Talking to the doctor

These phrases were noted down by my grandfather, Dr William Edward Hadden (1858-1949), when he first came to Portadown in the 1880s from Skibbereen in County Cork; he was obviously struck by the different ways that people in County Armagh expressed themselves.

• Indeed was he.
• A lock o' days I'm dauncy enough. (Jack Kerr recalls another expression for feeling off-colour: I'm guamey)
• Asked a man about 60 what his age was, he said, "Indeed if I could tell ye - if my mother had a lived she could ha tould ye, I forgot till ax her afore she died
• I'm an orphond, I live by myself and have neither father nor mother and I'm entitled if it was so allowed by the Most High to be the finest mon in Portadown but I've got bad care, I got a sleep last night thanks be to the Howly Virgin and Blessed Saint Joseph and it strengthened me.
• I just ran up in my desabells and never bothered putting anything on me at all.
• I never tasted no kind of spiritual drink.
• There are three houses here, and they don't frequent corkscrews.
• Our breed of people never was Tay people.
• "Do you sweat much?" "Sweat'? Aye! The full of a crock."
• I've seen me fretting in bed at night till the floor would be wet.
• "Have you a headache?" "Headache, Doctor? I had a headache that would break the heart of the Apostle Paul."
• I'm addicted to a bad headache, I'm naturally addicted to a bad stomach at all times.
• I don't agree with a bad smell.
• In the evening when I go to fall asleep my breast cracks like a pistol and the very fire flies out of my eyes.

a pain that would kill a horse

• I have a pain that would kill a horse, let alone a Christian.
• The pain are all out of it, and the swelling are gone down.
• There is not a bit of me together only what that medicine is houlding.
• I got a rub from Dr ---- and it was not a spit's worth of use.
• Doctor, it was just something like threakel and water and it had no taste of nothing else and it was no use.
• Man, the microbes of that disease is boys.
• You and she was acquainted the other end of this while back.
• Better give her a tongue thrashing for the way she is going about.
• He's a very hash ignorant man she has to put up with.
• It's a second husband I have and second husbands, they be peevisher than the first one was.
• I've had that cough ever since I had indigesting on the lungs
• The selvedge of my eyes.
• The hungry Wind gathers on the mind and around the heart.
• She had pumonia and I kept giving her the best of chicken food.
• It wrought her both ends.
• The pipes is bigly redd.
• Tired and languiged, that's what I feel.
• I can't sleep a wink at night and then when I wake in the morning I feel very bad.