'Queen:—Say to the king, I would attend his leisure
For a few words.
'Servant: Madam, I will.' ('Macbeth,' Act iii. scene ii.)
Our use of shall and will prevails also in Scotland, where the English change of custom has not obtained any more than it has in Ireland. The Scotch in fact are quite as bad (or as good) in this respect as we are. Like many another Irish idiom this is also found in American society chiefly through the influence of the Irish. In many parts of Ireland they are shy of using shall at all: I know this to be the case in Munster; and a correspondent informs me that shall is hardly ever heard in Derry.
The incorrect use of will in questions in the first person singular ('Will I light the fire ma'am?' 'Will I sing you a song?'—instead of 'Shall I?') appears to have been developed in Ireland independently, and not derived from any former correct usage: in other words we have created this incorrect locution—or vulgarism—for ourselves. It is one of our most general and most characteristic speech errors. Punch represents an Irish waiter with hand on dish-cover, asking:—'Will I sthrip ma'am?'
What is called the regular formation of the past tense (in ed) is commonly known as the weak inflection:—call, called: the irregular formation (by changing the vowel) is the strong inflection:—run, ran. In old English the strong inflection appears to have been almost universal; but for some hundreds of years the English tendency is to replace strong by weak inflection. But our people in Ireland, retaining the old English custom, have a leaning towards the strong inflection, and not only use many of the old-fashioned English strong past tenses, but often form strong ones in their own way:—We use slep and crep, old English; and we coin others. 'He ruz his hand
to me,' 'I cotch him stealing the turf,' 'he gother sticks for the fire,' 'he hot me on the head with his stick,' he sot down on the chair' (very common in America). Hyland, the farm manager, is sent with some bullocks to the fair; and returns. 'Well Hyland, are the bullocks sold?'—'Sowld and ped for sir.' Wor is very usual in the south for were: 'tis long since we wor on the road so late as this.' (Knocknagow.)
'Wor you at the fair—did you see the wonder—
Did you see Moll Roe riding on the gander?'