Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/18

Rh 8 G A E Celtic differs from some of the others. It is unnecessary ' here to go over the same grouml again. What is distinctive of the Irish is, for the most part, distinctive of the Scottish Gaelic. The Gaelic retains the hard or /c sound of c. There is not an instance of a purely Gaelic word in which the c is pronounced soft. There are dialects of Gaelic, how- ever, in which the 0 becomes aspirated in the middle or at the end of a word. Thus -mac, a son, is pronounced maclul ; 1)(’C(f,'(l(l]l, sin, is pronounced ])e(l(‘]l.(lCl(”l. This peculiarity does not exist in the counties of Sutherland and Caithness, where the hard sound of c is retained. The Scottish Gaelic, in like manner, in conunon with Sanskrit, Latin, German, and Slavonian, retains the sibilant s, where other dialects have discarded it. Many words beginning in Gaelic with s have It as the initial letter in Welsh. It is worthy of observation, however, that, in the aspirate.l form of the s used in inﬂexion or as indicative of gender, the s assumes the sound of la in Gaelic. In like manner, words in Gaelic, as in Irish, can end in s, 7', and 92. The instances of these are numerous. So also does the Gaelic, like Irish, retain -.1 harder form of the articulation than the British, but 11ot to the same extent; for /mvel, low, in Irish lmmal, is in Gaelic umhal, approaching in this, as in many other cases, nearer to the British form. So the Gaelic preserves letters where the British loses them, but not to the same extent as the Irish. For when the Irish has (04311, a house, and the British ii, the Gaelic has both teach and fig/1, and for the most part uses the latter. In addition to this, the Gaelic, like the Irish, has preserved the declension of its noun, v.-hich cannot be said of the British. Four of the cases are in constant use, the nominative, the genitive, the dative, and the vocative in both numbers, the dative plural alone having almost disappeared from common speech. In the singular number these cases are distinctly marked—cos, a foot, gen. coise, dat. cois, voc. a chos. Wherever the language is Well spoken these cases are in daily use, and are lost only when the language is far on in the process of decay. I)iference between Gaelic aml Iris/1. —The differences‘ between the Gaelic and the Irish are considerable, and, though Irish writers maintain the contrary, are not to be taken as indications of the modern origin of the former. Without entering on that question, we find a marked dis- tinction in the use by the Irish of what is called eclipsis,— that is, the use of other and softer articulations to eclipse the harder in the beginning of a word, in some cases, as, for instance, in the genitive plural of nouns. The object aimed at would seem to be enphony, and in seeking this -object the Irish and the Scottish car did not altogether correspond. In Irish, the law as given by O’Donovan is that m eclipses b, as ar m-bo, our cow; g eclipses c, as «r _q—reart, our right ; n eclipses (I, I2]; eclipses f, n eclipses _r/, b eclipses 1), cl eclipses t, t eclipses s. This system of eclips- ing runs through the nouns and verbs. It is unknown in Gaelic, if we except the eclipsing of s by I, as an t-soil, the eye, an t-slat, the rod, and certain words which, in some districts of the Highlands, suffer eclipse. In Skye the ex- pression for the number of men is cliremnlz mm n-daoine, the l n eclipsing the cl. Other instances may be found along the west coast of Scotland. But eclipsis is, for the most part, ' distinctive of the Irish dialect. The Gaelic is further | marked by a greater tendency to aspiration than the Irish. The sentence ciomms ta ta? how art then? in Irish, is in Gaelic cimmus tlm tluz 'l the verb and the pronoun being both | aspirated. Other differences might be referred to, but one is prominent, the difference of accent or emphasis. The ' tendency of the Irish is to emphasize the ﬁnal syllable, that of the Gaelic to emphasize the penultimate. Thus saldc/a, dirty, in Irish, is in Gaelic sulcicla ; 0z'.s-in, Ossian, is in Gaelic Oisidn. This makes a striking difference in the spoken tongues, and occasions one of the main difficulties , the course of several centuries. LIG Irish and Scottish Celts have in understanding each others’ speech. .-fdvantagcs and 1):;/‘acts qf G'r1cl1'c.—The Gaelic lan- guage, as 11ow existing, has its advantages and its corre- sponding dcfects. It is admirably adapted for the purposes of the poet. In descriptive poetry few languages excel it. There are some pieces of ancient, authentic, Ossianic poetry existing that are equal in power and beauty to the Composi- tions of any age or country. Such are the description of Cnchullin’s chariot and horses, and the description of the swords of the Ossianic heroes. The same is true of more modern poetic compositions. Macintyre of Glenort-h_v‘s Beinn Douran and Coire Clzeaflzaic/a are fine specimens of descriptive p0etry—p0etical in conception throughout, couched in the choicest language, and with rhythm of un- failing accuracy. The same may be said of .Iacdonald's Oran an t-samlnvzid/t, or Ode to Summer, which is a remarkable specimen of what the Gaelic is capable of when used for the description of nature. Other lyrical composi- tions are also of a high order of merit. Love-songs and boat—s0ngs abound, and are in many cases full of life and force; and the numerous songs expressive of clan affection".-3 and animosities display the same characteristics. No lan- guage is more capable of expressing both love and hate, and there seems to have been ample scope for both in the past history of the Highland clans. Within certain limits then, Gaelic is the language of poetry, extending from the epic of the Ossianic bards down to the lyric or less aspiring efforts of lesser bards. The language is also admirably ﬁtted for the communica- tion of religious knowledge. It is in its structure meta- phorical and emotional, and renders with wonderful pre- cision and effect the statements of Scripture. The saying attributed to one of the dukes of Argyll is well known, that if addressing his sovereign he would choose lingli.-li, if addressing the lady of his affections he would choose French, but if he was addressing his God he would choose Gaelic. Few of those whose calling it is to teach reli- gious truth, and who know how to handle the language with effect, have failed to feel and own that it is incompar- able for conveying the knowledge of the truth with power. Perhaps no preachers have surpassed the Welsh in real elo- quence, and yet some of the Gaelic preachers have not been behind them. The language has served a great purpose in the Highlands in connexion with the religious life of the people. . The defects of the language are to be found chiefly in the departments of philosophy, science, and art. There it has either to be rejected or to be supplie.l from foreign sources. Indeed in this ﬁeld it seems to have deterioratedduring There are MSS. of the 14th and l5tl1 centuries in existence, in which terms are employed in connexion with discussions in philosophy, theology, and medicine that could not now be understood. The philosophy of Aristotle is well rendered, as are also the theology of the fathers and the medical disquisitions of the Arabic writers on medicine. But when modern science and philosophy, and even theology in some of its depart- ments, have to be dealt with, the lack of terms renders the task a diﬂicult one. It is here that, in the progress of education, the diﬂiculty of preserving the language lies. The effect of this want is traceable in common speech, when English words have of necessity to be used in connexion with objects of everyday use. Steamer, train, boiler, engine, railway, quay, &c., have just to be introduced from the Saxon, and presented with a little of the Gaelic tone in them to suit the Celtic ear. Some writers and speakers do try to invent Gaelic terms to represent all these and similar objects, but popular usage rejects them and prefers the foreign words.