Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/247

Rh skulpad." On this latter term Mitford's powerful tale, "A Veldt Official," throws light: "He is a young horse but a good one and will stand fire like an arm-chair, though he does shy like a foal now and again at a schuilpaat the size of a snail." By this name is the land tortoise known all over South Africa. Cape differs from Hollander Dutch in hardening initial sch, hence the difference in spelling here. The term is historically notable. Kruger, in a famous parable, once likened the Uitlander to the skulpad, whose head he cannily waited to lop off as soon as the unhappy creature, unwarily progressive, should emerge from its cover. In most tongues the crab and the tortoise designate something pinched, stunted, crooked. Hence this Dutch term appears in Scots as an epithet, shilpit, very familiar and expressive. Thus in Ford's "Morning Walk,"—

So Scott calls sherry a "shilpit drink," not, as the glossarists explain, because it is insipid, but because, when tart and sour, it causes a wry face. The wines of old had to be sweetened in a posset to make them palatable.

Tam's nag bears here the name Kol, very common for a horse, and always designating one with a white star on its forehead, what Burns called "bawsent." An Englishman, bargaining with a Boer for a pair of horses, has them thus described: "Daar staat een, die licht-bruine met die kol; en daar in die hock die ander, die donker-bruine ook met een kol"—there stands one, the light brown with the blaize (kol); and there in the corner the other, the dark brown, also with a blaize, The Scottish ploughman equally favours such a horse and calls it "Star." Klaas's meerie is still frisky though her back is a bittie hollow ("al was haar rug, 'n bietjie hol"). In rug here we have the Sc. riggin or ridge of a house.

Reitz fails to face the droll visualising of Auld Nick, but merely says he played on a tromp for forty spooks in a clump. His playing is expressed by speul, Ger: spielen, and long in the Scots vernacular in such phrases as spiel the wa', spiel a tree, where it means to climb. The instrument, too, is the rural