[From Manx Dialect, 1934]

L

Lady o' London is a dialect name for the plant London Pride, a saxifrage.

Lap. 1. Wet mud; a marshy or oozy spot. Brown, page 450, speaks of a stream spreading " in a bit of a bed, or a lap." ' Caasey Slappad ' (sic for Kessah Slappagh) in Bradda West is or was a place of this description ; the ' S ' is prosthetic. In the Lothians a ' lap ' is a " plash, pool, place where water stands " (E.D.D.). Sc. Gaeliclapach; English' slop.'

2. A wrapping of soft material. " Are ye plentiful in pins, Miss Geargie ? Them laps for me head is tore " (Cushag, " Kate Cowle ").

Lawlums. " Didn't lil David put the lawlums on him ? "---Goliath (A. LaMothe's MSS.). Mr. J. J. Kneen explains ' lawlums ' as the Manx lame-lhomeys, literally ' hand-bareness.' Lhome, it may be added, has, besides its literal sense of ' bare,' an intensifying force, as in lhome - leigh, 'the rigour of the law.' ' Lawlums,' then, is equivalent to ' the strong hand,' physical mastery.

Learn, teach. " Those charmers were not willing to learn them to others. The father learns them to the son, and the mother to the daughter, so the family possess them as heirship " (Roeder, Lioar Manninagh, iii, 170). " I'll Yarn ye to back-answer me, me lad."

Leave, cease, desist from, with present participle as object. " Give over now, an' lave desthroyin' the jackad on me " (Cushag, UylecnaYaine, page g). " If ye don't Pave hittin' Jimmy I'll skin ye alive ! "

Lek. See " Like."

Lhag. Of a person, inert, sluggish. " It's a wonder if thou won't be lhag, crammin' an' fillin' thyself up that way " (Gaelk, " The Taffy Spree "). Of an object, slack, flabby. A rope that should be taut, or a mollag (bladder) that should be blown hard, may be ' too lhag.' Manx.

Lheie, a fishing-spot at sea. " A good lheie for carp " (bream), for instance. " The bows is at the cheihs [read ' lheies where the fish is often plentiful." (V.A.D., " Bow.") ' Bows,' sunken rocks. ' Lheie ' enters into place-names, as in ' Lheie Cregeen Mooar,' Big Cregeen's Fishing-place, on the coast of Rushen. Manx.

Lhiannags, husks of corn, dëbris of threshing. When the threshing-mill is at work, the air, the ground, and the napes of necks, are full of lhiannags. Manx lhiannag, a flake, pod, with English plural.

Lhierrym, the port quarter of a boat, also the thwart and oar at that point. The term is still in common use. Manx.

Lidgate (obsolete). The N.E.D. defines ' Lidgate ' as " a swing gate or gate set up between meadow or pasture and ploughed land, or across the highway, to prevent cattle from straying." This was probably the meaning of the word in Man, but attempts at defining it in the Statute Laws leave room to suppose that it may at one period have been applied to a gated road, or loosely to either a road or a gate. " Whosoever kaepeth any Lidgates, being Highways to the Forest, to draw their Turff and Ling, and to drive their Geodes to the Commons, that such Persons as use that said Way shall pay to him that keeps the said Gates an Ob. at the end of every seven Yeares ; and if that it be betwixt Neighbours, they to make it among them " (Customary Statutes, 1577). ' Ob.' for obolus, a halfpenny. " You shall enquire if there be any Manner of Person or Persons that leave their Fell Ditch or Lidgates open, and going unto the Forrest or Lidgate open unto the Lowlands, which may be hurtful unto their Neighbour " (Charge to the Great Enquest, c. 1577). ' Fell Ditch ' is the fell-dyke, the sod hedge limiting the mountain commons. The passage through this was usually called the fell-gate, with which ' lidgate ' does not appear to be synonymous in at least the prior of these extracts. ' Lidgate ' as a ' gate-road ' or thoroughfare through a gateway could be derived from the Old Norse hlid, a gate, and gdta, a road, the latter of which is common in Manx place-names.

In the earliest appearance of the word (1510, Manorial Roll), a Santon man was fined fourpence for failing to make a Lydegate on his land of Knockaloughan.

Like (as ' lek ') is sometimes inserted between a transitive verb and its object, with a qualifying effect on the object, in such constructions as " they seen lek a lil (little) white dog run into the house ; " " the wind was knockin' lek a singin' noise out of the stones." See also " Kyne " above.

Limited. ' The Limited ' is the public's pet name for the Isle of Man Bank, Ltd. (founded 1865), the first bank in the Island to have a limited liability, hence the name. " There are a few hundreds in the Limited, and that must go to my son " (Shimmin, Illiam Kodhere's Will, page ig).

Limmer, a trench or ditch containing water. I have heard this word in Andreas only. It seems to be a sea-term adapted (or perhaps restored) to use on land, for Cregeen defines it as " the passage for water under the floorings of a boat "-ix., the bilge.

Limpy-Letty, a scornful epithet in phrases such as " he's goin' hoppin' lek Limpy Letty." " Theer'll be some fun theer, I'll go bail, even in these poor limpyletty days. Nawthin' like the oul' times thoh, naw thin' ! " (Quarrie, " Tittle-whack "). The eponymous Letty has disappeared from history, but presumably she was lame ; Brown speaks of " a limpy gull to work the snails." In Somerset ' limpy ' is used for ' weak, sickly.'

Lines, fishing-lines ; line-fishing as distinguished from net-fishing in deeper water. " Bein' in two minds Would I stick altogether to the lines, And give up the sea " (Brown 436).

Lingo, which is common in colloquial English in such expressions as ' foreign lingo,' ' speak their lingo,' is used by Brown, page 200, without qualification, for unintelligible language. " I've got the book he was l'arnin' from . . . of course its lingo to me, But George'd be puttin' it out quite free."

List, a row or series of inanimate objects. " There's somethin' takin' on the Garth road, where there's a long list of trees." " There used to be a list of dubs and loghans all the way to Ballaugh."

Loaf-bread is wheaten bread, in distinction from ' flour-bread ' or flour-cake (arran flooyr), barley-bread (arran oarn), oat-bread (arran corker), and other good home-made stuff baked on the ' losh ' or baking-stone. " I'm not carin' for flour bread ; I'm tastin' the soda.

Now loaf bread is different " (Shirnmin, Luss ray Graih, page 5).

Loblolly-boy is an odd-job man or boy, a general factotum ashore or afloat. " In harvis' the storker was lob-lolly-bhoy-He watered the cows and cut the flitches, Drove pigs to the stubble," and so on for half-a-dozen lines (Ouarrie, " The Melliah "). ' Storker ' (q.v.), cowman. ' Loblolly ' is sloppy food, such as thin gruel, milk puddings, pinjane, and the like. ' Loblolly-boy ' is defined as a surgeon's assistant in English dictionaries.

Lock. A lock of hay or straw is a small portion, a large handful, taken from the stack. " Sthoo the cow, Jim, she's raggin' great locks out of the stack." ' Sthoo,' drive off.

Loghan, Loghan or Loughan, according to taste ' The Loghan ' is a name among sailors and fishermen for the Irish Sea. Manx for lakelet, pool. ' The Dub ' (q.v.) is another by-name for the same piece of water.

Lon. ' The Lon ' is a ' sign ' in the throat of a man or woman when on the point of death. See A Manx Scrapbook, page 410. I do not know its exact nature, but the word may be meant for the Manx lionn, bodily humours and their effects.

Loose-fish are any casual fish of other species caught along with herring. " Anything picked up at say, such as . . . loose fish " (V.A.D., " Scran ").

Losh, a blow with the fist. If the second of two reapers finished his portion of the 'butt' before the leader he was said to have given a ' losh ' to the other. (See V.A.D., " Furriman "-from Kelly.) Manx the same.

Lout, to loaf, loiter. " But yandha fellas tha'll go about From dub to club, an' lout an' linger, An' maybe land a birrov a trout" (Juan .Noa, Manx Yarns, page z3).

Lowallagh, allowable, permitted; permissive, tolerant. " Right lowallagh for a yarn " was the young lady from the North in " The Ranther's Goose."

'Lows (' allows'), shares, portions, as of money or goods divided among legatees. I have heard this in Andreas only. " They were all gettin' 'lows, as we call it, under the will. 'Lows, that's different shares." Lucky Proach. This appears to be a Manx dialect name for the fish cothss bubalis (see Transactions of I. of M.N.H. and Antiqn. Soc., i, 5g). 1 give it for what it may be worth.

Lutchynagh, a clumsy fellow, a booby. "Some lutchyuagh [read ' lutchynagh '] when his lump of taffy got too hot, Would drop it on the flure, cryin' out, 'Oh, wheer has it got ? ' " (Gaelk, " The Taffy Spree," Examiner cutting, 19o8). Manx.

Lutthered, mauled, messed about. " All lutther'd, two to wan, In some school fight " (Quarrie, " Old Times "). Manx lhuddyrit, mangled, dirtied.

Lyena. " How many are still living who have cut corn with the sickle before the day of the reaper? Does anyone know what the lyena is like ? It would be intensely interesting to hear of or from such a man " (Quarrie, " The First Reaping Machine ").

I have a dim memory of hearing a word like this used in connexion with scythe-mowing about thirty years ago, with the meaning of a stiffness or crick in the side ; but I should prefer to spell it something like ' lhieeney.' If this is what Quarrie had in mind in rgig-yes, I " know what the lyena is like."