Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/286




 * Half a one; half a glass of whiskey. One day a poor blind man walked into one of the Dublin branch banks, which happened to be next door to a public-house, and while the clerks were looking on, rather puzzled as to what he wanted, he slapped two pennies down on the counter; and in no very gentle voice:—'Half a one!'


 * Half joke and whole earnest; an expression often heard in Ireland which explains itself. 'Tim told me—half joke and whole earnest—that he didn't much like to lend me his horse.'


 * Hand; to make a hand of a person is to make fun of him; to humbug him: Lowry Looby, thinking that Mr. Daly is making game of him, says:—Tis making a hand of me your honour is.' (Gerald Griffin.) Other applications of hand'' are 'You made a bad hand of that job,' i.e. you did it badly. If a man makes a foolish marriage: 'He made a bad hand of himself, poor fellow.'


 * Hand-and-foot; the meaning of this very general expression is seen in the sentence 'He gave him a hand-and-foot and tumbled him down.'


 * Hand's turn; a very trifling bit of work, an occasion:—'He won't do a hand's turn about the house': 'he scolds me at every hand's turn,' i.e. on every possible occasion.


 * Handy; near, convenient:—'The shop lies handy to me'; an adaptation of the Irish láimh le (meaning near). Láimh le Corcaig, lit. at hand with Cork—near Cork. This again is often expressed convenient to Cork, where convenient is intended to mean simply near. So it comes that we in Ireland regard convenient and near as exactly synonymous,