From the town of Bray came a letter from Michael Doorley asking about the word sniggling, used in Borrisokane, Co. Tipperary in the writer's youth. `This means fishing for eels using a nine-inch long hook covered in earthworms', he says. `The hook was placed in crevices between rocks in the river or under the bridge.'
The noun sniggle is found in many of the regional dialects of England. It means an eel. It is found as snig in many places, but Co. Antrim is the only Irish location mentioned by the English Dialect Dictionary. In Cheshire, a restless child was said to `wriggle about like a snig in a bottle.' All over the English midlands, where they seemed to be very fond of snigs, related words emerged such as snig-bag, an eel bag; snig-bellied, said of a very thin animal; snig pie, an eel pie. `A snygge, a ele', is mentioned in a tract dating from 1483.
Mr Doorley's sniggle, `to catch fish, especially eels', according to the EDD, is commonplace from Scotland south to Devon, but there is no mention of Ireland. A Northamptonshire correspondent defines the verb as `to lay baits for catching eels in their holes. Sometimes used metaphorically for inveigling or securing a person by stratagem.' The words are of obscure origin, I'm sorry to say, but it's good to know that the old word survives in Tipperary.
Angry, was how Mrs Mary Hennessy's mother would describe a red, inflamed wound or sore. The good lady was a native of Clonmel. This adjective is common all over England. Shakespeare used it in Othello: `I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense, And he grows angry', says Iago to Roderigo (a quat is a pimple, here contemptuously applied to a person; origin unknown). John Florio, one of my favourite lexicographers, has this definition of pedignoni in his 1611 Italian-English dictionary: `angrie kibes, chillblaines'.
Where, other than in the south-east of Ireland, doles this angry survive? In many places, I suspect. I'd like to know. It's from Old Norse angr, grief; related to old English enge, Old High German engi, narrow, Latin angere, to strangle.
A son of mine who treats angry wounds in Cornwall, tells me that a pain felt at a distance from the actual seat of trouble is known there as an anguish. From Old French angoisse, agony of mind or body, this.