There have been plenty of novelists since Scott who have used a more or less artificial Scottish dialect with great effect, but the originator was Scott, and the spirit of the aristocratic Scott, as exemplified in all the passages I have selected, was as generous as that of the democratic Burns.

In making any "suggestions of a positive character " to the sympathetic Scottish Education Department, I hope that the two names will be kept side by side.-I am, &c. J. PARKER SMITH.

THE BIRTH OF THE VERNACULAR CIRCLE.

The appearance of the Vernacular Circle as an active adjunct to the Burns Club of London is a matter of the most interesting significance, although some of its critics have regarded its inception as an accident and its entire existence as an unrelated episode. Even at that, however, it must pique curiosity to know how it came about that the movement should have started in London and not in Scotland itself. So far, however, from its being freakish accident for Cockayne to become the cradle of the movement to preserve our vigorous vernacular, it was, as I shall show, most natural that this should be the case.

The origin of the Vernacular Circle was first mooted by Mr. William Will on 1st March, 1920, at a Committee meeting of the London Robert Burns Club, of which he was President. A lifelong student of Burns, he had been struck with the necessity of arresting the decay of the vernacular, clearly foreseeing that, if nothing were done, Burns's Doric verse would cease to be understood. Time and again it had been suggested at the birthday festivals of the Club, notably by Mr. John Buchan and by Mr. Charles Murray ("Hamewith "), that the Club was the proper instrument to effect the purpose, while Miss Mary Symon of Dufftown, a master of the art, writing privately to Mr. Will, had often urged that the Club should take action.

It was this reinforcement of his own vision which made Mr. Will propose the formation of the Circle to his Committee, which unanimously agreed to the transmission of the proposal to the annual meeting on 7th June, 1920. A preliminary printed circular on the subject found so much support among the members and

several public men and women that the annual meeting, on the motion of Mr. Will and the seconding of Mr. John Anderson, unanimously urged full steam ahead.

The reference, as the Parliamentary Commissioner would say, suggested several methods of approach, such

as

(1) Raising money for the purpose of founding at each of the Scots Universities an annual prize for a poem in the Scots vernacular. This, indeed, was attacking an ancient discourager, for professors or alumni of the Universities from the days of David Hume and Sir John Sinclair, through Beattie and Bain to Professor J. H. Millar, coiner of the term "kailyard school," had urged exactly the reverse line of action.

(2) Prizes for pupils in elementary and secondary schools who excel in reading or singing the vernacular.

(3) A course of lectures as part of the Club's regular winter programme, thereby keeping its interest alive between festival and festival.

In the five years that have elapsed, the movement has rapidly gained ground, not merely because of the propaganda work of the Club, but also because the proposal came at what used to be called a psychological moment. It captured and canalised several streams of tendency which had been rising apparently from nowhere, and allowed to dissipate themselves. Not only so, but the desire to preserve the vernacular is merely one current in these streams of tendency, the main purpose of which is to preserve what is best in our individualities as a people. Nor is it merely our national individualities which are in question: it is the individualities of all nations, which Mr. Wilson summed up in his historic phrase "self-determination." Confronted by attempts to impose standardisations, practised so intensively on the very amenable Teuton, the individual man and the individual nation are automatically setting up a species of resistance in a

hundred and one ways: and in this country at least that resistance, so far from invalidating the Commonwealth, actually strengthens it.

This tendency applies with peculiar force to our island and to the offshoots even when transferred to huge continents, for the variations of our scenery, climate, and conditions are far greater than in any similar area in the world, all of them reacting on the dwellers therein. We cling to these differences, not from any doctrinaire conservatism, but because we cannot do otherwise. A man brought up in the bleak Mull of Cantyre obviously cannot be the same as a man reared in the Garden of Kent. Faced by different conditions, he has to function differently, and, so functioning, he develops the lines of thought and modes of expression which distinguish him from his neighbours.

One of the most noticeable features is in the matter of expression which we call language in the main, and dialect in its particularisms, and that is extremely well marked north of the Border, though, of course, it exists in the different counties of England.

Enthusiasts for the vernacular are frequently faced by two questions. In the first place, we are told that Scots is nothing more or less than old north English. Secondly, we are asked, “Why, if language is such an integral part of environment, is it necessary to preserve it deliberately?" We may answer the first point by noting that, even if Scots is old north English, it has continued to exist in its transplanted place far more vigorously than in its own countryside a phenomenon duplicated by French in Quebec and by many phases of spoken, though not of written, American. But it not only retains much of its original form. It has by constant association with a differing type of mind—and all language is merely the audible expression of thought -assumed a character all its own, drawing on many sources foreign to its original habitat.

Again, it is not denied that dialect tends to change— that is the inherent quality of life—and that it is subject to tendencies to become "standardised " by intercommunication through newspapers, newspapers, gramophones, broadcasting, and other processes. But that, we feel, means the loss of personality, and this sense of loss, by an understandable paradox, is never so acute as among Scotsmen who have to live furth of Scotland and who begin to think of the advantage of their origin by the very fact of their removal from its sources.

That is really why it came about that the Vernacular Circle was formed, not in Scotland, but in London, and why its ideas have been warmly taken up by Scotsmen in the colonies, who are still further removed from everything that stands for home in the ultimate sense.

In one important respect London enthusiasts for the vernacular had a great advantage: they had not to waste any time in combating the idea, prevalent in some social circles in Scotland, that Scots is "vulgar." In passing, be it noted that the word, taken in its original sense, is all against the theory that the vernacular has reached the vanishing point and is merely the preserve of some patriotic pedants. Of course, in London, which has an expressive vernacular of its own, immortalised by Dickens, but flouted and avoided by the "best people," Scots is not "vulgar" in any sense of the word. On the contrary, it is a rarity, and, as such, it forms a passport for those who can use it to some purpose. Instead, therefore, of having to argue the point, the Vernacular Circle was free to study Scots from many angles. It examines the principle and practice of the vernacular in the shape of lectures from specific experts, followed by discussion. It illustrates the vernacular in action in the shape of recitations and songs; and it forms a rallying point for everybody interested in the subject. For example, we have had scholars like Dr. Peter Giles of Cambridge, Sir James