closed on Sunday, when, however, if all stories be true, a good deal of shebeening or illicit drinking goes on in the cities. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the austerity of Scottish Sabbatarianism has driven many into vicious indulgence; and much is to be hoped from the churches taking an interest in honest amusement as a help and not a hindrance to religion. But a sneer often thrown out by strangers against the supposed hypocrisy of Scotsmen, only shows ignorance of a country where those most concerned about Sabbath observance have long been the deadliest enemies of drinking habits.
Whisky, as well as golf, has now so masterfully invaded England, that this can no longer be called “Scottish Drink,” as it was not by Burns. In his day, home-brewed beer was the Lowland beverage, of which a Cromwellian soldier complained as more like brose for its thickness. Up to our day “Edinburgh Ale” made the capital’s chief contribution to the heady gaiety of nations. Whisky came in from the Highlands, its name a contraction of uisgebeatha, “water of life,” which Burns and Scott write usquebaugh, the Celtic word for water being the same that appears in so many river names Esk, Usk, Exe, Axe, and so forth. Even in the Highlands, this mountain dew would seem to have supplanted beer within historic times; and old writers admire the temperance as much as the honesty and courage of Highlanders. Both Highland and Lowland gentlemen preferred brandy, in the days when, as Lord Cockburn tells us, claret was hawked about the Edinburgh streets in a cart, a jug of any reasonable size being filled for sixpence.
Firm and erect the Caledonian stood,
Old was his mutton, and his claret good.
Let him drink port! a beef-fed statesman cried.
He drank the poison and his spirit died.
The preference for French wine and spirits before the days of Hanoverian fiscalities, relates to the old alliance with France, which has left its mark also on Scottish speech. That warning cry “Gardy-loo” (gardez l’eau), which gave such scandal to early English tourists, was of course a survival of a far-spread practice in cities before the days of drainage or even of ash-backets (baquets). Many French household words are used in Scotland at this day, as “caraff” (carafe), “ashet” (assiette), a “jiggot” of mutton (gigot) a “haggis” (hachis); and Burns’s “silver tassie” was of course a tasse. A “cummer” (commère) “canna be fashed” (se fâcher) to step out to the “merchant’s,” who may be “douce” or “dour” and an “honest” man (honnête), though sharp in his bargains. “Ma certie (certes), that’s a braw (brave) vest!” quoth a lass to her lad, a word here used like the French garçon or gars, while gosse will be distinguished as a “laddie,” who grows to be a “young lad” in spite of orgies on sour “grozers” or “grozets” and “gheans,” which in France are groseilles and guignes, but in England gooseberries and wild cherries. French names too have taken root in Scotland, Janet (Jeannette) being very common with one sex, as Louis or Ludovic is not unknown in the other. For the matter of that, one might string together instances of how the well of Old English flows undefiled by time in the north.
Then brought to him that maiden meek
Hose and shoon and sark and breek.
These words are used to this day in every Scottish cottage, as once in the stately style of an early southron minstrel. Shakespeare and the Bible show many picked phrases which are now wild flowers in the north; and high example might be found for the shalls and wills that here run loose from the enclosures of modern grammarians. But as Mr. David MacRitchie suggests in an interesting pamphlet, “to doubt that one is colded and can’t go to the church,” seem rather specimens of French idioms transplanted during the three centuries or so that Capets and Stuarts stood together against the Plantagenets.
Protestantism availed to draw Scotland from the arms of France into those of England; then Prelacy and Presbytery set the near neighbours again at odds. For some generations, the young Scotsmen who had once sought the Catholic schools of the Continent, were more in the way of finishing their education at Dutch or German Universities. Scotland had also an old connection, chiefly in the way of trade, with Scandinavia and Poland, in both of which countries Scottish family names are naturalised, as Swedish Dicksons and Polish Gordons. Scots students of our day still look to Germany, under whose professors they are apt to forget the Shorter Catechism for the categories of Kant and the secret of Hegel. The Union was not fully consummated till Macs began to make themselves at home in Oxford and Cambridge, while for a time the renown of Scottish philosophy drew some of the promising English youth to Edinburgh, whose medical school kept up the attraction. In the last generation or two, Scotsmen have been only too ready to go south for education, seeking a stamp of Anglified gentility as well as better qualities which were perhaps not to be had from those rude old dominies under whom the young laird and the barefoot loon once sat together in friendly hatred of “carritch” and rudiments.