Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/73

 58 Very bad potatoes:—'Wet and watery, scabby and small, thin in the ground and hard to dig, hard to wash, hard to boil, and the devil to eat them.'

'I don't wonder that poor Bill should be always struggling, for he has the devil of an extravagant family.'


 * 'Oh confusion to you Dan,' says the T. B. C.,
 * 'You're the devil of a man,' says the T. B. C.

(Repeal Song of 1843.)

(But this form of expression occurs in Dickens—'Our Mutual Friend'—'I have a devil of a temper myself'). An emphatic statement:—'I wouldn't like to trust him, for he's the devil's own rogue.'

'There's no use in your trying that race against Johnny Keegan, for Johnny is the very devil at running.' 'Oh your reverence,' says Paddy Galvin, 'don't ax me to fast; but you may put as much prayers on me as you like: for, your reverence, I'm very bad at fasting, but I'm the divel at the prayers.' According to Mr. A. P. Graves, in 'Father O'Flynn,' the 'Provost and Fellows of Trinity' [College, Dublin] are 'the divels an' all at Divinity.' This last expression is truly Hibernian, and is very often heard:—A fellow is boasting how he'll leather Jack Fox when next he meets him. 'Oh yes, you'll do the devil an' all while Jack is away; but wait till he comes to the fore.'

In several of the following short stories and sayings the simpleton side of Satan's character is well brought out.

Damer of Shronell, who lived in the eighteenth century, was reputed to be the richest man in Ireland—a sort of Irish Croesus: so that 'as rich as