Jurgen Kullmann, writing from Dortmund in a mixture of English and impeccable Irish which he learned over the years while on holiday in Connemara, asks about the word haggard, which he says, is not to be found in even the best English German dictionaries.
The reason for this is that haggard is regarded as a dialect word that would not be understood nowadays in many parts of rural England; it is confined to Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and parts of England's West Country, according to both the EDD and the latest surveys. It is an old word; its origin is the Old Norse heygarthr, from hey, hay and garthr yard.
Eleanor Annesley, who lives in Poole in Dorset, but who, comes from Gloucestershire, has started reading this column thanks to some nice things William Trevor said about it. "I was recently taken to dinner in a lovely restaurant near Truro", she writes, "and I was shocked to find on the menu an item described as gobbets of venison marinated in red wine. Now I've always known a gobbet as a lump of sputum and I was a little put off by the Cornish word, which is in common use."
Yes, sputum is what comes to my mind too, when I hear of gobbets, Eleanor, but I've heard gobbets, morsels of food, used in your own lovely Dorset as well as in Devon and Cornwall. The word is common in this sense in Scotland as well. Scott, in Redgauntlet, has "He immediately began to transfer the mutton and pie crust from the plate to his lips in such huge gobbets, as if he was refreshing a three days fast". Tindale used the word in 1526 in rendering Matthew: And they gadered vp of the gobbetys that remnained xij full.
Earlier, (1388) Wyclif had gobetys. So, gobbets has a more illustrious pedigree than the 20th century import medallions or as they say in the more pretentious places, medallions, monsewer.
As to where the word came from, Dumeril is sure that it, came from the Norman French go bet, a morsel, from gober, to gulp down. Fair enough, but an Irishman might ask if the French word, and the English and Scottish gob, a mouth, found in a hundred compounds such as gobsmacked and gobshite, are connected with Irish gob, gop, a beak, snout, muzzle, used here, in beautiful nature poems when Christianity was young? I'd be, reluctant to go further than that.