Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/64

CH. IV.] they ate their enough of them’ (‘Diarmaid and Grainne’): d'ith mo shaith ‘I ate my enough.’ Accordingly uneducated people use the word 'nough in this manner, exactly as fill is correctly used in ‘he ate his fill.’ Lowry Looby wouldn't like to be 'a born gentleman' for many reasons—among others that you're expected ‘not to ate half your ’nough at dinner.’ (Gerald Griffin: ‘Collegians.’)

The words world and earth often come into our Anglo-Irish speech in a way that will be understood and recognised from the following examples:—‘Where in the world are you going so early?’ ‘What in the world kept you out so long?’ ‘What on earth is wrong with you?’ ‘That cloud looks for all the world like a man.’ ‘Oh you young thief of the world, why did you do that?’ (to a child). These expressions are all thrown in for emphasis, and they are mainly or altogether imported from the Irish. They are besides of long standing. In the ‘Colloquy’—a very old Irish piece—the king of Leinster says to St. Patrick:—‘I do not know in the world how it fares [with my son].’ So also in a still older story, ‘The Voyage of Maildune’:—‘And they [Maildune and his people] knew not whither in the world (isan bith) they were goinggoing’ [sic]. In modern Irish, Ní chuirionn sé tábhacht a n-éinidh san domhuin: ‘he minds nothing in the world.’ (Mac Curtin.)

But I think some of the above expressions are found in good English too, both old and new. For example in a letter to Queen Elizabeth the Earl of Ormond (an Irishman—one of the Butlers) designates a certain Irish chief ‘that most arrogant,