Mr Leslie Doyle, who lives in Claydane, Manchester, but who was born and bred in Greystones, sent me two interesting words. The first is mollag, found only in the Isle of Man it seems. Mollag is a dog's skin blown up as a bladder and used as a buoy to float herring nets in the old days. And when a Manxman tells you that he's full as a mollag, he means that he is what Mayo and Kent people might describe as disguised, that is, drunk. Mollag is a native Manx word.
Mr Doyle's second word, he heard in his native Greystones. I'm sure he won't mind me mentioning that he is boarding on the four score, as they say in Galway and in Warwickshire; and in the course of his letter he recalls discussing the word dwees with an old Wicklow fisherman not long ago. Let me quote him: "Greystones had a considerable fishing industry in the 19th century and to a much lesser extent up to the 1930s. Fishermen there used a dog's skin, blown up and tarred, as a bladder. This they used as a float, and one was placed at each end of a trammel net or long line, to mark, on the surface, the ends of the net and line. I have never known the origin of the word which, I think, was not confined to Greystones fishermen. That fact that the finished bladder was black and that the Irish for black is dubh may be a pointer."
I don't think so. Perhaps we should look to the English dialect word dwyes, always found in the plural. In the Isle of Wight, dwyes are eddies, but in Cornwall the older fishermen have transferred the word to the glass floats that bob on them. Dwyes and dwees. I wonder am I putting two and two together and making five? Dwees are blandies in Kerry. Used of corpulent men and women as well as floats. Where that came from I don't know. Irish speakers have bleaindi.
An Anglican clergyman whose name I would not divulge for all the taa (i.e Wexford tea) in China, asks where his wife's words for a man she doesn't like, pill and pillock, come from. Modern slang?, he wonders. Well, they survive in modern slang, certainly. But they are old Scandinavian imports, considered naughty words once. From Norse pill, membrum virile, I'm afraid.