Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/64

52 Taking the common articles of dress, the word Gown, this word is neither German nor French but it is Celtic, and by the Cymri and Gael alike pronounced as the lower orders in England pronounce it Gwn. I need not say that it is uniformly held of the lower orders that they retain the ancient pronunciation more pertinaciously than the higher. The word Glove again is neither German nor French but it is Celtic, and literally means "for the hand." The word Basket is undoubtedly Cymric, for Martial who wrote in the reign of Domitian expressly states it. "Barbara de pictis venit Bascauda Britannis."

Many other words are common to the Celtic and other languages, which words have been ascribed to those other languages, as I contend improperly, for this reason that in them they have no meanings or affinities, no root or connection. I mean such words as hat, coat, boot and others. But in Celtic they have such roots and affinities and tell their meaning. Thus the word hat, which has generally been said to be taken from the German and from the same root as the word hut, as if the hat were a hut for the head. In Celtic hatru is the verb to cover, and het signifies any covering for the head whether a hat or a garland. It would be taking up too much of your time, were I to go through a long array of such words, and I will therefore only refer to a few others and close with general remarks on them.

Such words as iron, copper, wood, leather and others come under the same category. Iron in Cymric is written and pronounced Haiarn, and if you listen to the pronunciation of the lower orders you will observe how closely they retain it. I take however instead of these a more important word and that one representing a vast class. The word tun, ton, town, as forming a component part of the names of our towns is set down as undoubtedly an Anglo-Saxon word, and no one thinks of its being only a representative of the Celtic dun having the same meaning. Plutarch tells us of this in the name Lugdunum, and we have it still left us in a few of our towns and cities, London, Maldon, Abingdon and some others. But it is a remarkable fact that this word meaning a town does not occur in any other dialect of German (see Professor Leo's Local Nomenclature of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 33), and this leads us to another important conclusion.

Our Lexicographers when they have found any modern English word used in that ancient form of it termed the Anglo-Saxon, think they have attained the height of knowledge and that nothing more is ascertainable or to be sought