100 



which Wormius, as well in his " Monumenta Danica," as in his " Lite- 

 raria Runica," presents us with, suggest no affinity to the Latin, but 

 are evidently of kin with the Irish Ogham. 



Novel and paradoxical as it may appear to some, the fact is, that 

 the Latins have borrowed far more from the Celts than they have 

 given in return,* and the learned Abbe Pezron-f- has made it appear 

 that they have done so with regard to the names of all the days in the 

 week, most of the names of the months, the very term " disco," to learn, 

 and above three hundred obvious words, of which he has given a list, 

 as well as of those taken from the same source by the Greeks and 

 Germans. In conformity with which, " Quintilian instructs us, that 

 before the time of the Consuls the Latin was rude and barbarous in 

 expression, having many words from other languages, especially Gallic, 

 (i. e. Celtic.) In fact, the lingua prisca of Italy was the language 

 of the Umbrians and Sabines, who were Celts. Italy was called Gallia 

 Cisalpina, as being colonized from Gaul,"j: and Leibnitz decidedly 

 enforces this : " The Latin language," says he, " was compounded of 

 the Celtic and the Greek, and by how much the more ancient the 

 Celtic is, by so much the more clearly can the Latin derivatives from it 

 be illustrated; * * * so that in exploring the Irish, we would have an 

 exhibit, not of the Celts who were contemporaries with Caesar, but of 

 the progenitors of the Celts who were contemporaries with Ccesar."§ 

 Nor were the Latins the only philological spoilers, for Plato, in his 

 Cratylus, is expressly of opinion, that the Greeks too had borrowed 



* See Highland Report on Ossian, p. 138. 



f Antiq. de la Nation et de la Lang, des Celts, p. 289, et seq. 



X O'Flaherty's Isles of Aran. See also Polybius, lib. 2.— and Leibnitz, vol. 1. 



§ "Lingua Latina ex Celtica, hinc melius Latinas origines ex ea illustrari posse putem, 

 » * * * * ut ita in Hibemis non Celtae Csesari contemporanei, sed Celtarum Caesari 

 contemporaneorum avi quodam modo nobis exhibeantur." — Leibnitz, Dissert. Philol. Amstel. 

 1716, pp. 26-7. 



