Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/341

 bail they didn't skit and laugh.' (Crofton Croker.) 'Skit and laugh,' very common in South.


 * Skite; a silly frivolous light-headed person. Hence Blatherumskite (South), or (in Ulster), bletherumskite.


 * Skree; a large number of small things, as a skree of potatoes, a skree of chickens, &c. (Morris: South Monaghan.)


 * Skull-cure for a bad toothache. Go to the nearest churchyard alone by night, to the corner where human bones are usually heaped up, from which take and bring away a skull. Fill the skull with water, and take a drink from it: that will cure your toothache.


 * Sky farmer; a term much used in the South with several shades of meaning: but the idea underlying all is a farmer without land, or with only very little—having broken down since the time when he had a big farm—who often keeps a cow or two grazing along the roadsides. Many of these struggling men acted as intermediaries between the big corn merchants and the large farmers in the sale of corn, and got thereby a percentage from the buyers. A 'sky farmer' has his farm in the sky.


 * Slaan [aa long as the a in car]; a sort of very sharp spade, used in cutting turf or peat. Universal in the South.


 * Slack-jaw; impudent talk, continuous impertinences:—'I'll have none of your slack-jaw.'


 * Slang; a narrow strip of land along a stream, not suited to cultivation, but grazed. (Moran: Carlow.)


 * Sleeveen; a smooth-tongued, sweet-mannered, sly,