Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/113

 98 by coaxing, wheedling, making love, &c.—as in the phrase 'she put her comether on him, so that he married her up at once.' 'There'll not be six girls in the fair he'll not be putting the comether on.' (Seumas MacManus.)

The family name 'Bermingham' is always made Brimmigem in Ireland, which is a very old English corruption. In Friar Clyn's Annals (Latin) written in the fourteenth century, the death is recorded in 1329 of Johannes de Brimegham, i.e., the celebrated Sir John Bermingham who defeated Edward Bruce at Faughart.

Leap is pronounced lep by our people; and in racing circles it is still so pronounced by all classes. The little village of Leap in the County Cork is always called Lep.

There is a curious tendency among us to reverse the sounds of certain letters, as for instance sh and ch. 'When you're coming home to-morrow bring the spade and chovel, and a pound of butter fresh from the shurn.' 'That shimney doesn't draw the smoke well.' So with the letters u and i. 'When I was crossing the brudge I dropped the sweeping brish into the ruvver.' 'I never saw sich a sight.' But such words are used only by the very uneducated. Brudge for bridge and the like are however of old English origin. 'Margaret, mother of Henry VII, writes seche for such' (Lowell). So in Ireland:—‘Jestice is all I ax,’ says Mosy in the story ('Ir. Pen. Mag.); and churries for cherries ('Knocknagow'). This tendency corresponds with the vulgar use of h in London and elsewhere in England. ‘The ’en has just laid a hegg’: ‘he was singing My ’art’s in the