Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/212

188 in kindly fashion. No one contributed to this more than the peripatetic tailor, ever a welcome visitor to the upland dales: "Travelling artisans—tailors, shoemakers, and saddlers—went to the houses of the country people to work, taking with them their own material. They were paid so much a day and their 'meat.' This custom was formerly very common hereabouts, but it is not so much followed now." It was called "ť whip t' cat." All over Old Scotland the "customer" tailor, working for customers, was known as Whip-the-Cat. A correspondent said it primarily meant to "thrash with flail." One certainly fails to see why the "harmless, necessary" house-friend is chosen to symbolise itinerant labour.

Mining is the serious occupation of the Cumberland district, and here there are interesting notes. The "in-gaun-ee" of our colliers is explained by "ea," a gap, inlet, or gateway, used by miners with reference to a pit. "It was i' t' boddom ee at t' Park." New light is also thrown on the method of working known as "stoup an' room." "If in driving a level in the lead mines it is necessary at any point to carry the working upward and continue in a plane parallel to the original level, the material underlying the new level is a stoup. From these levels short cross-cuts were made into the vein." Of course, a room is any empty space, as "your room's better nor your company." Anyone can see that the Dutch-Frisian race that introduced mining and industries generally into Fife and the Lothians was closely akin to the Norse settlers in Cumberland and Westmoreland. Nay more, this very word "stoep" was transferred to the South African veldt. On the Boer homestead or place, as he calls it, the doorway on his raised first-floor has exactly such a stoup as is above described, with a double sloping approach to it, as is still to be seen in many old mansion-houses at home, and public buildings in Holland and North Germany. Such a stoup is shown in views of the old Court-house at the Tron of Glasgow, used alike for hustings, speeches, magisterial functions, and even executions.

Farm life has always been a stronghold of rural conservatism. One would hardly expect a survival anywhere of the sport of bull-baiting, yet the Cumbrian phrase, "Shak t' bull-ring," applied to the challenger at the village fair, analogue to the