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 REPRINTED FROM THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE 
 BUG HAN FIELD CLUB, 
 
 THE 
 AAKING OF OUR AOTMER 
 
 TONGUE, 
 
 p. GILES, M.A., LL.D. 
 
 PETERHEAD : 
 PRINTED BY P. SCROGIE, "BUCHAN OBSERVER" WORKS. 
 
 1906.
 
 ^bc ni>a(;ino of our fln)otber lEonGue, 
 
 p. GILES, M.A., LL.D., 
 
 Follow of Emmanuel Colloc;;o, Cambrid;^e ; University Reader in Comparative 
 
 Philoloyy. 
 
 fi? 
 
 Many thousands of years ago there lived on the continent of Europe 
 a people which by and by was to play a great part in the history of the 
 world. What name this people gave to itself we do not know, what 
 manner of men its memibers were we do not know, no single word of its 
 language is preserved. We do not know even the boundaries of its 
 home — how far it spread to north and south and east and west. Eut 
 somewhere in the great plain that runs across all Europe and half Asia 
 this people were to be found, and men in modern times call it for want 
 of a better name, the Indo-Germanic people. 
 
 The name is clumsy and ugly, and in a sense is unhistorical. For 
 the name refers to a much later time when this people had lengthened 
 its cords and strengthened its stakes and become not one people but many. 
 It did what has been done elsewhere. In America one stock till the 
 arrival of Columbus and his Europeans was found throughout the whole 
 continent, from the snows of the Vukon to the torrid heats of Panama, 
 and again from Panama to the Strait of Magellan. In the old world the 
 tie was more complex, but in the course of ages this people had spread east, 
 and no doubt after unrecorded struggles with Semites and Mongols had
 
 TJic Making of our Mother Tongue. 
 
 reached Persia, and from there had passed into Northern India. North 
 of the Black Sea the great Russian stock was forminf^ ; into the southern 
 peninsulas had passed the peoples that we know later as Greeks and 
 Romans, and far in the west, pushing and struggling for room till they 
 were faced by the boundless ocean, were the two peoples whose flesh and 
 blood we are — the Teutons or Germans and the Kelts. Thus far these 
 peoples had got at least looo years B.C. The different branches of the 
 original folk had become far separated and lost even the memory that 
 they were one people. But though this was so, the words that come 
 from later stages in their respective languages make it quite clear that 
 they all come from one original source. In all of them occur the same 
 words {or father and mother^ in all of them the same words for horse and 
 cozv and hound, and for many other things, though as time goes on more 
 and more changes take place, rendering the words less and less like one 
 another. Just as in botany or zoology plants or animals become isolated 
 and change till only the expert can recognise the relationship between 
 them and the other members of their family, so in language the changes 
 are often so great that it has required in modern times long and laborious 
 investigation to prove any connexion at all. 
 
 For long the relationship of the Germanic peoples in the matter of 
 language to other peoples was concealed by various strange changes that 
 had taken place in their dialects. Greek and Latin and other 
 languages agreed in using {or father a word, which varying slightly from 
 one language to another, may be fairly represented by /^r/*?^, the Ger- 
 manic peoples living between the Rhine and the Elbe, and extending 
 down towards Central Europe call \\. fader. The other languages agreed 
 to call the tooth by some word like the Latin dens, which we borrow in 
 modern times to make words like dental. But part at least of the early 
 Germanic peoples called it tunthus. The other languages agreed, in 
 addressing a second person, to call him tu thou , our forefathers changed 
 the / to th (J?) and called him ])«. 
 
 There were a great many other changes of this kind. Large num- 
 bers of examples of these changes began to be collected about a hundred 
 years ago, and a general statement was drawn up about them in 1S22 by 
 a great German scholar, called Grimm, and for this reason this statement 
 has always since been called in this country " Grimm's Law." 
 
 Why did these people make these curious changes in their language ? 
 We cannot tell for certain. We may be quite sure that they were not 
 conscious of making them. Though we are not certain as to the cause.
 
 Dr p. Giles. 
 
 we may at least hazard a f^uess. It will be noticed that in modern times 
 Germanic peoples live in a large part of the area which in the map is 
 assigned to Keltic peoples. It is probably the fusion between Kelt and 
 German that caused those changes. The Germans have occupied the 
 soil of the old Keltic settlements ; the Kelts have avenged themselves on 
 the pronunciation of the Germanic languages. The first stage of these 
 changes took place before the history of Northern Europe begins, and 
 that stage was probably brought about, not by Germans overlapping 
 Kelts, but by Kelts overlapping Germans. Both nations have always 
 been prolific, and the whole history of modern Europe is only an account 
 of their struggles to get more elbow-room. The Kelts have, in the course 
 of their history, left few countries unvisited : about 390 B.C. they attacked 
 Italy and Rome ; a hundred years later they made an inroad into Greece, 
 and even passed over into Asia, where, three hundred years later, St Paul 
 found them, under the name of Galatians, as difficult to manage as if he 
 had been an English bishop in an Irish diocese. Whether it was in 
 connexion with this great migration of the Kelts that these changes 
 came about in the Germanic languages we are not quite sure, but at any 
 rate the change of pater into fader and the like, had taken place by 
 about 200 B.C. Many centuries later when the Germans spread down 
 over the Keltic area, a second series of changes came in, which makes 
 the difference between modern German and modern English, which 
 makes the German say zapf {ox the English tap and schiff iov the English 
 ship. These changes only took place in southern Germany, and though 
 fashion carried some of them a good long way northwards, some of them 
 never reached the northern sea at all. Hence the low German, the 
 vulgar dialect spoken all along the northern parts of Germany, is much 
 more like English than the book German which is founded upon a 
 southern dialect. If Luther, who really made the modern German 
 language, had chosen to translate the Bible into a northern instead of 
 a southern dialect, the acquiring of German would not have been so 
 difficult a matter as a good many Englishmen find it. 
 
 It is with Julius C;i;sar that the written history of Western Europe 
 begins. The Greek sailors had been round these shores before in their 
 search for tin and for amber, but no foreign power had tried to include 
 the wild northern nations in its Empire. In a series of campaigns 
 extending over ten years (58-49 B.C.) Julius Cc-esar annexed the greater 
 part of what is now France to the Roman Empire. He even found time 
 to make two short expeditions into Britain. At that time southern
 
 England was a very different country from what it is new. The ancient 
 Britons, though they painted their skins, were not absolute savages ; but 
 the country generally speaking was left by them much as Nature made 
 it ; great forests and great fens occupied a large part of its area. The 
 inhabitants that Cxsar saw were people of the same race and speaking 
 the same language as the Welsh. As yet the country was Britain, it 
 had not yet become England, the land of the Angles. Ceesar made no 
 permanent conquest. Almost a hundred years later, the Emperor 
 Claudius set about annexing Britain in all earnest to the Roman Empire. 
 The Kelt has always been a good fighter and the Romans found the 
 conquest no easy task. But the trained soldier, if well led, has always 
 an advantage over the untrained horde, and in less than half a century 
 the Romans were the masters of the country everywhere, except among 
 the mountains of the north and of the west. 
 
 It is to this period that we owe the first account of the inhabitants 
 of Eastern Scotland. Tacitus, the Roman historian, was the son-in-law 
 of Agricola, the Roman general who first penetrated to the north. 
 Agricola made no permanent conquests in this country, but in a couple 
 of sentences Tacitus tells us that the Romans were struck by the differ- 
 ence between the Caledonians and the Silurians of Wales ; the latter 
 were dark, the former tall men with red hair, a fact which Tacitus 
 thought proved their German descent. So stated, Tacitus' conclusion 
 is probably incorrect. Modern ethnologists describe the Germans as 
 yellow-haired, the Kelts as red-haired. But the ancients, as a rule, fail 
 to note the difTference though Diodorus speaking of the Galatae of Gaul, 
 tells us that their children were born with the white hair of old men, a 
 description which, however inexact, was probably intended to describe 
 the fair hair of a German race. 
 
 In these tall red-haired people described by Tacitus others have seen 
 the Bicts, who in later centuries are found occupying the same area. 
 Perhaps on no other question, unconnected with religion, have so much 
 paper and ink been wasted on futile theories as on the origin and 
 language of the Picts. The subject has been discussed at length in an 
 elaborate memoir by Professor Riiys in the Proceedings of the Society of 
 Antiquaries of Scotland for May 9, 1892. In this memoir Professor 
 Rh\s argues that the Picts were of the same Iberian origin as the Basques 
 of the Pyrenees, and that the scanty remains of their language show a 
 combination of 15asque and Keltic characteristics. It would be unbe- 
 coming for one who is not a specialist in Keltic scholarship to criticise
 
 Dr V Giles. 
 
 this paper, which is the work of a scholar whose native speech is Keltic, and 
 who has devoted a lifetime to the elucidation of Keltic problems. But 
 Professor Rhys is well aware of the many difficulties which beset the 
 question and of the uncertainty of the results. It is sufficient here to say 
 that the most feasible explanation of the paculiarities of Keltic syntax 
 is to assume that they were produced under the influence of a language of 
 a different type spoken by a people which preceded the Kelts in the 
 areas later occupied by them, but that the evidence at present is hardly 
 sufficient to show that Pictish is a dialect of this earlier language con- 
 taminated by Keltic elements. The analysis of the scanty remains of 
 Pictish made by Professor Rhys implies a mixture of different elements 
 to which amongst living European languages Albanian alone would 
 supply a parallel. Nor is the comparison of Basque (which possesses no 
 records earlier than the sixteenth century) with Pictish of nearly a 
 thousand years earlier likely to be satisfactory, so long as no investiga- 
 tion of the ancient Iberian inscriptions, which have been edited by 
 Hubner in a large volume, has been made. In them it is possible that 
 Basque elements some hundreds of years older than the Pictish remains 
 may be found. But at present no one can say. That Professor Rhys is 
 not convinced of the finality of his own analysis is shown by the fact 
 that in the book entitled 77ie WelsJi People, published by him and Mr 
 Brynmor-Jones in 1900, the Pictish language is still held to be of a non- 
 Aryan stock, but its connexions, according to a theory of Prof J. Morris 
 Jones set forth in Appendix B. are to be found not in Basque but in the 
 Berber of Northern Africa. On the other hand some ethnologists 
 identify these tribes racially as of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan stock. In 
 any case the red-haired Caledonians are not likely to have been the 
 Picts, if any reliance may be placed upon tradition. For if northern 
 tradition is consistent in anything, it is in the statement that the Picts or 
 Pechts were a short, dark people. Mr Watt in the History of Aberdeen- 
 sliire, p. 16, quotes from the accoimt of St Manire in the Aberdeen 
 breviary to show that in the ninth century there was still a wood folk 
 addicted to old superstitions, and speaking a language or dialect differ- 
 ing from that of- the low country, and of xnost of the Christian teachers. 
 It is probable, therefore, that in ancient Caledonia, just as in ancient 
 Gaul, there were two stocks intermingled, a short dark race and a tall 
 red-haired race — the red Kelt and the black Kelt. The results, however, 
 in the two countries have been different. The tall red race has been 
 absorbed by the black short race and has disappeared from France, while
 
 The Making of our Mother Tongue. 
 
 the Scotch remain one of the tallest races in Europe, though on the East 
 Coast with but a small percentage of red hair* 
 
 For more than three hundred years the Roman hold upon Britain 
 never relaxed. From that occup,ation dates the use of a few words upon 
 the soil of Britain. Of these the most noteworthy are: Saturni dies, 
 •'Saturday " ; culter, siitor (Old English, sutere) ; fuller of cloth (Latin, 
 fullo, Old English, fullere) ; Incus (Old English, lacu, " lake "), which, in 
 the Northern dialect was replaced by the Keltic luh, " loch " ; inons or 
 inunt, " hill " ; partus, " port." J?y the 4th century A.D,, however, the 
 Roman empire was rapidly falling into decay. Its population was de- 
 creasing at an alarming rate. All along its northern frontier it was being 
 pressed by those energetic and prolific tribes who poured in countless 
 thousands from the forests of North and North-Eastern Europe upon the 
 hapless Roman Empire. Once more it was the old need for elbow-room, 
 and the barbarians by this time had discovered that Rome was not in- 
 vulnerable. So greed combined with necessity to tempt the northern 
 hordes to make an onslaught on the Empire. But clearly this must be 
 the work of the tribes next her frontier in the first instance. From the 
 shores of the North Sea and the Baltic it is a far cry to Rome. The 
 tribes on those coasts were in no position to penetrate to the heart of the 
 Empire. But like some of their northern descendants, who are supposed 
 to cast longing eyes upon another empire, they recognised that " their 
 future lay upon the water". They turned pirates, and they soon became 
 a terror to the English Channel. From about 364 A.D. the Roman 
 Government of Britain had to calculate in its budget for the expense of 
 works of defence against those terrible pirates. A special officer was 
 appointed to deal with them, who was called the Count of the Saxon 
 shore. He had a good deal to do, and he appears not to have been very 
 successful. The Romans were not able to keep these pirates from inter- 
 fering with the Channel trade ; they were not able even to prevent them 
 landing and plundering town and country on the borders of the North 
 Sea and the English Channel. To this period belong the great Roman 
 defensive works, the remains of which may still be seen at Brancaster in 
 
 * Mr Lang- is justified in making merry (Ilidonj of Scotland, vol. i., p. 493) over the 
 decipherment of an inscription which is road x ttocuhetts : aiikhhtmnnn : 
 HCCVVEVV : NEHHTONN. One of the niost Competent of native scholars, Dr Macbain oi' 
 Inverness, discusses the Pictish problem in an able excursus to his edition of .Skene's 
 Ili;/h/rmdfr» of SroUaud (1902) pp. .^SjlT. He holds that Pictish was an independent 
 Keltic dialect, and summarily rejects Prof. Rh}s"s view.
 
 Dr p. Giles. 
 
 Norfolk, built to keep, if possible, the pirates from penetrating up the 
 Wash and along the Ouse and its tributaries. 
 
 In another forty years the Empire became so weak at its heart that 
 of necessity it must withdraw its soldiers from Britain altogether. If it 
 was not to perish utterly it must concentrate its forces more. And so it 
 came to pass that in 410 A.D. the Romanized Britains of Southern 
 England were left to fight their battles by themselves. And it was not 
 only the German pirate they had to fear. Ever since the Romans had 
 been in Britain they had been harassed from the north by peoples called 
 Caledonians and Picts. The Romans at different times had built walls 
 from sea to sea to break the force of these invasions. A wall between 
 the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde was tried, and another between 
 the Tyne and the Solway. But the Picts were not to be denied. In 
 spite of walls and forts they made their raids just the same. 
 
 A happy idea struck the sorely tried Southern Britons. They would 
 set a thief to catch a thief. They employed the German pirates to beat 
 back the Picts. As a reward the Britons allowed these pirates to settle 
 in the Isle of Thanet, which in those days was divided by about a mile 
 of sea from the mainland. No doubt they devoutly hoped that Pict 
 would kill German and German Pict, till their fate was that of the pro- 
 verbial Kilkenny cats. But their hopes belied them. The Pict was 
 driven back and the pirate realised what a goodly land Britain was. He 
 would not allow the Pict to eat up the helpless Briton, he would eat him 
 up himself. 
 
 By this time a new element appears amongst the invaders from the 
 north. These are the Scots who from henceforth, till the Picts disappear 
 from history, are always combined with them in the Chronicles. When- 
 ever a raid is recorded upon Southern Britain from the north, it is 
 declared to be the work of the Picts and the Scots. These latter, accord- 
 ing to our records, were emigrants from the North of Ireland. 
 Throughout the early middle ages considerable vagueness prevailed as 
 to where Scotia really was situated, as to whether it was Ireland or North 
 Britain. This vagueness led sometimes to no small disturbance on the 
 Continent, where there were so many monasteries both of Irish Scots 
 and British Scots. Hence the greatest of mediaeval philosophers is 
 generally characterised in a hybrid compound, half Keltic, half Latin, as 
 the " Irish born " — Scotus Eriugena. 
 
 The emigrants spread over central Scotland from Argyllshire, 
 where they first landed, and where, in those days, there could not have
 
 The Makijtg of our Mother Tongue. 
 
 been much to tempt them to stay. But the common notion that they 
 ultimately extinguished the Pictish people on the north-eastern coasts is 
 improbable. No doubt in a later age they gave their name to the whole 
 country, but this result was achieved by their greater political influence 
 and by the fact that Kenneth MacAlpine was fortunate enough to com- 
 bine in his own person the royal rights of both Pict and Scot. All 
 evidence gees to show that in Pictland inheritance was not through the 
 father, but through the mother, and through this quaint law Kenneth the 
 lawful heir, according to the ordinary rules of descent, to the Scottish 
 Throne, fell heir also, through the female line, to the crown of the Picts. 
 
 In the campaigns when Saxons and Britons were matched against 
 the peoples from the north, the Scots seem to have played a large 
 part. Nennius tells us that Hengist, the Saxon leader, offered to Vorti- 
 gern, the British king, that he would send for his son and his brother to 
 fight against the " Scots and the people who dwell in the north, near the 
 wall called Guaul." This is no doubt the Roman Wall between Tyne 
 and Solway, for that between Forth and Clyde was apparently not long 
 held by the Romans, and the Picts had long since swarmed to the south 
 of it. The history of the more northern wall, along part of which the 
 North British railway between Edinburgh and Glasgow now runs is 
 extremely obscure, but probably it was not held by the Romans after 
 200 A.D., for the large number of coins found recently at Gartshore all 
 date either from Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius, the Emperors of the 
 latter half of the second century. Vortigern accepted the Saxon's offer 
 and accordingly Ochta, Hengist's son, and Ebissa, Hengist's brother, 
 came with forty ships. " In these they sailed round the country of the 
 Picts, laid waste the Orkneys, and took possession of many regions even 
 to the Pictish confines." Such is th^ first account of the first recorded 
 landing of a Teutonic or Germanic people on the shores of north-eastern 
 Scotland. 
 
 In the invasion of Southern Briton three tribes we are told took 
 part, the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons. The accounts which are 
 given of their settlement in England are drawn almost entirely from the 
 Venerable Bede who lived at Jarrow on the Tyne about two hundred 
 years after the settlement took place. Mr Plummer, the most recent 
 editor of Jiede's historical work — the Historia Ecclesiastica — complains 
 not without reason that modern historians make their statements more 
 definite than the information which they derive from Bede warrants. 
 He has considerable justification for his remark that J. R. Green in his
 
 Dr p. Giles. 
 
 Making of England wx'xlQ.'r, as if he had been present when the settlement 
 was going on. As a matter of fact, Bede's own information must have 
 been largely drawn from tradition, a very uncertain guide after the lapse 
 of two hundred years, and this information has never yet been satisfac- 
 torily tested by the facts that can be derived from the history of the 
 countries whence the settlers came. According to our information the 
 Jutes came from what is called Jutland, though they did not speak a 
 Norse dialect like the modern Danes. They settled mostly in Kent. 
 The Angles came from Sleswick, from the district that is still known as 
 Angeln. They made for the Eastern coast and pushed inwards to 
 Central England up the rivers that flow towards the East. It is possible 
 that earlier than this Frieslanders had settled in the district between the 
 Forth and the Humber. Of all the English dialects the Northumbrian 
 is the closest to Frisian, the records of which, unfortunately, do not go 
 farther back than the thirteenth century of our era. The Angles occu- 
 pied what is still known as East Anglia and there broke into two 
 portions, the North folk and the South folk, whence we get the county 
 names of Suffolk and Norfolk. But the whole of the settlers from 
 Suffolk to Lothian claimed for themselves the name of Angles, though it 
 is easy to see that, however dense the population of the Continental 
 Angeln had been, it must have had many reinforcements from other 
 quarters before it could have effectively occupied such an extensive area 
 as the East Coast, from the Forth to Suffolk. The Angles came bag 
 and baggage, leaving their own country desolate as, according to Bede 
 {H.E., i. 15), it still remained in his time. The Saxons came only 
 partially. Those who came seem to have come at least partly from 
 what is now Hanover. They settled south of the Angles and round the 
 Jutes. We have their names still in the county names Essex, Middlesex, 
 Sussex. Except in Thomas Hardy's novels, Wessex has disappeared, 
 but the area represented now by Hants, Dorset, Wilts, and Somerset 
 became the land of the West Saxons. It was the Saxons who did most 
 in pushing back the Keltic Britons towards the west, and hence to the 
 Keltic peoples the English-speaking folk have been the Sassenach to 
 this day. 
 
 The making of southern Britain into England was a long task. 
 Unfortunately our information as to how it was done is extremely scanty. 
 But the Britons were steadily driven back towards the west, into the 
 fastnesses of Cornwall, Wales, and Cumbria. Modern Welsh is of course 
 the lineal descendant of the language of these ancient Britons, the Welsh
 
 are the lineal descendants of that people. Even some of the old names 
 remain. A name like Cradock, the Welsh Caradoc, is the same as that 
 of the f^reat chieftain Caratacus of the first century A.D. 
 
 Did the ancient inhabitants entirely disappear from the districts 
 colonised by the Teutonic peoples? Professor Freeman and Mr J. R. 
 Green always contended that, like the ancient Israelites, the newcomers 
 hewed their enemies in pieces and left not one remaining. But this is 
 not probable. As pirates they had made much money by selling slaves; 
 they were not likely to close their eyes to the main chance now. Even 
 if they massacred the fighting men, they would find the women and 
 children too useful to treat in the same way. And this consideration is 
 strengthened by another which the ethnologists, have lately emphasised. 
 The Welsh are a dark people. These newcomers were a fair people. 
 }3ut to this day, in some of the Eastern counties, ^.;o-., Bedford, the people 
 are darker on the average than they are even in Wales. How can this 
 be, unless a large section of the earlier population survived ? 
 
 Yet the number of words taken over from the Keltic inhabitants by 
 the new settlers was small. In the early history of English the most 
 important Keltic words are brocc "badger," hogge "pig," ass, bratt, 
 " mantle, apron," mattoc, dnnn, " brown " (the same as Don in Keltic river 
 names), cradol " cradle," dun " hill," cuinb "combe," rocc " rock," denu 
 " den," luh " loch." 
 
 Southern Britain as far as the Forth has now become England, and 
 English not Welsh is its language, at least on the eastern side. In the 
 great central peninsula on the West of England, Welsh to this day is 
 strong ; it has long ceased in Cumberland and the district in Scotland 
 connected with it in early times ; but a few people could still speak the 
 ancient Keltic of Cornwall a hundred years ago. The coming of the 
 English had put civilisation back in the island. The newcomers were 
 heathen, and in every respect less developed intellectually than their 
 predecessors. In 597 A.D., a hundred and fifty years after the invasion, 
 Pope Gregory sent Augustine to convert the Saxons to Christianity. 
 Augustine met with great success. But there were many independent 
 little kingdoms, and it was a long time before they were all converted. 
 When converted, however, they took their religion seriously, and a 
 large part of the Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) literature consists of 
 religious works, translations or paraphrases of the Bible, and devotional 
 books. The first English poet — Caiidmon — sings not of the myths of his 
 own race, but of the story of early man as recorded in Genesis. Poems,
 
 no doubt, the Enjrlish brought with them, though Beowulf, the oldest 
 extant, is preserved to our day only in a manuscript of the tenth 
 century. These poems were handed down by recitation ; no reading 
 public existed. It was King Alfred, who died in 901 A.D., that first 
 developed an English prose style. 
 
 As three tribes took part in the conquest so we might expect to 
 distinguish three dialects in the language. There are, however, four 
 dialects, for the Mercians of the central counties north of the Thames, 
 though lump(?d together with the Angles by Bede, spoke a distinct 
 dialect. These dialects are, therefore, proceeding from north to south, 
 (i) Northumbrian, (2) Mercian, (3) Kentish, (4) West Saxon. 
 
 (i) The Northumbrian dialect was spoken between the Forth and 
 the H umber, lor it was many centuries after this before the boundary 
 between Scotland and England was drawn at the Tweed. When 
 English came into England it had a number of cases and declensions 
 like Latin. Northumbrian lost these earlier than the other dialects, and 
 hence Northumbrian, generally speaking, is easier to read than the other 
 dialects. It is out of Northumbrian that the dialects of Yorkshire, 
 Northumberland and Scotland have developed. As has already been men- 
 tioned, Northumbrian was closer to the language of Friesland than were 
 the other English dialects, and it is interesting to observe that for centuries 
 the connexion was kept up. It was the Northumbrian missionary 
 Wilbrord that converted the Frisians to Christianity, and who ultimately 
 became Archbishop of Utrecht. Wilfrid, the great Archbishop of York 
 had also been in Frisia and consecrated in exile a Frisian, Suidbert, as mis- 
 sionary bishop of Frisia. The connexion of Frisia and Northumbria was 
 broken by the invasion of the Danes. It is four hundred years later before 
 we reach any Frisian records. But the close resemblance of this langua"-e 
 to English can easily be seen from the following passage, which is a form of 
 the Decalogue somewhat different from that to which we are accustomed : 
 
 From Hunsingo, north of Groningen. Literal Translation. 
 
 Hir is scriven alsa dene bode, sa god Here is written the commandments, 
 selua ief Moysi in Monte Synai, uppa even so as God himself gave [them] to 
 tha berche Synai, on tuam stenena Moses in Moimt Sinai, on the mountain 
 tcflum ; tha scelen witaallera monnalik, Sinai, on two stone tables; them shall 
 ther eristen send. Primum mandatum, all i-lasses of men know, who are 
 thet erste bod : minna thinna god fore Christians. Primum mandatum — the 
 feder ende moder mith inlekere herta. first commandment : love thy God be- 
 Thetotherbod : minnathinneeuncristena fore father and mother with all thy 
 
 (literally, inner) heart. The second 
 commandment : love thy fellow (lit.,
 
 likL' thi solwm. Tliot thrcddo bod : fira 
 thene siiniiandei and thore holclie doj^an. 
 Thet fiarde bod : minna thine t'cder end 
 thine modcr, hu thu lon^'e Hbbe. Tiiet 
 fifte : tliet thu thi nowct ne ower hore. 
 Thet sexte : thet thunenncmon ne sle. 
 Thet sotjende : tiiet thu nowet ne stele. 
 Thet aclitende : tliet tliu thi nowet ne 
 ursuere, ne neii falesk withscip ne driiie. 
 Thet niugende : thet thu nenes thines 
 euncristena wiues nc g^ereie. Thet 
 tiande : thet thu nenes thines euncris- 
 ena godes ne ierie. 
 
 even) Christians Hke th3-self. The third 
 commandment : keep the Sunday and 
 tlie holy da}'s. The fourth commatitl- 
 nient : love thy father and thy mother, 
 that thou ma\st live long. The titth : 
 that thou no whit break the marriage- 
 bond. The sixth : that thou no man 
 slay. The seventh : that thou nought 
 steal. The eighth : that thou in nought 
 forswear thyself, nor no false witness 
 practise. The ninth : that thou covet 
 the wife of none of thy fellow Christians. 
 The tenth : that thou covet nothing- ot 
 thy fellow Christian's. 
 
 The similarity to English is soiriewhat concealed by the confusion be- 
 tween d and th which appears, and also by the interchange of g and i 
 (i.e. y) which is found in z'^and ierie. But it could be turned with very 
 few changes into Anglo-Saxon. The double negatives which are found 
 in most of the commandments, and which, except in dialect^ English has 
 now abandoned, are of course as common in old and middle English as 
 they are in Frisian. That Frisian is as intelligible to the modern reader ' 
 as the earliest records of the northern dialect, even to northern men, will 
 be seen from the following passage, which is probably among the 
 earliest records of the Northumbrian dialect. It is inscribed upon 
 the famous stone cross of Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire, and thus has not 
 been liable to corruption by transcription. Fortunately there is a West 
 Saxon paraphrase of the poem which is often attributed to Cnsdmon, the 
 earliest of northern poets. Both versions are given by Dr J. A. H. 
 Murray at page 20 of his invaluable treatise on the Dialect of the 
 Southern Counties of Scotland. I give Dr Murray's literal translation. 
 The parts missing on the Ruthwell cross are filled in from the West 
 Saxon paraphrase — 
 
 On-g-ereda; hina; On-graithed him (self) 
 
 God almechltig God almighty 
 
 )>a he walde when he would 
 
 on galpu gi-stiga on the gallows ascend, 
 
 moclig fore strong-of-mood before 
 
 alle men all men. 
 
 buga ik ne darstaj liow I dared not. 
 
 aliof ik riiknjc k\'ningk 
 lu-atunavs hlafard 
 h;L-kla ik iii darst;e 
 Lism.'era'du imgket men 
 ba a;tgadre 
 
 (.\ rood I was reared]. 
 ll|>heavcd .1 the rich king, 
 1 Ieaven'.s lord ; 
 lean I dared not ! 
 Men reviled us two 
 both together ;
 
 Ik [wc-Es] mi]) blod.t hisU'iiiid I [was] with blood bostaiiied 
 
 bi-jjfoteii of ... . out-gushed from [tlu> horo's side, 
 Since his ghost he had sent forth]. 
 
 Krist Wc-Es on rodi. Ciirist was on rood ; 
 
 hwe|»rie jier fusre howbeit there hastily (fussily) 
 
 fearran ewomu from-afar came 
 
 ;e])l)ihe till anum noble ones him alone (?) 
 
 ik ])xt al hiheald I that all beheld. 
 
 sare ik wa;s Sore I wiis 
 
 mil) sorgum gidroefed with sorrows oppressed : 
 
 Hnag ic [hwet)n\'] Inclined I yet 
 
 [to the hands of his servants. ] 
 
 Mi]) strelum giwiindad With shafts wounded, 
 
 alegdun hia; hinre lim-woerig'nre laid they him limb-we.'iry ; 
 
 gisto(.li.Iun him xt his liki\;s heafdum stood (b\-) him at his lyke's head, 
 
 biheakluu hiiis |)er heafun . . . Beheld they there heavon['s lord]. 
 
 (2) The dialect of central England was called Mercian. Unfortun- 
 ately there is very little literature in it from early times. I^ut from the 
 fact that it was the dialect spoken in London, Oxford, and Cambridge, it 
 is from Mercian that modern literary English has developed. 
 
 (3) The dialect of Kent was the most difficult but did not long sur- 
 vive for literary purposes, though Caxton tells us that even in his time 
 at the very end of the fifteenth century, the people south of the Thames 
 estuary did not clearly understand what the people north of it said, the 
 Kentish folk e.g., still saying eyren, where the men north of the Thames 
 used the form eggs^ which had been brought in by the Norsemen. 
 
 (4) The dialect in which most of the old English literature is preserved 
 is that of the West Saxons. The reason for this has now to be explained. 
 The part of England which, as far as we know, first developed a literature 
 was Yorkshire. Caidmon and his successor Cynewulf are said to have 
 both been connected with the great monastery which existed at Streana^s- 
 halch now known to us as Whitby. But a great disaster fell upon this 
 part of Britain. That disaster was the invasion of the Danes. Where 
 the Danes came from is not altogether clear, for the first of them who 
 came are called simply Northmen, and under that name were included 
 Norwegians and Swedes as well as Danes in the modern sense. No 
 doubt a large number may justly be called Danes, for curiously enough, 
 they were descendants of settlers who had come from the north and 
 fixed their abode in the old Angela which had been left desolate by the 
 removal of its inhabitants to England. Not less certainly a large num- 
 ber were the sons of Norwegian farmers along the sides of the Norwegian 
 fiords, where the natural increase of the population very soon outruns the 
 means of subsistence.
 
 These people took a leaf out of the book of the Saxons four hundred 
 years earlier and became pirates, though we know them under the more 
 dignified name of Vikings. They settled in France, whence the name 
 Normandy ; they settled along the east coast of Ireland, and for a time 
 in the western isles of Scotland. Hence to this day the Bishop is called 
 the Bishop of Sodor and Man, Sodor being a corruption of the Norse 
 words for South Isles, the name by which the Norsemen distinguished 
 the Hebrides from Orkney and Shetland. Hence also the name of the 
 county of Sutherland, which from the Scottish point of view is the north 
 land, but to the Norsemen was a southern land. When, in the ninth 
 century, the Norsemen descended upon the coasts of Northumbria, they 
 swept away the greater part of the old civilisation and the literature. 
 Thus it was that the Northumbrian literature would have been entirely 
 lost, had it not already become popular in the south-west of England, 
 which never suffered so much from the Danes and where consequently it 
 was preserved in a form more or less approximated to West Saxon. 
 
 The area covered by the Danes in England is easy enough to trace 
 by the place names. To say nothing of names which are more limited 
 in area, wherever a place-name ends in — by, there, unless the name is a 
 recent coinage, we are sure that there was a Danish settlement. Thus 
 Streansshalch became Whitby, in the north-west we have Kirkby, on 
 the east coast Grimsby, down as far as Leicestershire, Ashby. But in 
 Scotland only a (ew like Lockerby close to the Norse settlements in 
 Cumberland, though there are some isolated instances in more northern 
 counties (see a paper by Dr David Christison in the Proceedings of the 
 Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1892-3, p. 278). The equally char- 
 acteristic Norse — garth and — thwaite are almost non-existent in Scot- 
 land, entirely so north of the Forth ; though the former has a parallel in 
 the Keltic — gorth found in names like Crimondgorth, Auchnagorth. 
 
 The invasion of the Norsemen brought many common words into 
 English ; ta/vc for which the English was nhu, till (Eng. to), egg (Eng. ey). 
 The Norse language had a very great influence upon the local dialects, 
 and to this day the Northumbrian dialect is full of Danish words. 
 Wherever the verb gar (compel) or the verb bigg (build) is found, there 
 Norse influence is certain. Neither of these verbs has rooted itself in 
 book English, although Spenser attempted to introduce the former in 
 Elizabeth's tiine, this being one of the reminiscences of his residence for 
 some time in Lancashire. Other words brought in by the Norsemen 
 were earl^ early hcefene, "haven" (earlier English h[j]> " hithe"), handfeestati
 
 (whence the marriage on trial called handfasting which survived so lonpj 
 in Scotland), /lusbonde " husband," scale (of a balance), score. 
 
 Till the Danish invasion apparently an active commerce was kept 
 up between the English and the kinsfolk they had left behind on the 
 Continent. But when the Norsemen seized the coast this traffic was no 
 longer possible. Thus the connexion between the English and the 
 Continent was broken. But something that was soon to happen was to 
 break the connexion still more effectually. This event was the Norman 
 Conquest. 
 
 The Norman conquest, as far as the language was concerned, had 
 begun before William the Conqueror. Edward the Confessor had lived 
 long abroad and loved the courtly Normans, so that Norman French was 
 prevalent at his court. The Northmen had very little trouble in adopt- 
 ing another language. They adopted French in Normandy and English 
 in England. In this some people have seen proof of their wonderful 
 versatility. The explanation is probably simpler. The majority of these 
 Northmen who settled in foreign countries were single men who married 
 wives of the land. The result was that the next generation grew up 
 knowing their mother's language better than their father's. 
 
 The Norman conquest had a tremendous influence upon English (i) 
 by introducing new words, (2) by respelling the whole language. Every 
 schoolboy knows that while cow, sheep, swine, are good old English 
 words, beef, mutton, pork, are equally good Norman words. The old 
 words remained because the English people for a couple of centuries 
 became servants to Norman barons and minded their flocks and herds as 
 we see in Ivanhoe. These herdsmen had to supply the meat for their 
 lord's table, and had for this purpose to use words which would be 
 intelligible to their lord. The respelling of the language has had the 
 effect of divorcing it still more from its kindred languages on the other 
 side of the channel in appearance and approximating it to French. In 
 old English ^?^ is never found before another vowel, \\q'c\c& guard, guise, 
 guide, guild, guest, are all Norman words or spellings ; guard, guise, are 
 Norman words, guide, guild, guest, are Norman spellings for gide, gild, 
 gsest. 
 
 The Normans had so much influence upon English because the 
 great monasteries which they built were filled with Norman monks, and 
 from among them came the scholars that made a study of the language. 
 Norman William himself tried hard to learn so much English that no 
 man need make his complaint to him through an interpreter. But a
 
 1 6 TJie Making of our Motlier Tongue. 
 
 contemporary assures us that he had not much success. Norman French 
 remained for long the language of the Court, and it was the language 
 taught in ladies' schools. This is the meaning of the phrase so often 
 quoted (and so often misunderstood) from Chaucer of the Nonne a 
 Trioresse — 
 
 And Froiish she spak fill fjiire and fetisly 
 After the scole of Stratford alte Bowe, 
 For Frensh of Paris was to liire iinknowe. 
 
 It was a long time after the conquest — nearly three hundred years — 
 before English recovered its rights. In 1362 the English Parliament 
 ordained that in all law courts the English tongue should be used — " in 
 any courts whatsoever, whether in the king's or other courts, before the 
 king's justices or others." As time went on the French spoken in Eng- 
 land got worse and worse, for, from the days of John onward, the tie with 
 France was less close, and soon Englishman's French became a proverb, 
 and its character, I fear, is not even now restored. 
 
 But all the time that the grand people were talking and writing 
 French there were a large number of insignificant people engaged in 
 writing the English tongue. The old dialects under the veneer of 
 Norman French still survived. But in the middle of the fourteenth 
 century their use in literature began to die out. The Kentish was the 
 first to go and next after that the West Saxon, though it had been the 
 book language of the last Anglo-Saxon period. The Midland dialect 
 comes more and more to the front. It looked at one time as if through 
 Piers Plowman, the West Midland, the language of the Malvern Hills was 
 to become the literary language. But a greater than he arose in Chaucer 
 who wrote the educated London dialect of his day, and from then to now 
 that has been the literary dialect. But the other dialects were not dead. 
 They are not dead even now, though the spread of education in all ranks 
 is on the way to kill them. 
 
 Meantime the old Northumbrian dialect had entered upon a new 
 lease of life because it had become the language of the northern king- 
 dom of Scotland. As we have already seen the name of that country 
 was transferred from Ireland. In the making of most nationalities there 
 are many elements. Of Scotland this is not less true than of other 
 countries. At a period long anterior to the Norman conquest we have 
 seen that the Scots had occupied the western mainland of Argyll whence 
 they had spread northwards and eastwards till under Kenneth MacAlpin 
 they were amalgamated in one Government with the Picts who held the
 
 eastern districts north of the Forth. The district from Tweed to Forth 
 also we have seen was En<;h'sh, both racially and linguistically. The 
 Picts of Galloway and the ancient British kingdom of Strathclyde were 
 in process of time swamped by Scots, whose language survived in 
 Galloway till a period comparatively recent. The Norsemen held 
 Caithness and Sutherland and the Western Isles, and till the times of 
 Alexander III. formed a permanent menace to Scotland. Out of these 
 varied elements the Scottish nationality had to be formed, but the details 
 of the process belong to history and concern us only in so far as they 
 affect the development of a national language. 
 
 As Dr Hill Burton remarks, we are unable to trace satisfactorily the 
 stages by which the predominance of the Scots was lessened till at last 
 they occupied a position dishonoured and despised. All that we can 
 see is that Saxon pre-eminence begins with the reign of Malcolm Can- 
 more. In all probability the Court language of Malcolm and his prede- 
 cessors from Kenneth MacAlpin downwards was Gaelic. The marriage 
 of Malcolm with an exiled English princess seems immensely to have 
 increased Saxon influence. As the higher civilisation of the Scots had 
 assimilated the Picts, so in Malcolm's time apparently, the higher 
 civilisation introduced by Queen Margaret and her numerous English 
 followers usurped the place of the rougher Keltic civilisation which 
 preceded it. P'rom this time onwards the English language and a 
 trading population of English-speaking men spreads steadily and rapidly 
 along the eastern coast. Many attempts had been made to extend both 
 English language and English conquests north of the Forth during the 
 preceding four or five centuries. As far back as 685 A.D. the Saxon 
 Ecgfrid had been defeated and slain at the great battle of Nechtansmere, 
 probably Dunnichen in P'orfarshire. Ecgfrid had aimed at an over- 
 lordship over the whole northern half of the island. By his death all 
 such dreams were shown to be impossible of realisation, and in later 
 centuries the arrival of the Danes gave the English plenty of employment 
 elstiwhere. 
 
 That, till about the period of Malcolm, the English tongue and the 
 English population had not extended far beyond the Forth is shown by 
 several considerations. Of these, perhaps the most conclusive is that 
 when Queen Margaret, in 1074, wished to have what she considered 
 abuses in the Church rectified, she found that the clergy could speak only 
 in Gaelic, and her husband, Malcolm Canmore. who knew both English 
 and Gaelic, had to act as interpreter. For Buchan we have the evidence
 
 of the charters in the Book of Deer. These are all in Gaelic except the 
 last, which dates from David I. and is in Latin. That the grants which 
 purport to have been made to Columba and Drostan, should be made by- 
 people with Keltic names is only to be expected. But in the grant by 
 David I., which brings us to the generation after Malcolm Canmore, the 
 names of the witnesses are still of the same character. The bishops 
 who are witnesses have Biblical or Church names, Gregory, Andrew, 
 Samson. But what could be more Keltic than " Broccin and Cormac, 
 Abbot of Turbruaid (Turriff) and Morgunn, son of Donchad, and Gille- 
 petair, son of Donchad and Malaechin, and Matne's two sons," who 
 witness the preceding gift by " Colbain, mormaer of Buchan, and Eva, 
 daughter of Garnait, his wedded wife, and Donnachac, son of Sithech, 
 chief of Clann Morgainn," in a document which belongs to the same reign ? 
 Nor are the other signatures to the grant in Latin less Keltic — Donchad, 
 Earl of Fife, iVIalmor of Athol, Gillebrite, Earl of Angus, Gillecomded, 
 son of Aed, Adam, son of Ferdomnac, and Gillendrias, son of Matni, 
 who along with Broccin and Cormac and the three bishops already men- 
 tioned, form the witnesses. There can be no doubt that Dr Stuart, in 
 his preface to the Book of Deer (p. Iviii.), is fully justified in his remark 
 that " it is clear that the population and institutions of Buchan were wholly 
 Celtic in the time of David L, and that the influences which led to a 
 change in both must be traced to a later time, and to a concurrence of 
 causes gradually working out their issues throughout the kingdom." If 
 further proof were necessary, it could be supplied from charters granted 
 by the great landowners to their sub-tenants. When, in the first quarter 
 of the thirteenth century, William Cumyn, the first Earl of Buchan of 
 that name, granted the lands and mill of Stratheyn and Kindrochet 
 (Strichen and Kindrought), to Cospatrick Macmadethyn, the tenant bore 
 a name which shows a decidedly Keltic origin. Three centuries later 
 when the Sheriff Court Records of Aberdeen begin, such names have 
 entirely disappeared from Buchan and seem confined practically to the 
 uplands of the Dee and Don, where, for example, we find John and 
 Donald Makincal:;our combining with John Forbes "fear of Brux," and 
 others with common names on 3rd April, 1505 to be sureties for the 
 production of " Thome Coup before our soverane lords Justice 
 for the slauchter of Wat Makynreoche." 
 
 The steps by which the change from the Highland to the Lowland 
 tongue took place in the eastern counties north of the Forth cannot be 
 traced in detail because of the lack of documentary evidence. As we
 
 have seen, in the history from Kenneth MacAlpin to Malcolm Canmore 
 there is but darkness visible. A long procession of kings passes before 
 us, which is hardly more substantial than that which emerged before the 
 eyes of Macbeth in the witches' cave. In the succeeding period from 
 Malcolm Canmore to Alexander III., the period which is all important 
 for this and many other changes in Scotland, the torch of history burns 
 but with a feeble ray. Amid the prevailing darkness a few important 
 points can be detected. Tile coming of the English tongue was no 
 doubt at first confined to the sea-coast, its trading towns and their 
 vicinity. Before 1124 the towns of the north-east, Aberdeen, Banff, 
 Elgin,' Forres, Nairn and Inverness, had formed themselves into a 
 miniature Hanseatic league. From these towns as centres, the language 
 of the Sassenach spread. 
 
 But it was not only people of the Lothians who spread northward. 
 The Scottish kings had' themselves great estates in England and their 
 Norman friends followed them to the north where they presently 
 established themselves, Comyns, Byssets, Erasers, and many more, with 
 surprising success, paralleled only by the achievement of Strongbow's 
 followers in Ireland, also among a Keltic people. Nor were English 
 and Normans the only people who came. When Henry II. expelled the 
 Flanders traders from England, many of them migrated to the northern 
 kingdom. Long ere this the kings, however Keltic in blood, had lost all 
 touch with their kinsfolk of the north and north-west and found their 
 kingly authority in those districts not even of nominal value. The Lord 
 of the Isles looked upon himself, not as the subject, but as the equal of 
 the King who ruled south of the Grampians. Hence Malcolm IV. no 
 doubt was only too glad to settle a colony of Flemings in Moray, an 
 early anticipation of the procedure followed by his remote successor, 
 James I. of England, in the plantation of Ulster. Nor was it only in 
 Morayshire that the merchants of Flanders were to be found. As Mr 
 Watt says in his History of Aberdeenshire (p. 37) "they formed little 
 settlements in many parts of the country, established trade and handi- 
 crafts, particularly weaving, and reclaimed waste land. One of these 
 settlements was at Crutertston or Courtieston, in the parish of Leslie, 
 named probably after a Fleming settler ; and Plinder, still prominent 
 among the place-names of the neighbourhood, is a further record of this 
 medieval colony." Like European settlers in semi-civilized countries of 
 the present day, these foreigners were for long entitled to the enjoyment 
 of their own Fleming law. To this day the name of Fleming is not
 
 20 The Making of our Mother Tongue. 
 
 uncommon, and perhaps, as appearing in the " Life and Death of Jamie 
 Fleeman," is the most widely known of all Aberdeenshire names. 
 
 But it was neither Saxon nor Fleming merchants, nor Norman 
 chieftains that converted the districts remote from the seaboard towns to 
 the English speech. Something more drastic in its proceedings was the 
 
 cause. 
 
 Throughout almost the whole of the thirteenth century the Comyns 
 were the most powerful family in the north-east of Scotland, if not indeed 
 in the whole kingdom. They were connected with the royal house, and 
 John Comyn of Badenoch was one of the candidates for the throne, 
 rendered vacant by the death of the Maid of Norway. When his claim 
 was rejected, Comyn supported Baliol. This was the first of many 
 grievances which embittered the house of Bruce against the house of 
 Comyn so much that they must always be on opposite sides in the 
 conflict with England. When Comyn, Earl of Buchan, as general of 
 Baliol, invaded England, Carlisle Castle was held m Edward's interest by 
 the father of Robert the Bruce, later King of Scotland. For this Baliol 
 declared the estates of Bruce in Annandale " forfeited, and conferred them 
 on the Earl of Buchan. Henceforth there was no goodwill between the 
 Bruces and Comyns, though a dozen years were to elapse before their 
 final conflict in Aberdeenshire" (Watt, History of Aberdeenshire, p. 59). 
 In 1308 the time of vengeance arrived. Robert the Bruce defeated 
 the Earl of Buchan near Old Meldrum, and then proceeded to extirpate 
 the Comyn influence. John Barbour, who was born within a generation 
 of the event, and who, as parson of Rayne, had every opportunity to be 
 well acquainted with the facts, sums up the whole history in a few pithy 
 lines (The Brus, ix. 294-306) :— 
 
 Now ga we to the King agane, 
 That of his victor wes richt fane 
 And gert his men burn all Bouchane 
 Fra end till end, and spa7ut nane ; 
 And heryit thame on sic maneir 
 That eftir that, neir fifty 3heir, 
 Men menyt the heirship of Bouchane. 
 The King than till his pess has tane 
 The nortli cuntre, that hwmylly 
 Obeysit till his senjory, 
 Swa that be north the Month var nane, 
 That thai ne war his men ilkane. 
 His lordship wox ay mair and niair.
 
 Dr p. Giles. 21 
 
 Though the statement that " he spari't nane " may be taken with a grain 
 of salt, it is significant, as has already been said, that when the court 
 records of Aberdeen begin two hundred years later the names of the 
 jurymen and parties to suits who come from Buchan are so characteristic- 
 ally Lowland. From the date of the Comyns' overthrow, no doubt the 
 Lowland dialect has steadily advanced from the coast inland. 
 
 It has always to be remembered that the dialect now spoken in the 
 north-eastern counties is an imported dialect which was originally 
 uniform with the dialect, not only of Mearns, Angus, and Fife, but also 
 with that which was spoken from Forth to H umber. It is in fact an 
 English dialect, as presumably now every schoolboy know.s, though 
 nearly a hundred years ago Jamieson prefaced the first edition of his 
 Scottish Dictionary with a long dissertation to prove that it was not. 
 Jamieson, in fact, by this denial and by deriving Scotch words from 
 Dutch, " Suio-Gothic," from anything but their real source, did much to 
 retard a really effective study of the phenomena of the language which 
 he had so well and laboriously collected in his Dictionary. That the 
 dialect was English, indeed, hardly required to be proved, for no Scottish 
 author earlier than Gawain Douglas ever thought of calling it anything 
 else but Inglis (English). Till this time when the language of the Scots 
 was referred to, what was meant was Gaelic, or as the old Scotch writers 
 term it, Ersch (Irish). More than thirty years ago Dr J. A. H. Murray, 
 in the treatise already referred to, collected a catena of passages from the 
 Scottish writers themselves, showing that the Lowland tongue, " the 
 langage of the northin lede" was regularly described as Inglis. How, 
 then, did the Scottish writers describe the language of their southern 
 neighbours, which, founded as it was upon the Mercian dialect, was 
 now very different from Northumbrian ? As English was annexed by 
 them as the term for their own tongue, soutliron or suddron was all that 
 could be applied to the literary dialect of England. It is interesting to 
 note that even a writer so intensely national as John Knox was twitted 
 by his Roman Catholic opponents as writing a foreign tongue. No 
 doubt long residence out of Scotland, and probably more than all else 
 the English Bible, had considerably influenced Knox's writing in the 
 direction of the literary English of his day. Hence we find Ninian 
 Winzet, in the controversy which he carried on with Knox, declaring 
 "gif 30U throw curiositie of nouationis hes forget our auld plane Scottis, 
 quhilk 3our mother lerit ':;ou, in tymes cuming I sail wryte to ^ou my 
 mynd in Latin ; for I am nocht acquyntit with 5our southeroun." To
 
 " knapp suddron " was insisted upon by other Roman Catholic contro- 
 versialists as a characteristic of the Scotch Protestant Reformers, who 
 were supported from England. 
 
 The earliest form of the Northumbrian dialect known to us has been 
 illustrated by a document on Scottish soil — the Ruthwell cross. Unfor- 
 tunately the next stage is not so easy to illustrate, as the interlinear 
 glosses of the Gospels, the Lindisfarne and part of the Rushworth, are 
 not a consecutive translation but merely the vernacular meanings of the 
 words written above them, much in the same way as schoolbo)'s in 
 difficulties still write the meanings of hard Latin words between the lines. 
 On the northern side of the Border, however, there is nothing at all 
 parallel to these glosses, which date probably from before the Norman 
 Conquest. The only information indeed that we obtain concerning the 
 English language of the northern kingdom comes from the old Burgh 
 laws, some of which in their Latin form, date from the reign of David I., 
 in other words from the first half of the twelfth century. The Latinist 
 often left technical terms in the vernacular, and Cosmo Innes in the pre- 
 face to his edition of Barbour collected a considerable number of such 
 phrases. One example may suffice. Sz guts verberando fecet'it, aliquem 
 blaa et blodi, ipse quifucrit blaa et \Ao6\ prius debet exaudiri. The phrase 
 blaa and blodi was probably one in very common use. Not only is it 
 found in the much later vernacular version of the law, but appears even 
 in a hymn : — 
 
 His sydes full bla and bludy ware, 
 That siimtyme war full brij^hte of blee ; 
 His herte was perchede with a spere ; 
 His bludy woundes was reuthe to see. 
 
 But this hymn is no product of Scotland ; it belongs to the Yorkshire of 
 the 14th century, and is printed by Professor Horstmann, as possibly a 
 work of Richard Rolle of Hampole, who wrote about 1340 A.D. 
 
 In poetry, however, the language is rarely the common spoken 
 language of the date of composition. Poetry gains in dignity and 
 emotional effect from the use of phrases borrowed from earlier poetry or 
 archaic in themselves. Unfortunately, connected prose from the Scottish 
 side of the Border is late in appearing. No doubt it had existed, but the 
 long turmoil of the War of Independence, and the ravages of the 
 English have swept it away with most other traces of the well-being of 
 Scotland prior to the death of Alexander III. Hence the earliest piece 
 of continuous prose, that Cosmo Innes is able to cite, is a precept under
 
 the privy seal of the Earl of Fife, Warden of Scotland, to pass the wool 
 of the monks of Melrose free of custom. It is dated 26 May, 1389. 
 
 " Robert, &c., ffor quhy that of gude memore Dauid Kyng quhilom 
 of Scotland that God assoillie vv^ his chartir vndre his grets sale has 
 pjyvin to the religiouss men the abbot and the conuent of Meuros and to 
 thair successours for ever mire frely all the custume of all thair vvollys 
 as vvele of thair awin growing as of thair tendys of thair kyrkes as it 
 apperis be the forsaid chartir confermyt be our mast souereigne and 
 doubtit Lorde and fadre our lorde the Kyng of Scotland Robert that 
 now ys wyth his grete sele &c." (Liber de Melrose No. 480.) 
 
 Of more human interest is a letter of George, Earl of Dunbar, which 
 he wrote to Henry IV. of England on 18 February, 1400, and which is 
 given in full in the appendix to Pinkerton's History, vol. i. p. 449. Here 
 need only be quoted the end part, of which Innes obtained a recollation 
 from the document in the British Museum, and of which therefore the 
 dialect forms are certain : — 
 
 " And excellent prince syn that I clayme to be of kyn tull yhow, 
 and it peraventour nocht knawen on yhour parte, I schew it to yhour 
 lordschip be this my lettre that gif dame Alice the Bewmount was yhour 
 graunde dame, dame Mariory Comyne, hyrr full sister, was my graunde 
 dame on the tother side, sa that I am bot of the feirde degre of kyn tyll 
 yhow, the quhilk in aide tyme was callit neir. And syn I am in swilk 
 degre tyll yhow I requer yhow as be way of tendirness thareof, and fore 
 my seruice in maner as I hafe before writyn, that yhe will vouchsauf tyll 
 help me and suppowell me tyll gete amendes of the wrangs and the 
 defowle that ys done me, sendand tyll me gif yhow lik yhour answer of 
 this with all gudely haste. And noble prince mervaile yhe nocht that I 
 write my lettres in Engl, fore that ys mare clere to myne vnderstandyng 
 than latyne or fraunche. Excellent, mychty, and noble prince, the 
 haly Trinitie hafe yhow evermar in kepying. Writyn at my castell 
 of Dunbarr, the xviii. day of Feuerer. — Le Count de la Marche Des- 
 coce." 
 
 The doughty earl to whose understanding, as he says, English was 
 more clear than Latin or French, signs himself with a little remnant 
 of the French that was becoming in a scion of so Norman a stock as that 
 which produced Dame Alice the Bewmont and Dame Marjory Comyn. 
 Almost contemporaneous with his letter is the following missive sent 
 by the magistrates of Aberdeen in 1401 to some important personage 
 whose name unfortunately is lost. The letter is printed in Stuart's
 
 Extracts from the Council Register of Aberdeen, a volume issued by the 
 Spalding Club in 1844. 
 
 " Reuerence and honour likit yhu to wit, that the lord of Keth arestit 
 yhur wyn and yhur oxin, and for gud causis as he lete ws wit ; and for 
 yhur sakis we made him request that he suld frely delyuer thaim, for 
 the quilk request he has delyuerit thaim frely at this tym, for we ar 
 thai at wald at gud acord war betwex yhu and hym, and wil do our 
 besynes to bryng it thar to at our power, at the quilk accord he sayis 
 he wald be gladly and sal nocht leve in his defaute. Qwarfor, der lord, 
 it is our consale, and we requir yhu, that for essy of the contrar and 
 quiet of our place, yhe wald asich gif yhe ocht aw hym, sa that hym 
 nedit nocht in tyme to cum til mak sic punding and namly in our tovn, 
 for he says it is previt dete that yhe aw hym, and of lang tyme by gane ; 
 and gif yhe will adreis yhu to be at ony day with hym for the knawlege 
 of the forsaid thyngis sends ws word, and we sal late hym wit, and gif 
 it langs ansuer we sal ger send it yhu, for we ar richt mykil haldyn 
 to yhu, and als til hym. God kepe yhur estate as we desir." 
 
 How little this English from north of the Tweed differed from that 
 not far north of the Humber will be clear from the following little homily 
 of Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, on the text of the bee. 
 
 Moralia Richardi, hereniite de natura apis, unde quasi apis argu- 
 mentosa (Horstmann, Richard Rolle of Hampole (1895), p. 193. 
 
 The bee has thre kyndis. Ane es J?at scho es neuer ydill, and 
 scho es noghte with thaym ]?at will noghte wyrke, bot castys thaym 
 owte and puttes thaym awaye. Anothere es J?at when scho flyes scho 
 takes erthe in hyr fette, ])at scho be noghte with thaym J)at will noghte 
 lyghtly ouer-heghede in the ayere of wynde. The thyrde es j^at scho 
 kepes clene and brighte hire winge:;. Thus r}'ghtwyse men ]3at lufes 
 god, are neuer in ydyllnes ; ffor owthyre ]?at ere in trauayle, prayand, 
 or thynkande, or redande, or othere gude doande, or withtakand ydill 
 mene and schewand thaym worthy to be put fra ]?e ryste of heuene ffor 
 J)ay will noght trauayle here. ])ay take erthe, \dX es ]3ay halde ]3amselfe 
 vile and erthely that thay be noghte blawene with ]?e wynde of vanyte 
 and of pryde. Thay kepe thaire wynges clene, that es ])e twa ccmmande- 
 mentes of charyte ])ay fulfill in gud coneyens, and thay hafe othyre 
 vertus vnblendyde with ])e fylthe of syne and unclene luste. Arestotill 
 sais ))at J)e bees are fcghtande agaynes hym ])at will drawe J)aire hony 
 fra thayme. Swa sulde we do agaynes deuells ])dt afiforses thame to 
 reue fra vs pe hony of poure lufe and of grace. For many are ])at neuer
 
 kan halde J)e ordyre of lufe ynesche J)aire frendys sybbe or ffremmede, 
 bot outhire J)ay lufe ])aym ouer-mekill, settand thaire thoghte vnryght- 
 wysely on thaym ; or pay luf thayme ouer lyttil, yf pd.y doo noghte all 
 as J)ay wolde till ]?ame. Swylke kane noghte fyghte for thaire hony, 
 fifor-thy J)e deuelle turnes it to wormed and makes J)eire saules ofte-sythcs 
 full bitter in angwys and tcne, and besynes of vayne thoghtes and oj^er 
 vvrechidness, ffor thay are so heuy in erthely frenchype J?at ])ay may 
 noghte flee in till pe lufe of Ihesu Criste, in pc wylke ))ay moghte wele 
 for-gaa J)e lufe of all creaturs lyfande in erthe." 
 
 Here may be noted the most important of the cliaracters which dis- 
 tinguish this from the earlier literar]/ English of the south. They may 
 for convenience be taken in the order of the words as they stand in the 
 passage. They are as follows, the first in each couple being Hampole's 
 word, the other the contemporary southern literary English: — has = hath ; 
 ane = oon, one; scho = heo ; thay m = hem; kepes = kepeth ; men J)at 
 lufes = men Jjat lufeth (in the south), men ])at lufe (midland) ; (observe 
 that this form is found oftener in relative clauses than in principal 
 sentences ; cp. in modern Buchan Them at hiz a hantle tac dac with They 
 hiv a hantle amd thir haiis)\ prayand, thynkande, &c. = prayinge, 
 thynkinge, &c. (since Layamon in the 13th century); swylke = swich, 
 wylke ([^arbour, or quhilk)= which. Observe also agaynes which still 
 survives in the north without a final t ; for this the southern Middle 
 English is ayeines. 
 
 It may not be uninstructive to compare a sentence from a sermon 
 by John Gaytryge or Gawtry (a follower of Hampole) on the Ten Com- 
 mandments with the Frisian passage quoted before, in order to see how 
 far the languages, as represented by documents separated in time by less 
 than a century, have diverged. The date is about nine hundred years 
 after the emigration of the Angles to England, and about five hundred 
 after the total isolation of Frisian and English from one another. 
 
 '•])is tene Comanndementis px\. er befor rekennede, er vmbylowked 
 in twa of ])e gospell ; pi. tane es, J)at we luf god ouer all thyngs ; J)e 
 tothir, pdX we luf our eeuen-cristene als we do oureselfe. For god aw vs 
 to luf haly with hert, with all our mygth, with all our thogth, with word 
 and with deide. Our eeuenecristene alsvva aw vs to luf vnto ])at ylke 
 gud J)at we luf our-self, ]?at es at say, welefare in body and in saule, and 
 come to p2X ylke blysse p\\. we thynke till." (Horstmann op. cit. p. 109). 
 
 At this period the dialect which has ever since remained the literary 
 dialect of England was already taking shape. At first the popularity of
 
 Piers Plowman bid fair to make the literary dialect that of the west, for 
 William Langland its author was a native of the Malvern hills, l^ut a 
 much greater poet arose presently in Geoffrey Chaucer who represented 
 the cultivated speech of London. That speech as the dialect spoken in 
 the three great centres London, Oxford, and Cambridge, was already on 
 the way to become the literary dialect of England. Chaucer did much 
 to strengthen the tendency, which was confirmed by the fact that Eng- 
 land produced no author equal in influence to Chaucer for more than a 
 century and a half after his time. 
 
 An instructive parallel may be drawn between the English of 
 Wiclif's New Testament as revised by John Purvey, vvhich belongs to 
 this period (the end of the fourteenth century), and a transcription of that 
 translation made in the dialect of Ayrshire, probably by one Murdoch 
 Nisbet, about a hundred years lat^r. This Scottish version has been 
 recently edited by the late Dr T. G. Law for the Scottish Text Society. 
 
 The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke xv. iifif). 
 
 WlCLlF AND Pl-RVEY, I388. 
 
 And he seidc, A man hadde twei soncs ; 
 and the jonger of hem seide to the ladir, 
 Fadir, :;yve me the poreioun ot catel, 
 that faUith to me. And he departide to 
 hem the catel. And not aftir many daies, 
 wlianne alle thingis weren gederid to- 
 gider, the monger sone wente forth in 
 pilgrymag'e in to a fer ciintre ; and there 
 he wastide hise g-oodis in lyuyng-e 
 lecherously. And aftir that he liadde 
 endid alle thingis, a strong- himgre was 
 maad in that cuntre, and he bigan to 
 have nede. And he wente, and drou; 
 him to con of the citeseyns of that 
 cuntre. And he sente hym into his toun 
 to fede swyn. And lie coiieitide to fiUe 
 his wombe of the coddis that the hoggis 
 eaten, and no man -af him. And he 
 turnede a3en to hym silf, and seide, Hon 
 many hirid men in my fadir hous han 
 plente of iooues ; and V perische here 
 thoroii3 hiingir. Y schal rise vp, and 
 go to my fadir, and Y schal seie to hym, 
 Fadir, Y haue synned in to heuene, and 
 bifor thee ; and now I am not worlhi 
 to be clepid thi sone, make me as oon 
 of thin hirid men. And he rocs vp, and 
 
 Murdoch Nisbet, 1520? 
 And he saide, A man had ij sonnis ; 
 and the yonngare of thame said to the 
 fader, Fader, gene me the porlionn of 
 substance, that fallis to me. And he 
 depaitit to thame the substance. And 
 nocht mony dais eftire, quhen al thingis 
 war griderit togiddire, the yonnsrar sonn 
 went furth m pilgrimage into a ferr 
 cuntree, and thare he waistit his giidis 
 in leving licherouslie. And ettir that 
 he had endit al thingis, a stark hungire 
 was made in that cuntree ; and he 
 began to haue need. And he went, and 
 drew him to aan of the citezenis of that 
 cuntre ; and he send him into his tovn 
 to fede swyne. And he couatit to fill 
 his wambe of the coddis that the hoggis 
 ete : and na man gave to him. And he 
 turnit agane into him self, and said, 
 How mony hyretmen in my fadris hous 
 has plentee oi' laaues, and 1 peryse here 
 throu hungir. I sal ryse up and ga to 
 my fadere, and I sal say to him. Fader, 
 I haue synnyt into heuen and before 
 thee, and now I am nocht worthie to be 
 callit thi sonn : mak me as aan of thi 
 hyret men. And he rase up, and com
 
 cam to his fadir. And vvhamie he was 
 fit afer, his fadir saif hyni, and was 
 stirrid bi mercy. And ho ran, and tel 
 on his neckc, and l^issitie liym. And 
 the sono scide to hj'm, Fadir, Y haiie 
 s\-nned in to heiiene, and bifor thee ; and 
 now Y am not worthi to be clejiid I hi 
 sone. And the tadir seide to iiise ser- 
 iianntis, Swithe brynge ~,e forth the firste 
 stoole, and clothe ^e iiym, and fyiie 30 
 a rynjf in his hoond, and schoon on hise 
 feet ; and bryng"e ~e a fat calf, ;ind sle 
 30, and ete we, and mal<e we fecste. 
 For this my sone was deed, and hath 
 Ij'ved ajen ; he perischid, atui is 
 toundun. 
 
 to his fader. And quhen he was yit on 
 fer, his fadere saw him, and was mouet 
 be mercy, and he ran, and fell on his 
 neck, and kissit him. And the sonn 
 said to him. Fader, I haue synnyt into 
 heuen, and before thee, and now I am 
 nocht wortliie to be callit thi sonn. 
 And the fadere said to his soriiandis, 
 Suythe bring ye fiirthe the hrst stole, 
 and cleithe ye him ; and geue ye a ryng- 
 in his hand, and schoon on his feet ; 
 And bring ye a fat calf, and sla ye ; and 
 ete we, and mak we feest : For this 
 my sonn was deid,and has leeuetagane; 
 he jx^yset, and is fundin. 
 
 If Murdoch Nisbet, or whoever the translator was, had made a translation 
 for himself from the Vulgate, and not a mere transliteration of Wiclif's 
 version, no doubt he might have used here and there a somewhat different 
 vocabulary. As it is, however, he has made correctly such chano-es in 
 form as were necessary to render his version a really Scottish version. 
 He has changed the pronoun /lem to thame, the present tense fallith to 
 fallis, and the past tenses \K\-de into past tenses in-^ {coueitide, couatit), he 
 has introduced the characteristic third plural hyret men has, while Wiclif 
 keeps the old han ; Wiclif has tnade the change of an into oofi, oUdiws into 
 looues, but the Scotch transliterator has restored the old forms which mark 
 the distinction between the dialects to this day ; he has put in send3.s the 
 past tense, a form which long survived his time. But even at this compara- 
 tively late date some characteristics of modern Scots do not appear in it. 
 Most- marked of all northern peculiarities to an Englishman of our day is 
 the loss of final / after a and u in l)a\fa\ fou, pii\ etc., and the change of ol 
 into 07^, so that ^-^/Z appears as row, poll diS pozv, diX\d the like. In the 
 passage quoted, as it happens, there is not much to illustrate these 
 peculiarities but we find c?/in endit al things where modern Scotch dialects 
 would put d thing. And this brings us face to face with one of the great 
 difficulties of the literary language of Scotland throughout the sixteenth 
 century and later. Eccentricities of spelling, or what appear to us as 
 such, were at an earlier period attempts, no doubt often imperfect, 
 to represent phonetically the sounds which the writer intended to express. 
 But now we come to a period where the spelling had begun to deviate 
 considerably from the pronunciation. Tiie history of" Middle Scots," as 
 this period in the language is called, is a large and difficult subject, into
 
 which I do not propose to enter. It is enough to say that the language 
 of a large part of its literature, and especially of its prose literature, was 
 couched in a phraseology which was employed only by literary men 
 familiar with French and with Latin and was unknown or, if known, 
 unintelligible to the general. The best known example of this is the 
 strange and interesting work known as the Coniplaytit of Scotland and 
 dating from 1549 A.D. From the period of the Reformation, and 
 naturally v^'ith greater acceleration after the Union of the Crowns in 
 1603 A.D., the literary language of Scotland became assimilated to that 
 of England. The prose writers commanded a larger audience by appeal- 
 ing to an Engli.sh as well as to a Scottish public. The poets found the 
 English vocabulary on occasion very convenient for providing rhymes. 
 Hence a large part of the literature on which Scotland most prides her- 
 self is written only in a bastard Scots which is more than half "southron." 
 This charge has often been made, and with truth, against Burns. It has 
 been less noticed that, nearly seventy years earlier, Allan Ramsay had 
 recognised the truth of the criticism and gloried in what some of his con- 
 temporaries would have thought his shame. Even the most fanatical of 
 Scotchmen could not say more in praise of his native tongue than does 
 " honest Allan " in the preface to his poems. 
 
 " That I have exprest my thoughts in my native dialect, was not 
 only inclination, but the desire of m}' best and wisest friends ; and most 
 reasonable, since good imagery, just similies, and all manner of ingenious 
 thoughts, in a well-laid design, disposed into numbers, is poetry. — Then 
 good poetry may be in any language. — But some nations speak rough, 
 and their words are confounded with a multitude of hard consonants, 
 which makes the numbers unharmoniou>. Besides, their language 
 is scanty, which makes a disagreeable repetition of the same 
 words. There are no defects in ours ; the pronunciation is liquid and 
 sonorous, and much fuller than the En<:^lish, of which we are masters, by 
 being taught it in our schools, and daily reading it ; which being added 
 to all our own native words, of eminent significancy, makes our tongue 
 by far the completest ; for instance, I can say, an empty house, a toom 
 barrel, a boss-head, and a ho.'low-heart" 
 
 This is bringing the mountain to Mah:)met with a vengeance, but 
 nevertheless Ram -say's statement faithfully represents the practice pur- 
 sued by himself and all his poetical successors from then till now. 
 
 The practice in prose was somewhat different. During the greater 
 part of the eighteenth century, in Edinburgh at least, persons of education
 
 Dr p. Giles. 29 
 
 really employed two dialects. What Ramsay of Ochtertyre says of Lord 
 Karnes, will illustrate this. " The language of his social hour was pure 
 Scots, nowise like what he spoke on the bench, which approached to 
 English. In all probability he used the same words, phrases, and 
 articulations which the friends and companions of his younger years 
 made use of in their festive hours, when people's hearts knit to one 
 another Nevertheless there was nothing mean or disgustin<T in his 
 phraseology or tone." Here we have clearly Dandie Dinmont's coun- 
 sellor, Mr Pleydell, brought before us. But that the character survived 
 even into the nineteenth century could be plentifully illustrated from 
 Cockburn's Memoirs. How far even the common dialect has changed 
 in a century and a half may be seen from Lord Kames' remark that to 
 hear the sound written z in the names Mackenzie and Menzies oro- 
 nounced like an English c. was enough to turn his stomach. Though 
 Menzies has been successful in retaining its original sound, there are 
 probably no districts now where Mackenzie is pronounced in the old way 
 as Mackiugie, and probably few persons living who have heard it so pro- 
 nounced except as an intentional archaism. 
 
 But what of the language of the common folk through all these 
 centuries ? As we have seen, the Saxon language in Scotland had in 
 different areas different substrata. These substrata of extinguished 
 languages are to some extent reflected in the counties of the 
 mainland outside the Highland line by differences in the Scots 
 spoken in them. Thus the dialect of Galloway and Dumfries 
 differs markedly from that in the adjacent counties of Selkirk, 
 Peebles, and Roxburgh. The dialect of the Lothians many centuries 
 since extended itself over most of Fife. The ancient Strathclyde 
 represented by northern Ayrshire, Lanark, Renfrew, and Dumbar- 
 ton has a dialect of its own. Perthshire outside the Highland 
 line has a dialect which encroaches to some extent on Fife and 
 Forfar. From this the dialect of Angus and the Mearns is distinct 
 as it is also from that spoken outside the Highland line from 
 Aberdeen to Inverness. In Caithness, Norse and Gaelic have both 
 had to give way to a dialect similar to, though not identical 
 with that of Aberdeenshire. The dialect of Aberdeenshire is upon 
 the area which once was Pictish. So is that of Angus and the 
 Mearns. Why then are not the dialects identical ? There are no 
 linguistic elements in the one which are not in the other. The 
 chief and perhaps the only cause for the difference is the isolation
 
 The Makinf^ of our Mother Tonj^ue. 
 
 produced by geof^raphical barriers.* The Grampians and the river 
 Dee prevented much communication except by sea, and each district 
 has consequently gone "its ain gait" in the matter of language. 
 The differences are mainly, though not altogether phonetic, and a 
 comparative study of the history of their sounds would make it 
 tolerably clear how the differences arose. Every community which is 
 well marked off from its neighbours by geographical boundaries tends to 
 develop a dialect of its own. Even in the area in which the Aberdeen- 
 shire or " Broad liuchan " is spoken, there are a considerable number of 
 sub-divisions with special characteristics. The late Dr Gregor distin- 
 guished three sub-dialects in Banffshire. In Aberdeenshire, Buchan 
 proper can be distinguished in dialect from the Garioch and from Mar, 
 while all three are different from the dialect in the city of Aberdeen. 
 The differences are matters of phonetics and vocabulary which the 
 greater facilities for movement from one district to another, and the 
 levelling effects of education have already almost entirely obliterated in 
 the rural districts, the dialect of which, however, remains distinct from 
 that of the city. 
 
 The dialect spoken in the north-eastern corner from the Dee to 
 Inverness is well deserving of investigation by reason of its peculiarities, 
 and also by reason of the large amount of literature which has been pro- 
 duced in the area with at least some traces of the local characteristics. 
 To this region belongs the first important work extant in any Scottish 
 dialect — l^a^rhoui'^ Bruce. It might even be possible to wrge r prima 
 facie claim to the earliest lyric extant in Scots. Its two stanzas are well 
 known and have been handed down in a variety of forms. The first of 
 these runs thus in Laing's edition of VVyntoun's Original Chronicle ii., 
 266 :- 
 
 Oulien Alexaiulyr oure King wos dcdc 
 
 That Scotland led in liiwc and lu, 
 Awa}- WL's sons off ale and bred, 
 
 Of W3'nc and wax, off i;am}n and gle. 
 
 The scansion of the verse shows clearly that Alexandjr here could not 
 have been pronounced like the modern Alexander, because it can have 
 
 \ 
 
 * There is, however, some evidence to show ihat even in Pictish limes Angus and Mcarrs 
 were differentiated from Aberdeen.
 
 only three syllables. The pronunciation must in fact have been some- 
 thing like Alshiner, and in Buchan the last generation spoke of a man 
 whose name was Alexander Alexander as Banners Elshiner. Nor is this 
 a recent change in Aberdeenshire, for Alzenor, Eishenour, Alshonour, 
 (the two last of the same person) are all found in Aberdeen documents 
 of the sixteenth century. But the change was possibly not confined to 
 this area. 
 
 Of far greater importance, however, is Barbour's Bruce because of its 
 extent and also of its indisputably northern origin. The date of John 
 Barbour's birth is not certain, but he died an old man in 1395. He was, 
 therefore, probably born somewhere about 1320, possibly, as most 
 authorities think, some years later. By 1358 he was archdeacon of 
 Aberdeen and from the numerous references to him in extant documents, 
 it is clear that not only was he a capable churchman as the " bishop's 
 eye" ought to be, but also a scholar and a statesman. The history of 
 the Bruce, which alone is preserved to us, was only part of his literary 
 work. A m\'thical history called the Brut, tracing the descent of British 
 sovereigns from Brutus a descendant of Aeneas, and an equally mythical 
 metrical history of the family of Stewart we know to have been written 
 by him, but both are lost. The contents of the first were no doubt much 
 like those of the earlier English poem of the same name by Layamon ; 
 the contents of the second are preserved for us in Hector Boece's Latin 
 prose translated into the vernacular by another archdeacon, John 
 Bellenden, archdeacon of Murray and canon of Ross. This translation 
 was made for the benefit of James V., who, we are told elsewhere, was 
 " nocht perfyte in Latin toung." 
 
 As Barbour was in all probability a native of Aberdeen we might 
 expect in his work traces of the local dialect. There is no evidence that 
 in his time there was a standard form of the Scots tongue differing from 
 that of Aberdeen, and considering how the dialect of the North East 
 had spread from the South, the development of marked differences at so 
 early a period is improbable. But unfortunately we do not possess the 
 manuscript as written by Barbour himself. The two extant copies 
 were both written by the same scribe, John de Ramsay, more than a 
 hundred years after 1375 when the work was composed, and the scribe 
 undoubtedly adapted spelling and forms to the manner of his own age 
 and his own dialect. The greater part of Barbour's language is still 
 quite intelligible to Aberdonians, but the majority of the words which 
 appear to them specially characteristic of north-east Scotland are
 
 The Making of our Mother Tongue. 
 
 words which can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon, though in literary 
 English of modern times they may have died out. For the characteristic 
 /"instead of wh \n fa " who ^' far " where" fati " when," /up " whip," etc., 
 Barbour gives no help. Nor is there any trace of the loss general 
 throughout Scotland of // in «//,/>«//, etc. Possibly these changes had 
 not yet come in, though the latcer, as we shall see presently, had cer- 
 tainly appeared in some situations soon after the date of the writing of 
 our existing manuscripts in 1487 and 1489. 
 
 A still larger body of verse, which has been wrongly connected with 
 Barbour, is to be found in the Legends of the Saints preserved in a 
 manuscript in the Cambridge University Library. That they are of 
 northern origin is shown by the fact that, of the only two Scottish saints 
 included, St Machar, whose fame is entirely connected with Aberdeen, is 
 one. St Ninian also, the other Scottish saint, though most closely con- 
 nected with Galloway, had his festival specially observed in Aberdeen, 
 as the Aberdeen Breviary shows. Moreover it is easy to see the reason 
 for the introduction of St Machar, though apparently it has escaped the 
 attention of the editors. The writer of the collection had been engaged 
 on the life of St Nicholas, who, though born at Patara in Lycia, was very 
 popular in many countries including Russia and England where a very 
 large number of churches are dedicated to him. The great church of 
 Aberdeen is St Nicholas, and the editor of the collection naturally passed 
 from the saint of the new to the saint of the old town— St Machar, to 
 whom the church preceding the present cathedral and the cathedral itself 
 were dedicated. As two passages of 21 and 34 lines respectively are 
 common to the legends of St Machar and St Ninian, it seems probable 
 that the original, whence the present collection was drawn, contained no 
 legend of St Machar, but that the local editor or translator inserted it as 
 interesting to his readers. As Dr Metcalfe, the editor for the Scottish 
 Text Society says, the dialect forms are not clear proof of origin in 
 Aberdeen, nor in any other definite area. We have, however, no reason 
 to suppose that this MS. is anything more than a fifteenth century copy 
 of an older collection, so that we have the same difficulty about transcrip- 
 tion as in the case of Barbour. There is, however, one interesting point 
 in the legend of Mary of Egypt (xviii.) which is the most carefully 
 finished of the whole collection. Here we are told (114S) that the monk 
 who conversed in the wilderness with Mary of Eg}pt. 
 
 leite |)al haly lyine ga by 
 
 lill |ial feiis lluir[sj(]ay come ncrc.
 
 Dr p. Giles. 33 
 
 The text of the second h'ne is uncertain. The MS. seems to read 
 iheris furday and Dr Metcalfe in his glossary reads feris fursday^ i.e.. 
 Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday. The wordy^rw, however, is pro- 
 bably a misreading of the word schir, regularly applied to the Thursday 
 preceding Good Friday, which this Thursday is. In any case, the initial 
 f of furday, if it may be trusted, when combined with other proofs, 
 strengthens the claim of Aberdeen to be the home of the collection, and 
 is the earliest example of this well known dialect change. 
 
 Between this early literature and the modern dialect literature in 
 " Broad Buchan " there is a gap of centuries. Before we come to the 
 plentiful literature of the last two centuries, we find that the peculiarities 
 of the dialect are stereotyped much in their present form. The earliest 
 known literary reference to the peculiarities of " Broad Buchan " is in Dr 
 Archibald Pitcairne's satire of " The Assembly or Scotch Reformation," 
 written in 1692. I quote from a note of Dr Joseph Robertson's in his 
 Collections for a History of Aberdeen and Banff (Spalding Club, 1843) p. 
 73, Pitcairne's volume not being contained in any library accessible to 
 me. But a friend has collated Robertson's quotations with a copy of the 
 original in the Advocates' Library, and assures me that the note is accu- 
 rate and contains practically all the phrases that imitate or parody the 
 " Broad Buchan." The remarks are put into the mouth of " Laird Little- 
 wit, a north-country man," and are as follows : " Cleense out the keerates, 
 that the gospel may be preached; let that be first deene." ... "I 
 jeedge it guid, and for sekeerity of the protestant religion, that na keerate 
 get leave to sett his fitt within this bigging." ..." But see the doors 
 be nae opened to him." . . . "Fat ha' they deen ? If that be true, 
 we are but a beik of bees without stangs." . . . " If we be nae ilher- 
 ways sekeered, bot be the claim of right, we've a cald coal to blau at ; 
 I wad anes see to sekeere the quintra frae free quarters, and a' the rest of 
 the abeeses mentioned in't ; and then we may expect sume guid o't ; 
 but, guid seeth, moderator, Sir William Littlelaw had nae a's wits about 
 him fan that claim was drawn, and sae's seen o't the day, for they say he 
 takes fits." . . . "A wast quintra believer, moderator, can teach 
 better than ony keerate i' the north, and they'll seen learn to gi' the com- 
 meenion." 
 
 Apart from Barbour's Bruce and the Legends of the Saints, the 
 poetry of the North East of Scotland has been almost exclusively lyrical 
 and, with some notable exceptions, even its lyrics have not enjoyed 
 more than a local reputation. Moreover, even the best productions in
 
 this kind, with rare exceptions, are uncertain guides to the dialect, 
 because there are manifest attempts to assimilate the language to that of 
 writers in the south of Scotland, and secondly, because, like other Scotch 
 versifiers, the authors never hesitate to use an English word more or less 
 disguised by spelling, or an English construction, where either appears 
 to be more convenient than the words or phrases of the native dialect. 
 These characteristics have become more accentuated within the last 
 century through the influence of Burns, though Allan Ramsay, as we 
 have seen, was a conscious sinner in this respect. How it affected the 
 best of Kuchan song writers can easily be seen in the difference between 
 John Skinner's Monyjtmsk Christmas Baing, which was written not later 
 than 1738, and his other pieces. Yet even the title of this is conventional 
 Scots, since the Aberdeenshire dialect had never had an ending in — ing 
 for words of the type of /^iz'/^^, which ought to be Ba'in. And among 
 the songs there is a well marked gradation in dialect quality. The 
 Ezvie u>i' the crookit horn approaches closely to the spoken dialect and 
 the comparative purity of dialect seen in the C/tristjn.-Js Baing ; Tulloch- 
 goruui has a greater English element in it 2iX\(^ Jolin of Badcnyon a still 
 greater than Tullochgorum. No doubt the difference is one rather of 
 writing than of pronunciation. Could we have heard those charming 
 daughters who, as Skinner writes to liurns in November, 1787, "being all 
 tolerably good singers, plagued me for words to some of their favourite 
 tunes, and so extorted those effusions which have made a public appear- 
 ance beyond my expectations and contrary to my intentions," we should 
 probably have found that often where the written word was Anglicised, 
 the spoken word was in no way different from that of other inhabitants 
 of Linshart. 
 
 A much more faithful representation of local peculiarities is to be 
 found in Ajax his speech to the Grecian Knabbs attempted in broad 
 Biichans by R. F. Gent, which was first published in 1742. The author 
 of this, which is a translation of part of Ovid's Metamorphoses Book xiii., 
 was a ]>uchan man named Robert Forbes who was a hosier in London. 
 The author, in a poetical sJiop bill printed at the end of the Edition of 
 1754, the earliest which I have seen, gives us this information himself: 
 
 I likewise tell you liy Uiis bill 
 That I do live upo' Towerhili 
 Hard by the house o' Robie Mill, 
 
 just i' the nuik, 
 Ye caniKi' mist when 'ere you will, 
 
 the sign's a buik.
 
 In Chalmers' life of Ruddiman we are told that the grammarian 
 and printer, when this translation was read to him "in the vulgar dialect 
 of Buchan, declared it the best, that had ever been made." Ruddiman 
 ought to have been a good judge, for he was a native of Boyndie in 
 Banffshire. That he meant what he said is shown by the fact vouched 
 for by Chalmers that the edition of 1754, which has no pt inter's name, 
 was printed by his firm and the glossary supplied by Walter Ruddiman 
 his nephew. 
 
 Robert Forbes is not much of a poet. If he had been, he probably 
 would have selected a more poetical author than Ovid from whom to 
 translate. Like most translators he is occasionally hampered by the 
 difficulty of putting his author into the vernacular. Thus he can per- 
 petrate a verse like the following which in its versification savours of the 
 Scotch version of the Psalms at its worst : 
 
 The slaik indeed is unco' great, 
 
 I will confess alway. 
 But, name Ulysses to it anes. 
 
 The worth quite dwines away. 
 
 It must be acknowledged, however, that this is also Forbes's worst. 
 Sometimes, as in the following lines, he is spirited enough, however little 
 poetical, though perhaps after a hundred and sixty years occasionally 
 not altogether intelligible to everybody even in Buchan : 
 
 Fan he spang'd out, rampag'd an' said 
 
 That nane anion' us a' 
 Durst venture out upo' the lone, 
 
 Wi' him to shak' a fa' ; 
 I dacker'd wi' him by mysel'. 
 
 Ye wish't it to my kavel, 
 An' gin ye speer fa' got the day, 
 
 We parted on a nevel. 
 
 More poetical, though less satisfactory as a representative of the 
 dialect, is the contemporary author of a book which once had a great 
 vogue in the north eastern counties of Scotland — Helenore or the 
 Fortunate Shepherdess. Alexander Ross was a native of Aberdeenshire, 
 having been born in the parish of Kincardine O'Neil in the year 1699. 
 For more than fifty years of his long life he made his home in Lochlee 
 on the Forfar side of the Grampians where, as long as strength lasted, he 
 was schoolmaster. According to Rev. Harry Stuart of Oathlaw, the 
 stor\' of Lindy and Nory, as it was familiarly named, was originally
 
 36 The Making of our Mother Tongue. 
 
 written in English and, by the advice of a wise friend, metamorphosed 
 into Scots before publication. If this be so, and there seems no reason 
 to doubt Mr Stuart's evidence, the poem must have been considerably 
 altered in the process and the introduction distinctly suggests that it was 
 m.odelled upon Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd. Dr Longmuir the 
 most careful of the editors of Helcnore has some doubts where to place 
 its dialect. " As to the language, it is said to be ' the broad Scotch,' 
 although it is neither the language of Ramsay nor Burns, neither is it 
 what is known as the Buchan dialect, which may be regarded as the 
 broadest in Scotland . . . . it is, in short, the ordinary dialect of the 
 people whom he has so successfully represented." This appears to mean 
 that Dr Longmuir supposed the dialect to have been that of the people 
 of Glenesk. If so the dialect then must have approached that of 
 Aberdeenshire more closely than it is said to do now. In the introduc- 
 tion Scota lays her command upon the bard in these terms : 
 
 Speek my ain leed, 'tis gueed auld Scots I mean, 
 Your soudland gnaps I count not wonh a prine. 
 We've words a-foulh, we well can ca' our ain, 
 The' frae them sair my bairns now refrain. 
 But are to my gueed auld proverb confeerin', 
 Neilher gueed fish nor flesh, nor yet salt herrin'. 
 Gin this ye do, and lyn your ryme wi' sense. 
 But ye'U mak friends of fremmit fouk, fa kens ? 
 With ihir injunctions ye may set ye doon. 
 
 The phrase fa kens} locates the dialect on the Highland border, for in 
 the other counties of Scotland wh at the beginning of a word does not 
 become/". But south of the Grampians the word for good is not gueed 
 as here but^Ui^', with the same modified u sound as in the Forfarshire 
 pronunciation of shoon, moon, etc. The pronunciation gweed, sheen, 
 ineen, is characteristic of the area north of the Grampians. On the other 
 hand though a very large number of northern documents employ the 
 pronoun thir, it is doubtful how far it was native and, if native, how early 
 it disappeared in the spoken language. In all probability it was not in 
 use north of the Grampians in Ross' lifetime. No less doubtful is it 
 whether he had any authority other than the literary quh- for a form 
 beginning with /"to represent the southern ivJioni, as in the line — 
 
 They wistna fum to send upon tlic chase. 
 
 Ross apparently had doubts on the subject, himself, for in the second 
 edition he removed most of the examples.
 
 We may conclude, in short, that the characteristic forms found in 
 Helenore belong to Aberdeenshire, but that a ]a.v^e part of the 
 languas^e is founded upon literary models, partly Scotch and partly 
 English. 
 
 Of more modern versifiers the most trustworthy is T/ie Goodwife at 
 Home, a poem which was obviously intended to illustrate the vocabulary 
 of north-west Aberdeenshire without reference to other linguistic char- 
 acters, but which nevertheless has not a single rhyme in it that is 
 drawn from southern Scots or from English. It was the work of Mrs 
 Allardyce, the wife of a former minister of the parish of Forgue. and as a 
 dialect source is full of interest. 
 
 If we turn, now, to our prose sources we shall find difficulties of a 
 similar kind. It is unnecessary to consider here the literary prose 
 already mentioned, of John Bellenden, because, though archdeacon of 
 Moray, he probably came from the south of Scotland, and because his 
 translations, being made for the benefit of King James V., would no doubt 
 in any case be as free as possible from dialect characteristics unfamiliar 
 to the King. Our documents are therefore more of a business nature ; 
 the records of the Courts and Councils of Aberdeen, Elgin, and Banff, 
 and the contents cf charter chests, so far as these records are not in Latin 
 but in the vernacular. The oldest piece of continuous prose known to me, 
 which belongs to the dialect area and is not connected with the City of 
 Aberdeen, is a document published by Cosmo Innes in 1848 in the Spald- 
 ing Club volume entitled " The Family of Kilravock." The document 
 which is dated " at Elgin, the xv dai of the moneth of Feueryere, the yere 
 of our Lord a thousand four hundir twenti and twa yere," is curious enough 
 in point of contents. It is a formal release given by Thomas, Earl of 
 Murray to John Hay, of Lochloy, from an agreement made by the Earl 
 with John's father that John should wed a daughter of the Earl. The 
 other terms of the original bargain are duly set forth, but upon represen- 
 tations of Donald, thane of Cawdor, that John desires to marry a daugh- 
 ter of his instead, the Earl magnanimously declares, " we relesche you, 
 dischargis you, and quite-clemis you for ever, giffand and grantand to 
 you our counsale, our licence, fredom, and gude will to spouse and til 
 haf to your wife, the douchter of the saide Donald, thayne of Caldor, 
 with sic fredomes, profitis, and rewardis, as war forspokin in our first 
 connandis, togidder with our help, suppouel, and manetenance in al your 
 lachful and leveful erandis in al tyme to cum." The whole document, 
 however, is couched in such legal phraseology, that it is clearly no work
 
 of the Earl's own hand, but in all probability of some lawyer churchman 
 unconnected with the district. 
 
 Of the numerous " bonds of manrent " from the north-east of Scot- 
 land the same may be said. The oldest of them, by which " James of 
 Forbes, sone and ayer apperande of my derrest fadir, schir Alexander of 
 Forbes, knycht " binds himself to be the man of " Alexander of Setoune 
 of Gordon," is amon<;st the Gordon papers printed in the Spalding Club 
 Miscellany, vol. iv., and dates from 1444. All such bonds follow a definite 
 model, no doubt derived from Edinburgh. Even after the lapse of more 
 than a century tiie form remains the same, as can be seen from other 
 documents. 
 
 In the records of the town councils there is greater freedom, or, as 
 a contemporary would probably have called it, greater carelessness. 
 From them we shall consequently be able to glean more of what was 
 actually uttered at the time. On the other hand the court records mani- 
 fest a legal rigidity, which is all the greater, the less the clerk knows. In 
 the literary language of the sixteenth century it was usual to put the 
 plural ending to adjectives as well as substantives. Thus the saidis 
 persouns would be the correct literary idiom. This was also adopted by 
 the law courts, from the Latin documents of which it may have originally 
 emerged, for there is no evidence that it was a popular idiom. No doubt 
 after the establishment of the Court of Session in 1532, the minor courts 
 modelled their phraseology upon that of the High Court. Hence in the 
 earliest court records of Elgin, which date from i.'540, we find the saidis 
 continually recurring. But it is clear that the clerk of court had no idea 
 what it meant, since he uses it of a single person, as when Agnes (or, as 
 he spells it, Angnes) Haldon appeared before the court for hitting 
 Katerine Falconer with a stone " and drawing bluid and als for the mane- 
 ssing of the saidis Katerine with ane rung " (Cramond, Records of Elgin, 
 i. p. 49.) liut in the very next line he writes " the said Katerine." 
 
 From the court and council documents we learn that from the very 
 beginning of the sixteenth centur\' changes had taken place in the sound 
 of certain syllables containing /. Thus in the Sheriff Court records of 
 Aberdeen, recently edited for the Spalding Club by Dr Littlejohn, we 
 are told in an entry for May 17, 1505, that " Andro Elison had stowin 
 ane gray hors," where we have already a still surviving form de- 
 veloped alongside ane before a consonant, which is a literary mannerism 
 never recognised in popular speech. Yet in an entry for 1503 we still 
 find bollis oj aits^ though now bows is as much part of the dialect as
 
 Dr p. Giles. 39 
 
 stoiuhi. But in 1543, at ]'^Ij];in, the clerk still wrote stollin, and it is 
 1576 before I note stowiit at Elgin. The stereotyped spelling bollis long 
 survived, and it is 1591 before the Town Clerk of Aberdeen, Thomas 
 Molliscne, annoyed at the negligence of his predecessors, informs us that 
 before 1380 there were no volumes of records but "scrowis on parchment, 
 . . . written in Latyne all, and for ilk year ane skrow." \\y then, no 
 .doubt, not only scroll but all similar words, had long been made to end 
 in ow in pronunciation. Yet Thomas Mollisone still writes all, though 
 that word, no doubt, in vulgar parlance was a\ and as early as 1509 we 
 find Rawblair for Balblair, and in 1541 William Haw (for Hall) at Elgin, 
 for which Pitcairn's Criminal Trials has a similar instance as early as 
 1501. In 1541 a certain David Gaw or Ga figures much in the Elgin 
 courts. His name is the same as the modern Gall. In the records of 
 both Aberdeen and Elgin, the greatest ingenuity is expended on the 
 spelling of the word tolbooth. In 1462 we still find it spelt in Aberdeen, 
 tolbuith ; in 1598 we find an entry " for mending the quheills and extre 
 of the towbuithe knok" (the wheels and axle of the tolbooth clock). In 
 1 540 the clerk of court at Elgin writer, toivbooth and tolhoiuytkt (the latter, 
 as he imagined, the aristocratic spelling) in the same paragraph, and on 
 the next ^^z^^e: towbozvyth. It is clear that by the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, the word was far on its way to the towbeeth of later times. 
 
 The writing of/" instead q{ wh — or, as Scotch scribes wrote \t, guh 
 — was obviously regarded as vulgar, and is not easy to find. One some- 
 what doubtful example of/" for th we have already found for the fifteenth 
 century in the Legends of the Saints. The same word is found in the 
 records of Elgin for March 4, 1541 : "the next lawday eftir Schyir 
 turisday." Walter Cullen, reader in St. Nicholas Church of Aberdeen, 
 in the second half of the sixteenth century, generally shows his scholar- 
 ship by writing his Chronicle of Aberdeen in the literary dialect. Hut 
 in 1576 he notes that "on Furisday, the sewint day of October, it blow 
 {sic) at the soithest of woynd and weytt, that the lyk was not sein in 
 mony yeris afor." This writer regularly uses the literary quha and quhair 
 for the relative pronoun and conjunction, although the relative in all 
 Scottish spoken dialects is really at, which is also found in the literature 
 occasionally from Harbour downwards. A typical example of English 
 written as Scots is Burns' phrase "Scots wha hae," which in the Huchan 
 pronunciation ought to be Scots at hiz. This is one of the Norse peculi- 
 arities of the dialect which Northern English shares. It is only when 
 Walter Cullen has been excited by seeing his sovereign, King James VI.,
 
 that we ascertain that the dialect form for where began with an/": " The 
 fyrst tyme that I, Walter Cullen, reder of Aberdeen, sehit (not Scots, 
 but well-known to Eni^lish visitors in the mouths of rustics who wish to 
 talk " properly "} his graice, was the xx day of the said monett of June, 
 1580 yeris, and that at tlie woid of Fetteresso, he beand at the huntis 
 with sertane of his lordis ; and thaireftir I paist to Uunnottar,/"t/z> I 
 beheld his grace at his supar, quhill he paist to his chalmer." The 
 spelling, which uses arbitrarily u, v, and w for the same vowel or 
 consonant, makes it impossible to trace the history of the characteristic 
 V in vra?igy vratck, vritig, vricht, and many other words, where w and r 
 are found in combination. 
 
 Even at an earlier time we learn from the records of Elgin that the 
 plural oi calf w^'s, cair, the modern car, which is interesting as a survival 
 of the original English plural, found with a second suffix in Wiclif's 
 calver-en. 
 
 These examples will show how it is only from the occasional negli- 
 gence of our northern scribes that the historical development of the dialect 
 can be ascertained. They generally take the greatest care to conceal its 
 characteristics. In the smaller townships less care was exercised than in 
 the larger. Hence in the latter part of the sixteenth century more can 
 be gleaned from the records of Elgin than from those of Aberdeen, in 
 the seventeenth more from those of Banff than from either of the other 
 more important burghs. From the end of the sixteenth certury 
 onwards the writers of prose literature steadily eschewed, so far as they 
 were able, all dialect peculiarities. In the eighteenth century interest in 
 the dialect was awakened and Robert Forbes the author of the Speech to 
 the Grecian Knabbs presents us in A Journal from London to Portsmouth 
 with a specimen of such prose as Buchan farmers used about 1700, for it 
 is pretty clear that Forbes's language represents a somewhat older period 
 than his own. Only a few of the words he uses are unintelligible to the 
 older generation of living Buchan men, and he preserves a considerable 
 number of words and phrases that were often on the lips of the country 
 folk though but seldom committed to writing. 
 
 In the nineteenth century the dialect has found a much larger 
 number of interested enquirers and most of the local newspapers have not 
 unfrequently excellent specimens of rural colloquies. But by far the 
 best representation both of the dialect and of rural manners is to be 
 lound in the works of the late Dr William Alexander — Johnny Gibb of 
 Gushetneuk and Life among my ain folk. Wherever dialect is studied
 
 Dr p. Giles. 41 
 
 scientifically these books are recognised as the standard authority for 
 Aberdeenshire. And justly so ; for though, in imagination, George 
 Macdonald attains higher flights than ever William Alexander attempted, 
 and can write admirable Aberdeenshire Scots when he pleases, he cannot 
 be trusted to confine himself to the dialect. The objection which was 
 made to Christopher North's Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, that 
 " all his elders were fit to be ministers," applies with even more truth to 
 George Macdonald, and consequently his characters wander into lofty 
 regions, whither the pawky and " hame ower" Aberdeenshire dialect is 
 unable to accompany them. 
 
 In a paper already of great length it is impossible to catalogue in 
 detail the characteristics of a dialect so peculiar and so different from 
 literary English as is the Broad Buchan. To the southron both sound 
 and syntax are alike strange. Is a sentence like " The quynie coudna 
 be on-grutten," intelligible anywhere outside the north-east corner of 
 Scotland? "The little girl couldn't help crying " seems, to a Buchan 
 man, but a faint reflection of the meaning. The history of this curious 
 usage of the past participle is still unwritten. Even in the great Dialect 
 Dictionary recently completed, though a similar phrase occurs amongst 
 the examples, I have not been able to find that any attention has been 
 devoted to the idiom or any explanation offered. Other usages of the 
 negatived past participle can be traced back to the sixteenth century, 
 but this was more colloquial and therefore harder to trace in documents 
 of any kind. Yet it is highly desirable that these and many other points 
 of dialect usage should be collected and recorded before it is too late. 
 The dialect vocabulary is rapidly disappearing ; now that the Education 
 Department has appointed an itinerant instructor in English sounds, 
 presumably the next generation will lose the dialect pronunciation 
 also. 
 
 Of external influences upon the popular language, there is little 
 room to speak. As has been already said, the ornate and rhetorical 
 phraseology of Middle Scots literature never reached the common folk. 
 Yet even their language was not without a sprinkling of words taken 
 over from French or from Latin. The influence of France, as represented 
 in a book like Francisque Michel's, is greatly exaggerated, many of his 
 derivations of common words being obviously wrong. But the influence 
 of France in refinements of the dinner table is visible enough in servit, 
 ashet, jigot of mutton and others. Of these the first occurs in the 
 inventory of the rags and tatters that Bishop Gordon's servants did not
 
 42 The M'aki?ig of our Jlfoiher Tongue. — Dr. P. GiLES. 
 
 think it worth while to carry off in 15 19 — " Item vij seruiatis of lynning, 
 of ]iame iiij. rififin." 
 
 The influence of Latin was greater rather than less as compared with 
 French. For boys, secondary education, as it would be called nowadays, 
 consisted almost entirely in a good knowledge of Latin. Till well into 
 the nineteenth century, the University awarded its entrance scholarships 
 practically upon the ability to turn a piece of English into idiomatic 
 Latin. Even in side schools a show was made of talking Latin till at 
 least the second quarter of the nineteenth century. As late as 1830, a 
 worthy who kept a little school at Techmuiry, and taught his pupils in a 
 " sleeved waistcoat," expected them to ask permission in Latin to leave 
 the room. Licet exire was the formula which probably comprised most 
 of his Latin. A decade later the schoolmaster of the Cabrach was found 
 reading the Schoolmen by the light of a fir candle. To the influence of 
 these old schoolmasters, true successors of the old scholars of the middle 
 ages, not a few words in Buchan are owing. The word dominie itself, 
 which is widely spread, is only the vocative oi doviimis used correctly in 
 addressing the schoolmaster, for the dominus or B.A., had to give 
 practical proof of skill in teaching and punishing too, before he was pro- 
 moted to the rank of 7tiagister or M. A . Hence where the Donmne is found, 
 generally is to be found the pandie also, for pande (sc. vianuni), the 
 dominie's exclamation preliminary to administering castigation. But the 
 Latin words in dialect come not from this side of learning only. In 
 Buchan the English name of the plant coltsfoot is altogether unknown ; 
 it is tussilago or tissilago and nothing else, though this name seems to 
 have escaped the dictionaries. 
 
 Of the old Keltic words, ^j " grandchild " is one of the few which 
 have reached the literature. In the spoken language there is a consider- 
 able number, though they form but a small proportion of the total 
 vocabulary. 
 
 But this paper is on the making of the mother tongue and not its 
 present day condition, to which if time and health, and above all the 
 patience of the Club allow, it may be possible someday to return.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 The Refennictx are to Pafjc.s. 
 
 Origins — Tndo-Germaiiic People, i. — Gorm;m.s and Kelts — Grimm's 
 Law, 2, its probable cause, 3. 
 
 Early History— Julius Csesar, 3— Tacitus' Account of the Caledonians, 
 4 — The Picts, 4-6 — Effects of Roman occupation, 6 — Picts, Scots, and 
 Saxons, 7-S — The Saxon Settlement, 8-g — Keltic Survivals, 10 — The 
 conversion o\' Enjfland, /'j.— English dialects, 11— Frisian and Ncrihumbrian, 
 ih. — The Kuthwell Cross, 12 — Other English dialects, 13— The Danes, 14— the 
 Norman Conquest, 15 — Revival of the English toiig-ue, 16. 
 
 Scx^TLAND — Spread o\' the English tongue— Keltic in Buchan, 18— Normans 
 and Flemings, 19— Causes of change from Keltic to English in Buchan, 20 — 
 Robert the Bruce and the Comyns, ih.—I)i(jli.-< and Snddron, 21 — Northumbrian 
 and Scots, 22 — Earl)^ Scots prose — from tiie Border, 23— from Aberdeen, 24 — 
 Hampole's Northumbrian, (V>. — its characteristics, 25— VViclif and Purvey's New 
 Testament and the Scots version compared, 26— Characteristics of Scots, 27 — 
 Middle Scots and later changes, Allan Ramsay and Lord Kames, 28 /. — 
 Dialects in Scotland, 29 -Aberdeen, the Buchan dialect, t,o — Barbour, 4^ — 
 Legends of the Saints, 32— Beginning of later characteristics of Buchan dialect, 
 33 — Pitcairn s references to the dialect, /'/;. 
 
 Later Diali-:ct Lithratlre.— John Skinner, 34— Forbes, Ajax his speech 
 to the Grecian. Kualibt<, ih. — Ross, He/enotx, 35— Its dialect, 36— Mrs Allardyce, 
 37 — Early prose from the North-Eastern counties, ih. — Elgin records, 38 — 
 Changes of—//, ih. — Change of quh to f, 39— Of wr to rr and loss of /r, 40 — 
 William Alexander, «7>— George Macdonald, 41— Syntax of negatived passive 
 participle, ih. — External influences, French, Latin, Gaelic, 41-42. 
 
 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 p- 
 
 6, 
 
 ine 4, read occupation. 
 
 p- 
 
 ■24. 
 
 line 12 from bottom, ./or wingej 7-ead wingez. 
 
 p- 
 
 -^4. 
 
 line-n from bottom, /o>- |)at ere read l)ay ere. 
 
 p- 
 
 •^4. 
 
 line 5 from bottom, read concyens. 
 
 p- 
 
 24, 
 
 line 2 from bottom, 7'ead afforces.
 
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