English As We Speak It in Ireland

by P. W. Joyce

'Man,' says the pretty mermaid to Dick Fitzgerald, when he had captured her from the sea, 'man will you eat me?' 'By all the red petticoats and check aprons between Dingle and Tralee,' cried Dick, jumping up in amazement, 'I'd as soon eat myself, my jewel! Is it I to eat you, my pet!' (Crofton Croker.)

'Where did he get the whiskey?' 'Sorrow a know I know,' said Leary. 'Sorrow fly away with him.' (Crofton Croker.) In these and such like—which you often hear—sorrow is a substitute for devil.

Perhaps the most general exclamations of this kind among Irish people are begor, begob, bedad, begad (often contracted to egad), faith and troth. Faith, contracted from in faith or i' faith, is looked upon by many people as not quite harmless: it is a little too serious to be used indiscriminately—'Faith I feel this day very cold': 'Is that tea good?'

'Faith it is no such thing: it is very weak.' 'Did Mick sell his cows to-day at the fair?' 'Faith I don't know.' People who shrink from the plain word often soften it to faix or haith (or heth in Ulster). An intelligent contributor makes the remark that the use of this word faith (as above) is a sure mark of an Irishman all over the world.

Even some of the best men will occasionally, in an unguarded moment or in a hasty flash of anger, give way to the swearing instinct. Father John Burke of Kilfinane—I remember him well—a tall stern-looking man with heavy brows, but really gentle and tender-hearted—held a station at the house of our neighbour Tom Coffey, a truly upright and pious man. All had gone to confession and Holy Communion, and the station was over. Tom went out to bring the priest's horse from the paddock, but in leading him through a gap in the hedge the horse stood stock still and refused obstinately to go an inch farther. Tom pulled and tugged to no purpose, till at last his patience went to pieces, and he flung this, in no gentle voice, at the animal's head:—'Blast your sowl will you come on!' Just then unluckily Father Burke walked up behind: he had witnessed and heard all, and you may well say that Tom's heart dropped down into his shoes; for he felt thoroughly ashamed. The crime was not great; but it looked bad and unbecoming under the circumstances; and what could the priest do but perform his duty: so the black brows contracted, and on the spot he gave poor Tom down-the-banks and no mistake. I was at that station, though I did not witness the horse scene.

If a person pledges himself to anything, clinching the promise with an adjuration however mild or harmless, he will not by any means break the promise, considering it in a manner as a vow. The old couple are at tea and have just one egg, which causes a mild dispute. At last the father says decisively—'The divel a bit of it I'll eat, so there's an end of it': when the mother instantly and with great solemnity—'Faith I won't eat it—there now!' The result was that neither would touch it; and they gave it to their little boy who demolished it without the least scruple.

I was one time a witness of a serio-comic scene on the head of one of these blank oaths when I was a small boy attending a very small school. The master was a truly good and religious man, but very severe (a wicked master, as we used to say), and almost insane in his aversion to swearing in any shape or form. To say begob or begor or by Jove was unpardonably wicked; it was nothing better than blindfolding the devil in the dark.

One day Jack Aimy, then about twelve years of age—the saint as we used to call him—for he was always in mischief and always in trouble—said exultingly to the boy sitting next him:—'Oh by the hokey, Tom, I have my sum finished all right at last.' In evil hour for him the master happened to be standing just behind his back; and then came the deluge. In an instant the school work was stopped, and poor Jack was called up to stand before the judgment seat. There he got a long lecture—with the usual quotations—as severe and solemn as if he were a man and had perjured himself half a

dozen times. As for the rest of us, we sat in the deadly silence shivering in our skins; for we all, to a man, had a guilty consciousness that we were quite as bad as Jack, if the truth were known. Then poor Jack was sent to his seat so wretched and crestfallen after his lecture that a crow wouldn't pick his bones.