Wondrous Words Wednesday

Wondrous Words Wednesday , a weekly meme, is kindly hosted by Bermuda Onion.

My words this week are also taken from Galway Bay by Mary Pat Kelly. These words I did not find in the glossary:

Clachan : A small traditional settlement.

Meitheal : (mɛhəl) is the Irish name for a work group[1], conveying the idea of 'connection with neighbour.' Traditionally, the term referred to rural agricultural groups. The practice was, and is, for a group of neighbours to come together to help each other in tasks such as preparing the hay, or gathering the harvest. Each person would help their neighbour who would in turn reciprocate.

The term is used in various writings of Irish language authors. It is used to convey the idea of a 'spirit of community' within which neighbours will respond to the needs of each other. It is used in modern parlance, for example a Meitheal could be a party where neighbours and friends are invited to help decorate a house in exchange for food and drink.[Taken from Wikipedia]

Piseog : pishogue, piseog, pishrogue n. charm, spell, superstitious practice (e.g., puttin eggs in haycocks, clothes on bushes, counting magpies, throwing salt over the shoulder, etc.); anything connected with sorcery; a tall tale, something untrue < Ir. piseog, pisreog; piseogaí n. one who practises piseogs. 'She was full of piseogs, like hanging a St. Brigid's cross near where she was doing the churning to ward off anyone stealing the butter', 'He told me not to carry anything into the house over my left shoulder in case of bad luck, but that's only an old piseog!'; Griffin, The Collegians, 104: "Mr. Enright's dairyman, Bill Noonan made a pishog, and took away our butter' (a footnote explains: "A mystic rite, by which one person is enabled to make a supernatural transfer of his neighbour's butter into his own churns. The failure and diminution of butter at different times, from the poverty of the cream, appears so unaccountable that the country people can only attribute it to witchcraft"), Joyce, U., 319.25-26: "'A pishogue, if you know what that is'". [Taken from the Hiberno-English Archive]