pretty certain that both have and do in these applications are survivals from the old English colony in Waterford and Wexford.
In Donegal and thereabout the yon is often shortened to thon, which is used as equivalent to that or those: 'you may take thon book.'
In Donegal 'such a thing' is often made such an a thing.' I have come across this several times: but the following quotation is decisive—'No, Dinny O'Friel, I don't want to make you say any such an a thing.' (Seamus MacManus.)
There is a tendency to put o at the end of some words, such as boy-o, lad-o. A fellow was tried for sheep-stealing before the late Judge Monahan, and the jury acquitted him, very much against the evidence. 'You may go now,' said the judge, 'as you are acquitted; but you stole the sheep all the same, my buck-o.'
- 'I would hush my lovely laddo
- In the green arbutus shadow.'
- (A. P. Graves: 'Irish Songs and Ballads.')
This is found in Irish also, as in ‘a vick-o’ ('my boy,' or more exactly 'my son,' where vick is mhic, vocative of mac, son) heard universally in Munster: 'Well Billy a vick-o, how is your mother this morning?' I suppose the English practice is borrowed from the Irish.
In Irish there is only one article, an, which is equivalent to the English definite article the. This article (an) is much more freely used in Irish than the is in English, a practice which we are inclined to imitate in our Anglo-Irish speech. Our use of the
