it, and even the language of the Avesta showed clear traces of it. There could be no doubt that the Sanskrit also once possessed this mood, and at last it was discovered in the hymns of the Rig-Veda. Discoveries of this kind may seem trifling, but they are as delightful to the grammarian as the appearance of a star long expected and calculated is to the astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself have come down to us. FIFTH CHAPTER. THE LAST RESULTS OF THE CELTIC RESEARCHES. (Reported by Dr. Charles MEYER.) To Dr. Pritchard the honour is due of having first applied Bopp's principle of comparative grammatical analysis to the Celtic family, in which he was followed by Bopp himself, and by Adolphe Pictet (1837). Doctor Charles Meyer, in his Lecture read before the British Association at Oxford in 1847, was, however, the first to apply the whole machinery of linguistic comparative philology to that ancient and important branch of the Iranian stock. Having resided for some years among the Kymri bards, and learned to read, speak, and write their language, he was well qualified for treating it linguistically and ethnologically. I have, therefore, thought it advisable to extract from that Lecture (which has scarcely had any circulation beyond the readers of the Transactions of the Association) everything which appeared suitable for a Scientific Report such as was required in this place. It will be seen from this Essay that my excellent friend has made a great step towards connecting the Celtic languages with the problems and theories of the other branches of the Indo-European family. Doctor Meyer has laid the foundation of primitive Celtic ethnology. He has applied to this stock Grimm's scale of sounds, and proposed an improvement upon that law. He has been the first to discover the law which regulates the Celtic transmutations of initial consonants, and that of the vowels. By these two discoveries he has extended and improved Bopp's method of grammatical comparison. Finally, he has observed that the non-Sanskritic elements of Celtic form the link by which the Indo-European family approaches the Turanian formations. The truth and importance of this remark will soon become apparent to my readers. It results, at all events, from these researches, as well as from those of Diefenbach (Celtica, 1840), that the Celtic is the least developed branch of the Indo-European family. It cannot be considered as having, in the course of ages, been stripped of that luxuriancy of forms which the Asian and Germanic languages exhibit. On the contrary, all the phenomena before us lead us to conclude that the Celtic language crystallized before that wonderful development of organic forms burst forth. This view is not in contradiction to the assumption that, like all other languages, the Celtic also has gradually been losing forms, and using up and remodelling roots. On the contrary, it is demonstrable from the monuments before us, that such changes have taken place in Celtic. Of this the Grammatica Celtica of Zeuss, two volumes of which have just been published, contains new proofs. Now this fact, once admitted, must lead to some important conclusions as to the general development of that great family of languages, and as to the primordial history of mankind. What we see fixed in Celtic must have been a floating point in the members of the family of which Celtic forms an internal part, and must have been point of transition in all other tongues of that stock. The phenomenon presented to us by the Egyptian language, if compared with the Aramaic and Iranian, is therefore not an isolated one, but appears rather to be the indication of some general law of development. As to an alphabet, the Celts never had any of their own; they brought none from the East, and acquired none in Europe. I. Historical Introduction.-The Origin of the Celtic Tribes, and their Migrations and Tribes. MODERN Europe possesses two great dialects or languages each composed of three separate idioms, which exhibit what we may call the modern Celtic. The word Celtic I use as a generic name for all the different idioms and dialects, evidently united amongst themselves by a systematic family-likeness of grammatical features, once spoken by the different nations and tribes, which in the Greek and Latin records of ancient history are usually designated under the general name of Keλra (Keλroi) and Celta*, and still spoken by their descendants. The two great dialects of modern Celtic are given, each with its three subdivisions, of which only one is actually extinct, in the following table: 1. The Gallic or British, comprehending a. The Cymric or Welsh. b. The Cornish (extinct). c. The Armorican or dialect of Brittany (Bas Breton). 2. The Gaelic (Gadhelic) or Erse, comprehending a. The Fenic or Irish. b. The Highland Scottish (Gaelic). c. The Manx.t It appears from this, that five of the modern Celtic dialects, and four of those still extant, belong to this country, while the sixth, the Armorican or the dialect of Brittany, belongs to a district which, although situated in a foreign country, yet is British as to population, having been entirely colonized by British settlers, in the * Uckert's Geography, vol. ii. p. 186. This table is on the whole the same as that given by Dr. Prichard in his "Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nation." I have only added the names Gallic and Fenic, both of which are of too frequent occurrence, and of two significative import in the ancient national records (particularly the Irish), not to find a place in a pedigree of the Celtic. As for the etymology of the two principal words of this pedigree, I derive the word Gadhel, Gael (Irish Gaodhal, Gaoidhal, Gaedhil) from an old Celtic root gwydh, sequi, comitari, - preserved (with the regular change of gw into f) in the Irish words fuidh-im, sequor, comitor; feadhan, comitatus, clientela; feadha, patronus; feidhil, cliens — so as to give to the word Gadhel, Gael the signification follower, with reference either to the nomadic propensities and practices of the whole tribe, or to their habit of living in clanships. The name Gall (Gallus, Gaul), although used by Irish writers in direct opposition to that of Gael, to such an extent as to have acquired the general signification of foreigner, I am still inclined to consider as another more mutilated form of the same word, namely, a contraction of Gwadhal or Gwodhal. (Cf. the name of S. Vodoalus.) L fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and named by them after their mother-country, the latter being henceforth distinguished from its colony by the name of Great Britain.* Hence a land which, as Cæsar tells us, was once the acknowledged classical seat of Druidical discipline, and, we may therefore infer, of the Druidical or ancient Celtic language and literature, is also the principal seat of the modern Celtic, which originated there exclusively. English readers may perhaps be astonished to find that, in proposing the scientific use of the expression Ancient and Modern Celtic, and in explaining its meaning, I have tacitly assumed as fact a point which, of all those left to the investigation of comparative Celtic philology, obviously most requires to be proved, namely, the real general identity of the two languages, or, to speak more accurately, the two ages of language which we have called Ancient and Modern Celtic. But every one, however slightly acquainted with modern Celtological literature, must be aware that this identity has already been made the subject of so many extensive investigations, and has received so many clear demonstrations, as not to require additional proof. The important fact that all the words, significative names and phrases, occasionally quoted by Greek and Latin authors *This colonization of Brittany, which in the historic records of the Cymry (Trioedd, Vaughan, 7.) is attributed to Cynan Meiriadawc, contemporary of Macsen Wledic (Emperor Maximus), has conferred upon this hero, in very early legends preserved both in the Welsh and Gaelic literature, the renown of a descent into hell and victory over the infernal spirits, a fiction which doubtless originated in the supposed identity between the realms of death and the lands beyond the sea. V. Gododin, v. 196. (Myvyrian, i. p. 4.): Ni dyvu o Vrython (There did not come from the land of Britons a man better than Cynon, the sunlike conqueror of the infernal spirits.) Cf. God. v. 367. 545. 583. 586.; Mackinintosh's Gaelic Proverbs (1819), pp. 24. 203.; W. Scott's Waverley, cap. 19.; Macpherson's Ossian, vol. i. pp. 148. 154. The character, at once bold and goodhumoured, under which the Gaelic tradition represents Cynan or Conan, enables us to recognize in him the type of several other legendary heroes of a similar stamp, whose history is a copious and amusing theme for the nursery-tales of nearly every country of Europe; e. g. Der Schmied von Apolda; Bruder Lustig; Frère Moustache; V. Grimm's Deutsche Märchen, Notes, No. 81.; Emile Souvesire, Derniers Bretons, p. 176. |