Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/151

pleasantly-tartish "rizzars" from their pendulous stalks. The name is now little known, though Cunningham of Craigends (Scot. Hist. Soc.) tells us he bought rizzars from the garden of a Paisley change-house for 4d. Scots. This was during the Killing Time of the seventeenth century. It denotes anything growing on a branch, from Ger. "Reis," a twig. An Elizabethan street-cry was, "Cherries on the rise!" The rizzar berry is an old name for the currant. A "stake and rise" hut or "wattled cot" was a primitive but inexpensive abode. Still more attractive were the "geans" and "grozers," the latter better known in the West as "grozets," and sometimes grossarts as in James VI.'s application of a homely proverb—"When he heard of the tocher, then, by my kingly crown, he lap like a cock at a grossart." There was the usual round of games—hi-spy, smuggle the gag (never geg), tig, craw-flee. In their due season came bools, peeries, carrick, draigens (kites), girds (hoops). The Border expression "ca' a girr" was never heard. A hoop for any purpose was always a gird. The shinty term, carrick, I find to be quite local. It is only a modification of the word crook, and, like the similar Gaelic term "camanachd" (cam, crooked), properly applies to the stick used. Football and cricket were unfamiliar, so also was rounders. Nothing, therefore, was known of that interesting survival amid the wreck of old words, the "dulls" or "dools" of Allan Ramsay and Fergusson, and still in common use. Girls chose the quieter sports of merry-my-tanzie, jing-ga-ring, or the ever-entertaining palall, the "beds" of Edinburgh, and the peevor (from Fr. paveur, a pavior) of Lanarkshire. Playmates and playthings were known as playfares. The term has nothing to do with fairplay, but is from an Anglo-Saxon "gefera," a companion, the gaffer of a working squad. We have it in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Two Noble Kinsmen"—"Learn what maids have been her companions and play-feers." If "by-ordnar thrang," they were reported to be "cheef" or intimate—not so graphic as the Tweed-side "thick as dugs' heads"—but when they fell out they parted with a Parthian shot, "I'm no' freends wi' you the day." Poetical justice was gleefully noted with a "cheatery's choket you!" or "ye're weel cheap o'd," when Nemesis brought ill luck. "Fair hornie" was the euphemistic appeal for fair play. "Chaps me