ONlwSG

bastal m.

Fem. in M^cAlpine 1832 and MacLennan 1925.

*[ˈb̥as̪d̪̥əɫ̪], formerly written basdal, ‘noise; merriment, gaiety; showiness; glitter’; cf. EG bastall (eDIL^˄: ‘?show, ado’), Ir. bastall ‘bombast; captiousness’ (Ó Dónaill 1977).

Ir. postúil ‘self-important, conceited’ (ibid.) may be formed from Eng. boast + the adjectival ending -úil.

Mackay (1897, 95) and MacBain (1911) derive SG bastal from Ice.

MacBain gives ‘N[orse] bastl’.

bastl nt. ‘turmoil’, and McDonald (2009, 340) thinks the loan likely. Cleasby (1874) lists Ice. bastl n. ‘turmoil’ and bastla vb ‘to turmoil’, and it is likely that these, perhaps with intrusive t (cf. Ice. íslenska [ˈiːs(t)lɛnska] ‘Icelandic’), are related to Scots noun and verb bassle, bas(s)el [bɑs(ə)l] ‘(to) struggle; splash, plash, commotion; toil and moil, hard work’, baissle vb [besl] ‘to rush about in a busied or hurried manner; to busy or exert oneself’ and bastle sb. [bɑsl] ‘struggle’ (SND^˄). Jakobsen (1928, s.v. basel vb) compares Norw., Ice. and Sw. basa ‘to splash; beat; plash; gambol; exert oneself; slave, strive’, and SND^˄ Sw. basa ‘to rush with violence’.

For Norwegian, cf. base ‘to struggle, work hard; romp’ (Haugen 1984) and Nn. basa ‘idem’, which Torp (1992) compares with Northern Eng. and Scots basel.

From this, SG bastal as an Old Norse or Scots loan seems barely supported phonetically, certainly not semantically.

It might be worth considering whether EG bastall is a loan from an early form of Eng. bustle ‘conflict, struggle, scuffle, fray; noisy activity and movement; excitement, noise, fuss, commotion’ (OED^˄).

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the English word was also used as a slang term for ‘money’ (ibid.).

MEng. *bostle (from MEng. bostle vb > bustel > bussel > Eng. bustle (ibid.)) would probably yield EG bastal(l), with o ~ a alternation in Gaelic, regularly.

Derivatives: SG bastalach adj. and bastalachd f., an abstract noun.