(Vol. viii., pp. 229. 551.)
Your correspondent is a very Antæus. He has fallen again upon _uim_, and he
rises up from it to defend the _Heapian_ pronunciation with renewed vigour.
But I cannot admit that he has proved the pedigree of _humble_ from the
Gaelic.
But, even if _uim_ were the root of a Sanscrit word, and not itself a
derivative, still the many stages through which the derivation undoubtedly
passes, without any need of reference to the Gaelic, are quite enough to
establish the existence and continuance of an aspirate, until we arrive at
the French; and it has already been proved, that many words which lose the
aspirate in French do not lose it in English. The progress from the
Sanscrit is very clear:
_Sanscrit._ _Kshama._
_Pracrit._ _Khama._
_Old Greek._ [Greek: Chama]; whence [Greek: chamai], [Greek: chamaze],
[Greek: chthamalos].
_Latin._ _Humus_, _humilis_.
_Italian._ _Umile_; because there is in Italian no initial aspirate.
_French._ _'Humble_; because in words of Latin origin the French almost
always omit the aspirate.
_English._ _'Humble._
And here it may be observed, that _humilis_ never had, except in the
Vulgate and in ecclesiastical writers, the metaphorically Christian sense
to which its derivatives in modern tongues are generally confined, and to
which I believe the Gaelic _umhal_ to be strictly confined. But the
original words for _humble_ are _iosal_ and _iriosal_, cognate with the
Irish _iosal_ and _iriseal_, and the Cymric _isel_; and the olden and more
established words for the earth are, both in Gaelic and Irish, _talamh_ and
_lar_, cognate with the Cymric _llawr_.
All these facts lead to a reasonable suspicion that _uim_, _umhal_, and
_umhailteas_ (an evident naturalisation of a Latin word) are all derived
from Latin at a comparatively recent date, as certainly as _umile_,
_humilde_, _'humble_, and _'humble_ are, and in the same Christian sense.
The omission of an aspirate in the Gaelic word is then easily accounted
for, without supposing it not to exist in other languages, and for this
very simple reason, that no Gaelic word commences with _h_. There are
_some_ Celtic roots undoubtedly in the Latin language. It would be
difficult, for example, to derive _moenia_, _munire_, _gladius_, _vir_, and
_virago_ from any other origin, but much the larger number of words, in
which the two languages resemble each other, are either adoptions from the
Latin or derivatives from one common source, e. g. _mathair_ and _mother_,
_brathair_ and _brother_, as well as the Latin _mater_ and _frater_, from
the Sanscrit _matri_ and _bhratri_, &c., as all comparative philologists
are well aware. Would your correspondents call it the _'Ebrew_ language,
because a Gael calls it, as he must do, _Eabrach_?