Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/363

 the week, she can speak on Friday, whatever.' ('Collegians.') 'Although you wouldn't take anything else, you'll drink this glass of milk, whatever.' (Munster.)


 * Curious, I find this very idiom in an English book recently published: 'Lord Tweedmouth. Notes and Recollections,' viz.:—'We could not cross the river [in Scotland], but he would go [across] whatever.' The writer evidently borrowed this from the English dialect of the Highlands, where they use whatever exactly as we do. (William Black: 'A Princess of Thule.') In all these cases, whether Irish or Scotch, whatever is a translation from the Gaelic ar mhodh ar bíth or some such phrase.


 * Wheeling. When a fellow went about flourishing a cudgel and shouting out defiance to people to fight him—shouting for his faction, side, or district, he was said to be 'wheeling':—'Here's for Oola!' 'here's three years!' 'here's Lillis!' (Munster.) Sometimes called hurrooing. See 'Three-years-old.'


 * Wheen; a small number, a small quantity:—'I was working for a wheen o' days': 'I'll eat a wheen of these gooseberries.' (Ulster.)


 * Whenever is generally used in Ulster for when:—'I was in town this morning and whenever I came home I found the calf dead in the stable.'


 * Which. When a person does not quite catch what another says, there is generally a query:—'eh?' 'what?' or 'what's that you say?' Our people often express this query by the single word 'which?' I knew a highly educated and highly