Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 12

The Celtic Magazine.
in i and u. Hence we have the a, o, i, ti, and consonant declen-
sions, with the case terminations of the last three the same. Celtic
declension was like Latin and Greek declension. We can restore it
fairly well from Old Irish by attending- to the laws of auslaut, as
the Germans call it — that is, by attending to the terminations of
the cases. The a stems of Gaelic are all feminine, as cas " foot "
(for original coxa), genitive coise (for coxes); this answers to the
Latin first declension. The o stems are the masculine nouns that
have the genitive singular and nominative plural made by insert-
ing an z into the terminal syllable; nominative dard ("bard" for
bardos, or prehistoric Gaelic bardas), gen, baij^d (for bardi), nom.
plural baird (for bardoi or bardi). The i and u stems are like the
Latin and Greek nouns in is and us, of the third (and fourth)
declension. Thus snil^wA other such nouns whose last vowel is i hav-
ing a genitive in a with the i dropped, as stda (for prehistoric sfdayos),
belong to the i declensions. The consonant declensions had the
stem ending in consonants, mute, liquid, and sibilant. The most
important Gaelic consonant stems were in c or ac, and in ii. For
in the onward progress of the language the plural terminations
were lost, and only the stem remained. The stem, being longer
than the nominative singular, was made to do duty for a plural.
Hence we get our plurals in 7t, which are really nothing else than
stems like Latin hom{o) (man), pi. Jioinin{es), with the last syllable
of the nominatives sing, and plu. left off. The guttural stem ae
or aeh comes in to help the ;/ stem. Hence we get the plural
termination -acJian or -icJiean. The fem. a stems, as well as the i
and u stems, have followed the analogy of the consonant stems in
the plural. Again the consonant stems have gone over in the
singular to the o declension. Windisch's studies on the laws
of auslaut and on declension can be seen in the Scottish
Celtic Review, and Stokes's in the last volume of the Philo-
logical Society s Transactions. Much has also been done in
explaining the Old Irish verb, which is very complex. Our
modern Gaelic verb is but a fragment of what has been. The
future is entirely lost, its place being taken by the old present.
So with the aorists in s and t. The subjunctive is gone, its place
being held by the old Secondary Present or Imperfect. The
personal terminations are, some of them, difficult to explain — the