Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/53

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PREFACE.
xlix

"he got death," for this, though the literal translation, is not adopted into Hibernian English; but I do translate the Irish ghnidheadh se sin by "he used to do that," which is the ordinary Anglo-Irish attempt at making—what they have not got in English—a consuetudinal tense. I have scarcely used the pluperfect at all. No such tense exists in Irish, and the people who speak English do not seem to feel the want of it, and make no hesitation in saying, "I'd speak sooner if I knew that," where they mean, "if I had known that I would have spoken sooner." I do not translate (as Campbell would), "it rose with me to do it," but "I succeeded in doing it," for the first, though the literal translation of the Irish idiom, has not been adopted into English; but I do translate "he did it and he drunk," instead of, "he did it while he was drunk;" for the first phrase (the literal translation of the Irish) is universally used throughout English-speaking Ireland. Where, as sometimes happens, the English language contains no exact equivalent for an Irish expression, I have rendered the original as well as I could, as one generally does render for linguistic purposes, from one language into another.

In conclusion, it only remains for me to thank Mr. Alfred Nutt for enriching this book as he has done, and for bearing with the dilatoriness of the Irish printers, who find so much difficulty in setting Irish type, that