Patrick Weston Joyce

“ In north-west Ulster they sometimes use the preposition by:—'To come home by his lone' (Seumas Mac Manus) . Observe the word lone is always made lane in Scotland, and generally in Ulster; and these expressions or their like will be found everywhere in Burns or in any other Scotch (or Ulster) dialect writer.
Prepositions are used in Irish where it might be wrong to use them in corresponding constructions in English. Yet the Irish phrases are continually translated literally, which gives rise to many incorrect dialect expressions. ”

“ That old horse is lame of one leg, one of our very usual forms of expression, which is merely a translation from bacach ar aonchois. (MacCurtin.) ‘I'll seem to be lame, quite useless of one of my hands.’ (Old Song.)
Such constructions as amadán fir ‘a fool of a man’ are very common in Irish, with the second noun in the genitive (fear 'a man,' gen. fir) meaning ’a man who is a fool.’ Is and is ail ollamhan, ‘it is then he is a rock of an ollamh (doctor) , i.e. a doctor who is a rock [of learning] . ”

“ 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. ”

“ So also ‘a thief of a fellow,’ ‘a steeple of a man,’ i.e. a man who is a steeple—so tall. This form of expression is however common in England both among writers and speakers. It is noticed here because it is far more general among us, for the obvious reason that it has come to us from two sources (instead of one) —Irish and English. ”

“ There is still another peculiar usage of the English preposition for, which is imitated or translated from the Irish, the corresponding Irish preposition here being mar. In this case the prepositional phrase is added on, not to denote injury, but to express some sort of mild depreciation:—‘Well, how is your new horse getting on?’ ‘Ah, I'm tired of him for a horse: he is little good.’ A dog keeps up a continuous barking, and a person says impatiently, ‘Ah, choke you for a dog’ (may you be choked) . ”

“ This explains the common Anglo-Irish form of expression:—'He fell on the road out of his standing': for as he is 'in his standing' (according to the Irish) when he is standing up, he is 'out of his standing' when he falls. This idiom with in is constantly translated literally into English by the Irish people. ”

“ When this expression, ‘the way,’ or ‘how,’ introduces a statement it means ‘’tis how it happened.’ ‘What do you want, James?’ ‘’Tis the way ma'am, my mother sent me for the loan of the shovel.’ This idiom is very common in Limerick, and is used indeed all through Ireland.
Very often ‘the way’ is used in the sense of ‘in order that’:—‘Smoking carriages are lined with American cloth the way they wouldn't keep the smell’; ‘I brought an umbrella the way I wouldn't get wet’; ‘you want not to let the poor boy do for himself [by marrying] the way that you yourself should have all.’ (Ir. Pen. Mag.) ”

“ A woman is finding some fault with the arrangements for a race, and Lowry Looby (Collegians) puts in ‘so itself what hurt’ i.e. ‘even so what harm.’ (Russell and myself.)
The English when is expressed by the Irish an uair, which is literally ‘the hour’ or ‘the time.’ This is often transplanted into English; as when a person says ‘the time you arrived I was away in town.’
When you give anything to a poor person the recipient commonly utters the wish ‘God increase you!’ (meaning your substance) : which is an exact translation of the equally common Irish wish Go meádaighe Dia dhuit. ”

“ In Irish any sickness, such as fever, is said to be on a person, and this idiom is imported into English. If a person wishes to ask ‘What ails you?’ he often gives it the form of ‘What is on you?’ (Ulster) , which is exactly the English of Cad é sin ort? ”

“ Lowry Looby, who has been appointed to a place and is asked how he is going on with it, replies, ‘To lose it I did for a place.’ (‘Collegians.’) In the Irish story of Bodach an Chota Lachtna (‘The Clown with the Grey Coat’) , the Bodach offers Ironbones some bones to pick, on which Ironbones flies into a passion ”

“ Escape in monsters and amaze the town.'
(Pope: 'Dunciad.') 'The bars forming the front and rear edges of each plane [of the flying-machine] are always in one piece' (Daily Mail) . Shelley's 'Cloud' says, 'I laugh in thunder' (meaning I laugh, and my laugh is thunder.) ”

“ This is an excellent example of how a phrase may be good Irish but bad English.
A man possesses some prominent quality, such as generosity, for which his father was also distinguished, and we say ‘kind father for him,’ i.e. ”