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Wilson, and Professor Craigie reading papers on the history of the language. The delight of Doric in the diminutive, very marked in the east coast, has been dealt with by an amateur like myself. The phonetics of the Doric have been expounded by Mr. Lloyd James, of London University, whose handling of pronunciation is an ideal subject for broadcasting, which has freely availed itself of his services. The literary side has been illuminated by Mr. John Buchan and his sister-an excellent mimic-and by Professor George Gordon, of Oxford. We have had lectures on the musical side of the vernacular, for musical settings have done a great deal for its preservation. The spiritual side of it has been demonstrated in the case of a characteristic writer like George MacDonald, the centenary of whose birth gave his son-in-law, Sir Edward Troup, a topical opportunity for dealing with this important side of the question, for language is, as I have said, a mirror of the mind.

There is, indeed, no end of aspects which can be made intensely interesting to an audience in all stages of culture, from those who have a general enthusiasm for the preservation of our best idiosyncrasies to those who are attracted by its philological evolution and its significance in the history of literature.

The mere number of vernaculars, with their endless variations, presents varied points of view even in Scotland itself, where one district has little or no knowledge of words used in another part of the country; for example, the use of the word "linder" for an undervest in Kincardine and Aberdeenshire, the substitution of "f" for "wh," as in "fat" for " what," and so on. In short, cross-words puzzles are not in it with an attractive survey of our own old words. Glasgow, for example, has a great field of its own in examining its vowelisation and its aversion from consonants, with the reasons (the influence of Gaelic?) for the same. The whole subject, in fact, is absorbing when once undertaken.

Which leads me to say that there are influences at work in Scotland-which at first was either antagonistic or indifferent to the subject-making for co-operation with the Vernacular Circle in London in taking the matter in hand or preserving the Doric, and for calling a halt to the insensate bludgeoning of the vernacular by myopic prigs. It is particularly significant that the Burns Federation, under the inspiring leadership of Sir Robert Bruce, has become enthusiastic, recognising that a studied knowledge of the vernacular is a direct tribute to Burns and an incentive to those who wish to carry on his tradition with something approaching the impress of literature, for the Circle is doing, intensively and co-operatively, what Burns did in a purely personal way when he captured many floating songs, passed them through the clarifying alembic of his own mind, and gave them a totally new lease of life. Indeed, the Vernacular Circle means to give a new lease of life to the Scots Tongue, as a powerful adjunct to the English language, which long since has had the good sense to borrow of our virile and expressive best. Glasgow has wisely taken the cue, and it is to be hoped that her example will be followed in all the big towns of Scotland.

J. M. BULLOCH,

Chairman of the Vernacular Circle,
Burns Club of London.

A PLEA FOR THE VERNACULAR.

Those with any intimate knowledge of Sir Walter Scott are aware of his intense patriotism and of the strenuousness with which he opposed any changes that threatened the distinctive characteristics of Scotland. When, in 1806, it was proposed to make certain alterations in our law system, he made an eloquent speech against them at a meeting of the Faculty of Advocates. On the way home with two of the reformers, Jeffrey and another, he declined to have the matter treated as subject for banter. "No, no," he said, “'tis no laughing matter; little by little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy and undermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shall remain." Lockhart adds-" And so saying he turned round to conceal his agitation, but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing down his cheekresting his head until he recovered himself on the wall of the Mound." It is with something of the same passionate regret that many contemplate the decay of "braid Scots" and fear-what, however, is little likely to happen its ultimate extinction. In Scott's time the vernacular was in common use among all classes. Braxfield was raised to the Bench in 1776, and died in 1799, when Scott was twenty-eight years of age. Mr. Francis Watt's Terrors of the Law contains a rich collection of Braxfield's sayings couched in the broadest Doric. When the Sedition Trials were on, Braxfield made light of the difficulties of trying the Reformers. "Hoot," he said,

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just gie me Josie Norrie (Clerk of the Court and a master of precedents) and a guid jury, and I'll due for the fallow"; and of the Reformers he declared, "They wuld a' be muckle the better o' being hangit." This kind of speech led to a neat counter from Margarot. "Hae ye ony counsel, mon?" asked Braxfield, who, on

getting the answer, "No," next asked, "Dae ye want to hae ony appointet?" and received the reply, "No, I only wish an interpreter to make me understand what your Lordship says." Dean Ramsay, who was born twenty-two years after Scott, was familiar with Scottish gentlemen of birth and breeding who habitually spoke Scots. He heard one thus direct his servant to mend the fire" I think, Dauvid, we wadna be the waur o' some coals," and, in another place, after giving some excellent examples of the vernacular, he says" We must now look for specimens in the more retired parts of the country. It is no longer to be found in high places. It has disappeared from the social circles of our cities." This was written in 1858, and recorded a change that the author had actually witnessed, for in his youth Henry Dundas, who became Lord Advocate, Secretary of State, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Viscount Melville, to the last spoke both at the Bar and in Parliament with a pronounced Scottish accent and used many Scottish phrases. Melville, that is to say, spoke a language distinguished from standard English in two ways, by the quantity and quality of his vowels and consonants, and by the employment of words, phrases and constructions, and of words in a sense, strange to English ears.

The accent of Scotland persists, or, rather, the accents persist, for though, as Boswell records with surprise, Johnson could not distinguish the speech of the north from that of the south of Scotland, a native has no difficulty in determining whether a fellow-countryman hails from Inverness, the north-east, Forfarshire, Strathearn, the south-west, Edinburgh, &c., and there is nothing to be ashamed of in a manly Scots accent, though, perhaps, it may be overdone, as by an excellent clergyman who, though he had lived much abroad, to the end began the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father which art in hiven." We ourselves are for the most part unconscious of this accent in ourselves, for a worthy professor of divinity

from Aberdeen said to an elder of the Park Church, Glasgow, "I hear Dr. is a candidate for the Park. He wid never do. He hiz a moast hoarible Aiberdeen accent." A cultured Englishman, lecturing recently on English, and pleading for correct speech, said he had no desire to see the virile English of the Scotsman or the delightful English of the Irishman exchanged for the emasculated accent of the southern Englishman. South of the Tweed fun is made of the vibrant "r" heard in our speech, but the Scot's reading of the text, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," is surely better than the southern, "He that hath yaws to yaw, let him yaw." As a matter of fact, the letter sounds as heard in Scotland, especially in the south-west, the vocabulary and the constructions are more akin to the older forms of English than southern English is, and the student of "braid Scots" finds many affinities between it and the ancient northern English; to this day the last-named, as Mr. Malham-Dembleby's Original Tales and Ballads in the Yorkshire Dialect will show, is strongly represented both in the familiar speech of the north of England and in that of the south-west of Scotland. When heard in its purity, the speech of Ayrshire is of singular beauty, and did not Ruskin say of that heard in Aberdeenshire that it is "the sweetest, richest, subtlest, most musical of all the living dialects of Europe "? I remember getting a perfect example of it from a grieve. Strolling about the farm in the gloaming, I found him “at the moo' o' a barn," where he had been busy, and asked what he had been doing. "Av been riddlin' some seed hey.' Looking down, I thought I saw some movement in the heap, and said, "There's something crawling there." "Deed a sinna winner; there's naething waur nor seed hey for giddrin golachs an' ither orra craiturs o' that kin'," an interesting example of a style of speech very common still in the country. The use of such speech among the educated classes, especially among those of

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