Unfortunately, the origin of the term malarkey, meaning nonsense, is something of a mystery. Some think it originated from the Greek word “malakia” meaning soft. I found these interesting stories, but they are probably a bunch of malarkey!

The Mullarky clan in County Clare in Ireland were wealthy land owners with typical serf-tenants of the era (mid 1800’s). They paid their tenants in “Estate Script” which was paper money that could be spent locally. When the Great Potato Famine hit, the Mullarkys just kept issuing this script even though it rapidly became worthless due to the falling fortunes of the clan. Eventually the script was “just a lot of Mullarky,” said with the same scorn as “Confederate Money” in the USA during the Civil War. Something worthless…ridiculous…too silly to be considered. The phrase was carried to the US by the flood of Irish immigrants during the famine. After the famine eased in Ireland, the phrase died out fairly quickly, except in the US.

Both of these stories are based in New York.

One is the story of a fish seller named Malarkey. The story goes that this fellow would display on salted ice, the nice fresh fish, and when the lady of the house made a purchase, he would bag up a rotten old fish from the underside of the fish cart. Upon reaching her home she would open the package only to discover that evening’s dinner was not fit to eat. And thus was born “a bunch of Malarkey.”

The second story involved a cop named Malarkey walking a beat in Old New York. He apparently was assigned to a rural area, where, frankly not much of anything happened. So this fellow started to file false reports indicating that he had done this or that. Over time the tales of his exploits were exposed as false. Thus leading to the saying, “a bunch of Malarkey”.

Another:

Mullarkey was a leader of one of the many attempts to overthrow the English monarchy. He was a powerful orator and pamphleteer. To denigrate him, the English would refer to his writings and speeches as “that’s a lot of Mullarkey.”

Who knows what the true story is!