Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/177

Rh the "kneipen" of the German students. Without the k we have nip, to outwit, as in the Morayshire expression, "He fairly took the nip o' me." In the South this would be "He took his nap aff me." The form ouks for weeks, general over Scotland in the seventeenth century, lingered long in the North, but is now old-fashioned: "Sax ouks o' a knee-deep storm i' the mid o' Mairch; it nivver devald" (ceased). On the same lines is the Aberdeenshire description of a spell of wet weather in the uplands of the county: " Up i ee Cabrach for sax ouks ther wizz an onding o' weet oena upalt (uphold) or deval." This is a good test of an ear for Scottish dialect, if spoken moderately fast. Grigor has a variant of this saying, " It dang on sax ooks delaverly on iver uppalt or dewalt." He glosses delaverly here as continuously, which looks very like Chaucer's " deliver," nimble, active, as "Wonderly deliver and gret of strenthe," though it seems strange to see it used in Banffshire. The word oena here is exactly the German without, ohne, and once in common use. It is the favourite negative prefix as in 5n-bonnie, on-neat. Grigor gives this interesting example, "The nowt are gaein' throo an undeembus thing o' neeps: ye see, th'ive nae up-stanan." He compares the Shetland undumous, immense, uncountable from un, without, and deman, to reckon. The once familiar deval, to leave off, is, in Cumberland, dwalla in the sense of wither, grow yellow from damp,—

To continue on this human side of rustic speech, expressions for feelings are stanner-gaster, dumbfoundered; "a grue, cauld nicht" as inspiring a shivering sensation; yuckie, an itching feeling. With reference to their source of the feeling we have fousom (fulsome), dirty, causing disgust; wersh, generally insipid, and probably a contraction of the Buchan walshoch, weak and watery. Dreich is tedious. Hamil, Fife haemit, is home-made. A few examples applicable to manners as the outcome of feelings will suffice. Fraising, used much like the Fife fraiking, is the wheedling manner of a "twa-facet creatur." As marking the lowest grade of manners we have the "tinkler's tung," better known all over the edge of the Highlands by his name of caird. Thus