piggin - From Ulster to America
Source: From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English
Author: Michael Montgomery
Comments: From Ulster to America recounts the lasting impact eighteenth-century settlers from Ulster have made on the development of the English language of the United States. The book documents over 500 vocabulary items contributed to American English by these ‘Scotch-Irish’ settlers. Each ‘shared’ term with its meaning is authenticated by quotations from both sides of the Atlantic. This searchable online version of his book takes its text from the dictionary part of the second edition published by the Ullans Press in 2017.
piggin n A small wooden basin or tub with one stave extending above the rim to serve as a handle, used to carry liquids such as fresh milk. [origin uncertain; oed piggin n ‘a small pail or cylindrical vessel, esp. a wooden one with one stave longer than the rest to serve as a handle; a milking pail; a vessel to drink out of’ 1554→, chiefly dialect; snd piggin n 1789→; dare piggin n 1 ‘a wooden bucket or dipper with one stave extended as a handle’ chiefly New England, South, South Midland]
Ulst.:
1880 Patterson Antrim/Down Glossary 77 = a small wooden vessel, made of hoops and staves, with one stave prolonged so as to form a handle, used for milking in, &c.
1889 Hart Derryreel 5 Some of the cold water, which the woman brought to us in a wooden ‘piggin’, we mixed with sherry from my glass.
1935 Megaw Carragloon 101 He would be as hard to trail off the books as a sow out of a full piggin.
1942 Bangor Words 61 = a wooden basin made of staves, and hooped like a barrel. One stave, much longer than the other, was used as a handle. Used either for milking into, or eating porridge out of.
2014 Fenton Hamely Tongue 176 = a wooden vessel with an extended curved handle, used for ladling, carrying, etc. milk.
U.S.:
1839 (in 1863 Kemble Journal Georgian 52) A very small cedar pail—a piggin, as they termed it.
1927 Mason Lure of Smokies 124 The ‘piggin’, as old as Chaucer himself, was an odd pail, of red cedar usually, with the handle on one side made of an extended stave with a ‘hand holt’ cut in it.
1937 Hall Coll Piggins [were] wooden vessels used in the old days, cedar buckets. Coopers [made] the vessels. Piggins were a half-gallon and one gallon, the outside white and the inside red.
Purchase From Ulster to America
The second, revised edition of Michael Montgomery’s From Ulster to America is now available here:
From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English (Europe)
From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English (North America)
