Blair Collection > Vestigia celtica

29
this Breton tost put in a fair claim of
kinship, through the Old Gaelic toiseach^
with the great Clan Mac-in-tosh !
As has-been said, this passage of a rela-
tion at first simply local into relations
higher, wider, and more complex, might be
to some extent illustrated, though mostly
in fossil forms, from well-nigh all the Indo-
European languages. But in the Gadhelic
tongues this principle of verbal perspective,
grouping our words into significant sen-
tences on the plan of relative local proximity,
is still a living, plastic, formative organism.
If the reader will turn to Windisch's
KtLTZgefasste Irische Granimatik, chap, vi.,
§§ 190-198, he will see that the same
principle is as firmly rooted in the sub-
stance of the Old Irish speech as in the
vernacular Gaelic of the modern Hisfh-
lander. And in the next chapter I shall
proceed to show how this principle directly
inspires and dominates the whole field of
Gadhelic phrase and idiom.