Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/34

12 vowels. In course of time the Go. consonants have become greatly altered. Thus Go. s is often Eng. and Ger. r e.g. raus, a reed = Ger. Rohr, dius, a beast = deer, auso = ear, huzd = hoard, gazd, a goad = yard, haus-jan, to hear. This change is common in the declension of Latin nouns. Go. b is f in laub = leaf, giban, to give.

The guttural series offers the greatest difficulty to the modern Englishman, but none at all to the Scot. To the latter, as to the Goth, the guttural is familiar. Nowhere has he any tendency to alter its face value. His "heech" is as decided as the German's hoch or the Goth's hauh-s. His bocht is the Gothic bauhta, pret. of bugjan, to buy. The Gothic bairhts (bright), nahts (night), are followed in his bricht, nicht. Even where the guttural is strengthened by a following dental, the older h has been squeezed out in English, though preserved in the Scotch, as in waihts, a thing, Eng. wight, and whit for an older wiht, compared with Sc. aacht = ae-waiht, property. The guttural suffers in compounds as nought and not, for Go. ni-whait, compared with Sc. nocht and nochtie (paltry). the strong German nicht becomes in dialects nisht and nit. Dutch makes the positive form of Go. waihts into iets and negative niets, with which compare Sc. hait and "Deil hait" (Devil a bit!). Scotch writers of the seventeenth century often put a t after the guttural as publict for public. This may explain an occasional corruption of the original guttural as in the bauths, deaf, heard in Sc. bauch, applied to anything dulled, such as ice that is not keen. The Gothic phrase bauth wairthan is said of the salt that had "lost its savour, or become bauch (wersh)." Gothic distinguishes where Eng. and Sc. fail equally, as liu-hath = light and leihts (not heavy). In Sc. these words show a strong guttural as in-lichten for Go. in-liuhtjan (en-lighten). But the most interesting example, common to Gothic and Scotch, is tiuhan, to tow, tug, and its variant tahjan, to tear or rend, which Prof. Skeat further explains as expressing action of the teeth. Taw is used in connection with the preparation of leather, in which primitive process, among the Eskimo at least, the teeth of the women play a part. Perhaps we have here a side-light on the culture of the Goths. The primitive guttural, lost in Eng. tough, from tiuhan, is heard in