Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/134

 CH. VIII.] now transformed into such a mass 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 Cockney 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 assonantal rhyme):—

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

I express myself confident of outwitting or circumventing 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.)