The Concise Scots Dictionary (review)

336Reviews Partridge, Eric. A Dictionary of the Underworld. New York: Bonanza, 1961. Schmidt, J. E. Narcotics, Lingo and Lore. Springfield, 111.: Thomas, 1959. Richard A. Spears Northwestern University The Concise Scots Dictionary. Mairi Robinson, Editor-in-chief. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1985. 820 pp. £17.50. A reviewer must often sound dour. Let me begin by saying, then, · that this dictionary is the best thing to happen to Lowland Scottish culture since the Kilmarnock edition of Burns. The mirror which the CSD holds up is of course a flattering one—no single dialect or chronological variety of Scots ever contained the wealth of language here accumulated. But perhaps Lowland culture needs this kind of flattery. Our problematic national identity is strengthened by the concrete evidence of such a patrimony. The CSD is a digest of the two great research dictionaries of Scots, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) and The Scottish National Dictionary (SND). Where DOST -is incomplete, the editors fall back on The Oxford English Dictionary. I will not take up space here to discuss the strengths of the Scottish dictionaries—the exhaustive coverage of the literary language, supplemented by local documents for DOST and local dialect authorities for SND, the distinctive words and pungent sayings, the wealth of information about Scottish material culture and legal and other institutions. Having this material in one volume makes it possible to see at a glance the continuity of Older Scots and Modern Scots, which is obscured between the parent dictionaries by the Reviews337 different spelling conventions of the periods covered. It is often clear from the SND etymologies that words are of great antiquity in the language, but it is not always so obvious, when working forward from DOST, what a word might have mutated into in modern speech, for instance thrashel 'threshold' into thrashwart or gallows into gallus 'wild, unmanageable, bold . . . cheeky'. (In recent use amongst young Glaswegians, this has undergone the same type of value reversal as Black English bad.) The Introduction covers the essential facts about Scots, though more could be said about grammar. An interesting new point is the suggestion that Scots was so thoroughly restructured by the influx of Northern English speakers in the feudal period that the Scots we know is not actually descended from the Old English of south-east Scotland. Many important and complicated points are quietly insinuated into the instructions for using the dictionary. There is a map of the main dialect areas, as well as one of the old counties. These are used for geographical information in the entries, but a map of the post-1975 regions is provided for comparison. Appendices deal with Scottish coinage, weights, and measures, and there is a fascinating table showing how the various sects of the Kirk are related to each other. The editors have been bold enough to use the International Phonetic Alphabet for the pronunciations. The dictionary's unique contribution is its treatment of pronunciation for obsolete as well as current items. The model used is a rather conservative modern Scots, allowing the clusters kn and gn but showing the post-Great Vowel Shift realizations of vowels. One very broad diaphoneme is used—the vowel in words like law, cause, ba 'ball' ranges over three cardinal vowels in modern dialects. The form selected allows realistic pronunciation entries for older items, but is at odds with the most populous dialect area and with mainstream literary Scots. There are sometimes discrepancies in dating—obsolete pronunciations are asterisked, but this is not generally done with forms whose currency extends into the early twentieth century, for instance the past tense and past participle form l(e)ucht of lauch 'laugh'. The main datings are possibly too reliant on literary records. 338Reviews Since there are no standard spellings for Scots the layperson will find the dictionary fykie to consult. For the most part the headwords (provided by the parent dicionaries) are in fairly predictable spellings for Modern Scots, but the vagaries of the original corpora are evident; for instance, lawnd appears (and is referred to land), but laund does not, while haund does. Some words are entered under ui spellings, e.g., muir, others under uCe...