PROF. BLACKIE ON THE PRINCIPLE OF ONOMATOP(EIA IN LANGUAGE. 9 



all the words now existing in a language are to be dealt with on the supposition 

 that they contain some pictorial element of the original phonic drama of human 

 speech. Syllables are like sixpences, and are apt to be rubbed down in the course 

 of time, till their original image and superscription can no more be traced. 



Besides, as in the Greek language the word <kdi\p6s, signifying uterinus, or born 

 of the same womb, took the place of <pg<Lrug, which no doubt originally was used as 

 frater in Latin, bhrdtri in Sanscrit, and brother in English, so many of the oldest 

 dramatically significant roots of language may have been replaced by secondary 

 roots, in which the real character that belonged to the first pictorial roots is 

 lost. I do not therefore deny that equus may come from the root d'su, swift, and a 

 horse signify the swift animal. Though I have no doubt that bo, an ox, is merely 

 a human imitation of the bovine sound, I by no means insist that all animals 

 should have received their names from the cries which they make. I only say 

 that, in the original formation of language, this was one of the simplest and most 

 obvious methods of designation, and a method that extended a great deal further 

 than superficial observation might lead the modern speculator to believe. 



As little can I see why Professor Muller should feel it his duty to declare war 

 wholesale against onomatopoeia in language, because on this or the other occasion 

 some men have handled it wildly, and ridden rough-shod with it over Grimm's 

 law, and the whole body of ascertained facts with regard to phonic transmigra- 

 tions and transmutations. A man may talk ingenious nonsense on any branch 

 of philological science with the utmost ease, in the teeth of Grimm's law, or even 

 with the help of it ; but that great principle of interlingual change has nothing to 

 do with the question how roots, variable according to certain laws of phonic 

 change, were originally formed. The Sanscrit pitri may become the English 

 father, and the Scotch fader, without touching the question whether PA and 

 MA have anything to do with imitation by parents of the first untutored labial 

 utterances of a child. Finally, I must be allowed to express my conviction that 

 the opposition to onomatopoeia seems to arise in the minds of some speculators 

 partly from a certain horror of a sort of merely animal element in the creation of 

 language, which in ancient times had found acceptance with the low sensuous 

 philosophy of Epicurus,* and partly, so far as the Germans are concerned, 

 from a certain instinct in them which leads them to prefer what is remote to 

 what is obvious, what is conceptional to what is sensational, what is fanciful to 

 what is real, what is mystical to what is plain. If they blame us, not unjustly 

 altogether, for having no ideas in our scholarship, we may with equal reason 

 retort that they have too many, and use them often with a wild ingenuity, rather 

 than with a sober discretion. If we do not make such brilliant discoveries as 

 they do beyond the flaming walls of the universe, we do not, on the other hand, 



* Muller, vol. ii. p. 87, quotes a passage of Proclus from Epicurus as having suggested his 

 soubriquet of the Bow-wow theory. 



VOL. XXIV. PART I. C 



