738
AN GAODHAL.
or F future. 2: The Reduplicated Future. 3. The S-
future, and 4, the T-future. If the learned Canon
desires further information on this point I refer
him to Ebel’s Ed. of Zeuss, Whitley Stokes in
Kuhn & Schleicher's Beitraege vi, & vii., or Win¬
disch's Compendium.
§2. Second Prop. Derivatives in igh make futur
in och.
As I do not wish to trepass too much on
your valuable space I shall only quote here from
Windisch's grammar of Old and Middle Irish, i.e.
of Irish to after the 15th cent, what he says of the
igim-verbs, §§213 "The 3rd conj. contains (a) De¬
nominatives, (Pret. §269, Fut 282) as Latin custodio
...armim, I count, from aram number: cumach¬
taigim, I prevail over, from cumachte, power, foill¬
sigim ......... from follus ......... sudigim etc." Now
turn to 282 for the future and it is the B-uture.
He says of this :— "This formation like the S preterite
is mainly to be found in the 2 and 3 conj. The
Denominatives are restricted to this future. Its
name implies a reference to the Latin amabo, the
characteristic B of which is traced up to the root
bhu. The characteristic B or F is suffixed to the pre¬
sent stem," and he gives carfa, nocharub, as an ex¬
ample. This is sufficient to show that Irish from
the 12th century will not prove the proposition.
§3. Third Prop. Fad and ochad are the results of
beidh being prefixed to the root.
1. August Schleicher says (Preface to Formen¬
lehre der Kerchenslawisnhen Sprache.) "Different
languages are known to us in very different degrees
of age. This difference in age must first be elim¬
inated before there can be any comparison; the
given quantities must be reduced to common terms
before we can compare them." This fundamental
principle has not been observed in the proofs for
the above proposition. Beidh is an entirely modern
form — a growth of the last three centuries. Its
Middle Irish representative was bia, 3rd person
biaid. Now the composition represented by amabo
Mid. Ir. carf, I will love, must have taken place
thousands of years ago. Surely no one would ex¬
plain word form thirty centuries old by a form not
yet three centuries in existence. Very likely the
Rev. Writer was thinking of the bhu mentioned a¬
bove and concluded that beidh was bhu; but beidh
is only a worn remnant of an inflected form of a
word derived from bhu. Being inflected itself it
is strange he did not notice that it would be a stand¬
ing protest against his f- and och- theory. Still if
he used it for bhu because more intelligible, he
may have some reason to believe that it does un¬
derly the f-future, but he should have remembered
that first principle of logic — not to use a private
term without explaining it
2. But if the proposition in the sense explained
above might stand as far as the fad form are
concerned, it is fearfully and wonderfully
wrong with regard to ochad. No doubt
c, ch and g are interchangeable, but the laws
which regulate these changes are pretty well known
and we have yet to learn that the affixing of beidh
or even he would set those laws in motion. Again
the assertion that would undergo a double as¬
piration is backed up by no proof and is directly
contradicted by the leighfa underlined in the
quotation from the annals of Ulster above. Again
we saw that the igim verbs were content with the
f-future in Middle Irish and as there is a contin¬
al chain of writers over since, the Canon ought to
be able to trace the change which he supposes.
But there has been no such change. Etymological
guesswork is the most dangerous of all; and
think Lassen must have had encountered some such
reasoning as Father Bourke's when he wrote (Ind¬
isch, Bibl. 3 p. 78.) "for word comparison no
words are so useful as the short Chinese ones be¬
cause it is only necessary to leave a vowel out of
account and to change one consonant into another
in order to manufacture Finnish, Koptic and Iro¬
quois." Gaelic seems in a fair way to be added to
the list.
Having shown now that the first two proposi¬
ions are not exact and that the third is only true
in a sense, I shall briefly indicate the outlines of
the formation of the two futures which obtain in
the vast majority of modern Irish verbs
1. The Irish f-future is connected with the Lat-
B-future; what this b is, is doubtful. Two expla¬
nations are given (a) bo = fuo (bhu) a present form¬
tion, thus amabo = I am to love, (b) bo = bu-i-o, a
form analogous to Greek esio = I go to be. This lat¬
ter is generally adopted perhaps on account of the
analogy it presumes between Greek and Latin."
(From Papillion — Manual of Comp. Phil. ch. VIII.)
2. "Most of the old futures in e have in the lat¬
er language changed this their characteristic into
eo: Modern Irish eibeolad I will die, Prest. eiblim
...... coiseonad, I will maintain, Prest. cosnaim
coingeobad, I will hold, Prest, congbhaim ...... frei-
georad, I will answer, Prest. fragraim. This
formation is adopted by the verbs in igim, and other
denominatives and by some dissyllabic verbs in -il
-in, -ir, -is ......... Ceingeolad, I will bind, Prest.
ceanglaim from O. I. cengal, a tie), foillseocad, I
will show, Prest. foillsighim, (from follus, plain,
open, clear." (From Windisch §281) cf. MSS, Mat.
p. 624, where Oisin says, "Inneosad dhuit sceal
go grinn." The change of gh into ch his regulated
on that general law in Mod. Irish by which back
consonants with back vowels and front consonants
with front vowels, e.g., in the decl. of marcach, &c.
With regard to the controversy which caused
Canon Bourke's letter, I think it can hardly be¬
settled with satisfaction just yet. I know that
dean in Old Irish formed its future in the form now
used by igh-verbs, but that future is now obsolete.
Seeing however the inroads form-association has
made in this and in other languages, I see no reason
if we make the pl. of athair aithreacha, why dean
should not make deanochad if the people so wish.
It will be the province of an educated Irish speak¬
ing public to decide what will be its fate. All
apriori determinations are absurd and until usage
has gone one way or the other the wisest course
appears to be, to agree to differ.
I remain, yours truly,
Peter C. Yorke:
No deunaighidh, Éireannaigh, dearmad
air chúis bhur d-teangan. Is sí an t-aon
oidhreacht amháin í atá fágthadh againn
le seachadadh d'ar sliocht. Ach is mór
an oidhreacht í má bhreathnuigheannmuid
uirri mar is chóir — oidhreacht nach féid¬
ir le maoin shaoghalta a cheannach — comh¬
ara príomh shíbhialtas ar g-cinneadh! is
mór an oidhreacht í: Coimhéad do bhur g¬
clainn í.
