Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/138

 CH. IX.] fall on his foot while sitting by the fire, he wouldn't take the trouble to knock it off.

Says the dragon to Manus:—'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 hardship, 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 bloody 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!'

If you don't stop your abuse I'll give you a shirt full of sore bones.

Yes, poor Jack was once well off, but now he hasn't as much money as would jingle on a tombstone.

That cloth is very coarse: why you could shoot straws through it.

Strong dislike:—I don't like a bone in his body.

'Do you know Bill Finnerty well?' 'Oh indeed I know every bone in his body,' i.e. I know him and all his ways intimately.

A man is low stout and very fat: if you met him in the street you'd rather jump over him than walk round him.