Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/225

 9*8. VII. MARCH 16, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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derived from O.F. escuellette=& little platter, than from Schelle ? There is also a North- Country word skile, which may throw light on the subject. Skile, (1) verb=to separate ; (2) subs. , an iron slice for skimming the fat off broth. May not this word be a clue to the whole thing? skilly meaning anything poor from which the best has been taken, separated, or "skimmed" some- thing, in fact, of the strength and quality of what in Notts is called " husband's tea."

I am much interested in skilly-an-wack. I have only heard it used once in my life, and that was twenty-five years ago in Gloucester- shire. A country servant-girl, who certainly had never been out of the county, applied it to a skim cheese, which is commonly called a skim Dick. Skilly-an-wack (alias skilly-en- whack) seems, therefore, not to be a Lan- cashire dialect expression only, as A. M. infers. REES KEENE.

Gosforth, Cumberland.

The word skilly seems to be an equivalent to scaly i.e., mean, stingy, shabby so applied to a thin pottage. See skile in Halliwell, and cf. the greasy Joan who keels the pot, Swedish skilja, to divide, which is the basis of our word shitting so something divided, no doubt a very thin coin at first. We know that our silver pennies were so split up into halfpence and farthings, and, judging from the Scottish currency, where one shilling makes a half-sovereign, twenty pence being one pound Scots, it may be assumed that the silver penny grew into a nominal shilling, with the surviving idea of "division." To this add Swedish skala, to peel, for scaly, Greek ovcaAAw. A. HALL.

IPPLEPEN, co. DETON (9 th S. vi. 409 ; vii. 50, 113). I am at a loss to understand how MR. THORPE has arrived at the meanings of the Irish names given in his reply, ante, p. 50. The following are, I believe, the generally accepted meanings and derivations of the present forms :

MacCarthy. This surname is derived either from cartha ( = a pillar) or from cathrach, the genitive case of cathair (=a city). If the latter is the correct derivation the word cathrach would denote the founder of a city.

Macdona is an anglicized form of Donoch, which is in turn derived from domnach (= Sunday). This Donoch was the ancestor of the MacDonough, Lords of Sligo.

Mahony, O'Mahony,MacMahon,and Mahon are all derived from Mathghabhuin ( = bear of the plain), a son of Turlogh M6r, monarch of all Ireland, 1072-86.

Healy and Hely are anglicized forms of

O'h-Eiligh, a Leinster sept descended from Eile righ dhearg (eiligh=io accuse), or Eile the Red King.

Newry was formerly known as lubhar- cinn-tragha ( = the yew tree at the head of the strand). From an entry in the ' Annals of the Four Masters ' we learn that the town was so named from a yew tree planted by St. Patrick. The entry is as follows : "A.D. 1162. The monastery of the monks at lubhar-cinn-tragha was burnt, with all its furniture and books, and also the yew which St. Patrick himself had planted." lubhar- cinn-tragha was afterwards shortened to lubhar (pronounced Yure), by prefixing the contracted form (n) of the article an; and by the operation of the process, adopted after the invasion, of endeavouring to write Irish names as pronounced, we obtain the present form.

Nure, a shortened form of Newry, is another example of the anglicizing process of writing names as pronounced.

I propose dealing with the surnames Malony, M'Beth, and Cassidy on a future occasion always supposing that your columns will be open for a continuation of the discussion.

The foregoing information has been taken from O'Hart's 'Irish Pedigrees,' Joyce's 'Irish Names of Places' and 'Irish Local Names Explained,' ' Irish Family Names ' (in vol. xxi. of Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society's publications), and 'Annals of the Four Masters,' edited by J. O'Donovan.

ALBERT GOUGH.

Holywood, co. Down.

Reference is made to 7 th S. iii. 96 ; but I can scarcely think that DR. NEUBAUER should be taken seriously. It will be noted that he was ridiculing the Anglo-Israel mania, and cited a few impossible etymons by way of reductio ad absurdum. True, when taken up by Truth, he stuck to his guns, in order to castigate Mr. Labouchere ; but I take it as "all in fun." A. H.

MR. THORPE, replying to a query on the etymology of the above, states it to be Jewish, and incidentally cites several Irish patronymics as having been first given by jome Jewish employer, my own (Molony) 3eing, according to him, derived from Semitic lun, an inn. MR. PLATT (ante, p. 113) very properly points out that such an etymology
 * or these Irish names could only be suggested

py one unacquainted with them in their Gaelic forms, and says that Molony is derived from O'Maol Eoin. Could he be mistaking it for Malone? At any rate, my name is