IV.— SIDE-LIGHTS
1. Vernacular of the Lake District
It is a hopeful sign of progress that the mutual dependence of history, geography, and philology is becoming more and more recognised and acted upon. The bond of union is that element of human interest without which every study will soon lose its savour. The specialist who gropes round the study of his choice and sneers at others is but exploring his own dark chamber to the exclusion of the sunlight of fact and nature. No better illustration could there be of this helpful interdependence than what a glance at the map of England discloses. Down the West Coast extend three well-marked groups of hill country, Cumberland, Wales, and Cornwall, and in each and all the historical, geographical, and linguistic elements are "confusedly mingled," offering that prolonged quest which is so fascinating to the genuine student. The Cumberland group is particularly interesting as leaning more closely to Scotland than to England, towards which the Pennines seem to have presented a greater barrier than the Cheviots and the Solway did on their side. As a principality it was of old the appanage of the heir-apparent to the Scottish Throne, and as such raised nice questions of feudal tenure, which often brought the Scots and English to serious hand-i-grips, and made much history. At a still earlier period it formed, with South-Western Scotland, the country of the Strath-Clyde Britons, where the primitive Celts formed a counterpart to that Frisian race which gave a common character to the whole district between Humber and Tay. All over this Strath-Clyde Celtic has vanished before Norse with a strong Anglian admixture. It lives only in place-names. In Galloway even the patronymic Mac precedes Williams and Eoberts and Hughs, and the redoubtable Macdougall has become Macdowal (pronounced Madool). To north of Galloway, again, the Anglian conquest of Kyle in Ayrshire, in the eighth century, contributed still more to reduce the Celtic area in the South-west. The later Lollard movement in this district was probably a consequence of this early settlement. But it is among the Cumbrian dalesmen that the Norse element has been most persistent. The Norse kingdom in Scotland, before it was swept away at the battle of Largs, was in two parts, the Norder-ey or Northern Isles (Hebrides), and the Suder-ey or Southern Isles (Man and others). The bishopric of Sodor and Man still illustrates the division. Besides this affinity of speech and race across the Solway and the Sark, there was a long-standing trade connection. For ages sturdy Galloways and wild Doddies (polled cattle) "swam the Esk river where ford there was none" their way to the southern markets.
The historical and geographical aspects of the question being-thus stated generally, let me follow up the linguistic trail. Fortunately there lies before me an altogether admirable guide in "A Glossary of the Words and Phrases pertaining to the Dialect of Cumberland." By W. Dickinson, F.L.S. Rearranged, Illustrated and Augmented by Quotations by E. W. Prevost, Ph.D., F.R.S.E. With a Short Digest of the Phonology and Grammar of the Dialect by S. Dickson Brown, B.A. (Hons.) Lond. (London: Bemrose & Sons. Carlisle: Thurnam & Sons).
This work is a new edition of that published in 1859, and now improved by the elimination of elements not specially Cumbrian, but merely peculiar pronunciations of ordinary English. The Scottish student of the vernacular must put this invaluable guide alongside of his Grigor's "Buchan Dialect," Edmonston's "Orcadian Glossary," and Dr. Murray's "Dialects of the South of Scotland"—all he has indeed to set against the magnificent dialect work that has been done in England in a field that is not any richer than his own. Dr. Prevost has now completed this great work in an admirable "Supplement." These two volumes it is a very special pleasure to me to utilize ab valuable side-lights on the Scottish vernacular.
The "Supplement" is a substantial continuation, of over two hundred pages, to the author's larger work on the same subject, published in 1900. It runs on the same admirable lines as its predecessor in the scientific treatment of idiom and phonetics, sympathetic ingathering of material fast fading away, and abundant illustration of the dialect of the dalesmen from popular tale and song. Dr. Prevost has done work, unaided save by inborn, loving zeal, that, even in frugal Germany, is deemed worthy the aid of a State Department. Is there a class of subscribers in Scotland public-spirited enough to give similar countenance to the labourer there in a field that is quite as rich, but, alas! marked with decay? There has always been a double current of trade across the Sark, but traces of an early and unkindlier state of matters have been more persistent. Dr. Prevost quotes the significant couplet,—
"When Scots fwok starts to pou' their geese,
It's tyme to hooss baith nags and beese,"—
an echo of the freebooter's "hership," when the Michaelmas moon was welcomed as his lantern. In quieter times the Scots pedlar took his place among the dales, a character that Wordsworth made the model for his "Wanderer." To the packman's ear the Cumberland speech would sound homely. Familiar would be its fondness for the dental ending as in sheppert, forrat, anes-eerant ; the avoidance of the hard tone in bodd'm, foot-pad (path); the vocalising of prepositions as in wi' meh (with me); and the intrusion of a letter in such words as narder for nearer, spreckled for speckled. There are shades of difference here. For the Cumbrian's "Ah divn't, he disn't, plural, divn't " the Scot would say "Ah divna, he disna, we divna, they dinna," showing his fondness for the enclitic na, a far older negative than "not." Dr. Prevost accounts for the insertion of v here by analogy with "Ah hevn't," but in these cases the v is radical, div being an old strengthened form of do as shown in Moeso-Gothic.
Idiom is still more characteristic than phonetics, and here the parallels are most interesting. No one in touch with Lowland Scots could fail to recognise kinship with these Cumberland phrases:—I'se warrant, seckan a yan (sicna yin), the butcher's killin' es-sel the day, noos and thans, thur ans (thirr ans), pennies a-piece, whiles for sometimes, and the general use of the old preposition un meaning without (Ger. ohne) as a prefix sounding on. In both districts one hears such words as oonpossible, onbonny, onneat. There is agreement, too, in the marked preference for the relative 'at instead of that, and the persistence of the plural present of the verb in s. Both are well-known Northern characteristics. Sometimes one sees these historic forms condemned as if they were vulgar English. Thus the phrase, "They were a man," &c., is called bad grammar. What is said is, "Th' wur a man," where we have such an old particle as we find preserved in German da used for inversion of the subject. Just as German has both da and dort, Scots has thae, thirr. "Wur" shows the regular wus changed in the final before a vowel. Other old forms, very common in the Scots of the seventeenth century, survive in Cumberland speech, such as the particles after comparatives, nor, as, be: "It's better ner gud like sugger te taties," "He's keynder as thee tull me," "summat by ordinar," and the genitive without the apostrophe s (t' cow horn). Northern speech never used than after comparatives. When one hears than in Scots it is for then. There are shades of difference here, too. The "as that" in the Cumberland, "He said as that he wasn't cumin," is "'at hoo" (that how) in Lowland Scots. In intensives Scots has the "gayly," "varra" and "fine" of Cumberland, but in addition "fell" (Ger. viel), and "'at weel" (Ger. ja wohl, yes, indeed). Of similar persistence over a wide Northern area are such popular wit as, "Wake as dish watter," "Rowtin like a quey in a fremd lonnin," "Maiden's bairns are aye weel bred," "He's no fed on deef (worm-eaten) nits," "He hardly made sote to's kail," "Better fleitch a feull ner feight 'm," "Aback o' beyont whoar the meer fwoaled the fiddler," "He dissna ken a b fra a bull's feutt," and "He hiss neah maar wit ner's pitten in wi' a speun." The custom of the country substitutes a gander for a hen in the saying, "Dancin like a steg on a het gurdle," while, in both North and South, the following would now have little meaning: "Sweerin like a tinkler," "Teugh as a soople" (thong joining the two parts of the flail).
Extremely suggestive is the subject of Cumberland idiom, especially since it exhibits all the characteristics of Northern English as it has been so well preserved in Lowland Scots. A few significant phrases only can be given, such as "t' words 'at we use in oald Cumberlan'," "ah maks mesel easy," "a gey fine day," "siccan a fellow he is," "a few broth," "he'll be five come Lammas, "I'se quite agreeable," "mey peype's langer er (nor) theyne," "who's owt t' dog? It u'll be oor Tom's." The "I'se" above is exactly the Dutch and Boer Ik is = I am, preserving the Northern to be in the present tense. I have been asked by a Kintyre fisherman, "Who belongs that boat?" meaning to whom does the boat belong? He was not any more ungrammatical or illogical than the Cumbrian with his, "Who's owt t' dog ?" to whom is the dog owing? They both use the indeclinable interrogative as a dative. Likely, again, very frequently means "I suppose:" "Mr. S. is away from home likely," does not suggest any uncertainty, nor does "I will see you to-morrow, likely," which quite falls in with the Scottish attitude of noncommittal. The East Coast variant of "lickly" is "mebbe," or, preferably, "mebbes," for "it maybe so." Play oneself: "Barns! give ower! ye've played yersels aneuf noo." In Fife, purpose-like gudewives, greatly vexed with paidlin on the caum-staned doorsteps, would come out and exclaim: "Tak the croon o' the causey, vratches, and play yersels there." Meal's meat, what will suffice for one meal, is in Scotland always a meal o' meat: "Ah wadn't give 'm a meal's meat if he were starvin'." Rackon, to guess, imagine, suppose, has got a new lease of life across the Atlantic: "I'll reckon the' daizter an' dafter," says she, "nor iver I've reckon't the' yit." Up a heet for aloft is a common idiom in Hexham. Dr. Prevost illustrates thus: "Dan gev yah greet lowp ebben up a heet." In the North of England, as often in Scotland, one hears such awkward circumlocutions as Wadn't cud dea 't. The sense is that of moral, not physical, inability—he would be above doing it. "Another expression," says the doctor, "somewhat similar, is, 'Won't can come,'" where, however, the idea of physical inability is intended. The same ideas, expressed in the future tenses, as, "I will not can come," or "Shan't can dea't," are not in use. "Nay, I tell thee he wadn't cud dea't, I'll uphold thee; I ken ower weel for that, wey he wadn't cud din it." The favourite Glasgow circumlocution, "Can I get going?" is as nothing to these.
It says little for human nature that idioms of the colloquially exclamatory nature are more frequently contemptuous than complimentary. We have always with us the man who is only too ready to say to his brother, "Thou fool!" In an obscure exclamation, Goavy-dick! common to Fife and the Lothians, and apparently expressing mere surprise, the Cumberland dialect suggests that there is implied contempt. The plain man in the Lothians, suddenly surprised at sight of something comical, naturally exclaims, "Goavy-dick!" In Cumberland a Gauvy is a fool, a simpleton, an open-mouthed fellow: "Thee girt Gauvy, thoo." This is just the English gaby and the French gobe-mouche, the fly-catcher. Gope is to stare with open mouth:—"A gowped at t' chaps 'at war playing sangs." Other forms are in the phrases—"Greet govin fuil!" "Whee was't brong thee a fortune, peer gomas?" "T'ou's ayways in a ponder; ay geavin' wi' thy oppen mouth." In Scotland the metaphor is carried still further. "Git oot o' ma rodd, ye muckle gawpus!" says the stirring gudewife to a loutish, idle fellow, varying it for a lump of a lassie with taupie, French for the mole. In some districts to gob is to spit. The Orcadian gubb is scum, froth, foam. In Nithsdale gowf is to flaunt about, and a gowf is a foolish person. As a mere exclamation, however, and a kindly one, comes the characteristic Border and Lanarkshire lovenanty! the equivalent of goavy-dick! Jamieson's explanation. Love anent you! is too suspiciously neat. We are all familiar with Paisley as the city of "Seestu!" but the exclamation is not confined to that Scottish Helicon. It is very common in Orkney, and has a place in the kindred Norse district, the dales of Cumberland—"Sista, if thoo leaves me, ah'll kill tha;" "Sees te, Bella; nay, but sees te?" So thoroughly does the conventional lay hold of us that one will say even to a blind man, "See that, now!"
To note down the peculiarities of grammar that prevail in the spoken vernacular of the unlettered is a difficult task, but it is a trifle compared to the problems of dialect phonology. And yet while the vocables are being ousted by the ootners—the Cumbrian for Uitlanders—of the school and the newspaper, and the quaint idioms and proverbs and folk-lore slink into obscurity, abashed by the inroads of the railway, the tripper, and the tourist, the pronunciation of the locality seems to cling persistently to the very air and soil. Mr. Dickson Brown's work here is worthy of all praise as a valuable contribution to the exploiting of an almost unworked section of the linguistic field. The Cumberland dialect has been moulded by both Anglo-Saxon and Norse influences. To the latter, carried across the Yorkshire fells, is due the favourite abbreviated article t' for the in all positions—e.g. t'teable, t'floor, t'cow horn. Of course the t here is not the initial in the original "that"—still heard in Scotland, as "give me that cleek"—but the final. The first step of the change is seen in "the tane and the tither" for that ain and that ither. The Dutchman keeps it as het, while with the Highlander it is a feeble breath, 'he. The dalesman, though he spells water with a double dental, goes farther even than the Glasgow man in eliminating this letter, witness his favourite laal for little, while he will only say Hoo! for the "Kailyard" Hoo-t-ootts! If this be due to laziness, he takes the extra trouble of saying b for v as eben for even, whereas the Scot gets rid of v between two vowels as often as he can. The dalesman is lazy enough to say reesht and reet for the Scotsman's richt, just as in German dialects nicht drops to nisht and nit. The Cumbrian's enclitic negative is n't; thus he says divn't and disn't where the Scot chooses the better part, dinna and dizna. For the Scot's "u'll no gang" he says "ah willn't gang." In common with the Southron, the presence of r affects him. On the North-east he cherishes the burr, but introduces, where he can, a peculiar after-sound of w, as in cworn for corn, to the fwore for to the fore.
There is a wide field for comparison among the vocables. Many are haimit enough, such as crine (shrink), dorting (ill-humour), dub, fouthie, lum, reek, tine (lose), threep (argue), pree (taste), shade (part hair), snod (tidy). Others differ from Scots in meaning. Kittle is active, never difficult as in Scots; unco is strange, never intensive, as it is in "unco guid;" ploy is employment, not a feast in humble life; oot-weel is wale oot or select; threve is a great number, not a stock or set of corn sheaves. A bole or recess in a wall is so obscure in Cumberland as to require to be called a "booly hole." The Cumb. "This shoe isn't a marras (match) te that," would be in Scots, "...isna the marra o' that," or in the plural, "Thae shuen are no marras." More useful is it to study those obscure words on which Cumberland practice throws light, since there must now be but a limited acquaintance with them in Scotland. Some golfers might enjoy this couplet, for we sometimes hear of one lamming into his opponent,—
"Wid t' fwoak lammen intull t' chorus
It was neah whisper ah can tell yeh."
On the North-east Coast one may perhaps find the Burrow Duck called the Stockannet, as still heard on the Solway shore. But a glossary would in most cases be now needed for Scoto-Cumbrian obscurities like lisk (the groin), wipe (a gibe or rebuke), kickin' up a wap (row). Sype in Cumberland is to drain to the last dregs, but in Scots it means to soak. Staw, to surfeit, is genuine Scots, as "Plenty o' butter wad staw a dog." As more or less local survivals in the North take "thyvel, a porridge-stick" (East Fife, theel), "gwote, a gutter through a hedge; if covered in, called a cundeth" (Sc. condie). This last is in Lanarkshire known as a gote or drain. Gutter is another form of the word. Of the numerous uncomplimentary expressions in which dialect revels light is thrown on these obscure Scottish ones: slinge or sloonge, to loaf about, to mouch; doughy or daichie, "A duffy gowk is a great soft fellow;" mayzy or mwozie, dreamy, sleepy. This last is a Galloway and Ulster word. An Ulster man, giving his opinion of a third party, not present, said, "Of all the mozies!" In Cumberland a "mayzlin'" is a simpleton. As a verb it is in the line, "I mazle and wander, nor ken what I's dien."
In one particular the use of the familiar thou, as well as the old English distinction between ye and you, the Cumberland dialect is markedly archaic. Burns carefully retains "thow" in such homely subjects as the ewe Mailie and the Auld Mare Maggie, but it has disappeared from the modern vernacular. While the Cumbrian question, "Ur ye gan teh t'fair?" would be quite familiar in Aberdeenshire, not so the answer, "Mebbe, is thoo gan?" The former shows the pronoun of respect, the latter the true "heimliches Du" of the German. The idiomatic feeling comes out in popular sayings, and here Dr. Prevost's illustration by happy phrases is of the greatest service. Many are good Scots with a difference, such as "sittin to t'bottom" for a pot sittin in, "just noo" for i' the noo, "still an' on" (however), "he's a laddie for o' maks o' spwort" for he's a lad at a spree, "barley me that" for chaps me that." Seekin th' milk" for fetching it is characteristically Tyneside. I have heard a nursery tot singing lustily: "Oh my! wat a smell o' sindgin! Battle Hill is all a-fire. Seek the 'attie-indgin." "We stump't away togidder as thick (friendly) as inkle weavers" preserves a lost Paisley industry. A Glasgow man of the eighteenth century conveyed from Holland the secret of weaving coarse tape, long known and peddled over the dales as inkle. The name is preserved as that of a Paisley street to this day. The old Scottish saying, "To lick at the lowder," a variant of "To live at hake and manger," is explained here by the note on lowder as the foundation supporting the nether millstone. The dalesmen knew at one time the tems, a hair sieve, the origin of the phrase " to set the Thames on fire."
Naturally many old Northern words, interesting to the Elizabethan scholar, linger among the dales. Shakspere finds many illustrations here. Billy, common all over the Scottish Border as brother, chum, is Bully Bottom, the weaver; fliar, to laugh heartily, is "the fleering tell-tale" of "Julius Cæsar;" plash, to trim the sides of a hedge, is "the pleached alley" of "Much Ado;" slive, to split, slice, is "the envious sliver" that drowned poor Ophelia. But the Burns scholar is still more indebted to the sidelights of the Cumberland "Glossary." Burneywin is the blacksmith; chufty is fat-cheeked ("chuffy vintner"); ootliggers, or cattle not housed in winter, is the "ootler quey" of "Hallowe'en;" weed-clips is the "weeder-clips" that Burns turned aside from the thistle. Daft Will in "Hallowe'en" "loot a wince," explained here as an attenuated swear-word, used in full in Gibson's "Bobby Banks:" "'Ods wuns (God's wounds) an' deeth!" Every friend of Burns's auld mare will understand the kindly phrase in the Cumberland old song,—
"Tak a reap o' cworn wi' ye,
An' wile her (my meer) heamm, an' wile her heamm."
And when we learn that in the dales titty is a sister, and that "she's deein in a wearin" alludes to a hopeless case of consumption, we understand better two of our finest old songs.
Comparison with the usage of the Scottish border reveals but few variants in meaning or form among the common stock of vocables. Of such these few may be noted:—Creuve, a staked enclosure for catching salmon (C.)[1]—a pig sty (B.); dad, obsolete mining term, to shake (C.)—a blow (B.); gliff, a hurried look (C.)—a fright (B.); jag, sucker or rootlet (C.)—a pin prick (B.); jink, move quickly (C.)—avoid by a quick movement. (B.).
Parallels are more numerous. The familiar bien, well-to-do, kindly, has here the sense of obliging, "Theer was niver a kinder, bainer body leevt." The Border phrase "a bob of flowers" for a bouquet is similarly used, witness, "She had put on a great red bob of ribbon on her bonnet." "Chuck," a miner's term for food, suggests a note from my Border friend:—"In an evening school in Glasgow, about twenty-five years ago, asking the meaning of 'delicacies,' I got the answer, 'Fancy chucks.'" "Dub," so widely diffused in the North, is here equally familiar. Anything larger, however, than a puddle of casual water is separately named. When the river banks are high and steep, the word "whol" replaces dub. This, in the form of weel or well, is the regular name for a large pool in the stream of the Tweed. "Fell," the common Scottish and German intensive," has also its Border meaning of strong, hard-working,—
"A fell bit lassie, strong and clear,
But Tibbie was as thrang as ever."—
The Border phrase, a nibby stick, one with a crook, has the form gibby or kibby in the dales. "To glower oot" is a Border game in which two would stare at each other to see who would wink first. In Cumberland it simply means a fixed, staring look. "Skelly-eyed," both here and on the Border, has the sense of squint-eyed. Finally, the familiar "wap," a disturbance, is paralleled by a miner's description of the tragedy of Othello as "A (blank) wap aboot a pokkit neepyin."
One might pick at random from the "Cumberland Glossary" such parallels with vocables used in Lowland Scotland, more or less modified to suit the different conditions prevailing. Thus we have: Chun, the sprout of the potato; "T' taties are sair chunned" or well sprouted. Shaw says: "A term applied to the sprouts or germs of barley, but, as I have heard it, to the shoots of potatoes when they begin to spring in the heap;" which also appears in Jamieson, who adds that it is used in connection with the process of making malt. I always heard the maltman calling these "cummins." They represented the germination of the malt as dried on the floor of the malt-barn.
Cobble, to pave with cobblestones, to stone: "He could tell that they also had another fish in a hole because they were running up and down cobbling it," the poacher's trick to drive the fish out into the shallower water. This is the diminutive of cob, cop, cup, anything rounded, cup-like. Its Boer form is the too familiar kopje. Chaucer's miller had a wart "upon the cop right of his nose." I was forcibly shown what the old-time cobble-hole was when travelling through Antrim. The bundles of flax are kept down in water-pits, during the stage of putrefaction, by rounded stones or cobbles: and as I passed the good Orangemen were busy lifting out the fermenting mass and spreading it abroad to dry, filling the railway carriages the while for many miles with an odoriferous blend as of senna tea and grease fizzling from a hot-plate.
Dow, to be able, to dare, or venture (with a negative),—
"A whusslin lass an' a bellerin cow,
An' a crowin' hen'll deu nea dow."
This fine old word, still in much and daily use in German, is rarely heard now in Scotland. It recalls the well-known Burns couplet,—
"But facts are chiels that winna ding,
An' downa be disputed."
Faymishly, splendidly, "We set off t' merry neet, an' gat to Rostwhate famishly." How readily most of us settle down into the ruts of our pet mannerisms of action or phrase! All human action tends naturally to the automatic. An old weaver had one fixed reply to every opening for a twa-handed crack. To a neighbourly inquiry, "Hoo are ee the day, Dauvit?" came the unfailing response, "Fawmous, mun," which was quite as explicit as Buller's "The men are splendid." In a famous city in Fife dwelt worthy 'pothy Smith, whose favourite catch was, "I'm not very sure," and he carried his Scots caution so far one day as to answer to a neighbour's call at the shop door in passing, "Are you in, Mr. Smith?" "Well, I'm not very sure."
Feeky, nervously uneasy, used in reference to senile decay, a development of its familiar force peculiar to Cumberland. "Ah was terrible feeky till Ah hard thee fit in t' entry an' saw theh pass t' allen." Here we have the "ayont the hallan" of "The Cottars," where Hawkie was chewing her cud. This was the treviss or partition separating the but room from the ben. The passage crossing it inside the doorway was called the trance in Scotland, not the entry. A clergyman, familiar with our old-fashioned, long, narrow, dark country churches, tickled his hearers when discoursing on St. Peter's vision by saying that he himself had often preached in a trance.
Fowersom, a set of four,—
"An' a' the foursome gat as merry
As tho' they'd drunken sack or sherry."
Though the dalesman prefers wrestling to golfing, we have here aptly visualised many a comfortable party of happy, middle-aged worthies long past the record-breaking stage. Such a foursome was one day holing out at the Ginger-beer hole of St. Andrews Links, when the respective caddies compared notes. To the inquiry, "Hoo's your men gettin' on, Jock?" came the response, "Dod, but they're doin' fine; they hauved the lest hole in fifteen."
Bare Gorp or Gorlin, an unfledged bird: "Geap, Gorbie, an thou'll get a wurm." "As neakt as a gorlin." This is the "raw gorbit" of our unfeeling youth. It recalls a scene, under a spreading hawthorn tree, when I assisted at the beck of a masterful cousin, considerably my senior, in the fitting out of what we thought a braw butcher's shop, the joints and gigots consisting of callow spyugs and nestling mice, perfect Lilliputian piggies. A pleasanter reminiscence is Dr. George Macdonald's exquisite piece about the bonnie, bonnie dell where the yorlin sings, in an early volume of "Good Words for the Young." His yorlin, applied to the yellow-hammer, must be the Cumberland gorlin, turned to another use.
Gulls, the Corn Feverfew (Febrifuge, chrysanthemum segetum), a weed which gave much trouble to the Birleymen of the old townships when the crofters were too lazy to clear it out. The word is the same as what we have in yellow and yolk. Shaw says, "Benner-gowan. I have heard this name applied to the fever-few of our gardens;" to which Professor Wallace, his biographer, adds, "Benner—Bennert or Banewort." Banewort is either deadly nightshade or "Ranunculus flammula," and therefore not the same as the Corn Gool.
H is dropped more frequently than it is used. The Scots are mercifully preserved from this variety of "English as she is spoke." Dr. Prevost illustrates thus: "Bessy, boil me a heg." "Father, you should have said an egg." "Then gang an' boil me two neggs."
Havver. Dr. Prevost quotes a saying about the Havver bread, baked twice a year and carefully preserved for luck,—
"If you gang to see your havver in May,
You'll come weeping away,
But if you gang in June,
You'll come back in a different tune."
Havver is oats. The word has long been obsolete, and Burns, in the song, "O, whaur did you get it?" was working on an old model beginning—
"O, whaur did ye get that hauver meal bannock?"
a ballad which suggested to Scott his "Bonnie Dundee." Though not unknown to middle English, havver is distinctly Northern, and leans to a Scandinavian origin. But the Anglo-Saxon "oats" has quite superseded it. The German Hafer is the same word, as also our haversack (lit. oat-bag).
Heft, to restrain, let the cow's milk increase until the udder gets large and hard: "She's heftit of her yooer." The former sense is common over South-Western Scotland. On the East Coast the more familiar usage is swoln in the case of cows, and figuratively in the case of man as here: "A tak ill wi' the firrst o' hairst. A buddie's sae heftit wi' the baps an' the beer, an' fair hippit wi' the bindin'," was the sage reflection of a Fife bandster before the days of the reaping quick-firer. Yooer for udder is a good illustration of omission of a dental between vowels; cf. wa'er for water.
Hotch, what the Alston miners call a jig. The Burns reader will remember the midnight Free-and-Easy in Alloway Kirk,—
"Even Satan glower'd and fidged fou fain,
And botched and blew wi' might and main."
The word expresses primarily deep and rapid breathing under excitement, as in "Hech, sirs!" "a hacking cough," "Heigho, the wind and the rain!" and even the "Hoeh!" of the phlegmatic Teuton. The Scot's innate love of graphic metaphor leads him to widen his words with the freedom of an artist. "Any fish in the burn to-day?" "Fish! the pools is fair hotchin'."
Kast, to place peats on end so as to dry them: "A pony cart-load of peats had been cast by his sister." The Lowlander knows so little on this head that he might think it referred to throwing them out of the hole. The word properly implies a change of position, as "a cast in the eye," "a cast ewe," "cast up," and the saw, "Ne'er cast a cloot or May be oot."
K.—This letter was formerly pronounced in knit, knap, and knot. "My grandmother used to articulate easily and without effort the k in knitting, knee" (D. H.). I can distinctly remember that my grandmother said k'nife. An Aberdeenshire Jacobite old lady, long after the memory of the '45 and its repression of Scottish Episcopacy had died out, stoutly refused to honour the Hanoverian, "though Bishop Skinner sud pray the k'nees aff's breeks." A more persistent peculiarity is the omission of the letter t when between vowels, common in Cumberland and with all the slovenly speakers in south-western Scotland. The dalesman's "laal," however, is more easily managed than the Lanarkshire for little: "Axt him if he'd ivver seed laal sprickelt paddicks wid phillybags an' gallasses on." Dr. Prevost explains that "phillybags were long drawers visible below the skirt, formerly worn by boys and girls"—a fashion we all know from Leech's pictures of the early Victorians. But what has "ta Phairshon" to say of this insult? Some of his forebears certainly got short shrift at Carlisle 'Sizes. An English book, glossed by a German for his fellow-countrymen, calls a phillibeg a weed worn by Scotsmen. He had got his "weed" from reading in earlier literature such as in "Midsummer Night's Dream:" "Weed (dress) wide enough to wrap a fairy in." The Cumbrian "gallasses" is also Fife for braces or suspenders, and is but a variant of "gallows."
Pawky, too familiar, sly, impudent: "Grace did not trouble herself about the susceptibilities of pawky young monkeys." "They caw't yanudder for aw t' pawkiest rapscallions." This is certainly not the pawky we all have such a respect for. It must be the "paik," a low character of Davie Lindsay's verses, and one of "the poor relations" in words, "with a past."
Skeal or scales, a sort of huts or hovels, built of sods or turfs on commons. This is the Jcelandic "skjol," shelter; "skyling," a screening. As initial "sk" in Scandinavian and Dutch has become "sh" (cf. ski and Eng. shoe), we have here the summer "sheelins" of ballad and song. The hardening of sh, though spelt sch, still holds in Cape Dutch, so that Scheepers should be pronounced Skaepers.
This Norse skjol has assumed various forms among us. In English the sheeling is the sheal, a temporary summer hut, from a root, to cover. Professor Skeat connects the Icelandic skjola, a pail or bucket, with what in Scotland is a skiel or skeel, not at all forms in common use. At one time, however, it did appear among us. When Nansen, after his historic voyage, was entertained by the London Savage Club, the Norse skal was drunk, interpreted rightly enough as a sort of guid-willie waucht or loving-cup. It carries one back to a very different reception of Norsemen, a Scottish one, when the nobles that brought over Anne of Denmark as spouse to James VI. were feasted (1590) in the house of the famous Napier, Master of the Mint, in the Cowgate of Edinburgh. The Provost provided "naprie & twa dozen greit veschell." These were the goblets or skolls (Ger. Schale, cup; cf. scale, shell) which were drained to the king's "rouse" (Hamlet), long known in Scotland by the very name used at the London banquet. In Edmonston's "Shetland Glossary" "scoll" is a round wooden dish.
Skiddaw Gray, a bluish gray colour, a rough gray cloth from Herdwick wool. The Keswick Rifle Volunteers are called "Skiddaw Grays" because of the colour of their uniform. Similarly, as a specimen of the "wut" of the man in the street, the Mid-Lothian Militia, special care of the Duke of Buccleuch, were known as the "Duke's Canaries," or, more contemptuously, "Soordook Sogers," from association with the morning milk carts round the Tron Kirk.
Tew, annoyance, distress, fatigue: "Ey! it was a sair tew that." To tease: "T' thowtes o' hevin forgitten sum tewt me t' warst of a'." "Ah fand it gey tewsum wark." We have here—Dr. Prevost has it in his glossary, but adds nothing in the supplement—a word that has many duties and forms in Scots. I believe it has to do with teuk or took, which Shaw explains with Jamieson as a by-taste, a disagreeable taste.
Dr. Prevost, perhaps not unwisely, imposed upon himself certain limitations. Keeping strictly to his text, he makes little use of comparison with cognate dialect matter, and hardly ever says anything as to the history of his words. Here and there, however, there is a something that requires "reddin up." The word "ea" cannot well be both the "outlet of lime-kilns" and the "channel of a stream." The former is the Scottish collier's "in-gaun-ee," but the latter must be a wide-spread term for any running water and of Norse origin in place-names. In the "Supplement" it is "a gap, river mouth." In many parts of Scotland the local burn is called simply "the waa'er." At Eyemouth the villagers always speak of their "Eye" as the Waa'er. The author has, laudably, the courage to note even failures, thus: "Hemmil (obsol.), no description obtainable." But the illustrative passage added shows that it is but a misreading for "skemmel," entered elsewhere. The quotation is: "The sconce, long-settle and hemmil are superseded by more modern furniture." These illustrations, always apt and pithy, form an admirable feature of what is an invaluable contribution to the philology and folk-lore, not only of Scotland but still more, of England.
The volume throws much light on an almost untouched subject—the comparative study of dialects. With the Border, of course, there will be much affinity. The Cumberland stockannet or sheldrake is so named on the Upper Solway, but nowhere else except here and there on the East Coast north of Forth, where also any nestling is a raw gorbet, the Cumberland "bare gorp." Of pure Saxon affinities with the Tweeddale there are wig, a tea-cake; hine, a farm-servant; hinny, a term of endearment; and the curious gawm, to give attention to. "He nivver gawmed me" is quite Border. Farther north it is better known as gumption. The root is in the fourth century Gothic translation of the Gospels. The "hypocrites pray at the street corners that they may be seen of men ('ei gaumjaindau mannam')." Jamieson has gum, variance, umbrage, of which Lockhart, writing his account of Union times (1707) says: "Whilst this affair (Malt Tax) was in agitation, as it created a great gum and coldness between members of the two nations, it created a friendship and unanimity amongst the Scots Commons."
The able editors have designedly refrained from speculation on the historic aspects of their subject. The volume is richly suggestive here. Their "wife-day or cum-mether" (Fr. commère) is the Cummers' Feast of Old Edinburgh, a christening ceremony humorously sketched in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The rannel-trees, alluded to by Davie Deans in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian," are fully explained as a part of the old ingle and chimney-breest. Old farming customs are noted, such as "the deetin (Sc. dichtin) hill," the equivalent of the Scottish Sheelin Law, where the corn was winnowed. The "tummel-car," Burns's "tumlin wheels," we are told, was represented in 1897 by one ancient survivor. "Syme," the straw rope for securing thatch, is the simmons or sooms which the tenants of Caithness had to supply for the laird's stacks a century ago. The "spelk hen," annually due to the landlord for liberty to cut rods for securing thatch, clearly points to the Orcadian spolk, a splint (Eng. spoke, Ger. Speiche, the spoke of a wheel). To this day round Loch Lomond barked oak-branches are called speogs. The Morayshire custom of corn-thiggin, when the poor or thriftless crofter went round the clachan begging a pickle seed, is just the Cumberland "cworn-later" asking at every house for "a lile lock corn" for his first crop. "Lock" here is often heard in Scotland. A "fell lock o' us" is not a corruption of lot, a quantity. It is accounted for by the Orcadian lock, to clutch, seize hold of, the Icel. luka. In Old Edinburgh the Luckenbooths or close shops were so called in contrast to the stalls set up on the street. The "lucken-gowan" is the closed daisy. The latter part of the Cumberland compound "cworn-later" seems to be connected with Go. leithan, to go, Eng. lead, a verb with many derivatives. The Border herd's cruel mode of splitting up birds, frogs, &c., is known in both districts as spang-whew. In Clydesdale, again, a straining sieve is also known as a syle. Stranger, still, is it to find faggot as a term of reproach turning up in Campbeltown, where also skybel is well known as a good-for-nothing. "In lots there were helter-skelter skybels frae Carel" (Carlisle). Norse influence explains these affinities, as also the presence in the North-eastern counties of such Cumberland words as grice and shot, applied to young pigs; gob, spit, foam; geat, a bairn; wax kernels (waxin kernels in Fife) for glandular swellings in the neck; sned, a scythe handle (Kincardine); swine-crü (Fife crüve), a pig-sty; thyvel (Fife theel), a porridge-stick; weyt (Fife wecht), sheep's skin covering a wooden hoop, to lift corn; whicks (Fife quickens), roots of couch grass. It must be the same Northern leaning which accounts for such remarkable German representatives in the Cumberland dialect as byspel, a guy (Beispiel); flittermouse, the bat (Fliedermaus); shirk, a slippery character (Schurke); unfewsom, awkward, unbecoming (Ger. fügsam, pliant); skemmel, a long seat without a back. This last is German Schemel, a seat. Butcher's shambles were stools to show the meat in open booth or market as in Old Glasgow, where they were known as shemels. But the whole volumes are calculated to send one off on a stream of "divagations."
The "Glossary" could not but be suggestive at many points to the student of Scott and Burns. Sackless, innocent, a word now obsolete but used in "Rob Roy," appears in a Cumberland sketch in dialect: "Ah wasn't sec a sackless as he'd teann meh teh be." Curious is it to find the wyliecoat of the "Fortunes of Nigel," and familiar in old literature, still used in Cumberland in its usual sense of an undervest. The "rannel-tree," which Davie Deans uses in his vigorous denunciation of latter-day backsliding in Church and State, is annotated at great length by Dr. Prevost. It was the beam from which hung the inglecrook in the large, open chimney. In "Guy Mannering" a randle-tree is a tall, raw-boned youth. One naturally finds more points of relationship with Burns and his open-air and—to use a Greek in default of an English expression—autochthonous muse. In his facetious apostrophe to the unbidden insect guest he spied in church we have three Cumberland words—" . . . an auld wife's flannin toy . . . Aiblins on some duddy boy, on's wyliecoat," Burns, again, in the "Twa Dogs" makes "Cæsar" so frankly human as to hob-nob with "a tinkler-gipsey's messan . . . or tawtiet tyke, tho' e'er sae duddie." Compare this with the Cumberland couplet,—
"Me mudder ment me oald breeks,
An aye bit they wer duddy."
The "messan" of Burns and the "Glossary" was originally a lap-dog from Messina. During Knox's famous interview with Secretary Lethington, the wily diplomat kept toying with a messan on his knee. The two old-fashioned "bannocks" that Burns alludes to—mashlum (of mixed meal) and hauver (oatmeal)—have long ceased and determined in Scotland. Both are Cumberland terms. In "The Cottars," it will be remembered, the Covenanting Psalm tune, Elgin, "beets the heavenward flame," and, again, the house-father wales a reading out of "the big ha' Bible." Two of the words here are annotated in a fashion that throws light on Burns's use of them. Thus the "beeter" attends to the fire that bakes the oatbread. The "beetin stick" was used to stir the fire in the brick oven. A recent publication illustrating "The Cottars" glosses the "ha' Bible" as the one used in the great hall of a mansion. Dr. Prevost's note is more helpful to the student of Burns than this: "The manor house of small manors, now a farmer's house, in contradistinction to a cottage" or humblest rural abode.
Folk-lore offers a rich hunting-ground to the antiquary turned philologist. Here we have embedded the wit and the wan-wit of the "rude forefathers of the hamlet." In this connection Dr. Prevost gives some interesting finger-jingles, product of the upland nurseries—Tom Thumper (a German, speaking English, calls the thumb the thump), Billy Winker, Long Lazor, Jenny Bowman, Tippy Town-end; also, Tom Thumper, Bill Milker, Long Razor, Jerry Bowman, Tip Town-end. The following doggerel is in use:—"This (finger) go t' wood. This un says, what t’ do theer? To late mammy; what to do w' her? Sook a pap, sook a pap a' t' way heame." The word "late" here has an interest of its own. Dr. Prevost says it has two significations, to seek and to bring. A Cumbrian will say, "He's gaen to lait a lost sheep," or "He's gaen to lait t' kye in to milk" (Richardson). One is tempted to compare with these the layt in Jamieson, to allure, entice, an old word in Teviotdale, and his "ill-laits," common in Angus for "bad customs." The latter was much used as illaits in Fife for "bad habits." The former Jamieson traces to Icelandic. He says nothing of the expression, "he never let on," "made no remark," when it was expected. It can hardly be the usual let, permit. Kluge, under German laden, to invite, shows that the two senses above are substantially the same in their origin in the Gothic lathon, as in Matt. ix. 13: "nith-than kwam lathon usvaurthans," I came not to call the righteous; in Luke ii. 25: "Symaion beidands lathonais Israelis," in A.V. Simeon, waiting (biding) for the consolation of Israel.
Dr. Prevost supplies an interesting survival of the Gothic lathon, to invite, in the Cumbrian laitin : "In many places in the Lake district, when anyone dies, two persons from every house near are invited to the funeral, and the houses within the circle are termed the Laitin."
An interesting group of vanished Scots can be culled from the dalesmen. To scarce a living Scot is the squirrel known, as he was of old, by the name "con." A Cumberland contributor says, "'Fat as a con' is a simile I used to hear thirty years ago" (1845). "Hind," the A.S. hyne, a manager of an off-lying farm, is now heard only on the Scottish Border. Two Scoto-French expressions, of old very common in Scotland, are quoted from the dales. "Plague gang wi' them that tooly wi' thee," preserves the Scots tulzie, a quarrel, street-fight. Still more archaic is "Pie Powder," the ancient Court instituted when the Peace of the Fair was proclaimed. It settled all brawls and disputes over bargainings in which the outlander pedlar was involved. He was known as Pied Poudré or Dusty Foot.
While much of folk-lore is extremely local, much of it again seems to be almost world wide. We all know the Benjamin of the family hand, Wee Willie Winkie, and the little Piggie-Wiggie that cried all the way home. The Boer Tante amuses the wee kerel on the stoep with tales of "Pinkie," the little finger. I suppose there are still kindly mothers of the old-fashioned sort, who, baby on knee and ready for By-by! take the warm little tootsies, one in each hand, and make them go through a wondrous pantomime from dainty, coralline tips to rosy heel, to the jingling rhymes, lips parted, and heaven-lit eyes aglow: "John Smith, a falla fine, can ee shoe thiss hoarss o' mine? (In largo measure.) Yiss, indeed, an' thaat a' caan, juist as weel as ony maan (larghetto). Pitt a bit upoan the tae, te garr the pownie speel the brae (andante). Pitt a bit upoan the heel to garr the pownie pace weel (allegretto), pace weel, pace weel (allegro), with lively upsie-daesies!)" The folklore of school time is another wide and interesting theme. At St. Bees School the master was familiarly known as Nicks, which Dr. Prevost bases on the expression to keep nicks, to keep account or tally by nicks or notches, natural enough among shepherds who counted by scores on the crook. Keep in the sense of to mind, mend, look after, was very common long ago. Sir John Foulis, in his "Ravelstoun Diary," has now and again the item "for keeping my watch." "Boys keep nicks," continues Dr. Prevost, "when watching the schoolmaster, and 'nicks' is equivalent to 'cave':" "While anudder kept nicks, watching up an' doon street." The term is extended to the corporation schoolmaster, the policeman: "Twelve nixes manhannl'd by yah man," seems a ridiculously easy victory for the hooligan. To be nicked, i.e. caught, or hit, was a common expression during the war. It may even be implied in "Auld Nick," the catch-poll of souls. A good tuck-in is as dear to the schoolboy as a lively shindy. Hence it is natural to note: "'Mint-cake,' a sweetmeat, made by boiling down soft brown sugar and water until a firm but 'short' mass was formed, strongly flavoured with peppermint, in shape two inches square and a half thick; somewhat resembling toffy, but not so hard and crystalline; sold at two squares for a halfpenny"—communicated by Miss Armstrong. The luxury of my youth was "clack," known elsewhere as "gundy," and being a messy preparation in much favour with the girls. These were home products. A specific sure to mollify a colded throat was sugar-awlie," sold in short, black sticks, stamped at one end. The Glasgow sweet, known in the trade as Tchuch Jeens, is known to me only by name.
The biscuit and sma'-breed trade, now enormously developed, has quite transmogrified the old-time fly-blown window-watchers. Where are now the plump wee brown rabbits with currants for eyes, the nickit baiks, the rings powdered with pink sugar, the cheesies, Cupar hardies, and the ginger-breed demons? These last, standing grim and black, arms defiantly akimbo, and goggle eyes, so impressed a bit lassie one day that, barely reaching the counter with her bawbee, she asked the village Johnnie Aw-thing for "ain o' thae hawpny deevils," so familiar were we long ago with the deep things of theology. And yet our kindly English critics speak with commiseration of our dismal creed. I remember, when in a sweetie shop in Heidelberg, being surprised and amused as a little boy, putting down a kreuzer or two and receiving three sweets in exchange—Protection in Germany takes care of that—exclaimed with disgust, "Ah, wot a horrid shame, Herr Schmidt!" Nowadays the sorrows of exam-driven youth are tempered by the delicacies of Signor Nicolini, the ice-cream man. I know the slider merely by name, but apropos of it here are some of the words of Oald Cummerlan, illustrating its dialect forms and uses. "Wor hes thoo been aw this time, thoa sledderkin thoo; thoo's a fair sledders an' nivver like ta git back woriver thoo gangs till;" "T' aad fella dizz nout but sledder about an smeuk;" "Wi' taes aw sticking through my shoes I weade among the slatter;" "T'wedder was slattery, t'rwoads was slashy." An old-fashioned bailie, before the days of public festivities, spoke of oysters as "nae better nor slithery, fushionless glaur."
The "Cumbrian Glossary" is rich in illustration of folk-lore. Children's games afford ready proof. A safety-valve under the stern discipline was the barrin-oot at Pasch (Easter), or Candlemas in Scotland, and at Christmas in England. "It was customary for the boys inside school to sing, "Pardin, maister, pardin, Pardin for a pin; If ye won't give us helliday, We'll nivver let ye in.'" "Barrin-oot" was practised in Roxburghshire on 21st December 1907. The "beut-money," customary of old over the higgling of the market, is practised at school in Teviotdale when pupils are exchanging articles of different value (niffering). The "fair horny," or appeal in these cases to honest dealing, is in Cumberland used by colliers in dividing mutual gains. The leaping game of "feut-an'-a-half" is played alike on both sides of the Border. To the many Cumberland child-rhymes I add this from the Border,
"Ane's nane, twae's some,
Three's a pickle, four's a crumb,
Give's a cuddy's lade."
The old game, "Scots and English," is known in Cumberland as "Watch Weds." Each side put its caps at equal distances from a dividing line drawn on the ground between the rows. Pillaging then went on across the line. If one were caught, he was retained prisoner. In "wed" here we have the familiar wad, a pledge or surety.
The folk-lore of play never travels far from its native district unless on the strong current of the very modern Golf Stream. Cumberland boys, of course, know all about marbles, which they assort as alleys, steanies, and gingers or pots. The last was a rough, common marble of red half-baked clay and partially glazed. Steanies were brightly coloured, very hard, and highly glazed: "Hoo mony steany marbles do ye gi' for a ho'penny?" The rough horse-play of the grown-ups, the halflins or hobbledehoys, is hinted at in the once popular but now obsolete amusement, "girnin throo a braffin"—the Scots brecham or horse-collar. This is the comic side of the much older and really tragic, but seemingly off-hand, description of death on the gallows: "girnin in a widdie," or rope of hazel twigs.
No account of old-time pleasures in the uplands would be complete without some allusion to poaching. The humours of local government through the Great Unpaid were never more neatly hit off than in the speech: "When ah's a magistrate ah'll luik ower sec things as sniggin an' nettin." Sniggin was catching salmon as they lay in the pools by means of a bunch of hooks, "t'west Coomerlan flee." These rake-hooks sniggled over the bottom like eels, "snig” being an obsolete name for a young eel. In those old days work and pleasure were blended in kindly fashion. No one contributed to this more than the peripatetic tailor, ever a welcome visitor to the upland dales: "Travelling artisans—tailors, shoemakers, and saddlers—went to the houses of the country people to work, taking with them their own material. They were paid so much a day and their 'meat.' This custom was formerly very common hereabouts, but it is not so much followed now." It was called "ť whip t' cat." All over Old Scotland the "customer" tailor, working for customers, was known as Whip-the-Cat. A correspondent said it primarily meant to "thrash with flail." One certainly fails to see why the "harmless, necessary" house-friend is chosen to symbolise itinerant labour.
Mining is the serious occupation of the Cumberland district, and here there are interesting notes. The "in-gaun-ee" of our colliers is explained by "ea," a gap, inlet, or gateway, used by miners with reference to a pit. "It was i' t' boddom ee at t' Park." New light is also thrown on the method of working known as "stoup an' room." "If in driving a level in the lead mines it is necessary at any point to carry the working upward and continue in a plane parallel to the original level, the material underlying the new level is a stoup. From these levels short cross-cuts were made into the vein." Of course, a room is any empty space, as "your room's better nor your company." Anyone can see that the Dutch-Frisian race that introduced mining and industries generally into Fife and the Lothians was closely akin to the Norse settlers in Cumberland and Westmoreland. Nay more, this very word "stoep" was transferred to the South African veldt. On the Boer homestead or place, as he calls it, the doorway on his raised first-floor has exactly such a stoup as is above described, with a double sloping approach to it, as is still to be seen in many old mansion-houses at home, and public buildings in Holland and North Germany. Such a stoup is shown in views of the old Court-house at the Tron of Glasgow, used alike for hustings, speeches, magisterial functions, and even executions.
Farm life has always been a stronghold of rural conservatism. One would hardly expect a survival anywhere of the sport of bull-baiting, yet the Cumbrian phrase, "Shak t' bull-ring," applied to the challenger at the village fair, analogue to the Irishman's "Tridd on the tail of me coat," seems to preserve the custom. Curiously the Kelso March market is to this day known as the Bull Ring. The homely "coo-lickt," for hair that would part only in one place, is familiar in Teviotdale. The Cumberland euphemism for an illegitimate, "cum by chance," the Borderer applies, as "come o' wills," to potatoes left in the field and growing up in the following year. His "hick nor ree," said to a cart horse as a guide to left or right, is the Border phrase, "neither hup nor hie," or neither right nor left. Another farm variant is rig-welted, said of a sheep lying on its back and unable to get up, and so the Scottish awal. It is formed of rig, the back, and welter, to roll.
Weather-lore has always been in great favour with the rural wise. "Morland fleud ne'er did good," refers to the damage done in a hilly district by Lammas spates and the bursting of water-spouts. All along the foot of the Ochils widespread havoc has been caused in this way. On 4th October 1775 the Tyne at Haddington rose seventeen feet. But the record flood is the memorable one that Sir Thomas Dick Lauder described so well. One can still, on crossing the new bridge at Forres, note the almost incredible height to which the Findhorn suddenly rose in 1829. Any abnormal summer, or want of it, has aired much weather-lore such as this,—
"If t'esh sud hud afore t'yek,
Oor feyne summer wedder'll hoddenly hrek;
But if t'yek bud be seuner cummer
We'll sartinly hev a drufty summer."
The Cumberland glossary says that hoddenly is frequently, continuously, without interruption: "He's hoddenly been a good husband to me." Hodden, sair hodden, in straits to accomplish a task: "Ah was hard hodden to keep mi tongue atween mi teeth an' keep frae tellin' mi mind." This reminds one of Scott's fool, who had little to complain of as fetch-and-carry for the farm toon, save that he was "sair hodden doon wi' the bubbly Jock."
2. Braid Scottis in the Transvaal.
We have had not a little information about the Transvaal from within, but next to nothing about the language of the Boers. And yet there are few more direct roads to the true inwardness of the character and sentiment of a nation than its vernacular. It must be confessed, however, at the outset, that it is a somewhat indirect method of approaching the subject to sit at home here and discuss the speech of the Boer without ever having had an opportunity of hearing a Boer speak. Failing this, I take up my standpoint on a keen interest in Lowland Scots, spoken and written, and with this I propose to compare the Cape Dutch, or Kaapsch, as the Hollander calls it. Towards this aim has been contributed the generous aid of an Afrikander now in Cape Town, and of another who has left the Transvaal after long residence there. Finally, an old and valued friend, the late Heer E. P. Dumas, of Rotterdam, and formerly of Glasgow, lent me of his wonderful resources, both in Dutch and English, and especially sought out for me an admirable guide in "How to Speak Dutch," by Professor W. S. Logeman, B.A., and J. F. Van Oordt, B.A. This excellent manual, published at Amsterdam and Cape Town, second edition, 1899, gives throughout practical conversation in Dutch and Cape Dutch. I have kept almost entirely to the vocables and phrases found in this book.
(a) The Taal.
For a century the Dutch Afrikander has been practically cut off from his ancestral home in Holland. Doubtless his Church, its Bible, and its preachers, have served to keep unbroken a chain of communication, ever lengthening by time and distance, and this kind of influence must have told specially in language. But both the religion and the language have undergone a much more rapid change at home in Holland than out on the sparsely-peopled Veldt of South Africa. The consequence is that both are old-fashioned and homely, and therefore admirably suited to the mental and spiritual attitude of the pastoral Boer. With a creed that has ceased to develop, and without a home-grown literature, he has clung all the more fondly and tenaciously to the antique vernacular which he has inherited from his forefathers. He calls it lovingly die ou'we or oude Taal, using, to name it, the root we have in tell and tale. In German still, and in English of old, it meant to count, but the operations of reading and counting in many languages appear readily to overlap and commingle. The Taal scarcely deserves the hard words that have been applied to it as a barbarous and uncouth polyglot. The Scot can well sympathise with such treatment, for the Englishman, disdaining to try to understand his dialect, calls it unintelligible, vitiated English, and when he does condescend to make a lever de rideau out of it, mangles it through his perverse habit of mispronunciation. The Dutchman looks upon the Taal in much the same light. An intelligent Hollander writes me thus: "I hate and detest the Boer idiom, which is a repulsive amalgam of old and modern Dutch, with traces of Platt-Deutsch and English, and only good, or rather bad enough, to disappear from among the races of mankind." This is of value, merely as emphasising my point, that the appreciation of vernacular is incompatible with the attitude of what arrogates to itself a claim to progress and culture. The Taal has merely undergone natural changes on old lines, but less rapidly than Dutch. It has borrowed a little from English, and almost less from Kaffir, for no people ever learns much from a race on a lower plane of culture than its own, though the two may be commingled. The Highlander and Lowlander have always had very close intercourse at many points, but English and Scottish borrowings in Gaelic vastly outnumber Gaelic terms in Scots or English.
The Taal, or Kaapsche,[2] as the Hollander calls it, has closer affinities with Lowland Scots than with any other European tongue, except Dutch. Its resemblance to German is mainly superficial. Certainly the philologist is constantly reminded of German in studying the Taal, but the uneducated Boer or German speaker would quite overlook this, for their consonantal systems are entirely different. On the other hand, the Frisian speech was, in very early times, common to the eastern and western shores of the North Sea, and these shores were more nearly opposite, and united therefore more closely by trade, on the side of Scotland than of England. In addition, the two peoples enjoyed substantially the same Calvinistic type of Church, a type which has been even better preserved in South Africa than in either Scotland or Holland. Certainly, during the first half of the eighteenth century, a Scotsman would find himself vastly more at home in Leyden, Rotterdam, or Amsterdam than he would in London, or even Newcastle. The Boers themselves are well aware of this bond of union. The German overseer in Olive Schreiner's "Story of an African Farm" tells the knave, Blenkins, when introducing him to the Boer woman, Tant Sannie, to call himself a Scotsman. The English she hates.
It is a well-known characteristic of the Boer that he dearly loves to walk in the old ways, and of these not the least cherished is his vernacular. A few of the old-fashioned among ourselves similarly cling fondly to their "braid Scottis," but they are a fast vanishing quantity. The Boer always thinks and speaks of his Taal or speech as die ou'we, his familiar abbreviation of old. Like the Scot he is fond of dropping l. Thus in a version of "The Cottar's Saturday Night," by Reitz, devoted henchman to Kruger, he makes "the sire," die ou man, read een sions lied (song) in d'Ouwe Taal, when "he wales a portion of the big ha' Bible." This Taal is the Dutch of a century ago, modified by the phonetic corruptions natural to the changed surroundings and languid life on the Southern Veldt, and mingled with such English and Kaffir as is necessary for intercourse with the Uitlanders, to whom the old burgher's attitude is as proudly conservative as that of any Prussian junker or Highland duine-wassel, the over-lord whom the Norse imposed upon Celtic communistic life. This type of the full-flavoured Transvaaler is the Dopper Boer, an epithet that has sadly fallen in English, suggestive as it is of that Simon Tapper-tit who was the redoubtable hero of "Barnaby Rudge." In Dutch, however, it still retains all the dignity of its German cognate, tapfer, brave and valiant. From Dutch New York we have got it in the very modern toff. But it is still a Scottish dialect word. In Dumbartonshire as a note of admiration one hears, "My! that's a topperer," with a verb also, to toper, to surpass, to clinch. The Cumberland man applies "topperer" to any thing or person that is superior,—
"The king's meade a bit of a speech,
An gentlefwok say it's a Topper."–
The Dopper Kirk is the highest expression of this exclusive unco-guidness, which also so markedly characterised the true-blue Hillman of the seventeenth century. And with reason, for both can trace their dourly militant Calvinism to the same source—the Hollanders that baffled the legions of the Spanish Inquisition. The Scottish Church in Rotterdam has for three centuries marked the close affinity between Scot and Dutchman. Here Wallace, leader of the hapless Pentland rising, was a ruling elder, and so also was Hamilton, of "Old Mortality" fame, that wilful but unfortunate leader who so bungled the defence of Bothwell Brig. Here, too, John Brown of Wamphray ordained Richard Cameron in 1679, to fall desperately afterwards at Airdsmoss in 1681. From the Hillmen were recruited those doughty fighters, the Cameronians. The term Dopper, applied to Dutch Calvinism in the Transvaal, is in no sense ecclesiastical, though one sees it sometimes interpreted as the Quaker, and again as the Baptist Church. There is really nothing to support either interpretation.
If we are to get along with the Dutch of the Cape we had better try as soon as possible to understand this Taal to which they cling so fondly. For nothing so wins the affections and sympathies of a race with whom our lot may be cast as showing a kindly interest in their homely speech. Unfortunately the average Englishman is too apt to dispose of a strange tongue as simply a "rum lingo" and not worth mastering. Similarly to the Greek, everyone who did not understand his language was classed as a barbarian, a babbler. In the case of an Asiatic, a Polynesian, or a Negro dialect there is some excuse for indifference, but the Afrikander's speech is only indirectly a foreign tongue. Apart altogether from those borrowed words that reach us through education and trading intercourse, English and Dutch are structurally akin, belonging as they do to cognate branches of the great Teutonic family. Though in usage the Afrikander's vocables largely follow German, his consonantal system is frequently identical with English. Thus he speaks of somer and winter, dag and daa'e (g elided) and nooit, hart and bleed, vleesch and bane, steen and leem, vuur and water, and ijs, melk and hotter, and brood and drank, a Bijbel and a boek—all easily recognisable under the thin guise of altered spelling and pronunciation. His familiar epithets are obviously akin to ours, such as—
| Taal. | Sc. | Eng. | ||
| jong | yung | young | ||
| niuwe | noo | new | ||
| warm | warr'm | warm | ||
| keel | cüle | cool | ||
| siek | seek | sick | ||
| wel | weel | well | ||
| fijn | fine | fine | ||
| doof | daef | deaf (deff) | ||
| wit | white | white (wite) | ||
| grijs | grey | grey |
The wearing-down process is very apparent in epithets like goeje (good), rooje (red), breeje (broad), weije (wide), ouwe (old), koud (cold). The Scottish vernacular does not go quite so far, though one may hear 's-awfyka' the day for "It's awfully cold to-day." On the other hand, an unnecessary dental was added as in publict, witht. Such forms are found late in the eighteenth century. A medial guttural is also objectionable to the Boer. Thus he says daa'e for daage (days), and oo'ies for oogies (eyes), and even a final g may go as in lui, lazy, where we have an interesting modification of the syllable seen in English lag and laggard.
Action words also show close resemblances, such as we find in leef (live), groei (grow), kom, gaan (go), ken (know), vergeet, vergee (forgive), dek (deck), bloos (blush), sit, staan (stand), seg (say), and leg (lie). "Words for relationship exhibit equally affinity and lazy articulation—va'er (father), broer, neef (nephew), but others have been little changed, as moeder, suster, and sussie, seun, dochter. In North-eastern Scotland dialectic variations show forms like fader, breeder, neeper (neighbour). This last, again, is the Irish "Napper Tandy" in the "Wearin' o' the Green." South African speech has further remarkable affinities with Scottish dialects. "Is dit die naaste pad?" for Is't the nearest (nighest) path or road? might almost be heard here at home. We regularly find neest for nearest in Scottish verse. "When one hears in some country districts in Scotland such words as nearder and faarder for nearer and faarer (Eng. farther is wrongly formed), one is apt to regard them as ignorant corruptions, but they are really double comparatives (naa-re-d-er, faar-re-d-er), showing the older affix—re as in more—and the latter er with d inserted to separate the liquids. Now in Dutch it is the rule to insert d before er in adjectives ending in re, as vere, verder (far, farther) and zwaare, zwaarder (sweerer).
The wearing-down process is still more apparent where affinity with German is most direct. Thus we have na'ant (guten Abend, good evening), eers (erste, first), lus (Lust, pleasure). klere (Kleider, clothes), rus-plaas (Rust-platz, rest-place), rek (reeht, right), eenvoudig (einfaltig, onefold), gen (kein, no), blij (bleiben, remain), glo (glauben, believe), krij (kriegen, obtain), spreck (sprechen, speak), slaan (schlagen, strike), snij (schneiden, cut), verjaa (verjagen, drive off). But the consonantal changes generally incline to the English or Low rather than to the German or High Dutch type, as these examples show: Oudste or ouste (älteste, oldest), deur (Thüre, door), ook (auch, eke), diep (tief, deep), twede (zweite, second). It is curious to find that Cape Dutch, like Scots, prefers to harden initial sch into sk in contrast to German, as shown in skrij (Sc. skrive, Ger. sehreiben, write) and schade (Sc. skaid, Ger. Schade, damage). As Heeren Logeman and Oordt say, the rule is absolute, we ought to call the prominent politician Schreiner, Skreiner, in Taal fashion, and this connects the name with the old Scottish trade of the skriners, originally shrine-workers, and latterly cabinet-makers.
The most interesting affinities of the Taal are with Lowland Scots, and this quite apart from borrowings. One of the most characteristic features of our dialects is the fondness for diminutives to north of Tay, evidently a survival of Norse and Frisian influences. This is well marked in the Taal as in merrie (mare), beitjie (bit), meisie (miss), wortjie (word), hartjie (heart), kereltje (carlie). In some cases one hears even the Scottish tones of the voice as in—
| Taal. | Sc. | Eng. | ||
| huis | hooss | house | ||
| muis | mooss | mouse | ||
| vrind | freend | friend | ||
| en | an' | and | ||
| kērel | caerl | carle | ||
| seker | siccar | secure | ||
| een | ane | one | ||
| heel | hale | whole | ||
| meer | mair | more | ||
| groote | grit | great | ||
| such | sooch | sigh | ||
| kijk | keek | (look) | ||
| sweet | sweet, swaet | sweat | ||
| crau | craw | crow | ||
| dwijn | dwine | (pine away) | ||
| wijt | wyte | (blame) | ||
| bees | beas (s. and pl.) | beast | ||
| ure | oor | hour | ||
| juist | jüst | just | ||
| zoolang | so long! | good by! | ||
| duik | dook | duck (dive) |
If we consider slight variations in sound, with or without change of sense, further resemblances arise. Thus we find elk for the Scottish ilka (each), speul, to play, for speel, to climb; spoor, a trace, for speer, to find out by asking; hou (hold) for hud, and ge' for gied (gave), both with dropped dental; stuit, to knock up against, for stot, to rebound; duiwel, the devil, for deevil; loup, to go, or run for loup, to jump. Boer preferences, even, seem to run on Scottish rather than Dutch lines, witness his persistent choice of maak (make) rather than the Hollander's do. Even phrases have a familiar ring to the Scotsman's ear, as "een gang o' water " (very hard to put concisely in English), or "jij moet huis toe gaan" (ee mon gang to ee hoose). When in Fergusson's "Leith Races" we read: "The races done, we hale the dules wi' drink o' a'-kin kind," we have a genuine Taal phrase, "haal die doel," to reach the aim or goal. The dulls are still familiar to schoolboys as standpoints in the game of rounders. A Scot might say with a Boer, "Dat's het" for "That's it," while such phrases as these translate themselves: Hoe veel wil u be? Ik is met pa; wat meen jij? Hé je een beitjie brood voor mij?
In grammar the resemblances between the Taal and Scots are equally striking. The double negative is frequently used in both, as "It'll no be hizz nether." The Northern English substantive verb uses is throughout, and this is the rule in Cape Dutch: "Ik is een arm man," I am a poor man; "Die tije is zwaar," The times is hard (sweer). The verb have is either hae or het, singular and plural, as "Ons het al-tijd iets te mis voor een arm mens," Hizz hae all-tide something tae spare for a poor man; "Die kinders het vrinde genog," The children have friends enough. So one hears in Scotland, "Oor bairns hizz (or hae) naethin' to maak a wark aboot." The Boer preserves the subjunctive as Burns and older writers do: "Ik ga niet uit want (Ger. wenn) ik ben ziek," I go not out if I be sick. A parallel idiom is, for the time of day, half two (half-past one), twal oor (midday, twaalf uur, in Taal).
In one respect the Taal has the advantage of the Scots vernacular. As a living speech it grows and adapts itself to new conditions. How modern are these words and phrases, alike in their old-world guise!—faar-keeker, a telescope; spoor-boekjie, a time-table; on-smet, to disinfect; snij-dokters, cutting doctors, surgeons; ik shorthand ken en kan typewrite. One looks, also, to such elements as metaphors, proverbs, and the like for evidences of vitality in a language. The Boer's blad stil (blade still) strikingly depicts a dead calm. These popular sayings are simple, but expressive:—
Zoo vast as een klip=so huge as a cliff
(cf. "The shadow
of a great rock").
Zoo„ vastslim as„ een„ klipjakhal=sly as a jackal.
Zoo„ vaststil as„ een„ klipmuis=quiet as a mouse.
Zoo„ vastzach as„ een klipveeren=soft as feathers.
Zoo„ vastdood as„ een klipeen klip=dead as stone.
Zoo„ vastkoud as„ een klipijs=cold as ice.
Zoo„ vastoud as„ een klipdie Kaap=old as the Cape.
Een kerel as een boom=a fellow like a tree, a blockhead.
The Boer is essentially a nomad, taking naturally to a roving life in his waggon with all his dependants, as did his remote Gothic ancestors when they moved slowly but irresistibly westwards across the great plain of Europe even to the shores of the North Sea. But the monotony of his outlook over the arid, treeless veldt is very different from that of his remote ancestor, hemmed in by the weird gloom of the primeval forest, where lurked the wolf and the bear and the wild boar. The climate compels him to be on the move still. At the end of April he packs up his waggons on the high veldt where he has spent the summer, shuts up his house, and treks to the lower or bush veldt for the winter feeding. The rains set in at the end of September, when he returns to his house with his belongings. This is a primitive custom of northern lands adapted to new conditions. The "summer sheelins" lingered longest in the Highlands, but they were general in Old Scotland. In the "Complaint of Scotland" (1545?) there is a delightfully realistic description of this popular custom, which did more than all else put together to foster the popular literature of ballad, song, dance, and folk-lore generally. But of this aspect there seems to exist only Psalm-singing among the Boers. Another seasonal word, oogst, harvest (oo'st tijd, in the Taal), has also been transferred by the first settlers to their new home under the Southern Cross, for it is but another form of August. This oo'st of the Boer is the old French Aoust (Août) of his Dutch Huguenot ancestors. The original significance of the term must long have been forgotten, for this month is nearly mid-winter in South Africa.
An officer in the first Boer War graphically sketches the landscape on the veldt ("Blackwood's Magazine," 1880-81): "You may travel a hundred miles without seeing a tree. Houses are ugly cottages, with low roofs of galvanised iron, so low as to escape notice altogether but for the clump of blue gums beside them" (cf. "Cottar's Saturday Night,"—
"At length his lonely cot appears in view
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree").
"A few acres not far off are under the plough. Through the middle of the scene is a stream or bog, from which water is got. Round a part of it runs a stone wall to keep the cattle out. The windows of the house have four small panes. Pigs, cows, and dogs and children run at large together. The roads are a bit of dirty tape thrown down carelessly on the veldt, and not even pulled tight. Waggons are always straying from the track for firmer ground. In bottoms flows a marshy spruit or burn. Where there is a drift or ford this is churned into pools, where may be a dead ox is lying." If we substitute thatch for the galvanised roof this might pass for a description of much of Scotland, even so recently as last century. In fact it is a graphic picture of an old-time Highland clachan set amid its background of local colour. Certainly wheeled vehicles in Old Scotland were fewer, but the bridle tracks sought the firm high ground as independently, avoiding the bogs where the cattle might be lairdet (bemired). The ford was as troublesome as the drift, and equally a source of danger or delay when a spate came down. The Boer transferred the name veldt from his northern home. It is the Norwegian and Scottish fell. An obscure survival of it in Scotland is haemit, a peculiarly expressive word for what is homely and familiar. A less contracted form—haemilt—prevails in the North-eastern counties, where it means pasture adjoining an enclosure. In Icelandic it is heimilt, a contraction for the heim-veld. One familiar only with haemit might well take haemilt to be a corruption instead of the purer and older form.
The Boer farming customs are much like those of Old Scotland, where the farm land was divided into the infield or arable portion, enclosed by a fael or turf dyke, and the outfield or open grazings on the moorland. The name itself, as bower, is regularly used in Ayrshire for a dairy farmer on the steelbow, Fr. métayer, system. Near the homestead was the loanin or haemilt where the cows were kept at milking-time or during the heat of the day; and this ground, being thus heavily manured or tothed, as it was called, raised the best bere crop of the following season. In the dry air of the veldt the cow-dung is invaluable as fuel, but in bygone Scotland it was too frequently thrown into the burn, which was as little conserved as a Boer spruit. This word is well known in Scotland, though in a different sense, that is, as the spruit or spout of a kettle. Before the introduction of draining many were the wet spots where the rushes grew in such plenty that the general name for the plant was sprits Originally sprit meant to spurt or squirt out water (Du. spruiten, Ger. spriessen). In English the root was transferred to growing, hence sprout. The Banff hill farmer applies it to a particularly tough, strong rush which he twists into ropes. "Spritty knowes" or wet, rush-grown spots (water springs) were only too common in the pre-draining days. Burns, too, tells how his mare Maggie stoutly "spread abroad her well-filled briskit" and pulled the plough over "the spritty knowes." The favourite term in the West of Scotland for the kettle nozzle is not sprout but stroup, of Norse origin. The "Bachelor to his Bellows" in "Kilwuddie" sings,—
"Rayther than see a frien' sae leal
Gang ony siccan roads,
I'd mak a poker o' yer stroup,
Twa pat-lids o' yer brods."
A ditch, again, is a sluit, an old Dutch and Boer word familiar in Scotland for a mill-lade as being controlled by a sluice. The Sclate, or old burgh, mill of Irvine probably meant originally the mill on the sluit.
The nomadic habits of the Boer are reflected in his language. To go on foot is to be a thief and a liar, as are all pedlars and gangrel bodies, such as were those sorners who were hunted off to their own parish in Old Scotland. Every honest Scottish farmer must ride his own nag with sonsy goodwife on the pillion behind, even though that were only a turf seat, the sonks that we read of as doing such service. At the kirk-stile and before the ha'-house stood the loupin-on stane, the counterpart of the Boer stoep. This is not a Celtic racial feature but a Norse one, for the Highlander has always been an infantry man, and kept his garron merely for the pack-saddle. On St. Michael's Day in Norse Scotland everyone in the township had to mount and enjoy a mad gallop. Riding the marches is still a great holiday in some Lowland towns, and the broose is not long extinct, in which the wild stampede of the bridal party from the kirk to the home earned for the first comer his bottle. To his horse the Boer applies a modification of the German Pferd in the form of paard or pêrt. Cronje made his last desperate stand at Paardeberg, the hill of horses. So much a part of the Boer's life is his horse that he says, "Ik het een honger as een paard," for our "hungry as a hawk." But the bridle is known as toom, identical with the English team, though in a different sense. As in all primitive communities, the thong is the handiest material for cordage, and this is the Boer reim or reimpjie. "He had knee-haltered the animal with too great a length of reim. . . . Tom, the Kaffir boy, was dressed in the ordinary slop clothes of a store, more or less tattered, and more or less ingeniously repaired with bits of reimpjie" ("A Veldt Official"). In German the word is Riemen, but is also Old English. As it is properly applied to long, narrow strips of hide, one should connect it with the Scottish runes (m and n frequently interchange), the selvage of cloth. Hence Burns jocosely calls mischievous youngsters run-deils, strips, as it were, of Old Nick. In the Scots Privy Council Registers (1620) there is an interesting example of the word: "Grite abuse by slascheing of hydis and cutting of some of the rime away."
To complete his equipment the Boer wants only his gun, and this he visualises by a term peculiarly his own. "Roden could find no buyer for his old smooth-bore. A Boer would pick it up. 'A good roer,' would be his verdict, 'an excellent roer in its day'" ("A Veldt Official"). This word is explained by the German Rohr, a reed. It is only a variant of rush, as in bulrush, or in Burns's "Green Grow the Rashes," where rashes means, however, a different plant. The roer is the Boer's constant companion. He is not only a born sportsman, but, as lord over an inferior but treacherous race, man of war from his youth up." Knowing himself to be left as his own master, one of a governing few among many, he instinctively selects the defensive positions which the country affords in abundance. He prefers the advantage of a kopje, and using the stones scattered about in profusion, speedily constructs his schants or breastwork. Here we have the German Schanze, common on the lower Rhine in the sense of a bundle of sticks, such as the Dutch construct so cleverly to fence their waterways. This old Dutch word is used in the form sconce by Shakspere, both as bulwark and humorously as the skull, the bulwark of the head: "To knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel." When the Boer finds himself snugly en-sconced he is a wary behind his schants with roer in hand he is not, as we know too well, easily dislodged.
The waggon is of no less importance to the nomad Boer. It is his house, and, if surprised in the open, his castle too, for he then forms a hollow square, or laagers-up, within the square of waggons placed end to end. On the move in the waggon he treks, and when he yokes and unyokes he inspans or outspans respectively. There are two very common verbs in Lowland Scotland—trake, to gad about, and troke, to barter—the former of which is probably the Dutch trek, to take the road. In the Cumberland dialect treak is an idle fellow, and as a verb to wander idly about. "What is't ta treaken about this teyme o' neet?" There is no doubt about spang, to stretch, being widely known in Scotland, particularly to boys when playing bools or marbles. In Orkney spong is to stride. Stevenson uses it effectively in his "Underwoods,"—
"An' whiles the bluid spangs to my bree,
To lie sae saft, to live sae free,
While better men maun do an' die
In unco places."
Not the least interesting phase in the study of words is the modification of a radical idea under the influence of race and environment. As every term involves substantially a buried metaphor we thus see how unknown namers looked at the objects to the naming of which they diverted the stock of linguistic material that was the general property of the race. Many Transvaal words are not only in form but also conception identical with our own vernacular, but not a few, while radically akin, are put to new uses. This is specially the case with features of the landscape. It is natural to name the new and strange by reference to the old and familiar. Thus the Norse settlers in Clydesdale, arrested by the striking appearance of the isolated hill, Tinto, named it after a home term, tand, a tooth. So the Boers called those knobs that form the foot-hills of the Drakensberg, Kops or heads (German Kopf). But the radical idea was nothing more than anything rounded and prominent. Chaucer visualises his miller thus,—
"Upon the cop right of his nose he hade
A werte, and thereon stood a tuft of heres,
Reede as the berstles of a sowes eeres."
The word appears with variations of vowel and sense: cup, cap, cob, ettercop (spider), kibe (a swoln sore on the heel, Shak.). Lower eminences, again, have the diminutive form, kopje, and this is merely the Scottish cappie in the kindly wish, "May you aye be happy and ne'er drink oot o'a toom (empty) cappie!" though the point of view is widely different. In Cape Dutch kop is also the favourite word for "head," and not the Hollander hoofd, which is used only in a figurative sense as die hoofd-laager or headquarters. In Holland, on the other hand, kop is regarded as a vulgar term for the head. Compare the vulgar English, nut. Similarly, the French tête is the Latin testa, a pot, while in Scots the skull is the harn-pan.
There is indeed but little play for the imagination on the monotonous veldt. It is otherwise with the torrent-swept passes of the Drakensberg, where beck and spruit have eroded the slopes into profound, rock-walled gorges. The Boer, modifying the Dutch klip, a crag, calls such a place a kloof. Here, habituated as we are to rock-bound coasts, the word is used in the form cliff. Another feature of the lofty passes is a hoek, such as Bushman's in the Stormberg, which cost Gatacre so dear. "The ground sloped abruptly down from about a hundred feet, forming with the jutting elbow of the cliff a snug, grassy hoek or corner" ("A Veldt Official"). One sees in this word a derivative from the Norse holka, more familiar in Scotland as howk, to dig up. Hence at home here a hoek is called a hauch, only the scene of it is not a rocky pass, but a broad flat holm by a riverside. In Highland scenery it is the laggan, or laich, place. Still more welcome to the trekker, as his cattle toil wearily up the pass, is the nek. "Ambling along the dusty waggon-road which led up to the grassy nek, about a mile from the township," is a bit of description in "A Veldt Official." This word is the equivalent of the French col (Lat. collum, the neck), familiar to Alpine climbers, and a form of Scots, nick, notch.
Bygone social life in Scotland is reproduced in the speech of the Transvaal. In Old Edinburgh, the mistress of a bonny land in Advocates' Close, when the christening came on after a lying-in, sat up in bed in high dress and received her acquaintances who came to congratulate her and taste her sweet-cakes. This was the cummers' (French, commére) feast, or in Dutch the kraam-bezuk (German, Besuch) visit. Cummer is still a general rustic synonym for a lass. In the Transvaal the bed on such occasions is the kraam, a booth or screen, also the name of those stalls, the krames, that were hidden away between St. Giles and the Luckenbooths in Old Edinburgh. They were borrowed from the picturesque shops that surround the cathedrals of the Netherlands. A Kram in Germany is a small shop, but the custom of the kraam-bezuk is there known as the Kind- (child) or Wochenbett (bed). Another singular survival both of Teutonic social customs and vocables, is a Boer opsij or rustic wooing. The term is a variant of up-sit (omission of final dental). The "up-set" in a Scots burgh was the fee payable to the craft on admission to the trading privileges of a master. The conviviality attending the function long survived among artisans as a "foy." When a meisjie, or a widow well tochered with sufficient skaap (sheep), is visited by an eligible Dopper, "kom tae vrij" (woo), he off-saddles, and, if graciously received, prepares to improve the occasion with the bucolic reserve of the Laird of Dumbiedykes. The vrouw takes the long candles from the shrank (cupboard), and leaves wooer and wooed to sit up together till the grey dawn breaks, a custom which, in one form or another, rural Scotland long looked on kindly. The envied fair one, who has many of such vrijers, may have to sit up four or five nights a week till the eventful choice is made.
There is abundant evidence in language to prove that the ancient Northumbria—that is, Lowland Scotland from Tay to Humber—was a Frisian or Dutch settlement. Both find their affinities in the fertile plains of the lower Danube among those Goths for whom their good countryman, Bishop Wulfila, translated the gospels into their vernacular in the fourth century. The very tones of his converts live in the Dutch—
| Dutch. | Sc. | Eng. | ||
| wan | whan | when | ||
| dan | than | then | ||
| nu | noo | now | ||
| oot | oot | out | ||
| een | ane | one |
In his version the thieves twitted (id-weitjan, Du. ver-witjan) Jesus on the Cross, just as any Lowland Scot puts the wite (Du. wijt) or blame on another. The hireling shepherd in the parable is betrayed by his framath voice, the Dutch vremmd, and Scottish fremd. Scott, writing to John Ballantine, says: "Walter will be in town by the time this reaches you, looking very like a cow in a fremd loaning" (paddock). The disciples take of the fragments twelve baskets full of brock (ga-bruko, Du. brok), a term familiar in every kitchen. The Shetlander calls the offal of fish, brucks. St. Paul tells the Corinthians that "all things are lawful, but are not expedient," which Wulfila renders, "All bi-nah, akei ni all daug," where we have the Boer deug, virtue, merit, the root of which is primarily a pastoral metaphor, to yield milk, then to be good for. It gives us doughty, and do in the phrase, "Will that do?" The old verb dow, to be worth, be able, is still in use in Central Scotland. In "Johnie Armstrong's Last Good Night" there is a good illustration,—
"These four-and-twenty mills complete,
Shall gang for thee through a' the year;
And as meikle of gude red wheat
As a' their hoppers dow to bear."
When the Saviour sends out the twelve on mission He says: "And put not on two coats"—"Jah ni vasjaith tvaim paidom." Here Wulfila uses a very old word for a peasant's coat of sheepskin, paida. This explains the contemptuous Boer name for an English red-coat, a rooi-baatjie. Both forms follow the Greek βαίτη, a peasant's coat of skins, not the modern Dutch pije, a coat of coarse woollen stuff. This latter is what we hear in pea-jacket and the mediæval courte-py. It is remarkable that Dutch uses not this antique baatje, but jakse or mantle (Ger. Jacke, jacket). In the Taal it is applied as in the sentence, "Is die Heere nie bang dat het sal gaan reen? . . . Né, ons hêt almaal reên-baatjes"—Are you gentlemen not afraid that it is going to rain? . . . No, we have always waterproofs. Calvary, again, in the Gothic is hvairneistaths or harn-stead (Du. hersen-pan, Sc. harn-pan), the pot which holds the harns or brains. This renders the phrase, "the place of a skull," in the English version.
The homely aspect of life and its relations are naturally prominent. The patriarchal head is the huis heer, or, generally, the baas, based on the figure of the boss on a shield or the Scotch bush, the nave or hub of a wheel on which the spokes (children), felloes (dependents), and rim (outer world) all depend. Vrouw, the housewife, is the term of honour in preference to wife. The children are the kleintjies, the little ones (Ger. Klein). Broers and broederen preserve the distinction in brothers and brethren. Kindly inquiries take such forms as these: "Maarie, waar (whaur) is jou zussie? Is dit jou dochterjie?" Conventional address is equally patriarchal. One younger than the speaker is son; of his own age, neef (knave, in Ger. boy, lad); if a lady, tante; if younger, nicht (Ger. nephew). Ou is familiarly addressed to anyone, like our old, old boy. Parts of the body are quite intelligible, such as the "luff (or palm) van de hand," the oor (ear), and the oksel, or armpit (Sc. oxter).
In the domestic series the Boer comes equally close to the Scot. He mends the vuur (fire) with tangs (tongs), hoests (coughs), has a kinkhoest (whooping-cough), snotters or snivels, knows the virtue of a steek in time, taps his beer with a kraan, admires a breed shouder and sound lids (Du. leden, C. Du. le'e, joints, "lith and limb"), and prides himself in being slim (Sc. slim, Du. slem, Ger. schlimm), believes himself to be kloek (Ger. klug, clever) or gleg i' the uptak like the Scot. His huis has a roef, and a gevel (Gothic gibla, pinnacle of the Temple). From the stoep one enters the one large common room, the kitchie (Aberd.) of this ha'-house, with sleeping chambers leading off it. The bultong and the mealies hanging from the rafters represent the Scottish braxy and the weel-hained kebbocks. The loft above is reached by a trap (Ger. Treppe). This is the usual Scots word for a ladder. In school to take down a rival and thus climb higher in the class we called to trap. The Taal calls a stair a trap, as in the sentence, "Ga die trap op, loop voorbij (walk past) twee deure in die gang (passage), en klop (clap, knock) dan aan die derde deur," where the language is Scots enough to be easily followed. The "who goes up my winding stair" connects trap as at once a stair and a snare. The window, as in a Scottish borrowstoon when glass was scarce, closes with a schut or wooden screen, a term in constant use here in olden days. Amid the reek (Sc. Du. rook, smoke) hangs the pot on the fire by the lum-cleek (Du. and Sc. lum, a chimney, and klik a hook and cleek in golf), while the guidwife plies her canny trokes (Sc. Du. drok, busy) about the kitchen in homemade vel-schoen (fell or skin shoes), the bauchles or revlins (Orkney) of the days before machine-made slippers. Out of doors the Boer would recognise the sheep flake (Sc. and Du.) or hurdle, originally of flaked or plaited twigs, and the thoroughly Scottish saying, "Let the tow (rope) gang (gaan) wi' the bucket," for the folly of crying over spilt milk. He makes a kink (Sc. kinch) on his tow or tuig, and might easily hazard a guess at the meaning of Burns's lines,—
"My fur a-bin's (off-wheeler) a wordy beast (Du. waarde bees)
As e'er in tug or tow was traced."
A Cape man, doing business up-country, was buying horses for his waggon, and this is what the Boer seller had to say for them: "Die paar paarde is goed geleer (weel learnt) in die tuig." A pole or stick is a stang, just as in the Scottish phrase to ride the stang, and to smother is to smore. When the auld mare came to a stey (steep) brae, Burns reminds her,—
"Just thy step a wee thing hastet,
Thou snoov't awa'."
This shows the Boer snoove, to walk smoothly. A "stey brae" is in the Transvaal "een steile op-draus," a stiff up-drawing or climb, where we have the same word as there is in stile, or steps over a wall in the absence of a slap or a yett. It is, indeed, surprising to find so many of the homeliest Scots expressions in the Taal. One might fancy a private of the Scottish Borderers becoming quite brotherly with a Boer, for the jou (you to rhyme with now) and the mij (me) of both are almost identical in sound. The Boer's inquiry, "Is jou hoofd zeer?"—is your head sore, would not sound strange. Similarly a Cameronian in the Scottish Rifles would find his strong r in "warm" quite equivalent to the Boer's warem(e), as also the long vowel in school-maistre (C. Du. meester). Both will agree in taking a wife or a wifie in a depreciatory sense. The respectful vrouw is applied to a woman. The Scot would understand the Boer's "Ga maar binne in die huis" (gae mair ben the hoose), a "sully kêrel" for a simple-minded sumph is his own phrase, and 'tweel I wat is almost his way of saying "I am well aware" ("Net weel Ik weet"—pronounced wait). "Who could miss "Ja, dat is het"—that's hit. When we read in Burns, "The gossip keekit in his loof," we almost hear the Boer's "Hij kijk in die leof." The obscure word iets, used in preference to the Hollander wat (what) for anything indefinite, and its negative niets are very common in the Taal. They are contractions for Scottish ocht and nocht (Eng. aught and naught). Both appear in the sentence, "Hé je een beitje brood voor mij?" "Né, ik hé ver jou niets, maar (but, mair, cf. Fr. mais, majus) die man daar het iets ver jou." "Neem een komme water en dicht die vloere op" (take a kimmin o' water an' clean up the floor) shows, in neem, an old English verb which Shakspere had in mind when he called a pickpocket Corporal Nym; while kimmin (komme) is a well-known East Coast word for what would in Lanarkshire be called a bine or bucket. "Die lum rijk zwaar" is the Kaapsch (C. Dutch) for "The chimney smokes badly," where zwaar is the Lowland Scottish sweer, unwilling, but used in a slightly different sense. The Boer says, "Die pad is zwaar Zand" (the road is very sandy). "Die tije (tide-time) is zwaar"—the times are hard, "Dat is veel waart"—that is worth a great deal, and "Gé die man een stuk brood"—gie the man a piece bread, these all sound homely enough.
The kijk of the Taal is felt by the Hollander to be not so dignified as his ziet, which the Transvaaler again avoids. Similarly the German thinks its cognate gucken nicht so fein as sehen, But C. Dutch is fond of kijk, as witness the homely phrases—"Kijk hoe mooi die weer nou is" (See how nice the weather is now); "Kijk een beetje, daar kom mijn broer, Jakob;" "Hij kijkt naar je" (He's keekin naar ye); "Wach een beetje, laa mij kijk" (Wait a bittie, let me [cf. Lanarksh. Le'me] see). "Een val ver die muis" is the Boer way of describing a mousetrap. Here we have the German falle, and, curiously, the East Coast of Scotland word also, a mooss-faw (Norse musföll), with the usual dropping of a final l. A val deure is a trap-door. Even the youthful Boer would understand the Doric, to swei (Du. zwaai, swing) on a gate and to be roopie with a bad cold, for his roep (Sc. roup, an auction) means a call or a hoarse shout. From the sway or swei-cruck, in the old Scottish kitchen, hung the kail-pot. The request of the family doctor is equally familiar: "Laa' een beetje jou tong zien." "Wat kan ik voor u doen, Jufvrouw?" (Let me see your tongue. What can I do for you, Miss?) When he says "Daar teekens is van een besmettelijke ziekte" (there are tokens of an infectious sickness), he uses an expression almost identical with the Lowland Scots, smit and smittel. The Dutchman speaks plainly. He calls corns, for example, likdoorns (body-thorns), using the old word we have in lyke-wake, and calls a surgeon a snij-dokter or cutting doctor. He even turns his humour in grim directions. "Hei izet hoekie omgegaan" is his euphemism for "He has died." He uses here the diminutive of hoek a corner. Some may see in it a connection with our slang, Hook it! and Hooky Walker.
It will be seen that our current vernacular can claim close kin with the Cape Dutch. But the comparison also carries us back to olden times. There a roes has still the force it had in Hamlet's "The king has ta'en his rouse," for boisterous conviviality. One can recognise in it the Orcadian ruz, to praise, boast. Burns to Gavin Hamilton sings,—
"Expect na, sir, in this narration,
A fleechin, flethrin Dedication,
To roose you up, aud ca' you guid,
An' sprung o' great and noble bluid,
Because ye're sirnamed like his Grace."
In Dutch, too, there is a very strong expression for constant tippling in the verb zuipen, familiar to us in our saep, to soak in. More reputable illustrations, socially, are seen in mise, to spare, as in "Ons hé altije iets ver een arm mens to mise"—We have always something to spare for a poor man. A parallel is found in the Cumberland syper, as "The Hivverby lads at fair drinkin are Sypers." In mise, to spare, we are reminded of the Scots thrifty savings bank on the mantelpiece, the misert-pig, noted in Grigor's "Glossary." The reader of such a fine illustrator of old manners as Allan Ramsay meets with many interesting points in Cape Dutch. His Luckenbooths, from the Dutch luiken, to close, means the shops that were not mere temporary stalls. The lokman was the jailer, and the closed daisy was said to be locken. The vernacular lock for a quantity is no corruption of lot, but merely a synonym for a nievefu' or fist-full. In the expression, again, for "he is dressed," the Cape Dutch "hij trek aan" reminds us of Roger in the "Gentle Shepherd,"—
"An few gangs trigger to the kirk or fair,"
or the swains in "Hallowe'en,"—
"The lads sae trig wi' wooer babs,
Weel knotted on their garten."
The series "“zout, peper, mosterd, azjin (vinegar), zoet olie," is of much interest. The obscure azjin reminds us of Hamlet's "Woo't drink up Eysell?" where we see the same stem, essen to eat, with a different termination. The form olie for oil is exactly what was so familiar to Allan Ramsay and Fergusson in the vernacular of last century. It is the Dutch form of the Latin oleum. In old speech it was always a dissyllable, hence the Olie or Oylé wall of St. Katharine's, near Edinburgh.
But the Taal reminds us of many such points of social and trading contact between old Holland and Scotland. This is still more evident when we turn to farming terms. The Boer applied his rustic terms to the novel conditions of the mining industry. Thus he spoke of myn-pachts or mining leases, and here we recognise the pact and paction or bargain of our own country. But more strangely still, along the Forth or Dutch shore of Fife a small farmer is spoken of as a pachter or leaseholder, and sometimes described contemptuously as a pauchlin buddie. And even in so serious a matter as high politics words familiar in old Scotch land-tenure are heard. The Boer constitution or Grond-wet shows the well-known term a wad-set for a property pledged under a mortgage, and in our vernacular a bet or pledge is always a wad-g-er. A very common name, too, in Scotland for a farm, a place, is universal in South Africa. Thus one asks, "Hoe v'er is dit na die plaats van Oom Piet Steen?" How far is it to (Ger. nach) Old Pete Steen's place? The homestead in the Lowlands is the toon (Ger. Zaun, hedge, fence), but this the Boer uses strictly in its original sense of an enclosure, or in rural England a garth, as in the phrase, "Een meus kijk uit op die tuin," one may look out over the garden, given as one of the attractions of a particular lodging. The cultivated land of the Boer is without our most troublesome weed in olden times, the gool or wild marigold, but he has the name in his geel, yellow. He knows nothing of the old-fashioned bere or big, but oats he calls by its antique Scottish name, haver, a word that the song preserves in its "haver-meal bannocks." And when he mows his corn he speaks of whetting his scythe with a slijp, just as an Ayrshire man still does. Though he uses a Kaffir word for his sheep-pen (kraal), it might very well be called a fank as in the west of Scotland, for this shows his verb vangen to catch, from which comes our quaint legal terms, infang and ootfang theft, and the common description, "off the fang" applied to a water-pump when too dry for the valve to catch.
(b) Duncan Gray.
Mr. Reitz, Secretary of the quondam Transvaal Republic, enjoyed an English education, but seems to have returned to his home on the Veldt a confirmed separatist. His sense of patriotism, deepened by his sojourn here, led him to do for his brethren what King Alfred did for his Englishmen, and that was to supply them with a native literature, or at least a temporary substitute for it. He knew well that nothing so supports the flame of patriotism as pride in the national speech. This was in every way a laudable and progressive policy. Krugerism, on the other hand, represented, to the Uitlanders of Johannesburg and the Rand, a retrograde Conservatism. Reitz rightly tried to foster a popular literature, and so he chose for the models he put before the young Boers such pieces as "John Gilpin" and, above all, the poems of Burns. They were published, fifty in number, in 1888, when he was Chief Justice of the Orange Free State. Of these pieces the outstanding ones are "The Cottars," "Tarn o' Shanter," and "Duncan Gray," They are suggestions more than translations. With skill and judgment he selects the features that suit the Boer environment, and adds many touches that spring out of the changed situation. All of them throw most interesting light on the peculiarities, of the people. In "The Cottars" Reitz admirably illustrates the rural homeliness and isolation of Boer life, combined with characteristic social and devotional traits. "Tam" shows the Boer in convivial mood, the victim at once of good fellowship and uncanny spooks. He cheats Auld Nick through his slimness and mobility. In "Duncan Gray," again, we have the Boer in the lighter vein of a wooer or vrijer, a term that is a survival from prehistoric times, for it is just the masculine of the Freja or Norse Venus of our Friday or Freja Day, and stdl heard in the Ger. Frau. In the Gothic gospels of the fourth century, frijon, to love, is common, while our Lord is generally addressed as Frauja. The wooer is the young farmer, Daantjie or Danie Grouws (cf. Ger. grau, grey), while the wooed is the meisje (missie), Maartjie or Martha. A word-for-word translation will enable the reader, with his Burns in hand, to judge of the merits of the piece It will be noted, in this interlinear translation, that wherever an English word could be found that was closely akin to its Taal equivalent it has been used, though archaic from the modern point of view. The second line, as the oft-recurring refrain, need appear only once.
DAANTJIE GROUWS.[3]
Daantjie kom hier om te vrij,
Danie comes here for to woo.
Ja, met vrijers gaat dit soo,
Yes, 'mid wooers goes it so;
Sondags-aânts het hij vèr moet rij.
Sunday-eves he far must (O.-Eng. mote) ride.
Maartjie steek haar kop in die luch,
Martie sticks her head in the light,
Kijk soo skeef en trek terug,
Keeks so slyly and draws back,
Sit ver Daantjie glat op vlug.
Sets Danie clean on the wing.
Daantjie smeek en Daantjie bid.
Danie flatters and Danie entreats (O.-Eng. bid, to pray).
Maartjie's doof en blif maar sit.
Martie is deaf, and remains however seated.
Daantjie such vir ure lang.
Danie sighs four hour long.
Vêe die trane van sijn wang.
Wipes the tears from his cheeks (Ger. die Wangen),
Praat van hemselve op te hang,
Prattles of himself up-to-hang,
Die tijd versach[4] maar ons gevoel.
But (maar cf. Fr. mais) time softens our feelings.
Verachte liefde word ook koel.
Despised love worth (becomes) eke cool.
"Sal ik," seg hij, "nets (Ger. nichts) een gek.
"Shall I," says he, "an out-and-out gowk (fool),
Om een laffe meisie vrek?
For a laughing lassie be-driven-away?
Sij kan naar die hoenders trek."
She can near the hens go."
Hoe dit kom lat dokters vertel,
How it comes let doctors tell.
Maartjie word siek en hij word wel,
Martie grows sick and he grows well.
Daar's iets wat an haar borsie knaa.
There's something what (that) in her bosom gnaws.
En hartjie-seer begin haar plaa,
And heart-sore begins her to-plague,
Haar oogies glinster ook maar braa.
Her eyes glisten eke more bright (Sc. mair braw).
Daantjie was een sachte[5] man,
Danie was a soft (Sc. sauchie) man,
En Maartjie trek haar dit soo an;
And Martie took it to her so,
Daantjie, krij[6] jammer in sijn hart.
Danie felt pity in his heart.
Die liefde groei weer an sijn part.
Love grew again (Ger. wieder) on his part.
Nou leef sulle same sonder smart.
Now-live they together without vexation.
The Boer vernacular offers many points for annotation to the curious in matters linguistic. German, as the least altered living Teutonic speech, is, of course largely represented here, witness om=um, met=mit, aânts=abends, glat=glatt (smooth), vir=vier, trane=träne, van=von, sijn=sein, wang=wange, gevoel=gefühl, ons=unser, verachte=verachten, word=werden, seg=sagen, same=zusammen, oogies=augen, krij=kriegen. But scarce any of these are unknown to Scots or old English. Thus while modern English says evening, Scots shows the same softening as the Taal, witness, "Hame cam oor gude man at een." We have now lost the useful verb, word (becomes), but Scott uses it in "Woe worth the hour!" This piece, again, shows two of the commonest words in Cape Dutch that are explained by Scots and German, though at first sight obscure. These are the positive iets (ocht=ought), and the negative niets (nocht). But the Taal, in following the Dutch, is consonantly akin to Scots and English, rather than German, as is shown by comparison of the following Boer words with their German cognates:—te=zu, terug=zurück, op=auf, doof=taub, tijd=zeit, ook=auch. We have here also the favourite corruptions of the Taal. Thus a dental, both final and medial, frequently disappears as rij for ride, Ger. reiten, luch for Scots licht, or weer for German wieder (cf. Eng. with-stand, with-hold), drif for drift. А similar softening is seen in vêe for wipe. Such elisions are common in all linguistic growth. Reitz's language, indeed, shows nothing to justify the popular contempt for the Taal as a vulgar hotch-potch of corrupt Dutch, English and Kaffir.
To the Scot the Taal must always sound familiar, for he can turn an intelligent ear to both the Dutch and the German elements in it. The sounds are often exactly his own. The query, "Hae ye faur te gang?" is just the Boer, "He'you vèr te gaan?" The Boer constantly uses kijk, to look, though in Scotland it is but little heard out of the nursery. In South Africa, however, photographic views are kiekjies, and a field-glass is a ver-kiekjer. Similarly in en for and, een for a and one, ure for hour, and lang for long, we are on homely ground. The Scot, again, has ceased to sound the guttural in such (sigh), but to "keep a calm souch," is still for him a discreet silence.
Reitz's rendering is spirited, though we miss some characteristic touches. "On blithe Yule night when we were fou," is discreetly changed so as to suggest the long distances on the lonely Veldt and the pleasures of the Op-sit on the great social evening of the week. In the very expressive skeef, we have what is really only a variant of the Scottish skeigh. The change of final is paralleled in laugh, enough. Of course Ailsa Craig must go, but while to "remain seated" may be de rigueur on such occasions in Boerland, the change is weak. Nor can the Lover's Leap be always practicable in the sun-dried spruits, so "spak o' lowpin owre a linn" is dropped. "Grat his een baith bleert and blin," is feebly rendered by "wipes the tears from his cheeks." The phrase "een gek" is however stronger than "a fool" of the original. "Hunt'e gowk" is to play April fool. The word is also in the familiar play-rhymes, given in a former section (p. 128). This imitative name for the cuckoo (A.S. gaec) denotes a simpleton in many lands. Its monotonous note inspires the Cumberland proverb, "Ye breed of the gowk, ye've nae rhyme but ane." Gibson, poet of the dales, has, "T' pooar lal gowk hesn't gumption enough."
"Een laffe meisje" is only a "giglot lassie," a very different thing from a "haughty hizzie." The sly humour, too, of "Duncan was a lad o' grace," has been missed in the phrase, "soft or tender-hearted man.” The sach here is a familiar Scottish word for soft, while, contemptuously, sauchie is a simpleton. In the Buchan dialect a selch is a big, stout, daichie or doughy fellow, somewhat after the fashion of the seal. Selch, in fact, is a dialect equivalent for seal, of which it is but the fuller form. On the whole "Daantjie Grouws" is a vigorous and characteristic specimen of the Boer vernacular, and gives a very favourable impression of the translator's literary tastes and sympathies. There remains only to add, that in all the piece under discussion we have but three terms with which the Boer war made us familiar—kop, trek and ons (our), which last is in the title of the Bond organ, "Ons Land."
(c) The Cottar's Saturday Night.
Saterday-aant in 'n Boerewoning—Saturday-e'enin in a Boer-woning (dwelling, farm).
Reitz was evidently in whole-hearted sympathy with "The Cottar's Saturday Night," though here too his work is in no sense a reproduction but an imitation. We miss the beautifully appropriate local colour of the original—the graphic scenery of the opening, the elder bairns drappin' in' and all the cackle of the clachan, the saintly sire's exhortation to well-doing and faithful service, the finesse of the blushing Jenny and the pawky gudewife, the artless love-making, the kindly Hawkie "'yont the hallan," and the specially Burns touch in deprecating the ensnarements of artless love. His gray-haired sire is the House-father, the Klein-baas (little Boss) of a patriarchal, self-contained establishment who has nothing to say of hard manual labour at the beck and call of a master, or of "service out amang the farmers roun," for there were none to hire on the Veldt.
The Season is, of course, not the gloom of November but the end of harvest, the Oest-tijd of the Boer's Bible. The sickle is away (die sekels weg), and there is joy in prospect of the morrow's rest. Greetings go round (Naant, Gar. Guten Abend) from the eldest son (die oudste seun) to the little ones (die kleintjies). Brothers and sisters sit round upright in the hall (broers and susters sit rondom upsij) after the fashion of an old-time funeral party, and each outvies the other in gossip: "The social hours; swift-winged, unnoticed fleet" ("die tijd die vlieg so ongemerk verbij"=the tide flees so unmarked for-by). There follows a specially patriarchal function, the feet-washing (voet-wasbalie=feet-wash-pailie), grateful surely in that dry, dusty land. It long survived in Scotland as the rough horse-play of the evening before the wedding.
The watchdog barks (die honde blaf=bowffs, bluffs), and a knock at the door brings the conscious blush to Elsie's cheeks. The young man (die jonkman) greets (groet), Oom, Tante en Niggie (Ger. Nichte, niece), Boer conventions for host, hostess and girls. The sire talks to the kereltjie (carlie) of horses, pleughs and kye, but in Boerland this is horses, sheep and cattle (perde, skaap en vee). The Taal vee is in the opening of Henryson's fine pastoral,—
"Robin sat on a gude grene hill,
Kepand his flok of fie."
From the "neebor lad" (neef Koot, the lad Koot) we pass to Maatjie (Maatie, the gudewife) preparing the supper (die Opsit, a solemn social function). Instead of the "halesome parritch" and Hawkie's yill the table is decked with—
"Rijs, kerrie, kluitjies, en wit brood
En botter waar die vrou op trotsig is,
'N kom vol melk,"
which may be rendered—Rice, carraway sweets, tarts, and white bread and butter, of which the Frau is proud, and a cog of milk. A South African assures me that kluitjies here is not clotted (our clot, clod) cream, which that land knows not, but "a sort of tart with a sticky, sweet paste inside. Kluit in the Taal is a lump or clod, and substantially, the same as Sc. clüte, ankle, hoof of a sheep. The kom milk is the Fifeshire kimmin with the suffixed article. "Help jouself, neef Koot." But what cares he for the cake? (koek of tert, meaning cookie, and tairt). The "of" here is not our preposition. He gazes (kijk) rather at his Elsie; her dear eyes are worth more to him ("haar liewe oogies is hom meerder werd"). Lowland Scots do not, indeed, say mairder (more) but they say nearder.
The supper done ("die maaltijd 's klaar") the "Patriarg" takes the Bible, "die selfde Boek, wat al sijn voor-ouers had" (the self-same Book, what all his (Ger. sein) fore-elders had). It is the "big ha'-Bible," such an one as that wherein William Burness entered the baptisms in Boer fashion, "waar die doop-registers staan." In old St. Andrews the Baptists were known as The Dippies. The head of the house of old uncovered only for prayer, and so here,—
"Sijn breerand hoed eerbiedig afgehaal,
Sijn hart die is all grijs, sijn hare ijl"—
his broad-brimmed hoed (hat) reverentially (Ger. ehrbietig) aff-haling, his beard all grey, his hair thin,—
"Hij lees 'n Sion's lied in d'ouwe taal"—
he reads (wales) a Sion lay in the old speech.
There is no note here of the Covenanter's "wild warbling measures," but they sing with gees (Ger. Geist), heart and voice. They hearken as the old man reads (die ou man les—Ger. lesen) of how Moses smote the Amalekite (the Boer's Kaffir foe) and David groaned (ge-sug, sooched) under God's anger and chastising hand (kastijdend hand).
This Priester-praal or Evangelical part is done with real feeling. There is the picture of the Christ tied "an die Kruis met bloedrig sweet" (sweat),—
"Hoe Hij die hier gen (Ger. kein) rusplaas had op aard,
Daar Bowe tog die twede naam besit"-
There is nothing of the breaking-up of the party in such a self-contained household. But we have the secret homage of the parent-pair (stil en bed-aard spreek toen die Cristen-vader, the grey-haired sire), and the prayer to Him who decks the lily fair in flowery pride (wat met prag die lilies kan beklee=who with pride the lilies kan beclad).
There is of course no eulogy of the simple non-Prelatic services of the home, no patriotic outburst inspired by Old Scotia and Wallace's undaunted heart, but the piece concludes with an almost literal rendering of the Burns couplet,—
"But haply, in some cottage far apart,
[surely a close appeal on the Veldt]
May hear, well pleased, the pure language of the soul:
And in his Book of Life the inmates poor enrol'"—
"Ter wijl uit so 'n stille needrig hoek,
Hoor hij die reine siele-taal met wel-behaa
En skrijf dit in Sijn ewig lewensboek."
(d) Tam o' Shanter.
The Boer translator is not nearly so successful with "Tam o' Shanter" as with "The Cottars." The rustic setting, the pious sentiment, the Biblical flavour of the latter, seem to elicit a more sympathetic response. In some respects "Tam" should have been equally congenial. The Boer, whether in his oups or in his wanderings among the eerie, baboon-haunted kloofs, is peculiarly susceptible to the influence of unholy spooks on his nerves, a peculiarly Dutch term for bogles that may very plausibly claim kinship with our own Puck and the "wee Pechs" of Scottish folk-lore. The strengthening with initial s is no unusual feature. But Reitz so completely misses the humour of the situation and its inimitably dramatic touches that one wonders if we have here another racial illustration of the joke and the surgical operation. Few fresh features are imported into the tale, and only about a third of the original is used. The piece is entitled "Klaas Geswint en sijn Pêrt," or in German, Nikolas Geschwind (the mobile) und sein Pferd (and his horse). The commonplace beginning is unworthy of Burns's vigorous visualising: "when you perhaps with your mate up in the village sit laughing and chatting, you forget you must go home (vergeet jij, jij moet huis toe gaan), otherwise Elsie will beat you. She now sits by the fire and mutters, 'I'll get him soon as he comes home.'" We miss the graphic picture of Auld Ayr's High Street at the close of a market-day, the chapmen homeward bent, the change-house going "like a cried fair," and the prospect of moorland roads in winter. Elsie is a poor substitute for Kate, but the vrou, well used to the "handy rung" for the Hottentot help, threatens to beat her man (slaan, Ger. schlagen, Eng. slog). For "nursing her wrath to keep it warm" we have merely brom, expressive in a way, for it is akin to the word for barm or yeast. Reitz moralises on the frequent want of appreciation of a wife's advice, to him indeed the raison d'être of Klaas's subsequent mishap,—
"Jammer dat mans so selde hoor
As hulle vrouens, ver hul' knor;
Dit is maar so—hul kaan maar praat,
Ons luister tog nie na hul' raad.
Dat dit so is, het Klaas Geswint
Een donker nag oek uit-gevind;
••••••••
Toen hij terug rij van die Braak.
Had Klass geluister na sijn vrow
Dan had dit hom nog nooit berou."
Pity 'tis that men (mans) so seldom hear (hoor)
When their good wives scold them;
But so it is—they can speak at will,
We listen never a bit to their good advice.
That that is so, one Klaas Geswint
One dark night e'en found it;
When he rode home from the Braak.
Had Klaas listened to his wife
Then this had never happened to him.
Elsie's scolding does not want for directness. Not a day passed but she said to him, "Klaas, you are indeed an old rascal (alte skellem); not a night you have been out of the house but you conduct yourself like a beast, and when Koos Tities goes with you, then it goes badly with you two." There is here the identical epithet Burns uses, skellem, Ger. Schelm. It has now quite dropped out of the Scots vernacular, but is preserved in Gaelic as sgeilm, boasting, prattling. The boozing in the change-house is done con amore. "Ee'n aânt, in plaas van huis toe gaan" (Sc. ane eenin, in place of hooss tae gang), Klaas tipples with his kêrels in die knijp, where we have a Dutch word that has been borrowed by the German students for their Bier-kneipen. The glass which he induces his mates to give him is een slag, still heard in the Scottish phrase, to "sloken (moisten) one's drouth" or thirst. So they "ge' oom Klaas oek nog een dop" (so they gie old Klaas still another swig). In dop we have a word once in familiar use in Scotland. One of the Lowther family, travelling from Carlisle to Edinburgh (1629), records in his Journall or diary how, on going to bed for the night at laird Pringle's on Gala Water, his host gave him a doup of ale, or, in his own Cumberland dialect, a noggin of beer. The word is applied also in Cape Dutch to an egg-shell, and implies anything deep and rounded. In illustration we have the cognate Ger. Topf, a cooking-pot, Eng. spinning-top, and in Scots and nearest to Cape Dutch, candle-doup or the conical end of a candle. The result of the conviviality was to render Klaas, in Boer phrase, "mooi hoenderkop," beautifully fowl-headed. This may only visualise the erratic action of the bewildered hen, well known to cyclists, or a brain disease which makes its feathered victim whirl round and round and then fall helpless. The word mooi (Lat. mollis, soft) is as useful an epithet to the Boer in the Boer taal as bonnie in Scots. Thus he applies it to a river, a horse, a woman (handsome vrouw).
Reitz weakly omits the strikingly human elements of the story—the miller, the smith, the woman in the kirk-toon "with a past," the "chuffie vintner" and his spouse, and above all the souter, immortal Bacchanal. But moralising attracts him, so he tackles his author's visualising of Pleasure thus: "Pleasure is like a young cucumber. If you pick it, it simply withers; or like a tortoise in his shell, as soon as you touch him, he pulls in his head." We have here two similes that appeal most strongly to the Afrikander—"een jong komkommer en een skulpad." On this latter term Mitford's powerful tale, "A Veldt Official," throws light: "He is a young horse but a good one and will stand fire like an arm-chair, though he does shy like a foal now and again at a schuilpaat the size of a snail." By this name is the land tortoise known all over South Africa. Cape differs from Hollander Dutch in hardening initial sch, hence the difference in spelling here. The term is historically notable. Kruger, in a famous parable, once likened the Uitlander to the skulpad, whose head he cannily waited to lop off as soon as the unhappy creature, unwarily progressive, should emerge from its cover. In most tongues the crab and the tortoise designate something pinched, stunted, crooked. Hence this Dutch term appears in Scots as an epithet, shilpit, very familiar and expressive. Thus in Ford's "Morning Walk,"—
"Wee shilpit bairnies fill the doorsteps,
An peer oot through the window panes."
So Scott calls sherry a "shilpit drink," not, as the glossarists explain, because it is insipid, but because, when tart and sour, it causes a wry face. The wines of old had to be sweetened in a posset to make them palatable.
Tam's nag bears here the name Kol, very common for a horse, and always designating one with a white star on its forehead, what Burns called "bawsent." An Englishman, bargaining with a Boer for a pair of horses, has them thus described: "Daar staat een, die licht-bruine met die kol; en daar in die hock die ander, die donker-bruine ook met een kol"—there stands one, the light brown with the blaize (kol); and there in the corner the other, the dark brown, also with a blaize, The Scottish ploughman equally favours such a horse and calls it "Star." Klaas's meerie is still frisky though her back is a bittie hollow ("al was haar rug, 'n bietjie hol"). In rug here we have the Sc. riggin or ridge of a house.
Reitz fails to face the droll visualising of Auld Nick, but merely says he played on a tromp for forty spooks in a clump. His playing is expressed by speul, Ger: spielen, and long in the Scots vernacular in such phrases as spiel the wa', spiel a tree, where it means to climb. The instrument, too, is the rural name for the Jew's harp, the trump. The witches are timidly sketched as die goed, the stuff, the things, and almost as naked as a poodle.
It is significant of much that, whereas Tam "skelps through mud and mire, crooning some auld Scots sonnet," Klaas whistles (fluit=flute) the nine and ninetieth Psalm to keep his courage up, for the Boer is as fond of psalm-singing as a westlan' Whig. He dreads to meet uncanny spooks, for he must pass die kerk-hof," haunt of bogles. For the "hof" the modern Scot finds a Saxon term, churchyard, but the town graveyard of Dundee was of yore known as the Auld Howf.
Equally significant of Boer tactics, too, when Klaas is pursued by the witches, is his appeal to his mare to do her utmost, not in clearing the brig, rare in the Transvaal, but in crossing the drift or ford, often enough exposed to sudden floods. "Go it, Kol!" he shouts, "the devil cuts your spoor; here lies the drift. Up! she's over!" A born huntsman, the Boer knows the spoor well, the Scots speer, to follow a track, to ask one's way. But, exposed for generations to unseen dangers, he knows, too, what it is to have his retreat cut off, as Klaas dreaded here. The dénouement is rapidly sketched,—
"Haar stêrt het hul glad uit-geruk;
Mar Klaas is los, dis één geluk"—
Her tail was clean pulled out;
But Klaas is safe, a piece of good luck.
The stêrt here remains on our coast, as a note of Viking raids, in Start Point, and, with more peaceful suggestions, in the name of a bird, the redstart. "Uit-geruk," again, is simply the Scots rugged or pulled out. There remains only to point the moral in the fashion of the good Predikant,—
"Ver die wat lus het om te draai,
Wil ek mar net één wortjie raai:
Gedenk aan Klaas Geswint sijn pêrt,
En vraag jou selve: waar's haar stêrt?"
Rendered literally this would read:—
For him, who knows (wot) desire (lust) to turn round (Ger. drehen),
Will I but one word-ie advise (rede):
Think on Klaas Geswint his horse,
And ask (Ger. fragen) yourself, "Where is her tail?"
"Tam o' Shanter" is manifestly but an exotic on the Veldt. The Boer is out of sympathy with the characteristic humour of the situation. He lays hold of the conjugal aspect, so indispensable to the peace of his self-contained home. He emphasises the eerieness of the situation and its call for caution, but we miss the jocose familiarity and kindly humanity of Tam's relations to the witches.
- ↑ (C.) for Cumberland, (B.) for Border.
- ↑ Kaapsche, speech of the Cape, to which for generations the Dutch colonists were confined.
- ↑ The text of this piece is given in that unique and interesting collection, "Robert Burns in Other Tongues," by Dr. Wm. Jacks (Glasgow : Maclehose, 1896). For help in the English translation I am indebted to my esteemed friend, Miss Frances du Toit of Rondebosch, Cape Town, an accomplished Afrikander. The language, though not the sense, I have altered so as to suggest affinity wherever it exists.
- ↑ Versach, as if Scots fer-soak, makes soak.
- ↑ Sachte, softened, lit. soaked.
- ↑ Krij, kriegen (German), acquire, obtain.