Team Gowlbags write:
We’re Gowlbags. We’re a teeny, weedy new start-up company selling tees, bags, mugs and other bits & bobs with a Limerick/Munster theme. You’re readers might get a giggle out of our gear….
‘Haunty Beoure’, anyone?
Irish-made stuff to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie marked ‘irish-Made Stuff’. No fee
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Limerick words like “Gowl” and “Yurt” have improved my life and wellbeing no end.
Good luck to you.
Where are the tackies?
Is ‘gowl’ to Limerick/Munster what ‘gee’ is to Dublin? Real question…
i recall a poem ‘from gee to gowl and back again’. I can’t remember the poet – he used to open for toasted heretic in the baggot inn. kevin something, I think.
Its original source is probably “gall”, as in Dun na nGall (Donegal) which means foreigner or dark skinned. but, yes, over the years it has come to mean female bits , but in personified sense. “You are a gowl”, but rarely “may I see your gowl, please”
how then would “that’s a nice-looking gowl, may I please touch it?” work?
Helps if you’ve been introduced first, I always find.
just reading now on the internet (which I have access to) – says it’s slang for vagina alright, coming from the Irish word gabhal, which means ‘junction’
I stand corrected!
The origin to the best of my knowledge comes from Gabhal which means junction and does indeed refer to a lady garden.
Was going to ask that myself as I’m nearly sure I’ve heard Mayo people (Achill Island and Gweesalia) use gowl as a vernacular for the vajayjay i.e Yer man was going crazy to Riverdance and accidently kicked Sharon in the gowl (strange wedding).
It is. And it might even be stronger. Back in the 90s I called a lady of my acquaintance a gowl and there were shocked looks. I honestly thought at the time that was somewhat akin to ‘eejit’ but no. No it wasn’t. Apparently close to C word territory, though i suspect its impact isn’t as strong now…
gowl was a staple of our lexicon growing up in East Wall in the eighties…. never used it for ladyparts as i recall , always used in the sense of something bad…. “that harp lager is gowl”
Same for Finglas.
like “that Finglas is gowl”?
“there’s some right gowl gowl around finglas”
Reader, I married her.
My granda had loads of expressions like that, usually used as replies as to what was for dinner – bullocks banjos, cows rowdies, cats menackie and gougers gowl being some of my faves.
Céard é An Gabhal Luimneach mar sin ??