Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/40

16 i.e. brains-place = Golgotha, the place of a skull, of. Sc. harnpan and Fr. tête from Lat. testa, a pot.

Of more vital interest is the evidence these remains afford of the condition of life among the Goths. In one respect they have the advantage of preserving in transverse section a petrifaction, as it were, of contemporary speech. On the other hand, the limited range of subjects in the Gospels excludes many departments of social and intellectual activity. We miss the language of war and the chase, of the social pleasures, of folk-lore. But it must be admitted that the Gospel narrative comes very near to our "business and bosoms," so we should expect to find in the language of Wulfila no lack of homely and intelligible terms. A glossary arranged, as it is, alphabetically, conceals the evidence it bears of social and intellectual status. More instructive would it be to have the words classified under subjects. The main heads might be—(1) Man and his personal environment (man generally, parts of the body, relationships, dwellings, dress, feelings); (2) Man's remoter natural surroundings (plant and animal life, the weather, time, &c.); (3) Man's forms of activity (occupations, war, civil life, education, and religion). Under these heads a mass of most interesting words are to be found in Gothic, most of which are still in use among us, the rest are quite familiar to a Scotchman, and in a large degree to a German. All of them have a history in themselves and in the affinities they suggest.

Here follow some specimens of this instructive catalogue:—

Man generally.—Wair = Lat. vir, the strong one, the hero, obsolete but seen in O.Eng. wer-old = world, Sc. wardle, e.g. "Eh, sirs! sic a weary wardle" ("Johnny Gibb o' Gushetneuk"), wer-geld. It is found, but obscurely, in Canterbury = Roman Cant-uarius = bury or town of the men of Kent. In this word er represents A.S. waru = wair, common in old place-names. In Gael, wair is fear, as in Farintosh = clansman. Guma = homo, the earthy one (bride-g(r)oom, yeoman). Manna is used, like German man, in an indefinite, pronominal sense. Queins