‘You’ll have a mouthful of tae?’
‘Well, just a drop in m’ hand.’
‘May yer giving han’ never fail!’
‘Her house?! I wasn’t even axed had I a mouth on me!’
‘Now Biddy, ye always had eyes bigger nor yer belly!’
‘Aye! I’ll ate anythin’ that doesn’t talk back to me!’
‘Thon boy? He luks like a fella that had his fill tae ate, and his time ta’ take it!’
‘True! Ye cud crack a flea on he’s belly’. (tight as a drum, you see!)
‘None of yer aul buck now!’
‘What a do!?! We had lashings and lavings. I’m not fit to stir!”
‘It’s manners to wait till you’re axed!’ (asked)
‘If you believe all you hear, you’ll ate all you see!’
‘A watched pot never boils.’
‘Aye, skinny melink, is it? He’s seen more dinnertimes than dinners.’
‘If it doesn’t fatten, it’ll fill’. (of a light ‘feed’).
‘Time for bed, said Sleepy-Head:
‘Time enough! Said Slow:
‘Put on the pot!’ says greedy-guts
We’ll ate before we go!’
Of Ghosts and the like:
‘She’s no right woman!’ (supernatural being?)
He’d wrestle a ghost for a ha’penny (mean)
As pale as a ghost
‘Have ye no nearer friends to appear till nor me?’
..asked of one seldom seen, and thus assumed dead and gone!
That hoor’s ghost!’ Deprecatory remark!
‘He could sell scares till a ghost’.
Ghosts? I never seen anything worse than myself, not missing it!’
.. the final phrase meaning, ‘and I’m the better for it.’
‘Don’t you come down that ladder ..
for I’m after taking it away!’
‘Wait till I be after telling you ..’ [totally meaningless remark!]
Finally, a few more street rhymes .. expressions ..
‘How far would ye be if I hadn’t stopped ye?’ Rhetorical question, of course!
‘Further away from the fool!’
‘Little amuses the innocent: far less, the fool!’
.. he’s more knave than fool .. ah, give him a fool’s pardon .. on a fool’s errand.