v1.0
Published 01/10/24
gocaman m. [ˈɡ̊ɔʰkəman], gen. gocamain -[æɲ], in the sense ‘fool’ is derived by Mackay (1897, 92: gocamann [sic]) from Ice. gauksman ‘one who watches the cuckoo’s throat’. Mackenzie (1910, 384) gives SG goca-man ‘an attendant’ from ON gauk-madhr [sic] ‘a cuckoo-man’. Henderson (1910, 134) notes that ‘an official known as [SG] gocaman, a lookout man, a term used now for a “fidget”’ was formerly known in the Highlands, and quotes Martin Martin’s Western Isles of Scotland:
1716, 103.
‘They had a constant sentinel on the top of their houses call’d gockmin, or, in the English tongue cockman, who was oblig’d to watch day and night, and at the approach of anybody, to ask, “Who comes there?” This officer is continu’d in Barray still, and has the perquisites due to his place paid him duly at two terms in the year’ (≈Martin 1703, 103). Henderson (≈ibid.) derives gockmin from ‘the Scandinavian gok-man “lookout man”’, after Professor Mackinnon (1839–1914). MacBain (1911: gocaman ‘an usher, attendant, sentinel, or lookout man’) cites Mackinnon’s ‘Danish’ gok-man as well, and compares ON gauksman, gaukmaðr [sic] ‘cuckoo man’; so also MacKinnon (2007, 203), while McDonald (2009, 356) considers the loan likely.
The compound gauksmaðr m., acc. gauksmann, lit. ‘cuckoo’s man’ is unattested in both Icelandic and Old Norse; neither is gauk-maðr ‘cuckoo-man’, which would at least account for the lack of -s- is SG gocaman.
For the spurious form gok-man, cf. Armstrong 1825: Nor[wegian] gokman.
However, ON gauk- would be expected to yield SG *gòg- *[ɡ̊ɔːɡ̊]- or *[ɡ̊oːɡ̊]-.
In the following, (A–E) discuss gocaman along with a number of what appear to be etymologically related forms; (F–H) look at a number of semantically related words.
A. SG gocaman, gocman, gòcaman
A 1. SG gocaman [ˈɡ̊ɔʰkəman]
(i) gocaman (Mac Farlan 1795: ‘usher’; Mac Farlane 1815: ‘idem’; Armstrong 1825: ‘usher, gentleman-usher; warder, domestic sentinel’; HSS 1828: ‘usher, attendant’; McAlpine 1832: [gochg´-am-an] ‘domestic sentinel, one on the lookout in a mast etc.’; MacEachen 1842: ‘usher, attendant’; MacLennan 1925: ‘domestic sentinel, one on the lookout in a mast; attendant, usher’; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: ‘cuckoo follower’, Scalpay, ‘bird which accompanies the cuckoo; watchman’, Lewis; AFB˄: ‘usher, attendant, minder’; also in the open compounds
With the generic element followed by the gen. sg. of SG cuthag f. ‘cuckoo’ and clann f. ‘children’, respectively.
gocaman na cuthaig (with apocope; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh: Sutherland) or gocaman na cuthaige ‘pipit, titlark’ (AFB˄), and gocaman cloinne ‘babysitter’ (ibid.));
(ii) gocamann (Mackay 1897, 92: ‘fool’), in error.
A 2. SG gocman *[ˈɡ̊ɔʰkman], *[ˈɡ̊ɔxkman]
(i) gocman (Shaw 1780: ‘usher or gentleman’);
(ii) gocmann (MacDomhnuill 1741, 46: ‘usher or gentleman’);
(iii) gockmin (Martin 1703, 103), which is rendered cockman in English (ibid.);
(iv) gochdman (Shaw 1780: ‘watchman’);
(v) gochdmunn (HSS 1828: ‘watchman, vigil’; Dwelly 1911: see gocaman).
A 3. SG gòcaman [ˈɡ̊ɔːʰkəman]
Dieckhoff’s form, below, indicates [ˈɡ̊oːxkəman].
In Dwelly 1911: ‘usher, attendant; warder, domestic sentinel; one on lookout in a mask [sic]; spy, scout; fool’; Dieckhoff 1932: [gòːKgəman] ‘attendant’.
The forms under (A), above, may be formed on an onomatopoeic base, cf. SG gog in the senses ‘little syllable; cackling or clucking of a hen; cooing of a pigeon’ (Dwelly 1911); cf. Ir. gog in the senses ‘syllable, tittle; goose’s cackle’ (Dinneen 1947). Cf. also SG gùg gùg ‘cooing’ (Nicolson 1881, 207: ‘Gùg gùg,’ arsa a’ chuthag, latha buidhe Bealltainn ‘ “Coo-coo,” says the cuckoo, on yellow May Day’), gug gùg (AFB˄) and EG cú ‘cooing, coo, sound of the cuckoo’ (eDIL˄).
Cf. also SG gogadaich, gogail, gugail ‘clucking, cackling etc.’, guga ‘young of the solan goose’; Ir. gogal ‘gobbling; gaggling, cackling’.
The element gocam- is possibly constructed on the analogy of SG gairm in the sense ‘calling or crying out, crowing’, with the senses ‘coo-coo’ and, by extension, ‘(the bird) cuckoo’, hence (A 1) gocaman (with the agentive suffix -an) ‘the cuckoo one, i.e. the bird that hatches and fosters the cuckoo’s chick’.
The disyllabic (A 2) gocman may really be a hangover from Martin’s gockmin, which is not necessarily reliably Gaelic in form (s.v. goillir). (A 3) gòcaman, with its long vowel, may owe something to SG gòrach ‘foolish’,
Cf. also gòrag f. ‘foolish woman’, gòraich f., gòraileis and gòrlais f., and gòrachas m. ‘folly’.
but may nevertheless be an authentic variant (cf. SG gùg gùg, above). Note also that gocaman appears to have been borrowed into Irish, yielding gocamán (Ó Duibhín 2023, s.v. baby-sitter: ‘so used in Belfast,
Within the Catholic community of Belfast specifically, through contact with Rannafast residents (pers. comm. Professor Seòsamh Watson).
from [a] Rannafast [Donegal] word for a hen set to hatch another’s eggs’), gogamán (Aonghus Ó hAlmhain˄, s.v.) and, with a lengthened stressed vowel, gúcamán ‘buime [“foster-mother”]’ (Ó Dufaigh 2011, 152).
B. SG gocam-gò *[ˌɡ̊ɔʰkəm ˈɡ̊oː]
(i) gocam-gò (McAlpine 1832: written gocam-go, but with the transcription [gŏchg-am-gô´], with short [ɔ] and final long [ɔː], ‘spy, scout; fellow perched on any place’; Dwelly 1911: ‘idem’, see gòcaman; MacLennan 1925: ‘idem’; AFB˄: ‘scout, a person who reconnoitres’
AFB also gives a genitive form gocaim-ghò, but this is unattested elsewhere.
);
(ii) gocaman-gò (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: ‘unreliable, unsteady character’, Scalpay).
The forms (B) gocam-gò and gocaman-gò seem to be reduplicative, perhaps imitative of the male cuckoo’s mating call,
Cf. Ir. gogaille gó ‘one sent on a fool’s errand’ (Dinneen 1947; Ó Dónaill 1977), nead gogaille gó ‘a mare’s nest [an illusory discovery, esp. one that is much vaunted and betrays foolish credulity (OED˄)]’ (ibid.), although gó here is not said to be connected with the cuckoo’s call and may instead be connnected with Ir. gó ‘lie, falsehood, deceit’.
and may be secondary to (A) gocaman.
C. SG gocan, gocag
C 1. SG gocan [ˈɡ̊ɔʰkan], [ˈɡ̊ɔxkan]
(i) gocan (HSS 1828: ‘little attendant’; MacEachen 1842: ‘idem’; Forbes 1905, 29: ‘the titling, titlark, rock pipit; the small bird that follows the cuckoo’; Dwelly 1911: ‘little attendant, pert conceited little person, titlark’ and, in a separate listing, ‘whinchat’; MacLennan 1925: ‘little attendant, pert little person’; Dieckhoff 1932: ‘conceited little person’; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: ‘young child’, Skye, ‘unbalanced character’, Scalpay; An Stòr-Dàta 1993: ‘tit’; Garvie 1999, 64: ‘whinchat’; Robertson and MacDonald 2010: ‘acolyte; pert litte person; whinchat’; AFB˄: ‘pipit’; also in the open compounds
With the adjective cìreanach ‘crested’, gen. sg. of cuthag (cubhag) ‘cuckoo’ and nàire ‘shame, embarassment’.
gocan cìreanach ‘waxwing’ (Garvie 1999, 64), gocan cuthaige ‘meadow pipit’ (ibid.), ‘cuckoo’s follower, titlark’ (Robertson and MacDonald 2010), gocan na cubhaig ‘the cuckoo’s attendant; little bird’ (HSS 1828), gocan-cubhaige ‘titlark; the little bird always following the cuckoo’ (Dwelly 1911), gocan na cubhaig (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: Raasay), gocan cuthaig (ibid.: Tiree, Skye), gocan-cuthaig (ibid.: North Uist), gocan na cuthaig (ibid.: Strontian and North Argyll), and in the phrase gocan an n[à]ire ‘cheeky so and so’ (ibid.: ?North Uist);
(ii) gochdan (Dwelly 1911: see gocan);
(iii) gochcan (MacDomhnuill 1741, 75: ‘titling’).
C 2. SG gocag [ˈɡ̊ɔʰkaɡ̊]
In AFB˄: ‘meadow pipit, titlark’.
See under (D), below.
D. SG gogan, gogag
D 1. SG gogan [ˈɡ̊ɔɡ̊an]
In Shaw 1780: ‘cackling, prating’, and in the open compound
With gen. sg. of foghar ‘autumn’.
gogan foghair ‘autumn chick’ (McDonald 1972, s.v. coileach).
D 2. SG gogag [ˈɡ̊ɔɡ̊aɡ̊]
In Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: ‘small bird seen with cuckoo’, Harris.
SG (C) gocan, gocag and (D) gogan, gogag seem likely to be developments parallel to (A–B) gocaman, gocaman-gò etc., although in some cases they may be reduced forms.
Cf. EG gocán (eDIL˄: ?gocăn ‘name of a bird’) is glossed as Lat. parricula ‘little things’ (Stokes 1860, 5, line 66: haec parricula gocan). Stokes (ibid., 43) notes that Ir. gogan means ‘cackling, prating’ according to O’Reilly, and suspects EG gocán ‘to be the name of some small bird, cf. [SG] gocan na cubhaig’. O’Reilly’s (1817) Irish dictionary lists gogal followed by gogan, both in the sense ‘cackling, prating’, although they seem likely to have been adopted from Shaw’s (1780) identical Scottish Gaelic dictionary entries: neither word appears to occur in either O’Clery 1643, O’Begly 1732 or O’Brien 1768, but cf. Lhuyd’s (1707) Ir. gogalladh ‘pratling, talkativeness’ and (ibid., Appendix) Ir. and SG idem ‘cackling of a hen’.
The primary sense, then, of SG (A–D) gocaman, gocam-gò, gocan, gogan etc. seems to be ‘a bird that looks after the cuckoo’s chick’ and is described as ‘an attendant, usher (i.e. attendant), gentleman (i.e. gentleman servant) or acolyte’; this is extended to ‘someone that looks out for something’, conveyed in terms of ‘warder, watchman, vigil, lookout, spy or scout’. Unsurprisingly, gocaman etc. are also used to refer specifically to the species of bird parasitised by the cuckoo: this is commonly the meadow pipit or titlark (Anthus pratensis), sometimes the whinchat (Saxicola rubetra). Further extensions, or in some cases perhaps independent developments, may be present in the senses ‘chick, young child; cheeky person; pert person; conceited person’; for the senses ‘fidget; unreliable, unsteady person’ and Mackay’s ‘fool’, cf. SG goganta, gogaideach ‘light-headed’ and gogaideachd ‘excitement’ (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄; cf. also SG gocaireachd, s.v.).
E. SG cabhachan, gabhagan, gobhagan
E 1. SG cabhachan (MacLennan 1925: [cavachan]; McAlpine 1832: [kavf´-ach-an])
In MacLennan 1925: ‘cuckoo-titterer’; McAlpine 1832: ‘cuckoo titterer’; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: ‘titlark, cuckoo’s attendant’, Islay. Cf. Ir. cabhchán ‘cuckoo-follower’ (Dinneen 1947, Additions and Corrections).
E 2. SG gabhagan (MacLennan 1925: [gavugan])
(i) gabhagan (Shaw 1780: ‘the bird called titling, which attends the cuckoo’; Armstrong 1825: ‘titling; the small bird that is observed following the cuckoo’; HSS 1828: ‘titlark’; Forbes 1905, 29: the titling, titlark, rock pipit; the small bird that follows the cuckoo’; Dwelly 1911: ‘rock pipit, Anthus petrosus; titling, tit, titlark’; MacBain 1911: ‘titlark’; MacLennan 1925: [gavugan] ‘titlark’; An Stòr-Dàta 1993: ‘pipit’; Garvie 1999, 64: ‘rock pipit, Anthus spinoletta’; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: pipit titlark [sic]);
(ii) gobhagan (Armstrong 1825: ‘titling, also written gabhagan’; Forbes 1905, 29: the titling, titlark, rock pipit; the small bird that follows the cuckoo’; Dwelly 1911, see gabhagan) and gobhacan (Forbes 1905, 29: the titling, titlark, rock pipit; the small bird that follows the cuckoo’) in error.
SG (E) cabhachan, gabhagan and gobhagan might just be based on EG caí ‘cuckoo’: EG caí (also cói) was a guttural stem whose oblique case form cúach later became the normalised radical form, hence Ir. and SG cuach ‘cuckoo’. SG cuachag [ˈkʰuəxaɡ̊] ‘idem’ derives from cuach + the diminutive suffix -ag (EG cúach + -óc). SG cuthag [ˈkʰu-aɡ̊] ‘idem’ (also found spelt cubhag, cumhag, cuag and cúag) may go back to an unattested (disyllabic) EG *cuóc, a diminutive form from caí + the suffix -óc, under the influence of EG cú ‘the sound of a cuckoo’.
Or perhaps directly to EG cú ‘the sound of a cuckoo’ + suffix as MacBain (1911, s.v. cu’ag) suggests.
SG cabhachan, gabhagan and gobhagan, then, might derive from EG caí + the suffixes -ach/-ag + -an
Similarly, Ir. cabhchán, with -ach + -án.
(cf. EG (disyllabic) caóc ‘jackdaw’, probably from an onomatopoeic base + -óc, cf. Ir. cabhóg, SG cathag (cadhag)), with initial g- and stressed o developing on the analogy of (A–D) gocaman, gocan etc. and/or other bird names such as SG gobhlan ‘swallow’, gobhachan ‘sandpiper; dipper’ etc. Perhaps more likely, they are reflexes of Scots gowk ‘cuckoo’ (see under (F)): for the disyllabification in cabhachan etc., cf. Eng. dowry > SG dubhairidh (dubharaidh) (MacLennan 1925: [doo-ary]; Dieckhoff 1932: [duhuri]), and for medial /v/, cf. the variation /-/ ~ /h/ ~ /v/ in bual (s.v. bòl).
F. SG cabhcan
In AFB˄: /kauxgan/ ‘pipit, titlark’.
The neologistic Scottish Gaelic form cabhcan supplants (E) cabhachan, gabhagan and gobhagan in AFB˄,
As an underlying form in preference to the supposedly ad hoc spelling forms cabhachan, gabhagan and gobhagan (pers. comm. AFB’s editor Michael Bauer).
and is modelled on Ir. cabhcán and EG cobcan (i.e. *coḃcán). However, Ir. cabhcán ‘a kind of falcon’ (Dinneen 1947
First appearing in his 1927 edition, not his first (1904) edition.
) is taken to be a recent loan from Eng. falcon (Ó Dónaill 1977; Chudak 2010, 63), cf. Ir. cadóg < Eng. haddock (ibid. 64).
EG *coḃcán (in later MSS: cabcan, cabhcan; in modernised renditions, e.g. Ua Laoghaire 1915 I, 18–19: cabhcán) occurs as the word for a small bird in the late Early Gaelic tale ‘Tromḋáṁ Gúaire’,
Dated to no earlier than c.1300 (Béarra 2010, 415 + fn 9), the earliest extant copy of ‘Tromḋáṁ Gúaire’ is found in the late 15th-century Book of Lismore/Leabhar Leasa Móir.
in which the bird’s description matches that of the meadow pipit etc. fostering the cuckoo’s offspring: et araili ica radh co ndenann en ele banaltrannus fris, cobcan a ainm, ⁊ cuiridh sein a en fein uadha ⁊ bethaigidh se en na cuaiche (Joynt 1941, 6, lines 158–60) ‘and some say that another bird nurses for it [i.e. the cuckoo] – it‘s called cobcan – and it forsakes its own chick and feeds the cuckoo’s chick’.
The full passage reads, A brog na cuach cain: inann sin ⁊ peta cuach, ár ni bi a tigh peta is mesa inas; treicidh a ceileabrudh acht beg ⁊ ni ferr leis eisein do denumh tra eli ina isin geimreadh; et araili ica radh co ndenann en ele banaltrannus fris, cobcan a ainm, ⁊ cuiridh sein a en fein uadha ⁊ bethaigidh se en na cuaiche guma hingnima he, ⁊ beridh in chuach le he ⁊ ni hannsa le in cobcan sin ina gach en eli. Inann son ⁊ do dail-si ⁊ aes ealadna Eirenn; ni bhia cuimne aca ar mhaith da ndernuis tar eis na n-aer sa. (Joynt 1941, 6, lines 154–64) ‘ “Thou captive of a tamed cuckoo”: that is equivalent to a pet of a cuckoo, for there cannot be in a house a worse pet than this. It ceases to sing except a little, and he will as soon do so in winter as at any other time. And some assert that another bird nurses for it; its name is Cobcan, and he puts away his own bird and feeds the cuckoo’s bird till it is able to provide for itself, when the cuckoo takes it away with her, and she has no more regard for that Cobcan than she has for any other bird. Similar to that is your case and of the learned professors of Erin, for they will not remember any good thou hast done after these satires.’ (Conellan 1860, 29). (Note that, given the later reference to a house, Professor Thomas Clancy (forthcoming) suggests reading brug (i.e. bruġ) ‘abode’ for brog: ‘O abode of the fair cuckoo’.)
EG *coḃcán may conceivably have been formed from a borrowing of EScots gowk, gouk(e) ‘cuckoo’ or (northern) MEng. gok(e), gowke
Cf. MEng. gọ̄k (MED˄), i.e. [ɡoːk].
‘idem’ (cf. Scots gowk [gʌuk], but Ulster also [go:k] (SND˄), and Hiberno-English gowk /gauk/ (Dolan 2020)) + the agentive suffix -án.
Scots and Eng. gowk derive from Old Norse gaukr m. ‘cuckoo’, ON au yielding EScots and MScots /ou/, modern Scots /ʌu/ (Macafee 2003, 141–42).
G. SG riabhag f. [ˈɍiəvaɡ̊]
In McDonald 1972: riabhag = [H] snàthdag = [C] gocan na cuthaige ‘a little bird that follows the cuckoo’; cf. the open compounds
With len. gen. sg. of SG fraoch m. ‘heather’, coille f. ‘wood, forest’ and monadh m. ‘moor’.
riabhag fhraoich ‘meadow pipit’ (Garvie 1999, 64), riabhag choille ‘tree pipit’ (ibid. 63–64), riabhag mhonaidh/fhraoich ‘twite’ (ibid. 65).
SG riabhag derives from EG ríaḃ ‘stripe, streak, line’ + the agentive suffix -óc, cf. SG riabhach adj. ‘brindled’, and is descriptive of the (small, brown,) streaky meadow pipit.
H. SG snàthag, snàthadag, snàthdag
(i) snàthag [ˈs̪ᵰ̪ãː(h)aɡ̊] (Forbes 1905, 36: ‘the meadow pipit, heather lintie’; Dwelly 1911: ‘idem’; AFB˄: /sNaː.ag/ ‘meadow pipit, titlark’), and snathag (Garvie 1999, 64) without a lengthmark, in error;
(ii) snàthadag [ˈs̪ᵰ̪ãː(h)əd̪̥aɡ̊], [ˈs̪ᵰ̪ãː(h)ad̪̥aɡ̊] (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄: ‘little bird that accompanies the cuckoo’, Ross-shire, Sutherland, Bunloit);
(iii) snàthdag [ˈs̪ᵰ̪ãːd̪̥aɡ̊], with syncope (McDonald 1972: [G] riabhag = snàthdag = [C] gocan na cuthaige ‘a little bird that follows the cuckoo’; Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄, s.v. snàthadag: [sṉɑ̃:t̪ɑɡ] ‘the bird which accompanies the cuckoo’, Drumguish).
SG snàthag derives from SG snàth ‘thread, yarn’ (< EG snáth) + the agentive suffix -ag, and has the sense ‘weaver’, presumably reflecting the fact that the bird builds its nest from dry grass and hair.
Scottish Wildlife Trust˄.
The forms snàthadag and snàthdag show influence from SG snàthad ‘needle’ (EG snáthat).
Ir. gobadán ‘sandpiper’ (< Ir. gob ‘beak’ + the suffixes -ad -án) also has the sense ‘little bird that attends the cuckoo’ (Dinneen 1947), cf. the open compound gobadán na cuaiche ‘the bird that follows the cuckoo; pipit’ (Ó Dónaill 1977). In the proverb titfidh an spéir nuair a rachaidh an gobadán i mbéal na cuaiche ‘there will be chaos when the pipit leads [i.e. takes precedence over] the cuckoo’ (ibid.), the pipit is obviously the cuckoo’s foster-parent: the implication being that changing the natural order of things will only result in chaos. For Ir. gobadán, cf. SG gobada-lìridh, s.v. luaireag.