Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/110

 CH. VII.] In many parts of Munster there is a tendency to give the long a the sound of a in car, father:—


 * Were I Paris whose deeds are vaarious
 * And arbithraather on Ida's hill.


 * (Old Folk Song—'The Colleen Rue.')


 * The gladiaathers both bold and darling,
 * Each night and morning to watch the flowers.


 * (Old Folk Song—'Castlehyde.')

So, an intelligent peasant,—a born orator, but illiterate in so far as he could neither read nor write,—told me that he was a spectaathor at one of O'Connell's Repeal meetings: and the same man, in reply to a strange gentleman's inquiry as to who planted a certain wood up the hill, replied that the trees were not planted—they grew spontaan-yus.

I think this is a remnant of the old classical teaching of Munster: though indeed I ought to mention that the same tendency is found in Monaghan, where on every possible occasion the people give this sound to long a.

D before long u is generally sounded like j; as in projuce for produce: the Juke of Wellington, &c. Many years ago I knew a fine old gentleman from Galway. He wished to make people believe that in the old fighting times, when he was a young man, he was a desperate gladiaathor; but he really was a gentle creature who never in all his born days hurt man or mortal. Talking one day to some workmen in Kildare, and recounting his exploits, he told them