Page:The Celtic Review volume 4.djvu/196

 (dealbh), Bano (Banbh), garo, garrowe, and gerve (garbh). Manx forms are marroo (marbh), tarroo (tarbh). Compare Welsh marw, Cornish marow, Breton maro (Gaelic marbh).

MacAlpine gives bh the sound of broad gh in one or two instances, and dubh, black, which is one of his instances is pronounced dugh in North Argyll. He, however, makes guth voice ‘gugh.'

GAELIC IN NEW ZEALAND

,—Some time ago I sent you an article on a ‘Gaelic Class in New Zealand,’ which you were good enough to insert in the Celtic Review. This article awakened some interest both at home and in America, as witness a letter written in Welsh which I send you with some other enclosures. For the past two years I have been conducting a Gaelic class in Dunedin, which is in more respects than in name the Modern Athens of the Antipodes. I started with an attendance of about one hundred, most of them being young Colonials without a word of Gaelic in their heads. The Gaelic class ‘caught on’ wonderfully, and I felt somewhat embarrassed by the numbers and by the fact that we had only a very few books. We sent for Whyte’s How to Learn Gaelic, but three months would pass ere we could get a supply of this book. Meantime the Christmas holidays arrived, and we had a notable ‘basket’ Céilidh to which everybody brought a fàd or a fòid. When we resumed after the holidays the crowd was perplexing, and I began to think that the Gaelic Revival had actually set the Pacific Ocean on fire (there being no heather here to burn). But in order to make any progress we had to settle down to sober work, and that soon sobers a Colonial crowd. So long as the lessons consisted in pronouncing familiar sentences or tackling uncouth sounds by the whole crowd, or by the ladies and gentlemen alternately, they were immensely popular. Gaelic sayings, correctly spelt on the blackboard, were greedily transferred to note-books. Gaelic translations of all kinds of complimentary, not to say amatory, expressions were asked for; and I feel sure that more Gaelic passed through the post-office of Dunedin on postcards and such missives that Christmas than during the whole previous history of the Colony.

However, in process of time, the principle of the survival of the fittest operated, and there remained a fairly good working class whose attendance and attention could be depended on. By the end of the fourth term we had a written examination in Gaelic grammar and spelling, in which about a dozen, chiefly of those who had begun Gaelic with me for the first time, took