Page:English as we speak it in Ireland - Joyce.djvu/66

CH. IV.] For is constantly used before the infinitive: ‘he bought cloth for to make a coat.’

‘And "Oh sailor dear," said she, "How came you here by me?" And then she began for to cry.’ (Old Irish Folk Song.)

'King James he pitched his tents between His lines for to retire.' (Old Irish Folk Song: 'The Boyne Water.')

This idiom is in Irish also: Deunaidh duthracht le leas bhur n-anma a dheunadh: 'make an effort for to accomplish the amendment of your souls.' ('Dunlevy.') Two Irish prepositions are used in this sense of for: le (as above) and chum. But this use of for is also very general in English peasant language, as may be seen everywhere in Dickens.

Is ceangailte do bhidhinn, literally ‘It is bound I should be,’ i.e. in English ‘I should be bound.’ This construction (from ‘Diarmaid and Grainne’), in which the position of the predicate as it would stand according to the English order is thrown back, is general in the Irish language, and quite as general in our Anglo-Irish, in imitation or translation. I once heard a man say in Irish is e do chailleamhuin do rinn me: ‘It is to lose it I did’ (I lost it). The following are everyday examples from our dialect of English: ‘’Tis to rob me you want’: ‘Is it at the young woman's house the wedding is to be?’ (‘Knocknagow’): ‘Is it reading you are?’ ‘’Twas to dhrame it I did sir’ (‘Knocknagow’): ‘Maybe ’tis turned out I'd be’ (‘Knocknagow’): 'To lose it I did' (Gerald Griffin: ‘Collegians’): ‘Well John I am glad to