English As We Speak It in Ireland

by P. W. Joyce

So to humour the music they danced on the door.'

(Crofton Croker: Old Song.)

There was one particular tune—a jig—which, from the custom of dancing on a door, got the name of 'Rattle the hasp.'

Just at the mouth of the tent it was common to have a great pot hung on hooks over a fire sunk in the ground underneath, and full of pigs cheeks, flitches of bacon, pigs' legs and croobeens galore, kept

perpetually boiling like the chiefs' caldrons of old, so that no one need be hungry or thirsty so long as he had a penny in his pocket. These pots were so large that they came to be spoken of as a symbol of plenty: 'Why you have as much bacon and cabbage there as would fill a tent-pot.'

One day—long long ago—at the fair of Ardpatrick in Limerick—I was then a little boy, but old enough to laugh at the story when I heard it in the fair—a fellow with a wattle in his hand having a sharp iron spike on the end, walked up to one of these tent-pots during the momentary absence of the owner, and thrusting the spike into a pig's cheek, calmly stood there holding the stick in his hand till the man came up. 'What are you doing there?'—When the other looking sheepish and frightened:—'Wisha sir I have a little bit of a pig's cheek here that isn't done well enough all out, and I was thinking that may be you wouldn't mind if I gave it a couple of biles in your pot.' 'Be off out of that you impudent blaa-guard, yourself and your pig's cheek, or I'll break every bone in your body.' The poor innocent boy said nothing, but lifted the stick out of the pot with the pig's cheek on the end of it, and putting it on his shoulder, walked off through the fair with meek resignation.

More than a thousand years ago it was usual in Ireland for ladies who went to banquets with their husbands or other near relations to wear a mask. This lady's mask was called fethal, which is the old form of the word, modern form fidil. The memory of this old custom is preserved in the name now given to a mask by both English and Irish speakers—i fiddle, eye-fiddle, hi-fiddle, or hy-fiddle (the first two

being the most correct). The full Irish name is aghaidh-fidil, of which the first part agaidh, pronounced i or eye, means the face:—agaidh-fidil, 'face-mask.' This word was quite common in Munster sixty or seventy years ago, when we, boys, made our own i-fiddles, commonly of brown paper, daubed in colour—hideous-looking things when worn—enough to frighten a horse from his oats.

Among those who fought against the insurgents in Ireland during the Rebellion of 1798 were some German cavalry called Hessians. They wore a sort of long boots so remarkable that boots of the same pattern are to this day called Hessian boots. One day in a skirmish one of the rebels shot down a Hessian, and brought away his fine boots as his lawful prize. One of his comrades asked him for the boots: and he answered 'Kill a Hessian for yourself,' which has passed into a proverb. When by labour and trouble you obtain anything which another seeks to get from you on easy terms, you answer Kill a Hessian for yourself.

During the War of the Confederation in Ireland in the seventeenth century Murrogh O'Brien earl of Inchiquin took the side of the Government against his own countrymen, and committed such merciless ravages among the people that he is known to this day as 'Murrogh the Burner'; and his name has passed into a proverb for outrage and cruelty. When a person persists in doing anything likely to bring on heavy punishment of some kind, the people say 'If you go on in that way you'll see Murrogh,' meaning 'you will suffer for it.' Or when a person seems scared or frightened:—'He saw Murrogh or