Billy Colfer from Slade, that delightful little fishing village in the Hook Peninsula in Co Wexford, is director of The Norman Connection, a conference that takes place in Fethard-on-Sea every September. This year the dates chosen are the 26th and the 27th. On one of those days yours truly will be blathering about words collected by a schoolmaster over a century ago a bit further east along the coast and sent to Dublin for appraisal. The antiquarian who examined the manuscript, Joseph Lloyd, thought highly of it, but he died before he could get it published. It lay in a drawer until somebody went to work on its extensive mutilation more than 60 years ago. I've been trying to sort the thing out.
Anyway, Mr Colfer sent me an interesting word they have in the Hook, and I hope I have solved the problem of its origin for him. The word is stellan and it means, a stone shelf in an alcove, on which the water bucket was kept. The word, I must confess, was new to me.
It, is, not found as Mr Colfer has it in the dialect dictionaries, but I'm pretty sure it's related to stell, a prop, support; a stand or framework to support barrels, a word found in northern England and in Scotland. There is also a verb stell which means to place, set fix. The word is from Old English stellan, to place, set.
Should Mr Colfer's word, a noun, be spelled stellin(g)? I think so. The ing suffix often formed nouns from verbs. Think of the second coming; meeting; a wedding; winnings.
To hother is used by an 80-year-old man who lives in Waterford city, Mary Walsh from Ferrybank tells me. This is how her old acquaintance uses the word: `I can still hother down to, the pub and hother back again on me own, thank God.' The good lady asks me if her friend is confusing hother with totter, an old word that comes from Middle English toter, swing, corresponding to Old English tealtrean, to stagger, by the way.
From Flemish, hotteren, to totter, shake, this. Words from Flemish in the English of Ireland are scarce. But we, shouldn't jump to the conclusion that this interesting word came with Fitzstephens's archers and artisans all those years ago., It is common in many of the dialects of English and may have come to Waterford port in later times.