Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/45

Rh Ox, the carrier (cf. veho), is auhsa, retaining the original guttural. Our ewe, Lat. ovis, is found in awe-thi, a shepherd, and awi-str, a fold. Wulfila uses in "Behold, the Lamb of God!" the word withrus (awi-thrus), our wether, lit. a yearling. Fula and kalbo, gaits and gait-eins (goat-ling), and stiur (steer) explain themselves. Horse is not in the Gospels, but the Runic aihwus (horse) is in aihwa-tundja, the burning-bush, the first member of which is cognate with ὠκὺς, swift, acer, and the latter part our tinder. The horse is originally the eager, mettled one. In O.Norse ehwa and in A.S. ehu, Gael, ech, mean horse. In such a compound it should be noted that horse simply means large, cf. horse-chestnut, and Ἱππο-κάνθαρος, horse-beetle or monstrous beetle. Burns's term aiver for horse is derived from O.Fr. aver; Low Lat. averium, habere, hence average, cf. cattle and "goods and chattels."

One other singular animal name is in Wulfila. The Baptist was clad in camel's hair (Ga-wasiths taglam ulbandaus). The Go. for hair is tagl, our word tail. Ulbandus renders καμήλος, and the wonder is how such a word came into the language. It has a long and interesting history. In Greek it is ἐλέφας, our elephant, in A.S. olfend, the camel, in Lat. ebur, ivory, for this was known in the west long before the animal. The first part of Alphabet leads us to the Semitic form, Heb. aleph and eleph, the ox, and Sans. ibhâ, the elephant. For the old alphabets were hieroglyphic or pictorial in origin. The true Teutonic alphabet—the Runes—was of this nature, and the letters had names. Wulfila based his characters on Runes, as modified by Greek and Latin. The first letter-name in these was, as in the Phoenician alphabet, the ox, the Go. faihu, and its two horns in symbol can still be seen in our F. Another is called Tius = ᛏ = T, the Teutonic Jove, wielder of the thunder-bolt, and still in Tues-day. The symbol is just the broad arrow or sapper's mark. What was struck by his bolt must be deo-datum, confiscated, and thus Government serves itself heir to his thunder. But, to return to Ulbandus, el-eph contains the Arabic article el or al. The second syllable is one of many Sanskrit names for the elephant, ibhá = the strong one, and the appearance of the term in the west is due to the Arab traders who from the very early times shipped the animal and