Galoshin

English

Etymology

From the name of a play by Guizard, and the title character of that play.

Noun

Galoshin (plural Galoshins)

1. (Scotland) A mummer or guiser who performs in a midwinter Mummers play.
   • 1888, “Hallowmas Eve”, in The Illustrated London News, volume 93, page 498:

     In they stalk, got up in grotesque improvisations of mumming costume, and each armed with a wooden sword, and garrying a ghostly lantern hollowed out of a giant turnip, “Hara domes in Galoshin,” as that individual himself informs the company —being doubtless the traditional representative of some forgotten Templar Knight; and presently he is engaged in a sanguinary hand-to-hand encounter with another wooden-sworded champion upon the floor.

   • 2009, Stephen Miller, “'I HAVE THE PROSPECT OF GOING TO GALLOWAY': THE REV. WALTER GREGOR AND THE ETHNOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM”, in Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society:

     The only exception to this is the full text of a guising, or Galoshin, play from Balmaghie.

   • 2012, E Cass, “The James Madison Carpenter Collection of British Folk Plays”, in Folklore, volume 123, number 1:

     This is especially true of the Galoshins plays where his fixation on numbers and line lengths led him to mistake the nature of the play.

   • 2012, Robert Wyndham Nicholls, The Jumbies’ Playing Ground, →ISBN, page 23:

     Referred to as Daft Days by the Galoshin mummers in Scotland, this was a liminal period when normal conventions were in abeyance and abnormal conduct was permitted.

Anagrams

• Hoaglins, Shaoling, halo sign, shoaling