English As We Speak It in Ireland Part 46

Parson; was formerly applied to a Catholic parish priest: but in Ireland it now always means a Protestant minister.

Parthan; a crab-fish. (Donegal.) Merely the Irish _partan_, same sound and meaning.

Parts; districts, territories:--'Prince and plinnypinnytinshary of these parts' (King O'Toole and St. Kevin): 'Welcome to these parts.'

(Crofton Croker.)

Past; 'I wouldn't put it _past_ him,' i.e. I think him bad or foolish enough (to do it).

Past; more than: 'Our landlord's face we rarely see past once in seven years'--Irish Folk Song.

Pattern (i.e. _patron_); a gathering at a holy well or other relic of a saint on his or her festival day, to pray and perform _rounds_ and other devotional acts in honour of the patron saint. (General.)

Pattha; a pet, applied to a young person who is brought up over tenderly and indulged too {301} much:--'What a _pattha_ you are!' This is an extension of meaning; for the Irish _peata_ [pattha] means merely a _pet_, nothing more.

Pelt; the skin:--'He is in his pelt,' i.e. naked.

Penal Laws, 144, and elsewhere through the book.

Personable; comely, well-looking, handsome:--'Diarmid Bawn the piper, as personable a looking man as any in the five parishes.' (Crofton Croker: Munster.)

Pickey; a round flat little stone used by children in playing _transe_ or Scotch-hop. (Limerick.)

Piggin; a wooden drinking-vessel. It is now called _pigin_ in Irish; but it is of English origin.

Pike; a pitchfork; commonly applied to one with two p.r.o.ngs. (Munster.)

Pike or croppy-pike; the favourite weapon of the rebels of 1798: it was fixed on a very long handle, and had combined in one head a long sharp spear, a small axe, and a hook for catching the enemy's horse-reins.

Pillibeen or pillibeen-meeg; a plover. (Munster.) 'I'm king of Munster when I'm in the bog, and the _pillibeens_ whistling about me.'

('Knocknagow.') Irish _pilibin-miog_, same sound and meaning.

Pindy flour; flour that has begun to ferment slightly on account of being kept in a warm moist place. Cakes made from it were uneatable as they were soft and clammy and slightly sour. (Limerick.)

Pinkeen; a little fish, a stickleback: plentiful in small streams.

Irish _pincin_, same sound and meaning. See Scaghler.

Piper's invitation; 'He came on the piper's invitation,' i.e.

uninvited. (Cork.) A translation of {302} Irish _cuireadh-piobaire_ [curra-peebara]. Pipers sometimes visited the houses of well-to-do people and played--to the great delight of the boys and girls--and they were sure to be well treated. But that custom is long since dead and gone.

Pishminnaan' [the _aa_ long as _a_ in _car_]; common wild peas.

(Munster.) They are much smaller--both plant and peas--than the cultivated pea, whence the above anglicised name, which has the same sound as the Irish _pise-mionnain_, 'kid's peas.'

Pishmool; a pismire, an ant. (Ulster.)

Pishoge, pisheroge, pishthroge; a charm, a spell, witchcraft:--'It is reported that someone took Mrs. O'Brien's b.u.t.ter from her by _pishoges_.'

Place; very generally used for house, home, homestead:--'If ever you come to Tipperary I shall be very glad to see you at _my place_.' This is a usage of the Irish language; for the word _baile_ [bally], which is now used for _home_, means also, and in an old sense, a place, a spot, without any reference to home.

Plaikeen; an old shawl, an old cloak, any old covering or wrap worn round the shoulders. (South.)

Plantation; a colony from England or Scotland settled down or _planted_ in former times in a district in Ireland from which the rightful old Irish owners were expelled, 7, 169, 170.

Plaumause [to rhyme with _sauce_]; soft talk, plausible speech, flattery--conveying the idea of insincerity. (South.) Irish _plamas_, same sound and meaning.

Plauzy; full of soft, flattering, _plausible_ talk. Hence {303} the noun _plausoge_ [plauss-oge], a person who is plauzy. (South.)

Plerauca; great fun and noisy revelry. Irish _plearaca_, same sound and meaning.

Pluddogh; dirty water. (MacCall: Wexford.) From Irish _plod_ [pludh], a pool of dirty water, with the termination _ach_.

Pluvaun; a kind of soft weed that grows excessively on tilled moory lands and chokes the crop. (Moran: Carlow.)

Poll-talk; backbiting: from the _poll_ of the head: the idea being the same as in _back_biting.

Polthogue; a blow; a blow with the fist. Irish _palltog_, same sound and meaning.

Pooka; a sort of fairy: a mischievous and often malignant goblin that generally appears in the form of a horse, but sometimes as a bull, a buck-goat, &c. The great ambition of the pooka horse is to get some unfortunate wight on his back; and then he gallops furiously through bogs, marshes, and woods, over rocks, glens, and precipices; till at last when the poor wretch on his back is nearly dead with terror and fatigue, the pooka pitches him into some quagmire or pool or briar-brake, leaving him to extricate himself as best he can. But the goblin does not do worse: he does not kill people. Irish _puca_.

Shakespeare has immortalised him as Puck, the goblin of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream.'

Pookapyle, also called Pookaun; a sort of large fungus, the toadstool.

Called also _causha pooka_. All these names imply that the Pooka has something to do with this poisonous fungus. See Causha-pooka (pooka's cheese). {304}

Pookeen; a play--blindman's buff: from Irish _puic_, a veil or covering, from the covering put over the eyes. Pookeen is also applied in Cork to a cloth muzzle tied on calves or lambs to prevent sucking the mother. The face-covering for blindman's buff is called _pookoge_, in which the dim. _og_ is used instead of _in_ or _een_. The old-fas.h.i.+oned _coal-scuttle_ bonnets of long ago that nearly covered the face were often called _pookeen_ bonnets. It was of a bonnet of this kind that the young man in Lover's song of 'Molly Carew' speaks:--

Oh, _lave_ off that bonnet or else I'll _lave_ on it The loss of my wandering sowl:--

because it hid Molly's face from him.

Poor mouth; making the poor mouth is trying to persuade people you are very poor--making out or pretending that you are poor.

Poor scholars, 151, 157.

Poreens; very small potatoes--mere _crachauns_ (which see)--any small things, such as marbles, &c. (South: _porrans_ in Ulster.)

Porter-meal: oatmeal mixed with porter. Seventy or eighty years ago, the carters who carried bags of oatmeal from Limerick to Cork (a two-day journey) usually rested for the night at Mick Lynch's public-house in Glenosheen. They often took lunch or dinner of porter-meal in this way:--Opening the end of one of the bags, the man made a hollow in the oatmeal into which he poured a quart of porter, stirring it up with a spoon: then he ate an immense bellyful of the mixture. But those fellows could digest like an ostrich. {305}

In Ulster, oatmeal mixed in this manner with b.u.t.termilk, hot broth, &c., and eaten with a spoon, is called _croudy_.

Potthalowng; an awkward unfortunate mishap, not very serious, but coming just at the wrong time. When I was a boy 'Jack Mullowney's _potthalowng_' had pa.s.sed into a proverb. Jack one time went _courting_, that is, to spend a pleasant evening with the young lady at the house of his prospective father-in-law, and to make up the match with the old couple. He wore his best of course, body-coat, white waistcoat, caroline hat (tall silk), and _ducks_ (ducks, snow-white canvas trousers.) All sat down to a grand dinner given in his honour, the young couple side by side. Jack's plate was heaped up with beautiful bacon and turkey, and white cabbage swimming in fat, that would make you lick your lips to look at it. Poor Jack was a bit sheepish; for there was a good deal of banter, as there always is on such occasions. He drew over his plate to the very edge of the table; and in trying to manage a turkey bone with knife and fork, he turned the plate right over into his lap, down on the ducks.

The marriage came off all the same; but the story went round the country like wildfire; and for many a long day Jack had to stand the jokes of his friends on the _potthalowng_. Used in Munster. The Irish is _patalong_, same sound and meaning; but I do not find it in the dictionaries.

Pottheen; illicit whiskey: always distilled in some remote lonely place, as far away as possible from the nose of a gauger. It is the Irish word _poitin_ {306} [pottheen], little pot. We have partly the same term still; for everyone knows the celebrity of _pot_-still whiskey: but this is _Parliament_ whiskey, not _pottheen_, see p. 174.

Power; a large quant.i.ty, a great deal: Jack Hickey has a power of money: there was a _power of cattle in the fair yesterday_: there's a power of ivy on that old castle. Miss Grey, a small huckster who kept a little vegetable shop, was one day showing off her rings and bracelets to our servant. 'Oh Miss Grey,' says the girl, 'haven't you a terrible lot of them.' 'Well Ellen, you see I want them all, for I go into _a power of society_.' This is an old English usage as is shown by this extract from Spenser's 'View':--'Hee also [Robert Bruce] sent over his said brother Edward, with a power of Scottes and Red-Shankes into Ireland.' There is a corresponding Irish expression (_neart airgid_, a power of money), but I think this is translated from English rather than the reverse. The same idiom exists in Latin with the word _vis_ (power): but examples will not be quoted, as they would take up a power of s.p.a.ce.

Powter [_t_ sounded like _th_ in _pith_]; to root the ground like a pig; to root up potatoes from the ground with the hands. (Derry.)

Pras.h.a.gh, more commonly called pras.h.a.gh-wee; wild cabbage with yellow blossoms, the rape plant. Irish _praiseach-bhuidhe_ [pras.h.a.gh-wee], yellow cabbage. _Praiseach_ is borrowed from Latin _bra.s.sica_.