This study is a linguistic analysis of two novels by the early twentieth-century Donegal writer Patrick MacGill. From a linguistic point of view, these two novels [Children of the Dead End and The Rat Pit] form a particularly interesting source of data for the study of the dialectal variety known as Hiberno-English (or Irish English), as the author purports to give an accurate portrayal of the types of English spoken in Donegal in a period of ongoing bilingualism and language shift from Irish to English. This work will appeal to scholars interested in Irish English, languages in contact and Irish literature in English.