Читать книгу English As We Speak It in Ireland - P. W. Joyce - Страница 10

'And "Oh sailor dear," said she,

"How came you here by me?"

And then she began for to cry.'

(Old Irish Folk Song.)

'King James he pitched his tents between

His lines for to retire.'

(Old Irish Folk Song: 'The Boyne Water.')

This idiom is in Irish also: Deunaidh duthracht le leas bhur n-anma a dheunadh: 'make an effort for to accomplish the amendment of your souls.' ('Dunlevy.') Two Irish prepositions are used in this sense of for: le (as above) and chum. But this use of for is also very general in English peasant language, as may be seen everywhere in Dickens.

Is ceangailte do bhidhinn, literally 'It is bound I should be,' i.e. in English 'I should be bound.' This construction (from 'Diarmaid and Grainne'), in which the position of the predicate as it would stand according to the English order is thrown back, is general in the Irish language, and quite as general in our Anglo-Irish, in imitation or translation. I once heard a man say in Irish is e do chailleamhuin do rinn me: 'It is to lose it I did' (I lost it). The following are everyday examples from our dialect of English: ''Tis to rob me you want': 'Is it at the young woman's house the wedding is to be?' ('Knocknagow'): 'Is it reading you are?' ''Twas to dhrame it I did sir' ('Knocknagow'): 'Maybe 'tis turned out I'd be' ('Knocknagow'): 'To lose it I did' (Gerald Griffin: 'Collegians'): 'Well John I am glad to see you, and it's right well you look': [Billy thinks the fairy is mocking him, and says:—] 'Is it after making a fool of me you'd be?' (Crofton Croker): 'To make for Rosapenna (Donegal) we did:' i.e., 'We made for Rosapenna': 'I'll tell my father about your good fortune, and 'tis he that will be delighted.'

In the fine old Irish story the 'Pursuit of Dermot and Grania,' Grania says to her husband Dermot:—[Invite guests to a feast to our daughter's house] agus ní feas nach ann do gheubhaidh fear chéile; 'and there is no knowing but that there she may get a husband.' This is almost identical with what Nelly Donovan says in our own day—in half joke—when she is going to Ned Brophy's wedding:—'There'll be some likely lads there to-night, and who knows what luck I might have.' ('Knocknagow.') This expression 'there is no knowing but' or 'who knows but,' borrowed as we see from Gaelic, is very common in our Anglo-Irish dialect. 'I want the loan of £20 badly to help to stock my farm, but how am I to get it?' His friend answers:—'Just come to the bank, and who knows but that they will advance it to you on my security:' meaning 'it is not unlikely—I think it rather probable—that they will advance it'

'He looks like a man that there would be no money in his pocket': 'there's a man that his wife leaves him whenever she pleases.' These phrases and the like are heard all through the middle of Ireland, and indeed outside the middle: they are translations from Irish. Thus the italics of the second phrase would be in Irish fear dá d-tréigeann a bhean é (or a thréigeas a bhean é). 'Poor brave honest Mat Donovan that everyone is proud of him and fond of him' ('Knocknagow'): 'He was a descendant of Sir Thomas More that Henry VIII. cut his head off' (whose head Henry VIII. cut off). The phrases above are incorrect English, as there is redundancy; but they, and others like them, could generally be made correct by the use of whose or of whom:—'He looks like a man in whose pocket,' &c.—'A man whose wife leaves him.' But the people in general do not make use of whose—in fact they do not know how to use it, except at the beginning of a question:—'Whose knife is this?' (Russell.) This is an excellent example of how a phrase may be good Irish but bad English.

A man possesses some prominent quality, such as generosity, for which his father was also distinguished, and we say 'kind father for him,' i.e. 'He is of the same kind as his father—he took it from his father.' So also ''Tis kind for the cat to drink milk'—'cat after kind'—''Tis kind for John to be good and honourable' [for his father or his people were so before him]. All this is from Irish, in which various words are used to express the idea of kind in this sense:—bu cheneulta do—bu dhual do—bu dhuthcha do.

Very anxious to do a thing: ''Twas all his trouble to do so and so' ('Collegians'): corresponding to the Irish:—'Is é mo chúram uile,' 'He (or it) is all my care.' (MacCurtin.)

Instead of 'The box will hold all the parcels' or 'All the parcels will fit into the box,' we in Ireland commonly say 'All the parcels will go into the box.' This is from a very old Gaelic usage, as may be seen from this quotation from the 'Boroma':—Coire mór uma í teigtís dá muic déc: 'A large bronze caldron into which would go (téigtís) twelve [jointed] pigs.' ('Silva Gadelica.')

Chevilles. What is called in French a cheville—I do not know any Irish or English name for it—is a phrase interjected into a line of poetry merely to complete either the measure or the rhyme, with little or no use besides. The practice of using chevilles was very common in old Irish poetry, and a bad practice it was; for many a good poem is quite spoiled by the constant and wearisome recurrence of these chevilles. For instance here is a translation of a couple of verses from 'The Voyage of Maildune' with their chevilles:—

'They met with an island after sailing—

wonderful the guidance.

'The third day after, on the end of the rod—

deed of power—

The chieftain found—it was a very great joy—

a cluster of apples.'

In modern Irish popular poetry we have chevilles also; of which I think the commonest is the little phrase gan go, 'without a lie'; and this is often reflected in our Anglo-Irish songs. In 'Handsome Sally,' published in my 'Old Irish Music and Songs,' these lines occur:—

'Young men and maidens I pray draw near—

The truth to you I will now declare—

How a fair young lady's heart was won

All by the loving of a farmer's son.'

And in another of our songs:—

'Good people all I pray draw near—

No lie I'll tell to ye—

About a lovely fair maid,

And her name is Polly Lee.'

This practice is met with also in English poetry, both classical and popular; but of course this is quite independent of the Irish custom.

Assonance. In the modern Irish language the verse rhymes are assonantal. Assonance is the correspondence of the vowels: the consonants count for nothing. Thus fair, may, saint, blaze, there, all rhyme assonantally. As it is easy to find words that rhyme in this manner, the rhymes generally occur much oftener in Anglo-Irish verse than in pure English, in which the rhymes are what English grammarians call perfect.

Our rustic poets rhyme their English (or Irish-English) verse assonantally in imitation of their native language. For a very good example of this, see the song of Castlehyde in my 'Old Irish Music and Songs'; and it may be seen in very large numbers of our Anglo-Irish Folk-songs. I will give just one example here, a free translation of an elegy, rhyming like its original. To the ear of a person accustomed to assonance—as for instance to mine—the rhymes here are as satisfying as if they were perfect English rhymes.

You remember our neighbour MacBrady we buried last YEAR;

His death it amazed me and dazed me with sorrow and GRIEF;

From cradle to grave his name was held in ESTEEM;

For at fairs and at wakes there was no one like him for a SPREE;

And 'tis he knew the way how to make a good cag of potTHEEN.

He'd make verses in Gaelic quite aisy most plazing to READ;

And he knew how to plaze the fair maids with his soothering SPEECH.

He could clear out a fair at his aise with his ash clehalPEEN;

But ochone he's now laid in his grave in the churchyard of Keel.