Dr Leslie Lucas of Rosapenna, Co Donegal, wrote quoting from an article he read lately: "The unmistakable rasp of a corncrake from across the callows". What is a callow? he asks.
A callow is a low-lying damp meadow by the banks of a river. An Irish river, I might add, for callow is confined to Ireland, though to what parts of Ireland I'm not sure. P.W. Joyce doesn't give the word: neither does The Concise Ulster Dictionary. But the following turns up in Coulter's The West of Ireland (1862). "The extensive callows lying along the banks of the Suck"; and in a report in the Dundee Advertiser in August 1883 its Irish correspondent informed readers that "all the callows on the banks of the Shannon to Lusmagh are submerged".
The EDD has the word and so has the OED, but neither offer an etymology. The word is from Irish caladh, a riverside meadow (Dinneen). The anglicised form escaped the nets I cast when compiling my Dictionary of Anglo-Irish; I am grateful to Dr Lucas for it.
I am grateful, too, to Mr Tom Murray of Wexford town for another word that should have been included in my dictionary. He overheard a west Cork woman giving out to her daughter for wearing jeans that artfully displayed her bare knees and tantalising bits of her bottom: "you are nothing but a kalish", said the ageing matron. It's the Irish ceailis, a slattern.
A travelling woman came to my door the other day, selling holy pictures. She was young, and had a little girl with her. When I attempted to give her daughter a few bob to buy icecream the mother stayed my hand: the child had the tetters, she said: tetters (mostly used in the plural by travellers) means ringworm.
The EDD makes no mention of Ireland in its entry relating to it, but the ancient word, from Old English teter, ringworm, is common in rural England. In many places tetter means any kind of small pimple or pustule. Tetters on the tongue were thought to be a punishment for lying. And as for the tetters dreaded by adolescents, these pustules euphemistically called "spots" in the television advertisements, well, if all fails, why not try this old Cornish charm: "Tetter, tetter, you have nine brothers. God bless the flesh and preserve the bone. Perish, tetter, and be gone, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."