Daniel Cassidy: There’s a Sách úr Born Every Minute (Terence Winch)

 

Most readers of these posts share a common tool: the English language, which, as the authors of The Story of English (companion to the PBS series) wrote in 1986, “…has become the language of the planet, the first truly global language,” spoken by a billion or so people. They will also tell you that “the English language has been indifferent to the Celts and their influence.” In Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, Bill Bryson echoes this well-worn notion: “The Irish came in their millions, but gave us only a handful of words, notably smithereens, lollapalooza, speakeasy, hooligan (from Gaelic uallacháa braggart), and slew….” H.L. Mencken, in The American Language, credited the Irish with a minimal contribution to English: “Perhaps speakeasy, shillelah and smithereens exhaust the list.” Besides these examples, the one word that I remember long ago being told came from the Irish is galore. So it looked like a pretty settled matter that the Irish didn’t offer much to the English language.

Then along came musician, journalist, and scholar Daniel Cassidy. In 2007 he published How the Irish Invented Slang and set off a donnybrook with his claim that hundreds of slang words in English come directly from the Irish language. About three-quarters of his book is made up of a word list, with common slang words paired with the Irish words he says they come from. So dude is shown to come from the Irish dúd (pron. dood) and meaning “a foolish-looking fellow.” And those “dogies” in the cowboy song “Git Along Little Dogies” that weren’t dogs? Mystery solved: do-thóigthe (pron. dohóg’ə) is “a sickly, hard-to-feed calf.” It’s a startling thesis, and one I found compelling and convincing, and not simply out of ethnic pride. The New York Times ran a piece on Cassidy and his book, and the Irish-American community embraced him warmly.

But a cold shoulder awaited him among some linguists and etymologists who found him lacking in scholarly rigor and authority. Grant Barrett, in particular, presented the most convincing attacks on Cassidy’s work. The debate continues, with some scholars clearly threatened by an amateur barging into their domain with a promising new insight that none of the experts had ever noticed. (After I first posted an earlier version of this piece years ago, I was assailed by a captious online troll from Belfast, I think, calling himself something like “the Cassidy Debunker,” who seemed outraged at the very thought that the Irish language might have influenced English slang. Not brave enough, however, to put his name behind his outrage.) The essence of the argument presented by the anti-Cassidy forces is that connections like the kind he makes between Irish and English words require more extensive research to determine if these relationships are genuine or merely coincidental. Can one find a record in print and elsewhere of these words morphing from Irish into English? These are legitimate criticisms, and I’m sure some of Cassidy’s examples are simply wrong. But that is not to say that his primary finding—that some Irish words transformed over time into English slang words—is incorrect, just that it is thus far unproven. It seems to me, however, that Cassidy has presented a wonderful opening for trained scholars to explore, if they could get over their anger at being scooped (from scuab, to snatch away) by an outsider.

Insights like Cassidy’s are creative breakthroughs whose logical structures are filled in later. Earlier, in this space, I discussed “eureka moments” and “tacit knowledge” in my post on Elizabeth Sewell. Cassidy’s book, I believe, represents one of those eureka moments---he leaps over conventional wisdom and received knowledge, opening up new possibilities, a new understanding. Daniel Cassidy, whom I did not know, led an eclectic and interesting life. He died at age 65, not too long after his fascinating book appeared. 

Meanwhile, not long after I first encountered Cassidy’s book, I read John McWhorter’s Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English. Menckenlike, he announces that “there are, essentially, no words in English that trace to Celtic.” Ironically, though, one of the primary arguments of his book is that the very infrastructure of English is founded on Celtic influences: English is “. . .a structurally hybrid tongue, whose speakers today use Celtic-derived constructions almost every time they open their mouths....”   Baloney (from béal ónna, meaning “silly loquacity”) galore? You be the judge.

An earlier version of this post appeared on the Best American Poetry blog on July 7, 2009.

©Terence Winch  
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