FORRADH, 154, sly work about food, cooking slyly (eating food on the sly?). If a person came into a house and saw a person at the fireside trying to hide what she was cooking he might ask Dé ’m forradh a th’agad a sin? [What are you slyly cooking there?]
Dwelly defines forradh as “gain, emolument; culling hastily; excrescence; shift.” I wonder if culling hastily is related to Fr Allan’s definition. I hope excrescence isn’t!
It’s been suggested that this could be a development of the word farradh, for which Dwelly says: “Crop raised by a married farmservant for his own use. Strictly speaking, it means the tilling done by the wife, while the husband is attending to the gràithseach, the master’s crop. Occasionally a very active woman might get through more work than her less active husband, in which case, it would be said, is motha am farradh na a’ ghràithseach, the servant’s crop is bigger than the master’s.”