Wonderfully weird
EVER heard the Gaelic word for the noise a cow makes with a potato stuck in its throat? Now you can.
EVER need the word for the choking groan made by a cow with a potato in its throat?
Well, now you have it – ròmhan – and many other strange, forgotten Gaelic words collected by Father Allan McDonald, priest, poet and folklorist on the islands of South Uist and Eriskay from 1884 to 1905.
These include a word for the little bits of dust you see in a ray of sunlight, squeezing a big thing into a small hole and the noise made by women when they get together.
In 1958, folklore scholar John Lorne Campbell organised 2,900 of those words and published them as an intriguing dictionary, Gaelic Expressions from South Uist and Eriskay. Now a new book revives 42 of these weird and wonderful Gaelic words, titled Forradh, meaning ‘sly work about food, cooking slyly’.
For example, if a person came into a house and saw a person at the fireside trying to hide what she was cooking, he might ask: ‘Dé ’m forradh a th’agad a sin?’ (What are you slyly cooking there?).
Artist Catrìona NicilleDhuibh breathes new life into this quirky selection with hand-printed linocuts illustrating every word. ‘I love the humour which runs through the dictionary,’ she said. ‘There’s a real sense of human interaction and an ever-present gentle mockery, both of which I got used to when in South Uist and Eriskay doing my research.
‘I love the attention to small things and to tiny nuances, and the imaginative, but very concrete, interaction with the otherworld.’
Other gems include a bàsadair: ‘a hole in soft ground (covered by moss) with water underneath, where sheep and cattle are often lost’.
‘Bàsadairean are still well understood in South Uist and Eriskay,’ Catrìona explains. ‘One person in Eriskay described them to me as “a really wet place. Ground where the sheep would go through. It was a bit dangerous, a bàsadair. You’d need to be careful not to go through it. You’d go down. It was dangerous for man and beast. They’re up high in the mountain. There weren’t many but there were a few. There was one place down behind the mountain called Bàsadair Point”.
‘Calum Laing tells the story of how a bàsadair at Waterloo spelled the end of Bonaparte’s reign: “Bonaparte was putting his faith in the cavalry on that bloody day. ‘We stood,’ Ronald would say, ‘in a long line facing the edge of a hidden channel that reminded me of the Drimsdale ditch, every one of us boldly ready, waiting with a shining bayonet on our guns.
‘They tumbled towards us wildly; they didn’t see the marshy bàsadair until they were fatally stuck in it. Those of the great French army who remained alive dispersed and fled. The world was left in peace.”
Mabladh, the ‘awkward chewing such as a toothless old man would make’, can also mean hacking or maiming, used by Angus Campbell in Suathadh Ri Iomadh Rubha. ‘Our beautiful language, the music and birdsong of our infancy, heart and soul of all that was delightful in our history and lore, has been mabladh’ed and torn asunder by a generation of Gaels without respect, without pride in their birthright and their language.’
You can learn more Gaelic words and their pronunciations at the book’s website www.slycooking.com, including these:
❒ BILEAGACH: said of a person who must taste and sip every food or drink she sees. For example: Nach i Oighrig dhubh tha bileagach seach aon té eile ’s tìr? (Doesn’t dark Effie go in for tasting more than any other woman in the place?)
❒ CEASAD, grumbling for lack of a thing.
❒ COILLEAG or CAOIBHLEAG, the little rings that form on the surface of fat soup.
❒ CINNICHD, tidying one’s dress and one’s person with nervous gesticulations.
❒ FEADARRAICH, when the fire was being smoored and the lights put out, to terrify children a person would draw the tongs through the ashes, and the greenish red light from the embers were said to be the feadarraich coming for children who would not sleep quietly.
❒ FORAGRADH, disturbance of an uncanny nature heard in a house.
❒ GLAIGEIL: loud talk as of garrulous females, all talking together.
❒ GRÙDACH, searching for a lost object in a muddy pool or well with the hands.
❒ MABLADH, awkward chewing such as a toothless old man would make. [Messing a thing up. J.M.]
❒ MIONAGADANAN, the atoms seen in a ray of sunlight coming into a house. [Stress on first syllable, A.J.]
❒ SEANRAIGEACH, gille seanraigeach, said of a lad who passes his working hours without doing much, frittering and pottering.
❒ SGIONC, forcing an object into an aperture less than the object itself, eg putting a large cork into a narrow-necked bottle.
❒ STORRADH, to importune a person to take a thing as food when not inclined to take it. Forcing, urging strongly, pressing. Bha ’ad ’ga storradh orm ge b’oil leam,[they were forcing it on me in spite of me].
❒ www.slycooking.com