The Sayings of Malachi Horan of Killinarden Hill, Tallaght

 

 

Malachi Horan was born in the year 1847 on Killinarden Hill, Tallaght, and lived for almost 100 years.  In his mid 90s he related his memories and stories to Dr. George A. Little of the Old Dublin Society. 

They were published as ‘Malachi Horan Remembers' (1943).  Malachi died in 1946 and is buried in Saggart Graveyard.

 

“Maybe someday you will wear his shoes,  but you will never have the head to fill his hat”.

 

“He heard them warn him not to open his grave, with his mouth”.

 

“Mercy was out of town in those days”.

 

“Hard times breed hard men, and hard men make rough manners”.

 

“If people, in those days, had no great caring for the law, the law had now great caring for them”.

 

Ay, times change, but I doubt if we change with them”.

 

“There be men fit to travel the mountains and there be some whose foot should never bruise heather”.

 

“If no man laboured the land, the mountain would take back its own”.

 

“The drink do sour in the stomach, if it’s not mulled with company”.

 

“It was a cruel deed, but a worse one had sired it”.

 

“I think we can win more in the telling, than we lose in the playing”.  

 

“It is not always those that die fighting, die hardest for the country”.

 

“While the hammer is in your hand, drive another home”.

 “A Binder”=  A last drink- from the last sod of turf forced into a creel to bind the load.

 

“That is a day, would rear you”.

 

“There is nothing to knock the conceit out of a man, like his wife having a child”.

 

“Not a foot will I wet, this night, for you”.

 

“A prayer for him that’s gone, and a song for him that’s left- that’s a wake”.

 

“To be hard on the weak is a bad thing, for memory is long and time strengthens”.

 

“Every man had a sure cure, but no man could tell why it failed”.

 

“There is no white ewe, but may drop a Black lamb”.

 

“With eye’s as cold as well water”.

 

“Sorra the saint that was ever in the Country, but left his cure behind him in the well”.

 

“What is a man in the world for, but to work”.

 

“When luck walked the road, he was always in the ditch”.

 

“He would make a bid to mend a clock”.

 

“He was full of the brag of a youngster, that is not so sure of himself”.

 

“As yellow as a kite’s foot!”

 

“As sure as there is tinkers in Wicklow”.

 

“He/She would have licked a cork”. (Fond of the Drink)

 

“No man ever stooked that never dropped a sheaf”. (On making a mistake in work)

 

“When a man meets lead, what can he do but die”.

 

“Never ask a Cat a question!  She might answer you back”.

 

“Plenty of Whiskey, and the hard work needed to get the money to buy it”. (The Secret to a long life)

(All sayings as related to Dr. George A. Little of the Old Dublin Society).  

Edited by Albert Perris

A Ramble About Tallaght