Celtic Studies, by Dr

{ I > J(y'x<i 4^^ M v^^m W' f^^^^^ BW \k y\ (/. 0Mm CELTIC STUD t E S' : —t~-^- FR03I THE GERMAN OF D R . IT E R J\I ANN E B E L INTRODUCTION fOOTS, STEMS, AND,DERIVATIVES, AND ON CASE-ENDIXGS OF INDO-EUROrEAN LANGUAGES. BY WILLIxV:\I K. SULLIVAN, PH.D., M.R.I.A., PROFESSOR IN' THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, AND IN THE 3IUSEU3I OF IRISU INDUSTRY. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, U HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; AND 20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 1863 JOHN F. FOWLER, PRINTER, 3 CROW STREET, AND 24 TEMPLE LANE, DUBLIN. PKEFACE. The history of the variation of opinion about the Celtic languages would make a curious and instructive chapter of literary- history. Their relationships with other languages, like those of the peoples who spoke them with other branches of the human race, depended rather upon the dictates of passion than of reason. There was indeed but little room in most cases for the exercise of the reason, because those who theorized about the Celtic languages were generally wholly ignorant of them, or, at least, knew them very imperfectly, and in their most modem and corrupt forms. The rudest tongue is dear to those whose first thoughts were expressed in it. The pride which the Irish or Welsh take in their language is legitimate, and the exagger- ated estimate which they may sometimes form of the beauties and powers of their respective dialects can readily be pardoned. But the same indulgence cannot be extended to writers who contribute to bring science into discredit, and contempt upon the language and literature of a people, and therefore upon the people themselves, by fanciful and baseless speculations. It matters not whether, like Vallancey's, these speculations tended to exalt the Celtic language, or, Uke Pinkerton's, to degrade it: both are injurious to the growth of tnie learning. Indeed, the foiTQcr are the worse, because passages like the following, written by Mr. Pinkerton, could only degrade the author: " The mythology of the Celtse (which is yet to be discovered !) re- sembled in all probability that of the Hottentots or others, the rudest savages, as the Celtse anciently were, and are little better at present, being incapable of any progress in society". I have called up the literary shade of Pinkerton from the oblivion into which he has sunk, not because these old opinions are now of 1 ! iv Preface. much consequence of tliemselves, but because they show one of the extremes of opinion once held regarding the affinities of the Celtic language. This kind of literature now very rarely disgraces comparative philology, but, as may be expected in a subject like ethnology, which, as yet, scarcely deserves the name of a science, atid in which mere assertion too frequently usurps the place of inductive hypotheses, it still constitutes, if not an important, at least a very popular element. There is scarcely a language in the world between which and the Celtic some one has not attempted to prove a connection ; or, to speak more precisely, its chief existing dialect, the Irish. The disciples of the Pinkerton school were, of course, desirous that its affinities should be with the languages of the inferior races, and accordingly one found a great similarity between it and the tongue of the Jaloffs, on the coast of Africa ; another found that it was a distant cousin of that of the Leni Lenappe, a great family of American Indians, who formerly possessed the region of the Susquehannah. Others, again, found its true relations in the Lappish, the Ostyak, the Tungus dialects, and other tongues of North Siberia. On the other hand, the admirers of the Celtic tongue endeavoured to establish what, at one tune, was considered the noblest of origins, a Hebrew descent. This Semitic relationship was, no doubt, suggested by the traditions of an eastern origin, which pervade the Irish chronicles. As every ethnological puzzle was attempted to be solved by means of the Ten lost Tribes of Israel, it was of course suggested that the Irish were descended from them ; the favourite Semitic ancestors of the Celts of the west were, however, not the Israelites, but their cousin-germans the Phenicians ; as p is always represented in the Irish by/, the hearla fene was the lingua punica: and then was not the hdlltaine of May-eve a remnant of the worship of Baal ? Carthage was founded by the Phenicians ; the Carthagi- nians must, therefore, have been cousins of the Irish, and, consequently, the fragments of their language preserved in the Pgenulus of Plautus may be interpreted through the Irish ; and so they were. But Sir W. Bctham left Vallancey a great way behind, when he found that the affinities between the Irish and the Hebrew were often so close that he could not detect closer between the Irish and Welsh Preface. v There seems to have always existed among writers on languages a behef in the great antiquity of the Celtic tongues, —that they were much more ancient than most other European languages ; and imder tliis impression is was suggested that the Greek, Latin, and even the Sanskrit tongues were derived from them, or rather from a primitive Celtic mother-tongue. If even a fourth or fifth cousinship could not be pennitted with the Greek or the Gothic, Iioav could it be tolerated that Celtic should be made the progenitor of them all ? Accordingly, such pretensions were thus summarily dismissed by a writer who, whatever may have been Ms pretensions as an Oiientalist, seems to have had no claim to be considered a Celtic scholar, except perhaps that of having a Gaedlielic name. *' The Celtic, therefore, when divested of all words which have been introduced into it by conquest and religion, is a perfectly original language; but the originalities incontrovertibly prove that neither Greek, Latin, or the Teu- tonic dialects, nor Arabic, Persian, or Sanskrit were derived from the Celtic, since these languages have not any afl&nity whatever with that tongue" .*j The tradition which brought the Milesian L-ish through Spain in their journey from the East, suggested an affinity with the Basques and Gascons, which some persons have stated to be so close, that an educated Irish-speaking man would be able to hold a dialogue with a Basque peasant speaking the Escaldunac. There is, of course, not the shadow of a ground for this statement, but Irish and Basque affinities are still confi- dently spoken of by English writers who know neither the Irish nor the Escaldunac tongue. The Escaldunac is not the only tongue, the affinities of which are still doubtful or obscure, with which the Celtic languages have been connected by Engish writers; for Armenian, and Albanian, and even Coptic words have been found in them. That some affinity exists between Celtic and the first two is of course probable enough, as they are now beginning to be considered Indo-European ; but the grounds upon wliich such affinities were assmned were as unscientific as those which connected the Irish with Phenician. It was only through sources like Pinkerton, Vallancey, Betham, » Kesearches into the origin and affinity of the principal languages of Asia and Emope, by Lieut.-Col. Vans Kennedy. London, 1828, p. 85. VI Jrrejace. and Kennedy, that thirty years ago the scholars of France, Ger- many, and other foreign countries could have learned anything of the Celtic language or literature of these Islands; and scarcely anything was known of the Annoric of Bretagne. What won- der then that Malte Brun, F. Schlegel, and others, should have adopted the opinion of Pinkerton, that Irish was a peculiar language unconnected with the other European tongues ? The first man who had the merit of investigating the problem of the affinities of the Celtic was the distinguished ethnologist Dr. Prichard, who in 1832 published a supplement to his llesearches into the Physical History of jNIankind, under the distinct title of The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations} Before the publica- tion of this work, Bopp had published his Sanskrit Grammar, and J. Grimm his great German Grammar, works which mark an era in the history of comparative philology. Dr. Prichard was consequently able to base his inquiries upon the labours of these great scholars by whom the true foundation of the science has been laid. Although this work is now of very little, if any use, it was, considering the time at which it was written, and that the author appears to have been only able to use chiefly the modern forms of the Welsh, in which the inflexions are to a gi'cat extent lost, a very meritorious work, and one which will always be valuable in a historical point of view, as the first in which a true scientific method of investigation was attempted. In this work Dr. Prichard endeavoured to prove that the true affinities of the Celtic languages were with the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, and Slavonian, which were considered to form a family derived from a single primitive tongue, and to which the name Indo-Gcrmanic was given, and furthermore, that it was a mem- ber of that family, which should henceforward more appropriately be termed the Indo-European, or, as it seems now destined to be called, the Aryan family. Soon after the appearance of Dr. Prichard's work, and, no doubt, owing in a measure to it, the Celtic languages began to attract the attention of Continental scholars. Comparative philology had now grown into a great science, and was vigorously cultivated by many ardent labourers.

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