348 THE LATIN VERB JUBERE. 



Y. Again, it is very common in Sanskrit and also in Insular 

 Keltic to find the medials b, g, d, aspirated into bh, gh, dh ; indeed 

 so common in Keltic that a humorous Gaelic lexicographer 

 dec] ares that there is not a syllable in his language that has not 

 the letter h either expressed or understood ! So, if the I.-K. verb 

 dabair were made to go back to its original form gab hair, the 

 bh, as is usual in such a case where it comes between two vowels, 

 is quiescent, like the digamma in Greek ; the same quiescence is 

 common in Hebrew, as, nur, "to give light," for nabhar. The 

 verb gabhair to "speak" would then be pronounced ga-air, 

 which in I.-K. is written ga-ir and means to "laugh, shout, cry," 

 (cf. (e) E. jeer, to "deride, mock," and the Icelandic (c) dar, 

 "derision"), but in C. gair holds to the original meaning of a 

 "word, saying, report, fame," and its derivatives take the form 

 geir, as, geir-fa "vocabulary," geir-da, "good report, fame," 

 geir-io, "to use words or phrases." From this ga-air, geir, I 

 take the Gr. words gerus, "a voice," geruo, " I utter, speak, 

 cry, sing," and, by softening the initial g into gh or y, which is 

 then lost, I get the Gr. eiro, "I say, speak, tell, proclaim, announce"; 

 and here the occurrence of the initial g in I.-K. and in C. explains 

 many of the difficulties that face the etymologist in endeavouring 

 to account for the anomalies observed in the cognates and 

 derivatives of the Greek verb eiro, and proves in opposition to 

 Curtius (" Greek Etymology ") that eiro has Oriental kinsmen, 

 for K. gaair, geir = gabhair = dabhair = H. clabhar, as will be 

 shown presently. Further, the Greek verb eiro, "I say," when 

 in its middle voice eiromai, eromai, means " I ask," just as the 

 E. ask, A.S. acs-ian, asc-ian is probably formed by a transposition 

 of the s of the syllable sag, the G. root of sagen, to "say"; so the 

 supposed K. word ga-air, for gabhair, may soften the initial g 

 (gh) into y and become iarr (for ya-irr), and this is the common 

 verb in I.-K. for "to ask, inquire, seek," also "bid, desire" in 

 the sense of "ordering," which shows its connection with the root 

 dabar, ut infra. So far in this paragraph I feel my footing to 

 be sure, but in the remainder of it I must walk warily. You 

 will grant me that the form ga-air is assured and from it ka-ir 

 (/); now, just as the I.-K. koig, kuig, " five," is the L. quinque, 

 so I believe ka-air gives me the L. quaero "I seek," quaeso "I 

 ask, beg, intreat " (to be pronounced ka-ero, ka-eso), and their 

 connection with the root-meaning of gab is illustrated by the Fr. 

 causer, "to speak, discourse, prattle, babble," and jaser"to 

 prate, chatter." If the L. verb quaero be thus etymologically 

 the same as gabhair, dab hair, then the established notion in 

 phonology that s precedes r in time admits of exceptions ; for 

 although grammarians hold that in Latin the form lases is earlier 

 than lares and laebesum than liber um, yet in this case quaero 



