INTRODUCTION xxxiii 



monaty Such spellings, too, as ' moue, saue "" show that the 

 letters w and v were still treated as virtually the same. Peculiarly 

 realistic is the Scottish emphatically pronounced negation, ' No 

 sure' for surely not, and ' Sure, sure, he is most obstinate/ But 

 a spelling of exceptional interest is 'fain' in the sentence 

 (p. 100) — 'Let them (the cattle) stay there no longer than it 

 is so, till 1^* March, and then carry them to back Lee (lea) alto- 

 gether, and fain that south of the Garden.' The word ' fain ' 

 here is obscure. But ' when,' used here in the sense of ' after,' 

 a common idiom, is in dialect pronounced ' finn,' so that the 

 meaning is, punctuated to please the modern — 'and, when 

 that is done, remove them to south of the garden.' Initial 

 wh is regularly an^in Aberdeenshire; in the Lowlands only 

 'when' is so treated. This is no more barbarous than the 

 Englishman's w'ich, wot, wye, wen ; and much better than 

 his attenuated 'oo, 'oose, 'oom. 



It is easy to pick up or drop a pronunciation, but an 

 idiom abides. In this regard Cockburn's Scotticisms are most 

 characteristic. His actual Scots words are comparatively few. 

 They are : frush = easily broken, bye times = odd times, knowe 

 = knoll, overly = remiss, fend = get along, fale = turf, sods. 

 But one characteristically Scottish form is entirely absent. A 

 seventeenth-century speaker would say ' choakit ' where Cock- 

 burn has ' choaked.' If the suffix -ed forms a syllable it appears, 

 but otherwise we have '(i, a printer's convention in verse, 

 now happily disappearing. In the Letters, however, we have 

 ' straittened ' as well as 'body'd.' Under use of words note : 

 ' you have done (finished) about the house ; you must be 

 sensible (aware) there is a great deal to do ; not one scrape (bit 

 of writing) from Lowther.' The same is true of phrases, e.g. 

 'against May comes three years; between and to-morrow 

 night ; put work by (out of) hand ; up the way (road) ; few 

 breed by (in comparison with) what might have done.' The 

 adjective used as adverb was as common in Middle, and even 

 in Elizabethan, English as it still is in German and Scots, 



