Blair Collection > Vestigia celtica

47
appears twice in the two lines of a colophon,
which closes the Book of Deir, " certainly
as old as the ninth century " : see Stokes'
Goidelica, p. io6, and references there also
to Zeuss' Grammatica Celtica.
Of the analagous use oi fo, under, the
Old Irish affords many clear examples :
thus fo mdni peckto = \xndQV the yoke of
sin; diagmani fo baithis — \^\. us come under
baptism ; retechte fobaithis — before under-
going baptism ; fonchath = under battle
See Zeuss' Gram. Celt., p. 628.
Observe now the relio^ious sio-nificance
of this form of Celtic sentence-buildingr
It shows already some sense, strong if not
yet very clear, of man's subjection to the
Unseen. From the great vault above,
now radiant with benign light, now clothed
with sackcloth and gloom, the dread abode
of meteor and thunderbolt, there come
upon the children of men at once the
blessing and the curse, the reward and the
Nemesis, the bloom, on one hand, the bane
and blight, on the other, of human life.
Coming from Above, these visitations from