Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/44

20 traces it to Go. akran, fruit, probably a derivative of Go. akrs, and originally "fruit of the unenclosed land, natural produce of the forest." Tree generally is bagm = beam, Ger. baum. Timber is triu = tree (cf. Sc. a tree or wooden leg). The band that came to the garden to seize Christ were armed with trees (staves). This explains the expression "nailed upon the tree," spoken of the Crucifixion. Strange to say. Go. supplies no native tree-names. Of grains, three bear the modern names—Atisk = Old Sc. aitis, oats, lit. what is eaten, but used for the field of corn (σπόριμον) through which Our Lord walked on the Sabbath-day. In the A.S. Bible we read "Thā Noë ongan him aetes tilian" = then Noah began to get him food. Hwaiteis = wheat, sounds quite homely to us (hwate in Scots), so also does baris = bere, barley. Ahs, an awn or ear of corn, and ahana, chaff, mean, literally, the little sharp thing, Lat. acus, a needle.

Animals.—Beast in general is dius = deer ("rats and mice and such small deer," Shak.); wolf and fox (fauho) occur under these names. Waurms, as in O.Eng., means a serpent or dragon, cf. Great Orme's Head, and "Where the worm dieth not" in the Bible. Bird (fugls) in general is the Bible word fowl. Sparrow (sparwa), dove, and eagle are named, the first two, as in Eng., but in the passage, "Where the carcase is there are the eagles gathered together," eagle is ara. This word, now lost, is the O.Eng. and Sc. earn or erne and Ger. Adler = Adel-aar, the noble bird. The O.Eng. erne exists as a surname, e.g. Dr. Arne, the famous musician. Thomas the Rhymer says,—

The golden eagle in Gaelic is the iol-air. The iol here is just our yel-low. For the domestic animals, cattle generally is faihu, a widely diffused word, lit. the tethered; it is our fee. In Barbour's "Brus" it has its original meaning, —