Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/347

 MacBhàididh, and the one at Tyndrum Làirc Lòcha, or to distinguish from the Lochay at Killin, Làirc Locha Urcha. The word is lairge and lathairce in Irish with the meaning of thigh, in Middle Irish laarg, fork, leg and thigh, Old Irish loarcc, fork. Mr. Quiggin gives the Donegal form of the word as láiric.

These cases—cuisle, adharc, etc.—do not have the liquids long—not even in pairce or suairc—and show metathesis, or a change of place, by the vowel and the liquid or other consonant in most of the examples, rather than intercalation of a svarabhakti. This kind of metathesis is most frequent in East Perthshire and in Strathspey. It occurs in one or other, or in both of those districts, in the case of—

la, le as in Beurla, atharla, comhairle, mèirle, sgeimhle.

na, ne as in ceudna, eorna, tighearna. Di-Sathuirn, in Arran etc., ‘Di-Sathuirne,’ is in East Perth ‘Di-Sathrainn.’

sa, se as in the emphatic prepositional pronouns agamsa, asamsa, etc., and in tuairmse. Leamsa may be heard in Glenlyon as liuma-as, and riumsa as riuma-as, m being long in these instances. 

Highlanders, as they read the sea-poems now being contributed to the Review, will probably say: cha’n ’eil an so ach blaigh de ’n òran—tha dhà uiread dheth agam fhein—‘this is but a fragment of the song, I have twice as much of it myself.’ Which is doubtless the truth. In this case, however, the probable additions of local rhymesters have been ruthlessly cast overboard; and though in the process one is apt to reject genuine bits of the original poem and admit what is really modern, yet in either case literature is the gainer, so that no apology need be made. Science doubtless owes much to him who wrote: ‘I have but carried drift rubbish from the place where I found it to a place where it may be seen and studied by those who care to take the trouble’; but literature owes him less—the ‘drift rubbish’ might well have been sifted before being exposed to general view. If we can make an old ballad more presentable by collating different versions and leaving out inferior lines and