Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/210

186 home products. A specific sure to mollify a colded throat was sugar-awlie," sold in short, black sticks, stamped at one end. The Glasgow sweet, known in the trade as Tchuch Jeens, is known to me only by name.

The biscuit and sma'-breed trade, now enormously developed, has quite transmogrified the old-time fly-blown window-watchers. Where are now the plump wee brown rabbits with currants for eyes, the nickit baiks, the rings powdered with pink sugar, the cheesies, Cupar hardies, and the ginger-breed demons? These last, standing grim and black, arms defiantly akimbo, and goggle eyes, so impressed a bit lassie one day that, barely reaching the counter with her bawbee, she asked the village Johnnie Aw-thing for "ain o' thae hawpny deevils," so familiar were we long ago with the deep things of theology. And yet our kindly English critics speak with commiseration of our dismal creed. I remember, when in a sweetie shop in Heidelberg, being surprised and amused as a little boy, putting down a kreuzer or two and receiving three sweets in exchange—Protection in Germany takes care of that—exclaimed with disgust, "Ah, wot a horrid shame, Herr Schmidt!" Nowadays the sorrows of exam-driven youth are tempered by the delicacies of Signor Nicolini, the ice-cream man. I know the slider merely by name, but apropos of it here are some of the words of Oald Cummerlan, illustrating its dialect forms and uses. "Wor hes thoo been aw this time, thoa sledderkin thoo; thoo's a fair sledders an' nivver like ta git back woriver thoo gangs till;" "T' aad fella dizz nout but sledder about an smeuk;" "Wi' taes aw sticking through my shoes I weade among the slatter;" "T'wedder was slattery, t'rwoads was slashy." An old-fashioned bailie, before the days of public festivities, spoke of oysters as "nae better nor slithery, fushionless glaur."

The "Cumbrian Glossary" is rich in illustration of folk-lore. Children's games afford ready proof. A safety-valve under the stern discipline was the barrin-oot at Pasch (Easter), or Candlemas in Scotland, and at Christmas in England. "It was customary for the boys inside school to sing, "Pardin, maister, pardin, Pardin for a pin; If ye won't give us helliday, We'll nivver let ye in.'" "Barrin-oot" was practised in Roxburghshire on 21st December 1907. The "beut-money," customary of old over the