AN GAOḊAL.
701
The readers of the GAEL will find the following
course of lectures, by Mr. Peter C. Yorke, of St.
Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, Md., interesting.
I. INTRODUCTORY.
To beginners there is hardly anything more dis¬
couraging that the preliminary pages of an Irish
Grammar. If they know English they will not be
much surprised at the mere spelling of the words
and may have a kind of Dido's pity for such un¬
couthness, but when they are told that for the
greatest part, Irish is pronounced as it is written,
it would be no wonder if they grew skeptical as
to the existence of varieties. Yet when the con¬
sonant miraculously disappear and the sweet sounds
come tripping forth, they wonder and admire;
and meditate on the seeming perversity that has
hidden such jeweis in such caskets.
Again they go a step further; they enter on the
thorny road of Aspiration and Eclipses, and if they
turn not straightway back, they think what in the
world could have tempted a people to maul their
words so. They are told the same things happen¬
ed in French and English * but they reply that is
now a matter of ancient history — why has not I¬
rish done the thing at once, and got rid of it?
Then steps forward Euphony, and like charity cov¬
ereth a multitude of sins; but the discontented
learners plot wearily on, thinking what a strange
people these Irish were, to evolve such a language.
As long as Irish remains what it is, these diffi¬
culties will remain the same. There is no royal
road to Gaelic, and the only way is, to go right on.
Still there is in all men a tendency "beneath things
to seek the law." We would know why these rules
are so, and not otherwise. They may appear ar¬
bitrary, but in the language, there is little, if any¬
thing arbitrary. Language was not made in a
study, and then imposed upon a people; it is the
growth of time, and bears on it the marks of its
growth. These strange looking words, therefore,
must have a history — every useless looking conso¬
nant tells a tale. These initial changes are the re¬
sults of some force, and like all force-phenomena,
follows a law — what this history is, and what this
law will engage our attention now. We shall strive
to trace these words through their devious wander¬
ings and search for the hidden clue. We shall see
if after all these initial changes may not open up
to us a sight as wonderful as that which greeted
the eyes of the first diggers of Pompeii, or met the
astonished gaze of the delvers in the sands of Nin¬
iveh.
Besides, however, the pleasure this investigation
will bring us, I think it will not be without its
use. We shall know as far as it may be known the
reason for these seemingly arbitrary rules, and if
such reasons make not the retaining of them less
difficult, it may conduce to making the understand¬
ing of them more easy.
Before we commence our task it may be well to
know precisely what the Irish language is and what
is its relation to other languages. Passing over the
rediculous theories, that Adam spoke it in Paradise,
that it is near akin to the Hebrew and American
Indian or that every other spoken language is de¬
rived from it, I will state briefly what are the con¬
clusions of modern philologists on this point. All
language is generally divided into three classes,
Inflectional, Agglutinative and Monosyllabic. I¬
rish being an inflected language belongs, of course
to the first. This class consists of two large groups,
the Aryan and Semetic. Briefly stated the dis¬
tinction between the two is this, that in Semetic the
Root, that is, the original portion of the word in
which the idea dwells is composed of three letters
and these always consonants, while the Aryan or
Indo European the roots are monosyllabic, the vow¬
el is an essential constituent, and the number of
constants is variable, thus, I is the Aryan root of
Latin ire, to go; while H, L, K, is the root of the
Hebrew, Halak, he went. Indo-European has
given birth to many languages. What they are
and how their relationship came to be known is
best told in the words of Max Muller: "The world
had known Latin and Greek for centuries, and it
was felt, no doubt, that there was some kind of
similarity between the two. But how was this sim¬
ilarity to be explained? Sometimes Latin was sup¬
posed to give the key to the formation of a Greek
word, sometimes the Greek seemed to betray the
secret of the origin of a Latin word. Afterwards
when the ancient Teutonic languages, such as
Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, and the ancient Celtic and
Slavonic languages too, came to be studied, no one
could help seeing a certain family likeness among
them all. But how such a likeness between
these languages came to be, remained a mistery,
and gave rise to the most gratuitous theories, most
of them, as you know devoid of all scientific found¬
dation. As soon, however, as the Sanskrit stepped
into the midst of these languages there came light
and warmth and mutual recognition, they all
ceased to be strangers, and each fell of its own ac¬
cord into its right place. Sanskrit was the eldest
sister of them all, and could tell of many things
which the other members of the family had quite
forgotten. Still the other languages too, had each
their own tale to tell, and it is out of all their tales
together that a chapter in the human mind has
been put together, which in some respects,
is more important to us that any of the other
chapters, the Jewish, the Greek, the Latin or
the Saxon. *
This sisterhood of languages comprises seven
members :— Sanskrit in India, Iranic in Persia,
Greek, Latin, Celtic, in Western Europe, Teutonic
and Slavic. Nor have these been sterile for each
of them has been the parent of many tongues, thus
you all know that Latin produced French, Italian,
Spanish, &c. Teutonic, German, the Scandina¬
vian dialects and through the Anglo-Saxon, Eng¬
lish. Celtic broke up into two great divisions, one
of which is represented by Welsh; the other by I¬
rish, and from Irish has come the modern Irish-
Gaelic, Scotch-Gaelic, and Manx together with the
transition between Old Irish, and the modern ton¬
gue, called Middle Irish; therefore, to paraphrase
the words of Muller in the lecture quoted above,
Irish-Gaelic is an Aryan or Indo European language
it belongs to the Celtic branch, and this Celtic
branch together with the Italic, Greek, Teutonic,
Slavonia, Iranic and Indic branches, all spring from
the same stock and form together the great Aryan
or Indo European family of speech.
Having seen now the position of Irish among the
other languages, I will briefly state the changes it
has undergone itself. There are three periods —
Old Irish, Middle Irish, Moder Irish; The liter¬
ature of the first period is represented by MSS., ex¬
tending from the 8th to the 12th century. Mid¬
dle Iris MSS. begin at the 12th century, and Mod-
* O'Donovan, p. 41, apud, Bourke.
* India, what can it teach us? Lec. I.
