Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/205

Rh Forth, where also any nestling is a raw gorbet, the Cumberland "bare gorp." Of pure Saxon affinities with the Tweeddale there are wig, a tea-cake; hine, a farm-servant; hinny, a term of endearment; and the curious gawm, to give attention to. "He nivver gawmed me" is quite Border. Farther north it is better known as gumption. The root is in the fourth century Gothic translation of the Gospels. The "hypocrites pray at the street corners that they may be seen of men ('ei gaumjaindau mannam')." Jamieson has gum, variance, umbrage, of which Lockhart, writing his account of Union times (1707) says: "Whilst this affair (Malt Tax) was in agitation, as it created a great gum and coldness between members of the two nations, it created a friendship and unanimity amongst the Scots Commons."

The able editors have designedly refrained from speculation on the historic aspects of their subject. The volume is richly suggestive here. Their "wife-day or cum-mether" (Fr. commère) is the Cummers' Feast of Old Edinburgh, a christening ceremony humorously sketched in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The rannel-trees, alluded to by Davie Deans in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian," are fully explained as a part of the old ingle and chimney-breest. Old farming customs are noted, such as "the deetin (Sc. dichtin) hill," the equivalent of the Scottish Sheelin Law, where the corn was winnowed. The "tummel-car," Burns's "tumlin wheels," we are told, was represented in 1897 by one ancient survivor. "Syme," the straw rope for securing thatch, is the simmons or sooms which the tenants of Caithness had to supply for the laird's stacks a century ago. The "spelk hen," annually due to the landlord for liberty to cut rods for securing thatch, clearly points to the Orcadian spolk, a splint (Eng. spoke, Ger. Speiche, the spoke of a wheel). To this day round Loch Lomond barked oak-branches are called speogs. The Morayshire custom of corn-thiggin, when the poor or thriftless crofter went round the clachan begging a pickle seed, is just the Cumberland "cworn-later" asking at every house for "a lile lock corn" for his first crop. "Lock" here is often heard in Scotland. A "fell lock o' us" is not a corruption of lot, a quantity. It is accounted for by the Orcadian lock, to clutch, seize hold of, the Icel. luka. In Old Edinburgh the Lucken-