R.S. Blair from Bangor, Co Down, wrote to ask about the word withershin. He tells me that word is still used in parts of the Ards peninsula and around Cullybackey in Co Antrim. It is an adverb meaning in a direction contrary to the sun's course; from right to left; generally, in the wrong direction.
The word was not recorded from Ulster in Wright's great dialect dictionary, which is surprising; but Macafee has it in her Ulster Dialect Dictionary. Wright recorded the word, as withershins, in Scotland, Northumberland, Lancashire, Shropshire, and Cornwall. Scott, in Waverly, glosses the word: "Old Highlanders will still make the `deasil' around those whom they wish well to. To go around a person in the opposite direction, or wither-shins, is unlucky and a sort of incantation." (Deasil is Gaelic deiseal, to the right.) From Fergusson's Rambles (1884) comes the information that "to turn a boat against the sun, or withershins, at the beginning of a voyage is considered to be unfavourable." He was speaking of Orkney. The same notion was recorded from Lancashire fishermen. In Black's Folk Medicine (1833) we find this: "On the first three Wednesdays of May children suffering from mesenteric disease are dipped three times in Chapelle Uny `widderschynnes', and widderschynnes dragged three times around the well."
The word has been in Scots literature since 1513 when Douglas has in his Eneados: "And on the bak half writis widdirsinnis Plentie of lesyngis." But the origin of the word is the Middle Low German weddersins, which means, literally, "against the direction".
"He had it won from the trig," said an English commentator on Galileo's great Epsom Derby win. By trig he meant the starting stalls. I've often heard this word in Donegal for the starting line in athletics. Simmons's glossary of south Donegal English (1890) has it, and so does Macafee. From Northumberland the English Dialect Dictionary recorded: "Toe the trig", keep your toe on the starting line. "Come back to the trig", is shouted when a false start has been made."
Trig to us youngsters in New Ross was the point at which we placed our leading knuckle when playing marbles; Gross had an identical definition in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue back in 1796. As to origin, Oxford is not sure. It does speculate, however, that as Dutch trekker has become trigger in English, it is conceivable that Dutch trekken, to draw a line, might become trig.