ONlwSG

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Published 01/10/24

durga adj. [ˈd̪̥uɾ͡uɡ̊ə] 

Cf. [doorgu] (MacLennan 1925), /durugə/ (AFB^˄).

‘surly, sour, forbidding, repulsive, grim; grumbling’ (Dwelly 1911) is given the following entry by MacBain (≈1896 and 1911): ‘durga “surly, sour”, Ir. dúrganta; cf. Ir. dúranta “morose”; SG durga seems to be from ON durga “sulky fellow”, cf. Eng. dwarf.’ There seem to be two main, separate developments here (A and B, below).

A. Antecedents of SG dùranta, dur(r)anta

EG dúr ‘hard, rigid, solid; hard, difficult; rigorous, severe, firm, resolute; obdurate’ (< Lat. dūrus) (eDIL^˄) + the adjectival suffix -ḋ(a)e yields EG dúrḋa ‘hard; inflexible (of moral qualities)’, cf. Ir. dúr ‘hard etc.’ and dúrdha ‘hardened, incorrigible’ (Dinneen 1947). Affixed to words in final -n, however, the initial of the adjectival suffix is delenited, e.g. Ir. lasán m. ‘flame’ > lasánta ‘flaming, fiery’, hence analogical formations such as Ir. *dúrdhanta or dúrdhánta ‘surly, sour, repulsive’ (Dinneen) or, with devoicing, dúrchánta (Ó Dónaill 1977) or, with loss of the fricative, dúranta ‘dour, grim, morose, sullen’ (ibid.). The variant dúrgánta may either be a northern Irish form (with fortition of the fricative, cf. Ir. doraga for dorugha, s.v. dorgh), or perhaps the result of confusion with Ir. duairc ‘morose etc.’ (EG dúairc, s.v. duairc).

EG dúr develops into SG dùr ‘stubborn; stupid; persevering etc.’.

Also ‘dour: hard, stern, severe, relentless etc.’ (e.g. Thomson 1996a, Wentworth 2003, and Robertson and MacDonald 2010, s.v. dour), cf. Scots dour, apparently also from Lat. dūrus, although the phonetics are problematic (SND^˄, s.v.).

SG dùranta, however, seems to be a more or less literary word, and was perhaps adopted from Ir. dúranta. It is frequently misspelt durunta or duranta, and has more recently morphed into durranta: Shaw (1780: ‘rigid, morose’), who omits lengthmarks anyway, has durunta, 

Cf. Lhuyd 1707: Ir. durúnta ‘rigid’ (Irish dictionary) and Ir. durranta ‘morose’ (Appendix).

and is followed by Mac Farlane (1815: ‘morose’); Armstrong (1825: ‘morose, churlish, rigid) lists duranta without a lengthmark, but the abstract noun dùrantachd with (contrast HSS 1828: durantachd, without); MacLeod and Dewar (1839: ‘stiff, rigid, rigorous’) give durranta and duranta (the written form with -rr- perhaps influenced by M^cAlpine’s (1832) entry ‘dur [dûrr] “indocile, untractable; stubborn stiff ” ’, where [û] represents a long vowel), but also dùrantachd; MacEachen (1842: ‘stiff, obstinate’) gives dùrranta, noting the connection with dùr; Dwelly (1911: ‘stiff, rigid; rigorous; morose, churlish; obstinate’) has durranta and durrantachd, despite listing dùran ‘morose fellow, obstinate fellow’ and dùranach ‘obstinate blockhead’ (also formed on dùr); MacLennan (1925: ‘stiff, obstinate’) has dùranta (and dùrantachd), which is reflected in the pronunciation (Glengarry) [duːrundə] (Dieckhoff 1932, s.v. duranta ‘obstinate’), while AFB^˄’s durranta follows Dwelly, providing a pronunciation /duRəNdə/. A search in DASG^˄ yields the forms duranta 

Which occurs in the Stewart version – but not in the Eigg version (MacDomhnuill 1776) – of the brosnachadh ([battle-]incitement) said to have been uttered by Lachlann Mòr, the MacMhuirich chief-poet of Donald, Lord of the Isles, before the Battle of Harlaw in Aberdeenshire in 1411 (Gillies 2018, 2–3). ‘... [T]he Stewart version,’ writes Thomson (1968, 166), ‘is an expansion of the Eigg version, probably undertaken by some industrious gentleman with a perverse interest in lexicography, and access to Shaw’s Dictionary. It can with some confidence be dated between the years 1780–1804.’

and durunta (Stewart and Stewart 1804: in Vol. I, 7, and in the Focalair Gearr at the end of Vol. II, respectively), and durranta (Brownlie 1991–92, 23), forms that seem to reflect contemporary convention, i.e. Shaw (1780) and Armstrong (1825) on the first count, Dwelly (1911) and AFB^˄ on the second.

The range of senses above include ‘hard, solid, resolute, dour, surly’.

B. Descendants of ON dvergr, *durgr

MacBain’s derivation of SG durga ‘surly, sour’ from ON durga ‘sulky fellow’ is tentative presumably because the former is an adjective and the latter a noun, and because a development from ON g, here a fricative [ɣ], to a plosive [ɡ̊] in Scottish Gaelic would be unexpected.

Henderson (1910, 215) follows MacBain’s derivation, and also alludes to the phonological dichotomy: ‘rg seems to stand here’.

Indeed, MacBain’s ON durga has been miscopied from Cleasby’s (1874) OIce. durgr m. ‘idem’.

MacLennan (1925) cites ON durgr, although the word is in fact unattested in Old Norse; Stewart (2004, 409) follows MacLennan. McDonald (2009, 350–51) considers the derivation likely.

OIce. durgr is a by-form of dvergr, cf. ON dvergr m. ‘dwarf; midget, pygmy; short roof-post (from a crossbeam up under a rafter); ?a type of buckle or needle’ (NO), cognate with OEng. dweorg (Eng. dwarf), with which OED^˄ compares OIce. dyrgja ‘a female dwarf, (in modern Icelandic also) a fat or slovenly woman’, Ice. durgur ‘a loutish, clumsy or cantankerous person’, Nn. dyrgje ‘a lazy woman’, dorg m. ‘a mass or heap’, f. ‘a fat or slovenly woman’, and Scots dorg ‘a corpulent or stout person, something big, thick and clumsy’, noting they probably all derive ultimately from an ablaut variant (zero-grade) of a Germanic base (cf. de Vries 1962, s.v. dvergr, ¹dyrgja).

SG durragha (?durrgha), dur(r)ghaidh
Assuming borrowing took place some time after 1200, ON *durg acc. would probably yield SG *durrgh *[ˈd̪̥uɍ͡uɣ], later *durgh *[ˈd̪̥u̟ɾ͡u̟ɣ], *[ˈd̪̥uɾ͡uɣ], regularly (Cox 2022, 273–76), adjectival use of which might account for SG durragha (?leg. durrgha) ‘surly’ (Shaw 1780) 

Cf. the apocopated form [d̪u̜ru̜ɣ] (≈Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄, s.v. durgh: ‘’S ann durgh a tha cridhe fear dha m’ fheadhainn/mo leannan: “dour”, usually said by a girl or woman when the fire wasn’t taking properly’, Lewis). Although the headword used in Faclan bhon t-Sluagh is durgh, we should probably read durrgh: the anonymous fieldworker appears to use [r] for [ɍ] consistently in their transcriptions).

and the derivative form durghaidh, durrghaidh ‘dour, surly, churlish’ (McDonald 1972: Uist).

Cf. the by-form dur(a)bhaidh (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄: used of an unpleasant, dour character: duine durabhaidh, North Uist (so also AFB^˄); Brownlie 1995, 139: duine durbhaidh ‘a dour person’, Tiree).

However, SG durragha etc. may be etymologically related to Early Modern Irish dorrḋa ‘grim, surly’, an adjective formed from dorr adj. ‘harsh, rough’ or doirr sb. ‘anger, displeasure’ (eDIL^˄) + the adjectival suffix -ḋae; cf. modern Ir. dorrga (dorrdha), the adjective dorrgach (dorrdhach), with a secondary adjectival suffix -ach, the nominally diminutive form dorrán ‘(fit of) anger; angry, surly person etc.’ and the derivative adjectival and abstract noun forms dorránach and dorránacht. For Scottish Gaelic, cf. dorra, 

Where SG dorra conceivably represents the comparative of the equivalent of either Early Modern Irish dorr or indeclinable dorrḋa (with assimilation of the dental fricative).

used as the comparative (besides duilghe) of SG duilich ‘difficult; sorry’ (EG doliġ), dorrach, dorran, dorranach and dorranachd (Dwelly 1911), while the stressed vowel of SG durragha etc. may have been influenced by the onomatopoeic durrghail ‘murmuring, grumbling, cooing, growling’ (cf. AFB^˄). Dwelly also lists dorrda and dorrtha, 

Both cross-referenced to dorrach. In translating Ir. dorrga, Ó Baoill and Ó Dochartaigh^˄ (No. 8, line 4) employ the Scottish Gaelic form dorrtha, but there seem to be no historical grounds for what apparently originated in a miscopying of Shaw.

which go back via Armstrong’s (1825: dorrda, dortha ‘surly, harsh, churlish, austere’) and Shaw’s (1780: dorrda ‘rough, rugged, austere’, dorrdha ‘fierce, cruel’) Scottish Gaelic dictionaries to Lhuyd’s (1707) and/or O’Brien’s (1768) Irish dictionaries: dorrda ‘austere, harsh, unpleasant’, dorrdha ‘fierce, cruel’. However, Lhuyd’s dorrda seems to be a misreading or miscopying, and hence reduplication, of dorrdha; at any rate, of relevant glosses in Plunkett’s (1662) Latin dictionary, the entries for asper and crudelis include only ‘dorr, dorraċ, dorrḋa’ and ‘dorrḋa’, respectively.

The early 19th-century version of the Harlaw brosnachadh (see fn 3, above) makes use of both (SG) dorrdha and dorrda in Section D (Stewart and Stewart 1804 I, 7), but they have been culled indiscriminately from Shaw merely for the purpose of augmenting alliterative effect – neither appear in the Eigg version (MacDomhnuill 1776, 5).

Shaw’s (1780) durragha post-dates the c. 1750 composition of Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair’s poem ‘Birlinn Chlann Raghnaill’ (Thomson 1996b, 137), and also the first printing of the poem (MacDomhnuill 1776), whose dugharra (p. 149, last line) appears as durragha in McL 15 of the McLagan Collection and in Royal Irish Academy MS E ii 1 (746), and later as dugharra, dùgharr’ (Thomson ibid., 157), hence MacLeod’s (1933, 41 line 116, 74: ‘stubborn, grim’) edition of the poem gives dùgharr’. Thomson’s (141, line 1566, 205: ‘grim’) own edition, on the other hand, gives durrgha on the grounds that ‘[t]he form durrgha resonates with tulgadh in the previous line’. The poem is included in the expanded edition (Mac-Dhomhnuill 1834) of Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair’s Ais-eiridh (Mac-Dhonuill 1751), and, while the last line on p. 159 has the form dugharra, the Glossary (pp. 177–80: 178) has the form durradha ‘gloomy, sullen, surly; also robust’. The word also appears in an explanatory prose section of a poem by Eachann MacLeòid of South Uist in the form durrgha (Stewart and Stewart 1804 I, 287–293: 293, line 10), although on p. 2 of the appended Glossary (ibid. II) as dorrdha ‘surly, austere, harsh’. Dwelly’s Appendix (Dwelly App.) gives durradha ‘currish, dogged’. AFB^˄ (pers. comm. Michael Bauer) reconciles the forms durrgha and durradha by using the form durragha, given as the semantic equivalent of durga and durganta (see below): ‘rigid, stiff, hardened; robust, rigorous; obstinate, dogged; sullen, morose; grim, forbidding’.

The form durragha also occurs in a poorly transcribed version of the Ossianic poem ‘An t-Athach Iongnadh’ [‘the strange apparition’] (Campbell 1872, 83–84: ‘An Tathach Iunigh’, 84, stanzas 20–21):

   Bhrish shin Buaghinin an Tuir, [‘We breached the ramparts of the tower,’]
   ’S barbh shin an Dorsair, [‘And killed the doorkeeper,’]
   Chaigh shin gu durragha steach, [‘We went ?forcefully in,’]
   Shog shin ubhlidh na Cairich; [‘And released the fort from (its) tribute;’]
   Hainig shin air an Fhaichigh amach, [‘We came out onto the green,’]
   Nar Droing aigintich arramich. [‘A high-spirited armed force.’]

Campbell’s transcription is based on the MacNicol Collection version (NLS Acc.2152/16, folios 5v–6v^˄). However, the copy of the poem found in the McLagan Collection (GB 247 MS Gen 1042/168, folios 1–2r^˄) has gu dutharra, with (resolutely) written superscript in English: Bhris sinn Buaghannan a tuir | ’S mharbh sinn an dorsair; | Chuaidh sinn gu dutharra asteach | Is thog sinn umhla na caithreach | Thainig sinn air an fhaiche amach | Nar droing aigionntuich uallaich. Furthermore, two prose versions of the poem employ the phrase le dùrachd ‘in earnest’ instead: in the McLagan Collection (GB 247 MS Gen 1042/9, pp. 18–21^˄): (p. 21) Mharbh sinn an dorsair, ’s bha sinn a mach air an fhaiche ’nar dream aigeannaich uallaich. Bhris sinn dorsan an Tùir, ’s chrom sinn le dùrachd a steach; ’s thog sinn ùmhladh na caithreach), and in a virtually identical version in Cameron 1894 I, 258.
    While the forms durragha, durradha and dorrdha are probably connected, the origin of dugharra and its variant dutharra, unless they are metathesised forms of durragha, is unclear. However, assuming medial gh marks hiatus, dugharra may derive from Scots dour [duːr] (SND^˄: ‘hard, stern, severe, relentless etc.’; DOST^˄: ‘determined, resolute, stern, hardy etc.’) + the Gaelic adjectival suffix -ra (< EG -ḋae, by assimilation to the preceding -r (Cox 2017, 152)), on the analogy of formations such as SG nàdarra ‘natural’ (nàdar ‘nature’), ceacharra ‘dirty, sordid’ (EG cechar ‘quagmire’), measarra ‘temperate, sober’ (EG mes(s)ar ‘measure, average, moderate’). For the disyllabification in dugharra, cf. Oftedal 1956, 134–35, and Watson 1999, 350–51. For the hiatus > th [h], see Watson 1996, 376. (For SG duthar ‘grim, stern, rough’, which may also be from Scots dour, s.v. duatharachd).

SG durga, durc
ON *durg acc. yields Scots durk, dork, dorg, durg, dirk [dʌrk], [dɔrk] (SND^˄), [dȯrg], [dɔ‘rk], [dȯ‘rk] (Jakobsen 1928: Shetland) ‘something big and clumsy; a stout, big-boned or clumsily-built person’ (SND^˄), as an adjective ‘clumsy’ (or with the Scots adjectival suffix -ie).

For Barra, Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄ records durragan ‘a dour chubby person who sits quietly in a corner without contributing to the conversation’; this may be based on SG durrag ‘maggot’.

On the one hand, Scots durg, dorg (with -[rg]), the adjective, or *durgie, *dorgie, appears to yield SG durga, 

Shaw 1780: ‘surly’; HSS 1828: ‘surly, sour, forbidding, repulsive’; MacLeod and Dewar 1839: idem; Dwelly 1911: ‘surly, sour, forbidding, repulsive, grim; grumbling’; MacLennan 1925: ‘surly, sour’; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄: ‘about someone who’s hard by nature’, ?Uist; AFB^˄: /durugə/ ‘rigid, stiff, hardened; robust, rigorous; obstinate, dogged; sullen, morose; grim, forbidding’.

dorga 

Shaw 1780: ‘despicable’; Armstrong 1825: ‘despicable, crusty’; Dwelly 1911: idem.

‘surly etc.’ and (with the addition of the Gaelic adjectival suffix -nta 

Which developed in Scottish Gaelic as in Irish (Cox 2017, 152 + fn 6).

 ) durganta, 

Shaw 1780: ‘surly’; Armstrong 1825: ‘surly, morose; grim’; HSS 1828: ‘surly, sour, forbidding, repulsive’; MacLeod and Dewar 1839: idem; MacEachen 1842: ‘surly, grumbling’; Dwelly 1911: s.v. durga; MacLennan 1925: ‘surly, sour’; Dieckhoff 1932: [duRuːgəndə] ‘surly’; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄: ‘about someone who’s hard by nature’, ?Uist. Cf. the derivative abstract noun SG durgantachd (Armstrong 1825).

dorganta ‘idem’; 

Armstrong 1825: ‘discourteous, surly’; Dwelly 1911: ‘idem’.

on the other hand, Scots durk, dork (with -[rk]), the substantive, appears to yield SG durc, 

Dwelly 1911: ‘lump or piece of anything; clumsy knife; truncheon’; MacLennan 1925: ‘lump, shapeless piece’; Dieckhoff 1932: [durKg] ‘a piece, e.g. one of the short bits into which firewood is split’; CG VI, 64: ‘short piece of stick, rope, iron etc.’; Ó Murchú 1989, 333: /durxg/ ‘chunk, piece’.

dorc 

Dwelly 1911: ‘piece’.

[d̪̥uɾ̥k], [d̪̥ɔɾ̥k] ‘a piece or chunk of something; something chunky’, 

MacBain (1896; 1911) assumes a native origin: ‘dorc “a piece” (dialectic): *dorco-, root der “split”, Eng. tear; N. dorg’ (where N. may stand for ‘Norwegian’ rather than ‘Norse’). Under durc, he merely gives ‘lumpish person’.

whose diminutive form durcan 

Forbes 1905, 9: dorcan, durcan ‘yearling bull-calf’; Dwelly 1911: durcan, diminutive of durc, and dorcan ‘yearling bull-calf’ (after Forbes); contrast MacDomhnuill 1741: darcan ‘acorn or mast’.

was borrowed as Scots durkin in the sense ‘anything short, thick and strong, hence a short, thick-set person’ (SND^˄); cf. Ir. dorc ‘lump, buttock; lumpish person’ (Ó Dónaill 1977).

Scots durkin in the sense ‘big person of a bad disposition’, however, is derived from SG duaircean ‘a surly, base fellow’ (a diminutive form of SG duairc m./f., a nominal use of the adjective duairc, s.v.) (SND^˄).

SG duirc, var. duirce, 

MacDomhnuill 1741: duirce daraich ‘acorn or mast’; Mac Farlan 1795: duirc daraich ‘acorn’; Armstrong 1825: duìrce [sic], duirce daraich ‘acorn’; HSS 1828: duirc daraich ‘acorns’; MacLeod and Dewar 1839: idem; Dwelly 1911: duirc ‘pine cone, acorn’, duirc-daraich ‘acorns’; MacLennan 1925: duirc ‘pine cone, acorn’; AFB^˄: duirc ‘any hard-shelled tree fruit (e.g. acorn, cone)’.

dim. duircean, 

HSS 1828: duircein (pl.) ‘seeds of fir’; MacLeod and Dewar 1839: idem.

‘cone, acorn’ also occurs; cf. Ir. duirc ‘morose, sullen, silent person’ (Ó Dónaill 1977).

In discussing the origin of Ir. duirc ‘dagger’, which first appears in O’Begly’s (1732) English-Irish dictionary, 

Poniard ‘daigéar, miodóg, duirc’.

but which also occurs as a diminutive in the anglicised form durgin in 1689, 

Four milk black Sheep, ta’n from the Fold,
And Yearlings three or four year old,
With Hide and Horns, and Guts and all,
Thrust on a Tree, and roasted whole;
Which, with their Durgins and Madoges*,
They cut upon their greasie Brogues
For Trenchers, and did wipe their Brushes
With Napkins wove of Shags and Rushes.

  *Glossed ‘Skeins. or Knives’
         (Farewell 1689, 38^˄)
While madoge represents Ir. miodóg ‘dagger’, durgin may represent a diminutive form *duircín.

O’Rahilly (1942c, 212) points out that the earliest example in OED^˄ of Eng. dirk 

The English spelling dirk was established by Johnson’s (1755) Dictionary of the English Language.

‘a kind of dagger or poniard, especially a Highlander’s dagger’ is dated 1602: ‘two Scotch daggers or dorks at their girdles’; this is omitted from the 3rd (2019) edition of the dictionary, in which the earliest quote cited is dated 1557 (after DOST^˄, s.v. durk): ‘Mans McGillmichell is jugit in amerciament for the wranguse drawin of ane dowrk to Andro Dempster, and briking of the dowrk at the said Androis heid’. While DOST^˄ notes that the Scots word is of obscure origin, OED^˄ compares Eng. dirk (as O’Rahilly (p. 213) does Ir. duirc) with Germ. Dolch, Dut. dolk and Dan. dolk ‘dagger’. However, in CG VI, 64, Angus Matheson suggests a connection between SG durc ‘a short piece of stick, rope, iron etc.’ and Eng. dirk, and compares SG duirceach and duirceall in the sense ‘dagger’.

E.g. in the poem ‘[A’] Bhiodag Thubaisteach’ (the unlucky dagger) (Mac-an-Tuairneir 1813, 341):
Duirceach do chuirc Mhor-thirich,
Da bheil a roibein liath;
Duirceall dubh gun fhaobhar,
’N am taobhsainn ris a bhiadh.
whose first line later becomes (MacKenzie 1841, 84, with the poem now entitled ‘Sgian Dubh an Sprogain Chaim’ (the skene-dhu with the bent handle)) Mathalt do chuirc Mhòr-thirich, i.e. Mathalt de chuirc Mhòrairich ‘a blunt basket of a Morar knife’ (Black 2001, 16–17); cf. HSS 1828: duirceall ‘old rusty knife’, and MacLennan 1925: duirceach ‘a dirk’, duirceall ‘a rusty knife’.

SG duirc appears to be first cited in the sense ‘knife etc.’ in 1828 (HSS: ‘dirk’) – certainly, it is not listed in MacDomhnuill’s (1741, 115) dictionary: ‘gearrascian, cuinseir no bidag 

I.e. gearra-sgian, cuinnsear no biodag.

“a dagger, whinger [a short stabbing sword] or durk”’; Dwelly (1911) describes duirc as the ‘Gaelic spelling of dirk’. The sense ‘dagger’ may have arisen first in Scots (durk), before being borrowed into Scottish Gaelic (duirc; duircean, duirceach, duirceall), Irish (duirc; *duircín) and English (now dirk).

The range of senses above include ‘dwarf, something short, squat, stout, thick-set, surly, big, clumsy, slovenly, a mass, lump, cone, a chunk of something, a short knife’.