Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/248

224 name for the Jew's harp, the trump. The witches are timidly sketched as die goed, the stuff, the things, and almost as naked as a poodle.

It is significant of much that, whereas Tam "skelps through mud and mire, crooning some auld Scots sonnet," Klaas whistles (fluit=flute) the nine and ninetieth Psalm to keep his courage up, for the Boer is as fond of psalm-singing as a westlan' Whig. He dreads to meet uncanny spooks, for he must pass die kerk-hof," haunt of bogles. For the "hof" the modern Scot finds a Saxon term, churchyard, but the town graveyard of Dundee was of yore known as the Auld Howf.

Equally significant of Boer tactics, too, when Klaas is pursued by the witches, is his appeal to his mare to do her utmost, not in clearing the brig, rare in the Transvaal, but in crossing the drift or ford, often enough exposed to sudden floods. "Go it, Kol!" he shouts, "the devil cuts your spoor; here lies the drift. Up! she's over!" A born huntsman, the Boer knows the spoor well, the Scots speer, to follow a track, to ask one's way. But, exposed for generations to unseen dangers, he knows, too, what it is to have his retreat cut off, as Klaas dreaded here. The dénouement is rapidly sketched,—

The stêrt here remains on our coast, as a note of Viking raids, in Start Point, and, with more peaceful suggestions, in the name of a bird, the redstart. "Uit-geruk," again, is simply the Scots rugged or pulled out. There remains only to point the moral in the fashion of the good Predikant,—

Rendered literally this would read:—