I don't usually tackle questions about placenames, preferring to leave these matters to Flann O Riain to deal with in his column, but I couldn't resist a plea from Ms Anne James of Mountgarry, Swords, Co Dublin. She has been trying without success to find an explanation of the name of a cul-de-sac leading to the Broadmeadow river at Swords, Juckback Lane.
This was once called Jugebage Lane, Anne tells me; it was referred to as such in the Civil Survey of 1651: `three acres called Jugebage'. In this juge lies the answer, I feel.
Juge is merely an old spelling of jug, an obsolete word for a common pasture or meadow. Worlidge's Dictionarium Rusticum of 1681 has it, as has Bailey's dictionary of 1721. The word is from French dialect un juge de terre, and juge is from Latin Jugum, which, in this context, means as much land as a pair of oxen could plough in a day - an acre approximately.
The back in the word may simply mean `situated behind' but, depending on the terrain, of course, it could have been a survival from Old English baech, a valley. Does the land behind the lane slope, I wonder?
Helen Walsh from Sandy mount asks about a word her grandmother, who came from south Kilkenny, had. I remember hearing the word used by Mrs Liz Jeffries, of Neamstown, Kilmore Quay, long ago; a lady since gone from us.
The word is fantasheeny. Liz used to say that some people, lately come up in the world, had such fantasheeny ways, God help 'em. What she meant, and what Ms Walsh's granny meant, was that they were showy, and ostentatious in their vulgarity.
How this word came to roost in south-east Ireland is a mystery to me; I have never come across it elsewhere in this country, although it is found in Devon. It's an Italian word, of course; it's the same word as fantoccini, little puppets made to move by means of concealed strings. It properly means footsoldiers. John Florio, Shakespeare's friend, and author of the charming dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes, has `fantoccio: a foolish seruing creature'.
T. de Roiste from Ballincollig, Co Cork, would like information about doolally, an adjective meaning eccentric, not quite the full shilling. He wonders if it's from Irish.
Ah no. The word was coined from the Deolali army sanatorium in Bombay. No prizes for guessing how it came to Cork.