206 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2«"i S. VII. Mar. 6. '69. 



especiallj' at a time when, both in England and in 

 France, the plan of a revision of the dictionary is freely 

 discussed.* 



Our author, in his preface, makes no secret of the ex- 

 treme difficulty peculiar to the subject he has taken in 

 hand ; " c'est du fond d"un abime," says he, " que je rap- 

 porte ce livre." Regular battles have been fought on the 

 great question of the Celtic language ; some critics wish- 

 ing to make the whole of Europe speak " Bas-Breton ; " 

 others, rushing to the other extreme, seeing nothing but 

 a branch of the Teutonic idiom even in the dialects 

 spoken by the Irish Gails and the Scotch Highlanders. 

 Scaliger, Freret, Sharon Turner, Adelung, Grimm, and a 

 host of other savants have written, pro and con, shoals of 

 memoirs, and the difficulty is to weigh all the arguments 

 brought forward by the champions on both sides. M. de 

 Belloguet has not for a moment hesitated to sift the 

 matter thoroughly, and he has done so, we think, with 

 great success. 



The question of the origin of the Celtic races is to be 

 solved from considerations of three distinct kinds ; first, 

 hy a careful examination of the dialects ; secondly, by a 

 study of the physical peculiarities which characterise 

 each people; and, thirdly, by an appreciation of their 

 manners and customs. This threefold division corre- 

 sponds, respectively, to what M. de Belloguet designates 

 as 1°, la partie linguistique ; 2°, la partie physiologimie ; 

 and, 3", la partie Hhnologique et F^lhopee. The brochure 

 now under consideration forming only the beginning of 

 the introduction of the first part, we must perforce re- 

 serve our definitive opinion of the author's system to the 

 period when the entire work has appeared ; but we can 

 in the meanwhile form some estimation of his powers as a 

 linguist, and offer a few remarks on his glossary. 



M. de Belloguet maintains the Indo-AryS.n origin of 

 the Celtic nations, and in support of his opinion he gives 

 us a threefold table of proper names which are found 

 under almost the same forms in the Breton and Sanscrit 

 dialects. He then refutes the objections of his opponents, 

 noticing more especially two German professors, Messrs. 

 Holtzmann and Moke, whose crotchets on the identity 

 between the Celts and the Teutonic races are urged in 

 spite of all the evidence supplied by facts hitherto con- 

 sidered as irrefutable. But amongst the savards who join 

 with our author in tracing the Celts directly to the banks 

 of the Indus, some, M. de la Villemarque, for instance, 

 have nevertheless erred in attempting to determine from 

 the small stock of really Celtic words which still remain 

 a certain number of grammatical data. M. de Belloguet 

 proves conclusively that we are reduced to mere suppo- 

 sitions ; and he is, we think, far wiser in acknowledging 

 plainly that the task of ascertaining the syntax of our 

 Celtic forefathers must be postponed for the present. 



The extraordinary difficulty attendant upon the com- 

 pilation of a glossary such as M. de Belloguet's, will be 

 apparent to those who consider for a moment the arbi- 

 trary manner in which Latin words are translated by the 

 Celts. Thus Italia and Italus become lodalt and Eodailt, 

 Todallact and Tothtaineach, EiigeneSz=Eoghan, and Eu- 

 ropa, although beginning with the same diphthong, is 

 transformed into Oirp. We shall take the five following 

 names, the first letter of which is J : — Jesus, Jacobus, 

 Judith, Johannes, Januarius ; their Celtic equivalents are 

 Josa, Seumas, Siuhhan, Eoin (formerly Seathan), and 

 Gionhhair; the feminine {Johanna) of Seathan {Johannes) 

 is disfigured into Sinead ! 



Nothing deterred bj' these impediments in his way, M. 

 de Belloguet sets to work and divides his glossary into 



* Nay, on the other side of the Channel, the first /as«- 

 culus of a THctionnaire historique de la Langue Fran^aise is 

 advertised as recently published. 



two great categories. The first part comprises the words 

 which ancient writers have transmitted to us with their 

 signification. In the second, we find a series of words 

 likewise preserved to us by ancient authors, but the 

 meaning of which is unknown to us. Two hundred and 

 twenty distinct words are included under the first cate- 

 gor}-, and the copious and judicious remarks offered by 

 the author thi'ow considerable light upon several obscure 

 points of classical lexicography. The famous exclama- 

 tion, for instance, Cecos, or C<ecos Ccesar! uttered by a 

 Gallic soldier who had taken the great general prisoner 

 (cf. Servius, JEn. xi. 743.), suggests the following re- 

 marks : It is quite evident that the word Cecos, or Ccbcos, 

 had a double meaning; but what was that meaning? La 

 Tour d'Auvergne interprets it bj' the Armorican verb Sko, 

 strike — strike Caesar. Gibson, adopting Camden's opi- 

 nion, reads Ceios, and discovers the double meaning in 

 the two Welsh imperatives Gadwet, let loose, and Kidwet, 

 keep carefully. M. de la Villemarqu^ and M. Eloi Jo- 

 hanneau propose other interpretations. In his turn M. 

 de Belloguet believes that the two Gallic soldiers spoke 

 different dialects, and that the word which the one under- 

 stood as an insult, signified, for the other, "set free!" 

 Similar occurrences are far from rare in the Celtic idioms, 

 and it may be supposed that the Armorican exclamation, 

 he kos Ccesar ! wretched Ctesar ! may have been mistaken 

 by the second warrior as Gadiuetr Ccesar ! 



The second division of the glossar3' is, in one sense, less 

 hypothetic than the first, for all the words which compose 

 it are undoubtedly Celtic ; but, on the other hand, the 

 meaning of them is far more difficult to get at, and in 

 some instances we are even unable to conjecture what it 

 can possibly be. In treating this part of his subject, M. 

 de Belloguet has been led to examine and discuss the 

 various remains of Celtic epigraphy scattered over the 

 face of the country. First we have the collection of stones 

 discovered in 1711, below the ground of the church of 

 Notre Dame at Paris ; then an inscription recently found 

 at Autun, another ope at Nevers, a fifth at Poitiers, a 

 sixth at Avignon, a seventh at Alise, an eighth at Vol- 

 naj', near Beaune, and several smaller ones discovered at 

 Rheinzabern in Rhenish Bavaria. 



The Autun inscription is as follows : — 



" LICNOS CN 

 TEXTOS . lETR^ 



anval''nnacv. 



canec^sedlon." 



In this document the first two words, Licnos Contextos, 

 seem to designate a proper name with the final syllable 

 OS, so common in Gallic medals. M. de Belloguet decom- 

 poses the word Anvallonacu into the two primitives An 

 (article) and the subst. Falla, meaning authority or com- 

 mandment, Fallamhnachd, Fallamhnaim, I govern. An- 

 vallonacu would thus be the designation of a power either 

 human or superhuman placed in connexion with the 

 word lEVKV which follows. As for Canecosedlon, it is 

 quite impossible, in the present state of our knowledge 

 of Celtic monumental inscriptions, to explain what it sig- 

 nifies ; for if the first part of the word, Can or Caneco, 

 may be referred in the Irish idiom to Cain, pious, or to 

 Canach, tribute, duty ; the remainder, Sedlon or Cosedlon, 

 baffles all our ingenuity. The remaining word, ievk'', is 

 extremel3' important, on aceount of its frequent recur- 

 rence in inscriptions such as those we are now studying. 



Thus, in the Nevers monument : — 



" ANDE 



camv 

 i.ostoiti 



SSICNOS 

 lEVRV." 



