v1.0
Published 01/10/24
sglumach ?f. For this word, Henderson (1910, 212) gives the senses ‘fledgling of some size; lump of an infant’, deriving it from ON skumr (sic) ‘skua or brown gull’ (cf. Ice. skúmr m. ‘skua, Larus catarractes [= Stercorarius skua]; chatterer, gossip’ (Cleasby 1874)) and comparing intrusive r in SG briosgaid < Eng. biscuit for the ‘introduced l’ (rather cf. Ir. and SG giomach ~ gliomach ‘lobster’). ON skúm acc. would be expected to yield a long vowel in Scottish Gaelic, not the short vowel Henderson’s form implies. McDonald (2009, 407; 2015, 129) equates Henderson’s sglumach with SG sgliùrach f. ‘slut, gossip; a young seagull, until it is one year old, when the term sgàireag, q.v., is used’ (MacBain 1896; 1911), but the differences between these forms argue against their being related.
In addition to the form sgliùrach, MacBain cites HSS’s (1828) SG sgliurach and Ir. sgliurach. The Scottish Gaelic word, however, appears to have a long stressed vowel consistently: although Shaw (1780) and Forbes (1905, 36, 281–82) give sgliurach, they ignore lengthmarks throughout, and, although HSS lists sgliurach and the abstract noun sgliurachd (sic) without lengthmarks, it gives the source of the latter in brackets as sgliùrach, with a lengthmark. A long vowel is indicated by McAlpine (1832: sgliurach [sklėūr´-ach]), Dwelly (1911: sgliùrach), Garvie (1999, 62: sgliùrach) and AFB˄ (sgliùrach /sgluːrəx/); Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄ records sgliùrach for Lewis, Barra, Skye, Islay and North Argyll ([ˈsklu̟:rəx]), and lists sgliùrach and sgliurach separately for both Harris and South Uist, the latter presumably in error. Meek (in Campbell 1978, 101) notes the variant sgliùbraich (dat.), with intrusive b, in the proverbial saying guth na faoileig aig an sgliùbraich ‘the young gull has the old gull’s voice’, cf. guth na faoileig aig an sgàraig with the same meaning (McDonald 1972, s.v. sgàireag).
As for Ir. sgliurach, MacBain appears to draw from O’Reilly’s Irish dictionary (1817 and 1864: ‘a slut, slattern, a bad woman’), who in turn appears to draw from Shaw’s Scottish Gaelic dictionary (ibid.: ‘a slut, bad woman, slattern’); Dinneen’s Irish dictionary (1904: scliurach ‘a slattern, a slut, a gossip’) appears to draw from HSS’s Scottish Gaelic dictionary (ibid.: ‘a slut, a slattern; a gossip; a whore; a young gull’), but the word does not appear to be listed in either Lhuyd’s (1707) or O’Brien’s (1768; 1832) Irish dictionaries, and is omitted from Ó Dónaill’s (1977) Irish dictionary. Consequently, Ir. sgliurach (scliurach) is probably a ghost word.
The senses of SG sgliùrach include (in paraphrase) 1. ‘a slovenly; gossipy; noisy; promiscious female’; 2. ‘a clumsy; unpleasant person’; 3. ‘a juvenile; immature gull or crow’; 4. ‘fish rejected due to its poor quality’; 5. ‘a shower of rain’.
The aspect ‘slovenly’ appears first in Shaw 1780; ‘gossipy’, ‘promiscuous’ and ‘juvenile gull’ in HSS 1828; ‘noisy’ and ‘unpleasant’ in Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄; ‘poor quality fish’ and ‘rain shower’ in AFB˄. Note that SG sgàireag ‘juvenile gull’, q.v., also occurs in the sense ‘shower of rain’ (Dwelly 1911).
At least some of these senses conceivably go back to EScots *skrile vb ‘to scream, shriek, wail’ (> MScots and Scots skirl, via metathesis), from early MEng. scrille, itself of Scandinavian origin, cf. Norw. skryla vb ‘(of a child) to wail’ and skrella vb ‘to shriek with laughter’ (DOST˄, s.v. skirl); other (effectively extended) senses may have evolved as terms of abuse. EScots *skrile might yield early SG *sgriùl- (possibly with a long vowel through onomatopoeia), which might yield sgliùr-, via metathesis, and sgliùrach ‘screecher’ with the addition of the Gaelic agent suffix -ach. The senses of Scots skirl vb include ‘to make a shrill piercing sound, scream, shriek; (of birds) to scream, screech; (of the wind) to blow with a shrill noise’, and of Scots skirl sb ‘a shrill piercing noise, scream, screech; shrill talk; the loud cry, wail or whistle of a bird; the high-pitched shriek or whistle of a strong wind, esp. when accompaned by hail or snow
Cf. skirl ‘a blast of wind accompanied by rain or snow’ (Marwick 1929, s.v. skirler).
’ (SND˄).
Henderson’s otherwise unattested form sglumach is probably a ghost word and may have arisen from a misreading or miscopying of sgliùrach.