Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/215

 200 'Never dread the winter till the snow is on the blanket': i.e. as long as you have a roof over your head. An allusion to the misery of those poor people—numerous enough in the evil days of past times—who were evicted from house and home. (P. Reilly: Kildare.)

Of a lucky man:—'That man's ducks are laying.'

When a baby is born, the previous baby's 'nose is out of joint.' Said also of a young man who is supplanted by another in courtship.

A man who supplants another in any pursuit or design is said to 'come inside him.'

A person is speaking bitterly or uncharitably of one who is dead; and another says reprovingly—'let the dead rest.'

When it is proposed to give a person something he doesn't need or something much too good for him, you oppose or refuse it by saying:—'Cock him up with it—how much he wants it!—I'll do no such thing.' Two gentlemen staying for a night in a small hotel in a remote country town ordered toast for breakfast, which it seems was very unusual there. They sat down to breakfast, but there was no sign of the toast. 'What about the toast?' asks one. Whereupon the impudent waiter replies—'Ah, then cock yez up with toast: how bad yez are for it.'

A very general form of expression to point to a person's identity in a very vague way is seen in the following example:—'From whom did you buy that horse, James?' Reply:—'From a man of the Burkes living over there in Ballinvreena': i.e. a man named Burke. Mr. Seumas MacManus has adopted