DASG Blog

Èidhearag

Last summer I spent a few days in Uist. While there I had a conversation with a local man and in the course of this he asked me a question about Lewis terminology which, to my shame, I couldn’t answer. He told me that he had once met someone from the West Side of Lewis who told him about an èidhearag. Being myself a native of Brue on the very same side of Lewis, he thought that èidhearag might have been a word with which I was also familiar. When I told him that I wasn’t he informed me that, according to the testimony of my anonymous fellow West Sider, èidhearag was a word for a light breathe of wind, comparable to the more commonly used oiteag.

This exchange occurred in mid-June, a time of year when the many genres of wind we have in the Western Isles aren’t necessarily at the forefront of my mind. However, at this moment – while I’m living beneath a blanket in the midst of a wet and miserable January in Glasgow – it’s a subject which has re-emerged in my thoughts with a newfound poignancy.

DASG’s Corpus returns one reference to èidhearag. This is found on p.118 of Domhnall Iain MacLeòid’s Faclan Ura Gàidhlig. He defines èidhearag as being a ‘light air’ and it is listed alongside 18 other words for varying degrees of breeze, wind, and gale. At the lighter end of this spectrum we have the various oiteagan: an oiteag bheòthail is a fresh breeze, oiteag leth-bheòthail is moderate, while an oiteag shocair is a gentle breeze. At the more fierce end we get a cnap-gaoithe or squall, a làn-ghèile or whole gale, and ultimately doineann or hurricane. My favourite term is ioma-ghaoth for a wind which feels like it’s coming from every possible direction – a concept which my upbringing on Lewis certainly acquainted me with!

An awareness of the wind and weather was of profound importance to Gaelic communities in the Highlands and Islands and this is reflected by the range of terminology and proverbs used to describe each type of weather. In The Campbell Collection of Gaelic Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings, the author Rev. Duncan Campbell writes about “Geaslanachd na Callainn” or “The Divination of New Year’s Eve”. This was the belief that the prevailing direction of the wind on New Year’s Eve would determine its direction for the rest of the year and was captured in the saying “Gaoth na Callainn, gaoth na bliadhna”/“The wind at Hogmanay will be the wind for the rest of the year” (The Campbell Collection of Gaelic Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings, pp.95, 97). Let’s hope, with this in mind, that no-one ever experienced an ioma-ghaoth at New Year.

This does, however, remind us of the necessity with which Gaels had to record and classify the weather. When most of them overwhelmingly drew their livelihoods from the land the slightest change could be the difference between disaster or prosperity. Evidence for this exists in the Lochaber custom of referring to an eastward wind as “Searbhanta Mhic Dhòmhnaill Dhuibh” or “Lochiel’s Servant” as an east wind bode well for rainfall at a harvest time (The Campbell Collection of Gaelic Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings, p.150).

Aside from the land, the oceans were the other sphere in which bad weather could scupper the hopes of Gaels. There are plenty of songs and sayings about the (mis)fortunes of sailors and fishermen as they pursued their work. But we get a hint of a darker period in the history of the Hebrides in the following saying from the MacDonalds of Uist: “A’ ghaoth tuath nimheil, thig ás na Hearadh naimhdell”/“It’s a vicious north wind which blows from hostile Harris.” This refers to a time when a north wind increased the risk of MacLeods from Harris launching an attack on the MacDonalds. Similar to this but with relevance to Gaelic society as a whole is the following from p.253 of Gaelic Proverbs and Familiar Phrases by Alexander Nicolson: “Is fuar gaoth nan coimheach”/“Cold is the wind that brings strangers”. As Mr Nicolson explained in his annotations: “Possibly applied first to the wind that brought Norsemen, afterwards to the coming of Southrons.”

Do you know of any interesting customs or sayings relating to the weather? If so why not send them to us.

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