There is a special chapter (iv) in this book devoted to Anglo-Irish phrases imported direct from Irish; but instances will be found all through the book.
It is safe to state that by far the greatest number of our Anglo-Irish idioms come from the Irish language.
Influence of Old English and of Scotch.
From the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion, in the twelfth century, colonies of English and of Welsh-English people were settled in Ireland—chiefly in the eastern part—and they became particularly numerous in the time of Elizabeth, three or four centuries ago, when they were spread all over the country. When these Elizabethan colonists, who were nearly all English, settled down and made friends with the natives and intermarried with them, great numbers of them learned to use the Irish language; while the natives on their part learned English from the newcomers. There was give and take in every place where the two peoples and the two languages mixed. And so the native Irish people learned to speak Elizabethan English—the very language used by Shakespeare; and in a very considerable degree the old Gaelic people and those of English descent retain it to this day. For our people are very conservative in retaining old customs and forms of speech. Many words accordingly that are discarded as old-fashioned—or dead and gone—in England, are still flourishing—alive and well—in Ireland. They are now regarded as vulgarisms by the educated—which no doubt they are—but they are vulgarisms of respectable origin,
