Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 4

354 ^ PLEA FOR GAELIC.
All Gaelic words ending in ear, wliicli mean a male individual
who does something, embody the Gaelic word fear (a man, or a
male unit), which word, when combined with another, is spelt
/hear, and pronounced as h' or rjp, if a sheep's note is properly
spelt iJLri. Thus,
Muilkar . . Miller,
is a contraction for
Mullinn/Zjear . MUhnan.
Saigh-dea?- . . Soldier.
Saighead/Ziear . Sagittarius.
The Latin word thus seems to be founded upon /hear rather
than Vir, though vir is supposed to come from the Sanscrit Vira ;
but of the Aryan languages (so far as I know) Gaelic alone
explains how the V was lost, for Gaelic inflections are often
made at the beginning of words.
Supposing that the word for an archer to be a remnant of the
old Keltic of Italy, preserved in Latin, Sagittarius is made up of
Saighead - f hear - ius,
Arrow - man (with a termination.)
And if the g had the value which it has in many languages, the
sounds would be almost identical in Latin and Gaelic.
If this be right, the termination er, and the (now) Gaelic word
/hear, appear in most of the Aryan languages of Europe, —
Eng., Baker ; Gaelic, Fuineadair ; German, Backer ; French,
Boulanger ; Norse, Bager ; Spanish, Panadero ; Italian, Fornaro ;
Swedish, Bagare ; Latin, Pistor : but Greek aprowowi will not
do, though the words an fhear, the man, reappear in àvrjp, a
man, and aran, bread, in àoros.