English As We Speak It in Ireland

by P. W. Joyce

'The other day he sailed away and parted his dear Nancy.'

(Old Folk Song.)

The dropping of thou was a distinct loss to the English language: for now you has to do double duty—for both singular and plural—which sometimes leads to obscurity. The Irish try to avoid this obscurity by various devices. They always use ye in the plural whenever possible: both as a nominative and as an objective: 'Where are ye going to-day?' 'I'm afeard that will be a dear journey to ye.' Accepting the you as singular, they have created new forms for the plural such as yous, yez, yiz, which do not sound pleasant to a correct speaker, but are very clear in sense. In like manner they form a possessive case direct on ye. Some English soldiers are singing 'Lillibulero'—

'And our skeans we'll make good at de Englishman's throat,'

on which Cus Russed (one of the ambush) says—'That's true for ye at any rate. I'm laughing at the way we'll carry out yeer song afore the day is over.' ('The House of Lisbloom,' by Robert D. Joyce.) Similarly 'weer own' is sometimes used for 'our own.'

The distributive every requires to be followed by pronouns in the singular: but this rule is broken even by well-known English writers:—'Every one for themselves' occurs in Robinson Crusoe; and in Ireland plurals are almost universally used. 'Let every one mind themselves as the ass said when he leaped into a flock of chickens.'

Father Burke has shown—a matter that had escaped me—that we often use the verbs rest and perish in an active sense. The first is seen in the very general Irish prayer 'God rest his soul.' Mangan uses the word in this sense in the Testament of Cathaeir Mór:—

'Here is the Will of Cathaeir Mór,

God rest him.'