English As We Speak It in Ireland Part 15

A person readily finds a lost article when it is missed, and is suspected to have hidden it himself:--'What the Pooka writes he can read.' (Munster.)

A man is making no improvement in his character or circ.u.mstances but rather the reverse as he advances in life:--'A year older and a year worse.'

'A shut mouth catches no flies.' Much the same as the English 'Speech is silvern, silence is golden.'

To the same effect is 'Hear and see and say nothing.'

A fool and his money are easily parted.

Oh I see you expect that Jack (a false friend) will stand at your back.

Yes, indeed, 'he'll stand at your back while your nose is breaking.'

'You wouldn't do that to your match' as Mick Sheedy said to the fox. Mick Sheedy the gamekeeper had a hut in the woods where he often took {118} shelter and rested and smoked. One day when he had arrived at the doorway he saw a fox sitting at the little fire warming himself. Mick instantly spread himself out in the doorway to prevent escape. And so they continued to look at each other. At last Reynard, perceiving that some master-stroke was necessary, took up in his mouth one of a fine pair of shoes that were lying in a corner, brought it over, and deliberately placed it on the top of the fire. We know the rest! (Limerick.)

'There's a hole in the house'; meant to convey that there is a tell-tale listening. (Meath.)

We are inclined to magnify distant or only half known things: 'Cows far off have long horns.'

'He'll make Dungarvan shake': meaning he will do great things, cut a great figure. Now generally said in ridicule. (Munster.)

A man is told something extraordinary:--'That takes the coal off my pipe'; i.e. it surpa.s.ses all I have seen or heard.

A man fails to obtain something he was looking after--a house or a farm to rent--a cow to buy--a girl he wished to marry, &c.--and consoles himself by reflecting or saying:--'There's as good fish in the _say_ as ever was caught.'

Well, you were at the dance yesterday--who were there? Oh 'all the world and Garrett Reilly' were there. (Wicklow and Waterford.)

When a fellow puts on empty airs of great consequence, you say to him, 'Why you're _as grand as Mat Flanagan with the cat_': always said contemptuously. Mat Flanagan went to London one time. After two years he came home on a visit; but he was {119} now transformed into such a ma.s.s of grandeur that he did not recognise any of the old surroundings. He didn't know what the old cat was. 'Hallo, mother,' said he with a lofty air and a killing c.o.c.kney accent, 'What's yon long-tailed fellow in yon _cawner_?'

A person reproaching another for something wrong says:--'The back of my hand to you,' as much as to say 'I refuse to shake hands with you.'

To a person hesitating to enter on a doubtful enterprise which looks fairly hopeful, another says:--Go on Jack, try your fortune: 'faint heart never won fair lady.'

A person who is about to make a third and determined attempt at anything exclaims (in a.s.sonantal rhyme):--

'First and second go alike: The third throw takes the bite.'

I express myself confident of outwitting or circ.u.mventing a certain man who is notoriously cautious and wide-awake, and the listener says to me:--'Oh, what a chance you have--_catch a weasel asleep_' (general).

In connexion with this may be given another proverb: of a notoriously wide-awake cautious man, it is said:--'He sleeps a hare's sleep--with one eye open.' For it was said one time that weasels were in the habit of sucking the blood of hares in their sleep; and as weasels had much increased, the hares took to the plan of sleeping with one eye at a time; 'and when that's rested and _slep_ enough, they open it and shut the other.' (From 'The Building of Mourne,' by Dr. Robert Dwyer Joyce.) {120}

This last perpetuates a legend as old as our literature. In one of the ancient Irish cla.s.sical tales, the story is told of a young lady so beautiful that all the young chiefs of the territory were in love with her and laying plans to take her off. So her father, to defeat them, slept with only one eye at a time.

CHAPTER IX.

EXAGGERATION AND REDUNDANCY.

I have included both in this Chapter, for they are nearly related; and it is often hard to draw a precise line of distinction.

We in Ireland are rather p.r.o.ne to exaggeration, perhaps more so than the average run of peoples. Very often the expressions are jocose, or the person is fully conscious of the exaggeration; but in numerous cases there is no joke at all: but downright seriousness: all which will be seen in the following examples.

A common saying about a person of persuasive tongue or with a beautiful voice in singing:--'He would coax the birds off the bushes.' This is borrowed from the Irish. In the 'Lament of Richard Cantillon' (in Irish) he says that at the musical voice of the lady 'the seals would come up from the deep, the stag down from the mist-crag, and the thrush from the tree.'

(Petrie: 'Anc. Mus. of Ireland.')

Of a noted liar and perjurer it was said 'He would swear that a coal porter was a canary.' {121}

A man who is unlucky, with whom everything goes wrong:--'If that man got a hen to hatch duck eggs, the young ducks would be drowned.' Or again, 'If that man sowed oats in a field, a crop of turnips would come up.' Or: 'He is always in the field when luck is on the road.'

The following expression is often heard:--'Ah, old James Buckley is a fine piper: _I'd give my eyes_ to be listening to him.'

That fellow is so dirty that if you flung him against a wall he'd stick.

(Patterson: Ulster.)

Two young men are about to set off to seek their fortunes, leaving their young brother Rory to stay with their mother. But Rory, a hard active merry cute little fellow, proposes to go with them:--'I'll follow ye to the world's end.' On which the eldest says to him--a half playful threat:--'You presumptious little atomy of a barebones, if I only see the size of a thrush's ankle of you follyin' us on the road, I'll turn back and bate that wiry and freckled little carcase of yours into frog's-jelly!' (Robert Dwyer Joyce: 'The Building of Mourne.')

'Did Johnny give you any of his sugar-stick?' 'Oh not very much indeed: hardly the size of a thrush's ankle.' This term is often used.

Of a very morose sour person you will hear it said:--'If that man looked at a pail of new milk he'd turn it into curds and whey.'

A very thin man, or one attenuated by sickness:--'You could blow him off your hand.'

A poor fellow complains of the little bit of meat he got for his dinner:--'It was no more than a daisy in a bull's mouth!' Another says of _his_ dinner {122} when it was in his stomach:--'It was no more than a midge in the Glen of the Downs.'

Exhorting a messenger to be quick:--'Don't be there till you're back again.' Another way:--'Now run as quick as you can, and if you fall don't wait to get up.' Warning a person to be expeditious in any work you put him to:--'Now don't let gra.s.s grow under your feet.' Barney urging on the a.s.s to go quickly:--'Come Bobby, don't let gra.s.s grow under your feet.'

('Knocknagow.')

If a person is secretly very willing to go to a place--as a lover to the house of the girl's parents:--'You could lead him there with a halter of snow.'

'Is this razor sharp?' 'Sharp!--why _'twould shave a mouse asleep_.'

A lazy fellow, fond of sitting at the fire, _has the A B C on his s.h.i.+ns_, i.e. they are blotched with the heat.

Of an inveterate talker:--That man would talk the teeth out of a saw.

A young fellow gets a great fright:--'It frightened him out of a year's growth.'

When Nancy saw the master so angry she was frightened out of her wits: or frightened out of her seven senses. When I saw the horse ride over him I was frightened out of my life.

A great liar, being suddenly pressed for an answer, told the truth for once. He told the truth because he was _shook_ for a lie; i.e. no lie was ready at hand. _Shook_, to be bad, in a bad way: shook for a thing, to be badly in want of it and not able to get it.

Of a very lazy fellow:--He would not knock a coal off his foot: i.e. when a live coal happens to {123} fall on his foot while sitting by the fire, he wouldn't take the trouble to knock it off.

Says the dragon to Ma.n.u.s:--'If ever I see you here again I'll hang a quarter of you on every tree in the wood.' (Crofton Croker.)

If a person is pretty badly hurt, or suffers hards.h.i.+p, he's _kilt_ (killed): a fellow gets a fall and his friend comes up to inquire:--'Oh let me alone I'm kilt and speechless.' I heard a Dublin nurse say, 'Oh I'm kilt minding these four children.' 'The b.l.o.o.d.y throopers are coming to kill and quarther an' murther every mother's sowl o' ye.' (R. D. Joyce.) The parlour bell rings impatiently for the third time, and Lowry Looby the servant says, 'Oh murther there goes the bell again, I'll be kilt entirely.'

(Gerald Griffin.) If a person is really badly hurt he's _murthered entirely_. A girl telling about a fight in a fair:--'One poor boy was kilt dead for three hours on a car, breathing for all the world like a corpse!'