Culture

Fews Glossary: J

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Dialect ‘J’
 
Jag                 prick
Jamety          an old ejaculation
Jamety Katty         and others.. as above
Jap                 splash on clothes, ‘I’m all japed with mud’
Jig                  dance
Jigged           drunk
Jiggered       exhausted, ‘wrecked’
Join               var.  ‘I’m joined with John’, ‘The crowd joined and we had to run’, attacked
Jog                push
Joggle          to move from side to side
Jouk, duke   to stoop to hide, avoid a blow
Jubus           dubious, suspicious
Jundy            push, also ‘junty’
Juke              to stoop, avoid
 

Fews Glossary: K

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Kak              faeces
Keek            peep, look
Kemped       hurried, careless, ‘kemped work’
Keen            eager, ‘she’d be keen to throw her clothes with his’, she’d like a marriage with him;  ‘She’s keen on Mary’s John’, fancies; very, ‘keen tormented’
Keogh-boy   a smart or amusing young man
Kilt               greviously hurt, ‘he was as near kilt as if he were dead’
Kind             of religious persuasion, ‘he’s not our kind’ , he ‘digs with the wrong foot’
Kindling        dry wood
Kindness      a present, ‘he always brings a wee kindness with him’
Kink             an attack of coughing or laughing
Kennel         kindle, ‘kennel  the fire there, would you?’
Kimeens       tricks
Kitchen        relish, fit product for one’s kitchen, ‘butter to butter is no kitchen’; manage a house, ‘she could kitchen where Mary would only spend’
Kittery         awkward, left-handed, ‘kitter-pawed’, awkward physically, ‘kitter-fisted’, bad fighter, ‘kittery’, fool
Kittle            birth, ‘the cat has kittled’
Kitling           a young cat
Knackery     knavery, trickery
Knee-crooking       poor-spirited, as of a crowd
Knowing       small portion, ‘just a wee knowing. Don’t be filling it up’
                   cunning, ‘he’s too knowing’ ‘a right knowing wee man’
Knur            small

Gullion Legends

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Slieve Gullion is the most mystic of Irish mountains, linked with Irish literature through the ‘Chase of Slieve Gullion’.  It is associated with many Irish heroes of old, principally Cuchullain – and Cullain the smith to King Conor MacNessa whose name by proxy, the boy Setanta borrowed. 
 

Read moreGullion Legends

Mayflower Dancing

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Of course Margaret the Flower was merely exhibiting on our behalf a very ancient Celtic custom.  In his History of Creggan (1840) Nelson wrote of these too:  this misguided Christian minister however disavowed ancient Irish custom in favour of his own classical training.  He was wont to ascribe their origin to the ancient Greek or Roman.
 
‘On May eve some young persons, male and female, go to gather Mayflowers in the meadow.  They carry these home or scatter them about the doors on the same evening.  Of the origin of this they know nothing but it may be the remains of the ancient Roman Floralia. 
 
In the neighbouring parish of Louth the figure of a female is made nearly as large as life which is dressed fantastically with flowers, ribbons etc.  This image possibly represents Flora the goddess of flowers and some say of fecundity.  Around this figure a man and a woman, for the most part his wife dressed in the same way as the figure, dance to the sound of a fiddle, exhibiting themselves in many ridiculous positions and forms, to the great amusement of the general populace. 
 
During all this time the figure is kept moving up and down as if dancing.  These exhibitions are usually closed by a collection taken up for the actor and actress who generally act another scene of drunkenness the same evening’.

Right Sort of Doctor

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On Slieve Gullion’s sunny slopes, Deirdre is said to have grown from infancy to girlhood with a voice so sweet that when she sang, the thrushes were silent with envy. 
 
There too Fingan the great physician to King Conor MacNessa, had his house with door open on each side to the four winds of Heaven.  He was the right sort of a doctor too for he could tell from the smoke that arose from a house, how many were ill in it and what maladies they suffered from.
 
Tradition says that it was in a glen in the valley below it that Conor MacNessa, the only ruler in Ireland to believe in Christ before the coming of Patrick, died of holy anger on that first Good Friday.
 
Most people however, know the mountain for the Calliagh Berra whose home is atop and who it is said, still roams there at night.  It would be a brave man indeed who would confront her in her house by the lake at the midnight hour!
 

Maybe the Laziness’ll lave ye!

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‘Finn was out walking on the top of Slieve Gullion one time when he met a lovely young woman grieving by the lakeside. An’ he said,
 
‘What’s the bother?’   She pointed into the water.
 
‘Shure it’s me ring I’ve lost’.  Then says he,
 
‘Don’t worry, I’ll git it if I can’.
 
An’ in he went but when he reached the bank again, shure he wus oul’ an’ grey.  An’ his huntsmen came up an’ sorra a bit of them cud know him, he wus that changed!  An’ the lady, she wus the Calliagh Berra, an’ she run away an’ what happened after that I do forgit.
 
Indeed it’s little I know of the same Calliagh Berra, but many a time when the mist wud be on the mountain above, I heared the oul’ people say till me mother,
 
‘The Cally has a male in her pot today.’
 
An’ indeed I often wondered what it might be she was boiling.  Many a night I lay awake thinkin’ of it.
 
Shure it’s the great mountain.  The whole world wus on top one day.  Swarmin’ all over it they wur.  It wus black with them iverywhere.  They had tay on the mountain, but I got none.  Them that comed from Dublin had all sorts of refreshments ay, oranges an’ iverything.  You’d niver believe there wus such a gra’ for our oul’ mountain.  Some had bags with sweetbreads in them an’ other things too.  Some came be the chapel, an’ some be fut, an’ some be cars.  An’ a whole lot come this way an’ more got out at Kinneys.
 
Me brother went up that day an’ he wus bad with the toothache besides being lame like me.  But he cud go an’ he went.  An’ he went till the lake for the cure.
 
‘Troth an’ I’ll go,’ says he, ‘should I die be the way’.
 
An’ when he returned, says he, ‘I’m cured an’ sound’.
 
‘Thank God,’ says me mother.  A great sympathetic, dacent and charitable woman, the mother.
 
 ‘We’ll be done with yer gernin’, she says,
 
An’ mebbe the laziness will leave ye as well.’