The verb to won is to be found in many places in the north of this fair isle. It means to reside, to dwell. Anne Lavery from Derry asks me where it came from.
It is an old Scots word but it is found in many of England's northern counties as well in various forms: woane, wone and wunn among them. Burns has `There's auld Rob Morris that wons in yon glen.' Scott, in his Minstrelsy, has `I camn to see my ae brother That wones in this grene-wood.' From the verb we have the noun wonner, an inhabitant, and both wonning-house, a dwelling. Hamilton's Outlaws, (1897) a book full of good, earthy language has `The byre's the place or flea-luggit auld clushets, and no the wonning-house.' (This particular clushet, by the way, is one who is in charge of a cow-house. It probably represents close-herd. A clushet in Ayrshire, however, means a cow's udder: in Norfolk it means something else entirely: it is applied by women to men they don't particularly like. These clushets come from Middle Dutch klosse, a bag, a testicle. But I'm rambling. As for Anne Lavery's won, its origin is Old English Wunian, to dwell.
Sean Mac Conchradh of Blackrock, Co Dublin, asks if the word clevy (a Munster word we both think) is Irish in origin. It's in Irish as cleibhi, but the word came here from southern dialect English, a variant of clavel. It means, of course, a beam of wood serving as a lintel above an old-fashioned fireplace; the shelf above the fireplace, the mantlepiece. It's found all over the place from Gloucestershire south. From Old French clavel. Its modern French relative is claveau, an arch-stone.
If I may be permitted to ramble again, there is another English clavel. It is a mill word, also found as clevel, and it means a grain of corn. There was a popular belief in Kent that each clavel of wheat bore the likeness of Christ, the True Corn of Wheat. One old timer wrote to the EDD: `A man said to me at Eastry, `brown wheat shows it more than white, because it's a bigger clevel. To see the likeness the clevel must be held with the seam of the grain from you.' Has this clavel or clevel travelled to the mills of Ireland, I wonder? And has that lovely bit of English seanchas?