I have rarely seen such an expression of feigned pain on a man's face as I did recently in an excellent Wicklow restaurant when an American visitor asked for ketchup to complement his dinner.
The proprietor departed looking grim and returned with the offending goo in a silver sauceboat.
Whatever its merits as a condiment, the word ketchup, also found as catsup and catchup, is Oriental in origin. Collins says that it came from the Chinese (Amoy) koetsiap, the brine of pickled fish, from koe, seafood and tsiap sauce. But let it be said that the late Anthony Burgess thought that this was poppycock. He insisted that the word came from Malay kechap, to smack with the lips.
Tim Cronin from Douglas, Cork, asks me to settle an argument. Thus spake Tim: "I know that as a Wexfordman you are unlikely to know an awful lot about real hurling, but you might be able to tell me which is the correct term for the thing the ball is struck with: is it a hurley or is it a hurl? When I was young we called it a hurl, and hurley was a word you might find used by camogie players and Cork Con followers. Nowadays its all hurleys with them, God help us. So now, can you answer my question?" Both words were in use in the last century; that much I know. Callanan in the Convict of Clonmel, (1825) has: "At my bedfoot decaying my hurl-bat was lying." In 1827 Hone called the thing a hurlet. This word was from Antrim. Eugene O'Curry in his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish has: "He would give his ball a stroke of his hurl. . .he would throw his hurl at it". Eugene was a Clareman: but my friend Jimmy Smyth, the great Clare hurler of the fifties, calls it a hurley. Hall's Ireland (1841) calls it a hurley too. I would be interested to know where the thing is called a hurl, and where a hurley, today.
Vincent McCann, Dublinman who lives near me in Wicklow, tells me that in the hard times when he was young Thursday night was known among the working people of the capital as Drippin' Night. The maids who worked in the big houses used to save some of the dripping from the roasts and give it to their boyfriends as a thank-you for entertaining them on that night, Thursday being pay-day.