Its a long time since Seamus Smyth of Glenageary Avenue, Co Dublin, wrote to me about the man-keeper, a little green lizard which has frightened the wits out of generations of Irish country children. I knew this beastie as the arklooker (Irish earc luachra, lizard of the rushes): man-keeper, man-creeper and man-eater are northern words for this common newt, Triturus vulgaris, the only kind found in Ireland. Seamus, like me, believed the tale that this harmless creature would, if given a chance, jump down your throat and do you untold damage. This yarn, of course, was spun to keep children away from wells, river-banks, vats of milk and other sources of danger, and it worked, I can tell you. But why keeper? I don't know, I'm afraid.
Jane Gantley, home on holidays from England, overheard a very interesting word in a bed-and-reakfast house she stayed in near Waterford. The woman of the house came to see if the breakfast was to Jane's liking: one look at the plate of home-made bread caused her to apologise for serving "mummocked-up bread like that". It was crumbly and had broken up a little in the cutting.
I've heard the word in the south-east: it seems that mammocked is the most common variant in Scotland and England. In Scott's Black Dwarf, a lady speaks of a man who had torn her heart to mammocks. Mummock is used to this day in Shakespeare's country, though he himself has "He did so set his teeth and tear it. O, I warrant how he mammocked it!", in Corialanus. A very fastidious eater, a picker, as they say, would be described in today's Warwickshire as `a mummock at his food'. You'll also find there the verb to mummock, meaning to worry, as in "the dog was mummockin the sheep". Origin? Ock is a diminutive suffix, but nobody seems to know where the first part comes from.
I mentioned mammock to a friend from Dorset a few nights ago. A mammock to her meant a scarecrow, or a ridiculously dressed person (she mentioned models in see-through dresses). A different word entirely, this related to mammet, an idol, effigy: frequently a term of abuse, as in Romeo and Juliet's `A wretched puling fool, A whining mammet.' From Old French mahummet, idol, the same word as mahumet, now Muhammed, described insultingly in The Song of Roland as "one of the idols of the Saracens".