English As We Speak It in Ireland

by P. W. Joyce

The pronouns myself, himself, &c., are very often used in Ireland in a peculiar way, which will be understood from the following examples:—'The birds were singing for themselves.' 'I was looking about the fair for myself' (Gerald Griffin: 'Collegians'): 'he is pleasant in himself (ibid.): 'I felt dead [dull] in myself' (ibid.). 'Just at that moment I happened to be walking by myself' (i.e. alone: Irish, liom féin). Expressions of this kind are all borrowed direct from Irish.

We have in our Irish-English a curious use of the personal pronouns which will be understood from the following examples:—'He interrupted me and I writing my letters' (as I was writing). 'I found Phil there too and he playing his fiddle for the company.' This, although very incorrect English, is a classic idiom in Irish, from which it has been imported as it stands into our English. Thus:—Do chonnairc me Tomás agus é n'a shuidhe cois na teine: 'I saw Thomas and he sitting beside the fire.' 'How could you see

me there and I to be in bed at the time?' This latter part is merely a translation from the correct Irish:—agus meise do bheith mo luidhe ag an am sin (Irish Tale). Any number of examples of this usage might be culled from both English and Irish writings. Even so classical a writer as Wolfe follows this usage in 'The Burial of Sir John Moore':—

'We thought ...

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,

And we far away on the billow.'

(I am reminded of this by Miss Hayden and Prof. Hartog.)

But there is a variety in our English use of the pronouns here, namely, that we often use the objective (or accusative) case instead of the nominative. 'How could you expect Davy to do the work and him so very sick?' 'My poor man fell into the fire a Sunday night and him hearty' (hearty, half drunk: Maxwell, 'Wild Sports of the West'). 'Is that what you lay out for me, mother, and me after turning the Voster' (i.e. after working through the whole of Voster's Arithmetic: Carleton). 'John and Bill were both reading and them eating their dinner' (while they were eating their dinner). This is also from the Irish language. We will first take the third person plural pronoun. The pronoun 'they' is in Irish siad: and the accusative 'them' is the Irish iad. But in some Irish constructions this iad is (correctly) used as a nominative; and in imitation of this our people often use 'them' as a nominative:—'Them are just the gloves I want.' 'Them are the boys' is exactly translated from the correct Irish is

iad sin na buachaillidhe. 'Oh she melted the hearts of the swains in them parts.' ('The Widow Malone,' by Lever.)

In like manner with the pronouns sé, sí (he, she), of which the accusatives é and í are in certain Irish constructions (correctly) used for the nominative forms, which accusative forms are (incorrectly) imported into English. Do chonnairc mé Seadhán agus é n'a shuidhe, 'I saw Shaun and him sitting down,' i.e. 'as he was sitting down.' So also 'don't ask me to go and me having a sore foot.' 'There's the hen and her as fat as butter,' i.e. 'she (the hen) being as fat as butter.'