THERE was a time when I thought that Ulster men and women were wild divils compared with us from the sedate south. Northern bookmen were to blame for this. Peadar O'Donnell, Scum us MacMantis, Lynn Doyle and about a score more of them went on about their raking exploits in the wee hours, and I suppose I wasn't to blame for thinking that their raking was related to rake, a dissipated person, from rake/, a variant of rakehell, the rake bit coming from Old English raca, related to Old Norse raka, the implement gardeners use - and to the Latin noun rogus, a funeral pile, from the Gothic verb rikan, to pile up. James Foley from Omagh, writing in the northern journal, Causeway, recently, points out that the Ulsterman's rake means a friendly visit, so that a raker is as far removed from a rakehell as one could imagine. Where, he asks me, does this Ulster rake originate?
The Scots, the northern English, and, significantly, the Shetland rake means to wander, ramble; to stroll about idly; to stay out late at night. I have no doubt that this good word, ignored by the dictionaries because of its dialect status, is from the Old Norse reika, to ramble, to stroll.
Dr John Fleetwood tells me that he was recently told by a patient in his Carysfort, Blackrock, clinic that she hadn't ajoog in her. What, he asks, is a joog? She explained that she felt very tired. Joog is the Irish drug, a drop. The verb diug means to drain, to drink to the dregs. I'd like to know where the lady hailed from. Could this be a survival from Dublin Irish?
Dan Swift from Rathfarnham wrote to ask about the word rosiner, a stiff drop of the crathur. Well, you won't find this in the dictionaries either, but the EDD is helpful.
The word is indeed related to the rosin used by fiddlers, as Mr Swift suspects. In Lancashire, a rosin was a jocular term for a drink bought for a musician. In Lincolnshire, to rosin `er up' meant to ply a lady with drink so as to get her warmed up to sing. Oh yes. In Hampshire, to be rosined means to be plastered. The word is found from Northumberland to the southern shires; rosiner is found all over Ireland. All from Old French resine, from Latin resina, from Greek rhetine, resin from a pine.