Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/96

72 Dutch, when Episcopacy and Independency together had driven Presbyterians into the arms of the Calvinists of Holland. Though legal nomenclature is necessarily technical, yet, as the Scots always loved a good-going plea, legal terms have become to a surprising extent household words. A pley (plea) is indeed the very commonest expression for a dispute in general, while the lawyer is, par excellence, "a man o' bizness." These words are in no special sense Scottish, being in every case English worn with a difference. At the head of a Court, or indeed anybody acting in a judicial capacity, is the preses; the pleader is an advocate. The provincial representative of a judge is a depute. To bring a complaint into Court is to delate, a sense not unknown to Shakspere; witness the phrase in "Hamlet," "More than the scope of these delated articles allow." The parties are complainers. The Crown prosecutor is the fiscal, a "god of power" in a Scottish burgh. The accused is the pannel and the indictment is the libel, a term so familiar that some worthy folks speak of having their luggage libelled. Evidence is adduced, and witnesses depone. A civil suit is a process, prepared by a writer, or depreciatorily a "writer buddy," who summonses witnesses. The judge condescends upon the facts, and issues an interlocutor or decision. In questions of real estate the guardian is a tutor, sureties to contracts are cautioners, and the deed must be implemented conform to its terms. The successful litigant is discharged from the conclusions of the summons. To become a bankrupt is to fail, a catastrophe, classed of old for its awfulness with insanity and suicide as a "stroke from God," or damnum fatale. The unhappy "dyvour" sat near the Mercat Cross on a stone bench and clad in a yellow robe. The word long survived its disuse in the legal sense as a weapon in a scolding-match. A declared bankrupt was notour, to be put to the horn if he failed to extinguish the debt, followed by the terrors of poinding and multiple-poinding. The proprietors in a parish are heritors. One who holds under a perpetual ground rent is a feuar, or in Lanarkshire a portioner. Real estate is mortgaged under a bond or disposition in security, the agent in the transaction is the doer or haver, and the decision of the Court upon it is a decreet. To transfer a property is to convey, and the buyer becomes infeft of his