Ever since Ireland was told that the black stuff might
not be Irish, but rather a porter stout from Covent Garden, the country has
descended into a frantic state of uncertain soul-searching and impassioned
reflection to clarify once and for all what is actually ‘Irish’ (potatoes,
Gaelic Storm, and Saint Patrick aside).
But now the most quintessentially ‘Irish’ institution of
them all is under intense academic scrutiny, the much celebrated notion of ‘the
craic’ (and that’s before considering the devastating impact this may have on
the tourist industry).
Now, this isn’t to say that we’re losing our humour, but
rather are embroiled in an intense etymological debate that discredits ‘craic’
as a recent invention of bleary-eyed romantics and multi-millionaire tourist
tycoons.
One of the leading figures in the anti-craic camp is
Diarmaid O’Muirithe, a retired senior lecturer in Irish at University College,
Dublin who now keeps his hand in through a weekly column in the Irish Times in
which he examines the origin and meaning of words.
Mr. O’Muirithe has this to say on the issue:
“The constant Gaelicisation of the good old
English/Scottish dialect word crack as craic sets my teeth on edge. It seems,
indeed, that many people think that the word is an Irish one; hence we find
advertisements proclaiming ‘music, songs, dancing and craic’; the implication
is that craic = boozing and high jinks, great fun as it used to be…”
“The English Dialect Dictionary (Wright’s) deals at
length with crack, a word still in use from the English midlands to Glasgow and
Edinburgh. It gives crack as ‘1. talk, conversation, gossip, chat’. In this
context [Walter] Scott uses it in Rob Roy (1817), ‘I maun hai a crack wil an
auld acquaintance here’. ‘The friendly crack, the cheerfulsang’, wrote a lesser
Caledonian, Picken, in 1813. 2. A tale, a good story or joke; gossip,
scandal. 'A' cracks are not tae be trow'd', is a Scots proverb.”
It transpires that the word crack is of Middle English or
old Scots origin, and crossed the Irish Sea to Ulster a few centuries ago and
there it remained unadulterated. The Gaelicised version is apparently because the
Irish alphabet has no ‘k’, and due to its change has become open to a change in
definition: namely miscreant behaviour, mischief and devilment.
Another theory as outlined on Wikipedia is that, “Now,
'craic' is interpreted as a specifically and quintessentially Irish form of
fun. The adoption of the Gaelic spelling has reinforced the sense that this is
an independent word (homophone) rather than a separate sense of the original
word (polysemy).”
Is the word craic, though a modern phenomenon, indeed a homophone for crack
rather than an alternate spelling?
This isn’t to attack either word, but to extend the
debate to you fine folk to see if craic and crack can be distinguished once and
for all, and to have both words assume their true position within the
vernacular.
©
Full copyright remains with Of This Island
(http://ofthisisland.blogspot.com). All requests to use Of This Island
material must be made in writing to OfThisIsland@hotmail.com
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @Of_This_Island and via our blog http://ofthisisland.blogspot.com/
Of This Island are pleased to contribute to Slugger O'Toole
No comments:
Post a Comment