1800.] ‘ 
any thing more on the fubje&, for the be- 
nefitof your numerous Northern readers, 
the following hints are at their and your 
fervice. I fhall introduce them with a few 
inftances, in which, I apprehend, Mr. Ban- 
nantine is miftaken. He is welcome to» 
take the fame freedom with me. Hanc 
veniam damus petimufque viciffim. 
To be ‘‘ augry at a perfor” appeared 
to me, as it does to Mr. Bannantine, a 
Scotticifm, till I found it fanétioned by 
the authority of Lord Chefterfield, in his 
Letters to his Son. 
According to Mr. Bannantine, the 
Scotch call ‘* a pretty houle,”” “ a neat 
houfe.”’ Surely this acceptation of the 
word zéat is not peculiar to Scotland, or, 
if it be, where is the impropriety ? Idonot 
think it is common in that part of the 
ifland to call ** a handfome woman,” a 
neat woman. A woman who, though not 
very handfome, pays: a commendable at- 
tention to her perfon and drefs, is called’ 
there, as in England, a neat woman. 
Is not a farmer often called a fexant, 
and fometimes faid to ‘* /abour the land” 
in England as well as in Scotland? At 
the 238th page of Newte’s Tour, Mr. 
Bannantine will find thefe words, ‘* The 
tenants had as much land asa plough could 
labour.” A fimilar phrafe occurs in 
Pennant’s Tour, in 1772, p. 203. Asin 
both inftances, the words are not diftin- 
guifhed by Italics, or otherwife, is it not 
fair to fuppofe that the gentlemen ufed 
their own Englifh phrafeology ?—tairer, 
furely, than it was in the owner of the only_ 
hut in the little ifland of Staffa,* to tell 
Sir Jofeph Banks, who complained of 
being attacked in bed by the Scotch greys, 
** that he had brought them from England 
with him.”’ 
To “* powder beef’? may be a Scotti- 
cifm ; but it does not ftrike me as fuch. 
In a colony where there is not one North 
to 100 South Britons, I remember a girl, 
of a family which had been long eftablith- 
ed in the country,who, having been defired - 
to powder fome meat, was faid to have 
literally obeyed, by beftrewing it with the 
contents of her father’s powder - horn. 
This ftory was mentioned as an inftance 
of her ignorance of houfehold affairs. 
Fodder, in the North, means hay as well 

* A little ifland on the weit’ coaft of Scots 
land, entirely compofed of the volcanic pro- 
duction called bafaltes, like the Giants? 
Caufeway, but much more ftupendous. It 
.was {carcely known to the naturalifts till 
“37725 when Sir Jofeph Banks firft defcribed 
it. 
Lift of Scatticifms. 
237 
as {traw, and it/is ufed both as a noun and 
a verb. 
Mr. Bannantine has not happily ex- 
plained the Scottifh ufe of the word 710f55 
That word, ufed indefinitely, fignifies the 
material of peats, and not the peats them- 
felves. It is to peats, what clay is to 
bricks. A mefs is a peat-bog, or a tract 
of ground where peats are, or may be, 
dug or ‘¢ ca/?.”’ 
In Scotland, as in England, fow means 
the female, and doar the male: grumphyis 
a fort of cant-term for either. The plu- 
ral fine is alfo in commen ufe beyond 
the Tweed; but pig is univerfally, and, I 
fuppofe, properly, confined to the young. 
A fog, as Mr. Bannantine obferves, means 
a fheep, but a fheep of a particular age ; I 
think, one either.a little above, ora little 
under, a year old. 
The word batcher conveys no very 
pleating ideas in England; but in Scot- 
land, as Mr. Bannantine intimates, is an 
odious word, and the trade is little relifh- 
ed; hence few Scottifh butchers in Lon- 
don. The following verfe of a fong, com- 
pofed in or about 1746, wilh give additi-- 
onal illuftration to the articles butcher and 
duck, in Mr. Bannantine’s Lif. 
Satan fits in his dark nook, 
Breaking ticks to broil the devke = 
The bloody butcher gae a yell, 
And loud the laugh gae’d round a’ hell. 
Admirality, and I may add, commonality 
for admiralty and commonalty, though al- 
molt general among the Scottith vulgar, 
are not, perhaps, peculiar to them. Per- 
fons who are at once bad readers and bad 
{cholars, are betrayed into this barbarous 
pronunciation, by the fimilarity of the ter- 
mination to tole of venality, partiality, 
Ge Ae 
To look over a letter means in Scotland, 
“¢ to read it curforily ;** and, if I be not 
miltaken, the phrafe is fometimes ufed in 
the fame fenfe in England. 
Sparfe veriting, fays Mr. Bannantine, 
means ‘* loofe writing.’ In this fenfe, 
the ingenious gent!eman’s writing is /parfe, 
for he has applied the word liofe very 
loofely. Perhaps he has ufed it for want 
of an Englith fynonym to the word /par/z, 
(from fpargo). Scattering or fepttered 
would have come nearer the meaning ; for 
when much {pace is occupied by few words, 
the Scotch, efpecially the lawyers, fay, 
** the writing is {parle,”” or ¢ the paper is 
{parfely written.” 
Mr. Bannantine tells us of fome names 
of villages near Edinburgh, which have 
been fadly mangled. But Ido not know 
that the vulgar there are remarkably un- 
merciful, 
\ 

aes = == a 
LO oe — — 
“se 






