Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/201

Rh Gulls, the Corn Feverfew (Febrifuge, chrysanthemum segetum), a weed which gave much trouble to the Birleymen of the old townships when the crofters were too lazy to clear it out. The word is the same as what we have in yellow and yolk. Shaw says, "Benner-gowan. I have heard this name applied to the fever-few of our gardens;" to which Professor Wallace, his biographer, adds, "Benner—Bennert or Banewort." Banewort is either deadly nightshade or "Ranunculus flammula," and therefore not the same as the Corn Gool.

H is dropped more frequently than it is used. The Scots are mercifully preserved from this variety of "English as she is spoke." Dr. Prevost illustrates thus: "Bessy, boil me a heg." "Father, you should have said an egg." "Then gang an' boil me two neggs."

Havver. Dr. Prevost quotes a saying about the Havver bread, baked twice a year and carefully preserved for luck,—

Havver is oats. The word has long been obsolete, and Burns, in the song, "O, whaur did you get it?" was working on an old model beginning—

a ballad which suggested to Scott his "Bonnie Dundee." Though not unknown to middle English, havver is distinctly Northern, and leans to a Scandinavian origin. But the Anglo-Saxon "oats" has quite superseded it. The German Hafer is the same word, as also our haversack (lit. oat-bag).

Heft, to restrain, let the cow's milk increase until the udder gets large and hard: "She's heftit of her yooer." The former sense is common over South-Western Scotland. On the East Coast the more familiar usage is swoln in the case of cows, and figuratively in the case of man as here: "A tak ill wi' the firrst o' hairst. A buddie's sae heftit wi' the baps an' the beer, an' fair hippit wi' the bindin'," was the sage reflection of a Fife bandster before the days of the reaping quick-firer.