English As We Speak It in Ireland

by P. W. Joyce

'I'll make you dance Jack Lattin'—a threat of chastisement, often heard in Kildare. John Lattin of Morristown House county Kildare (near Naas) wagered that he'd dance home to Morristown from Dublin—more than twenty miles—changing his dancing-steps every furlong: and won the wager. 'I'll make you dance' is a common threat heard everywhere: but 'I'll make you dance Jack Lattin' is ten times worse—'I'll make you dance excessively.'

Morristown, Jack Lattin's residence, is near Lyons the seat of Lord Cloncurry, where Jack was often a guest, in the first half of the last century. Lady Morgan has an entry in her Memoirs (1830):—'Returned from Lyons—Lord Cloncurry's, a large party—the first day good—Sheil, Curran, Jack Lattin.'

It is worthy of remark that there is a well-known Irish tune called 'Jack Lattin,' which some of our Scotch friends have quietly appropriated; and not only that, but have turned Jack himself into a Scotchman by calling the tune 'Jockey Latin'! They have done precisely the same with our 'Eileen Aroon' which they call 'Robin Adair.' The same Robin Adair—or to call him by his proper name Robert Adair—was a well-known county Wicklow man and a member of the Irish Parliament.

The word sculloge or scolloge is applied to a small farmer, especially one that does his own farm work: it is often used in a somewhat depreciatory sense to denote a mere rustic: and in both senses it is well known all over the South. This word has a long history. It was originally applied—a thousand years ago or more—to the younger monks of a monastery, who did most of the farm work on the land belonging to the religious community. These young men were of course students indoors, as well as tillers outside, and hence the name, from scol, a school:—scológ a young scholar. But as farm work constituted a large part of their employment the name gradually came to mean a working farmer; and in this sense it has come down to our time.

To a rich man whose forefathers made their

money by smuggling pottheen (illicit whiskey) from Innishowen in Donegal (formerly celebrated for its pottheen manufacture), they say in Derry 'your granny was a Dogherty who wore a tin pocket.' (Doherty a prevalent name in the neighbourhood.) For this was a favourite way of smuggling from the highlands—bringing the stuff in a tin pocket. Tom Boyle had a more ambitious plan:—he got a tinker to make a hollow figure of tin, something like the figure of his wife, who was a little woman, which Tom dressed up in his wife's clothes and placed on the pillion behind him on the horse—filled with pottheen: for in those times it was a common custom for the wife to ride behind her husband. At last a sharp-eyed policeman, seeing the man's affectionate attention so often repeated, kept on the watch, and satisfied himself at last that Tom had a tin wife. So one day, coming behind the animal he gave the poor little woman a whack of a stick which brought forth, not a screech, but a hard metallic sound, to the astonishment of everybody: and then it was all up with poor Tom and his wife.

There are current in Ireland many stories of gaugers and pottheen distillers which hardly belong to my subject, except this one, which I may claim, because it has left its name on a well-known Irish tune:—'Paddy outwitted the gauger,' also called by three other names, 'The Irishman's heart for the ladies,' 'Drops of brandy,' and Cummilum (Moore's: 'Fairest put on Awhile'). Paddy Fogarty kept a little public-house at the cross-roads in which he sold 'parliament,' i.e. legal whiskey on which the duty had been paid; but it was well known that friends could get a little drop

of pottheen too, on the sly. One hot July day he was returning home from Thurles with a ten-gallon cag on his back, slung by a strong soogaun (hay rope). He had still two good miles before him, and he sat down to rest, when who should walk up but the new gauger. 'Well my good fellow, what have you got in that cask?' Paddy dropped his jaw, looking the picture of terror, and mumbled out some tomfoolery like an excuse. 'Ah, my man, you needn't think of coming over me: I see how it is: I seize this cask in the name of the king.' Poor Paddy begged and prayed, and talked about Biddy and the childher at home—all to no use: the gauger slung up the cag on his back (about a hundredweight) and walked on, with Paddy, heart-broken, walking behind—for the gauger's road lay towards Paddy's house. At last when they were near the cross-roads the gauger sat down to rest, and laying down the big load began to wipe his face with his handkerchief. 'Sorry I am,' says Paddy, 'to see your honour so dead bet up: sure you're sweating like a bull: maybe I could relieve you.' And with that he pulled his legal permit out of his pocket and laid it on the cag. The gauger was astounded: 'Why the d—— didn't you show me that before?' 'Why then 'tis the way your honour,' says Paddy, looking as innocent as a lamb, 'I didn't like to make so bould as I wasn't axed to show it?' So the gauger, after a volley of something that needn't be particularised here, walked off with himself without an inch of the tail. 'Faix,' says Paddy, ''tis easy to know 'twasn't our last gauger, ould Warnock, that was here: 'twouldn't be so easy to come round him; for he had a nose that would smell a needle in a forge.'