_Introduction_.--The Celtic languages form one group of the
Indo-European family of languages. As might be expected from their
geographical distribution, they hold a position between the Italic and
Teutonic groups. They are distinguished from these and other branches of
the family by certain well-marked characteristics, the most notable of
which are the loss of initial and inter-vocalic p, cf. Ir. _athair_ with
Lat. _pater_; Ir. _lan_, "full," Welsh _llawn_, Breton _leun_, with Lat.
_plenus_; Gaulish _are-_, "beside," Ir. ar. Welsh, Breton ar, with Gr.
[Greek: peri], [Greek: para]; and the change of I. E. e to i, cf. Ir.
_fir_, "true," Welsh _gwir_, Breton _gwir_, Lat. _verus_. We may further
mention that the I. E. labialized velar gv is represented by b, e.g. Ir.
bo, "cow," Welsh _buwch_, Gr. [Greek: bous], Sanskr. _gaus_; Ir. _ben_,
"woman," Gr. [Greek: gyne], whilst the medial aspirates bh, dh, gh
result in simple voiced stops. I. E. sonant r and l become ri, li. Other
distinctive features of the modern dialects are not found in Gaulish,
partly owing to the character of the monuments. Such are the
-ss-preterite and the fusion of simple prepositions with pronominal
elements, e.g. Ir. _fri-umm_, "against me," Welsh _wrth-yf_, Breton
_ouz-inn_. The initial mutations which are so characteristic of the
living languages did not arise until after the Romans had left Britain.
The Celtic languages betray a surprising affinity with the Italic
dialects. Indeed, these two groups seem to stand in a much closer
relationship to one another than any other pair. As features common to
both Celtic and Italic we may mention: (i) the gen. sing, ending -i of
masc. and neut. stems in o; (2) verbal nouns in _-tion_; (3) the b-
future; (4) the passive formation in -r.
The various Celtic dialects may be divided as follows:--(1) Gaulish; (2)
Goidelic, including Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx; (3) Brythonic,
including Welsh, Breton and Cornish. Gaulish and Brythonic, like Oscan
and Umbrian among the Italic dialects, change the I. E. labialized velar
guttural qv to p, whilst the Goidelic dialects retain the qv which later
gives up the labial element and becomes k, e.g. Gaulish _petor-_,
"four," Ir. _cethir_, Welsh _petguar_, Breton _pevar_, Lat. _quattuor_;
Ir. _cia_, "who," Welsh _pwy_, Lat. _quis_; Gaulish _epo-_, "horse,"
Welsh _eb-ol_, Breton _eb-eul_, Ir. _ech_, Lat. _equus_. Several
attempts have been made to prove the existence of Celtic dialects with
qv on the continent. Forms containing p occur in the Coligny calendar,
discovered in 1897, by the side of others with qv, a state of affairs
not yet satisfactorily accounted for. The Rom tablets, discovered in
1898, have not been interpreted as yet, but p forms are found on them
exclusively. In an excursus we shall deal with the language of the
Picts.
No comprehensive handbook of the Celtic languages on the lines of
Grober's _Grundriss der romanischen Philologie_ or Paul's _Grundriss
der germanischen Philologie_ was available in 1909. The reader may
refer to Windisch's article "Keltische Sprachen" in Ersch und Gruber's
_Allgemeine Encyklopadie der Wissenschaften und Kunste_, and V.
Tourneur, _Esquisse d'une histoire des etudes celtiques_ (Liege, 1905;
vol. ii. with full bibliography). Also H. Zimmer, "Die kelt.
Litteraturen" in _Die Kultur d. Gegenwart_, T. i. Abh. xi. I, Berlin
and Leipzig, 1909. The materials for the study of the older forms of
the languages are to be found in Zeuss's _Grammatica Celtica_ as
revised by Ebel. A comparative grammar of the Celtic dialects has been
prepared by H. Pedersen (Gottingen, 1908). See also Whitley Stokes and
A. Bezzenberger, _Wortschatz der keltischen Spracheinheit_ (Gottingen,
1894).
I. GAULISH.--Celtic place-names are found as far east as the Dniester
and Dobrudja, and as far north as Westphalia. The language of the
Galatians in Asia Minor must have stood in a very close relation to
Gaulish. Indeed few traces of dialectical differences are to be observed
in continental Celtic. Unfortunately no literary monuments written in
the ancient speech of Gaul have come down to us, though Caesar makes
mention of religious poems orally transmitted by the Druids, and we also
hear of _bardi_ and _vates_. But a large number of personal and
place-names have been preserved. The classical writers have, moreover,
recorded a certain number of Gaulish words which can generally be
identified without difficulty by comparing them with words still living
in the modern dialects, e.g. _pempedula_, "cinquefoil," cf. Welsh
_pump_, "five," and _deilen_, "leaf"; _ambactus_, Welsh _amaeth_;
_petorritum_, "four-wheeled chariot," cf. Welsh _pedwar_, "four," and
Ir. _roth_, "wheel," or _rith_, "course." We have further between thirty
and forty inscriptions (three in north Italy) which we may without
hesitation ascribe to the Gauls. These inscriptions are written in
either N. Etruscan or Greek or Latin characters. We are thus in a
position to reconstruct much of the old system of declension, which
resembles Latin very closely on the one hand, and on the other
represents the forms which are postulated by the O. Ir. paradigms. Hence
Gaulish is particularly valuable as preserving the final vowels which
have disappeared in early Irish and Welsh. The few verb-forms which
occur in the remains of Gaulish are quite obscure and have not hitherto
admitted of a satisfactory explanation. The statements of ancient
authors with regard to the Belgae are conflicting, but there cannot be
much doubt that the language of the latter was substantially the same as
Gaulish. Caesar observes that there was little difference between the
speech of the Gauls and the Britons in his day, and we may regard
Gaulish as closely akin to the ancestor of the Brythonic dialects. It is
difficult to say when Gaulish finally became extinct. It disappeared
very rapidly in the south of France, but lingered on, possibly till the
6th century, in the northern districts, and it seems unnecessary to
discredit Jerome's statement that the speech of the Galatians in Asia
Minor bore a strong resemblance to the language he had heard spoken in
the neighbourhood of Trier. There is no evidence that Breton has been
influenced by continental Celtic. The number of Gaulish words which have
come down in the Romance languages is remarkably small, and though at
first sight the sound-changes of French and Welsh seem to bear a strong
likeness to one another, any influence of Gaulish pronunciation on
French is largely discounted when we find the same changes occurring in
other dialects where there is little or no question of Celtic influence.
The proper names occurring in classical writers, on inscriptions and
coins, have been collected by A. Holder in his monumental
_Altceltischer Sprachschatz_ (Leipzig, 1896-1908). The inscriptions
have been most recently treated by J. Rhys in the _Proceedings of the
British Academy_, vol. ii. See also a paper in this volume entitled
"Celtae and Galli" by the same author for the text of the Coligny and
Rom inscriptions. The value of Gaulish for grammatical purposes is set
forth by Whitley Stokes in a paper on "Celtic Declension" in the
_Proceedings of the London Philological Society_ (1885-1886). For the
extent over which Gaulish was spoken, its relation to Latin and its
influence on Romance, see E. Windisch's article on "Keltische Sprache"
in the section "Die vorromanischen Volkssprachen" in Grober's
_Grundriss der romanischen Philologie^2_, vol. i. pp. 373 ff. Cf.
further the introduction to J. Loth's _Chrestomathie bretonne_ (Paris,
1890); G. Dottin, _Manuel pour servir a I'etude des antiquites
celtiques_ (Paris, 1906); R. Thurneysen, _Keltoromanisches_ (Halle,
1884).
II. GOIDELIC AND BRYTHONIC.--When the monuments of the Celtic dialects
of the British Islands begin to appear, we find a wide divergence
between the two groups. We can only mention some of the more important
cases here. The Brythonic dialects have gone very much farther in giving
up inflectional endings than Goidelic. In Irish all final syllables in
general disappear except long vowels followed by s or r and u < o
preceded by i. But these reservations do not hold good for Brythonic.
Thus, whilst O. Irish possesses five cases the Brythonic dialects have
only one, and they have further lost the neuter gender and the dual
number in substantives. In phonology there are also very striking
differences, apart from the treatment of the labialized velar qv already
mentioned. The sonant n appears in Brythonic as an, whereas in Goidelic
the nasal disappears before k, t with compensatory lengthening of the
vowel, e.g. I. E. _*kmtom_, Ir. _cet_, "hundred," W. _cant_, Bret.
_kant_; Prim. Celt. _*jovnko-_, O. Ir. _oac_, Mod. Ir. og, "young," W.
_ieuanc_, Bret, _iaouank_. t, k standing after a vowel and preceding l,
n (and also r if k precede) disappear in Goidelic with compensatory
lengthening of the vowel, e.g. Prim. Celt. _*statla-_, Ir. _sal_,
"heel," W. _sawdl_; Prim. Celt. _*petno-_, Ir. _en_, "bird," O. W.
_etn_, Mod. W. _edn._ Similarly b, d, g disappear in Goidelic when
standing after a vowel and preceding l, r, n with compensatory
lengthening of the vowel, but in Welsh they produce a vowel forming a
diphthong with the preceding vowel, e.g. Prim. Celt. _*neblo-_, Ir.
_nel_, "cloud," W. _niwl_; Prim. Celt. _*ogno-_, cf. Lat. _agnus_, Ir.
_uan_, "lamb," from _*on_, W. _oen_; Prim. Celt. _*vegno-_, cf. Ger.
_Wagen_, Ir. _fen_, "wagon," O. W. _guein_, Mod. W. _gwain_. The
Goidelic dialects have preserved the vowels of accented syllables on the
whole better than Brythonic. Thus Brythonic has changed Prim. Celt, a (=
I. E. a, o) to o (W. aw, Bret. eu); and Prim. Celt. u to i, e.g. Ir.
_brathir_, "brother," W. _brawd_, Bret. _breur_; Gaulish _dunum_, Ir.
_dun_, "fort," W. _din_. Already in Gaulish the I. E. diphthongs show a
tendency to become simple long vowels and the latter are treated
differently by Goidelic and Brythonic. In early times I. E. _eu, ou_
both became o and I. E. ei gave e. In Goidelic o, e, in accented
syllables were diphthongized in the early part of the 8th century to ua,
ia if the next syllable did not contain the vowels e or i, whereas in
Brythonic o gave =u (written u) and e became in W. ui (wy), and in Bret.
oe (_oue_), e.g. Gaulish _Teuto-_, _Toutius_, Ir. _tuath_, "people," W.,
Bret. _tud_; Brythonic _Leto-cetum_, Ir. _tuath_, "grey," W. _llwyd_,
Bret, _loued_. Similarly in loan-words, Ir. _ceir_, _fial_, W. _cwyr_,
O. Corn. _guil_, from Lat. _cera_, _velum_. Further I. E. ai, oi are
preserved in Irish as ai (ae), oi (oe), Mod. Ir. ao, but in Welsh I. E.
ai gave either ai or oe, whilst oi changed to _u_ (written u), Ir.
_toeb_, "side," W., Bret. tu; I. E. _*oinos_, Ir. _oen_, "one," W.,
Bret. un; Prim. Celt. _*saitlo-_, cf. Lat. _saeculum_, W. _hoedl_,
"age," Bret. _hoal_. In Goidelic accented e changes to i before _i, u_
in the following syllable, cf. Ir. _fid_, "wood," gen. sing, _fedo_, O.
H. G. _witu_, and i changes to e before a or o under similar conditions.
In like manner u becomes o before a or o, whilst o changes to u before
i, u, cf. Ir. _muir_, "sea," Prim. Celt. _*mori_, gen. sing. _mora_. Of
Brythonic finals which disappear, a, i, (o), j alone influence preceding
vowels, whilst an i (y) which received the stress in O. W. was also able
to modify vowels which went before it. In Goidelic the combinations
_sqv_, sv appear respectively as sc, s (medially, f), but in Brythonic
they both give _chw_; Prim. Celt. _*sqvetlon_, Ir. _scel_, "story," W.
_chwedl_; Prim. Celt. _*svesor_, Ir. _siur_, "sister," but _mo fiur_,
"my sister" (whence Scottish _piuthar_ by false de-aspiration), W.
_chwaer_, Bret. _c'hoar_. In Brythonic initial s becomes h in the 7th
century, but this is unknown in Goidelic, e.g. Ir. _salann_, "salt," W.
_halen_, Cornish _haloin_, Bret, _holenn_; Lat. _se-men_, Ir. _sil_,
"seed," W. _hil_. Initial v gives f in Goidelic in the course of the 7th
century, whereas in Brythonic it appears as _gu, gw_, cf. Lat. _verus_,
Ir. _fir_, W., Bret. _gwir_. We may also mention that in Goidelic
initial j and medial v disappear, e.g. Gaulish _Jovincillus_, W.
_ieuanc_, "young," Bret, _iouank_, Ir. _oac, oc_; W. _bywyd_, "food,"
Ir. _biad_. Post-consonantic j in Brythonic sometimes gives -id (Mod. W.
_-ydd_, Mod. Bret, -ez), e.g. Gaulish _nevio-, novio-_, O. Bret,
_nowid_, W. _newydd_, Bret, _nevez_, Ir. _nue._ I.E. -kt and -pt both
appear in Goidelic as _-cht_ but in Brythonic as _-ith_, cf. Lat.
_septem_, O. Ir. _secht_, W. _seith_, Bret. _seiz_.
We unfortunately know very little about the position of the stress in
ancient Gaulish. According to Meyer-Lubke in place-names the penult was
accented if the vowel was long, otherwise the stress lay on the
preceding syllable, e.g. _Augustodunum_, O. Fr. _Ostedun_, now _Autun;
Catalaunos_ (Chalons), _Tricasses_ (Fr. Troyes), _Bituriges_ (Fr.
Bourges). In Goidelic the stress, which is strongly expiratory, is
always placed on the first syllable except in certain cases in verbs
compounded with prepositional prefixes. In Old Welsh and Old Breton, on
the other hand, the final syllable, i.e. the primitive penult, received
the stress, but in both languages the stress was shifted in the middle
period to the penultimate. The Goidelic dialects, like the Slavonic,
distinguish between palatalized and nonpalatalized consonants, according
as the consonant was originally followed by a front (e, i) or back vowel
(a, o, u), a phenomenon which is entirely unknown to Brythonic.
Finally, the two groups differ radically in the matter of initial
mutation or, as it is often called, aspiration. These mutations are by
no means confined to initial consonants, as precisely the same changes
have taken place under similar conditions in the interior of words. The
Goidelic changes included under this head probably took place for the
most part between the 5th and 7th centuries, whilst in Brythonic the
process seems to have begun and continued later. It is easier to fix the
date of the changes in Brythonic than in Goidelic, as a number of
British names are preserved in lives of saints, and it is possible to
draw conclusions from the shape that British place-names assumed in the
mouths of the Anglo-Saxons. In Goidelic, we find two mutations, the
vocalic and the nasal. Initial mutation only takes place between words
which belong together syntactically, and which form one single
stress-group, thus between article, numeral, possessive pronoun or
preposition, and a following substantive; between a verbal prefix and
the verb itself.
1. When the word causing mutation ended in a vowel we get the vocalic
mutation, called by Irish grammarians aspiration. The sounds affected
are the tenues k (c), t, p; the mediae g, d, b; the liquids and nasals
m, n, r, l, s, and Prim. Celt. v (Ir. f, W. gw). At the present day
the results of this mutation in Irish and Welsh may be tabulated as
follows. Where the sound is at variance with the traditional
orthography, the latter is given in brackets. In the case of n, r, l
in Goidelic we get a different variety of n, r, l sound. In Welsh in
the case of r, l, the absolute initial is a voiceless r, l written rh,
ll, which on mutation become voiced and are written r, l. In Irish s
becomes h written sh and the mutation of f is written fh, which,
however, is now silent. Examples:--Irish, cu, "hound," _do chu_, "thy
hound"; Welsh ci, dy gi (do, dy represent a Prim. Celt. _*tovo_);
Irish _mathair_, "mother," _an mhathair_, "the mother," Welsh _mam, y
fam_ (the feminine of the article was originally _*senta, senda)._
+--------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+---------+
|Original| | | | | | | |
| sound | k | t | p | g | d | b | m |
+--------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+---------+
| Irish |[chi](ch)| h(th) | f(ph) | Z(gh) | Z(dh) | v,w(bh) | v,w(mh) |
+--------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+---------+
| Welsh | g | d | b | nil | d(dd) | v(f) | v(f) |
+--------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+---------+
2. When the word causing mutation originally ended in a nasal, we get
the nasal mutation called by Irish grammarians eclipse. The sounds
affected are k (c), t, p; g, d, b; Prim. Celt. v (Ir. f, W. gw). In
mod. Irish and mod. Welsh the results are tabulated below. Irish f
becomes w written bh, whilst W. gw gives _ngw_. Examples:--Irish
_bliadhna_, "year," _seacht m-bliadhna_, "seven years," cf. Latin
_septem_, Welsh _blynedd, saith mlynedd_; Irish _tir_, "country," _i
d-tir_, "in a country," Welsh _tref_, "town," _yn nhref_, "in a
town," cf. Latin _in._
+----------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Original Sound | k | t | p | g | d | b |
+----------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Irish | g | d | b | ng | n | m |
+----------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Welsh | ngh | nh | mh | ng | n | m |
+----------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
3. In Welsh k (c), t, p undergo a further change when the word causing
mutation originally ended in s. There is nothing corresponding to this
consonantal mutation in Goidelic. In this case k (c), t, p become the
spirants [chi] (ch), th, f (ph), e.g. _lad_, "father," _ei thad_, "her
father," ei represents a primitive _*esias._ In the interior of words
in Brythonic, cc, pp, tt give the same result as initial k, t, p by
this mutation.
The relation in which the other Celtic dialects stand to this system
will be mentioned below in dealing with the various languages. It will
be noted from what has been said above that, with the exception of the
different treatment of the labialized velar qv, and the nasal sonant n,
the features which differentiate the Brythonic from the Goidelic
dialects first appear for the most part after the Romans had left
Britain. At the beginning of the Christian era the difference between
the two groups can only have been very slight. And Strachan has shown
recently that Old Irish and Old Welsh agree in a very striking manner in
the use of the verbal particle ro and in other syntactical peculiarities
connected with the verb.
(i.) _Goidelic_.--The term Goidelic is used to embrace the Celtic
dialects of Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. In each case the
national name for the speech is _Gaelic_ (Ir. _Gaedhlig_, Scottish
_Gaidhlig_, Manx _Gailck_), from Ir. Scottish _Gaodhal, Gaedheal_, Mid.
Ir. _Goedel_, W. _Gwyddel_, "a Gael, inhabitant of Ireland or Scotland."
Old Irish may be regarded as the ancestor of Scottish and Manx Gaelic,
as the forms of these dialects can be traced back to Old Irish, and
there are practically no monuments of Scottish and Manx in the oldest
period. Scottish and Irish may be regarded as standing to one another in
much the same relation as broad Scottish and southern English. The
divergences of Scottish and Manx from Irish will be mentioned below. The
language of the Ogam inscriptions is the oldest form of Goidelic with
which we are acquainted. Some 300 inscriptions have up to the present
been discovered in this alphabet, the majority of them hailing from the
south-west of Ireland (Kerry and Cork). In Scotland 22 are known, whilst
in England and Wales about 30 have turned up. Most of the latter are in
South Wales, but odd ones have been found in North Wales, Devon and
Cornwall, and one has occurred as far east as Hampshire. The Isle of Man
also possesses two. The letters in the oldest inscriptions are formed by
strokes or notches scored on either side of the edge of an upright
stone. Thus we obtain the following alphabet:--
--'----''----'''----''''----'''''-- --,----,,----,,,----,,,,----,,,,,--
h d t c q b l v s n
--/----//----///----////----/////-- --.----..----...----....----.....--
m g ng z r a o u e i
This system, which was eked out with other signs, would seem to have
been framed in the south-west of Ireland by a person or persons who were
familiar with the Latin alphabet. Some of the inscriptions probably go
back to the 5th century and may even be earlier. As illustrations of the
simplest forms of Ogam inscriptions we may mention the following:
_Doveti maqqi Cattini_, i.e. "(the stone) of Dovetos son of Cattinos";
_Trenagusu Maqi Maqi-Treni_ is rendered in Latin _Trenegussi Fili
Macutreni hic jacit; Sagramni Maqi Cunatami_, "(the stone) of Sagramnos
son of Cunotamos"; _Ovanos avi Ivacattos_, "(the stone) of Ovanus
descendant of Ivacattus." It will be seen that in the oldest of these
inscriptions q is still kept apart from k (c), and that the final
syllables have not disappeared (cf. _maqqi_, O. Ir. _maicc_), but it
appears certain that in Ogamic writing stereotyped forms were used long
after they had disappeared in ordinary speech. Several stones contain
bilingual inscriptions, but the key to the Ogam alphabet is supplied by
a treatise on Ogamic writing contained in the Book of Ballymote, a
manuscript of the late 14th century. It should be mentioned that the
Welsh stones are early whilst the Scottish ones are almost without
exception late, and several of the latter have so far defied
interpretation. In addition to the Irish Ogams there are a number of
Christian inscriptions in Latin character, but, with one exception, they
are not older than the 8th century.
See R.R. Brash, _The Ogam Inscribed Monuments of the Gaedhil_ (London,
1879); R.A. Stewart Macalister, _Studies in Irish Epigraphy_ (London),
vol. i. (1897), vol. ii. 1902, vol. iii. 1907. The Welsh inscriptions
are contained in J. Rhys, _Lectures on Welsh Philology_[2] (London,
1879). The Scottish stones have also been treated by Rhys in the
_Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries_ (Edinburgh,
1892). See also G.M. Atkinson for the tract in the Book of Ballymote,
_Kilkenny Journal of Archaeology_ (1874). The Irish Christian
inscriptions were published by Margaret Stokes as the annual volumes
of the Roy. Hist, and Archaeol. Association of Ireland (1870-1877),
and have been republished by R.A. Stewart Macalister.
(a) _Irish._--We are able to trace the history of the Irish language
continuously for a period of 1200 years, and from the time that the
literary documents begin we are better supplied with linguistic material
for the study of the language than is the case with any other Celtic
dialect. At the same time that form of Irish which is to be found in the
oldest documents has preserved a number of features which have entirely,
or almost entirely, disappeared from the Brythonic languages. For this
reason scholars have largely occupied themselves with Irish, which for
purposes of comparative philology may be regarded as the classic Celtic
language.
The history of Irish is divided into three periods:--Old Irish
(700-1100), the documents mainly representing the language of the 8th
and 9th centuries; Middle Irish, extending roughly from 1100 to 1550;
Modern Irish from 1550 to the present day. These periods merge into
one another to such an extent that no firm division can be made. The
language of some manuscripts of the 14th century contains forms which
are really Old Irish, and Middle Irish orthography was partly employed
by historians and antiquarians in the middle of the 17th century. Old
Irish, as compared with Brythonic, preserves a wealth of inflectional
forms in declension and conjugation, but many of these tend to
disappear very early. In the modern dialects of Ireland and Scotland
there is a rigid rule of orthography that a palatalized, or, as it is
termed, slender consonant in medial or final position, must be
preceded by a palatal vowel (i), and a non-palatalized consonant by a
non-palatal or broad vowel (a, o, u). This is the famous rule of the
grammarians known as _caol le caol agus leathan le leathan_ ("slender
to slender and broad to broad"), but it is not so strictly adhered to
in the spoken language as is commonly stated. In the older language
the quality of medial and final consonants is only denoted very
imperfectly, thus non-palatalized final consonants are regularly not
denoted as such, e.g. O. and Mid. Ir. _fir_, Mod. Ir. _fior_. In Old
and Mid. Irish the initial mutations are only regularly denoted in the
case of the vocalic mutation of c, p, t, s, f, and the nasal mutation
of b, d, g. The vocalic mutation of c, p, t, s, f was denoted by
writing ch, ph, th, sh, fh, the first three symbols of which were
derived from the Latin alphabet. Another method of denoting the
mutation was to write a dot over the letter, originally the punctum
delens, which was justified in the case of mutated f as the latter
early became silent. But no such devices were ready at hand in the
case of the medial b, d, g, and the mutated forms of these consonants
were consequently not represented at all in the orthography. The same
remark holds good in the case of the nasal mutation (eclipse) of the
tenues. But it is easy to demonstrate that the same condition of
affairs as we find in the modern language must have obtained in Old
Irish. This insufficiency of symbols renders the orthography of the
early stages of the language very complicated. We find that b, d, g
were used initially to denote the voiced stops, but medially and
finally they represent spirants, the voiced stops in this case being
denoted by c, p, t. It is not until much later times that the h in the
mutated forms of the tenues, or the use of the dot, was extended to
the mediae. Thus in Mid. Irish we find _do bochtaib in choimded_ (Mod.
Ir. _dobhochtaibh_), Mid. Ir. _ro-gab_ = Mod. Ir. _do ghabh_. The
nasal mutation of c, p, t was first denoted by writing these sounds
double and finally in the 18th century by writing gc, bp, dt. The
spirants arising out of Prim. Celt. g, d, b came in Old Irish to be
confused with those which developed out of Prim. Celt, p, t, k, in
other than initial positions. In final positions in polysyllables we
commonly find d and b written but medially th and ph, e.g. _didnad_,
"consolation," gen. sing, _dithnatha_. For the ending -ad cp. Lat.
_-atu-_. On the other hand we find g written medially and ch finally.
These rules, however, are not yet applied in the oldest documents.
When we turn to the inflections we find that most of the old
terminations have disappeared, but that their influence on preceding
consonants is still felt and serves to distinguish one form from
another; thus in the declension of _fer_, "man," nom. sing. _fer_,
gen. sing. _fir_, dat. sing, _fiur_, acc. sing, _fer n-_, nom. pl.
_fir_, gen. pl. _fer n-_, corresponding to Prim. Celt. (Gaulish)
_viros, viri, viro, viron, viri, viron_, the influence of the
following sound still differentiates the cases from one another. In
the later language the initial mutations come more and more to be
used for this purpose. In Middle Irish the declensions and
conjugations are much simplified and the neuter gender is given up in
substantives. In the verb the athematic conjugation has disappeared
and the distinction of primary and secondary endings is not observed.
On the other hand Irish has developed a peculiar system of absolute
and conjoint inflection with different sets of endings. The conjoint
endings are always used in the case of compound verbs, and in simple
verbs they are employed after certain proclitics, e.g. the negative
particles. Thus _berid_, "he bears," is an absolute form; _do-beir_,
"he gives," _ni beir_, "he does not bear," are conjoint forms.
Further, the verb system is partly dominated by the various devices
employed to express relatival function. There are three main types of
conjugation in Old Irish corresponding to the Latin first, third and
fourth conjugations, the Latin types _moneo_ and _audio_ being
difficult to distinguish in Irish. In the modern language there is in
reality but one conjugation. The old Irish verb system comprises
present and imperfect indicative, imperative, pres. subjunctive in
-a-or -s- with corresponding past subjunctive, future in -f- or -s- or
-e- or with reduplication along with corresponding secondary future,
-s- preterite, -t- preterite, reduplicated preterite, a preterite
containing a long stem-vowel, together with deponential and passive
forms in -rd. This system is eked out with the verbal prefix ro, which
among other functions changes a preterite into a perfect or a present
into a perfect. Such a cumbrous system was bound to fall to pieces. A
number of isolated forms have come down, but the only tenses which
have survived into the modern period are the present and imperfect
indicative, the imperative, the present subjunctive, the -s-
preterite, the -b- and -e- future with corresponding secondary forms,
and some of the passive forms in -r. At the same time in the modern
language there is an increasing tendency to use analytical forms. Two
noteworthy features of the Irish verb remain to be mentioned. The one
is the use of pronouns as objects infixed between particle and verb,
or in a verb compounded with a preposition between preposition and
verb. There are two sets of forms according as to whether the verb
occurs in a relative clause or not. Thus -m- is the ordinary infixed
pronoun of the 1st pers. sing., whilst -dom- is the corresponding
relative form. In the 3rd pers. sing. aspiration may be employed, e.g.
_ni ceil_, "he does not hide," _ni cheil_, "he does not hide it." This
has been given up in the modern language. Secondly in verbs compounded
with prepositions the accent of the verb varies according as to
whether the verb is used enclitically or not--thus after the negative
ni or in the infinitive and imperative. Hence we have _do-beir_, "he
gives," by the side of _ni tabair_, "he does not give," infin.
_tabairt_; _do-gniu_, "I do," _ni denim_, "I do not do," infin.
_denum_. The changes caused by this alternation in addition to others
due to the working of the Irish accent and to the initial and internal
mutations have played havoc with the verb system and render it
exceedingly difficult to reconstruct the paradigms. In the later
periods of the language analogy naturally plays a great part, and many
of the complicated forms are done away with, but even in the modern
dialects the alternation between enclitic and orthotonic forms still
survives in the commonest verbs, e.g. Irish _bheir se_ "he gives," _ni
thabhair se_, "he does not give," infin. _tabhairt_; Scottish _bheir
e, cha toir, toirt_; Manx _ver eh, cha der, coyrt_; Irish _ni se_, "he
does," _ni dheanann se_, "he does not do," infin. _deanamh_; Scottish
_ni e_, "he does," _cha dean e_, "he will not do," infin. _deanamh_;
Manx _nee eh, cha jean eh, jannoo_.
In the early period Irish borrowed a number of words from Latin. These
are mainly connected with the church or with articles of civilization
which would be imported from Roman Britain. Some of these show traces
of British pronunciation, e.g. O. Ir. _trindoit_, from Latin
_trinitatem_ with o for a. In others again Lat. p is represented in
Ir. by c, which may be due to the substitution of q as being the
nearest Irish sound to the foreign p. Thus we find Ir. _corcur_,
"purple," _casc_, "Easter"; _cenciges_, "Whitsuntide"; _cruimther_,
"presbyter." In addition to these several loans were received from
Norse. In the Mid. Irish period many French words came in, and during
the middle and modern periods the number of English words introduced
is legion. Pedersen has tried to show in his _Vergl. Gramm._ that a
considerable number of words were borrowed from Brythonic (Welsh) at
an early date.
[For the Latin loan-words, see J. Vendryes, _De hibernicis vocabulis
quae a latina lingua originem duxerunt_ (Paris, 1902); Kuno Meyer has
collected a number of loan-words from Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Early
English, Latin and Early French in _Revue celtique_, xii. 460 and
xiii. 505. See also Whitley Stokes, _Bezzenberger's Beitrage_, xviii.
56 ff. For Celtic names in Norse see W. Stokes, _Revue celtique_, iii.
186 ff., and W.A. Craigie, _Zeitschr. f. celt. Phil._ i. 439 ff.]
With regard to the dialects of Irish, there is a well-known rhyme
which states the peculiarities of the speech of the four provinces,
and dialectical differences must have existed at an early period,
though they do not make their appearance in the literary language
until the 18th century. At the present day the Irish of Leinster has
vanished entirely, and we have unfortunately no records of it. But in
the other three provinces the vernacular still lives, and we find the
Irish of Munster, Connaught and Ulster marked off from one another by
well-defined peculiarities. In general it may be stated that the south
of Ireland is more conservative than the north. In Munster there is a
tendency to shift the word-stress from the initial syllable to a heavy
derivative syllable, e.g. -an. This does not take place in Connaught,
whilst in Ulster the tendency is to shorten the vowel. Again in
monosyllables ending in ll, nn, m, and under certain other conditions
a short vowel becomes a diphthong in the south, in Connaught it is
merely lengthened, but in Ulster the original length is retained, e.g.
Ulster _ball_, "member, limb," Connaught _ball_, Munster _baull_.
Final dh, gh in Munster are sounded as g. In certain cases the north
prefers the vocalic mutation where the west and south have the nasal,
thus notably in the dative singular after preposition and article,
e.g. Munster-Connaught _do'n bhfear_, "to the man," Ulster _do'n
fhear_. In the south synthetic verb-forms are employed to a much
larger extent than in the north.
In the early part of the 19th century Irish was still the speech of
more than half the inhabitants of Ireland. A German traveller reckoned
that out of a total population of seven millions in 1835 four millions
spoke Irish as their mother-tongue. The famine of 1846-1847 was felt
most in those districts that were purely Irish, and these were the
parts that were and still are chiefly affected by the tide of
emigration. Add to this the fact that the influence of O'Connell and
his satellites, and above all that of the Roman Catholic clergy, was
against the language. In spite of the efforts of the Gaelic League
(founded 1893), which have met with considerable success, the language
is rapidly dying of internal decay. The speakers of Irish are chiefly
confined to the following counties, where over 20% of the population
speak Gaelic:--Waterford, Cork, Kerry, Clare, Galway, Mayo, Sligo,
Donegal. The following figures will illustrate the decay of the
language since the famine:--
Year. Monoglots. Bilinguists.
1851 319,602 1,204,684
1861 163,275 942,261
1871 103,562 714,313
1881 64,167 885,765
1891 38,192 642,053
1901 20,953 620,189
According to the 1901 census report the speakers of Irish were
distributed as follows:--Leinster, 26,436; Munster, 276,268;
Connaught, 245,580; Ulster, 92,858. The Gaelic movement, which has
thriven largely on account of its anti-English character, would have a
much better chance of galvanizing the ancient language of Ireland if
it were not for the supreme difficulties of Irish spelling and
phonetics. Of the hundreds of thousands of persons who attend the
classes of the League not more than one or two per cent. at the
outside arrive at any state of proficiency. Presbyterian Gaels in
Scotland are taught to read the Bible but Irish Catholics are not
encouraged to do so. The result of this is seen in the fact that,
whilst many, if not all, of the local Nationalist newspapers under the
pressure of the League publish badly-printed and little-read columns
in Irish, there are only two regularly appearing periodicals which
contain any large amount of Irish. Half the contents--and those the
most important--of the weekly organ of the league, _An Claidheamh
Soluis_ ("the flaming sword"), are in English. The latter was started
in 1898 under the title of _Fainne an Lae_ ("the ring of day," i.e.
the dawn). The other periodical is the monthly _Gaelic Journal_
(_Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge_), a would-be literary magazine of very
inferior quality which has led a precarious existence since 1882. In
1898 it was decided to hold a festival called the _Oireachtas_
("hosting, gathering") on the lines of the Welsh _Eisteddfod_. The
venture was a great success and similar meetings have been held every
year since, whilst each province and many of the counties have their
annual local Gaelic _feis_ (festival). The literary output of the
movement has been prodigious, consisting in the main of a number of
short stories and dramas (mostly propagandist), but nothing of any
particular merit has as yet been forthcoming. The best-known writers
are Dr Douglas Hyde (collector of folk-stories--_Beside the Fire_,
1890, _An Sgeulaidhe Gaedhealach_, 1895 (reprinted from vol. x. of the
_Annales de Bretagne_), _Love Songs of Connaught_, 1893, _Religious
Songs of Connaught_, 1905); P. O'Leary (author of two lengthy stories,
_Seadna_, 1904, _Niamh_, 1907); P. Dinneen (author of an historical
tale, _Cormac Ua Connaill_, 1901); P. O'Shea, better known as "Conan
Maol," author of a collection of short stories entitled _An Buaiceas_,
1903.
AUTHORITIES ON IRISH LANGUAGE.--For the study of Old Irish--Zeuss,
_Grammatica Celtica^2_ (Berlin, 1871); B. Guterbock and R. Thurneysen,
Indices to the Irish words treated in Zeuss (Leipzig, 1881); E.
Windisch published the first grammar of Old Irish in 1879 (trans. by
N. Moore, Pitt Press, 1882), but Windisch's treatment of the verb was
rendered obsolete by the discovery of the laws of the Irish accent by
H. Zimmer, _Keltische Studien_ (Berlin, 1884), and R. Thurneysen,
_Revue celtique_, vi. 309, J. Vendreys, _Grammaire du Vieil-Irlandais_
(Paris, 1908); R. Thurneysen, _Handbuch des Alt-Irischen_ (Heidelberg,
1909). Mention should also be made of J. Strachan, _Selections from
the Old Irish Glosses_ (Dublin, 1904); and the same writer's _Old
Irish Paradigms_ (Dublin, 1905), _Stories from the Tain_ (Dublin,
1908). See also various papers on the Irish verb in the _Transactions
of the London Philological Society_ by Strachan (1895-1902); H.
Pedersen, _Aspirationen i Irsk_ (Copenhagen, 1898); C. Sarauw, _Irske
Studier_ (Copenhagen, 1901); G.J. Ascoli, _Archivio glottologico
italiano_, vols. v. and vi. For the study of Middle Irish--E.
Windisch, _Irische Texte mit Worterbuch_ (Leipzig, 1880). (Other
volumes in conjunction with W. Stokes.)
Editions of texts by W. Stokes, Kuno Meyer and others in the _Revue
celtique, Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie, Eriu_. K. Meyer has
issued an exhaustive Mid. Irish glossary (A-D) as a supplement to the
_Archiv fur celtische Lexikographie_. The remainder is being published
under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy. The first grammar of
Modern Irish was published by Francis Molloy in 1677 at Rome under the
title of _Grammatica Latino-Hibernica_. Molloy was followed by
Jeremiah Curtin in 1728 with a book called _Elements of the Irish
Language_. Numerous other grammars were published towards the end of
the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century, but few of them
have any value. The more important of them are enumerated in the
introduction to O'Donovan's _Grammar_ and to Windisch's _Kurzgefasste
irische Grammatik_, and in Pedersen's _Aspirationen i Irsk_, pp.
29-47. We may mention W. Neilson's _Grammar_ (1808) as it is important
for the Irish of E. Ulster. But the greatest native grammarian was
John O'Donovan, who traversed Ireland in connexion with the Ordnance
Survey, and published in 1854 a comprehensive grammar noting the
differences between the various dialects. A little grammar published
by Molloy in 1867 is instructive on account of the author's peculiar
point of view. The most useful books for the study of the living
language are the series of booklets (five) published by Father
O'Growney, one of the chief promoters of the present movement. Mention
should also be made of J.P. Henry's _Handbook of Modern Irish_, pts.
i.-iv., and of the grammars by P.W. Joyce (Dublin, 1896) and the
Christian Brothers (Dublin, 1901). For the northern form of Irish J.P.
Craig's _Grammar of Modern Irish_ is useful (^2 Dublin, 1904). The
phonetics of a Munster dialect have been investigated by R. Henebry,
_A Contribution to the Phonology of Desi Irish_ (Greifswald, 1901).
The dialect of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway has been
described by F.N. Finck, _Die Araner Mundart_, i. _Lautlehre und
Grammatik_, ii. _Worterbuch_ (Marburg, 1899). G. Dottin has given an
account of a dialect of North Connaught (Mayo) in the _Revue
celtique_, xiv. pp. 97-137. A study of the speech of the north was
published by E.C. Quiggin under the title of _A Dialect of Donegal,
Phonology and Texts_ (Cambridge, 1906). For an account of the decay of
Irish see H. Zimmer, "Die keltische Bewegung in Irland," _Preussische
Jahrbucher_ for 1898, vol. 93, p. 59 ff., and the last chapter of
Douglas Hyde's _Literary History of Ireland_ (London, 1901).
The work of the earlier compilers of glosses will be mentioned in the
literature section below. The first dictionary of the modern language
of any importance was that published by J. O'Brien in 1768. Next came
E. O'Reilly with his _Irish-English Dictionary_ (Dublin, 1817). This
book contains a vast store of words gathered on no principle whatever
from all manner of sources, and has therefore to be used with caution,
but even at the present day it renders considerable service. A second
edition with a supplement by O'Donovan was published after the
latter's death in 1864. The first trustworthy dictionary of the modern
language was published under the auspices of the Irish Texts Society
by P.J. Dinneen (London, 1904). English-Irish dictionaries have been
compiled by D. Foley (Dublin, 1855); E.E. Fournier (Dublin, 1903); T.
O'Neill Lane (Dublin, 1904).
(b) _Scottish Gaelic._--Scottish Gaelic is the form of Goidelic speech
which was introduced into Scotland by the Dalriadic Scots who came over
from Ireland in the early centuries of our era. We possess practically
no early monuments of the language. We have one or two inscriptions in
Latin characters, such as that at St Vigeans and the Ogams mentioned
above, which have not yet been solved. In the _Book of Deir_ there is a
colophon of a few lines probably written by an Irish scribe in the 9th
century, and as the language of these lines differs in no wise from the
Irish of the period, we do not know if they accurately represent the
Gaelic of Scotland or if they may not be pure Irish. In the same MS.
there are further Gaelic scraps belonging to the 11th and 12th
centuries. The word-forms in these entries are identical with those
current at the time in Ireland, but the historical orthography seems to
show more signs of decay than is the case in Irish. The medieval
Scottish MSS. in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh are only just being
published, but they seem either to hail from Ireland or to be written in
pure Irish. The end of the 15th century brought a change. The Lordship
of the Isles, the great bond between Ireland and Scotland, was broken
up. The Gaels of Scotland, thrown on their own resources, advanced their
own dialect to the position of a literary language and tried to discard
the Irish orthography. The _Book of the Dean of Lismore_, compiled about
1500, is written in a kind of phonetic orthography which has not as yet
been sufficiently investigated. The language of those poems which are
not directly ascribed to Irish poets, and which may therefore be
regarded as representing the literary language of the Highlands at the
time, seems to occupy a position midway between Irish and Scottish
Gaelic. But until the beginning of the 18th century the Highlands were
under the literary dominion of Ireland, so much so that Bedell's Irish
version of the Scriptures was circulated in Scotland with a glossary
from 1690 to 1767, and Bishop Carsewell's version of Knox's Prayer-book
(1567) is pure Irish. The language of the people is poorly represented
in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the orthography is not fixed until
we reach the 18th century.
Irish and Scottish Gaelic differ considerably in point of vocabulary,
but there are also important divergences in phonetics and inflections.
In the first place, Scottish Gaelic as written has entirely given up
the nasal mutation (eclipse), e.g. Scottish _ar bo_, "our cow," Irish
_ar m-bo_; Scottish _nan tir_, "of the countries," Irish _na d-tir_.
It should, however, be observed that in Skye and the Outer Isles the
nasal mutation has been partly restored and in some places there are
even parallels to the Welsh nasal mutation of c, p, t to _ngh, mh,
nh._ Secondly, post-vocalic c, p, t are commonly preceded by a
breathed sound not represented in writing, thus _mac_ "son," is
pronounced _mahk_; _slat_, "rod," as _slaht_. Again there is a
tendency to insert a sibilant in the group rt, thus _ceart_, "right,"
is sounded _kearst_, and the distinction between palatalized and
non-palatalized sounds is not so rigidly observed as in Irish. The
group _cht_ is in Scotland pronounced as if _chk_. We may also mention
that Scottish Gaelic preserves an old e in a number of words where
Irish now has a, thus, Old Ir. _fer_, Scottish G. _fer_, Irish _far_,
but in both cases the spelling is _fear_ (in this respect Scottish
Gaelic goes hand in hand with Manx and the almost extinct Irish of
Down). Similarly, we find that in Scottish Gaelic and Manx stressed
vowels preceding a palatalized consonant have not undergone
palatalization to the same extent as in Irish, e.g. in Ireland
_duine_, "man," < _*dunjo-_, is pronounced _din'd_, but in Scotland
_dun'd_ (in Manx written _dooinney_). A further peculiarity of
Scottish Gaelic is that it substitutes lenes or voiceless mediae for
the voiced stops, and even l, r, n sounds show a great tendency to
give up the voice. Scottish Gaelic goes farther even than Irish in the
confusion of vowel-sounds, e.g. Lat. _coxa_, Ir. _cos_, "foot," Sc.
_cas_; Ir. _codal_, Sc. _cadal_. When we turn to the inflections we
find that analogy has here played a much greater part than in Irish.
There is a tendency to make the plural of all substantives except
masculine monosyllables end in -an. In the conjugation the synthetic
forms have with one or two exceptions entirely disappeared and the
present forms have become momentary in force. Hence in ordinary
grammars it is stated that the present has become a future, thus _ni
mi_ means "I shall do." The past participle chiefly ends in -te as
against Irish -the, -te, or -tha, -ta, according to the quality of the
preceding sound. The present (future) and past subjunctive
(conditional, representing both the imperfect indic. and secondary
future of Irish) supply the place of the Irish consuetudinal forms. In
idiom also Scottish has diverged very considerably from Irish, e.g. in
the use of _tha_ (Ir. ta) for is.
It seems now to be agreed that the various dialects of Scottish Gaelic
fall into two main divisions--northern and southern. Mackinnon states
that the boundary between the two passes roughly up the Firth of Lorne
to Loch Leven, then across country from Ballachulish to the Grampians.
The country covered by the northern dialect was of old the country of
the Northern Picts, whilst the portion of Argyllshire south of the
boundary line, together with Bute and Arran, made up the kingdom of
Dalriada. The Gaelic district south of the Grampians belonged to the
Southern Picts. The southern dialect is commonly regarded as the
literary language. It approaches more nearly to Irish and preserves
the inflections much better than the speech of the north.
The following characteristics of the northern dialects may be
mentioned:--(1) The diphthongization of open e to ia is carried much
farther in the north than in the south. (2) The vowel ao in the north
is more regularly the high-back-narrow-unrounded vowel-sound, whereas
the south in many cases has a low-front-wide-round sound. (3) The
north has _str_ in initial position where the south prefers sr.
Further, the northern dialects go very far in dropping unaccented
final vowels. It may be remarked that in the reduction of derivative
endings containing long vowels Scotland goes hand-in-hand with Ulster
Irish, thus Connaught _aran_, "bread," is in Ulster and Scotland
_aran_. Again, Scottish agrees with North Irish in the loss of
synthetic verb-forms and in using as negative _cha_, Mid. Ir. _nico,
nocha_. But, on the other hand, Scotland, with the exception of South
Argyll and some of the Isles, diphthongizes accented a, o, e, in
monosyllables, before ll, nn, m, thus resembling the speech of
Munster. In South Argyll the original short vowel is half lengthened.
As to the southern limits of Gaelic speech in Scotland, the boundary
between Gaelic and English in medieval times was the so-called
Highland line, and at the War of Independence it is probable that it
extended to Stirling, Perth and the Ochil and Sidlaw Hills, the Inglis
being limited to a very narrow strip along the coast. Dr J.A.H. Murray
traced the linguistic frontier in 1869-1870 with the following
results. The line started about 3 m. west of the town of Nairn on the
Moray Firth and ran in a south-east direction to the Dee, 4 m. above
Ballater. On the other side of the Dee it began 4 m. above Balmoral
and followed the boundary of Perth and Forfar as far as Glen Shee,
where it went off to the south-west as far as Dunkeld. After passing
Birnam Hill it turned due west until the upper part of Glen Almond was
reached, where it bent to the southward, passing through Comrie and
along the braes of Doune to the Teith, 3 or 4 m. below Callander.
Thence it ran along the north shore of Lake Monteith to Gartmore, and
from there to Rowardennan on the east side of Loch Lomond. On the west
side it passed through Glen Douglas down Loch Long and the Firth of
Clyde, leaving Bute and Arran to the west. At the present day this
boundary has probably receded to the extent of several miles, and even
in 1870 there were districts such as Bute and the region round Dunoon
where Gaelic was only spoken by the oldest natives and the immigrant
population. The language is not found in the north-east of Caithness,
the boundary running, according to Murray, roughly from a little
north-east of Lybster to the mouth of the Forss. Celtic was driven out
of Shetland and Orkney by Scandinavian some time during the middle
ages. (See further J.A.H. Murray, _The Dialect of the Southern
Counties of Scotland_, London, 1875; _Revue celtique_, vol. ii. pp.
180-187.)
Until the 18th century Gaelic was spoken in Galloway and on the
uplands of Ayr and Lanark. The following figures from the census
returns illustrate the decrease in the number of persons who speak
Gaelic:--
Monolinguists. Bilinguists.
1881 No return 231,594
(this includes
Gaelic monolinguists)
1891 43,738 210,677
1901 28,106 202,700
In the last-mentioned year it appears that nearly one-half of the
speakers of Gaelic are reported from the counties of Inverness and
Ross (23,893 monolinguists and 82,573 bilinguists). From about 1300 we
find Scottish emigrants filtering into the glens of Antrim, where the
Gaelic that is spoken is still unmistakably Scottish. There have long
been local societies of Highlanders for the cultivation of their
native tongue, the most important one being _An Comunn Gaidhealach_
(founded 1891). This society holds an annual gathering called the
_Mod_ (=Eng. "moot") on the lines of the Welsh Eisteddfod, and
recently the Scottish Education Department has countenanced the
teaching of Gaelic in Highland schools. But the political element
plays little or no part in the language movement in Scotland, and the
latter is not likely to assume the proportions of the Gaelic League in
Ireland. As a rule, however, Highlanders are better able to read their
own language than Irish Gaels, for, the majority being Protestants,
they are encouraged to read their Bibles. There are only two
periodicals which devote half their space to Gaelic. The one is _An
Deo-Greine_ ("the sunbeam"), founded October 1905; and the other is
the Catholic propagandist quarterly _Guth na Bliadhna_ ("the voice of
the year"), started in 1904. Up to 1905 a fortnightly newspaper
printed wholly in Gaelic appeared in Prince Edward Island, under the
title of _An Mac-talla_ ("the echo"), and efforts have been made to
revive it. A weekly newspaper wholly in Gaelic was started in 1908 by
R. Stuart Erskine under the title of _Alba_.
AUTHORITIES ON SCOTTISH GAELIC.--The first grammar of Scottish Gaelic
was compiled by W. Shaw (_An Analysis of the Galic Language_, 1778).
The most useful one was that published by Alexander Stewart, _Elements
of Gaelic Grammar_ (Edinburgh, 1801). A revised edition of this work
with many additions and corrections was published by H.C. Gillies,
London, 1902. This book is rather spoilt by the author's attitude, and
requires to be supplemented and corrected. G. Henderson and C.W.
Robertson have published important papers on the modern dialects in
the _Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie_, the _Celtic Review_ and
the _Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness_. The most useful
work on Gaelic philology is Alexander Macbain's _Etymological Gaelic
Dictionary_ (Inverness, 1896) (a later edition by W.J. Watson). The
chief dictionaries are _Dictionarium Scoto-Celticum_, published by the
Highland Society of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1828); R.A. Armstrong,
_Gaelic Dictionary_ in two parts (London, 1825); N. McAlpine,
_Pronouncing Gaelic Dictionary_ (Edinburgh, 1847) (this book gives the
pronunciation of Islay); Macleod and Dewar, _Gaelic and English
Dictionary_ (latest edition, Edinburgh, 1901); _Faclair Gaidhlig_,
published by E. Macdonald, Herne Bay, appearing in parts since 1902.
(c) _Manx._--Our sources of information with regard to the language of
the Isle of Man are even more scanty in the early period than they are
in the case of Scotland. There are a number of references to the island
in Irish literature, but the earliest monument of the vernacular we
possess is the version of the Book of Common Prayer made by Bishop
Phillips in 1610. In this translation the traditional Irish orthography
is not followed. The spelling resembles the orthography which was
employed in Scotland by the compiler of the _Book of the Dean of
Lismore_. How far this system was used is a question which it is
difficult to decide. In Scotland the Irish orthography has prevailed in
a slightly modified form, but Manx writers adhered to a mode of spelling
which was as phonetic as any system based on English, or, probably more
correctly Anglo-Scottish, orthography could be. This fact, combined with
the rapid phonetic decay of the language, makes it extremely difficult
to discover what sound-values are to be attached to the various symbols.
At the beginning of the 18th century English was not understood by
two-thirds of the natives, and in 1764 the S.P.C.K. issued a paper
containing this statement: "The population of the Isle is 20,000, of
whom the far greater number are ignorant of English." But from this time
English gradually crept in. The last edition of the Manx Bible was
issued in 1819, and of the New Testament in 1840. The present writer's
great-grandmother refused to speak English, his grandfather (b. 1815)
preached in Manx and English, and his father (b. 1844) only spoke
English. The following figures illustrate the rapid decline of the
language:--
Monolinguists. Bilinguists.
1875 190 12,340
(out of a population
of 41,084 exclusive
of Douglas)
1901 None 4,419
Manx stands in a much closer relation to Scottish Gaelic than Irish,
and fishermen state that they could understand a good deal of what is
said in South Argyll, though they are quite at a loss at Kinsale. Manx
exhibits the same tendency as Scottish to use analytical and
periphrastic forms in the verb, thus _jannoo_, "to do," is used like
Scottish _deanamh_ with an infinitive to express the past and future.
The present has acquired a momentary (future) signification, and the
past participle ends in -it (Scottish -te). The negative is _cha_ as
in Scotland and Ulster. Manx goes as far as northern Scottish in
dropping unstressed final vowels, e.g. _chiarn_, "lord," Irish,
_tighearna_; -yn is the favourite plural ending in substantives. The
nasal mutation has been partly given up. Old Irish stressed e is
frequently retained, e.g. _fer_, "man," Irish _far_ (spelt _fear_),
and the vowels o and a are confused as in Scottish, e.g. Manx _cass_,
"foot," Scottish _cas_, Irish _cos_. Manx is divided in itself about
the treatment of short accented vowels before _ll, nn, m_. According
to Rhys the south side lengthens, whilst the north side diphthongizes;
e.g. Irish _crann_, "tree," _clann_, "offspring," S. Manx _kron_,
_klon_, N. Manx, _kroun_, _kloun_ (written _croan_, _cloan_). In the
matter of stress Manx is quite original, going farther even than the
dialects of the south of Ireland. Not only does it shift the stress in
the case of heavy derivative suffixes like -an and reduce the
preceding vowel, e.g. Ir. _fuaran_, Sc. _fuaran_, Manx _fran_,
"spring," but even in cases like _caghlaa_, "variety," Sc. Ir.
_caochladh_, O. Ir. _coimmchloud_; _coraa_, "voice," Ir. _comhradh_.
The Mid. English stress on the final is further retained in words from
the French such as _ashoon_, "nation," _livrey_, "deliver."
As other features peculiar to Manx we may mention the following. An
intervocalic s or sh shows a tendency to become lisped and voiced to
d. In monosyllables post-vocalic final m, n, are often preceded by an
intrusive b, d respectively, thus _ben_ "woman," may be heard as
_bedn_. Ir. a becomes more palatal and is often ae. Ir. sc becomes st,
_sht_, e.g. Ir. _fescor_, "evening," Manx _fastyr_; Ir. _uisce_,
"water," Manx _ushtey_.
AUTHORITIES ON MANX.--The place and personal names of the Isle of Man
have been collected by A.W. Moore in _Manx Names_[2] (London, 1903)
(33% of the proper names are Scandinavian). The chief source of
information about the spoken language is J. Rhys, _The Outlines of the
Phonology of Manx Gaelic_ (London, 1895) (the book has unfortunately
no index and no texts). The only serious attempt to represent spoken
Manx graphically is the transcription of a song by J. Strachan in the
_Zeitschr. fur celtische Philologie_, vol. i. p. 54. The native
grammarian is J. Kelly, who in 1803 published _A Practical Grammar of
the Ancient Gaelic or Language of the Isle of Man, usually called
Manks_. This book was republished by W. Gill for the Manx Society in
1859, and a facsimile reprint of this latter was made for Quaritch,
London, 1870. A useful little book entitled, _First Lessons in Manx_
was published by Edwin Goodwin (Dublin, 1901). There are two
dictionaries, one by A. Cregeen, Douglas 1835, which is now being
reprinted for _An Cheshaght Gailckagh_, a Douglas society which is
endeavouring to encourage the use of Manx and to get it introduced
into the schools. The other dictionary is by J. Kelly in two
parts--(i) Manx and English, (2) English and Manx, published by the
Manx Society in 1866. Kelly also prepared a Triglot of Manx, Irish and
Gaelic, based upon English, which has never been published. A useful
paper on the language appeared in the _Transactions of the London
Philological Society_ for 1875 by H. Jenner, "The Manx Language: Its
Grammar, Literature and Present State." (E. C. Q.)
(ii). _Brythonic._ The term Brythonic is used to denote the Celtic
dialects of Wales, Brittany and Cornwall. Unlike the Goidels the
Brythonic peoples have no common name for their language. Forms of
Brythonic speech were doubtless current throughout England and Wales and
the Lowlands of Scotland at the time of the Saxon invasion. The S.E. of
Britain may have been extensively Romanized, and it is not impossible
that remnants of Goidelic speech may have lingered on in out-of-the-way
corners. No literary documents dating from this period have been
preserved, but some idea of the character of Brythonic may be gathered
from the numerous inscriptions which have come to light. In the middle
of the 6th century Brythonic was confined to the western half of Britain
south of the Clyde and Forth. The colonization of Britannia minor or
Armorican Brittany during the 5th and 6th centuries will be described
later. In the latter part of the 6th century the W. Saxons pushed their
conquests as far as the estuary of the Severn, and from that time the
Brythons of S.W. Britain were cut off from their kinsmen in Wales. Early
in the 7th century the Brythons of Strathclyde were similarly isolated
by the battle of Chester (613). The kingdom of Strathclyde maintained a
separate existence until the 10th century, and it is generally stated
that Brythonic speech did not die out there until the 12th century. The
question as to how far Brythonic names and words have survived in these
districts has never been properly investigated. Certain it is that
Brythonic numerals survived amongst shepherds in Cumberland, Westmorland
and N.W. Yorkshire down to the second half of the 19th century, just as
herrings are still counted in Manx by Manx fishermen otherwise quite
innocent of the language. Accordingly, from the 7th century onwards
Brythonic became gradually limited in Great Britain to three
districts--Strathclyde, Wales, and Cornwall and Devon. During the 7th
century the Brythons of Wales and Strathclyde often fought side by side
against the Angles, and it is from this period that the name by which
the Welsh call themselves is supposed to date, _Cymro_ < _*Combrox_, pl.
_Cymry_ < _*Combroges_, i.e. "fellow-countrymen" as opposed to W.
_allfro_, Gaul. _Allobroges_, "foreigners." We have no means of
determining when Celtic speech became extinct in the petty states of the
north which retained their independence longest.
The chief features which distinguish the Brythonic from the Goidelic
dialects have already been enumerated. In the course of the 6th and 7th
centuries final short vowels disappeared. In compound names the final
vowel remains in the first component until the 7th century. Short vowels
in other than initial syllables when immediately preceding the stress
(on the historical penultimate) disappear, whilst long ones are
shortened, e.g. Welsh _cardawt_ from Lat. _caritatem_. Other vowels in
unstressed position are apt to be reduced, thus o, u, give i in O.W.
(Mid. W. y). A marked characteristic of Welsh as distinguished from
Cornish and Breton is the treatment of a under the influence of a
following i. In Welsh the result is ei, in Corn. and Bret. e, e.g. Welsh
_seint_, "saints," Bret. _sent_, sing. _sant_. The mutations seem to
have started in the second half of the 6th century in the case of the
tenues.
See J. Loth, _Les Mots latins dans les langues Brittoniques_ (Paris,
1892); J. Loth, _Chrestomathie bretonne_ (Paris, 1890).
(a) _Welsh (Cymraeg)._--It is usual to divide the history of the Welsh
language into three periods--Old, Middle and Modern. To the oldest
period belong the collections of glosses, the earliest of which go back
to about 800. The middle period extends from 1100 to 1500.
As a rule the medial mutation of the tenues and mediae is not denoted
in O. Welsh. Intervocalic g is sometimes retained but generally it has
disappeared, whilst after r and l it is still written. In the course
of the 9th century initial w (v) becomes gu (later gw). As the O.
Welsh documents consist almost entirely of isolated words, we know
scarcely anything about the morphology of the language during this
period. To the middle period belong the ancient poems from the Black
Book of Carmarthen, but the language of these compositions is
evidently much older than the date of the manuscript (12th century),
as it preserves a number of very archaic features. Other important
sources of information for this period are the O. Welsh Laws contained
in a MS. of the 12th century. To a somewhat later date belong the
Mabinogion (14th century MS.), and the prose versions of French
romances published by R. Williams (15th century). In Middle Welsh the
consonant mutations are in general denoted in writing, though not
consistently, and from this period dates the introduction of w and y
(O.W. u, i) to denote vowel sounds. The symbol ll to denote a
voiceless l was already employed in Mid. W. but rh (= voiceless r), dd
(= Eng. th in "thou") and f (= v) either do not appear or only become
regular during the modern period In Mod. W. the orthography is
regularized and does not differ materially from that of the late
medieval documents. In O.W. the old stress on the final syllable (the
historical penult) appears to have been preserved, but during the
middle period the accent was shifted to the penult. In consequence of
this change aw (a) in final syllables is reduced to o in Mod. W., e.g.
Mid. W. _pechawt_ < Lat. _peccatum_, Mod. W. _pechod_.
The comparative wealth of inflection preserved by O. Ir. has almost
entirely disappeared in Welsh. There are only the faintest traces of
the case forms, the dual and the neuter gender. Compared with the
Irish nominal declension according to -o- (-jo-), -a-, -i-, -u-, -s-,
guttural, dental and nasal stems, Welsh only distinguishes the nom.
sing. and plur., the latter sometimes retaining an old formation. Thus
masc. -o- stems show palatal modification, e.g. _corn_, "horn," plur.
_cyrn_ < _*korni_; the plural ending of -u- stems, O. Gaulish _-oves_,
gives O.W. -ou, Mid. W. -eu, Mod. W. -au, e.g. _penneu_, "heads." The
termination _-ones_ of the -n- stems appears as -on. The infixation of
pronominal objects between a verbal particle and the verb itself
continues in use down to the present day as in Breton. In the third
person sing. of the pres. ind. there are instances in the oldest Welsh
of the peculiar alternation between orthotonic and absolute forms
which characterize the Irish paradigms, e.g. _pereid_, "it endures,"
but _ny phara_. The several types of conjugation represented in Irish
have become obscured, traces remaining only in the endings of the
third sing. of the pres. ind., the pret. ind. (Mid. W. -as, -es, -is)
and the pret. passive (Mid. W. -at, -et, -it). The verb system of
Welsh comprises the following tenses: indic. present (also used as
future), imperative, imperfect, preterite (in Mid. W. forms with s
have become prevalent as in Irish, but forms corresponding to the
Irish preterites in t or with reduplication or unreduplicated with
long vowel are not infrequent in the early poetry), pluperfect (a new
formation), pres. and pret. passive. In the subj. early W.
distinguishes pres. and past, but the latter comes to be replaced by
the pluperfect indicative. The sign of the subj. is -h- < s, which
reminds one of the Irish s-subj., though the formation is somewhat
different. There are also traces of a future formation containing h
< s. (See also under WALES.)
History and extent.
We have seen already that Wales began to exist as a separate entity
roughly at the end of the 6th and beginning of the 7th centuries. In
the second half of the 8th century the Welsh were confined in pretty
much their present limits by Offa, king of Mercia, who constructed the
Dyke going by his name, which has approximately remained the political
boundary between England and Wales ever since. From this time onwards
the bitter feeling against England which we find expressed in the
fervid compositions of Iolo Goch and other political bards served to
prevent any serious inroads of English on Welsh-speaking territory.
With the advent of the Tudors, however, there came a great change.
Henry VII. owed his throne in large measure to the support he had
received from Wales and he prided himself on his Welsh ancestry. A
consequence of this was that throughout the 16th century Wales
received exceptionally favourable treatment at the hands of the
English sovereign and parliament. In 1562 a decree was issued ordering
a translation of the Bible to be made into Welsh. All this could
naturally not be without effect on the attitude of the leaders of the
people towards England. The change is already apparent in the poems of
Lewis Glyn Cothi and others. And the striking difference in the manner
in which the Reformation was regarded in Ireland and Wales is worthy
of remark. During the Stuart wars the Welsh nobles fought invariably
on the Royalist side, and there is plenty of other evidence that the
aristocracy of Wales was becoming thoroughly anglicized both in
sentiment and language. At the same time the practice of the Tudors
was reversed in many particulars. Thus it became the custom to appoint
Englishmen ignorant of the national language to the Welsh bishoprics.
In this manner it is not a matter for surprise that a feeling of
estrangement should grow up between the bulk of the population, who
only knew Welsh, and the clergy and nobles, their intellectual
leaders. The neglect of the national language is evident from the
large number of English words which have even crept into such
classical works as Prichard's _Canwyll y Cymry_ and Ellis Wynn's
_Gweledigaethau y Bardd Cwsg_. It is stated that, of the 269 works
published by Welshmen between 1546 and 1644, 44 were in Latin, 184 in
English and only 41 in Welsh, and of these 37 consist of works of
piety. Thus at the beginning of the 18th century there seemed a fair
chance that Welsh would soon become extinct like Cornish.
An extraordinary change was brought about by the Methodist movement in
Wales. The preachers, in order to get hold of the masses, addressed
them in the vernacular, and their efforts were crowned with enormous
success. At the same time a minister of the Established Church,
Griffith Jones, went about Wales establishing lay schools to which
young and old might come to learn to read the Welsh Bible. Between
1737 and 1761 3395 such schools sprang up, at which no fewer than
158,238 persons of all ages learned to read their native language.
After Griffith Jones's death this work was carried on by others,
notably by Charles of Bala (1755-1814), who passed over to Calvinistic
Methodism and whose schools were transformed after the model of the
Sunday schools instituted in 1782 by Robert Raikes. Charles of Bala
was largely instrumental in the founding of the British and Foreign
Bible Society, and Wales was provided with 100,000 copies of the Bible
and Testament at very moderate prices. Bishop's Morgan's version of
the Scriptures made in 1588 (final revision 1620) represents the
speech of North Wales which had remained more or less free from
English influence, so that the language of the Welsh Bible is rightly
regarded as the literary model. Three-fourths of the inhabitants of
Wales belong to the various Nonconformist sects, and therefore pass
almost without exception through the Sunday school, where they are
drilled in its sole object of study, the Welsh Bible.
With the increasing employment of Welsh owing to the Nonconformist
movement there was also awakened a new interest in the past history of
the principality. A society calling itself the _Cymdeithas y
Cymmrodorion_ was founded in London in 1751, and during the succeeding
half-century two periodicals exclusively in Welsh were started, the
one, _Trysorfa y Gwybodaeth_, in 1770, the other, _Cylchgrawn
Cymraeg_, in 1793. The year 1792 witnessed the creation of an
important society, the _Cymdeithas y Cymreigyddion_, in London, in
which the moving spirits were William Owen (Pughe), Owen Jones and
Edward Williams. The results of their indefatigable search for ancient
Welsh manuscripts were published in three volumes under the title
_Myvyrian Archaiology_ (London, 1801-1807). Owen further published an
edition of the greatest medieval Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, and also
the first copious dictionary. But this was not all. In Goronwy Owen
(1722-1769) a poet had arisen whose works could stand comparison with
the compositions of the medieval writers, and it was owing to the
efforts of the three men above mentioned that the national Eisteddfod
(=session, from _eistedd_, "to sit") was revived. The origin of these
literary festivals is shrouded in obscurity. It is recorded that a S.
Welsh prince, Gruffydd ap Rhys, held a festival lasting forty days in
1135 to commemorate a victorious campaign at which poets and minstrels
competed for gifts and other rewards. Gruffydd's son Rhys ap Gruffydd
is reported to have instituted a similar contest in 1176, at which the
successful competitors received a chair whilst the others were given
presents. It would seem that after the loss of Welsh independence a
carefully graded order and a system of jealously guarded rules came
into existence. Similar national festivals were held under royal
patronage under Henry VIII. in 1523 and again under Elizabeth in 1568.
From 1568 until 1819 no general eisteddfod for all Wales was held.
Since 1819 the national festival has been held annually and every
little town has its own local celebration. Hence the Nonconformist
Sunday school, the pulpit and the eisteddfod may be regarded as the
most potent factors in resisting the inroads of English. The whole
question of the vitality of Welsh and what may be called the political
and social history of the language is treated in great detail by H.
Zimmer, "Der Pan-Keltismus in Gross-britannien und Irland," i., in
_Preussische Jahrbucher_, vol. xcii. (1898). In elementary schools in
Wales the use of Welsh has been permitted since 1893.
With regard to the extent over which Welsh is spoken a detailed map is
given in J.E. Southall's _Welsh Language Census of 1891_ (Newport,
1895). A line drawn from the southern end of the estuary of the Dee
about 2 m. W. of Connah's Quay to Aberthaw in Glamorgan would
practically include all those districts where Welsh is spoken by 60%
of the population, and considerable deductions would have to be made
for parts of Flint, Montgomery, most of Radnor and the N. part of
Brecon. Little is spoken in the southern half of the Gower peninsula
or in S. Pembrokeshire. Over much of Anglesey 97-1/2% of the population
spoke Welsh and in parts of Cardiganshire 98.3%. Of a total population
in 1901 of 2,012,876, 929,824 were returned as speakers of Welsh, of
whom 280,905 were monoglots. That Welsh is a very living language may
be gathered from the following statistics. Between 1801 and 1898 no
fewer than 8425 volumes were published in the vernacular, whilst in
1895 there were appearing regularly 2 quarterlies, 2 bi-monthlies, 28
religious and literary monthlies and 25 weekly papers. In 1909 the
number was probably greater. The danger for Welsh lies rather in the
direction of internal decay. The speech of the people is saturated
with English words and idiom, and modern writers like Daniel Owen
submit to the same influence instead of returning to the classical
models of the 17th century.
Much remains to be done as regards the classification of the modern
Welsh dialects. It is usual to divide them into four groups--(1) Powys
(N.E.); (2) Gwynedd (N.W.); (3) Dyfed (S.W.); (4) Gwent (S.E.). One of
the chief points on which N. and S. diverge is the pronunciation of
the vowels i, u, y, which in the S. all tend to become i. The
difference between N. and S. was noticeable as early as the time of
Giraldus Cambrensis. See M. Nettlau, _Beitrage zur cymrischen
Grammatik_ (Leipzig, 1887), also _Rev. celt._ ix. pp. 64 ff., 113 ff.;
T. Darlington, "Some Dialectal Boundaries in Mid-Wales," _Trans, of
the Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion_, 1900-1901. The only scientific
description of a living dialect is "Spoken N. Welsh," by H. Sweet,
_Trans, of the London Phil. Soc._, 1882-1884.
AUTHORITIES ON WELSH LANGUAGE.--For the study of older Welsh:--J.C.
Zeuss, _Grammatica Celtica_ (Berlin[2], 1871)--an index to the O.
Welsh glosses cited in this work was compiled by V. Tourneur, _Archiv
f. celt. Lexikographie_, iii. 109-137; J. Strachan, _An Introduction
to Early Welsh_, with a Reader (Manchester, 1909); J. Rhys, _Lectures
on Welsh Philology_ (London[2], 1879). Editions of texts--_The Black
Book of Carmarthen_, facsimile edition by J. Gwenogvryn Evans
(Pwllheli, 1906); J. Rhys and J. Gwenogvryn Evans, _The Text of the
Mabinogion_ (Oxford, 1887); _The Myvyrian_ _Archaiology of Wales_
(1801-1807; reprinted Denbigh, 1870); W.F. Skene, _The Four Ancient
Books of Wales_ (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1868); Aneurin Owen, _Ancient
Laws and Institutes of Wales_ (London, 1841); facsimile edition by
A.W. Wade-Evans, _Welsh Medieval Law_ (Oxford, 1909); K. Meyer,
_Peredur ap Efrawc_ with glossary (Leipzig, 1887); R. Williams,
_Selections from the Hengwrt Manuscripts_ (London, 1876-1892); J.E.
Southall, _Wales and Her Language_ (Newport, 1892). The earliest Welsh
grammar was published as long ago as 1567 in Milan by Griffiths
Roberts, reprinted in facsimile as supplement to the _Revue celtique_
(Paris, 1883). An account of the language was prefixed to Owen Pughe's
Dictionary (1803). During the 19th century many manuals of indifferent
value saw the light of day. The most authoritative works are:--T.
Rowland, _A Grammar of the Welsh Language_ (Wrexham, 1853^1, 1876^4),
(still the most complete work), the same author also published a
companion volume of _Welsh Exercises_ (Wrexham, n.d.); W. Spurrell, _A
Grammar of the Welsh Language_ (Carmarthen^3, 1870); E. Anwyl, _A
Welsh Grammar for Schools, (i.) Accidence, (ii.) Syntax_ (London^2,
1898). Other useful manuals for the beginner:--T. Jones, _A Guide to
Welsh_, pts. i. ii. new ed. (Wrexham, n.d.); S.J. Evans, _The Elements
of Welsh Grammar_ (Newport^3, 1903). Dictionaries:--The first Welsh
dictionary was compiled by William Salesbury (London, 1547; facsimile
reprint, London, 1877); W. Owen Pughe, _A Dictionary of the Welsh
Language_ (2 vols., London, 1803; reprinted Denbigh, 1870); W.
Spurrell, _Welsh-English and English-Welsh Dictionary_ (Carmarthen^6,
1904); a smaller one by W. Richards in 2 vols. (Wrexham, n.d.), and
many others. A dictionary on a large scale was planned by D. Silvan
Evans and subsidized by the government. Only A-Dd has, however,
appeared (Carmarthen, 1893-1906), cp. J. Loth in _Archiv. f. celt.
Lex._ vol. i. for additions and corrections. A survey of Welsh
periodical literature is contained in T.M. Jones's _Llenyddiaeth fy
Ngwlad_ (Treffynnon, 1893). For Welsh folklore see J. Rhys, _Celtic
Folklore, Welsh and Manx_ (Oxford, 1901). H.H. Vaughan, _Welsh
Proverbs_ (London, 1889), also _Rev. celt._ iii. 419 ff. See also G.
Dottin, _Revue de synthese historique_, vi. 317 ff.; H. Zimmer and
L.C. Stern in _Kultur der Gegenwart_, Teil 1, Abt. xi. 1.
(E. C. Q.)
(b) _Breton_.--Breton (_Brezonek_) is the name given to the language
spoken by those Britons who fled from the south-west of England to
Armorica (see BRITTANY) in the 5th and 6th centuries of our era to avoid
being harassed by the Saxons. The first migration probably took place
about 450. The Dumnonii and Cornovii founded small states in Brittany,
or Britannia Minor, as it was termed, and were followed in the second
half of the 6th and into the 7th century by a long stream of refugees
(cf. J. Loth, _L'Emigration bretonne_, Paris, 1883; A. de la Borderie,
_Histoire de la Bretagne^2_, vol. i., 1905).
In the earliest stages it is difficult to distinguish Breton from
Welsh. The history of the language may be divided into Old Breton from
the 7th to the 11th centuries, Middle Breton from the 11th to the 17th
centuries, and Modern Breton. In Old Breton the only material we
possess consists of glosses and names occurring in lives of saints,
Frankish authors, and charters. However, we find a few characteristics
which serve to show that the old glosses are really Breton and not
Welsh. Thus, an original a never becomes a diphthong (au, aw) in Old
Breton, but remains o. In Bret, gn becomes gr. Further, in O.W.
pretonic u is weakened to an indeterminate sound written i and later
y, a phenomenon which does not occur in Breton, e.g. Lat. _culcita_
appears in O.W. as _cilcet_, but in O. Br. as _colcet_. A marked
characteristic of Breton is the confusion of i and e, e.g. Ir. _lis_,
"court," W. _llys_, Br. _les_. In Old Breton as in Old Welsh neither
the initial nor the medial mutations are expressed in writing, whilst
in Middle Breton only the latter are regularly denoted. In this period
the language diverges very rapidly from Welsh. As prominent features
we may mention the following. Stressed o (=Prim. Celt. and Ir. a)
becomes eu, in unstressed syllables e; thus the suffix _-aco_ becomes
_-euc_ and later -ec, but in Welsh _-auc_ and later -oc, -og.
Postvocalic -tr, -tl become -dr, -dl as in Welsh, but in Middle Breton
they pass into -zr, -zl, which in the modern language appear as _-er,
-el; e.g._ Mid. Br. _lazr_, Mod. Br. _laer_, "robber," W. _lleidr_,
Lat. _latro_. Further, -lt becomes -ot, -ut, e.g. Br. _aot_, _aout_,
"cliff," W. _allt_; Br. _autrou_, "lord," Ir. _altram_, W. _alltraw_,
_athraw_, Corn. _altrou_; and, more important still, th, [+a] (W. dd)
become s, z, e.g. Mid. Br. _clezeff_, "sword," Mod. Br. _kleze_, W.
_cleddyf_. The orthography only followed the pronunciation very
slowly, and it is not until 1659 that we find any attempt made to
reform the spelling. In this year a Jesuit priest, Julien Maunoir (Br.
Maner), published a manual in which a new spelling is employed, and it
is usual to date Modern Breton from the appearance of this book,
although in reality it marks no new epoch in the history of the
language. It is only now that the initial mutations are consistently
denoted in writing (medially they are already written in the 11th
century), and the differences between the dialects first come into
view at this time. As in Welsh the accent is withdrawn during the
middle period from the final to the penultimate (except in the Vannes
dialect), which causes the modern unstressed vowel to be reduced in
many cases. Again, in Old Welsh and Old Breton a short stressed vowel
in words of one syllable was lengthened, e.g. _tad_, "father," pl.
_tadau_, but in Modern Breton the accent tends to lengthen all
stressed vowels. Breton has gone its own way in the matter of initial
mutation. The nasal mutation has been entirely given up in the initial
position, whilst a new mutation, called medial provection, has arisen
in the case of b, d, g, which become p, k, t after a few words which
originally ended for the most part in z or ch. The vocalic mutation of
initial g in Breton is _c'h_. We may also make mention of one or two
other points on which Breton differs widely from Welsh. Breton has
given up the combination ng, e.g. Mid. Br. _moe_, Mod. Br. _moue_,
"mane," W. _mwng_, Ir. _mong_. The language betrays a fondness for
nasalized vowels, and in this connexion it may be noted that v
representing an original m (W. f, Ir. mh), though generally written ff
in Middle Breton, now frequently appears as nv; Mid. Br. _claff_, Mod.
Br. _klanv_, "sick, ill," W. _claf_, M. Ir. _clam_. Final g after r
and l and sometimes in monosyllables after a vowel is represented in
Breton by _c'h_, whilst in Welsh in the one case we find a vowel and
in the other nil, e.g. Br. _erc'h_, "snow," W. _eiry_, _eira_; Br.
_lec'h_, "place," W. _lle_. In Welsh mb, nd immediately preceding the
stress appear in the modern language as mm, nn but in Breton we find
mp, nl, e.g. Br. _kantol_, "candle," W. _cannwyll_, Lat. _candela_;
Br. _kemper_, "confluence" (in place names), W. _cymmer_, Ir.
_combor_.
With regard to the extent of country over which Breton is spoken we
shall do well to note the seats of the old Breton bishoprics. These
were Quimper, St Pol de Leon, Treguier, St Brieuc, St Malo, Dol and
Vannes. Under Count Nominoe the Bretons succeeded in throwing off the
Frankish yoke (841-845) and founded an independent state. At this time
of greatest political expansion the language boundary was formed by a
line which started roughly a little to the west of Mont St Michel at
the mouth of the Couesnon, and stretched to the mouth of the Loire.
During the next three centuries, however, in consequence of political
events which cannot be enumerated here, we find French encroaching
rapidly on Breton, and the old dioceses of Dol, St Malo, St Brieuc,
and in part Vannes became Romance-speaking (cp. J. Loth, _Revue
celtique_, xxviii. 374-403). So that since the 13th and 14th centuries
the boundary between French and Breton begins in the north about
Plouha (west of St Brieuc Bay), and stretches to the mouth of the
Vilaine in the south. That is to say, the Breton speakers are confined
to the department of Finistere and the west of the departments
Cotes-du-Nord and Morbihan. Lower Brittany contains a population of
1,360,000, of whom roughly 1,250,000 speak Breton. The number of
monoglot Bretons is stated to have been 768,000 in 1878, 679,000 in
1885, and over 500,000 in 1898. There is an infinity of dialects and
subdialects in Brittany, but it is usual to divide them into four
groups. These are the dialects of (1) Leon in Finistere; (2)
Cornouailles in Finistere, the Cotes-du-Nord and a part of Morbihan;
(3) Treguier in the Cotes-du-Nord and Finistere; (4) Vannes in
Morbihan and a portion of the Cotes-du-Nord. The first three resemble
one another fairly closely, but the speech of Vannes has gone its own
way entirely. The dialect of Leon is regarded as the literary dialect,
thanks to Legonidec.
The modern language is unfortunately saturated with words borrowed
from French which form at least a quarter of the whole vocabulary. The
living speech is further characterized by innumerable cases of
consonantal metathesis and by parasitic nasalization. Loth gives
specimens of the most important varieties of Breton in his
_Chrestomathie bretonne_, pp. 363-380, but here we must confine
ourselves to pointing out the two most salient differences between the
speech of Vannes and the rest of Brittany. In Vannes the stress has
not been shifted from the final syllable. In Haute-Cornouailles and
Goelo there is a tendency to withdraw the stress on to the
antepenultimate, whilst in Treguier certain enclitics attract the
accent to the final. s, z of the other dialects representing Welsh th
become h in Vannes, e.g. W. _caeth_, Br. _keaz, kez_, "poor,
miserable," Vannes _keah, keh_. This phenomenon occurs sporadically in
other dialects. It may also be mentioned that Prim. Celt, non-initial
d, W. dd, is retained as z in Leon but disappears when final or
standing between vowels in the other dialects, e.g. O. Br. _fid_, W.
_ffydd_, "faith," Leon _feiz_, in Cornouailles, Treguier and Vannes,
_fe_. It is doubtful if the most serious differences between the
dialects are older than the 16th century.
In the middle ages the language of the Breton aristocracy was French.
Upper Brittany was politically more important than the western
portion. The consequence was that no patronage was extended to the
vernacular, and Breton sank to the level of a patois with no unity for
literary purposes. But a new era dawned with the beginning of the 19th
century. The national consciousness was awakened at the time of the
Revolution, when the Bretons became aware of the difference between
themselves and their French neighbours. It may be mentioned by the way
that the Breton language was regarded with suspicion by the leaders of
the First Republic and attempts were made to suppress it. A Breton
named Legonidec had to flee to England for fighting against the
Republic. He came under the influence of the movement in Wales, and on
his return sought to create a Breton literary language. He published
an excellent grammar (_Grammaire celto-bretonne_, Paris, 1807) and a
dictionary (_Dictionnaire breton-francais_, Paris, 1821), from which
he omitted the numerous French words which had crept into the language
and for which native terms already existed. Legonidec's example fired
a number of writers with zeal for their native tongue and the clergy
became interested. Under their auspices manuals of Breton were
published and the language was utilized in a number of schools. A
society called the _Association Bretonne_ was founded in the year
1844. But under the Second Empire, for reasons which are not easy to
discover, this Breton awakening was declared to be contrary to the
interests of the state, and all the means at the disposal of a highly
centralized government like that of France were employed to throttle
the movement. Down to the present day the use of Breton is strictly
forbidden in all the state schools, and the influence of the Roman
Catholic clergy has for the most part been hostile to the language.
However, the attitude of the government aroused considerable
dissatisfaction in the early 'nineties, and in 1896 the _Association
Bretonne_ (disbanded in 1859 and reconstructed in 1873) appointed a
permanent committee with the object of preserving and propagating the
national language. At the same time some of the clergy headed by Abbe
Buleon began to move, and Breton was introduced into many of the
schools not under state control. In 1898 was founded the _Union
Regionaliste Bretonne_, the most important section of which endeavours
to foster the native speech in conjunction with the _Comite de
preservation du breton_ (founded 1896). In 1899 the annual meeting of
the U.R.B. was modelled on the lines of the Irish Oireachtas, the
Welsh Eisteddfod and the Scottish Mod, and festivals of this kind have
been held ever since. Many Breton newspapers publish columns in
Breton, thus _Ar Bobl_ (a weekly newspaper founded in 1904 and
published at Carhaix) frequently devotes half its columns to the
language. But there is also a weekly four-page newspaper which is
wholly in Breton. This is _Kroaz ar Vretoned_, edited by F. Vallee and
published at St Brieuc. In addition to this there are three monthly
magazines wholly in Breton. The first is _Ar Vro_, edited by the poet
Jaffrennou, and in 1908 in its fifth year. The second is _Dihunamb_,
written in the dialect of Vannes and started in 1905. The third is
_Feiz ha Breiz_, started 1899.
AUTHORITIES FOR BRETON.--For the external history of Breton see H.
Zimmer, "Die keltische Bewegung in der Bretagne," _Preussische
Jahrbucher_ for 1899, xcix. 454-497. For Old and Middle Breton, J.
Loth, _Chrestomathie bretonne_ (Paris, 1890), and the same writer's
_Vocabulaire vieux-breton_ (Paris, 1884). Loth and E. Ernault have
been indefatigable in investigating the history of the language. Their
numerous contributions are mainly to be found scattered through the
_Revue celtique, Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie_ and the
_Annales de Bretagne_. Ernault has also published _Glossaire
moyen-breton_ in 2 vols. (Paris, 1895-1896); _Dictionnaire
etymologique du moyen-breton_ (Paris, 1888). Another etymological
dictionary was published by V. Henry (Paris, 1900). Grammars,
&c.:--Dialect of Leon: Legonidec, _Grammaire celto-bretonne_ (Paris,
1807, 1838[2], also contained in H. de la Villemarque's edition of
Legonidec's Dictionary); F. Vallee, _Lecons elementaires de grammaire
bretonne_ (St Brieuc, 1902); E. Ernault, _Petite Grammaire bretonne_
(St Brieuc, 1897, the latter also takes account of the dialects of
Treguier and Cornouailles). Dialect of Treguier: L. le Clerc,
_Grammaire bretonne_ (St Brieuc, 1908); J. Hingant, _Elements de la
grammaire bretonne_ (Treguier, 1868); P. le Roux, "Mutations et
assimilations de consonnes dans le dialecte armoricain de Pleubian,"
_Annales de Bretagne_, xii. 3-31. Dialect of Vannes: A. Guillevic and
P. le Goff, _Grammaire bretonne du dialecte de Vannes_ (Vannes, 1902);
_Exercises sur la grammaire bretonne_ (Vannes, 1903); H. d'Arbois de
Jubainville, "Etude phonetique sur le dialecte breton de Vannes,"
_Revue celtique_, i. 85 ff. 211 ff.; E. Ernault, "Le Dialecte
vannetais de Sarzeau," _Rev. celt._ iii. 47 ff., 232 ff.; J. Guillome,
_Grammaire francaise-bretonne_ (Vannes, 1836). As a curiosity we
mention P. Treasure, _An Introduction to Breton Grammar_ (Carmarthen,
1903). Dictionaries: Legonidec, _Dictionnaire francais-breton_ (St
Brieuc, 1847), _Breton-Francais_ (St Brieuc, 1850), both republished
by de la Villemarque and representing the Leon dialect; A. Troude,
_Nouveau Dictionnaire pratique francais et breton du dialecte de Leon
avec les acceptations diverses dans les dialectes de Vannes, de
Treguier, et de Cornouailles_ (Brest, 1869), and _Nouveau Dictionnaire
pratique breton-francais_ (Brest, 1876); E. Ernault, "Supplement aux
dictionnaires bretons-francais," _Revue celtique_, iv. 145-170. The
Breton words in Gallo, the French patois of Upper Brittany, were
collected by E. Ernault, _Revue celtique_, v. 218 ff.
(c) _Cornish._--The ancient language of Cornwall (_Kernuak, Carnoack_)
stood in a much closer relation to Breton than to Welsh,[1] though in
some respects it sides with the latter against the former.
It agrees with Breton on the following points:--It has given up the
nasal mutation of initials but provects the mediae. Prim. Celt. a is
not diphthongized, but becomes e, e.g. Corn, _ler_, "floor," Br.
_leur_, W. _llawr_, Ir. _lar_. _Ng_ is lost as in Breton, e.g. _toy_,
"to swear," Br. _toui_, W. _tyngu_, Ir. _tongu_; nd becomes nt before
the stress and not nn as in Welsh, e.g. Corn. Br. _hanter_, "half," W.
_hanner_. Cornish like Breton does not prefix a vowel to words
beginning with s + consonant, e.g. Corn. _spirit_, later _spyrys_, Br.
_spered_, W. _yspryd_. On the other hand, O. Cornish does not confuse
i and e to the same extent as Bret., e.g. W. _helyg_, "willow," O.
Cornish _heligen_, Br. _halek_. Further, Cornish does not change th, d
to s, z as in Breton, _e.g. beth_, "grave," Br. _bez_, W. _bedd_, and
initial g disappears in the vocalic mutation as in Welsh. Peculiar to
Cornish is the change of non-initial t, d to s, z. This occurs in the
oldest Cornish after n, l, e.g. O. Corn, _nans_, "valley," W. _nant_;
Corn. _tas_, "father," W. _tad_. A feature of later Cornish is the
introduction of a d before post-vocalic m, n, e.g. _pedn_, "head," W.
_pen_. In later Cornish the accent seems to have fallen on the
penultimate as in Modern Welsh and Breton.
In 936 the "Welsh" were driven out of Exeter by AEthelstan, and from
that time the Tamar appears to have formed a general boundary between
English and Cornish, though there seems to be evidence that even as
late as the reign of Elizabeth Cornish was spoken in a few places to
the east of that river. The decay of Cornish has been largely
attributed to the Reformation. Neither the Prayer-book nor the
Scriptures were translated into the vernacular, and we find the same
apathy on the part of the Church of England in Cornwall as in Wales
and Ireland. Unfortunately the Methodist movement came at a time when
it was too late to save the language. By 1600 Cornish had been driven
into the western parts of the duchy and in 1662 we are informed by
John Ray that few of the children could speak it. Lhuyd gives a list
of the parishes in which Cornish was spoken, but goes on to state that
every one speaks English. In 1735 there were only a few people along
the coast between Penzance and Land's End who understood Cornish, and
Dolly Pentreath of Mousehole, who died in 1777, is commonly stated to
have been the last person who spoke it, though Jenner seems to show
that there were others who lived until well into the 19th century who
were able to converse in the dialect. However, the modern English
speech of West Cornwall is full of Celtic words, and nine-tenths of
the places and people from the Tamar to Land's End bear Cornish names.
Celtic words still in use are to be found in Jago's _Dialect of
Cornwall_ (Truro, 1882); thus the name for the dog-fish is _morgy_,
"sea-dog."
AUTHORITIES FOR CORNISH.--A mass of details about Cornish is collected
in H. Jenner's _Handbook of the Cornish Language_ (London, 1904). (Cf.
J. Loth's review in the _Revue celtique_, xxvii. 93.) Lhuyd's
_Archaeologica Britannica_ (1707) contains a grammar of the language
as spoken in his day, and a _Sketch of Cornish Grammar_ is to be found
as an appendix to Norris's _Ancient Cornish Drama_. A dictionary was
published by R. Williams entitled _Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum_
(Landovery, 1865), to which W. Stokes published a supplement of about
2000 words in the _Transactions of the London Philological Society_
for 1868-1869. We may also mention the _English-Cornish Dictionary_,
by F.W.P. Jago (Plymouth, 1887), and a _Glossary of Cornish Names_, by
J. Bannister (Truro, 1871). W. Stokes published a Glossary to _Beunans
Meriasek_ in the _Archiv fur celtische Lexikographie_, i. 101, and
important articles by J. Loth have appeared in the _Revue celtique_,
vols. xviii. to xxiv. W.S. Lach-Szyrma, "Les Derniers Echos de la
langue cornique," _Revue celtique_, iii. 239 ff. H. Jenner, "Some
Rough Notes on the Present Pronunciation of Cornish Names," _Rev.
celt._ xxiv. 300-305.
III. THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANCIENT PICTS.--The evidence from which we can
draw any conclusions as to the affinities of the language of the Picts
is so extremely scanty that the question has been the subject of great
controversy. The Picts are first mentioned by Eumenius (A.D. 297), who
regarded them as having inhabited Britain in the time of Caesar. In the
year 368 they are described by Ammianus Marcellinus as invading the
Roman province of Britain in conjunction with the Irish Scots. In
Columba's time we find the whole of Scotland east of Drumalban and north
of the Forth divided into two kingdoms--north and south Pictland--and it
is reasonable to identify the Picts, at any rate in part, with the
Caledonians of the classical authors. Galloway and Co. Down were also
inhabited by Picts. Bede in enumerating the languages of Britain
mentions those of the Britons, Picts, Scots and the English. The names
by which the Picts are known in history have aroused considerable
discussion. It seems natural to connect Lat. _Picti_ with the _Pictones_
and _Pictavi_ of Gaul, but in Irish they are known as _Cruithne_, which
appears in Welsh as _Prydyn_, "Pict"; cp. _Prydein_, "Britain," forms
corresponding to the earliest Greek name for these islands, [Greek:
nesoi Pretanikai].
Three conflicting theories have been held as to the character of the
Pictish language. Rhys, relying on the strange character of the Scottish
Ogam inscriptions, pronounces it to be non-Celtic and non-Indo-European.
In this he has been followed by Zimmer, who bases his argument on the
Pictish rule of succession. Skene maintained that the Picts spoke a
language nearly allied to Goidelic, whilst Stokes, Loth, Macbain,
D'Arbois and Meyer are of opinion that Pictish was more closely related
to Brythonic. Of personal names mentioned by classical writers we have
Calgacus and Argentocoxus, both of which are certainly Celtic. The names
occurring in Ptolemy's description of Scotland have a decidedly Celtic
character, and they seem, moreover, to bear a greater resemblance to
Brythonic than to Goidelic, witness such tribal designations as Epidii,
Cornavii, Damnonii, Decantae, Novantae. In the case of all these names,
however, it should be borne in mind that they probably reached the
writers of antiquity through Brythonic channels. Bede mentions that the
east end of the Antonine Wall terminated at a place called in Pictish
_Pean-fahel_, and in Saxon _Penneltun_. _Pean_ resembles Old Welsh
_penn_, "head," Old Irish _cenn_, and the second element may possibly be
connected with Gaelic _fal_, Welsh _gwawl_, "rampart." The names of the
kings in the Pictish chronicles are not an absolutely trustworthy guide,
as owing to the Pictish rule of succession the bearers of the names may
in many cases have been Brythons. The names of some of them occur in one
source in a Goidelic, in another in a Brythonic form. It is of course
possible that the southern part of Pictish territory was divided between
Goidels and Brythons, the population being very much mixed. On the other
hand there are a number of elements in place-names on Pictish ground
which do not occur in Wales or Ireland. Such are _pet_, _pit_, "farm"
(?), _for_, _fother_, _fetter_, _foder_, "lower" (?). _Aber_,
"confluence," on the contrary, is pure Brythonic (Gaelic _inver_).
Though the majority of scholars are of opinion that Pictish was nearly
akin to the Brythonic dialects, we are entirely in the dark as to the
manner in which that language was ousted by the Goidelic speech of the
Dalriadic Scots. In view of the comparatively unimportant part played
for a considerable period in Scottish affairs by the colony from
Ireland, it is well-nigh incredible that Pictish should have been
supplanted by Gaelic.
AUTHORITIES.--J. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_ (London[2], 1905), _The Welsh
People_ (London[3], 1902), "The Language and Inscriptions of the
Northern Picts," in _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland_ (1892); H. Zimmer, "Das Mutterrecht der Pikten," in
_Savignys Zeitschrift_ (1895); also trans. by G. Henderson in _Leabhar
nan Gleann_ (Inverness, 1898); W.F. Skene, _Celtic Scotland_
(Edinburgh, 1876); A. Macbain in appendix to reprint of Skene's
_Highlanders of Scotland_ (Stirling, 1902); A. Macbain, "Ptolemy's
Geography of Scotland," in _Transactions of the Gaelic Society of
Inverness_, xviii. 267-288; W. Stokes, _Bezzenbergers Beitrage_,
xviii. 267 ff.; H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, _Les Druides et les dieux
celtiques a forme d'animaux_ (Paris, 1906). The various theories have
been recently reviewed and criticized by T. Rice Holmes in an appendix
to his _Caesar's Invasion of Britain_ (London, 1907).
IV. HISTORY OF CELTIC PHILOLOGY.--For many centuries the affinities of
the Celtic languages were the subject of great dispute. The languages
were in turn regarded as descended from Hebrew, Teutonic and Scythian.
The first attempt to treat the dialects comparatively was made by Edward
Lhuyd in his _Archaeologia Britannica_ (Oxford, 1707), but the work of
this scholar seems to have remained unnoticed. A century later Adelung
in Germany divided the dialects into true Celtic (= Goidelic) and Celtic
influenced by Teutonic (= Brythonic). But it took scholars a long time
to recognize that these languages belonged to the Indo-European family.
Thus they were excluded by Bopp in his comparative grammar, though he
did not fail to notice certain resemblances between Celtic and Sanskrit.
James Pritchard was the first to demonstrate the true relationship of
the group in his _Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations_ (London, 1831),
but his conclusions were not accepted. As late as 1836 Pott denied the
Indo-European connexion. A year later Pictet resumed Pritchard's
arguments, and Bopp himself in 1838 admitted the languages into the
charmed circle, showing in an able paper entitled _Uber die keltischen
Sprachen_ that the initial mutations were due to the influence of
terminations now lost. But it was reserved to a Bavarian historian, J.C.
Zeuss (1806-1856), to demonstrate conclusively the Indo-European origin
of the Celtic dialects. Zeuss, who may worthily rank with Grimm and Diez
among the greatest German philologists, rediscovered the Old Irish
glosses on the continent, and on them he reared the magnificent
structure which goes by his name. The _Grammatica Celtica_ was first
published in 1853. The material contained in this monumental work was
greatly extended by a series of important publications by Whitley Stokes
and Hermann Ebel, so much so that the latter was commissioned to prepare
a second edition, which appeared in 1871. Stokes has rendered the
greatest service to the cause of Celtic studies by the publication of
countless texts in Irish, Cornish and Breton. In 1870 the _Revue
celtique_ (vol. xxviii. in 1908) was founded by Henri Gaidoz, whose
mantle later fell upon H. d'Arbois de Jubainville. In 1879 E. Windisch
facilitated the study of Irish by publishing a grammar of Old Irish, and
a year later a volume of important Middle Irish texts with an exhaustive
glossary, the first of its kind. Since then Windisch and Stokes have
collaborated to bring out some of the greatest monuments of Irish
literature in the series of _Irische Texte_. The text of the Wurzburg
glosses was published by Zimmer (1881) and by Stokes (1887), and that of
the Milan glosses by Ascoli. An important step forward was the discovery
of the laws of the Irish accent made simultaneously by Zimmer and
Thurneysen. This discovery led to a thorough investigation of the
difficult verb system of Old Irish--a task which has largely occupied
the attention of Strachan in England, Thurneysen and Zimmer in Germany,
and Pedersen and Sarauw in Denmark. In a sense the publication of the
_Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus_ (Cambridge, 1901-1903) may be regarded as
marking the close of this epoch. The older stages of Irish have hitherto
so monopolized the energies of scholars that other departments of Celtic
philology save Breton have been left in large measure unworked. J.
Strachan had begun to tap the mine of the Old Welsh poems when his
career was cut short by death. J. Loth and E. Ernault have concentrated
their attention on Breton, and can claim that the development of the
speech of Brittany has been more thoroughly investigated than that of
any other Celtic language. The number of periodicals devoted entirely to
Celtic studies has increased considerably of recent years. In 1896 K.
Meyer and L. C. Stern founded the _Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie_
(now in its 7th volume), and in 1897 the _Archiv fur celtische
Lexikographie_ began to appear under the direction of K. Meyer and W.
Stokes. As a supplement to the latter Meyer has been publishing his
invaluable contributions to Middle Irish lexicography. In Ireland a new
periodical styled _Eriu_ was started by the Irish School of Learning in
1904. The Scottish _Celtic Review_, dealing more particularly with
Scottish and Irish Gaelic, began to appear in 1903, and the
_Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness_ are in the 26th
volume. For Wales we have _Y Cymmrodor_ since 1877, and the
_Transactions of the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion_ since 1892, and for
Brittany the _Annales de Bretagne_, published by the Faculty of Letters
at Rennes (founded 1886).
See V. Tourneur, _Esquisse d'une histoire des etudes celtiques_
(Liege, 1905). (E. C. Q.)