Blair Collection > History of the Celtic language

CELTIC LANGUAGE. 137
The letters are Cabalistic and full of divinity,
and the form emblematic of the sacred vase, with
the sacred water.
Let us now, in prosecution of our plan, attend
to Adam giving names to fowls.
Ce/r, a hen, Arabic Kerk. This name, it will
be allowed, is not inexpressive of the ordinary note
of the hen, accompanied by a jerk of the neck. Is
the scoffer still inclined to sneer ? If so, we would
respectfully remind him that our Saviour, who
spoke as never mere man spoke, deemed it not
beneath the majesty of his character to press the hen
into his service, by way of illustration : " as « hen
gathereth her chickens under her wings." A hen
when hatching, it will be found, cannot utter the
note cere, but gur, or goor ; and hence cerc-gur^ a
hatching hen. This last note, misapplied, is the
primary idea of the Persic Koorick, a hen, and of
our own Celtic gur, a brood of chickens ; also the
process of incubation : of iihh-giiir^ an o^gg which
suffers from the process of incubation ; r/wraban, a
sitting or crouching posture; ^2/rach, a person or
animal so sitting. It is not a little remarkable,
that although we call a brood by convention, gur^
yet an individual chicken is hig or 6ec, that being
its own proper note. This, again, is another proof
that language was from the beginning progressive,
seeing that a chicken bespeaks the pre-existence of
a hen by a considerable space of time. It is also