648 "Professor J. Stuart BlacMe [April 29, 



a man who knows something may pass for a pundit. I shall there- 

 fore proceed to tell you what I know of the matter, on John Locke's 

 famous supposition that your metropolitan minds are, in reference to 

 the subject of my lecture, as a sheet of blank paper, on which an 

 unkempt uncoven anted Scot may for once be allowed to stamp any 

 scripture he pleases. 



Colonel Kennedy was perfectly aware that there existed not a few 

 words in Welsh and Irish manifestly cognate with the same words 

 in Latin ; but he had a ready theory that all savage or semi-civilised 

 tribes borrow largely and greedily from their civilised superiors, and 

 he thought that this theory was sufficient to explain all the similarities 

 which he had noted. Now, it is quite true, however some stiff 

 Galicians may kick against it, that not only ecclesiastical words, but 

 other words not a few, may be either certainly set down as borrowed 

 from Latin, or labouring under a strong suspicion of such importa- 

 tion. But it is equally true that words for the most common objects 

 and necessary relations of life, and where no suspicion of borrowing 

 can intrude, appear in Gaelic with a distinctly Latin physiognomy; 

 and it is truly surprising to me how the bad luck could have happened 

 to any ransacker of dictionaries, to march out two long columns of 

 Celtic roots of familiar objects without stumbling upon a single Latin 

 or Teutonic equivalent. If the Celts borrowed fion from the Latin 

 vimim, which is possible enough, though anything but certain, it 

 certainly cannot be said that the words mathair, mother, beathair, 

 brother, each, horse, and cu, clog, fall imder the same foreign 

 category. And what shall we say to the numerals ? It should have 

 seemed to Colonel Kennedy that it was as irrational to suppose that 

 the Celts borrowed the names of the simple numerals from the 

 Eomans, as with the scholars of last century to believe that Sanscrit is 

 a language borrowed from Greek as a consequence of the conquests 

 of Alexander the Great. The lowest savages count by fives and tens 

 and scores ; and the Celts in Julius Caesar's time were confessedly 

 %r above that level. Let us commence therefore with the numerals 

 as at once the most striking proof of the original identity of the 

 language, and as presenting examples of some of the most character- 

 istic mutations of consonants, which regulate the passage of an 

 original Indo-European root from the Latin to the Celtic form. 



Gaelic. Latin. 



aon nnus. 



da duo. 



treas trcs. 



ceithir guatvor. 



coig guinquc. 



se sex. 



seahd septem. 



ochd oct). 



naoidh novem. 



dcich decern, 



fid i cat vi<tinti. 



ccad centum. 



