Geraldine Murtagh from Tobercurry, Co Sligo, has written to say that she hopes that I can shed some light on two words that she remembers from her childhood and teens in north Leitrim. The first of these is crevin, used to describe the mound of turf which extends above the top edge of the trailer.
Crevin is from the Irish craoibhin, which means, according to Dinneen, "a row of turf sods put standing upright around and above the mouth of a creel to keep in the smaller peat". Dinneen found the word in the Rosses and Gweedore, Co Donegal; Geraldine has found it in Sligo as well as in her native Leitrim.
Her second word in free. I'll let the lady speak for herself: "Free is the neat, block-like wall of turf holding the fuel in a shed or stack. The older generation took great pride in freeing the stack of turf so that it would stand firm against the winter gales."
This free of Geraldine's also comes from Irish. Fraigh, Dinneen tells us, is a Connacht word, meaning among other things, "the clamp or retaining course of a turf rick". Two more Irish words from the English of Ireland, until now unknown to me. Delighted to have them.
Patrick Hunter Blair of Mountcaper, Spa, Ballinahinch, Co Down, tells me that there is another stell (from the same source as stillion, probably) in everyday use among Galloway sheep farmers, and I should think, among some of their kin in the north of Ireland.
Patrick writes: "A stell is a shelter of dry-stone walls (called dykes), built on an open hill. The stells may be rectangular, circular, T-shaped or cruciform. They may be any size from 5 to 30 yards across. Many of them are reputed to have been built by prisoners of war in Napoleonic times, when sheep farming as it is practised today started to develop in that part of Scotland." (The EDD has: stell-dykes: the wall of an enclosure for sheep).
Patrick goes on: "Stells should not be confused with buchts, sheep-handling pens made from dykes. Buchts tend to be close to the steading (farmyard) and can be a complex collection of small enclosures, corridors and gates. I hope that these thoughts from a hill farmer's son are of interest to you." Bucht I've heard in Donegal. It's from Flemish bocht, a sheepfold. Thanks, Patrick.