Page:Alexander Macbain - An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language.djvu/27

 Rh The Celtic group now comprises five living languages; in. the 18th century there were six, when Cornish still lived. These six Celtic languages are grouped again into two branches, which may be named the and the. The former includes the Welsh, Cornish, and Breton; the comprises Irish, Manx, and (Scottish) Gaelic. The main difference between these two branches of the Celtic group consists in this: the velar guttural of the Aryan parent tongue, which we represent here by the symbol q, when labialised, that is when the sound w or u attaches itself to it, becomes in Brittonic a simple p and in Gadelic a c (k, Ogam qu). Thus the Welsh for "five" is pump, Cornish pymp, and Breton pemp, Gaulish pempe, whereas the Gaelic is cóig, Manx queig, and Irish cúig: the corresponding Latin form is quinque. Professor Rhys has hence called the two branches of the Celtic the P group and the Q group (from Ogmic qu = Gaelic c). The distinction into P and Q groups existed before the Christian era, for the Gauls of Caesar's time belonged mainly, if not altogether, to the P group: such distinctive forms as Gaulish petor, four (Welsh pedwar, Gaelic ceithir), epo-s, horse (Welsh ebol, Gaelic each), and pempe, five, already noted, with some others, prove this amply. At the beginning of the Christian era the Celtic languages were distributed much as follows:, spoken in France and Spain, but fast dying before the provincial Latin (and disappearing finally in the fifth century of our era); or , spoken in Britain by the conquering Gaulish tribes; , belonging to the Gallo-Brittonic or P group, and spoken in Scotland and, possibly, in northern England; and , spoken in Ireland and perhaps on the West Coast of Scotland and in the Isles. The etymology of the national names will be seen in Appendix A. Our results may be summed in a tabular form thus:—

There are no literary remains of the Gaulish language existent; but a vast mass of personal and place names have been handed