Polio, Fags and a Listowel version of English

Wintry Cork

Street Photography by John Tangney

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Another Time, Another Epidemic, Polio

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Coffin Nails

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William  Street

Photo: John Hannon R.I.P.

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The Kerryman Memory Lane

Listowel Youth Club photo by John Cleary reprinted this week in The Kerryman

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Irishisms

We are all watching lots of television and films during lockdown. We are told that the English language is morphing into a midAtlantic dialect. We are all beginning to sound the same. we use the same vocabulary and the same idioms. All the local colourful phrases that distinguished our brand of English are being lost.

Her Marie Nelligan Shaw remembers phrases common in Listowel in her childhood.

Hi Mary, 

Was just remembering old expressions.
A Muller= A pot
That fellow will end up at the back of Shaw’s=Limerick jail
Hope he gets some cop on= sense
You are wrong as Moll Bell = No idea who Moll Bell was
Don’t eat that apposite me = Opposite
There’s fear of you= stop complaining
She’s a real shaper= A show off 
Knock up (name) and she will open the shop for you= knock at the shop door and the shopkeeper will give you what you need.
He went fast in the end= somebody who died after a long illness.
I left the bicycle right outside and when I came out, there it was, gone!
There are probably a million more and I’m sure I will remember more as my Covid-19 mind thinks of something to keep my mind operating.
Stay safe,
Marie