Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 195, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1915 — The English of the Irish. [ARTICLE]

The English of the Irish.

Until something less than 100 years ago the inhabitants of Forth and of Bargy spoke a language different from that spoken in the rest of Wexford or in any other part of the country. It was a language that Chaucer and* Spenser would have understood. To this day some of the old words still survive, such as “let” for “hindered,” “kennen” for “known,” “mate" for “meadow,” “sash” for “shame,” “ractsome” for “fair,” “redesmen” for “adviser,” “choir” for “lewd” for “ashamed.” Any angry person will still say,“l’ll make gobbets of you!” Other Wexford expressions, rarely to be heard in other parts of Ireland, are “renegged,” meaning “change of mind,” “coknowsure” for a knowing person, “ramshogues” for "foolish stories," “shandrumdandy,” for “broken down," “sharoose” for "displeased.”—Maude Radford Warren in Harper’s Magazine.