Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 5

I WELSH PHILOLOGY, U7
I orthography, &c. But the true student of Gaelic knows the value of
! their complaints. The further remarks of Professor Rhys deserve quo-
. tation : — " In the case before us wo are only too familiar with the worth-
lessuess of the fruits of a method which ignores the phonological laws of
the language with which it pretends to deal, or fails to do justice to their
historical import ; and it is by his attitude with resided to these laios that
one can generally teU a dilettante from a bona fide student of the Celtic lan-
guages. The former you hardly need to be told, never discerns a difficulty,
, for to him a letter more or less makes no difference, as his notion of
, euphony is so Protean as to be equal to any emergency ; but the latter
, frequently stumbles or goes astray, and lias to retrace his steps ; and
' altogether his progress can be but slow; so much so, in fact, that
some of our leading glottologists of our day think it, on the whole,
I impossible to attain to the same state of knowledge respecting the
; history and etymology of Celtic words as that arrived at in the
; case of the other Aryan tongues. That it is harder is certain,
but that it impossible I am inclined to doubt." It consoles us in
; Scotland to find our Welsh cousins in troubles similar to our own. But
1 so far " progress is being made " in Scotland as in Wales. The all-per-
i vading influence of Professor Blackie, of Skene's Celtic Scotland, &c., of
\ Dr Maclauchlan's many works, and of the Eev. A. Cameron's most
I scientific teaching in Glasgow, are signs of real progress in the right
i direction. " Nor is there anything which may be regarded as an indica-
I tion that we have nearly come to the end of our tether. For example,
j one of the tasks — and only one out of several — which the student of an
} Aryan language proposes to himself is to discover, as far as that is
i practicable, the origin of every word in its vocabulary, and to show to
: what group of vocables it belongs, or in other words, from what it is de-
\ rived and how." We regret that in connection with the Celtic tongues
j this work has been carried on with most reprehensible extravagance in
S some quarters, especially in the sphere of topography, to this very day ;
I but we hope that henceforth Professor Ehys's lectures and the labours of
I others throughout the British Isles will help to diminish the number of
I Celtic vocables whose origin is obscure, notwithstanding the special diffi-
! culties in the way. There are good signs of the times, not only in the
I German Kuhn's Beitraege and in the French Gaidoz's Revue Celtique, but
j also at home among the Irish and the Welsh ; in Scotland in the Celtic
Magazine, and in the newly-proposed quarterly by Mr Cameron, the
Scottish Celtic Review. In these publications, as Professor Ehys neatly
remarks in regard to the foreign ones, " stubborn words of our vernacular
i are forced, one after another, to surrender the secrets of their pedigree."
Nothing could be more admirable than the following general remarks.
1 The conclusion of the last two sentences of the paragraph to be quoted
\ suggest a much needed lesson. " But whence, it will be asked, does this
greater difficulty attending the study of the Celtic languages, and of the
' Welsh in particular, proceed? Mainly from two causes — the great dearth
of specimens of them in their earlier stages, and the large scale on which
I phonetic decay has taken place in them. For, to pass by the former
I for the present, it is to be remembered that the phonetic changes
' which have been engaging our attention are but the footprints of
, phonetic decay, and that the phonological laws which have just been dis-