Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/42

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studies in lowland scots

(Ger. and O.E. Wange, the cheek, A.S. wangere). Tooth itself is tunthus, showing the older n as in Lat. dent—Du tand. The isolated peak, Tinto, in Lanarkshire, was so named by the Norsemen. Wlits and (w)ludja, the countenance, are A.S. wlite, now lost. Finger and hand are found almost unchanged. The former has its Sc. and Ger. sound. The Sc. wime (belly) is exactly Go. wamba (Eng. womb). The mouth = munths, and the heel = fairzna, are more like their German cognates, Mund and Ferse. Stamms (stammerer), daubs, blinds (pron. as in Sc), halts (halt), explain themselves. The Go. for neck, hals, was at one time common in Sc, as hause, but still lives in the Orkneys. Here is the experience of an Orcadian in the Canongate of Edinburgh: "Ae wife luckid oot at a muckle apstair window; the meenit the Laird saw a heed i' a window atween him an' de licht, he stend stock still, an' says he tae me—'Po' me sal, there's a muckle bauckie!' (cf. Sc. for bat, ghost, bogle, and Burns's "bauckie bird"). Robbie, gie me me gun, and I'll lay him deed as seur as his heed's on his hass.'"—"Orcadian Sketches."

Relationships. — Our word father is not in Go. except in fadr-eins = parents or family (Joseph was of the house of the family of David), and "abba, fadar!" (Gal. iv. 6). Its stem is in hund-faths = master of a hundred, and bruth-faths = lord of the bride. Faths is fode = a man, in our old ballads such as Cheild Rowland and Burd (bride) Ellen, e.g. "God rue on thee, poor luckless fode, what hast thou to do here?" The root of these means the protector, and is in sense classical rather than Teutonic (cf. Lat. pater). Gothic fodr is a sheath, i.e. the protecting one. Mother is nowhere in Gothic. The place of these two terms is taken by the onomatopoetic atta, aithei. Such child words are common, e.g. abba, papa, tata (Vaidic and Greek), and dad, hence Att-ila, the Hun = the little father. The Czar is still to the Slavs the little father. Attâ in Sans, is mother or aunt = Go. aithei. Widuwo = widow, the bereaved one, really an adj. as viduus ager, a fallow field, in Lat. This is also its force in Go. and Sc. The woman of Sarepta is "quinon widuwon" = a widow (woman or quean).

Such terms as brothar, swistar, dauhtar (Sc. dochter), sunus (son), lauths (lad), call for no remark. Barnilo, child, what is