English As We Speak It in Ireland. P. W. Joyce
stitched up the rent with next to hand materials—viz. slender tough osier withes or gads as we call them in Ireland. When the job was finished he spread out the garment before him on his knees, and looking admiringly on his handiwork, uttered the above saying—'Firm and ugly!'
The idea of the 'old boy' pursuing a soul appears also in the words of an old Anglo-Irish song about persons who commit great crimes and die unrepentant:—
'For committing those crimes unrepented
The devil shall after them run,
And slash him for that at a furnace
Where coal sells for nothing a ton.'
A very wet day—teeming rain—raining cats and dogs—a fine day for young ducks:—'The devil wouldn't send out his dog on such a day as this.'
'Did you ever see the devil
With the wooden spade and shovel
Digging praties for his supper
And his tail cocked up?'
A person struggling with poverty—constantly in money difficulties—is said to be 'pulling the devil by the tail.'
'Great noise and little wool,' as the devil said when he was shearing a pig.
'What's got over the devil's back goes off under the devil's belly.' This is another form of ill got ill gone.
Don't enter on a lawsuit with a person who has in his hands the power of deciding the case. This would be 'going to law against the devil with the courthouse in hell.'
Jack hates that man and all belonging to him 'as the devil hates holy water.'
Yerra or arrah is an exclamation very much in use in the South: a phonetic representation of the Irish airĕ, meaning take care, look out, look you:—'Yerra Bill why are you in such a hurry?' The old people didn't like our continual use of the word; and in order to deter us we were told that Yerra or Arrah was the name of the devil's mother! This would point to something like domestic conditions in the lower regions, and it is in a way corroborated by the words of an old song about a woman—a desperate old reprobate of a virago—who kicked up all sorts of ructions the moment she got inside the gate:—
'When she saw the young devils tied up in their chains
She up with her crutch and knocked one of their brains.'
'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.' The people of Munster do not always put it that way; they have a version of their own:—'Time enough to bid the devil good-morrow when you meet him.' But an intelligent correspondent from Carlow puts a somewhat different interpretation on the last saying, namely, 'Don't go out of your way to seek trouble.'
'When needs must the devil drives': a man in a great fix is often driven to illegal or criminal acts to extricate himself.
When a man is threatened with a thrashing, another will say to him:—'You'll get Paddy Ryan's supper—hard knocks and the devil to eat': common in Munster.
'When you sup with the devil have a long spoon': that is to say, if you have any dealings with rogues or criminals, adopt very careful precautions, and don't come into closer contact with them than is absolutely necessary. (Lover: but used generally.)
'Speak the truth and shame the devil' is a very common saying.
'The devil's children have the devil's luck'; or 'the devil is good to his own': meaning bad men often prosper. But it is now generally said in joke to a person who has come in for an unexpected piece of good luck.
A holy knave—something like our modern Pecksniff—dies and is sent in the downward direction: and—according to the words of the old folk-song—this is his reception:—
'When hell's gate was opened the devil jumped with joy,
Saying "I have a warm corner for you my holy boy."'
A man is deeply injured by another and threatens reprisal:—'I'll make you smell hell for that'; a bitter threat which may be paraphrased: I'll persecute you to death's door; and for you to be near death is to be near hell—I'll put you so near that you'll smell the fumes of the brimstone.
A usual imprecation when a person who has made himself very unpopular is going away: 'the devil go with him.' One day a fellow was eating his dinner of dry potatoes, and had only one egg half raw for kitchen. He had no spoon, and took the egg in little sips intending to spread it over the dinner. But one time he tilted the shell too much, and down went the whole contents. After recovering from the gulp, he looked ruefully at the empty shell and blurted out—the devil go with you down!
Many people think—and say it too—that it is an article of belief with Catholics that all Protestants when they die go straight to hell—which is a libel. Yet it is often kept up in joke, as in this and other stories:—The train was skelping away like mad along the main line to hell—for they have railways there now—till at last it pulled up at the junction. Whereupon the porters ran round shouting out, 'Catholics change here for purgatory: Protestants keep your places!'
This reminds us of Father O'Leary, a Cork priest of the end of the eighteenth century, celebrated as a controversialist and a wit. He was one day engaged in gentle controversy—or argufying religion as we call it in Ireland—with a Protestant friend, who plainly had the worst of the encounter. 'Well now Father O'Leary I want to ask what have you to say about purgatory?' 'Oh nothing,' replied the priest, 'except that you might go farther and fare worse.'
The same Father O'Leary once met in the streets a friend, a witty Protestant clergyman with whom he had many an encounter of wit and repartee. 'Ah Father O'Leary, have you heard the bad news?' 'No,' says Father O'Leary. 'Well, the bottom has fallen out of purgatory, and all the poor Papists have gone down into hell.' 'Oh the Lord save us,' answered Father O'Leary, 'what a crushing the poor Protestants must have got!'
Father O'Leary and Curran—the great orator and wit—sat side by side once at a dinner party, where Curran was charmed with his reverend friend. 'Ah Father O'Leary,' he exclaimed at last, 'I wish you had the key of heaven.' 'Well Curran it might be better for you that I had the key of the other place.'
A parish priest only recently dead, a well-known wit, sat beside a venerable Protestant clergyman at dinner; and they got on very agreeably. This clergyman rather ostentatiously proclaimed his liberality by saying:—'Well Father—— I have been for sixty years in this world and I could never understand that there is any great and essential difference between the Catholic religion and the Protestant.' 'I can tell you,' replied Father——, 'that when you die you'll not be sixty minutes in the other world before you will understand it perfectly.'
The preceding are all in joke: but I once heard the idea enunciated in downright earnest. In my early life, we, the village people, were a mixed community, about half and half Catholics and Protestants, the latter nearly all Palatines, who were Methodists to a man. We got on very well together, and I have very kindly memories of my old playfellows, Palatines as well as Catholics.
One young Palatine, Peter Stuffle, differed in one important respect from the others, as he never attended Church Mass or Meeting. He emigrated to America; and being a level headed fellow and keeping from drink, he got on. At last he came across Nelly Sullivan, a bright eyed colleen all the way from Kerry, a devoted Catholic, and fell head and ears in love with her. She liked him too, but would have nothing to say to him unless he became a Catholic: in the words of the old song, 'Unless that you turn a Roman you ne'er shall get me for your bride.' Peter's theology was not proof against Nelly's bright face: he became a Catholic, and a faithful one too: for once he was inside the gate his wife took care to instruct him, and kept him well up to his religious duties.
They prospered; so that at the end of some years he was able to visit his native place. On his arrival nothing could exceed the consternation and rage of his former friends to find that instead of denouncing the Pope,