Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/88

64 it is found in the mediæval romances. In the Gothic Gospels the centurion gives, as an instance of his authority, "To my servant (du skalka meinamma) I say, 'Do this,' and he doeth it." Though thus an old Teutonic word, we find it in strange places. St. Serf taught his scolocs at Gulross in 517, and Dean Hole, in his " Memories," notes shack as in the dialect of Newark applicable to one who "can and will do anything but regular work." Pratt, in his "Buchan," mentions a charter of 1265 in which the Archbishop of St. Andrews granted to the Earl of Buchan certain lands that "the Scoloci hold," evidently the church nativi, neyfs or serfs. Joseph Robertson and Skene say they are the scholastici or pupils on the monastic lands, but Skeat connects it with skalk (servant) in mare-schal. The German element is conspicuous everywhere in Lowland Scots, even where one might have looked for Gaelic. Till the potato famine brought over the Irishman, Highland reapers and drovers were regular summer visitants in the south. Yet such a common expression as kempin, in which one shearer struggled to outstrip another, is pure German (kämpfen, to wrestle). In that interesting last century poem, The Hairst Rig, where there is a graphic description of a kempin tussle, the Gael and his speech are treated as something quite fremit (Ger. fremd) or foreign. One genuine Gaelic word, however, is only too well known on every farm in Fife, skellocks, Eng. charlock or wild mustard. This obtrusive and vigorous weed is the Gaelic sgeallag. Macbain ("Gael. Dict.") finds its root as sqel, separate, Eng. shell, which last Skeat prefers to connect with scale. Its place on the Highland crofts as an ubiquitous weed is taken by the gool or wild chrysanthemum, so named from its yellow flower,—

With the decadence of the vernacular has gone a great number of words that were bound up with the social life of the past. The position of the long-forgotten birley-man was of great antiquity and importance. He was the elective Schulze or magistrate of the primitive village commune and an authority on boor-law that was referred to in all disputes. Till near the end of last century he was the recognised valuator or appraiser