A young woman of my acquaintance who is shy about getting her name mentioned in this column has quite a few Donegal friends; she asks about their word midden, a dung-heap, a word she has never heard along the Wicklow-Kildare border.
No doubt the word came to Donegal from Scotland, but the word is found in many places in England as well. Ferguson's Proverbs of 1641 tells us that "a cock is crouse (brave) on his ain midding". Not so long ago farmers used to be proud of the size of their middens, which were often situated uncomfortably near the dwelling house. W. G. Lyttle has this to say in Life in Ballycuddy, County Down, published just over a century ago: "We hae been readin' in the newspapers aboot them middens. A beleeve a weelbiggit (well-built) midden is a sonsy (having a pleasant look about it), wholesome thing aboot ony man's hoose, an' guid fur the appetite." The English Dialect Dictionary quotes an old Northumbrian quatrain, of which there are many Irish varieties: "Berwick is a dirty town, A church without a steeple; There's a midden at every door; God curse all the people."
As to the word's origin, it is from the Old Norse myki-dyngja. The first element means dung, the second, heap, especially a heap of dung, according to Vigfusson's great dictionary. Incidentally, Myki also gave us muck.
Native speakers of Irish, I am informed, never use the words nia and neacht, nephew and niece; now Joan Barbour from Kent, who travels to Dublin on business regularly, tells me that to the oldtimers in her home place a nephew is a grandson. Yes, this was an old meaning of the word. Shakespeare meant grandchildren when he wrote, in Othello, "You'll have your nephews neigh to you." The word came into English from Old French neveu, nepveu, petitfils, from latin nepos, grandson. I wonder has this meaning ever been recorded in Ireland?
One of the words sent to me recently from Waterford by John Pender is trisk, seaweed. From the Irish trioscar, according to Dinneen. Seamus Moylan has it in The Language of Kilkenny, from the lower Suir: "seaweed growing on submerged rocks". I am reminded of Aidan Mathews' poem, The Death of Irish: "The tide gone out for good, Thirty-one words for seaweed/Whiten on the foreshore." Here's one that has survived by being assimilated into the English of south-east Ireland.