Month: January 2005

Fumbling Robbers

by
Marty Bogroll
The restaurant clientele was naturally fearful and concerned when three armed and masked men appeared at the door, intent on robbery.  When the robbers failed to gain entry, people inside became puzzled.


  Customers had entered easily. The large notice said [SLIDE] so they simply slid the reinforced glass door to one side.   These guys tried pushing – then pulling.  Then they put their collective shoulders to the door.  

Read moreFumbling Robbers

Follow the fishes’ FARTs

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Talking of Brannon’s Ghost that was known for breaking ‘wine’, I read the other day of the results of a scientific study in Vancouver into the utilization of this bodily gas expulsion by shoals of fish for communication purposes.

 
‘It sounds like a high-pitched raspberry!’ Ben Wilson told a convention of aquatic scientists, ‘And is caused by bubbles coming out of a herring’s anus.  
 
For decades we’ve wondered how shoals of fish kept together at night and now we know,’ he concluded triumphantly.  
 
‘They emit a Fast and Repetitive Tick which enables them to communicate after dark.  This is useful in commercial as well as scientific research for now fishermen should be able to locate shoals of herring at night simply by tracking their FaRTs.’
 
Dennis Higgs of the University of Windsor in Ontario commented,
 
‘I’d not have thought it, but fish do very strange and diverse things’.
 
I was tempted to tell him of this friend of mine (well, acquaintance!) who, after six pints of Guinness, could render a full verse of ‘White Christmas’.  
 
But I didn’t wish to encourage him.
 
Well, either of them actually!!
 

Geese for the Cooking?

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These two neighbour men were forever falling out over a right of way.  The problem was that one had to get through the other’s fields to get to his own.  The thing was resolved in a peculiar way!

This day they had the worst row ever – very near came till blows – and one said to the other that he was walking to Newry to hire a solicitor who would get it settled in court.
 
He put he’s coat and boots on and walked to town.  In the lawyer’s office he stated his case and gave his name and address and that of his neighbour and rival.  When he heared all the in’s and out’s of it,
 
‘Man!’, he says, ‘Begor, och aye, but ye have the great case there entirely!  Shure we’ll win that aisy!’
 
(That’s the way them soliciting men talk. Didn’t ye know?)
 
He agreed till take the case and the man walked home to Fathom.  
 
Meanwhile didn’t yer other man, not to be outdone, walk into Newry too to get he’s own lawyer. 
 
Hell’th o me sowl, if he didn’t pick the self same lawyer as the first man, who was now back working he’s farm.  When he’d heared all the in’s and out’s of it and was given the same names and addresses as before, why, even the lawyer man caught on it was the same case.
 
Well, that left he’em wi’ a dilemma for he couldn’t fight the same case for the two of them.  He thought a wee while about it.
 
 ‘Man!’, he says,
 
‘Begor, och aye, but ye have the great case there entirely!  
 
Shure you”ll win that aisy!
 
The on’y thing is, I’ll that busy I can’t take yer case. 
BUT …
I’ll give ye a letter to take till another lawyer.  
 
Besides meself, he’s the best lawyer in Newry. 
 
He’ll fight it fir you.’
 
Hell’th o me sowl, but if yer man, no sooner than he got outa that office, didn’t he open the letter in a  yard nearby and read it.
 
‘I’ve got a hoult of two fat geese from the country’,
 
it read,
 
‘You pluck this one and I’ll pluck t’other!’
 
Divil the step did he make for the other lawyer’s office at all but made a bee-line home an’ up to his neighbour’s farm.
 
The neighbours and former friends settled the trouble between them then and there, shook hands and never the cross word after.
 
An’ isn’t it a tarrib’ pity the young married wans couldn’t settle their differences the same way instead o’ making them soliciting men even fatter and richer?
 
 

Divil’s own sister

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This man one time had the real targer of a wife and after the holy terror of a row, he tore out of the house cursing and damning her soul into hell and out again.

 
 
And here, all of a sudden he falls in with this strange man who walked out from under a bush along the road where he could have been sheltering.
 
They got into crack anyway.  Passing this house, here wasn’t there another man and wife flailing oul’ hell out of other and calling other for all the wrong names in the wide world.  The two on the road stood to listen.
 
‘What’s going on in there?’ says the strange man.
 
‘Need you ask?’ says our man.
 
‘Can’t you see that’s the devil outa hell in that house?’
 
‘Go long wi’ ye!’ says the strange man, and he drew the back o’ his hand across the other fellow’s jaw in a welt that stumbled him.
 
‘It’s you and the likes of you that gives me the bad name!’
 
”Why?  Don’t tell me you’re the Divil himself?’
 
‘I am,’ say the Divil, an’ him still mad.
 
But the other man put out his hand in friendly greeting.
 
‘Put it there!’ says he.
 
‘We could be related.
 
I think I’m married to your sister!’

Hummerly Bummerly Counting

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More curious counting:
 
Yen, twa tippling
March, mapplin
Mapplin how
How harry
Bow barry
Biddery gan
Gan gibby
Gilby nowd
Dis cum towd
Ten you marry.
 
 
One-ery, two-ery, dickery davey
Allibo crackery, ten-ery lavery
Just contendium merricum time
Hummerly, bummerly, twenty-nine.

‘Ye’re not as slow as ye walk aisy!’ says Gwendelene McEvoy to me, as I trumped her ace.

‘Aye’, says Peter Cunningham, ‘the softest part of him is he’s teeeth!’

 
 

Church St People’s Story

by
Luke Burke Newry
The gable house here (the street signs read Church Street and John Mitchel Street) was the home of the Lundy’s.  May, recently deceased, was waked from her home then in John Mitchel Street.

 
 
P. J. Manly, retired caretaker of the Abbey School, still lives two doors up. Two further doors up is the home of Jean Rooney, sister of Eamon and Councillor John McArdle from High Street. 
 
I am reliably informed that the lady, Margaret Hart, residing at 48 with her niece Eileen, was widowed when her husband Peter (of 1 Chapel Street) was killed in Burma in the last week of the Second World War.
 
The Bears Bar (Windmill) is at the other end of this terrace, and jutting out in the distance is the Cavern Bar (now owned by Dominic Boyle, formerly by Tommy Courtenay). 
 
Lucia White of Number 26 tells me she was clearing the attic some years later with her young son when she came upon a discarded baby cot.  ‘Did you used to have a baby?’ he asked innocently.  ‘Yes’, she smiled.  ‘What did you do with it?’ he asked in alarm!
 
There are far too many families here for individual comment.  Your author as a child, was brought to visit two old ladies, Camille and Mary Warrinnier (we said Warner!), some friends of my mother.   
 
Everyone in the town knows Dickie Rodgers who still resides in Number 11. 
 
Other families included McCaul, McLoughlin, McGovern, McCourt, Hughes and many more. 
 
A few lines of comment from old residents would prove very welcome!   

Old …. never die..

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Match these phrases with their endings below: 
 
before that, however, try guessing the answers…
 
 
 
Old teachers never die, they just lose..

Old golfers never die, they just lose..
Old convicts never die, they just lose..
Old sculptors never die, they just lose..
Old bankers never die, they just lose..
Old actors never die, they just lose..
Old professors never die, they just lose..
Old Egyptian tourists never die, they just go..
Old surgeons never die, they just..
Old farmers never die, they’re just..
Old geometry teachers never die, they just..
Old hookers never die, they’re just..
Old journalists never die, they just get..
Old rulers never die, they’re just..
Old magicians never die, they just..
Old pilots never die, they just go to..
Old thieves never die, they just..
Old foresters never die, they just..
Old vets never die, they just..
Old upholsterers never die, they just..
Old puncture repair men never die, they just..
Old blacksmiths never die, they just..
Old bakers never die, they just lose..
Old butchers never die, they just..
Old tailors never die, they’re just..
 
Answers: 
..their class
..their balls
..their appeal
.. their marbles
.. interest
..their parts
.. their faculties
..go senile (think about it!)
..get bypassed
..put out to grass
..go off on a tangent
..laid off
..depressed
..thrown away
..disappear
..to a higher plane
..steal away
..pine away
..go to the dogs
..don’t recover again
..are retired.
..forge on!
..the bap!
..get the chop!
..stitched up!
 
Your own contribution to Guestbook, please!
 
 
 
 

Seein’ Double: Woman Trouble

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Ah might a given ye the wrong notion of it that the travelling woman was al’ays a gracious and charitable cratur wi’ cures aplenty and such like.  Well, though her great knowledge was respected, she cud be a schemin’ oul wan too!

 
 
There was this woman an’ she was married but wasn’t she carryin’ on with another man unanownst till her husband.  He had he’s suspicions though an’ this time, didn’t he catch them, this man an’ the wife together, an’ there was holy murder.
 
There was an old travellin’ woman used to be around that country – I mine her meself!  She’d get tay and’ a night in the house.  She come in and the woman was on her lone.  She seen there wus somethin’ up an’ she axed the woman was there anything the matter.  
 
‘Oh, an awful unlucky thing happened this morning’, says she, telling her what happened.
 
‘Ah well, no matter’, says the travelling woman, ‘I think I know a way of curin’ that! Lav it till me.’
 
They had sowans for their supper an’ the oul’ travelling woman ate a big baul.  Next morning she asked the woman where the man was.
 
‘He’s away out working in the field along the road,’ says she.
 
Off goes the travelling woman and she seed him working like mad in the field along the ditch.  He was in bad humour.  She raised her hand up to her eyes, the better till see, and she says,
 
‘Good morning to both of yous!’
 
 ‘What do you mean?’ he says, as mad as hell.
 
 ‘Good morning to both of yous?! There’s on’y me here..’
 
‘Ah!’ says the travelling woman.  ‘I had a big baul o’ sowans for supper an’ it puts a great mist over me eyes, she says, so that I see two where there’s on’y the wa’n!’
 
An’ he got to thinkin’ for he had a big feed o’ sowans the night before he’d seed he’s wife wi’ the man.
 
‘Maybe that’s what came over me’, he says, ‘for I had sowans myself before I saw that!’