Blair Collection > Kelt or Gael

28 The Kelt or Gael.
expressed the sounds of Aryan speech with equal
fulness: as a matter of infeience, we should at
once decide that they did not. For this reason
it is that every Aryan tongue, nay, even dialects
of the same tono^ue, use a different number of
letters, many recently invented or derived, in
order to express its sounds, while others,
especially English, so strain the sounds of their
letters, that the different sounds of the same
Greek letter are only current by convention.
^ ^ ^ ^ ■ The Greeks borrowed, and after a time added
to, the Phoenician alphabet, and nearly all
existing European alphabets are derived from
the Greek. Another Phoenician alphabet has
been traced to Spain. It may possibly be the
original Basque. It is not used by them at
present, but I am informed that there is an early
Basque coinage with a peculiar alphabet for
the inscriptions, though I have never seen any
Irish or British of it
alphabet.
There is an alphabet which is now specially
known as the Irish, but which should, I think, be
called the British, and which may be derived
from the Latin. The Senchus Mor, or old Irish
laws compiled in the fifth century, is written in it.
The oldest Welsh and Cornish manuscripts in
existence are written in it. The Saxon chronicle
is written in it, incorporating, however, the
extra letters invented by Ulfilas for the Moeso
Gothic, and the Runes are only a coarser form
of it.