GRAND REOPENING of neglected blog. I've decided to return to my old habit of talking to myself - It's therapeutic.
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SOME WORDS FROM A DISTANT COUNTRY, MY BOYHOOD

English was, of course, the language of my childhood, but with a few words not universally recognised. Some are, or were, found in children's speech elsewhere in the country, others seem to be exclusive to our area. Some words are dialect, some slang, some are words whose meaning has changed. One word on the list is merely a local pronunciation of a word in common use. Here are the words that I remember. Perhaps more will be added over time.

BADLY, means 'ill', two words of the same meaning, but I've only heard badly used for 'unwell, 'sick' in Hull.

BAIN a child, local version of 'bairn'.

BAWK (BALK?) to bawk is to retch, to feel sick. "It makes me bawk" = "it makes me feel sick". The Scots have a word of the same or similar meaning, bock.

BOGIE a kids' basic transport; board or planks set on four pram wheels, the front pair pivoted for steering. Operated by pushing. The vehicle has the same name in some parts of the country, but others have different names, e.g., guider.

BOOLER, a hoop, usually a bicycle wheel or tyre. To bool is to roll (bowl?), dialect.

BRAY, to beat - "You won't half get brayed when you get home". A northern, possibly a Yorkshire, expression.

CHOW - to berate, to scold. Getting chowed at was preferable to a braying. From 'chew'?

CUSHY COO LADY I don't think is a Hull expression, but I heard it once or twice. It means 'lady bird', and looks like the dialect of the East Riding, where 'cow' was pronounce 'coo'. The kids I heard using it might have had country-dwelling relatives. The 'cow' identification of the lady bird is common to several languages and cultures. It seems that only we English associate it with birds.

FIREBALL (verb) how to define? To ingratiate oneself for mercenary purposes. Children showing (insincere) affection in hope of a reward would be accused of fireballing. I know nothing of the distribution of this term It may be widespread.

FOGGY first, see yags

FRAME to show progress. A child who learned a new skill was framing. "You frame like a pig with a muck fork" was a saying of my mother-in-law. Her parents were country people, so the word cannot be exclusive to Hull.

GOODIES sweets. Does anyone apart from Hull people say goodies for sweets?

GRID a bicycle, juvenile slang, I guess.

HONGKONGS horse chestnuts. The common name is conkers, but I don't think 'hongkongs' is exclusive to Hull and district.

HOWDEN FAIR "a house like Howden Fair" was in a mess, usually caused by kids left to their own devices for a while. In fact Howden Fair's reputation was one of drunkenness and licentious behaviour, but our parents wouldn't have known that.

KINGCOUGH (KINCOUGH, KINCOFF?)tricky one this. if you were sitting on a doorstep or the pavement edge ('flag edge') older people would say "You'll get kingcough sitting there." I assumed it was another way of saying a bad cough. Now I think it might have meant haemorrhoids, though I've yet to find confirmation.

KINGS used to call a break in a game, say if someone's out of breath in a chasing game. "Kings a minute!" Sometimes with a show of crossed fingers. Elsewhere the word "fainites" is used. No doubt there are other expressions.

LAG urination, juvenile slang, I suppose. "I'm off for a lag". Once at school we were reading a poem containing the line "a lame duck lagging on the way". The teacher couldn't understand what the class was sniggering about.

MAUNGY mean, miserly, miserable. Someone who wouldn't let you borrow his comic, take a ride on his bike, was a maungy dog. My wife has used the word to complain about the weather, "another maungy day".

NAB an apple core. "Save us your nab", a kid would say to a mate eating an apple.

RECKON pretend. "He's oney reckoning." we'd say of some lad who might or might not have been hurt in a fight and was writhing on the ground. "Reckon you're gonna stab me with a knife", was the introduction to a demonstration of unarmed self-defence.

ROAR pronounced 'rooer', to cry. "Give over rooring" a mother might say to a crying child, "or I'll give you summat to roor about".

ROMANCE telling a tall story. A mother's reply to a child fabricating an excuse for some misdeed or mishap; "You're only romancing. Now tell the truth."

SLOP a police officer. Juvenile slang, or perhaps back slang - polis, silop. (addendum: slop, 'policeman', is in Eric Partridge's, Dictionary of Historical Slang. He says it's back slang).

SAINT VITUS' DANCE "Stop fidgeting, Have you got St Vitus Dance?" I still don't know who St Vitus was.

SMILER the drink commonly known as a shandy. Half Hull Brewery mild, half lemonade; my reward for going to the "beer-off" (off licence) on a Saturday evening. I was eight or nine, but they'd sell me beer and cigs. Other times, other customs, as they say.

SPELL a splinter. this was our word. Different words are used in different areas. 'Spell' is not exclusive to Hull.

SPRAG to inform. "I'm spragging on you". Juvenile slang in this sense, but also used by adults in another sense. To be spragged is to be barred from a pub or club. "I can't go there. I'm spragged."

TARTING courting, used, mainly, to annoy some lad who hung around one girl too much.

TOD a turd. Just local pronunciation, also 'bod' for bird, 'shot' for shirt, etc. This pronunciation seems to have died out, except in the case of 'tod'.

TWAG truancy from school. "Playing twag" was what we said, but my sons said "twagging off". Twag had become a verb. We called the council's truant officer "twag man". It seems from a Victorian newspaper article I read that the original phrase was "playing the wag", which is strange, because we don't use that dialect form of the definite article. Either "t'wag" was introduced into Hull from the West Riding and assumed to be one word, or Hull people DID once use that form. If the latter is true, only this one example of its use survives?

YAGS "I claim", Yags foggy = "me first"; yags seggy = "me next"; yags laggy = "I want to be last", the choice of the less enthusiastic. "Half-yags", was used to claim, seldom successfully, a share in something found or stolen. Your mate picked up a sixpenny piece in the street. "Half-yags!", you'd cry, hoping to be given threepence.

YON a word of limited use. Yon end (the other end), yon side (the other side). Never used, to my knowledge, in any other context. "You grab yon side, I'll get this side, and we'll shift it." "She lives at yon end of our street."

YOUKNOW Whatsisname; used to address someone you DON'T know. "Oy youknow, wanna play on our team?" "I saw that lass, youknow, yesterday. She's right mad at you."

5 & 20 25 in time-telling. Five and twenty to one; five and twenty fast three. Otherwise 25 is 25, as it is everywhere. Digital timepieces will have killed off that little eccentricity.

National Poetry Day. I can't let it pass unacknowledged. This is a poem I'm liking at the moment.

AEGEAN
(Maria Luisa Spaziani)

This music has lasted since the world began.
A rock was born among the waters
while tiny waves chatted in a soft universal tongue.
The shell of a sea-turtle
would not have foretold the guitar.
Your music has always risen to the sky,
green taproot, Mother Sea,
first of all firsts. You enfold us,
nurturing us with music -threat,
fable, hypnosis, lullaby, roar,
omen, myth,
little agonies
of grit, of wreckages, of joys -

(translator, Beverly Allen)

... and the original -

EGEO

Dal principio del mondo dura questa musica.
Nacque fra acque sasso,
chiacchieravano ondine in morbido esperanto.
Non avrebbe previsto la chittara
un guscio di testuggine marina.
Da sempre sale al cielo la tua musica,
verde radice prima, mamma-mare,
prima di tutti i prima. Ci aviluppi
nutrendoci di musica - minaccia,
favola, ipnosi, ninnananna, rombo,
presagio, mito,
piccolo agonie
di graniglie, relitti, di allegrie -

I especially like the line about a 'morbido esperanto'.

Last year I posted a piece that referred to the mysterious Voynich Manuscript.
Now I learn that a publisher has purchased the right to publish a limited run of the MS. More information here.
The carbon dating of the MS to between 1404 and 1435 rules out the possibility that the alchemist John Dee (1527-1609) "the Welsh Wizard" was the author, with or without associates such as Edward Kelley "d'Imany" (born 1555). I admit to disappointment that it can't be connected to such intriguing individuals.
Much more on the Voynich Manuscript can be found here.

"The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming.

"I don't mean to sound naive and think everybody will come round if they are spoken to nicely, but I think a lot of people who say these nasty things are lonely or drunk and they feel powerless. Social media makes claims it can't deliver on - you're going to be in touch with the Prime Minister! Well, the Prime Minister doesn't read your tweets. But there are some very nasty people out there."
(Mary Beard)

Oh, their mothers are so proud of them.

Every little hurts, as someone once said.

GIORDANO BRUNO
(Edwin Morgan)

innumerable worlds and worlds unmade,
half-made, the universe immense, displayed,
half-hidden, hidden, infinite, arrayed

with lights or lying back in hungry black
till knots unknot and darkest packs unpack
and pouring creatures run through every crack:

oh yes they do! why should we think it dead,
that vast ubiquitous flicker overhead?
The staff of life may not be only bread!

Why would the lord of life confine his writ
to this one ball of water, flesh, and grit?
You say it's special? Ah but transcending it

are specks we see, and specks we cannot see
but must imagine, in that immensity.
It is reason sets imagination free.

Configurations still unfigurable,
visions and visitations still invisible,
powers to come, still impermissible -

these give the slip to my incarceration.
Chains and a cell are but one suffering station.
Multiple worlds need multiple incarnation.

- But earthly powers were called for, and were shown.
There is a sequence when the torch is thrown:
smoke, screams, a little ash and bone.

I was puzzling over the meaning of the last verse, until I remembered that Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy. I'm sure that the first two lines are Bruno's. I'll try to confirm this.

I copied this charm from a book of Highland (Gaelic) verse in translation. This particular translation is by Alexander Carmichael and was reported as being from his "Carmina Gadelica", but I have yet to find it there.

KEPPOCH CHARM STONE INVOCATION

Let me dip thee in the water,
Thou yellow, beautiful gem of power!
In water of purest wave,
Which pure was kept by Bridget.

In the name of the Apostles twelve,
In the name of Mary, Virgin of virtues,
And in the name of the High Trinity,
And all the shining angels,
A blessing on the gem,
A blessing on the water, and
A healing of bodily ailments to each suffering creature.

This charm is of interest to me because the same practice of charming away illness with a stone is reported in the kirk session records in the parish where my family was living at the time. I quote the records here, spelling unchanged, emphasis added.

“John Young, in the Valleyfield, delated for charming, summoned, called, and appearing, interrogated as to his charming, declared as follows—viz., that being some time ago called to cure a certain sick person, he used these words: ‘ Little thing hath wronged thee, nothing can mend thee but Father, Son, and Holie Ghost, all three, and our sweet Lady. In etemitie let never wax, but away to the waine, as the dew goes of yeard and stane. I seek help to this distressed person in thy name.’ He likewise acknowledged that he used the same words in curing of a woman in the Blaire, who was for years thereafter weell; and that by the same words he cured Robert Bruce in the Shyres miln,—and the disease these persons had, he said, was a splen, which he siemed to the session to understand as of a disease put upon them through envy and splen. And being interrogat if he used any gestures or postures whiles he was pronouncing these words, he could not deny but that first he rubbed his own hand upon a bare stone, and rubbed the breast, stroaking it 3 times, of the person affected, and siemed to say that he prescribed the use of some herbs to the patient. The session did unanimously conclude him guilty of charming; whereupon being again called, the minister did endeavor to hold out the evill of his way, telling him that his cures were not effected without the help of the devill, and not only to forbear the same in tyme comming, but to mourn before God, and to seek mercie through Christ for using of the divel's prescriptions, and that the witches and warlocks used God's words and made mention of the name of God and Christ in theire services; and he being removed, the session did think fit to advise with the presbetrie how to carrie with him.”
28 August 1693.

(from David Beveridge, "Culross and Tulliallan", vol.ii, p.19)

Some other examples of curing stones and associations (?) with Celtic saints.

Alexander the Great, the plonky who conquered the world.

WINE
(Raymond Carver)

Reading a life of Alexander the Great, Alexander
whose rough father, Philip, hired Aristotle to tutor
the young scion and warrior, to put some polish
on his smooth shoulders. Alexander who, later
on the campaign trail into Persia, carried a copy of
The Iliad in a velvet-lined box, he loved that book so
much. He loved to fight and drink, too.
I came to that place in the life where Alexander, after
a long night of carousing, a wine-drunk (the worst kind of drunk–
hangovers you don't forget), threw the first brand
to start a fire that burned Persepolis, capital of the Persian Empire
(ancient even in Alexander's day).
Razed it right to the ground. Later, of course,
next morning–maybe even while the fire roared–he was
remorseful. But nothing like the remorse felt
the next evening when, during a disagreement that turned ugly
and, on Alexander's part, overbearing, his face flushed
from too many bowls of uncut wine, Alexander rose drunkenly to his feet,
grabbed a spear and drove it through the breast
of his friend, Cletus, who'd saved his life at Granicus.
For three days Alexander mourned. Wept. Refused food. "Refused
to see to his bodily needs." He even promised
to give up wine forever.
(I've heard such promises and the lamentations that go with them.)
Needless to say, life for the army came to a full stop
as Alexander gave himself over to his grief.
But at the end of those three days, the fearsome heat
beginning to take its toll on the body of his dead friend,
Alexander was persuaded to take action. Pulling himself together
and leaving his tent, he took out his copy of Homer, untied it,
began to turn the pages. Finally he gave orders that the funeral
rites described for Patroklos be followed to the letter:
he wanted Cletus to have the biggest possible send-off.
And when the pyre was burning and the bowls of wine were
passed his way during the ceremony? Of course, what do you
think? Alexander drank his fill and passed
out. He had to be carried to his tent. He had to be lifted, to be put
into his bed.

"Carol Ann Dunn was born and raised in Liverpool but has lived in Leeds for over 30 years, working as a teacher and trainer across West Yorkshire. A singer of both traditional and choral music, she began writing poetry and ballads on a course at Maddy Prior's Stones Barn and does so on subjects that are important to her, such as this one."

All the above and the following lifted from the Morning Star.

THEY'LL NEVER WALK ALONE
(Carol Ann Dunn)

The fans had come to Sheffield
To see their idols play,
Their chants were loud but happy
On that fatal April day.

The fans were all excited,
convinced their team would win;
Police had packed them tighter
And ever tighter in.

The crush grew suffocating
And fans soon realised
A tragedy was happening
Before their very eyes.

Though pressed against the railings
Like cattle in a pound,
Some fans were helping others
Climb out to safer ground;

Though they could hardly breathe,
They hoisted children high,
Passed them along to safety
Then stayed behind to die.

Police would blame them later:
‘The fans were drunk’ they lied;
That rag the Sun abused as scum
The innocent who died.

The inquest (well, the first one)
Claimed ‘Accidental Death’;
An insult on an injury
That took away our breath.

Now Merseyside united,
The red side with the blue;
As purple as a bruise,
One colour from the two.

Through all their bruising battles
They were bloodied but unbowed;
They brought us a new unity,
They did our city proud;

They showed us our true colours
These loved ones of the dead,
To find some kind of peace of mind,
To help put pain to bed.

Will we walk with these families,
Now that the end’s in sight
For justice for the ninety six?
Will we? Too fucking right.

SULTAN
(Nizar Qabbani)

If I were promised safety,
if I could meet the Sultan
I would say to him: O my lord the Sultan!
my cloak has been torn by your ravenous dogs,
your spies are following me all the time.
Their eyes
their noses
their feet are chasing me
like destiny, like fate
They interrogate my wife
and write down all the names of my friends.
O Sultan!
Because I dare to approach your deaf walls,
because I tried to reveal my sadness and
tribulation,
I was beaten with my shoes.
O my lord the Sultan!
you have lost the war twice
because half our people
has no tongue.

"Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland" published 1754 though written 1726.
I'm reading a reprint of this work at the moment, and something I read had me puzzled -

"The Irish Tongue was, I may say lately, universal in many Parts of the Lowlands; and I have heard it from several in Edinburgh, that, before the Union, it was the Language of the Shire of Fife, although that County be separated from the Capital only by the Frith [sic] of Forth, an Arm of the Sea, which from thence is but seven Miles over; and as proof they told me, after that Event (the Union) it be became one Condition of an Indenture, when a Youth of either Sex was to be bound on the Edinburgh side of the Water, that the Apprentice should be taught the English Tongue."

The political Union of England and Scotland took place in 1707. I find it hard to believe that the population of the whole of Fife, or even much of Fife was Gaelic speaking at that time. There may have been some Gaelic speakers in remote districts, but that is all I'm willing to accept until presented with further evidence.