Studies in Lowland Scots

Front matter

STUDIES IN LOWLAND SCOTS

printed by william green and sons edinburgh

August 1909

The Dawn

STUDIES IN LOWLAND SCOTS

I.—

An Introduction to the Gothic Version of the Gospels by Bishop Wulfila and its Connection with Lowland Scots

The tourist on the Rhine, looking down from the deck of his steamer as it breasts the tawny stream, will frequently pass in his course a slow procession of barges deeply laden with coal. If of an inquiring turn of mind, he will learn that these hail from the Ruhr, a tributary that enters the great river near Düsseldorf, the valley through which it flows enjoying a brisk trade in coal-mining and its allied industries. Three centuries ago, in an obscure monastery of this side-valley, in the little town of Werden, an inquisitive German—one Arnold Mercator—rummaging among the dusty tomes of its library, perhaps in search of plunder for his master, the Landgraf of Hesse, discovered a manuscript of rare beauty. As the Lutheran Reformation was then making havoc of monastic stores, the prize was removed for greater security to Prague. It had been written by some careful scribe in characters of silver on a purple or mulberry-tinted parchment. The letters of a few words at the beginning of each paragraph were in gold. How it had come to Werden no one could tell, but experts are agreed that it must have been made in Italy towards the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, i.e. during the rule of the Goths under Theodoric the Great. It was, indeed, a version of the Gospels in the language of the Goths. Toward the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, Count Königsmark, having captured Prague, carried off the MS. to Stockholm. Thereafter it had further adventures, having been for a time in Holland, but it was ultimately restored in 1669 to the royal library at Upsal, where it still remains. It contained the Gospels in 339 leaves, of which 177 are preserved, and is known as the Codex Argenteus. While in Holland it was printed for the first time at Dort, 1665, by Francis Junius, well known to literary students as the first to give the Anglo-Saxon poem of Cædmon to the world, just as Milton was meditating his great epic. Junius prepared types which were a close facsimile of the Gothic characters. These types he afterwards presented to the University of Cambridge, where they are still preserved.

What was the origin of this unique relic? The early Church historians throw some light, unfortunately obscure, on its author. His name is variously spelt, but is best known as Ulfilas or Ulphilas, the Græcised form of the genuine Gothic Wulfila or Wolf-ling, showing the common diminutive suffix—ila as in att-ila, little father (atta, father); barn-ilo, bairnie (barn, child); maw-ilo, maiden, girlie (mawi, girl, Ger. Magd, our Maisie), the talitha or damsel, addressed to Jairus' daughter. The parents of Wulfila had been carried off from Cappadocia, near the end of the third century, in a raid of the Goths into Asia Minor, and formed part of a small colony that appear to have introduced Christianity among their captors. Born 311 A.D. he became at an early age a leader among his countrymen, was much connected with Constantinople, where he was held in honour, was, after having been a lector or reader, consecrated bishop at the age of thirty by Eusebius of Nicomedia, and, after having held office for forty years, he died at Constantinople about 381. Wulfila was in the first great schism of the Church—he was an Arian—and had come, along with other bishops, to Constantinople on the last occasion, to procure from the Emperor the promise of a new Council to settle the faith. The rival party of Athanasius ultimately triumphed, and the name and work of the good missionary suffered in consequence, and speedily sank into obscurity. But in his own age his reputation was of the highest; he wrote in Greek, Latin and Gothic; and was spoken of as the Moses of his devoted people, having led his persecuted tribesmen through the Balkan passes and planted his colony of Goths in Mœsia, the modern kingdom of Bulgaria. Byzantium was then the centre equally of the culture and philosophy of ancient Athens as of the Christian faith, and in the midst of it all had this intellectual Goth been reared. His pupil and successor, Auxentius, has left a brief but touching account of his beloved master, reminding us of that more complete picture that has come down to us, under similar circumstances, of the last moments of his old English parallel, the Venerable Bede.

Wulfila is said to have translate the entire Scriptures, with the exception of the Book of Kings. The reason given for this omission is that, knowing too well the warlike tastes of his coutnrymen, he hesitated to lay before them a part of the sacred narrative that spoke so much of battles and bloodshed. One might easily in these days fail to realise the full import of his great achievement. Here is a rude tribe, but little removed from barbarism—to the Greek and Roman undoubted barbarians. Open though they might be to the ennobling influences of Christianity, what is to be said of the courage, originality, and confidence in their future that led their bishop to let them hear the Gospel story in their own vulgar tongue? Ever since the beginning of literature there has existed a well-marked distinction between the language of the vulgar and that of the learned—the lewed man and the clerk. The latter is the exclusive privilege of the educated, and specially of the priestly class; the former is the vernacular, the speech of the verna or house-hold slave, that which children may pick up from a nurse, but which they will be half-ashamed of soon as they cross the vestibulum of the grammar school and learn the language of books. Knowing the influence of our Authorised Version on the development of modern English, we can better appreciate the wisdom and foresight of Wulfila. That his efforts failed to effect a similar result for his native Gothic was due to the cruel destiny of his people, a destiny over which he could have had no control. A somewhat bewildering chapter in Gibbon, and a half-contemptuous aplication of the name in art, alone preserve the memory of the Goths. Obscure Teutonic tribes—Alemanni, Suevi, Balti, Belgians, Franks, Lombards—these survive in some form, but the name of the Goth is well-nigh effaced from the map of Europe. Let me hurriedly glance at the history of this people, our own kith and kin, as their language shows them to have been.

The races that have played the chief part in the history of Europe fall into two distinct groups—the Latin and the Teutonic. The physical configuration of the Continent explains the division. Imagine oneself in a balloon in lat. 50° N., and what will be seen by the eye whose horizon is created by the imagination? Southwards a great inland sea bathed in the golden light of a sub-tropical sky, lofty snow-clad mountains shut out the arctic blasts, long rugged spurs push their giant arms far into the blue waters, lovely valleys skirt the shores or lose themselves in the deep recesses of the foot-hills, winding bay and receding creek bring the sea-breeze that fills the social sail and tempts to a larger trade and a wider knowledge. Northwards, on the other hand, stretches an almost sub-arctic sea, broken into two irregular halves by peninsulas, its shallow waters washing dreary sandy shores, on every side a vast plain covered for ages with a dense forest through which mighty rivers pour their sluggish waters into storm-tossed seas, and ever overhead a changeful sky, now vexed with the drifting cloud-rack, now hid behind a pall of murky fog. Southern mountain-land, nothern plain—these have ever been the respective homes of the Roman and the Teuton. The Goths swooped down upon the eastern peninsula, the Vandals upon the western, where the name Andalusia still marks their footsteps, while the fierce Viking Ber-serkr sailed his dragon prow through Ægean seas, but in time they lost their identity amid the orange groves and beneath the blue skies of the south. Equally marked is the contrast between the pleasures, the business, and the thoughts of the two races. South of the Alps the unit of national life is the polis of the urbs—a busy city-life, quick-witted, eloquent, artistic, thronging agora and forum under the shadow of each rock acropolis. In the huge, formless, northern plain, on the other hand, man is lost in the world of mingled wood and water. His clearing in the forest is his homestead, the centre of social life. Round it he plants his prickly hedge and calls the whole his tun (Ger. zaun, a hedge), the most general Teutonic place-name. In Gothic tains is a branch of the thorn-bush, tain-jo the woven basket that received the fragments after the feeding of the five thousand. Here the family and not the bazaar is the social unit.

In the ancient world the Roman and the Teuton met again and again in conflict. The Empire held its own for a time, when across the Rhine and the Danube, securely flaunted the eagles of the legions. But decay set in and the Danube became the scene of danger. By the middle of the third century the Goths overran the whole country between the Baltic and the Black Seas. Round the Carpathians they swarmed, seized Dacia (the modern Wallachia), crossed the Danube, and in 251 they met in battle and slew the Emperor Decius. Then, sweeping over the Balkan Peninsula, they crossed into Asia, ravaging as far as Trebizond and Cappadocia. But in 269 they suffered a check at the hands of the Emperor Claudius, and for ninety years there was peace. Those north of the Danube came to be known as East Goths, those on the south side as West or Visigoths. Ermana-ric, or Herman-ric, made of the former a powerful dominion that had ultimately to succumb to that terrible scourge of Eastern Europe—the Tartar Huns.

Meanwhile, the West Goths were torn by internal dissensions. A patriotic and apparently conservative party under Athana-ric was opposed to the Christian and Arian party under Frithigern, with whom Wulfila sympathised. The latter, to avoid persecution, led a colony through the Balkan passes and settled within the Empire in what is now Bulgaria. This peaceful movement was, however, thwarted by cruel treatment that resulted in a rising in which the Emperor Valens was slain at Adrianople in 378. His successor, Theodosius, made terms with the Goths, and many of them joined the legions. In subsequent Gothic history great names appear;—Alaric, the hero of national independence and unity, strong enough to sack Rome itself; Ataulf, the loyal ally and son-in-law of the Emperor Theodoric, who fell in battle with Attila, the Hun, on the Frankish plain of Chalons; and, finally, Theodoric the Great, the protector of the peaceful Roman against the Gaulish Odoacer, and Emperor of the once more united Western Empire. Therefore it is that in the Italy of the fifth century we find the last reliable traces of the Goths—the Codex Argenteus, other fragments of the Wulfilic translation discovered as late as 1817 and preserved at Milan, a Gothic calendar, and a business document, the owner of which lived at Arezzo, near Naples. In Italy, however, the Goth was but a temporary invader; in Gaul and Spain he held his own for long, ultimately succumbing to the Frank and the Moor.

On what is known as the Bucharest ring is a Runic inscription consisting of three genuine Gothic words—Gut annôm hailig—dedicated to the Goths' treasures. Each of these words occurs in the Wulfilic Gospels. From this we learn that the Goths called themselves Gut-os, in the singular Guts; to the classical writers they were the Gothones. There seems to be a real confusion between the sounds of ū and ō. Wulfila speaks of the Epistle Du Rumonim to the Romans, and calls Rome Ruma. Shakspere, too, rhymes Rome with doom and groom, and in "Julius Cæsar" Cassius says,—

Now is it Rome, and room enough When there is in it but one only man."

The Wulfilic form survives to this day in the name Roumania. The fuller name for the Gothic people is Gut-tiuda. The

Grimm's Law of Consonantal Change.

latter part of this term is the German national name Deutsch for Deut-isch, in Gothic Thiud-isk; it is from a root widely diffused in all the Indo-European tongues, to which, of course, Gothic, as a Teutonic speech, belongs.

The branches of the Indo-European family fall into three distinct group:—I. Sanskrit, Old-Persian, Greek, Latin, Keltic, Slavonic; II. Low German (Frisian, Dutch, Norse, Scotch, English); III. High German. Of these the first to appear in Europe must have been the Keltic; the outstanding physical features of our continent—mountains, rivers, valleys—bear Keltic names. The last to appear, and the lowest in the scale of culture, is the Slavonic. The affinities of these tongues have long been established, and the principles involved are formulated in the well-known Grimm's Law. The most striking illustrations of the law are to be found in such familiar and widely-diffused words as numerals, pronouns, and terms for relationships, common natural phenomena, domestic animals, and the like. The law affects merely the nine mutes, as arranged in three sets, viz.:—Hards, Aspirates, Softs, the initials of which form the mnemonic H. A. S. Any word common to the three groups stated above will change, as far as its mutes are concerned, from group to group in the order of the groups and the order of the sets of mutes. These changes can be showns diagrammatically, thus:—A circular disc, divided into three arms corresponding to the three groups above, is made to revolve from left to right within a circle or outer rim, which latter is divided into three compartments corresponding to the three sets of mutes—H. A. S.

The typical illustrations of the law in the three positions of the disc are these:—

1st position.—Group I. | Hard.

Sanskrit, Græco-Latin, Keltic, | K. T. P. | Ca p i t (is) (Latin).

Slavonic. | T res ( „⁠ ).

Group II. | Aspirate.

Low German. | Kh. Th. Ph. | H au b i th (Gothic).

| | h. f. v. | H ea f o d (Anglo-Saxon).

Th ree (English).

| | Th reis (Gothic).

Group III.

Soft. | H aup t (German)

High-German. | G. B. D. | H aup t (German).

2nd Position.—Group I. | Aspirate. | Θ υγάτηρ (Greek).

„ II. | Soft. | D auhtar (Gothic). D ochter (Scotch).

„ III. | Hard. | T ochter (German).

3rd Position.—Group I. | Soft. | Fa g us (Latin). Fa g us (Latin).

„ II. | Hard. | Bo c (Anglo-Saxon).

| | Beech (English).

| | Bo k a (Gothic).

| | Bo k a (Gothic).

| | T wo (English).

„ III. | Aspirate. | Bu ch (German).

| | Bu ch (German).

We should not expect too much of this law, for it applies merely to a few consonants, and even here there are many exceptions. High-German has been, for instance, immensely influence by Low-German, and has accordingly often changed its original hard lip mute p for b. The Celt regularly reverses the process. This latter must itself have been very imperfectly individualised before the great break-up of the common stock. The law, indeed, is very imperfect as regards German, not only in the lip, but also in the guttural series. In the middle or dental potion, however, the groups are clearly distinguished. Each tongue has, in these respects, as in others, developed on its own lines, and produced idiosyncrasies due to the most powerful agent in linguistic variation—dialectic growth. Of far more value are the laws regulating the internal development of each language, and all that gives it character and individuality. The consonants are but the hard unyielding bones of a word; the vowels, on the other hand, body forth those subtler influences of tone, accent, and quantity that form the cover of flesh, complexion, and feature, differentiating the individual, the tribe, and the nation. True progress in philology lies in a mastery of phonetics as applied to the vowel-system of a language, and especially of its dialects.

Our own language, that is to say, English and Lowland Scots—for the latter is but the Northern or Northumbrian variety of the former—is more nearly related to Gothic than any other Indo-European speech, brought as it was to our shores by the English folk, those Low-German tribes that had spread westwards to the dreary Frisian shores when their brothers, the Goths, roamed towards the banks of the blue Donau, to waste their strength in a life-long struggle with the mighty power of Rome. The study of these Gothic remains therefore constitutes not merely a unique field of linguistic research, but is of practical value in helping to a right appreciation of the history of our own tongue in its English, much more in its Scottish aspect.

In all probability Wulfila reduced his native Gothic to writing for the first time, and for this purpose constructed his alphabet on a basis of Runic, Greek and Latin characters. As to which of the three formed the primary basis, scholars are not agreed. German writers, whose views are endorsed by Mr. Douse, assign this position to the Runic alphabet, while Prof. Skeat discusses the whole point without the slightest reference to Runes. The question is a difficult, but not very momentous one. Written symbols of every kind are peculiarly liable to change. We all use the same conventional set of cursive characters, and yet in practice these assume endless varieties of form. Further, it is more than likely that both Runic and Greek, i.e. Phoenician characters, diverged from a common source. Runes form an undoubted relic of Teutonic antiquity. Widely diffused over northern and western Europe, they acquired a mystic force from their extensive use in charms and divination. They have not come down to us in connection with literary remains, but merely in incised inscriptions on stones, crosses, weapons, &c. The word rune (Go. runi and A.-S. rûn) means a mystery, not a letter, for which Wulfila uses boka (cp. Ger. Buchstabe). In O.Eng. and Sc. the verb to roun or round means to whisper, and its cognate Lat. rumor properly means a whisper, while in its Sanskrit form—bru—the word means to speak, and is very commonly used. It may here be noted that Runic letters are formed almost entirely of combinations of straight lines, generally in threes. All writing is in a variety of printing or graving that has become more and more cursive. Thus s, which has now its familiar serpentine form, shows, as a Rune, three lines en zigzag, as in the oldest form of the Gr. sigma. Again, the Runes had names attached to them, showing their pictorial or hieroglyphic origin. Thus the first is f = faihu, the Go. cattle ; Sc. fee, Ger. vieh, just as in Heb. al-eph is the ox. O is ôthal an heirloom, inheritance, not extant in Gothic, but in Orkney applied as udal to a form of land tenure, and as udaller familiar to readers of Scott's "Pirate." The Norsemen in Ireland made it O'Dell. T again is Tius (Tues-day), the Northern Jove, wielder of the thunderbolt, which indeed the character symbolises, for it is nothing but the Government broad arrow. Wulfila significantly eschews the use of this heathen name. But that his people must have been familiar with Runes and their names, is believed to be proved from a curious Viennese MS. of the ninth century containing the Gothic alphabet, with the recognised Runic names for the letters. Not many of the Runes, however, were adopted by Wulfila without modification under Greek influence. A is more Runic than Greek; b, i, r, are common to both systems. The Rune u seems clearly repeated in Gothic, yet Prof. Skeat regards it as a Lat. u inverted. He is equally determined to ignore Runes in the case of o, which symbol reproduces a Rune very fairly, yet some see in it Gr. omega, and Skeat the inversion of a Gr. contraction for ou ȣ. Some of the symbols are certainly Greek:—g (hard), e, k, l, n, p, w (upsilon), and ch, used merely in such proper names as Christos. Wulfila does not give ch its Runic nasal force, for which he doubles g as in Greek, e.g. briggan, to bring. From the Latin alphabet he borrowed, it is thought, d, h, m, s, t, and f, of which the two first are not at all Runic, but m is equally Runic and Latin, though with a different phonetic value, and s, t, and f can be easily traced to Runes. Gothic j (as y in yes) Skeat gets from Lat. g, yet this, too, looks like a modified Rune of similar value. There remain the characteristically Gothic kw, hw, and th. The first Mr. Douse regards as a Eune for qu, used as a number = 90, but Prof. Skeat the Lat. u. Hw cannot be accounted for; but Prof. Skeat considers it Gr. theta, while to explain the thoroughly Teutonic th-symbol he resorts to the far-fetched device of inverting Gr. phi. The Anglo-Saxon thorn-letter closely follows the Runes. Lastly, Wulfila uses his letters as numbers, hence we know their sequence, which is that of Greek, not Runic, where the alphabet was known as futhork from its first six letters, viz., f, u, th, o (for a), r, k.

It is interesting to know the phonetic value Wulfila probably attached to his symbols. This we ascertain from two sources, a comparison with the general Teutonic vowel and consonantal system, and a study of Wulfilic transliterations of Greek proper names. His vowel system is:—

Short | ǎ as in manna = Sc. man.

„ | ai for ĕ as airtha = earth.

„ | i as fisks = fish.

„ | au for ǒ daur = door.

„ | u as suns = soon.

Long | ā, rarely used.

„ | ê as gêbun (gayvoon), they gave.

„ | ei (ī) as weis (weece), we.

„ | ô as wôk, I woke.

„ | û as suts (soots, Ger. süsz), sweet.

The Greek transliterations for the most part bear out these values, but it is probably that Wulfila found his vowel system different from the Greek. It seems strange that, having adopted Gr. eta as a symbol, he should have given it the long sound of upsilon, and chosen to use ai for the short sound, thus—Baiailzaibul = βεελζεβοὐλ, Gaiainna = Γἐεννα, Gehenna. Similarly, o is always long, and au represents its short sound, as Apaustaulus, ἀπόστολος. These short sounds ai = ĕ and au = ǒ, are almost restricted to those cases in which these vowels are followed by r or h. A somewhat similar disturbing effect of r is still seen in clerk, Derby, and less correctly in servant (sarvent), and sergeant (sargent). The combination ai and au elswhere have the values of Ger. Kaiser and Haus repsectively. Long i is ei = ee in seen, but the transliteration varies, Go. ei representing Gr. ι, ει, and η, e.g. Aileisabeth = Ελίσαβετ, Jaeirus = Ιάειρος, and Atheineis = Αθἥναι. The consonants do not call for much remark; g has always its hard sound, j, which has now its palatal sound under the influence of French, has the sound of y in yes; p seldom appears in Gothic words except in the middle position, and b has the force of f or v between vowels. In course of time the Go. consonants have become greatly altered. Thus Go. s is often Eng. and Ger. r e.g. raus, a reed = Ger. Rohr, dius, a beast = deer, auso = ear, huzd = hoard, gazd, a goad = yard, haus-jan, to hear. This change is common in the declension of Latin nouns. Go. b is f in laub = leaf, giban, to give.

The guttural series offers the greatest difficulty to the modern Englishman, but none at all to the Scot. To the latter, as to the Goth, the guttural is familiar. Nowhere has he any tendency to alter its face value. His "heech" is as decided as the German's hoch or the Goth's hauh-s. His bocht is the Gothic bauhta, pret. of bugjan, to buy. The Gothic bairhts (bright), nahts (night), are followed in his bricht, nicht. Even where the guttural is strengthened by a following dental, the older h has been squeezed out in English, though preserved in the Scotch, as in waihts, a thing, Eng. wight, and whit for an older wiht, compared with Sc. aacht = ae-waiht, property. The guttural suffers in compounds as nought and not, for Go. ni-whait, compared with Sc. nocht and nochtie (paltry). the strong German nicht becomes in dialects nisht and nit. Dutch makes the positive form of Go. waihts into iets and negative niets, with which compare Sc. hait and "Deil hait" (Devil a bit!). Scotch writers of the seventeenth century often put a t after the guttural as publict for public. This may explain an occasional corruption of the original guttural as in the bauths, deaf, heard in Sc. bauch, applied to anything dulled, such as ice that is not keen. The Gothic phrase bauth wairthan is said of the salt that had "lost its savour, or become bauch (wersh)." Gothic distinguishes where Eng. and Sc. fail equally, as liu-hath = light and leihts (not heavy). In Sc. these words show a strong guttural as in-lichten for Go. in-liuhtjan (en-lighten). But the most interesting example, common to Gothic and Scotch, is tiuhan, to tow, tug, and its variant tahjan, to tear or rend, which Prof. Skeat further explains as expressing action of the teeth. Taw is used in connection with the preparation of leather, in which primitive process, among the Eskimo at least, the teeth of the women play a part. Perhaps we have here a side-light on the culture of the Goths. The primitive guttural, lost in Eng. tough, from tiuhan, is heard in the A.S. tóh, and Sc. tyuch and tchuch. A similar survival is e-nyuch (enough), compared with Go. ga-nohs, sufficient.

But the strongest changes appear, as is natural, in double consonants, for here we encounter a potent factor in phonetic change, human laziness. To the favourite initial guttural the liquids r, l, w, or v attach themselves with persistence. In these cases the guttural has a tendency to disappear in favour of the weaker parasitic sounds. This feature may be illustrated in hrugga, a staff (Sc. rung), hrot, a roof (O. Fris. hrof; Du roef), hrukjan, to crow—"suns hana hrukida," soon the cock crowned. Scotch sometimes uses this strong initial as in Go. hropjan, to call, for which we find not only roup, an auction, but hraep, sometimes heard as thraep, to argue—"He thraepit it doon my throat." Hropei, a call or harsh cry, is seen in Sc. roopie, croaky, croupie. Another instance is hrains, pure, Ger. rein and our rinse. Hrishjan, again, to shake, passes through A.S. hrysian to our "rush." A derivative is Sc. reeshle, rustle, a stronger form of rush, as in "I'll reeshle yer riggin" (back Ger. Rücken). Of the loss of h before l our laugh for example, for it is Go. hlahjan, though the Sc. lach better preserves to original guttural.

A favourite inital in Gothic, sk, has generally been softened in cognate tongues to sh, Ger. sch. The South African Taal consistently preserves the hard form where the home Dutch softens it, as in Taal skap, sheep. We see this change in skreitan = shred, but contrast Sc. screed, scart (scratch), skiuban = shove, skura = shower, Sc. shoor. When Christ stilled the tempest Mark says, "wrath skura windis mikila," a muckle shoor of wind arose. As we usually find in Scots, s has the hard sound regularly in Gothic, where un-weis, unlearned, un-wise, sounds quite like Sc. on-weiss. The English cousin often sounds cúss-in on a North-country tongue. A striking example of the hard s is where Matthew, telling of the stilling of the tempest (viii. 26), says, "jah warth wis mikil," and there was a muckle wheesh. If followed by i, it must be softened, as siujan (Sc. shoo), and sow = saian (Sc. saw). The Gothic laus with s hard has exactly the Scotch sound of loose, though the sense is somewhat different, viz., empty, of no effect. The difficult th is often changed to d, as Go. maurthra = murder, sinthan, go, wander = send, hlethra = ladder, but Sc. lether, sneithan, to cut = Sc. sned, snod, Ger. schneiden, balths = bold, Sc. bauld, kiltheis = child. In Sc. th is often heard for Eng. d, e.g. shoother = shoulder, poother = powder, bethel = beadle (Lat. bedellus).

English characteristically weakens initial hw, in contrast to Sc. and the original Go., into w, as hwaiteis, wheat, Sc. hwait; hwairpan, to throw, warp; hwairnei, brains, Sc. harns, Ger. Ge-hirne. Whet preserves its original sense of cutting in Sc. as, "to white a stick." It has several forms in the Gospels. Wulfila shows a striking metaphorical usage as when the crowd "hwotidedun" blind Bartimæus for addressing Jesus, rendered by our "rebuked." The guttural in Latin is, according to rule, the hard k, as in quis, Sanskr. kas, compared with Go. hwas, Sc. whaw, who. In this and its derivatives, on the other hand, the guttural disappears in English. Our which is a good illustration of such changes—Go. hwi-leiks, Sc. whi-lk, compared with which or witch. A countryman, sauntering near the Strand, on asking a passer-by, "What street is this?" was answered, "Wych Street." This, meaningless to him, made him repeat the query, whereupon the Londoner testily said, "W'y, Wych Street, of course," and walked on, doubtless mentally forming his own opinion of Doric dulness. On the road to Calvary the mob railed on Jesus, "wagging their heads," withondans hauhida seina. This withon, to shake, is for an older hwithon, as seen in Lat. quatere, to shake. As expressing a rapid movement, whid, whidding, withon has many representatives in Scotch. Among the powers promised by the Master is that of treading on serpents, "trudan ufaro waurme," where the word has its original sense of dragon, "monster of the prime," as in the Welsh cape, christened by the Norsemen Great Orme's Head. The original is hwaurms, which again is the Sansk. krimi, and this, through early Arab traders, has given us carmine and crimson.