Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/39

Rh complete, the others show numerous and extensive lacunæ Of not one of the Gospels is the concluding portion preserved. The last words of the narrative, as a whole, form the report of Mary Magdalene, that she had seen her risen Lord on the first day of the week. We miss the marriage supper at Cana, the interviews with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, the good Samaritan, the Agony, and the institution of the Lord's Supper. But we have the story of our Lord's birth and early life, the episodes of the Baptist and the Temptation, the great miracles, the best discourses, such as the Lord's Prayer, Sermon on the Mount, and the farewell to the disciples, the most familiar parables, the entry into Jerusalem, the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. A closer scrutiny of this unique relic ought to proceed on three lines—(a) What are its merits as a translation? (b) what does it reveal of the material, social, and intellectual condition of the Goths at the time? (c) what are its affinities with Scotch, English and German?—the modern languages with which it is intimately connected. From the philologist's point of view the first may be passed over. Wulfila keeps faithfully to the Greek text, and in the spirit of Old-English, and the prevailing practice of modern German, he refrains from adopting a foreign word, but prefers, if possible, to translate it. In this respect we have long enjoyed Free Trade, and readily admit within our shores an unlimited number of foreign words, not unfrequently ousting good native products in the process. Many terms, however, Wulfila adopts. The Greek borrowed words include those connected with the church services, dress, and articles of utility or refinement, such as paska (old Scotch pash, Easter), purple-dye, sackcloth, olive-oil, myrrh, linen, mustard. The Latin borrowings, on the other hand, refer to war, government, money, and the like, such as Cæsar (Kaisar), pretorium, militare, regere, cumbere (to sit at meat), fascia. Of these native equivalents the following may be taken as samples:—bokareis = scribes, figgra-gulth = ring (finger-gold), hunsla-staths = altar, i.e. (Sc. hansel)-place; weina-basi = grape (wine-berry), hunda-faths = centurion, hleithra-stakins = tabernacles (properly a "wattled cot"), harns-stead,