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Published 01/10/24
gailbheach adj. [ˈɡ̊al͡avəx], -ax], -ɔx], ‘stormy; wrathful, fierce, enraged; extraordinary, prodigious as to size or power; boisterous at sea; enormous, as price; austere, as a person; terrible’ (Dwelly 1911)
Cf. gailbheach ‘awful’ (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: [ɡɛlɛɑx], Skye).
is compared by MacBain (1911) with Eng. gale ‘a very strong wind’, Dan. gal ‘furious’ and ON galinn ‘idem’. MacBain compares SG gailleann f. (s.v. gaillionn) [ˈɡ̊aʎəᵰ̪] ‘storm, tempest; impetuous blast; snow storm’ (Dwelly) similarly; McDonald (2009, 356) considers the Gaelic words unlikely to have been borrowed from Old Norse. ON galinn is the participle of gala ‘to bewitch’, and has the senses ‘bewitched and, by extension, mad, wild, fierce’ (NO); it would formally be expected to yield SG *gailinn [ˈɡ̊aliɲ].
SG gailbheach and Ir. gailbheach ‘windy and showery, blustery, stormy’ go back to EG gailḃech ‘stormy, tempestuous, fierce’, which is tentatively connected with EG gailliṁ ‘storm’ (eDIL˄). EG gailliṁ is perhaps for *gailḃiṁ (< *gailḃ + the suffix -iṁ/-eṁ), with assimilation.
?Cf. EG 1gal ‘warlike ardour, fury, valour; steam, vapour, mist’ (≈eDIL˄: ‘perhaps the original sense is “seething heat”, passing into “mental excitement, rage” ’).
EG *gailḃ survives in Ir. gailbh ‘gale, storm, windy shower’ (Ó Dónaill 1977
O’Reilly 1817: gailbhe ‘bluster, tempest’.
), although Ir. gailbheach is also used nominally (ibid.).
On the possibility of a connection with the Irish place-name Gaillimh (Eng. Galway), Dr Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill of An Brainse Logainmneacha/Placenames Branch notes (pers. comm.) that ‘[t]he word gailleamh/gaillimh occurs not only as the name of the city and county of Gaillimh (Galway) (#1384607; #100015) and as the name of the river Abhainn na Gaillimhe (River Corrib) (#1165327), but also as a qualifying element in the townland name Ros na Gaillimhe (Rosgalliv) (#37489) in Co. Mayo. In his discussion of the townland name, the late Dr Fiachra Mac Gabhann (2014, 338) states, “Is forbairt ó gall ‘a pillar stone, a standing stone’ ... atá i gceist; tá forbairt inchurtha le sonrú san ainm cathrach agus contae Gaillimh ... Ba í an tuiscint a bhí ag an Donnabhánach gur chiall chnuasaigh a bhí leis an iarmhír -imh ...” [It is a development from gall “a pillar stone, a standing stone” ...; a comparable development can be seen in the city and county name Gaillimh ... Ó Donnabháin took the suffix -imh to have a collective sense ...]. Ó Máille (1954, 28) had proposed the same derivation: “Tá an focal gailleamh déanta suas as gall ‘cloch’ is an foircheann anma -eamh, sa gcaoi go gcialluíonn sé ‘cloch-rud, rud clochach’ ” [The word gailleamh is made up of gall ‘cloch’ and the nominal suffix -eamh, meaning “stone-thing, stony thing”], going on to say “Is fíor-chlochach fós grinneall abhainn na Gaillimhe ...” [The bed of the River Corrib is still extremely stony ...]. Ó Máille states that EG gailleṁ (gall + -eṁ) must belong to the same category of feminine ā-stem nouns as EG ainiṁ (modern Ir. aineamh) “blemish, defect” and gaineṁ (modern Ir. gaineamh) “sand”. (As an ā-stem, the genitive singular form of modern Ir. gaineamh is gainimhe or gainmhe, the same inflection as in the place-name Gaillimh.) There are some problems with this analysis, not least of which is the unanticipated palatalisation of -ll-. The word may be far older than to admit of simple analysis as “gall + nominal suffix”. As well as the townland in Co. Mayo, Ó Máille adduces three further place-names which he argues contain the same element, in order to prove that the word gailleamh has the topographical meaning “stony”. Only one of these, (1) Eanach Gailbh (Annagelliff) (#366), the name of a parish and townland in Co. Cavan, is a remotely plausible candidate. Ó Máille presumes that (2) Stragelliff (#4612), because it is the name of a townland situated in the parish of Annagelliff, has the same origin; however, the early spellings clearly suggest otherwise. The other place-name Ó Máille mentions, (3) Eng. Killeennagallive (#48950) in Co. Tipperary, has been shown by Dr Pádraig Ó Cearbhaill (2007, 198–202) to derive from Ir. Cillín na nEalbh. Ó Cearbhaill (p. 202) states, “Ar fhianaise dhéanach a bhí Ó Máille (1954, 26, 30) ag brath nuair a mheas sé, go hiomrallach, gur sampla den fhocal gailleamh a bhí i gcáilitheoir an log[ainm] faoi chaibidil” [Ó Máille ... was relying on later evidence when he judged, mistakenly, that the qualifying element of the place-name under discussion was an example of the word gailleamh]. To recap, if the place-name Gaillimh is related to gall “(pillar-)stone” at all, the development to EG gailliṁ/gailleṁ is unclear, notwithstanding Ó Máille’s proposed analogy with gaineṁ. It is also unclear whether it is related in any way to its Early Gaelic homonym gailliṁ (modern Ir. gailbh) “gale, storm”; cf. gailḃech (modern Ir. gailbheach) “stormy, tempestuous, fierce”.‘
O’Reilly’s (1817) Irish dictionary lists gailbhinn ‘a storm’, gailebheinn ‘a great rough hill’ and gaillshion ‘a storm’, but they may have been adopted from Shaw’s (1780) Scottish Gaelic dictionary, in which SG gailebhein [sic] ‘a great rough hill’ and gaill(-)shion ‘a storm’ are likely to be folk-etymologically formulated reflexes of gailbhinn ‘storm at sea’, a normalised dative form of *gailbh as an n-stem: Shaw’s gailebhein (for gailbhinn) ‘a great rough hill’ (← ‘billow, wave’) assumes the word contains a lenited form of SG beinn ‘mountain, hill’; his gaill(-)shion (for gaillshian) ‘a storm’ assumes the word contains a lenited form of SG sian ‘storm’, whereas gaillshion is really a reinterpretation of gaillionn, now written gailleann, the assimilated form of gailbhinn, in part probably modelled on SG doineann (formally doinionn, EG doinenn) ‘storm, tempest’.
Derivatives: cf. the verb gailbhich ‘to raise a storm’ (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: s.v. ghailbhich, Skye).