Jimmy Smyth, the great Clare hurler of the 1950s, wrote to ask if I could shed some light on a term he came across in a Tipperary song. I can't, I'm afraid, but I have no doubt that one of my readers, better versed in the history of athletics than I am, can come to the man's rescue.
Let me quote you the troublesome verse. It's in a song by a man who styled himself "The Rhymer from Roscrea" and it was published in the Nenagh Guardian in 1873. Having exhorted the Muses to descend and perch on his pen, the Rhymer goes on describe what he calls the Olympic Games recently held in Roscrea. In verse 13 he has:
Next comes the running jump, a feat for which success requires Agility with strength should meet in one whom praise inspires Dan Stapleton, just half an inch, beat Murphy, P., whose best Was four-eleven; close was the pinch, but these beat all the rest.
What, asks Mr Smyth, was the running jump? It can't have been the long jump, and as for the high jump, that's not in the running either, so to speak, for, as my correspondent says, "I'm sure you could still manage four-eleven yourself over a gate, with a Wexford bull after you". As I say, help with this would be appreciated: Mr Smyth's collection of Tipperary sporting songs is almost ready for publication.
Dan Moynihan from Bishopstown, Cork, heard two men discussing the life and hard times of an acquaintance in a west Cork pub recently, and one mentioned the baigle of a woman he had married.
Baigle is beagle, and the English Dialect Dictionary has this to say about it: "An opprobrious epithet applied to a depraved, unmanageable, and troublesome person". It is found in the northern counties of England, also in Shakespeare's Warwickshire, and in the south-east. As is the case of west Cork, it is applied to women and to difficult children by men.
Let's go back further. Baigle/beagle is not from French; their bigle is borrowed from English. It's not from Old English either, because of the hard g. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't rule out the theory that the word is from Old French beeguelle, a noisy, shouting person, a word derived from beer, to gape, open wide, guele, throat. That makes sense.
I've often heard this opprobrious baigle, and its Irish equivalent, bairseach, in west Cork. Is it found elsewhere, I wonder?