For some time back I have been collecting words that have survived in the English of Ireland since Tudor times. Last week two more arrived in the post to me.
The first is from J.S. Poyntz from Sutton and it's a word he heard many times in Sligo when he was much younger than he is now. His word is back-friend, and it means a secret enemy, a backstabber, a sleeveen intent on malice. John Florio has the word in the great dictionary he dedicated to Anne of Denmark, James the First's wife: `Inimico, an enimie, a foe, an adversarie, a back-friend'.
Surprise, surprise, Shakespeare has the word as well in The Comedy of Errors: Dromio of Syracuse, in answer to a civil question, says that his master is `in Tartar limbo, worse than hell. A devil in an everlasting garment hath him; one whose hard heart is buttoned up with steel; A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough; A wolf, nay worse, a fellow all in buff; A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper.
The second word comes from J. Connolly of Artane, who heard the word, buck, used by old men who worked in the Poulmounty woollen mills, between Borris and New Ross, many years ago.
Buck, considered by the EDD to be obsolete or close to it almost 100 years ago, is still very much alive in places in the south-east of Ireland. It was a word for lye, made from stale urine or wood ashes or cow-dung for washing wool or coarse linen. It also meant a large wash of clothes. Hence the old people had the words buck-basket, a washerwoman's clothes basket; bucklee, the lye of wood ashes, a commodity never brought into the house during the Christmas; buck-house, a washing house, a laundry (a northern Irish word this, recorded from an advertisement in the Belfast Newsletter of 1738).
Now as to the Tudors, Shakespeare has `Buck! I wish I could wash myself of the buck' in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and relating to a wash of clothes, has `she washes bucks here at home' in Henry the VIth, Part 2. Buck is far older than Tudor times. Piers Plowman has `(He) laueth hem in the lauandrie... and bouketh hem at hus brest.' Its origin? The Middle English bouken, from Low German buken. Interestingly, the Irish is buac, lye.