I was delighted to get a letter from Mrs Catherine Murphy, who has lived all her long life in Ringsend, apart from a spell she spent in Lancashire in the 1950s. "Liverpool was, in a sense, closer to us than Bray in my young days", she says. "I wonder would you be interested in some of the words I picked up long ago, some here, some across the water?" Dear Mrs Murphy, what sort of a question is that? I'll let you do the talking.
Murn: This means stuck up. This is a Lancashire word. I've never heard it in Dublin. This is how you'd use it: "The murn of them people, since they were left a bit of money!". (This is a Manx word, moyrn, haughtiness, pride).
Tooting: There are people who, when they come to visit, mooch around the house, picking up things and examining them, opening cupboards etc. You'd say that these people were tooting around. (John Clare has this in the Shep- herd's Calendar:"for birds in bushes tooting". Its origin is Old English totian, to peep out).
Kist: A chest. You'd hear a seaman's chest called a kist. (Old Norse kiste, a casket, a coffin. Irish ciste is a borrowing.)
Keech: A sweet cake. This I heard in Lancashire from the woman I boarded with. (The English Dialect Dictionary has "Keech: A large oblong or triangular pasty, made at Christmas, of raisins and apples chopped together." The Irish ciste is a borrowing from this English dialect word).
Hushion: This is what many of my Liverpool friends called a cushion. (I once heard an old woman from Horeswood, near Campile, Co Wexford, call it a quishin. Chaucer had that one. "And with that worde, he for a quishin ran And said knelith now whiles that thou lest". From Latin culcita, a mattress.
Abide: In Ringsend to say "I can't abide that fellow" means "I can't tolerate him"; but in Liverpool it also meant to put up with something, pain, for instance. (In the sense of tolerate Shakespeare has "I cannot abide swaggerers" in Henry IV, part 2; and in the sense of endure, he has, in Henry VI "What fates impose, that men must needs abide, It boot not to resist both wind and tide". From Old English abidan, from a, (intensive) plus bidan, to wait).
Thank you, Mrs Murphy, for your words. And for the Mass card.