Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/331

Charles Dickens] ignorance on the part of lexicographers. Johnson derives "boy" from the German or Saxon "bube," but admits that the etymology is uncertain. No such word as boy occurs in Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon dictionary, but it is to be found in the Manx language, a branch of the Celtic, with the orthography of bwoie. "Girl" is a word that has puzzled the dictionary makers quite as much as its companion, boy, and they all seek its etymology everywhere except in the right place. One exceedingly wise person (in his own estimation), named Minsheu, traces it from the Latin garrula, because girls are garrulous and fond of prating; and not being quite sure that he is right, suggests that possibly it may be from the Italian girella, a weathercock, "because of their fickleness." The "r" in the word, which is not usually pronounced, seems to have led this learned noodle astray. The vulgar pronunciation, "gal," points to its true source in the Celtic caile and cailinn, pronounced kala and kalinn, and to the Irish coleen. Another possible derivation, which it would be pleasant and flattering to the sex to believe to be the correct one, is from the Gaelic gaol, pronounced "gurl," without the "r," and signifying love. The Anglo-Saxon words for "girl" were piga and maid, the latter of which remains. Piga has been very properly superseded, and only remains in the once common public-house sign of "Pig and Whistle," perverted from "piga and wassail"—i. e., a lass and a glass. The word "grove" is another word of which the grammarians, ignorant of the original language of the British people, can make nothing. Worcester, whose dictionary is one of the best ever compiled, and who does not wholly ignore the Celtic and Cymric elements of the language, derives grove from the Anglo-Saxon graef, a grave or ditch, and quotes from Junius the explanation that "groves are frequently protected by a ditch thrown around them." "More probably," adds Richardson, "because a grove is cut out, hollowed out of a thicket of trees: it is not the thicket itself." But the word existed in England for centuries before a Saxon set foot on the soil, and is no other than the Celtic craobh, pronounced kraov, a tree, and craobhach or kraovag, abounding in trees. The words "cuddle" and "fun," which the dictionaries call low words, and scarcely attempt to define, because they find no traces of them in Anglo-Saxon, Greek, Latin, or French, are pure Celtic. Cuddle is from cadail, to sleep; and fun is from fonn, music;—following the same tone of thought which converted the Anglo-Saxon "glee," which originally meant music, into a synonym for the mirth and pleasure which music produces. The slang word cove, a man or fellow, comes from the Gaelic caomh, pronounced kaov, gentle, courteous. "Dull" and "tall" are Celtic words, of which the origin was unsuspected and unknown at the time when our first dictionaries were published, and mean respectively "blind" and "high," which are their Anglo-Saxon synonyms.

Many hundreds of such words might be cited, but enough, perhaps, has been said, to prove that the language has still a large percentage of the original dialect of the Britons. The patronymics of the English are Celtic to a degree of which Mr. Mark Anthony Lower—the only person who has devoted much time to the subject, and who has compiled a large volume about it—is utterly unconscious. Omitting altogether the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scottish names—the Ap's, the O's, and the Mac's—a very large list of Celtic names in use among the English might be compiled. Among others, all the names that terminate in ton, don, or ley are of Celtic or British origin, or sometimes a compound of Saxon and Celtic. Ton and don are the modern forms of "dun" or town, a Celtic word that in Saxon or Anglo-Saxon would be represented by berg, burgh, and burg. Milton—compounded of a Saxon and a Celtic word—signifies mill, or windmill-hill, or the mill on the downs, or down. Ley or lle is the Celtic for place, whence Stanley, a hybrid word, half Saxon, half Celtic, signifying the stony place. Among other Celtic patronymics cited at random are Capel, from capul, a brood mare; Doran, an otter; Braddon, a salmon; Lack and Lake, from, lach, a wild duck; Phillimore, from the Gaelic fille, a garment, or plait, and mor, great; Ross, Roos, and Rouse, from ruis, the alder-tree; Cowan and Cohen, from cuan, the ocean; Muir and Moir, from muir, the sea; More and Moore, from mor, great; Frith a forest; Glen, glenn, and Glyn, a valley; Ennis, Innis, and Inch, an island: Aird, a high place; Belmore, from baile-mor, the great town; Bligh, milk; Burt, sport, mockery; Cagger, a secret; Campkin, from cam, crooked, and cean, head; Camac, from camag, a curl; Cade, from cead, permission; Carr and Kerr, from cearr, wrong, awkward; Dallas, from dall, blind; Dana, from dana, poetical; Dorsay, from daorsa, captivity; Eyre, from eyrie, a high place; Outram, from outram, light, giddy; Morley, from ley, a place, and mor, great; Bain, Bean, and Behan, from bean, white; Campbell, from cam, crooked, and bille, mouth; Egan, from eigim, violence; Turley, from tur, a fortress or town, and ley, a place; Cadell, from cadail, sleep; Mearns, from muirne, the vine; Malthus—slow and silent—from mall, slow, and thos, silent; and our very old and familiar friend Smith, from simid or simit, a hammer. This list might be largely extended, and the subject is well worth the study of one who aspires to give us a book that does not yet exist—the true etymology and origin of the patronymics of Great Britain.

Were I a judge on the bench, deciding on the veracity of Gildas, on which alone rests the story of the extermination of the British, I should pronounce him guilty either of wilful error, or fabrication, or of stupidity. Were he and his reliability not in question, but only the point whether the English are more of an Anglo-Saxon than of a Celtic nation, I think I should decide upon the evidence of local