Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/204

 CH. XII.] you grows careless about you once he goes away:—'Out of sight out of mind.'

To go with your finger in your mouth is to go on a fool's errand, to go without exactly knowing why you are going—without knowing particulars.

When a person singing a song has to stop up because he forgets the next verse, he says (mostly in joke) 'there's a hole in the ballad'—throwing the blame on the old ballad sheet on which the words were imperfect on account of a big hole.

Searching for some small article where it is hard to find it among a lot of other things is 'looking for a needle in a bundle of straw.'

When a mistake or any circumstance that entails loss or trouble is irreparable—'there's no help for spilt milk.'

Seventy or eighty years ago the accomplishments of an Irishman should be:

To smoke his dudheen, To drink his cruiskeen, To flourish his alpeen, To wallop a spalpeen. (: Wexford.)

It is reported about that Tom Fox stole Dick Finn's sheep: but he didn't. Driven to desperation by the false report, Tom now really steals one, and says:—'As I have the name of it, I may as well have the gain of it.'

A person is told of some extraordinary occurrence and exclaims—'Well such a thing as that was never before heard of since Adam was a boy.' This last expression is very general.

The Chairman of the Banbridge Board of Guardians