Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/43

Rh born, is the Sc. bairn, bairnie, and occurs in many forms. Another term, well represented but now obsolete, is magus, magula, a lad, and the feminine forms mawi, mawila, and magathei = maidenhood, and applied by Luke to Anna, the prophetess. Magaths, of which the form magathei is the abstract, is A.S. maeg-eth, our maid, maiden, Maisie (Meg-sie). The root notion is that of a "growing" lad or lass, cf. might, main. It is substantially same as maik, a "fitting" companion, very common in old Scots. Thus Barbour's "Brus" has—

Dress in general is wasi = Lat. vestis. Paida, a coat of skins, to this day the dress of Slavonic shepherds, is said to be in pea-jacket, which has come through Dutch. Another hint of a national peculiarity in dress we get. When Mary wiped Our Lord's tear-moistened feet, Wulfila uses for our phrase, "the hairs of her head," Skufta haubidis seinis. Skuft is the top-knot, Ger. Schopf. The Greek here simply says Θριξὶν τἤς κεφαλἤς. The pre-historic top-knot is still dear to the feminine world from Lapland to Paris.

Natural Phenomena.—To Wulfila heaven and earth, sun, moon and stars, sea and land, berg and dale, stone, fen, flood, water, burn, gold, silver, iron, salt, were known by precisely the same names as to ourselves. The sun was known by two names, sunno, fem., and sauil, Lat. sol. neut. The sea was the saiwa, the tossing one, the lake marei, the O.Eng. mere. A country district was a gawi, still heard in Rhein-gau and (perhaps) Miln-gavie; a field was hugs, a haugh, or akrs = acre, Lat. ager. Ahwos, torrents of rain, is aqua, the universal Aryan word for water.

Plant Life.—Grass is Go., but not in its strictest sense, rather herb. The mustard seed is the greatest of all the grasses, cf. gorse and Sc. gers. In our sense of grass hawi = hay, is used, e.g. "If God so clothe the hay of the field." For fruit generally, especially of the fields, we have akran (akrs = field), our acorn, now restricted in sense. The New Philological Dictionary