Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/170

146 ing was in progress. Originally it was the begging of seed oats to sow the first crop on entering a farm. The hay was done up first in colies, then tramp-colies, and last in hey-soos or trances. In Shetland the head-koil or koil-tett is the top sheaf on the haystack. The sickle was the hyuck, either the ancient toothed ind, requiring no sharpening, or the syth-hyuck, a very capable implement in the hands of an active lass, specially if kemping or striving with rivals for speed. There were a few odd terms for implements. A rake to clear out manure from a cart was a hack or a drag, the latter, curiously, a North of England word. In Cumberland a drag is a three-pronged fork, known in Fife as a graep, for dragging or drawing litter out. Hack is another form of howk, dig out. "Sunshine mead him throw his cwoat off when in 'hackin' he grew warm " (Cumb.). A drill harrow was a shim, known not only in Banff and Moray but in Yorkshire. In Kent it goes bodily between the rows of hops. Winnowing of old was done on the sheelin (shelling) hill. An enormous saving was effected when a machine for it was introduced near the close of the eighteenth century. Many worthy folks thought it an impious thing thus to raise wind by art and man's contrivance. The fanners, as the machine was called, was in Moray named a winister.

These verses express the scruples of the straiter sect that objected to 'novations,—

A minister's wife, having made an effort to have her daughter "finished" in Edinburgh, was naturally a diligent matchmaker. Entertaining an eligible young farmer at the manse one evening, she made much of the young lady's piano playing. The farmer, appealed to for a compliment, confessed that to him the best music was the sound of the fanners.