Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/175

Rh they winna stand the kin (kain) lang.” Sclitter, uncouth, a lazy person ; scuddy, jimp, scrimpit, e.g. “ Yere terrible scuddy wi' eer mizzur; ee dinna turn ee bauk," or beam carrying the scales; dottrifeed, a variant of tabitless or thowless, handless, fingers all thumbs, e.g. “That dottrified he can dae naething, the fushin's a' oot o'im "—these are also very expressive. Shaw, it may be noted, has the peculiar" scuddy" above as Dumfriesshire, where it means naked, bare, as a child or nestling. While my friend used all these out-of-the-way words he seemed unfamiliar with such as hip, to miss, pass over; lippen, to trust to; lapper, to clot, as blood or milk.

The foregoing shows that the language of mutual criticism was not unknown among this rural community. To speak fast was to yammer, a variant of yatter. Mimp (a variant of mumble), in Cumberland to talk primly and mincingly, and properly meaning a small part, is applied in Banffshire to an affected walk: “She mimpit an' primpit throo the room.” Sclitter was an ill-shaped, lazy, indolent, slooterin person, while slabbery was used like the Fife hashy. The coward was the foogie, a wide-spread relic of the Candlemas cock-fight in school. “Gie 'm the foogie lick; that'll riz his birse," with which last. word compare Gaelic bairseag, a scold. In Buchan it usually is applied to playing truant: “The twa loons fugiet the squeel, an' geed awa to the widds, an' harriet craws' nests a' day." It is a relic of schoolboy Latin, from fugio, to run away.

Yankee 'cuteness finds its analogue in the North-eastern phrase, to take a nip of one. Apropos is Grigor's story: "Fin I wiz a bit loonie, him and me trockit (bartered, niffered) watches; an' he took a nip o' ma; for, fin I geed, she (the watch) geed, an’ fin I steed, she steed. A jist lost (so many) shillins, an'a thocht this was my last chance," said by an old sexton in excuse for an overcharge in digging a grave, the grave of a man who had “taen a nip o'm.”

Continuing the peculiar, but not necessarily uncomplimentary, terms, I note cothie, usually coothie, in the sense of very comfortable; Cumb."a varra cowthie body," i.e. kindly. From it came the odd expression cothie juke, cothie-guckie, a snug shelter, a cosy beild. Hare-shed, hare-lip, was the cleft in a defective upper lip. The effect on speech is to produce the "whummle-