Could Boris win the game of thrawns?

AS YE OLDE WORDS FALL INTO DISUSE ...

Many charming old words from across the British Isles are, for one reason or another, seldom used nowadays.

‘ Hockerty- cockerty’ is, for instance, a Scottish term meaning ‘seated with one’s legs astride another’s shoulders’. In the West Country ‘ shrammed’ means ‘ freezing cold’ and ‘ ferniggle’ means ‘to play truant’.

Oddly enough, the bowler-hatted clarinettist acker Bilk was born Bernard Stanley Bilk, but adopted acker because in Somerset, where he came from, it was another word for ‘friend’.

In East anglia, a ‘dardledumdue’ is a day dreamer, and ‘jannicking’ means fooling about. In Cumbria ‘peelie-wallie’ means unwell, and a gripe has a secondary meaning as a three-pronged fork used for shifting dung. There are different words meaning ‘moody’ all over the British Isles: ‘crabbit’ in Scotland, ‘thrawn’ in northern Ireland, ‘mardy’ in the Midlands.

I mention all these variations because I have just been reading Under The Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy. One of the beauties of Hardy lies in his use of old words now rarely heard: ‘tardle’ meaning a tangle, for instance, or ‘to wamble’ meaning to stagger.

Early on in the book, two characters are comparing their old and new parsons. By and large, they prefer the old one, because he wasn’t such a busy bee. ‘ yes; he was a right sensible pa’son,’ says one of them, adding, ‘ He never entered our door but once in his life, and that was to tell my poor wife ... he didn’t at all expect her to come any more to the service’.

The two men also approve of their old parson because he was fairly lazy, and didn’t interfere. ‘There’s good in a man’s not putting a parish to unnecessary trouble.’

But the new parson is an eagerbeaver full of bright new ideas. ‘ There’s this here man never letting us have a bit o’peace, but keeping on about being good and upright.’ The old parson never minded that the font was leaky, but it greatly bothers the new parson.

‘ When I told him that Mr Grinham never minded it, but used to spet upon his vinger and christen ’em’ just as well, ’a said, ‘Good Heavens! Send for a workman

immediate. What place have I come to!’

and so on they go, debating the pros and cons of the old versus the new. at last, one of them finds something to say about the thrusting newcomer. ‘Still for my part, though he’s arrayed against us, I like the hearty borus-snorus ways of the new pa’son.’

at this point in the book, I paused, wondering what, exactly ‘borus-snorus’ meant. Luckily, my edition of Under The Greenwood Tree has notes at the back. ‘Borussnorus is’, the editor informs us, ‘a variant of “boris-noris” ’.

and what, you may ask, is ‘borisnoris’? The editor quotes from a Glossary Of The Dorset Dialect ( 1886) by William Barnes. apparently, boris-noris means ‘careless, reckless, rash, happygolucky, going on blindly without any thought of risk or decency.’ Does this remind you of anyone? Can you think of a contemporary politician who might be described as ‘careless, reckless, rash, happy-go-lucky and so on? aha! Boris Johnson! This suggests to me that Boris may well be a victim of nominative determinism, which is the idea that people are unconsciously driven to adopt characteristics, or even professions, suggested by their names. For example, the term was inspired by a pair of eminent urologists called Splatt and Weedon.

Generally, this developing science concentrates on surnames. There are, for instance, aboveaverage numbers of bakers called Baker and orthopaedic surgeons called Limb.

BUT there is no reason why it shouldn’t apply to christian names, too. On an anecdotal level, there seem to be quite a few lawyers called Sue and Will, as well as bird- watchers called Robin and Dickie.

Might it be that some deeprooted memory of the ancient English expression ‘ Boris-noris’ has been instrumental in forming Mr Johnson’s notably harumscarum character?

If so, we must all continue to scour the works of Thomas Hardy, in search of tell-tale clues as to the meaning of gove-wove, faragebarage, and corbyn-dorbyn, never mind those old English verbs ‘to raab’, ‘to starmer’ and ‘to rudd’.