Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/207

Rh randle-tree is a tall, raw-boned youth. One naturally finds more points of relationship with Burns and his open-air and—to use a Greek in default of an English expression—autochthonous muse. In his facetious apostrophe to the unbidden insect guest he spied in church we have three Cumberland words—" an auld wife's flannin toy   Aiblins on some duddy boy, on's wyliecoat," Burns, again, in the "Twa Dogs" makes "Cæsar" so frankly human as to hob-nob with "a tinkler-gipsey's messan  or tawtiet tyke, tho' e'er sae duddie." Compare this with the Cumberland couplet,—

The "messan" of Burns and the "Glossary" was originally a lap-dog from Messina. During Knox's famous interview with Secretary Lethington, the wily diplomat kept toying with a messan on his knee. The two old-fashioned "bannocks" that Burns alludes to—mashlum (of mixed meal) and hauver (oatmeal)—have long ceased and determined in Scotland. Both are Cumberland terms. In "The Cottars," it will be remembered, the Covenanting Psalm tune, Elgin, "beets the heavenward flame," and, again, the house-father wales a reading out of "the big ha' Bible." Two of the words here are annotated in a fashion that throws light on Burns's use of them. Thus the "beeter" attends to the fire that bakes the oatbread. The "beetin stick" was used to stir the fire in the brick oven. A recent publication illustrating "The Cottars" glosses the "ha' Bible" as the one used in the great hall of a mansion. Dr. Prevost's note is more helpful to the student of Burns than this: "The manor house of small manors, now a farmer's house, in contradistinction to a cottage" or humblest rural abode.

Folk-lore offers a rich hunting-ground to the antiquary turned philologist. Here we have embedded the wit and the wan-wit of the "rude forefathers of the hamlet." In this connection Dr. Prevost gives some interesting finger-jingles, product of the upland nurseries—Tom Thumper (a German, speaking English, calls the thumb the thump), Billy Winker, Long Lazor, Jenny Bowman, Tippy Town-end; also, Tom Thumper, Bill Milker, Long Razor, Jerry Bowman, Tip Town-end. The