Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/199

Rh sair chunned" or well sprouted. Shaw says: "A term applied to the sprouts or germs of barley, but, as I have heard it, to the shoots of potatoes when they begin to spring in the heap;" which also appears in Jamieson, who adds that it is used in connection with the process of making malt. I always heard the maltman calling these "cummins." They represented the germination of the malt as dried on the floor of the malt-barn.

Cobble, to pave with cobblestones, to stone: "He could tell that they also had another fish in a hole because they were running up and down cobbling it," the poacher's trick to drive the fish out into the shallower water. This is the diminutive of cob, cop, cup, anything rounded, cup-like. Its Boer form is the too familiar kopje. Chaucer's miller had a wart "upon the cop right of his nose." I was forcibly shown what the old-time cobble-hole was when travelling through Antrim. The bundles of flax are kept down in water-pits, during the stage of putrefaction, by rounded stones or cobbles: and as I passed the good Orangemen were busy lifting out the fermenting mass and spreading it abroad to dry, filling the railway carriages the while for many miles with an odoriferous blend as of senna tea and grease fizzling from a hot-plate.

Dow, to be able, to dare, or venture (with a negative),—

This fine old word, still in much and daily use in German, is rarely heard now in Scotland. It recalls the well-known Burns couplet,—

Faymishly, splendidly, "We set off t' merry neet, an' gat to Rostwhate famishly." How readily most of us settle down into the ruts of our pet mannerisms of action or phrase! All human action tends naturally to the automatic. An old weaver had one fixed reply to every opening for a twa-handed crack. To a neighbourly inquiry, "Hoo are ee the day, Dauvit?" came the unfailing response, "Fawmous, mun," which was quite as explicit as Buller's "The men are splendid." In a famous city