Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/225

Rh (Du. spruiten, Ger. spriessen). In English the root was transferred to growing, hence sprout. The Banff hill farmer applies it to a particularly tough, strong rush which he twists into ropes. "Spritty knowes" or wet, rush-grown spots (water springs) were only too common in the pre-draining days. Burns, too, tells how his mare Maggie stoutly "spread abroad her well-filled briskit" and pulled the plough over "the spritty knowes." The favourite term in the West of Scotland for the kettle nozzle is not sprout but stroup, of Norse origin. The "Bachelor to his Bellows" in "Kilwuddie" sings,—

A ditch, again, is a sluit, an old Dutch and Boer word familiar in Scotland for a mill-lade as being controlled by a sluice. The Sclate, or old burgh, mill of Irvine probably meant originally the mill on the sluit.

The nomadic habits of the Boer are reflected in his language. To go on foot is to be a thief and a liar, as are all pedlars and gangrel bodies, such as were those sorners who were hunted off to their own parish in Old Scotland. Every honest Scottish farmer must ride his own nag with sonsy goodwife on the pillion behind, even though that were only a turf seat, the sonks that we read of as doing such service. At the kirk-stile and before the ha'-house stood the loupin-on stane, the counterpart of the Boer stoep. This is not a Celtic racial feature but a Norse one, for the Highlander has always been an infantry man, and kept his garron merely for the pack-saddle. On St. Michael's Day in Norse Scotland everyone in the township had to mount and enjoy a mad gallop. Riding the marches is still a great holiday in some Lowland towns, and the broose is not long extinct, in which the wild stampede of the bridal party from the kirk to the home earned for the first comer his bottle. To his horse the Boer applies a modification of the German Pferd in the form of paard or pêrt. Cronje made his last desperate stand at Paardeberg, the hill of horses. So much a part of the Boer's