Nailed: the salty answer to a ticklish problem

think it is rhyming slang for ''tail'', itself a quaint wee word for

''skirt'' and oft used by hard-boiled American private dick, (sic),

novelists.

My respondent of last week, Alan Mitchell of Elderslie, (and the most

famous son of which village was whom?) has taken me to task over my

dismissal of his enclosed wee dod of brass metal. He claims a brass nail

is unknown to joiners and refers instead to a brass screw. A screw is .

. . never mind. I haven't a scooby what that is myself these days.

But gloriously we seem to be near a true origin of the term, from rig

worker and an old chum, Stevie McVeigh. He offers a grand definition

altogether of the beginnings of this insult to Glasgow's houris of the

night. At one time loose ladies were permitted to go on board ships to

have their evil ways with Nelson's salty old tars.

They were wont to bed down with the mariners at the only spot on the

decks where any kind of quiet intimacy could be found. This was

underneath the gun emplacements where the decks were bolted down with

brass nails. Thus the weemenfolk were ''brass nails'' and very

uncomfortable for all it must have been. A progeny of these courtesans

of the poop deck was, incidentally, known as a ''son of a gun''. There

you are now.

GEORDIE as the generic name for a chap from Newcastle was harder to

track down. My only explanation so far is that lots of Scots in the

eighteenth century were traders in the North-east of England, and

settled down there.

During the '45 and the tragic aftermath Scots in England were held

horribly suspect so the Tyneside Scots took to claiming when down south

that they were ''for Geordie'', (meaning that shilpit descendant of the

wee German lairdie), who foiled our own bonnie prince. Thereafter such

carpet-bagging apostates were known as ''Geordies''. Can you do any

better? I doubt it.

And here's a stoatir I was asked by reader Shug Steele, who also

provided, the blackguard, the answer. Why are non-Hispanics called

''Gringos''? I knew this and surely it is too good not to be true.

During the siege of the Alamo in which Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and

John Wayne sacrificed their all against the Mexican hordes, the

Americans sang all day and night to show defiance. The song they chanted

over and over was ''Green Grow the Rushes O''. Get it? ''Green-go''. You

believe that? Even the American-Hispanic Dictionary states that the term

is ''uncertain'' a concurrence made by the Oxford.

However, an expert tells me the word derives from the Spanish

''Griego'' meaning someone who doesn't know what he is talking about.

Shug also wanted to know what pan is, as in ''knocking my pan in''. I

am pretty sure this is something to do with gold miners who worked at

their pan all day to little result. But then, why is a street beggar

known as a ''panhandler''. Is there a relationship.

BUT to readers answers. The following queries have elicited the

following answers:

Back to square one -- Back in the days before television, football

commentators would place the action on the pitch by referring by use of

a number, to the locus of the play to a grid, with corresponding

numbers, primed in the Radio Times. So ''shot the ball front square two

to square three where it was booted into square five and then it was

sent back to square four''. In no sense was square one indicative of

''back to the start''. Just another example of erroneous conclusions'',

concludes Dr E.B. Cowan of Eaglesham Road, Glasgow.

A reader of 40 years from Newlands, wants to know why the English have

''public '' schools, when they are the exact opposite. A skoosh this

one. Prior to the end of the eighteenth century and especially at the

beginning of the nineteenth, the children of the aristos were educated,

if at all, at home, i.e. privately. The rise of actual schools meant

that the boys were educated with other children, that is, publicly.

Scotland has exactly the opposite nomenclature and regards what the

English call public schools as private ones.

Moth to a candle: (as mused by myself last week). Reader Shona Blake

of Kelso writes: ''I think the best theory is that, rather than being

attracted to the light, the moth is disorientated by it. Under natural

conditions -- before we came on the scene with our artificial light

sources -- a moth would steer a straight course by keeping the moon in a

constant position in its field of view. When the ''moon'' turns out to

be a candle or lightbulb the familiar disastrous consequences ensue.''

Shona concludes by stating that the moth gets singed because it is

trying to fly in a straight line. Thank you Ms Blake. But not for your

further query -- given that the phases of the moon are due to the shadow

of the earth passing across it, how come, when the moon is gibbous and

seven-eighths full, the edge of the earth's shadow is concave?

Shona wants to know if it is an optical illusion and, if so, how it

comes about. I want to know how she thought it up.

Reader Shug from Govanhill again wants an answer as to why New York

streets have grilles with steam pouring out of them. Any answers?

Answers and enquiries to myself, care of the blatt. And a few more

questions. ''What and why is 'Beyond the Pale'? I know this but shall be

interested in all the inaccuracies which shall pour in.

Or how about this one from reader Harry Mackenzie? Why in rugby is a

try called that? After all, he has plainly succeeded. Dammit, he also

wants to know why there isn't a King Bee. There is, at least in a famous

R&B song, sung by a chap whose name I forget. Can I be answered on this

one. Oh, and still, why are the Pars so called? And why ''on

Tenterhooks''. This feature, within a week, is driving me daft.