Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/139

 124 He knew as much Latin as if he swallowed a dictionary. (Gerald Griffin.)

The word destroy is very often used to characterize any trifling damage easily remedied:—That car splashed me, and my coat is all destroyed.

'They kept me dancin' for 'em in the kitchen,' says Barney Broderick, 'till I hadn't a leg to put under me.' ('Knocknagow.')

This farm of mine is as bad land as ever a crow flew over.

He's as great a rogue as ever stood in shoe-leather.

When Jack heard the news of the money that was coming to him he was jumping out of his skin with delight.

I bought these books at an auction, and I got them for a song: in fact I got them for half nothing.

Very bad slow music is described as the tune the old cow died of.

A child is afraid of a dog: 'Yerra he won't touch you': meaning 'he won't bite you.'

A man having a very bad aim in shooting:—'He wouldn't hit a hole in a ladder.'

Carleton's blind fiddler says to a young girl: 'You could dance the Colleen dhas dhown [a jig] upon a spider's cobweb without breaking it.'

An ill-conducted man:—'That fellow would shame a field of tinkers.' The tinkers of sixty years ago, who were not remarkable for their honesty or good conduct, commonly travelled the country in companies, and camped out in fields or wild places.

I was dying to hear the news; i.e. excessively anxious.