Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/56

CH. IV.] You are about to drink from a cup. ‘How much shall I put into this cup for you?’ ‘Oh you may give me the full of it.’ This is Irish-English: in England they would say—‘Give it to me full.’ Our expression is a translation from the Irish language. For example, speaking of a drinking-horn, an old writer says, a lán do'n lionn, literally, ‘the full of it of ale.’ In Silva Gadelica we find lán a ghlaice deise do losaibh, which an Irishman translating literally would render ‘the full of his right hand of herbs,’ while an Englishman would express the same idea in this way—‘his right hand full of herbs.’

Our Irish-English expression ‘to come round a person’ means to induce or circumvent him by coaxing cuteness and wheedling: ‘He came round me by his sleudering to lend him half a crown, fool that I was’: ‘My grandchildren came round me to give them money for sweets.’ This expression is borrowed from Irish:—'When the Milesians reached Erin tanic a ngáes timchioll Tuathi De Danand, ‘their cuteness circumvented (lit. ‘came round’) the Dedannans.’ (Opening sentence in Mesca Ulad in Book of Leinster: Hennessy.)

‘Shall I do so and so?’ ‘What would prevent you?’ A very usual Hibernian-English reply, meaning ‘you may do it of course; there is nothing to prevent you.’ This is borrowed or translated from an Irish phrase. In the very old tale The Voyage of Maildune, Maildune's people ask, ‘Shall we speak to her [the lady]?’ and he replies Cid gatas uait ce atberaid fria. ‘What [is it] that takes [anything] from you though ye speak to her,’ as much as to say, ‘what harm will it do you if you speak to her?’