English As We Speak It in Ireland. P. W. Joyce
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, As do bhólacht ná bí teann, 'Do not be haughty out of your cattle.' This is a form of expression constantly heard in English:—'he is as proud as a peacock out of his rich relations.' So also, 'She has great thought out of him,' i.e. She has a very good opinion of him. (Queen's Co.)
'I am without a penny,' i.e. I haven't a penny: very common: a translation from the equally common Irish expression, tá me gan pinghín.
In an Irish love song the young man tells us that he had been vainly trying to win over the colleen le bliadhain agus le lá, which Petrie correctly (but not literally) translates 'for a year and for a day.' As the Irish preposition le signifies with, the literal translation would be 'with a year and with a day,' which would be incorrect English. Yet the uneducated people of the South and West often adopt this translation; so that you will hear such expressions as 'I lived in Cork with three years.'
There is an idiomatic use of the Irish preposition air, 'on,' before a personal pronoun or before a personal name and after an active verb, to intimate injury or disadvantage of some kind, a violation of right or claim. Thus, Do bhuail Seumas mo ghadhar orm [where orm is air me], 'James struck my dog on me,' where on me means to my detriment, in violation of my right, &c. Chaill sé mo sgian orm; 'he lost my knife on me.'
This mode of expression exists in the oldest Irish as well as in the colloquial languages—both Irish and English—of the present day. When St. Patrick was spending the Lent on Croagh Patrick the demons came to torment him in the shape of great black hateful-looking birds: and the Tripartite Life, composed (in the Irish language) in the tenth century, says, 'The mountain was filled with great sooty-black birds on him' (to his torment or detriment). In 'The Battle of Rossnaree,' Carbery, directing his men how to act against Conor, his enemy, tells them to send some of their heroes re tuargain a sgéithe ar Conchobar, 'to smite Conor's shield on him.' The King of Ulster is in a certain hostel, and when his enemies hear of it, they say:—'We are pleased at that for we shall [attack and] take the hostel on him to-night.' (Congal Claringneach.) It occurs also in the Amra of Columkille—the oldest of all—though I cannot lay my hand on the passage.
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 to the person represented by the noun or pronoun. 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 Amadán Mór.') 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.