Dia dhaoibh,
I'm wondering if anyone might be able to tell me the origin of a word used in the John Spillane song "The Ballad of Patrick Murphy",
https://www.christymoore.com/the-ballad-of-patrick-murphy/. The word is anglicised as "murricaune" and means "water bailiff". Possible Irish spellings could be "murachán", "muireachán", etc but I don't know what would be correct.
I wonder if the etymology is connected either to "muireach" (variant of "muirí", meaning "maritime",
https://www.teanglann.ie/ga/fgb/muireach) or "maor"/"maorach" (meaning "bailiff"/"supervisory" respectively,
https://www.teanglann.ie/ga/fgb/maor,
https://www.teanglann.ie/ga/fgb/maorach)
The word would have been used in the 20th century and probably long before, in the East Cork area. It was possibly specific to Cobh and/or Passage West. I had heard it mentioned in conversation by a man from that area who is no longer with us, and that's why it caught my ear when I heard the song.
While I was looking into this word to see if it existed outside of the song and one elderly man's reminiscences, I found the following interesting but probably irrelevant snippet of text:
https://timeforgeography.co.uk/static/transcripts/281141002%20Sand%20dunes_1/Irish%20ga%20transcript.txt. Here, the word "murachán" is seemingly used to refer to sea-grass. It's probably a complete coincidence, but I found it poetic and amusing how the same word is used to describe a bailiff, literally someone who would grass on you at sea.
Has anyone with expertise on Cork Irish or Hiberno-English slang heard of this word?
GRMA
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
