Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/197

Rh (however), "he's a laddie for o' maks o' spwort" for he's a lad at a spree, "barley me that" for chaps me that." Seekin th' milk" for fetching it is characteristically Tyneside. I have heard a nursery tot singing lustily: "Oh my! wat a smell o' sindgin! Battle Hill is all a-fire. Seek the 'attie-indgin." "We stump't away togidder as thick (friendly) as inkle weavers" preserves a lost Paisley industry. A Glasgow man of the eighteenth century conveyed from Holland the secret of weaving coarse tape, long known and peddled over the dales as inkle. The name is preserved as that of a Paisley street to this day. The old Scottish saying, "To lick at the lowder," a variant of "To live at hake and manger," is explained here by the note on lowder as the foundation supporting the nether millstone. The dalesmen knew at one time the tems, a hair sieve, the origin of the phrase " to set the Thames on fire."

Naturally many old Northern words, interesting to the Elizabethan scholar, linger among the dales. Shakspere finds many illustrations here. Billy, common all over the Scottish Border as brother, chum, is Bully Bottom, the weaver; fliar, to laugh heartily, is "the fleering tell-tale" of "Julius Cæsar;" plash, to trim the sides of a hedge, is "the pleached alley" of "Much Ado;" slive, to split, slice, is "the envious sliver" that drowned poor Ophelia. But the Burns scholar is still more indebted to the sidelights of the Cumberland "Glossary." Burneywin is the blacksmith; chufty is fat-cheeked ("chuffy vintner"); ootliggers, or cattle not housed in winter, is the "ootler quey" of "Hallowe'en;" weed-clips is the "weeder-clips" that Burns turned aside from the thistle. Daft Will in "Hallowe'en" "loot a wince," explained here as an attenuated swear-word, used in full in Gibson's "Bobby Banks:" "'Ods wuns (God's wounds) an' deeth!" Every friend of Burns's auld mare will understand the kindly phrase in the Cumberland old song,—

And when we learn that in the dales titty is a sister, and that "she's deein in a wearin" alludes to a hopeless case of consumption, we understand better two of our finest old songs.

Comparison with the usage of the Scottish border reveals