Hew Morrison Collection > Gaidheal > 1 Leabh 2 Air

70
SUPPLEMENT TO THE GAEL.
second beauty of i raelic is its richnoss in
certain deep v^oJic, dipthon^ral, and
liquid Bounds, to -vvhich English is a
stranger. The gioat number of words
spelt with ao and e?t are eiamples of
this ; and the peculiar liquid roll given
to I, and r, and n in many words as in
Uanabh lach, belongs to the same cate-
gory. Among beauties alao must be clas-
sed the delicate nasal sound given to »?»
in many ' words before a and o ; for,
though the American nasality is alniost
always ugly, the Gaelic is only so in the
mouths of extremely coarse and grumpy
persons. The third beauty of the High-
land dialect which I wish to eulogise is
an extremely delicate and fine perception
of euphony generally and particularly,
as marked in the changes produced on the
initial letter of many words, by the as-
similating character of the final letter of
the immediately preceding word to this
catagory belong the remarkable phenom-
ena- -so characteristic of the Celtic lan-
guages — of what is called asjnration or
breathing, that is a softening down of
the initial consonant of a word into
a cognate, but more vocal consonant
by the euphonic influence of a
broad final vowel immediately pre-
ceeding ; thus cu a dog, genitive a
choin of the dog, because, whatever the
English may imagine, ch is realy a much
softer sound than k, or hard o. In the
same manner from muileciim a mill, comes
Loch-a-Vuillean, the very pretty name of
a very ugly little loch in this place, where
the initial vi is changed into mh, the En-
glish V, by the melodious contagion of the
proceeding a, the genitive case masoulino
of tlie definite article. So after )/io, do, da,
and a few other monof-yilables with a
long; final vowel. Another very noticea-
ble result of^the fine ouponio instinct in
the (j-aolio is the practice of changing an
initai * into t after a preceeding n ; as in
Mac-an-ts'wir, or Macintyre, "a carjien-
ter'a son," when the t in pronuncitaion
takes the place of the s, plainly from tlie
influence dentonasal n, which is more al-
lied to the dental t than to the sibilant *.
■o much for beaiities. I shall now — as
I mean to be honest — specialize aomti de-
fects, and those very gruiit defects
in the Gaelic dialect. The first is
a lazy habit our Northern islanders and
mountaineers have got into of omitting
their consonants altogether, and in this
way, so to speak, taking the bones out of
the word, and depi'iving it of its pith and
sinew. In this respect it is a curruptfon
of Latin, in many cases even worse than
French ; for our Gaelic neighbourp, for
instance, have only taken the t out of
pater and changed it into ^jot but the
Highlandman in athair which rliey pro-
nounce (tar, haA'e not only lost the initial
p, but drop altogether the aspirated con-
sonant whicli they retin in spelling. And
so in whole hostr of dissyllables and poly-
syllables with dh, bh, or gh, in the mid-
dle, these consonants for any use they
are put to might as well not be there.
No doubt we have examples of this sort
of unhandsome treatment of double con-
sonants in our English words dough,
plough, although, and other such ; but
these cases of English, are few and ex-
ceptional, whereas in Gaelic they are the
rule, and prevail to such an extent as
justly to bring down upon the language
the charge of feebleness and emascula-
tion. Another great \ice of Gaelic is the
monotony of its accent, the habit of ac-
centing words on the penultimate and
ante-penultimate syllables, except only
in such compound words as Ben-
more and Lismore whoso parts retain their
special significance, as contrasltd with
grasmhor sultmhor, and similar com-
pounds ; for it needs assuredly no proof
that monotony is always a blemish, and
that an accent on the final vowel, what the
Greeks call oxyton, is generally eupho-
nious. Again it must be accimnted a
serious blemish in the Gaelic language
that it carries the principle of aspiration
in some canes to such an extent as not
only to soften, b\it altogether to annial-
ate the initial consonant of a -word, (as
when a man's nose is cut off) necessarily
loses its character, and is difficult to re-
cognise. Thus Eoinn Fad, the lowest of
the three heads of Bon More, is pi'o-
nounced Ben At ; and s<), generally the
Aspiration of / into fh is an example of
an addition which not only add.? noth-
ing to the original quantity, but takes
away even that which existed. And lastly,
the rampant luxuriance with whicli the
aspirate ch has iicen allowed to overrun
the Gaelic dictionary must justly bo con-
sidered an a mannerism of the worst kind;
even as it is a grave offence against good
taste and a sign of rhetorical poverity,
when a writer constantly repeats certain