Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/27

15 ON THE ANCIENT LANGUAGES OF FRANCE AND SPAIN. 1 5 Taranis, in like manner, is evidently from the Cymric taran thunder, taranu to thunder, taranydd the thunderer. In Gae- lic torrun. Suetonius has informed us of another Gallic word which appears to me to have been also unsatisfactorily explained. He says that Gsesar raised a legion in Transalpine Gaul which he named Alauda, from a Gallic word, the meaning of which however he has not given. "Ex Transalpinis con- scriptam, vocabulo quoque Gallico Alauda enim appellaba- tur" (lib. 1. § 24). Pliny, in a notice of this legion, also refers to this name Alauda as a Gallic word, but seems to connect it at the same time with the Latin name of a bird supposed to be the crested lark, as if from the crest of the helmet worn by the soldiers. "Pare volucris ex illo galerita appellata quondam postea Gallico vocabulo etiam legioni no- men dederat Alaudse" (Hist. Nat. lib. ii. § .37). But Pliny's etymologies are generally bad, and in this instance, if he has not been misunderstood, it seems absurd to suppose that Csesar would give such a name to his new legion. Look- ing at its composition, as raised of foreigners, 1 would sug- gest that it was probably taken from the Cymric word allaid foreign, to signify, therefore, the foreign legion. The word equivalent to this in Gaelic is allmharach. In connexion with this, though wandering a little from the subject, I venture to suggest an explanation of the name Alemanni (Allemans in modern French), applied to the Ger- mans, the derivations of which hitherto given seem very unsatisfactory. Without discussing them, however, I should pronounce it left by the Cymry, who might then have termed strangers and foreigners, as they now do, "Allmaon," a foreign people; whence the name might have become ap- plied as a national, though at first it was only a general appellation. In the same manner we may explain the term Belgse applied to the German intruders in the north of Gal- lia, who seem never to have acknowledged that name, and who, therefore, must have had it applied from some extra- neous source. If we consider, then, their relative position to the Cymry, whom they drove from their possessions, we find its meaning in Cymric, where, from the roots belg a breaking out, beli havoc, devastation^ we have Belgiad, still signifying a "ravager, or destroyer." Such was then, evi- dently, the name applied to their national enemies by the Cymry of old, as their descendants have afterwards, under similar circumstances, spoken of the Saesonafd. Returning to our argument: it is thus our purport to show that the people of Gaul, termed by Caesar Celts, were of the