Father Padraig Mac Carthaigh of Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, sent me a few interesting words, some local, some not. The first of these is tory tops, heard in Cork; these are pine cones and are known in Galway and in Wicklow as cogneys.
The English Dialect Dictionary has tory tops but doesn't give an etymology. It was one of the few words sent to Oxford from Co Cork. Father Mac Carthaigh guesses that it is related to Irish torthai, fruits. I don't know. Neither do I know the origin of cogneys. I've heard boorkeens in Carlow. The Irish is buaircin.
When a Wicklow man cleans out or disembowels a rabbit, he panches him. This word was known also to Colm Devereux of the Willow Grove and to Michael Donnelly of Corrig ower, but not to two young ones of about 20 who sipped a drink in Mr Devereux's pub. Bad news this. I didn't bother asking them what they'd do to a deer; you wouldn't panch it, you'd grollick it in both Rathdrum and Callary. This is from Irish greallach, entrails. Scots Gaelic has the word, too; and Scots English has gralloch.
George Mooney from Newtownmountkennedy gave me the word shoorawns, and Father Mac Carthaigh knows of a woman who had, unwisely, cut them with a strimmer and suffered a severe rash as a consequence of being hit by flying pieces of the weed known to most of us as hogweed or cow-parsnip.
The Wicklow Irish is siuran. De Bhaldraithe's dictionary gives odhran; McKenna's has odhran, feabhran, fuaran and fleabhran; and Dinneen found fiuran in Dublin, a word sent to me in the form fewrawn by J. O'Brien of Shankill some time ago.
Cloerauns is another of Michael Donnelly's words. They are heaps of small stones gathered from a cornfield to assist the mower; the cairns are usually built near the ditches in the corner of the field. The word, no doubt, is a local form of Irish clochran.
Lastly, an old use of the word concern from Wicklow. I heard it at young Geraldine Magee's wedding the other night. A woman who lives near Geraldine in Corrigower was talking about President Clinton's concern. This was her word for an affair. It was a common euphemism in Restoration days.
"It is not long ago that I had a concern with a signora," wrote the dramatist Wilson in Bolphegor in 1690. Obsolete everywhere now, Oxford thinks. Tell them that in Wicklow.