read with ease the ordinary texts, it was not thought necessary to give in all instances literal renderings of the Irish phrases. In fact such literal versions, because of their approximation to the English of the uneducated, would be unworthy to stand as the equivalent of dignified and vigorous idiom. In any case, exact translation is often well nigh impossible because of the almost Tacitean elusiveness of the Irish turn of expression. The Waterford pronunciation, one of the most distinctive and most musical of all the pronunciations of Irish and, possibly, the one which bears least trace of English influence, has been indicated throughout Part I. by the method of spelling and otherwise, but not, I trust, in such a way as to render this part of the book unintelligible to those readers who may have adopted the pronunciation of another district.
Part II. consists mainly of articles by Tomás Ó Muireaḋaiġ He is probably one of the very few writers whose language, both in speaking to those around him and in reflecting within his own mind, is Irish. The average country letter with its peculiarities of spelling and grammar would represent the level of his highest literary achievement in English composition. He is not merely a native speaker—a sadly abused term—but a native thinker. In his district the people distinguish two forms of Irish, the farmers’ and the fishermen’s Irish, or the Irish of the sea and the Irish of the land. The fishermen’s Irish is somewhat careless in pronunciation, rather free in its admission of half English words in -áil, and prone to a certain confusion in grammatical structure. The farmers’ Irish, on the other hand, is exact in grammar, neat in pronunciation, and not quite so tolerant of words of foreign origin. The Irish of Tomás Ó Muireaḋaiġ is, in the main, the
