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LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. BY JOHN RHYS, M.A., LATE FELLOW OF MERTON COLL., OXFORD, PERPETUAL MEMBER OF THE PARIS PHILOLOGICAL
SOCIETY. LONDON: TÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1877. [All rights reserved.] |
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LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. |
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PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH
AND LONDON |
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To, F. Max Müller, Professor Of Comparative
Philology At Oxford, And To Whitley Stokes, Member Of The Legislative Council
Of India, This Volume Is With Deference Dedicated By The Writer. |
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PREFACE. The substance of these lectures was delivered at
Aberystwyth College in 1874, so that they were intended to appeal, in the
first instance, to Welsh students of Celtic Philology; but it is hoped that
they will also be found intelligible to other than Welsh readers, and with a
view to this the Welsh instances have been rendered into Eaiglish throughout.
Since they were first delivered they have been re-written almost entirely,
and the author could have desired to repeat the process; but at that rate
publication would have been out of the question, as his views are constantly
undergoing modification, which will surprise no one aware how recently the
systematic application of the comparative method of study to the Celtic
languages began. His excuse for publishing at all, |
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viii PREFACE. under the circumstances, must be the fact that,
although the highest effort of one student may result only in giving him a
glimpse of half the truth, even that may enable another to discover the whole
truth, and to secure for both a more advanced point of view. The chances of
his doing this appear to outweigh the probability of the crudeness of his
theories leading others astray who are not in the habit of trying to think
for themselves, persuaded as he is, that, if they do not derive wrong ideas
of Celtic questions from these pages, there are plenty of others from which
they will. Besides, it would require a livelier imagination, and more
ingenuity than he could boast of, to originate, with regard to the history of
the Celtic languages or nations, any theories which could vie in absurdity
and distorted vision with many of those still obtaining among people of the
class mentioned. The reader will have already surmised that the
Lectures do not form a harmonious whole: one reason for this was the gradual
coming in of more accurate knowledge about some of the most important of our
Early Inscriptions after the MS. had been in the printer's hands. The |
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PREFACE. ix study of the former cannot fail to form an era in
Welsh Philology, and no inference warranted by them could safely be
overlooked. To a student of Greek or Roman epigraphy they might, it is true, appear
of little importance both in point of meaning and of number, but meagre as
they are, to those who are desirous of understanding the history of the Welsh
language, they are simply invaluable.
The author has the satisfaction of having, in the course of the last four
summers, inspected nearly all of those still preserved, together with others
of a somewhat later period, of which it was not thought necessary to submit
a detailed account, seeing that they
mostly belong to the time of the Old Welsh Grlosses, and form accordingly a
part only, and that the less important one, of the available materials for
the study of Old Welsh. As to the meaning attached here and elsewhere in
this volume to the terms Early, Old, Mediaeval, and Modern Welsh, the reader
is referred to the beginning of the Fourth Lecture, page 143. And by the
frequently recurring words, our Early Inscriptions, are briefly meant the old
inscriptions, not of Roman or English |
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x PREFACE. origin, which have been found in Wales,
Devonshire, and Cornwall, together with one or two in Scotland that appear to
belong to the same class. RHYL, January 1, 1877. |
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CONTENTS. |
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xii CONTENTS. |
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LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. LECTURE I. "If we meet in difierent tongues with words
which are clearly the same word, notwithstanding differences of form and
meaning which they may exhibit, we cannot help concluding that they are
common representatives of a single original, once formed and adopted by a
single community, and that from this they have come down by the ordinary and
still subsisting processes of linguistic tradition, which always and
everywhere involve liability to alteration in outer shape and inner
content." — William Dwight Whitney. If you glance at that part of the Old World
extending from the Ganges to the Shannon, and consider the Babel of languages
spoken within that range, you will be able to form an idea of the difficulty
of satisfactorily classifying them. However, that has been so far done, and
with so much success that the results are not likely to be very gravely
compromised by future investigations. Roughly speaking, we have within that
stretch of the Northern Hemisphere three great families of speech, namely,
the Aryan, the Semitic, and the Turanian. The first, of which more anon,
comprises the idioms of the chief European
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2 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. nations, and of Hindoos, Persians, and Armenians.
The Semitic languages reckon among their number Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, and
kindred tongues. As Turanian we are taught by some to treat Turkish,
Hungarian, Finnic, Lappish, Samoyedic, and a number of other nearly related
dialects spoken in the Russian Empire, to which may now be added Accadian,
one of the languages of the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Ancient Assyria. This
covers a considerable portion of Asia and all Europe, excepting the
south-west of France and the north of Spain, where Basque is still spoken, a
language whose place in the Turanian family has not yet been made out. It is,
however, certain that it is neither Aryan nor Semitic. To return to the Aryan
family with which we are here more especially concerned, the analysis of the
languages, formerly or still spoken by the leading nations of Hindoostan,
Persia, and Europe, has led to the conclusion, that they are, linguistically
speaking, descended in common from a single primeval tribe. So far all may be
said to agree, but not so when we come to the question as to how and in what
degrees the Aryan nations are severally related one to another within the
family they make up. The older and still, perhaps, the prevailing theory,
which has found a doughty champion in Dr. Fick of Gottingen, sets up a |
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LECTURE I. 3 genealogical tree to the following effect: — The
original Aryan tribe broke up somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Caspian
Sea into two, whereof the one, proceeding eastward, forced its way ultimately
into Hindoostan and Persia, while the other made for Europe. Thus we have an
Eastern or Asiatic branch, and a Western or European one. The former is represented
by the Hindoos and Persians, and the latter is supposed to have, in the first
instance, yielded a Northern and a Southern division: the Northern Aryans of
Europe comprise the Teutons and the Litu-Slaves. The Teutons include the
Aryan nations of Scandinavia and Iceland, the High Germans, and the Low
Germans, among whom our nearest neighbours, the English, are reckoned. The
Litu-Slaves fall into two groups, whereof one includes Lithuanians and Letts
on the Baltic in a country divided between Prussia and Russia; not to mention
the Old Prussians or Borussi, who inhabited parts of Prussia now completely
Germanised, and gave their name to Prussia itself, and to Berlin and other
towns, where their memory is now a mere matter of history. The other group comprises
the ruling race in Russia, Poles, Servians, Bohemians, Wends, and other
nearly related races located within the areas of the Russian, Ottoman,
Austrian, and German empires, and forming the disjecta membra |
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4 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. of a Slavonic world not easy to define
without the aid of a good linguistic map of Europe. The other or Southern
division of the European Aryan comprises — first, the Greeks and allied races
forming a whole with its centre of gravity somewhere between the Adriatic and
the Hellespont; secondly, the
Italians, who speak a variety of Romance dialects, preceded in Ancient Italy
by no less a variety, including, among the most important, Latin, Oscan, and
Umbrian — the affinities of Etruscan are still, owing to the difficulty of
interpreting its remains, subjudice: it will probably turn out to be
non-Aryan. And, thirdly, the Celts,
called by the Romans Galli, by the Greeks Keltoí and Galaátai, and by
themselves, or, rather by those of them who inhabited Gaul or Ancient France,
according to Caesar's account, Celtae, as to whom it may be said that some
three hundred years before the Christian era, they occupied the British
Isles, Gaul, Switzerland, a part of Spain, South Germany, and North Italy:
not long after some of them passed into Asia Minor and gave their name to the
province of Galatia. The advocates of this theory are in some
troulble as to how to deal with these three groups; the difficulty being,
that Latin and the Celtic languages are so similar in many important respects
that they are not to be severed, while, on the other |
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LECTURE I. 5 hand, Latin and Greek are still more
closely allied. The consequence is, that some subdivide the Southern division
into an Italo-Celtic and a Hellenic group, while others prefer to suppose a
Celtic and a Greco-Italic group. This is one of the difficulties of the
genealogical theory; but there are a good many more under which it labours,
and which have been formulated by Johannes Schmidt in the first part of his
book entitled Die Verwantschaftsverhdltnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen
(Weimar, 1872), in which he propounds his own views. The latter I could not
better describe than by rendering, as literally as I can, his own words: a
paragraph beginning on page 28 runs thus: — " The figure also of an
inclined plane dipping in an unbroken straight line from Sanskrit to Celtic
appears to me not inappropriate. As to linguistic boundaries within this
range, originally there were none: two dialects A and X taken at any distance
you please apart in it were connected with one another by the continuous
varieties B, C, D, &c. The appearance of linguistic boundaries, or, to
abide by our figure, the transformation of the inclined plane into a flight
of steps, I look at in this way: — one family or one stem speaking the
variety F, for instance, gained, for reasons political, religious, social or
other, the upper hand over its immediate neighbourhood. Thereby the nearest- |
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6 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. lying varieties of speech, G, H, I, K,
in the one direction, and E, D, 0, in the other, were suppressed by F and
replaced by it. After this had happened F bordered immediately on the one
side on B, on the other immediately on L: the varieties connecting both were
on the one side raised and on the other sunk to the level of F. Thus a sharp
linguistic boundary had been drawn between F and B on the one hand, and
between F and L on the other, a step taking the place of the inclined plane;
and surely this kind of thing has come to pass often enough in historical
times. I will mention only the influence of Attic as it grew stronger and
stronger, and gradually drove the dialects quite out of the field of Greek
literature, the language of the city of Eome suppressing the other Italian
dialects one and all, and Modern High German destined, and that perhaps at no
very "distant a date, to bring about the like extirpation of the German
dialects." These languages, whether, in the task of classifying them,
one follows the lead of Fick or of Schmidt, are known collectively by various
names, such as Japhetic, Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, Indo-Celtic, Aryo-European,
and simply Aryan, none of which are free from objections, but Aryan
recommends itself by its brevity. It is, however to be remembered, that it is
usually confined to |
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LECTURE I. 7 the Asiatic brancli, the Aryans of India
and Iran, by Continental writers, who, in case they are Germans, call the
entire family Indo-Germanic, while a natural antithesis has suggested to the French
mind the compound Indo-Celtic. Aryo-European, though also a new-fangled term,
is more logical than Indo-European, which is still very commonly used here
and in France: Japhetic seems to be out of favour and old-fashioned^ though
quite as good a term as Semitic, which continues to be applied to another
great family. To pass from this question of names to another and a more
important one, it may be asked how it is known that the Aryan languages are
of one and the same origin. In answer it may briefly be said, that one of the
readiest ways of satisfying one's self on this point is to compare the
vocabularies of the languages in question, especially •the more permanent
portions of them, such as the pronouns, the numerals, and the terms
expressive of the nearer removes of blood-relationship. Thus nobody can fail
to see to what conclusion the similarity between the following words must
point: — Welsh mi, Irish md, Latin me, Greek fie, Eng. me, Lithuanian manS*,
Old Bulgarian (so the Slavonic language of which we have the earliest
specimens is called) »ze", Sansktit m&m, Zend m&m; Welsh dau,
Irish da, Latin duo, Greek Ivo, Eng. |
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8 LECTURES
ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. two, Lith. dii, 0. Bulg. dva, Sansk. dm,
Zend dva; "Welsh brawd, Ir. brdthair, 'L2X. fr&ter, Greek
<f)pdTrjp ' a clansman,' Eng. brother, Lith. broterdlis, •0. Bulg. hratru,
Sansk. bhrdtar, Zend brdtar. Suffice it to say, that, if you chose to carry
this simple inspection far enough, you would probahly find they instances at
your command so many and such as to preclude the possibility of their
similarity to one another being the mere result of accident or of borrowing.
Should you still hesitate to ascribe their similarity to a common origin of
the languages they respectively belong to, there remain the irresistible
arguments -which the grammar of the latter never fail to supply. That is, in
a few words, the kind of reasoning on which comparative philology, or, as it
has been more concisely called, glottology, may be said to be mainly founded;
at any rate, so far as concerns the leading families of human speech. In
passing, one cannot abstain from calling attention to the historical value
and importance of the method of glottology already mentioned. A few specimens
will serve to show how it lifts the veil of darkness which conceals from our
ken the antiquity of the race. Thus from Welsh ych ' an ox,' plural ychen,
Breton oc'hen, Eng. ox, oxen, Sansk. ukshan, 'a bull,' it is concluded that
the primeval Aryans had a word uksan meaning an |
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LECTURE I. 9 OX or bull; and from Welsh hu, bum, bumch,
' a cow,' Irisli bo, Lat. bos, Greek /3oi/?, Eng. cow, Sanst. ffo, that they
had a word ffvau meaning a cow or an ox: hence it is evident they were*
familiar with horned cattle. In the same way it could be shown that they had
horses, sheep, goats, swine, and dogs. They lived not in tents, but in some
kind of houses with doors to them [Welsh drrvs, Ir. dorus, Greek 6vpa, Eng.
door, Sansk. dvdrd], and they knew how to kindle [Welsh enni/n ' to kindle a
fire,' Sansk. indk the same, indkana ' firewood, fuel '] fires in them. Those
fires served to make their pots or cauldrons boil [Welsh pair ' a cauldron,'
Med. Ir. coire, Sansk. caru]: in them they cooked and stirred about some kind
of broth or porridge [Welsh umd ' porridge,' Breton ioi, 0. Irish itk "
puis," Lat. jus ' broth, soup,' Greek fm/io? ' soup,' Lettish jdut ' to
stir meal about in water,' 0. Bulg. jucha ' soup,' Sansk. yus, yusha, 'broth,
soup']. What kind of meal entered, into the composition of this /leKa^
^a)IJ,o<! is not known, as the evidence bearing on their skill in
agriculture is very scanty. But that they had some kind of corn is proved by
the . equation of the Welsh word haidd ' barley ' with Sansk. sasya, Zend
hakya 'corn, a field-crop.'* ♦ When this was suggested to Mr. Whitley
Stokea, he kindly called my attention to the following passage in Pliny
xviii. 40: — "Secale Taurini sub Alpibus asiam vocant"— he proposes
to read |
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10 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. They did not go naked, but wore clothing
[Welsh gwisc, Lat. vestis, Sansk. vastra\, made probably of wool [yf elsh.
gwlan, Lith. vilna, 0. Bulg. vluna, Eng. wool^ Sansk. urna\. All this tends
to show- that they lived in the North Temperate Zone, that is, as it is
supposed, in Western Asia, far away ' probably from the first man's abode,
sometimes assigned by anthropology, in its attempt to grapple with the
difficulty as to how Australians, Coolies, Papuans, and Negroes reached their
respective homes, to a continent which it undertakes to project as once
extending from Africa eastward by Madagascar and Ceylon as far as Celebes.
But although we read in the Book of Genesis how Adam was driven out of
Paradise with its four mysterious rivers, they are, perhaps, a little
sanguine who expect that deep-sea dredging in the Indian Ocean may one day be
the means of bringing to light a twig or two of the tree of knowledge. Now
that our inquiry is overtaken on a by-path, it is liable to be waylaid by the
evolutionist and stopped by the theologian; the former wishing to know how
far our Aryan forefather had risen above the ape, and the latter how far he
had gone from original righteousness. The lasiam. Further, in his Remarks on
the Celtic Additioni to CfuHius' Greek Etymology, &o. (Calcutta, 1875),
p. 43, he points out in the two first letters of the Irish word eorna
'barley,' the rule-right Irish representative of Greek feid, Lith. javai,
Sanskrit ywva. |
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LECTURE I. 11 answer has been partly
given already: the following remarks may he added: — Looked at from an
intellectual point of view, we do not know much about him beyond the facts,
that he could count as far as one hundred [Welsh cant, 0. Ir. cdt, Lat.
centum, Eng. hundred, Sansk. qata\, that to him to know was to see [Welsh {yn
dy) wydd (' in thy) sight,' gwyddost ' thou knowest,' Lat. video ' I see,'
Greek olBa ' I know,' elhov ' I saw,' Sansk. vedmi, veda, ' I know '], and
that he knew how to stretch and touch a number of strings so as to elicit
from them music to cheer his leisure hours or to enliven his festivities
[Welsh tant 'a rope, a string, a musical string,' )J /Q/^ ^ plural tannau '
the harp,' 0. Ir. t^t {gl. fidis), Sansk. — tanti, tantu, ' a string, a
chord,' tata ' a stringed instrument; ' Greek tovo'; ' a rope, a cord, a
strain, tension, a note, a tone,' rao-i? * a stretching, a raising the pitch
in music ']. Socially he seems to have been the master of his house on a
footing of equality with his wife, who was mistress of the same and not a
slave. His children not only addressed him as father, but they also called
him more familiarly tata [0. Welsh tat. Mod. Welsh tad, our only word for
father, Lat. tata, a fond word for father, Greek rdra. Terra, 0. Bulg. tata,
Sansk. tata, tdta']. His vocabulary appears to have been very copious as
regards the various ramifications of the family, whence it is |
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2 LECTUKES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. inferred that each individual had his standing
in it well defined, a state of things highly natural in a patriarchal system
of government. His ideas of religion and morals can only be guessed, and how
many gods he had it is impossible to say. It is, however, certain that he
worshipped one above all others, if others he had, and that he spoke of him
in terms expressive at once of the light of day and of the wide expanse of
the sky, which looked down upon him wherever he roamed [0. Welsh diu ' God,'
Med. Welsh diu ' day,' Mod. Welsh Duw ' God,' dytv 'day,' ke-ddyw ' to-daj,'
Ir. dia ' God,' in-diu ' to-day,' Lat. Diovis, Jovis, deus, divus, sub divo =
sub Jove ' beneath the open sky,' Greek Zew, genitive Alo^, Stos ' heavenly,'
evStos ' at midday,' Sansk. div, dyu, ' the sky, day, brightness ']. This may
have been merely his way of saying that his great Heaven-father [ = Lat.
Dies-piter, Joupiter, Jupiter, Juppiter = Greek Zev Trdrep = Vedic Sansk.
Dyaushpitar\ was the god of light, and that he was present everywhere.
Whether he worshipped light or not, as such, in the performance of his
religious rites he seems to have been in the habit of standing with his face
turned to the rising of the sun and his right hand to the south [Welsh dehau
'right (hand), south,' Deheu-dir 'the south land, i.e., South Wales,' 0. Ir.
dess, Mod. Ir. deas ' right, south; ' the
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LECTUEE I. 13 Teutonic instances are
Teisterhant and Texel, in which the first syllable is supposed to mean south (see
the Eevue Celtique, ii. p. 1 73); Sansk. dak- shina ' right, south,' dakshind
{dig) a southern country supposed to be the Deccan]. ■ . A ( '-'/ How
he stood with his god or gods it is impossible to say, but he seems to have
been no entire stranger to his own shortcomings, and the consciousness of
some kind of sin or guilt, as proved by Welsh euog 'guilty' (for other
instances of Welsh eu = ag see the Rev. Celt., ii. p. 193), Greek ayos '
pollution, guilt, a curse,' Sansk. dgas ' offence, mistake, transgression,'
words which bring into a strange rapport with one another the disciples of
Buddha in the far East, the followers of Calvin in Wales, and those subtle
Greeks of old, in whose history, religious and political, the ayos played a
conspicuous part. The natural corollary to this is the inference that the
religion of out Aryan ancestors must have had its ascetic side, and enjoined
on them some kind of penance and self-mortification, as suggested by the
following words: — Welsh crefydd ' religion,' meaning formerly religion from
the point of view of an ascetic, whence crefyddrcr in the Middle Ages meant a
religieux rather than a religious man in the ordinary Protestant sense: Irish
crdibdech ' pious ' (in the Book of Armagh), craibhtheach ' religious, |
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14 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. devout,'
craibhdhigh " people who mortify the flesh " (O'Reilly), Sansk.
^ram, cr&mya ' to become tired, to labour in vain, to chastise one's
self,' grdnta (for crdm-ta) ' fatigue, pains, chastisement, the result of
religious effort,' gramana ' one who chastises himself, an ascetic, a
beggar-friar, a Buddhist,' gramand ' a beggar-nun,' agramana ' an anascetic'
So, after wandering about in the mists of antiquity, we unexpectedly find
ourselves near a point conspicuous in the religious landscape of our own day.
When we set out on this digression we were considering the phonetic
similarity of cognate words belonging to different languages, but in the
course of it instances were intentionally brought together, which may, on the
other hand, have forced their differences into relief. It will, however be
some consolation to find that the majority of those differences follo\7 fixed
rules. Thus, to recall the Welsh word pair and the Irish coire, the same p-c
variation occurs in other cases, such as Mod, Welsh pen ' head,' pren ' a
tree,' pwy ' who,' and 0. Welsh map ' a son,' which are in Irish ceann,
crann, cia, and mac, respectively. Similarly in equating Welsh cant with Eng.
hund-ied we assumed Welsh c to be represented in the Teutonic languages by h;
and that is found to hold true in other instances: take Welsh caj'-a.el, |
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LECTURE I. 15 Eng. ham, "Welsh cos
' hateful,' Eng. hate, Welsh ci ' a dog,' pi. cwn, Eng. hound, "Welsh
coed ' a wood,' Eng. heath, "Welsh coll, Eng. hazel, "Welsh craidd
' centre,' Eng. heart. Now it is one of the characteristics of the Teutonic
languages that they deviate as regards the consonants in a consistent and
well-defined manner from the other Aryan languages, and it is to the students
of the former that we owe the discovery of the rules alluded to, or at any
rate the more important of them. Hence they are commonly called, after the
scholars who made them out, Grimm's Law, and sometimes Eask's. By means of
that law, and the other data afforded by a careful comparison of all the more
important Aryan languages, some glottologists think it possible approximately
to infer both the vocabulary and the inflections of that older language
whence they have all sprung. An idea may be formed of the amount of work
attempted in this direction from the fact that the second edition of Schleicher's
Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-GermMnic Languages (Weimar,
1866) makes up 856 pages octavo, and that the second edition of Fick's
Comparative Dictionary of the same (Gottingen, 1870) covers no less than 1085
pages octavo, while the third edition, now publishing, is likely to occupy a
good deal more than double that number.
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16 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. Perhaps
I could not do better than close these preliminary remarks with a rough
summary of consonants etymologically equivalent in some of the leading Aryan
languages. No attempt is made to make the table exhaustive by crowding into
it exceptional details, unless they happen to be of special interest to the
student of Welsh. However, it will be found sufficiently exact to enable you
with ease to bring to book many of the fanciful etymologies which are ever
floating about in the atmosphere of Celtic philology until they are caught by
some reckless writer of the fantastic school of history, who dearly loves
wild speculations on the past of some one of the Celtic nations; for a false
etymology can seldom be said to be insured against speedy oblivion until the
Muse of History has taken it by the hand and assigned it a sphere of
usefulness. Now that you have a general idea of the way the student of
comparative philology goes to work, and the position which the Celtic
languages occupy in the. family to which they belong, your attention must be
called a little more in detail to them. It has already been hinted that they
offer more important points of similarity to Latin and its sister dialects of
Ancient Italy than to any other Aryan group of languages whatsoever^ — herein
Fick and Schmidt would agree; but next,
o S^ a> z o s * a *t£ ,.- •-» SB m JS 2 o S a |
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.
fc* > J3 r^ ri3 ja bo . . •qspAPio * — to r-" '^ =r '-. •qsuipio ^^
bo _" ■ 1 f oo-^: bo-o T3 -o bo-o TS ^ c a a tT:*_-^ar •qsjitiiso
<^ ***" bO « '"' o eu-w ■" bo-o 73 ^ tio-J3 Td ^ c a
E tT-r-, > m •iretiqmfl poB uraao bo rt — •ajFI •3183J0
I luapoH •q8r[3na j3
S:3>hJ=; ct<^ q. to bcTj ^ = a S!.">>&»"' ■OTOoa •UBllWnq^TI M^ bo r! ""^ ffi 4^ ^
fU'N bc^ r^ >^q bo^ ^ a a a ^ 'r^ > m PIO » jf *!% H bO-O J5 N bO-O J3
1 a" a -".rri!> aT •pnsz OiJiT-ia P* N!£t3 ,£3 N bO'^ r^^ id B U
>i > ^ •?U3Isn«s O.J4-B o,^ bo-e ,Q Ja i^Cl,:2.'a a fi tT t>. t>
» w at< fi< o o p M o p o m l2i
^ S p3 1>< ^ OT » a S-u-s 3
£•"'0 s ■3a-§«,2 "■s-i SB-" •^ m a;" S 5j- a
S.2* Stj £«§!" = « » s K-^ ^ a » p a o S ,a^^ Bsg c -.2 Sap. r-fe a •■•5
p ■"S-a§"a |
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18 LECTURES ON ■WELSH PHILOLOGY;
perhaps, to the Italian group they loost nearly resemble English and the
other members of the Teutonic group. This fact, which is gradually becoming
more evident as Celtic glottology progresses, is fully taken into account by
the dialectic theory, as coinciding with the geographical position occupied
at the dawn of history by the Celts between Italians and Teutons; whereas the
genealogical tree would lead one to expect to find them resembling, in point
of language, the Slavonians quite as much as the Teutons, which is certainly
far from being the ease. It is also to be noticed, that it is owing to the
encroachment of languages deriving their origin from Italy and Germany, that
the vast Celtic world of antiquity has been, as far. as regards language,
reduced to its present narrow dimensions, that is to say, the fag-ends of
France and the British Isles. This is, however, an aspect of our history
which no one could expect us to dwell upon with feelings of pleasure and
satisfaction: as we believe the Celts never to have been cowards, we turn
away fain to think that the words which the poet makes Hector apply to
individuals hold equally true of races: — Moi/jax Soinvd <p7]fu
vcipvyixivov l/i/ieiiai i.vSpSiv, Qi KaKbv, oiSi fiev i<r$\ip, iir^v t4
vpHra yivrirai.. The Celtic languages still spoken are Welsh, Breton, Gaelic
in Ireland and the Highlands of |
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LECTURE I. 19 Scotland, and Manx: among
the dead ones are Old Cornisli, Pictish, and Gaulish. Of these, Cornish,
which ceased to be spoken only in the latter part of the last century, has
left us a considerable amount of literature, while the Pictish words extant
may be counted on one's fingers: the old Gauls have left behind them a number
of monuments, from which, together with other sources, a fair number of their
names and a few other specimens of their vocabulary have been collected;
enough in fact to enable one to assign them their proper place in the Celtic
family. Now as to the Celts of the British Isles and Brittany, all are agreed
that they divide themselves naturally into two branches, the one Kymric and
the other Goidelic. To the latter belong the Irish and the Gaels of Scotland,
together with the Manx; to the former the Welsh, the Cornish, and the
Bretons, not to mention that the Picts, Mr. Skene notwithstanding, were
probably Kymric rather than Goidelic. Then as to the Ancient Gauls, it has
been usual to range them with the Kymric nations, so that you will find the
entire Celtic family commonly spoken of as consisting of Goidelic nations on
the one hand, and Gallo-British ones on the other. There are, however, good
reasons for regarding this classification as resting on a bad
foundation, |
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20 LECTUKES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. namely,
a phonological argument which will not bear examination. It is this: The
Welsh and the Gauls belong to the same branch of the Celtic family, because
their languages agree in replacing Aryan qv by j», while Irish uses c: thus
the 0. Irish word ioxfour was cethir, while our word is pedrvar, formerly
petguar, and the Gauls called a kind of carriage in use among them
petorritum, a form which no doubt involves their word fovfour. The
corresponding Latin, it is needless to add, yjSLS quatuor, and the Aryan
original was probably qvatvar. Now a glance at the equivalents of Aryan qv in
the table will serve to show that this kind of reasoning, if it proves
anything, proves rather too much. For why, it may be asked, should the Welsh
not be asserted also to be particularly near relations of those Italians, for
instance, who said petur for quatuor, of the Greeks who called the same
numeral irivvpe';, and of the Modern Koumanians who have modified the Latin
words aqua and equa into ape and eape respectively? That would of course be
absurd, and it is evidently dangerous to rest a theory of history or
ethnology on such a basis. Nor is this all: the p coincidence between Welsh
and Gaulish should imply something like an identity of date; that is, both
languages ought to have had p for qv in use at the same time, so as to allow
one to infer that qv |
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LECTURE I. 21 had become jo at a time
when they were as yet one language. This would be another twig of the
genealogical tree, and a contradiction of the facts of the case. The Gauls
had replaced qv by p at some date anterior to the time of Caesar, whereas our
ancestors do not seem to have done so much before the 6th century. You will
have already learned from the table, that Aryan p had disappeared from the
Celtic languages: so, previous to the change by the "Welsh of qv into
/», the latter sound must have been unknown to them. Accordingly we find that
the Ogam alphabet made no provision for it, and that, when our ancestors
began to borrow Koman names with j», they had to invent symbols for it: more
strictly speaking, they seem to have extemporised them, for in the only two
instances extant they are different ones. The former are pvnpkivs,
accompanied by Pope- in Ogam, on the Cynffig stone, and tvepilli, the
genitive of the Welsh form of Turpilius, on the Glan Usk Park stone near
Crickhowel: the Ogam is not easy to read, but Turpil- is certain.* , The
other names with p, Pascent-, Paternini, * The Ogmic symbol for p in Turpil-
is of the form of x placed on the right of the edge. The same symbol placed
on the edge has lately been proved by Dr. S. Ferguson to occur fqr^ in an
Irish inscription reading: Sroinienas poi netattrenalugoa, which Mr. Stokes
would treat as Broinioonas poi netat Trenaliigos, and render, literally,
(Lapis) Broinidnis (qui) fuit propugnatorum TrenalugHs: see the Proceedings
of the RoyaJ, Irish Academy, vol. i. ser. ii. pp. 292-297, |
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22 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. Paulinus,
Potenina, which occur on our older class of monuments, are unfortunately not
given in Ogam. The earliest native name in point is pobivs in debased Eoman
capitals hardly older than the 6th century, and the earliest instance in
manuscript is the related name borne by the king of Dyfed in the time of
Gildas, who uses it in the vocative case as Vortipori; Gildas wrote about the
middle of the 6th century. Kymric names with qv are more numerous, and,
probably, earlier: in debased capitals we have for instance maqv[eragi],
maqvirini, QVENATAvcr and QVENTENDANi, of which the last-mentioned is A
highly interesting instance: it seems to be a derivative from Qvenvend-,
which in Modern Welsh is peuTvyn, ' white-headed,' and as a proper name T
Penwyn, ' The Whitehead.' In Irish this is Cennjinn, whence is formed
Cennfinnan, which is, letter for letter, our Qvenvendan-i, and has its
parallel in the Irish name Cenndubhan, similarly formed from dubh, ' black: '
we may compare in Welsh Carnwennan, Arthur's knife, from carnwen, '
white-hilted.' Nor is this all, for Pennon and Cennjinn find their Gaulish
representative, • where also another stone ia mentioned by the Bishop of
Limerick as reading: Carbi poi macui Ldbradi — Mr. Stokes would render it
(Lapis) Corbi (qui)fuit gentis Lahradii. These excellent suggestions of Mr.
Stokes I have taken the liberty of publishing from his letters to me last
May. |
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LECTURE I. 23 to which my attention was
lately called, on a silver coin in De Saulcy's collection (^Reo. Celt., i.
297) in the form nENNOoviNAoc, i.e., Pennowindos. In Ogam we frequently have
maqvi the genitive of the word for son, and an inscription from Devon reads
Swaqqvuci maqvi Qvici, which deserves a word of explanation. Swaqqvuc-i is
probably a derivative from srvaqqv-, which must be the prototype of Mod.
Welsh chwaff, used in S. Wales in the form hwaff or waff, and meaning '
quick, quickly; ' and as to Qvic-i, the same name occurs in Irisb Ogam
written Qweci, for that is how I would read ' ' ' ' ' , , , 1 1 1 m^hh-hh. ,
As a rule, however, our qv is so written also in Irish Ogam, as in maqvi,
which occurs scores of times on Irish monuments written maqvi, maqqvi, moqvi,
with a single Ogam, j_l±jjl, for qv, or doubled for what I transliterate qqv.
But in the earliest specimens of Irish and Welsh found in manuscript Irish qv
had been simplified into cc or c, and Welsh qv made into p, so that the word
for son became mace or mac on the other side of St. George's Channel, and
map, now mab, on this — the G-aulish cognate is supposed to be the simple
form implied by the Gaulish derivative Mapilus (Kuhn's Beitraege, v. p. 364).
To talk of the Welsh changing c into p, it is almost needless to remark, is
the result of ignorance of the laws of
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24 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY.
phonology: where Irish c and Welsh p are equivalent, they both represent an
earlier qv which, it is interesting to notice, the Irish retained intact till
after the time when the Welsh began to change it into p. Thus Irish hagiology
speaks of a St. Ciaran, whose name it also preserves in what is evidently a
much older form, Queranus. He is supposed to have lived from 516 to 549, and
to have been the first abbot of Clonmacnoise. There was, however, an earlier
Irish saint of the same name who was born in St. Patrick's time, and is
supposed to have died in the year 600. Fortunately for our inquiry, he came
over into this country, and his name became modified into Fir- ' anus or
Piran; and a church in Cornwall still bears his name, Piran in the Sands,
Piran in Sabulis or Peranzabuloe. Thus it would seem that the Welsh were in
the habit of changing qv into p about the end of the 5th or the beginning of
the 6th century, while the Irish retained it intact so late at least as the
middle of the latter century: so the Grallo-British theory can derive no
support from this quarter. Were one inclined to use an argument like the one
which has just been condemned, one might urge that Irish and Gaulish having
initial s where Welsh has h, makes for a Gallo-Goidelic unity. This would of
course be idle, as it is certain that |
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LECTURE I. ' 25 onr ancestors changed s
into k subsequently to their borrowing from the Romans the word sextarius,
which they had made, before the end of the 9th century, into hestaur, written
later hestawr, whence hestoraid, colloquially curtailed in some parts of N.
Wales into stored, a measure of capacity of about two bushels. It need hardly
be added, that our early monuments never show an initial k, but always s; but
the process of changing s into h in Welsh would seem to have become obsolete
before the middle of the 6th century, if we may depend on the tradition which
refers the church of Llansannan in Denbighshire to the Irish saint, Senanus,
who is supposed to have spent a part of his life in this country, and to have
died in the year 544: this is, however, not a very conclusive argument, as
some native words do not change s into h: take for instance the numeral
saith, ' seven,' and there may have been reasons unknown to us why a foreign
name should not follow the rule obtaining in Welsh: the double n also in
-Llansannan creates a difficulty. Having severed the supposed Gallo-British
ties of special kinship, we are at liberty to re-classify the entire family
into two branches, whereof the one embraces the Celts of the Continent, and
the other those of the Islands. This, however, does |
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26 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. not in
any wise interfere with the probability of the Continental Celts having
invaded this island, and taken possession of extensive tracts of it long after
they and the Insular Celts had differentiated themselves in point of language
and history. In fact, it is certain that parts of the South of England had
been thus occupied by invaders from the Continent, among whom there were
probably Celts, if indeed they were not wholly Celts, before Julius Caesar
landed' here. And if the common reading of a passage in Ptolemy's Geography
is to be depended upon, which mentions a people called Uaplaoi, living in a
town called JJerovapia, near the Humber, one can hardly avoid drawing the
conclusion that the Gaulish Parisii had sent a colony here. This is by no
means impossible, considering the position of the Uapicrot near the Humber,
and the possibility that the Parisii, whose chief town, Lutetia, stood on an
island in the Seine, on a site still occupied by Paris, had ships at one time
at their command. And here the following points, which I copy from Smith's
Dictionary/ of Greek and Roman Geography, are perhaps not all irrelevant. It
seems that the Romans had a fleet at Paris; a ship appears in the arms of the
city; an inscription was dug up at Notre Dame in the last century, reading
Nautce Parisiaci; and the Senones, the neighbours, and probably |
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LECTURE I. 27 the allies, of tlie
Parisii, possessed ships; for Csesar (vii. 58) states that Labienus seized
about fifty of them at once at Melodunum, higher np the river. Whatever the
noun implied by UeTovap'ia may have been, the word is probably to be equated
with Mod. Welsh pedwaredd, ' quarta.' Brittany, it is needless to say, is a
kind of a counter-colony, the Bretons being the descendants of countrymen of
ours who passed thither about the 5th century, and not the direct
representatives of the Ancient Gauls, as is proved by their traditions and
language, which is a Kymric dialect easily learned by a Welshman. I gather,
however, that a leading French Celtist, M. H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, takes
for granted the Gaulish descent of Breton; but so far I am not aware that he
has made it the subject of special discussion. In the same light as the
British colony in Armorica, one might also regard the settlement in Scotland of
Gaels from Ireland. It is clear that the old classification, if it is to
stand, must be placed on a firmer foundation, which, I am persuaded, is not
likely to be discovered. Nevertheless, it is impossible to prove to a
certainty that the one here proposed in its stead is the correct one. At
first sight it might appear to be demonstrated as soon as certain traits have
been pointed out in which Welsh and |
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28 LECTUEES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. Irisli
agree with one another and differ from Gaulish. But it is not so, as two
languages may take the same path independently of one another: such points of
similarity — and such there are in spite of the scarcity of the Gaulish data
— can only yield a greater or less degree of presumption in favour of the
closer kinship of Welsh and Irish. This is, however, a sufficient reason for
briefly mentioning a few of them. A single s flanked by vowels is lost in
Welsh and Irish, but retained in Gaulish; as in the Irish word ffa, genitive
ffai or ffooi, ' a spear, a javelin.' Its Gaulish equivalent is gaesum,
mentioned for instance in Virgil's description of the followers of Brennus: —
duo quisque Alpina coruscant Oaesa
manu, tcutis protecti corpora longii. In classical Latin the stems of nouns
in the second declension end in u in the nominative, as in equuSf^lius,
donum, but Old Latin equos,filios, donom, on a level with the Greek uL?,
6e6<;, and the like. The corresponding vowel in Sanskrit is a, as in
Qivas, ' the god Siva,' Mntas, ' car us,' kdntam, ' carum: ' it is a also in
Zend and written Lithuanian, and it is generally considered to be older than
the u and o of Latin and Greek. The inscriptions of Ancient Gaul show Gaulish
to have been in this respect on the classical level: witness |
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LECTURE I. 29 the following forms: —
Andecamulos, Cernunnos, Contextos, Crispos, Doiros, Dontaurios, Iccavos,
OviXKoveo^, Seyo/jMpo^, Seviros, tarvos, Tarbelinos, Ulcos; Brivatiom,
canecosedlon, cantalon, celicnon, Dontaurion, lubron, veixrjrov, Kamedon. The
evidence of the leading elements in compounds is to the same effect:
Danno-tali, OvivBo-fiayo^, Samo-talus, Sego-mari, Yerno-dubrum. But on the
whole the early inscriptions of Wales and Ireland make for a — unfortunately
we are nearly confined to the leading elements in compounds: Welsh —
Cata-manus, Corba-lengi, Cuna-cenni, Ena-barri, Netta-sagru, Trena-catus;
Irish — Ana-dovinias, Cata-bar, Cuna-cena, Cuna-gussos, Eva-cattos,
Netta-lami: to this I would add an inscription from Ballintaggart reading
Tria maqva Mailagni, probably for Tria{m) Maqvam Mailagni = TpiMv vlwv
Mailagni. It is right to add, that in the period to which our earlier Welsh
monuments are to be referred the vowel ending the leading elements in
compounds had got to be indistinctly pronounced, a preparation to its entire
elision in later Welsh generally. In our bilingual inscriptions a is used in
Ogam, but advantage is sometimes taken of the obscure sound of the vowel to
write it o in the Latin version, or even e, which tends to make the names
look a little more like Latin. Thus we find together Cunatami and Cuno- |
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30 LECTUEES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. tami,
Cunacenniwi and Cunocenni, Trenagiisu and Trenegussi: also in two distinct
inscriptions in Roman capitals Senomagli and Senemagli. But on the whole the
weight of evidence is in favour of the claims of a. Welsh and Irish
inscriptions contain derived forms ending in the genitive in gni: Welsh —
Maglagni, Ulcagnus, Corbagni, Curcagni; Irish — Artagni, Corbagni, Dalligni,
Mailagni, Talagni, Ulccagni. In Gaulish names the same suffix is cnos, cnon,
genitive cni, as in celicnon, Oppianicnos, ToovTicratKvo';, Druticnos,
Druticni. On a bilingual stone Druticnos is rendered Druti Jilius, but the
inference, that Gaulish had a word cnos meaning son, is as warrantable as if,
from Ile\o'irihri<; = IIiko'Ko<; vlo<;, one concluded that Greek had
a word t8r}<; = vto?. When the Celts first took possession of these
islands, it is highly probable that the patriarchal system of government obtained
among them, and that it continued to flourish as a well-defined system of
tribes or clans, such as we find in later times in Ireland and Scotland,
during the long interval between their coming here and their separation into
Kymric and Goidelic nations. And it is perhaps to this prehistoric period of
Goidelo-Kymric unity that one is to refer the composition of most of the
personal names containing the word teyrn, 'a king, a monarch,' 0. Irish
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LECTURE I. 31 ' a lord:' in our early
inscriptions we have tigirn-i and tegern-o-. The etymon is the Celtic word
for house, which, in 0. Welsh, was tig, now ty, 0. Ir. teg, now teach,
genitive tige, now tighe: so the word teyrn is perhaps an adjectival
formation which may originally have meant connected with or relating to the
house, but in what special sense it is now impossible to say. Its use was not
confined to the Insular Celts, for Gregory of Tours mentions a Tigernum
" castrum urbis Arvernse, Tigernense castellum" — I am quoting from
Gliick's Keltischen Namen (Munich, 1857), p. 180: in Auvergne this is now
Tiern, and the name is known to all in its form of Thiers. Now the Celts of
the British Isles seem to have applied the adjective to the householder or
the head of the house, but as the head of the house in a wider sense was also
lord and monarch of his people, the word came to mean a lord or monarch; and
it is perhaps not altogether an accident that we have no evidence of this in
Gaulish nomenclature, while it is well attested in Kymric and Goidelic proper
names: take the following: — Welsh — Catteyrn (Oattegirn, catotiGiRNi),
Cyndeyrn (Kentegerni), Dutigirn, Eutigirn, Gwrtheyrn (Vortigern), lUteyrn,
Myllteyrn, Rhydeyrn (Rutegyrn), Teyrn (Tegyrn), TeyruUuc, Teyrnog (Ir.
Tighearnach), Teyrnon; from Cornwall we have tegeknomali, and in
manuscript |
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32 LEOTUKES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY.
Tigerinomalum; Breton — Maeltiern, Tiernmael; Irish — Eachtighearn,
Tighearnan, Tighearnmas. To the same Goidelo-Kymric period I would refer the
adoption by the Insular Celts of Druid ism, which is probably to be traced to
the race or races who preceded the Celts in their possession of the British
Isles. Ctesar's words as to Druidism are so well known that they need not be
here quoted at length. On the other hand, the Irish word for druid, the equivalent
of our derwydd is draoi, genitive druadh, which in Irish literature mostly
means a magician or soothsayer, and is usually rendered by magus in the lives
of Irish saints written in Latin. It has not been proved, as pointed out by
M. d'Arbois de Jubainville {Les Celtes — Extrait de la Revue Archeologique:
Paris, 1875), that Druidism found its way into Gaul before 200 b.c. When it
did get there, it was, undoubtedly, through the Belgae, who had settled in
Britain: Caesar's words are significant (vi. 13) — " Disciplina in
Britannia reperta atque inde in Galliam translata esse existimatur, et nunc,
qui diligentius earn rem cognoscere volunt, plerumque illo discendi causa
proficiscuntur." As already pointed out, such items as these do not
amount to a demonstration of the correctness of the classification here
advocated; but neither is a demonstration necessary in order to give it
a |
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LECTURE I. 33 superiority over the one
now in fashion. The latter being shown to be founded on a misconception, the
former cannot but in the main be admitted; and in any case it has the
iraportant consideration to recommend it, that it makes no unnecessary
postulates. A Celtic people speaking one and the same language came from the
Continent and settled in this island; sooner or later some of them crossed
over to Ireland and made themselves a home there. The latter opinion is
countenanced, as far as they go, by some of the names on both sides of the
Irish Sea as given in Ptolemy's Geography. Thus the Brigantes occupied not
only the North of England, but also a part of Ireland: we have a Fayyavaiv
uKpov in the third of Carnarvonshire called Lleyn, and Tafyyavoi located, as
it is supposed, in what is now called Clare. Possibly also Ptolemy's
OvevUave!;, in Forfarshire, belonged to the same tribe as his Irish
OvevvUvioi, or at least to a nearly related tribe. Dr. Reeves in his edition
of Adamnan's Vita Sancti Columbus (Dublin, 1857) mentions, p. 31, Inbher
Uomnonn (in the map prefixed to the work it is Inbher Domhnann), the old name
of the Malahide river, near Dublin; also the Eirros Domno of Adamnan's text,
in Irish lorrus Domknann, the barony of Erris in the county of Mayo, which
the Irish, according to his account, refer to c |
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34 LECTUEES ON "WELSH PHILOLOGY.
the '' Fir Domhnann, Viri Damnonii, a section of the Firbolgs." The
Irish names here alluded to suggest a connection with the Dumnonii of Devon,
Ptolemy's Aovuvovtoi, rather than with his Aafivovioi of the North, or his
Aafivoviov to kul Oxpivov aicpov, supposed to be the Lizard, in Cornwall.
Owing to their being separated by an intervening sea, there grew up between
the Celts of Ireland and their kindred in this country differences of
dialect, to which the probable adoption of their language by races, whom they
may have found in possession of both islands, more or less materially
contributed. In the course of many centuries these differences had become so
many and such that they could no longer be said to speak one language, but
two nearly related languages, Goidelic in Ireland, and Kymric here. This is
not altogether mere theory, for all the most tangible differences between
Welsh and Irish can be assigned to various periods of time posterior to the
separation: this has already been indicated in the case of a few of them, and
others will be dealt with as we proceed. Where then is the necessity for
supposing that the Celts who took possession of the British Isles were even
then of two distinct nationalities, speaking two distinct languages, and what
was it that originally determined that duality? Those who profess to be
unable to believe that |
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LECTURE I. 35 the Welsh and the Irish
are nearly related, because they find them unlike inr their national
character and habits, choose to forget how different the circumstances were under
which tl\ey have lived from the days of Julius Csesar to our own. But even so
late as the reign of Elizabeth, their difference of history had hardly
produced so marked a difference of character as one might have expected.
Since then, however, the gulf has been considerably widened. The Irish have
had their '98, and the bulk of them remain true to the Church of Eome, while
the Welsh have become Protestants, and most of them have adopted the
theological views of Calvin, the force of whose influence, if we look at it
merely as a means of profoundly modifying a people's character, and without
regard to its characteristics in other respects, cannot easily be
exaggerated. ( 36 ) |
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LECTURE II. "The initial changei^
are commonly the most perplexing feature of the Welsh language to those who
know it only imperfectly; and those who observe the rules by ear are seldom
acquainted with the rationale of their own faultless speech."— Chaeles
Williams. In spite of what was said in the former lecture, you will perhaps
think that, although the chief differences between Welsh and Irish can be
shown > to have sprung up since the separation, the fact of their
springing up at all points to radical difference in the constitution of the
vocal organs of the Welsh and the Irish. It may, however, be premised that
this does not follow, as it is to be borne in mind that the normal state of
language is that of change, and that the same end may frequently be attained
by different means. The end here alluded to is not the ultimate end of
language, the expression of thought, but the economy of labour in the
articulation of words, the exponents of thought. This, in default of a better
name, one may call its economical end. This will appear plainer from a
discussion of the |
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LECTURE II. 37 so-called system of
mutation of initial consonants in "Welsh, and its counterpart in Irish,
a subject which, even apart from its relevancy to the question how nearly
Welsh, and Irish are related, has strong claims on our consideration, though
we run the risk of only adding another chapter to the mass of nonsense
already written on it. The fact is, our native grammarians, both Welsh and
Irish, look at it as at once the peculiarity and the pride of Celtic
phonology, and regard it with the same air of mystery and wonderment to which
English and German grammarians occasionally give expression d propos of the
Teutonic ablautreihe or sing -sang -sung system of vowel mutation obtaining
in languages of that stock. In reality there is nothing peculiar about either
excepting the persistency with which they have been carried out; and as to
the amount of credit they respectively reflect on the races which in the course
of ages unconsciously and cleverly pieced them together, that is a matter on
which opinion seems to vary according to the writer's nationality. The
following summary of the more common mutations in Welsh and Irish will be
found convenient as we go on: — |
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38
LECTUEES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY.
Welsh. Ikish. Welsh. IBISH. c g
ch 1 , lit ^ rdd \^' t d th r p b -
(gh) ph gli 1 r 1 r b dd = « f = V dh bh m f = V mh CO ch- CO,
c t,t, th tt, t 70 nt
7c, 77h nt, nnh t PP ph or S
pp. p mp mp, xuiiiii P e r.t i Uh cht 7g
77 77 nd un nu
y mb mm mm gg cc, g' c,^ 1
Ih Lb dd bb a, d' pp,b' t, d'
p, V t
Lit i* 11 11
11 r rth Ir Urh Ir LU^ 1 rr rrh, rh IT P r P rl rU rl g I [gtlijj i^' nl nr nil nrh nl nr Irish mutation, such as that of c into ch,
or h into hh (pronounced »), is commonly called aspiration, and that whereby
nt becomes t, or 7id nn, has been more happily called eclipsis, while our own
grammarians have managed to include the Welsh changes corresponding to both
sets and others not usual in Irish in the following triad: — Radical. Middle. Nasal. Aspirate. c g ngh
ch t d nh th P b mh ph g Kg d dd n
b f m 11; • 1 m f
rh r LECTUKE n. |
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39
This neat little scheme is fairly accurate in an etymological sense,
but it has not unfrequently been assumed to have a phonological value, which leads
to mistakes, such as, for instance, the supposition that II is related to I
in the same way as t to d, and not as th to dd or nearly so. For our present
purpose the Welsh consonants may be classified as follows: * — Oral Coksonahts. Nasal Consonants. Mutes.
Spirants. ' ' Spirants. Surds. SoDants. Surds. Sonants. Surds. Sonants. t P g d b ch th ph or £f 11 rh B h dd f 1 r
It mh n m Here there are two things
which require to be clearly realised: the first is the difference between a
mute (otherwise called a stopped or explodent consonant) and a spirant
(otherwise called a produced or fricative consonant). Compare, for instance,
p and b with ph and v: in the former two the breath is suddenly checked and
stopped by the lips being brought into contact with one another, while in the
latter two there is no com- * Do rh, ngh, nh, mh consist of single
consonants, or are they made up of surd r, ng, n, m plus h, is a question I
leave undecided; the latter view seems to suit Welsh phonology somewhat
better than the other. |
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40 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. plete
stoppage of it, since it is, so to say, allowed to squeeze through without
interruption. The next is the distinction between surds (otherwise called
voiceless or pneumatic consonants) and sonants (otherwise called voiced or
phonetic consonants), as, for instance, between p and 5, or between ph and v:
thus p and ph in the Celtic languages imply simple breath, while h and v
involve not mere breath, but voice, which the former produces by setting the
vocal chords in vibration during its passage through the larynx. It is hardly
necessary to state, in so many words, that the vowels are both sonant and
spirant, as they are in fact almost pure voice more or less modified in its
passage through the mouth or nose. Now one of the causes which bring about
changes in language is the tendency, ever quietly asserting itself, to
economise the labour of pronunciation, and it is heterogeneous sounds brought
into immediate contact with one another, mutes with spirants, or surds with
sonants, that form the hollows to be filled and the hills and mountains to be
lowered by the unreasoning laziness of speech: this levelling process is commonly
called assimilation. Let us now see how it will enable us to understand the
mutations of consonants in Welsh and Irish: — Old Welsh ahal, ' an apple,'
and aper^ ' a |
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LECTURE II. 41 confluence, a stream,'
became in later "Welsh afal and aher respectively; and why? In ahal the
h was flanked by vowels, that is, a sonant mute by sonant spirants; and here
both Welsh and Irish took the same path, and reduced the mute into a spirant,
making aha into ava, written in Welsh afa: in the latter we have a surd mute
between sonant spirants; and as language proceeds by degrees, and not by
leaps or strides, it had the choice of two courses, and only two: — it might
either reduce the surd mute into a sonant mute, thus making aper into aher,
or reduce it into a surd spirant, which would give us apher. The former has
become the rule in Welsh and the latter in Irish. But Irish in its later
stages indulges also in the Welsh mutation: thus such Old Irish words as cet,
' hundred,' and cdic, ' five,' are now c^ad and cuiff; and so in other
instances where Old Irish c, t, (j>?) stood for no, nt, (mp?). Here you
may ask how these changes, which seem to have nothing to do with initial
consonants, have got to be known in Welsh grammar as the mutations of initial
consonants, or simply initial mutations. The answer is not far to seek. The
action of assimilation in modern Celtic languages is not confined to single
words, but in certain cases, which you learned when you were children,
and |
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42 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. j which
you will find enumerated in elementary books on Welsh grammar, two words are
taken together so closely in speaking that, for the purposes of phonology,
they form as it were one, and not two: thus the initial consonant of the
second, assuming it to have one, becomes a quasi-medial, liable to the same
changes as an ordinary medial. For instance, though pen (Irish ceann) is
head, we say dy ben (Ir. do cheann), ' thy head,' and ei ben (Ir. a cheann),
' his head.' Now these mutations and the like are constantly recurring
phenomena in Welsh (and Irish) as now spoken and written, and no writer on
our grammar could overlook them; while to contrast aber with its older form
aper seldom occurred to them, and when it did, they only found in the latter
an orthographical freak of the ancients; and their ideas of the comparative
immutability of their mother-tongue led them tacitly to assume that aper was
always pronounced aber. Thus it was natural that they should have called the
changes in question initial mutations, to which they ascribed a syntactical
rather than a purely phonetic origin. That our grammarians, however, are not
the only class of writers who have failed to acquire a correct idea of this
kind of mutation, is proved by the fact that it is the custom of philologists
to speak of it as though it were a |
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LECTUEK II. 43 property only of
consonants flanked by vowels, or, as they briefly term them, vowel-flanked
consonants — a description which would lead one to expect that the change
could not go on when the consonants are final, or come in contact with the
liquids I and r. Now it is remarkable that these last are present in all the
earliest attested cases of this mutation, namely, in the following words from
the Oxford and Cambridge Glosses, together with the Luxembourg Folio: — Dadl
(for datl), " concio," cedlinau (for cetlinau), ' to pursue,'
scribl (for scrip I), " scripulus," maurdluithruim (for
Tnaurtluitkruim), " multo vecte," ardren (for artren), "
pr^pugnis," riglion (for riclion), "garrulis," cedlestneuiom
(for cetlestneuiom), " tabe." Thus the mutation in contact with one
of the liquids is the only kind known in the earliest specimens of Old
"Welsh: between vowels it only began towards the close of that period in
the history of the language. The import of this fact, translated into
phonology, seems to be that the liquids I and r have a greater power of
assimilation in Welsh than the vowels have. Suppose I to stand for I or r,
and jo for any mute consonant, also a; for any quantity much greater than 1,
then you might roughly say that the tendency of the language to reduce — |
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44 LECTTIEES ON WELSH PHILOLOGT.
][/>]! into l[i5]l = 2x, a[p']\ into a[3]I = 2x — 1, and a[/?]aintoa[5]a=
2x — 2. These equations suggest another, namely, that of a[j»] into a[6] =^ =
x - \. Translate this into a chronological form, and it means that final
mutes remained proof against mutation after medial ones had been subjected to
it; but does this agree with facts? If you turn to any tolerably well-written
specimens of Med. Welsh prose, such as most of the Mabinogion are, you will
find that it holds true in the case of c, t, p: in fact, such forms as redec,
goruc, dyfot, oet, paraut, continually recur, but final p appears much less
frequently in them. Nay, it would seem that traces of this had come down to
William Salesbury's time; for he says a propos of the letter c: " Also
other some there be that sound c as g, in the last termination of a word:
example, oc, coc, Hoc: whych be most-commonly read og, cog, Hog " (Ellis'
Uarly English Pronunciation, p. 749). This would bring us down into the
middle of the 16th century. As to g, d, b, and m, they had long before
undergone the mutation in question, whence it may be inferred that their
power of resistance was less than that of c, t, p. Thus , it would seem that
to achieve the nine mutations forming the column headed ' Middle ' in
the |
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LECTURE II. 45 grammarians' table, it
took the language at least eight centuries. Strictly speaking, the process is
not yet complete; for, in the Gwentian dialect, Old Welsh t medial might be
said to be still t, as in oti {= ydyw), 'is,' ffetog (=: arphedog), *an
apron,' gatel (= gadael), 'to leave,' retws (= rhedodd), ' ran,' and
innumerable others, But even here it cannot be said that no move has been
made towards the complete reduction of t into d; for the Grwentian t in the
above words and the like is not our ordinary t, but a t somewhat softened towards
d, a variety which I think I have also heard from English peasants in
Cheshire. So that, after all, the Gwentian can only, be said to have lagged
behind the other dialects. This case, however is instructive as casting some
light 'on the question how t comes to be mutated, into d. Thus it appears
that Welsh t and d are only termini, between which an indefinite number of
stages have been gone through, somewhat in the following order:— t, ti^ hj
'3> • • • • 'n-lj ^ni ^ ^ni ®n-l> ■ • • • "3, <^j ^fj, a.
The varieties from t to t^-i inclusive would be written if by a person
writing from dictation, while those from (4-i to c? would be written d: as to
t„ and d^, he would hesitate between t and d; and this no doubt is one reason
why t and d were confounded in Med. Welsh, and even indifferently written by
the same persons in the same words. |
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46 LECTTJEES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. The
same remarks, of course, apply to the other surd mutes. It is needless to
observe that this kind of confusion could hardly have arisen had c, t, p,
been mutated into g, d, b, without any intermediate steps. The view here
advanced has, moreover, the advantage of being in perfect keeping with one of
the most sacred dogmas of modern philology, that all changes in language
proceed by degrees. By way of analogies in other languages, it will be worth
the while to mention just a sufficient number of instances to show that
mutation, in the sense it has in Welsh grammar, is not peculiar to our family
of languages. In the first place, it may be pointed out that in Sanskrit dsit
+ rdjd and samyak + uktam become en phrase: dsid rdjd or dsidrdjd, "
erat rex," and samyaguktam, ' well said; ' and so whenever a surd comes
before an initial sonant. In the interval between Latin and written Spanish,
mutation has regularly proceeded one step, as in pueblo and trinidad from the
Latin populum and trinitatem: but, since the present orthography, that is as
far as concerns the consonants, was established, it seems to have taken
another, as pueblo is pronounced with b like a labial v, and trinidad with d
as soft as our dd. Lastly, Italian, according to Prince L.-L. Bonaparte,*
dis- * My attention was first called to this coincidence by a mention in
Ellia' Early English Pronunciation of Prince L.-L. Bonaparte's discovery,
which he has briefly given in his preface to II Vangdo di S. |
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LECTURE II. 47 tinguislies a strong and
a weak pronunciation of the consonants, which are distributed in very much
the same way as the radical and reduced consonants of Welsh, which we have
been discussing. So, in this respect, the pronunciation of Italian is now in
the same state as that of Welsh must have been just before it had reduced c
to ff, and so on. Nor is this all: some of the Italian dialects have gone as
far as Welsh in this path of phonetic decay, or even outstripped it. The most
remarkable is that of Sassari, in the island of Sardinia, where, for
instance, one says lu gori for Italian il more — Welsh y galon, ' the heart '
(radical, cori, calon); la derra for Ital. la terra — Welsh i dir, ' to land
' (radical, terra, tir); and lu bobbulu for Ital. il popolo — Welsh y bobl, '
the people ' (radical, pobbulu, pobl): a similar change takes place in the
case of radical g, d, b, s. The second group of our mutations consists of the
reduction of yc, nt, mp into <yy^, nnh, mmk, and of lyg, nd, mh into yy,
nn, mm, respectively. Let us begin with the latter three: in Mod. Welsh they
are written ng, nn (or n), mm (or m), Matteo vdgarizzato in Dicdetto Sardo
Sassarese dal Can. O. Spano (London, 1866). The book is not easy to procure,
and I am indebted to the Prince's kindness for a copy of it. Since then I
have incurred a similar obligation to Dr. Hugo Schuchardt of Halle, who has
written an elaborate article on the subject in the Romania. There he
discusses the consonants and their mutations much in the same way as I have
attempted in this lecture. |
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48 LECTUBES ON "WELSH PHILOLOGY.
and so- in Mod. Irish, excepting that, when a quasi-medial is concerned, nn, mm,
are represented by n-d, m-b, in which the ofand b are not intended to be
heard. Thus it is hardly necessary to remark that the assimilation is the
same in both languages; however, it seems to have been neither very common in
0. Irish, nor so inexorably carried out in the subsequent stages of the
language as in Welsh, where we find it an all but accomplished fact in our
earliest manuscripts. One of the latest Welsh instances of a medial complex
apparently free from its influence occurs in the name Vendumagl-i on a stone
inscribed in mixed Eomano-British and Hiberno-Saxon characters of the 6th, or
more probably of the 7th, century: later this name appears in the form
Gwenfael. To this I will add two or three instances more, which will suffice
to convince you that what we are discussing is more familiar to you than you
have, perhaps, anticipated: — annaearol, ' unearthly,' for an + daearol, '
earthly; ' canm/ll (pron. cannim/lT), 'a candle,' from Lat. candela; am
(pron. amm), ' about,' Ir. imm, im, represented in 0. Gaulish by ambi, and in
Greek by dfi(f)l; cam (pron. camm), 'crooked,' Ir. camm, cam, for camb — as
in the 0. Gaulish Cambodunum. The same thing also happens when the mute is a
quasi-medial, as, for example, after the proclitic |
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LECTURE II. 49 preposition yw, 'in,' as
when we say yw Nimhych, ' in Denbigh,' yn ninas Dafydd, ' in the city of
David,' for yn + Dimbych and yn + dinas: so in other cases too numerous to
mention. To return to the other three, they are, after undergoing eclipsis,
as Irish grammarians call it, written in Mod. Welsh ngh, nnh, mmk, which
imply a process that requires some explanation. The veteran phonologist, Mr.
Alexander J. Ellis, who has written extensively and elaborately on Early
English Pronunciation, considers that the n in the English word tent is
partially assimilated to the following mute, and that it becomes a surd which
he would write nh: thus he would represent tent as pronounced tennht, and
similarly tempt, sink, as temmht, siqqhk — his q means the sound of ny in
sing, for which I have made use of y. It is hardly probable, however, that
any ordinary orthography would take cognizance of the difference between surd
and sonant nasals in the positions here indicated, and I am inclined to think
that the Welsh of old who wrote hanther, now hanner, 'half,' and pimphet, now
pummed, ' fifth,' meant something more than this. As the spirants th, ph, are
out of the question, it is not improbable that nth, mph, were intended to be
pronounced nkt^h, mhp^h, that is, the complexes nt, mp, were to be aspirated,
which we may express D |
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50 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. by
-writing them [nt'jk, [mp'Jk, respectively. So far Irish may possibly have
proceeded on the same course as Welsh, but no further; for the next step it
takes is to allow the nasal, whether it was surd or sonant, to disappear,
leaving the preceding vowel in certain cases — possibly only when it had the
tone — lengthened to preserve the quantity of the syllable. Thus it converts
such a form as dent into ddt, ' a tooth,' that is del, for the Irish use the
acute accent to indicate quantity. Now det is in Welsh dant, which is free
from the eclipsis, but not so its derivative dannheddog, ' toothed.' Here not
only has nt become \nt\h, but the nasal which began to be assimilated by the
oral consonant eventually vanquished the latter and completely assimilated it
to itself in its altered condition, so that for \nt\h we get \nn\h^ that is,
in our ordinary orthography, nnh. Other instances, such as tymmhor, ' a
season,' plural tymmkorau, from the Latin tempus, tem-por-is, and annheilwng,
' unworthy,' for an + teilwng, ' worthy,' are so common that I need not
mention more of them; nor is it requisite to dwell on the similar eclipsis of
quasi-medial c, t, p, as, for instance, in yn nghwsg (pron. y'nghwsg), '
asleep,' yn Nhynyn, ' at Towyn,' for yn + cwsg and yn + Tywyn. But why, to
revert to one of the instances just mentioned, should tymmhor, which seems to
have been preceded by tylmplhor |
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LECTUKE II. 51 or tymkp'hor, for Latin
tempor-, have taken the place of that form? that is, why should p'h have
yielded its place to mh? Here, as before, the answer must be sought in the
tendency of language to lessen by assimilation the labour of utterance. Thus,
in the case before ns, the jo'A (oral, mute, surd) standfe between mh (nasal,
spirant, surd) and the vowel o (oral, spirant, sonant): so it seems perfectly
intelligible that the language, proceeding by degrees, should replace ph by a
surd spirant; but that would leave us in the dilemma of having to decide
between the nasal spirant, mh and the oral spirant ph (== ff), that is,
between tymmhor and tymphor. This, however, an unerring instinct does for us
in favour oi tymmhor * the reason probably being, that, as we have already
seen in another case, the assimilative power of a consonant is greater than
that of a vowel, that is, in this instance, of m than of o. Thus far we have
traced <yc, nt, mp, through two stages of modification: sometimes,
however, the language goes a step or two further, and in cer- * Substitute
for the vowel I or r, and the reTerse takes place, the oral consonants
having, it would seem, more assimilative force than the nasal. The instances
are not very numerous — I may mention cetkr, ' a nail, a spike,' for centhr,
Breton Jeentr, borrowed from the Latin centrum, and cathl, ' a song,' for
canthl, whence the 0. Welsh cenihliat, " canorus; " the gloss
occurs in the Juvencus Codex on the words Dauida canorum, and would now be
cethliad: the disappearance of the nasal is a later step, which has nothing
to do with the assimilation in question.
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62 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGT. tain
cases even confounds the representatives of these complexes with those of 7^,
nd, mb: — (1.) In Mod. Welsh we find it difficult to double a consonant not immediately
following the tone-vowel, consequently such words as dannheddog and
annheilwng become danheddog and anheilwng in pronunciation. Similarly we
neither speak nor write fyn nhad, fym mhen, but always fy nhad, 'my father,'
fy mhen, 'my head,' for fyn + tad and fyn + pen, the possessive pronoun being
a proclitic, which never has the tone. It must, by the way, be explained,
that although in book Welsh the word is written fy, even before vowels, as
in_^ enw, ' my name,' liable to become in North Wales y^MW, and so in other
cases, the old form of it was min, which is still duly represented in South
Wales hj fyn — in North Cardiganshire it sometimes becomes fyng, like pring
for prin, ' scarce ' — as va.fyn enw, ' my name,'_/y?j oen, ' my \&,mb,^
fyn arian, ' my money,' and the like: it is this full iorvafyn that must be
considered in the eclipsis. Add. to the foregoing the case of r^g, nd, mb,
which is similar. Thus we say fy nydd, ' my da,y,,^fy mramd, 'my brother,'
^at fyn nydd, fym, mramd, ioxfyn + dydd&ndifym + brawd: similarly, we say
saith mlynedd, ' seven years,' for saitKn + blynedd, Irish seacht m-bliadhna
(pron. seacht mliadhnd); for saith is one of our numerals which originally
ended in n, matched in Latin by the m |
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LECTUEE II. 53 of septem, novem, decern;
and such a phrase as saith rdynedd is an interesting instance of a fact
remaining long after one of its factors is clean gone. Occasionally the nasal
is also simplified when it happens to be medial, as in ymenyn, 'butter,' for
which one might have expected ymmenyn for ymb-en-yn: the Breton forms are
amanenn, amann, and the Irish imb, imm, im, all from the root AKGV, whence
also Lat. unguo, ' I smear or besmear,' AUemanic anko, ancho, ' butter.' (2.)
The surd is liable to become a sonant unless it comes immediately before the
tone-vowel: thus such words as dnghlod, ' disrepute,' dmmkeu, ' to doubt,'
tymmkor, ' a season,' are sometimes pronounced dnylod, dmmeu, tymmor; that
is, a second process of assimilation has taken place in them; but it is
prevented by the position of the tone in ammMuaeth, ' doubt,' and tymmhorau,
' seasons.' .In words such as the following no trace of the surd is to be
found: — cdnnoedd, ' hundreds,' ddnnedd, 'teeth,' which is followed by the
Northwalian pronunciation of dannMddog as daniddog, tdnnau, ' chords,'
trSngu, ' to expire,' from trangc, ' death,' and many others. As to such
words as ugain, ' twenty,' and drjan, ' money,' for ugaint and arjant, they
seem to be instances of the retreat of the accent from the ultima to the
penultima, accompanied by the reduction and the simplification of the nasal:
a similar remark would seem to |
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54 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. apply to
the colloquial form of the third person plural of verbs, as when ydynt, '
sunt,' clywsant, ' audiverunt,' rhedent, ' currehant,' are made into ydyn,
clymson, rheden, a pronunciation which no one would, however, use when
reading in public. The case of the woTdyminnydd, ' brain,' is different and
somewhat exceptional: as the Breton is empenn, and the Irish inchinn, genit.
inchinne (compare the Greek iyKecpaXo^) , we might expect it to be in Welsh
ymmhennydd or ymhennydd for yn~ penn-ydd. The explanation would seem to be
that the word was formerly accented ymennydd. It has already been hinted that
y, rf, h, have less power of resistance than <?, #, p: this is confirmed by
the history of the modifications we are now discussing. Thus, while the
eclipsis has in the case of the former three been approximately ascribed to
the 7th century, few instances of its affecting the latter are to be found in
the range of 0. Welsh, but as we pass on to Mod. Welsh we find it far from
unusual in a manuscript which Aneuriu Owen supposed to be of the 12th
century. I allude to the Venedotian version of the Laws of Wales. Later, in
the Mabinogion, we have such forms as cyghor (pron. cy^yhor), 'counsel,
council,' amherawdyr, ' emperor,' from Lat. imperator, side by side with
ympen, 'in the head,' ygkairllion, ' at Caerleon,' which are now pronounced
ymhenn and y^haerlUon; and so in other cases. In |
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LECTURE IT. 55 instances of this kind a
disinclination to obscure what may be called the dictionary form of words
must be regarded as having for a time stemmed the current of phonetic decay.
Still later Salesbury is found indulging in such combinations as yn-pell, '
far,' and yn-carchar, ' in prison; ' but according to his own account the
mutes following ■n were dead letters, which he only meant to appeal to
the eye: it is easier to forgive him this than such freaks of fancy as
vy-tat, vy-bot^ for vy nhat, ' my father,' and vy mot, ' my being,' which do
much to detract from the phonological value of his writings. Perhaps one of
the last conquests which eclipsis has made in Welsh occurs in our colloquial
ynkwy, ynkm, nkw, for the written A/vyntAwy, that is, Awynt-Awy, ' they.' For
I need hardly say that one or more words have already been cited which may
have reminded you that those conquests have hitherto not been complete; —
whether that would continue to apply to them, supposing the language to live
long enough, is a question which it would not be easy now to answer. In the
first part of this lecture it was noticed that the reduction of a[j»]a into
a[5]a took place earlier than that of a[jo] into a[^]: the parallels to these
in the case of eclipsis are the reduction of m&lp7i]a into mklmk^a and
that of mAlp'A'] into mA['mA'], that is in pronunciation, as this concerns a
final consonant, mm, now commonly written m. Now it is |
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56 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGT. mainly
words which come under this formula that have successfully resisted eclipsis,
such, for instance, as the following: — dant, ' a tooth,' plural dannedd;
hynt, 'a journey,' 0. Ir. sit; 'pump, 'five,' 0. Ir. coic; tant, ' a chord,'
plural tannau, 0. Ir. tdt, Mod. Ir, teud; meddiant, ' possession,' plural
meddiannau. To these may be added cant, ' a hundred,' plural cannoedd, 0. Ir.
cet, Mod. cdad, which forms a sort of compromise between the rule and the
exception; for we saj pedwar cant, ' four hundred,' but can (pron. cann) erw,
' a hundred acres,' and can.ych, 'a hundred oxen.' Now that the ground which
this part of our inquiry should cover has been rapidly run over, it may be
added that there is nothing in eclipsis which may be regarded as peculiar to
the Celtic languages; but I will only cite from other languages just a
sufficient number of analogous instances to indicate some of the quarters
where more may be found, (a.) You may have wondered how such English words as
the following, now pronounced dumm, lamm, clime, came to be written dumb,
land), climb: the answer of course is that the b in them was formerly
pronounced, and that this is merely a case of the spelling lagging behind the
pronunciation — littera scripta manet. To this class of words may be added
the modern rcoodbine, which at an earlier stage of the language was written
wudubind; |
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LECTURE II. 57 and, to come down to our
own daj'^, all of you have heard London called Lunnun. Beyond the Tweed this
and more of the kind may be considered classic: witness the following stanza
from Burns' Five Carlins! — " Then neist came in a sodger youth, And
spak wi' modest grace, An' he wad gae to Lon'on town If sae their pleasure
was. " Here may also be mentioned, that there are German dialects which
habitually use kinner, wunner, mermen, unner, branmvm, for the bookforms
kinder, wunder, wenden, unter, branntmein. Similarly in 0. Norse bann and
lann are found for band and land, not to mention the common reduction of 7^
into nn as in finna, ' to find,' annar, 'other' (German under), munnr,
'mouth' (Ger. mund) , and the like. (b. ) Diez in his grammar of the Romance
languages supplies a variety of instances in point, such as the following: —
Siciii&n, abbunnari, ' abbundare,' accenniri, ' accendere; ' Neapolitan,
chiommo, 'plumbum,' munno, 'mundus.' And it is perhaps by assimilation that
nd, nt final have become n in Provencal, as in gran, ' grandis,' joreow, '
profundus,' fron, ' frons, frontis,' den, ' dens, dentis,' Si.ni joven,
'juventus.' (c.) So far I have failed to discover an exact parallel to the
Welsh eclipsis of c, t,p, leaving the nasals in a su^d state as in our stock
instance tymmhor from tempus. |
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58 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY.
temporis; but this is probably to be attributed to my very limited
acquaintance with the exact pronunciation of other languages. It would not,
however, be altogether irrelevant here to mention Mr. Ellis' account of the
sound of n, for instance, in the word tent, which he regards as pronounced
tenht or tennht, and to add that he further finds that in Icelandic n coming
after ^ or ^ is also made into nh, as in vatn, ' water,' regin, ' rain,'
pronounced vatnA and regknh respectively. Now there can be no doubt that at
one time English kn also was, provincially or generally, pronounced knh; for
when the k ceased to be heard in such words as knave, knee, know, the nh
still remained, a point amply proved by Cooper, who published, in 1685, a
work entitled Grammatica Linguce Anglicance, from which Mr. Ellis cites no
fewer than five passages giving the then English pronunciation of kn as hn.
This kn, which we are wont to write nh, and Cooper mentions in company with
zh, wh, sh, th, as having no place in the alphabet, found its way into Wales,
nor has it to this day quite disappeared from our pronunciation of English.
When I was a boy, our schoolmasters in Cardiganshire prided themselves on the
many things they nhew, and favoured the boys who strove to benefit by their
superior nhonledge, but as to the young nhaxes who preferred idling, they had
their laziness liter- |
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LECTURE II. 59 ally nhocked out of them
in no pleasant manner: in fact, there are Welshmen not a few still living who
have never lost the nhowledge thus nhocked into them when they were boys. The
next mutations to be noticed, in the order given in the table we have been
following, that is, if we reserve It for a special mention, and omit Ip for
want of sure instances, are those of Ic, re, rt, rp, into Ich, rch, rth, rph
(or rff), as in the following words: — golehi, ' to wash,' 0. Irish /olcaim,
" humecto,lavo; " march, 'a steed,' whence mwrehog, '■ a
knight,' Ir. mareaeh; nerth, ' strength,' whence nerth/hwr, ' powerful,' 0.
Ir. nertmar, Gaul. JS'ertomarus; corff, ' a body,' plural cyrff and corfforoedd,
Ir. corp (Lat. corpus, corporis); gorpken, ' to finish,' from pen, ' head,
end,' with the prefix gor. The formula of the reduction in these words and
the like is not that of r\_p']a but of rh\_p'\a into rh\_ph']a, that is, for
instance, the Latin corpus was, in Welsh mouths, corhpus, with p (surd, mute)
between rh (surd, spirant) and u (sonant, spirant), so that under the
combined influence of its two neighbour-sounds it had to be changed into ph
(/■), which gives us corff and not corb, as might be expected were
corpus to be treated as such and not as corhpus. Even now, if I am not
mistaken, the liquids in corff and golehi are not quite the sonants r and I,
but rather rh and Ih; or, perhaps, |
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60 LECT0EES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. it would
be more correct to say that they begin as sonants and end as surds, to be
timed ^-^^ and ijwih respectively. Thus following Mr, Ellis' palaao-type
representation of tent as tennAt, we might say that these words are
pronounced corrhff and gol-lhcki. When the spirants ch, th, ph, began to take
the places of the corresponding mutes in the positions here indicated, it
would now be hard to say; however, our earliest specimens, scanty as they
are, of 0. Welsh of the 9th century exhibit them on much the same footing in
the language then as now. It is true that occasionally c, t, p, are to be met
with for ch, th, ph, but that is probably rather the result of carelessness
in writing than of any uncertainty in the pronunciation. This phonetic change
is not a very common one in European languages; but we seem to have an
implied instance of it in the Sassarese dialect in such words as baj,ca
(Ital. barca) and alchi (Ital. archi, with the ch, as usual in Italian,
standing for the sound of k): the present pronunciation is given by Prince
L.-L. Bonaparte as hw^Qfo, and a-^, so that the intermediate stage can hardly
but have been hab^ and alyi or bar-^a and aryi. The next mutations in the
table are those of rd, lb, rh, into rdd, If, rf, to which may be added those
of Im, rm, into If, rf. They need not be here dwelt upon, as the same
explanation applies to them as |
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LECTURE II. 61 to vowel-flanked
consonants and others mentioned at the outset. But as to Ig, rg, it is to be
noticed that even in 0. Welsh they had the sound of Igh, rgh, with gh sounded
as the sonant spirant which may sometimes be heard in such German words as
liegen, ' to lie,'i and regen, ' rain.' In the Oxford Glosses on Ovid's Art
of Love we have this once written gh, namely in helghati, "
venare," that is, helgha ti, ' do thou , hunt; ' but in the Cambridge
Glosses on Martianus Capella we have it written ch in the verbal noun in the
phrase in helcha, ' in venando/ now.yw hela, ' in hunting:' compare the Irish
seilg, ' a hunting, venison.' Probably the sound was the same even where g
continued to be written, as in 0. Welsh colginn, ' aristum,' now coli/n, ' a
sting.' The next step was to omit the consonant altogether, as in the
last-mentioned instance, or else to change it into_/ as in kelghati, now
helja di; and in such words as arjan, 'silver,' 0. Welsh argant, Breton
arc'hant, 0. Ir. argat, now airgead, from Latin argentum, tarjan, ' a
shield,' from 0. English targe, genitive targan; to which may be added proper
names in gen, such as 0. Welsh Morgen, TJrbgen, later Morjen, Urjen. Next in
order come ch, th, ph, for cc, tt, pp respectively, as in sack ' a sack, from
Latin saccus, saeth ' an arrow,' from sagitta, and cyff ' a stump, trunk,
stem,' from cippus. The same thing hap-
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62 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. pens iu
the case of quasi-medials, as, for instance, when we use ac ' and,' tri '
three,' which stands for an earlier tris, or ei 'her,' which originally also
ended in s, as in the following examples: — ci a chath ' a dog and a cat,'
for ci ac + cath; ty a than ' house and fire,' for ty at + tan = ti/ ac +
tan; tri phen ' three heads,' for trip + pen = tris + pen; ei Must ' her
ear,' for eic + dust = eis + dust; whereas ' his ear ' would be ei glust,
because ei masculine originally ended in a vowel — the Sanskrit for ejus is
asya ' his,' asyds ' her.' This mutation, so common in Welsh, to which I have
hitherto failed to find a parallel elsewhere, is probably to be explained as
follows: — Take for instance the Latin word cippus, which the Welsh borrowed
into their own language. Here the vowels i and u are separated by two /»'s,
whereof the one is implosive, or formed when the lips are brought together,
and the other explosive, or formed when the contact ceases. Now the
assimilative force of the vowels would tend to reduce the word to cibbus or
cipkphUs. But the double consonant generally also implies a more violent
ejection of air from the lungs than is usual in the case of a single one, a
circumstance which is directly antagonistic to any reduction in the direction
of jo to 6; so dbbus is ruled out of the field. Of course, in the case of our
supposed form dphphus, the two ph's being
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LECTURE II. 63 continuous sounds, could
not fail to merge themselves into one, that is to say, if they were not to be
so regarded from the first. In either case the result would be cipkus or
ciffus, whence our cyff. Then as to the time when this mutation became the
rule, that may be determined between certain wide limits. It is an
accomplished fact in the 9th century, whereas about the middle of the 6th
century a Continental writer speaks of our crwth as " chrotta
Britanna." So it may be ascribed to the 7th or the 8th century, probably
the former, for which our inscriptional evidence seems to make: an Anglesey
tombstone bears the name Decceti, while another, in Devonshire, in letters
tending to the Hiberno-Saxon style, gives it the form Decketi. Still more
instructive is an inscription from Carmarthenshire which mentions a man
called Lunarlc^hi Cocci, in letters which can hardly be earlier than the
middle of the 6th century. This last clearly shows that re had become rch
before cc had yielded ch as in coch ' red,' the modern representative of
cocc-i; a fact which is quite in harmony with what has already been said as
to the relative force of vowels and consonants for assimilation. The
transition of such a word as cippus into aphpkus or ciphph would lead one to
expect fructus to have become in Welsh, in the first instance, |
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64 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY.
fruchthus or fruchth, but we have no evidence whatever for such a form. In
the earliest 0. Welsh we have ith in the place of chth, and, accordingly,
/rz^zi^A, now ffrwyth, ' fruit,' for fructus; and so in native words, such as
wytk, ' eight,' for oct, Ir. oeht, Lat. octo; rhaith, ' law,' for reet-, Ir.
reckt, Lat. rectum, Eng. riffkt. Did cktk become ith without any intermediate
stage of pronunciation? That is hardly probable, and the next thing is to
suppose the steps to have been ct, ckth, ghth, ith, or rather ct, cht, chth,
ghth, ith, as the Irish equivalent is still written cM, though the
pronunciation, it is true, approaches chth or chtth. And it is not improbable
that cht dates from the period of Goidelo-Kymric unity, if not earlier; and
it is to be noticed that, as ht, cht, or ght, it is common to the Teutonic
languages, where it would accordingly seem to date before their separation
from one another: take for instance the English word might, formerly written
meaht, miht, G-er. macht, Gothic mahts. Then, in the next place, as to the
transition of cht into chth, it is just what the analogy oi rth, rch, for rt,
re, would lead one to expect in Welsh; but a more questionable step is the
softening, here supposed, of chth into ghth. However, the pronunciation
offers no difficulty, as it is easy to begin the gh as a sonant spirant and
to finish the th as a surd one; in point of assimi- |
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LECTUEE 11. 65 lation, such a syllable
as acht offers in its ch a compromise between the a and the t. Moreover, English
orthography seems to have registered an analogous process in such words as
night, which was formerly written neaht, naht, niht, then nigt and night. The
gh was sounded in English in William Salesbury's time, who describes it as
softer than Welsh ch, but otherwise of the same character. The change of
spelling from h to gh was preparatory in some of the instances to its ceasing
altogether to have the power of a consonant, which happened with the same
result as in Welsh. Take again the word night with its short i (as in pin)
lengthened eventually at the expense of the gh into I (as in Welsh, or ee in
the English beech) — the subsequent diphthongisation of that I into the ei of
our own day, which permits our writing night in Welsh spelling as Tieit, does
not concern us here — and compare the Welsh word hrlth, feminine braith, '
spotted, party-coloured; ' brith stands for a much earlier brlct, which may
be supposed to have successively become bricht, brichth, brighth, brith;
while the feminine stands for brictd, which would have to pass through the
stages brichta, brechtha, breghtha, breith, on its way to our present Welsh
braith. The presence of an i for the first consonant in the combination in
question is common to Welsh with French, as
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66 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. in the
Old Welsh fruith, now ffrnyth, French, fruit, and so in other instances, a
coincidence which the advocates of the Gallo-British theory should make the
best of; but as words borrowed into Welsh from Latin follow the same rule in
this as native ones, it is probable that chth, ghth, date after the Eomans
came to our shores, and the only inscription bearing on this point seems to
favour that supposition, as far at least as concerns ghth. It comes from
Pembrokeshire, and is in letters which may, perhaps, be assigned to the
latter part of the 6th century: they can hardly be much earlier. The reading
seems to be Nogtivis Fill Demeti; the Ogam differs, but it certainly begins
with nogt, which I take to mean noghth rather than nogkt, as I fail to see
how the latter form could have arisen: noghth would be the prototype of one
of the words which have the. form noeth in Mod. Welsh; that is to say, noeth,
' naked,' Ir. nocht, and noeth, ' night,' as in henoeth, ' to-night,' Mod.
Ir. anocht. By gk is here meant the same sound which yielded 7 in helja and
Morjen already mentioned, and which, as the continuator of g followed by I,
r, or n, is replaced in Mod. Welsh by the vowel e in such words as Mael for
0. Welsh mail = magi, as in Grildas' Maglo-cuni, aer, ' a battle,' 0. Welsh,
air = agr-, of the same origin as the Greek aypa, 'a catching, hunt- |
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LECTUKE II. 67 ing, the chase,' and oen,
' a lamb,' 0. Welsh, oin = ogn-, of the same origin as Latin agnus. Irish is
satisfied with merely lengthening the vowels by way of compensation, so that
the foregoing words assume in that language the form Mdl, dr^ and uan = on.
These guesses, which cannot seem less satisfactory to you than they do to me,
would look incomplete without a mention of pi; but as pt is supposed to have
been changed at a very early date into ct, it has no history of its own. Thus
our saitk, ' seven,' formerly seitk, is regarded as the direct representative
of a Goidelo-Kymric seckt or sect for an Aryan saptan, which is rendered
probable by the Irish form, which is now .seacht, formerly secM. And it is
worthy of notice that the only Latin loan-word with pt has been treated in
Welsh differently from those with ct: I allude to pregetk, ' a sermon,' from.
prceceptttm, 'a maxim, rule, injunction, doctrine ' — compare also TrAipki, '
Egypt,' for 'H A'lyvTrTo<}. We have not yet done with the table we set out
with: there still remain the items in Italics. Instances have been noticed of
the reduction of c, t, p, into g, d, 6, but" now we have to deal with
changes which seem to take the other direction, as when gg becomes cc and the
like: this kind of mutation may, in default of a more appropriate term, be
called provection. But when c, for |
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68 LECTUBES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. instance,
is reduced in. Welsh to g, we know that to be an instance of assimilation
tending to lighten the labour of articulation; however, it is not to be
assumed that provection is a kind of dissimilation to increase it. Let us
begin with the more palpable cases in point: what makes it so difficult to
teach a Welshman not to make the English words hag, pod, tiib, into back,
pot, tup, or to get an Englishman to pronounce the word eisteddfod correctly
as eistehvod, and not as eistethphod? It cannot be that pod is made into pot
because the o is followed by a mute or a stopped consonant, for t and d are
the same in that respect; and in the other case th and dd are both spirants
or continued consonants. Thus it is clear that these changes do not depend on
any of the qualities serving as a basis for the classification of consonants
into mutes and spirants into surds and sonants. Another glance at the table
will show that, when provection takes place, more consonants than one are
concerned. Now it happens almost uniformly in Welsh, that when an accented
vowel is followed by a combination of consonants, it has a closed
pronunciation, which implies a hasty and forced ejection of air from the
lungs. This high pressure, so to say, is not favourable to the pronunciation of
such consonants as g, d, b, dd,f, as they require the organs of speech to be
brought together much more gently |
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LECTUBE II. 69 and slowly than in the
case of the corresponding snrds. Hence it is clear that when a Welshman makes
hag into hack, or an Englishman eisteddfod into eistethphod, these are cases
of assimilation based on a third principle, the force of the vowels, and, in
the instances before us, the assimilation distinctly amounts to the
substitution of an easier for a harder pronunciation. It is hardly necessary
to state that the use made of provection is only sporadic in Welsh as
compared with the other kinds of assimilation and their far-reaching effects
on the words of the language. In Irish, however, it plays a considerably more
important part, whence another divergence between the two languages,
especially in words which, in 0. Welsh and 0. Irish, contained the
combinations lb, rb, rd, seeing that in later Welsh they are If, rf rdd, and
in Irish lb, rb, rd, or even Ip, rp, rt. Thus the 0. Welsh gilbin becomes
gylfin, ' a bird's bill or beak,' while the Irish is gulha, which also occurs
with a p instead of h; and the Latin or do appears in Welsh as urdd, ' an
order,' and in Irish as ordd or ort, genitive uirdd or uirt. It may not be
wholly devoid of interest to you to find that there are cases of provection
in English in such forms, for instance, as the perfects meant, 0. English
mcende, mende; dreamt, 0. Eng. dremde; dealt, 0. Eng. dmlde. |
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70 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. delde;
felt, 0. Eng. felde, felte, to which may be added others such as built, 0.
Eng. bulde, and bent, 0. Eng. bende. The same thing happens when the ending
ard becomes art as in braggart, sweetheart, a change which invariably takes
place in Mod. Welsh when words of this category are borrowed, as, for
instance, in godart, 'a kind of cup,' sowgart, ' a riding habit,' llempart,
Rhisiart, from goddard, safeguard, leopard, Richard. But, to proceed to
instances of a more respectable antiquity, we come to gg, dd, bb, yielding
mutes: in order to avoid confusion they must be treated as belonging to two
strata of different dates. The later of them belongs to Mediseval and Modern
"Welsh, and dates after most of the reductions already discussed had
taken place, as, for instance, in such words as these: cyttuno, ' to agree,
to bargain,' for cyd + duno, ' to unite, agree; ' yspytty, ' a hospice,' for
yspyd + dy (for ty, ' a house '); Hetty, ' lodgings, an inn,' for lied + dy.
Here it is to be observed that when the tone falls on the vowel immediately
preceding the mutes in question, the vowel is shortened and forced while the
mute is doubled; but as soon as the tone shifts, the vowel is slackened and
the mute simplified. However, it is usual to write lletty ' lodgings ' and
llettya ' to lodge,' or else llety and lletya; but neither orthography is
accurate and |
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LECTURE II. 71 consistent, for the
•words being accented on the penultima as usual, are pronounced Hetty and
lletya. This would perhaps be most readily indicated for the benefit of
strangers desirous of learning our language by writing lUty and lletya.
Similarly in cases of assimilation we should have to write, for instance,
atebodd, ' respondit,' and dteb, ' respondere,' for ad plus keb as in gohebu,
' to correspond by letter; ' in 0. "Welsh it is hep, ' quoth,' for a
European saqv-, whence the English say, German • sagen, and the Lithuanian
atsakyti, which is all but bodily equivalent to our dteb. The other stratum
of instances alluded to belongs to 0. "Welsh, and they are, as might be
expected, few in number. Apertk, now abertk, ' a sacrifice, an offering,'
would seem to be one, as it admits of being analysed into (ap-pertk for)
abherth = ad-berth: the 0. Irish forms are edbart, edpa^t, id-part (Zeuss^,
p. 869), all from the root ber, the Celtic equivalent oifer, in Lat.yer-o,
Greek <j)ep-a), ' I bear.' The analysis of the Old "Welsh aper, now
aber, ' the mouth of a river,' would disclose the same root, if one is right
in understanding the word originally to mean the volume of water which a
river bears or brings into the sea or into another river. Compare Umbrian
arfert-ur (for ad-fert-ur), 'allator, oblator,' and arferia, glossed by
Festus "aqua qute inferis libabatur." |
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72 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGT. To the
working of the same principle in 0. Welsh we are probably to trace apati, for
abhati, in a Latin inscription in Hiberno-Saxon characters on a stone at
Llantwit in South Wales. Similarly Welsh cred-u, ' to believe/ for an earlier
cret-u, 0. Irish creitem, ' faith,' neither of which seems to be derivable
from Latin cred-o, is rather to be compared with Sanskrit graddhd, '
trusting, faithful,' ^addhdna, ' faith,' graddMtaw/a= Welsh credadwy, ' to be
believed.' We may probably assume that aperth stands for an earlier apperth
{=ahherth ^ adberth), and the conclusion seems natural, that the
simplification of the mute implies that the accent was on the ultima:
unfortunately we cannot be said to know much about its position in 0. Welsh.
However, the fact that aperth, for instance, was pronounced aperth and not
apperth in the latter part of the 0. Welsh period is rendered certain by its
further reduction in later Welsh. into aberth: so with the other instances.
Before leaving this point, you may wish to know if anything corresponding
happens in the case of quasi-medials, that is, if we have parallels to the
phrases already mentioned, ci a chath, ty a than, and ei chlust. There are
such, and the following will do as instances: tri gair, ' three words,'
ceiniog a dimai, ' a penny and a halfpenny,' ei bara, ' her bread.' These
might at first sight seem to be |
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LECTURE II. 73 hardly in point, the
forms to be expected being tri cair, ceiniog a timai, ei para; however,
looking at the actual ones, you will observe that the language has not set
out from tri gair, a dimai, ei bara, for in that case we should now have by
reduction tri air, a ddimai, ei far a — this last does occur, but it means '
his bread,' and not ' her bread.' The fact is, tri gair, for instance, with a
g that resists reduction, stands for trig + gair for an earlier tris + gair.
It is this kind of strengthened g that has been entered in the table as g. A
similar remark applies to d' and b'. We now pass to the consideration of It
and Id, as to the former of which, it is possible that It, in the first
instance, became Iht by assimilation; but Ih, though a surd, is not the sound
,we write U, which roughly speaking stands to I as_/ tot;, or th in ' thin '
to th in ' this.' What is the exact relation in which our II stands to Ik?
would a change from Ih into II be a case of provection, or is II due
altogether to the influence of the t following it? These are questions which
I must leave in the hands of those who make the physiology of speech their
special study. The combination Id also yields lit, for the d in melldith, ' a
curse,' and melldigo, ' to curse,' from the Latin maledictio and maledicere,
is merely historical, the pronunciation being melltith and melltigo; nor does
anybody, so |
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74 LECTUKES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. far as I
can remember, write swlld and cysylldu for srclli, ' a shilling,' and
cysylltu, ' to join, to connect,' as it is not very generally known that these
two words are borrowed from the Latin soldus or solidus and. consolidare. In
the change of Id into lit, language probably proceeded, as usual, by degrees:
in the first instance Id became It by provectiou, which, by the way, is
shared by Bretou, for it is from It it must have arrived at the vocalised ut,
ot, which it opposes to our lit. The next step was to make It, Iht, into lit;
bo that the representatives of early It and Id could no longer be kept apart,
having in both instances got to be lit, subject to be further modified by
assimilation into ll-ll, that is II, as in Welsh allawr, allor, ' an altar,'
Breton auter, Ir. altoir, from Latin altare; callawr, ' a cauldron,' Bret,
cauter, caoter, from Latin caldarium — compare French chaudiere, ' a boiler
or copper; ' cyllell, ' a knife,' from Lat. cultellus— compare French
couteau; ellyn, ' a razor,' Bret. aotenn, Ir. altan. In several of these
words this was an accomplished change in 0. Cornish; for example, we have
ellyn and cyllell in the later Oxford Glosses written elinn and celleell, and
still earlier we find callawr written colour in the weU-known 0. Welsh
triplets beginning " Niguorcosam nemheunaur " in the Cambridge
Codex of Juvencus. This proves that the Welsh had the sound which |
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LECTUEE II. 75 we write II as early as
the 9th century, and could pronounce it between vowels, as we do, a point in
which Welsh contrasts with Icelandic, which also has the sound, but only
before t. My attention was called to its presence in that language by an
Icelandic gentleman in Oxford asking me one day when such and such a college
was ' ' buillt." On inquiry I found that this is the sound which I
always has before t in modern Icelandic: thus Icelandic kolt, ' a small
forest,' sounds to me like our kollt, ' a chink,' though it may be that the
Icelanders do not force the breath so much to the right side of the mouth as
we do in pronouncing our II, which is sometimes called unilateral by
phonologists — it does not, however, I may observe, deserve to be so called
any more than our I, which we pronounce also on the right side of the mouth;
and so too, I suspect, some Englishmen do. Look at these points as you may,
the coincidence between Welsh and Icelandic is a striking proof that t has an
affinity for U which requires a physiological explanation. Now we come to
cases which do not involve mutes, but only I, r, n: let us take first U and
Ir. The instances readiest to hand of II, that is l-l yielding in Welsh the
spirant surd which we write II, occur in loan-words from Latin, such as
porchell ' a young pig ' from porcellus, ystafell ' an |
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76 LECTTJKES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY.
apartment' from stabellwm, Tstim/U 'Epiphany' from Stella. Then there are
other cases like Welsh oil ' all,' Irish uile, from a stem olja, and Welsh
paiell ' a tent ' from Lat. papilio, which in Welsh mouths became, no doubt,
papiljo, that is to say, if that was not the first and only pronunciation
which they heard from the Romans themselves. But how did papiljo become
pepyll, whence our nxo^Qvn pabell? did it become papilla with II for Ij, ox
papil'jo, papilljo, with I', II, produced by provection? On the whole, I am
inclined to take the latter view as the more probable. Of Ir I have no
certain instances: so the next combinations are rr and rl. As to the former,
it makes in Mod. Welsh rrh and rh, as for instance where a noun is preceded
by the definite article yr, 0. Welsh ir, which is a proclitic. Take the
following: y rhan ' the share ' for yr + ran; oW rhan ' from the share ' for
o -\-yr -\-ran; Vr rhan 'to the share' for i -\- yr -{■ ran; and so in
other cases, though rhan is regarded as the radical form, of which more anon.
The provected form of rl is written rll, as in perllan ' an orchard,' oerllwm
' cold and bare,' garlleg from the English garlic, and jarll from English
eorl or earl. But the importance of this change appears mostly in the case of
the definite article, as in y llaw ' the hand ' for yr + llaw, d'r Haw ' from
the hand ' ion o-\-yr-\- llaw, a^r llaw ' with the hand ' |
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LECTUEE II. ll for a + yr + Ham; and so
on. Here it is to be remarked, as to the article prefixed to feminines, that
the parallels to y ddafad ' the sheep ' for yr + da/ad, y formyn ' the maid '
for yr + morwyn, are to be sought not in y Haw ' the hand ' for yr + Haw, and
y rhan ' the share ' for yr + rhan, but in an earlier stage yr + law and yr +
ran, which passed into y(r) Haw and y{r) rhan. There still remain to be
noticed nl and nr, the provected forms of which are written nil and nrk as in
gwinllan, ' a vineyard ' and enllyn anything eaten or drunk with bread, such
as butter, cheese, milk, beer, or the like: so also after the preposition yn,
as in yn Llundain ' in London ' and yn llawn ' in full.' Whether and in what
cases I has passed immediately into ll and not through an intermediate Ih,
which would be the parallel to rh, I am unable to decide. But both ll and Ih
would be provected forms of I, and we seem to detect a trace of the latter in
0. Cornish in the later Oxford Glosses, which give us the equivalent of our
enllyn, Ir. anion, in the form ehnlinn, whereby is probably meant enlhinn or
e\nr]hinn. A word now as to ll and rh initial. Ll and rh, whether initial or
not, are confined, as far as concerns the Celtic languages, to Welsh and
Cornish — Edward Llwyd found traces of both in Cornish. But the fact that
they are foreign to the Breton |
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78 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. dialects
seems to show that they date after the mutual diiferentiation of Welsh and
Breton. We have no Welsh manuscript authority for rh in the 0. Welsh period, but
II is found written in the Black Book of Carmarthen of the 12th century as it
is now. On the other hand, 0. Cornish offers an instance in the later Oxford
Glosses of a word beginning with hi identical probably with Ih: it is
hloimol, which is unfortunately as obscure as the Latin glomerarium which it
was intended to explain, but the Mod. Welsh equivalent might be expected, if
it existed, to begin with the syllable llwyf. But how, you will ask, is the
provection of initial I into Ih, II, and of initial r into rh, to be
accounted for? The first answer to suggest itself is, that it is the result
of the influence of the other consonants, which as initials remain c, t, p,
&c., while as medials or quasi-medials they are reduced to g, d, b,
&c. Thus .c initial and g medial would be matched by II initial and I
medial; and so with rh and r. Supposing that it could be shown, but it is
hardly probable that it can, that the. pairing of U and I, rh and r, began
some time posterior to that of c and g, t a.Vid d, and so on, this might be
admitted as a passable explanation, though it would be open to the objection
that the analogy of c, g, for insta'nce, would require I and r as initials to
remain unchanged, but to give way as |
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LECTURE II. 79 medials to some softer
sounds, l^ and r^; and this applies both to Welsh and Sassarese, the
agreement between which extends to r. Thus in Welsh we say rlmyd ' a net,',
but ei rmyd ' his net,' and the Sassarese word for net is pronounced rrezza,
while the net is, nevertheless, la rezza. But one could not, in the way here
suggested, account for initial r always appearing in Ancient Greek as p, a
coincidence with Welsh which can hardly be accidental; nor is this all, for
in Ancient Greek, as in Welsh, two r's coming together resulted in pp as in
nvppo<!, KdXXippdr}, which the Komans transcribed Pyrrhus, Calirrhoe — the
distinction between p and p is unknown in Mod. Greek. On the whole, then,
nothing remains but that we should ascribe the distinction between the
liquids as initials and non-initials to the same cause, to a certain extent,
as that between the mutes. Thus from the facts of mutation already discussed,
as, for instance, of c becoming g when non-initial and following a vowel,
while initial c undergoes no such a change, it seems to follow that initial
c, owing wholly or in part to its position, is pronounced with more force
than when it happens to be preceded by a vowel. The same applies to other
mutes, and herein Italian, as has already been mentioned, is at one with the
Celtic languages. Moreover, the greater force of initial consonants has been
established by direct |
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80 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY.
measurement in a way which must now be briefly described. In an address to
the Philological Society, Mr. Ellis gave a short account of an. instrument
called the logograph, invented by Mr. W. H. Barlow for recording, among other
things, the comparative force of articulation in speech. Since then Mr.
Barlow has very kindly answered various' queries I have sent him, and
favoured me with a copy of his own description of his invention to the Royal
Society in a paper entitled: " On the Pneumatic Action which accompanies
the Articulation of Sounds by the Human Voice, as exhibited by a Recording
Instrument. By W. H. Barlow, F.R.S., V.P. Inst. C.E." (Proc. of the Roy.
Soc, vol. xxii. pp. 277-286). " The instrument I have constructed,"
he says, " consists of a small speaking-trumpet about four inches long,
having an ordinary mouthpiece connected to a tube half an inch in diameter,
the other end of which is widened out so as to form an aperture of 2 J inches
in diameter. This aperture is covered with a membrane of goldbeater's skin or
thin gutta percha. A spring which carries the marker is made to press against
the membrane with a slight initial pressure, to prevent as far as practicable
the effects of jar and consequent vibratory action. A very light arm of
aluminium is connected with |
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LECTURE ir. 81 the spring and holds the
marker; and a continuous strip of paper is made to pass under the marker in
the same manner as that employed in telegraphy. The marker consists of a
small fine sahle brush placed in a light tube of glass one-tenth of an inch
in diameter. The tube is rounded at the lower end, and pierced with a hole
about one-twentieth of an inch in diameter. Through this hole the tip of the
brush is made to project, and it is fed by colour put into the glass tube in
which it is held. To provide for the escape of the air passing through the
instrument, a small orifice is made in the side of the tube o'f the
speaking-trumpet, so that the pressure exerted on the membrane and its spring
is that due to the difference arising from the quantity of air forced into
the trumpet, and that which can be delivered through the orifice in a given
time." The line described by the marker when the instrument is used
looks somewhat like the outline of a series of valleys and mountains
represented in section: the valleys are the vowels, and the high pointed
peaks the surd mutes c, t, p, while the other oral consonants are represented
by lesser and less sudden elevations. Among the results of Mr. Barlow's
experiments on the logograph may be mentioned the following: — The pneumatic
force of the vowels is comparatively small.
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82 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. That of
sonant consonants is greater, but falls considerably short of that of the
surd mutes c, t, p. That of an initial consonant is greater than that of the
same consonant preceded by a vowel. This, in answer to one of my queries, has
been ascertained by Mr. Barlow, who has very kindly sent * me the diagrams in
respect of c, t, p, g, d, b. Thus it would seem that the greater force of an
initial consonant depends on a physiological cause, and that it is its
continued influence on the pronunciation of initial I and r which brought
about their provection into II and rh respectively. Assuming, as I think we
now may, this initial pressure to be a vera causa, we can apply it to explain
another feature of Welsh phonology. I allude to our gm for m semi-vowel; for
as the Italians derive their guaina, ' a scabbard,' from Latin vagina, and
the French their guerre from a word the form of which recalls its English
equivalent war, so Welsh regularly makes use of gw, formerly written gu,, for
Aryan w, which it is the custom of glottologists to treat as v. Thus Latin
vinum becomes in Welsh gwin, ' wine,' and the same rule * It was only lately that it occurred to me
to ask Mr. Barlow to experiment on initial I and r, and as he waa on the
point of setting out for Philadelphia, and the instrument had been lodged in
the Kensington Museum, I am unable to give the results of a direct experiment
on I and r. However, I have no doubt that they follow suit with the other
consonants mentioned. |
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LECTUEE II. 83 is followed in native
words such as gwynt, Latin ventus, Eng. wind. In Old Welsh this was not
confined to the beginning of a word — witness petguar, now pedwar, ' four; '
but, as in the case of pedmar, the g disappeared later. However, initial gw
is not in sole possession, as it is occasionally supplanted by ckw. Thus
cAmertkin, ' to laugh,' and ckwareu, ' to play,' have, as far as concerns
Mod. Welsh, driven gwerthin and gwareu out of the field; while chwannen, ' a
flea,' is the only form, gwannen being altogether unknown, though the word is
probably of the same origin as the German wanze, ' a bug.' To these may be
added a remarkable instance in the case of a Latin loan-word: vesica becomes
in Welsh either chTvysigen or gwysigen, ' a bladder, a blister.' Looking at
these facts — initial gw, initial chw, and w for medial gw — the common
combination from which we must set out, can hardly but be assumed to have
been^^w, with gh pronounced as a very soft spirant like the g one sometimes
hears in German sagen, ' to say.' In Old Welsh this combination would of
course be written gu; but where it occurred in the body of a word, the
guttural would eventually drop out of the pronunciation, whereas, occurring
initially, it would come under the pneumatic pressure which has just been
supposed, to have induced the provection of / and r into II and rh; and
the |
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84 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. result
would be the like provection (A gh into eh. That of gh into g differs from
them in its resulting in a mute and not a spirant, but it may be compared
with the Sassarese substitution of a strong h for an initial v as in bozi,
Ital. voce, while as a quasi-medial in la bozi, ' the voice/ the labial has
the weaker pronunciation of a kind of v or Spanish b. As for the transition
from w to gkm, it can hardly have taken place all at once: it happened,
probably, through the intermediate stage of 'w, where the soft palate was
just slightly moved by the air in its passage from the larynx into the mouth
during the pronunciation of the w. But why the soft palate should have been
drawn in at all is another of those questions which I must leave to the
student of the physiology of sounds. It is to be noticed that the guttural
preceding the semi-vowel dates from the 7th or the 8th century, as no trace
of it is to be found on our early inscribed stones, which show only F, or, in
Ogam, a character which is to be read w. In the case of U and rk, the
difference between Welsh and Irish was owing to a change on the part of Welsh
only: in the present instance the gulf has been widened by changes on both
Welsh and Irish ground. The former have just been described, and the latter
consist in dropping the semi-vowel, as a rule, where we have reduced 0. |
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LECTURE ir. 85 Welsh gm into w, while,
as an initial, it was some time or other modified from w to v, which was
subsequently provected into f, for seemingly the same reason that gh, I, and
r initial became in Welsh ch, II, and rh respectively. All this happened
before the date of the earliest Irish manuscripts of the 8th century, but no
trace of it is known on the Ogam-inscribed stones of Ireland: on them the
semi-vowel is represented by the same character which I would read m on
British monuments. The time may be still more narrowly defined: the change
had not taken place before the middle of the 5th century, as seems to be
indicated by the fact, that an Irish saint, supposed to have died about 460,
bore a name which in Ireland afterwards became Fingar, and in Cornwall, where
he spent a parb of his life, Gwinear, as it is now written. This implies that
in his time his name did not commence with an f, but with nearly the same
initial in Ireland and Cornwall, namely w or v. Moreover, about the beginning
of the 6th century the semi-vowel was still pronounced in Irish where it has
since been elided. Thus in one of the lives of the Irish saint Monenna or
Modvenna, a contemporary of St. Patrick, she is spoken of as a virgo de
Convalleorum populo, another gives the last words as Conalleorum populo, and
a third makes her a native of terra Conallea, which must, I suppose, be |
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86 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY.
Tyrconnell. Now Conall is one of those vocables which have dropped the
semi-vowel, which is exceptionally retained in the Convalleorum alluded to:
the "Welsh is Cynmal, 0. Welsh Congual, and still earlier ovnovali on an
inscribed stone in Cornwall. It was thought right to dwell on Welsh ^w =
Irish f at some length, not only on account of their phonological interest,
but because they are not infrequently relied upon as evidence of a very
profound and primeval difference of language between the Irish and the Welsh.
Now that we have fairly come to the end of our task — at least in outline —
as far as regards the consonants, than which we have no reason to suspect the
vowels of being less interesting, though, maybe, the laws they obey are more
subtle, we may be allowed to indulge in a few remarks of a more general
nature. Enough has probably been said to convince you that, in spite of our
having reserved to the last the fag-ends of the subject, Welsh phonology is
far from devoid of interest. The regularity which pervades it leaves but
little to be desired, and it falls, comparatively speaking, not so very far
short of the requirements of an exact science. Some, however, have no
patience with a discussion which turns on consonants and vowels, and nothing
short of etymologies bearing directly on ethnological questions or the origin
of lano-uafe |
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LECTURE II. 87 can hope to meet with
their approval. This need not surprise any one, for, as a rule, few people
feel interested in the details of a scientific inquiry, and duly realise the fact,
that what they regard as food only fit for the shrunken mind of a specialist
must necessarily precede those gushing results they thirst after. In the case
before us, we are only too familiar with the worthlessness of the fruits of a
method which ignores the phonological laws of the language with which it
pretends to deal, or fails to do justice to their historical import; and it
is by his attitude with respect to these laws that one can generally tell a
dilettante from a bona fide student of the Celtic languages. The former, you
hardly need be told, never discerns a difficulty; for to him a letter more or
less makes no difference, as his notion of euphony is so Protean that it is
equal to any emergency; but the latter frequently stumbles or goes astray,
and has to retrace his steps; and altogether his progress can be but slow: so
much so, in fact, that some of the leading glottologists of our day think it
on the whole impossible to attain to the same state of knowledge respecting
the history and etymology of Celtic words as that arrived at in the case of
the other Aryan tongues. That it is harder is certain, but that it is
impossibk I am inclined to doubt. At any rate, so far progress is being made;
nor is there |
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88 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOQT. anything
which may be regarded as an indication that we have nearly come to the end of
our tether. For example, one of the tasks — and only one out of several —
which the student of an Aryan language proposes to himself is to discover, as
far as that is practicable, the origin of every word in its vocabulary, and
to show to what recognised group of words it btelongs, or, in other words,
from what root it is derived and how. In some of the languages kindred to our
own this work has already been carried very far, and the nunjber of the
vocables in them of obscure origin has been materially reduced; but in the
Celtic languages this search, being attended with greater difficulties, is
not so far advanced; but it is going on and likely to go on, as you will see
on perusing the Eevue Celtique or Kuhn's Beitraege, where you will find,
among others, some of the most stubborn words of our vernacular forced, one
after another, to surrender the secrets of their pedigree. But whence, it
will be asked, does this greater difficulty attending the study of the Celtic
languages, and of Welsh in particular, proceed? Mainly from two causes — the
great dearth of specimens of them in their earlier stages, and the large
scale on which phonetic decay has taken place in them. For, to pass by the
former for the present, it is to be remembered that the phonetic changes |
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LECTURE ir. »y which have been engaging
our attention are but the footprints of phonetic decay, and that the
phonological laws which have just been discussed form but the map of its
encroachments and a plan, as it were, of its line of attack. With these
before our eyes, we are, to a certain extent, enabled to infer and picture to
ourselves the positions, so to say, and the array in which the forces of our
language were at one time drawn up. So, when you hear it said, as you
frequently may, that Welsh or Irish is the key to I know not how many other
languages, do not believe a word of it: the reverse would be nearer the
truth. We want concentrated upon the former all the light that can possibly
be derived from the other Aryan tongues; that is to say, if we are to
continue to decipher their weather-worn history. ( 90 )
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LECTUBE III. . " La dissonanza tra
lingua e lingua, se pur non sia minors, riesoe di oerto, in generals, men
sensibile rispetto aUe vooali ohe non rispetto alle consonant!; ma appunto
per questo, torna piil logioo, in una trattazione come la nostra, che il
ragguaglio delle cousouanti sia mandato innanzi a quello delle vocali."
— G. I. ASOOLI. At first it was not my intention to notice the vowels, but it
has since occurred to me, that if they were to be passed over in silence, you
might suppose that I endorse the first part of Voltaire's definition of
etymology as a science in which the vowels are of no consequence and the
consonants of extremely little. But there is another reason why they should
be noticed here, and that is the fact that without taking them into account
the history of the consonants cannot be thoroughly understood. Before,
however, proceeding to any details it will be necessary roughly to indicate
what vowels in Modern Welsh represent the vowels of the Aryan parent-speech
respectively. It is to be observed, that, as a result of the researches of
Professor Curtius of Leipsic, and others,- it is now generally accepted as a
fact that the Western Aryans not only retained the vowel a in some |
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LECTURE III. 91 words, but also changed
it into e in others; but it would make no difference, so far as our present subject
is concerned, if it should some day be made out that the parent-speech had
two or more kinds of a (as is the case, say, in English), which the Eastern
Aryans confounded in course of time, and reduced to one, while their brethren
in the West never completely effaced the distinction between them. It further
appears probable that, anterior to the separate existence of Irish and Welsh,
a had also been modified in not a few words into o in the common Celtic from
which these languages have branched off. Thus while Sanskrit harps on the
same string of a, the Celtic and other Aryan languages of Europe have no less
than three vowels at their disposal, namely, a, e, o: witness our tad '
father,' de^ ' ten,' and pob-i ' to bake,' which are in Sanskrit respectively
tata, dagan, and pac, all with a. So far, then, as concerns Welsh or Irish,
we may treat the following vowel-sounds as original: a, a, e, e (?), i, i
(?), o, u, u (?), ai, au. Our task is now briefly to point out the most
common and direct continuators of each of them in our language. A. The a of
the Aryan parent-speech is retained in the following words and many more
which might be enumerated: — |
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92 LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. aden, '
a wing,' adar, ' birds/ from pat, whence also Skr. pat, ' to fly,' Gr.
irrepov, 'Eug. feather. a/al, ' an apple,' Lith. obolys, 0. Bulg. jahluko,
Eng. apple. am, ' about, around,' 0. Ir. imb-, imm, Grr. afi^l, Lat. amb- in
ambages, Ger. um. an-, as in annoeth, ' unwise,' anamserol, ' untimely,' Ir.
an-, Skr. an-, Gr. dv-, Lat. in-, Eng. un-. ar, ' ploughland,' arddu, ' to
plough,' aradr, ' a plough,' Ir. arathar, ' a plough,' Gr. apoto, * I
plough,' Lat. aro, same, ardtrum, ' a plough,' Goth, arjan, ' to plough,'
Eng. to ear, earth. all-, in alltud, ' one of another nation,' Ir. aile, Gr.
aWo?, Lat, alius, Eng. e/se. arcA, ' a bidding, a request,' from?aek, whence
also Latin precor, ' I pray,' Ger. /rage, ' a question: ' another form of the
same root seems to be PAKSK, whence Skr. prach, ' to demand, to ask,' Lat.
posco (=porsco), Ger. forschen, ' to inquire, to investigate.' cad, 0. Welsh
cat, ' battle, war,' whence Catteyrn, 'battle-king,' Early Welsh Catotigirni;
Ir. cath, Gaulish catu in Caturiges, Catuslogi; Early Eng. heatho-, ' war,
battle.' caled, ' hard,' Zend gareta, ' cold,' Eng. cold, which seem to show
that the common base was scareta, and that the Celts reasoned from cold to
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LECTURE III. 93 can, ' a song,' canu, '
to sing, to crow,' Ger. hahn, ' a cock.'
i, ' seed/ Lat. satus. ha/, 'summer,' Skr. samd, 'year,' Zend hama, '
summer.' halen, ' salt,' kallt, ' salty, salted,' Ir. salann, ' salt,' Gr.
a\?, Lat. scd, Eng. salt, pa, ' what,' Ir. ca, Skr. kas, ' who,' Lat. quo-,
in quod, Goth. Avas, Eng. who. pas, ' the whooping-cough,' Skr. kds, ' to
cough,' 0. Eng. hoostan, ' to host, to cough,' Ger. Austen, tarw, ' a bull,'
Ir. tarbk, Gaulish tarvos, Zend. thaurva { = tharva), 'violent, strong,
hard,' Lat, tormts: it is not certain that these words are connected, but in
any case tarw cannot be identified with the Latin taurus. E. The vowel e for
Aryan a occurs in Welsh, in common with other European languages, in a good
many words, of which the following are a few: — ad-fer, ' to restore,' from
the same origin as Gr. ^e'joo), lidl.fero: Skr. bkar, ' to 6ear.^ cred,
'belief,' Ir. creitem, Lat, credo: Skr. graddhd, 'trusting, faithful.'
chwech, ' six,' Ir, s4, Gr. e^, Lat. sex: Skr. skask. deg, ' ten,' Gr. Ima,
Lat. decern, Goth, taikin, Eng. t&a: Skr. daqan. |
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94 LECTXJEES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. deheu,
' right, south,' 0. Ir. dess, Gr. le.^io'i, Lat. dexter: Skr. dakshina. ebol,
' a colt,' 0. Ir. ech, ' a horse,' Lat. equus, 0. Eng. eok: Skr. agva. gen, '
the chin,' Gr. yew;, Lat. getia, Goth, kinnus, Eng. chin: Skr: hanus. keb,
'besides, without,' 0. Ir. seek, Lat. secus. heb, ' quoth,' Gr. taireve.
(theme aetr), Lat. in-sece, Lith. sakau, ' I say,' Ger. sagen, Eng. say. ^ew,
' old,' 0. Ir. sen, Gr, ei/i; («at z/ea), Lat. senex: Skr. sa?2a. met, '
honey,' Ir. mjY, Gr. fjJXi, Lat. jwe^, Goth. milith. mellt, ' lightenings,'
0. Prussian, mealde, ' a lightening,' 0. Bulg. mliinij. melyn, ' yellow,
tawny,' Gr. fiekav, gen. fjdkavo'i, ' black, dark, blue,' Lith. mUynas, '
blue: ' Skr. malina, ' dark, black.' merck, ' a girl, a daughter,' Lith.
merga, ' a girl.' nef, ' sky, heaven,' 0. Ir. 7wm, Gr. ve'^o?, Lat. nebula,
0. Bulg. nebo, ' heaven.' ser, ' stars,' Gr. da-rrip, Lat. Stella, Eng. star:
Skr. staras, ' stars.' ■serch, ' love, affection,' Ir. searc, Gr.
arepya, ' I love,' a-Topryrj, ' love or natural affection.' 7. Aryan t is
represented in 0. Welsh by i, written y in Mod. "Welsh, and i or y
indiffe- |
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LECTURE III. 95 rently in the
intervening period. But in most cases the y of Mod. "Welsh has taken the
place of other vowels, while the instances where it is the representative of
an i of Aryan or even European standing are comparatively few. The following
may be mentioned: — dyw, ' a day,' he-ddyw, ' to-day,' Gr. evSto? ( =
evBifo^), ' at midday,' Lat. diu, diurnus (= dius-nus): Skr, diva, ' heaven,
day.' hysp, fem. kesp, ' dry, not giving milk,' Gr. layyo^, ' dry,' Lat.
siccus, Zend hisku, ' dry; ' the "Welsh, the Greek, and the Zend forms
seem to be the results of reduplication — si-siqv- or si-sik-. mysc, as inyn
mysc, ' in the midst of,' Gr. fxiyvvfu, /ttffyo), Lat. misceo, Eng. mix, Skr.
miksh. nyfio, ' to snow,' from a root snighv, whence also Gr. vi^ei, Lat.
ninguit, ningit, or nivit, ' it snows,' Eng. snoK: Zend ^izA. py, ' what,
which ' (now superseded by pa), Gr. Tt?, Ti, Lat. quis, quid, Oscan pid: Skr.
kirn. yd, ' corn,' 0. Ir. ith, gen. etho, Lith. pttus, ' mid-day, mid-day
meal: ' Skr. pitu, ' food, sustenance.' 0. In a good many instances o has
taken the place of a, at a date probably falling within the limits of the
history of the "Welsh language, but in others it seems to be, as
already |
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96 LECTDBES ON WELSH PHILOLOGT.
suggested, of older standing, as may be gathered from its appearance in the
corresponding forms in other languages nearly related to Welsh, as in the
following instances: — coll, ' hazel,' 0. Ir. coldde, ' columns,' Lat.
corulus (= cosulus), Eng. hazel. dqf, ' tame,' Lat. domare, ' to tame,' Eng.
tame. mock, ' soon, quick,' Ir. moch, Lat. mox; Skr. iweth, 'naked,' Ir. nocAt, Lat. nudus {^:=no{g)vidus),
Goth, naqvaths, Eng. naked. nos, ' night,' kenoetk, ' to-night,' trannoetk, '
overnight, the day after,' literally trans noctem, Mod. Ir. anockt, '
to-night,' Gr. vv%, gen. vvKTo^, Lat. now, gen. noctis, Lith. naktis, Goth,
nakts, Eng. nigkt: Vedic Skr. nakti. ( = op), as in o thry efe, ' if he
turn,' Lat. necopinus, in-opinus, opinio, 0. Norse, ef, if, ' doubt,' Ger.
obi Eng. if. og or aged, ' a harrow,' Lat. occa, Lith. akeczos, ek^czos, 0.
H. Ger. egidd. Mod. Ger. egge. pobi, 'to bake,' Gr. iriaam, future Tre'^o),
Lat. coquo: Skr. pac. m/tk (for oitA = oct), ' eight,' Ir. ocAt, Gr. oktoi,
Lat. octo, Eng. eigkt: Skr. ashman. U. Aryan m is represented in 0. Welsh by
u, written in Mod. Welsh w: however, the in-
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LECTURE III. 97 stances where the
original u may perhaps not have been modified are comparatively few, such as
the following: — cnm, ' dogs,' Ir. con, Gr. «we9, Lat. canes, Bng. hounds.
Ski. ^dnas, gunas. drwg, ' bad,' Ir. droch-, Ger. trug, ' deception,'
hetriigen, 'to deceive,' Skr. druh, 'to injure,, to harm,' Zend druj, ' to
lie.' dwfn, '.deep,' 0. Ir- domnu, ' depth,' Lith. dubus, ' deep, hollow,' 0.
Bulg. duno (= dubno), ' ground ' (compare Ir. domhan, ' the world '), Goth,
diups, ' deep,' 0. Eng. deop, Mod. Eng. deep. }ud, in the 0. Welsh names
Judgual, Margetjud, now Idwal and Meredudd, comes from the root TUDH, whence
also Ir. iodhnach, ' armed,' Gr. vafilvTi, ' a battle,' Skr. gudk, ' to
fight,' rhwd, ' rust,' Lat. russus, Ger. rosten, ' to rust,' Eng. rust, from
the root etjdh, whence Welsh rhudd, ' red,' and its congeners. A. Aryan d
seems to have in Early Welsh acquired a guttural sound, which passed into 6, yielding
in Mod. Welsh o and aw, the latter being used in monosyllables, and the
former in most other words as Welsh is now pronounced; the instances are
numerous — take the following: — |
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98 LECTUEES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. brawd, '
a brother,' pi. brodyr, Ir. brdthair, Lat. frdter, Eng. brother, Skr.
bhrdtar. chwiorydd, ' sisters ' (sing, chmaer), Lat. sorores, Eng. sisters,
Skr. svasdras. dawn, ' a gift in the sense of talent or genius,' Ir. dan,
Lat. ddnum, 0. Bulg. dam. llawn, ' full,' Ir. Ian, Lat. plenus, Skr. prdna.
llawr, 'floor,' Ir. Idr, 'Eiug.Jloor. modryb, ' an aunt,' from the. word for
mother, which is lost in Welsh, but is in Irish mdthair, Gr. fj.^TTjp, Doric
fidrrip, Lat. mdter, Eng. mother., Skr. mdtar. E, 1. It is not supposed that
the parent-speech had e, and it is doubtful whether it had i': even supposing
that it had the latter, I have failed to trace a single instance down to
Welsh. The nearest approach to this would be the case of Welsh byw, ' quick,
living,' 0. Ir. beo, bin, and Welsh byw, ' a life or lifetime,' 0. Ir. biu,
in Fiacc's Hymn (Stokes' Goidelica, p. 128), Greek yS/o?; but Latin vlvus,
Sanskrit jiva, and their cognates can hardly be said to prove beyond doubt
that the i was originally long. It is, however, probable that e had replaced
d in & few Celtic words, or even passed into i, before the separate
history of Welsh or Irish can be said to have begun. The |
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LECTURE III. 99 instances alluded to are
those where Welsh and Irish have i answering to Latin e, as follows: — '
gwir, ' true,' Ir. /ir, Lat. verus, Goth. vSrjan (in tuzverjan), ' to believe,'
Ger. waAr, ' true.' hir, ' long,' Ir. sir, Lat. serus, ' late,' Goth,
seithus, 'late.' rhi, ' a king,' 0. Ir. ri, gen. rig, Gaulish Dumno-rix,
Dubno-reix, Dubno-rex, Catu-riges, Lat. rex, gen. regis; Goth, reiks, Skr.
rdjan. tir, 'land,' Ir. tir, Lat. terra, ' the earth.' U. Nearly the same
remark applies to u as to i. Ai. From the different representatives of at in
the various Aryan languages it has been inferred that the. primitive Aryans
had two kinds of this diphthong, which glottologists would distinguish as ai
and di: the case is, however, not quite so clear as it looks in some books.
Now, at a certain stage in the history of Welsh, ai had become oi, which has
since been differentiated by causes to be noticed later into oe and m/ in
Mod. Welsh. The ordinary Irish representatives are ia and ^. The following
words are instances in poiiit: — bloesc, ' imperfect or indistinct in one's
pronunciation,' Skr. mleccha, ' a foreigner, a barbarian:' Sanskrit ch =■
sk. |
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