Once upon a time, and not so long ago either, you could hear the old women of Wexford's towns speak of their whittles. A whittle was a cape, a mantel, a shawl; the word means literally, "a white mantel".

The word was also found in many of the dialects of England. Captain Grose, in his account of Hampshire in 1790 described the garment as "a three-cornered shawl with fringes along the border, worn by woman of the lower classes and generally red or white - chiefly made of worsted. A Devonshire correspondent told the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) that a whittle was the wrapper in which a child is carried to the christening.

The EDD also glosses whittle as "a baby's flannel; a baby's woollen napkin; a flannel peticoat". Horae Subsecivae, written in 1777, defines swaddling clothes as "whittles and clouts". The venerable scholarly journal Notes and Queries of 1854 has the word, and the EDD gives this from west Somerset: "The regular name for a baby's long flannel petticoat. It is made with the front open, and tied with tapes. The whittle is left off when the baby is 'tucked up'."

In south-east Wexford in the old days, a whittle was a covering for a bed; a sheet. Hence in the baronies of Forth and Bargy came their word for a winnowing sheet: mucha whittle.

The origin of this word, no longer heard in Co Wexford as far as I know, is the Old English hwítel, a cloak; a blanket.

Whittle has another meaning: a whitlow, a hangnail. From Scotland's Fife, Melvill in his Autobiography of 161O has: "We feill mair a whittell in our fingar nor the helthe of the haill body." The Ulsterman, McIlroy, in Druid's Island (1902), wrote: "McCrone suffered for a whole winter from a whuttle in one of his thumbs." From Donegal, Pearson's Magazine of July 1900 has: "His hand tuk bad with the whittle." From Yorkshire in 1850, "Tom Treddlehoyle", in The Bairnsla Annual, says: "Av hed t'wittle in me reight hand thumb."

Whittled, meaning fluthered, very intoxicated, is found in England's North Country and in Lancashire. In parts of Scotland a whittle was a large knife, such as is used by butchers; a carving knife. The EDD has this interesting item from Cumberland: "Formerly clergymen and schoolmasters had the privilege of using their their whittles or knives at the tables of their parishioners, at known and stated intervals, by way of helping out their scanty stipends." How times have changed.

*wordsweuse@irishtimes.com