Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/61

46 her over the garden wall yesterday, and she to fall on her knees on the stones.’

The Irish language has the word annso for here, but it has no corresponding word derived from annso, to signify hither, though there are words for this too, but not from annso. A similar observation applies to the Irish for the words there and thither, and for where and whither. As a consequence of this our people do not use hither, thither, and whither at all. They make here, there, and where do duty for them. Indeed much the same usage exists in the Irish language too: Is ann tigdaois eunlaith (Keating): ‘It is here the birds used to come,’ instead of hither. In consequence of all this you will hear everywhere in Anglo-Irish speech:—‘John came here yesterday’: ‘come here Patsy’: ‘your brother is in Cork and you ought to go there to see him‘: ‘where did you go yesterday after you parted from me?’

‘Well Jack how are you these times?’ ‘Oh, indeed Tom I'm purty well thank you—all that's left of me’: a mock way of speaking, as if the hard usage of the world had worn him to a thread. ‘Is Frank Magaveen there?’ asks the blind fiddler. ‘All that's left of me is here,’ answers Frank. (Carleton.) These expressions, which are very usual, and many others of the kind, are borrowed from the Irish. In the Irish tale, ‘The Battle of Gavra,’ poor old Osheen, the sole survivor of the Fena, says:—‘I know not where to follow them [his lost friends]; and this makes the little remnant that is left of me wretchedwretched’ [sic]. (D'fúig sin m'iarsma).

Ned Brophy, introducing his wife to Mr. Lloyd, says, ‘this is herself sir.’ This is an extremely