see you, and it's right well you look’: [Billy thinks the fairy is mocking him, and says:—] ‘Is it after making a fool of me you'd be?‘ (Crofton Croker): ‘To make for Rosapenna (Donegal) we did:’ i.e., ‘We made for Rosapenna': ‘I'll tell my father about your good fortune, and ’tis he that will be delighted.’
In the fine old Irish story the ‘Pursuit of Dermot and Grania,’ Grania says to her husband Dermot:—[Invite guests to a feast to our daughter's house] agus ní feas nach ann do gheubhaidh fear chéile; ‘and there is no knowing but that there she may get a husband.’ This is almost identical with what Nelly Donovan says in our own day—in half joke—when she is going to Ned Brophy's wedding:—‘There'll be some likely lads there to-night, and who knows what luck I might have.’ (‘Knocknagow.’) This expression ‘there is no knowing but’ or ‘who knows but,’ borrowed as we see from Gaelic, is very common in our Anglo-Irish dialect. ‘I want the loan of £20 badly to help to stock my farm, but how am I to get it?’ His friend answers:—‘Just come to the bank, and who knows but that they will advance it to you on my security:’ meaning ‘it is not unlikely—I think it rather probable—that they will advance it’
‘He looks like a man that there would be no money in his pocket’: ‘there's a man that his wife leaves him whenever she pleases.’ These phrases and the like are heard all through the middle of Ireland, and indeed outside the middle: they are translations from Irish. Thus the italics of the second phrase would be in Irish fear dá d-tréigeann a bhean é (or a thréigeas a bhean é). ’Poor brave honest Mat Donovan that everyone is proud of him and fond
