THE ANGLO-IRISH LANGUAGE 185 



In the centuries that followed the Restoration the 

 " Plantations " and the " Settlements " from England 

 ceased, and Ireland slowly assimilated all. Gentle- 

 men and peasants began to speak the same language, 

 borrowing one from the other ; the talk of the men of 

 quality, bred in the classic tradition, enriched the 

 vocabulary of the peasants, while the country gentle- 

 men, themselves Irish speakers, absorbed into their 

 English speech something of the vigour and passion, 

 the profuse imagery and wilful exaggeration that are 

 inherent in the Gael. Nowadays the talk that comes 

 into Ireland from England, with its commercial slang, 

 its facetious under-statement, its Cockney assurance, 

 cannot be said to enrich the Anglo-Irish vocabulary; 

 yet more direful are the contributions from America. 

 To-day that nauseating term, " the Boss," is glibly 

 used by the country people of the West ; deep among 

 the hills of Connaught, girls who have earned their 

 dowries in Ncav York factories and Philadelphia 

 hotels, guess and calculate, and drawl and mew through 

 their noses, to their own high satisfaction and to the 

 respectful admiration of their relatives. Yet Anglo- 

 Irish remains to us, a medium for poets and story- 

 tellers that is scarcely to be surpassed, a treasury of 

 idiom and simile meet for the service of literature. 



But the spirit of the language is guarded by many 

 dragons. Writers of various degree have tried a 

 fall with them and have retired worsted, to construct 

 from their inner consciousness the vision that was 

 denied to them, even as the scientist constructed 

 tlie camel. Sliakespeare yielded once, and but 

 momentarily, to the temptation; and it is impossible 

 to say that he came out of it well. Even in his day 

 tliere was a convention for an Irisliman ; and recog- 

 nising it as such, he abandoned Captain Macmorris 

 with all decent speed. But the convention lived on, 



