As I was going to Dub-l-in
I met a pack of tailors,
I put them in my pocket,
In fear the ducks might ait them.
In the Co. Down the Roman Catholics are called 'back-o'-the-hill folk': an echo of the Plantations of James I—three centuries ago—when the Catholics, driven from their rich lowland farms, which were given to the Scottish Presbyterian planters, had to eke out a living among the glens and mountains.
When a person does anything out of the common—which is not expected of him—especially anything with a look of unusual prosperity:—'It is not every day that Manus kills a bullock.' (Derry.) This saying, which is always understood to refer to Roman Catholics, is a memorial, in one flash, of the plantation of the northern districts. Manus is a common Christian name among the Catholics round Derry, who are nearly all very poor: how could they be otherwise? That Manus—i.e. a Catholic—should kill a bullock is consequently taken as a type of things very unusual, unexpected and exceptional. Maxwell, in 'Wild Sports of the West,' quotes this saying as he heard it in Mayo; but naturally enough the saying alone had reached the west without its background of history, which is not known there as it is in Derry.
Even in the everyday language of the people the memory of those Plantations is sometimes preserved, as in the following sayings and their like, which are often heard. 'The very day after Jack Ryan was evicted, he planted himself on the bit of land between his farm and the river.' 'Bill came and planted himself on my chair, right in front of the fire.'
'He that calls the tune should pay the piper' is a saying that commemorates one of our dancing customs. A couple are up for a dance: the young man asks the girl in a low voice what tune she'd like, and on hearing her reply he calls to the piper (or fiddler) for the tune. When the dance is ended and they have made their bow, he slips a coin into her hand, which she brings over and places in the hand of the piper. That was the invariable formula in Munster sixty years ago.
The old Irish name of May-day—the 1st May—was Belltaine or Beltene [Beltina], and this name is still used by those speaking Irish; while in Scotland and Ulster they retain it as a common English word—Beltane:—