Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/194

170 too ready to say to his brother, "Thou fool!" In an obscure exclamation, Goavy-dick! common to Fife and the Lothians, and apparently expressing mere surprise, the Cumberland dialect suggests that there is implied contempt. The plain man in the Lothians, suddenly surprised at sight of something comical, naturally exclaims, "Goavy-dick!" In Cumberland a Gauvy is a fool, a simpleton, an open-mouthed fellow: "Thee girt Gauvy, thoo." This is just the English gaby and the French gobe-mouche, the fly-catcher. Gope is to stare with open mouth:—"A gowped at t' chaps 'at war playing sangs." Other forms are in the phrases—"Greet govin fuil!" "Whee was't brong thee a fortune, peer gomas?" "T'ou's ayways in a ponder; ay geavin' wi' thy oppen mouth." In Scotland the metaphor is carried still further. "Git oot o' ma rodd, ye muckle gawpus!" says the stirring gudewife to a loutish, idle fellow, varying it for a lump of a lassie with taupie, French for the mole. In some districts to gob is to spit. The Orcadian gubb is scum, froth, foam. In Nithsdale gowf is to flaunt about, and a gowf is a foolish person. As a mere exclamation, however, and a kindly one, comes the characteristic Border and Lanarkshire lovenanty! the equivalent of goavy-dick! Jamieson's explanation. Love anent you! is too suspiciously neat. We are all familiar with Paisley as the city of "Seestu!" but the exclamation is not confined to that Scottish Helicon. It is very common in Orkney, and has a place in the kindred Norse district, the dales of Cumberland—"Sista, if thoo leaves me, ah'll kill tha;" "Sees te, Bella; nay, but sees te?" So thoroughly does the conventional lay hold of us that one will say even to a blind man, "See that, now!"

To note down the peculiarities of grammar that prevail in the spoken vernacular of the unlettered is a difficult task, but it is a trifle compared to the problems of dialect phonology. And yet while the vocables are being ousted by the ootners—the Cumbrian for Uitlanders—of the school and the newspaper, and the quaint idioms and proverbs and folk-lore slink into obscurity, abashed by the inroads of the railway, the tripper, and the tourist, the pronunciation of the locality seems to cling persistently to the very air and soil. Mr. Dickson Brown's work here is worthy of all praise as a valuable contribution to the