Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/52

28 is the trumpet, a cow-horn most probably, and known as the thut-haurn (Du. toet-horen, Eng. toot).

Religion.—The Supreme Being is Guth, God, peculiarly Teutonic, and of uncertain origin. Wulfila refrains from using the Runic Tius. A demon is skohsl, Ger. Scheu-sal, Scheuche, a scarecrow, Sc. shoo, cf. monstrum, a thing to point the finger at. But a commoner term is un-hultha, Devil, Satan, still in Ger. un-hold (unkindness, sin), and Held, a hero, hence the favourite O.Eng. name Hilda, the gracious one. Hell is halja, the covered or hidden, cf. Hades, the unseen. The root is in hul-jan, to cover, Sc. hool of a pea, and the hulls for clothes in "Sartor Resartus." A priest is a gud-ja, or good man. The affix ja is very common as a diminutive in Sc, and specially Aberdeenshire, e.g. wifie, lassie (wifya, lass-ya).

The foregoing terms give, in considerable variety, evidence of the social and intellectual condition of the Goths. They also bear out the fact that these people were, in a veritable sense, our forefathers. A further inquiry will prove that these remains throw a very instructive light, not only backward upon the primitive condition of Teutonic Europe, but forward on many words and expressions still in common use. As we have a fuller and richer history, an older and more varied literature than any other European country, it cannot but happen with our words as with our institutions, that old friends assume new faces. Gothic, therefore, serves to show how great has been this change in meaning as well as form. The long forgotten sense in which they occur gives us a strange surprise. Sutizo comp. of suts = sweet, is in Matt. xi. 24—"Sweeter [i.e. better] will it be for Sodom at the judgment-day than for thee." Again, Mark xi. 12, coming out of Bethany the next day, Jesus was greedy (gredags) i.e. hungry. Sels, our silly, always retains its good sense, as in Ger. selig, happy, blessed, and "the silly sheep" of pastoral poetry. In the parable of the talents, Lc. xix. 22—"Thou wicked and slothful servant" is "Un-selja skalk jah lata," lit. unsilly, skulk, yea, late, four words equally good Go. and good Eng., but in a strangely altered sense. Lats = late, is always used in the sense of lazy. Its opposite, early, is air, ere, while both are in Scots as "late an' air." Modags = moody, is always angry, thus, "Whosoever is moody (modags) with his