A person who is cool and collected under trying circumstances is 'as cool as a cucumber.' Here the alliteration helps to popularise the saying.
I must put up the horses now and have them 'as clean as a new pin' for the master.
A person who does good either to an individual or to his family or to the community, but afterwards spoils it all by some contrary course of conduct, is like a cow that fills the pail, but kicks it over in the end.
A person quite illiterate 'wouldn't know a B from a bull's foot.' The catching point here is partly alliteration, and partly that a bull's foot has some resemblance to a B.
Another expression for an illiterate man:--He wouldn't know a C from a chest of drawers--where there is a weak alliteration.
He'll tell you a story as long as to-day and to-morrow. Long enough: for you have to wait on indefinitely for 'to-morrow': or as they say 'to-morrow come never.'
'You'll lose that handkerchief _as sure as a gun_.'
A person who does neither good nor harm--little ill, little good--is 'like a chip in porridge': almost always said as a reproach.
I was _on pins and needles_ till you came home: i.e. I was very uneasy. { 142}
The story went round like wildfire: i.e. circulated rapidly.
Of a person very thin:--He's 'as fat as a hen in the forehead.'
A man is staggering along--not with drink:--That poor fellow is 'drunk with hunger like a showman's dog.'
Dick and Bill are 'as great as inkle-weavers:' a saying very common in Limerick and Cork. _Inkle_ is a kind of broad linen tape: a Shakespearian word. 'Several pieces of it were formerly woven in the same loom, by as many boys, who sat close together on the same seat-board.' (Dr. A. Hume.)
William is 'the spit out of his father's mouth'; i.e. he is strikingly like his father either in person or character or both. Another expression conveying the same sense:--'Your father will never die while you are alive': and 'he's a chip off the old block.' Still another, though not quite so strong:--'He's his father's son.' Another saying to the same effect--'kind father for him'--is examined elsewhere.
'I'm a man in myself like Oliver's bull,' a common saying in my native place (in Limerick), and applied to a confident self-helpful person. The Olivers were the local landlords sixty or seventy years ago. (For a tune with this name see my 'Old Irish Music and Songs,' p. 46.)