Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/44

CH. IV.] to the person represented by the noun or pronoun. Typical examples are: one fellow threatening another says, ‘I'll break your head for you’: or ‘I'll soon settle his hash for him.’ This of course also comes from Irish; Gur scoilt an plaosg aige, ‘so that he broke his skull for him’ (Battle of Gavra); Do ghearr a reim aige beo, ‘he shortened his career for him.’ (‘The Amadán Mór.’) See ‘On’ in Vocabulary.

There is still another peculiar usage of the English preposition for, which is imitated or translated from the Irish, the corresponding Irish preposition here being mar. In this case the prepositional phrase is added on, not to denote injury, but to express some sort of mild depreciation:—‘Well, how is your new horse getting on?’ ‘Ah, I'm tired of him for a horse: he is little good.’ A dog keeps up a continuous barking, and a person says impatiently, ‘Ah, choke you for a dog’ (may you be choked). Lowry Looby, who has been appointed to a place and is asked how he is going on with it, replies, ‘To lose it I did for a place.’ (‘Collegians.’) In the Irish story of Bodach an Chota Lachtna (‘The Clown with the Grey Coat’), the Bodach offers Ironbones some bones to pick, on which Ironbones flies into a passion; and Mangan, the translator, happily puts into the mouth of the Bodach:—‘Oh, very well, then we will not have any more words about them, for bones.’ Osheen, talking in a querulous mood about all his companions—the Fena—having left him, says, [were I in my former condition] Ni ghoirfinn go bráth orruibh, mar Fheinn, ‘I would never call on you, for Fena.’ This last and its like are the models on which the Anglo-Irish phrases are formed.