that it is an oath of powerful hatred and venom. Occasionally the curse
of "Bad luck to you!" produces an admirable retort, which is pretty
common. When one man applies it to another, he is answered with "Good
luck to you, thin; but may neither of thim ever happen."

"Six eggs to you, an' half-a-dozen o' them rotten!"--like "The devil go
with you an' sixpence!" is another of those pleasantries which mostly
occur in the good-humored badinage between the sexes. It implies
disappointment.

There is a species of imprecation prevalent among Irishmen which we may
term neutral. It is ended by the word bit, and merely results from a
habit of swearing where there is no malignity of purpose. An Irishman,
when corroborating an assertion, however true or false, will often
say, "Bad luck to the bit but it is;"--"Divil fire the bit but it's
thruth!"--"Damn the bit but it is!" and so on. In this form the mind is
not moved, nor the passions excited: it is therefore probably the most
insipid of all their imprecations.

Some of the most dreadful maledictions are to be heard among the
confirmed mendicants of Ireland. The wit, the gall, and the poetry
of these are uncommon. "May you melt off the earth like snow off the
ditch!" is one of a high order and intense malignity; but it is not
exclusively confined to mendicants, although they form that class among
which it is most prevalent. Nearly related to this is, "May you melt
like butther before a summer sun!" These are, indeed, essentially
poetical; they present the mind with appropriate imagery, and exhibit a
comparison perfectly just and striking. The former we think unrivalled.

Some of the Irish imprecations would appear to have come down to us from