Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/198

174 but few variants in meaning or form among the common stock of vocables. Of such these few may be noted:—Creuve, a staked enclosure for catching salmon (C.) —a pig sty (B.); dad, obsolete mining term, to shake (C.)—a blow (B.); gliff, a hurried look (C.)—a fright (B.); jag, sucker or rootlet (C.)—a pin prick (B.); jink, move quickly (C.)—avoid by a quick movement. (B.).

Parallels are more numerous. The familiar bien, well-to-do, kindly, has here the sense of obliging, "Theer was niver a kinder, bainer body leevt." The Border phrase "a bob of flowers" for a bouquet is similarly used, witness, "She had put on a great red bob of ribbon on her bonnet." "Chuck," a miner's term for food, suggests a note from my Border friend:—"In an evening school in Glasgow, about twenty-five years ago, asking the meaning of 'delicacies,' I got the answer, 'Fancy chucks.'" "Dub," so widely diffused in the North, is here equally familiar. Anything larger, however, than a puddle of casual water is separately named. When the river banks are high and steep, the word "whol" replaces dub. This, in the form of weel or well, is the regular name for a large pool in the stream of the Tweed. "Fell," the common Scottish and German intensive," has also its Border meaning of strong, hard-working,—

The Border phrase, a nibby stick, one with a crook, has the form gibby or kibby in the dales. "To glower oot" is a Border game in which two would stare at each other to see who would wink first. In Cumberland it simply means a fixed, staring look. "Skelly-eyed," both here and on the Border, has the sense of squint-eyed. Finally, the familiar "wap," a disturbance, is paralleled by a miner's description of the tragedy of Othello as "A (blank) wap aboot a pokkit neepyin."

One might pick at random from the "Cumberland Glossary" such parallels with vocables used in Lowland Scotland, more or less modified to suit the different conditions prevailing. Thus we have: Chun, the sprout of the potato; "T' taties are