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Published 01/10/24
goillir m. *[ˈɡ̊əʎ̪ɛɾʲ], gen. idem, and goillire *[ˈɡ̊əʎ̪əɾʲə]
Cf. [gö2lly’´-ur-a] (McAlpine 1832).
‘?storm petrel, Hydrobates pelagicus
‘A little bigger than a sparrow it appears all black with a white rump. Its tail is not forked, unlike Leach’s petrel. In flight it flutters over the water, feeding with its wings held up in a ‘V’ with feet pattering across the waves. At sea it often feeds in flocks and will follow in the wake of ships, especially trawlers. The storm petrel breeds largely on islands on the west coast of the UK and on the Northern Isles. Only comes to shore to breed and then at night. Best looked for by seawatching in spring and autumn from a westerly headland with onshore gales.’ (RSPB˄.)
’. Martin Martin in his Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (≈1703, 72) writes, ‘[t]he bird goylir, about the bigness of a swallow, is observed never to land but in the month of January, at which time it is supposed to hatch; it dives with a violent swiftness; when any number of these fowls are seen together, it’s concluded to be an undoubted sign of an approaching storm, and when the storm ceases they disappear under the water; the seamen call them malifigies,
I.e. malefices ‘acts of baleful or malefic socery’ (DOST˄, s.v. malefice).
from mali-effigies, which they often find to be true.’ Following Martin, the Gaelic form of the bird name is given as either goillir (Armstrong 1825; MacBain 1896; 1911; Forbes 1905, 26, 239, 320; Dwelly 1911, after Armstrong) or goillire (McAlpine 1832; MacEachen 1845; Forbes 1905, 36, 235, 239; MacLennan 1925).
In his Sailor’s Word-Book (1867), Smyth lists both goylir ‘a small sea-bird held to precede a storm; hence seamen call them malifiges; arctic gull’ (after Martin) and goillear ‘the Gaelic for a sea-bird of the Hebrides, said to come ashore only in January’ (possibly a miscopying of Armstrong, whose own entry goillir follows his entry goillear).
SG goillir is derived by Henderson (1910, 128–29) from ON kolr ‘coal-black’, but no such word is attested, as Lockwood (1971, 26–27) points out.
McDonald at first considers the loan likely (2009, 376), later unlikely (2015, 126).
Although the word ON kol nt. ‘coal’ is attested, it would be expected to yield SG *[kʰɔɫ̪]. While earlier Lockwood (1963, 56) notes that the provenance of SG goillir is unknown, he later suggests (1971, 26–27; 1984, s.v. goylir) that it is simply a variant of SG goillear (leg. goilleir) ‘someone with a hanging lip or fat cheeks’, from SG goill ‘blubber lip or cheek’ + agentive suffix, reasoning that the name must refer to the bird’s fat and oil content, although the high fat content of larger birds such as the gannet and fulmar would presumably have been more significant. (The word for ‘someone with fat cheeks’ when cited by any of the above lexicographers is either goillear (Armstrong; so Dwelly), goilleir (MacEachen) or goillire (McAlpine; MacLennan).)
Martin’s (ibid., 71–73) list of bird names includes both Scots words: ‘the bird corn craker’ (cf. Scots corn-craik, Eng. corn crake), ‘the colk’ (= Eider-duck) and ‘the rain-goose’ (= red-throated diver), and Scots forms of Gaelic words: ‘the gawlin’ (q.v.), ‘the bonnivochil’ (SG buna-bhuachaill, q.v.), ‘the bird screachan-aittin’ (SG ?sgreuchan-aitinn ‘juniper-screecher’, unidentified) and ‘the bird faskidar’ (SG fasgadair (= skua)). Martin’s goylir is assumed to be a Scots form of SG goillir (SND˄),
Jamieson’s (1808) headword goyler is his own (Scots) rendition of Martin’s goylir.
but SG goillir is Armstrong’s (1825) own Gaelic reconstruction of Martin’s goylir, apparently made on the basis that Martin’s medial <yli> must represent an unlenited patatal lateral /ʟ´/ [ʎ̪] in Gaelic, hence <illi> (while SG goillire is a dialectal variation introduced later by McAlpine (1832)); in the same way, Armstrong’s claim that goillir is a Lewis bird is perseverated throughout the lexicographical record – McAlpine, MacEachen, MacBain, Forbes, MacLennan, Dwelly – whereas Martin’s account is in fact part of his description of North Uist.
However, if we can assume that Martin’s gawlin (recte gowlin, which occurs twice in his contents list) is a Scots form of SG gobhlan (< gobhal ‘fork’ + the nominally diminutive suffix -an), implying Scots /ʌu/ for SG /ɔu/, perhaps we can assume that Martin’s goylir implies Scots /oɪ/ for SG /ɔi/ (/əi/) and that we should perhaps read SG *goibhleir *[ˈɡ̊ɔilɛɾʲ], *[ˈɡ̊əilɛɾʲ], which might also be a derivative of SG gobhal, but with the agentive suffix -eir (-air), with medial palatalisation (cf. SG gobhal ‘fork’, (pl.) goibhlean; sabhal ‘barn’, (pl.) sabhalan, saibhlean; sràbh ‘straw’, (diminutive and singulative) sràibhlean),
Indeed, Jamieson (1808) derives Scots goyler (sic) from SG godhler, gobhler (sic).
and which might refer to the bird’s habit of ‘feeding with its wings held up in a ‘V’ with feet pattering across the waves’ (fn 2, above).
An alternative name for the storm petrel in Gaelic is gur-le-gùg (Dwelly 1911: ‘hatch with song’; Forbes 1905, 320: gur-le-gug), which is probably the folk etymologised equivalent of guile-gùg ‘storm petrel’ (AFB˄: /gulə guːg/), perhaps imitative of the storm petrel’s chattering, purring call (RSPB˄)’, itself probably a variant of the onomatopoeic word gurra-gùg ‘cooing’. (Dwelly, however, associates gur-le-gùg with ‘the kind of cooing uttered during hatching-time by the small sea-fowls called Mother Cary’s chickens [= storm petrels]’.
In summary, while the form SG goillir has been perseverated through a number of lexicographical works, it is Armstrong’s (1825) own interpretation of Martin’s goylir, but Martin’s form seems more likely to be a Scots representation of an otherwise unattested SG *goibhleir *[ˈɡ̊ɔilɛɾʲ], *[ˈɡ̊əilɛɾʲ] in the sense ‘fork-winged bird’, with reference to the particular wing shape of the storm petrel while feeding in flight.