Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/310

Rh 293 CELTIC LITERATURE Zeusa, the Irish and British branches. Each of these branches has again produced three dialects. The Irish or Goidelic dialects are the Irish proper, the Scottish Gaelic, and the Manx, or dialect of the Irish spoken in the Isle of Man. The British dialects are the Kymraeg or Welsh, the Cornish, and the Armoric, or language of Brittany. The Cornish is now extinct, having died out about the middle of the last century. We have included Armoric among British dialects on the ground that whatever may be its relation to old Gaulish it was intimately connected during the Middle Ages with the Cornish, if it be not a direct descendant of the language spoken by the southern Britons who emigrated to Brittany during the early Saxon wars. Distinction It would be impossible within the limits of such an between article as this to point out even tlie principal distinctions ofCeltic between the two branches of the Celtic, but the following language, examples will perhaps enable the reader to realize their general character. The Irish has preserved the hard or k sound of c, while in British it is represented by p; e.g., Irish cethir, four, eland, posterity, crann tree, with initial guttural, are equal to the Welsh pi tguar, plant, pren ; Irish nach, nech, person, mace, son, with final guttural, and each, each, with initial and final c, correspond respectively with Welsh nep, map, and paup This change from a guttural to a labial, and even in some cases to a dental, is what Professor Curtius calls &quot; labialismus,&quot; and is very marked in Greek as compared with Latin ; so that as respects this phonetic law Welsh stands to Irish in the same relation as Greek does to Latin. The tendency to labialism is, how ever, less in Irish than in Latin, e.g., Latin sept em, seven, Irish secht ; and perhaps even than in Sanskrit, for Irish drops initial p, e.g., iasg, fish, Welsh pysg, or changes it into b, e.g., Welsh pen, Irish ben. The reverse process to labialism even sometimes takes place in the case of borrowed words, e.g., Pascha, Easter, Welsh Pasg, Irish Casg ; Latin purpura, Irish corcur. So great is the contrast in this respect between Irish and Welsh, that the latter labializes borrowed names, as in the case of the Irish Saint damn, who became Piaran in Wales. If Dr Windisch, Mr J. Rhys, and some other philologists are right in thinking that the primitive or true p sound when not combined with other consonants has disappeared everywhere from all the Celtic languages, and that when p does appear in them, especially in Welsh, it is only the representative of a former qu, mb, or of a provected b, that is a 6 carried for ward from the end of one word to the beginning of the next, then the distinction just dwelt iipon, though very marked when we compare modern Welsh and Irish, did not exist in ancient times. But whether this be so or not the Irish articulation maintains a good deal of hardness and strength, in illustration of which we may mention that en and sr occur as initial sounds the latter, which is also found in Sanskrit, does not exist perhaps in any other European language. Again, Irish, like Sanskrit, Latin, German, and Slavonian has preserved the sibilant s, while in British, as in Zend, Persian, and Greek, it has been generally changed into h, e.g., Irish sen, old, Welsh hen, Irish salann, salt, Welsh halen ; or the s when combine 1 with other consonants has. a prefixed y, as in Irish scarad, separation, Welsh yscar. As regards this change of s into h British also stands to Irish in the same position as Greek does to Latin, e.g., Latin sal, Greek -XAs. Like the labialism above pointed out, this change did not, however, constitute an ancient distinction. Irish words can also end in * and r, and in n probably derived from m. Of these, final s disappears first, but we have an example of the preservation of a final r in so common a word as athir, father, when, it has lost the initial labial. British has often r or w for an m in Irish, e.g., louan, a rope, Irish loman ; huvel, low, Irish Jtumal. All the dialects of the British do not do this equally ; thus Irish amail, amal, like, is auel in Cornish, and euel in Armoric, but mat iu Welsh. And again the Irish preserves letters where the British loses them ; this is especially the case with gutturals, e.g., Irish tech, house, Welsh ti ; Irish nocht, night, Welsh nos ; Irish teglech, household, Welsh teulu. And, lastly, Irish has preserved the declension of its noun even to this day ; and forms closely allied to old Indo- European declensions are found in Old Irish, but with the exception of the genitive in Cornish scarcely a trace of declension is to be found in British. Irish verbal forms are also much better preserved than the British ones, though the latter are in a better state than the nouns. As regards the dialects of each branch, the Irish ones Irish differ less from each other than do the British dialects. Ji elects, Irish proper and Scottish Gaelic are practically the same language, and do not differ greatly more than the dialect of English spoken in the Scotch Lowlands does from common English. Such differences as do exist indicate the modern origin of the Scottish Gaelic. Among those differences the following will bear out this opinion. In the genitive plural the initial consonant is not modified, or, as Irish grammarians say, does not suffer ellipsis in Gaelic as it does in Irish. Thus a Highlander says nan cos, of the feet, where an Irishman would say na g-cus ; the former would, however, use nam before a labial, as e.g., nam fear, of the men. Again the possessive pronouns ar, our, bhur, your, do not cause ellipsis in Gaelic as in Irish, e.g., ar buachaill, our boy, Irish arm-buachaill ; bhur cosa, of your feet, Irish bharg-cosa. Again there is the frequent ending of the nomi native plural in Gaelic in an, as in slatan, rods, a pecu liarity which it shares with Manx and Welsh, and probably derives from British ; writing the personal ending -aire, or -oir as -air in Gaelic, e.g., sealgair, a huntsman, for seal- gaire, and the personal ending -aidh as -aiche or -ice, e.g., coisiche for coisidhe, a footman ; writing the Irish termina tion -ugadh in progressive active nouns as -itchadh, e.g., gradhachadh for gra dhughadh ; writing the passive parti ciple always hard instead of softening it under certain circumstances, as in Irish, e. g., ta, tlia ; te, (he. Among the less marked differences we may point out the use of the negative cha in Gaelic for the modern Irish ni and old nocha, the more frequent use of the auxiliary verb (a in conjugation, and the absence of / in the future indicative and in subjunctive in Gaelic. Manx differs from Irish much more than Gaelic ; but the dissimilarity is not nearly so great as at first sight it appears to be, owing to a kind of phonetic spelling having been adopted in Manx through which the radical letters have often been lost. Manx has been much corrupted, too, in consequence of the connection between Ireland and the Isle of Man having been cut off by the Norse conquest, and also by its having been under the dominion of Wales for some time ; add to which that it never received literary cultivation. The chief differences are in orthography, the ending of the nominative plural in n already alluded to, the dropping of a final vowel, tho substitution of d for g, and of t or c for g in the middle or end of words, &c. Of the British dialects Cornish and Armoric resemble Dritisli each other more than either of them does Welsh. This dialects. resemblance is, however, not as great as that of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic, but perhaps as close as that between Spanish and Portuguese, especially if the later borrowings from English and French be excluded. As to the words borrowed by the Cornish from French, which are much more numerous than those taken from English, it is inter esting in connection with the history of romance to note that many are borrowed directly from Provencal. The difference between Welsh and Cornish and Armoric is con-