we have two old Scots words, the latter of which is still in common use to express anything that is dwarfed or ill-grown. "Widdie " or "woodie" is a green withe or sapling. "As thrawn as a woodie," and "Thraw the woodie, when it's green, are two Scots proverbs often quoted. "Widdiefu' " may therefore mean, "thrawn" or obdurate, though it is understood by some as synonymous with " rig-woodie," deserving of the gallows. "Sic hauns as you sud ne'er be faiket," has been the cause of much difference among the doctors. Robert Chambers suggested "sic hauns as yours," as a way out of the difficulty, setting down "faiket” as “folded,” to complete the sense. This amended reading is neither admissible nor necessary. "Haun" is still a common term in Ayrshire for a man or woman, much in the same way as "hand" when speaking of the operatives in a factory. “He's a droll haun," "she's an awfu' haun," are heard in Ayrshire every day. Burns gives no hint as to what he meant by "faiket," but reasoning from "defalked" or 'defaiket," which Cuthbertson quotes from an old Kilmarnock manuscript, in which it means, subtracted or taken away from, the word seems to mean, spared or let off easily. A free translation of the line would therefore be :-Such able men as you should never be allowed to lapse into indolence. "Raploch," coarse, which also occurs in the Second Epistle to Davie, is an adjectival use of the substantive which was used to designate the rough cloth made from the coarsest of the wool. 66 66 Goavin, as if led by branks," is part of Burns's description of his own behaviour in On Dining with Lord Daer. "Goavin," staring stupidly, is in everyday use yet. The allusion to the branks is a humorous comparison between his air of embarrassment and the uncertain gait of a horse encumbered with the old, clumsy bridle. "I throw the wee stools o'er the mickle," in the Address to the Toothache, means that in his frenzy he attacked the furniture and tossed the small stools over the large ones. We have heard some ludicrous translations of this passage, and in no illustration have we ever seen the hero depicted in the act of smashing the furniture. "Lippened," in To Dr. Blacklock, trusted or relied upon, is still a household word all over Scotland. "Collieshangie," a tumult or uproar, is compounded of "collie" and "shangie" or "shangan," a tin can or other resonant article tied to the tail of a dog when it is desired that he take a bee-line for home. 66 Cardandie," another Ayrshire word for an uproar, is doubtless a corruption of "Kirkdandie," the annual fair at which place was the Donnybrook of the West Country in the olden time. "Kintracooser," a led stallion, is specially cutting in the humorous satire in which it occurs. "Crocks," in the Twa Herds "Wha will tent the waifs and crocks" signifies old or diseased sheep. "Flewit," a "skelp" or sharp blow, which occurs in the Trimming Epistle, is also used by Allan Ramsay, but we have never heard it used in Ayrshire. "Feck" means, value or profit, in "Gied ye a' baith gear and meal; E'en mony a plack and mony a peck, but as it occurs in the Holy Fair "Ye, for my sake, hae gi'en the feck Of a' the ten comman's A screed some day it means, the greater part or the majority, in which sense it is an everyday word in Ayrshire. "The feck o't" or "the maist feck o't" is in universal use to express the larger quantity or number. "Gairs" is just gores, a feminine mystery in dressmaking; "jimps" and "jirkinet," which both occur in the same lyric (My Lord a-Hunting), refer to female articles of attire. The former is, stays or corsets; the latter (the diminutive of jerkin), a sort of boddice or jacket. "Thiggan," from the obsolete word "thigger," a beggar, is another of the numerous specimens of old Scots to be found in the Address of Beelzebub "If the wives and dirty brats Come thiggan at your doors an' yetts." The word "puke" in the line "Like a swine to puke and wallow," which occurs in the Epistle to John Kennedy, is not to be confounded with "pouk," to pluck, in Death and Dr. Hornbook. In the former instance it means, to vomit, as in Shakspeare— 66 'Mewling and puking in his nurse's arms," but the word is now rarely used in Ayrshire as an alternative for "spew." Burns uses the word "wallow" in the English sense, as in this quotation, and also as a pure Scots word meaning, according to Jamieson, to wither or fade. ScottDouglas remarks that the line in The Soldier's Return,— "Syne pale like ony lily," appears in one MS.-"Syne wallow't like a lily." "What care I in riches to wallow," from Tam Glen, is understood in either sense according to the leanings of the reader. In the Epistle to Major Logan, we find, "The witching, curs'd, delicious blinkers, Jamieson says "blinker" is a lively engaging girl, but, as we pointed out in our first article, in the Cloaciniad Come cowe me, we have, "Wasna Wattie a blinker," which seems to intimate that it was a general term of reproach, "Hyte," angry or mad, is from the Saxon héte, hatred or indignation. We have never heard the word used, "gaen gyte" being the popular designation for lunacy or madness. ‘Grien,” to long for or desire earnestly, is still in common use. "Griens for the fishes and loaves" 66 will be found in the second Election Ballad, and "troggin (pedlar's wares) in the fourth, derived from "trogger," akin to troker or trekker, a hawker or pedlar. D. M'NAUGHT. STEVENSON ON BURNS. A SKETCH. W 66 He HEN Robert Louis Stevenson was yet a young man of twenty-five summers he engaged to write for the Encyclopædia Britannica" an article on Burns. wrote the article and was paid for his work, but it was never printed in the Encyclopædia. The editor considered the article too violent a departure from the traditional and accepted estimate of Burns. What change the article may have undergone meantime is not known generally, if known at all. What is well known is that Stevenson was scarcely second to Pope as a rewriter, emendator, and pin-point polisher of his compositions. However, the article as it appeared afterwards in the Cornhill Magazine and in the volume of collected Essays entitled "Familiar Studies of Men and Books,” has ceased to be a stranger. Its reception when published did not satisfy Stevenson. In it he had purposely aimed a blow at Burnsolatry, and found for result that he had missed his mark and aroused a devil. From the premises of Stevenson certain other writers concluded that Burns was essentially a bad man. Stevenson, in a critical preface to the book of essays mentioned, bravely resisted the attempt to identify him with such doctrine. Whatever character the article bears, it is still true, as W. E. Henley has remarked, that "the preferences of Stevenson were with Rab Mossgiel." Had the article only aroused the many lovers and the few haters of Burns to a grimmer party defiance, Stevenson could well have viewed the result with magnanimity and a Bohemian chuckle. But to be reckoned leader in what he regarded as gross fanaticism was not to be suffered in silence, and led him, on the republication of the article, to write a preface in which scathing chastisement is served on his critics, and in which, also, a few popular "class" infirmities are severely handled. In all this, how ever, the elements of failure inherent in his article on Burns are intensified rather than corrected. To rewrite an essay before printing it was easy for Stevenson, but to rewrite a printed essay that had obviously failed in its purpose was too much for him, and he chose the less dignified method of seeming to stand boldly where footing was left him, cracking his whip his weapon is not an edged one-while retreating from untenable positions. The word failure has been used. Was other result possible? Stevenson had dealt with Burns's "feet of clay" because Carlyle had executed his "head of gold." The impossibility of reaching a man's character through his faults was clear to Carlyle, and ought also to have been clear to Stevenson. The process of deducting the sum of a man's vices from the sum of his virtues to find his character is never satisfactory in its result. It errs not so much in implying that character is the difference between the virtuous and the vicious as in assuming that vices and virtues that can thus be tabulated are the true exponents of character. Burns saw deeper than this, and maintained that "What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted." What beneficent light is emitted from both Burns and Stevenson is of the nature of transmuted heat. What is dark and unlovely in both is due to derangement or failure of the transmuting process. The fact of one man showing a larger residue of untransmuted raw material than another is not conclusive that his character is worse, so long as the original volume of raw material peculiar to each remains unreckoned with and the obstacles to transmutation remain ungauged. "Then at the balance let's be mute." The feeble, slim, hectic, angular Stevenson never felt in its strength the tumult of passion that heaved and rocked and hissed against the inner citadel of the man Burns. We cannot acquit Stevenson of both of two things of every motive to be unfair and of ineptitude to deal justly by Burns. The offensive element common to both the article and the critical preface is not Stevenson's smack-lip exposure of Burns's faults and failings, but his exaggerated statement of them; his tone of unbending superiority; and his purposeful exclusion— not so much from his study as from his constructive thought |