650 Professor J. Stuart Blackie [April 29, 



unscientific eye, in perceiving that gdbar and caper, gahail and capere 

 are identical, the change of the sharp into the blunt consonant in 

 both cases, and the rejection of the final vowel, with the familiar 

 change of r into I in capere, being all that is required to effect the 

 passage from the Latin to the Celtic form of the word. In athair a 

 further change takes place, the dropping of the initial consonant ; but 

 this is quite in order, as the Homeric forms ala for yata, el/Soi for 

 libo, and aivog for Seii/os sufficiently prove. The Gaels seem to have 

 had a peculiar antipathy to p at the commencement of a word ; so 

 that not only in atliair from pater, but in leac from -n-XaK-, in leana from 

 planus and in Ian from pleniis, and in iicJidt from pectus, this unoffend- 

 ing letter has been rudely thrown out. The system of aspiration here 

 noted as a preparatory step for the evasion of the medial consonant, 

 and taking the bones, so to speak, out of the word, extends in Gaelic 

 and all the Celtic languages far beyond the case of the medial con- 

 sonant. It is a regular habit of the language to modify by aspirates 

 the initial consonant of any word, when it is preceded by certain words, 

 most of which are distinguished by a long final vowel, a modification 

 which in not a few cases amounts to a total deletion of the consonant, 

 and in certain cases to a sweeping erasure of both consonant and 

 aspirate from the field of hearing ; a result which not only emas- 

 culates the word, but renders it difficult to be recognised by those 

 whose ear has been trained to the primary and unmodified form. 

 Thus the word tigh, a house (in which as spelt the Latin tego, the 

 Greek crreyos, the German dach, and the English deck are plainly 

 recognised), when preceded by mo or do, my or ^%, forthwith becomes 

 high. A similar modification takes place regularly in the flexion of 

 nouns and verbs, and specially when an adjective is joined to a 

 feminine noun. Thus, as Ben, a mountain, is feminine in Gaelic, 

 instead of Ben More, or big mount, the natives say Benvore, or, as they 

 spell it, Benmhor, changing the m into v by the addition of the 

 aspiration. I remember how much I was puzzled with the signification 

 of Ben Awt (the name, as pronounced, of the north peak of Ben 

 More in Mull), till I consulted a lady living at the bottom of the hill, 

 who told me that Awt as pronounced was only a modified form of 

 FAD, long, the modification being caused by the feminine gender of 

 the noun, which necessitated the asj^iration of the initial / ; and this, 

 again, necessitated the disappearance of both asj)irate and consonant ! 

 The effect of all this, while it unquestionably gives a certain indis- 

 tinctness and want of firmness to the expression of the language, is to 

 make it admirably fitted for musical purj^oses ; as we see also in 

 Scotch, where hall becomes ha; at all becomes ava ; gold, gowd ; will 

 not, winna ; do not, dinna ; must not, manna, and so forth. This state 

 of the case contrasts wonderfully with the common opinicm enter- 

 tained of Gaelic by the English people, who are accustomed to talk of 

 it as harsh and guttural ; but this opinion arises 2)artly from the fact 

 that tourists in the Highlands seldom hear the language spoken 

 except by the most unrefined persons, and partly from the notion that 



