Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/188

 CH. XI.]

Morristown, Jack Lattin's residence, is near Lyons the seat of Lord Cloncurry, where Jack was often a guest, in the first half of the last century. Lady Morgan has an entry in her Memoirs (1830):—'Returned from Lyons—Lord Cloncurry's, a large party—the first day good—Sheil, Curran, Jack Lattin.'

It is worthy of remark that there is a well-known Irish tune called 'Jack Lattin,' which some of our Scotch friends have quietly appropriated; and not only that, but have turned Jack himself into a Scotchman by calling the tune 'Jockey Latin'! They have done precisely the same with our 'Eileen Aroon' which they call 'Robin Adair.' The same Robin Adair—or to call him by his proper name Robert Adair—was a well-known county Wicklow man and a member of the Irish Parliament.

The word sculloge or scolloge is applied to a small farmer, especially one that does his own farm work: it is often used in a somewhat depreciatory sense to denote a mere rustic: and in both senses it is well known all over the South. This word has a long history. It was originally applied—a thousand years ago or more—to the younger monks of a monastery, who did most of the farm work on the land belonging to the religious community. These young men were of course students indoors, as well as tillers outside, and hence the name, from scol, a school:—scológ a young scholar. But as farm work constituted a large part of their employment the name gradually came to mean a working farmer; and in this sense it has come down to our time.

To a rich man whose forefathers made their