A correspondent from Macroom who signs her letter Muinteoir Scoile asks about the origin of a let in tennis. Let is an archaic noun meaning an obstruction, hindrance, stoppage. In tennis, needless to say, it means an interference with the ball; the point must be played again. Spenser has: "Scorning the let of so unequal foe" in The Faerie Queene.
Shakespeare also has the noun. In Henry V he wrote: "My speech entreats That I may know the let, why gentle peace Should not expel these inconveniences." The noun has survived down to our time in the phrase "let or hindrance". From Old English lettan, to hinder. It is related to late - laet meant slow.
The archaic verb let, to hinder, prevent, is found in Chaucer's Tale of the Man of Lawe: "The day goth faste, I wol no lenger lette." You'll remember "Unhand me, gentlemen - By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me", from Hamlet.
Joan Pender, a Kilkenny woman who now lives in Artane, writes to remind me of the insulting term bread and tay boys used by the followers of the country hurling teams in taunting teams from the towns at matches in the 1950s.
She adds a few more: the coffee an' crames, the butterflies, the after you, Margarets. It was ever thus, Joan. The Cockneys in Tudor times were known as the toast-and-butters, one of my sons tells me. Beaumont and Fletcher in Wit Without Money have: "They love young toasts and butter, Bow Bell suckers". The term was here used of effeminate men.
Of cowards Falstaff spoke of in Henry 1V: `I pressed me none but such toasts and butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads".
Never one to put a sper on their tongues, those Tudors. Sper is John McDonagh's word; John is a Galwayman who now lives in London's Hampstead. This is the Irish speir, a fetter; a leg fetter for sheep, according to Father Dinneen. A borrowing from English, this, I feel sure. Spenser has "Sperre the gate fast for fear of fraude" in The Shepherd's Calendar. Shakespeare has: "With massy staples, And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts Sperr up the sons of Troy" in one of my favourite plays, Troilus and Cressida. The Old English was sparian, to fasten with a bolt.