I recently read a book called The First Night of Twelfth Night by Professor Leslie Hotson, an American. What ails the man who believes, contra mundum, that Twelfth Night is the night following Twelfth Day, and goes on to write a book about it? Let me quote him on page 12: "The Oxford English Dictionary unhappily defines Twelfth-night as `the evening before Twelfth-day', and is followed in the error by the Fowlers in their Concise Oxford Dictionary, to the misleading of the unwary. One might equally well define `Wedding-night" as `The evening before the wedding day'. " And on page 13 he says of Draper's splendid The Twelfth Night of Shakespeare's Audience: "in referring to Twelfth Night as `Twelfth Night Eve'. " Professor Draper is apparently confused by the OED. And off the good American professor goes, tripping gaily, unaware of his solecism. Christmas Night, he thinks, is the night following Christmas Day instead of the eve of Christmas Day, our Oiche Nollag too.
I met two old friends of mine in Greystones recently. Ronnie Drew is home for the Christmas and he gave me the word gawsther, a word which has a variety of meanings all over Ireland and Britain. As a verb it means to brag, to swagger, show off: and hence the noun gausterer, a boaster, a swaggerer, and the adverb gausterous, rude. To gauster also means to talk loudly or impudently: hence gaustering, laughing out loud.
Gosther to Tyrone's Carleton meant idle talk, gossip: and in Westmeath a gosther is a prattler. The word is from Middle English galstren, to make a noise. Of Germanic ancestry.
Barney Cavanagh no longer edits the radio news bulletins but he hasn't lost his love of words. He asked me about his northern word gowpen, the full of two hands cupped together. There is also the verb, to gospen, to scoop up with both hands. Imported from Scotland this. From the Old Norse gaupin, the full of two cupped hands, according to Vigfussen's dictionary.