Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/46

22 ivory from Ceylon. Ibha, again, is the Gr. adverbial suffix and adv. Ὶφἶ, and it does the same duty in Go., where adverbs are regularly formed from adjectives by adding—aba, e.g. baitr-aba = bitterly, abr-aba = ably. The A.S. olfend means a camel. The Romance form, olifaunt, survives as a surname. Chaucer, in the tale which he tells in his own character as poet of the Canterbury pilgrimage, sends the Quixotic knight Sir Thopas to do battle with the giant Sir Oliphaunt.

One looks with interest on any light the Gothic fragments shed on the life of the people. Do they show even the rudiments of a social organisation? They called themselves Gut-thiuda, a compound of the national name and a derivative; from an Indo-Europ. root tu, to swell, be large or mighty, and present in our English thu-mb, the thick, swoln one. The notion is akin to that in Lat. plebs, the many, the masses. From it is thiudans, the king. Jerusalem is the baurgs of the mikilins thiudanis. On the other hand, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, is only the kindins, akin to king, whereas reiks, from which come Lat. rex, Ger. Reich, and -ric in bishopric, is applied to Jairus, ruler of the synagogue. Apart from the idea of rule the most frequent term of respect, and uniformly applied to Our Lord, is frauja, rendering Gr. Κύριος, but now quite lost. It is, however, common in the ballads as free,—

The editor of the ballad remarks:—Free, fey, lord, or fairy, and thus gets over a difficulty with a little courage. It is also in Ger. Frau, and may be the curious Norse surname Fridge, seen on tombstones in the north. Its Norse equivalent is freyr, probably preserved in the surname Frier.

There is evidence of a self-governing community of kindred interest and origin in sibja, long most familiar in Lowland Scots as sib, related, relationship. The village commune is the gauri or country district (cf. Rhein-gau), where lived the gau-ja or