Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/230

206

In his version the thieves twitted (id-weitjan, Du. ver-witjan) Jesus on the Cross, just as any Lowland Scot puts the wite (Du. wijt) or blame on another. The hireling shepherd in the parable is betrayed by his framath voice, the Dutch vremmd, and Scottish fremd. Scott, writing to John Ballantine, says: "Walter will be in town by the time this reaches you, looking very like a cow in a fremd loaning" (paddock). The disciples take of the fragments twelve baskets full of brock (ga-bruko, Du. brok), a term familiar in every kitchen. The Shetlander calls the offal of fish, brucks. St. Paul tells the Corinthians that "all things are lawful, but are not expedient," which Wulfila renders, "All bi-nah, akei ni all daug," where we have the Boer deug, virtue, merit, the root of which is primarily a pastoral metaphor, to yield milk, then to be good for. It gives us doughty, and do in the phrase, "Will that do?" The old verb dow, to be worth, be able, is still in use in Central Scotland. In "Johnie Armstrong's Last Good Night" there is a good illustration,—

When the Saviour sends out the twelve on mission He says: "And put not on two coats"—"Jah ni vasjaith tvaim paidom." Here Wulfila uses a very old word for a peasant's coat of sheepskin, paida. This explains the contemptuous Boer name for an English red-coat, a rooi-baatjie. Both forms follow the Greek βαίτη, a peasant's coat of skins, not the modern Dutch pije, a coat of coarse woollen stuff. This latter is what we hear in pea-jacket and the mediæval courte-py. It is remarkable that Dutch uses not this antique baatje, but jakse or mantle