Pig of a poser, this one...

"Gis" as in "fower taties more than a gis" or - by way of a little elucidation - "as sick as a gissie pig."

It appears to be an entirely North-Eastern term, barely even to have breached Darlington, and the Oxford English Dictionary - the 20 volume version upon which from time to time we fall in desperation - has no truck with it.

Gis, says the Oxford, is merely a "mincing pronunciation" of Jesus, as in Hamlet: "By Gis and by sweet charity, alack and fie for shame."

Larn Yersel' Geordie embraces it, of course - "Gissies, tetties and bagies: I wish to order pork, potatoes and a little turnip, please" - but without etymological exploration.

Like moo-cow and baa-lamb, it might just be onomatopoeic, but whoever heard of a prize porker going round saying "Gis"? A gis, it will have been gathered, is a swine: perhaps someone else can relieve the collective pig ignorance.

* "Cuddy", incidentally, means a small horse in both Ashington and Australia, though elsewhere it's a song thrush, a moor hen and the young of a coal fish.

Like gis, the Oxford English ignores cuddywifter entirely - another case, perhaps, of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

PERHAPS in anticipation of the first part of today's Gadfly, a note and a poem arrive from Mr H C Devonshire in Darlington. "For many years I have read the interesting columns written by yourself and your good lady, but despite that I have remained normal, apart from one minor eccentricity," it begins.

His minor eccentricity, water on the brain, is the historic Tees Cottage Pumping Station on Darlington's western skirts. The poem - "in the style of Beowulf and Noggin the Nog" - is best read aloud, he says, though not with other people around.

Space only allows the first verse: the complete works happily on request, or doubtless at the Tees Cottage open days on Easter Sunday and Monday.

Listen,

And I will tell you the Saga,

Of the Tees Cottage Station, and how the Peases,

The Peases of Mowden, met up with the others,

Their friends and relations, as many relations

As Pooh and friend Rabbit, and all of the others.

As it was told, in days of old

By the men of Darlington, as they sat by their braziers,

Counting their strike pay and eating their Stotties...

YOUNGER readers and those of an impoverished upbringing may have been puzzled by the reference to Noggin the Nog (pictured below). They missed a treat.

The Sagas of Noggin the Nog, not to be confused with The Northern Echo's fabled Nig-Nog Club, was a television series written and produced by Oliver Postgate - who'd spent time in Wandsworth jail during the war after declaring himself a conscientious objector - and first screened between 1959-65.

"In the lands of the North," it always began - as well might Mr H C Devonshire - "where the Black Rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long, the men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale..."

The tale concerned Olaf the Lofty and Graculus the Great Green Bird, Groliffe the dragon, Thornogson and the king under the hill.

Most of all, once impressionable readers may remember Nogbad the Bad - "the vilest of all wicked uncles".

Oliver Postgate, of course, also wrote The Clangers, Bagpuss (who gained an honorary degree from the University of Kent) and Ivor the Engine. Ten bonus points, answer at the foot of the column, for the name of the dragon in Ivor.

OWN goal corner: Susan Jaleel in Darlington merely underlines our aberrant apostrophes - the paper still has terrible trouble with them - whilst Peter Murphy in Evenwood draws attention to an "Entertainment" piece in Monday's paper in which we reported that Geordie rock star John Miles was for ten years musical director to Tuna Turner. "I always knew," says Peter, "that there was something fishy about these pop stars."

WITHOUT totally losing them, recent columns have been reminiscing about marbles and the game's now dusty rules.

Bert Draycott from Fishburn, the World Spoons Playing Champion, remembers "nuggs up" and "nuggs down" and either way near the knuckle.

"If you shouted 'nuggs up' first, you could rest your shooting hand on your other fist to get a better shot, especially when playing ponky out the ring," says Bert.

Mr J A Boyle from Bishop Auckland recalls the term tunts. "To tunt was to infringe one of the rules, which unfortunately I don't remember too clearly."

Paul Dobson, also in Bishop, remembers the rules very well, even admits to being considered something of a marbles hustler in his youth - which may explain the big tin of alleys still at home.

In his Durham school days they were known as muggles, the glass alley game revolved around "nowts" (a safety shot) and "everys" and juvenile side bets were paid solemnly, sometimes fractiously, in marbles.

Though Bert Draycott supposes that the game hasn't been played for 30 years up here, BBC news had something about "modern marbles" on Sunday teatime. The column, unfortunately, was still sleeping off lunch at the time.

NONE of the surviving Durham miners appears to have been invited to play marbles with the celebrated socialite Lady Docker (Gadfly, January 22), but it gives Peter Hale in Scorton, near Richmond, a chance to reprise the old joke about her ladyship's gold plated Rolls.

"Did you hear that one of the windscreen wipers fell off?"

"Yes, but he wasn't hurt a bit."

LATE NEWS: 1st Lt John Briggs signals headquarters with an 1890 account of unrest over miners' evictions at Silksworth, Sunderland.

"When bailiffs arrived to clear the houses they were escorted by police and women lined the road hissing 'Gissie'."

Perhaps innocently, the website upon which he found it wonders if "gissie" is still in use anywhere to mean "police".

Isn't it much more likely that the unfortunate modern term "Pigs" owes everything to the dispossessed women of Silksworth?

More of gis and that next week.

Published: 29/01/2003