English As We Speak It in Ireland

'Joy be with him and a bottle of moss,

And if he don't return he's no great loss.'

'How are you to-day, James?'

'Indeed I can't say that I'm very well': meaning 'I am rather ill.'

'You had no right to take that book without my leave'; meaning 'You were wrong in taking it-it was wrong of you to take it.' A translation of the Irish ní cóir duit. 'A bad right' is stronger than 'no right.' 'You have no right to speak ill of my uncle' is simply negation:-'You are wrong, for you have no reason or occasion to speak so.' 'A bad right you have to speak ill of my uncle:' that is to say, 'You are doubly wrong' [for he once did you a great service]. 'A bad right anyone would have to call Ned a screw' [for he is well known for his generosity]. ('Knocknagow.') Another way of applying the word-in the sense of duty-is seen in the following:-A member at an Urban Council meeting makes an offensive remark and refuses to withdraw it: when another retorts:-'You have a right to withdraw it'-i.e. 'it is your duty.' So:-'You have a right to pay your debts.'

'Is your present farm as large as the one you left?' Reply:-'Well indeed it doesn't want much of it.' A common expression, and borrowed from the Irish, where it is still more usual. The Irish beagnach ('little but') and acht ma beag ('but only a little') are both used in the above sense ('doesn't want much'), equivalent to the English almost.

A person is asked did he ever see a ghost. If his reply is to be negative, the invariable way of expressing it is: 'I never saw anything worse than myself, thanks be to God.'

A person is grumbling without cause, making out that he is struggling in some difficulty-such as poverty-and the people will say to him ironically: 'Oh how bad you are.' A universal Irish phrase among high and low.

A person gives a really good present to a girl:-'He didn't affront her by that present.' (Patterson: Antrim and Down.)

How we cling to this form of expression-or rather how it clings to us-is seen in the following extract from the Dublin correspondence of one of the London newspapers of December, 1909:-'Mr. -- is not expected to be returned to parliament at the general election'; meaning it is expected that he will not be returned. So also:-'How is poor Jack Fox to-day?' 'Oh he's not expected'; i.e. not expected to live,-he is given over. This expression, not expected, is a very common Irish phrase in cases of death sickness.

CHAPTER IV.

IDIOMS DERIVED FROM THE IRISH LANGUAGE.

In this chapter I am obliged to quote the original Irish passages a good deal as a guarantee of authenticity for the satisfaction of Irish scholars: but for those who have no Irish the translations will answer equally well. Besides the examples I have brought together here, many others will be found all through the book. I have already remarked that the great majority of our idiomatic Hibernian-English sayings are derived from the Irish language.

When existence or modes of existence are predicated in Irish by the verb tá or atá (English is), the Irish preposition in (English in) in some of its forms is always used, often with a possessive pronoun, which gives rise to a very curious idiom. Thus, 'he is a mason' is in Irish tá sé 'n a shaor, which is literally he is in his mason: 'I am standing' is tá mé a m' sheasamh, lit. I am in my standing. This explains the common Anglo-Irish form of expression:-'He fell on the road out of his standing': for as he is 'in his standing' (according to the Irish) when he is standing up, he is 'out of his standing' when he falls. This idiom with in is constantly translated literally into English by the Irish people. Thus, instead of saying, 'I sent the wheat thrashed into corn to the mill, and it came home as flour,' they will rather say, 'I sent the wheat in corn to the mill, and it came home in flour.' Here the in denotes identity: 'Your hair is in a wisp'; i.e. it is a wisp: 'My eye is in whey in my head,' i.e. it is whey. (John Keegan in Ir. Pen. Journ.)

But an idiom closely resembling this, and in some respects identical with it, exists in English (though it has not been hitherto noticed-so far as I am aware)-as may be seen from the following examples:-'The Shannon ... rushed through Athlone in a deep and rapid stream (Macaulay), i.e. it was a deep and rapid stream (like our expression 'Your handkerchief is in ribbons').

'Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap.'

(Gray's 'Elegy.')

'Hence bards, like Proteus, long in vain tied down,

Escape in monsters and amaze the town.'

(Pope: 'Dunciad.')

'The bars forming the front and rear edges of each plane [of the flying-machine] are always in one piece' (Daily Mail). Shelley's 'Cloud' says, 'I laugh in thunder' (meaning I laugh, and my laugh is thunder.) 'The greensand and chalk were continued across the weald in a great dome.' (Lord Avebury.)

'Just to the right of him were the white-robed bishops in a group.' (Daily Mail.) 'And men in nations' (Byron in 'The Isles of Greece'): 'The people came in tens and twenties': 'the rain came down in torrents': 'I'll take £10 in gold and the rest in silver': 'the snow gathered in a heap.' 'The money came [home] sometimes in specie and sometimes in goods' (Lord Rothschild, speech in House of Lords, 29th November, 1909), exactly like 'the corn came home in flour,' quoted above. The preceding examples do not quite fully represent the Irish idiom in its entirety, inasmuch as the possessive pronouns are absent. But even these are sometimes found, as in the familiar phrases, 'the people came in their hundreds.' 'You are in your thousands' [here at the meeting], which is an exact reproduction of the Gaelic phrase in the Irish classical story:-Atá sibh in bhur n-ealaibh, 'Ye are swans' (lit. 'Ye are in your swans').

When mere existence is predicated, the Gaelic ann (in it, i.e. 'in existence') is used, as atá sneachta ann, 'there is snow'; lit. 'there is snow there,' or 'there is snow in it,' i.e. in existence. The ann should be left blank in English translation, i.e. having no proper representative. But our people will not let it go waste; they bring it into their English in the form of either in it or there, both of which in this construction carry the meaning of in existence. Mrs. Donovan says to Bessy Morris:-'Is it yourself that's in it?' ('Knocknagow'), which would stand in correct Irish An tusa atá ann? On a Sunday one man insults and laughs at another, who says, 'Only for the day that's in it I'd make you laugh at the wrong side of your mouth': 'the weather that's in it is very hot.' 'There's nothing at all there (in existence) as it used to be' (Gerald Griffin: 'Collegians'): 'this day is bad for growth, there's a sharp east wind there.'

I do not find this use of the English preposition in-namely, to denote identity-referred to in English dictionaries, though it ought to be.

The same mode of expressing existence by an or in is found in the Ulster and Scotch phrase for to be alone, which is as follows, always bringing in the personal pronoun:-'I am in my lone,' 'he is in his lone,' 'they are in their lone'; or more commonly omitting the preposition (though it is always understood): 'She is living her lone.' All these expressions are merely translations from Gaelic, in which they are constantly used; 'I am in my lone' being from Tá me am' aonar, where am' is 'in my' and aonar, 'lone.' Am' aonar seal do bhiossa, 'Once as I was alone.' (Old Irish Song.) In north-west Ulster they sometimes use the preposition by:-'To come home by his lone' (Seumas Mac Manus). Observe the word lone is always made lane in Scotland, and generally in Ulster; and these expressions or their like will be found everywhere in Burns or in any other Scotch (or Ulster) dialect writer.

Prepositions are used in Irish where it might be wrong to use them in corresponding constructions in English. Yet the Irish phrases are continually translated literally, which gives rise to many incorrect dialect expressions. Of this many examples will be found in what follows.

'He put lies on me'; a form of expression often heard. This might have one or the other of two meanings, viz. either 'he accused me of telling lies,' or 'he told lies about me.'

'The tinker took fourpence out of that kettle,' i.e. he earned 4d. by mending it. St. Patrick left his name on the townland of Kilpatrick: that nickname remained on Dan Ryan ever since.

'He was vexed to me' (i.e. with me): 'I was at him for half a year' (with him); 'You could find no fault to it' (with it). All these are in use.

'I took the medicine according to the doctor's order, but I found myself nothing the better of it.' 'You have a good time of it.' I find in Dickens however (in his own words) that the wind 'was obviously determined to make a night of it.' (See p. 10 for a peculiarly Irish use of of it.)

In the Irish poem Bean na d-Tri m-Bo, 'The Woman of Three Cows,' occurs the expression,...