CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D. AUTHOR OF "LOST BEAUTIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE," "THE GAELIC ETYMOLOGY OF THE LANGUAGES OF WESTERN EUROPE,' A GLOSSARY OF THE OBSCURE WORDS AND PHRASES IN SHAKSPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES," ETC. ETC. BOSTON: TICKNOR AND CO. 211 TREMONT STREET 1888 PREFACE. THE original intention of the Editor of this work was to make it a guide to the better comprehension by English readers of the immortal works of Robert Burns and Walter Scott, and of the beautiful Scottish poetry to be found in the ancient and modern ballads and songs of the "North Countrie,❞—and not only to the English but to all other admirers of Scottish literature, where it differs from that of England, and to present to them in accessible and convenient form such words as are more poetical and humorous in the Scottish language than in the English, or are altogether wanting in the latter. The design gradually extended itself as the compiler proceeded with his task, until it came to include large numbers of words derived from the Gaelic or Keltic, with which Dr. Jamieson, the author of the best and most copious Scottish Dictionary hitherto published, was very imperfectly or scarcely at all acquainted. "Broad Scotch," says Dr. Adolphus Wagner, the erudite and sympathetic editor of the Poems of Robert Burns, published in Leipzig, in 1835, "is literally broadened,—i.e., a language or dialect very worn off, and blotted, whose original stamp often is unknowable, because the idea is not always to be guessed at." This strange mistake is not confined to the Germans, but prevails to a large extent among Englishmen, who are of opinion that Scotch is a provincial dialect of 8. D. TRANSFER AUG 111941 |