Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/51

36 shovel.’ This idiom is very common in Limerick, and is used indeed all through Ireland.

Very often ‘the way’ is used in the sense of ‘in order that’:—‘Smoking carriages are lined with American cloth the way they wouldn't keep the smell’; ‘I brought an umbrella the way I wouldn't get wet’; ‘you want not to let the poor boy do for himself [by marrying] the way that you yourself should have all.’ (Ir. Pen. Mag.) You constantly hear this in Dublin, even among educated people.

Sometimes the word way is a direct translation from the Irish caoi, ‘a way,’ ‘a road’; so that the common Irish salutation, Cad chaoi bh-fuil tu? is translated with perfect correctness into the equally common Irish-English salute, ‘What way are you?’ meaning ‘How are you?’

‘This way' is often used by the people in the sense of ‘by this time’:—‘The horse is ready this way,’ i.e. ‘ready by this time.’ (Gerald Griffin, ‘Collegians.’)

The word itself is used in a curious way in Ireland, which has been something of a puzzle to outsiders. As so used it has no gender, number, or case; it is not in fact a pronoun at all, but a substitute for the word even. This has arisen from the fact that in the common colloquial Irish language the usual word to express both even and itself, is féin; and in translating a sentence containing this word féin, the people rather avoided even, a word not very familiar to them in this sense, and substituted the better known itself, in cases where even would be the correct word, and itself would be incorrect. Thus da mbeith an meud sin féin agum is correctly rendered ‘if I had