Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/245

Rh (and his horse). The commonplace beginning is unworthy of Burns's vigorous visualising: "when you perhaps with your mate up in the village sit laughing and chatting, you forget you must go home (vergeet jij, jij moet huis toe gaan), otherwise Elsie will beat you. She now sits by the fire and mutters, 'I'll get him soon as he comes home.'" We miss the graphic picture of Auld Ayr's High Street at the close of a market-day, the chapmen homeward bent, the change-house going "like a cried fair," and the prospect of moorland roads in winter. Elsie is a poor substitute for Kate, but the vrou, well used to the "handy rung" for the Hottentot help, threatens to beat her man (slaan, Ger. schlagen, Eng. slog). For "nursing her wrath to keep it warm" we have merely brom, expressive in a way, for it is akin to the word for barm or yeast. Reitz moralises on the frequent want of appreciation of a wife's advice, to him indeed the raison d'être of Klaas's subsequent mishap,—

Elsie's scolding does not want for directness. Not a day passed but she said to him, "Klaas, you are indeed an old rascal (alte skellem); not a night you have been out of the