THE ANGLO-IRISH LANGUAGE 189 



man or woman what is crudely called the " Irish 

 broouc " is rarely present in its strenj^th, yet their 

 talk is full of the vivid quality that is theirs, partly 

 by heritage, partly by intimacy with the people who 

 were till almost yesterday their tenants. Sooner or 

 later the skilled ear will recognise something in the 

 intonation, in the careless extravagance of simile, 

 in the instinct for effect and the wish to create it, 

 that will betray that composite being, the Anglo- 

 Irishman. 



" So far as our dialectical expressions are vulgar 

 or unintelligible," says Dr. Joyce, " those who are 

 educated among us ought to avoid them." But the 

 point we wish to make is that the Captain Costigan 

 of real life would not have avoided them; it simply 

 would not have occurred to him to employ them. 

 This, from some points of view, is undoubtedly regret- 

 table. Phrases such as those offered by Dr. Joyce — 

 and let us here offer him our heartfelt thanks for his 

 artistic reticence in the spelling of them — are worthy 

 to sparkle on the stretched forefinger of all time ; 

 they add the pictorial quality to conversation, they 

 give a tingling freshness to the common things of 

 life. " He could quench a candle at the other side of 

 the kitchen with a curse " ; " He has forty-five ways 

 of getting into his coat " ; " The life of an old hat is 

 to cock it " ; " He's neither glad nor sorry, like a dog 

 at his father's wake " ; "A man looking at a carriage 

 in motion says : ' Aren't the little wheels dam good 

 not to let the big wheels overtake them ! ' " These, 

 and throngs of others of their kind, mark the intoler- 

 ance of the unvarnished fact and the brimming 

 imagination that can and will embellish it. Proverbs 

 and set phrases are ready in plenty, yet they do not 

 satisfy the ambition of the artist. The variety of 

 well-established blessings is enormous, yet in our own 



