Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/307




 * 'What's the matter—what's wrong!'


 * 'Oh I saw the divel!'


 * 'No you didn't, you fool, 'twas something else you saw.'


 * 'No it wasn't, 'twas the divel I saw—didn't I know him well!'


 * 'How did you know him—did you see his horns?'


 * 'I didn't: he had no horns—he was a mwail divel—sure that's how I knew him!'


 * They ran out of course; but the mwail divel was gone, leaving behind him, standing up against the turf-rick, the black little Maol Kerry cow.


 * Margamore; the 'Great Market' held in Derry immediately before Christmas or Easter. (Derry.) Irish margadh [marga], a market, mór [more], great.


 * Martheen; a stocking with the foot cut off. (Derry.) Irish mairtín, same sound and meaning. Martheens are what they call in Munster triheens, which see.


 * Mass, celebration of, 144.


 * Mau-galore; nearly drunk: Irish maith [mau], good: go leór, plenty: 'purty well I thank you,' as the people often say: meaning almost the same as Burns's 'I was na fou but just had plenty.' (Common in Munster.)


 * Mauleen; a little bag: usually applied in the South to the little sack slung over the shoulder of a potato-planter, filled with the potato-sets (or skillauns), from which the setter takes them one by one to plant them. In Ulster and Scotland, the word is mailin, which is sometimes applied to a purse:—'A mailin plenished (filled) fairly.' (Burns.)


 * Maum; the full of the two hands used together (