Page:The dialect of the southern counties of Scotland - Murray - 1873.djvu/32

18 time to time, and none of those now extant can lay claim to any antiquity: but associated with all, and yet identified with none, the refrain "Tyr-ibus ye Tyr ye Odin," Týr hæb us, ᵹe Tyr ᵹe Odin! Tyr keep us, both Tyr and Odin! (by which name the tune also is known) appears to have come down, scarcely mutilated, from the time when it was the burthen of the song of the gleó-mann, or scald, or the invocation of a heathen Angle warrior, before the northern Hercules and the blood-red lord of battles had yielded to the "pale god" of the Christians.

It seems probable that although the Northumbrian territory extended to the shores of the Forth, the Anglian occupancy of Lothian was more fitful and precarious than that of Tweeddale and the basin of the Solway, and that it was not till a later period that the Teutonic dialect exclusively prevailed there. This idea is supported by the geographical nomenclature; such names as Dunbar, Aberlady, Drummore, Killspindy, Pencaithland, Dalgowrie, Dalkeith, Dalhousie, Roslin, Pennicuick, Abercorn, Cathie, Linlithgow, Torphichen, Cariden (Caer-eiden?), Kinneil, are mixed with the Teutonic Haddington, Linton, Stenton, Fenton, Dirleton, Athelstaneford, Ormiston, Whittingham, Gifford, Newbattle, Cranston, Duddingston, Broxburn, Whitburn, and, so far as they are ancient, indicate the continued existence of a British or Pictish population, among whom the advancing Teutonic made its way more gradually. To this later prevalence of the North Angle dialect on the shores of the Firth, I also attribute, in part, the difference still existing between the pronunciation of