Mrs Joan Power from Waterford sends me a brace of words remembered from her youth. The first is gligger. A gligger is a prankster and no doubt it comes from the Old English glig, a jest. Variants are found in 16th-century English, and I wonder if they have travelled to this country. "Nay, I can gleek upon occasion", says Bottom to Titania. Glaiks is an earlier variant. In Lyndesay's Satyre of 1535 you'll find "I se they have playit me the glaiks". There was, it seems, an old card game called Gleek, and to play the gleek or glaik meant to deceive your opponent. (I am aware of the Ulster and Scots words gleek and glaik, to glance, to stare in a rude fashion; as nouns, a peep, a talkative person, a gligeen. These, however, may not be related to Shakespeare's and Lyndesay's gleek and glaik).
To Mrs Power's second word, geck, a dupe, a simpleton. This is an old word found in Scotland and in Ulster as gowk, and in places on the banks of the Barrow, as gock. It comes from Old Norse gowkr, the cuckoo. The Dutch had gecken, to mock. Shakespeare was fond of Mrs Power's geck. In Twelfth Night Malvolio complains to Olivia about being made "the most notorious geck and gull That e'er invention play'd on".
Charlady is a word that intrigues Mrs Margaret Byrne of Artane. She wonders if it is connected with chore. Char, sometimes chare, is an old word for drudgery. You'll find "The maid that milks And does the meanest chares" in Antony and Cleopatra. Its origin is the Old English cerr.
Finally, an anonymous Cork teacher asks what Goldsmith meant when he wrote in The Vicar of Wakefield that he didn't like to see his daughters "trudging up to their pew all blowzed and red with walking". Blowze is a dialect word for a ruddy-faced girl. Origin unknown, the dictionaries say. Surely it's connected with blow, a blossom (a word that comes from the German bluhen, to bloom) and to the Limerick dialect word blowen, a good-looking young woman? I think so, for what it's worth, and I think Shakespeare is on my side. In Titus Andronicus he wrote: "Sweet blowze, you are a beauteous blossom, sure . . ."