Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/556

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. JUNE 4, 1904.

tinctive of the Celt everywhere. After making due allowance for the loss of spirit and aroma inevitable in the transfusion from one tongue into another so different, it cannot be denied that many of the writers whose pious and banal effusions are registered here, if they were English, would be regarded as very minor bards indeed, hardly superior to our own Hervey and Mason, or those immortalized in the amber of the ' Dunciad.' For instance, we are told that the most striking poem of one Robb Donn was his 'Song to Winter,' of which some stanzas are given in a translation, but they are hardly more intelligible than the original Gaelic. One of these we take the liberty of printing as prose : " The running stream's chieftain Is trailing to land, So flabby, so grimy, The spots of his prime he Has rusted with sand ; Crook-snouted his crest is That taper'd so grand" (p. 67). Dr. Maclean's elucidations are not them- selves always conspicuously lucid. The proverbial saying, "Two old women could dispose of it with- out leaving the fireside," seems to gain nothing in intelligibility from the comment, " How potent is gossip the feminine avizandum ! " (p. 156!)

One of the most interesting chapters in the book is that which discusses Macpherson and his "" Ossian,' a burning question once, now as cold as Hecla. A judicious resume of the controversy leads one to the conclusion, now generally accepted and held by Dr. Johnson at the time, that a real residuum of ancient native folk-song underlay, and
 * gave life and substance to, the very mediocre

-expansions and additions which the charlatan imposed upon it. The English ' Ossian ' was un- doubtedly the original, of which the Gaelic, after- wards produced to order, was the translation. More than half of the poem, it is estimated, was absolutely Macpherson's own. It is amusing to find the pretender, with a proper sense of his own importance, ordering his remains to be interred in Westminster Abbey.

Keltic Researches : Studies in the History and Dis- tribution of Ancient Goidelic Language and Peoples. By E. W. B. Nicholson, Bodley's Librarian, Oxford. (Frowde.) WE have here a work of remarkable learning, such as but few of us are able to appreciate as it deserves, much less to criticize. The author endeavours to 6how, and we think successfully, that the ancient Pictish tongue was not, as several of our older anti- quaries imagined, a form of Gothic, but a Goidelic dialect standing in a relation to the Highland Gaelic of to-day similar with that which Anglo-Saxon holds to modern English. He discusses at length the Pictish place-name Peanfahel, so happily pre- served for us by Bede, who is careful to tell his readers that it is in " Sermone Pictorum." Our readers, even those who have no acquaintance with things Celtic, will call to mind how, in the fall into a heated discussion regarding the language this word represents. Oldbuck, by far the wiser man, was wrong in maintaining it to be Teutonic. Modern scholars regard it as Celtic, though by no means in agreement as to which sub-family or dialect it belongs. Mr. Nicholson's criticisms are too elaborate to reproduce, and, like all good philo- logical work, will not bear abridgment. We have ourselves no doubt that he has arrived at a solution very nearly approximating to truth. The portion devoted to the names of the Celtic
 * Antiquary,' Sir Arthur Wardour and Mr. Oldbuck

kings is of great interest. Moderns have rejected the whole long array, and have found additional pleasure in their sarcasms on account of the por- traits of these worthies to be seen on the walls of Holyropd. It does not, however, follow that this long line is absolutely unhistoric because some one was paid to make spurious likenesses of indi- viduals. That the names are mostly Celtic and very old is not open to question. The existing texts are no doubt very corrupt, and in many cases are perhaps incapable of satisfactory restoration, unless which is a piece of good fortune not likely to happen earlier manuscripts should come to light. In any case they are not fabulous in the sense we apply the term to certain pedigrees manufactured in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To put these names at their lowest, they represent dim traditions which cannot be without some foundation of truth, however much they may have suffered distortion.

The author gives much information about the kindred of the Picts who were once settled in certain districts now parts of France ; their history only exists in most shadowy form, but we are glad to have what is known, or even rationally surmised, put before us.

Origines Alphabetical; New Guesses at Truth. By a March Hare. (York, Sampson ; London, Simp- kin, Marshall & Co.)

Tmsjeu d'esprit at the source of which, whatever our conjectures, we are forbidden to hint is likely to furnish amusement and sport to philologists and others. It belongs to an order of wit that of the punster we duly proscribe. It contains more than one good laugh, and, in spite of its frivolity, is the work of a scholar.

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J. A. J. H. ("Fat, fair, and forty"). This form occurs in 'St. Ronan's Well,' chap. vii. Dry den (' The Maiden Queen,' I. ii.) has : " I am resolved to grow fat, and look young till forty."

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