Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/237

Rh supports the flame of patriotism as pride in the national speech. This was in every way a laudable and progressive policy. Krugerism, on the other hand, represented, to the Uitlanders of Johannesburg and the Rand, a retrograde Conservatism. Reitz rightly tried to foster a popular literature, and so he chose for the models he put before the young Boers such pieces as "John Gilpin" and, above all, the poems of Burns. They were published, fifty in number, in 1888, when he was Chief Justice of the Orange Free State. Of these pieces the outstanding ones are "The Cottars," "Tarn o' Shanter," and "Duncan Gray," They are suggestions more than translations. With skill and judgment he selects the features that suit the Boer environment, and adds many touches that spring out of the changed situation. All of them throw most interesting light on the peculiarities, of the people. In "The Cottars" Reitz admirably illustrates the rural homeliness and isolation of Boer life, combined with characteristic social and devotional traits. "Tam" shows the Boer in convivial mood, the victim at once of good fellowship and uncanny spooks. He cheats Auld Nick through his slimness and mobility. In "Duncan Gray," again, we have the Boer in the lighter vein of a wooer or vrijer, a term that is a survival from prehistoric times, for it is just the masculine of the Freja or Norse Venus of our Friday or Freja Day, and stdl heard in the Ger. Frau. In the Gothic gospels of the fourth century, frijon, to love, is common, while our Lord is generally addressed as Frauja. The wooer is the young farmer, Daantjie or Danie Grouws (cf. Ger. grau, grey), while the wooed is the meisje (missie), Maartjie or Martha. A word-for-word translation will enable the reader, with his Burns in hand, to judge of the merits of the piece It will be noted, in this interlinear translation, that wherever an English word could be found that was closely akin to its Taal equivalent it has been used, though archaic from the modern point of view. The second line, as the oft-recurring refrain, need appear only once.