Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/293

Rh in gwedyd, 'to say.' A modification of the same stem gives us the gwyd in Gwydion, and a third form is

(reduced also to dywe'yd, d'we'yd, and even d'e'yd) means 'to say, saying;' dywed, 'dic;' dywedaf, 'dicam;' dyfyd (North Welsh for dywyd), 'dicet;' dywawd, also dywod and (now in North Wales) dywad, 'dixit.' The umlaut y in dyfyd (dywyd) is caused by the semi-vowel which once followed, as in Gwyd (Skene, ij. 135) or still follows as in Gwydion (with the i pronounced like English y in yes). The effects of the semi-vowel are perceptible in other words, especially verbs, such as gwyl, 'videbit,' from gwel-ed, 'to see,' or saif, 'stabit,' from sef-yll, 'to stand:' for some remarks on this subject see my Lectures, pp. 116-18. With regard to Gwyd, it is right to notice that Welsh has another word gwyd, 'vice,' which is, in fact, the Latin word vitium naturalized; but the line, 'Aches gvyd gwydion,' in the Taliessin line referred to, could only mean 'the land of Gwydion's vice,' which would be utterly at variance with Taliessin's usual tone with regard to Gwydion; so I have no doubt that it should be rendered 'the land of Gwyd Gwydion.' Unless the form Gwyd was called into existence to accompany the other, they may be treated as standing for an ancient nominative Vetjo and genitive Vetjonos respectively. In dywawt or dywawd, 'dixit,' we have an ablaut or by-vowel in the diphthong aw, representing an early ā which remains written á in Irish words. Similarly from Welsh rhed, 'run,' we have gwa-red, ' suc-currere,' Irish fo-reth- of the same meaning; but the old perfect was gwa-rawt, Irish fo-ráith for *vo-rāt-e. This recourse to a different vowel in the perfect was formerly fully recognized in Celtic grammar, but it probably never had the importance which is attached to it in the economy of the Teutonic verb, as, for example, in the English, give, gave, ride, rode, bear, bore, and see, saw. Celtic verbs of the class in question had two stems, one with ě and the other with ā; and I wish to call attention to the fact that there were also nouns cognate with both the one and the other. Thus in the case of the Welsh rhed-, 'run,' we have not only rhedeg, 'the act of running,' but also rhawd, 'a course, path or orbit:' similarly from the other verb we have, beside guetid already instanced, a word gwawt, now gwawd, 'a poem or song,' and in modern Welsh more usually 'a satire or a sarcastic remark.' The Irish equivalent was faath or fáth, 'a learning or study of the poet's art' (Cormac, s.v. faath), whence fáitsine, 'prophecy,' and probably Fáthach, the name of the of the Fir Bolg. But Irish had besides this a related word fáith,