Scottish life and poetry /by Lauchlan Maclean Watt

Front matter

10192123

WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

I. Early Life

PAGE n.

PEOPLE AND TONGUES ....

m.

THE GAEL .

IV.

V.

VI.

WYNTOUN, PORDUN, HUCHOWNE, ETC. ,

VII.

JAMES I .

vm.

IX.

GAWAIN DOUGLAS .

X.

SIR DAVID LYNDSAY ....

XI.

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETS .

XII.

BALLAD POETRY .

XIII.

THE REFORMATION AND POETRY .

XIV.

XV.

JACOBEAN POETRY ....

XVI.

ALEXANDER, DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN, AND

THE

SEMPILLS .

xvn.

xvrn.

WITCHCRAFT .

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETS : THOMSON,

ETC.

• viii CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGB

xxm. HOME, FALCONER, FERGTJSSON, ETC . 315

XXIV. LOGAN, BRUCE, AND THE SCOTTISH PARAPHRASES . 334

xxv. women’s voices . 349

XXVI. SUPERSTITIONS AND SURVIVALS . 370

xxvn. LIFE IN COUNTRY AND TOWN . 385

xxvm. burns . 393

XXIX. SCOTT . 420

XXX. NINETEENTH CENTURY . 441

APPENDIX I. — TALES, SONGS, AND DANCES MEN¬ TIONED IN THE COMPLAYNT OF SCOTLAND . . 495

APPENDIX n. — SONGS AND DANCES MENTIONED IN

COLKELBIE'S SOW . . . . . . 497

APPENDIX III. — MANUSCRIPTS REFERRED TO . . 499

BIBLIOGRAPHY . 501

INDEX . 503

ERRATA

Page

1 1,

line 13.

For

" Tuetonic ” read “Teutonic.”

12,

“ Ercshe ” read “ Ersche.”

last.

“ hates ” and "scorns” read “hate "and “ scorn."

121,

1 1

" comsummated ” read “consummated.”

132,

1 1

1 1

" Douglas ” read “Angus.”

162,

3°-

1 1

“ leider ” read “lieder.”

1 So,

1 1

“bolder of Bordest ” read "boldest of Border."

186,

1 1

1 1

“ at ” read “ it.”

220,

“ Duke ” read " Earl.”

23°.

1 1 f 1

261,

1 1

“Sixty” read “thirty.”

283,

1 1

“ Camphell ” read “ Campbell.”

292,

<3-

“Coire Cheathaich" read “ Ben Dorain.”

337,

1»

1 1

“ London ” read “ Loudon.”

347,

1 2.

1 1

“ordained” read “licensed.”

352,

1 f

1 1

“ fled ” read " fell.”

1 1

“thoughts” read “thought.”

1 1

»1

“ her ” read “ its.”

1 1

,, “ phenomena ” read “phenomenon.”

Insert “441” under Campbell, Thomas, in Index.

Chapter I Early Life

Glimpses of the early life of the people may be had through consideration of their homes. Shelter from weather, security from foes, contiguity to fishing-grounds or beds of shell-fish, the existence of cover for the constant warfare on the forest monsters, the vicinity of quarries for weapons, guided the selection of the site of what not infrequently in far later days became perhaps a populous and important city.

The folks who lived so are the objects of wildest conjecture. We know what they lived on, and with what instruments they slew ; but little more, except that they must have frequently endured wretched misery. The able hunter, or the strong man with a weapon, either fashioned by himself or wrung from the grip of some other, alone could reckon on being fit to secure the best shelter and the skins required for a measure of comfort and clothing. Yet they were not utterly brutes. From some of the caves have been recovered what were doubtless masterpieces of primitive art, giving us a glimpse of our tawny prehistoric hunter, in his smoky home, by the light of his flickering fire, scratching, on antlers and tusks of deer and mammoth elephant, figures of beasts of the chase, with lines of real beauty in them. These are proofs that even in Cimmerian darkness, light, beauty¬ seeking, had arisen for some. Life must have been a sort of sleepless grappling scuffle with the shadows of fear that inhabited low marsh and cavern, lake and forest, and, above all, with man’s persistent enemies — disease and man himself, his fellow-creature and continual foe.

A

After the Iron Age had dawned many caves were enlarged and made more commodious. Teviotdale has excellent specimens of what would seem to have belonged to a com¬ munity of tribes, who extended at one time over a district stretching from Midlothian right through the territory of the Teviot and the Jed.

Sea-caves were not so common for dwellings, as they could only have been safely used as such when the sea had withdrawn, and the beach-level modified its configuration.

The oldest forms of entirely artificial dwellings remaining in Scotland are, of course, identified with “ the Piets,” a convenient name for all the unknown who moved in the mists of unrecorded time, so that almost everything whose origin is folded in uncertainty used to be attributed to this mysterious race, and thus considered to have been at once fully explicated. These dwellings were both above and below ground. The former are better known, perhaps, as beehive huts. They were built of dry stone on a very primitive principle, suggested, doubtless, by the caves and pit-house or “ weem,” the stones overlapping till they met at the top. They are to be seen in the Arran Isles of Ireland, and one was discovered in Uist. Windowless and un¬ chimneyed, they were simply artificial caves reared by men above the ground. The “ weems,” or earth-dwellings, were just the beehive process reversed in position, and are to be found widely scattered. The specimens at Kildrummy, in Aberdeenshire, and at Skaill in Orkney, are amongst the most notable anywhere. They were often explained as having been the remains of siege-works, but archaeology has set them in their proper place amongst ancient dwellingplaces of men. It must have been altogether a strange life, with many wild elements of weirdness.

Perhaps the most remarkable type of prehistoric home is that which is known as the crannog, or lake-dwelling. The idea of such dwellings was really an interpretation and adaptation of Nature’s own example. It was evident to all that an immeasurably superior security was to be found on an insular position, and that for purposes of defence it v^as desirable, where necessary, even to create an island for such a purpose. Judging from results it wrould seem that this was done by setting adrift rafts of brushrvvood, and, when these stranded, by constructing a composite mass

EARLY LIFE of stones, beams, and logs. Stout piles were then driven in around the edge, and the spaces between these filled up securely ; then, on this island-platform, a hut community clustered, secure from everything but the treachery which might one day disclose to a1" foe the Avindings of the connect¬ ing causeway, or the dreadful conflagration which man’s mysterious servant, fire, might awaken, destroying all their work right down to the water’s edge. That the latter was the fate of most of the crannogs is proved by their remains ; and archaeology has great reason to be thankful that it was so, for the inhabitants evidently left in scrambling haste, scattering their choicest properties as they fled. Those dwellings do not belong all to one period. They began in the age of stone, and lasted till the age of bronze. They are sharply divided, according to what has been found on their sites, into those of the stone and those of the bronze age.

There is a form of early dwelling which, like the crannog, is essentially a stronghold, and around which much mystery is enfolded ; in fact, there is no ancient dwelling of which there are so many specimens, with, at the same time, so little known about them or the people who inhabited them. They are the round towers, or “ brochs.” There are, roughly, seventy-five in Shetland, seventy in Orkney, seventy-nine in Caithness, sixty in Sutherland, thirty-eight in Lewis and Harris, thirty in Skye, and two in Forfarshire, while Perth, Stirling, Midlothian, Selkirk, and Berwickshire have each a specimen. They differ among themselves only in position and in magnitude, but their plan and construction are the same, just as if one man had planted them at the same time. The general form and features are a broad - based circular edifice of considerable height, the outside walls sloping in towards a point half-way up to the top. In some the lower wall is solid for about eight to ten feet from the base, except for the door and entrance passage, in which there is often a guard-room. From the passage a rude stair within the wall ascends to the second stage ; thence up to the summit the structure is simply a double-walled funnel, with chambers between the walls, and narrow stairs leading upwards. The inside wall encloses a courtyard open to the sky. There could never have been a roof, as the outside wall is windowless, the only lights being loopholes left between the stones, and looking into the enclosure or courtyard which the encirclingwalls created. The door was probably a slab of stone, while the other entrances leading into the upper chambers were so constructed that a man would have to stoop in entering, so as to lay himself open to an awkward reception if his company were not desirable. The lintels are monster monoliths, making one wonder how the people who moved in these contracted chambers could have raised them to where they lie.

Perhaps no better design for security against primitive warfare ever was made. The broch was impervious to fire. It was too high to be rushed. The entrance passage often had another inner door, in the event of the outer being forced. It was almost impossible for this to happen, as the whole upper structure, being dry stone, was an arsenal of dreadful weapons, which had only to be pushed over by the defenders to annihilate any who were underneath, and, even were the enemy so far successful, they would find themselves at the bottom of a well, exposed to absolute extermination. The brochs were formerly much higher than now. In 1800, or so, Dun Carloway, in Lewis, was forty feet in height. Pennant, in 1776, says one of the Glenelg brochs was, in his time, thirty and a half feet high, and seven and a half feet had just been removed. By many of the brochs elsewhere you find ruins of later buildings and attached fortifications of a later date, but at Glenelg there are the remains and traces of five, practically within the same field, as if a com¬ munity of chiefs had settled down together, or a sort of John o’ Groats family, else there must have been continual bloodshed in that strath.

The best of the brochs is that of Mousa, in Shetland. It is about forty-five feet high, and has been higher. It is twice mentioned in the Sagas, and its rooms and courtyard have been touched by some romance. Egil Skalagrimson, the warrior poet Norseman, tells how Bjorn Brynulfson, fleeing from Norway with Thora Roald’s daughter, was wrecked on Mousa, landed his cargo, and wintered in the broch, where he married her, and thereafter sailed to Iceland. Then the grim rooms hung with skins, and the slab floor strewn with rushes, were doubtless merry enough ; while the courtyard glowed in the watch-fire’s light, and the ruddy men of the sea drank, sang, or squabbled, with stories of the

EARLY LIFE daring deeds ol' Northmen in between. And, again, when Erl Erlend Ungi eloped with Margaret, the widow of Maddad, Earl of At.hole, and was besieged in the broch by Earl Harald Maddadson, doubtless brave days made the old sad place resound once more. It is silent now for ever, dreaming, by the waters, of the long dead who reared it on the shore, and the wild bird that builds its nest within its crevices is the only thing of life it holds ; but, if the stones could speak, much of the story of our beginnings would probably have to be re-written and re-told.

The relics found in these have been very varied. In the broeh of Ousdale, near the Ord of Caithness, was found a cist covered with a slab, and containing ashes, charcoal, and clay. In cleaning out the chamber at the foot of the stair a human skeleton was discovered, buried head down¬ ward, built in, and covered with stones and earth. In the courtyard of the broch at Kintradwell a well seven feet deep was discovered, and on one of its steps lay a stone cup, as if just laid down yesterday from a lip long ages dust. It makes your heart stand still ; and you can scarce forbear looking over your shoulder to see if some grim warrior, parched with thirst, be not behind you in the dark. This broch had remains of later inferior buildings around it, and, under these, ten skeletons were unearthed in exploration.

The relics found in these buildings reveal a stage of con¬ siderable civilisation. The people who lived in them kept flocks and herds, grew corn, and ground it with little handmills, spun and wove, had ornaments of gold, and worked in iron and bronze. All kinds of stone implements have been found, from mallets to cups, horn and bone combs, buttons and bodkins, not many instruments of bronze or iron, but pottery in plenty, and all kinds of food traces. The remains of Roman ornaments and denarii found at Scapa, in Orkney, point to nothing. Over four thousand of these denarii have been found in Scandinavia, evidently carried thither by Northmen themselves in later times.

It must have been a strange life, in peace or war. In the latter, the people around probably forsook their wattled huts, and crowded in to defend the broch ; the long nights had song and saga to beguile them ; and love and hate weie there — many a sad heart throbbing behind the dry-stone walls, many a proud soul breaking after the fight was over ;

or, when the mist, chilling and with the roar of the sea behind it, came up to the door of the tower, where some would wait in vain for the hearts that were drifting on the skerries. The Norseman swept them from the shores somehow, and took their places, and they left only scraps of their life for us to guess at, as a garment dropped in flight may tell those who find it that some one had passed that way before them.

But, squalid and hard though the lot of prehistoric man was in life, his death lifted him into a totally different plane. His dwelling - places were, when not rude cavern or stone hut, of the flimsiest nature ; his comforts were nothing, yet, when he died, a place was set aside for him which, for grandeur of simplicity, eclipses everything of similar kind. He had, if noteworthy in any way, a chamber of huge slabs built for him. His ornaments — frequently trophies, doubtless — and his weapons were laid beside him, just as the Indians or other savages were wont to do. Often these were broken, in order that the spirit of them might be free to go with his spirit wheresoever he went. Then over this chamber of sleep earth and stones were heaped, till a conspicuous landmark was raised. Or a circle of huge rough monoliths was reared around him, with curious lintels of massive boulders here and there, to be left standing through earth’s enquiring ages unexplained and unexplaining, or till as much as could easily be handled should be carried away to build dykes or byres for the farmer whose holding was on the corner of the moor where those lonely derelict columns brood to-day.

Chapter II

“To know ourselves ” is best achieved by a study of the life and poetry of our people.

One must, however, be extremely careful of the entangle¬ ments caused by hasty conclusions, the frantic guess-work of ethnology, and confusing views of history ; from which you find perpetuated to-day such statements as that such and such districts are Celtic because the people of them speak Gaelic, or Saxon because Gaelic is not understood there, usually, of course, at the date of the writer himself ; whereas language has often little to do with race at all, after long lapse of time subsequent upon settlement. For example, you find in America thousands of negroes, English-speak¬ ing and following European habits of thought and living, whose boast of being Anglo-Saxon is a broad joke indeed. At the time of the siege of Mafeking, Baden-Powell was taken as the representative of Anglo-Saxon resolute dogged¬ ness, while his names mark him out distinctly as Cymric, and his race had learned that dogged pulse of frontier warfare, standing dourly in the mists, fighting in De-Wet-like cam¬ paigns against the English Edward. The fact is, that we are so mixed as a people that perhaps no greater historic fallacy has been perpetuated than the designation of us as the Anglo-Saxon race. Anglo-Celtic would be nearer the mark of truth, and, if we would be fully described, Anglo- Cymro - Dano - Celtic would most truly cover the Scot at any rate.

Dr Samuel Johnson said, “ Languages are the pedigree of nations.” Like many other aphoristic utterances, this is not true universally, and in Scotland it does not hold at all. “ For not only is English spoken throughout the

Highlands by people to whose ancestors it was an alien tongue, but the Gaelic language itself is the mother-tongue of many whose physical characteristics plainly shew that they come of widely different stocks.”1 We have ourselves seen whole parishes undergo the change from one language to the other, and in places where, only a few years since, the children were playing in the one tongue the present generation are playing in the other. In 1830 Gaelic was the absolute vernacular of Braemar, while in 1876 it was preached in four Parish Churches in Caithness, and in seven congregations of the Free Church in that county. It does not follow that a race changes its history or its pedigree according to the uniform it dons.

The natives of the outer Hebrides are regularly spoken of and thought of as the purest Celts, “ because Gaelic is their language ” ; whereas the Highlander himself calls those islands Innse Gall, “ the islands of the strangers,” from the fact that they were largely peopled by the Norsemen, and held by Norway till after 1226. Recently an account of the life of George Ross, who founded a little kingdom of his own in the Cocos Islands, in the Indian Ocean, appeared in a newspaper. He was born in Orkney, so to the writer of the article he must be “ the Viking,” “ the child of the Norseman,” and the like ; a thing which no Ross could ever be, for his race could not be anything other than that of the Celtic clan of his name, and he must have been sprung from some settler in the Islands, a thing easily explained, Orkney and Shetland having been in historic times the happy hunting grounds of Scots adventurers, as the melancholy traditions of the native people still can testify, and the lingering dislike of the “ Scotchman ” among the older generation proves. So, also, a friend of mine, writing about a district from which Gaelic had died out about two generations ago, the people now speaking a broad strong Doric, said : “ Their speech proves them to be of the old Teutonic stock,” which it might also have done in regard to the children of the Italian ice-cream vendor in any Scottish village, or the children of a Polish miner “ with a name like a sneeze,” but a vocabulary and accent picked up in the parish school !

The Scots are a mixed race, but the predominant trend of thought and sympathy is Celtic, in the main. The masterful 1 Mackenzie’s Short History of the Highlands.

Scandinavian seized, held, and dominated districts of the land. Yet, though he changed much of the local situation, he did not change the blood of the folk. He gave to the kerns whom he conquered his own name as the tribal title, as did the Macleods, the ^Macaulays, Sinclairs, and their set, but inside the clan thus formed there were sept names and clanlets who kept and keep still their own stories and their own designations. The great clans were most frequently strong co-operative confederacies, rather than a homogeneous unity sprung from a common source.

It is important and useful to consider the poetry of Scotland, its characteristics and its history, if by any means we can arrive at a glimpse of ourselves as a people.

There is a literature of song and legend in the northern land which was there before the Saxon and the Norman came. Gaelic was the language of the Court until Malcolm Canmore’s Saxon Queen, in the eleventh century, put it out of fashion ; although John Macdonald, known as “ Iain Lorn,” was pensioned by Charles II. as the first and last Gaelic Poet-Laureate in Scotland. He was bard of the Keppoch Macdonalds, and lived through the reigns of Charles I., Charles II., James, the stirring times of the Revolution, and the reign of William and Mary, dying in 1710, when Anne sat upon the throne.

There was, even after Saxon language and poetry had become the fashion at Court, a solemn national recognition of the Celtic origin of the nation. Thus, at the corona¬ tion of the Kings before Alexander III. it was a part of the ceremony that, as the monarch was set upon the mystic Stone of Destiny, a Gaelic bard stood forward, and, in the ancient tongue, recited the genealogy by virtue of which the new king had right to rule. As the old language faded from the low country before the spread of the Saxon tongue, the minstrels would have to wed new words to the time-old strains. The gift, however, remained with the Celtic wanderer. In the books of the Lord High Treasurer of James IV., as preserved in the General Register House of Edinburgh, we find records of payments for music and ballads to “ Martyn Clareschaw.” Martyn appears again as “ Martyn M‘Bretne ” just after “ Blind Hary,” both having sung at the King’s command in 1491. In March 1498, at Dumbarton, just within the misty Highland line,

“ the man that playit to the King on the elarsha ” received fourteen shillings. The “ clareschaw ” here is the old High¬ land harp, the real national instrument, superseded in later days by the warlike bagpipe.

“ Irish ” was the adjective used to describe the Gaelic people and their language in Scotland as late as the eighteenth century. The Scottish people themselves, however, did not call their native Gaelic “ Irish ” until the fifteenth century. “ Lingua Scotica ” was the designation. Reginald of Durham, writing in 1164, described Kirkcudbright as being in the “ terra Pictorum,” and speaks of the language of the people there as “ sermo Pictorum.” George Buchanan, writing about Galloway in his History , in the time of 'Queen Mary, tells us that a great part of the people of that country used their ancestral speech, up even to his day. Dunbar, in his famous Flyting with Kennedy, taunts his opponent as “ Ersche Katherene,” or Irish robber. The word, as applied to Scottish Gaelic, was undoubtedly intended to convey depreciation, and its use survived till a very late period, instances occurring frequently in the edicts of the General Assembly, though there, of course, without any such meaning. This is responsible for many errors, as when, for example, an ignorant Irish enthusiast claims Highland melodies as belonging to his country, because in the eighteenth century they were described as “ Irish,” meaning, of course, “ Gaelic ” in popular phrase. Kennedy, replying to Dunbar, says, as if it were natural, owing to racial difference :

‘‘'Thou luvis nane Erische, elf, I undirstand,

Bot it sowld be all trew Scottismennis leid ; language

It vves the gud langage of this land.”

Thus, as late as the sixteenth century in Pictish Galloway the language of the people was known to be Celtic.

Lyndsay, in his argument against Latin being exclusively considered the sacred tongue, points out that it was quite clear that the Scriptures should be translated into Latin, owing to concomitant circumstances of environment :

“ Had Sanct Jerome been borne intil Argyle,

Into Irische toung his bukes had done compyle.”

Barbour, Dunbar, Blind Harry, and Fordun show that they take the true Scottish vernacular to be the Gaelic tongue. Thus Barbour writes :

“ This wes the spek lie maid, perfav ;

And is in Ing^js toung to say.”

Blind Harry, also, in his Wallace, says :

“ Lykely he was, inanlik of contenance,

Lyke to the Scottis be mekill gouernance, except Saiff off liis toung, for Ingliss had he nane.”

Dunbar, speaking of Chaucer, styles him

Of our Inglisch all the lycht.”

Fordun, in the Scotichronicon, mentions that in Scotland there are two tongues, namely :

“ Scottish and Tuetonic. The tribes speaking the latter language inhabit the sea-coasts and the lowlands ; but those who speak the Scottish inhabit the mountains and the remoter islands.”

Wytoun deliberately makes the statement as to the language in which he thinks he is writing :

“ Allsua set I myne intent,

My wyt, my wyll, and myne talent.

Fra that I sene had stories sere In cronnyklys (juhare thai wryttyne were,

Off Latyne in-tyl Ynglis sawe.” diction

Thus he follows the usage of Gaeldom, where, till this day, even the most Doric song of Burns is spoken of as an “ English ” song.

It is not a little remarkable, however, that when Alexander, the last of the purely Celtic dynasty died, the popular lament for him was in Scoto-English or lowland Scottish :

“ Quhen Alysandyr oure kyng was dede.

That Scotland led in luue and le, love and law

Away wes sons off ale and brede, plenty

Off wyne and wax, off gamyn and gle :

Oure gold wes changyd into lede,

Cryst borne into Vyrgynyte Succoure Scotland and remede,

The aggression of Teutonic culture along the eastern territories north of the line of the “ Scots ” meant conflict, and was the real cause of such a terrible slaughter as took place at Harlaw, which is not to be taken so much as a struggle between Celt and Saxon as between the old regime and the new. After the wars of . independence a sense of Scottish nationalism came into the land ; the deepening hate for “ the auld enemie ” made the people later on in the sixteenth century take and claim the name “ Scot,” which they had hitherto applied to the dwellers of the mountain territory, and the word “ Scottish ” as being the vernacular of the southern and Teutonic districts, and no longer that of the Gael, which now was styled “ Ercshe ” or “ Irish,” with, as we have seen, an accompaniment of scorn by those whose language had become that of the Norman-Scottish Court. The difference of language became in this way, though wrongly, equivalent in popular judgment to a distinction of race. What this signified may be seen in The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, where everything that can be cast into the form of a sneer on this account is flung in the teeth of the western bard.

About 1450 the language of the Scottish writers is known for critical purposes as Early Scots : from 1450 to 1620, it is known as Middle Scots. The influential elements which brought about the changes thus denoted cannot be exhaustively noted, as it is impossible to sift and weigh the individual contributions of Scandinavian and Norman elements. It was a slow movement, the ebb and flow marks of which were not definitely recorded. The early Middle Scots was leavened by the influence of Chaucer ; it was the medium of James I., IJenryson, and Dunbar, and their school, and was an artificial literary creation, whose aim was to enrich and elevate the language with “ aureat terms.” It by no means represented the actual vernacular of the people. The direction of progress was, however, towards the popular tongue, and Lyndsay, especially, was probably the pioneer in this. In his works, with very few exceptions, the vocabulary wTas such as every person could understand, perhaps only too clearly. This was the secret of his power in his own day, and certainly gave him that hold upon the Scottish people which did not slacken till the great vernacular revival in Robert Burns,

In Scotland from a very early period we find the poet’s craft a recognised and honoured one, and we see men of culture writing cultured verse in cultured form, so far as their time permitted them — a literature, in fact, of the Court, as well as a literature of the p'opulace — word-music and wordpicture of the hall, stories of world-renowned heroes, as well as the rude, heart-shaking lays of the peasants’ huts, full of rough foray and fray in local envies, and the hates of rival clans. Sometimes an odd fragment of the poet’s scorn sticks and stings in the enemy’s heart. In 1296 Edward of England attempted, with strenuous bitterness of onslaught, to take Berwick, but the Scots drove back the foe and burned some of his ships. And then they flung from town to town shafts of scornful song, a verse of which is preserved in Fabyan’s Chronicle :

“ What wenys Kyuge Edward e with longe shankys To have wonne Berwyk all our ontliankys ? in spite of us

Gaas pykes him, let us

And when he hath it Gaas dykeis him.”

After the noble manifestation of national liberty at Bannock¬ burn in 1314, the same voice spoke, as in the scrap preserved in the Chronicle of St Alban s, and in Marlowe’s Edzvarcl the Second :

“ Maydens of Englande, sore may ye morne lover.s For your lemmans ye haue loste at Bannockysborne,