Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/147

 132 But let us now have a look at some of our Anglo-Irish redundancies, mixed up as they often are with exaggeration. A man was going to dig by night for a treasure, which of course had a supernatural guardian, like all hidden treasures, and what should he see running towards him but 'a great big red mad bull, with fire flaming out of his eyes, mouth, and nose.' (Ir. Pen. Mag.) Another man sees a leprechaun walking up to him—'a weeny deeny dawny little atomy of an idea of a small taste of a gentleman.' (Ibid.) Of a person making noise and uproar you will be told that he was roaring and screeching and bawling and making a terrible hullabulloo all through the house.

Of an emaciated poor creature—'The breath is only just in and out of him, and the grass doesn't know of him walking over it.'

'The gentlemen are not so pleasant in themselves' [now as they used to be]. (Gerald Griffin.) Expressions like this are very often heard: 'I was dead in myself,' i.e., I felt dull and lifeless.

[Dermot struck the giant and] 'left him dead without life.' ('Dermot and Grainne.') Further on we find the same expression—marbh gan anam, dead without life. This Irish expression is constantly heard in our English dialect: 'he fell from the roof and was killed dead.'

Oh brave King Brian, he knew the way To keep the peace and to make the hay: For those who were bad he cut off their head; And those who were worse he killed them dead.

Similarly the words 'dead and buried' are used all through Munster:—Oh indeed poor Jack Lacy is