Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/234

210 phrases—"Kijk hoe mooi die weer nou is" (See how nice the weather is now); "Kijk een beetje, daar kom mijn broer, Jakob;" "Hij kijkt naar je" (He's keekin naar ye); "Wach een beetje, laa mij kijk" (Wait a bittie, let me [cf. Lanarksh. Le'me] see). "Een val ver die muis" is the Boer way of describing a mousetrap. Here we have the German falle, and, curiously, the East Coast of Scotland word also, a mooss-faw (Norse musföll), with the usual dropping of a final l. A val deure is a trap-door. Even the youthful Boer would understand the Doric, to swei (Du. zwaai, swing) on a gate and to be roopie with a bad cold, for his roep (Sc. roup, an auction) means a call or a hoarse shout. From the sway or swei-cruck, in the old Scottish kitchen, hung the kail-pot. The request of the family doctor is equally familiar: "Laa' een beetje jou tong zien." "Wat kan ik voor u doen, Jufvrouw?" (Let me see your tongue. What can I do for you, Miss?) When he says "Daar teekens is van een besmettelijke ziekte" (there are tokens of an infectious sickness), he uses an expression almost identical with the Lowland Scots, smit and smittel. The Dutchman speaks plainly. He calls corns, for example, likdoorns (body-thorns), using the old word we have in lyke-wake, and calls a surgeon a snij-dokter or cutting doctor. He even turns his humour in grim directions. "Hei izet hoekie omgegaan" is his euphemism for "He has died." He uses here the diminutive of hoek a corner. Some may see in it a connection with our slang, Hook it! and Hooky Walker.

It will be seen that our current vernacular can claim close kin with the Cape Dutch. But the comparison also carries us back to olden times. There a roes has still the force it had in Hamlet's "The king has ta'en his rouse," for boisterous conviviality. One can recognise in it the Orcadian ruz, to praise, boast. Burns to Gavin Hamilton sings,—

In Dutch, too, there is a very strong expression for constant tippling in the verb zuipen, familiar to us in our saep, to soak in.