Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/40

Rh used; this came from eo. The Lowland Scotch have a corrupt Perfect, gaed, which has been long in use.

Some of the compounds of our English verbs carry us far back. Thus, to explain the meaning of the first syllable in such words as forlorn, fordone, we must look to the Sanscrit parâ.

The Aryan settlement on the banks of the Oxus was in the end broken up. First, the Celt marched towards the setting sun, to hold the Western lands of Europe, and to root out the old Turanian owners of the ground; of these last, the Basques and Lapps alone remain in being. Hundreds of years later the English, with other tribes (they had not yet learnt to count up to a thousand), followed in the Celt's wake, leaving behind them those of their kinsmen who were after&shy;wards to conquer India and Persia, to compile the Vedas, and to leave their handwriting on the rock of Behistun. Some streams flowed to the West of the great water&shy;shed, others to the East.

Many tokens show that the English must have long lived in common with the forefathers of Homer and Nævius. The ending of the Greek word paid-ion is the counterpart of that of the English maid-en; paid-isk-os of cild-isc, childish, Latin is still nearer akin to us, and sometimes hardly a letter is changed; as when we com&shy;pare alias and else. Dom-unculus appears in Old English as hus-incle. The Latin fer and the Old English bœre, in truth the same word, are attached to substantives,