‘It is raining cats and dogs’ and a few other Irish tales that got into our language

I am away in Ireland this week and saw the rain come down hard for a short while. One person at the hotel commented that it ‘was raining cats and dogs’ out there.  At it turns out, this phrase reflects a unique situation in Ireland in the days when everyone had a thatch roof (made of straw packed tightly together to keep the rain out, the picture below shows a thatched roof made of straw).

The history of this phrase goes back to the days when most people had thatched roofs and in the winter, when the houses got cold, the dogs and cats would find their way into the thatched roof, digging themselves a hole to keep warm. As the roofs got older and started to leak because of heavy rains, the dogs and cats still crawled into their holes, and the roofs eventually gave way. The dogs and cats fell from their holes in the thatched roofs, falling into the house…. hence the term ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’.

In the 1400-1600s, the poor people of Ireland would sell their urine by peeing in a pot and bringing the pot of urine to the local tannery where they would get a few pennies for it. These people were know to be ‘piss poor‘. Urine was used to prepare the hides of cattle to make leather. Some people were so poor, they ‘did not have a pot to piss in‘ hence the phrase reflected the poorest of the poor. We have adopted the same phrase today to reflect a sense of poverty.

The third phrase we learned from the Irish ‘By Hook or By Crook‘, really reflects two towns between Waterford and Wexford (actual names of towns).  A particular road forked and one way took you to the town of Hook and the other road took you to the town of Crook.  If you were a determined traveler (or in the case of the English General Oliver Cromwell whose mission was to concur the Irish with an army of 3000 troops in 1649) you could get to whichever town you wanted and he was determined to concur these towns by whatever road it took to do it. The phrase has come to mean that people who are determined to achieve their goals, will do it ‘By Hook or By Crook’

Isn’t language wonderful.  I am writing this in Ireland. Have a wonderful 4th of July.