CELTS 



57 



and in order to proceed as mucli a> po^iUt- imm the 

 kii-iwn t<> tin- unknown, we licgin by classifying 

 ili.-ir idioms. These, whether dead or Htill spoken, 

 in-long to the Aryan or Indo-European family of 

 languages, ami tho^-of them spoken in modern times 

 .lisi.le themselves into two groups vi/. Goidelic 

 and Krytlionic. (1) The Goidelic group eml.ract", 

 I In- dialects termed Gaelic, that is to say, Irish 

 Gaelic, (.1 Irish as it is now more frequently and 

 l.iielly called ; Manx Gaelic, or the Gaelic dialect 

 not yet extinc-t in the Isle of Man; and Scotch 

 Gaelic, or the Gaelic spoken in the Highlands and 

 Wands of Scotland. In ordinary Scotch and Knglish 

 parlance this is what is understood by the word 

 Garlic when it is used without any qualification. 

 In order to resist one of the delusions to which 

 charlatans are always leading the unwary, it is 

 right to say that the words Gael and Gaelic have 

 nothing to do with Galli. Gael is the simplified 

 Knglish spelling of a word which is now written 

 in Scotch and Irish Gaelic Gaidheal, with an 

 evanescent dh ; but the most ancient form known 

 of it was Goidel, whence the adjective Goidelic, 

 which has been resorted to by Celtic scholars as 

 applicable equally to all three Gaelic subdivisions 

 of the Celtic group here in question. The Celtic 

 languages of this group are sometimes also called 

 Erse, which is a term derived from the Scotch form 

 of the adjective Irish; this was Ersch or Yrisch, 

 the longer and shorter forms of which appear, used 

 without any distinction, by Kennedy in his answer 

 to the poet Dunbar, when the latter had called 

 Kennedy an ' Ersch brybour baird ' and an ' Ersch 

 katherane,' in reference to his alleged extrac- 

 tion from the Irish Scots of Galloway and Carrick. 

 Kennedy's reply contains the following line (see 

 Murray's Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scot- 

 land, 1873, pp. 43-44) : 



Thou luvia nane Erische, elf, I understand, 

 and he goes on to add 



Thy fore fader maid Ersche and Erschmen thin. 



( 2 ) The Brythonic group embraces the following 

 languages : Welsh, Breton, and Cornish, which has 

 been extinct now for about a century. Two of 

 these belong to Great Britain, and one, the Breton 

 or Armoric, to Little Britain on the other side 

 of the English Channel. These three might be 

 collectively termed British or Britannic, but that 

 both these adjectives have connotations which 

 would be misleading, as they tend to confusion ; 

 so here, also, a neutral form, Brythonic, is used, 

 which is derived from Brython, one of the Welsh 

 words for the Welsh and the so-called Ancient 

 Britons, whence their language is sometimes called 

 Brythoneg in Welsh. This last was in Cornish 

 Brethonec, and in Breton Brezonek, meaning re- 

 spectively the Celtic of Cornwall and of Brittany. 

 Brython or Britto was the national name of all 

 peoples of this branch, just as Goidel or Gael may 

 be treated as the national name of the other 

 branch. 



All this applies only to the neo-Celtic nations, or 

 those among whom Celtic languages are or have 

 been in use in modern times, and a question of 

 much greater difficulty presents itself when one 

 attempts to classify likewise the continental Celts 

 of ancient history. The reason for this is chiefly 

 the fact that the linguistic data become more pre- 

 carious as one goes back. Thus, for example, the 

 language of the ruling people of ancient Gaul has 

 been left us only in a very few inscriptions, so 

 that our knowledge of it from that source has to 

 be complemented by the study of Gaulish proper 

 names, of which a considerable number is extant 

 in Latin inscriptions and in the writings of Roman 

 and Greek authors. Now, when we apply the 



tent of some of the most palpable difference* that 

 an- known to exist between the Goidelic and the 

 Brythonic idioms to the remains of the Gaulish 

 language, we find at once that it is to be ranked 

 with the Brythonic dialects, and not with the 

 <Hii. It-lie ones, and our Brythonic group becomeH 

 what may be more exactly described as a Gallo- 

 Brythonic one. This further suggests the question 

 whether there was no continental Celtic idiom 

 which partook of the characteristics of the Goidelic 

 branch. The probability is that there was ; for 

 one finds Sulpicius Severus, an ecclesiastical writer 

 of the 4th century, distinguishing between Celtic 

 and Gallic or Gaulish, as if both were spoken in his 

 time. (See Dialogue i. 26, in Migne's Pair. Lat. 

 vol. xx. col. 201 : ' Tu vero, inquit Postumianus, 

 vel Celtice, aut, si mavis, Gal lice loquere, dum- 

 modo jam Martinurn loquaris.') And the use 

 of the two names Celtee and Galli would seem 

 to point lo the same inference viz. the exist- 

 ence in Gaul of two Celtic peoples, the one, 

 probably, superimposed on the other, as on a van- 

 quished population, or driving it towards the 

 south and west. Thus, if the Celtic language 

 which Sulpicius Severus distinguished from Gaulish 

 should be ranked with the Goidelic dialects, we 

 should have alongside of a Gallo- Brythonic group 

 another which might be called Celto-Brythonic 

 were it not inconvenient to use the words Celt and 

 Celtic in two senses. For while the modern usage 

 applies them indifferently to the whole family, 

 Sulpicius indicates a narrower sense ; and so, in 

 fact, had Caesar done centuries before, when he 

 wrote that one of the three peoples of Gaul was 

 called Celtae in their own tongue. He states that 

 these Celtse proper, so to say, were separated by 

 the Garonne from the Aquitani, and by the Seine 

 and the Marne from the Belgse. In other words, 

 their countiy extended from the Garonne to the 

 Seine and Marne, and other Roman writers give it 

 the name of Celtica ; and Dionysius of Halicar- 

 nassus had heard of a river Celtus, from which 

 Celtica was supposed to derive its name. From 

 this narrower Celtica, in the sense which Roman 

 writers gave it, one might form the adjective 

 Celtican, to apply to its people, in order to avoid 

 the confusion which must arise from calling them 

 Celts, whilst using that word also of the whole 

 family. 



In order to show the philological reasons for this 

 classification, it would be necessary to go into a 

 variety of details ; but let one of these suffice for 

 the present. The Gallo-Brythonic dialects used p 

 where the others would have qu. Take, for ex- 

 ample, the early inscriptional Irish for the genitive 

 of the word for ' son ' ; it was maqvi, corresponding 

 to a nominative which appears as mace or mac in 

 the oldest manuscript Irish ; and mac is still the 

 word for ' boy ' or ' son ' in all the Goidelic dialects. 

 Now the early Brythonic form of this genitive 

 would have been mapi, while in the oldest manu- 

 script Welsh we have map, and in later Welsh 

 m&b, 'boy ' or 'son.' From this word was formed 

 another, mabon, a ' boy ' or ' youth ; ' and this in its 

 old form appears in Latin inscriptions as mapomis 

 in Roman inscriptions found in Britain in honour 

 of the Celtic god Apollo Mapomis, so called in 

 reference to his youthfulness. Now from Gaul 

 we have such names as Eporedorix, Parisii, Petro- 

 corii, and many others, with the consonant p; but 

 every now and then we have also names with 

 qu, such as Sequana and Aquitani, together with 

 several instances from Spain, where a people of the 

 same Celtic branch as those of Celtica nad also 

 probably established themselves. 



So far, then, as one can get philological data to 

 reason upon, it would seem that the west of Europe 

 had in early times l>een subjected to two Celtic 



