Christmas time stirs fond memories of old words. Tom Mullins of King Street, Mitchelstown, remembers his father's strange word jildy or gildy - he's never seen it spelled. It is, or was, an adjective used on the Limerick side of the Galtee mountains instead of neat, smart, tidy. One would say: `Isn't that a jildy dress?'
All I can offer here is a guess. There is an old Norse word, gildr, an adjective defined by Vigfusson's dictionary as `of full worth, of full size, complete, stout.'
A Norse word surviving in the foothills of the Galtees? Stranger things have happened.
Geraldine Monaghan of Parnell Road, Dolphin's Barn, heard the word mingin from a northern friend. The word means dirty, stinking.
This word is common in the north: I've heard it myself in Donegal. It came from Scotland, where ming, verb, means to mix. The mix referred to was a concoction of human excrement, urine and other dainties used in the treatment of fleeces: from Old English mingan, to mix.
A rare beauty came from somebody who signed his letter `Bannow Rambler'. He heard it from a man who used to hunt with the Wexford hounds many years ago.
Gossamer we all know to be a gauze of silk fabric of the very finest texture: also a filmy cobweb often seen on foliage. But the huntsman's gossamer was that misty vapour that rises from winter fields as the morning sun strikes them, a portent of a good hunting scent.
All gossamers are from gos, goose, plus somer, summer, and refers to St Martin's Summer around Armistice Day, or yours truly's birthday, whichever you prefer, when it was traditional to eat goose. Look at the morning hedgerows at that time of the year and you'll notice the prevalence of cobwebs.
Christmas prompted Jack Foley of Corbeagh, Cootehill, Co Cavan to tell me that saucepans to the women cooking the Christmas, as was said, were simply mugs of various sizes: what you or I would call a saucepan was called a burner.
Finally, reminded by the many letters received about Barney Cavanagh's gowpen, the full of two cupped hands, may I echo the Scots poet Hogg, who 200 years ago this Christmas asked the Virgin to fling doun frae her lap gowpens of benedicities on his readers. Go neiri an Nollaig libh.