The vast collection derived from all the above sources lay by till early last year, when I went seriously to work at the book. But all the materials were mixed up—three-na-haila—'through-other'—and before a line of the book was written they had to be perused, selected, classified, and alphabetised, which was a very heavy piece of work.
A number of the Irish items in the great 'Dialect Dictionary' edited for the English Dialect Society by Dr. Joseph Wright were contributed by me and are generally printed with my initials. I have neither copied nor avoided these—in fact I did not refer to them at all while working at my book—and naturally many—perhaps most—of them reappear here, probably in different words. But this is quite proper; for the Dialect Dictionary is a book of reference—six large volumes, very expensive—and not within reach of the general public.
Many of the words given in this book as dialectical are also used by the people in the ordinary sense they bear in standard English; such as break:—'Poor Tom was broke yesterday' (dialect: dismissed from employment): 'the bowl
fell on the flags and was broken in pieces' (correct English): and dark: 'a poor dark man' (dialect: blind): 'a dark night' (correct English).
This is essentially a subject for popular treatment; and accordingly I have avoided technical and scientific details and technical terms: they are not needed.
When a place is named in connexion with a dialectical expression, it is not meant that the expression is confined to that place, but merely that it is, or was, in use there.
P. W. J.
Dublin: March, 1910.