Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/151

 136 words 'I don't know,' always shortened to I'd'no (three syllables with the I long and the o very short—barely sounded) 'I'd'no is John come home yet?' This phrase you will often hear in Dublin from Munster people, both educated and uneducated.

'The t'other' is often heard in Armagh: it is, of course, English:—

'Sirs,' cried the umpire, cease your pother, The creature's neither one nor t'other.

of the items in this chapter would fit very well in the last; but this makes no matter; for 'good punch drinks well from either dandy or tumbler.'

You attempt in vain to bring a shameless coarse-minded man to a sense of the evil he has done:—'Ye might as well put a blister on a hedgehog.' (Tyrone.)

You're as cross all this day as a bag of cats.

If a man is inclined to threaten much but never acts up to his threats—severe in word but mild in act:—His bark is worse than his bite.

That turf is as dry as a bone (very common in Munster.) Bone-dry is the term in Ulster.

When a woman has very thick legs, thick almost down to the feet, she is 'like a Mullingar heifer, beef to the heels.' The plains of Westmeath round Mullingar are noted for fattening cattle.