English As We Speak It in Ireland

by P. W. Joyce

And his tail cocked up?'

A person struggling with poverty—constantly in money difficulties—is said to be 'pulling the devil by the tail.'

'Great noise and little wool,' as the devil said when he was shearing a pig.

'What's got over the devil's back goes off under the devil's belly.' This is another form of ill got ill gone.

Don't enter on a lawsuit with a person who has in his hands the power of deciding the case. This would be 'going to law against the devil with the courthouse in hell.'

Jack hates that man and all belonging to him 'as the devil hates holy water.'

Yerra or arrah is an exclamation very much in use in the South: a phonetic representation of the Irish airĕ, meaning take care, look out, look you:—'Yerra

Bill why are you in such a hurry?' The old people didn't like our continual use of the word; and in order to deter us we were told that Yerra or Arrah was the name of the devil's mother! This would point to something like domestic conditions in the lower regions, and it is in a way corroborated by the words of an old song about a woman—a desperate old reprobate of a virago—who kicked up all sorts of ructions the moment she got inside the gate:—

'When she saw the young devils tied up in their chains

She up with her crutch and knocked one of their brains.'