An old, anonymous friend of this column, who calls himself Mary Willie in honour of a famous Tipperary hurling pub, has taken up his pen again to complain about the riff-raff who caused damage to a train during their journey home after that Munster hurling championship match against Waterford. He wants information about the term riff-raff, for which he also sent some Tipp equivalents, unprintable in a family newspaper.
Riff-raff comes from the Middle English ryffe raffe, from rif and raf, "every single bit; one and all". There was a corresponding phrase rif no raf, (neither rif nor raf) which meant "nobody or nothing at all". These two phrases came from Middle French rif ne raf, which meant "completely". Related to French rifler, to plunder, and rafle, a sweeping up, Collins's Dictionary says (and, incidentally, therefore related to both rifle and raffle).
Oxford and Webster agree; but Oxford throws in a caveat. What about the Swedish rafs, rubbish, and rafsa, to sweep together, to huddle up? it asks tentatively, pointing us north away from the Romance languages.
Anyway, by about 1470 we find riff-raff in the modern sense of hooligans, the dregs of society. A chronicle from around that time has: "Many a man was mortheryde and kylde in that conflycte, I wot not what name hyt for the multytude of ryffe raffe."
Cathal O Searcaigh's natty little Nepalese hat, sported at his recent elevation to the degree of Doctor in Celtic Studies at the NUI, Maynooth, led to a guest asking me where the words fedora and trilby came from. Fedora was the title of a play by Victorien Sardou, first staged in Paris in 1882.
Shaw dismissed it as a typical piece of "Sardoodledom", but the tragedy was a triumph for Sarah Bernhardt, who played Fedora Romanoff, a Russian princess. She wore a soft felt hat throughout the play; the fashion houses got in on the act and the fedora quickly became a fashion item for both men and women.
Trilby, a novel by George du Maurier, was published in 1894. It tells the story of Trilby O'Ferrall, an artist's model who lived in the Latin Quarter of Paris, and who, you may remember, came under the influence of Svengali, who ultimately ruined her life.
Miss O'Ferrall had a fiance called Little Billee, who wore a soft felt hat with a narrow brim. In the stage adaption of the novel the hat featured prominently; the rest, as they say, is fashion history.
