on is great to lend a little guidance to the
bewildered Englishman. Some simple phonetic artifice might defend your
verses from barbarous mishandling, and yet not injure any vested
interest. So it seems at first; but there are rocks ahead. Thus, if I
wish the diphthong _ou_ to have its proper value, I may write _oor_
instead of _our_; many have done so and lived, and the pillars of the
universe remained unshaken. But if I did so, and came presently to
_doun_, which is the classical Scots spelling of the English _down_, I
should begin to feel uneasy; and if I went on a little further, and came
to a classical Scots word, like _stour_ or _dour_ or _clour_, I should
know precisely where I was--that is to say, that I was out of sight of
land on those high seas of spelling reform in which so many strong
swimmers have toiled vainly. To some the situation is exhilarating; as
for me, I give one bubbling cry and sink. The compromise at which I have
arrived is indefensible, and I have no thought of trying to defend it.
As I have stuck for the most part to the proper spelling, I append a
table of some common vowel sounds which no one need consult; and just to
prove that I belong to my age and have in me the stuff of a reformer, I
have used modification marks throughout. Thus I can tell myself, not
without pride, that I have added a fresh stumbling-block for English
readers, and to a page of print in my native tongue have lent a new
uncouthness. _Sed non nobis._

I note again, that among our new dialecticians, the local habitat of
every dialect is given to the square mile. I could not emulate this
nicety if I desired; for I simply wrote my Scots as well as I was able,
not caring if it hailed from Lauderdale or Angus, from the Mearns or
Galloway; if I had ever heard a good word, I used it without shame; and
when Scots was lacking, or the rhyme jibbed, I was glad (like my
betters) to fall back on English. For all that, I own to a friendly
feeling for the tongue of Fergusson and of Sir Walter, both Edinburgh
men; and I confess that Burns has always sounded in my ear like
something partly foreign. And indeed I am from the Lothians myself; it
is there I heard the language spoken about my childhood; and it is in
the drawling Lothian voice that I repeat it to myself. Let the
precisians call my speech that of the Lothians. And if it be not pure,
alas! what matters it? The day draws near when this illustrious and
malleable tongue shall be qu