Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/252

228 mainly Campvere, or through the Huguenot city of Bordeaux, then also in the hands of Dutch traders. But the East Coast of England, particularly the port of Hull, came under similar influences, so that no list of word exchanges can claim to be in any special sense Scottish. Word exchanges under this industrial head have mainly a social significance.

In other two directions seventeenth-century influence might well have been very considerable and lasting. These were the military and the academic. The Scot abroad, under both aspects, has played a part in literature in no way bome out by the evidence of the vernacular. A typical soldier of fortune, Sir James Turner, tells us he went through all his Continental fighting without knowing French. Graham of Claverhouse, though he got his baptism of fire abroad, uses no French in his correspondence save such a word as allya (Fr. allié), an ally, relation by marriage, but it is often used by contemporary Scottish writers. In the arts of peace many youthful Scots gained posts in Huguenot colleges, such as the Melvills, Boyd of Trochrig, and others, but they use scarce any borrowings from French. Sir Thomas Hope, Lord-Advocate, through the critical times of the Bishops' War and the Solemn League and Covenant, himself the grandson of a Frenchman settled in Edinburgh, had some of his sons educated in France, but uses surprisingly few French words. Sir Thomas Lauder, again, later known as Lord Fountainhall, studied and travelled in France through the middle of the century, but he uses very little French. After his day, under the influence of the English Revolution and the Orange King William, the academic stream flowed towards Holland.

Borrowings from one language by another are either few or many, just as one regards the question of origin. The evidence of this origin, in the case of Scoto-French, is to be found in the literature of the past, but here we come under book and imitative influences, and these are deceptive. I present a few examples from sources that can hardly be called literary. Such evidence has the merit of being contemporary, undesigned, and unbiassed by art. I now present it in chronological sequence, premising that it is in no degree exhaustive. It has, however, the advantage of showing popular use of the words at the time.