458
AN GAODHAL
ed for her deliverance, while all the dates given by
them as to the time of the achievement of their
nations independence are extremely vague, or er¬
roneous, but this defect may be in some measure
attributed to the corruptions introduced by igno¬
rant or careless transcribers. I am myself for
some particular reasons which prevail in my mind
decidedly of opinion that the national autonomy
of Ireland shall be gained in the year 1889, or pre¬
cisely about that period. If the Irish people pray
for the freedom of their country, the conversion of
their enemies, and the universal triumph of their
faith, as I have heretofore recommended. But, on
the contrary if they commit agrarian, or other mur¬
ders, enter into political conspiracies, in opposi¬
tion to the advice of their clergy, or engage in any
of those feeble, and futile rebellious attempts which
always leave the ruling prince stronger, and the
subject weaker, they may certainly prolong the
duration of their own bondage.
In conclusion, hoping that God may permit me
to finish my proposed articles on this most interest¬
ing subject.
Believe me yours most patriotically
GÆL GLAS.
PROF. ROEHRIG on THE IRISH LANGUAGE,
(Continued from page 497.)
We find that in certain instances i is inserted
in Celtic, to render masculine words feminine
thereby transforming them, so to say from broad
to slenaer words ; as, for instance, in Irish fasg,
masc., faisg, fem,: dul, masc., duil, fem., etc.
This leads us to some further remarks on the in¬
fluence and significance of the above-mentioned
two distinct classes of vowel sounds. As in the
Ural-Altaic family of languages referred to, we
have couplets, or correlative forms of suffixes (one
broad, the other slender), as circumstances may
require the use of one or the other, — so we have
there, in a similar manner often also, two such
corresponding forms of entire words, but with this
remarkable difference, that they then not only re¬
present a mere external duality of form but ex¬
press an antagonism in form as well as in mean¬
ing, according to the nature of their vowels. This
I have shown, with more full developments, else¬
where, in various articles and essays published
years ago, on philological points of interest: and
I shall now almost literally recapitulate again,
here, in this connection, so far, at least, as it may,
without wearing the reader, serve to elucidate
the traces we still find of it in Irish. These are
few, it is true, but seem to have originally covered
an incomparably larger ground and extended to a
great many more essential, grammatical as well
lexical, items in Irish and other Celtic tongues.
We hope, therefore, that the following somewhat
lengthy digression will not abate the readers interest
since it is intended to afford us a broader founda¬
tion for a phenomenon of language which, though
existing now only in a fragmentary manner in
Irish, is exceedingly interesting and significant in
itself, and connects what little remains of it, in
Celtic, with a once (most probably) universal law
extending, more or less, throughout the whole do¬
main of human speech, and appearing to reach
even the very confines of the mysteries of our men¬
al constitution and the various modes of associa¬
tion of ideas in our mind by correlation and con¬
trast. Such a subject must, on that account, be
pre-eminently interesting to every philological in¬
quirer and philosophic reader. Now, when one of
such word-couplets as we may call them, contains
broad or strong vowels, viz.: a, o, u, — it generally
denotes strength, the male sex, affirmation, dis¬
tance etc. ;— while the other, with slender or weak
vowels, viz., e, and i (the consonantal skeleton,
frame, or ground-work of the word remaining the
same as it was), expresses weakness, the female
sex, negation, proximity and the whole series or
corresponding ideas, Roots of an allied meaning
in the Tartar-Finnish group are thus frequently
distinguished from one another simply by a differ¬
ence of vowel class; with slender or weak voweis
meaning often the opposite of what the broad or
strong vowels would express. The classification
of the vowels into broad and slender must, there¬
fore, have been adopted to the differentiation or
meaning at an early period, as it is, certainly, a
remarkable fact that the changes from broad to
slender, or from slender to broad, that is the sub¬
stitution of the other class of vowels, in the place
of the other complemental class bring about anoth¬
er, in some respects more or less opposite
meaning of the word. Here, then, in this change
which substitutes within the articulate frame¬
work or body of the word, a vowel of the one class
for a vowel of the other complemental class, some
sort of polarity may be recognized. — a law which
seems to indicate that, in primitive speech, very
word had probably a dual form. As soon as, one
may say, a sensuous idea had gained the material
embodiment of a word, or, better, at the very mo¬
ment of this act of crystallisation if it may be so
termed, — the electric flash of the intellect resolved
the forming word into two parts, or rather into
two aspects of one and the same unit, giving to
it a positive and negative pole. With this process
that fundamental law which necessitates the di¬
vision of the vowel sounds into two classes (broad
and slender) is in beautiful harmony. If we turn
our attention to some Ural-Altaic languages, — to
the Hungarian, Turkish, Mongolian and Tungusic
of the present day we find this dualism traceable
to a considerable extent. Thus, to to give a few
instances from many; in the Mantchoo (a Tun¬
gusic tongue), occur such couplets of words as
ama (father), with broad vowels; eme (mother),
