We know that one of the most conspicuous and charming traits of the Irish race is to have a pleasant word for everybody, no matter what is in their hearts, on the theory attributed to St. Augustine that a drop of honey will attract more flies than a barrel of vinegar. The Irish call it "deludering" and "soothering," both very expressive words.
The pleasant way in which questions are answered is very gratifying, especially to a stranger. You never hear a gruff word in Ireland. An Englishman is brutally abrupt, but the Irish are always agreeable. The other day when I asked the guard of a railway train how soon it would start he replied promptly:
When I complained to the hotel porter that it was raining all the time in Ireland he replied apologetically:
Some of the retorts you hear from the common people are highly poetic. When I bought a bunch of flowers from an old woman in the street the other day she replied:
"God bless your kind heart, sir; your mother must have been a saint."
"Good luck to your ladyship's happy face this morning," was the greeting of an old hag to my daughter.
"Oh, let me poor eyes look at ye, me lady, and your voice is as swate as your face."
In a little book I picked up one day, I found a dialogue between a farmer and fox, as follows:
"And what are ye ating, my dear little fox?" said the farmer insinuatingly. "Is it a goose you stole from me?"
"No, my dear farmer, it is the leg of a salmon."
One day I was speaking to the jarvey who was driving us about in the jaunting car, of a neighbor I had met, who had spent some years in America. He had returned to his native place with a "tidy purseful" of money, and was looking around for some business in which to invest his little capital.
"He seems to think very well of himself," I suggested.
"He acts as if he came over with Cromwell a thousand years ago, and he looks down on thim of us who was kings of all the counthry, even before the mountains was made."
An American tourist said to his driver: "Why do you speak to your horse in English, when you talk Celtic to your friends on the road?"
"Sure, an' isn't the English good enough for a beast?" was the reply.
The term "himself" is used to describe the boss, the head of a family, the chief man in an association, the commander of a ship, or the colonel of a regiment. It is applied in the same way as the term "old man" that we are accustomed to in the United States. When a subaltern in the army speaks of "himself," you may understand that he means the colonel of the regiment. When an employee of a railway company alludes to "himself," it is the general manager. And when a sailor uses that term he means the captain of the ship. Wives use it to describe their husbands; children refer to their fathers in that manner and workmen to their superintendent or the boss of the gang: