[Loch-Ruadh] more forgotten English

[Madelina de Lindesay]

January 21:

mallemarocking - The vising and carousing of seamen in the Greenland ships.  (Adm. William Smyth's "Sailor's Word-book", 1867)

Formed on Dutch 'mallemarok", a foolish woman, tomboy; from "mal", foolish, and "marok", adaptation of French "marotte", [an] object of foolish affection.  (Sir James Murray's "New English Dictionary", 1908)

Birthday of William Henry Smyth (1788-1865), an English admiral, whose glossary of nautical terms, the "Sailor's Word-book", was published in 1867.  Two centuries earlier, the English travel writer Samuel Purchas wrote in his "In Praise of the Sea" (1619) that the ocean offered, "refuge to the distressed, portage to the merchant, passage to the traveller, customs to the prince, springs, lakes, and rivers to the earth."  He added that it "entertains the sun with vapours, the moon with obsequiosness, the stars also with a natural looking-glass, the sky with clouds, the air with temperateness, the soil with suppleness, the rivers with tides, the hills with moisture, the valleys with fertility; ...the sea yields action to the body, mediatation to the mind ...by this art, navigation."
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January 22/23:

burbles - Small vesicular tingling pimples such are caused by the stinging of nettles, or of some minute insects.  Minshew calls them "barbles" because they have been produced by puncturing the skin with little barbed points.  (Rev. Robert Forby's "Vocabulary of East Anglia", 1830)
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January 24:

spanghew - To throw with violence.  (John Brockett's "Glossary of North County Words", 1825)

Paul's Pitcher Day - The eve of St. Paul's Day is thus called by the tinners of Cornwall from a custom they have of setting up a water-pitcher and pelting it with stones until it is broken.  The men then leave their work and adjourn to a neighboring ale-house, where a new pitcher bought to replace the old one is successively filled and emptied, and the evening is given up to merriment and misrule.... It was found to be generally held as an ancient festival intended to celebrate the day when tin was first turned into metal, in fact the discovery of smelting.... The boys of Bodmin used to parade the town with broken pitchers, and into every house where the door could be opened, or had inadvertently been left so, they would hurl a "Paul's pitcher", exclaiming "Paul's Eve, and here's a heave!"  (William Walsh's "Curiosities of Popular Customs", 1897)
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January 25:

liversick - sick at heart.  (T. Lewis Davies' "Supplemental English Glossary", 1881)

Feast Day of St. Dwyn, a Welsh patroness of lovers.  The following description of a "night courtship" is found in Robert Anderson's "Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect" (1805):  "A Cumbrian peasant addresses his sweetheart during the solemnity of midnight when every bosom is at rest except that of love and sorrow.  Anticipating her kindness, he will travel ten or twelve miles over hills, bogs, moors, and mosses, undiscouraged by the length of the road, the darkness of the night, or the intemperature of the weather.  On reaching her habitation, he gives a gentle tap at the window of her chamber, at which signal she ... proceeds with all possible silence to the door, which she gently opens.... On his entrance into the kitchen, the luxuries of a Cumbrian cottage - cream and sugared curds - are placed before him.  Next, the courtship commences, previous to which the fire is darkened or extinguished, lest its light should guide to the window some idle or licentious eye.  In this dark and uncomfortable situation, they remain till the advance of day, depositing in each other's bosoms the secrets of love."
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More later.

Madelina