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The Canny Scotchman

The Canny Scotchman image
Parent Issue
Day
4
Month
October
Year
1895
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

One is not qnito stire that the religiusity of tho Scotch makes thcm so much more virtuous thaii pcople who pay less attention to "the ïneans of grace. " But while it cannot readily be proVed that they have more of the positivo virtues than their ueighbors there is at least some reasou to believe that they are freer from a few of the ugly vioes than their sontheru cousiüs, although when the Scot is bad ho is very bad. When he gives way to driuk, for iustance, he rans to great lcnglhs. Bnt it will be fouud that there ís ruuch lesswife beating (there being nothing in Scotland at all reseinbliug the frightful practico of "clogging" knowii iii Lapcashire towns), mnch less crnelty to children, much more kiudliuess and fellow feeling anioug the Scottish people than arnoDg the English, while at the same time the Scotch are not nearly so clannish as the Irish, the Jews or the nese. In his poem on "Nothing" Rochester hasclassed "Scotch civility" along with "Freuch truth" and "Hiborniau learning" as beingnonexisteat. Even Walter Scott causes Mr. Owen to speak of a typical Scot liko Bailie Nicol Jarvie, as "that cross grained crabstick of the Saltmarket, ' ' and are we not told that the term "Scot" as well as "Gael," derived from a word for "wind," ineans "the violent, stormy peoüle?" In spite oí all tbis and njnch more to the same end the Scot, t:ike him all in all, is not fairly chargeable with being lacking in courtesy. The word "conthy" (the opposite or positive of "uucouth, " diminutived by the addition of the terminal "y"), signifying a combination of quiet kindliness and sweetness of rnanner, has no English equivalent, and thus would seem to indicate a peculiarly Scotch qnality, wlrich, it may be said, tends to wane considerably with the growth of cominercialism, giving place to a brusqnery peculiarly the outcome of the "rush" of business, and what Carlyle called the "mere cash nexus" between man and man. Scottish speech abounds in what may be called pet words, which would seem to testify that, whether the Scotch be stormy and eharp tongued or not, they can, upon occasion, be as insiuuatingly smooth tongued as the wily Italian

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Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News