PATRICIA RAINEY, writing from Exeter, tells me that her father, who came from Co Antrim, often used the word chiller for a double chin.
The form as Patricia gives it is, or was, used only in the north of Ireland; in Scotland and the north of England it is still chuller and choller, in Devon and its neighbouring counties cholly.
Yes, the chiller etc was the fat flesh hanging from the lower jaw of man or beast; a dewlap; a double chin.
Chillers, chollers, etc are also the gills of a fish in the southern counties of England, and the wattles of a cock or turkey cock in Antrim and Down. There is no problem with the word's origin: Old English ceotur, the throat. Old High German has chelero, the throat, dewlap.
A Cork correspondent, Claire Nyhan, was annoyed recently by an English friend who asked innocently why Cork people have hijacked the term the holy ground. Surely, says Claire, the holy ground is Cobh; the song proves it.
The song, a stor, does no such thing, and some 19th century broadsides I've seen place this particular holy ground in Bristol, adjacent to the docks. It was a red light district. Such districts all over the English speaking world, including the west side of New York, and the waterfronts of Philadelphia and Halifax, Nova Scotia were known as holy grounds. The term is now obsolete, I'm told.
The original holy ground was the notorious Seven Dials district of the parish of St Giles in London. Tom Moore, in Tom Crib's Memorial (1819), remarks that the term came from a celebrated fancy chant, or brothel song, ending every verse thus: "For we are the boys of the Holy Ground/And we'll dance upon nothing (be hanged) and turn around." Holy" is an obvious pun on "Saint" Giles.
Eric Partridge tells us that an early explanation (1821) stated that the name is in compliment to the superior purity of its Irish population." Ah, yes indeed! Many of the most notorious madams of the Seven Dials were Irish, and some of them, with touching patriotism, employed only Irish girls in their houses. Fine girls they were, by all accounts.