The baurgs of Wulfila must have been a considerable place. It had its market-place (ga-runs), crowded corners (weihsta, akin to Lat. vicus), street (gatwo, Sc. gate) and stey brae (staiga), still a street name in Hamburg, in the form Steig.
The arts of civil life do not play any great part in the Gospels. Next to the farmer would be the (w)aurtja, or gardener (wort, Ger. Wurzel), whose care would be the aurti-gards with its vineyard. Wine (weina), as a name, appears in the word for a drunkard and as a compound with triu (tree), basi (berry), and tains (branch, Sc. tine of a stag, harrow, eglantine). Building construction is implied in timrjan (timber), to build. Trius, the general term for tree, means also timber, as in triuw-eins, of tree, and in Scots. The Ger. Baum is Go. bagms, beam, boom. The common tool of Central Europe, the axe, is akwizi. The metals are known—eis-arn[1] (iron), gulth (gold, figgra-gulth, a finger ring), and silubr (silver, meaning also money, as in Scots). Ais, brass, coin, is Lat. aes. The apostles were enjoined to take nothing for the way except ane rung, but no meat-bag (wallet), loaf, nor money in (their) girdles = "niba hrugga aina, nih mati-balg nih hlaif nih in gairdos aiz." Aiza-smitha is the coppersmith of 2 Tim. iv. 14. The humbler arts of the home are indicated by wulla (wool), lein (linen), and nethla (needle), siujan (sew), and bi-waibjan (weave).
The higher walks of culture could scarcely be looked for among Wulfila's heathen converts. In church organisation the alien term accompanies the novel and strange idea, but it says much that the subtle language of the Greek is so often accurately rendered by a native word, intelligible to the hearers presumably, otherwise it would have been meaningless. We have spirit (ahma, Holy Ghost), soul (saiwala), mind (muns, munan, to think), understanding (hugs). The sense of property is well recognised—Swes, one's own (cf. Lat. suus) property, arbi, a heritage (Ger. Erfe), skattja, a money-changer, skatts, money (cf. scot-free, and Orcadian scat-hold), wadi, a pledge (Sc. wad-set, a mortgage), waddja-bokos, a bond or legal document. Bota is the familar Scots for boot or money in bargaining. Nor is law (witoth, from
- ↑ Arn is an adjectival affix as in silvern, and in iron. The German Eisen does not show this affix.
