Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/41

Rh = γυνὴ, the producer, stands for woman generally, our queen, Sc. quean.

Parts of the Body.—Leik = body generally, dead or alive, very common in older Eng. as in lich-gate, lyke-wake. Hwairnei = brains, Sc, harns, Ger. Ge-hirne, renders Golgotha = hwairnei-staths, place of a skull. Lof-a = Sc. loof, cf. die flache Hand, the open palm. "Some standing by struck Jesus with the lofa (loof)."—John xviii. 22. In A.S. it is lôf. Beowulf has g-lôf, our glove, an almost solitary trace of the prefix ge, so common with nouns in Gothic and German. Gothic shows that our gallop has also a trace of it in verbs, for it is Go. ga-hlaupan, to run, our leap, Sc. lowp, Ger. laufen, Eng. loafer and inter-loper. Kinnus = the cheek, our chin. Sc. keeps k in kin-cough for chin-cough, Du. kink-hœst. Literally it is the curved, crooked, as in kink, a twist in a rope, Sc. kinch. Taihs-wa = dexter, the pointer or right hand (also in teach and token). Gothic has a word for one-handed = hamfs, in the general sense of maimed, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; good is it for thee to enter into life one-handed than to enter Gehenna having two hands" = "Jabai marzjai thuk handus theina, afmait tho; goth thus ist hamfamma in libain galeithan, than twos handuns habandin galeithan in gaiainnan."—Mc. ix. 43. Haihs = one-eyed, a curious compound, according to Bopp, of the -ce of Lat. ec-ce hic-ce, e-ka (Sanskrit one), along with the common Aryan word for the eye, Go. augo, Lat. oc-ulus. The whole is therefore in the Roman name Horatius Cocles = the one-eyed. By Grimm's Law the syll.-ha = ka (Sans.) is in both hamfs and haihs. Hamfs = ha-nifa, Sc. neive, fist. In haihs and hamfs the syllable ha is prefixed. It has been dropped in Sc. neive, cf. knife = nife.

With few exceptions terms for parts of the body can be recognised with little difficulty. Some interpret themselves at once—brusts (breast), hairto (heart), hups (hip), fotus (foot), suljo (sole), auso (ear), kniu (knee, with k sounded as in Scotch). Others are archaic, as fill, skin (fell, felt, pelt), amsa, shoulder. If, as Prof. Skeat suggests, this be a mis-reading for ahsa, it is the Sanskrit uhsan, the bearer, the Ger. Achsel, and Sc. oxter, the arm-pit. Several are to be referred to A.S., as haubith, head (A.S. heafod), wairilo, the lip (A.S. weler), waggari, a pillow