22 Faraday, Irisli hiflncncc on Icelandic Literature. 



phonetic reasons for a Norse or Enij^lish origin are equal, 

 and history is in favour of Norse. 



In IcclaiKh'c prose, omitting the two corruj^t phrases 

 quoted in Biskitpa Sligiir, there are six words which are 

 ahnost certainly GaeHc : bjanak (Jr. bendacht, blessing) ; 

 erg, a shieling (Irish airghe) ; gelt, men mad with fear 

 (Irish geilt) ; ingian (Irish ingen, ingean, girl); kvaran, in 

 the name of a King of Dublin, Olaf Kvaran (Irish cuaran) ; 

 and i)iinn\akl a mixture of flour and butter made by 

 Hjorleif's Irish thralls (Irish mi'n, flour). With one 

 exception, these occur only oiice or twice, generally in 

 connection with Gaels. The exception is gelt'~, first 

 identified by Dr. Meyer^with \x\^\ geilt, men who go mad 

 with fear in a fight. It is apparently the same word as 

 gjaiti, in the phrase " ver^a at gjaiti," which occurs several 

 times, and seems to be a familiar expression. This form 

 used to be regarded as connected with goitr, a hog, and is 

 so given as " an old dative " in the Oxford Dictionary ; 

 but this it could not be, since the root vowel of go/tr is a, 

 and the ja of gjaiti could only come from an original e. 

 A few other words are sometimes claimed as GaeHc loans, 

 but brok, b rcckr, {o\di Irish broc, shoe); kcsja (Irish ceis, 

 a spear) ; des (Irish dais, heap), may have been borrowed 

 by the Irish from Norse. 



It will be seen that all the evidence is negative. We 

 expect to find Gaelic names in Iceland ; we do not find 

 them. We expect to find Gaelic loan-words in Iceland ; we 

 do not find tlicm. On the other hand, Norse words are fairly 

 plentiful in Gaelic ; while Norse personal names survive 

 even to the present day in Irish and Scottish surnames. 

 The Norsemen have left traces in Ireland ; there is no 

 trace in Iceland of a strong Irish influence. 



1 Zeitschrift filr Keltische Philologie, I., p. 442. Pafar seems to be 

 Latin, and kii'Si has never been equated. 

 * Speculum Regale, ed. Brenner, 1881. 

 » Folklore, V. p. 312. 



