Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/318

 the noun pláusoge [plauss-oge], a person who is plauzy. (South.)


 * Plerauca; great fun and noisy revelry. Irish pléaráca, same sound and meaning.


 * Pluddogh; dirty water. (MacCall: Wexford.) From Irish plod [pludh], a pool of dirty water, with the termination ach.


 * Pluvaun; a kind of soft weed that grows excessively on tilled moory lands and chokes the crop. (Moran: Carlow.)


 * Poll-talk; backbiting: from the poll of the head: the idea being the same as in backbiting.


 * Polthogue; a blow; a blow with the fist. Irish palltóg, same sound and meaning.


 * Pooka; a sort of fairy: a mischievous and often malignant goblin that generally appears in the form of a horse, but sometimes as a bull, a buck-goat, &c. The great ambition of the pooka horse is to get some unfortunate wight on his back; and then he gallops furiously through bogs, marshes, and woods, over rocks, glens, and precipices; till at last when the poor wretch on his back is nearly dead with terror and fatigue, the pooka pitches him into some quagmire or pool or briar-brake, leaving him to extricate himself as best he can. But the goblin does not do worse: he does not kill people. Irish púca. Shakespeare has immortalised him as Puck, the goblin of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream.'


 * Pookapyle, also called Pookaun; a sort of large fungus, the toadstool. Called also causha pooka. All these names imply that the Pooka has something to do with this poisonous fungus. See Causha-pooka (pooka's cheese).