Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/232

208 This is the usual Scots word for a ladder. In school to take down a rival and thus climb higher in the class we called to trap. The Taal calls a stair a trap, as in the sentence, "Ga die trap op, loop voorbij (walk past) twee deure in die gang (passage), en klop (clap, knock) dan aan die derde deur," where the language is Scots enough to be easily followed. The "who goes up my winding stair" connects trap as at once a stair and a snare. The window, as in a Scottish borrowstoon when glass was scarce, closes with a schut or wooden screen, a term in constant use here in olden days. Amid the reek (Sc. Du. rook, smoke) hangs the pot on the fire by the lum-cleek (Du. and Sc. lum, a chimney, and klik a hook and cleek in golf), while the guidwife plies her canny trokes (Sc. Du. drok, busy) about the kitchen in homemade vel-schoen (fell or skin shoes), the bauchles or revlins (Orkney) of the days before machine-made slippers. Out of doors the Boer would recognise the sheep flake (Sc. and Du.) or hurdle, originally of flaked or plaited twigs, and the thoroughly Scottish saying, "Let the tow (rope) gang (gaan) wi' the bucket," for the folly of crying over spilt milk. He makes a kink (Sc. kinch) on his tow or tuig, and might easily hazard a guess at the meaning of Burns's lines,—

A Cape man, doing business up-country, was buying horses for his waggon, and this is what the Boer seller had to say for them: "Die paar paarde is goed geleer (weel learnt) in die tuig." A pole or stick is a stang, just as in the Scottish phrase to ride the stang, and to smother is to smore. When the auld mare came to a stey (steep) brae, Burns reminds her,—

This shows the Boer snoove, to walk smoothly. A "stey brae" is in the Transvaal "een steile op-draus," a stiff up-drawing or climb, where we have the same word as there is in stile, or steps over a wall in the absence of a slap or a yett. It is, indeed, surprising to find so many of the homeliest Scots expressions