Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/65

50 vile, traitor of the world Owney M‘Rorye’ [O'Moore]. But perhaps he wrote this with an Irish pen.

A person does something to displease me—insults me, breaks down my hedge—and I say ‘I will not let that go with him’: meaning I will bring him to account for it, I will take satisfaction, I will punish him. This, which is very usual, is an Irish idiom. In the story of The Little Brawl of Allen, Goll boasts of having slain Finn's father; and Finn answers bud maith m'acfainnse ar gan sin do léicen let, ‘I am quite powerful enough not to let that go with you.’ (‘Silva Gadelica.’) Sometimes this Anglo-Irish phrase means to vie with, to rival. ‘There's no doubt that old Tom Long is very rich’: ‘Yes indeed, but I think Jack Finnerty wouldn't let it go with him.’ Lory Hanly at the dance, seeing his three companions sighing and obviously in love with three of the ladies, feels himself just as bad for a fourth, and sighing, says to himself that he ‘wouldn't let it go with any of them.’ (‘Knocknagow.’)

‘I give in to you’ means ‘I yield to you,’ ‘I assent to (or believe) what you say,’ ‘I acknowledge you are right’: ‘He doesn't give in that there are ghosts at all.’ This is an Irish idiom, as will be seen in the following:—[A lion and three dogs are struggling for the mastery and] adnaigit [an triur eile] do [an leomain] ‘And the three others gave in to the [lion].’

This mode of expression is however found in English also:—[Beelzebub] ‘proposes a third undertaking which the whole assembly gives in to.’ (Addison in ‘Spectator.’)