Word of the Week (November 23 - 28) : hag

Word of the Week Nov 23 - 28

hag

Definition according to the Dictionary of Newfoundland English:

hag v Cp HAG n: HAG-RODE. To torment (in a nightmare).C 70-25 If you think or talk badly of someone who is dead, the dead person will hag you. The person hagged will become light headed and will talk in his sleep. The way to get him out is to slap him across the face. C 71-6 As a young girl she got hagged. That night she woke up screaming, she had felt the young man's hands around her throat but she couldn't scream or move.

hag1 n [phonetics unavailable]. Cp OED ~1 1 c obs (1632, 1696) for sense 1; OED hag-ridden 1, EDD hag sb1 2 (4) hag-ride esp Do So D Co for comb in sense 3. See D Hufford, 'A New Approach to the "Old Hag" [Nfld], 'in WAYLAND D HAND American Folk Medicine (1976), pp. 73-45.

1 The nightmare; freq in form old hag. Cp DIDDIES.
1896 J A Folklore ix, 222 A man ... told me he had been ridden to death by an old hag, until a knowledgeable old man advised him to drive nails through a shingle, and lash it to his breast when he went to bed.

[1929] BURKE [6] "No Short Skirts": For her skirts are so tight round the hips, Jennie, / It's no wonder she got the old hag.

1924 ENGLAND 216 A sufferer from nightmare is supposed to be ridden by something called 'the old hag,' and the only way to free him from torment is to call his name backward.

1937 Bk of Nfld i, 230 Nightmare is called by fishermen the 'Old Hag.' T 222-66 Well, by this time it would be bedtime, and perhaps after such an exciting day you would probably have bad dreams; in fact you might have the old hag, or a nightmare. C 69-22 He often gets the hag. Usually he is dreaming that someone is chasing him [or] he may be falling from somewhere. C 70-23 If you sleep on your back you'll have hags.

1975 Evening Telegram 20 Dec, p. 3 Christmas for many has moved beyond the yearly sufferable nightmare to the realm of that particularly exquisite nocturnal terror called, in Newfoundland,'The Old Hag.'

2 Part of inner organs of a lobster, discarded in eating (P 127-73); OLD WOMAN.

3 Comb hag-rode: (a) troubled by nightmare; (b) bewitched (see P 51-67 quot).P 213-55 Hagorid: [afflicted by] a nightmare, especially one in which the victim feels someone sitting on his chest. P 51-67 When he couldn't catch any fish, he said he was hagrode. C 67-10 ~ [Hagrode is when] she awakes in a sweat and feels pinned to the bed by some unseen force.hag1 n DBE ~ 2 for sense 1.

1 [1886] 1910 HOWLEY MS Reminiscences 23 'Oh' said he, 'Cole has got the Old Hag Sir, thats all.' ... He tried to call out but could not, but just as they were giving him the third and last swing [over the cliff] he made one desperate effort to screech.

1985 A Yaffle of Yarns 94 She frequently announced...that she had had the 'old hag' the night before and described the symptoms in great detail.

1985 JOHNSTON 66 The air itself was black and thick and wrapped like arms around me. The hag, to those who have not known her, cannot be described.

3 Comb, cpd ~ rode, ~ wind: a gale at sea.

1981 SPARKES 166 A person having a nightmare was said to be hagrode.

1977 MOAKLER 22 So blew the hag winds till a mauzy dawn/That left the Banks as peaceful as a bawn. P 308-88 'That's no way to call a man when he is egg rod.

Now, we invite you to RELiVE, REMEMBER and REFRESH iT and/or even REDEFiNE iT!

The main thing is to RELiSH iT.

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