in b'yus after a vowel, as Skr. rajab'yus; Lat. regibus; Erse, righaibh or rioghaibh." (Celt. Nat. p. 186.) The Lithuanian has mus in the dative plural, or more commonly the contracted form, ms; wilkas, a wolf; dat. pl. wilkamus or wilkams. In Old Prussian it is ns or mans; vyrs, a man, dat. pl. vyrins or vyrimans. In Lettish, it is im; in Sclavonian, m. The termination r, as characteristic of the passive voice, is found only in Latin and Celtic. It occurs in both branches: Welsh, carav, I love; passive forms, carer, cerir: Erse, cesaim, I torment; passive, cestar, cesfaidher. (Prichard, p. 180.) In Celtic, the third person plural ends variously in ant, ent, ont, ynt, and corresponds with the Latin terminations, ant, ent, int, unt; which last was originally ont, and agrees with the #olic λεγοντι for λεγουσι. The Oscan forms, petor, pis, coincide with the Welsh pedwar, pwy, but cannot with any certainty be ascribed to them a more convincing proof of their presence may be adduced in the Welsh appellation pen, a head or summit, which is found in the Latin names of mountain ranges, Apennines, Pennine Alps. These reasons appear sufficient to induce us to believe that Erse and Welsh tribes had found an early entrance into Italy, although we cannot trace their course thither from our histories. The facts and statements produced in this chapter will very aptly introduce the following remarks of a writer in the Quarterly Review:-"The Greek and Latin have for some time been considered by all competent scholars as two separate dialects, formed, each in its own peninsula, 6 For the illustration of this r, as the sign of deponents, and of the passive voice in Latin, see Bopp, p. 686, and Pott, i. p. 133. ii. p. 92. 7 In Erse kean signifies head: see above, note 3. by a conquering race of Gothic [?] origin, planting itself each among a conquered primeval population, and each adopting, of necessity, part of the language originally spoken by that population into the substance of its own. It is thus that the Celtic element, largely visible both in the Greek and the Latin, is accounted for; and one of the most curious branches of the whole of this inquiry is, that which tends to confirm the radically separate formation of the two languages of classical antiquity, by showing that, though each has much of Celtic, the Celtic element of the one is not the Celtic element of the other. They have both borrowed, we are told, from the same vocabulary, but, generally speaking, they have not taken the same words. It is much to be wished, that this very curious point should be made the subject of a separate and minute investigation" (vol. xlvi. p. 339). From what has been said, it will be clearly seen, that the Medo-Celtic or Erse constituted the Celtic element of Latin, whilst Greek is cognate with a very different branch of the Celtic family; viz., the Welsh or Perso-Celtic. It has been already pointed out that Latin is of greater European date than classical or PersoGreek; but it would appear, that even the Celtic portion of these languages held the same relative age; for though Arndt brings the ancient Gauls or Welsh from the northeast, yet he represents them as breaking in upon the Erse tribes, who had been previously settled in Europe. Mr. Prichard concludes his interesting treatise on the Eastern origin of the Celtic nations with this GENERAL INFERENCE. I have thus laid before my readers the most obvious and striking analogies between the Celtic dialects, and the languages which are more generally allowed to be of cognate origin with the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. On the facts submitted to them, they will form their own conclusion. Probably few persons will hesitate in adopting the opinion, that the marks of connexion are too decided and extensive to be referred to accident or casual intercourse; that they are too deeply interwoven with the intimate structure of the languages compared, to be explained on any other principle than that which has been admitted by so many writers in respect to the other great families of languages belonging to the ancient population of Europe; and that the Celtic people themselves are therefore of Eastern origin, a kindred tribe with the nations who settled on the banks of the Indies, and on the shores of the Mediterranean and of the Baltic. It is probable that several tribes emigrated from their original seat in different stages of advancement in respect to civilization and language, and we accordingly find their idioms in very different degrees of refinement; but an accurate examination and analysis of the intimate structure and component materials of these languages is still capable of affording ample proofs of a common origin. |