3/10/2023 0 Comments Gentle reader phrase![]() ![]() ( Folklore, 105(3/1), 1994)Īnd finally an enchanting passage from W. Local views about our wood being somehow a fairy one: not in the sense of winged tinsel fairies, but as a ‘gentle place’ with some kind of special continuity with the past. ( Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3(42), 1940) Cartin’s father held Cloghnagalla to be a ‘gentle spot’, to be avoided, especially at Halloweve. The Wee Fellas be about.’ (Patrick Kavanagh, The Green Fool, 1938) ‘Aw, Paddy,’ he said, ‘this part of Ireland is a gentle spot. Woe betide the foolhardy person who ventures to raise an axe against one of these ‘gentle bushes’, as they are called. (Samuel McSkimin, The history and antiquities of the county of the town of Carrickfergus, 1823) The large hawthorns growing singly in fields, are deemed sacred to fairies, and are hence called gentle thorns. Here are some gentle citations from the OED and Bernard Share’s Slanguage: The gentle folk and gentle people are among many euphemisms used in Ireland to refer to them. The gentle in The Last of the Name is defined in the OED as ‘enchanted or visited by fairies associated with fairies’ and is labelled chiefly Irish English. Gentle has several common senses in standardized English, and a bunch more that have lapsed from use since its arrival into English from Old French gentil ‘courteous, noble, high-born’ (hence gentleman), from Latin gentīlis ‘of the same clan’. There's a whole bit about this in Kevin Barry's Nightboat to Tangier /TuIhC0aRaN ![]() Kevin Barry’s novel Night Boat to Tangier describes a similar conflict: Next morning the scarf was the same way as it was left the day before, so the men fell to the sledging, and there was no more word of the fairies. He told the men to be back next morning and that they’d see if it was gentle or not. So the ganger took off a red scarf he had round his neck, tied a knot on it and threw it on top of the rock. Whatever quarry the men were sent to, they thought it was gentle and refused to lift a sledge. When the building was going on, Michael had a ganger from Co. The present house in Binnion was built in 1816. Later in McGlinchey’s book is an illuminating use of this dialectal gentle: ![]() Niall Mac Coitir, in his book Irish Trees: Myths, Legends & Folklore, writes that in Ireland holly is a crann uasal, a ‘gentle’ or ‘noble’ tree, and that ‘you annoy the fairies when you misuse it, for example by sweeping the chimney with it’. Holly and hazel recur in folk belief and have been credited with protective powers since ancient times. The people used to have a rhyme ‘Holly and hazel went to the wood, holly took hazel home by the lug.’ That meant that holly was the master of the hazel. Holly and hazel are two trees that are gentle. I always heard you should never strike a cow with a holly stick. It’s also linguistically rich in this and the next post I’ll note two words that caught my eye.įirst up is gentle, in a supernatural sense not widely known or used. Published in 1986 with Brian Friel as editor, it is acclaimed as a ‘minor classic’ by Seamus Heaney. The Last of the Name by Charles McGlinchey (1861–1954) is an account of life in rural Ireland generations ago: customs, beliefs, practicalities, peculiarities. ![]()
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