"I was reminded the other night of a very common expression", writes Michael Brady, a student from Cavan who has pitched his tent in Clontarf. "I was walking down Dorset Street when I heard a lady who was peering through the window of a public house exclaim: `There he is, the bastard. I'll brain the bowsie when I'll get me hands on him.' To brain: does this simply mean that the good lady meant to damage her beloved's cerebrum, assuming that he possessed one?" he asks.
That's all it means, but it is interesting in that it has been around for a long time. Shakespeare has it in Henry IV Part I: "Zounds, an I were now by this rascal I could brain him with his lady's fan", said Hotspur, getting hot under the collar.
But Mr B's letter reminded me of another Shakespearian to brain, meaning to understand, comprehend, figure out. I have heard this verb once or twice in County Wicklow. "Brain it out for yourself, if you can", said a man from Glenealy direction to me recently, referring to recent mysterious financial transactions.
The only reference to it in the EDD cites a Suffolk source but the same EDD is almost useless when it comes to the dialect words of Ireland, apart from Wexford's southern baronies and some of the counties of Ulster. But, as I say, Shakespeare has it, in Cymbeline.' "Tis still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen tongue and brain not." Is this brain of Shakespeare's to be found in other parts of Ireland? I'd like to know.
"Bully man!" is a term of endearment in Co Donegal, usually addressed to a youngster, Anne Gillespie wrote to tell me. As if I didn't know, being married to a Donegal woman. They have it in Connacht as well, by the way, and in other northern counties besides Donegal. They have bullai fir! in the Gaeltacht areas, and Anne implies that the English expression was borrowed from the Irish.
Hold hard there, girl. It was in English long before the Gaeltacht people got to know of it. Your man from Stratford has it in that naughty play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, when Flute, the bellowsmender, exclaims: "O sweet bully Bottom!"
But the English in their turn borrowed the word from the Middle Dutch boele, sweetheart.
Related to the other bully, a persecutor of weaker people? Yes, through a common enough process that changed the Dutch word for sweetheart into something that meant its antithesis. Sin mar a bhionn.