English As We Speak It in Ireland

by P. W. Joyce

(Old Irish Folk Song.)

'King James he pitched his tents between

His lines for to retire.'

(Old Irish Folk Song: 'The Boyne Water.')

This idiom is in Irish also: Deunaidh duthracht le leas bhur n-anma a dheunadh: 'make an effort for to accomplish the amendment of your souls.' ('Dunlevy.') Two Irish prepositions are used in this sense of for: le (as above) and chum. But this use of for is also very general in English peasant language, as may be seen everywhere in Dickens.

Is ceangailte do bhidhinn, literally 'It is bound I should be,' i.e. in English 'I should be bound.' This construction (from 'Diarmaid and Grainne'), in which the position of the predicate as it would stand according to the English order is thrown back, is general in the Irish language, and quite as general in our Anglo-Irish, in imitation or translation. I once heard a man say in Irish is e do chailleamhuin do rinn me: 'It is to lose it I did' (I lost it). The following are everyday examples from our dialect of English: ''Tis to rob me you want': 'Is it at the young woman's house the wedding is to be?' ('Knocknagow'): 'Is it reading you are?' ''Twas to dhrame it I did sir' ('Knocknagow'): 'Maybe 'tis turned out I'd be' ('Knocknagow'): 'To lose it I did' (Gerald Griffin: 'Collegians'): 'Well John I am glad to

see you, and it's right well you look': [Billy thinks the fairy is mocking him, and says:—] 'Is it after making a fool of me you'd be?' (Crofton Croker): 'To make for Rosapenna (Donegal) we did:' i.e., 'We made for Rosapenna': 'I'll tell my father about your good fortune, and 'tis he that will be delighted.'

In the fine old Irish story the 'Pursuit of Dermot and Grania,' Grania says to her husband Dermot:—[Invite guests to a feast to our daughter's house] agus ní feas nach ann do gheubhaidh fear chéile; 'and there is no knowing but that there she may get a husband.' This is almost identical with what Nelly Donovan says in our own day—in half joke—when she is going to Ned Brophy's wedding:—'There'll be some likely lads there to-night, and who knows what luck I might have.' ('Knocknagow.') This expression 'there is no knowing but' or 'who knows but,' borrowed as we see from Gaelic, is very common in our Anglo-Irish dialect. 'I want the loan of £20 badly to help to stock my farm, but how am I to get it?' His friend answers:—'Just come to the bank, and who knows but that they will advance it to you on my security:' meaning 'it is not unlikely—I think it rather probable—that they will advance it'

'He looks like a man that there would be no money in his pocket': 'there's a man that his wife leaves him whenever she pleases.' These phrases and the like are heard all through the middle of Ireland, and indeed outside the middle: they are translations from Irish. Thus the italics of the second phrase would be in Irish fear dá d-tréigeann a bhean é (or a thréigeas a bhean é). 'Poor brave honest Mat Donovan that everyone is proud of him and fond

of him' ('Knocknagow'): 'He was a descendant of Sir Thomas More that Henry VIII. cut his head off' (whose head Henry VIII. cut off). The phrases above are incorrect English, as there is redundancy; but they, and others like them, could generally be made correct by the use of whose or of whom:—'He looks like a man in whose pocket,' &c.—'A man whose wife leaves him.' But the people in general do not make use of whose—in fact they do not know how to use it, except at the beginning of a question:—'Whose knife is this?' (Russell.) This is an excellent example of how a phrase may be good Irish but bad English.