38 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [Vol. VII. 



Articles of food come early into the life of a nation and stay long. 

 In the Canaries a butter-cake was called borondango, which is just the 

 Welsh barachdaen, a slice of bread and butter ; tacerquen, syrup of 

 mocanes, is the Irish deasguin, molasses ; aculan, fresh fat, is the 

 W. agalen, a lump of butter. It has no doubt puzzled investigators 

 of the vocabularies to understand how asitis-tirma, atis-tirma and 

 tis-Ui"ina could mean at once "invocation to God," " cry of surrender," 

 and "a sacred cliff." The Gaelic explains it, for its aitchim-troin, " I 

 beg for protection," is alike applicable as a prayer to deity and to a 

 victorious enemy ; while diagha-drim, in the same language, denotes a 

 sacred ridge or mountain. Take again the Guanche battle-cry, which 

 shows what devout warriors they were, like the crusaders at Jerusalem. 

 Its form, as handed down, is daiana, which looks dangerous enough for 

 a "Cruachan"; but it is the Irish deodhann, " by God's help ! " which 

 in Welsh is a ga gan Dduw. The lists give tara, tarha, tarja as " sign 

 of remembrance " ; it is really the Irish tarra, tarrsa, and the Welsh 

 dere, dyre, which mean " come thou ! " Some words denoting rank, 

 and which the writer, with smaller vocabularies, once counted to the 

 Iberic Turdetani, who seem to have formed part at least of the Iberic 

 population of the Canaries, are purely Celtic. Achiman, for example, 

 was a famous royal name among the Turdetani, but the achimenceys, or 

 nobles of the Guanches, were acmhaingeach, which O'Reilly translates 

 " powerful, puissant, rich." So artamy, prince, is the Gaelic ardmhaor, 

 chief magistrate; chichiciquico, a squire, is gaisgidheach ; and guaire, 

 noble, is just guaire, " excellent, noble, great," says O'Reilly. 



Celtic words beginning with the letter t are often doubtful, for, as 

 O'Reilly remarks, " the letter t is used as an adventitious prefix to all 

 Irish words beginning with a vowel, which are of the masculine gender 

 and are preceded by the article a?i, which in English signifies the." 

 The Berbers, with whom the Guanches were most intimately related, 

 make free use of t both before and after words. Thus viedina, the 

 Arabic for town, they convert into tamdint ; niurrah, "a woman," into 

 taniraut ; and dar, "a house," into taddert. It will, therefore, not be 

 a matter of surprise that a comparison of the many Canary words, 

 beginning with this letter, with the Celtic vocabulary, pays but little 

 heed to what is frequently adventitious, and of no root value. In 

 tracing the origin of certain Guanche words, it has been necessary to 

 combine Gaelic and Cymric elements. Such, for instance, is the 

 universal Guanche word gtianil, denoting " wild cattle." Here the 

 Irish agh gives cattle, and the Welsh anial, wild. So niagarefo, a tall 

 thin boy, combines the Gaelic mac, a son, and the Welsh llipa, lanky. 



