Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/242

218 The Season is, of course, not the gloom of November but the end of harvest, the Oest-tijd of the Boer's Bible. The sickle is away (die sekels weg), and there is joy in prospect of the morrow's rest. Greetings go round (Naant, Gar. Guten Abend) from the eldest son (die oudste seun) to the little ones (die kleintjies). Brothers and sisters sit round upright in the hall (broers and susters sit rondom upsij) after the fashion of an old-time funeral party, and each outvies the other in gossip: "The social hours; swift-winged, unnoticed fleet" ("die tijd die vlieg so ongemerk verbij"=the tide flees so unmarked for-by). There follows a specially patriarchal function, the feet-washing (voet-wasbalie=feet-wash-pailie), grateful surely in that dry, dusty land. It long survived in Scotland as the rough horse-play of the evening before the wedding.

The watchdog barks (die honde blaf=bowffs, bluffs), and a knock at the door brings the conscious blush to Elsie's cheeks. The young man (die jonkman) greets (groet), Oom, Tante en Niggie (Ger. Nichte, niece), Boer conventions for host, hostess and girls. The sire talks to the kereltjie (carlie) of horses, pleughs and kye, but in Boerland this is horses, sheep and cattle (perde, skaap en vee). The Taal vee is in the opening of Henryson's fine pastoral,—

From the "neebor lad" (neef Koot, the lad Koot) we pass to Maatjie (Maatie, the gudewife) preparing the supper (die Opsit, a solemn social function). Instead of the "halesome parritch" and Hawkie's yill the table is decked with—

which may be rendered—Rice, carraway sweets, tarts, and white bread and butter, of which the Frau is proud, and a cog of milk. A South African assures me that kluitjies here is not clotted (our clot, clod) cream, which that land knows not, but "a sort of tart with a sticky, sweet paste inside. Kluit in the Taal is