I see that Senator Feargal Quinn has suggested that the address of Aras an Uachtarain, Chesterfield Avenue, be changed to honour William Jefferson Clinton, and that Senator David Norris disagrees, pointing out that Chesterfield, an opponent of the Penal Laws of the eighteenth century, also campaigned to have the Phoenix Park opened to all the citizens of Dublin.
I am on Senator Norris's side. Whatever about Chesterfield giving the back of his hand to Trinity College's distinguished honorary alumnus, Dr Johnson, in the matter of the great dictionary, he took a great interest in the English he heard in Dublin. Indeed he is credited with introducing the word un- well into the English of England. In a letter to his son, written in 1774, he wrote: "I am what you call in Ireland, and a very good expression I think it is, unwell." Leave him his loanin, Feargal, He deserves it.
David Hammond wrote from Belfast with a parcel of good Ulster words. One is the noun beekie, a fire. Macafee hasn't this in her Concise Ulster Dictionary, but she had beek as a verb meaning to warm oneself at a fire; to bask in the sun; to feed a fire. She also has the adjective beeking, very hot, and the noun beeking, a thrashing. David Hammond quoted the passage from the New Testament, so wonderfully translated into Scots by WL Lorimer Street. Peter had denied Christ and was "stannin beikin himsel", when the servant girl said, "Ay, but ye war sae wi him, tae: your Galilee twang outs ye". The origin of beek is uncertain, the great dictionaries say, but I think Mr Hammond may be correct when he relates it to bea- con, a word which has its origin in Old English beacn, a sign, portent, which by Langland's time had come to mean a signal fire; in Piers Plowman (1377) he speaks of a "blynde bekene".
The verb grabble, to grope, clutch, was sent to me by Ruth Hall who lives in London, but who was, she tells me, born by the banks of the Bann. The verb, once standard, is now confined to Ulster and to some Scots and English dialects. It is, as Mrs Hall surmises, related to grab, a verb which, like grabble, has its origin in Dutch grabbelen, extended form of middle Dutch grabben. There are two specialised meanings of grabble used in the north; to "tickle" trout is one, and the other is used of a hungry baby clutching at its mother's breast.