I usually went to Annie’s Huckster Shop with a companion, who always left the door open, deliberately.
Culture
Fews Glossary: P 1
Dialect ‘P’ 1
Pack friendly, ‘them two’s very pack’
Pad path
Paddle walk, ‘he’s that wake he can barely paddle’
Pang bung full, ”I am all panged up’, ‘pang up his plate’
Pant a story
Patch incomparable, ‘he’s not a patch on his father’
Peek pry
Peg a blow, ‘he got a peg on the side of the head’
Pelt n. naked, ‘in his pelt’: v. throw, ‘pelt him with stones’
Perk v. wasting, ‘she’s pelting away’: pleased, brightened, ‘she’s all perked up’, animated, ‘a perky wee bit, she is’
Pernickety fastidious
Perused sifted
Pick choice, search, ‘can I have my pick?’ ‘Pick one out’
Pickle quantity
Piece distance, ‘a quare piece off’, ‘put him a piece’, accompany him a part of the way, n. school (or worker’s) packed lunch, ‘have you your piece wi’ you?’
Pig’s back as in ‘on the pig’s back’, well-off
Pike big, lengthy, ‘a pike of a man’, greedy, ‘a pikey eater’
Pink accurate shot, ‘he pinked it first time’
Pinney pinafore
Pins legs, ‘he’s good on his pins, Paddy’
Pirtas potatoes
Pitch throw
Place home, house, farm,’I’m going till John’s place’
Plaster fuss
Annie’s Huckster’s Shop
Annie’s house was low and thatched, crushed between the country road and the foot of a South Armagh hill, like a limestone slab in the butt of a ditch. More than a huckster’s, her shop was an institution that defied the strangulation of rationing until well into the war years.
Annie’s Shop: 3
After the serving came the reckoning, interspersed with acidy queries about people, children with chin-cough, a christening or a wake, laying hens – or a sudden and arresting cry after a departing customer,
In The Forth
In the fort one time there was a lone bush so large and branchy, ye cud have stud under it all day in the rain without iver getting’ wet. About a ton of stones lay aroun’ it near till the size of ducks’ eggs, but what they wur there for nobody knowed. The tree itself wus blown down on the windy night an’ carried right across the fiel’s to the road. But nivir a sowl laid han’s on it or touched it until it wasted away of itself.
Near the same fort too, just outside the ring, there wus at one time the finest pillar-stone in Ireland, but oul’ Mrs Rice had it destroyed. An’ it wus she had the bad luck, all her cows dyin’ of disorders, an’ she claimin’ compensation off two townlan’s an’ blackguardin’ her dacent neighbours.
But the same Mrs Rice, she went too far when she cut down the oul’ thorns on the fort. But God rest her, she cud nivir see the harm in it. She nivir saw another winter!
The fort was always a gentle place. I mind me father that’s dead this many a year – he’d be a hundred today if he wus alive – hearing the finest music there that iver wus heared. Deed the finest music that iver wus heared wus nothin’ till the music he heared at the oul’ bush in the fort. An’ the light wus beautiful an’ playin’ all aroun’ it.
An’ another fort here wus clane destroyed be John Brady. He wus one of the wealthiest men of his day – with a dozen race-horses, an’ mebbe more, in England. But he lost all his money an’ people said it was well he come till no worse. An’ there wus another lone bush in Ballyheridan of great repute on George John Fleming’s land.
An’ tuk it down and’ burned it, he did. An’ he wasted right away.
An’ he a man of thirty-four acres!
Fews Glossary M ‘1’
Dialect ‘M’ 1
Machine any vehicle, or trap etc. ‘Nice machine you’ve got there’
Mad angry
Made up pleased, ‘she was made up by the present’
Maggoty-headed foolish, difficult, obstinate
(Fit) Make ‘she’s a fit make for him’, suitable companion
Make a move move, try a stunt, ‘if you make a move, I’ll brain you’
Make halfpenny
Make forth pass on, ‘we must make forth to Wee Hughie’s’
Makings materials, ‘the makings of a man’, ‘.. of a coat’
Make little disparage, ‘He made little of it but in the end, he was the buyer’
Male food, (meal) ‘Is he not in for his male yit?’
Mallyvogin scolding
Maluder thresh, beat, ‘Give him a good maludering’
Manifest plain, ‘a manifest lie’
March ditch boundary ditch
Mark scratch, impress, ‘If my hands make an errand till yer face, they’ll mark it well for you’, ‘the wee mare can hardly mark the ground, she’s that lame’
Marksman a person who signs his name by a mark
Marley speckled, e.g. of hen; also of man’s greying hair
Mate meat, meal, ‘he’s quare and good at his mate’
Measured fell, ‘he measured his length on the road’
Melder a large mixed dish of food
Mell a wooden mallet for breaking lumps of earth
Fews Glossary L ‘3’
Dialect ‘L’ 3 of 3
Loft upstairs
Looby big, careless, slothful
Loodther to beat
Looks his bit begs his food, ‘a poor man looking his bit’
Loony lunatic
Longsome slow, ‘he’s that longsome, the thing’s never done’
Loose free, ‘When your father’s loose I’d like a word with him’
Loose-leg an unattached person, ‘a bachelor has a loose-leg’
Looseness diarrhoea
Loy a spade
Lue lukewarm, of friendship, courting or liquid drinks
Lump it put up with it, ‘like it or lump it’
Lump large, ‘great lump of a child’, ‘.. of a horse’, ‘.. of a house’, complimentary expressions
Lying sick, ‘she’s lying these weeks’
Long-tongued an indiscreet person
Loose-tongued same, and a bawdy conversationalist
Lug ear
Fews Glossary L ‘2’
Dialect ‘L’ 2 of 3
Level going easy-tempered, gentle
Lick a toady, to beat, a blow, ‘that’s but a lick and a promise’, careless washing; ‘lick thumbs on that’, make a pledge or promise
Lies near is close; also of money in the bank, stands in good stead, ‘it lies by me till I need it’
Lift to pass the plate in church, stadium; n. the result of the former; misunderstand, ‘I did not lift you there’; steal, ‘he’d lift anything’; ‘when does the funeral lift?’, start; ‘I’ll give you a lift with my toe’, hard kick to raise you up; ‘a dead lift’, weight raised from ground level
Liggety long
Lights ‘roaring his lights out for nothing at all’
Like ‘like I don’t know what!’, comparison difficult
‘what like is the calf?’, is it healthy?; ‘summer like’, hot; ‘winter-like’, cold
Likeness photograph, ‘he had his likeness tuk’
Limber easily breakable
Lines Certificate of baptism, marriage, character
Linge chastise
Lip impertinence, ‘don’t give me your lip’; taste, ‘I haven’t lipped a drink all day’
Lint-hole flax-hole
Load large quantity, ‘he had a full load last night’, got drunk
Load o’ coul’ a bad cold
Lock unspecified quantity, ‘a lock of potatoes’, ‘a lock of hens’
Fews Glossary: Mix
Dialect ‘mix’
Raghery red-coloured pony (or girl)
Pallions flapping pieces of bandages or clothing
High-low shoe/boot type, half-shoe, half-boot, with a very short top
Nyff-nyaffs odds and ends, small ornaments
Jook-the-Beetle little pieces in champ that were not mashed; by extension, a sly person who escapes just punishment
Dah-hoe a bogey, curse, ‘the dah-hoe is in him’, a hereditary evil
Shire to pour off and leave only sediment, or leave till sediment settles
Teemer osier basket used to drain potatoes
Terrible well-lost gone for ever, won’t be found
Expressions:
‘You’ve as much need of a woman as ducks need umberellas’
Foolish counting in the ‘twenties’
‘Wannery two ere ey Dickery Daisy
Hall a boe Crack, a bone fandolairy
Haze come paze
Come merry, come time
Hummily bummily
Twenty-nine!’
ED: I remember this one. There were others. Does anyone remember them?