| No. 10.—Vol. VI.] | JANUARY & FEBRUARY, 1896. | [Old Series, No. 70 |
TO OUR READERS.
Arrangements with reference to printing have caused an unavoidable delay in producing the present number. To obviate a like delay in the next number, the present issue is marked “January and February.” April will therefore close Volume VI., and Volume VII. will commence, like the ancient Irish year, with Bealtaine. Subscribers will receive the same number of copies as if no change had been made.
Subscribers and members of societies to which the Journal is sent are requested to continue their efforts in increasing its circulation. There is every hope that a sufficient increase will be secured to enable the price to be reduced to 3d. per copy. But this mainly depends on our readers, whose interest it concerns only less than it concerns the interests of the language itself.
For the present any person or number of persons sending in advance a subscription of £1 will be entitled to receive four copies of the Journal for twelve months.
IRISH IN MONAGHAN COUNTY.
From Fore, in Westmeath, through Meath, Cavan and Monaghan to Slieve Gullion, in Armagh, and thence to Carlingford, in Louth, there runs what may be called a vein or thread of Irish without much interruption. In these counties, and also, it is said, in a very small district in the Mourne Mountains,1 Co. Down, a population of about 14,000—amongst whom there are very few young people2—still speak a dialect[1] of Irish that has probably suffered more from the inroads of English than any other form of spoken Gaelic. Fifty years ago, and even later, Irish would appear to have been the common vernacular language of the north of Leinster and the south of Ulster. The boundary on the south would seem to have been the Boyne river, and on the north the planted districts. To the shame of the natives, be it said, this state of things no longer exists. In this stretch of country the native tongue has been waning, or, as the peasantry say, “wearing out,” very fast, and, if things go on as at present, will probably be extinct there in ten or fifteen years.
The Irish of the district referred to is a variety of the Northern or Ulster dialect (canaṁaint Ċúige Ulaḋ),3 of which it forms a sub-dialect, pretty well defined by some peculiarities of its own in pronunciation and vocabulary. Many of these appear in the phrases and dialogues in Neilson’s Grammar. This Irish is very closely related to the Irish still spoken in the mountains of Tyrone and Derry, and in the Glens of Antrim, and a little less nearly to that of Donegal. There appear to be two varieties of this Southern dialect of Northern Irish. These may be called Meathian (M) and Oirghiallan (O), from the ancient territories in portions of vvhich they survive. They differ especially in the pronunciation of ao, aoi, eá, f, b and p broad, ng, and of
- ↑ In all that is said of dialect and dialects in this paper, the word is to be understood to denote distinctions of a very limited scope.—Ed.
