I CONTINUE to be surprised by the number of words thought to belong only to the English of Ireland that crop up in the dialects of England.
Take the verb to beknow, meaning to know, understand, acknowledge. Many's the time I've heard it in south Carlow, most recently at the funeral of a young man drowned in the Barrow. A woman said to another: "Isn't it terrible to think he didn't beknow how dangerous that place is." You'll hear beknow, meaning acknowledge, too; beknownst as well, and unbeknownst and more than once I've seen it written that the words are exclusively Anglo Irish. Nonsense. They are found too in Essex and Somerset, according to Joseph Wright's great dictionary. In Piers Plowman (c. 1362) you'll find "Ichau hen covetous, quod this caityf, (prisoner) I beknowe (acknowledge) hit here"; and Chaucer, in the Canterbury Tales (late 1300s) wrote: "I dar noght biknowe myn owne name."
Yes, it's dangerous to assume that a word is native to any particular place. The OED, sensibly, has smothereens as being "adopted from, or the source of Irish smidirin"; their doubt is caused by the existence of the English dialect smithers, fragments, a word known to Dickens. And I was very surprised indeed to find that the Oirish exclamation bejapers!, so beloved of English comedians, is far more commonly used in Yorkshire and in East Anglia than it is in Ireland.
Mr J. Lundon, a Limerickman now living in Knockaunglass, Athenry, has in his time sent me very interesting words, exclusive of those he uses to denigrate Wexford hurling. He has recently sent me a word still heard in mid Tipperary and east Limerick: bobbery, a slang word meaning noise, noisy disturbance, row. He informs me that it is an Anglo Indian representation of Hindi Bapry re! O father! a common expression of surprise or grief. It seems to have first found its way into print in 1816 in a tome called Adventures in Hindostan. When it arrived in Limerick and Tipp is anybody's guess.
Finally, Mary White from Wexford asks where the expression speer wall a partition near the door of a farmhouse, originated. The speer wall didn't run the length of the kitchen, just far enough to prevent a draught between the farmhouse door and the open fire. I have myself heard this word in Kilmore Quay. A lovely survival this, ultimately, I think, from the Old English gespearrian, to shut, bar. Is it found elsewhere in Ireland?