If the administrator will please excuse me from going off genealogy for one more post I wanted to better explain my reaction to Peter and Valerie's posts. Peter, I accepted your evaluation for where the word "mully" origated and indeed Valerie's addition to that interpretation. What amused me was that the word traveled to the US with our families English immigrants and within a few generations was so completely changed and interpretated by my mother to her meaning. I spelled the word mullygrubbing but in fact due to the dialect used in the area where I was born and grew up the "g" was often dropped from words and it was used as "mollygubbin". Yep! we all speak the same language but come visit us and you won't understand half of what you are hearing of your English language.