v1.0
Published 01/10/24
ballart m., gen. ballairt, ‘noisy boasting, fuss about one’s family; clamour, turbulence’ (cf. Dwelly 1911). MacBain (1911) states the word is ‘probably from [Old] Norse ballra, strepere, baldrast, make a clatter’ (sic) and is followed by MacLennan (1925), Stewart (2004, 408) and McDonald (2009, 339)). MacBain’s text is a palimpsest of Cleasby’s (1874) entry: ‘baldrast and ballrast, að, dep. [cp. Germ. poltern; Ivar Aasen baldra, Ihre ballra = strepere], to make a clatter’. ON baldrast ‘to bundle or bunch together’ and ballrast ‘to wander here and there’ (NO) are reflexive verbs, and the dissimilar grammatical categories, dissimilar semantics and dissimilar phonetics involved make it highly unlikely that either Old Norse word has anything to do with SG ballart. Ó Muirithe (2010) compares ON ballr ‘audax, hard, stubborn’, but, even though we accept the appearance of an epenthetic vowel between l and r in late Old Norse or Old West Norn and an epenthetic -t in Gaelic, the dissimilar grammatical categories and dissimilar semantics do not support such a derivation.
SG ballart is conceivably from Scots or English ballast, which otherwise gives SG balaist.
MacDomhnuill 1741, 213: balaisde.
Regarding the semantics, Dieckhoff (1932) records SG (Glengarry) ballaisg m. ‘boaster’ besides balaist
balaiste [sic] m. [balˈeSdˈ].
m. ‘ballast’; Ó Dónaill (1977) lists Ir. ballasta m., var. ballasc, ‘ballast’ and ballastach adj. ‘well-ballasted, important-looking’; O’Reilly 1864, who otherwise lists several (sometimes erroneous) Irish derivative forms of ballart
ballairdhim, ballarcad, ballardach, ballardhach, ballardhadh, ballardhaim.
(possibly from Lhuyd 1707
ballard, ballardach, ballardhaim [sic], ballardthoir. Edward Lhuyd toured the Celtic-speaking parts of Britain and Ireland between 1697–1701.
), cites ballasdadh ‘declaration, publication’ from ‘Plunket’s Latin and Irish Dictionary MSS’;
Not seen. O’Reilly says in his list of authorities that this book ‘was compiled at Trim, in the county of Meath, by Brother Richard Plunket, a Franciscan Friar, AD 1662. The original is in Dr Marsh’s library; a copy of it is in the Library of Trinity College ...’.
Eng. ballast has the figurative and extended sense ‘stability or steadiness, esp. of a moral or intellectual kind; a person, thing, etc., considered as a stabilizing element or force’ (OED˄). Regarding the phonetics, SG st > sg occurs for example in SG cost (formerly spelt cosd < Eng. cost) becoming cosg. The development of final -rt for -st is harder to explain, but it might have its origin in the dialectal variation found in reflexes of EG rt /ʀt/: in some dialects EG rt yields /ʀht/ with preaspiration of the dental, which in some dialects yields /ʀst/, which in some dialects yields /st/ with assimilation of r to s, as in South Uist and Barra (Borgstrøm 1937, 110–11, 136; 1940, 170–72) and in parts of northern Argyllshire (and partly in Islay and Gigha), with sometimes even the pronunciation of Anglo-Scottish words in final -r, e.g. record [rɛkərst], following the example of SG sagart m. [sɑkərst] ‘priest’ (Holmer 1938, 75); in Mull, both non-assimilated and assimilated forms occur (cf. SGDS Item 727, Points 81–83). If Lhuyd's (1700) ballars ‘ballast’ is not for *ballarst, it may represent a further development.
SG ballart seems for the most part to be a literary word: DASG˄ cites its use in Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair’s poem ‘Moladh Mòraig’ (Thomson 1996b, 64, line 368: Gun bhallart, gun mhòrchuis), in Seumas MacLeòid’s novel Cailin Sgiathanach (1923, 142
A novel that suffers from ‘overloaded and pretentious language’ (Thomson 1983c).
) and in ‘A Bhanis Thioram’, a poem by Domhull Domhnallach an Tirreadh (sic) published in 1893 in Mac-Talla II, No. 9, 8, but where the meaning ‘noise, boasting’ etc. does not seem to fit particularly well.
Bidh ballart gu dilinn | Is miothlachd is farran | Air duine nach h-aithne dha | ’Charid seach cach [sic]. The poet is most probably Dòmhnall Dòmhnallach (Donald Macdonald) 1858–1919, who was born in Tiree, emigrated to Toronto in 1889, moved to New York and returned to Tiree before settling finally in Ottawa (Cameron 1932, 289–99).