Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/87

 72 If a person pledges himself to anything, clinching the promise with an adjuration however mild or harmless, he will not by any means break the promise, considering it in a manner as a vow. The old couple are at tea and have just one egg, which causes a mild dispute. At last the father says decisively—'The divel a bit of it I'll eat, so there's an end of it': when the mother instantly and with great solemnity—' I won't eat it—there now!' The result was that neither would touch it; and they gave it to their little boy who demolished it without the least scruple.

I was one time a witness of a serio-comic scene on the head of one of these blank oaths when I was a small boy attending a very small school. The master was a truly good and religious man, but very severe (a wicked master, as we used to say), and almost insane in his aversion to swearing in any shape or form. To say begob or begor or by Jove was unpardonably wicked; it was nothing better than blindfolding the devil in the dark.

One day Jack Aimy, then about twelve years of age—the saint as we used to call him—for he was always in mischief and always in trouble—said exultingly to the boy sitting next him:—'Oh by the hokey, Tom, I have my sum finished all right at last.' In evil hour for him the master happened to be standing just behind his back; and then came the deluge. In an instant the school work was stopped, and poor Jack was called up to stand before the judgment seat. There he got a long lecture—with the usual quotations—as severe and solemn as if he were a man and had perjured himself half a