Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/58

34 nearer Sc. smit than Eng. smut; kannjan, to make to know, is not only heard in Sc. ken but in the phrase "a kennin," a sample; diwan, to die, is often heard in Sc. dwine, a dwinin, to fade away from such an illness as consumption, or a decline, as it was called of old; mundon, to observe, is akin in use to Sc. mind, pay attention to; brukjan, to make use of, is the archaic brook (Ger. brauchen). When the question is put to Christ as to paying tribute to Cæsar (kaisara-gild), he asks, "Why temptest thou me? " Wulfila puts it thus: "Hwa mik fraisith?" using a verb that in Scots means flattering, wheedling. The Go. jiukan, to contend, and jiuka, strife, explains the Scots expression "a yokin," "he yokit on me," in precisely the same sense. We use went as the past of go from Go. wandjan, but Scots keeps to the older form, Go. iddja, as gaed, the yode of Old English.

When we turn from the vocables of a language, as evidence of its character and pedigree, to its grammar we are on firmer ground. For in the one case the materials are in a perpetual flux, each district, generation, social set, individual even, giving a new meaning to the old stock or borrowing from without, whereas in the other we have the permanent bed of the stream, deeply grooved with the flow of ages. In language, as in the features of Nature, age conceals itself under the guise of familiarity. Who thinks, as he follows the course of some wimpling burn, that he is gazing on what is older than the oldest historical monument in existence, or dreams that the variations of case and number in his own speech were evolved in an age long anterior to the Vaidic hymns. For these are the grammatical formulæ of his race, perennial as the very laws of thought. Historical grammar is in the study of language what morphology is in the natural sciences treated biologically. In both directions we see persistency of type, co-existent with endless modifications in obedience to the demands of functional growth and decay. Thus, what seem to be arbitrary formulæ, mere atrophied structure, become in the light of historical grammar natural and significant. Many of the so-called anomalies of English grammar can thus be invested with meaning and interest. The historical grammarian has not evidence enough to give us the ultimate analysis of those conventional