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ply drops it; e. g. Irish tech [house]. Welsh ti ;
Irish nocht [night], Welsh nos; Irish teglech
household], Welsh teulu, etc. There are, howev¬
er, also, now and then, coincidences to be found
between the two branches, Gaelic and Kymric,
either in the form of words or in grammatical con¬
struction. We shall here, in passing, allude only
to a few of them. Thus, for instance, when two
definite nouns come together, two substantives
that should have the definite article and stand in a
geditive relation to each other, as the Lord of the
world: the last noun only will admit of the article
so that it would be "Lord of the world." This is
expressed in Irish by Tighearna an domhain: even
with three or more such substantives, only the
last would be preceded by the article, as for in¬
stance, the servant of the son of the king, would be
in Welsh gwas mab y brenin. (Exactly the same
takes place in Arabic, where the Lord of the world,
or rather of the worlds, is expressed in Sura I. of
the Coran, by rabbulalamina.) In Gaelic and
Kymric, names of countries are preceded by the
definite article (as they are also in French), viz.,
an Frainc, la France : an Albain, l'Ecosse: an
Spain, l'Espagne, etc. In Gaelic as well as in
Kymric, we see adiectives following the substan¬
tive; thus, a great man would be in Irish fear mor
and in Welsh gwr mawr. And where there is an
exception to this rule, we find it to be the same in
both branches; e.g. the words old, true, first, pre¬
cede the substantive ; Irish, sean, fior, priomh,
Welsh hen, gwir, prif. When an adiective follows
two or more nouns connected by the conjunction
and, then it agrees, if they are of different genders
only with the last noun. Thus, a good man and
woman is in Irish expressed fear agus bean mhaith
and in Welsh by dyn a dynes dda. In Gaelic and
Kymric, we see demonstrative pronouns joined to
nouns, taking the last place ; e. g. Irish an fear so
Welsh y gwr hwn ; just as the French would say,
cet homme ci. In both branches, the compound
numbers are formed in the same manner, e. g.,
thirty is in Irish deich 's faichead in Welsh deg
ar hugain, fifty in Irish deich 's da fhichead, in
Welsh degs a deugain, etc. The consuetudinal
has, in both branches, similar forms. e. g., Irish
bidhir, Welsh bgddi, Irish bidhis, Welsh bgddan
etc. Similarly as in Irish, a his) before a vowel
does not aspirate [a anam, his soul], but a [her
does aspirate the vowel by inserting h a -anam
her soul, and as a [their] causes n to be prefixed
[a n-anama, their souls], and ei and en in Welsh, have
h prefixed to words beginning with a vowel: Also
before consonants, the construction of ei is some¬
what analogous to Irish. Thus tad which means
father, preceded by ei, appears as ei thad, her fa¬
ther and as ei dad, his father. In Gaelic as well
as in Kymric, the verb generally holds the first
place in a sentence, then follows the subject or
nominative, and after that the accusative. [We
meet with the same construction, in a measure, at
least in French, e.g.. "Suivent les noms des pro¬
vinces;" in a few instances — determined by gram¬
mar; also, in Spanish and Arabic, something sim¬
ilar is seen.
Celtic, or rather Celt, (Kelt) is, as Pausanias
(Lib. I., chap. 3,) informs us, the name which these
people gave to themselves, and which the Greeks,
as late as the third century before our era, applied
to the Celts on the Continent, and which became
subsequently extended to the other Celtic tribes.
According to Dio Caasius, Celt is identical in mean¬
ing with Gallus, and there seems to be no doubt
but that originally the names Galli, Gallia, Gala¬
tae Celtae were of one and the same root, and that
Galli and Celtae denoted one and the same people;
so also Galatae, which afterwards received the more
restricted meaning of Celts, in Asia. Also the
name Voea was in use as to the generic term of
the Celtic race. Vo ca re appears in Wales, We
Wallach, Wallon, and is fundamentally the same
word as we have in Gallus, Gallia, Gau ; the let¬
ters g or, h, and w or f, interchanging, in langua¬
ges, frequently with each other. Thus, Wales,
German Wallis, is in French Gales; the adjective
of it is gallois. So we have Cornaguales and Corn¬
wall, which has been considered as standing for
Cornu-galliae; while another derivation might be
simply from the name which Saxons and Angles
used to give to the remnants of the Britons, viz.
Corn Weales and Brit-Wales, meaning inhabitants
of Wales. We have already spoken of the permu¬
tation of gutturals and labials, and will only, in a
more particular way, refer here to the French guepe
(for guespe) and the German wespe, English wasp;
the French guerre, English war: French gater
[for gaster] and the English waste, also to proper
names, such as Guillame and William: Guelf and
Welf, etc. Thus, Gal = Wal: it leads us to Old
Celtic gallu, to be powerful, mighty, great; and
gallu means also power, strength, violence. (This
connects ith the German Ge-walt, the Icelandic
valld, balld, r, ball, r, bali, the Gothic baldo, Eng¬
lish bold, the Sanscrit adjective balin, the verb bal
balami, which reappears in the Latin valeo, vali¬
dus, the French valoir, English value, etc.)
Hence Gal = Wal means mighty, great: mighty
men: then those that violently immigrate, and
powerfully invade the country, who appear to the
inhabitants as hostile people, enemies: thus it
means an enemy, and subsequently, when hostili¬
ties had subsided, a stranger, foreigner.
To be continued.
We have received No. 16 of the Gaelic
Journal. This journal should be
in the library of every Irishman. Is it
not singular that our learned men ex¬
hibit such apathy in its regard? A
journal conducted by some the best
scholars of their country,
