THE FUTURE OF THE SCOTCH LANGUAGE.

.Q 0 few poems of any value appear in the Scotch dialect of 1\3 to-day, as distinguished from the Scotch language need by Burns, and still more by his predecessors, that two such by 31r. R. Louis Stevenson, which are published in the April number of the Scottish Church, call for some attention, apart altogether from the personality of their author. They are titled "A Lowden Sabbath Morn" and " lite Terraram." They are written in the stanza, and the more elaborate of the two is not quite devoid of the spirit, of "Holy Willie's Prayer." "Ills Terrarum" must be dismissed in a word ; it is a lifelike and, truth to tell, not specially fascinating description of a sheltered corner in the Pentland& "A Lowden Sabbath Morn" is an attempt to represent an important and typical incident in the Scotch country life of to-day,—the careful dressing of individuals and families for church, the mustering of the congregation, the opening services, the censorious sermon, relieved in the case of listeners by a nap or the munching of "peppermints," and the Stevensonian conclusion a- " Bethankit ! what a bonny creed !

What mair would ony Christian need ?- The Maw words ramm'le ower his heid,

Nor steer the sleeper ; And in their reatin' graves, the deid Sleep aye the deeper."

The poem is clever and realistic, and delicately sarcastic,—some- how Mr. Stevenson makes Barns's Saturday-night cotter cut a miserable figure on Sunday morning. Here, too, is a Scotch Idrk-interior, taken by instantaneous photography ;—

" There's just a waukrit" twa or three ; Thrawn commentautore swear to 'gree, Weans glowrin' at the bomlin' bee'

On windie-glasses,

Or lads that tale a keek a-glee At songs lasses."

But the effect of the whole poem is unsatisfactory. Mr. Steven- eon, clever though he is, Scotchman though he is, and—as his 'Pastoral" in this month's Longman's Magazine shows— endowed though he is with a quick eye to Scotch character, is essentially a cosmopolitan. He looks at Scotch rustics curiously, as he would look at originals in the Cevennes or in the Rockies. He does not throw his heart into their ecclesiastical life ; he does not even throw his head into that life, as did Burns. To judge from a footnote, he paces no little stress upon his précis of the Lowden minister's sermon a- " Wi' sappy unction, boo he horses The hopes o' men that trust in works,

Expounds the hats o' ither kirks,

An' shows the beat o' them No muckle better than mere Turks

When a"s confess'd o them !"

Compare the dragging languor, the thin sneer of this, with the force, the fire, the heartiness, the intellectual sincerity of Burns a—

"Hear bow he clears the points o' faith, Wi' rattlin', and wi thumpin' ! Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath He's stampin', and he's jompin'l His lengthen'd chin, his turned-up snout, His eldritch squeel an' gestures, 0, how they fire the heart devout, Like cantharidian plasters !"

Then, what a loosely constructed stanza for such a careful artist as Mr. Stevenson to produce ! What could be feebler than the fifth line, "No muckle better than mere Turks," which, besides, makes confusion of the whole, for, as Mr. Stevenson puts it, it is not the beat of the individual men who trust in works that are no better than Turks—which is quite intelligible—but the best of certain ecclesiastical communities—which is nonsense ! Even Mr. Stevenson's vernacular fails him. As a good Scotch word, " sappy " has no meaning whatever as applied to " unction ;" and in any case it is redundant. It is invariably used of persons, meaning, in the case of a woman, "plump," and of a man, "partial to liquor."

As readers of "Kidnapped" are aware, Mr. Stevenson knows the tree Scotch language, and the Highland variety of it, better, and can use them more skilfully, than most of his contempo- raries. How comes it, then, that, trying to write in the Scotch dialect of to-day, he looks for all the world like an English exquisite masquerading in the Sunday brews of a Scotch ploughman ? Simply because there is no true Scotch language of to-day, because what was the Scotch language even in Bane's time has, thanks mainly to the quickness of Scotch boys, and the neck-and-neck competition between Scotch teachers that are paid by English results, run to dialect. And though some special and exceptionally descriptive Scotch words, which have been handed down from generation to generation, or appear in the most familiar of Barnes songs, may still inter- lard the Scotchman's speech of to-day, as they interlard the poems of a Scotch scholar like Mr. Stevenson, that dialect is as essentially badly pronounced English, as the Perthshire plough- man's Sunday brows are Bond Street fashions spoiled by pro- vincial tailoring. Let Mr. Stevenson himself be our witness. Here is one of his best—in every sense best—stanzas :—

" The prentit stases that mark the deid, Wi' lengthened lip, the serious read ; Syne wag a moreleesin' heid,

An' then an' there Their hirplin' practice an' their creed Try hard to square."

There is but one word in all this that would not have been as expressive if either spelt or rendered in English, and that is the admirable "hirplin' "—so much more expressive than " limping " —which ought to be incorporated in the English language, and to appear in every English dictionary. Again, here is Mr. Stevenson, in some respects both at his best and at his worst :—

" The guidman follows close, an' cleiks The sonde miasis."

" Gnidman" is the best and kindliest Scotch. " Sonsie " is nearly as expressive as " hirplin'." " Cleik," as the equivalent of "taking the arm of," is admirable, too,—though, by-the-way, how long ago is it since Scotch ploughmen began to be so polite to their wives in broad daylight on Sunday ? " Close "is merely the English "close" mispronounced. But "1211138113 i" Shade of Mrs. Dandie Dinmont, who, as everybody knows, was "` the mistress' in the kitchen and the gudewife ' in the parlour "! Has Scotch dialect fallen so low that it is borrowing from the Bank-Holiday slang of Hampstead Heath, that it has assimilated the Cockney " minus," which, in spite of Thackeray's attempts to clasaiciso it in the form reproduced by Mr. Stevenson, we still hold at arm's-length P Then ring out Scotch school-bells to the tune of the Fourth Standard, and let that dialect die.

The degeneracy of the Scotch language into a dialect the darkness of which Mr. Stevenson's slightly archaio yet mis- chievously modern experiments in Burnsian stanza render visible, is evidently causing a panic in the North. The leading Edinburgh newspaper, in a rather alarmist but well-reasoned utterance on this subject, says emphatically a —" The condition of Scotch literature at the present time ie simply deplorable. It is not alone that the language, but that the knowledge of it is

dying out, and the literature expressed in it is becoming a sealed book except to the initiated." There is, no doubt, a great deal of truth in this. How many Edinburgh girls could tell what a " cockernonie " is P How many Edinburgh young men could -decide off-hand whether " a tapetless, ramfeezled hizzie " is a being to be admired or not P How many Edinburgh teachers would be posed if an Inspector of Schools were to ask them to give their experiences of " a smytrie o' wee duddie weans ?" Bnt it is much more easy to show how far the decadence of the Scotch language has proceeded, than to indicate how it can be stopped. It is, indeed, proposed that " the Scotch Universities should take up the question, and should answer it by founding a chair, or at least establishing a few lectureships, for Scotch literature." Such a step would stamp Lowland Scotch as a practically dead language, like Gaelic, which is studied mainly by Ossianie enthusiasts and by Scotch teachers who have to make a living in the Highlands. It may be doubted, too, if any good—at least, any permanent good—is done by well-intentioned Anglophobea of the type of Emeritus Professor Blackie, who still raves, recites, and maddens round the land, singing the praises of "Robbie "—sometimes, oh, infandun t! it is "Rabbis" —Burns. (Did Mr. Blackie, when he called on his friend, Mr. Carlyle, in London, slap him on the back, and salute him with, "Roos ye'r auld liver the day, Tara P") Whatever is vital in Scotch literature, whatever in the Scotch dialect of to-day is worth preserving, can and ought to live in virtue of their merits, and of their merits only. As regards literature, are things really so very bad as they are painted in the North P Burns, who in his day was quite as much of an Angliciser as, tests Lord Neaves, was John Knox, so frequently wrote in English, so frequently burst the bonds imposed by the dialect and the companionship of filler and Lapraik, to enjoy the company of Pope, and even of Shakespeare, that a full half of his works—three-fourths of his "Jolly Beggars" and "Cotter's Saturday Night," practically the whole of "Scots wha hae," the finest passages in both his lyrical and his didactic verse—belongs to English literature in the strictest sense. As for expressive Scotch words and phrases —words and phrases, that is to say, for which there are no adequate English equivalents, or which express nuances—why cannot English writers who admire such repeat them till they become part and parcel of the language now common to all Englishmen and Scotchmen of School-Board age P " Flunkey " is now to be found in all English dictionaries as an English word. Yet it was Carlyle and Thackeray that brought it into circulation, Carlyle having taken it from Burns, and Burns pro- bably from Ferguson. Many expressive Scotch adjectives, -chiefly monosyllables, such as "dour," "donee," " fey " (if " fey " is originally Scotch), "Buell," " howff," "feckless," "drumly," " wimplin'," and " hirplin'," have either been or are being acclimatised in England through sheer dint of use. This may seem but a limp suggestion to offer by way of curing or reducing the evil of which our Scotch friends complain. But that is all that can safely be offered. They cannot boycott, much less banish, the English language at this time of day, but they can help us to enrich it,