702
AN GAODHAL
ern Irish appears to have been evolved about the
15th. To give an example of the changes under¬
gone it will be sufficient to say that they are of a
kind, with what the modern Romance languages
underwent. Thus the neuter gender has disappear¬
ed, the accusative inflection has been lost, the con¬
jugation of verbs has simplified, and so on. The
changes have been more numerous in Scotch Gae¬
elic, but still these two langugges are substantially
the same.
This much I have thought it well to say about
the philology and history of Irish in order that you
may understand the terms that may be used here¬
after in these lectures. I have said it in as few words
as the subject would permit, and hence they can
give you but a faint idea of its vastness and of its
beauty. When fifty years ago it became first known
it was as Muller says, “like the opening of a new
horizon of the world of thought,” and I cannot close
this lecture in more fitting terms that the words
he addressed on this matter to his hearers at Cam¬
bridge — "The stories they (words) have told us are
beginning to be old stories now. Many of you
have heard them before. But do not let them
cease to be marvels because they happen every day,
and do not think there is nothing left for you to do.
There are more marvels still to be discovered in
language, than have ever been revealed to us : nay
there is no word, however common, if only you
know how to take it to pieces, like a cunningly con¬
trived word of art, fitted together thousands of
years ago by the most cunning of artists the human
mind, that will not make you listen and marvel
more than any chapter of the "Arabian Nights."
LECTURE II. ECLIPSIS.
In my introductory remarks, I showed you the
position of Irish among the languages of the earth :
and I sketched the changes it has undergone dur¬
ing the past thousand years. We shall now in the
light of this knowledge study a few of the hard
points of modern Gaelic Etymology. Aspirations
and Eclipses are, I remarked, two great obstacles to
beginners. We shall see what light Ancient and
Middle Irish and the Aryan languages throw on
them. In this lecture I shall treat of Eclipses.
There are three books, two of which at least I will
suppose you to have. They are 1. The Preservation
S's Primers, 2. Dr. Joyce's Irish Gram., or 3. Canon
Bourke's. As far as I can, I will confine myself to
the “Second Irish Book.” Open, now, this Second
Book at Part II. and you see there a very lucid
statement as to what Eclipsis is, and then a table
of eclipsed consononts, that is, the sounds which
the various initials recieve in certain circumstances.
If we examine this table, which you will remark, is
here in alphabetical order, we shall find that these
initials do not change according to the same law.
Four of them, namely, c, f, p, and t.
are flattened into g, bh, b, and d such a
change is very natural and very common, and if
you take notice of any of your German friends speak¬
ing English you will find them making it constant¬
ly. The formula, however, n-d is not
of this class, because here a flat letter
becomes a nasal, the same is true of b
eclipsed by m. Again the flat letter g
does not disappear but with n forms a
nasal sound distinct from both, and if we turn to
Rule VIII. for eclipsis, we find, "that in every in¬
stance where an initial consonant would be eclipsed
words beginning with a vowel will
take n before them." This rule, the
case of ng and the occurrence of m-b
(because before this letter n becomes
m,) would seem to point to the fact that
the change of d into n, etc., is not an
internal change like e. g., the change
of b into v, but the result of some ex¬
ternal accretion. Lastly, at the end
of the table we have s becomming t.
This small table of eclipsis, therefore, contains
three classes of changes which I will tabulate as
follows ;—
I. Nasal Eclipsis, - -
m-b, e. g. ar m-bád.
n-d, " " bhur n-doras.
n-g, " " a n-gabhar,
n- vowel, e. g. a n-eudach.
II. Flattening.
g-c, e. g. ar g-ceart.
bh-f, " " a bh-fuil.
b-p, " " bhur b-páisde.
d-t, " " a d-tír.
III. t Eclipsis,
t-s, e. g. an t-slat.
Starting then from this, we shall enquire, 1st as
to the origin of the nasals. 2nd of the fiat mutes.
3rd of t.
§1. NASAL ECLIPSES.
I might remark in the beginning that this term
"Nasal Eclipsis” was first given by Zeuss to this
class of changes which we are now going to consid¬
er, and I make use of it here as the most fitting
term to express such changes. First let us turn to
Rule VI. of the Second Book (p. 96 American and
72 Dublin Edition.) It runs as follows :— The Car¬
dinal Numbers, seacht, seven: ocht, eight
naoi, nine; and deich, ten; cause
eclipsis, etc., e. g. Seacht m-bliadhna, sev¬
en years, Deich n-daoine, ten men, naoi
n-geinealaighe, nine generations, naoi
n-oird, nine sledges. Knowing, as we
do know now, that the English through its parent
Anglo-Saxon is kin, if Irish through the Celtic,
knowing two, that the names of numbers would be
likely the oldest words in any language, we might
conclude that numerals in the Irish and the nu¬
merals in English would bear some kind of family
likeness, and this conclusion is borne out by the
facts, as the very first three numbers
prove, e. g., aon, one, da, two, tri, three.
The curious student will find in Canon Bourke's
Grammar, p. 89, materials for further comparison.
Looking at this rule, then, with this fact in our
minds, the suspicion would naturally arise, that
