Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/311




 * Moretimes; often used as corresponding to sometimes: 'Sometimes she employs herself at sewing, and moretimes at knitting.'


 * Mor-yah; a derisive expression of dissent to drive home the untruthfulness of some assertion or supposition or pretence, something like the English 'forsooth,' but infinitely stronger:—A notorious schemer and cheat puts on airs of piety in the chapel and thumps his breast in great style; and a spectator says:—Oh how pious and holy Joe is growing—mar-yah! 'Mick is a great patriot, mor-yah!—he'd sell his country for half a crown.' Irish mar-sheadh [same sound], 'as it were.'


 * Mossa; a sort of assertive particle used at the opening of a sentence, like the English well, indeed: carrying little or no meaning. 'Do you like your new house?'—'Mossa I don't like it much.' Another form of wisha, and both anglicised from the Irish má'seadh, used in Irish in much the same sense.


 * Mountain dew; a fanciful and sort of pet name for pottheen whiskey: usually made in the mountains.


 * Mounthagh, mounthaun; a toothless person. (Munster.) From the Irish mant [mounth], the gum, with the terminations. Both words are equivalent to gummy, a person whose mouth is all gums.


 * Moutre. In very old times a mill-owner commonly received as payment for grinding corn one-tenth of the corn ground—in accordance with the Brehon Law. This custom continued to recent times—and probably continues still—in Ulster,