INTRODUCTION Anglo-French from the intercourse between the French and Scottish Courts in the 15th and 16th centuries, and from the commercial relations between Continental ports and towns like Aberdeen, Leith and Kirkcudbright. The words from these three sources mostly, but not exclusively, indicate things and ideas that relate to the common life of the ordinary folk rather than to that of the literary lite or fashionable circles. § 17.1. Examples from Mod.Sc. — antrin, appleringie, aumrie, backet (a trough), canaillie (riff-raff), corbie (crow), cordiner (shoemaker), dambrod, devall, douce, dour, fasch (trouble), fugie (play truant), gardies (arms), geen (wild cherry), grosset (gooseberry), guttam (a drop of ink), goutte (drop), liege-pousté (free exercise of one’s powers), lingle (shoemaker's thread), maugre (in spite of), melishan (malison), mingie (a crowd), mortersheen (glanders in horses), moyen (means), palmie and pandie (stroke on hand), poper (the boy who swept out the school and lit the fire), potestatur (height of one's powers), spulzie (booty), trevis (partition in byre), vacance (holiday), vivers (provisions). § 18. As a literary medium the language has been for a long time practically confined to the production of lyrical poems (song and ballad), satirical and descriptive poetry, the dialogue in novel or play, and the short humorous story. Even here the vernacular often gives way when the thought becomes more serious or elevated. In The Cotter's Saturday Night, for example, of the twenty-one stanzas of the poem only nine can be regarded as Scots — viz. those devoted to the description of the humble home and its occupants — and even in these latter, English often predominates. In stanza xii. the last five lines change into English when the father turns to family worship. So also in stanza xviii. the description of the conclusion of the evening is in stately English, to match the serious attitude of the “parent-pair.” § 18.1. It cannot be denied that skilful writers have used this bilingual consciousness to produce some considerable artistic effects, but the net result of this process of Anglicisation is that a great deal of our prose and verse seems to differ very little from St.Eng., except in the occasional use of a distinctively Scottish word or phrase, and the clipping of words of their final consonant with the apology of an apostrophe. This spurious Scots is very popular with English readers and on the English stage, because it is easily understood. It is sometimes forced on reluctant authors by publishers, who naturally desire a wider circulation for their books. Many Scots writers pander to it because it saves them the trouble of searching for the appropriate Scottish rhyme, word or phrase. Except in the case of rhymes, the Scotsman who speaks any Scottish dialect will probably read such Scots with his own local pronunciation. The effect, however, of seeing the English words and spellings is to tend to change our Scottish speech into a bastard English, a very good example of which may be seen in the autobiographical parts of Mansie Wauch. § 19. This deplorable result is due in some measure to the chaotic state of Scottish spelling. In Older Sc. most words could be spelled in a variety of ways. As an example of this one might cite the word “abune,” for which in Older Sc. we find abone, abune, abon, abonne, aboyn(e), aboin, abun, abwn, abwne. The same writer may even spell the same word differently on the same page. In the case of most vowels in Older Sc. the best that can be said is that one r way was rather more commonly used than the others — e.g. “ei” was the most common way of writing the “ay” [e] sound which later became “ee” [i] as meit, deid, scheip, for meet, dead, sheep, and “ou” the most common way of writing the “oo” [u] sound as in house, mouse, and “ow” the most common way of writing the diphthong in lowe (a flame), gowk (a cuckoo). Very often in Older Sc. the exact sound intended can be reached only by comparison with the word in the older forms of n.English and in the Mod.Sc. dialects or by a reference to its record in cognate languages. § 20. Early writers of the 18th cent. Renaissance did very little to normalise Scottish spelling. To take the case of Allan Ramsay, he discarded the Older Sc. spellings of sch and quh for sh and wh as in scheip, schake, quha; v, u, w, which were used indifferently by writers in Middle Sc., he used as in Mod.Eng., and all these changes were simplifications. He used gh as often as ch for [&crtail;] and [x] in words like micht, thocht — i.e. might, thought — thereby suggesting an Eng. pronunciation. In the pa.p. of weak verbs written correctly with yt or it in Middle Sc. he used the English ending d or ed. For the O.Sc. terminations and of the pr.p. and ing, yng of the gerund he writes an or in, but also ing after the Mod.Eng. usage, whereas, except in three dialects in Mod.Sc., these two terminations are now pronounced alike [m] or [&schwa;n]. Words which generally have an ee [i] P ronunciation in Sc. he writes with ei, ie, ey, a + cons. + e (all Older Sc.), ea and ee — e.g. deid — dead, dee — die, threed — thread, ee — eye,