Fables By William Wilkie |
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| XV. |
| XVI. | FABLE XVI. The
Hare
and the
Partan
. |
 | Fables |  |
FABLE XVI. The Hare and the Partan .
The chief design of this Fable is to give a true specimen of the Scotch dialect, where it may be supposed to be most perfect, namely, in Mid-Lothian, the seat of the capital. The stile is precisely that of the vulgar Scotch; and that the matter might be suitable to it, I chose for the subject a little story adapted to the ideas of peasants. It is a tale commonly told in Scotland among the country people; and may be looked upon as of the kind of those Aniles Fabellæ, in which Horace observes his country neighbours were accustomed to convey their rustic philosophy.
Ae creature livin, for a joke;
A jibe leaves after it a stang
To mak them think on't; and a laird
May find a beggar sae prepar'd,
Wi pawks and wiles, whar pith is wantin,
As soon will mak him rue his tauntin.
All fit it nicely wi a fable.
A Partan creepin on a lee ,
Had drapt the creature thereaboot.
Mawkin bumbas'd and frighted sair
To see a thing but hide and hair ,
Which if it stur'd not might be taen
For naething ither than a stane .
Wi gerse and rashes like a net,
First thought to rin for't; (for bi kind
A Hare's nae fechter , ye maun mind )
But seeing, that wi aw its strength
It scarce cou'd creep a tether length ,
The Hare grew baulder and cam near,
Turn'd playsome, and forgat her fear.
Sae feckless and sae poor a creature?
It scarcely kens , or am mistaen,
The way to gang or stand its lane .
See how it steitters ; all be bund
To rin a mile of up-hill grund
Before it gets a rig-braid frae
The place its in, though doon the brae .
And thinkin there was little risk,
Clapt baith her feet on Partan's back,
And turn'd him awald in a crack.
To see the creature sprawl, her sport
Grew twice as good, yet prov'd but short.
For patting wi her fit , in play,
Just whar the Partan's nippers lay,
He gript it fast, which made her squeel,
And think she bourded wi the deil.
She strave to rin, and made a fistle:
The tither catch'd a tough bur thristle ;
A herd came stending wi his tyke ,
And fell'd poor Mawkin, fairly ruein,
Whan forc'd to drink of her ain brewin .
A canny man signifies nearly the same thing as a prudent man: but when the Scotch say that a person is not canny, they mean not that they are imprudent, but mischievous and dangerous. If the term not canny is applied to persons without being explained, it charges them with sorcery and witchcraft.
Strong. The Scotch almost always turn o in the syllable ong, into a. In place of long, they say lang; in place of tongs, tangs; as here strang, for strong.
A woman that sells fish. It is to be observed that the Scotch always use the word wife where the English would use the word woman.
Sore. I shall observe, once for all, that the Scotch avoid the vowels o and u; and have in innumerable instances supplied their places with a and e, or dipthongs in which these letters are predominant.
Grass and rushes. The vowel e which comes in place of a is by a Metathesis put between the consonants g and r to soften the sound.
An ascent or descent. It is worth observing, that the Scotch when they mention a rising ground with respect to the whole of it, they call it a knau if small, and a hill if great; but if they respect only one side of either, they call it a brae; which is probably a corruption of the English word brow, according to the analogy I mentioned before.
Thinking. When polysyllables terminate in ing, the Scotch almost always neglect the g, which softens the sound.
Thistle. The Scotch, though they commonly affect soft sounds, and throw out consonants and take in vowels in order to obtain them, yet in some cases, of which this is an example, they do the very reverse: and bring in superfluous consonants to roughen the sound, when such sounds are more agreeable to the roughness of the thing represented.
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