Page:The Celtic Review volume 4.djvu/292

Rh take one another’s place in different dialects. Cadhmus, a plasm, mould for casting bullets, from Scot calmes, caums, in Sutherland càmus, is gàmus in West Ross, and is so given in the Highland Society’s Dictionary (supplement and English-Gaelic part sub plasm). Geuban, crop of birds, in some districts gizzard, referred by MacBain to English gaps, is ceòban in Strathspey, and ciaban in Skye and West Ross. Cial, brim of a vessel, in Rob Doun’s poems ceàl, is identified by MacBain with ciobhull, jaw, ‘more properly giall,’ he says. Cial means jaw in Strathspey. The West Ross culm, obscurity, haze about the moon, etc., seems to be a variant of gulm, a frown, etc., from English gloom? MacAlpine’s ‘glìbheid, weather in which a curious mixture of rain, sleet, and hail prevails’ is clìfeid in West Ross, in Sutherland glìfeid with meaning of sleet; c.f. glìb, sleet. Clìobar and glìobar, glìobas, sleet, also occur. Gartan, an insect found on deer, cattle, and dogs, West Ross, seems to be a form of cartan, a cattle·bott, heath-mite, etc. The connection of crobhsag, gooseberry, West Ross, in East Ross crobhrsag with plural there crobhrsan, seems certain, though not quite clear, with gròiseid borrowed from Lowland Scots, in which the word is variously written grozel, grizzle, groset, grozer, groser, grosert. Different terms for gadfly are creithleag, cleithir, gleithir, creithire, Kintyre, etc., Irish cleabhar, creabhaire, and creathaire, Middle Irish crebar.

g

G is often silent in the prepositional pronouns agam, ‘a’am,’ agad, againn, agaibh, e.g. in Arran, Kintyre, North Argyll, Perth, Skye, and Sutherland. In the group sgt sometimes it is silent as in passive participles loisgte, burned, pronounced ‘loiste’; ruisgte, stripped, ‘ruiste.’ Sometimes g is preserved in that group. The difference is due to frequency of use, the cause of many of the seeming irregularitities in letter changes. When a word is in constant use phonetic changes are apt to take place more readily, and to be carried further than in words that are more rarely