Blair Collection > History of the Celtic language

CELTIC LANGUAGE. 233
at is uttered. This sound no simple vowel can
express, and hence the propriety of joining two.
Is this note the ideal meaning, by analogy, of the
terms «/steal, turbulence; a^leas, mischief ; ameart,
discord, strife; «mgidh, wicked; anigealas, wicked-
ness ; fir/bhiser, a nefarious person, the devil ; ml,
a mare's hot season, because peculiarly abounding
with this note during the sham battles, which most
country people must have witnessed? The note
of a sailor in ho/sing a sail requires id, and hence,
by transposition, ho/se, as ium is of the watch-
word, to row, whence iumdXv, row. There is,
again, an expression of terror like ho ! bo ! very
frequently used in some districts, namely, h~ua !
h-ua ! It is put into the mouths of Cyclops, and
all sorts of giants on coming home to their caves,
like Polypheme, and smelling strangers : thus —
" Hi, h-ua, huagaich,
Tha boladh an Ai'bhalich a so."
Hence, perhaps, zmmhas, terror, horror ; ua or
w«mh, a cave ; waigh, the grave : perhaps because
sepultures of old were caves. Abraham purchased
the cave of Mach Pelah for this purpose.
The reader may probably be surprised at the
paucity of our characters. It is a principle recog-
nised by all philologists, that the shorter the lan-
guage the more primitive: upon the same principle,
the shortness of a simple term argues its superior