FullReads

One quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modified use of the Scottish dialect; but it has not generally been observed, either by their imitators, or the authors of different taste who have written for a later public, that there is a difference between the dialect of a language, and its corruption.

A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons of intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fineness and force, but under the particular conditions of life, climate, and temper, which introduce words peculiar to the scenery, forms of word and idioms of sentence peculiar to the race, and pronunciations indicative of their character and disposition.

Thus ‘burn’ (of a streamlet) is a word possible only in a country where there are brightly running waters, ‘lassie,’ a word possible only where girls are as free as the rivulets, and ‘auld,’ a form of the southern ‘old,’ adopted by a race of finer musical ear than the English.

On the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coarse, stridulent, and, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, ‘broad’ forms of utterance, are not dialects at all, having nothing dialectic in them, and all phrases developed in states of rude employment, and restricted intercourse, are injurious to the tone and narrowing to the power of the language they affect. Mere breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the speakers are men of varied idea and good intelligence; but the moment the life is contracted by mining, millwork, or any oppressive and monotonous labour, the accents and phrases become debased. It is part of the popular folly of the day to find pleasure in trying to write and spell these abortive, crippled, and more or less brutal forms of human speech.

Abortive, crippled, or brutal, are however not necessarily ‘corrupted’ dialects. Corrupt language is that gathered by ignorance, invented by vice, misused by insensibility, or minced and mouthed by affectation, especially in the attempt to deal with words of which only half the meaning is understood, or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp’s ‘aperiently so’–and the ‘undermined’ with primal sense of undermine, of–I forget which gossip, in the Mill on the Floss, are master- and mistress-pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop’s ‘allegories on the banks of the Nile’ are in a somewhat higher order of mistake: Miss Tabitha Bramble’s ignorance is vulgarised by her selfishness, and Winifred Jenkins’ by her conceit. The ‘wot’ of Noah Claypole, and the other degradations of cockneyism (Sam Weller and his father are in nothing more admirable than in the power of heart and sense that can purify even these); the ‘trewth’ of Mr. Chadband, and ‘natur’ of Mr. Squeers, are examples of the corruption of words by insensibility: the use of the word ‘bloody’ in modern low English is a deeper corruption, not altering the form of the word, but defiling the thought in it.

Thus much being understood, I shall proceed to examine thoroughly a fragment of Scott’s Lowland Scottish dialect; not choosing it of the most beautiful kind; on the contrary, it shall be a piece reaching as low down as he ever allows Scotch to go–it is perhaps the only unfair patriotism in him, that if ever he wants a word or two of really villainous slang, he gives it in English or Dutch–not Scotch.

I had intended in the close of this paper to analyse and compare the characters of Andrew Fairservice and Richie Moniplies for examples, the former of innate evil, unaffected by external influences, and undiseased, but distinct from natural goodness as a nettle is distinct from balm or lavender; and the latter of innate goodness, contracted and pinched by circumstance, but still undiseased, as an oak-leaf crisped by frost, not by the worm. This, with much else in my mind, I must put off; but the careful study of one sentence of Andrew’s will give us a good deal to think of.