# Studies in Lowland Scots/The Dawn

STUDIES IN LOWLAND SCOTS
I.—THE DAWN
An Introduction to the Gothic Version of the Gospels by Bishop Wulfila and its Connection with Lowland Scots
The tourist on the Rhine, looking down from the deck of his steamer as it breasts the tawny stream, will frequently pass in his course a slow procession of barges deeply laden with coal. If of an inquiring turn of mind, he will learn that these hail from the Ruhr, a tributary that enters the great river near Düsseldorf, the valley through which it flows enjoying a brisk trade in coal-mining and its allied industries. Three centuries ago, in an obscure monastery of this side-valley, in the little town of Werden, an inquisitive German—one Arnold Mercator—rummaging among the dusty tomes of its library, perhaps in search of plunder for his master, the Landgraf of Hesse, discovered a manuscript of rare beauty. As the Lutheran Reformation was then making havoc of monastic stores, the prize was removed for greater security to Prague. It had been written by some careful scribe in characters of silver on a purple or mulberry-tinted parchment. The letters of a few words at the beginning of each paragraph were in gold. How it had come to Werden no one could tell, but experts are agreed ​that it must have been made in Italy towards the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, i.e. during the rule of the Goths under Theodoric the Great. It was, indeed, a version of the Gospels in the language of the Goths. Toward the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, Count Königsmark, having captured Prague, carried off the MS. to Stockholm. Thereafter it had further adventures, having been for a time in Holland, but it was ultimately restored in 1669 to the royal library at Upsal, where it still remains. It contained the Gospels in 339 leaves, of which 177 are preserved, and is known as the Codex Argenteus. While in Holland it was printed for the first time at Dort, 1665, by Francis Junius, well known to literary students as the first to give the Anglo-Saxon poem of Cædmon to the world, just as Milton was meditating his great epic. Junius prepared types which were a close facsimile of the Gothic characters. These types he afterwards presented to the University of Cambridge, where they are still preserved.
What was the origin of this unique relic? The early Church historians throw some light, unfortunately obscure, on its author. His name is variously spelt, but is best known as Ulfilas or Ulphilas, the Græcised form of the genuine Gothic Wulfila or Wolf-ling, showing the common diminutive suffix—ila as in att-ila, little father (atta, father); barn-ilo, bairnie (barn, child); maw-ilo, maiden, girlie (mawi, girl, Ger. Magd, our Maisie), the talitha or damsel, addressed to Jairus' daughter. The parents of Wulfila had been carried off from Cappadocia, near the end of the third century, in a raid of the Goths into Asia Minor, and formed part of a small colony that appear to have introduced Christianity among their captors. Born 311 A.D. ​he became at an early age a leader among his countrymen, was much connected with Constantinople, where he was held in honour, was, after having been a lector or reader, consecrated bishop at the age of thirty by Eusebius of Nicomedia, and, after having held office for forty years, he died at Constantinople about 381. Wulfila was in the first great schism of the Church—he was an Arian—and had come, along with other bishops, to Constantinople on the last occasion, to procure from the Emperor the promise of a new Council to settle the faith. The rival party of Athanasius ultimately triumphed, and the name and work of the good missionary suffered in consequence, and speedily sank into obscurity. But in his own age his reputation was of the highest; he wrote in Greek, Latin and Gothic; and was spoken of as the Moses of his devoted people, having led his persecuted tribesmen through the Balkan passes and planted his colony of Goths in Mœsia, the modern kingdom of Bulgaria. Byzantium was then the centre equally of the culture and philosophy of ancient Athens as of the Christian faith, and in the midst of it all had this intellectual Goth been reared. His pupil and successor, Auxentius, has left a brief but touching account of his beloved master, reminding us of that more complete picture that has come down to us, under similar circumstances, of the last moments of his old English parallel, the Venerable Bede.
Wulfila is said to have translate the entire Scriptures, with the exception of the Book of Kings. The reason given for this omission is that, knowing too well the warlike tastes of his coutnrymen, he hesitated to lay before them a part of the sacred narrative that spoke so much of battles and bloodshed. One might easily in these days fail to realise the full import of his great achievement. Here is a rude tribe, but little removed from barbarism—to the Greek and Roman undoubted barbarians. Open though they might be to the ennobling influences of Christianity, what is to be said of the courage, originality, and ​confidence in their future that led their bishop to let them hear the Gospel story in their own vulgar tongue? Ever since the beginning of literature there has existed a well-marked distinction between the language of the vulgar and that of the learned—the lewed man and the clerk. The latter is the exclusive privilege of the educated, and specially of the priestly class; the former is the vernacular, the speech of the verna or house-hold slave, that which children may pick up from a nurse, but which they will be half-ashamed of soon as they cross the vestibulum of the grammar school and learn the language of books. Knowing the influence of our Authorised Version on the development of modern English, we can better appreciate the wisdom and foresight of Wulfila. That his efforts failed to effect a similar result for his native Gothic was due to the cruel destiny of his people, a destiny over which he could have had no control. A somewhat bewildering chapter in Gibbon, and a half-contemptuous aplication of the name in art, alone preserve the memory of the Goths. Obscure Teutonic tribes—Alemanni, Suevi, Balti, Belgians, Franks, Lombards—these survive in some form, but the name of the Goth is well-nigh effaced from the map of Europe. Let me hurriedly glance at the history of this people, our own kith and kin, as their language shows them to have been.
The races that have played the chief part in the history of Europe fall into two distinct groups—the Latin and the Teutonic. The physical configuration of the Continent explains the division. Imagine oneself in a balloon in lat. 50° N., and what will be seen by the eye whose horizon is created by the imagination? Southwards a great inland sea bathed in the golden light of a sub-tropical sky, lofty snow-clad mountains shut out the arctic blasts, long rugged spurs push their giant arms far into the blue waters, lovely valleys skirt the shores or lose themselves in the deep recesses of the foot-hills, winding bay and receding creek bring the sea-breeze that fills the social sail and tempts to a larger trade and a wider knowledge. Northwards, on the other hand, stretches an almost sub-arctic sea, broken into two irregular halves by peninsulas, its shallow waters washing dreary sandy shores, on every side a vast plain covered for ages with a dense forest through which mighty rivers pour their sluggish waters into storm-tossed seas, and ​ever overhead a changeful sky, now vexed with the drifting cloud-rack, now hid behind a pall of murky fog. Southern mountain-land, nothern plain—these have ever been the respective homes of the Roman and the Teuton. The Goths swooped down upon the eastern peninsula, the Vandals upon the western, where the name Andalusia still marks their footsteps, while the fierce Viking Ber-serkr sailed his dragon prow through Ægean seas, but in time they lost their identity amid the orange groves and beneath the blue skies of the south. Equally marked is the contrast between the pleasures, the business, and the thoughts of the two races. South of the Alps the unit of national life is the polis of the urbs—a busy city-life, quick-witted, eloquent, artistic, thronging agora and forum under the shadow of each rock acropolis. In the huge, formless, northern plain, on the other hand, man is lost in the world of mingled wood and water. His clearing in the forest is his homestead, the centre of social life. Round it he plants his prickly hedge and calls the whole his tun (Ger. zaun, a hedge), the most general Teutonic place-name. In Gothic tains is a branch of the thorn-bush, tain-jo the woven basket that received the fragments after the feeding of the five thousand. Here the family and not the bazaar is the social unit.
In the ancient world the Roman and the Teuton met again and again in conflict. The Empire held its own for a time, when across the Rhine and the Danube, securely flaunted the eagles of the legions. But decay set in and the Danube became the scene of danger. By the middle of the third century the Goths overran the whole country between the Baltic and the Black Seas. Round the Carpathians they swarmed, seized Dacia (the modern Wallachia), crossed the Danube, and in 251 they met in battle and slew the Emperor Decius. Then, sweeping over the Balkan Peninsula, they crossed into Asia, ravaging as far as Trebizond and Cappadocia. But in 269 they suffered a check at the hands of the Emperor Claudius, and for ninety years there was peace. Those north of the Danube came to be known as East Goths, those on the south side as West or Visigoths. Ermana-ric, or Herman-ric, made of the former a powerful dominion that had ultimately to succumb to that terrible scourge of Eastern Europe—the Tartar Huns.
​Meanwhile, the West Goths were torn by internal dissensions. A patriotic and apparently conservative party under Athana-ric was opposed to the Christian and Arian party under Frithigern, with whom Wulfila sympathised. The latter, to avoid persecution, led a colony through the Balkan passes and settled within the Empire in what is now Bulgaria. This peaceful movement was, however, thwarted by cruel treatment that resulted in a rising in which the Emperor Valens was slain at Adrianople in 378. His successor, Theodosius, made terms with the Goths, and many of them joined the legions. In subsequent Gothic history great names appear;—Alaric, the hero of national independence and unity, strong enough to sack Rome itself; Ataulf, the loyal ally and son-in-law of the Emperor Theodoric, who fell in battle with Attila, the Hun, on the Frankish plain of Chalons; and, finally, Theodoric the Great, the protector of the peaceful Roman against the Gaulish Odoacer, and Emperor of the once more united Western Empire. Therefore it is that in the Italy of the fifth century we find the last reliable traces of the Goths—the Codex Argenteus, other fragments of the Wulfilic translation discovered as late as 1817 and preserved at Milan, a Gothic calendar, and a business document, the owner of which lived at Arezzo, near Naples. In Italy, however, the Goth was but a temporary invader; in Gaul and Spain he held his own for long, ultimately succumbing to the Frank and the Moor.
On what is known as the Bucharest ring is a Runic inscription consisting of three genuine Gothic words—Gut annôm hailig—dedicated to the Goths' treasures. Each of these words occurs in the Wulfilic Gospels. From this we learn that the Goths called themselves Gut-os, in the singular Guts; to the classical writers they were the Gothones. There seems to be a real confusion between the sounds of ū and ō. Wulfila speaks of the Epistle Du Rumonim to the Romans, and calls Rome Ruma. Shakspere, too, rhymes Rome with doom and groom, and in "Julius Cæsar" Cassius says,—
"Now is it Rome, and room enough When there is in it but one only man."
Grimm's Law of Consonantal Change.
​latter part of this term is the German national name Deutsch for Deut-isch, in Gothic Thiud-isk; it is from a root widely diffused in all the Indo-European tongues, to which, of course, Gothic, as a Teutonic speech, belongs.
The branches of the Indo-European family fall into three distinct group:—I. Sanskrit, Old-Persian, Greek, Latin, Keltic, Slavonic; II. Low German (Frisian, Dutch, Norse, Scotch, English); III. High German. Of these the first to appear in Europe must have been the Keltic; the outstanding physical features of our continent—mountains, rivers, valleys—bear Keltic names. The last to appear, and the lowest in the scale of culture, is the Slavonic. The affinities of these tongues have long been established, and the principles involved are formulated in the well-known Grimm's Law. The most striking illustrations of the law are to be found in such familiar and widely-diffused words as numerals, pronouns, and terms for relationships, common natural phenomena, domestic animals, and the like. The law affects merely the nine mutes, as arranged in three sets, viz.:—Hards, Aspirates, Softs, the initials of which form the mnemonic H. A. S. Any word common to the three groups stated above will change, as far as its mutes are concerned, from group to group in the order of the groups and the order of the sets of mutes. These changes can be showns diagrammatically, thus:—A circular disc, divided into three arms corresponding to the three groups above, is made to revolve from left to right within a circle or outer rim, which latter is divided into three compartments corresponding to the three sets of mutes—H. A. S.
The typical illustrations of the law in the three positions of the disc are these:—
| 1st position.—Group I. | Hard. | |
| $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad } }$ | $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad } }$ | |
| Sanskrit, Græco-Latin, Keltic, | K. T. P. | | Ca p i t (is) (Latin). |
| Slavonic. | | | T res( „⁠ ). |
| Group II. | Aspirate. | |
| $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad } }$ | $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad } }$ | |
| Low German. | Kh. Th. Ph. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | H au b i th (Gothic). |
| | h. f. v. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | H ea f o d (Anglo-Saxon). |
| | | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | Th ree (English). |
| | | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | Th reis (Gothic). |
| Group III. |
| $\scriptstyle {\overbrace {\quad \quad \quad \quad } }$ | Soft. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | H aup t (German) |
| High-German. | G. B. D. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | H aup tD rei (German„). |
| 2nd Position.—Group I. | Aspirate. | | Θ υγάτηρ (Greek). |
| „II. | Soft. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | D auhtar (Gothic). D ochter (Scotch). |
| „III. | Hard. | | T ochter (German). |
| 3rd Position.—Group I. | Soft. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | Fa g us (Latin). Fa g usD uo (Latin„). |
| „II. | Hard. | | Bo c (Anglo-Saxon). |
| | | | Beech (English). |
| | | | Bo k a (Gothic). |
| | | | Bo k aT wai (Gothic„). |
| | | | T wo (English). |
| „III. | Aspirate. | | Bu ch (German). |
| | | | Bu chZ wei (German„). |
Alphabet.
​Our own language, that is to say, English and Lowland Scots—for the latter is but the Northern or Northumbrian variety of the former—is more nearly related to Gothic than any other Indo-European speech, brought as it was to our shores by the English folk, those Low-German tribes that had spread westwards to the dreary Frisian shores when their brothers, the Goths, roamed towards the banks of the blue Donau, to waste their strength in a life-long struggle with the mighty power of Rome. The study of these Gothic remains therefore constitutes not merely a unique field of linguistic research, but is of practical value in helping to a right appreciation of the history of our own tongue in its English, much more in its Scottish aspect.
In all probability Wulfila reduced his native Gothic to writing for the first time, and for this purpose constructed his alphabet on a basis of Runic, Greek and Latin characters. As to which of the three formed the primary basis, scholars are not agreed. German writers, whose views are endorsed by Mr. Douse, assign this position to the Runic alphabet, while Prof. Skeat discusses the whole point without the slightest reference to Runes. The question is a difficult, but not very momentous one. Written symbols of every kind are peculiarly liable to change. We all use the same conventional set of cursive characters, and yet in practice these assume endless varieties of form. Further, it is more than likely that both Runic and Greek, i.e. Phoenician characters, diverged from a common source. Runes form an undoubted relic of Teutonic antiquity. Widely diffused over northern and western Europe, they acquired a mystic force from their extensive use in charms and divination. They have not come down to us in connection with literary remains, but merely in incised inscriptions on stones, crosses, weapons, &c. The word rune (Go. runi and A.-S. rûn) means a mystery, not a letter, for which Wulfila uses boka (cp. Ger. Buchstabe). In O.Eng. and Sc. the verb to roun or round means to whisper, and its cognate Lat. rumor properly means a whisper, while in its Sanskrit form—bru—the word means to speak, and is very commonly used. It may here be noted that Runic letters are formed almost entirely of combinations of straight lines, generally in threes. All writing is ​indeed a variety of printing or graving that has become more and more cursive. Thus s, which has now its familiar serpentine form, shows, as a Rune, three lines en zigzag, as in the oldest form of the Gr. sigma. Again, the Runes had names attached to them, showing their pictorial or hieroglyphic origin. Thus the first is f = faihu, the Go. cattle ; Sc. fee, Ger. vieh, just as in Heb. al-eph is the ox. O is ôthal an heirloom, inheritance, not extant in Gothic, but in Orkney applied as udal to a form of land tenure, and as udaller familiar to readers of Scott's "Pirate." The Norsemen in Ireland made it O'Dell. T again is Tius (Tues-day), the Northern Jove, wielder of the thunderbolt, which indeed the character symbolises, for it is nothing but the Government broad arrow. Wulfila significantly eschews the use of this heathen name. But that his people must have been familiar with Runes and their names, is believed to be proved from a curious Viennese MS. of the ninth century containing the Gothic alphabet, with the recognised Runic names for the letters. Not many of the Runes, however, were adopted by Wulfila without modification under Greek influence. A is more Runic than Greek; b, i, r, are common to both systems. The Rune u seems clearly repeated in Gothic, yet Prof. Skeat regards it as a Lat. u inverted. He is equally determined to ignore Runes in the case of o, which symbol reproduces a Rune very fairly, yet some see in it Gr. omega, and Skeat the inversion of a Gr. contraction for ou ȣ. Some of the symbols are certainly Greek:—g (hard), e, k, l, n, p, w (upsilon), and ch, used merely in such proper names as Christos. Wulfila does not give ch its Runic nasal force, for which he doubles g as in Greek, e.g. briggan, to bring. From the Latin alphabet he borrowed, it is thought, d, h, m, s, t, and f, of which the two first are not at all Runic, but m is equally Runic and Latin, though with a different phonetic value, and s, t, and f can be easily traced to Runes. Gothic j (as y in yes) Skeat gets from Lat. g, yet this, too, looks like a modified Rune of similar value. There remain the characteristically Gothic kw, hw, and th. The first Mr. Douse regards as a Eune for qu, used as a number = 90, but Prof. Skeat the Lat. u. Hw cannot be accounted for; but Prof. Skeat considers it Gr. theta, while to explain the thoroughly Teutonic th-symbol he resorts to the far-fetched ​device of inverting Gr. phi. The Anglo-Saxon thorn-letter closely follows the Runes. Lastly, Wulfila uses his letters as numbers, hence we know their sequence, which is that of Greek, not Runic, where the alphabet was known as futhork from its first six letters, viz., f, u, th, o (for a), r, k.
It is interesting to know the phonetic value Wulfila probably attached to his symbols. This we ascertain from two sources, a comparison with the general Teutonic vowel and consonantal system, and a study of Wulfilic transliterations of Greek proper names. His vowel system is:—
| Short | ǎ as in manna = Sc. man. |
| „ | ai for ĕ as airtha = earth. |
| „ | i as fisks = fish. |
| „ | au for ǒ daur = door. |
| „ | u as suns = soon. |
| Long | ā, rarely used. |
| „ | ê as gêbun (gayvoon), they gave. |
| „ | ei (ī) as weis (weece), we. |
| „ | ô as wôk, I woke. |
| „ | û as suts (soots, Ger. süsz), sweet. |
The Greek transliterations for the most part bear out these values, but it is probably that Wulfila found his vowel system different from the Greek. It seems strange that, having adopted Gr. eta as a symbol, he should have given it the long sound of upsilon, and chosen to use ai for the short sound, thus—Baiailzaibul = βεελζεβοὐλ, Gaiainna = Γἐεννα, Gehenna. Similarly, o is always long, and au represents its short sound, as Apaustaulus, ἀπόστολος. These short sounds ai = ĕ and au = ǒ, are almost restricted to those cases in which these vowels are followed by r or h. A somewhat similar disturbing effect of r is still seen in clerk, Derby, and less correctly in servant (sarvent), and sergeant (sargent). The combination ai and au elswhere have the values of Ger. Kaiser and Haus repsectively. Long i is ei = ee in seen, but the transliteration varies, Go. ei representing Gr. ι, ει, and η, e.g. Aileisabeth = Ελίσαβετ, Jaeirus = Ιάειρος, and Atheineis = Αθἥναι. The consonants do not call for much remark; g has always its hard sound, j, which has now its palatal sound under the influence of French, has the sound of y in yes; p seldom appears in Gothic words except in the middle position, and b has the force of f or v between ​vowels. In course of time the Go. consonants have become greatly altered. Thus Go. s is often Eng. and Ger. r e.g. raus, a reed = Ger. Rohr, dius, a beast = deer, auso = ear, huzd = hoard, gazd, a goad = yard, haus-jan, to hear. This change is common in the declension of Latin nouns. Go. b is f in laub = leaf, giban, to give.
The guttural series offers the greatest difficulty to the modern Englishman, but none at all to the Scot. To the latter, as to the Goth, the guttural is familiar. Nowhere has he any tendency to alter its face value. His "heech" is as decided as the German's hoch or the Goth's hauh-s. His bocht is the Gothic bauhta, pret. of bugjan, to buy. The Gothic bairhts (bright), nahts (night), are followed in his bricht, nicht. Even where the guttural is strengthened by a following dental, the older h has been squeezed out in English, though preserved in the Scotch, as in waihts, a thing, Eng. wight, and whit for an older wiht, compared with Sc. aacht = ae-waiht, property. The guttural suffers in compounds as nought and not, for Go. ni-whait, compared with Sc. nocht and nochtie (paltry). the strong German nicht becomes in dialects nisht and nit. Dutch makes the positive form of Go. waihts into iets and negative niets, with which compare Sc. hait and "Deil hait" (Devil a bit!). Scotch writers of the seventeenth century often put a t after the guttural as publict for public. This may explain an occasional corruption of the original guttural as in the bauths, deaf, heard in Sc. bauch, applied to anything dulled, such as ice that is not keen. The Gothic phrase bauth wairthan is said of the salt that had "lost its savour, or become bauch (wersh)." Gothic distinguishes where Eng. and Sc. fail equally, as liu-hath = light and leihts (not heavy). In Sc. these words show a strong guttural as in-lichten for Go. in-liuhtjan (en-lighten). But the most interesting example, common to Gothic and Scotch, is tiuhan, to tow, tug, and its variant tahjan, to tear or rend, which Prof. Skeat further explains as expressing action of the teeth. Taw is used in connection with the preparation of leather, in which primitive process, among the Eskimo at least, the teeth of the women play a part. Perhaps we have here a side-light on the culture of the Goths. The primitive guttural, lost in Eng. tough, from tiuhan, is heard in ​the A.S. tóh, and Sc. tyuch and tchuch. A similar survival is e-nyuch (enough), compared with Go. ga-nohs, sufficient.
But the strongest changes appear, as is natural, in double consonants, for here we encounter a potent factor in phonetic change, human laziness. To the favourite initial guttural the liquids r, l, w, or v attach themselves with persistence. In these cases the guttural has a tendency to disappear in favour of the weaker parasitic sounds. This feature may be illustrated in hrugga, a staff (Sc. rung), hrot, a roof (O. Fris. hrof; Du roef), hrukjan, to crow—"suns hana hrukida," soon the cock crowned. Scotch sometimes uses this strong initial as in Go. hropjan, to call, for which we find not only roup, an auction, but hraep, sometimes heard as thraep, to argue—"He thraepit it doon my throat." Hropei, a call or harsh cry, is seen in Sc. roopie, croaky, croupie. Another instance is hrains, pure, Ger. rein and our rinse. Hrishjan, again, to shake, passes through A.S. hrysian to our "rush." A derivative is Sc. reeshle, rustle, a stronger form of rush, as in "I'll reeshle yer riggin" (back Ger. Rücken). Of the loss of h before l our laugh for example, for it is Go. hlahjan, though the Sc. lach better preserves to original guttural.
A favourite inital in Gothic, sk, has generally been softened in cognate tongues to sh, Ger. sch. The South African Taal consistently preserves the hard form where the home Dutch softens it, as in Taal skap, sheep. We see this change in skreitan = shred, but contrast Sc. screed, scart (scratch), skiuban = shove, skura = shower, Sc. shoor. When Christ stilled the tempest Mark says, "wrath skura windis mikila," a muckle shoor of wind arose. As we usually find in Scots, s has the hard sound regularly in Gothic, where un-weis, unlearned, un-wise, sounds quite like Sc. on-weiss. The English cousin often sounds cúss-in on a North-country tongue. A striking example of the hard s is where Matthew, telling of the stilling of the tempest (viii. 26), says, "jah warth wis mikil," and there was a muckle wheesh. If followed by i, it must be softened, as siujan (Sc. shoo), and sow = saian (Sc. saw). The Gothic laus with s hard has exactly the Scotch sound of loose, though the sense is somewhat different, viz., empty, of no effect. The difficult th is often changed to d, as Go. maurthra = murder, sinthan, go, wander ​= send, hlethra = ladder, but Sc. lether, sneithan, to cut = Sc. sned, snod, Ger. schneiden, balths = bold, Sc. bauld, kiltheis = child. In Sc. th is often heard for Eng. d, e.g. shoother = shoulder, poother = powder, bethel = beadle (Lat. bedellus).
English characteristically weakens initial hw, in contrast to Sc. and the original Go., into w, as hwaiteis, wheat, Sc. hwait; hwairpan, to throw, warp; hwairnei, brains, Sc. harns, Ger. Ge-hirne. Whet preserves its original sense of cutting in Sc. as, "to white a stick." It has several forms in the Gospels. Wulfila shows a striking metaphorical usage as when the crowd "hwotidedun" blind Bartimæus for addressing Jesus, rendered by our "rebuked." The guttural in Latin is, according to rule, the hard k, as in quis, Sanskr. kas, compared with Go. hwas, Sc. whaw, who. In this and its derivatives, on the other hand, the guttural disappears in English. Our which is a good illustration of such changes—Go. hwi-leiks, Sc. whi-lk, compared with which or witch. A countryman, sauntering near the Strand, on asking a passer-by, "What street is this?" was answered, "Wych Street." This, meaningless to him, made him repeat the query, whereupon the Londoner testily said, "W'y, Wych Street, of course," and walked on, doubtless mentally forming his own opinion of Doric dulness. On the road to Calvary the mob railed on Jesus, "wagging their heads," withondans hauhida seina. This withon, to shake, is for an older hwithon, as seen in Lat. quatere, to shake. As expressing a rapid movement, whid, whidding, withon has many representatives in Scotch. Among the powers promised by the Master is that of treading on serpents, "trudan ufaro waurme," where the word has its original sense of dragon, "monster of the prime," as in the Welsh cape, christened by the Norsemen Great Orme's Head. The original is hwaurms, which again is the Sansk. krimi, and this, through early Arab traders, has given us carmine and crimson.
Of more vital interest is the evidence these remains afford of the condition of life among the Goths. In one respect they have the advantage of preserving in transverse section a petrifaction, as it were, of contemporary speech. On the other hand, the limited range of subjects in the Gospels excludes many departments of social and intellectual activity. We miss the language of war and the chase, of the social pleasures, of folk-lore. But it must be admitted that the Gospel narrative comes very near to our "business and bosoms," so we should expect to find in the language of Wulfila no lack of homely and intelligible terms. A glossary arranged, as it is, alphabetically, conceals the evidence it bears of social and intellectual status. More instructive would it be to have the words classified under subjects. The main heads might be—(1) Man and his personal environment (man generally, parts of the body, relationships, dwellings, dress, feelings); (2) Man's remoter natural surroundings (plant and animal life, the weather, time, &c.); (3) Man's forms of activity (occupations, war, civil life, education, and religion). Under these heads a mass of most interesting words are to be found in Gothic, most of which are still in use among us, the rest are quite familiar to a Scotchman, and in a large degree to a German. All of them have a history in themselves and in the affinities they suggest.
Here follow some specimens of this instructive catalogue:—
1. Man and His Personal Environment.
Man generally.—Wair = Lat. vir, the strong one, the hero, obsolete but seen in O.Eng. wer-old = world, Sc. wardle, e.g. "Eh, sirs! sic a weary wardle" ("Johnny Gibb o' Gushetneuk"), wer-geld. It is found, but obscurely, in Canterbury = Roman Cant-uarius = bury or town of the men of Kent. In this word er represents A.S. waru = wair, common in old place-names. In Gael, wair is fear, as in Farintosh = clansman. Guma = homo, the earthy one (bride-g(r)oom, yeoman). Manna is used, like German man, in an indefinite, pronominal sense. Queins ​= γυνὴ, the producer, stands for woman generally, our queen, Sc. quean.
Parts of the Body.—Leik = body generally, dead or alive, very common in older Eng. as in lich-gate, lyke-wake. Hwairnei = brains, Sc, harns, Ger. Ge-hirne, renders Golgotha = hwairnei-staths, place of a skull. Lof-a = Sc. loof, cf. die flache Hand, the open palm. "Some standing by struck Jesus with the lofa (loof)."—John xviii. 22. In A.S. it is lôf. Beowulf has g-lôf, our glove, an almost solitary trace of the prefix ge, so common with nouns in Gothic and German. Gothic shows that our gallop has also a trace of it in verbs, for it is Go. ga-hlaupan, to run, our leap, Sc. lowp, Ger. laufen, Eng. loafer and inter-loper. Kinnus = the cheek, our chin. Sc. keeps k in kin-cough for chin-cough, Du. kink-hœst. Literally it is the curved, crooked, as in kink, a twist in a rope, Sc. kinch. Taihs-wa = dexter, the pointer or right hand (also in teach and token). Gothic has a word for one-handed = hamfs, in the general sense of maimed, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; good is it for thee to enter into life one-handed than to enter Gehenna having two hands" = "Jabai marzjai thuk handus theina, afmait tho; goth thus ist hamfamma in libain galeithan, than twos handuns habandin galeithan in gaiainnan."—Mc. ix. 43. Haihs = one-eyed, a curious compound, according to Bopp, of the -ce of Lat. ec-ce hic-ce, e-ka (Sanskrit one), along with the common Aryan word for the eye, Go. augo, Lat. oc-ulus. The whole is therefore in the Roman name Horatius Cocles = the one-eyed. By Grimm's Law the syll.-ha = ka (Sans.) is in both hamfs and haihs. Hamfs = ha-nifa, Sc. neive, fist. In haihs and hamfs the syllable ha is prefixed. It has been dropped in Sc. neive, cf. knife = nife.
With few exceptions terms for parts of the body can be recognised with little difficulty. Some interpret themselves at once—brusts (breast), hairto (heart), hups (hip), fotus (foot), suljo (sole), auso (ear), kniu (knee, with k sounded as in Scotch). Others are archaic, as fill, skin (fell, felt, pelt), amsa, shoulder. If, as Prof. Skeat suggests, this be a mis-reading for ahsa, it is the Sanskrit uhsan, the bearer, the Ger. Achsel, and Sc. oxter, the arm-pit. Several are to be referred to A.S., as haubith, head (A.S. heafod), wairilo, the lip (A.S. weler), waggari, a pillow ​(Ger. and O.E. Wange, the cheek, A.S. wangere). Tooth itself is tunthus, showing the older n as in Lat. dent—Du tand. The isolated peak, Tinto, in Lanarkshire, was so named by the Norsemen. Wlits and (w)ludja, the countenance, are A.S. wlite, now lost. Finger and hand are found almost unchanged. The former has its Sc. and Ger. sound. The Sc. wime (belly) is exactly Go. wamba (Eng. womb). The mouth = munths, and the heel = fairzna, are more like their German cognates, Mund and Ferse. Stamms (stammerer), daubs, blinds (pron. as in Sc), halts (halt), explain themselves. The Go. for neck, hals, was at one time common in Sc, as hause, but still lives in the Orkneys. Here is the experience of an Orcadian in the Canongate of Edinburgh: "Ae wife luckid oot at a muckle apstair window; the meenit the Laird saw a heed i' a window atween him an' de licht, he stend stock still, an' says he tae me—'Po' me sal, there's a muckle bauckie!' (cf. Sc. for bat, ghost, bogle, and Burns's "bauckie bird"). Robbie, gie me me gun, and I'll lay him deed as seur as his heed's on his hass.'"—"Orcadian Sketches."
Relationships. — Our word father is not in Go. except in fadr-eins = parents or family (Joseph was of the house of the family of David), and "abba, fadar!" (Gal. iv. 6). Its stem is in hund-faths = master of a hundred, and bruth-faths = lord of the bride. Faths is fode = a man, in our old ballads such as Cheild Rowland and Burd (bride) Ellen, e.g. "God rue on thee, poor luckless fode, what hast thou to do here?" The root of these means the protector, and is in sense classical rather than Teutonic (cf. Lat. pater). Gothic fodr is a sheath, i.e. the protecting one. Mother is nowhere in Gothic. The place of these two terms is taken by the onomatopoetic atta, aithei. Such child words are common, e.g. abba, papa, tata (Vaidic and Greek), and dad, hence Att-ila, the Hun = the little father. The Czar is still to the Slavs the little father. Attâ in Sans, is mother or aunt = Go. aithei. Widuwo = widow, the bereaved one, really an adj. as viduus ager, a fallow field, in Lat. This is also its force in Go. and Sc. The woman of Sarepta is "quinon widuwon" = a widow (woman or quean).
Such terms as brothar, swistar, dauhtar (Sc. dochter), sunus (son), lauths (lad), call for no remark. Barnilo, child, what is ​born, is the Sc. bairn, bairnie, and occurs in many forms. Another term, well represented but now obsolete, is magus, magula, a lad, and the feminine forms mawi, mawila, and magathei = maidenhood, and applied by Luke to Anna, the prophetess. Magaths, of which the form magathei is the abstract, is A.S. maeg-eth, our maid, maiden, Maisie (Meg-sie). The root notion is that of a "growing" lad or lass, cf. might, main. It is substantially same as maik, a "fitting" companion, very common in old Scots. Thus Barbour's "Brus" has—
"Walter Stewart with him tuk he, His maich, and with him great menye."—X. 827.
Dress in general is wasi = Lat. vestis. Paida, a coat of skins, to this day the dress of Slavonic shepherds, is said to be in pea-jacket, which has come through Dutch. Another hint of a national peculiarity in dress we get. When Mary wiped Our Lord's tear-moistened feet, Wulfila uses for our phrase, "the hairs of her head," Skufta haubidis seinis. Skuft is the top-knot, Ger. Schopf. The Greek here simply says Θριξὶν τἤς κεφαλἤς. The pre-historic top-knot is still dear to the feminine world from Lapland to Paris.
2. Man's Natural Surroundings.
Natural Phenomena.—To Wulfila heaven and earth, sun, moon and stars, sea and land, berg and dale, stone, fen, flood, water, burn, gold, silver, iron, salt, were known by precisely the same names as to ourselves. The sun was known by two names, sunno, fem., and sauil, Lat. sol. neut. The sea was the saiwa, the tossing one, the lake marei, the O.Eng. mere. A country district was a gawi, still heard in Rhein-gau and (perhaps) Miln-gavie; a field was hugs, a haugh, or akrs = acre, Lat. ager. Ahwos, torrents of rain, is aqua, the universal Aryan word for water.
Plant Life.—Grass is Go., but not in its strictest sense, rather herb. The mustard seed is the greatest of all the grasses, cf. gorse and Sc. gers. In our sense of grass hawi = hay, is used, e.g. "If God so clothe the hay of the field." For fruit generally, especially of the fields, we have akran (akrs = field), our acorn, now restricted in sense. The New Philological Dictionary ​traces it to Go. akran, fruit, probably a derivative of Go. akrs, and originally "fruit of the unenclosed land, natural produce of the forest." Tree generally is bagm = beam, Ger. baum. Timber is triu = tree (cf. Sc. a tree or wooden leg). The band that came to the garden to seize Christ were armed with trees (staves). This explains the expression "nailed upon the tree," spoken of the Crucifixion. Strange to say. Go. supplies no native tree-names. Of grains, three bear the modern names—Atisk = Old Sc. aitis, oats, lit. what is eaten, but used for the field of corn (σπόριμον) through which Our Lord walked on the Sabbath-day. In the A.S. Bible we read "Thā Noë ongan him aetes tilian" = then Noah began to get him food. Hwaiteis = wheat, sounds quite homely to us (hwate in Scots), so also does baris = bere, barley. Ahs, an awn or ear of corn, and ahana, chaff, mean, literally, the little sharp thing, Lat. acus, a needle.
Animals.—Beast in general is dius = deer ("rats and mice and such small deer," Shak.); wolf and fox (fauho) occur under these names. Waurms, as in O.Eng., means a serpent or dragon, cf. Great Orme's Head, and "Where the worm dieth not" in the Bible. Bird (fugls) in general is the Bible word fowl. Sparrow (sparwa), dove, and eagle are named, the first two, as in Eng., but in the passage, "Where the carcase is there are the eagles gathered together," eagle is ara. This word, now lost, is the O.Eng. and Sc. earn or erne and Ger. Adler = Adel-aar, the noble bird. The O.Eng. erne exists as a surname, e.g. Dr. Arne, the famous musician. Thomas the Rhymer says,—
"The raven shall come, the erne shall go, And drink the Saxon bluid sae free."
The golden eagle in Gaelic is the iol-air. The iol here is just our yel-low. For the domestic animals, cattle generally is faihu, a widely diffused word, lit. the tethered; it is our fee. In Barbour's "Brus" it has its original meaning, —
"In the contrie thar wonnyt ane That husband wes and with his fe Oft-syss (times, Chaucer's ofté-sithes) hay to the peile led he."—Book x. 150.
​Ox, the carrier (cf. veho), is auhsa, retaining the original guttural. Our ewe, Lat. ovis, is found in awe-thi, a shepherd, and awi-str, a fold. Wulfila uses in "Behold, the Lamb of God!" the word withrus (awi-thrus), our wether, lit. a yearling. Fula and kalbo, gaits and gait-eins (goat-ling), and stiur (steer) explain themselves. Horse is not in the Gospels, but the Runic aihwus (horse) is in aihwa-tundja, the burning-bush, the first member of which is cognate with ὠκὺς, swift, acer, and the latter part our tinder. The horse is originally the eager, mettled one. In O.Norse ehwa and in A.S. ehu, Gael, ech, mean horse. In such a compound it should be noted that horse simply means large, cf. horse-chestnut, and Ἱππο-κάνθαρος, horse-beetle or monstrous beetle. Burns's term aiver for horse is derived from O.Fr. aver; Low Lat. averium, habere, hence average, cf. cattle and "goods and chattels."
One other singular animal name is in Wulfila. The Baptist was clad in camel's hair (Ga-wasiths taglam ulbandaus). The Go. for hair is tagl, our word tail. Ulbandus renders καμήλος, and the wonder is how such a word came into the language. It has a long and interesting history. In Greek it is ἐλέφας, our elephant, in A.S. olfend, the camel, in Lat. ebur, ivory, for this was known in the west long before the animal. The first part of Alphabet leads us to the Semitic form, Heb. aleph and eleph, the ox, and Sans. ibhâ, the elephant. For the old alphabets were hieroglyphic or pictorial in origin. The true Teutonic alphabet—the Runes—was of this nature, and the letters had names. Wulfila based his characters on Runes, as modified by Greek and Latin. The first letter-name in these was, as in the Phoenician alphabet, the ox, the Go. faihu, and its two horns in symbol can still be seen in our F. Another is called Tius = ᛏ = T, the Teutonic Jove, wielder of the thunder-bolt, and still in Tues-day. The symbol is just the broad arrow or sapper's mark. What was struck by his bolt must be deo-datum, confiscated, and thus Government serves itself heir to his thunder. But, to return to Ulbandus, el-eph contains the Arabic article el or al. The second syllable is one of many Sanskrit names for the elephant, ibhá = the strong one, and the appearance of the term in the west is due to the Arab traders who from the very early times shipped the animal and ​ivory from Ceylon. Ibha, again, is the Gr. adverbial suffix and adv. Ὶφἶ, and it does the same duty in Go., where adverbs are regularly formed from adjectives by adding—aba, e.g. baitr-aba = bitterly, abr-aba = ably. The A.S. olfend means a camel. The Romance form, olifaunt, survives as a surname. Chaucer, in the tale which he tells in his own character as poet of the Canterbury pilgrimage, sends the Quixotic knight Sir Thopas to do battle with the giant Sir Oliphaunt.
3. Man and his Activities.
One looks with interest on any light the Gothic fragments shed on the life of the people. Do they show even the rudiments of a social organisation? They called themselves Gut-thiuda, a compound of the national name and a derivative; from an Indo-Europ. root tu, to swell, be large or mighty, and present in our English thu-mb, the thick, swoln one. The notion is akin to that in Lat. plebs, the many, the masses. From it is thiudans, the king. Jerusalem is the baurgs of the mikilins thiudanis. On the other hand, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, is only the kindins, akin to king, whereas reiks, from which come Lat. rex, Ger. Reich, and -ric in bishopric, is applied to Jairus, ruler of the synagogue. Apart from the idea of rule the most frequent term of respect, and uniformly applied to Our Lord, is frauja, rendering Gr. Κύριος, but now quite lost. It is, however, common in the ballads as free,—
"No longer durst I for him let (hinder, halt). But furth I fundit (went) with that free."
—As I went on ae Monday.
The editor of the ballad remarks:—Free, fey, lord, or fairy, and thus gets over a difficulty with a little courage. It is also in Ger. Frau, and may be the curious Norse surname Fridge, seen on tombstones in the north. Its Norse equivalent is freyr, probably preserved in the surname Frier.
There is evidence of a self-governing community of kindred interest and origin in sibja, long most familiar in Lowland Scots as sib, related, relationship. The village commune is the gauri or country district (cf. Rhein-gau), where lived the gau-ja or ​peasant, perhaps the gudge or homely Buchan ploughman in "Johnny Gibb." The boundary of the commune is marko, the Mark, and Sc. march, found in ga-marko, a neighbour marching with one. The essence of free government, the right of popular discussion, is mathl, the market-place, analogous to the agora and the forum, when we remember that faura-mathleis is a chief speaker, and mathljan, to speak, is the Old Eng. mele, talk. Akin to this is the duty of public giving, implied in mota, toll or custom (cf. O.Eng. mote or village council), mota-staths, the receipt of customs, and a motareis, a publican. The same word is in our meed and Ger. ver-miethen, to let, be hired. Public defence is, of course, but little represented, though we have terms for army (harjis, Ger. Heer, Eng. herr-ing), sword and war (from weigan, to fight, whence Eng. vie). Ga-drauhts, a soldier, is from a verb, dringan, to serve, be pressed into service, still preserved in the old phrase, to dree one's wyrd or fate.
It is possible to construct a Gothic landscape out of the words of that far away time, words perfectly intelligible still. Overhead stretches the heavens (himins, Ger. Himmel), above the clear air (liftus, Sc. lyft), now swept by the wind (winds), now thick with the rains (rign) or the snow (snaiws) when the frost (frius) of winter (wintrus) breathes over the land (land). The sun (sunna) lights the day (dags), the moon (mena, Sc. mune) the night (nahts). All round lies the open heath (haithi) and the woodland (timrjan, to build), with thorns (thaurnus) and wild flowers (blowans haithjos = lilies of the field) by the wayside (wigs), deep in mire (fani, fen = mud) or rough with stones (stains). In moist hollows one sees the fields (hugs, Sc. haugh land), where the peasant (gauja) ears (arjan, Lat. arare) his gawi with his hoe (hoha)—the plough came later—among his roots (wort, aurtja, a husbandman), driving (dreiband) his oxen (auhsa, Sc. owsen) at the goad (gazd) point, sowing (saiand) his wheat (hwaits), oats (at-isk, Sc. aits) or barizeins (Sc. bere), or cutting (snethand, Sc. sneddin) his grass (gras) and hay (hawi) with the sickle (giltha, geld, geld-ing = the castrated one) when harvest (asans) comes round, and the corn (kaurn) is to be winnowed (winthi-skauro, a ​winnowing fan), or the meal (malan) to be ground in the mill (asilu-quairnus = ass-quern) and stored in the meal-ark (arka.Lat. arca) for the bread (h-laibs = loaf) that the good-wife will turn out of the oven (auhns, Sc. oon) to grace the table (biuds, booth, the board, always movable) at the evening meal (nahta-mats). Here sits (sitan) the lord (faths) of the feast, the wairdus (Ger. Wirth) among his guests, his ga-hlaiba or fellows of the loaf, while the servants (thewis, A.S. theow = serf) bestir themselves. The Syro-Phoenician woman helps us to complete the picture: "Yea, but eke the dogs under the table eat of the crumbs (dross) of the bairns" = "jah auk hundos undaro biuda matjand af drauhsnom barne." The morning or working meal is the undaurni-mats, where undaurni is under, in its Ger. rather than Eng. sense, as meaning "intervening time." Undaurni-mats is, therefore, the meal or meat time coming between times of labour. In Early and Middle English it is very common as undern.
The occupations of the farm would bulk largely in such a community. In addition to the more easily recognised forms already noticed are a few less obvious but interesting. The barn of the Gospels is bansts, from bindan, to bind as a means of securing. A Lowland Scot would say of a man under stress of passion, "He could nether hud nor binn." The Sc. steading as the stead (Go. staths, a place) or centre of the holding is found in the Go. verb staldan, to own, possess. The manger Wulfila calls uz-eto, what is eaten out of, cf. Ger. aus-essen. The wattled pens in which the animals were stalled may well be implied in flahta, used in the sense of a plaiting of the hair, and connected with flaihtan, to plait (Lat. plectere). The movable fence that the Sc. farmer still uses for sheep feeding off turnips in the field, he calls a flake. Here would be at times secured the "hairda sweine managaize" (herd of many swine) that the Gadarene demoniac saw the hairdeis (herd) haldand (keeping, holding, Sc. huddin). Not far off would be the unsavoury dunghill, maihstus, mixen. The strong guttural of maihstus in the Gothic is still heard in the Sc. mauchie, fulsome, foul-smelling.
​The civic unit was the householder, the garda waldands, wielder of the yard. The term gards has lived long as Gart, Gort, Garth in place-names, and in Norse-Celtic districts signifying a farm-stead (Go. staths, stads, Sc. steading). Gud-hus is the only use of our word house, and means God's-house or temple. The preference for gards instead of hus suggests that primitive type of farm-life in which a settler effects a clearing in the primeval forest and encloses his home (af-haims = from home) like the Sc. farm-toon, for this is the radical sense of both gards and Sc. toon. Its roof is the hrot, uncovered to admit the paralytic into the room where Jesus was. In the Heliand, a Low-German poem of the ninth century upon the Saviour's life, this sufferer is admitted "thurk thes huses hrost," through the house's roof. Hrot, roof, roost, all originally indicated the rafters on which the fowls perched. "Rule the roost" is really an analogous phrase to Cock of the walk. The paralytic was let down through the tiles—skaljos, Eng. scale—a word which shows they must have been slates, for to the Scottish schoolboy his slate-pencil was long known as skeelyie—the actual Gothic term we have here. Of course skaljos would equally apply to thin slabs of stone, still a roofing material in the Border districts, and on old churches. At the end of the house rose the gibla (Sc. and Du. gevel), that pinnacle of the Temple to which the Tempter led Christ. In front was the porch, after the fashion of a Boer stoep, and known as the ubizwa (our eaves). The door (daur) and the window (auga-dauro = eye-door) completed the external view. Inside the house, on the middle of the floor, stood the sacred vesta of the Romans, the Go. hauri, our hearth, the ascending smoke (rikwis, Sc. reek) of which escaped as it best might from its pile of ashes (azgo). Over it mayhap hung the kettle (katils, from kasa, a pot), with chair and bench (stols and sitls = Ger. Stuhl, settle) not far off.
The larger social centre was the baurgs (Eng. burgh, Sc. broch), translating πόλις, and meaning, literally, a walled place, from bairgan, to preserve. Some kind of enclosure secured the Go. baurgs, for baurgs waddjan is the town-wall of Damascus, whence St. Paul escaped by a basket. The term waddjan here, akin to withe, wattle, widdie, points to a kind of fence still very common in Holland, and formed of plaited willow or hazel twigs. ​The baurgs of Wulfila must have been a considerable place. It had its market-place (ga-runs), crowded corners (weihsta, akin to Lat. vicus), street (gatwo, Sc. gate) and stey brae (staiga), still a street name in Hamburg, in the form Steig.
The arts of civil life do not play any great part in the Gospels. Next to the farmer would be the (w)aurtja, or gardener (wort, Ger. Wurzel), whose care would be the aurti-gards with its vineyard. Wine (weina), as a name, appears in the word for a drunkard and as a compound with triu (tree), basi (berry), and tains (branch, Sc. tine of a stag, harrow, eglantine). Building construction is implied in timrjan (timber), to build. Trius, the general term for tree, means also timber, as in triuw-eins, of tree, and in Scots. The Ger. Baum is Go. bagms, beam, boom. The common tool of Central Europe, the axe, is akwizi. The metals are known—eis-arn (iron), gulth (gold, figgra-gulth, a finger ring), and silubr (silver, meaning also money, as in Scots). Ais, brass, coin, is Lat. aes. The apostles were enjoined to take nothing for the way except ane rung, but no meat-bag (wallet), loaf, nor money in (their) girdles = "niba hrugga aina, nih mati-balg nih hlaif nih in gairdos aiz." Aiza-smitha is the coppersmith of 2 Tim. iv. 14. The humbler arts of the home are indicated by wulla (wool), lein (linen), and nethla (needle), siujan (sew), and bi-waibjan (weave).
The higher walks of culture could scarcely be looked for among Wulfila's heathen converts. In church organisation the alien term accompanies the novel and strange idea, but it says much that the subtle language of the Greek is so often accurately rendered by a native word, intelligible to the hearers presumably, otherwise it would have been meaningless. We have spirit (ahma, Holy Ghost), soul (saiwala), mind (muns, munan, to think), understanding (hugs). The sense of property is well recognised—Swes, one's own (cf. Lat. suus) property, arbi, a heritage (Ger. Erfe), skattja, a money-changer, skatts, money (cf. scot-free, and Orcadian scat-hold), wadi, a pledge (Sc. wad-set, a mortgage), waddja-bokos, a bond or legal document. Bota is the familar Scots for boot or money in bargaining. Nor is law (witoth, from ​witan, to know) absent, witness witoda-laisareis, a teacher of the law, witoda-fasteis, a lawyer. And of course writing must have been a regular art—"ainana writ witodis" = ane writ of the law (a stroke of the pen, Luke xvi. 17).
The refined arts of healing and teaching are illustrated by lekeis, a physician, the O.Eng. leech, literally the licker, and lekinon, to heal, and by laisareis (Ger. Lehrer), Wulfila's rendering of Rabbi. The root of the latter is in a Gothic preterite verb, lais, I know, and its derivative, laisjan, therefore means to make to know, that is, teach. Gothic thus distinguished between the two processes, long expressed in English, as it is still in Scots, by the one term, learn. The only reference to anything like education is stabs, a letter, element, still a compositor's term (cf. Ger. Buch-stabe). Our spell has its older meaning, spillon, to narrate (cf. gospel = good-spell), spill, a tale, spilla, a teller, and spilda, a writing-tablet. The art of the healer had to deal with two serious forms of disease—palsy and leprosy. The paralytic, us-litha, is named from lithus, a joint or limb (Ger. G-lied) from leithan, to go (our lead). Scott tells the story of Samuel Johnson's discussion with the elder Boswell at Auchinleck. The doctor's depreciation of Cromwell the laird clinched with, "He gar'd kings ken they had a lith in their neck." Leprosy is thruts-fill, from thriutan, to threaten and fill, the skin.
The Goth could not have been without his pleasures—witness his siggwan, to sing, also to read, doubtless a recitative in church. In this connection may be noted an odd expression that throws light on the ceremonial of Wulfila's converts. When Our Lord entered the synagogue at Nazareth on Sabbath He stood up to read, ἀνέστη ἀναγνῶναι, "us-stoth siggwan bokos," literally, stood up to sing the book. Again, a certain lawyer asked, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the law? How readest thou?" replied Jesus. The Greek is simply πῶς ἀναγκώσκεις, but Wulfila writes, "Hwaiwa us siggwis?" how singest thou? alluding to intoning the lessons. Wherever Scripture reading occurs this verb is met with. Our word read is also in Gothic (rodjan), but in the sense of speaking. For singing in the secular sense we have liuthon (Ger. Lied), and liuthareis, a singer. The only instrument mentioned ​is the trumpet, a cow-horn most probably, and known as the thut-haurn (Du. toet-horen, Eng. toot).
Religion.—The Supreme Being is Guth, God, peculiarly Teutonic, and of uncertain origin. Wulfila refrains from using the Runic Tius. A demon is skohsl, Ger. Scheu-sal, Scheuche, a scarecrow, Sc. shoo, cf. monstrum, a thing to point the finger at. But a commoner term is un-hultha, Devil, Satan, still in Ger. un-hold (unkindness, sin), and Held, a hero, hence the favourite O.Eng. name Hilda, the gracious one. Hell is halja, the covered or hidden, cf. Hades, the unseen. The root is in hul-jan, to cover, Sc. hool of a pea, and the hulls for clothes in "Sartor Resartus." A priest is a gud-ja, or good man. The affix ja is very common as a diminutive in Sc, and specially Aberdeenshire, e.g. wifie, lassie (wifya, lass-ya).
The foregoing terms give, in considerable variety, evidence of the social and intellectual condition of the Goths. They also bear out the fact that these people were, in a veritable sense, our forefathers. A further inquiry will prove that these remains throw a very instructive light, not only backward upon the primitive condition of Teutonic Europe, but forward on many words and expressions still in common use. As we have a fuller and richer history, an older and more varied literature than any other European country, it cannot but happen with our words as with our institutions, that old friends assume new faces. Gothic, therefore, serves to show how great has been this change in meaning as well as form. The long forgotten sense in which they occur gives us a strange surprise. Sutizo comp. of suts = sweet, is in Matt. xi. 24—"Sweeter [i.e. better] will it be for Sodom at the judgment-day than for thee." Again, Mark xi. 12, coming out of Bethany the next day, Jesus was greedy (gredags) i.e. hungry. Sels, our silly, always retains its good sense, as in Ger. selig, happy, blessed, and "the silly sheep" of pastoral poetry. In the parable of the talents, Lc. xix. 22—"Thou wicked and slothful servant" is "Un-selja skalk jah lata," lit. unsilly, skulk, yea, late, four words equally good Go. and good Eng., but in a strangely altered sense. Lats = late, is always used in the sense of lazy. Its opposite, early, is air, ere, while both are in Scots as "late an' air." Modags = moody, is always angry, thus, "Whosoever is moody (modags) with his ​brother without a cause." Verbs show similar changes of sense.
The Go. swers (Ger. schwer, heavy) has been lost in English in any sense, but is still familiar in Scots as unwilling, slow to move. In the Gospels the centurion's servant was swers or dear to him. Fagrs, again, our fair, has only the sense of suitable or fit. In German and Dutch the root is very common. On the other hand, many adjectives differ little from modern forms, thus, gods (good), ubils (evil), faus (few), manags (many), reiks (rich), arms (poor, Ger. arm), leitils (little), mikils (muckle), braids (Sc. bredd, broad), kalds (cold) and gradags (greedy), fuls (foul), wairs (worse, Sc. waur). Such adjectives were compared much as now; for example, for good, better, best, we have gods, batiza, batists. A quite obsolete adjective, mins, is treated similarly, minniza, minists. It still appears as a verb, to mince, make small, common in early English.
In the list of nouns there are interesting Gothic words still common in Scots though long lost to English. In the miraculous feeding the disciples took up of the remains of the feast, laibos gabruko, literally the lave of the brock or broken bits. In Ephesians the phrase, without spot or blemish, has wamme and maile, the former O.Eng. wem, a spot, the latter such a blemish as iron-mould (Sc. eirn-mail) or rust on linen. The Apostles are to shake the dust off their feet, if not favourably received, where we have in Go. mulda, the Du. mul and Sc. mools, a favourite expression for burial, as in being "laid amone the mools." Its adjective muldeins, earthy, is applied in Sc, as moolins, to crumbs. The sponge that the soldier handed to the Christ on the Cross is a swam (Ger. Schwamm). Swumfsl is the pool of Siloam. The word is in Eng. swamp, and, as a Scots mining term, is the sumph or draining hole at the foot of the shaft. When Judas led Pilate's men to Gethsemane they carried lanterns, for which Wulfila uses skeima. It is in our shimmer, but in Scots in the older form,—
"The glare o' his e'e hath nae bard exprest,
Nor the skimes o' Aiken-drum."
—The Brownie of Blednoch.
"Dintis, That slew fyr as men slayis on flintis."—Barbour.
In the cricket-field a hard hitter is a slogger, retaining the old guttural. To whet is now obsolete almost, but Wulfila regularly uses it in the sense of threaten, rebuke. Thus Our Lord whets (hwotjan) the evil spirits. Shakspere makes Brutus say,—
"Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar I have not slept."—Jul. Cæs.
Wopjan = weep (cf. whoop) has now quite a restricted sense, but in Go. it is used for calling aloud under all circumstances, of cock-crowing, and of the voice of the Baptist. The usual word for crying in our sense is gretan = Sc. greet. Thus Peter went out and grat bitterly (gaigrot baitraba). To whine, again, is hwainon, in the sense of mourning. Again, in Wulfila the thieves twitted (id-weit-jan), i.e. reproached, Jesus on the Cross, from a verb the same as Sc. wite = blame. Ween, now only in over-weening, is quite common in its old sense of expect, fancy. "Art thou he that should come or ween (wenjan) we another?" asked John's disciples. Be-wray, now obsolete, is wroh-jan, to accuse, e.g. "Wrohiths was fram thaim gudjam" = was accused of the priests.
This process of change goes a step farther, and introduces us to common Go. words of which scarcely a trace now survives. Go. ogan, to be in extreme fear, has been frittered down to the senseless expletive awful, yet at one time it meant death by throttling (root, agh, to choke, Lat. anguis = the throttler). Its derivatives are ogre, eager, ugly, awe. On the Borders ug-sam is still an expressive epithet. Theihan, to thrive, prosper, gives the commonest asseveration in O.Eng., "So mot I the" = so may I prosper. The thigh, Sc. thee, is the plump, well-thriven. Laikan, to leap for joy, laiks, sport, is the vulgar larks, larking. The brother of the Prodigal, coming near the house, ​hears singing and larking (laikins). Dugan, to avail, is Ger. taugen, common in O.Sc. as dow. Bums has, "Some swagger hame as best they dow" (are able), and, again, as a negative, downa. The derivative doughty, Ger. tüchtig, has the guttural sounded in Scots. The root lives in a mutilated form in, How d' you do? Anan, to breathe, a very old verb, is lost in Eng. Uz-anan is said of Our Lord giving up the ghost on the Cross. Scotch long preserved the word,—
"And thai war ayndles and wery And thar abaid thair aynd to tan" (tane, take).
—Barbour.
Eend, breath, now obsolete, was common in Scotch of the seventeenth century. The derivative, ansts, grace, favour, Ger. Gunst for ge-unst, is a pretty metaphor in Gothic.
Some of these Gothic verbs are more obscure than others, but the difficulty vanishes on closer acquaintance. German easily accounts for such as fraihnan, to question (fragen), mitan, to cut (Messer, a knife), niman, to take (Ger. nehmen, Eng. be-numb), thaurban, to be in want (Ger. be-dürfen, to need). Of the first there is an odd example in the ballad, "As I went on ae Monday,"—
"Till him I said full soon on-ane (anon), For furthermair I would him fraine, Gladly would I wit (know) thy name."
In A.S. dearn, secret, is common. It is Go. ga-tarnjan, to conceal, lost in English but familiar in Scots. Its usual sense of hiding, listening, varies somewhat in the Fifeshire, "he dernd a wee," that is, paused to think. When, in the synagogue at Nazareth, the unclean spirit in the poor man called out, the Master said, "Silence! come out of him." Here the Go. word for "Silence" is thahai, the imperative of thahan, cognate with Lat. taceo, to be silent.
German is in a much more archaic and homogeneous condition than modern English, and, therefore, one is quite prepared for many points of connection between it and Gothic. But they belong to different branches of the Teutonic family. Gothic, a Low-German speech, is closely allied to the Scandinavian group of Teutonic tongues, and therefore akin to Lowland ​Scots, which, as distinctively Northern in character and largely influence by Norse, has preserved many antique forms. Here one finds the most astonishing identities, not alone in form and sense, but in pronunciation and minute turns of expression. The Goth said hwan, than, nu, ut, na, ain, haim, braid, gagg (gang), for when, then, now, out, no, one, home, broad, go. For "Suffer little children to come to me," Wulfila says, but slightly changed, "Let thay bairns gang to me." A hypocrite is a liuta = one that loots. The apostles, sent out to preach, are to take ane rung (one staff, aina hrugga). One is to lay upon the altar a hunsl as a gift, which is just hansel in Handsel-Monday, and Shakspere's "unhouseled" in "Hamlet." The leaven of the Pharisees, in translating the Greek ζύμη (cf. zymotic diseases), Lat. fermentum, is called beist, from beitan, to bite, in Scotland known as the first milk of the cow after calving. Milk itself is a dissyllable (miluks), just as one hears it now in Dutch. "Blessed are the merciful" appears as bleiths = the blate = coy, modest. St. Luke tells Theophilus that he has followed the Gospel story glegly (glaggwuba), or accurately (ἀκριβῶς), from the beginning, suggestion the Scrots phrase "gleg i' the uptak," sharp of wit. The gospel mystery, again, was concealed from the wise and prudent and revealed to babes. For babes here we have niu-klahs = new-born. Can this be the klekkin and klekkit, familiar to every Scottish laddie that has kept rabbits? The homeliness of the expression is almost shocking, but in language, as in life, there are plenty of poor relations. The hireling shepherd in the parable is betrayed by his "stibna framaths," his fremmit or strange voice. The Gadarene demoniac is wods = mad, Sc. wud, on which Shakspere puns in "Mid-summer Night's Dream"—"Wood within the wood," scarcely intelligible to southron readers. Another Shaksperian phrase "The wild waves whisht," in the "Tempest," is paralleled in Go. by the very Sc. expression, "There was a muckle wheesh," = and "Jah warth wis mikil" following our Lord's rebuke of the waves. Other peculiar terms oddly survive in Scots. Thus, James and John were partners—ga-dailans—of Simon, a word used ​with precisely the same force among our herring fishers, who go as dealsmen and half-dealsmen. A common asseveration is "bi sunjai," the "verily" of the Authorised Version. Quite a long story might be told of this word and its cognates ; enough to say it lives in Sc. "My san!" a variant of "My certe!" Professor Skeat connects "sunja" with our archaic "sooth."
Turning now to verbs we find similar evidence of identity. The Goth said bide (beidan) for staying in a place. Jesus asks of the unbelieving generation, How long must I thole (thulan) you? Bartimæus, now no longer blind, throwing off (af-wairp-ands) his robe and loupin up (us-hlaujpands), cam at (to) Jesus. The elect are the waled (waljan) or chosen. The crown of thorns—wipja us thaurnum—is a wuppin o' thorns, from wipjan, to twist or plait, the Sc. wup, beautifully used in the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens,—
"Gae fetch a wab o' the silken claith Anither o' the twine; And wap them in til oor gude ship's side, And let na the sea come in."
The regular verb in Go. for the act of perception is gaumjan, the expressive Sc. gumpshin. For a strictly mental act Wulfila uses hugjan, to think, which, with the particle of reversal, for, Ger. ver, is Sc. for-hoo, to forsake, as in "Johnny Gibb," "I wadna say nor the laird wud hae to forhoo's bit bonny nest." To strike or cuff with the open hand is kaupat-jan, Sc. gowpen. Finally giutan, to pour out water, is quite a Sc. favourite, and developed curious meanings such as gyte = silly (cf. Lat. ef-futio from the same root). In "Johnny Gibb" is "Loshtie, man, ye're seerly gyaun gyte," and again from an old poem,—
"Wark, ye ken yersels, brings drouth Wha can thole a gaisen mouth!"
Lowland Scots preserves many such verbs in their Gothic senses and sometimes even in sound. Thus gairnjan, to yearn for, is heard better in Sc. girn than its equivalent grin; bismeitan, used when Christ anoints the blind man's eyes, is ​nearer Sc. smit than Eng. smut; kannjan, to make to know, is not only heard in Sc. ken but in the phrase "a kennin," a sample; diwan, to die, is often heard in Sc. dwine, a dwinin, to fade away from such an illness as consumption, or a decline, as it was called of old; mundon, to observe, is akin in use to Sc. mind, pay attention to; brukjan, to make use of, is the archaic brook (Ger. brauchen). When the question is put to Christ as to paying tribute to Cæsar (kaisara-gild), he asks, "Why temptest thou me? " Wulfila puts it thus: "Hwa mik fraisith?" using a verb that in Scots means flattering, wheedling. The Go. jiukan, to contend, and jiuka, strife, explains the Scots expression "a yokin," "he yokit on me," in precisely the same sense. We use went as the past of go from Go. wandjan, but Scots keeps to the older form, Go. iddja, as gaed, the yode of Old English.
When we turn from the vocables of a language, as evidence of its character and pedigree, to its grammar we are on firmer ground. For in the one case the materials are in a perpetual flux, each district, generation, social set, individual even, giving a new meaning to the old stock or borrowing from without, whereas in the other we have the permanent bed of the stream, deeply grooved with the flow of ages. In language, as in the features of Nature, age conceals itself under the guise of familiarity. Who thinks, as he follows the course of some wimpling burn, that he is gazing on what is older than the oldest historical monument in existence, or dreams that the variations of case and number in his own speech were evolved in an age long anterior to the Vaidic hymns. For these are the grammatical formulæ of his race, perennial as the very laws of thought. Historical grammar is in the study of language what morphology is in the natural sciences treated biologically. In both directions we see persistency of type, co-existent with endless modifications in obedience to the demands of functional growth and decay. Thus, what seem to be arbitrary formulæ, mere atrophied structure, become in the light of historical grammar natural and significant. Many of the so-called anomalies of English grammar can thus be invested with meaning and interest. The historical grammarian has not evidence enough to give us the ultimate analysis of those conventional ​formative elements—number, gender, and case; but he can tell us why one says methinks, but a child may not say me likes nurse; why an Englishman's like I do is wrong, but his give 'em (not for them) it right; why drownded, Shakspere's swounded (swooned) and once-t are no more correct than sounded (Lat. sonare) and whilst (by false analogy from whiles); and why a Scotsman uses hit for it and speaks of a cattle beast and a widow woman. The answer to these and many more such questions is found better in Gothic than anywhere else, for this reason, that it places us so near to the primitive type of Teutonic speech, undisturbed by subsequent functional derangement. Hence it is indispensable to the scientific study of English grammar, just as it in turn is illuminated by the living vernacular of Scotland.
It would be impossible, within reasonable limits, to give anything like a full account of Gothic grammar. Merely a few points can be selected, and these such as prove the essential identity of the language with our own, and at the same time elucidate modern idiom and expression. Gothic is, like German, highly inflected. Wulfila cannot equal the richness of the Greek verb, but is able to convey to his countrymen with sufficient accuracy the spirit of so subtle and flexible a language. The basis of conjugation is the familiar distinction between strong and weak verbs, or what might rather be called primary and derivative. Gothic properly makes this turn on what is the cardinal function of the verb, the expression of preterite or past time. The primitive and very natural mode of doing so is by reduplication of the root, and this is well preserved here as in Greek. The idea of past time might very well be expressed by stress on present. Tee-total is said to be the result of a stuttering orator's endeavour to emphasise total abstinence. Traces of the process exist in Latin, either obvious, as cado, cecidi, or disguised, as fac-io, fec-i for fe-fac-i. Our did, Go. di-da, is the sole English survival of this process, but we have in Gothic several specimens of the feci-type, as hold, held (Go. hald, hai-hald), take, took (têk, tai-tôk), Sc. greet, grat (grêt, gai-grot). This process must have become at an early period merely conventional, as the rule in Gothic is not to repeat the root-vowel but the initial consonant and a uniform light vowel, ai = e, in met. Even at this early stage the further step had ​been taken, and many verbs originally reduplicating are treated as they are now, e.g. Go. bind, band = bind, bound; sit, sat. This is the result of a shifting of the accent due to the addition of personal endings, similar to what we see in photográph, photógraphy, cáput, capitís. Hence have arisen the monosyllabic preterites that we find in Go., Ger. and Eng. These processes exhausted themselves ages ago. Not a single strong verb has been developed within the historical period. The younger weak and derivative inflection supplies our increasing wants, and, like Jacob, appropriates the heritage of its elder brother. "We say helped, dragged, slipped, for example, for the Go. halp, drôg, slaup. A Scotsman even says begoud for began, and, still worse, seen for saw, hoten for hit, and putten for put. It was a Glasgow merchant, they say, who, visiting the Louvre, remarked in answer to his French conductor's "This is a portrait of Burke, your great countryman," "Dod, maan, I seen him hanged."
But the best proof of the value of Gothic as an aid to historical grammar is to be found in the analysis it renders possible of our weak preterites in -d and -ed. There we see that they are really compounds, like will go, am walking, &c. The auxiliary do has coalesced with the stem, so that I love is just I love-did. The Go. tam-jan, to tame, in its past, is declined on the model of love-did.
| S. | P. |
| tam-i-da | tam-i-dêd-um |
| „dês (for dedt) | „dêd-uth |
| „da | „dêd-un. |
Strange to say, the very common Teut. verb to do is not found as a separate verb in Gothic. It must have reduplicated and formed its pret. as S. di-da, di-des, di-da: Pl. di-ded-um, and so on. The first syllable disappears when used as a compound tense. It thus appears that, even where apparently we see tense indicated in Eng. by modification of the stem, we really use an auxiliary. Gothic uses this composite tense as freely as we do now. At the grave of Lazarus "Jesus wept" (ἐδάκρυσεν), which Wulfila renders, "Jah tagrida Jesus," as if we were to ​say, and Jesus teared. In Matt, xxvii. 1, "That they might kill him," is "Ei af-dauthi-dedeina ina," reminding one of what the child said of the murdered fly, "Me deaded it."
This preterite tense is the only time inflection in Gothic. In common with all the Teut. languages it had no future. Wulfila renders the Greek future variously, most frequently by using the subjunctive. In Latin, as every boy knows, the Fut. Ind. and Pres. Subj. of some conjugations are perplexingly like each other. He also uses the Indic. and part. present, e.g. I coming heal him = Ik quimando gahailja ina, for I coming will heal him; "Thai guth gasaihwand," i.e. they seeing God, for they will see. Circumlocutions he employs, just as we may now say, I am going to, about to, intend to, have to. Our auxiliaries shall and will are always independent verbs in Gothic, with the decided meaning of duty and wish. Such is the tense condition of the Teutonic verb; the other forms which grammarians parade in English are simply imitations of Latin. All this goes to show that in primitive times little advance had been made in developing this, one of the subtlest and most abstract of conceptions. Even yet the commonest errors in translation, as every teacher knows, are due to confusion of tenses.
Many more striking illustrations of the value of Gothic to the student of grammar might be adduced. Suffice it to refer to one more verbal form, the passive. Here Gothic throws a unique light on the primitive condition of the Teutonic tongues. These all, like English, never had a conjugational or simple passive. We are so familiar with it in Greek and Latin that we can scarcely realise our poverty here. In point of fact, young learners have the greatest difficulty in grasping the conception of a passive. They fail to see the difference between I am struck and I am sick. For, in a compound tense such as am struck, the participle, which we call the main verb, is nothing more than an adjective in predicative relation to the subject. English, and still more French and German, avoid the passive by the use of indefinite and reflexive pronouns. Thus the book has been found is in German the book has found itself. Colloquially we regularly avoid the passive by using the indefinite they as a subject. Other modern languages adopt to an excessive extent reflexive forms. Thus, Italian has for it is said, it says ​itself. Even Gothic preserves merely a trace of a passive inflection by simple derivation from the stem as bairada, bairanda (from bairan, to bear) φέρεται, φέρονται. But the favourite mode is our modern one of circumlocution, with participles and auxiliaries, or by a peculiar formation from a passive participle in—na, our—en in brok-en. Thus, from mikils, Sc. muckle, mikilnan, to be enlarged, from hauhs = high hauhnan, to be exalted. Slight traces of this still survive in learn and own. The former is from an original lais-nan, to be lered or taught. German shows this distinction of act. and pass. senses well in lehr-en (active, to teach), where h is not radical, and lern-en, to be taught, to learn. Own, again, is an original agnan (A.S. ag-nian), to be possessed, from (Go.) aigan, to have, owe. These forms are, however, not true passives, being simply the participle with the adjectival ending—na or en, treated as a verb, very much as we still do, e.g. "Fallen, thy throne, O Israel!" or = Fallen's thy throne, O Israel. In all these cases the participle is merely an adjective used predicatively. I am loved is not a form like amor, but really I am (one) loved.
The ultimate elements in grammar are two-fold, verbal and pronominal. In a now-forgotten book, the "Diversions of Purley," Horne Tooke showed a century ago that nouns, which bulk so largely in grammar, are merely epithets formed from verbal roots. It is said that our man, the thinker, is the only case of a Teut. root used directly as a noun. The pronominal elements are the abbreviations of speech, in themselves non-significant marks of identity. Their inflexion, as pronouns, is peculiar. We have lost many of the Gothic forms, but preserve a few, e.g. the old dative in -m as him, them, whom (found also in seldom, whilom), and the neuter of demonstratives in -t as it that, what. The masc. accus. sing. in -na one hears in Sc. thone, not a mistake for you. Thus Peter, in his denial, said, “Ni kanna thana mannan" = I kenna thone man. The full form of I, Go. ik, has quite gone. In "King Lear," the disguised Edgar, using the Somersetshire dialect, says, “Keep out, che vor' ye," Go. ik warja thuk = I warn you. When the two disciples are told to find the colt in the village over against, Wulfila uses the dual of the pronoun, for Go. had a dual here as well as in the ​verb. A more serious loss is that of the reflexive, which German preserves (of. Go. sik, Ger. sich).
Turning lastly to demonstratives and relatives, we find still further interest in Gothic grammar. The article is exactly what we see in Sanskrit and Greek. Its feminine survives in she, its neuter as that, which Sc. treats as an article, e.g. "Gie me that poker" for "Give me the poker." The nom. plur. of that (which is not those) we use as the old plur. of he, but in Sc. it is rightly used, as Go. thai bokos = Sc. thay books. The proper plural of he Chaucer uses regularly. In Shakspere its dative is frequent, though his editors substitute for it them. It is not in Gothic, except in a few adverbial phrases, such as to-day (himma daga, ef. Sc. the day). The relative is very imperfectly developed. The correlation of adjectival clauses is effected mainly by the addition of an indeclinable particle -ei to pronouns and demonstratives, as ik-ei = I who. This is just what might be expected, for the use of the relative implies a distinct advance in composition and the inter-dependence of clauses. Its growth is always slow, and the usage of cognate tongues far from uniform. The reader of Dickens knows that when the uneducated attempt to go beyond the rudimentary stage in composition of ands and buts and wells, and aspire to relatives, they throw about their which's very freely. The primitive relative is usually a pronominal particle (Go. -ei above is the Sanskrit ya), or the article, the indeclinable the (our article) of A.Sax. and the abbreviated unemphatic relative that or 'at of Scots, due, in the opinion of Dr. Murray ("Dialects of Lowland Scotland"), not to Norse but Celtic influence. A Gaelic speaker will say he for the throughout. The Irish peasant makes it dee. On the other hand the pure Lowland Scot says Foorsday (Thursday), and squeezes out the dental between vowels as persistently as the Cumberland man has laal and oude for little and old.
This relative one constantly hears in Scots. It can be traced from the oldest vernacular, the twelfth century "Laws of the Four Burghs," down to the speech of to-day. In such imitation Scots as Burns often wrote we have wha instead. Thus, "Scots wha hae" would be in Barbour "Scottis at hes," as Dr. Murray well shows. Our forms—who, which, that—have an interesting ​history. That is simply the demonstrative, and has its own appropriate use; but who, whose, whom, what, which, are really interrogatives. They are so in Sanskrit, where who is ka as in Gaelic (co) still. Sans. and Gr. clearly differentiate relative and interrogative, not so Lat. Who as a relative in Eng. was not recognised by Ben Jonson, the author of our earliest English Grammar, who says "one relative which." Dr. Furnivall says it was first used once in Wyclif's Bible, and very sparingly till Shakspere. In Gothic the interrogative is hwa-s, Sc. whaw, whae; its instrumental hwé we have in why, Sc. hoo, foo. A peculiar idiom is the Scots at hoo for how that. Which is a descriptive form of adjectival relationship quite distinct from who. Latin qualis, Fr. lequel, Ger. der welcher, and Shakspere's the which, all show this peculiarity. Gothic proves it to be a compound, where it is hwi-leiks. The first member is wha = wha; leiks is the word for body, as in Lich-field, lich-gate. This is our like, both separately and in composition, as in life-like = lively. For it has become our general adverbial suffix, -ly, e.g. like-ly = like-like. Sanskrit affords a curious parallel; Lat. corpus, a body, is the Sans. kalpa, which also forms adverbs in the sense of like, but not quite, e.g. pandita-kalpa = a quasi-pundit. Scottish people similarly use like in making explanations, e.g. He gie'd it to me like; I gaed wi' him a mile like.
The following table exhibits the pronominal compounds of like, to which Sc. adds thi-lk = that-like:—
| Gothic. | Scots. | German. | English. |
| Hwi-leik | hwi-lk | we-lch(er) | whi-ch |
| Swa-leik | swi-lk = sic | so-lch(er) | su-ch |
| Ana-leiks | i-lk and ilk-a | a(h)n-lich | ea-ch, on-ly, |
The foregoing imperfect sketch of this fascinating subject is an attempt to tell the strange story of the Gothic MS. and its enlightened author, of the people among whom he laboured, and the sad fate that has buried them in oblivion. On the fragmentary evidence of the Gospels, excluding altogether the Epistles, I have endeavoured to illustrate the intellectual condition of the Goths in the fourth century, and to prove that whatever there is in the language of to-day that we regard as most homely and familiar, the indispensable materials of every​day intercourse, and the very formulæ under which our thought must find expression, all lived in the mouths of our remote Gothic ancestors in their rude tuns and burgs by the banks of the Danube, while this land of ours was still a Roman colony. Do such records not awaken a deeper interest than a blurred footprint in the Red Sandstone, or even an inscribed brick from a Chaldæn mound? Jacob Grimm, the father of comparative philology, found in Gothic the clue to many of his researches, and based upon his study of it those principles which have illuminated the whole field of linguistics. During the seventy years that have intervened since he completed his great Grammar, in 1837, philologists have never lost sight of the value of Gothic. The Wulfilic remains have appeared in various forms, but the field has been almost entirely left to German scholars, and this in spite of the fact that their language is, for many reasons, the farthest removed from the true type of a Teutonic speech. The English Universities are strong in classical philology, but in every other department the German easily holds the field. The best Celtic dictionary and grammar, the most complete collection of Anglo-Saxon literature, the only concordance to Shakspere worthy of the name, the most complete English grammar—these, among many other works, have been left to the foreigner. Bosworth gave us a text of the Gothic Gospels, Professor Skeat has done much to popularise the study, and quite recently Mr. Douse has published a very elaborate and very scientific treatise of about three hundred pages, which may be an "Introduction to Gothic," though it must be barely intelligible to anyone who has not worked long and well at the subject. But the surprising feature is that, whereas German scholars, many of them much like our secondary schoolmasters, have so successfully prosecuted such studies, and Englishmen only in a fragmentary fashion and generally under the mantle of the universities, Scotsmen have contributed nothing to the subject, yet they possess an unbroken stream of literature from the twelfth century to the days of Burns and Scott, and, what is of more importance, they have, not from books or the mistaken theories of teachers, but as a living product, native to the soil that bore them, a rich system of phonetics, a homely, pithy vocabulary, and a genuine Teutonic ​idiom, vastly more archaic than the academic and conventional printed speech of the English scholar. To the Scot, therefore, the language and idiom of our old writers and of Wulfila have a freshness, a directness, and a meaning which are scarcely possible to any but an exceptionally favoured Southron. In proof of this contrast take two such works as Barnes's Poems in the Dorset dialect and the Banffshire tale of "Johnny Gibb." Whereas the one must be almost a foreign tongue to the average Englishman, no intelligent Scot, especially if born and reared in a country district, need miss in the other one point of its inimitable humour, its pithy, pawky turns of idiom and expression, and the real genius that created its character and incident. But, alas! in spite of such native advantages of Scottish scholarship. Dr. Johnson might still say of it that everyone here gets a mouthful but no one may make a meal of learning. Such works as "Johnny Gibb," the late Dr. Gregor's "Banffshire Glossary," Edmonston's work on Orcadian, the Scots contributions to Professor Wright's "English Dialect Dictionary," and Dr. Murray on the dialects of the South of Scotland, are invaluable for the study of our fast-decaying vernacular. To the philologist a vernacular is vastly more instructive than any mere book-speech, for in the field of dialectic growth and decay the real problems of language must be studied. In such fields there is almost everything to] be done for our own vernacular. Who will do for the north-eastern counties, for Fife and the Lothians, for Lanark and Ayr, what Dr. Murray has so well done for the Scots of the Border counties? Is Jamieson, even in his latest form, a scientific record of our vocables? Is there not room for some scholarly account of Gaelic, Norse, and French influence on Scots? Who will treat philologically the relics of the oldest vernacular in burgh and parliamentary records, the diction of our folk-lore and ballad minstrelsy, and even of Burns and Scott, or popularise our national epic, Barbour's "Brus"? Whoever should attempt to cultivate any one of these spheres of linguistic research will render his labours more valuable by a previous acquaintance with the Gothic of Wulfila.
2. Specimens from the "Gothic Gospels" of Wulfila.
In treating of the language of the most interesting of the Low-German races, the Goths of Moesia on the Lower Danube, during the fourth century of our era, I have aimed at presenting merely an introduction and in no way an exhaustive treatise. I have had the further object of demonstrating to the student of Lowland Scots the value and the extent of his inheritance in that forgotten speech. I know of no other treatment of the subject from this point of view. Professor Skeat, so long ago as 1868, rendered the study immensely interesting to the merely English scholar in his "Moeso-Gothic Glossary," of which I have made the most ample use in the following pages. He has put this English standpoint fairly and forcibly: "To study Moeso-Gothic is, practically, more the business of Englishmen than of anyone else—excepting perhaps the Dutch. Though it is not strictly an older form of Anglo-Saxon, it comes sufficiently near to render a study of it peculiarly interesting and instructive to us, and a thing by no means to be neglected." This exception of Dutch, one of the most modernised and cosmopolitan of the Teutonic stock, is not a very happy one, nor can Anglo-Saxon in the mouth of the Englishman of to-day be mentioned in the same breath with the still living hold of the Lowland Scot on his Gothic original through his Northumbrian and Frisian ancestry. Professor Skeat has made Gothic still more accessible through his "Gospel of St. Mark in Gothic" (Clarendon Press, 1882). More exhaustive is the "Introduction to Gothic" of Mr. T. le Marchant Douse, 1886. For a complete text, grammar and philological examination we must look to German writers. Of these by far the most practical and accessible are F. L. Stamm and Dr. Moritz Heyne, 1872 (text, grammar, glossary), and Wilhelm Braune (Gotische Grammatik, 1887). Needless to say, neither makes any use of Lowland Scots.
The version I have placed alongside of Wulfila for comparison through the following extracts is taken from "The New Testament in Scots, being Purvey's Revision of Wycliffe's Version turned into Scots by Murdoch Nisbet, c. 1520," ed. ​by the late T. Graves Law, LL.D. While among the very oldest specimens of Scots prose, and strictly comparable with Gothic on the score of subject-matter, it has the disadvantage of reflecting unduly the influence of contemporary English. For it must be remembered that the Scots never had a native Bible or Psalter. Nearly all the popular Reformation literature was produced under the influence of English. Nisbet's version was at no time in general use.
The more than literal versions of the passages here presented are not intended to be read as a translation or rendering of their sense. The words employed do not always convey such an acceptation as would satisfy the mere modern reader. That purpose is sufficiently met by the accompanying rendering into Lowland Scots, valuable in itself as supplying a philological commentary, or by the version in common use. Any rendering that is cognate with the corresponding word in the text, whether old or modern English, Lowland Scots or German, is adopted. Words that have no such cognates are italicised, while anything necessary to complete the sense is put in brackets. The mere look of the text, therefore, should show how much of the language spoken in Moesia in the fourth century has still representatives, more or less distantly related.
As an aid to the text and translation some knowledge of the grammar is necessary. No complete scheme need be given here, but pronominals and connectives, as they so frequently recur, will give good return for some attention. In the personals (I and thou) only the plurals call for notice. Of the cases the nom., poss. and obj. are—for I, weis (we), uns (us), unsara (of us and our); for thou, jus (ye), izwis (you), izwara (of you, your). Little has survived of the third person pronoun, so that it has to be shown entire, distinguishing termination from stem. This stem is the unemphatic demonstrative i-. The equivalents here given are the Anglo-Saxon forms:
| | | Masc. | Masc. | Fem. | Fem. | Neut. | Neut. |
| Sing.— | N. | i-s | = he | si | = heo | i-ta | = hit |
| | Acc. | i-na | = him | i-ja | = her | i-ta | = hit |
| | Gen. | i-s | = his | i-zai | = hire | i-s | = his |
| | Dat. | i-mma | = him | i-zos | = her | i-mma | = hit |
| | | Masc. | Masc. | Fem. | Neut. |
| Sing.— | N. | ei-s | = hi | ijô-s | ija |
| | Acc. | i-ns | = hi | ijô-s | ija |
| | Gen. | i-zê | = hira | i-zo | i-zê |
| | Dat. | i-m | = him | i-m | i-m |
The A.S. has but one set of forms for plural. Lowland Scots has preserved hit. Morris says, "Hine = him is still retained , in the Southern dialect, as 'I seed en.' Shee and thay do not occur in any pure Southern writer before a.d. 1387." Our plurals here are borrowed from the demonstrative. "Thai (they), thair, thaim are Northern forms, and are not used by Southern writers" (Morris). We use the original forms colloquially in such phrases as "Give 'em it," for the personal him not them. The A.S. forms accompany here the Gothic:—
| | | Masc. | Masc. | Fem. | Fem. | Neut. | Neut. |
| Sing.— | N. | sa | = se | sô | = seo | tha-ta | = thaet |
| | Acc. | tha-na | = thone | thô | = thâ | tha-ta | = thaet |
| | Gen. | thi-s | = thaes | thi-zôs | = thaere | thi-s | = thaes |
| | Dat. | tha-mma | = tham | thi-zai | = thaere | tha-mma | = thâm |
| Plur.— | N. | thai | = thâ | thô-s | | thô | |
| | Acc. | tha-ns | = thâ | thô-s | | thô | |
| | Gen. | thi-ze | = thâra | thi-zo | | thi-zê | |
| | Dat. | thai-m | = thâm | thai-m | | thi-m | |
It will be noticed in the above forms that Go. z becomes the modern r according to rule. Of these Gothic forms Scots preserves thone for acc. sing, and thai for plurals, as "thai books." The neut. sing. that it uses as the definite article both singular and (in Aberdeenshire) plural. The remoter demonstrative, those is thirr. By the addition of uh or h, an enclitic cognate with Lat. -que, the strong form of the Go. demonstrative is formed. Similarly both personals and demonstratives become relatives by the addition -ei, also used independently as a connective. Lastly, an old pronominal stem, hi = this, survives only in certain adverbial phrases, himma daga = to-day, fram himma = henceforth, und hina dag = to this day, und hita nu — till now, hitherto.
​Mr. Douse has transliterated a passage to show the pronunciation of Gothic. As it adds great confidence, and even light, in learning a language to read it aloud, this passage will form the best introduction to the extracts given below.
Mark's Gospel—Gothic Version (c. a.d. 365).
Chapter IV., Verses 1-20.
| 1. | Jah Yăh Yea | aftra ăftră after | Jêsus Yaysŏos Jesus | dugann dŏogănn began | laisjan lais-yan to-lere | at ăt at |
| marein; măreen; (the)-mere; | jah Yăh and | galêsun gălaysŏon gathered | sik sik selves | du dŏo to | imma immă 'em |
| filu, fĭlŏo, fell | manageins mănăgeens many | swaswê swăsway so as | ina ĭna him | galeithandan găleethăndăn leading (going) |
| in in in | skip skip ship | gasitan gasĭtan he-sat | in in on | marein; măreen; mere; | jah yăh and | alla ăll all |
| sô sô the (she) | managei mănăgee (g hard) many | withra withră over-against (Ger. wieder) | marein măreen the-mere | ana ănă on | statha stăthă stead | was. wăs. was. |
| 2. | Jah Yah And | laisida laisidă lered-he | ins ins them | gajukôm găyŏokôm yokes (parables) | manag, mănăg, many, | jah yăh and |
| 3. | quath quăth quoth | im im 'm | in in in | laiseinai laiseenai lere-ing | seinai: seenai: his: | Hauseith! Howseeth! Hear-ye |
| Sai, Sai, See | urrann ŏorrăn owre-ran (arose) | sa să the | saiands saiands sowing-(one) | du dŏo to | saian saian sow |
| 4. | fraiwa fraiwă seed | seinamma. seenamma. his | Jah Yăh And it chanced | warth, wărth, (worth) | mith-thanei mith-thanei while |
| saísô, sĕsô, he-sowed, | sum sŏom some | raíhtis rĕhtis richt | gadraus gadrows y-drossed (fell) | faúr for fore | wig, wig, the-way | jah yăh and |
| quêmun quaymun cam | fuglês fŏoglôs the-fowls | jah yah and | frêtun fraytŏon fret (ate) | thata. thăta. that. |
| 5. | Antharuth-than Antharuth-than antarn-ains (then) | godraus gadrows y-drossed | ana ănă on-(to) | stainahamma stainahamma, stony (places), |
| tharei thăree there (where it) | ni nĭ nae | habaida habaida had | áirtha ĕrtha airth | managa; mănaga; mony; | jah yăh and |
| suns sŏons soon | urrann, ŏorran, owre-ran | in in in this | thizei thĭzee (because it) | ni ni nae | habaida habaida had |
| 6. | diupaizôs dyŏopaizôs deepness | áirthôs: ĕrthôs: of-earth: | at ăt But | sunnin sŏonnin sun | than than then |
| urrinnandin ŏorrĭnnăndin owre-rinnin | ufbrann, ŏofbrăn, up-brunt (it), | jah, yăh, and | untê ŏontay unto (because) | ni nĭ nae |
| 7. | habaida habaida had | waúrtins, wŏrtins, worts, | gathaúrsnôda. gathŏrsnôda. it-thirsted. | Jah Yăh Yea | sum sŏom some |
| gadraus gadrows y-drossed | in in in | thaúrnuns; thŏrnŏons; thorns; | jah yăh and | ufarstigun ŏofarstĭgŏon over-styed |
| thai thai thai | thaúrnjus thŏrnyŏos thorns | jah yăh and | afhwapidêdun afhwăpĭdaydŏon aff-whoopit-it (choked) | thata, thătă, that, |
| 8. | jah yăh yea | akran ăkrăn acorn (fruit of the fields) | ni nĭ nane | gaf. găf. it gave. | Jah Yăh And | sum sŏom some | gadraus gadrows y-dross | in ĭn in |
| áirtha ĕrtha airth | gôda, gôda, good, | jah yăh and | gaf găf gave | akran, ăkrăn, acorn, | urrinnandô ŏorrinnando owre-rinnin |
| jah yăh and | wahsjandô, wăhs-yăndô, waxing; | jah yăh yea | bar băr bare | ain ain ane | ·l· (30) | (= thrins thrĭns- three, |
| tens, | jah yăh and | ain ain ane | ·j· (60) | (= sáihs tiguns), sĕhs-tĭgŏons, six-tens, | jah yăh and |
| 9. | ain ain ane | ·r·= (100) | (taíhun-taíhund). tĕhŏon-tĕhŏond. ten-tens | —Jah Yăh Yea | quath: quăth: quoth-he |
| Saei Săee Who-ever | habai habai have | ausōna owsônă ears | hausjandōna hows-yăndônă to-hear |
* gahausjai. gahowsyai. hear-he.
Notes to the Gothic Version.
1. Jah is the same as yea and Ger. ja, though the sense sometimes requires the rendering, and: galesun, perf. of lisan, A.S. lease—to glean, galeithandan, pres. part. leithan, A.S. lithan, lead, Ger. laden: withra—against (cf. with-stand).
2. Ga-jukom from jukan to yoke, and, with collective ga, a parable as being a parallel, something paired.
3. Fraiw—seed, Eng. fry: 4. warth, from wairthan, to become, Ger. werden, common in O.Eng., and used by Scott, "Woe worth the day!"
5. Antharuth-anthar-uh, other, Sc. antarin, ither, Ger. ander.
7. Waurtins, a root, wort, orts (Shaksp.), orchard, Ger. Wurzel: ga-draus, perf. drius-an, to fall with ga-, cf. y-clad.
Af-hwapjan, to choke, from hwapjan, a variant of whopan, to boast, whoop-cf. a whopper, whooping-cough.
8. Akran, from akrs, a field, not connected with oak or acorn.
Mark's Gospel–Lowland Scots Version (c. 1520).
Chapter IV., Verses 1-20.
1. Ande eftir Jesus began to teche at the see: and mekile pepile was gaderit to him, sa that he went into a boot, and sat in the see; and al the pepile was about the see on the land. 2. And he taucht thame in parabilis mony thingis, and he said to thame in his teching, 3. Here ye; lo, a man sawand gais out to saw: 4. And the quhile he sawis, sum sede fell about the way and briddis of heuen com and ete it. 5. Vther fell on stany places, quhare it had nocht meikle erde; and anon it sprang vp, for it had nocht depnes of erde: 6. And quhen the sonn raase vp, it wallowit for heete; and it dried vp, for it had nocht rute. 7. And vther fel doun into thornis, and the thornis sprang vp, and strangilit it, and it gafe nocht fruite. 8. And vther fel doun into gude land, and gafe fruite springand vp and waxand; and aan brocht furthe threttifald, aan sextifald, and aan a hundrethfald. 9. And he said, He that has eeris of hering, here he. 10. And quhen he was be himself, tha that war with him askit him to expone the parabile.
Notes to the Scots Version.
2. Taucht, pret. of teach, preserving the strong guttural.
4. Ete, pret. of the strong verb, eat.
5. Erde, Sc. yird: verb and noun, yirdit—buried, showing pa-part. prefix ge-
6. Wallowit, withered: Go. walwjan, to roll, wallow, Sc. derivative form, wiltit.
Luke's Gospel—Wulfila's Version.
Chapter II., Verses 4-20.
4. Urran than jah Iosef us Galeilaia, us baurg Nazaraith, in Iudaian, in baurg Daweidis sei haitada Bethlahaim, duthe ei was us garda fadreinais Daweidis,
5. Anameljan mith Mariin sei in fragiftim was imma queins, wisandein inkilthon.
6. Warth than, miththanei tho wesun jainar, usfullnodedun dagos du bairan izai. ​ 7. Jah gabar sunu seinana thana frumabaur, jah biwand ina, jah galagida ina in uzetin, unte ni was im rumis instada thamma.
8. Jah hairdjos wesun in thamma samin landa, thairhwak- andans jah witandans wahtwom nahts ufaro hairdai seinai.
9. Ith aggilus fraujins anakwam ins jah wulthus fraujins biskain ins, jah ohtedun agisa mikilamma.
10. Jah kwath du im sa aggilus : ni ogeith, unte sai, spillo izwis faheid mikila, sei wairthith allai managein,
11. Thatei gabaurans ist izwis himma daga nasjands, saei ist Xristus frauja, in baurg Daweidis.
12. Jah thata izwis taikns: bigitid barn biwundan jah galagid in uzetin.
13. Jah anaks warth mith thamma aggilau managei harjis himinakundis hazjandane guth jah kwithandane:
14. Wulthus in hauhistjam gutha jah ana airthai gawairthi in mannam godis wiljins.
15. Jah warth, bithe galithun fairra im in himin thai aggiljus, jah thai mans thai hairdjos kwethun du sis misso: thairhgaggaima ju und Bethlahaim, jah saihwaima waurd thata waurthano, thatei frauja gakannida unsis.
16. Jah kwemun sniumjandans, jah bigetun Marian jah Iosef jah thata barn ligando in uzetin.
17. Gasaihwandans than gakannidedun bi thata waurd thatei rodith was du im bi thata barn.
18. Jah allai thai gahausjandans sildaleikidedun bi tho rodidona fram thaim hairdjam du im.
19. Ith Maria alla gafastaida tho waurda thagkjandei in hairtin seinamma.
20. Jah gawandidedum sik thai hairdjos mikiljandans jah hazjandans guth in allaize thizeei gahausidedun jah gasehwun swaswe rodith was du im.
Transliteration of the Gothic Version, Luke II. 4-20.
4. Our-ran (arose) then yea Joseph out-of Galilee, out of the burg Nazareth, in Judea, in David's burg that is-hight Bethlehem, to the-that (=because that) he-was out-of the yard of-the-family (father-hood) of-David.
5. To-be-inscribed mid Mary who in free-gift was to-him quean, being in-child. ​ 6. Worth then, mid-than-that (=while) thae were yonder, out-full-did (=fulfilled) the-days to her bearing.
7. And she-bore her son thone foremost-born, and be-wound him, and laid him in an oot-eatin (thing), because nae was to-them room in the stead.
8. And herds were in the same land, throoch-waking and witting watches by-nicht over their herd.
9. But the angel of-the frea on-cam to-them, and the-glory of the-frea be-shone them, yea they-awed with-muckle awe.
10. And quoth to 'em the angel: be-awed not, for see, spell-I to-you muckle joy, that worth (ariseth to all the-many,
11. That born is to-you the-day a-Saviour, he-that is Christ the-frea, in David's burg.
12. And that (be) to-you token: get-ye the-bairn bi-wound, yea laid in an ooteatin (thing).
13. And suddenly worth mid the angel a many of the her-ship of Himmel (kind)-begotten, herying God and quothing, -
14. Glory in-the-highest to-God, and on earth peace in men of good will.
15. And worth, be-the (=while) thai angels led far-from them into Himmel, and thae men thai herds quoth to themselves: let-us-throoch-gang now unto Bethlehem, yea let-us-see that word that worth (=happened) that the frea has-kenned to-us.
16. And cam they hastening, and begot (=found) Mary and Joseph and that bair lying in the oot-eatin (thing).
17. Seeing then they-kenned be (=about) that word that was read (=spoken) to 'em be that bairn,
18. Andall they hearing seld-likened (=marvelled) be thae (things) read from (by) the herds to 'em.
19. But Mary fastened all thae words, thinking in her heart.
20. And wended themselves thae herds muckeling, yea heezing God in all these-that they have heard, yea seen, so as (it) was read to 'em.
Notes to the Gothic of Luke II. 4-20.
4. Garda, in the sense of the ancestral home of the family, somewhat equivalent to the later territorial surname, often spoken of as that ill.
5. Ana-meljan—weak verb from mel, time (cf. Ger. ein-mal, once), A.S. mael-also writings: wis-andein, part. of wisan, to be, from which Eng. was, Sc. wurr, wuz, wiz-na, by common interchange of s and r.
6. Jainar, from jains=that (Ger. jener, yon), meaning there—other forms are jaind (“yond Cassius”—“Jul. Cæs.”), and jaindre=yonder.
8. Witandans, pres. part. of witan, to watch, observe (cf. eye-wit-ness). The two verbs witan, to know, and weitan, to see, are substantially identical, cf. οίδα and Lat. videre.
9. Ohtedun agisa, pret. pl. of ogan, from agan, to fear, and agis, awe. Such a form as Lat. ang-uis, a snake, shows that the material figure in ​agan and agis is that of throttling or the choking sensation of awe or dread.
11. Nasjands, pr. part. of nisan, to save, A.S. ge-nesan, Ger. ge-nesen.
13. Hazjandane, pr. part. of hazjan, to praise, A.S. herian, O.E. hery.
14. Wulthus, glory, has many derivatives: A.S. wuldor.
17. Bi, prep. by, Ger. bei, occurs in many senses, some of which have been better preserved in Sc. than in Eng. Rodith, from rodjan, our read, but always in sense of speaking, as in Ger. reden and Redner.
Luke's Gospel in Nisbet's Scots.
Chapter II., Verses 4-20.
4. And Joseph went vp fra Galilee, fra the citee of Nazareth, into Judee, into a citee of Dauid, that is callit Bethleem, fore that he was of the hous and of the meynye of Dauid. 5. That he suld knawleche with Marie his wif, that was weddit to him and was gret with child. 6. And it was done, quhile thai ware thar, the dais ware fulfillit that scho suld beire childe. 7. And scho baire hire first born sonn, and wrappit him in clathis, and laid him in a cribbe; for thare was na place to him in na chalmere. 8. And schepirdis war in the sammin cuntre wakand and kepand the wacheingis of the nycht on thare flock. 9. And, lo, the angel of the Lorde stude beside thame, and the cleirnes of God schynit about thame; and thai dredd with gret dreed. 10. And the angell said to thame, Will ye nocht dreed; for, lo, I preche to you a gret ioy, that salbe to al the pepile. 11. For a saluatour is born this day to you, that is Crist the Lord, in the citee of Dauid. 12. And this is a takin to you: Ye sal find a young child wlappit in clathis, and laid in a cribbe. 13. And suddanlie thare was made with the angel a multitude of heuenlie knichthede loving God, and sayand, 14. Glorie be in the hieast thingis to God, and in erd pece, to men off gude will. 15. Ande it was done, as the angellis passit away fra thame into heuen, the schephirdis spak togiddire and said, Go we ouir to Bethleem, and se we this word that is made, quhilk the Lord has made and schawin to vs. 16. And thai hyand com, and fand Marie and Joseph, and the young child laid in a cribbe. 17. And thai seand, knew of the word that was said to ​ thame of the child. 18. And almen wonndrit that herd; and of thir thingis that war said to thame of the schephirdis. 19. Bot Marie kepit al thir wordis, beirand to giddire in hir hart. 20. And the schephirdis turnit agane, glorifiand and lovand God in al thingis that thai had herd and seen, as it was said to thame.
Notes to the Scots Version, Luke II. 4-20.
4. Meynye, a crowd, Go. managei, Ger. Menge, 0.Eng. menye, as “Robin Hood his merry menye."
7. Claithis, pl. of claith with th hard ; generally claise : verb cled=clothe, past cleddit.
8. Wakand, pres. part. of wauk—“The Waukin o' the Fauld "—to be awake, on the wake or watch.
12. Takin, a sign, Go. taikns, a miracle, in which sense Luther's Version lises its High German equivalent, Zeichen. Young, Go, juggs, Ger. jung, young. Wlappit, wrapped, folded, from a root, waljan, to roll, cf. welter, waltz, wallow, wallop (the lapwing in dialect), lapper, a folder in cloth-finishing.
13. Loving, praising; louing, praise, Fr. allouer, Lat. laudare.
16. Hyand, hastening, Eng. hie, Sc. hech (cf. Lat. singultire, to fetch a deep breatb).
Luke's Gospel.
Chapter XV., Verses 11-32.
11. Kwathuth-than: manne sums aihta twans gunung.
12. Jah kwth sa juhiza ize du attin: atta, gif mis, sei und-rinnai mik dail aiginis; jah disdailida im swes sein.
13. Jah afar ni managans dagans brahta samana allata sa juhiza sunus, jah aflaith in land fairra wisando jah jainar dista-hida thata swes seinata libands usstiuriba.
14. Bithe than frawas allamma, warth huhrus abrs and gawi jainata, jah is dugann alatharba wairthan.
15. Jah gaggands gahaftida sik sumamma baurgjane jainis gaujis, jah insandida ina haithjos seinaizos haldan sweina.
16. Jah gairnida sad itan haurne, thoei matidedun sweina, jah manna imma ni gaf.
17. Kwimands than in sis kwath: hvan filu asnje attins meinis ufarassau haband hlaibe, ith ik huhrau frakwistna.
18. Usstandands gagga du attin meinamma jah kwitha du ​ imma : atta, frawaurhta mis in himin jah in andwairthja thein- amma;
19. Ju thanaseiths ni im wairths ei haitaidau sunus theins ; gatawei mik swe ainana asnje theinaize.
20. Jah usstandands kwam at attin seinamma. Nauh- thanuh than fairra wisandan gasahw ina atta is jah infeinoda jah thragjands draus ana hals is jah kukida imma.
21. Jah kwath imma sa sunus : atta, frawaurhta in himin jah in andwairthja theinamma, ju thanaseiths ni im wairths ei haitaidau sunus theins.
22. Kwath than sa atta du skalkam seinaim: sprauto bringith wastja tho frumiston jah gawasjith ina jah gibith fig- gragulth in handu is jah gaskohi ana fotuns is ;
23. jah bringandans stiur thana alidan ufsneithith, jah mat- jandans wisam waila ;
24. unte sa sunus meins dauths was jah gakwiunoda, jah fralusans was jah bigitans warth ; jah dugunnun wisan.
25. Wasuth-than sunus is sa althiza ana akra jah kwimands atiddja nehw razn jah gahausida saggvins jah laikins.
26. Jah athaitands sumana magiwe frahuh hwa wesi thata.
27. Tharuh is kwath du imma thatei brothar theins kwam, jah afsnaith atta theins stiur thana alidan, unte hailana ina andnam.
28. Thanuh modags warth jah ni wilda in gaggan, ith atta is usgaggands ut bad ina.
29. Tharuh is andhafjands kwath du attin: sai, swa filu jere skalkinoda thus jah ni hvanhun anabusn theina ufariddja, jah mis ni aiw atgaft gaitein, ei mith frijondam meinaim biwesjau ;
30. ith than sa sunus theins, saei fret thein swes mith kalkjom, kwam, ufsnaist imma stiur thana alidan.
31. Tharuh kwath du imma : barnilo, thu sinteino mith mis wast jah is, jah all thata mein thein ist ;
32. Waila wisan jah faginon skuld was, unte brothar theins
Transliteration of Luke XV. 11-32 in the Gothic Version.
* 11. Quoth-he than: some (=a certain one) of men aucht twain sons.
* 12. And quoth he the younger of them to father: father, give me the-deal (share) of ownings that on-rins to-me; and he-dealt to hem his substance.
* 13. And after nae many days brocht all together (Ger. zu-sammen) he the younger son, and aff-led (=departed) into a land (that) was faur, and yon(d)er distugged (=scattered) that substance of-his, living riotously.
* 14. Be-the than (=since then) he-frae-was of-all, worth a great hunger on the-country (Ger. Gau) yon, and he began to worth in-want-of-all (Ger. be-dürfen=ala-tharba).
* 15. And gangin he hefted himself to some of-the-burghers of-yon-gau, and sent-he him to-his heath to-hold swine.
* 16. And yearned he to-eat of-the horns (=husks), that meatit the swine, and nae man gave 'im.
* 17. Coming than into himself quoth-he: hoo fell of-the-hired-servants of mine father have of loaves abundance, but I of-hunger perish.
* 18. Out-standing gang-I to mine father, and quoth to him: father, fro-wrooht-have-I (been) to-myself in (=against) Himmel, and in (=against) thine presence.
* 19. Now thone-sith (further) worthy am I not that I be-hight, thine son; do to me so ane of thine thralls.
* 20. And out-standing cam-he at his father. Nevertheless than (=But) being faur-off saw 'em he-the-father, yea rejoiced, yea thranging (=thronging, running, Ger. dringen), fell on his hause (Ger. Hals), yea kissed him.
* 21. And quoth-to him he-the-son: father, I have-fro-wrocht against Himmel and in thine sight, now am-I nae longer worthy that I-be-hight thine son.
* 22. Quoth then the father to his servants: quickly bring the foremost vest-ment and vest him and give a-finger-gold in his hand, and a pair-shoes on his feet.
* 23. And bringing thone fatted steer up-sned (it), and meating let-us-be weel;
* 24. For he mine son was dead, and is quickened, yea fer-lost was and bi-gotten (found) worth; and began-they to be (merry).
* 25. Was then his son the elder on acre (=a-field), and coming at-gaed nigh house, and heard sang, and larkin.
* 26. And, at-highting (calling) some-ane of-the-lads, frained (asked) what that was.
* 27. Thereupon quoth he to him that brother thine cam, yea af-sned thine father thone fatted steer, (because) he an-nim him hale.
* 28. Then-indeed moody he-worth, and would-na gang in, but his father gangin-oot bade (entreated) him.
* 29. There-on he answering (=Ger. an-heben) quoth to the father: see, so fell of-years have-I-served thee, yea nae-ony-wheen command thine over-gaed-I, yea to-me never (ni aiw=nae-eve(r)) hast-thou-given a goat-ling, that mid mine friends I-might be merry. ​
* 30. But than he, thine son, he'at fret thine substance mid harlots, cam, up-snedst-thou for him, thone fatted steer.
* 31. There-on quoth-he to him: bairnie, thou daily mid me wast, yea is, yea all that mine is thine;
* 32. Well was it incumbent (=should) to-make merry, and to-feign (=rejoice) for thine brother dead was, and has-revived, and worth fer-lost (Ger. verloren), and be-gotten (got again)
Notes to Luke XV. 11-32, Gothic Version.
* 13. Us-stiur-iba, riotously, with adv. affix -iba. The stem seems to be in M.Eng. stiren, sturen, to stir, Icel. styrr, a disturbance. O.H.G. storen, to scatter, Lat. sternere, Eng. storm, steer: steer, an ox, lit. the strong (one).
* 14. Fra-was, from wisan, to be. The prefix fra-, far-, is best seen in Eng. for-gather, forget, Sc. fer-fochen and Ger. ver-loren.
* 15. Ga-haftida, haftjan, to cleave to, Ger. heften, common in Sc., as "Throw the heft after the hatchet," or "Let the tow (rope) gang wi' the bucket." Sheep are said to be heftit (acclimatised) to a pasture.
* 16. Gairnida, from gairnjan, yearn, grin, Sc. girn.
* 17. Filu, much, many, Sc. fell, Ger. viel.
* 19. Ju, now, already, Ger. je, A.S. geo.
* 20. Hals, identical with German for neck, and common in old Scots.
* 23. Alids, fatted, from al-jan, akin to alere, to nourish.
* 25. At-iddja, past of gaggan, to go, and in Sc. gaed, M.Eng. yode.
* Laikins, from laikan, to leap for joy, O.E. laik, cf. larking.
* 26. Frahuh, pret. of fraihnan, to ask, Sc. frain, Ger. fragen.
* 28. Bad, pret. of bidjan, to pray—hence bead, bedesman—obsolete in Eng. Go. distinguishes between this and baidjan, to order, bid.
* 29. And-hafjands, pres. part, of hafjan, Eng. heave, Ger. heben.
* Skalkinoda, pret. of skalkinon, to serve as a skalks, Du. schalk, mare-schal=master of the horse.
* Frijondam, dat. pl. of frijonds=friend, Sc. freen, from frijon, to love; opp. fijan, to hate, fijands, an enemy, fiend, Sc. feint.
* 30. Fret, pret. of fra-itan, to eat up, fret, Ger. fressen.
* 31. Barnilo, dim. and familiar of barn, a bairn, from bairan, to bear, bring forth. In the Heliand, Christ is "God's bairn."
* Sinteino, from sinth, a journey, hence a time, sinthan, to go, wander, A.S. sithian: cf. since, Sc. syne in Auld Lang Syne.
Luke's Gospel—Scots Version.
Chapter XV., Verses 11-32.
11. And he saide, A man had ij sonnis: 12. And the yonngare of thame said to the fader, Fader geue me the portionn ​ of substance that fallis to me. And he departit to thame the substance. 13. And nocht mony dais eftire, quhen al thingis war gaderit togiddire, the yonngar sonn went furth in pilgrimage into a ferr cuntree, and thare he wastit his gudis in leving licherouslie. 14. And eftir that he had endit al thingis, a stark hungire was made in that cuntree; and he began to haue need. 15. And he went and drew him to aan of the citezenis of that cuntree; and he send him into his town to fede swyne. 16. And he couatit to fill his wambe of the coddis that the hoggis ete: and na man gave to him. 17. And he turnit agane into himself, and said, How mony hyretmen in my fadris hous has plentee of laaues, and I peryse here throu hungir. 18. I sal ryse up and ga to my fadere, and I sal say to him, Fader, I haue synnyt into heuen and before thee, 19. And now I am nocht worthie to be callit thi sonn: mak me as aan of thi hyret 20. And he rase up, and com to his fader. And quhen he was yit on fer (afar), his fadere saw him, and was mouet be mercy, and he ran, and fell on his neck, and kissit him. 21. And the sonn said to him, Fader, I haue synnyt into heuen, and before thee, and now I am nocht worthie to be callit thi 22. And the fadere said to his seruandis, Suythe bring ye furthe the first stole, and cleithe ye him; and geue ye a ryng in his hand, and schoon on his feet; 23. And bring ye a fat calf, and sla ye; and ete we, and mak we feest: 24. For this my sonn was deid, and has leeuet agane; he peryset, and is fundin. And almen began to ete. 25. Bot his eldar sonn was in the feeld; and quhen he com and nerit to the hous, he herde a symphony and a croude. 26. And he callit aan of the seruandis, and askit quhat thir thingis war. 27. And he said to him, Thy bruther is cummin; and thi fadere has slayn a fat calf, for he resauet him saaf. 28. And he was wrathe, and wald nocht cum in. Tharfor his fadere yede furthe, and began to pray him. 29. And he ansuered to his fadere, and said, Lo, sa mony yeris I serue thee, and I brak neuir thi comandment; and thou neuir gaue to me a kidde, that I with my freendis suld haue eten. 30. Bot eftir that this thi sonn, that has destroyit his substance with huris com, thou has slayn to him a fat calf. 31. And he said to him, Sonn, thou art euirmaire with me, and al my thingis are thin. 32. Bot it behuvit to mak feest and to ​haue ioy: for this thi bruther was deid, and leevit agane; he periset, and was fundin.
Notes to the Scots Version, Luke XV. 11-32.
16. Couatit, desired, longed for, coveted. Wambe, belly, usual Sc. wime, rhyming with "time," Lat. umbo, the boss of a shield. Coddis, husks. "Grain which has been too ripe before being cut, in the course of handling is said to cod out" (Jamieson). A pillow-cod or cod-ware is a pillow-slip.
22. Suythe, quickly, A.S. swith=strong, same as Go. swinths. 25. Croude, Purvey, "á symfonye and a croude." The instrument was a fiddle.
* ↑ The accompanying facsimile is taken from Dr. Bosworth's edition of the "Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Wycliffe, and Tyndale's Gospels." In Roman type it reads thus:—Unte jabai afletith mannam missadedins ize, afletith jah izvis atta izvar sa ufar himinam. Ith jabai ni afletith mannam missadedins ize, ni thau atta izvar afletith missadedins izvaros. Aththan bithe fastaith, ni vair [thaith]. The Authorised Version (Matt. vi. 14-45) will furnish the reader with a translation. Professor Skeat ("St. Mark in Gothic") says: "The student who has already some knowledge of Middle English and Anglo-Saxon will not experience much difficulty in gaining, in a short time, some elementary and very useful knowledge of Gothic." If he can supplement this or substitute for it a knowledge of Lowland Scots, both profit and progress will be vastly enhanced. I warmly endorse what he adds: "A knowledge of Gothic ought to be as common among Englishmen"—and all Scotsmen—the present attempt to smooth the way for those who wish to understand more about the formation of the Teutonic part of our own language may meet with some success."
* ↑ Cædmon appeared in 1655. See Masson's Cambr. Milton I., 39.
* ↑ For a very full account of Wulfila, and especially of what Auxentius has recorded of him, see Max Müller's Lectures, Vol. I. ch. 5.
* ↑ To complete the parallel, it was Ælfric who sketched for us how he wrote down the closing verses of St. John's Gospel to the dictation of his master as the light of his life was sinking into eternal night.
* ↑ See diagram facing this page
* ↑ Preserved still better in the pronunciation of "earth" in Lowland Scots.
* ↑ Greek translated the Arabic kermes by κόκκος, hence our cochineal, the Romans by vermis, hence vermilion.
* ↑ The accompanying diagram shows the gaps in the MS. referred to. The passages awanting are shown in black.
* ↑ Cf. Sans. Anna, lit. what is eaten for ad-na (root ad), food in general, rice.
* ↑ Where Go. is identical with Eng. or Sc. it follows the reference within brackets.
* ↑ H in hlaiba is the prefix ha-, see p. 17.
* ↑ Arn is an adjectival affix as in silvern, and in iron. The German Eisen does not show this affix.
* ↑ Thay is not the article but a true demonstrative.
* ↑ In a scientific age such as ours one need hardly note the connection between germs and fermentation.
* ↑ Cf. A gizzend tub; also Allan Ramsay, imitations of Horace's "Siccas carinas," boats leaking from having been long beached; also Icel. Geyser.