Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/87

Rh We find also in Barbour the specially Northern use of the relative that in the form 'at,—

This idiom is found throughout the literature which best preserves the vernacular—Privy Council Registers and the Records of Burghs, Kirk-Sessions and Guilds, and is still in general use. Burns and Ramsay avoid it as beneath the dignity of literature, but there is a good specimen in the "Window in Thrums," "Him at's marrit on the lad Wilkie's sister." Dr. Murray, who quotes a typical example, "the dug at its leg wuz rin owre," ascribes this form of that to Celtic influence, but in spite of the teaching of the Celtic Revival the Gael has made scarcely any impression here or elsewhere on the language of the Lowland Scot. The Sassenach has taken kindly to vulgar Gaelic words like creesh (fat, grease) or bodach, a silly person, a buddie (body), which he loves to characterise as windy (boastful), birssy (irascible), fikey (finicky), or nochty (insignificant). A Gaelic word for relationship, oy from ogha, a grandchild, was in use last century. In the year 1717 the Burgh Records of Dysart note an heir to property as "oy to John Ramsay, carpenter," and Burns has ier-oe, a great-grandchild. "Wee curlie John's ier-oe" (Dedication to Gavin Hamilton), shows one of the very few Gaelic words in Burns. In the case in point it supplied him with a handy rhyme. The Orcadian has jeroy, a great-grandchild. Oy has met with the fate of eyme, an uncle, common in Barbour and the ballad-writers, and still general in German as oheim. The notorious President Kruger was known familiarly as Oom Paul. To him his bête noire, Mr. Rhodes, is a schelm. This is the same word as the very Gaelic-looking skellum, applied by that waefu' woman Kate to her husband, Tam o' Shanter. It is in Gaelic as one of many borrowed Teutonic words. Another word of extreme interest, scallog or sgalag, a husbandman, has come into Gaelic from the Norse, and during last century was the name in the Outer Hebrides for the poor tenants—virtually the serfs of the tacksmen. It has never been in vernacular Scots, though as schalk