Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/54

30 Slahan, which has now the special sense of slaying, in Go. means simply striking. Thus, at the Crucifixion the bystanders say: "Prophesy who is he slaying (striking) thee," "Hwa ist sa slahands thuk." This sense is old Scots,—

In the cricket-field a hard hitter is a slogger, retaining the old guttural. To whet is now obsolete almost, but Wulfila regularly uses it in the sense of threaten, rebuke. Thus Our Lord whets (hwotjan) the evil spirits. Shakspere makes Brutus say,—

Wopjan = weep (cf. whoop) has now quite a restricted sense, but in Go. it is used for calling aloud under all circumstances, of cock-crowing, and of the voice of the Baptist. The usual word for crying in our sense is gretan = Sc. greet. Thus Peter went out and grat bitterly (gaigrot baitraba). To whine, again, is hwainon, in the sense of mourning. Again, in Wulfila the thieves twitted (id-weit-jan), i.e. reproached, Jesus on the Cross, from a verb the same as Sc. wite = blame. Ween, now only in over-weening, is quite common in its old sense of expect, fancy. "Art thou he that should come or ween (wenjan) we another?" asked John's disciples. Be-wray, now obsolete, is wroh-jan, to accuse, e.g. "Wrohiths was fram thaim gudjam" = was accused of the priests.

This process of change goes a step farther, and introduces us to common Go. words of which scarcely a trace now survives. Go. ogan, to be in extreme fear, has been frittered down to the senseless expletive awful, yet at one time it meant death by throttling (root, agh, to choke, Lat. anguis = the throttler). Its derivatives are ogre, eager, ugly, awe. On the Borders ug-sam is still an expressive epithet. Theihan, to thrive, prosper, gives the commonest asseveration in O.Eng., "So mot I the" = so may I prosper. The thigh, Sc. thee, is the plump, well-thriven. Laikan, to leap for joy, laiks, sport, is the vulgar larks, larking. The brother of the Prodigal, coming near the house,