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Published 01/10/24
2bailc f. [b̥al̥kʲ], gen. bailce -[ə],
(Glengarry) [balˈcgˈ] (Dieckhoff 1932).
‘sudden heavy shower of rain’. Henderson (≈1910, 205) writes, ‘bailc “the welkin”: mun thiormaich a’ bhailc (Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair) “ere the welkin cleared up”. The Norse is belker “a dully rainy sky, a sudden shower”, which Jakobsen thinks is connected with ON belgr “skin, what is swollen out”, cf. Ice. belgingr “a stiff blast”. SG bailc is also used for spots where no seed has grown in the fields and is thus empty of crops; cf. Eng. welk vb, cf. Germ. welk adj. “feucht, milde, lau”, a side form of Wolke “cloud”, and the Gaelic [word] is a borrowing; cf. SG balt “welt, fringe of a grass-plot”, from Eng. welt.’ McDonald (2009, 341) concludes that the loan is uncertain.
It is not clear whether or not Henderson sees a link between SG bailc ‘heavy shower’ and Eng. welkin ‘sky, the heavens’ (OEng. wolk(e)n); it seems unlikely there is. Similarly, bailc probably has no connection with Eng. welk ‘to wither’. The phrase quoted from Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair’s poem ‘Marbhrainn a rinneadh do pheata colu[i]m’ (‘An elegy composed for a pet dove’) was published in 1751 as Go ’n thiormaich a bhailc, i.e. gun thiormaich a’ bhailc ‘that the shower has dried’ (Watson 1932, 103; Thomson 1996b, 39). By ‘Norse belker’, Henderson is referring to Jakobsen’s entry in the Danish version (1908–21) of his Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language (1928–32). However, the etymon in this case is ON belgr m. ‘skin’ and an accusative belg would formally yield SG *[ˈb̥el͡ej] or perhaps *[ˈb̥jɑɫ̪͡ɑɣ], certainly not [b̥al̥kʲ]. For bailc in the sense ‘spots where no seed has grown’, see under 1bailc.
A particular difficulty with a derivation of Norn, i.e. Scots, belker [bæ‘ļkɛr, be‘lkər] from ON belgr is, as Jakobsen points out, that ON belg acc. gives Scots belg [bɛļg, beilg, (bɛilg)] ‘amnion’, which in turn would yield SG *[ˈb̥el͡eɡ̊] or perhaps *[ˈb̥jɑɫ̪͡ɑɡ̊].
Perhaps a more likely origin for SG bailc (and Ir. bailc f.: O’Reilly 1864: ‘flood; strength’; Dinneen 1947: (Donegal) ‘downpour’; Ó Dónaill 1977: ‘downpour’) is EG balc, bailc ‘strength, firmness, vigour’, a nominal use of the adjective balc, bailc ‘stout, strong, sturdy, firm, vigorous, powerful’ (eDIL˄).
Although nouns derived from adjectives in this way in Gaelic are as a rule masculine, any vascillation between balc ~ bailc might promote its use as a feminine noun: bailc is taken as the dative of a feminine balc, before being normalised as the radical form.
Conceivably, (Scots) belker might derive from SG bailc + the Scots noun agent suffix -er, found frequently in Scots words for ‘a wind or rain storm’, e.g. bleester, blenter, blouster, blowder, blatter, 2bleeter (SND˄).