English As We Speak It in Ireland Part 4

This is one of the commonest of our Anglo-Irish idioms, so that a few examples will be sufficient.

'I saw thee ... thrice _on Tara's champions_ win the goal.'

(FERGUSON: 'Lays of the Western Gael.')

I once heard a grandmother--an educated Dublin lady--say, in a charmingly petting way, to her little grandchild who came up crying:--'What did they do to you on me--did they beat you on me?'

The Irish preposition _ag_--commonly translated 'for' in this connexion--is used in a sense much like _air_, viz. to carry an idea of some sort of injury {29} to the person represented by the noun or p.r.o.noun. Typical examples are: one fellow threatening another says, 'I'll break your head _for you_': or 'I'll soon _settle his hash for him_.' This of course also comes from Irish; _Gur scoilt an plaosg aige_, 'so that he broke his skull _for him_' (Battle of Gavra); _Do ghearr a reim aige beo_, 'he shortened his career for him.' ('The Amadan Mor.') See 'On' in Vocabulary.

There is still another peculiar usage of the English preposition _for_, which is imitated or translated from the Irish, the corresponding Irish preposition here being _mar_. In this case the prepositional phrase is added on, not to denote injury, but to express some sort of mild depreciation:--'Well, how is your new horse getting on?' 'Ah, I'm tired of him _for a horse_: he is little good.' A dog keeps up a continuous barking, and a person says impatiently, 'Ah, choke you _for a dog_' (may you be choked). Lowry Looby, who has been appointed to a place and is asked how he is going on with it, replies, 'To lose it I did _for a place_.'

('Collegians.') In the Irish story of _Bodach an Chota Lachtna_ ('The Clown with the Grey Coat'), the Bodach offers Ironbones some bones to pick, on which Ironbones flies into a pa.s.sion; and Mangan, the translator, happily puts into the mouth of the Bodach:--'Oh, very well, then we will not have any more words about them, _for bones_.' Osheen, talking in a querulous mood about all his companions--the Fena--having left him, says, [were I in my former condition] _Ni ghoirfinn go brath orruibh, mar Fheinn_, 'I would never call on you, _for Fena_.' This last and its like are the models on which the Anglo-Irish phrases are formed. {30}

'Of you' (where _of_ is not intended for _off_) is very frequently used in the sense of _from you_: 'I'll take the stick _of you_ whether you like it or not.' 'Of you' is here simply a translation of the Irish _diot_, which is always used in this connexion in Irish: _bainfead diot e_, 'I will take it of you.' In Irish phrases like this the Irish _uait_ ('from you') is not used; if it were the people would say 'I'll take it _from you_,' not _of you_. (Russell.)

'Oh that news was _on_ the paper yesterday.' 'I went _on_ the train to Kingstown.' Both these are often heard in Dublin and elsewhere. Correct speakers generally use _in_ in such cases. (Father Higgins and Kinahan.)

In some parts of Ulster they use the preposition _on_ after _to be married_:--'After Peggy McCue had been married _on_ Long Micky Diver'

(Sheumas MacMa.n.u.s).

'To make a speech _takes a good deal out of me_,' i.e. tires me, exhausts me, an expression heard very often among all cla.s.ses. The phrase in italics is merely the translation of a very common Irish expression, _baineann se rud eigin asam_, it takes something out of me.

'I am afraid of her,' 'I am frightened at her,' are both correct English, meaning 'she has frightened me': and both are expressed in Donegal by 'I am afeard _for_ her,' 'I am frightened _for_ her,' where in both cases _for_ is used in the sense of 'on account of.'

In Irish any sickness, such as fever, is said to be _on_ a person, and this idiom is imported into English. If a person wishes to ask 'What ails you?'

he often {31} gives it the form of 'What is on you?' (Ulster), which is exactly the English of _Cad e sin ort_?

A visitor stands up to go. 'What hurry is on you?' A mild invitation to stay on (Armagh). In the South, 'What hurry are you in?'

She had _a nose on her_, i.e. looked sour, out of humour ('Knocknagow').

Much used in the South. 'They never asked me had I a mouth on me': universally understood and often used in Ireland, and meaning 'they never offered me anything to eat or drink.'

I find Mark Twain using the same idiom:--[an old horse] 'had a neck _on him_ like a bowsprit' ('Innocents Abroad'); but here I think Mark shows a touch of the Gaelic brush, wherever he got it.

'I tried to knock another shilling out of him, but all in vain': i.e. I tried to persuade him to give me another shilling. This is very common with Irish-English speakers, and is a word for word translation of the equally common Irish phrase _bain sgilling eile as_. (Russell.)

'I came against you' (more usually _agin you_) means 'I opposed you and defeated your schemes.' This is merely a translation of an Irish phrase, in which the preposition _le_ or _re_ is used in the sense of _against_ or _in opposition to_: _do thainic me leat annsin_. (S. H. O'Grady.) 'His sore knee came _against him_ during the walk.'

_Against_ is used by us in another sense--that of meeting: 'he went against his father,' i.e. he went to meet his father [who was coming home from town]. This, which is quite common, is, I think, pure {32} Anglo-Irish. But 'he laid up a supply of turf against the winter' is correct English as well as Anglo-Irish.

'And the cravat of hemp was surely spun _Against_ the day when their race was run.'

('Touchstone' in 'Daily Mail.')

A very common inquiry when you meet a friend is:--'How are all your care?'

Meaning chiefly your family, those persons that are under your care. This is merely a translation of the common Irish inquiry, _Cionnos ta do churam go leir_?

A number of idiomatic expressions cl.u.s.ter round the word _head_, all of which are transplanted from Irish in the use of the Irish word _ceann_ [cann] 'head'. _Head_ is used to denote the cause, occasion, or motive of anything. 'Did he really walk that distance in a day?' Reply in Irish, _Ni'l contabhairt air bith ann a cheann_: 'there is no doubt at all _on the head of it_,' i.e. about it, in regard to it. 'He is a bad head to me,'

i.e. he treats me badly. Merely the Irish _is olc an ceann dom e_. _Bhi fearg air da chionn_, he was vexed on the head of it.

A dismissed clerk says:--'I made a mistake in one of the books, and I was sent away _on the head of_ that mistake.'

A very common phrase among us is, 'More's the pity':--'More's the pity that our friend William should be so afflicted.'

'More's the pity one so pretty As I should live alone.'

(Anglo-Irish Folk-Song.)

This is a translation of a very common Irish expression as seen in:--_Budh mho an sgeile Diarmaid_ {33} _do bheith marbh_: 'More's the pity Dermot to be dead.' (Story of 'Dermot and Grania.')

'Who should come up to me in the fair but John.' Intended not for a question but for an a.s.sertion--an a.s.sertion of something which was hardly expected. This mode of expression, which is very common, is a Gaelic construction. Thus in the song _Fainne geal an lae:--Cia gheabhainn le m'ais acht cuilfhionn deas_: 'Whom should I find near by me but the pretty fair haired girl.' 'Who should walk in only his dead wife.' (Gerald Griffin: 'Collegians.') 'As we were walking along what should happen but John to stumble and fall on the road.'

The p.r.o.nouns _myself_, _himself_, &c., are very often used in Ireland in a peculiar way, which will be understood from the following examples:--'The birds were singing _for themselves_.' 'I was looking about the fair _for myself_' (Gerald Griffin: 'Collegians'): 'he is pleasant _in himself_ (ibid.): 'I felt dead [dull] _in myself_' (ibid.). 'Just at that moment I happened to be walking by myself' (i.e. alone: Irish, _liom fein_).

Expressions of this kind are all borrowed direct from Irish.

We have in our Irish-English a curious use of the personal p.r.o.nouns which will be understood from the following examples:--'He interrupted me _and I writing_ my letters' (as I was writing). 'I found Phil there too _and he playing_ his fiddle for the company.' This, although very incorrect English, is a cla.s.sic idiom in Irish, from which it has been imported as it stands into our English. Thus:--_Do chonnairc me Tomas agus e n'a shuidhe cois na teine_: 'I saw Thomas _and he sitting_ beside the fire.' 'How could you see {34} me there _and I to be in bed at the time_?' This latter part is merely a translation from the correct Irish:--_agus meise do bheith mo luidhe ag an am sin_ (Irish Tale). Any number of examples of this usage might be culled from both English and Irish writings. Even so cla.s.sical a writer as Wolfe follows this usage in 'The Burial of Sir John Moore':--

'We thought ...

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, _And we far away_ on the billow.'

(I am reminded of this by Miss Hayden and Prof. Hartog.)

But there is a variety in our English use of the p.r.o.nouns here, namely, that we often use the objective (or accusative) case instead of the nominative. 'How could you expect Davy to do the work _and him so very sick_?' 'My poor man fell into the fire a Sunday night _and him hearty_'

(_hearty_, half drunk: Maxwell, 'Wild Sports of the West'). 'Is that what you lay out for me, mother, _and me after turning the Voster_' (i.e. after working through the whole of Voster's Arithmetic: Carleton). 'John and Bill were both reading and _them eating their dinner_' (while they were eating their dinner). This is also from the Irish language. We will first take the third person plural p.r.o.noun. The p.r.o.noun 'they' is in Irish _siad_: and the accusative 'them' is the Irish _iad_. But in some Irish constructions this _iad_ is (correctly) used as a nominative; and in imitation of this our people often use 'them' as a nominative:--'_Them_ are just the gloves I want.' '_Them_ are the boys' is exactly translated from the correct Irish _is_ {35} _iad sin na buachaillidhe_. 'Oh she melted the hearts of the swains in _them_ parts.' ('The Widow Malone,' by Lever.)

In like manner with the p.r.o.nouns _se_, _si_ (he, she), of which the accusatives _e_ and _i_ are in certain Irish constructions (correctly) used for the nominative forms, which accusative forms are (incorrectly) imported into English. _Do chonnairc me Seadhan agus e n'a shuidhe_, 'I saw Shaun and _him_ sitting down,' i.e. 'as he was sitting down.' So also 'don't ask me to go and _me_ having a sore foot.' 'There's the hen and _her_ as fat as b.u.t.ter,' i.e. 'she (the hen) being as fat as b.u.t.ter.'

The little phrase 'the way' is used among us in several senses, all peculiar, and all derived from Irish. Sometimes it is a direct translation from _amhlaidh_ ('thus,' 'so,' 'how,' 'in a manner'). An old example of this use of _amhlaidh_ in Irish is the following pa.s.sage from the _Boroma_ (_Silva Gadelica_):--_Is amlaid at chonnaic [Concobar] Laigin ocus Ulaid man dabaig oca hol_: 'It is how (or 'the way') [Concobar] saw the Lagenians and the Ulstermen [viz. they were] round the vat drinking from it.' _Is amhlaidh do bhi Fergus_: 'It is thus (or the way) Fergus was [conditioned; that his shout was heard over three cantreds].'

This same sense is also seen in the expression, 'this is the way I made my money,' i.e. 'this is how I made it.'

When this expression, 'the way,' or 'how,' introduces a statement it means ''tis how it happened.' 'What do you want, James?' ''Tis the way ma'am, my mother sent me for the loan of the {36} shovel.' This idiom is very common in Limerick, and is used indeed all through Ireland.

Very often 'the way' is used in the sense of 'in order that':--'Smoking carriages are lined with American cloth _the way_ they wouldn't keep the smell'; 'I brought an umbrella _the way_ I wouldn't get wet'; 'you want not to let the poor boy do for himself [by marrying] _the way_ that you yourself should have all.' (Ir. Pen. Mag.) You constantly hear this in Dublin, even among educated people.

Sometimes the word _way_ is a direct translation from the Irish _caoi_, 'a way,' 'a road'; so that the common Irish salutation, _Cad chaoi bh-fuil tu_? is translated with perfect correctness into the equally common Irish-English salute, 'What way are you?' meaning 'How are you?'

'This way' is often used by the people in the sense of 'by this time':--'The horse is ready this way,' i.e. 'ready by this time.' (Gerald Griffin, 'Collegians.')

The word _itself_ is used in a curious way in Ireland, which has been something of a puzzle to outsiders. As so used it has no gender, number, or case; it is not in fact a p.r.o.noun at all, but a subst.i.tute for the word _even_. This has arisen from the fact that in the common colloquial Irish language the usual word to express both _even_ and _itself_, is _fein_; and in translating a sentence containing this word _fein_, the people rather avoided _even_, a word not very familiar to them in this sense, and subst.i.tuted the better known _itself_, in cases where _even_ would be the correct word, and _itself_ would be incorrect. Thus _da mbeith an meud sin fein agum_ is correctly rendered 'if I had {37} even that much': but the people don't like _even_, and don't well understand it (as applied here), so they make it 'If I had that much _itself_.' This explains all such Anglo-Irish sayings as 'if I got it itself it would be of no use to me,'

i.e. 'even if I got it': 'If she were there itself I wouldn't know her'; 'She wouldn't go to bed till you'd come home, and if she did itself she couldn't sleep.' (Knocknagow.) A woman is finding some fault with the arrangements for a race, and Lowry Looby (Collegians) puts in 'so itself what hurt' i.e. 'even so what harm.' (Russell and myself.)

The English _when_ is expressed by the Irish _an uair_, which is literally 'the hour' or 'the time.' This is often transplanted into English; as when a person says 'the time you arrived I was away in town.'

When you give anything to a poor person the recipient commonly utters the wish 'G.o.d increase you!' (meaning your substance): which is an exact translation of the equally common Irish wish _Go meadaighe Dia dhuit_.

Sometimes the prayer is 'G.o.d increase your store,' which expresses exactly what is meant in the Irish wish.

The very common aspiration 'G.o.d help us' [you, me, them, &c.] is a translation of the equally common _Go bh-foireadh Dia orruinn_ [_ort_, &c.].

In the north-west instead of 'your father,' 'your sister,' &c., they often say 'the father of you,' 'the sister of you,' &c.; and correspondingly as to things:--'I took the hand of her' (i.e. her hand) (Seumas Mac Ma.n.u.s).