"It is just remarkable," he says, "that your dictionaries should put down, as obsolete, words that are in common use all over the south of Scotland, where, as I say, the old Northumbrian English is preserved in its purity; and that ye should have learned people hunting up in Chaucer or Gower for the very speech that they might hear among the bits o' weans running about the Gallowgate or the Broomielaw. 'Wha's acht ye?' you say to one of them; and you think you are talking Scotch. No, no; acht is only the old English for possession: isn't 'Wha's acht ye?' shorter and pithier than 'To whom do you belong?'
"Oh, certainly!" says the meek disciple: the recall of the boys from Surrey is obviously decided on.
"And speir for inquire; and ferly for wonderful; and tyne for lose; and fey for about to die; and reek for smoke; and menseful for becoming; and belyve, and fere, and biggan, and such words. Ye call them Scotch? Oh, no, ma'am; they are English; ye find them in all the old English writers; and they are the best of English too; a great deal better than the Frenchified stuff that your southern English has become."
Not for worlds would the Laird have wounded the patriotic sensitiveness of this gentle friend of his from the South; but indeed, she had surely nothing to complain of in his insisting to an Englishwoman on the value of thorough English?
"I thought," says she, demurely, "that the Scotch had a good many French words in it."
The Laird pretends not to hear: he is so deeply interested in the steamer which is now coming over the smooth waters of the bay. But, having announced that there are a great many people on board, he returns to his discourse.
"Ah'm sure of this, too," says he, "that in the matter of pronunciation the Lowland Scotch have preserved the best English—you can see that faither, and twelmonth, and twa, and such words are nearer the original Anglo-Saxon——"
His hearers had been taught to shudder at the phrase Anglo-Saxon—without exactly knowing why. But who could withstand the authority of the Laird? Moreover, we see relief drawing near; the steamer's paddles are throbbing in the still afternoon.
"If ye turn to Piers the Plowman," continues the indefatigable Denny-mains, "ye will find Langdale writing—
And a fewe Cruddes and Crayme.