Ulster adjurations are a curious medley, ‘Heth’ and ‘Feth’ being frequently used. ‘By Jaiminie King’ is a curious expression often heard in County Fermanagh. ‘Holy Farmer’ is another obscure form of oath. ‘Hokey oh’ is a phrase implying astonishment and alarm. ‘Hoker’ is used by Chaucer to express frowardness, and ‘Hocer’ in Anglo-Saxon meant a reproach. These words probably contain the clue to the origin of this obscure Ulster provincialism.
Expressions conveying contempt or endearment are common. ‘Bad scran to you’ is a phrase of angry contempt. ‘Skran’ in Icelandic means ‘refuse.’ Milton used the word ‘scrannel’ (‘scrannel pipes’) to express poor or mean; and ‘scranny’ still survives in provincial English in this sense. ‘Bad cess to you’ is another Ulsterism of similar meaning, of which the origin is more doubtful; possibly ‘cess’ is a contraction for success. ‘Give me none of your back-talk’ is said by a superior to an inferior, meaning, ‘Don’t presume to argue the question with me.’ A ‘Tory rogue’ is still commonly used in Ulster in the sense of a scamp; but it is often applied to children in a playful sense. It is an interesting relic of the original meaning of the word Tory—an Irish outlaw or freebooter. A ‘tongue-thrashing’ is a vigorous phrase for a severe rebuke. ‘Carnaptious’ means quarrelsome and fault-finding.
Some salutations are characteristic of the northern province. ‘How do you get your health?’ often takes the place of the more vague, ‘How do you do?’ ‘The top of the morning to you’ is a cheery way of saying ‘Good-morrow.’
As might have been expected, there is a long array of peculiar botanical and zoological expressions characteristic of Ulster. Every district has its local names for flowers, plants, birds, and animals, and in these Ulster is peculiarly rich. Potatoes are known as ‘spuds;’ ‘biller’ means water-cress; ‘daffydowndillies’ is a lengthened form of daffodils; ‘mayflower’ is the marsh marigold or Caltha palustris. The heads of the common plantain are called ‘cocks’ or ‘fighting-cocks,’ because children make a game of striking them off in mimic warfare. The dock-plant is called the ‘dockan’ (Scotch), and its leaf is a popular remedy for nettle-sting; the wood-sorrel is known as ‘cuckoo-sorrel.’
A still longer list of zoological terms might be made out. The bottle-nosed whale is known as the ‘herring-hog;’ the pollack is called ‘lythe;’ the lobworm used by fishermen for bait is called the ‘lug;’ the stickleback has its name corrupted into ‘spricklybeg;’ the gadfly is known as the ‘cleg’ (which is also its Scotch name); ‘yilly-yorlin’ (also Scotch) is the yellow-hammer; the ‘felt’ is the redwing; the ‘peeweet’ (Scotch again) means the lapwing; the ‘mosscheeper’ is the titlark; the cormorant is known as the ‘scart.’
We now turn to some provincialisms which do not admit of a ready classification. ‘Bis’ is often said for ‘is,’ and ‘bissent’ for ‘is not.’ Here we have an instance of a very common phenomenon—an archaic form surviving as a colloquialism or provincialism. A vast number of our common vulgarisms which we are inclined to regard as breaches of grammar are simply good grammar out of date; in this case, the provincialism almost exactly preserves a very ancient form of the verb. The Anglo-Saxon verb ‘to be’ present tense indicative mood was ‘beom, bist, bith,’ whence no doubt come ‘bis’ and ‘bissent.’ ‘Braird,’ often used in Ulster, as in Scotland, of the young springing grain, is the Anglo-Saxon ‘brord,’ meaning the first blade. ‘Buffer’ in the sense of ‘boxer’ is from the old French word ‘buffe,’ meaning a blow.
‘Chew, sir,’ is a form of rebuke applied to a snarling dog. ‘Dwamish’ means faint and sick, from ‘dwam,’ a Scotch word signifying a swoon or a sudden attack of illness. ‘Dunt’ means a blow, and is old English and Scotch; Burns says, ‘I’ll tak dunts frae naebody.’ A ‘founder,’ according to our dictionaries, is a term in farriery to indicate lameness caused by inflammation within the hoof of a horse. In Ulster, the word is often used to express a chill or wetting followed by illness. A man after being exposed to the vicissitudes of weather becomes seriously ill without knowing what is the matter, and he expresses his condition by saying that he has got ‘a regular founder.’ ‘Head-beetler’ is used in the same vulgar sense as ‘Head-cook and bottle-washer’ in some localities. The beetle was a machine for producing figured fabrics by the pressure of a roller, and ‘head-beetler’ probably means the chief director of this class of work. A ‘heeler’ is a cock which strikes out well with his heels. In Ulster, the word is sometimes used for a bold forward woman.
When a child begins to nod and look sleepy, he is told that ‘Johnny Nod is coming up his back,’ which is understood as a signal for going to bed. ‘Potatoes and point’ is a curious phrase in which the poverty of the lower classes in Ireland finds unconscious expression. The idea is, that the potatoes before being eaten are ‘pointed’ at a herring, which is hung up to serve as an imaginary relish to the simple fare, but too precious to be freely consumed. ‘Dab at the stool’ is another expression referring to eating customs: salt is placed upon a stool, and each individual, as the potatoes are taken out of the pot, takes one and ‘dabs’ it at the stool, to get a portion of the salt. ‘Pouce’ and ‘poucey’ mean dust and dusty, but by a common perversion of language, ‘poucey’ comes to mean a person in a flax-mill who is exposed to the irritation of dusty particles, and becomes in consequence short-winded and bronchitic. ‘Roughness,’ as in Scotland, means plenty. ‘Ruction’ signifies a row, a disturbance; possibly it is a contraction of ructation, from the Latin verb ructare. ‘Skelly,’ to squint, is from the Scotch, and is found in Scott. The Danish is ‘skele.’ ‘Smittle,’ also used in Scotland, means infectious, and is connected with the verb to smite. ‘Think long’ means to be homesick.
We thus see how much curious information and how many relics of the past are found in the despised vulgarisms of a provincial patois. They are the fossils of language, and speak to us of vanished peoples and of ages long gone by.