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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

More Unique Irish/ Dunmore Expressions

 we just had a visit from my mother's sister. as I've mentioned it's the only time that my mother has really laughs as far as i know, since their cousin died especially.  as i expected, a lot of old stories, sayings etc came out so i wrote down many. some examples: 

  • stump jumper: hick, one who lives '"up the line" (other side of the tracks). interestingly, my grandfather worked for decades in the coal mines, and called my father a stump jumper, although he was the son of a dentist. 
  • "20 miles of bad road": some one with a bad complexion, with pimples, pock marks  etc.
  • "going  to New York": getting  pregnant. one of the challenges of these sayings is finding out where the hell they came from, their derivation. guess that's a further project
  • "fell off the roof"; getting your period (women obviously). 
  • "map of Ireland written all over his face": very Irish looking. 
  • do your "job": to crap.  when i was young, my mother used to ask if  i had a job to do. so when i got older and heard people desperate for jobs, wanting jobs, looking for jobs etc i thought it was hilarious. . i thought a job was a piece of shit, literally
as was said before, as you can see some of the above  seem to be Irish in flavor, some more local/folk i suppose. again really want them to be captured before they're gone--no one seem to use them anywhere. 

2 comments:

  1. The jobs thing is hilarious. Well, I guess America needs an enema...as constipated as we are. She's going to NY is great.

    ReplyDelete
  2. thanks man appreciate it again. note i wrote about otb recently. miss it already

    ReplyDelete