Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/115

 100 Final d is often omitted after l and n: you will see this everywhere in Seumas MacManus's books for Donegal. Recently we were told by the attendant boy at one of the Dublin seaside baths that the prices were—'a shilling for the hot and sixpence for the cowl.' So we constantly use an’ for and: in a Waterford folk song we have 'Here's to the swan that sails on the pon’ (the 'swan' being the poet's sweetheart): and I once heard a man say to another in a fair:—‘That horse is sound in win’ and limb.’

Short e is always sounded before n and m, and sometimes in other positions, like short i: 'How many arrived?' ‘Tin min and five women’: 'He always smoked a pipe with a long stim.' If you ask a person for a pin, he will inquire 'Is it a brass pin or a writing pin you want?'

Again is sounded by the Irish people agin, which is an old English survival. 'Donne rhymes again with sin, and Quarles repeatedly with in.' (Lowell.) An Irishman was once landed on the coast of some unknown country where they spoke English. Some violent political dispute happened to be going on there at the time, and the people eagerly asked the stranger about his political views; on which—instinctively giving expression to the feelings he brought with him from the 'ould sod'—he promptly replied before making any inquiry—'I'm agin the Government.' This story, which is pretty well known, is a faked one; but it affords us a good illustration.

Onion is among our people always pronounced ingion: constantly heard in Dublin. 'Go out Mike