Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/63

Rh verb. A more serious loss is that of the reflexive, which German preserves (of. Go. sik, Ger. sich).

Turning lastly to demonstratives and relatives, we find still further interest in Gothic grammar. The article is exactly what we see in Sanskrit and Greek. Its feminine survives in she, its neuter as that, which Sc. treats as an article, e.g. "Gie me that poker" for "Give me the poker." The nom. plur. of that (which is not those) we use as the old plur. of he, but in Sc. it is rightly used, as Go. thai bokos = Sc. thay books. The proper plural of he Chaucer uses regularly. In Shakspere its dative is frequent, though his editors substitute for it them. It is not in Gothic, except in a few adverbial phrases, such as to-day (himma daga, ef. Sc. the day). The relative is very imperfectly developed. The correlation of adjectival clauses is effected mainly by the addition of an indeclinable particle -ei to pronouns and demonstratives, as ik-ei = I who. This is just what might be expected, for the use of the relative implies a distinct advance in composition and the inter-dependence of clauses. Its growth is always slow, and the usage of cognate tongues far from uniform. The reader of Dickens knows that when the uneducated attempt to go beyond the rudimentary stage in composition of ands and buts and wells, and aspire to relatives, they throw about their which's very freely. The primitive relative is usually a pronominal particle (Go. -ei above is the Sanskrit ya), or the article, the indeclinable the (our article) of A.Sax. and the abbreviated unemphatic relative that or 'at of Scots, due, in the opinion of Dr. Murray ("Dialects of Lowland Scotland"), not to Norse but Celtic influence. A Gaelic speaker will say he for the throughout. The Irish peasant makes it dee. On the other hand the pure Lowland Scot says Foorsday (Thursday), and squeezes out the dental between vowels as persistently as the Cumberland man has laal and oude for little and old.

This relative one constantly hears in Scots. It can be traced from the oldest vernacular, the twelfth century "Laws of the Four Burghs," down to the speech of to-day. In such imitation Scots as Burns often wrote we have wha instead. Thus, "Scots wha hae" would be in Barbour "Scottis at hes," as Dr. Murray well shows. Our forms—who, which, that—have an interesting