English As We Speak It in Ireland Part 22

We know that in former times in Ireland the professions ran in families; so that members of the same household devoted themselves to one particular Science or Art--Poetry, History, Medicine, Building, Law, as the case might be--for generations (of this custom a full account may be seen in my 'Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland,' chap. vii., especially page 184). A curious example of how the memory of this is preserved occurs in Armagh. There is a little worm called _dirab_ found in bog-water. If this be swallowed by any accident it causes a swelling, which can be cured only by a person of the name of Ca.s.sidy, who puts his arms round the patient, and the worm dies. The O'Ca.s.sidys were hereditary physicians to the Maguires, chiefs of Fermanagh. Several eminent physicians of the name are commemorated in the Irish Annals: and it is interesting to find that they are still remembered in tradition--though quite unconsciously--for their skill in leechcraft.

'I'll make you dance Jack Lattin'--a threat of chastis.e.m.e.nt, often heard in Kildare. John Lattin of Morristown House county Kildare (near Naas) wagered that he'd dance home to Morristown from Dublin--more than twenty miles--changing his dancing-steps every furlong: and won the wager. 'I'll make you dance' is a common threat heard everywhere: but 'I'll make you dance Jack Lattin' is ten times worse--'I'll make you dance excessively.'

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Morristown, Jack Lattin's residence, is near Lyons the seat of Lord Cloncurry, where Jack was often a guest, in the first half of the last century. Lady Morgan has an entry in her Memoirs (1830):--'Returned from Lyons--Lord Cloncurry's, a large party--the first day good--Sheil, Curran, Jack Lattin.'

It is worthy of remark that there is a well-known Irish tune called 'Jack Lattin,' which some of our Scotch friends have quietly appropriated; and not only that, but have turned Jack himself into a Scotchman by calling the tune 'Jockey Latin'! They have done precisely the same with our 'Eileen Aroon' which they call 'Robin Adair.' The same Robin Adair--or to call him by his proper name Robert Adair--was a well-known county Wicklow man and a member of the Irish Parliament.

The word _sculloge_ or _scolloge_ is applied to a small farmer, especially one that does his own farm work: it is often used in a somewhat depreciatory sense to denote a mere rustic: and in both senses it is well known all over the South. This word has a long history. It was originally applied--a thousand years ago or more--to the younger monks of a monastery, who did most of the farm work on the land belonging to the religious community. These young men were of course students indoors, as well as tillers outside, and hence the name, from _scol_, a school:--_scolog_ a young scholar. But as farm work const.i.tuted a large part of their employment the name gradually came to mean a working farmer; and in this sense it has come down to our time.

To a rich man whose forefathers made their {174} money by smuggling _pottheen_ (illicit whiskey) from Innishowen in Donegal (formerly celebrated for its pottheen manufacture), they say in Derry 'your granny was a Dogherty who wore a tin pocket.' (Doherty a prevalent name in the neighbourhood.) For this was a favourite way of smuggling from the highlands--bringing the stuff in a tin pocket. Tom Boyle had a more ambitious plan:--he got a tinker to make a hollow figure of tin, something like the figure of his wife, who was a little woman, which Tom dressed up in his wife's clothes and placed on the pillion behind him on the horse--filled with pottheen: for in those times it was a common custom for the wife to ride behind her husband. At last a sharp-eyed policeman, seeing the man's affectionate attention so often repeated, kept on the watch, and satisfied himself at last that Tom had a tin wife. So one day, coming behind the animal he gave the poor little woman a whack of a stick which brought forth, not a screech, but a hard metallic sound, to the astonishment of everybody: and then it was all up with poor Tom and his wife.

There are current in Ireland many stories of gaugers and pottheen distillers which hardly belong to my subject, except this one, which I may claim, because it has _left its name on_ a well-known Irish tune:--'Paddy outwitted the gauger,' also called by three other names, 'The Irishman's heart for the ladies,' 'Drops of brandy,' and _c.u.mmilum_ (Moore's: 'Fairest put on Awhile'). Paddy Fogarty kept a little public-house at the cross-roads in which he sold 'parliament,' i.e. legal whiskey on which the duty had been paid; but it was well known that friends could get a little drop {175} of pottheen too, on the sly. One hot July day he was returning home from Thurles with a ten-gallon cag on his back, slung by a strong _soogaun_ (hay rope). He had still two good miles before him, and he sat down to rest, when who should walk up but the new gauger. 'Well my good fellow, what have you got in that cask?' Paddy dropped his jaw, looking the picture of terror, and mumbled out some tomfoolery like an excuse. 'Ah, my man, you needn't think of coming over me: I see how it is: I seize this cask in the name of the king.' Poor Paddy begged and prayed, and talked about Biddy and the childher at home--all to no use: the gauger slung up the cag on his back (about a hundredweight) and walked on, with Paddy, heart-broken, walking behind--for the gauger's road lay towards Paddy's house. At last when they were near the cross-roads the gauger sat down to rest, and laying down the big load began to wipe his face with his handkerchief. 'Sorry I am,' says Paddy, 'to see your honour so dead _bet_ up: sure you're sweating like a bull: maybe I could relieve you.' And with that he pulled his legal _permit_ out of his pocket and laid it on the cag.

The gauger was astounded: 'Why the d---- didn't you show me that before?'

'Why then 'tis the way your honour,' says Paddy, looking as innocent as a lamb, 'I didn't like to make so bould as I wasn't axed to show it?' So the gauger, after a volley of something that needn't be particularised here, walked off _with himself without an inch of the tail_. 'Faix,' says Paddy, ''tis easy to know 'twasn't our last gauger, ould Warnock, that was here: 'twouldn't be so easy to come round him; for he had a nose that would _smell a needle in a forge_.' {176}

In Sligo if a person is sick in a house, and one of the cattle dies, they say 'a life for a life,' and the patient will recover. Mr. Kinahan says, 'This is so universal in the wilds of Sligo that Protestants and Catholics believe it alike.'

As an expression of welcome, a person says, 'We'll spread green rushes under your feet'; a memory of the time when there were neither boards nor carpets on the floors--nothing but the naked clay--in Ireland as well as in England; and in both countries, it was the custom to strew the floors of the better cla.s.s of houses with rushes, which were renewed for any distinguished visitor. This was always done by the women-servants: and the custom was so general and so well understood that there was a knife of special shape for cutting the rushes. (See my 'Smaller Social Hist. of Ancient Ireland,' p. 305.)

A common exclamation of drivers for urging on a horse, heard everywhere in Ireland, is _hupp, hupp!_ It has found its way even into our nursery rhymes; as when a mother is dancing her baby up and down on her knee, she sings:--

'How many miles to Dub-l-in?

Three score and ten, Will we be there by candle light?

Yes and back again: _Hupp, hupp_ my little horse, _Hupp, hupp_ again.'

This Irish word, insignificant as it seems, has come down from a period thirteen or fourteen hundred years ago, or probably much farther back. In the library of St. Gall in Switzerland there is a ma.n.u.script written in the eighth century by some scholarly Irish {177} monk--who he was we cannot tell: and in this the old writer _glosses_ or explains many Latin words by corresponding Irish words. Among others the Latin interjection _ei_ or _hei_ (meaning ho! quick! come on) is explained by _upp_ or _hupp_ (Zeuss).

Before Christianity had widely spread in Ireland, the pagans had a numerous pantheon of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, one of which was _Badb_ [bibe], a terrible war-fury. Her name is p.r.o.nounced _Bibe_ or _Bybe_, and in this form it is still preserved all over Cork and round about, not indeed for a war-fury, but for what--in the opinion of some people--is nearly as bad, a _scolding woman_. (For _Badb_ and all the other pagan Irish G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, see my 'Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland,' chap. v.)

From the earliest times in Ireland animals were cla.s.sified with regard to grazing; and the cla.s.sification is recognised and fully laid down in the Brehon Law. The legal cla.s.sification was this:--two geese are equivalent to a sheep; two sheep to a _dairt_ or one-year-old heifer; two _dairts_ to one _colpach_ or _collop_ (as it is now called) or two-year-old heifer; two _collops_ to one cow. Suppose a man had a right to graze a certain number of cows on a common (i.e. pasture land not belonging to individuals but common to all the people of the place collectively); he might turn out the exact number of cows or the equivalent of any other animals he pleased, so long as the total did not exceed the total amount of his privilege.

In many parts of Ireland this system almost exactly as described above is kept up to this day, the collop being taken as the unit: it was universal in my native place sixty years ago; and in a way it exists {178} there still. The custom is recognised in the present-day land courts, with some modifications in the cla.s.sification--as Mr. Maurice Healy informs me in an interesting and valuable communication--the _collop_ being still the unit--and constantly referred to by the lawyers in the conduct of cases. So the old Brehon Law process has existed continuously from old times, and is repeated by the lawyers of our own day; and its memory is preserved in the word _collop_. (See my 'Smaller Soc. Hist. of Anc. Ireland,' p. 431.)

In pagan times the religion of Ireland was Druidism, which was taught by the druids: and far off as the time is the name of these druids still exists in our popular speech. The Irish name for a druid is _drui_ [dree]; and in the South any crabbed cunning old-fashioned-looking little boy is called--even by speakers of English--a _shoundree_, which exactly represents in sound the Irish _sean-drui_, old druid; from _sean_ [shoun or shan], old. (See 'Irish Names of Places,' I. 98.)

There are two words much in use in Munster, of which the phonetic representations are _thoothach_ or _thoohagh_ and _hochan_ (_o_ long), which tell a tale of remote times. A _thoothach_ or _thoohagh_ is an ignorant unmannerly clownish fellow: and _hochan_ means much the same thing, except that it is rather lower in the sense of ignorance or uncouthness. Pa.s.sing through the Liberties of Dublin I once heard a woman--evidently from Limerick--call a man a dirty _hochan_. Both words are derived from _tuath_ [thooa], a layman, as distinguished from a cleric or a man of learning. The Irish form of the first is _tuathtach_: of the second _thuathchain_ (vocative). Both are a memory of the {179} time when illiterate people were looked down upon as boorish and ill-mannered as compared with clerics or with men of learning in general.

The people had great respect and veneration for the old families of landed gentry--the _real old stock_ as they were called. If a man of a lower cla.s.s became rich so as to vie with or exceed in possessions many of the old families, he was never recognised as on their level or as a gentleman. Such a man was called by the people a _half-sir_, which bears its meaning on its face.

Sixty years ago people very generally used home-made and home-grown produce--frieze--linen--b.u.t.ter--bacon--potatoes and vegetables in general.

A good custom, for 'a cow never burst herself by chewing her cud.'

(MacCall: Wexford.)

To see one magpie or more is a sign of bad or good luck, viz.:--'One for sorrow; two for mirth; three for a wedding; four for a birth.' (MacCall: Wexford.)

The war-cry of the great family of O'Neill of Tyrone was _Lauv-derg-aboo_ (the Red Hand to Victory: the Red Hand being the cognisance of the O'Neills): and this cry the clansmen shouted when advancing to battle. It is many a generation since this same cry was heard in battle; and yet it is remembered in popular sayings to this day. In Tyrone when a fight is expected one man will say to another 'there will be _Dergaboos_ to-day': not that the cry will be actually raised; but _Dergaboo_ has come to be a sort of symbolic name for a fight.

In and around Ballina in Mayo, a great strong fellow is called an _allay-foozee_, which represents the {180} sound of the French _Allez-fusil_ (musket or musketry forward), preserving the memory of the landing of the French at Killala (near Ballina) in 1798.

When a person looks as if he were likely to die soon:--'He's in the raven's book.' Because when a person is about to die, the raven croaks over the house. (MacCall: Wexford.)

A 'cross' was a small old Irish coin so called from a figure of St. Patrick stamped on it with a conspicuous cross. Hence a person who has no money says 'I haven't a cross.' In Wexford they have the same saying with a little touch of drollery added on:--'There isn't as much as a cross in my pocket to keep the devil from dancing in it.' (MacCall.) For of course the devil dare not come near a cross of any shape or form.

A _keenoge_ (which exactly represents the p.r.o.nunciation of the Irish _cianog_) is a very small coin, a farthing or half a farthing. It was originally applied to a small foreign coin, probably Spanish, for the Irish _cian_ is 'far off,' 'foreign': _og_ is the diminutive termination. It is often used like 'cross': 'I haven't as much as a keenoge in my pocket.'

'Are you not going to lend me any money at all?' 'Not a keenoge.'

A person not succeeding in approaching the house or spot he wants to reach; hitting wide of the mark in shooting; not coming to the point in argument or explanation:--'Oh you didn't come within the bray of an a.s.s of it.' This is the echo of a very old custom. More than a thousand years ago distance was often vaguely measured in Ireland by sound. A man felling a tree was 'bound by the Brehon Law {181} to give warning as far as his voice could reach,' so as to obviate danger to cattle or people. We find a like measure used in Donegal to this day:--[The Dublin house where you'll get the book to buy is on the Quays] 'about a mountain man's call below the Four Courts.' (Seumas MacMa.n.u.s.) The crow of a c.o.c.k and the sound of a bell (i.e. the small hand-bell then used) as measures of distances are very often met with in ancient Irish writings. An old commentator on the Brehon Laws defines a certain distance to be 'as far as the sound of the bell or the crow of a barn-door c.o.c.k could be heard. This custom also prevailed among other ancient nations. (See my 'Smaller Soc. Hist. of Anc. Ireland,'

p. 473.)

_The 'Duty'._ Formerly all through Ireland the tenants were obliged to work for their landlords on a certain number of days free, except that they generally got food. Such work was commonly called in English the 'duty.' In Wicklow for example--until very recently--or possibly still--those who had horses had to draw home the landlord's turf on certain days. In Wexford they had in a similar way to draw stones for the embankments on the Barrow.

The tenants commonly collected in numbers on the same day and worked all together. The Irish word used to designate such gatherings was _bal_--still so called in Connaught. It was usual to hear such English expressions as--'Are you going to the duty?' or 'Are you going to the bal?' (Kinahan.)

(N.B. I do not know the Irish word _bal_ in this sense, and cannot find it in the Dictionaries.)

'Duty' is used in a religious sense by Roman {182} Catholics all through Ireland to designate the obligation on all Catholics to go to Confession and Holy Communion at Easter time. 'I am going to my duty, please G.o.d, next week.'

'I'll return you this book on next Sat.u.r.day _as sure as the hearth-money_': a very common expression in Ireland. The old English oppressive impost called _hearth-money_--a tax on hearths--which every householder had to pay, was imported into Ireland by the English settlers. Like all other taxes it was certain to be called for and gathered at the proper time, so that our saying is an apt one; but while the bad old impost is gone, its memory is preserved in the everyday language of the people.

A king, whether of a small or large territory, had in his service a champion or chief fighting man whose duty it was to avenge all insults or offences offered to the families of the king and tribe, particularly murder; like the 'Avenger of blood' of the Jews and other ancient nations.

In any expected danger from without he had to keep watch--with a sufficient force--at the most dangerous ford or pa.s.s--called _bearna baoghaill_ [barna beel] or gap of danger--on that part of the border where invasion was expected, and prevent the entrance of any enemy. This custom, which is as old as our race in Ireland, is remembered in our present-day speech, whether Irish or Anglo-Irish; for the man who courageously and successfully defends any cause or any position, either by actual fighting or by speeches or written articles, is 'the man in the gap.' Of the old Irish chiefs Thomas Davis writes:--

'Their hearts were as soft as the child in the lap, Yet they were the men in the gap.'

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In the old heroic semi-historic times in Ireland, a champion often gave a challenge by standing in front of the hostile camp or fort and striking a few resounding blows with the handle of his spear either on his own shield or on a shield hung up for the purpose at the entrance gate outside.[7]

The memory of this very old custom lives in a word still very common in the South of Ireland--_boolimskee_, Irish _buailim-sciath_, 'I strike the shield,' applied to a man much given to fighting, a quarrelsome fellow, a swaggering bully--a swash-buckler.

Paying on the nail, paying down on the nail; paying on the spot--ready cash. This expression had its origin in a custom formerly prevailing in Limerick city. In a broad thoroughfare under the Exchange stood a pillar about four feet high, on the top of which was a circular plate of copper about three feet in diameter. This pillar was called 'The Nail.' The purchaser of anything laid down the stipulated price or the earnest _on the nail_, i.e. on the bra.s.s plate, which the seller took up: when this was done before witnesses the transaction was as binding as if entered on parchment. (O'Keeffe's Recollections.) 'The Nail' is still to the fore, and may now be seen in the Museum of the Carnegie Library building, to which it was transferred a short time ago.

The change in the Calendar from the old style to the new style, a century and a half ago, is noted in the names for Christmas. All through the South, {184} and in other parts of Ireland, the 6th January ('Twelfth Day') is called 'Old Christmas' and 'Little Christmas' (for before the change of style it was _the_ Christmas): and in many parts of the north our present Christmas is called New Christmas. So in Donegal the 12th of May is called by the people 'Old May day.' (Seumas MacMa.n.u.s.)

_Palm, Palm-Sunday._ The usual name in Ireland for the yew-tree is 'palm,'

from the custom of using yew branches instead of the real palm, to celebrate Palm Sunday--the Sunday before Easter--commemorating the palm branches that were strewed before our Lord on His public entry into Jerusalem. I was quite a grown boy before I knew the yew-tree by its proper name--it was always _palm-tree_.

_Oliver's Summons._--When a lazy fellow was driven to work either by hunger or by any unavoidable circ.u.mstance he was said to have got _Oliver's Summons_, a common household word in parts of the county Limerick in my younger days, originating in the following circ.u.mstance. When a good plentiful harvest came round, many of the men of our neighbourhood at this time--about the beginning of last century--the good old easy-going times--worked very little--as little as ever they could. What was the use of working when they had plenty of beautiful floury potatoes for half nothing, with salt or _dip_, or perhaps a piggin of fine thick milk to crown the luxury. Captain Oliver, the local landlord, and absolute monarch so far as ordinary life was concerned, often--in those seasons--found it hard or impossible to get men to come to do the necessary work about his grounds--though paying {185} the usual wages--till at last he hit on an original plan. He sent round, the evening before, to the houses of the men he wanted, a couple of fellows with a horse and cart, who seized some necessary article in each house--a spinning-wheel, a bed, the pot, the single table, &c.--and brought them all away body and bones, and kept them impounded. Next morning he was sure to have half a dozen or more strapping fellows, who fell to work; and when it was finished and wages paid, the captain sent home the articles. I had this story from old men who saw the carts going round with their loads.

CHAPTER XII.

A VARIETY OF PHRASES.

Among fireside amus.e.m.e.nts propounding riddles was very general sixty or seventy years ago. This is a custom that has existed in Ireland from very early times, as the reader may see by looking at my 'Old Celtic Romances,'

pp. 69, 186, 187, where he will find some characteristic ancient Irish ones. And we know that it was common among other ancient nations. I have a number of our modern Irish riddles, many in my memory, and some supplied to me from Wexford by Mr. Patrick J. MacCall of Dublin, who knows Wexford well. Some are easy enough: but there are others that might defy the Witch of Endor to answer them. They hardly come within my scope, but I will give a few examples. {186}