Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/191

Rh phonetics, sympathetic ingathering of material fast fading away, and abundant illustration of the dialect of the dalesmen from popular tale and song. Dr. Prevost has done work, unaided save by inborn, loving zeal, that, even in frugal Germany, is deemed worthy the aid of a State Department. Is there a class of subscribers in Scotland public-spirited enough to give similar countenance to the labourer there in a field that is quite as rich, but, alas! marked with decay? There has always been a double current of trade across the Sark, but traces of an early and unkindlier state of matters have been more persistent. Dr. Prevost quotes the significant couplet,—

an echo of the freebooter's "hership," when the Michaelmas moon was welcomed as his lantern. In quieter times the Scots pedlar took his place among the dales, a character that Wordsworth made the model for his "Wanderer." To the packman's ear the Cumberland speech would sound homely. Familiar would be its fondness for the dental ending as in sheppert, forrat, anes-eerant ; the avoidance of the hard tone in bodd'm, foot-pad (path); the vocalising of prepositions as in wi' meh (with me); and the intrusion of a letter in such words as narder for nearer, spreckled for speckled. There are shades of difference here. For the Cumbrian's "Ah divn't, he disn't, plural, divn't " the Scot would say "Ah divna, he disna, we divna, they dinna," showing his fondness for the enclitic na, a far older negative than "not." Dr. Prevost accounts for the insertion of v here by analogy with "Ah hevn't," but in these cases the v is radical, div being an old strengthened form of do as shown in Moeso-Gothic.

Idiom is still more characteristic than phonetics, and here the parallels are most interesting. No one in touch with Lowland Scots could fail to recognise kinship with these Cumberland phrases:—I'se warrant, seckan a yan (sicna yin), the butcher's killin' es-sel the day, noos and thans, thur ans (thirr ans), pennies a-piece, whiles for sometimes, and the general use of the old preposition un meaning without (Ger. ohne) as a prefix sounding on. In both districts one hears such words as oonpossible, onbonny,