The creature's neither one nor t'other.


CHAPTER X.

COMPARISONS.

Some of the items in this chapter would fit very well in the last; but this makes no matter; for 'good punch drinks well from either dandy or tumbler.'

You attempt in vain to bring a shameless coarse-minded man to a sense of the evil he has done:—'Ye might as well put a blister on a hedgehog.' (Tyrone.)

You're as cross all this day as a bag of cats.

If a man is inclined to threaten much but never acts up to his threats—severe in word but mild in act:—His bark is worse than his bite.

That turf is as dry as a bone (very common in Munster.) Bone-dry is the term in Ulster.

When a woman has very thick legs, thick almost down to the feet, she is 'like a Mullingar heifer, beef to the heels.' The plains of Westmeath round Mullingar are noted for fattening cattle.