We haven’t talked recently about the language we talk here in Norn Iron. I’ve mentioned that as well as Scottish and Irish Gaelic influences, we also still use phrases from Elizabethan English – but did you know that we also have our own Belfast version of cockney rhyming slang? Probably the best known phrase is, ‘You’re tatie bread!’ – basically meaning your life expectancy is about to be greatly reduced!
If you’re a wee bit hard of hearing you might be described as ‘corn beef’ – i.e. deef! If you live in the ‘heel and ankle’ area – that’s the Shankill Road – then you might want to ‘Orange Sash’ your ‘deuce and ace’ – but only to make sure yer face is ‘James Dean’ – clean. While yer at it you might want to ‘church dome’ your ‘Ballyclare’ afore ye lave the ‘Mickey Mouse’ – in other words, comb your hair before you leave the house!
You might want to put on yer ‘Bangor Boat’ and then use yer ‘jam jar’ to save your ‘plates a’ meat’ – coat, car, feet? Or somebody might say, ‘Shift yer big plates a’ meat there, so I can get by ye’. I knew a pastor once, who hailed from England and thought he had successfully picked up the local slang, only he ended up encouraging his congregation to clap their ‘plates a meat’ – if ye’ve ever tried it ye’ll have discovered, like me, that it’s a bit difficult to do!
Most of us open our ‘mince pies’ after a ‘Robin Hood’ ‘Bo Peep’ in our own ‘Jimmy Ned’ every night – a good sleep in yer own bed? If yer a man ye might take out yer ‘Ian Frazer’ and have ‘dig in the grave’ – shave. And instead of eatin’ in you could go out for a ‘Ruby Murray’ for yer tea – that’s a curry. Ruby Murray, by the way, was a well known singer and actress, very successful in the UK charts back in the fifties – and originally from the Donegal Road, in Belfast.
A dig in the ‘north and south’ would be pretty unpleasant. And an ‘Irish Mick’ in the ‘Lower Falls’ could actually turn out to be an even more painful experience! I’ll leave you to work that one out for yerselves –
Well, we don’t always talk in rhymes here – in fact, it’s mainly in certain parts of Belfast that you’ll hear that ! We do have a habit of ending sentences with certain words – in Belfast it’s ‘now’, usually pronounced, ‘nye’. In County Antrim and Derry we’ll put ‘hey’ onto the end – ‘I was all affronted, hey!’ – and causing some bemused visitors to look in vain on their map for a place called, ‘Derryhay!’ – ‘Where are you from?’ ‘I’m from Derry, hey!’ In County Down – where I live – you’d be more likely to hear the word ‘boy’, though it’ll be pronounced, ‘bye’ – as in, ‘How’s it goin’ there, bye?’
Talkin’ of movin’ yer ‘plates a’ meat’, my mother would often say, ‘Yer sprawled out there like a churn a-dryin’’ – imagine a milk churn tilted up to drain. She had some other great descriptions, too – ‘For dear sake would ye tidy yourself up a bit – yer like an owl lookin’ out of a holly bush!’ Or sometimes, ‘You look like Josef Locke!’
‘Now, who was Josef Locke?’ I hear you ask. Well he was another singer from Northern Ireland – a tenor, actually – who was successful in the forties and fifties – appearing in Blackpool and on the radio, TV and in several films. He was born Joseph McLaughlin in Derry, but his real name was too long for the bill, so his agent shortened it to Josef Locke. There is now a memorial to him on Queen’s Quay, in Derry.
Locke was known as ‘The Singing Bobby’, because he’d previously served in the Palestine Police Force and then in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. He was famous for many Irish ballads – but especially, ‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen.’
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