xxxii ORMISTOUN'S LETTERS 



beyond what Cockburn has to say of seeds, tree-propagating 

 and planting, fruits and vegetables, poultry and pigeons. 

 His wise remarks on nascent economics have an increasing 

 interest to us, for the rural exodus, the village decadence, 

 and the growth of home industries are living questions still. 

 But behind all these are the man himself and the presenta- 

 tion through him of a notable phase in national development. 

 He wrote at the time of that change in speech and writing 

 which followed the Union, and nowhere can we get better 

 material for its study. The language wants polish and knows 

 no tricks of rhetoric, but there is no mistaking the meaning, 

 provided we trust to the ear and not to the eye, for the 

 punctuation seems to us defective. In this, as in so much 

 else, we moderns are treated like children, thanks to the 

 progress of book-making. There is no space to speak of the 

 spelling, though it finely illustrates archaic survivals, incon- 

 sistencies, and all those features of the time which only 

 accurate reprints show. But I must draw attention to a 

 point now rarely presented to the reading public, the presence 

 of what Scottish writers of the century dreaded under the re- 

 proach of Scotticisms. While Cockburn as an educated man — 

 and he certainly writes like one, though true to the situation 

 he makes no show of learning — would conform to English as 

 he heard it and used it officially, there is no doubt he could 

 scarcely avoid the homely ruts in writing to Bell. Thus 

 while we have such usual forms of the period as ' dont, your's, 

 their's, our's, it's growth, people's living, Brodies friends, 

 you'l, he'l,' we have also specially Scots ones in ' w^^, w*, ace*, 

 agt (against), Bror, comon, ane, ye (the) papers.' More interest- 

 ing are forms which are due to Scots pronunciation — 'ditchen 

 (ditching), farthen (farthing), non (none), through (thorough), 

 and hight — both with strong guttural, watter, jobb, halfs 

 (halves), espicially, rasberry, then (than), collyflowers, un- 

 sensible, closs, allers (alders), for fear of their middling with 

 trees, leed (mill-lade), least (lest), Norraway, moneth (Ger. 



