Bother

i.e. pother (Hibernian). Halliwell gives us blother, which he says means to chatter idly.

“‘Sir,ʹ cries the umpire, ‘cease your pother,

The creature’s neither one nor tʹother.ʹ”

Lloyd: The Chameleon.

⁂ The Irish bódhar (buaidhirt, trouble), or its cognate verb, to deafen, seems to be the original word.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.