190 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts^ and Letters. ' 



South German dialects : chilihha cliirihha ; — altbougli we find 

 this interchange in many other words of the South German 

 dialects, in which we can not assume such an influence. The 

 consonant 1 being a weakening of r, may not the Gadhelic Kil 

 stand for kir, and kir be a reminiscence of the Roman cur a? 

 but it remains to be proven, whether kil as prefix in Irish 

 village — names points indeed to " local centers from which 

 proceeded the evangelization of the hali-savage Celts." As 

 kil means also inclosure in general, may it not have entered 

 into the naming of villages long before the appearance of 

 Christianity in Ireland? And if it really had the distinct 

 meaning of " church " in the 1,400 local names in Ireland, 

 according to I. Taylor (Words and Places, p. 227), it seems 

 very strange, that the Celtic dialects did not retain it as the 

 common name of ' church,' as the Teutonic dialects. 



The theoretical middle steps through which we have follow- 

 ed " church," of course have passed away without a trace of 

 them being left ; they were perhaps only momentarily taken, 

 but surely unconsciously. Foreign words taken by the uned- 

 ucated into a language obey apparently no rule ; they seem 

 to enter into a chrysalis state, till they emerge fully fashioned 

 from the depth of the folkspeech and take their rank in the 

 literary language, no further mutable. But the external or 

 phonetic change of a word is frequently accompanied by an 

 internal or ideal change. The spirit of Christianity filled our 

 word with a nobler meaning. From the oversight or charge 

 of worldly affairs, implying responsibility for safety and pros- 

 perity it passed to the charge and oversight of that which con- 

 cerns mankind so much — cura or curatio animarum. Thus we 

 easily perceive the later development of its meanings, to that 

 of the edifice, for instance, in which the cura animarum took 

 place. 



In conclusion, it will be of interest to consider briefly the 

 history of cura in the Romance languages, whose ideal develop- 

 ment in these languages seems to support our etymology of 



I 



