Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/40

CH. IV.] preceding examples do not quite fully represent the Irish idiom in its entirety, inasmuch as the possessive pronouns are absent. But even these are sometimes found, as in the familiar phrases, 'the people came in their hundreds.' 'You are in your thousands' [here at the meeting], which is an exact reproduction of the Gaelic phrase in the Irish classical story:—Atá sibh in bhur n-ealaibh, 'Ye are swans' (lit. 'Ye are in your swans').

When mere existence is predicated, the Gaelic ann (in it, i.e. 'in existence') is used, as atá sneachta ann, 'there is snow'; lit. 'there is snow there,' or 'there is snow in it,' i.e. in existence. The ann should be left blank in English translation, i.e. having no proper representative. But our people will not let it go waste; they bring it into their English in the form of either in it or there, both of which in this construction carry the meaning of in existence. Mrs. Donovan says to Bessy Morris:—'Is it yourself that's in it?' ('Knocknagow'), which would stand in correct Irish An tusa atá ann? On a Sunday one man insults and laughs at another, who says, 'Only for the day that's in it I'd make you laugh at the wrong side of your mouth': 'the weather that's in it is very hot.' 'There's nothing at all there (in existence) as it used to be' (Gerald Griffin: 'Collegians'): 'this day is bad for growth, there's a sharp east wind there.'

I do not find this use of the English preposition in—namely, to denote identity—referred to in English dictionaries, though it ought to be.

The same mode of expressing existence by an or in is found in the Ulster and Scotch phrase for