Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/76

 CH. V.] knees, and looking admiringly on his handiwork, uttered the above saying—'Firm and ugly!'

The idea of the 'old boy' pursuing a soul appears also in the words of an old Anglo-Irish song about persons who commit great crimes and die unrepentant:—


 * 'For committing those crimes unrepented
 * The devil shall after them run,
 * And slash him for that at a furnace
 * Where coal sells for nothing a ton.'

A very wet day—teeming rain—raining cats and dogs—a fine day for young ducks:—'The devil wouldn't send out his dog on such a day as this.'


 * 'Did you ever see the devil
 * With the wooden spade and shovel
 * Digging praties for his supper
 * And his tail cocked up?'

A person struggling with poverty—constantly in money difficulties—is said to be 'pulling the devil by the tail.'

'Great noise and little wool,' as the devil said when he was shearing a pig.

'What's got over the devil's back goes off under the devil's belly.' This is another form of ill got ill gone.

Don't enter on a lawsuit with a person who has in his hands the power of deciding the case. This would be 'going to law against the devil with the courthouse in hell.'

Jack hates that man and all belonging to him 'as the devil hates holy water.'

Yerra or arrah is an exclamation very much in use in the South: a phonetic representation of the Irish airĕ, meaning take care, look out, look you:—'Yerra