So while proceeding through my diurnal perusal of the plays of Shakespeare I have started to open the tome at random and see what I can find.

Todays’ happy chance brought me to King Henry V Act 4, Scene 4 where my eye was caught by some French text.
The scene takes place (I think ) on the battlefield at Agincourt where Pistol [who was a bit of a reprobate in Henry IV (part 1) ] meets a French soldier who pleads with Pistol for his life.

Pistol . Yield cur !

French Soldier. Je pense que vous etes le gentilhomme de bonne qualité.

Pistol. Qualtitie ! Calen o custure me ! Art thou a gentleman ? What is thy name ? Discuss

And there it is ! The Waterford connection. !

Pistol, like a lot of people when confronted with a language they do not understand decides to talk some foreign mumbo jumbo at the stranger.
(In Cork, in my youth we used to say Pic de Jer (a park in Ballinlough ) or Bon Secours (a hospital on College Road ) in similar circumstances.)

Calen o custure me was the name of a song popular in the English court in pre- Shakespearean times, most commentators of Shakespeare had assumed that it was somehow derived from the Italian.
It was Professor Brian Boydell who discovered that it in fact came from a folk song , popular indeed in the English Court , but which came originally from the Sunny South East of Ireland.
What Pistol was saying was in fact

Cailín óg cois tSuire mé which translates as ;
I am a young girl from the side of the Suir .
(The Suir being the river which flows through Waterford )

The Consort of St. Sepulchre , a marvellous group who played music from the time of Shakespeare and one of who’s members was Barra Boydell (son of the Prof.) used to perform this song and it is from the sleeve notes of one of their LP’s that I originally got this information.