Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/251

Rh philology. It discusses the only accessible evidence for that matrix of culture, social custom and attitude to the facts of nature and life which moulded the vernacular of Scotland in common with its cognate European tongues.

The illustrations that I have here garnered owe much to the published researches and arguments of the late Professor Max Müller and to Professor Sayce. It was the writings of the former that most powerfully impelled me to follow up my youthful reading of Trench's charming studies into the wider field of comparative philology. But most of all is the article based on the teaching of the late Professor Aufrecht. He was the first holder of the Chair of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology in Edinburgh University. As these lectures have never been published, so far as I know, I believe I am doing a welcome service to linguistic study in incorporating them with my own researches.

But slight evidence of the "Auld Alliance" has survived in the vernacular. Any influences exerted on the nation by it were at no time more than political. France used Scotland merely as a thorn in the side of her rival, England. The political movement came to a head during the Reformation struggle, but the battle of Langside (1568) dealt the final blow at the Catholic reaction. Even this political line of influence has left scarce a survivor in the vocabulary. The long reign of the Old Faith might have been more fruitful. On the evidence of language the hold of Catholicism on Lowland Scotland has been of the slightest. The once familiar Pasch (Easter) and a dairgie (Domine, dirige nos) are among the very few of its survivals.

Actual intercourse between the two countries was of the trading kind, but such interchanges as existed were carried on with Northern France through Dutchmen and Dutch ports,