Blair Collection > History of the Celtic language

CELTIC LANGUAGE. 185
America, Lapland, China, and Japan, as well as
in the disputed term Scotland. Such is our view
of the Babelonian confusion.
To return to B : —
^eulanach, a leader, a frontier : also a term
amongst mariners for the ninth wave, said to be
much more awful than the intervening eight. The
idea is beautiful: here he comes "like a whale
whom all his billows follow," or like a leader with
his stern attendants; and these followers urged on
by another Mave called Cw/anach, i.e. the urger ;
which wave, of course, becomes i?eulanach in turn,
just as present becomes past, or as the future
becomes present. This ninth wave is particularly
watched by the person at the helm. It is called
also muir-hdite^ i.e. the drowner. We have been
in an open boat at sea, when, to save our lives and
our bark, we had recourse to pouring oil upon this
billow to prevent it from breaking in upon us;
and it had the desired effect. The idea oftentimes
occurred to us since, that, if people, ignorant of
Phoenician tactics, were to see this ceremony, they
would have at once pronounced us as offering
libations to Neptune, with a view to appease the
angry god. The report would have been sub-
stantially correct, and might have laid the foun-
dation of no bad fable. Macdonald, the poet,
describes these waves to the life in his inimitable
sea-storm, thus: —