to
of
of
Professor Lavell
OR, AM
IRISH-ENGLISH
DICTIONARY.
ita sic lo-
OR, AN
IRISH-ENGLISH
DICTIONARY;
THE IRISH PART
HATH BEEN COMPILED NOT ONLY FROM VARIOUS IRISH VOCABULARIES, PARTICULARLY THAT OF MR. EDWARD LHLYD,
BUT ALSO FP.OM A GREAT VARIETY OF THE
BEST IRISH MANUSCRIPTS NOW EXTANT ;
ESPECIALLY
THOSE THAT HAVE BEEN COMPOSED FROM THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES, DOWN
TO THE SIXTEENTH ; BESIDES THOSE OF THE LIVES OF SAINT PATRICK AND SAINT BRIDGIT, WRITTEN IN THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH CENTI'RIES.
BY J. O'BRIEN.
Postremo, ad perficiendam, vel certe valde promovend:im litteraturam Celticam, diligent! us lingua? Hiber- nicas studium adjungendum censeo, ut Lhuydius egregie facere coepit. Nam, utl alibi jam admonui, qucmad> modum Angli fuere colonia Saxonum, et Britanni emissio veterum Celtarum, Gallorum, Cimbrorum ; ita Hiterni sunt propago antiquiorum Britannia? habitatorum, colonis Celticis, Cimbricisque nonnullis, et ut sic dicam, mediis anteriorum. Itaque utex Anglicis lingua? veterum Saxonum, et ex Cambricis veterum Gallo- rum; ita ex Hibernicis vetustiorum adhuc Celtarum, Germanorumque, et ut generaliter dicam, accolarum Ooeani Britannici Ciimarinorum antiquitates illustrantur. Et si ultra Hibernian) esset aliqua iiiiula Celtici sermonii, ejus tilo in inulto adhuc antiquiora duceremur. — Leibnitzius, Coliectan. Etymol. vol. 1. p. 153.
SECOND EDITION,
REVISED AND CORRECTED.
DUBLIN : PRINTED FOR HODGES AND SMITH,
21, COLLEGE-GREEX. 1832.
Printed by II. GIIAISBKREY.
PREFACE
TO Till. SI COND I.DITION.
i i due to tin- public to offer an apology for undertaking Ml 1 must be so little qualified as that o! an Kditor of an Iri:.li Diet and it may not be amiss to give >
reasons tor sela tin^r O'Brien's l)ictn>i republicatioD.
I should not have undertaken this work could I with any person, zealous for education through th«
ln>h language, who was better qualified than i re are, 1 regret to say, very few persons zealous in this cpuse, who are well acquainted with rnftcular tongue,
and I found none of those few sufficiently disengaged to un- dertake the labour. I would not under any circumstances have ventured upon the work « alone, but 1 was fortunate
enough to find in my neighbourhood an intelligent and : worthy assistant, Mr. Michael M'Ginty, a good Irish and English scholar, to whose industry and attention 1 am gl. having tin- opportunity of bearing testimony. He was not unwilling to take directions, and to go by rule touards se- curing uniformity in the spelling and accents of the Irish words. He has re vised every line, and no change has been made either in the orthography or the accentuation without having authority from the lush Bible, or some other printed Irish book.
It may be a further apology for one not originally ac- quainted with the language undertaking such an office, to re- mark, that the Irish language has been very little indebted to natives for its cultivation. Those works which have contri- buted most to furnish a standard for the language, or to facili- tate its study, have come from the labour> of strai need but mention the name of Yallamry. who, though an Englishman, has done more to promote Irish literature than
VI PREPACK TO THE SECOND EDITION.
all the native Irish put together. But in connexion with an Irish Dictionary, I cannot omit to mention the name of Ed- ward Lhuyd, a learned Welchman, to whom we owe the first Irish-English Dictionary that ever issued from the Press. How far we are indebted to him for the Dictionary now re- printed, will appear in the sequel. Mr. Lhuyd was a very eminent linguist, and engaged deeply in researches into the ancient languages of Great Britain ; for the furtherance of which study he set himself to learn the Irish language. The circumstances which led him to this work will best appear by the following extract from his Preface to the Irish Dictionary, published in his Archseologia Britannica, a translation of which Preface is to be found at the end of Nicholson's Irish Library :
" It is but reasonable that I here make an apology for un- dertaking to write and publish a Dictionary of a different lan- guage from my native tongue, and which I did not learn by ear from any person whose native language it was.
" Some Welch and English gentlemen laid their com- mands on me to write something beyond what has hitherto been published concerning the original antiquity of the British nation, and in regard, that the old and ancient languages are the keys that open the way to the knowledge of antiquity, I found it the more necessary to make myself as much master as possible of all the old obsolete words of my own native lan- guage; for it was generally owned and taken for granted, (whether true or false,) that the British was the first and most ancient language in Great Britain.
" As soon as I had made, by the help of a certain parch- ment manuscript, a tolerable progress in the old British lan- guage, I found my knowledge therein not only imperfect and defective as to the meaning and signification of the old names of persons and places, but also that there were many more words in the old statutes, histories, and poems, whose signifi- cations still remained to me very dubious and obscure, not- withstanding the great benefit and advantage we have from the Welch and Latin Dictionary compiled by the very learned and ingenious Dr. J. Davies. and printed at London, A. D. 1632. ^
" This difficulty naturally led me to conjecture that a little skill in the old Irish words would be very useful to me in ex- plaining those old British words, and therefore I applied my- self to read the Irish Bible, and the Chronological History of
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDIT: Vll
Ireland, written by the learned antiquary, Dr. J. Keating, with a lew modern books that occasionally fell into my hands; and being persuaded that making a collection of the word> would very much assist my memory, I therefore at first made a Dictionary for my own particular use, which afterwards swelled to the bulk you now see it in the following impn -MUM. " As concerning those words which are not distinguished with a letter or any other mark, I collected them for the most part out of divers lri>h books, but most particularly from the
Old Testament, translated into Irish by the friar, Ki:
at the desire and « of Dr. William Bedel, Bishop of Kil-
more, and from Dr. William O'Donel, Archbishop of Tuain, his translation of tl Testan.
From this account of tin- origin of Mr. Lhuyd's Dic- tionary, it a|>[;i ;tr- that the Irish Bible of Danirl and Bcdi 1 formed a principal foundation of his work, and that it would itself be likely to be very useful to those engaged in the study of the Irish Script'
Our author o'Brim availed himself largely of I.huyd's labour-, and -on, k a repository of his pr<
f preelections from tin Holy Scriptures, as will appear from a I ret t«. hi> 1 j». xliii. \\'e have thru, in fact, in
O'Bricn's Dictionary a work particularly suited for tin- studs ot tin- Iri^h Bible, in which references are often made to tin- • •hapter and verse. This circumstance had great weight with | me in >ele< tin-' thi> work for republication ; and I have iny-ilt adeuseof both ( )'l 1: i< Q*S and O'Reilly's Dictionaries in reading part- of tin- Irish Hil)N\ and 1 have no hesitation in >a\ -\i\^ that I found O'Brien's, though the smallest, turjtbftjnost satisfac- tory ^fjthe^twp, from his frequently insertinu S< nj)ture phrases ••ind rtfrr- • Whilst then O'Brien's Dictionary has thi*
recommendation to the student of Scripture, it recommends itself on many accounts to the native Irish reader. O'Brien was a thorough Irishman, a Roman Catholic Bishop ofCloyne ; he has inserted in his book much of Irish families and of Irish _,rraphy, which will make it very interesting to those of Irish blood, and will no doubt give the book an increased po- pn id circulation.
It is further no slight recommendation of this book that it can be sold ut nearly one-third of the price of O'Reillys, which was so expensive as to preclude the possibility of gene- ral circulation.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
It is necessary to state the peculiarities of this edition, which I feel confident will be considered improvements. O'Brien's Dictionary was printed throughout in the Roman character, and Irish, English, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words were all written in the same letter. In this edition eech lan- guage has its appropriate character. In order to render the work popular among the Irish this change was necessary with regard to the Irish words, and every scholar will feel the pro- priety of the change in the Greek and Hebrew words. In the course of my reading some parts of the New Testament, I dis- ^ covered a few words omitted in O'Brien's book, and friends have communicated a few other omissions. These words lj*\ have inserted, taking care in every instance to state the autho- 'L, rity on which the word has been introduced by a reference to the book, chapter, and verse of the Bible in which it is to be found.
That there may be many imperfections in the execution of this work I think not improbable, considering the circum- stances under which it has been undertaken ; that in spite of all its imperfections it will be found an effective assistant in the study of Irish literature I have no doubt ; that it will be par- ticularly useful to the student of the Irish Bible I am fully persuaded. I ardently desire the intellectual and spiritual culture of the natives of my country, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who speak the Irish language. I see no reason why they should not have their language cultivated as well as the Scotch and the Welch. I anticipate national and individual improvement from the education of the people of Ireland through the medium of their own language.
With these convictions and these hopes I have given my time and labour to the Work. I now send it forth to the Irish public, bespeaking their candid acceptance of what has been undertaken for their good ; and though it be but a Dictionary of Words I can commit it to the blessing of God as one link in a chain of mercies which I trust he has in store for my country.
ROBERT DALY.
POWERSCOURT,
August, 1832.
PREFAC E
TO THE FIRST EDITION.
THE tedious and difficult task both of compiling and correctly printing the IRISH DICTIONARY now offered to the public, hath been undertaken by its Editor with a view not only to preserve for the natives of Ireland, but also to recommend to the notice of those of other countries, a lan- guage which is asserted by very learned foreigners to be the most ancient and best preserved dialect of the old Celtic tongue of the Gauls and Celtiberians ; and, at the same time, the most useful for investigating and clearing up the antiquities of the Celtic nations in general : two points which it is humbly hoped the learned reader will find pretty well confirmed, if not clearly verified in this Dictionary, and which it is natu- ral to expect may engage the attention of the Literati of our neighbour- ing countries to this ancient dialect of the Celtic tongue. A third con- sideration regarding this language, and which is grounded on a fact that is solidly proved by Mr. Edward Lhuyd, a learned and judicious anti- quary, viz. that the Guidhelians, or old Irish, had been the primitive in- habitants of Great Britain before the ancestors of the Welch arrived in that island, and that the Celtic dialect of those Guidhelians was then the universal language of the whole British isle : this consideration, I say, which regards an important fact of antiquity, whose proofs shall hereafter be produced, will, I am confident, appear interesting enough in the eyes of learned foreigners, especially tho<e of Britain, to excite their curiosity and attention towards the Iberno-Celtic dialect, and engage them to verify by their own application, the use it may be of for illustrating the antiquities of the greater British isle. Some instances of its utility in this respect shall be added in the sequel of this Preface, to those that are produced by Mr. Lhuyd.
A fourth circumstance which must naturally incite the Literati of different nations to a consideration of the Irish language, as explained in this Dictionary, is the very close and striking affinity it bears, in an abun- dant variety of words, not only with the old British in its different dialects, the Welch and Armoric, besides the old Spanish or Cantabrian language preserved in Navarre, Biscay, and Basque, but also with the Greek and Latin ; and more especially with the latter, as appears throughout the course of this work, wherein every near affinity is re- marked as it occurs, whatever language it regards. Short specimens of
D
X PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
the affinity of the Irish with the Latin and Greek shall be laid down in this Preface; and the plain fact of this abundant affinity of the Ibemo- Celtic dialect with the Latin in such words of the same signification as no language could want, should, I presume, be esteemed a strong proof that the Lingua-prisca of the Aborigines of Italy, from which the Latin of the twelve tables, and afterwards the Roman language were derived, could be nothing else than a dialect of the primitive Celtic, the first universal language of all Europe : but a dialect indeed which in process of time received some mixture of the Greek, especially the vEolic, from the colonies, or rather adventurers, which anciently came to Italy from Peloponesus, agreeable to that saying of Dionys. Halicarnas. Romani autem sermon e nee prorsvs barbaro, nee absolute Grceco utuntur, sed ex utroque mixto, acccdente in plerisque ad proprietatem lingvce sEo- licce. But it shall appear from this Dictionary, and partly from what shall be laid down in this Preface, that the Greek itself had a strong mixture of the primitive Celtic, which was a more universal language, and more simple in the radical formation of its words.
But before we can expect that the considerations now set down, as motives of incitement for learned foreigners to take particular notice of the Irish language, should be of due weight in their eyes, it is natural and necessary we should first make appear that our assertions concerning these motives are grounded either on good reasons or respectable autho- rities. And now, as to the two first assertions, viz. that the Irish lan- guage is acknowledged by very learned foreigners to be the best pre- served dialect of the old Celtic of the Gauls and Celtiberians, and the most useful for illustrating the antiquities of the Celtic nations in general. To justify this assertion, we have only to refer the learned reader both to the honourable testimony of the great Leibnitz, as it stands in the title-page of this work, and to several remarks of the like nature made by the learned and candid Mr. Edward Lhuyd, not only in the Preface of his Irish Vocabulary, but also in his letter to his countrymen, the Welch, at the head of his Archceologia Britannica, which is published in English by Dr. Nicholson in his Irish Library. In the former Mr. Lhuyd candidly acknowledges that the roots of the Latin are better and more abundantly preserved in the Irish than in the Welch, which is the only Celtic dialect that can pretend to vie with the Iberno-Celtic with regard to purity or perfection; and adds the following words: "Your language," says he to the Irish nation, " is better situated for being pre- served than any other language to this day spoken throughout Europe." His reason, without doubt, for this assertion, was because languages are best preserved in islands and in mountain-countries, being the most diffi- cult of access for strangers; and especially because the Roman arms ne- ver reached Ireland, which received no colonies but from the Celtic countries. In another part of the same Preface this author observes that the eminent antiquaries Cambden, Bochart, Boxhorn, and other learned men of that kind, acknowledged the utility of the Irish and Welch dia- lects for the illustration of antiquities, and that they themselves did not write so fully and copiously as they would have done if they had been masters of those languages. He likewise observes that it was impossible
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XI
for Menage and Alclrete to have fully succeeded in accounting for the radical derivation of the languages they undertook to explain, without some perfection of knowledge of the Irish language, or of the Welsh.
But in his letter to his own countrymen, the Welch, this candid writer entirely gives the preference to the Irish before his own native language, not only for purity and perfection, as well as for antiquity of establishment in the British isles, but also for its utility in illustrating the remote antiquities of Great Britain. The truth of this assertion very sufficiently appears from the following words of Mr. Lhuyd in that let- ter : " We see then," says he to the Welch, " how necessary the Irish language is to those who will undertake to write of the antiquities of the Isle of Britain; and by reading the first section of this book it will be also evident tliar it is impossible to be a complete master of the ancient, British, irithoiit a competent knowledge of the Irish." Mr. Lhuyd's foundation for this assertion in favour of the Irish language, will appear in full light in the following arguments in support of the third conside- ration, which we have laid down as one motive for learned foreigners to take notice of the Irish language, and which is. that the Guidhelians, or old Irish, were inhabitants and possessors of Great Britain before those Britons who were the ancestors of the Welch ; and that the Guidhelian language, which Mr. Lhuyd gives good reasons for concluding to be the same as that of the Gauls of those days, was the universal dialect of Bri- tain before the British, which was established in that island by the colony from which proceeded the Wrelch.
This assertion Mr. Lhuyd supports with very solid reasons and argu- ments, amounting, in my humble opinion, to as high a degree of evi- dence as the subject can naturally bear. But before we produce them, which shall be done in his own words, it is fit to observe that this writer lays down as his opinion, that the ancient planters of Ireland consisted of two different nations of people, coinhabiting and mixed with each other in that island. The one he proves to have been originally a Gaulish colony, froin the near and abundant agreement of a part of the Irish language with that of the old Gauls, as far as it can now be traced or discovered. And the other he derives from Spain, grounding him- self on the affinity he had observed between a part of the Irish and the old Spanish or Cantabrian language, and which he shews in a long list of words of the same meaning in both languages. The colony which originally proceeded from Gaul he calls by the name of Guidhel ; and so the Irish called themselves by that of Gaidhil, which is but an abusive writing of the word Gaill, the "plural of Gall ; Lat. Gallus, a Gaul.— ' "/. Remarks <.-n the letter <f. And the colony which came from Spain, and brought a mixture of the old Spanish into the Irish, Mr. Lhuyd supposes to be the Scots, relying on the authority of the Irish historians, and of Nonius the Briton, who agree in bringing the Scots into Ireland immediately from Spain ; though they are all at the same time of one voice in affirming them to be Scythians; and not only Nenius calls them Scythians in the following passage, where after calling them Scoti (because the Britons called them ij-Scot) when he mentions their coming from Spain, novissimc renervnt Scoti a partibus Hispanic? ad
Xll I'REFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Hiberniam; he then in the following words calls them Scythians: Scythe in quarta mundi estate Hiberniam obtimterunt. But as to this early epoch he only mentions it on the credit of the Irish antiquaries, as appears by the words sic mild pcritissimi Scotorum nuncinvertoit, im- mediately preceding those last above cited. Not only Nenius, I say, calls the Scots by the national name of Scythiani, but in like manner King Alfred, in his translation of the History of Orosius into the Anglo- Saxon language, renders the word Scoti by Scyttan ; and Cambden in- forms us that the Anglo-Saxons who inhabited the northern parts of England on the borders of Scotland in his own time, always called the Scots by the names of Skittes or Skets. And the Low Germans have no other name for either the Scots or Scythians but Scutten; which shews that they always knew the Scots and the Scythians to be only one and the same people ; or in other words, that from their first knowledge of the Scots being inhabitants of Ireland, and afterwards of the North of Britain, they knew them to be Scythians, and that both names were synonimous, or rather that the British word Scot, or y-Scot, the Irish •Scujt, and the Lat. Scoti, were but different pronunciations of the Gr. 'SicvOai, and the German Scutten.
These authorities will always be an insurmountable bar in the way of establishing the new-invented system of the antiquity of the Scots, by pretending to derive them from the Caledonians ; a system which Mr. David Malcolme, Minister of Duddingslon in Scotland, boasts of as his own invention, in the work entitled " A Collection of Letters," &c. printed at Edinburgh an. 1739; and this new invention has been fruitful enough to produce another of a more elevated nature, calculated chiefly to confirm that of Mr. Malcolm; I mean the Erse, or Irish Poems of Mr. Macpherson, pretended to be the work of a Scottish (i. e. Caledo- nian) bard of the fourth century. — Vid. Mem. de M. de C. sur les Poemes de M. Macpherson, Journ. des Scarants, an. 1 764, Mai, Jidn, &c. But who could ever imagine that Mr. Malcolme would be bold enough to pretend to ground his new system of the antiquity of the Scots in Britain, upon Mr. Lhuyd's curious discovery of the Irish Guidhelians having been the earliest inhabitants of the British isle ; since this learned anti- quary so expressly, and even repeatedly distinguishes these Guidhelians rfrom the Scots, whom he declares to be a quite different nation, who first came from Spain into Ireland, and there coinhabited with the Guidhe- lians, who before had been inhabitants of Britain?
For this reason the ingenious inventor of the modern scheme of Scottish antiquity entirely overlooks what Mr. Lhuyd says of the Scots as being a nation quite different from the Guidhelians, and takes care to -•\ quote no more of that learned antiquary's reflections for the foundation of his new system, than what he writes of the Guidhelians alone, whom Mr. Malcolme identifies with the Caledonians, and these with the Scots. But one point relative to the Scots, and a point which suffers not the least doubt, is, that whatever part of the world they immediately came from to Ireland they were mere Scythians by nation, either Asiatic or European ; but much more probably of the latter, I mean Scandinavians, or other northern Germans, of whom Plinius (lib. 4. c. 12.) says, Scy-
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. X11I
tharum narnen usqueqiiaque transiit in Sarmatas atque Germanos ; and Anastasius Sinaita, (qusest. 38.) Scythiam solid sunt rocare veteres r-m- ne?n regionem Borealam itbi sunt Gothi et Dani. But it is far from being certain or universally agreed on, that the Caledonians were origi- nally Scythians, or Germans, as Tacitus conjectures, rather than mere painted Britons of the same stock with the Welch, whose ancestors were likewise a painted people before the Romans reduced them into a pro- vince, and brought them to conform to the Roman manners. And another point equally certain is, that the Scots never inhabited Britain before their arrival in Ireland, but came directly by sea to this latter island, from which, after a long process of time, they sent a colony to the north- west coast of Britain ; and this point is universally agreed on by all the Scottish writers, none excepted, before Mr. Malcolme's time, who there- fore is well grounded to vindicate to himself alone the invention of the new scheme of Scottish antiquities, first broached in his letter to Archi- medes the Caledonian, and afterwards enlarged upon in his subsequent letters and remarks. But Mr. Lhuyd is far from authorizing Mr. Mal- colme's system of identifying the Caledonians, or old Picts, with the Scots ; since he says " that though their lan^ua^e is lost, yet their re- mains or posterity are yet intermixed with Scots, Strat-clyd Britons, old Saxons, Danes, and Normans ;" where we see he entirely distinguishes the Caledonians (who with him are the same people with the old British Picts) from the Scots, as well as from the old Saxons, &c.
Now, with regard to Mr. Lhuyd's opinion that the Scots were the people that brought the old Spanish language to Ireland, and there mixed it with the dialect of the Guidhelians, with whom they became co-inhabitants; this notion would not have been entertained by that learned gentleman had he been thoroughly acquainted with Irish anti- quities. For in the first place, the general tradition of the old Irish, handed down to us by all our historians and other writers, imports that when the Scots arrived in Ireland they spoke the same language with that of the Cu<xt<x-be-O<xn<xjn, i. e. the Danish tribes, who were their immediate predecessors in the usurpation and chief sway of the island, at least in the northern provinces. And in the next, it' we suppose it a real fact that the Scots came directly from Spain to Ireland, we must in all reason, and for want of further light from either Latin or Greek wri- ters, regard them only as a part either of those Germans, of whom Se- neca, about the year 60 of the Christian sera, says that the Pyrenean mountains were not a sufficient barrier against their incursions into Spain ; Pyrenceus Germanontat transifus non inliibitit ; per irtvia per- que incognita versavit se hurnana levitas. — Sen. de Consolat. ad Albi- num. Or else of the other swarm of remote or northern Germans, of whom Orosius, by the words Gertnani ulteriores, Gallieno Imperatore, abraxa potiti sunt Hhpania, &c. informs us that they invaded, plun- dered, and possessed themselves of Spain for twelve years ; that is to say, from the reign of the indolent Emperor Gallienus about the year 260, to that of the brave Valerianus, who by his General Saturninus partly routed them out of Spain, and probably settled another part of those barbarians in some portions of land, under condition of serving the
XIV PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
empire, as may be inferred from a speech of that general, wherein he boasts of having pacified Spain by his expedition against those invaders in the year 273. We see then that neither of those two swarms of Ger- mano-Scythians had been suffered to remain long enough in Spain to have exchanged their native language for the Spanish ; for these latter mentioned by Orosius had but twelve years' settlement in that country ; and for the other band of German rovers mentioned by Seneca, we find no further account of them in any other author ; whence it is natural to conclude, that they were only a flying party, who went about for the sake of plunder. However that may be, it is natural to think it an unlikely story that a Scythian people should have been the importers of the old Spanish language into Ireland ; though the fact of its having been brought very anciently into that island is not the less certain, and that by a colony of the old Spaniards, who coinhabited with the Guidhelians, but in a smaller number, as appears by the nature of the Irish tongue, in which the Gaulish Celtic predominates over all other mixtures, not only of the old Spanish, but also of the Scandinavian and other Scytho- German dialects, though Ireland anciently received three or four diffe- rent colonies, or rather swarms of adventurers, from theft* quarters. The Scots were the last of them, unless we should count as a colony those fe- rocious Danes and Norwegians who infested us, and tyrannized ever most of the maritime parts of our island, from the beginning of the ninth century to the year 1014, when the ever-victorious Brien Boiroirnhe, after a continued series of thirty pitched battles fought against them in different parts of the kingdom, at last entirely and irretrievably broke their power at the memorable battle of Clontarf near Dublin. As a more ample inquiry into the origin of the Scots, and the antiquity of their establishment in Ireland, would stretch out this Preface to an enormous length, I therefore reserve it for another work, which is already so far advanced that it may in a short time be made ready for the press.
We are now to lay down Mr. Lhuyd's reasons for concluding that the Guidhelian Irish were inhabitants of all Britain before the ancestors of the Welch. Other writers had indeed declared it as their opinion, that Ireland was first peopled from the greater British isle, which in like manner received its first inhabitants from Gaul, by the short passi'.uv from Calais to Dover, according to those writers; for which they liuvo assigned no other reason, than that every island should in all seeming reason have received its first planters from whatever peopled land hap- pened to be the nearest to it, and that too by the shortest pa>sa<jo. But to make this argument conclusive for this point, it should first be proved that none of the nations on the Continent near those islands had the use of ships, or practised any sort of navigation, as early as the time in which those islands are supposed to have been peopled. For if the Spaniards, the Gauls, or the Lower Germans, had been at that time accustomed to go to sea, were it only for fishing, or plundering the neighbouring coasts, it might very naturally have happened that some parties of thorn, oven by an accidental stress of weather, would have discovered and aftenvanls planted both the British isles, before the inhabitants of Gaul on the coasts about Calais, had entertained any thoughts of extending tlioir
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XT
knowledge of Britain beyond the white cliffs of Dover ; in which case the opinion of Tacitus, (de Morib. German, c. 1.) "' that in ancient times people sought out new habitations rather by sea than by land," would have been verified with regard to the first peopling of the British Isles. But Mr. Lhuyd's reasonings to prove the tact of the Irish Guidhelians having been inhabitants of Britain before the ancestors of the \\ elch, are liable to no such exceptions, as they are grounded upon what may be called living evidences, consisting in plain and natural vestiges of those Guidhelians still remaining after them throughout the whole island. Here I lay them before the reader in Mr. Lhuyd's own words :
" Seeing then it is somewhat manifest that the ancient inhabitants of Ireland consisted of two nations ; that the Guidhelians were Britons, and that Nennius and others wrote many ages since an unquestionable truth, when they asserted the Scottish nations coming out of Spain. The next thing I have to make out is, that that part of them called Guidhelians have once dwelt in England and Wales. There are none of the Irish themselves that I know of, amongst all the writings they have published about the origin and history of their nation, that maintained they were possessed of England and Wales ; and yet whoever takes notice of a great many of the names of the rivers and mountains throughout the kingdom, will find no reason to doubt but the Irish must have been the inhabitants, when those names were imposed upon them. There was no name anciently more common (in Britain; on rivers than Uisc, which the Romans wrote I*ca and Osca ; and yet retained in English, as I have elsawhere observed, in the several names of .Ink. Esk, Usk, and Ax, Ex, O.r. .Scc. — rid. Archcpl'j". p. 7. col. 3. Now, though there be a con- siderable river in Wales of that name Uisc, from which Carleoii, in British called Caer-leon ar Cisce, derives its name; and another in De- von, (from which the city of Exeter, in British called Caer-esk, has its name, see the note en the word uj^je infra,) yet the signification of the word is not understood either in Welch or in the Cornish. Neither is it less vain labour to look for it in the British of Wales, Cornwall, or Ar- moric Britain, than it would be to search for Avon, which is a name for some of the rivers of England, in the English ; the signification of the word in Irish is irater. And as the words Coom, Dore, Stour, Taine, L)G< ,S:c. in England, confess that they are no other than the
\N elch Kitm. Dur, Ysdur. Tait, Din, and Avon, and thereby show the Welch to be their old inhabitants. So do the words Uisc. Lvch, (or Loch, or Lach.) Kinnuy. Ban, Drim, LecJdia, and several others in Britain, make it appear that the Irish were anciently possessed of those places; forasmuch as in their language the signification of the words are water, lake, a yreat rirer, (or literally a head-river,) a mountain, a back or ridge, a grey stone. As for the word ujfc or ujfge it is so well known, that they use no other word at all for water. And I have formerly suspected that in regard there are so many rivers of that name in England, the word might have been anciently in our language ; but having looked for it in vain in the old Loegrian British, still retained in Cornwal andBasse-Bretagne, and reflecting that it was impossible, had it been once in the British, that both thev and we should lose a word of so
XVI PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
common an use, and so necessary a signification; I could find no place to doubt but that the Guidhelians have formerly lived all over this king- dom, and that our ancestors had forced the greatest part of them to re- tire to the North and to Ireland, in the same manner that the Romans afterwards subdued us, and as the Barbarians of Germany and Denmark, upon the downfall of the Roman power, have driven us, one age after another, to our present limits. We see then how necessary the Irish language is to those who shall undertake to write of the antiquities of the isle of Britain ; and by reading the first section of this book it will be also evident that it is impossible to be a complete master of the an- cient British without a competent knowledge of the Irish. Nor is it necessary for satisfaction herein to look farther than for our common names for a sheepfold and milch-cattle; for who should ever know the reason of our calling a sheepfold kor-lan, although he knows Ian, the latter syllable of the word, signifies a yard or fold, unless he also knows that the Irish call a sheep c<j.0fi ? or why it is that we call milch-cows guartheg-blithion, unless he knows that Matujn, in the same language, signifies to milk ; and so for a great number of other words, which we have neither leisure nor room to take notice of at present, nor indeed any necessity, in regard they are obvious to all observers in the follow- ing book." N. B. — A part of these words meant here by the author are to be found in p. 7. col. I. &c. of his ArcJusologia.
This learned antiquary resumes this argument in other works and writings. In one of his letters to Mr. Rowland, the author of Mona Antiqua, we find the following words : " Indeed it seems to me that the Irish have in a great measure kept up two languages, the ancient British and the old Spanish, which a colony of them brought from Spain. For notwithstanding their histories (as those of the origin of other nations) be involved in fabulous accounts, yet that there came a Spanish colony into Ireland, is very manifest from a comparison of the Irish tongue partly with the modern Spanish, but especially -with the Cantabrian or Basque; and this should engage us to have something of more regard than we usually have to such fabulous histories." The same writer, in his Ad- versaria Posthuma de Fluriontm, Montium, Urbium, fyc. in Britannia Nommibvs, pag. 264, &c., repeats that the names dsc, /w, Oxc, Use, of rivers in South Britain, varied by moderns into A.r, Ex, O.r, (!,r, are but corrupt writings of the Irish words uj^c, uj^e, or ea^c, (for so it is written indifferently in the old parchment manuscripts) signifying water; and Mr. Baxter, in his Glossarium Antiqvitatuni Britunnicarum, ac- knowledges the same thing.
To all this I shall add some remarks of my own upon Mr. Rowland's description of the isle of Anglesey, the last refuge of the remains of the old Guidhelian Druids from the Roman tyranny. In this island I have remarked the following vestiges of the Guidhelians, or Irish, and of the Irish language. In the first place, Mr. Rowland, in his Mona Antiqua, p. 27, observes that the vestiges of old habitations still to be seen on the tops of high places in Anglesey, are called to this day Ceitir Guidelod, which he interprets the Irishmen's cottages, but should more properly and literally be rendered the Irishmen's habitations or seats ; for the
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XVII
Irish word C<*ta;;t, of which Ceitir is a corruption, signifies either a city, or town, or habitation. And Mr. Rowland very justly observes in the same place, not only that those are the vestiges of the first habita- tions that were made by the first planters of the island, because the valleys were then all covered with woods, which were the haunt of wolves and other wild beasts, but also that those old ruins of habitations could not be so called as being built by those Irish ravagers or plun- derers who came to the island, under the command of Sirig. towards the end of the fourth century, and from whom the place called yn Hiric y Guydhil, where this commander engaged and defeated the Britons, de- rives its name. — fid. Hum/red. Lhuyd. Descript. Wallice and Carnbd. h> Anglesey. And this last assertion Mr. Rowland supports with this plain and sound reason, that those Irish plunderers found good habita- tions already made to their hand in the island. And indeed it is not natural that a flying part}- of foreigners who rush in upon a coast with the mere design of plunder, should think of building forts on high places without a view of conquest or permanent settlement in the country ; nor does it seem that that band of Irishmen had time enough allowed them for forming such a project, before they were attacked and routed by a superior number of the Britons led against them by Caswalhon Lhawir, Prince of North Wales.
Two other places or objects in the same island, whose names are mere plain Irish, and not understood by the Welch, are so many living evidences of the Irish being the ancient inhabitants of those parts before the Welch. The landing place of the ferry or passage from North Wales to Anglesey is called Port-aeth-icy, for so the Welsh write it. Mr. Rowland, for want of understanding the Irish, is driven to the ne- cessity of snving this compound word an absurd and strained interpreta- tion, as if it meant, the passage which some before had passed oi-er. These are his very words. Now this word is of so plain a signification in Irish, that a child bred up to the use of that language would under- stand the genuine meaning: of it at its very first utterance. The three monosyllables, of which this complex word Port-aeth-icy is composed, signify in Irish the bank, or landing-place of the yellow ford or passage; pout being the Irish for a bank or port ; Lat. portus ; <ir, or &«•>, the Irish for a ford or passage ; Lat. vadum ; and bu;, or bu;, pronounced u-y, the Irish for yellow. And indeed no name of a place could have a more natural signification, as the water of that small arm of the sea is always of a yellowish colour ; and if my memory does not very much de- ceive me, the earth or soil on both sides of that passage is of a saffron or ruddy hue. It is also remarkable that Tin-dath-wy, the name of the territory adjacent to this place called Port-ath-icy, is mere Irish ; for tyn in Welsh signifies a country or region, as ta;n does in Irish ; so that the word was originally Ca;n-at-buj, the territory of the yellow ford. The other vestige of ancient Irish habitations in Anglesey, is the name of the ruins of a great edifice in that island, which Mr. Rowland thinks to have been the Arch-Druid's supreme court of judicature. Those ruins are to this day called Bruyn-gwin, as the Welch write it ; a plain Irish word, which signifies a white palace, or house, the same as White-
XV111 PREFACE TO THE FIRST KDITION.
hall in London. Ofiu;gean, pronounced bruian or bruyn,'m Irish signifies a great house or palace; gwin, in the Welch way of writing, is of the same signification with jr;onn or ban in Irish, which means white. Now as the Welch have not the word bruin in their language, Mr. Rowland vainly strives to derive that word from the Welsh breiniol, i. e. supreme or royal ; and givyn, which in Welch is the common word for white, he changes, or rather strains into cwyn, a suit or action at law. This in- deed may justly be called a far-fetched, or forced interpretation, while the meaning of the word is quite plain and natural in the Irish lan- guage.
I shall finish this supplement to Mr. Lhuyd's observations, after re- marking, in the first place, that the name of the very capital of Britain, as it was used in the time of the Romans, who added the termination ///// to it, was mere Guidhelian or Irish, in which language long is still the only word in common use to signify a ship, as b;n or bjon is, and always has been used to imply a place of safety, or a strong town, being very nearly of the same signification with bun, with this only difference that in the Iberno-Celtic language bun signifies a fortified place that is con- stantly shut up or barricaded, and b;n or b;on literally means a place of safety, a covered or walled town ; so that long-b;n, or long-bjon, which the Romans changed into londinvm, literally signifies a town of ships, or a place of safety for ships. To which may be added, that the old name of the river of London was likewise very plain Guidhelian Irish; Caesar calls that river by the name of his, which is only Latinizing the Guidhe- lian word 1fc, water, the name it then bore amongst the people of the country ; and whether the word Tarn was always prefixed to Isc or /v/'.v, either as an epithet, or as being the name of the river Tame, which joins its water, as it possibly might also have joined its appellative with the river he or his ; in either supposition the Iberno-Celtic word tarn, which signifies still, quiet, gentle, smooth, &c., was a very natural epithet for the river Thames, as well as it may be a very significative name for the river Tame. To all this I shall not hesitate to add, that Albion, the most ancient name of the greater British Isle, and under which it was known to the Greeks, not only in the times of Ptolemy, of Marcianus Heracleota, Eustachius, &c., but also in the much more ancient time of Aristotle or of Theophrastus, as is observed by the great Ussher, Anti- quit. Eccl. Brit. p. 378, that this name, I say, is' plain Guidhelian Irish, in which language <xl or u;l signifies a rocky cliff, and ban, white ; whence the whole name Alban, Albain, or Ailbion, signifies the white cliff; a very natural name in the mouth of a Gaul or Guidhelian placed on the Continent, at or near Calais, where the first and only knowledge he has of the British Isle consists in the bare sight of the white cliffs of Dover. This Guidhelian or Gaul having crossed the channel, and ob- served the situation and shape of the land about Dover, he calls it by the name of Cean-t;/i, i. e. head-land, which Guidhelian word the Ro- mans Latinized into Cantium. A numerous colony of the same nation being afterwards come over to that island, which they peopled by de- grees from one end to the other, it is quite natural that they should have given names to all the remarkable objects of either nature or art through-
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XIX
out Hie whole country, such as rivers, mountains, headlands, towns, &c. ; and accordingly we still find these Guidhelian names every where in Eng- land and Wales, all the way from Dover to York, I mean from Cean-trr, or Kent, to the river Isc, now called Ouse, and by the Romans Isis, which passes through York; and from the river Isca, passing through the town of Caer Leon ar Isc, in Monmouthshire, to Longdion, or L»nfj.dun, the city of London, and its river Tamh-isc, Thamisis, the Thames.
It is particularly to be remarked that the Guidhelian colony never gave any other name to the island than that of Alban, or Albain ; and that when the Belgics, afterwards called Britons, ancestors of the Welch, and who in all likelihood were mixed, either from the beginning or by degrees, with Gauls, as well as with Cimbrians and other Germans, forced the Guidhelians towards the northern parts of the isle, the name they had first given it, followed them always, so as to be appropriated to whatever tract they inhabited. Hence it came to pass that this name stuck at last to Caledonia, or North Britain, afterwards called Scotland, from the colony of Irish Scots who first settled in those parts under the command of P'ergus, son of Ere, and his brothers, in the beginning of the sixth century. This circumstance of Albain, the first name of the whole island, being limited at last to the northern parts of it, is clearlv evinced by the constant tradition of the Irish, who never, even to thi^ day. gave any other name than that of Albain to the country now callerl Scotland by the English. And to finish my observations on this subject, I shall remark that Kimry, or Kit/iraes, the national name the Welch distinguish themselves by, though I do not fir.d that they can account for its radical derivation in their own language, is a very plain Guidhelian or Irish word still of common use in Ireland. Cuma.»t in the Irish lan- guage signifies a deep valley between two hills, as cume/iac does a tract of land consisting of hills and dee]) valleys ; and the inhabitants of such a country are very properly called Cuma/iAjg. A well-known example of this appellative is furnished by the distinctive sirname of a branch of the O'Briens of Thomond, which settled about the end of the fourteenth century in the valleys and high lands called Cum<x/u\c, northwards of Dungarvan, in the County of Waterford; from which they were always called Cuma/tdjj, or the O'Briens of Cuma/tdc, i. e. of the valleys and hills.— / />/. cuman infra. I need not observe that this is a very proper and significative name for the Welch, and that this national appellative they are distinguished by, is much more naturally derivable from the na- ture of their country, than from the supposition of their being either Gomarians or Cimbrians, as some writers have imagined. In the mean time it is natural to think that if the old Britons had the word cumar in their language, with the meaning now explained, those of that nation who lived 011 the plains might have given the name of Cumaraig, corrupted into K'tmraeg, to the "inhabitants of the hilly countries of Wales and Cumberland. But if they never had it in their dialect, it seems a plain case that these countries were first called Cu.na/uxc by the Guidhelians, in whose language the word is still of common use in Ireland, as above observed ; whence it is natural that the Britons finding those countries in
XX PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
possession of that name at their arrival in the island, always called the inhabitants of them by that of Cumaraig, or Kimraeg and Kimry, ac- cording to the genius of their dialect.
But however useful or necessary the Irish language may be for clear- ing up the antiquities of Great Britain, some of our learned readers may very possibly think us quite presumptuous, and even extravagant, if we adopted the assertion of Mr. Lhuyd, " that the learned nations of France, Spain, and Italy will not be capable of giving a full etymological account of those languages which Menage, Aldrete, and other learned persons endeavoured to do, if they do not acquire some perfection of knowledge of the Irish language and the Welch ; which, without dis- pute, are allowed to have been the best preserved part of the languages those learned men treated of, before they were corrupted by the Romans, Goths, and Africans." As to this assertion of Mr. Lhuyd in the Preface of his Irish Vocabulary, I shall only be bold enough to assure the reader, from my own knowledge of the matter, that with regard to Menage, (for I have not seen Aldrete's book,) and even Ducange, any man of letters well acquainted with the Iberno-Celtic dialect, may, with all the facility imaginable, make up such supplements to the erudite performances of both the one and the other, as may comprehend very extensive and cu- rious improvements of their respective works. And to put the learned reader in the plain way of judging whether it be possible that this asser- tion may naturally be well grounded, I shall only desire that he may join me in supposing " that a colony of Gauls or Celts might have se- parated themselves from the rest of their nation on the Continent some hundreds of years before Julius Caesar invaded Gaul, and that ever since their separation they lived together by themselves in remote islands, without being exposed to such a mixture of other people of different languages, as may cause any great alteration in the dialect they originally used in common with the main body of the Gaulish nation on the Conti- nent. But in the mean time the original tongue of their brethren, the Gauls, on the Continent, was from age to age liable to corruption and alteration from their mixture, first with the Belgians and other Germans, then with the Romans and their troops of different nations constantly quartered amongst them for many centuries ; and much earlier, as to the southern parts of Gaul, with the Phocean-Greeks of Marseilles ; beside that the language of a very extensive and powerful nation, consisting of a great number of different tribes and provinces, whereof some are very remote from others, is much more subject to alteration than that of a co- lony of the same nation, which, from the time of its separation, has been concentered and kept together within the circumscribed borders of an island."
Now, if the primitive language of the Gauls on the Continent hath been at long run so entirely altered and disguised, that very little of it is discernible in the chaos of the many other different languages it is confounded with, which is now its real state ; the learned reader is to judge whether it be not very natural to think that Ilie dialect of that co- lony of ancient Gauls which brought away to their islands, and there pre- served in the best manner the original Celtic language, may be of great
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXI
help to make this discernment, by pointing out and separating from that chaos the genuine remains of the old Gaulish tongue ; and consequently an effectual help and guide in tracing out the real origin of those words which Menage and Ducange undertook to explain? If the reader judges on the affirmative side of this question, as it is natural to expect, he then will decide in favour of the Iberno-Celtic dialect, as being that which furnishes the surest clue for tracing out what may still remain of the old language of Gaul, through the confused assemblage of other foreign dialects in which it is wrapped up and disguised. For it seems certain, that the Guidhelian or Gaulish colony which settled in Ireland, after inhabiting Britain for several ages, separated from the Gauls of the Con- tinent long before their mixture with any foreigners ; since it appears from Caesar's account of the infinite multitude of people, into which the Britons, ancestors of the Welch, were already grown in his time, that they had then been possessors of the island for many centuries after the Guidhelians had passed over to Ireland ; which number of centuries being added to those which the Irish Gauls must necessarily have spent in the same British Isle, before they could multiply to a sufficient num- ber to people it universally, and give names, as hath been proved above, to its rivers, mountains, and remarkable places, from one end of it to the other ; these two numbers of centuries being, I say, joined together, and considered as the space of time between the epoch of the separation of the Irish Guidhelian,- or Gaulish colony, from the Gauls on the Conti- nent, to that of Caesar's invading Britain, must throw back that separation to a period of time much earlier than that of the Belgic Germans mixing with the Gauls, or of any other mixture their language could have re- ceived. From which it is manifestly consequent that the Guidhelians brought away to the British Isles the pure original Celtic tongue of the primitive Gauls ; and as to their preserving it in the best manner pos- sible, even to this day, the reasons already alleged are sufficient to evince that point.
The remains of the Gaulish language in its present confused state, are mixed with the old French, or the German dialect of Franconia, as also with the different dialects of the Burgundians and Goths, from which the affinity of the French with the Italian in words which are not of Latin extraction, is chiefly derived ; (and this shews, by the by, how improper it is to derive, without distinction, from the Italian, as Menage generally does, those French words which bear a resemblance with Italian words, or vice versa ; since this resemblance or affinity on both sides proceeds from one and the same common source ;) and lastly, those remains of the old Gaulish tongue are mixed with the Latin, besides the old mixture of the Belgic German. But one particular circumstance of its Latin mixture, and a circumstance that neither Ducange nor Menage seem to have taken any notice of, is, that besides the great multitude of words which the modern French language, made up of all the mixtures novy mentioned, has really borrowed from the Latin, and are the more easily discerned as they are generally formed upon the genitive case of the Latin words, as conversion, sermon, &c. It contains also an abun- dunt variety of other words, which, though seemingly of Latin extraction
XX11 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
by their near affinity with words of the same sense in that language, are, notwithstanding, genuine and real Celtic words, and the very archetypes or radicals upon which the Latin words have been formed. This will be more clearly understood and evinced from what shall be observed in the sequel concerning the striking affinity of the Irish with the Latin in an abundant variety of words. The sure method of discerning those original Celtic words resembling the Latin in any European dialect of the Celtic nations, is by considering, in the first place, if they are ex- pressive either of such ideas or such objects of the senses as no language can want words for from the beginning, because no society of people, nay, none of its particular members enjoying all the senses, could at any time or in any country be strangers to such objects or ideas, and conse- quently none destitute of words to distinguish them ; and secondly, to consider if such words be the only appellatives of their respective objects or ideas used in the language either in common practice or in old wri- tings, for signifying the things they are appropriated to. All words in any of the Celtic dialects, which can stand the test of these two qualities, may with full assurance be regarded as mere Celtic, (though probably somewhat changed from their primitive form and pronunciation,) and not derived from the Latin, whatever resemblance or affinity they may bear with words of the same signification in that language.
It was upon the foundation of the two characteristics now explained that I demonstrated, as I cannot but think all the appellatives of objects, or signs of ideas, in the list of Irish words published last year at London in the Prospectus of the following Dictionary, to be pure original Celtic, notwithstanding their close and striking affinity with the Latin words of the same signification, which are stamped with plain marks of being rather derivatives of the Celtic words of the sort I am speaking of; these being generally monosyllables, and seldom or never consisting of more than two syllables; whereas the Latin words corresponding with the Celtic monosyllables, consist, generally of two syllables, as those that agree in signification with the Celtic words of two syllables, are gene- rally of three or four syllables, which, according to the rules of etymo- logy, evinces them to be derivatives from the more simple radicals of the Celtic, of which the lingua prisca of the Aborigines, the mother of the Latin, was only a dialect. Thus also, and upon the same foundation, we may, I think, assure ourselves that the following French words, with a vast number of others of the like nature, arc mere Celtic or Gaulish, though doubtless somewhat changed from their primitive structure as well as pronunciation ; such as pain, vin,froment, /ioi/t/>i(',f<'/iiinc, prrc, mere, fils, fille, sceur, frcre, banif, cheval, cavale,jnment, ame, cor, or corps, coettr, amour, kc.; all signifying objects or things which no lan- guage can want words lor, and which, at the same time, are, I think, the only words used in the French for the objects they respectively signify ; from both which character] sties it is evident they arc not derivatives of the latin, notwithstanding their resemblance to its words of the same meaning. And here I think it, pertinent to remark, that men of letters, of the French, Spanish, and German nations, who had leisure and cu- riosity enough to make out ample lists of words bearing these two cha-
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XX111
racteristics, and resembling the Latin in their respective dialects, would thereby contribute in a very essential manner to the improvement of Cel- tic literature. And if the words of any kind which may be found to bear an affinity with the Greek as well as with the Latin, were marked and pointed out in such lists, it would not only enlarge such an improve- ment, but also evince a curious point and matter of fact which I shall remark in the sequel, when I have compared many Iberno-Celtic words with Greek words of the same, or of an analogous signification, and which I do not find that any writer has hitherto taken notice of, viz. that the Latin has borrowed much less of its words from the Greek than is gene- rally imagined, and that a vast number of those Latin words which are supposed to be of Greek extraction, have been really and immediately derived from the Celtic, and not from the Greek, whose words of this nature are likewise derivatives of the Celtic ; or, which is the same thing, either of the Phrygian or Thracian ; this latter people being unquestion- ably Celts, as well as parents of the former, according to the best autho- rities. And this confirms the truth of Plato's opinion in his Cratilus, that the Greeks have borrowed a great deal of their language from the Barbarians. Before I have done with this subject of the utility of the Iberno-Celtic dialect towards improving Celtic literature, and illustrating the antiquities of the Celtic nations,, I think it proper to produce some few examples of words or terms used in the base Latin and French, of whose radical structure or derivation our glossarians or etymologists, particularly Ducange and Menage, have not been able to give any posi- tive or satisfactory explication; and examples which will justify in some measure my preceding assertion, '•' that very considerable supplements to the works of these two learned writers may easily be made up with the help of the Irish language."
First, I shall instance in the word allodium, in old English, attend, and in French, alien, or franc-alleu. It is agreed upon tEat this word signifies a free hereditary property of long standing in a family, and de- scending from father to son, without chief-rent or other obligation to any lord paramount. But the radical derivation of the word is far from being agreed upon by our glossographers, as appears at the words allo- dium in Ducange, and alien, or franc-alleu. in Menage. Nothing more plainly intelligible than this word in the Irish language, wherein its true derivation is found and well known, and not, I dare say, in any other Celtic dialect. The word allod, otherwise written allud, signifies, in Irish, any thing that is ancient ; thus, ;n <xll6b, or jn <xllub, signifies an- ciently; Lat. olim, antiqwtus; ;n <x;m^;n allojb, in ancient times ; Lat. tempore an fir/uo ; jreamxnn allob, an ancient land property; Latfundus arttiquus, sen prcedium antiquum ; maojn atlob, old properties, or goods of any kind, in a family; Lat. bona allodialia. A like facility of ex- plaining the radical derivation of the word feodum, or feud urn, is fur- nished in the Irish language, wherein the common and only word in use to signify a piece; portion, or division of ground, assigned to be cultivated under some obligations, is the monosyllable jrob, which is visibly the root of the Latin verb fodio, to dig or work at the ground; and it is natural to think that the Latin, or the lingua prisca, from which it is derived,
XXIV PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
had a noun of the same radical structure with this Iberno-Celtic word j:ob, from which the Latins derived the verb fodio, as verbs are gene- rally formed upon and derived from the nouns. This Celtic word p>b is evidently the root of the Jjatinfeodum, sometimes written feudum, of which it likewise furnishes the true sense and common meaning ; as it signifies a piece of land or ground assigned for improvement, under some obligation to the paramount, by which this kind of tenure or property is distinguished from allodium. Some modern writers, particularly Mr. Dalrimple, have advanced that the Germans were the first authors of the feodal tenure; an opinion which plainly shews that those writers have not dipped very deep into the German antiquities, and the manner in which those people lived in the times of Caesar and Tacitus ; nor con- sidered that the Emperor Alexander Severus in the year 222 established feodal tenures, called military benefices, on the frontiers of the empire, obliging the proprietors of them to defend the limits of the empire against the barbarians, by defending at the same time their own properties. And if those writers had carried farther back their researches into antiquity, they would find in Diodorus Siculus, lib. 1. that the Egyptians, for a proof that the people of Argos and Athens, and of another city of Greece, named Asty, descended from themselves, alleged, " that the se- cond order of people amongst them was those unto whom the lands of the country were assigned, to the end they may the better apply them- selves to arms for the defence of the country ; like those of Egypt, who are there the proprietors of the lands, and are therefore obliged to fur- nish soldiers for the wars at their own charge." I have been often think- ing that the custom of feodal tenures for military service among the Egyptians, derived its origin from the time that Joseph bought for the king all the lands of Egypt for the provisions he furnished to the par- ticular proprietors, during the seven years of famine mentioned in Gene- sis ; after which event the king was at liberty to give out the same lands in equal or proportionable divisions, as Lycurgus did those of his juris- diction, under the obligation of military service. Before that epoch the properties of particulars in Egypt were doubtless of the free allodial kind, which in the primitive times must have been the case in all other countries.
Another word of the same nature with those I have mentioned, I mean soccagium, soccage, a tenure subject to services of agriculture, or some other duties or rents to the Paramount, has its natural root in the Irish language, wherein the monosyllable fOc is the common and only appellative of a ploughshare, or that pointed iron instrument which lies perpendicular to the coulter, and parallel to the ridge. As this word soc has been in the old French or Gaulish language with the same meaning, I cannot but think that that language had also the word piOt, plur. piotu, which in the Celtic means a wheel and wheels, and is the only word used for it in Irish ; Lat. rota and carruca, which latter word signifies a plough, as well as any wheel -carriage, (vid. Littleton's Dic- tion, in V. Carruca,) and whence in the modern French a plough is called cJiarrue, as it may as properly be called jtot, or plur. jtotu, from its wheels, being words of the same meaning. I therefore refer to the
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION*. XXV
judicious etymologists, whether the French words roture and roturier may not be more properly derived from ftot, or ^ocu, signifying a plough, than from the participle of the Latin word n/mpo, to break, be- cause agriculture chiefly consists in breaking or dividing the ground. — • Vid. Menage in the word roturp. And to finish my remarks on words of this nature, I shall only add, that I very much doubt if the root of the Latin word armarium, armaria, can be as properly found in any other living language of the Celtic nations as in the Irish ; wherein the mono- syllable ajnm signifies any close place, which is likewise the general sig- nification of the word armarium, though it is particularly used to signify a storehouse, a closet, a cupboard, a chest, a study, or library. — Vid. Dtt Canoe, and Littleton's Diet, ad Voc. armarium. Tims also the Irish word cam, crooked or convex, is the root of the Latin camurus, as camuris cornibus of Virgil, and camus of the French. And as to the names of rivers, mountains, and towns all over the Celtic nations, I dare say no Celtic dialect now subsisting can equal the Irish in accounting for their radical derivations. For the etymological explanation of all the names of towns that end in ban, I refer the reader to that word in the following Dictionary, as I do to the word ma j, (which in Irish is the common word to signify a plain field, or any open piece of ground clear of trees or woods,) for explaining those which end in maju^, of which Bochart (lib. 1 . c. 42. p. 757.) assures us, there were more than thirty in the Celtic countries, besides six which he names. But Ortellius, Rhe- nanus, and Cambden, who are followed by Bochart, and lately by Bullet and Peloutier, are all mistaken as to the signification of the word magus, which they interpret a town or habitation, not considering that all towns or habitations would have as good right to that name as those which are particularly distinguished by it. The name maj was doubtless given to those plain or clear pieces of ground at or before the time of building thereupon the towns whose names terminate in that monosyllable of which the Latins made magus. In the same manner as we read in the life of St. Patrick, that the town which he built on the high ground of £)ftajm Sajleac, derived its name of Ard-magh, from its situation on a high field or plain, which clearly indicates the literal signification of the Celtic word ma j. Thus also, for the literal explication of the names of towns terminating in durus or durum, it is sufficient to observe, that in the Iberno-Celtic dialect the monosyllable ban signifies water ; and ac- cordingly it is observable, that those towns are situate near some rivers, lakes, or marshes, or otherwise convenient to good springs or fountains. And as to the names of rivers, it is to be observed, that the common ap- pellative for a river in Irish is ama;n, Lat. amnis ; which name joined to that of some remarkable quality of any particular river, makes up its name. Thus ja^tb, pronounced garv, which signifies violent, rough, rapid, being joined to amujn makes gankaroajn, and contractedly 3<i- jiama;n, Jd-r^roup, Latinized into Garumna, the river Garone. Lastly, to account for the etymology of the names of rivers ending in ana or anus, as Sequana and Rhodanus, £c., we have only to remark that an is one of the common appellatives of water in the Irish language. If Mr. Bullet had been well acquainted with it, he would have had no need of
d
XXY1 PREFACE TO THE FIKST EDITION.
so often recurring to strained explications of the names of the remarkable rivers of France.
Now, to acquit myself of the fourth and last point of my engagement to the public, as it is stated in the beginning of this Preface, I have only to shew, in the first place, the close and abundant affinity of the Irish language with the Latin. And at the same time, in order to demon- strate that the Iberno-Celtic dialect did not borrow from the Latin any of those words in which both languages agree, (excepting always such words as are significative of the rites and mysteries of the Christian reli- gion; objects which no people could have words for before the preaching of the Gospel,) I shall only lay down on the part of the Irish, those which are expressive of ideas or objects which no language can want words for, even in its most incult state, and are at the same time the only words in common use in that language to signify precisely and properly the things they are appropriated to ; two characteristics which plainly demonstrate that they are not derivatives of any other language, but ra- ther genuine original words of the Celtic tongue. From which circum- stance, joined to the plain marks of derivation with which the corres- ponding Latin words are stamped, as shall hereafter be observed, it will evidently appear that those Latin words, with a vast number of others taken notice of throughout the course of this Dictionary, are derivatives of the Celtic; and consequently that the lingua prisca of the Aborigines of Italy, from which the old Latin, refined by the Romans, had been formed, was only a dialect of the Celtic; which was the more natural, as the Aborigines themselves, consisting of Umbrians, Sabins, and others, were certainly Celts. In the next place, I shall compare the Irish with the Greek, in order to shew that the Greeks have derived a great part of their language from the Celtic, for most certainly the Irish never bor- .( rowed any part of their's from the Greeks, no more than did the Gauls or any other Celts : and by comparing the Latin, as well as the Greek, with the Irish in words, wherein the three languages agree in affinity, it will be made manifest that the Latin did not borrow from the Greeks (as it hath hitherto been imagined) those words which agree with the Iberno-Celtic, as well as with the Greek, but rather that both the Latin and the Greek derived them from the Celtic. This point hath been already touched upon and laid open, in some measure, in the preceding part of this Preface ; I shall therefore now proceed to lay down my list of Irish and Latin words of the nature I have explained, but not in an alphabetical order. The Irish precedes, the Latin follows, in Italic cha- racters, and then the English in the Roman. At the same time it is to be noted, that to judge of the affinity of the Latin with the Irish, it is necessary the reader should know that the Irish alphabet has no v con- sonant, but that the letter b, aspirated with an h, serves instead of it, as in the Spanish. It is also to be remarked, that the change of initial con- sonants makes no difference as to the identity of radicals between the words of different languages, no more than the exchange of one vowel for another in any syllable of such words. Now begins the list, wherein the letter M. shall be fixed immediately after every Irish word that may
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXVll
seem to strangers to be of two syllables, though it be really but a mono- syllable. No Irish word of this list is of more than two syllables.
Ir. (D;a, M., senit be, Lat. Deus, God ; Ir. anm or anam, Lat. anima, the soul ; Ir. jntleacr, Lat. intellect us, the understanding ; Ir. noeamOjt, Lat. memoria, the memory; Ir. to; I, Lat. roluntas, the will ; Ir. jntjn, Lat. hitentio, intention ; Ir. me;n, M., LaL metis, the mind ; Ir. neo/un, Lat ratio, reason ; Ir. ;~pn;b, Lat spir it us, spirit ; Ir. beata and b;c, Lat. vita, lite ; Ir. copp, Lat. corpus, the body ; Ir. cpo;be, M., Lat. cor. abl. corde, the heart ; Ir. CO;-, Lat. pes, the foot ; Ir. act, Lat. pectus, the breast; Ir. jrean, plur. jrj;t, Lat. rir, a man; Ir. bean and ben, Lat Vtnu*, woman; Ir. atajrt, Lat pater, a father; (vid. atta in the Gothic Glossary at the end of the Codex .Jrgenteus, where it ap- pears that this word had not the letter p as its initial in many ancient languages, not even in the old Greek, nor anciently in the Latin, as may be inferred from the word attavus. — See ataj,* infra /) Ir. mata;;t, Lat. mater, a mother: Ir. batata; /t, Lat. j 'rater, a brother or cousin; Ir. majljf, Lat. malitia. malice; Ir. jreall, Lat fallacia, treachery; Ir. f)Cj\, Lat. verum, true ; Ir. bo, Lat bos, a cow ; Ir. taftb, pronounced tar i", Lat. taunts, a bull; Ir. cabal or capal, Lat cavallu-s, a horse; Ir. eac, plur. e;c, Lat. equits, a steed ; Ir. cu, plur. ca;n or cajn, M., Lat. cani-s ; Ir. cu;n;/7. Lat. cumcidus, a rabbit ; Ir. rabajt, Lat caper, a goat ; Ir. uajn, M., Lat agnus, a lamb ; Ir. cuac, M., Lat. citcullus, the cuckoo ; Ir. car, Lat cctus, a cat ; Ir. co;^tr, M., Lat. cortex, bark; Ir. ce;-t, Lat. ccpra, wax; Ir. ^on, Lat stannum, tin; Ir. o/t, Lat au- rum, gold; Ir. a;pgec or aj^jjoc, Lat. argentum, silver; Ir. jenn or ;a^un, Lat. ftrrw/i, iron ; Ir. cnajb, Lat. canabis, hemp ; Ir. c^oc, Lat. crocus, saffron; Ir. ca;lc, Lat. calx, calci-s. chalk or lime; Ir. tj/t, Lat. terra, land or country- ; Ir. ralb and cellu/t, Lat tellus. telluri.s, ground ; Ir. cOftciM, Lat. purpura, purple; Ir. airmjn, Lat amnis, a river; Ir. loc or lac, Lat. lacu-s, a lake, or pool of water ; Ir. j-eajal, Lat. secale, rye ; Ir. cpu;r/?eacc, Lat. triticum, wheat ; Ir. anba^, Lat. arua, aruo- rum, corn, or fields cf com; Ir. j/tan and g/tajne, Lat gran ion, grain ; Ir. Ijn, Lat Unum, flax; Ir. ob, pronounced or, Lat ovum, an egg; Ir. caj^e. Lat. case us. cheese ; Ir. lace, Lat. lac, milk ; Ir. pun, Lat. ri- num, wine; Ir. ajlmu;ntr, Lat aliment urn, food or nourishment; Ir. 3;neamu;n, Lat. genimen, a generation ; Ir. balb, Lat balbus, a stam- merer; Ir. calb, Lat. calrus, bald; Ir. coec, Lat caucus, blind; Ir. macujl, Lat. macula, a spot or stain; Ir. mejnbpieac, Lat. meretrix, a harlot ; Ir. b^uct:, Lat r net us, a belch ; Ir. clum, Lat. pluma, a feather ; Ir. mob, Lat. modus, a mode or manner ; Ir. nof, Lat. mos, a custom or usage; Ir. clabif. M., Lat gladium, a sword; Ir. lar»n, Lat. lancea, a lance ; Ir. ya; jjb, Lat. sagitta, an arrow ; Ir. j\oi, Lat. rota, a wheel ; Ir. mpl, Lat mola, a mill-wheel, or the whole mill ; Ir. obujft, Lat. opus, operis, work ; Ir. neab and n;b. Lat nidus, a nest ; Ir. f-oc, Lat. soccus, a ploughshare; Ir. pcb, unde Lzt.fodio andfeodum, a sod or piece of ground ; Ir. allob, Lat allodium, an ancient property ; Ir. ca^ta, Lat char us, a dear friend ; Ir. cnejb, Lat crede, believe tliou; hence Ir. crte;b;om, l^t. fides, belief.— X. B. These two words were in the Irish language before the knowledge of Christianity, as all people must have
XXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
had an idea of the act of believing each other in their mutual converse of life. Ir. f&e jut, Lat. sceculum, an age, or man's life ; Ir. m; and mjf, Lat. mensis, a month ; Ir. ;"eact:m<x;n, Lat. septimana, i. e. septem mane, a week; Ir. uajfi, Lat. hora, an hour; Ir. eun, Lat. unum, one; Ir. bo, Lat. duo, two ; Ir. t^t;, Lat. tres, tria, three ; Ir. ce<xt<xj/i, Lat. quatuor, four ; Ir. cu;j, Lat. quinqiie, five ; Ir. fe, Lat. sex, six ; Ir. ^e<xcc or fQc'c, Lat. septem, seven ; Ir. oct, Lat. octo, eight ; Ir. n<xo, Lat. novem, nine ; Ir. be;c, Lat. decem, ten ; Ir. ce<xb or ce<xt, Lat. centum, one hundred; Ir. ro;le, Lat. mille, a thousand; Ir. njamujp, Lat. numerus, a number ; Ir. <xnngu/i, Lat. angor, anguish, trouble, or vexation ; Ir. <x^m, Lat. arm us, unde anna armorum, the shoulder, also arms, so called from that part of the body, which is the chief seat of strength ; Ir. ne<xbul, contracts neul, Lat. nebula, a cloud ; Ir. poc, Lat. siccttas, frost ; Ir. mojji or mu;/i, or m<vj/i, Lat. mare, the sea; Ir. mo;n or mu;n, Lat. mons, a mountain ; Ir. po/tt, Lat. portus, a bank, a landing-place, a port, or haven ; Ir. jralla, Lat. vallum, a wall or rampart ; Ir. olcx, Lat. oleum, oil ; Ir. ctvjrmeal, Lat. candela, a candle ; Ir. pof and /to;^, Lat. rosa, a rose ; Ir. ca/t^a, Lat. carruca, any wheel-carriage ; Ir. ^cuab, Lat. scopa, a floor-brush, or a sweeping-broom ; Ir. leatun, Lat. latum, broad, breadth ; Ir. <x;tp, any huge lump or heap of earth ; hence the Latin Alpes, the name of that huge mountain which separates Gaul from Italy; for the Gauls called all mountains or heights by this name Ailp, of which the Latins made Alpes. Omnes altitudines montium a Gallis Alpes vacant ur, says Servius ad ^Eneid x. initio ; and Georg. in. v. 474. Cluverius remarks in his Germania Antiq. that Gallorum lingua Alpes, monies alti vocantur, and that alp signified a mountain in the British ; Alp mons Britannis. — Vid. Isid. Orig. I. 14. c. 8; Strabo, 1. 4. p. 201 ; Ptol. 1. 2. c. 2. Thucidides mentions a mountain in the country of the Argians called Olpe in his time. Ir. o/jll-bfiojac, plur. oijU-b/tOjajj,
. Lat allobrogi, from <x;U, which in Irish signifies a rocky cliff, and b/tor, a habitation ; so that Allobrogi signifies a people inhabiting rocky cliffs and hills, such as were those who lived near the Alpes in the hills of Savoye and Dauphine, from thence called Allobrogi, which is but a Latinized writing of the Celtic word -CtjU-b/iOjcijg.
The preceding list of Irish words, all, excepting the last, stamped with the two characteristics above described, might be stretched to a much greater extent, were it reconcileable with the reasonable length of a Preface. The last word, <T;ll-b/tO£<xc, hath been added to show that Allobrox, Allobroges, is mere Guidhelian, or Gallic Irish, as are like- wise vergobretus, the title of the chief magistrate or judge of the JEdui, rercingetorix and vergasttlaunus, two military officers of the Arverni. Versobretus is but a Latinized writing of the Guidhelian or Gallo- Celtic words pe<x/t-gO-b^e;t:, in Irish signifying a judge, or literally, the man who judgeth, or the man of the judgment, vir adjudicium, or ad
jiniicanditm, from j:ea/i, a man, and b/te;c, judgment; whence b;te;- ceani, a judge, (qd. vid. infra.) Fercingetorix is likewise a Latin fashion and contraction of the Celtic words j:e<X;t-c;n-jo-tojfi, or tupuf, which literally means the head man of the expedition ; and f^ergosillau- nits is another Latin form of the Celtic jred/t-jo-^jlecxn, pronounced
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXIX
rd;le<xn, meaning, verbatim, the man of the standard, or a standard- bearer,— J id. y*a;jle<xn. But however short or incomplete the above list may be, I cannot but doubt that any other dialect of the Celtic coun- tries could furnish as many words of so near a resemblance and radical affinity with the Latin, all being nouns, and such appellatives as no lan- guage can want, and at the same time the only words in use to signify precisely the things they are appropriated to ; I say precisely, because there are a few words in this list whose objects are also signified in some manner by other appellatives. But besides that those other appel- latives are not of the old Guidhelian or Iberno-Celtic dialect, but rather of a Scytho-German, or Scandinavian origin, they are not exactly and properly of the same signification with those in the above list, to which they are pretended to be synonymous. Thus the word taj-gfe is some- times used instead of jntteacc to signify the understanding, though it rather means conception, or the act of the understanding, than that fa- cility of the soul which is called intellect. So likewise the word caojne is sometimes employed in the place of medmojft, though its proper mean- ing is remembrance, or reminiscence ; while the word me<xmo;rt signifies that very faculty of the soul of which reminiscence is but the act. In the same manner the word j-ljtxb is made synoniraous to mojn or mu;n, a mountain, though it rather means a heathy ground, whether it be low and flat, or in the shape of a hill; and so is pxjtujje to roujfi or m<xj;t, the sea, though it more properly signifies deluge, as in the common ex- pression fiujje pe&i\t<\nna, a deluge of water. Now it is to be noted, that inasmuch as it is allowed by the best etymologists, that of radical words of the same sense in different languages, those should be esteemed the more ancient that consist of fewest letters ; and that of words agree- ing only in part, those which have the additional letters or syllables are for the most part the derivatives, as Mr. Lhuyd justly observes ; it fol- lows that the Iberno-Celtic words in the preceding list, being all either of one or two syllables, and mostly monosyllables, should be esteemed the radical and ancient words of the Celtic, from which the corresponding Latin words, all consisting of a greater number of syllables, were de- rived. For it is remarkable that the Latin words agreeing in radicals with the Irish monosyllables are generally of two syllables, and those that correspond to the Irish words of two syllables, always consist of three or four ; not excepting the names of numbers, which are all mono- syllables, exclusive of ceat<xj;i, whose corresponding Latin, quatuor, surpasses it by one .syllable. It is therefore to be presumed that no ju- dicious writer will ever join Mr. Thomas Innis in his strange assertion, " that the Irish had no names of numbers until they came to the know- ledge of the Latin tonsue after their conversion to Christianity ;" an as- sertion which betrays his want of attention to the affinity of all the ancient dialects of the European nations with each other, and which he supports with no other reason than the resemblance of the Irish numerical names with the Latin ; and this reason he pretends to corroborate with the marks of Latin derivation with which our exotic words, significative of the rites and mysteries of the Christian religion, are plainly and neces- sarily stamped ; without considering that no people can have words for
XXX PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
things or objects of which they never had any knowledge until they are made acquainted with them; though, on the contrary, no society of people could want words for those objects or ideas they must at all times be conversant with ; such as numbers, or the multiplicity of things, with which all people had as early an acquaintance as with their fingers. Nor can I imagine that any body will ever shew a solid reason why a people who march against their enemies on a day of battle, a practice which all different tribes constantly observed ever since the division of mankind, should not at all times have names for the numbers of their men, as well as for that of their fingers.
Now I think it pertinent to my subject to remark, that the very near resemblance and affinity between the Irish words and the Latin, in the above list, furnishes a fresh proof of the high antiquity both of the Iberno-Celtic dialect, and of the epoch of the separation of the Guidhc- lian colony from the main body of their nation in Gaul ; inasmuch as that near affinity of the Irish with the Latin must necessarily proceed from much a nearer one, and probably from an original identity between the language of the Guidhelians or the Celts of Gaul, and that of the Aborigines or Indigenae of Italy, who were a people of very remote an- tiquity. This original identity of the primitive language of the Gauls with that of the Aborigines of Italy might, I think, be accounted for in a very natural manner. That part of the posterity of Japhet which peopled the south and south-west parts of Europe, must have first pro- ceeded from the centre of the separation and dispersion of mankind, (whether it be Armenia, or the plains of Senaar,) towards the straits of the Thracian Bosphorus, and those of the Hellespont, which they crossed over by the means of boats, whose construction, doubtless, was familiar to them from the traditional knowledge they had of that of the ark. Those tribes which passed over the Hellespont first inhabited the south parts of Thracia, as also Macedonia and Greece ; and those which crossed the Thracian Bosphorus, now the straits of Constantinople, must, by the same reason of convenience, have been the first inhabitants both of the northern parts of Thrace and of Lower and Upper Mysia, as also of Dacia, when a part of them had crossed the Danube. In process of time a part of those tribes which first stopped in the two Mysias and the northern parts of Thrace, proceeded towards Illyris, or lllyricum, and Pannonia; from which regions, where they were separated into two different bodies, it is natural to conclude, from the situation of them parts, that they proceeded towards the west by two different courses; those of Pannonia steering towards Noricuin, now Austria, Stiria, Carniola, Carinthia, and Upper Bavaria; from which quarters all the western parts of Germany, in all appearance, were first peopled, as the east and north-east parts very probably were from Dacia; and those of lllyricum, taking their course towards Istria, from which point of the Adriatic coast they poured down into the delicious regions of Italy, whence, after having multiplied their numbers, a part of them proceeded to Gaul, speaking the very same language with those of their nation which they left in Italy, and who by all the ancient authors were called Indigence, or Aborigines, words of the same signification, meaning thut
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXXI
they were the original or primitive people who first inhabited that land. Those were the Siculi, the Ausones, the Umbri, (and all their descen- dants of different names mentioned by Cluver. Georgr. 1.3. c. 33. p. 332.) and the people who were particularly called Aborigines, of whom Dionys. Hallicarnassus says, that some of the ancient historians counted them amongst the Indigetes, or Indigence, and that others wrote they were a tribe of the Ligures, tc/io came into the centre of Italy from the neighbourhood of Gaul, where indeed it is well known that those an- cient people were settled at both sides of the Alpes as far as to the banks of the Rhone, being in all appearance a part of the first detachments that went off from Italy towards Gaul, and who may consequently be ranked amongst the Indigenae. The same author adds that other ancients iden- tified the Aborigines with the Umbrians, whom Plinius represents as the most ancient people of Italy, Umbrornm gens antiqnissima Italice exis- ttmatur,\.3. c. 14; and Florus calls them mitiquuwmu Italice populus. But this diversity of opinions concerning the origin of the Aborigines serves to prove that they were a tribe of the first inhabitants of Italy, and consequently of the same stock and body of people, whereof the first planters of Gaul were but a detachment, as the Umbri are acknowledged by some of the most respectable ancient writers to be of the same stock with the old Gauls, not of those who repassed the Alps, and inhabited the upper parts of Italy called Gallia Togata. So Solinus, citing Boc- chus, says, Gallorum veterum propaginem Urnbros esse Bocchus absol- vit, Sol. c. 8 ; and Servius, Sane Umbros Gallorum veterum propa<n- nem esse .Marcus Antonius refert, Serv. 1.11; Isidorus, Umbri Italics gens est, sed Gallorum veterum propago, Isid. 1. 9. c. 2. The Sabini, who, as well as the Umbri and the Aborigines, made a part of the peo- ple afterwards called Latins, were but a tribe of the Umbri, and conse- quently of the same stock with the primitive Gauls. For this origin of the Sabini we have the authority of Zenodotus of Tzezene, as quoted by Dionysius Hallicarnassus, 1. 2. Antiq.. and who had anciently written the History of the Umbrians, whom he calls Indisetes. and says that a part of them being forced by the Pelasgi to remove from their former quarters, were afterwards called Sabini : mutatoque cum sedibus nomine, Sabinos fuisse appellatos. Now supposing the above scheme of the original population of those regions of Europe which I have mentioned, to be agreeable to reason and the nature of things, a point which is to be sub- mitted to the judgment of the public, it must naturally follow that all the primitive inhabitants of those regions had originally but one and the same language. Of which fact Cluverius has produced very good proofs and clear vestiges in Gaul, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Illyricum, ,
(German. Antiq. c. 6, 7, 8.) ; and had he also taken in Thrace, Mace- donia, and Greece. I cannot think that he would have been mistaken. I am much inclined to believe that the near agreement which the ancient writers have remarked between the old Latin and the Greek, was in greater measure owing to this original identity of the European lan- guages, than to whatever mixture might have be'en introduced into the Latin from the dialects of the Greek adventurers that came to Italy from time to time. Nor do I doubt ttot that the Gauls who repassed the
XXX11 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. ,
Alps, and settled in Upper Italy in the earliest times of the Romans, found the language of that country very nearly agreeing with their own : in the same manner and by the same reason that the people of Ireland and those of the Highlands of Scotland easily understand each other's dialects, though it be now near twelve hundred years since the Scots of Scotland parted from those of Ireland.
What I have now advanced concerning the chief cause of the near affinity and agreement anciently remarked between the Latin and the Greek, may perhaps be fovmd supported in some measure by the like affinity appearing in several instances between the Iberno-Celtic and the Greek in the following list of Irish, Greek, and Latin words. For whenever the Latin shews a radical affinity with the Celtic, as well as with the Greek, at the same time, I cannot but think we may conclude that such an affinity does not proceed from any mixture derived into the Latin from the Greek colonies anciently settled in Italy, but rather from the remains of that original agreement which subsisted in the primitive times between all the dialects of the Celtic nations, amongst which the Greek may justly be counted, especially before it was changed by the mixtures it received from the Phoenician and Egyptian colonies. Hence we may conclude that the Greek words in the following list which agree with the Iberno-Celtic and the Latin, are certainly of a Celtic or Celto- Scythian origin; and that the Latin words are immediately derived from the Celtic in the same manner, and not from the Greek, as I have before observed. In this list the Greek words are set down after the Irish ; next, the Latin words that agree with both, in Italic characters, and then the English explication in Roman types. The letter M. shall be fixed after the Irish monosyllables, which strangers may mistake for (s words of two syllables. When it happens that the words resembling each other are not exactly of the same, but only of an analogous signifi- cation, their respective meaning and common acceptation shall be ex- plained apart. The letters Ir. are to distinguish the Irish words, Gr. the Greek, and Lot. the Latin, in the following manner: Ir. <xe/i, M., Gr. arjp, Lat. aer, the air ; Ir. ogbej;-, Gr. ajSvoxroe, Lat. abyssus, the sea; Ir. <x;/tjet or <x;/ijjOC, Gr. apyvpog, Lat. ar^e/'f/ttn, silver; Ir. <xtl, Gr. aXXoc, Lat, alius, another ; Ir. <xm<vjl and pxm<xjl, Gr. ojimAoe, Lat. similis, like; Ir. cinnco^ie, Gr. ajKvpa, Lat. anchora, an anchor; Ir. <xon and eun, Gr. tv, Lat. unum, one ; Ir. <xjt, Gr. aoomg, Lat. aratio, ploughing; Ir. <xt:<xj;i, Gr. Trarr/p, andarra, (quavoce cetafr prottectiare* a f unioribus, et altores ab alnmnis olim nuncupabantur. — Vid. Glossar. Goth, in Voce Atta ad Celcem Codicis drgentei.) Lat. pater, a father. The letter p was abusively prefixed by the Greeks and Latins to the original Celtic word <xt<X};t or <xte/i. Ir. b<xc and bacut, Gr. jSeucrpoi', Lat. baculus, a staff; Ir. bjt and beat<x, Gr. |3torrj, Lat. tula, life ; Ir. be;/t and bejfijm, Gr. </>epa>, Lat. fero, to bring or carry ; Ir. bo, Gr. $oue, and ^Eol. |3oe, Lat. bos, a cow or an ox ; Ir. bptcic, Gr. flpa\iov, Lat. brachium, the arm, meaning all the hand down from the shoulder to the fingers, all comprehended; Ir. bun, Gr.jBevfloe, l^ai. fundum, a bot- tom or foundation ; Ir. cabin, Gr. Kairwv, Lat. capo, a capon ; Ir. c<x;lc, Gr. xa^f£> Lat- calx, calcis, chalk or lime, or cement of limestone ; Ir.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXXlll
cna;b, Gr. Kavafiiz, Lat canabis, hemp; Ir. cejft, Gr. KJ/OOC, Lat cera, wax ; Ir. ceat, Gr. Itcarov, Lat. centum, one hundred ; Ir. c;^re, a trea- sure locked up in a chest, Gr. KHTTII, Lat. cista pro area, a chest; Ir. cojljf, Gr. KovXoe, Lat. caulis, cabbage; Ir. colun, Gr. KoXwvij, Lat. columna, a post ; Ir. C0j-, Gr. TTOI/C, Lat. pes, a foot ; Ir. cu, genit. sing. and nom. plur. cujn, Gr. KVWV, genit. KWOC, Lat. cams, a hound or dog; Ir. c/ioc, Gr. KpoKog, Lat. crocus, saffron ; Ir. Oe and £);a, Gr. GEOC, Lat. Deu-s, God ; Ir. be;c and beaj, M., Gr. Seica, Lat decem, ten ; Ir. t>1f, two persons or things, Gr. SIQ, Lat. 6/.$, twice ; Ir. bo, Gr. 8uw, Lat. duo, two ; Ir. ea/t;t, Gr. Tipu?, Lat. heros, a hero ; Ir. px;b and ba;b, Gr. ^arrje, Lat. vates, a prophet; Ir. pjle, or pleab, Gr. (piXoaofyog, Lat philosophus, a philosopher or poet; Ir. peall, deceit or treachery, Gr. <{>n\t(jj, Lat. /«//o, to deceive ; Ir. fecij, Gr. Qayos, Dor. laLfagus, the beech-tree ; Ir. jrjon, Gr. <wvoe, Lat. rinu/n, wine; Ir. jftan and 3/ta;nne, Gr. ypai/ov, Lat. granum, a grain, or grain, meaning corn; Ir. la and lo, plur. lajona, Gr. Xtov, in the compound word, ytviOXioe and yevt6\iov natalis dies, Lat lux, a day, or day-light ; Ir. lac or loc, Gr. \ciKKog, Lat. lacns, a lake or pool of water; Ir. lar//i, Gr. Xoy^ij, Lat lancea, a lance or sword; Ir. l;n or l]an, Gr. Xti'ov, Lat. li/ium, flax; Ir. maca;^, Gr. ^rjrrj/j, L^t. mater, a mother; Ir. ID; I, Gr. /uf/X«, Lat. met, honey ; Ir. m; and m;o^, Gr. ^u/jv, Lat. mensis, a month ; Ir, neaBul, Gr. ve^eXrj, Lat. nebula, a cloud; Ir. no, Gr. veoe, Lat. novus. new; Ir. noctr or nucc, Gr. w!:,, Lat ^^o.c, night; Ir. ola, Gr. tXatov, Lat. oleum, oil ; Ir. oct, Gr. OKTOJ, Lat. oc^o, eight; Ir. p;cxn, Gr. iroivri, L&t.poena, pain; Ir. fteuma, Gr. peu/^a, Lat. rheuma, phlegm; Ir. ^-ac, Gr. O-OKKOC, Lat. saccus, a sack or bag ; Ir. 7^0,;]:, Gr. o-jca^ij, Lat. scapha, a ship ; Ir. /"bejrt or p3e;/t, Gr. atyatpa, Lat. sphcera, the sky, the sphere ; Ir. /ra;b, Gr. ara&ov, Lat. stadium, a furlong ; Ir. ta/tb, Gr. raypof, Lat. taurus, a bull; Ir. t;a/tna, Gr. -upavvoc, Lat tyrannus, a lord or king ; Ir. to;l, Gr. fleX^a, Lat. voluntas, the will. The Iberno- Celtic monosyllable co;t is the root of the Latin and Greek words, as well as of the Latin volo. Ir. "c^j, Gr. rpeiQ, Lat. tres, tria, three.
This list might be made much longer, and carried even to a greater ex- tent than the limits of a Preface could reasonably admit; especially as it is now to be followed by another series of Irish and Greek words of the like affinity, in which the Latin takes but little or no share, and from which it will further appear how abundantly the Greek hath derived its words from the old Celtic, the primitive and universal language of all Europe, its north-east parts alone excepted. And this abundant deriva- tion of the Greek from the Celtic, would, I am convinced, appear still more remarkably, if such another comparative vocabulary as this I am working at, were made up in a series of German and Greek words, agreeing with each other in radical structure as well as in signification. My reason for thinking so is, because it is in my thought very natural to believe that Germany received its first inhabitants remotely from Thracia and the two Mysias, and immediately from Dacia and Pannonia, as hath been laid down in the above plan of the first population of Europe ; and consequently that the German language must abound with the old Thracian, Phrygian, and Macedonian tongue, which was origi-
XXXIV PREFACE TO THE K1RSF EDITION.
nally but a dialect of the Celtic. Here follows the series of Irish and Greek words as above described : Ir. <X£alla, a speech or declaration, Gr. rt-yycAAw, nuncio, whence ayyeAoe, and the Latin angelus ; Ir. <vjbe, * M., the face or countenance, Gr. aSoe, species, prcestans forma, a good face or countenance ; Ir. <xjbme, pronounced <x;me, Gr. at/mog, coarse or shrubby land, Lat. dumus ; Ir. <x;n, Gr. aivr\, praise, honour ; Ir. 01/15, Gr. opyoe, white ; Ir. <xmm<x, a horse's neck-band, or collar, Gr. a^fia, \vinculwn, a band or bandage; Ir. <x/i, slaughter, Gr. Apjjc, Mars; Ir. beann, Gr. fiovvog, the summit of a mountain, or the top of any thing ; Ir. c<xc, the excrement of man or beast, Gr. KUKK^, dung ; Ir. cafi;i<xjc, a rock, also a stone-castle, Gr. vapa^, a rock or bulwark ; Ir. c<xl<x, Gr. XoAeTToc, hard ; Ir. cam, crooked, Gr. KctfjnrTw, to make crooked ; Ir. col, Gr. KoXovmg, an impediment ; Ir. c/io, Gr. Kvap, the eye of a needle ; Ir. c/ton, dark or brown coloured, Gr. %pow, to colour; Ir. c/tjt, a trembling, Gr. KpaSoo), to tremble ; Ir. cujftro, Gr. Kowp/zt, beer or ale ; Ir. bea/tc, the eye, Gr. Sfp/cw, to see. The Celtic be<x/tc is manifestly the root of the Greek verb Stpk-co, and the more evidently as verbs are generally derived from nouns. I doubt that any other language affords a word of a stronger or more natural signification than that which is the only word in the Irish to signify -sight, or the eye-sight, I mean /ioi;b- bea/tc, contracted into ^t<x;bea/tc, whose literal meaning is, in Latin, radii ocidorum, the rays of the eyes; Ir. bo/to,^, Gr. Ovpag, accusat. plur. a door; Ir. bu/i, Gr. w^tup, water. Plato in his Cratilus is of opinion that this word, as also TTVO, fire, and Kwsg, dogs, are derived from the Phrygian language. He might as properly have derived them from the Celtic of Europe, wherein u/i is fire, cujn, dogs, and bu/i, water, whence the termination bu/tum of many names of towns in the Celtic countries. Ir. bj<xcu;/i, grief, Gr. Saicpovs, tears ; Ir. gjgt;^, Gr. jij- yAtCTjuoc, a tickling ; Ir. lea^ca/i, plur. lea^ta;/i, ships, Gr. Arj(rrTjc> a pi- rate, and ArjorptKoi', a sea-rover ; whence Lestrigones, the name of a pira- tical people anciently settled in Italy ; Ir. ob<xn, Gr. <j>ofios, fear, dread ; Ir. ^ea/ic<xll, Gr. o-op/ca, accusat. flesh ; Ir. fmeup, Gr. ^topov, a black- berry; Ir. fj\on and /tjn, Gr. ptv, the nose; Ir. tjme, Gr. ripi, honour or dignity ; Ir. ton, Gr. vwrov, the breech ; Ir. t/io^-ca, fast, Gr. Spso-Kta, in the compound word tOeXo-OptcrKia, i. e. voluntarla jejunia, and rendered in the vulgate, super stitio, from the original Greek of the Epistle to the Collosenses, c. 2. v. 23. where it alludes to the super- stitious Judaical fasts observed without authority ; vid. Euxtorf. Synag. Jud. c. 13. versus jinem. Ir. tfiejb, a quarrelling with words, a dispute, Gr. Onim, (vid. Scholiast. Aristophan. in voce thrctte,) to litigate or dispute ; Ir. o;ce and ujce, Gr. vvia, (in the compound word aicpovu- vm, nox intempesta,} the night. Many more words might be added in this list, had not our Preface been already stretched to too great a length. The reader may remark that the Irish words in the preceding lists arc either of one or two syllables, and that the Greek ana Latin words cor- responding to them are generally of two or three syllables, which is a plain mark of their being derivatives from the Celtic.
Before I have dismissed this subject, I find myself interested by the plan I have laid down to account for the origin of the affinity still sub-
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXXV
sisting iii some measure between the ancient different languages of Europe in its south and south-west parts, to make a few remarks on a system of quite a different tendency published last year at London on the same subject, in a work entitled " The Remains of Japhet," wherein all the different dialects of the posterity of Japhet by his sons Gomer and Magog, are reduced by the learned author to the one common name of Japhetan Language, which, he says, " was afterwards called Pelas- gian, and then the Gomerian and Mogogian, or Scythian language; which, he adds, is now to be found only in Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland and Wales; and hence," says he, "I count the Irish and Welch to be sister dialects of the Pelasgian." These are the very words of the author, (Prsef. p. 12.) by which we see he not only reduces all the different dialects of the Japhetan language under the one general name of Pelasgian, which he consequently must mean to be the national name of all the descendants of Japhet by his two sons Gomer and Magog; but also adds that the name of Pelasgian was more ancient than that of Go- merian and Magogian, or Scythian language. This learned author does not stop here, but extends the Pelasgian name still farther, by attributing it also to the dialect of the descendants of Javan, the fourth son of Ja- phet, (Genes. 10. 2.) for in the first place he tells us, (chap. 1. p. 47.) that, " thus," to cite his own words, " was the Ionian or Gomerian lan- guage first founded in Greece, the isles of Elisha, and afterwards called Pelasgian;" where, by the by, he identifies the name Ionian with Gome- rian, as he does in the preceding page, though those two races, and their names, proceeded from two different persons, both sons of Japhet. This notion surely could not be a consequence of the mistake committed in chap. 1. p. 35, where Javan is set down as the third son of Gomer, which must be through inadvertency, or the fault of the printer, since the author mentions him as the fourth son of Japhet in p. 41. It is likely the descendants of Gomer and Javan used but almost one and the same language in the primitive times of their separation ; but as this learned author acknowledges that Greece was first peopled by Javan and his children, I cannot imagine why he identifies the Javonian and Gomerian, as well as the Pelasgian dialects in so many different places throughout his book, even when speaking of times of great distance from the epoch of the dispersion of mankind. The few remarks I have " to make on this learned" Tmfnor's system cannot, with any reason, be judged offensive to him, since I begin with fairly confessing that I have not acquired erudition enough to understand it, or to discover any solid foundation he may have to extend the Pelasgian name not only to all the posterity of Javan and their language, but also to all those of Gomer and Magog, and their different and widely spreading dialects through- put all Europe and the greater part of the Asiatic regions ; a point he insists on in many places besides those I have quoted, and very remark- ably in the following words, ch. 3. p. 71 : " But though the whole issue ot Japhet were first called Pelasgians in general, yet they appear to have been all along considered, both in Scripture, and among the earliest as well as modern authors, under the two general appellations of Gomerians or Celts, and Scythians." And here it is observable that our author, who
XXXVI PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
now makes no mention of the Javonians, must still mean to identify them with the Gomerians, since he says that " all the issue of Japhet were first, called Pelasgjans, and then Gomerians," &c.
The origin of the Pelasgians, and the derivation of their name, is well known to be a very uncertain point : I have diligently examined all the different accounts given of them by the ancient historians, such as Herodotus, Thucidides, Pausanias, Strabo, Dionys. Halicarn., Macro- bins, besides what little Homer and Hesiod say of them ; all which authors I have now before me, and have pretty maturely consulted. I have also compared the different opinions given of them by the moderns, such as Gurtlerus, de Originibus, 1. 1. c. 15, 17, &c., Pezron, Fromont the elder, Peloutier, and others ; and after all, I can only say that the origin of the Pelasgians and that of their name is a point that seems to me still wrapped up in its primitive uncertainty and obscurity. It ap- pears indeed by all accounts that they were very ancient inhabitants of different parts of Greece, removing successively from one quarter to another; and I see no absurdity, though no certainty, in the opinion of their being the descendants of some of the earliest planters of that coun- try. But of what particular stock, whether Javonians or Gomerians, or of the posterity of Peleg, the fourth descendant from Shem, as Epiphanius gives room to think them, and as Gurtlerus assures himself, no body can determine with any degree of certainty. Strabo, lib. 5, upon the autho- rity of Ephorus, who, he says, had his from Hesiod, derives their origin and name from Pelasgus, the founder of the kingdom of Arcadia, and so does Macrobius, Saturnal. 1. 5. c. 18, which is the more apparent, as the former tells us in the same place that it was upon Hesiod's authority that Ephorus had derived the origin of the Pelasgians from Arcadia, as being descendants of Pelasgus; for Strabo had, a few lines before, cited Ephorus in the following words, for having related that those people were originally Arcadians : " Eos (Pelasgos) originem ab Arcadibus du- centes, vitam militarem delegisse, author est Ephorus;" to which he adds, " that having induced many other people to observe the same mi- litary institution, they were all distinguished by the one common name of Pelasgians ;" which, we may observe, furnishes one reason to account for their multiplicity. But who this Pelasgus was, or of what origin, is another point that still remains involved in very deep obscurity. Sir Isaac Newton, accustomed to give no proofs but demonstrations, tells us, without proof, that Pelasgus was one of the race or subjects of the Pastor Kings of Egypt, made fugitives by Misphragmuthosis, and that he came to Greece, together with Inachus, Lelex, Oeolus, the old Ceerops, and others, all adventurers of the same pastor-race. But we are told by Greek historians that he was the son of Jupiter by Niobes. — Vid. Gurt- !<>r. 1. 1. c. 15. s. 15. The learned Fromont the elder is very positive that the Pelasgians were originally Philistines, and the same people as iho Leleges. But whatsoever origin or stock Pelasgus may be of, if we suppose the Pelasgians to be his descendants, their antiquity in Greece must be allowed very respectable, as Gurtlerus and Simson refer him t<> A. M. 2420, about. 1 GOO years before Christ, though still very short of what it. would be, had they descended from the Javonians or Ionian*,
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION'. XXXV11
who, according to Josephus, Epiphanius, and other?, were the first inha- bitants of Greece. And indeed if what Herodotus relates (in Polymn.) as the opinion of the Greeks in his time. viz. that the Tones, when they had lived in Achaia of Peloponnesus, which, he says, was before the time of Danaus and Xuthus. the son of Deucalion, were called Pelasgi
;les, or Littorales, but afterwards Tones, from Ion, the son of Xuthus : if this report of the Greeks. I say. were well founded, it would seem to identify those Pelasgi jEgiales. or Littorales, with the old lonians. But Herodotus seems to have had no opinion of the foundation of that report of the Greeks in his time, for when first he mentions the Pelasgi in his first book, after observing that they were a different people from the Hellenians or Greeks, being of different language and manners, and that they were perpetually removing from place to place, t which, it would seem, may be partly owing to their military way of liv- ing.) he adds. '• that under King Deucalion they inhabited the coast of Phthiotis, (near that bay which in Ptolemy's maps is called Sinus Pelas- gicus,; that under Dorus, the son of Deucalion, they removed to Estiotis, i "pper Thessaly.) that being thence expelled by the Cadma?ans. they settled for some time in a place called Macednus in Pindus, (a city or territory of the Dorians,) whence they returned to Thessaly, then called Dryopides, and that it was from this last station they came into Pelopon- nesus, where they were called Dorici, or Dores;" doubtless for their having lived among the Dorians of Thessaly ; Pindus. where they had lived for some time, being, as I have just now said, one of their cities or territories, and which with Erineus, Boius, Cytinius, and Doris, all situate about Mount Pindus. constituted the Dorian State. — See Diod. SycuL 1. 11. c. 79. and Gurtler. 1. 2. c. 30. s. 5.5.
But the author of " The Remains of Japhet." availing himself of this appellation of Pela^^i ^Egiale-s, which Herodotus mentions to have been attributed, by a vulgar report among the Greeks, to the Tones of Peloponnesus, concludes thereupon, not only that the Pelasgi were the same people as the Sicyones or yEgiales, subjects of ^Egialeus, the first king of Sicyonia, but also that they were the most ancient settled people of all the Greeks, inasmuch as '•' the Sicyonians were the eldest settled kingdom of all Greece," according to Bishop Cumberland, whom he quotes, pp. 8 1 . S'2. This conclusion our erudite author introduces by the following lines, p. 88: " The most ancient monarchy of these (the Pelasgi) was that of the Sicyonians, and their country was called
>nia. situated on the north-west side of the Peloponnesus ; but the name of this peninsula was first --Egialea. which, in the opinion of the famous Bishop Cumberland, was so called either from its first king, /Egialeus, or because it lay near the shore of that peninsula." This pe- riod, indeed, seems somewhat obscure ; to me, at least, I confess it is not intelligible. But the following in p. 82 is very clear : •'•' Now as to the Sicyonians. a division of the Pelasgi, which was the first and general name of all the original settlers, their antiquity cannot lie disputed : for Herodotus says, in his Poiym/tiri. that the G reeks fcffirm the people of ihis kingdom. .'Egialea, were called Pelasgi .Egialenses before Danaus came into Greece, and before Xuthus1 time, whose son Ion is fabulously
XXXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
said to have given the namelones to some of the inhabitants of Greece." Now with this worthy author's good leave, I humbly think these two pa- ragraphs of his work may want some share of revision for their greater accuracy. For in the first place, I must observe to him, that Herodotus does not say " the Greeks affirmed that the people of the kingdom of ^Egialea were called Pelasgi ./Egialenses," as this writer sets down ; but that the lones of Achia, in Peloponnesus, were said to be so called, ac- cording to the report of the Greeks. lones qui quamdiu in Peloponneso Regionem quce vocatur Achia incoluerunt, et ante adventum Danai et Xutti in Peloponnesum (ut Greed aiunt) vocabanlur Pelasgi sEgiales sen Littorales, sed ab lone Xuthi^^'o lones sunt appellati. These are the precise words of Herodotus in the Latin edition revised by Henrietta Stephanus. In the next place I do not find any authority for this author's assertion, " that ^Egialea was the first name of the peninsula of Pelopon- nesus ;" nor does it appear that it was even the first name of Sicyonia, but rather the contrary ; inasmuch as I find in Ptolemy's map of that pe- ninsula, which now lies open before me, the following words marked down in that part which comprehended the kingdom of Sicyonia, " Sicyonia, prius Mlcone, post jfflgialis." Besides all this, it is to be considered that Herodotus, as I have already observed, does not appear to have any good opinion of that report of the Greeks about the Pelasgi ^giales, especially as by his account of the migrations of the Pelasgi, they did not enter into Peloponnesus until long after the time of ^Egia- leus, who, by all accounts, was of much higher antiquity than either Da- naus or Xuthus. And another reason why this author could not, with any degree of certainty, have concluded, from the appellation of Pelasgi JEgiales, that the Pelasgian name in Peloponnesus was as ancient as ^Egiales, or the kingdom of Sicyonia, is, that the word sEgiales is made synonimous to Littoralis, not only by the Latin edition of Herodotus, but also by Bishop Cumberland, as above cited by our author, and by Fromont the elder, who likewise derives the proper name of King .^Egiales, from his having settled himself near the shore ; and this deri- vation is the more natural as aryiaAoe in Greek signifies the same as littus, a shore. In short, all that can be said, with any appearance of foundation or probability, for the antiquity of the Peiasgian name in Peloponnesus, in my humble opinion, is reducible to this alone : that after the removal of the Pelasgi from Thessaly to that Peninsula, where, according to the above account of Herodotus, they were called Dorici or Dores, (a name which they brought with them from Doris, where they had inhabited, in the city of Pindus, as I have already observed, and what I find confirmed by Gurtlerus, lib. 2. c. 30. s. 56.) The lones of the Peloponnesian Achia, who then were settled in the twelve cities enu- merated by Herodotus in his first book, having plain cause of appre- hending the consequences of the growing power and ambition of the Athenians, joined both in alliance and military institution with those Doric Pelasgians, as being a numerous tribe of veteran soldiers. In consequence of which junction the lonians were called Pelasgi J^giales, i. e. Littorales, as being all situated on the coast of Achia, behind Sicyonia, towards the west. And this new appellation of the lonians is
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXXIX
naturally consequent from Strabo's account of the Pelasgi, of whom he says that all the different people who had associated themselves with them in the same institution of a military life, were distinguished by the same name of Pelasgi: ad quam vitce (militaris) institutionem cum alios permultos convcrtissent, idem omnibus rocabulum impertis.se. — Strabo, (ex Ephoro,) lib. 5. The apprehension of the lones was but too well grounded, inasmuch as they were afterwards dispossessed of their twelve cities by the Adrians, or Athenians, who transplanted them backward of Athens into Hellas, or Hellades, afterwards called Achaia, on the conti- nent of Greece in Lower Thessaly, where they could secure them from any junction with the Spartans.
The circumstance explained in the above quotation from Strabo, ac- counts very naturally, as I have hinted before, for the great extent of the Pelasgian name ; and this author, immediately after his remark in that passage, plainly tells us it was from that circumstance it happened that the Pelasgian name was famous in Greta, Thessalia, Lesbos, and the neighbourhood of Troas. Other authors, particularly Pausanias and Dionysius Hallicarnassus, extended that name to other parts of Greece and the Ionian coasts of Asia ; and this, I think, is all that can be said of the Pelasgi and the cause of the extent of their name. As to that adven- turing band of them that went to Italy, they were so inconsiderable that the Aborigines conceived no jealousy against them for their number, but received them with open arms as their auxiliaries against the Umbrians. Peloutier cites Thucidides as if he had said that the Pelasgians were most widely dispersed throughout all Greece before the time of Hellen, the son of Deucalion. His quotation runs thus : ante cetatem Hellenis filii Deucalionis gens Pelasgica latissime diffusa erat. — Thucid. 1. 1. c. 3. I have scrupulously examined Thucidides, not only in his first book and third chapter here cited, but throughout the whole Latin copy revised and published by Henricus Stephanus, and could find no words to that purpose in any part of his work, nor any mention of the Pelasgi but in two places. First in that very place cited by Peloutier, where I only find these lines wherein the Pelasgi are occasionally mentioned : ante Trojanum bellum constat Helladem (postea Achiam) nihil commu- niter egisse ; ac ne ipsum quidem hoc nomen toto ubique mihi ridetur habuisse, sed qitcedam loca ante Hellenem Deucalionis filium : nee us- quequaque hocfuisse cognomen, sed turn suum cujusqne gentis pro- prium, turn Pelasgicum a seipsis cognomen impositum. This only shews that the Pelasgians were one of the different people that inhabited Hel- lades in Lower Thessaly before the reign of Hellenes, which agrees with Herodotus's account above related. The other mention of the Pe- lasgians by Thucidides, is in his fourth book, where he only says of them that the Pelasgici Tyrrheni were formerly inhabitants of Lemnus and Athens. In the last-cited page of " The Remains of Japhet" the learned author advances, " that Pelasgi was the first and general name for all the original settlers." Certainly he could not have devised a more concise and effectual method to comprehend within that name, not only all the primitive descendants of Japhet, but also those of his two bro- thers. But I apprehend he will scarce be able to reconcile it with the
PREFACE TO THE FIKST EDITION.
particular character given of those people by Herodotus and Strabo, of whom the former, in his account above related, says of them : ilia vero (gens Pelasgica) assidue multumque est pervagata ; and the latter ob- serves that the Attican writers said of the Pelasgians, that being accus- tomed to go about like birds wherever chance or fortune led them, they were hence, instead of Pelasgr, called Pelargi, i. e. Ciconiae, meaning storks or cranes, a kind of strolling birds. Rerum Atticarum scriptores de Pelasgis tradidere Athenis fuisse Pelasgos, qid cum, instar aviuni quo sors vocaret hue atque illuc errabundi connnearant, pro Pelasgi, Pelargi, i. e. Ciconice vocarentur ab Atheniensibus. It is from this unsettled kind of life, and from the radical derivation of the word Pe- lasgi, that the erudite Fromont the elder, and the very judicious and learned author of the Mechanical Formation of Languages, make the name Pelasgi synonimous to dispersi; and indeed it would seem by Strabo's remarking that all those who came into the military institution of the Pelasgi, which engaged them to march from place to place, wherever they found it advantageous to take party as auxiliaries, that this appellation of Pelasgi was rather significative of their profession or state of life, than the particular name of a tribe or nation. From all this it follows, that the Pelasgi were of all others the people who had the least right to be called Settlers.
One point relative to the Pelasgi at which, I confess, I am somewhat surprised, is the great consideration they are held in by some modern writers on account of their religious maxims, as they are described by Herodotus in the following passages, by which the learned reader will judge whether the Pelasgi deserve to be extolled, as they are by those writers, for their manner of worship, as if it were agreeable to the pure patriarchal religion : " Hos itaque ritus, et alios prasterea quos referam, Greed sunt ab ^Egyptiis mutuati ; sed ut Mercurii statuam facerent por- recto cum veretro non ab ^Egyptiis, sed a Pelasgis didicerunt, et primi quidem ex omnibus Graecis Jlthenienses acceperunt, et ab his deinceps alii : nam prastabant apud Grcecos ea tempestate Athenienses, in quo- rum regione permixti Pelasgi habitant, ex quo coeperunt pro Gnvcis haberi. Quisquis Cabirorum sacris fuit initiatus, qua? Samotkraces peragunt a Pelasgis sumpta, is, o vir, qua? dico intelligit. Nam Saino- thraciam prius incoluerunt hi Pelasgi qui cum Atheniensibus habitave- runt, et ab illis Samothraces orgia acceperunt." It seems to me very extraordinary that those writers who affect to extol the religion of the Pelasgi, take no sort of notice of this fine sample of their piety, winch they communicated to the Athenians in the shameful attitude of the sta- tue of their god Mercury, no more than of their horrid Cabirian myste- ries, of which they were the authors, according to the above account; mysteries which not only encouraged but even required fratricide. Cabiros autem dum Cori/bantes vacant, mortem quoque Cabiricam an- nunciant. Hi enim duo fratrlcidx sublatam cistam, in qua pudendum Dionysi erat repositum, vexerunt in Hetruriam, egregiarum merciinn mercatores. Ibique habitantes exules, venerabilem pietatis doctrinmn, pudenda cistamque Hetruscis colendam commendarunt. — Clem. Alex. Admon. ad Gent. p. 12. And Firmianus informs us, that at the cele-
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xli
bration of those Cabirian and Corybantian rites, it was required that two brothers should kill a third brother, and to the end that this pious cere- mony should not be profaned by being made known to the public, the two parricide brothers were to consecrate and bun." the murdered body under the cliff of Mount Olympus. The approvers of the religion of the Pelasgi must have taken no notice of those horrors, of which they were the first inventors among the Greeks, by the account of Herodotus. — See also Gurtler. 1. 1. c. 17. s. 22, 23. But here follows the passage, in the same place of Herodotus, which is strained, and indeed it must be violently strained, to found a favourable opinion of the primitive religion of the Pelasgi as here described ; at least it will never appear from it, that their manner of religious worship was the same as that of the Patriarchs, who worshipped the one and only true God ; whereas the Pelasgi professed at all times a plurality of Gods, as appears by this passage of Herodotus which here followeth, lib. 2 : lidern autem, (Pe- lasgi) in deonim invocatione turn omnia immolabunt (uti ego apud Do- donam audiendo cognor'i) turn milli deonim ant cognomen aut nomen
iiitjionebant, quippe quod nondum audiissent multo delude pro-
gressu temporis all or inn deorum nomlna audierunt ex sEgypto allata, post quos diu nomen Dionysi acceperunt. Here we see that the Pe- lasgi always admitted a plurality of gods, and that the reason why they gave them no particular names was because they had heard of no such names until they were received from the Egyptians. It is well known to all readers of antiquity that in the primitive ages, after the knowledge and worship of the true Deity had been generally swerved from, no na- tion, not even the Egyptians, as appears from the first book of Diodorus Siculus, knew or worshipped any other gods than the sun, moon, stars, and the four elements ; and that idolatry was not in practice until after- ages, when the different nations began to deify their kings and illus trious personages, which seems to have had its first rise from Egypt and Phoenicia, whence it first came to the knowledge of the Greeks, as ap- pears by the preceding passage ; and in Greece it was first brought to perfection and method by Hesiod and Homer, as we are informed by Herodotus in the same place, and in the following words : Uncle autem singuli deorum extiterint, an cuncti semper fuerint. aut qua specie, hactemts ignoratutn est, nisi nuper atque heri, ut sic dicam. ,\am Hesiodus atque Homer us (quos quadringentis non amplius annis ante me opinor extitisse) fuere qui Gratis theogoniam introdurerunt, diis- que et cognomina, et honores, et diver sa sacrificia, etfiguras attribue- I'tf/it. Here we see no particular merit can be derived on the religion of the Pelasgi from their observing no difference of sacrifices, since no such difference was known to the Greeks before Hesiod and Homer had instructed them of it.
These remarks on the history of the Pelasgi I have made with a view to submit them entirely to the judgment of the learned author of the Remains of Japhet. Far from being disposed to derogate in the least from the merit of his work, I rather should, in my quality of a mere Irishman of the old stock, show him my gratitude for his zeal in assert- ing that Patriarchal genealogy of Milesius which our bards have been
f
xlii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
stout enough to trace up to our first fathers through the plains of Senaar, mentioning also in their way both the Pharaohs of Egypt and Moses, V | though they knew not one step of that dark road, no more than Senaar and these personages, until they had learned them from the holy scrip- tures. As to this erudite author's first peopling Ireland from the Scythian countries by a north-west route, I must take leave to observe to him. that it manifestly appears, from the nature of the Irish language, that Ireland was peopled by Celts both from Gaul and Spain, long be- fore the arrival of the colony brought thither by Milesius ; and that of the Tuatha de Danain, or the Dananian tribes, who had preceded the Milesians, the only Scythian colonies that ever came to Ireland before the Norwegians or Danes, that were expelled by Brien Boiroimhe in the beginning of the eleventh century. I am not interested to make any re- marks against this learned author's making the Britons a Gomerian co- lony, and bringing them by sea from Greece, though a great deal could be said, and has already been said upon good grounds by several learned writers against the old reveries of Jeffry of Monmouth, who first pub- lished that opinion, whose chief materials he had found in Nennius. But if he means, as it seems he does, that the Britons, ancestors of the Welch, were the first inhabitants of Albion, afterwards called Britain, he will, I am confident, find the contrary of that opinion well evinced in the preceding part of this Preface, where it is proved, both by good au- thorities and what may be called living evidences, that that island was peopled before them by the Guidhelians or Celts of Gaul, who after- wards constituted the main body of the Irish nation. As for this learned writer's making the Irish language a dialect of the Scythian, formed, as he says, upon the authority of the Irish bards, at the famous school on the plains of Shinar or Senaar, by a king of Scythia, called Feniusa Farsa, son of Baath, who is pretended to be a son of Magog, I do not conceive how he can reconcile this opinion of the Irish being a dialect of the Scythian or Magogian language, with that circumstance he mentions, p. 119, " that it is called Gaoidhealg, from its first professor at the above school, by name Gadel, a Gomerian," and that the language he then spoke and taught as an usher of that school under that royal school- master Feniusa Farsa, grandson of Magog, is the language of the nut ire Irish to this day ; a very venerable antiquity, I must coniess. But at the same time I cannot but regret that this worthy gentleman, who appears but too well inclined to favour the antiquities of Ireland and Britain, did not consider that nothing could be of greater prejudice or discredit to them than asserting those fabulous genealogies, and the stories of the / Y travels of the supposed leaders and chiefs of their ancient colonies, such as liave been rejected with just contempt by all learned nations, first invented in Ireland by bards and romancers after they came to some knowledge both of the sacred writings and profane histories ; and in Britain by Nennius and Jeffry of Monmouth, as above observed. The real and true antiquities of Ireland are not to be derived from any other sources than our authentic annals, such as those of Tighernach of Innis- fallen, and the Chronicon Scotorum, and a few others, wherein no fabu- lous stories are taken notice of, such as those of the book called
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Leabher Gabhala, and others of the kind, published in the translation of Doctor Keating's History, which he never intended for the public, but only for the amusement of private families; a translation which must have been intended for ridiculing and entirely discrediting the Irish antiquities, as the publisher of Clanrichard's Memoirs has justly ob- served in his erudite preface. The other repositories of the true Irish antiquities are, first the very language of the ancient natives, as it is pre- served in old parchment manuscripts ; next the history of the customs or manners of these same ancient natives, inasmuch as the surest clue for tracing out the origin of nations consists both in their language and old usages; and in the last place, the ancient names of Fribes and places, by which the origin of the old natives may likewise be pointed out.
Now remains that I should give a particular account of the sources and authorities from which the following Irish Dictionary hath been de- rived and composed, which consist not only in different vocabularies, but also in a good number of the best and most ancient Irish manuscripts now extant, as is mentioned in the title page. The chief vocabularies which are inserted in this Dictionary are those of Lhuyd, Plunket, and Clery, with others of anonymous authors, besides particular collections of words taken out of different old writings by persons of the best skill in the Irish language, with whom I kept a correspondence of letters for that purpose for several years. The manuscripts out of which I have taken a great number of words not to be found in any of the vocabularies above mentioned, are the Annals of Tighernach, of Innisfallen, those called Chronicon Scotontm, and that great and voluminous repository of the old Irish language, called LeaE^n 6rte<j.c,orthe Speckled Book of Mac Eagan. containing a great collection of lives of saints and historical tracts, and whereof my copy hath been writtei^soon after the middle of the eleventh century, as appears by a list of the archbishops of Armagh down to the writer's time, who finishes it with (Daol;^ GDac-tf nxxtjajb, who suc- ceeded to that see an. 1165. Another very ancient parchment manu- script entitled pejtjrie no. f»J<xom, or the Book of Vigils and Feasts of Saints, together with that extensive Life of St. Patrick, called f'ita Tr>- parfita. written, according to the judicious Colganus, about the middle of the sixth century : besides another Life of ttie same Saint, written by Fiechus, one of his earliest disciples, in the beginning of the sixth cen- tury, and the Life of St. Brigit, composed by Broganus about the year 62-5, as is solidly proved by Colganus in his Notes on that Life. The History of the Wars of Thomond. or North Munster, written in a very florid and copious stile by John Magrath in the year 1459, is another great repository of the Irish language, which is often quoted in this Dic- tionary, to whose composition several other manuscripts and printed books have also contributed. One advantage which accrues for the cul- tivation of the Irish language, from our having inserted and explained in this Dictionary the hard words that occur in old manuscripts is, that it will enable all readers of Irish to understand such manuscripts ; what will encourage them to cultivate that ancient language, which is the best
xliv
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
preserved remains of the old Celtic of Gaul and Spain, as hath been already proved by several reasons and authorities.
But before we have finished this Preface, it may be necessary to ob- viate an objection that might possibly be made against our opinion of the purity of the Irish dialect, and our deriving it almost entirely from the old Celtic of Gaul, or rather identifying the one language with the other, allowing only a small mixture of the old Spanish, and without taking much notice of any mixtures it should naturally have received from the two Scythian or Scytho-German colonies, the Dananians and the Scots, which we acknowledge not only to have been mixed with the primitive Irish, but also to have obtained sovereign sway amongst them, at least in the northern provinces. This objection, which indeed carries a plausible appearance, can, notwithstanding, be obviated, as I humbly think, in a very natural manner; by which it will appear that the mix- ture which the primitive language of the main body of the old Irish na- tion, before those Scytho-German colonies, could have received from their dialects, may justly be esteemed as inconsiderable, or rather almost as a mere nothing, as that which may be thought to have been intro- duced into the Irish of all our manuscripts written from the time of the arrival of the English, Welch, and Norman colonies in Ireland, down to our own days : manuscripts which shew not the least mixture of English. The reason is very plain and natural, and can very pertinently be ex- emplified and confirmed by what happened in Ireland relative to the people now last mentioned. All the Celtic nations, as may clearly be inferred from Caesar's Account of his Wars with the Gauls, Germans, and Britons, as also from other ancient writers, were divided at all times into different tribes and petty sovereignties, all as independent of each other as their respective forces could make them, almost perpetually in war amongst themselves, at least in one part or other of the same nation, and never acknowledging any one common sovereign or monarch, but when they all judged it necessary for their defence against a common enemy to choose a supreme commander invested with all civil and mili- tary power, as in the case of Cassivellanus : " Non cnim unius impcrio regebantur (says Cambden) sed, ut Gallia, sic quoquc Britannia plurcs reges habuit. Utque Gallia in rebus difficilioribus publicum gentis concilium egerunt, et unum imperatorem designarunt ; idem Britannos praestitisse ex his C^saris verbis elici possit. Summa imperil b<>/ //(///<' administrandi communi concilia permissa est Cassivillauno." From this political constitution of all the Celtic nations it naturally followed, that whenever an adventuring party of strangers came into a Celtic country, they could never fail of being well received by one tribe or other of the nation, who employed them as their auxiliaries against those of their neighbours with whom they had any quarrel ; and in proportion as those auxiliaries helped the natives to weaken each other by their quarrels, so they themselves gained ground and strength from day to (lay, until they reduced, at long run, the silly warring tribes under their own sway. And as such foreign adventurers and sea-rovers from the northern parts always came in small numbers and parties, without charging their leather boals and small vessels with women, so they were
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xv
under the necessity of begging wives from the natives of the countries they were received in : an instance of which fact Beda gives (Hist. Eccl. c. 1.) in his account of the manner in which the Scandinavian Picts got wives from the Irish Scots, who certainly were their countrymen, as ap- pears by the proper names of the chiefs or petty kings of both people, and from several other arguments. The necessary consequence of this mixture and alliance of these new adventuring people with the old na- tives of the country was, that they, or at least their children, lost theii own original language, and spoke no other than that of the nation they mixed with ; which was exactly the case with the first English settlers in Ireland, who soon became mere Irishmen in their language and man- ners, so as to have entirely disused the English, and spoke nothing but Irish : a circumstance which made the English government think proper to oblige them to return to the use of the English language, and disuse the Irish, under certain penalties specified in an Act of Parliament, in whose preamble it is observed that those English planters were become more mere Irish than the very natives of the old sort ; ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores. These arguments, I flatter myself, will sufficiently obviate and annihilate all the force of the above-mentioned objection ; especially in the eyes of all those who will have read and considered the examples and proofs produced by Monsieur Bulet in his Dissertations, where he shews, by solid reasons and plain evidences, that the Gauls preserved their old language under the empire of the Romans, and for a long time after the northern people, Goths, Burgundians, and Franks, had settled among them ; and that it was in Charlemagne's time they began to mix it with broken Latin.
The author of the Remains of Japhet thinks his system of deriving the Irish language from the Scythian, or rather identifying the one with the other, is very clearly and effectually confirmed by Colonel Grant's explication of an inscription found on the reverse of a Siberian medal, of which that officer gives a copy in a French Memoir addressed to Mon- sieur De Lisle, a French envoy or resident at the court of Petersburg. Colonel Grant, by his explication of that inscription, published in the Remains of Japhet, pretends that the characters and words inscribed on that medal are all mere Irish, delivered partly in abbreviations, and partly in entire words. I have long examined and pored over that in- scription, as published in the now-mentioned work, and can declare to the public, with full assurance and knowledge of the matter, that it con- -f — « tains no more of Irish characters or words, either entire or abbreviated, than it does of Greek or English, or any other language I have any ac- quaintance with. And further, that that officer's Irish explanation of the Tartarian words Artugon, Schugo-Teugan, Tangara, not only is vio- lently strained, but also shows very clearly that he had but a very im- perfect knowledge of the Irish language, and none at all of its ortho- graphy ; a fact which appears throughout his whole Memoir. And for a more evincing proof of this fact, I can, with good authority, inform the public that that officer acknowledged to a worthy person of the fairest character, both in his public office and private life, in this capital, that he could not read the Irish language in its old and common letters or
xlvi
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
types, either in print or manuscript This he could not avoid acknow- ledging, being put to the trial by the person I mean, with whom he had a friendly intimacy, and from whose mouth I have received this anec- dote. All this serves to shew us how dangerous it is to grasp at every appearance of an argument for supporting a favourite opinion. To me it is really inconceivable why the author of the Remains of Japhet so earnestly insists on deriving the Irish and their language from the Scy- thians or Magogians, while he asserts that the Britons and their dialect proceeded from the Gomerians ; though he brings them from Greece, a country which he mentions in several places to have been first peopled by Javan and his posterity, agreeable to Josephus and the authors of the Universal History ; and yet as often represents its most ancient inhabi- tants as Gomerians or descendants of Gomer. The close and abundant affinity, or rather identity, in many instances, so remarkable between the Irish and Welch dialects, proves to a demonstration that both people proceeded from the same country or the same nation, in times later, by many ages, than the epoch of the separation of the Gomerians and Ma- gogians ; and as we are assured by Tacitus that the language and man- ners of the Britons agreed with those of the Gauls in his time, it evi- dently follows, from the close affinity or agreement between the Irish and Welch dialects, joined to this testimony of Tacitus, that both people were inhabitants of Gaul immediately before they passed over to the British isles ; and no good author ever advanced that the Gauls were Magogians or Scythians. If we should say, with this learned author, that this close agreement between the Irish and Welch dialects hath pro- ceeded from the supposed sameness of the dialects of the first descen- dants of Gomer and Magog; by the same reason we must conclude, that the dialects of any other two different people descended from any two sons of Japhet, Sem, or Cham, should keep as close an affinity with each other to the present time, as the Irish and Welch dialects mutually pre- serve in our days. But this conclusion is very far from being verified by experience, nor is it natural or agreeable to reason that it should. The difference or alteration wrought in the dialects of any two tribes who proceeded separately from the same country or nation with which it once made but one and the same people, is owing partly to the difference of their climates, which having naturally an influence on their organs of speech and their imaginations, causes a like difference in their pronun- ciation, and consequently in their language; and partly to the new dif- ferent names they must give the new objects they meet with both in their travels and the countries they fix in ; besides the new names and terms belonging to the different trades, arts, or sciences they may happen to invent or discover in process of time, or regarding their different ways of life : all which names and terms must naturally be different in all diffe- rent dialects. Now all those alterations, together with what may pro- ceed from mixtures of words borrowed from other people in course of time, must always be proportionable to the space of time which has elapsed since the first separation of those two tribes or colonies from the same common country or stock, with which they once constituted but one and the same nation: so that the difference of their dialects is
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xlvii
necessarily in a direct ratio of the length of the time elapsed since their separation, and consequently their affinity must always be in an inverse ratio of that same space of time. Hence it is manifest, that if we com- pare any three or more dialects of the Celtic nations with each other, the two whose dialects have preserved the closest affinity are those whose separation from each other has been most recent ; allowances being made for their situations and difference of climate. And if a just pro- portion could be struck out between the respective affinities of the dia- lects of any two different people with the dialect of any third separate people ; the quantity or space of the time elapsed since their respective separations from that third tribe may be determined in some manner ; not indeed with precision, but so as to leave it unfixed within the c m- pass of some few centuries. Thus if we should suppose that the affinity of the dialect of the Highlanders of Scotland with the Irish language may be in the ratio of three to one with the affinity between the Welch £ dialect and the same Irish language ; then, if no allowances or deduc- tions should be made with regard to climate, situation, or other circum- stance, the quantity of the time elapsed since the separation of the Welch and the Irish, should be in the same ratio of three to one with the space of time elapsed from the separation of the Highlanders from the Irish ; or, which is the same thing, this last space should be in the inverse ratio of three to one with the former. Now, as it is known from the Irish Annals that the separation of the Highland Scots from the Irish began in the year 503, and that they continued to increase their numbers from Ireland during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, we may, by taking a medium, fix their entire separation about the middle of the eighth century ; that is to say about a little more than one thousand years since. This computation, if we should exactly conform to the above proportion, would throw back the separation of the Irish from the Welch on the continent of Gaul, to the term of three thousand years. But as tlieir climates and theiz situations for preserving their respective languages in the British Isles, are not very different, we may, with a good face of certainty, supposing always the above proportion of affini- ties, refer their separation to some epoch between 2300 and 2600 years backward of our time ; so as it may be about eight hundred years before the birth of Christ: a very inconsiderable antiquity in comparison with that of the separation of the Gomerians and Magogians.
For a conclusion of this Preface, I have one remark to add, which tends to shew the perfection and politeness, as well as the antiquity of the Irish language. It consists in this one remarkable circumstance, that before the Irish came to the knowledge of the Gospel or Christian morals, their language had words for all moral duties and virtues, and their opposite vices or sins ; nay, and for those acts which are called theological virtues, fa tth, hope, and charity, and whose Irish names are C;ie;b;orii, boc<ty-, g^tab, all three mere original Irish words, such as no language can want. The Irish names of the seven mortal sins, u<xb<x/<, faint, b/iu;;r, c;t<xOf , jcea^tj, pD/tm<xb, tej^ge, are of the same nature, as well as those in which are expressed the ten commandments, the four cardinal virtues, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, the seven corporal
iMftj ^^'»^^-«*. *^A^>- ^^
xlviii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
and seven spiritual works of mercy or piety, and the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit. — Galat. 5. 22. Not one of all those names having the least resemblance in radical structure to the Scriptural Latin words of the same signification, excepting c^e^beam, which I have demonstrated above, and in the note at the word ojpvjon in the Dictionary, to be an original Celtic word, and that upon whose root, which is Cftejb, the Latin credo was formed. All this plainly shows that the Druids, who were the doctors of morality and religious discipline among the Celts, and particularly in Ireland, were a learned body of people, and fully in- structed of all moral duties and virtues. For the Irish language could not have words for objects or ideas that were unknown to the Irish Druids and the rest of their nation. Of the same genuine stock of the old Iberno-Celtic, are the names of penitential works, c/to^ccx, bej/ic, Ufirxvjte, i. e.fast, alms, and prayers; though the first is of a radical identity with the ftprjo-KEta of the Greek, in the compound word s&Ao- 6pr)GK£ia, which expresses the same thing as the Irish compound to;l- t;to^c<x, voluntary fast. Caesar's remark that the Gauls went over to Britain for perfecting themselves in the Druidish discipline, shews that the Druids who belonged to the colonies that passed over from Gaul to the British Isles, carried with them, and preserved in those remote re- cesses, the original doctrine of morality, possibly the same that had been handed down to them from the Patriarchal times. And if those Gauls who went to Britain for that purpose, had passed over to Ireland to be instructed by the Irish Druids, it is quite agreeable to reason to think that they would have found the primitive traditions still better preserved amongst them than among the Britons, who left the continent of Gaul much later than the Guidhelian Irish. Another short, but curious re- mark to be made on the Irish language is, that though it be not com- mon in the other European languages, nor indeed does it seem natural, that monosyllabic words should be expressive of complex ideas, yet the Iberno-Celtic dialect abounds with such monosyllabics. For instance, this one syllable m<vjg conveys at once a complex of all the different ideas of a stern and proud attitude of a person's head and face, with an affected air of the countenance.
I am very sensible that some account of the origin and antiquity of the use of letters in Ireland, would be very pertinent at the head of an Irish Dictionary. But as that subject, and the inquiry that should at- tend it, would require an extensive dissertation to set it in its due light, I have reserved it for another work, which, as I have hinted before, might in a short time be made ready for the Press. It is just to inform the reader, who will doubtless take notice of several instances of repetitions of the same words in different writings throughout this Dictionary, that such repetitions proceed partly from the difference of pronunciation in the four provinces of Ireland, and partly from the substitution of corn- mutable vowels and consonants indifferently for each other. I have fol- lowed Mr. Harris's example in his edition of Sir James Ware's works, by inserting, in an alphabetical order in the Irish Dictionary, the names of the old families of Ireland, and of the territories they anciently pos- sessed, but in a more ample manner than Mr. Harris has done. The
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
abbreviations used in the Dictionary are explained at the heel of this Preface. I would recommend to those who would be desirous to con- ceive at once a general notion of the nature and radical constitution of the Irish language, to begin with reading successively the Remarks pre- fixed in the Dictionary before every one of the seventeen letters of the Irish alphabet.
P. S. — The author of the following work having forgot to account in his Preface for the plain affinity observable in many instances throughout the Dictionary between Irish and Anglo-Saxon words of the same signi- fication, he now thinks fit to offer as hfs humble opinion, that that affinity may, for the greater part, be rationally derived from the radical agree- ment which originally subsisted between all the dialects of the Celtic nations, and more especially between those of the Gauls, Germans, Ita- lians, Spaniards, and the inhabitants of the British Isles : a fact whereof Cluverius has alleged many such proofs, as may be esteemed living evi- dences, in his Germ. Antiq., 1. 1. c. 5, 6, 7, 8. And thouah it hath been observed in the Preface that the mixture introduced into the pri- mitive Irish language, which was the original Celtic of Gaul, from the dialects of the Scytho-German colonies that mixed with the Guidhelians, who were the old natives of Ireland, should be esteemed very incon- siderable for the reasons therein alleged ; yet the author did not mean to deny or doubt Jjtft that several words of those Scytho-German dialects might have crept into the Guidhelian language, and many more of the Germano-Belgic dialects of those several tribes of Belgians whom the Irish called Clanna-Oolj, or ITj/t-Oolj, i. e. J'iri Btlgi't, who were mixed with the old inhabitants in the different provinces of Ireland, where they even obtained sovereign sway fcr many centuries, especially in Leinster and Connaught, in which latter province they maintained their sovereignty to the end of the third century.
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS WORK.
H. and Heb. for Hebraice ; Old Parch, for Parchment ; L. and Lat for Latine; PI. for Plunket, and Cl. for Clery ; Gr. for Greece; Ant. Membr. for Antiqua Membrana; W. and Wei. for Welch, and S. W. for South Welch, N. W. for North Welch; dim. for diminutive; pi. for plural ; Q. for qucere ; \. e. for id est ; ex. for example ; Ir. for Irish ; vid. for vide; sup. for supra; qd. vid. for quod vide ; Brit, for British; Syr. for Syriac; Hisp. for Hispanice ; Belg. for Belgice; Gall, for Galilee; Dan. for Danish; Germ, for Germanice ; S. for Saint; gen. for genitive; Goth, for Gothice ; Teut. for Teutonics; Cantab, for Cantabrice; Chal. for Chaldaice; N. B. for notabene; Sc. for Scotch ; an. for anno; Sax. for Saxonice; Ang. Sax. for Anglo-Saxon; <T<x;t/t. for C<x;t/te;m t Cbo;/-ibe<xl6<xji ; Z;. jB. and Leabh. Br. for 0/ieac CQ;c ^fobjdjn, or Mac-Egan's Speckled Book; compar. and comp. for comparative ; gen. for genitive; Brog. and Brogan. for Broganus; col. for column; p. and pag. for page; c. and ch. for chap- ter; v. for verse ; t. and tit. for title; vit. for vita.
REMARKS ON THE LETTER tf.
THE letter A is the first in the alphabets of almost all languages, though our ancient historians inform us, as O'Flaherty, upon the autho- rity of the book of Lecan, observes, that the old Irish like the Ethio- pians or Abyssines began their alphabet with the letter 0, and therefore the Irish called it bet-lu;^-n;on from its three first letters b, I, n. How- ever, in imitation of other learned languages, and particularly the Latin, whose alphabet was introduced into Ireland bv the first missionaries of the Christian religion, the modern Irish thought proper to begin their alphabet with <l '. This letter is one of the five vowels (called cu;£ gutajbe in Irish) and is pronounced broad, like air in English. It is distinguished by the appellative of <vjlm, which seems to signify strictly and properly the palm tree, called palma nobilis, and therefore deserves precedency ; although Mr. Flaherty, notwithstanding the affinity of the words <x;lm and palma, interprets it' they?/- tree, Lat. abies. It is not unlike the Hebrew K and the Chaldean and Greek a. By our Gram- marians it is ranked among the leatan-gutxvjbe, or broad vowels ; and in our old manuscripts we find <x, o and u written indifferently one for the other, as in ^<^f, oc<xr, a^uf, and : as also in beo.it, beoft, beu/t a tear, &c. thus among the ^Eolians we find o written for a, as arporog for (rrparog, an army, ovto for avw, meaning orer or above, and the Latins have imitated them, saying domo from the Greek 8a/*w, to tame, or subdue ; as also Fovius for Fabius, according to Festus, andforreus forfctrreus.
<T was sometimes written for the e<x of the moderns, as b<xj for beaj, good, &c. it begins all those diphthongs which in Irish are called n<x ce;tr^te bam<xrtco;ll, or the four aphthongs, viz. <xo, <xoj, 07, <xe. Note that <vo (which is a modern aphthong, as is the triphthong AOJ, and is substituted instead of <xe and oe used by our old writers) is pronounced broad like e long, or the Latin oe, as in the words pxo j<xl, an age, Lat. Sfpcidvm, and <xo^, age, lat. (Etas. The triphthong <xo; is pronounced like ee_'m the English words been, keen, &c. but more nearly like uj in the Irish, for which it has been substituted by the modems. It is an inflection of <xo and formed directly from it, as from m<xol, bald, comes maojl and roaojle, bald and baldness; ^<xO;t, bao/t, produce also fa.ojf\, b<xo;^i, &c. so that the Irish triphthong in general is formed by adding an j to the diphthong, and thus serves to express the genitive case and other inflec- tions of the same word, as <xo; from <xo, eo; from eo, ;<xj from ;<x, ;u; from ju, and ua; from u<x. Analagous to the genius of the Irish language in this manner of inflecting the diphthong into triphthongs, it is obser- vable in the Ionic inflections of nouns that they frequently use oto for ou in the genitive case : and nothing more common in the Greek language than a vowel extraordinary, and sometimes two, added in the beginning, middle or end of words, that they may sound the sweeter, or that the verse may flow the more pompous and musical. Thus, for one example amongst many, the Phoenician tribe, who are called Gephyrcci in the Latin edition of Herodotus, are written r^vpaiot in his Greek origi-
Hi REMARKS ON THE LETTER <(.
ml, 1. 5. c. 57, 58. So that if we would compare both languages toge- ther, we should find much a greater number of such inflections and vari- ations in the Greek, than in the Irish. And they are the less puzzling in the latter, as the three vowels are all pronounced with one breath and in one syllable, and as no vowel but the^Ts acfdeHTo tKe dipBfliong to form the triphthong.
But this singularity seems peculiar to the Irish language, that no two or three vowels joined to each other in the same word, can form two different syllables. For which reason our bards or versificators who frequently wanted to stretch out words by multiplying their syllables, according to the exigency of their rhymes, devised the method of throw- ing in between the two vowels an adventitious consonant (generally a b or g aspirated by b) in order to stretch and divide the two vowels into two different syllables. And as this consonant was quite foreign to the natural frame of the word, so it entirely corrupted and disguised its radi- cal formation and structure. It must be confessed this method has the sanction of a respectable antiquity, and is countenanced by examples, if not precedents, not only in the Welch or old British language, but even in the Greek, wherein the^Eolic digamma (which is the v consonant, and was pronounced by the Colics, as it is still by the Germans, like/) was inserted when two vowels met together. For example, the word Jaones was pronounced Javones or rather Jafones, and Jaon changed into Ja- von, &c. vid. Stillingfleet Origin, p. 560. Thus also an adventitious d is inserted between two vowels in many Latin words, both to distinguish the syllables and prevent a hiatus, particularly in compounds whose first part consists of the iterative particle re while the following part begins with a vowel, as in the words redarguo, redeo, redigo, redimo, redinte- gratio, &c. but certain it is, notwithstanding these examples or prece- dents, that this rule, together with another devised in like manner by pur bards or rhymers, I mean that which is called ctxol lecaol, <X£Uf Leacdn le Leatan, has been wofully destructive to the original and radical purity of the Irish language. This latter rule (much of a more modern inven- tion than the former, for our old manuscripts shew no regard to it) imports and prescribes that the two vowels thus forming, or contributing to form two different syllables by the interposition of a consonant, whe- ther such a consonant be adventitious to, or originally inseparable from the radical formation of the word, should both be of the same denomina- tion or class of either broad or small vowels : and this without any regard to the primitive elementary structure of the word. So that if the vowel preceding the consonant should originally happen to be of the class of broad vowels <x, o, u, while the vowel following the same consonant should be of the class of the small vowels e, ;, or vice versa: in that case, the vowel preceding the consonant being of a different class from that which follows it, must either be struck out entirely, to make room for a vowel of the same class with the following, (for it is the vowel fol- lowing the consonant that commands the change in the preceding, with- out being subjected to any in itself,) or else another adventitious vowel must be placed after it of the same class with the subsequent.
I shall instance only in two words amongst many others, both to illus-
REMARKS ON THE LETTER tf. lui
tratc those two rules by way of exemplification, and to shew how preju- dicial they naturally must have been to the primitive purity of the Irish language, by changing, corrupting, and metamorphosing a great number of its words from their original and radical structure. I shall first ex- emplify in the Irish word "&&U., a Gaul ; pi. Jajll, Gauls ; which are the Celtic words upon which the Latin words Gallus, Galli, have been formed. Nothing more evident from the most ancient monuments of the Irish nation, than that the national name of the first Celts who came to Ireland (whether they arrived there immediately from Gaul, or rather after remaining for some tract of time in the greater British isle, as Mr. Lhuyd gives good grounds to think) was "&<\ll in the singular and 3<x;ll in the plural; and that their language was called Galicor Gallic : though it is equally certain this same national name of "&Q.II, and 3<v;U in the plural was afterwards applied by the old natives to other colonies that followed these primitive Celts into that island from different parts of the continent, and even to the English adventurers whom they called Clanna 3^ as we^ as SajfAnajc : which must have proceeded both from their having forgot their own origin, on account of the change of their national name from 3aJ^- 'in^° "&Wbjl, &c- anc^ a^so from the knowledge they traditionally preserved of the Gaulish nation, of its great extent, as well as of its vicinity with the British isles : all which circum- stances occasioned that the generality of the old Irish Celts and Celtibe- rians, who probably were the first planters of Ireland, imagined that the strangers who came amongst them from time to time, whether imme- diately from Britain or otherwise, must have originally proceeded from Gaul. Now, the Irish bards or rhymers wanting to stretch out this mo- nosyllable "&Q.jil into two syllables, to serve the exigency of their verses and ry thmical measures, have first formed it into 3<tojU agreeably to the former of the two rules now mentioned, and when the second rule caot te caot,took place, it required that an j or an e should be thrown in before the consonant b,by which means it turned out 3<*}*>;U or J^ebjU instead of its simple original formation "&&jlL So likewise the word 3a^7.c or 3<x;l;c meaning the Celtibemian language was changed into 3AJ*>;l;c or 3Ae^J^c genii. 3de^jfyce or 3ae^3e> from which last spelling it has been changed by our modern Grammarians into 3AO*>Ajljc, genit. 3aob<x;tge, by the unnatural substitution of<xo instead of the <xe or oe j of the ancients, absolutely ordering that we should pronounce their cio just as we do oe in the Latin word Coelu/n.
3u;b;ll, another writing of the same word, meaning the Irish people, and Jujbjljc their language, are found in some Irish manu- scripts of good antiquity, from which the moderns, by abusively substi- tuting <xo; instead of u;, though carrying no other sound, have turned these words in goojtyll and "gaoisjljc, genit. 3<xo;bjl;2;e, which is the gothic and uncouth shape, in which, to conform with the modern ortho- graphy, I must let it stand, in the very frontispiece of my Dictionary. I have just hinted that 3UJ*>;U and jujbjtjc is not to be counted "a modern manner of writing these words; which truth is confirmed by "W elch manuscripts of respectable antiquity, wherein the Irish are called Guydhill and sometimes Ginjdilocl, and their language Guydhilec.
Hv REMARKS ON THE LETTER tf.
Apropos to this writing of the Welch, I cannot but observe by-the-by that it hence appears this old nation must have always judged the primi- tive Irish and the Gauls to be originally one and the same people, inas- much as we find in Mr. Lhuyd's Archseologia (comparat. etymol. p. 23. col. 3.) that the Welch or old Britons interpreted in their language the La- tin word Gallus or Gallicus by Guydhileg, a word which is plainly and literally of the same formation with those whereby they distinguished the Irish people and their language. Before I have done with the words 3<x;ll and "&al)c, "&&fat> or ^^)c> I think it pertinent to remark, that notwithstanding the complex and inform shape of the words "gafojl, 3<xeb;l, 3»4O)bji, and "^ajtyljc, Jaebjljc, "gaofcjljc, into which they have been changed, yet the originals from which they were derived are still preserved in their primitive simplicity, by the very pronuncia- \ tion of these latter words, which is very nearly the same as tKaToi the former, inasmuch as the adventitious letter b is not pronounced, and ' serves only to distinguish the syllables : which shews that this was the only purpose it was first thrown in for. We should not in the mean time forget that it is to this change made in the words "&&)ll and 3A^C' doubtless by our heathenish bards who inserted the letter b, that we owe the important discovery necessarily reserved to their successors who em- braced Christianity, of those illustrious personages Gadel and Gadelus ; the former an usher under that royal schoolmaster Pheniusa Farsa, king of Scythia, in his famous school on the plain of Sennaar , where this Gadel invented the Irish alphabet and the Gadelian language, so called, as it is pretended, from his name ; and the latter, a grandson of that king by his son Niul, married to Scota daughter of Pharaoh Cingris, as our bards call him instead of Cinchres, king of yEgypt, under whose reign, they tell us, Moses and our Gadelus were cotemporaries and great friends : and from this Gadelus our learned bards gravely assure us that the Irish derive their name of Gadelians, who, they tell us, were also . called Scots from his wife the ^Egyptian princess Scota. This disco- covery, I have said, was necessarily reserved to our Christian bards, as their heathenish predecessors most certainly could have no no- tion of the plain of Sennaar, of Pharaoh, or of Moses; objects not to be known but from the Holy Scriptures, or some writings derived from them, such as those of Josephus, Philo, &c., never known to the Irish bards before their Christianity. I have remarked in another work not as yet published, that our Christian bards did not lose much time in availing themselves of the sacred history to frame this story, inasmuch as we find it word for word in the scholiast on the life of St. Patrick by Fiachus, bishop of Sleipte, one of that saint's earliest disciples ; which scholiast the learned and judicious Colganus places towards the end of the sixth century. This date is much earlier than that of the manuscript called Lecxb<x/i gabalta, or the book of conquests, wherein our story now mentioned is embellished with further circumstances.
The other word I mean to produce as a remarkable example and proof of the alteration of the primitive and radical frame of many words of the Irish language, caused by the above described rules and other innovations of our modern copyists and rhymers, as well as by the cor-
REMARKS OX THE LETTER <l . Iv
ruption proceeding from vulgar pronunciation, to which indeed all lan- guages have been subject (even the Latin, witness the words nudiuster- tjtt*. pridie, postridie, &c.) the word, I say, I mean to exemplify in, is Oljaba;n or 6t)ajajn, a year, Lat. annus. The original formation or construction of this word was bel-a;n, or beat-a;n* i. e. the circle of belus, or of the sun. <t;n or ainn in Irish signifies a great circle, as its diminutive a;nne, vulgarly pa;nne, means a small circle or a ring ; vid. a;n, a;nn, ajnne, infra ; and bel or beal was the Assyrian, Chaldean, and Phoenician name of the true God, while the patriarchal religion was generally observed ; and very properly, as it signifies Dominus or Domi- nator in Latin. This name was afterwards attributed to the sun. when these oriental nations generally forgot, or willingly swerved from the worship of the true God, and adored that planet as their chief deity. See Gutlerus Origenes Mundi, lit. 1. cap. 9. Schedius de Diis Germ, cap. 7. Tirinus in cap. 2. Osee, v. 16. It is very certain that the pri- mitive Irish observed this idolatrous worship of the sun under the name of bet or beat, whatever part of the world they derived it from, as ap- pears very manifestly by those religious fires they called beat-tejnne, which, according to all our old monuments and histories, they lighted with great solemnity on May day : a fact which is evidently proved by the very name whereby they distinguished that day, which is still called and known by no other name than that of la beat-te;nne, i. e. the day of the fire of bel or belus ; this solemnity they celebrated in honour of the Sun under the name of beat on this first day of their summer, when the benign influence of that planet begins to restore new life to both the animal and vegetable world in most parts of our hemisphere.
Now this word bet-ajn being changed by the vulgar pronunciation into ble-a;n and bt;-ajn, in which position it required the insertion of an aspirated b or j, consequently turned out btjbajn or bt; ja;n, according to the former of the two rules above explained, and then the latter rule of teatan le leacan, to vindicate its right to share in the new crea- tion of this word, threw in the vowel a, before the adventitious conso- nant to agree with the subsequent a, so that the original word having thus received two adventitious letters besides the aspirate b, is thereby metamorphosed from its original form bet-a;n into bl;aba;n or bl;a- ja;n, for it admits of both these writings. In my general preface to this Dictionary I shall mention a good number of other words whose true radical originals are scarce, if at all, discernible through the * hideous shape they have been transformed into, both by vulgar pronun- ~" ciation authorized by ignorant copyists who had not skill enough to rec- tify them, and by the insertion of so many vowels and consonants which were quite adventitious and foreign to the natural and radical frame of the words. I shall finish these remarks with observing, that the word <x;n or ajnn (which is the latter part of the compound word bel-a;n, sig- nitying the great circle of belus, i. e. the solar circle or annual course
* Vid. the valuable Irish manuscript called Feilire na Xamnh, i. e. the vigils and feasts of saints, judged to be a work of the eighth century, whereof I have a copy, which, by the ap- pearance of tha writing and parchment, cannot be less ancient than the tenth century
Ivi REMARKS ON THE LETTER <T.
of the sun) is the Celtic original upon which the Latin word anus was formed, it was afterwards written annus, for Quintilian informs us that the ancients did not double their consonants. Varro assures that the proper and original signification of this word anus or annus is a circ or great circle, whose diminutive anulus or annulus signifies a small circle or ring, his words are, nam ut parvi circuit, annuli, sic magni diceban- tur anni. But the word annus is now exalted to mean solely and pro- perly the solar circle or annual course of the sun, whilst anus its more ancient writing, is degraded to signify no more than the circular form of the podex : vid. Littleton ad voces anus, annus, annulus. Other ex- amples, to observe it by-the-by, of words of an honourable meaning at first, being afterwards degraded to a dishonourable signification and vice versa, will be found in the following Dictionary at the word Cn;oct.
OR, AN
IRISH-ENGLISH DICTIONARY.
<f, his, her ; ex. <x ceann, his head; <x ceann, her head.
<f, their ; ex. <\. cce<xnn, their chief, or, their head; <x ccl<xnn, their children.
•Cf, before inanimate things in the singular number signifies its ; ex. <x bun, its bottom ; <x to^ac, its beginning.
if is a sign of the present and pre- ter tenses ; ex. <v be;;t me, I say; <x buba;;xt fe, he said.
•Cf is sometimes a sign of the future tense ; ex. <xn &;t; <x^* <x ttjocjrab j-e, the place from which he shall come.
•cf is a sign of the vocative case, and signifies the same as tu or o in Latin ; ex. <x £>b;<x, O God ; <x <Dbu;ne, you man, or O man.
•cf is sometimes an interrogative, as, <x bjrujl fe xxnn, is he there ?
if is also a sign of an affirmative ; ex. <x j'eo.b, yes, yea.
<f is sometimes a preposition equal to in ; ex. <x ttujf, in the be- ginning; <x tte<xc, in a house. N. B. — " In old parchments it is always written j ttujy, j tt:e<xc, &c. before words beginning with a consonant ; but before those that begin with vowels, it was rather in that was prefixed instead of the
cf.
modern <in or <i ; ex. ;n a;t, in a place ; ;n ecijlu;^, in the church ; jn eajco^t, in the wrong. But in the modern way, when the Irish word begins with a vowel, or with the letter 5, the n in the preposition jn or an is transposed and prefixed to the word, and the vowel left by it- self alone ; ex. <x ncijt, in a place ; <x ne<X^;luj^, in a church ; tX ngecill, in pledge. This nj is pronounced nearly as the gn in the French word Seigneur, or the double nn or n in the Spanish Sennor"
Cf is prefixed to adverbs and nouns of time ; ex. <x natlob, formerly, or anciently, (vid. <xtl6b) ; <i n;u j, to-day; <x ma;;teo.c, to-morrow. " Remark the affinity between ;u j in the word <x n;u j and huy in the French word avjourd'huy, and between ma;/ie<xc and the Saxon word morrow."
Cf sometimes signifies out of or from, like the Latin e, ex; ex. <x b<x;le, out of town ; Lat. e villa, <x bej- ;t;nn, out of Ireland.
if is sometimes equivalent to the
Latin prepositions in and coram ;
ex. <x lcvc<x)ft and a. bjr;a£
before, or in presence of.
B
<tb
•Ct in old writings signifies an ascent, a hill, or promontory, as also, a car or drag.
<f signifies also good luck or good adventure ; vid. ab ; hence the compound word bon-d, bad luck or bad accident. N. B. — From the above examples it appears that the single letter <x in Irish, has almost as great a latitude of signification as the Greek OTTO, which signifies in, from, out of, &c. ; Lat. a, ab, c, ex. &c. ; Goth. of.
<Tb, an abbot, or rather a father. " N. B. — This word is of the same radical structure and signi- fication as the Hebrew rQN, and the Chaldaic ND2N, as also the Greek and Latin abbas"
<Tb, sometimes signifies a temporal lord.
<f b, ex. na/i <xb beo e, let him not live.
<fb<x, a cause, a matter, or busi- ness.
<tbcxc, the entrails of a beast.
<t b<vjb, a bud ; also ripe.
ttb<x;l, and <xb<x;lc, death; also, dead, or expired.
if b a; /i, say you, speak you; the imperative mood second person of the verb <xb<x^<x;m, or <xb^<n;m, to speak.
•Cfbaj/tt, speech, an articulate form of expression.
•cTb<x;/tt:, education, politeness, good manners.
•ctb<x;^-e, a custom, or manner.
tfb<*c, a dwarf; <xbac, a proclama- tion.
ifbtxc, a terrier, a little cur dog to unkennel foxes. It seems derived frpm the word <xb, the sound of dogs in barking by an onomato- poeia, hiiic <ib<tyt;iac, the bark- ing of a dog.
<fb<Xb, a camp, or encampment ; commonly called lonrpojtt. 2
, an apple-tree, also an apple ; vid. ub'al, Wei. aval.
, a river ; rectius <ur)<xn ; Lat. amnis.
•cCbd/itUft, good luck upon any un- dertaking.
•tfb'a^t/toic, the barking of a dog.
<Tbco;be, an advocate; pot-ins tvb- b<xco;be.
ttbkm, awafer; <xbl<xr> c the host or Eucharist.
•Cfb'ejljvid.cibbatj terrible, dreadful.
-Ctbloin, a portion of meat, fish, or butter, which a person may eat with his bread, vulgarly called kitchen.
no <xblab/iac, mute, or dumb.
, a mother-abbess, an eye-lid, plur. <xb;-«x;b, vulgo j:<xb;t<x;b. Corn, abrans. ^<x and <vb/i<\, a speech, a say- ing, a poem ; hence the diminu- tive <xb/ian.
<f b/tcnn, a song, or sonnet, &c.
<£b^<vjm, to say, or speak.
N. B. — Many of the Irish verbs arc irregularly declined or conju- gated; ex. <xb/ta;m, I say ; <x be;/t tu, you say ; <x be;/i f&, he says ; be;/xm;b, we say : be;/t Qb, ye say ; be;/t p<xb, they say. Thus the verb <xb/t<x;m, which may be called defective, borrows most of its persons, not only in the present tense, but also in the entire perfect, from the verb be;jt;m; ex. <xbub<x;/tt me, I said ; <xbuba;;tt tu, you said. This verb be^tjno has a plain affinity with the dicer e of the Latin, and the dire of the French.
•Ctb/ian, and -cTb/uxon, the month of April.
•cTb/tann, evil, naughty; also bad news.
<( b^olojb, forgiveness, absolution.
tfb^-bdt, and abfcol, an apostle: plur. e<x^b<v;l and
•Ct b;-talba, apostolic.
tTb^tr<xlb<Xct, apostleship.
tfbujb, ripe; also ready, expert, alert, thrift}'. Sometimes written <xpu;b, ripe, not unlike apricus. '(. urn, which is to the same sense.
<f bultd, able, strong, capable : Lat kahilis.
, a wild beast of any kind; treac na nabity", a house in which wild beasts are kept ; hence aba-
, a refusing, a denial. tfca, with them ; r\] b;0n <xc<x, they
have not ; <s.;ce, with her ; <x;je,
with him.
ifcajbeoib, an inhabitant, a tenant. tl ca >u\, an acre of ground] vid. acpKX. tfcd.ft;t<x, the loan of any thin^:
also, conveniency, or use. tfea't<xc, useful, necessary; also,
obliging. •cTca^cA. profit. tfccujl, backwards ; vid. cut. tfc, but ; vid. <icr. tfca, a mound or bank. Canta-
brice, <vc<i, a rock. tfcab, a field. tfcamajft, soon, timely ; also,
abridged; ex. bacam<v;n; brevi
tempore, soon, or speedily. <tc<xma;/teact, abridging, abrevia-
tion. ttccvn, and rtceout, sharp, tart,
sour ; Lat. acer, acerbus ; Gall.
acre and aigre. <Tcbtt<v, an expedition by sea or
land ; ex. fto fmj j ci-t <vcbn<x, he
went on an exjiedition. vf cb;t<xn, an adventurer, a foreigner. ^cb'tcxnac, the same, and more
properly. tf cpu;n, ability, capacity.— Mat. 25.
1.5.
<Tcmu^an, a reproof, a reproach. tlcpxl, an aiiiiel. vfcr, the same as<vc and <\cb, but,
except, save, only ; Lat. at ; ex.
<xc <xmu;n, save only ; <xct ce- 3
<xnna, however.
tfcc, a statute, decree, or ordi- nance ; hence Lat. actor signifies a pleader at law.
{fee, a condition, act, or deed ; ex. <ijt n<x oactajb pn, upon them conditions ; Lat, acta.
tf ctr, a body.
ifct, danger, hazard, or ]>eril.
<fct:\x;m, to ordain, or order, to pass an act in parliament.
<f cloijb, to chase, pursue.
tTclu-b, and <\cla;b, the art of fish- ing, also a fishery.
{fcKvjbe, smooth, soft, also ]X)lite, civil, generous, like the Greek 07X00, splenrlidus.
Cfcnxxc, a circuit, or compa>-.
•dciTxijnj, and <xcm<xjnjexvc. puis- sant, plentiful, copious, rich.
tfcomdl, to heap together, to in- crease; Lat. ace it undo, are; ex. /to <xcoiTK\;l fe na cnama ba beo;n, he heaped up the bones. Old Parchu
tfcomal, an assembly, or heaping together ; ex. <xcom<xl beo^ci po mo beci-tc. — Old Par. ; Lat ac- cumulatio.
•cfco»t and <vcob<x;ft, avarice, co- vetousness, penury.
<fc»t<x, an acre of groimd; Lat. acra. This Irish word has a close affinity with the Hebrew "DX, a husbandman, agricola, and from this ")DK. or the Irish dc/«x, comes the Latin acra and offer. — Vid. Buxtorf. and Opi- t'nis Lexicons.
<fcu^-, rid go, <xju^", Lat. ac. Go- thice ga/i.
tfb is sometimes the sign of a par- ticiple, governing a second per- son ; ex. <xb buaU. striking you ; Lat. te ftriens, ab ma/tb<xb, killing you, Lat. te //
Ub is ]ire]iosed in the old Irish \o all verbs in the perfect tei the indicative and the present of
b
b
the potential, indifferently, or in the same sense, as bo in the mo- dern way of writing ; ex. ab Y-C/-IJO- b<ty", I wrote, for bo fcpjdbaf, ab ^cjijobajnn, for bo ^qtjobajnn, I would write, Lat. s-criberem.
<Tb is a sign of the present tense sometimes, but often of the per- fect tense; ex, abbe;;vjm, I give; <ib clujn;m, I hear.
<fb signifies <x or an ; but always applied to the second person ; ex. 0;ajb tu ab Sbean/iab &%uf <xb pOfijrocal, thou shalt be a proverb and a by-word.
tTbaj, a shock of corn, a sheaf or bundle of corn, or several small sheaves set together, to make one great shock or heap.
•cTbamant;, a diamond, the hardest and most glittering of all pre- cious stones called by the Lapi- daries a diamond, Lat. adamas.
•CfWm and <Cbam, Adam, the first man.
•cTba;/i, an adder.
if bbat, to die ; ex. 710 <xbbat, he died.
•cCbbat, slaughter, destruction.
tTbjrja, it belongs to you, it is your property ; this is an imper- sonal verb like the Lat. decet.
<fb, a law ; also fit to do any thing.
if b, felicity, success, good luck ; ex. <\.f rea/tft ab na ealujbe, good luck is better than skill or art.
•cfb is an intensitive or augmenta- tion of the sense, or signification of a word.
•cfbaba;;t, to sport or play.
<tba;j, and a^ajb, the face, or complexion, (jr. EtSoe.
•cfbajlg, desire.
tfbajljne, the military law, or law of arms.
tfba/tcac and tlba/tcaroujl, horny, having horns.
ttbat, a flesh-hook. 4
t£baU, dull, deaf, having the ears stopt up ; (rectius ob<ul, from o, an ear, and ball, dull or deaf, vid. o ;) hence the word <xb<xll- t&n, a stupid, dull fellow.
-CtbOiU, sin, corruption.
<Tbo.lt/KXjbe, an adulterer.
<Tblt/i<xno.c, the same.
<fb<xlt;fi<j.nna^, adultery.
iCbajm/ia^teo.^ e, let him be blessed or beloved, not unlike the Lat. word adametur, but that this Irish word is an impersonal.
<tban, a pan, or large chaldron.
•ctbann, the herb colt's foot.
<Tboinfl.b and tfbanam, to kindle, to warm ; ex. bo ftdbnab <xn tejne, the fire was kindled; also to stir up, like the Lat. adunare.
<f banco., kindled, warm, also exas- perated; <x ta <xn cejne <xbanta, the fire is kindled.
<fbna, the kindling of the fire, the warmth or fervour of an action.
to adore.
, adoration, hence jb;ol<xb^a, idolatry.
<Tb<Xft<!ib, to join, to stick close to, Lat. adherere.
Cfbaftc, a horn ; ex. <vba;tc bo, &c.
<Tb<X;ic<xc, horned, horny.
<fba/icjn, a little horn.
and -cCba^itan, a^bolster, a pillow, hence cld.on <xba;^t, a pain in the neck, and by a me- taphor, ceannabajftt g<xc<v po- bujll, the chieftains and re- presentatives of every people ; ceann <xb<x;;it properly means a bolster.
a dream.
<Tba^, good. _
<TbBa and ifbbaban, instruments ; ex. abba ceojl, instruments of music.
<Tbba and -cTbbab, a house room, or habitation, also a garrison, a fortress ; it is very common to sig- nify a prince or great man's pa-
rf b
<f 6
lace in old poems.
tfbbact, a harmless or inoffensive jibing or joking.
{fbboctttc, jocose, merry, jesting.
•cTbbactxxc, gross or fat ; in good plight.
iTbbaj^eac, a carder of wool or flax ; mnd. <xbfc<xjrtj~; je, women hired for carding.
<fbb<xl, quick, nimble, thrifty.
<tbb<xl, prodigious, great, strange ; ex. <xbbo.l nrio/t, exceeding great.
N. B. This word has generally the same signification with <xbejl, which in the ancient celtic did signify air, that element being still called arel, in the British language, (vid. Lhwd's comp. . it) rerbo aer,) hence b;<x<xb- ejl contracted into b;<x-b<xt, sig- nifies devil or spirit of the air, from which the Greek and La- tin diabolos and diabolus, quasi dtemon aerius ; in Irish be<xm- <xn de/t.
<fb<xnr;t;^eac, a sort of music con- taining three notes called by the Irish geant/KXjje gott:;t<x;je,
a cause or motive ; ex. <X;t <xn <xbb<ift fjn, therefore, for that cause.
<fbba/i, a subject or matter to be shaped in another form ; hence metaphorically, <xbbfyt pJ.o;;t, an apprentice to a carpenter or a mason ; <xbb<ift ceanbajje an apprentice, or the matter of a tradesman.
<f bbo.;t<x.c, or <( jba/i<xc, lucky, for- tunate.
<f bbanay, carded wool for clothiers, hence <xbb<i;^^e<xc, quod vide.
, a proclamation, also a cry for war ; even- prince and tribe had one peculiar to them. bbct<ty-, joy, pleasure ; also osten- tation.
, pleasant, ambitious,
vain glorious.
iTbbub, joy, pleasantry, merriment.
tfbbocojbe and -ctbbocojbeac, an intercessor, an advocate.
<Tbboco)beAcr, a pleading.
tXbplajt, a constitutional or right- ful sovereign installed according to law, from <xb a law, and jrl<x;c a sovereign.
<Cbfru<xt:m<X;i, detestable, odious, abominable ; <xb in this word be- ing an augmentative of the sense and force of the word, vid. vxbuat.
{fbjajri, lawful, just
•cCblo.c<xb, to bury, to inter, vid. <vbn<xc<xl, it is formed from teo.c, a stone laid over the grave.
ilblac<xn, a burial or interment.
rfblajcre, buried, interred.
<Tbl<xjc, the desire.
tTblann, a youth or lad, one able to bear arms, from <xb, fit, and lann, a sword or lance.
•cfblaocbo., fit to take up anns or enter the military degree,
ttbma, knowing, skilful.
<Cbmab, timber.
<Cbma;l, an acknowledgment or confession.
tfbmo.;mandifbmu;j;m, to confess; ex. <xbm<x;m mo peacab, I confess my guilt.
<Tb!T)<ila.b, to confess.
<TbirxxU, wanton, desultory, nimble.
<Cbmol<xb, to extol, to praise to one's face, from <x;b, a face, and molab, a praise.
•cTbnacal, a submitting to the law of nature, a burial, interment, from <xb<x, law, nae or n<x;, man, and c<xl, observing or submitting to.
•Cfbn<x;/i, and (fhn&j/ie, villany, shamefacedness, confusion.
<£ bncij^t; jean, it shames, pudet.
<Tbn<xo;, old, ancient.
<Tb/t<xb, and iTbndjm, to worship, to adore, Lat. adoro ; ex. ;6bal- <xb;t<xb, to worship idols, or ido-
latry, also to adhere or join ; <X£ <xb/t<vb bon ft; j, adhering firmly to the king and his cause, Lat. adhereo.
<f b;t<x and iTb/iity-, worship, adora- tion.
'Cfb/iae, to refuse, deny, reject.
<fbub, a circle fire ; vid. Martin's west islands, p. 116.
•ctbub, vid. jrabub, to kindle fire.
ifbuac, horror, detestation i
•CtbuatmcL/i, horrible, terrible, dreadful.
•Cfbuacma;/teact, abomination.
•cTe, no ilob, the liver.
•cTe, <xon, one, bo g<xc <xon, to each, to every one.
<fe/i, the sky, or air, Greek and Latin, aer.
•cTea/tba, airy.
tfea/tbajte, sky-coloured.
•cteb, the eye.
tTege, the liver ; more commonly <xob<x and b<xob<x.
if fOft, gold; (vid. L/ntyd's Comp. voc. inv. aurem.*)
•cf pia; gjb, to rise.
•Ctj:/-i;onn, the mass, or eucharistic offering.
<Tg, a sign of the participle of the present tense; ex. <xj ft&b, say- ing, <xj ealob, stealing into a place privily.
Cfg, at or by ; ex. <vj <xn bo/i<X^, at the door, Lat. ad, as ac/ ostium, <xj <xn <xiTKx;n, by the river, ad veljuxta amnem.
vfj, with ; ex. <xg <xn <i;/tne;^, with the cattle.
1X5, signifies, in the possession or power of a person ; ex. /to <*tcx <xn 13;<x;l <ij OQu/tc<x, the axe is in Morrogh's possession.
, whose, whereof; ex. <XT<X nbe;n ^c ;on<xb, whose place he supplies.
, or <\£<xb, leisure, time, or op- portunity; ex. n;bj:u;l a^;<xb a^am <x;;t, I have not time nor leisure G
to do it.
tf^a, or ifjcvb, an addition, hence its diminutive, <xj<x;pn.
•cTg<xb, unto thee, with thee ; <xj<x;b, unto you ; ex. yecx^ <xj<xb jce;n, stand by thyself. , a speech.
and <t5<xtt<vm, a dialogue ; unde ajtxltam o;^-;n -o^^f pat- t/tu;j, also persuasion ; pe<*/i <x<xlma,an interpreter, a speaker, o., to speak, or tell to a per- son ; this word is of the same root and origin with the Greek ayyeXXw, Lat. nuncio, are, in which word the ancient Greeks always pronounced the two gam- mas or double -y, the former be- ing changed into v by modern grammarians, as avyeXAa* instead of ayyeXXw ; in the Celtic agal- la, to speak or tell to ; hence the Greek Ev-ay-yeXtov, i. e. good telling or good tidings, anglice, Gospel, i. e. God's spell or good spell, which is the same as God's tell or good tell, the words God and good being of the same ori- ginal sense for reasons obvious to every one.
•cT j, an ox, bull, or cow ; a j altajb, a buffalo.
N. B. — <Tj or <xb are always pro- nounced like •/ in English, or like the word eye in llu' begin- ning of words, except when the syllable is marked with a long stroke, or ^-;ne jraba, in which case it is pronounced like aw in English.
if j, a battle, a conflict ; also feat of arms, Greek ayun>, <'i'rln>n<')i,\>\. &T<X ; ex. Conn <xn a j<x, the war- like Conn.
<C j, fortune, luck, happiness, pros- perity, vid. <xb.
-Cl^, fear, astonishment, am-.
vt ja, or tfTcxjm, to bo afraid or astonished, like the Greek ay aw,
<f 1
demiror, stupeo, hence awe in English.
ifjac, warlike, brave.
if j<x;b, be mem', j. b; j-ubac.
il j<x;b or if £<x; j, the face or com- plexion, also the front ; ex. a. j- <i;b <xn ctvca, the front of the army, hence <xj<i;b signifies a- gainst ; ex. <vm <xjoijb, against me : bo cua;b ;*e <x;»t <x j<x;b, he prospered, but more properly written <vba;b, like the Greek
ifj<xm, with me, or in my posses-
sion.
if£<x?ia.;m and <fj<i;t<x, to revenge. revenge.
<fja»tt<xc, vindictive, revengeful.
if 5<x/-, or <XTUJ-, and ; in old parch- ments it is written <xcuj- ; Latin ac.
if j<x-tt, a bolster ; rectius 43o&)pt.
if ja/tt<x, deaf, also little, diminu- tive.
ifgo/toit, a halter to lead a horse or other beast by, like the Greek ayofiai, duco, to lead ; in its inflexions of the present dual.
if jb<x, of, or belonging to a fight or battle.
if jm<x/t, if jnxxjtixc, fortunate or lucky, happy, prosperous ; an- ciently written arima.
<T jn<x/-, a pleading for, argumenta- tion.
, an advocate or pleader. to expostulate, also to challenge, to lay to a person's charge ; ex. na^t <xz^<xb b;a <xn cu;»i ^r;n 0;tt, that God may not avenge or punish you for this crime ; nan <xjft<x?t o?tc<x e, let it not be laid to their charge.
, wisdom, discretion, pru- dence, Greek a-yvtia, castitas, and <xjnoy-<\5n<x, cast us, puru-s, chastiK being the truest sign of a wise man.
7
if jjr<xl, generous, noble.
if;, i. e. c<x;njen, a cause or con- troversy.
if;, a swan.
if;, or <xo;, an herd, also a sheep,
a cow.
' if; or ifo;, a region, country, or territory ; plur. <io;B ; ex. <xo;b l;ara;n, the countn- about Cas- tle Lyons ; <xob rr<xcco;tle, the countW of Imokilly. vv X. B. — In Hebrew »K signifies a region or country ; vid. Opitius' Lexicon.
if;, i.. e. e;j^e, or eolcd, the learned.
if ;B or if 0;b, a similitude.
, the sea ; Lat. abyssvs, and Greek afivaaog, also great boast- ins:, vain glory.
if ;be^e<xc and if ;fy~e<ic, wonder- ful, terrible, also enormous, strange, arrogant, surprising.
if;b jjr;^ or if ;bc;c;n, recti/ c;t;ft, the alphabet ; abeceda- rium.
if;b;b, ripe, grown to perfection, is like Hebrew 3'2K cnlmns, arista ; straw, stubble ; also an ear of corn which is never <ib;b, ripe, till it has the 3QK or cul- mm upon it.
if ;b;b;l, the alphabet.
if;cbe, a veil.
if ;ce, with her, by her ; ex. bo b; <x;ce, she had.
ifc<x, with them ; <x;je, with him.
if;ce, led, as c<ipall <x;ce, a led horse.
if;ce, if;ce<xc, and if;cjbi<xcc, a leading ; from the verb <i;c;m, to lead ; Lat. ago.
if;ce, a tribe, also nourishment, also a desire.
if;ce, near, close to, hard by, as <im <x;ce, near me.
if;cpecict:, power.
if;ce<x?t, angry, cruel, severe, disa- greeable to all the senses ; Lat.
acer and aeris. <f jc;b, a disorder, sickness. tf;c;be<xc, a sick disordered or in-
firm person ; Greek tuSvoe, in-
firmus, eegrotus. <f;c;be, accident, as <x;cjbe <xn
<Xfia;n fl-J^r <xn p;on<x, the ac-
cidents of bread and wine. •cC;cjll;be, dextrous, handy; and
<vjc/U;be<xct;, dexterity, from the
root ; <vjc;l, able, unde Achilles. •cfrcjm and <xjtc;m, to pray, be-
seech, entreat, or beg. tfjcme, a sort or kind, a sect of
people; Greek OKJUTJ, is the
bloom of age.
, they shall confess ; vid.
<T;bbe<xn, long, also bad or evil. •cTjbbejl, a wonder, a boasting. <T;bbe;le<xct;, the same ; Greek
a/3eArtpoe, stolidus. •cT;bb^e, an old sort of Irish song,
or Cfioncw ; Greek aa£w, cano,
canto.
, mischief, violence. •cTjbeoic, or <xo;be<xc, a milch cow. •cT;bjc;be<xc, demonstration. •cTjbjbe, or <vjb;b;on, humble, res-
pectful, Gr. mSoioe, venerandus. tfjbme, raiment, apparel, also goods
and chattels. •Ctjbme, a military dress. tfjbnoe, coarse or rough land, Greek
at/joe? dumus, vel locus arbori-
bus consitus. •Cfjbne, age. iT;bm;lle, to consume, confound,
destroy, pervert ; ex. bu^ na;b-
rn^lle, your confusion. —Is. xxx. 3. •cTjbmejlte, consumed.
jbmo^, or <C;jn;o^, arguing,
pleading, reasoning ; vid. <x j-
<fjbn<x;Te and <T;bne, advocate,
pleaoier. <T;e;^, of or belonging to the air,
be<xmon aje;/t, rcctius <xe;/i, de-
mon aerius.
8
blame, fault. <(jf1\)0n, the unbloody sacrifice of the mass.
to act or carry on ; aonacb t<x;lt;onr> bo <x;je ; vid. Croni- cum Scotorum.
Te)n, antiq. oce;n,the ocean, the Y deep ; hence bub<x;je;n na px/i- ' je, the bottomless depth of the sea ; vulgo, bu;ge;n.
<ime, I will visit, or punish. <() je, a beam, a prop or supporter. •cT; je, stout, valiant, e, a hill.
, a kettle, a brass pot; vid. <xbcu?.
intentions.
the intention, mind, or inclination.
a judge, Greek a*/>ew, signifies to make choice of judges being the elect or chosen men among the people.
or 0;neac, liberality, generosity. <T; jte, faces, the pi. of <x ja;b, bu/t
na; jte, your faces. <T;te or 6;le, another, Lat. a//«5. '. <T;t, a stone ; <x;l <xobt<x, a pebble, hence <x;le<xc, a stone horse, Heb. y^Q is a rock or stone. , shamefaced, also noble, beau- tiful ; Cantabrice, <xb<xl, shame. , a sting or prickle. •d;l, will, pleasure; ex. ma a;l le<xt, if you will ; munab <x;l leoit, if you will not, Lat. vo- luntas. <T;lb;n cae^iac, a small parcel of
sheep.
<T;le, the same as u;le ; ex. <vjle com<xct<xe, Almighty ; Gothic alia/.
<C;ljre<ty-, a bridle bit. •ct;lje<vn, a noble offspring, from <x;t noble, and jean kind, i. e. altigeiu.
a desire, longing appe- tite.
tf J
an alms h eprayed for alms.
•Cf;l;m, to pray, entreat, or beseech; in the Arabic and Hebrew lan- guages n*>N signifies to adore, vorship. whence the epithet m^N is given to God ; vid. Deut. xxxi r. 15.
<fjl;m, to nurse, foster, nourish ; Lat. alo.
ttjtjomajnt, nourishment.
<f;lt;m, I go, or come ; Gal. alter.
<fjtt, go thou or come; ex. a;lt ;tte, ptytajj, re;?/ /»/c, ef suc- c itr re. — Vid. f'ita??i S, P. apud ColgoMian.
N. B. — This last example shows how different the Irish orthogra- phy in ancient times has been from that of the present age.
<f;U, course, place, stead, turn ; Lat. rich.
<T;ll, or p<x;U, a great steep or pre- cipice, a rock, or cliff; Lat. val- linn, (like falla ;) mutkxc n<\ bajlle. the top of the rock ; all bnuacAc, having steep or rocky brinks or borders; hence per- haps the national name of Allo- brogii, a people who inhabited the rocky country near the Alps.
<f jltbjl, a bridle-bit.
<f;tlbrtuac<xc, having steep or rocky brinks.
•Ctjtle. praise.
<T;lle, most beautiful.
<f;llean, a causeway.
•Cf;tleo.n, a pet, or darling.
, roaring or lowing, as <xjl- teo;n, the roaring of a lion, a canker, an eating or spreading sore; hence b/t<xo/i <x;lt/-e, a drop obser\-ed to fall upon the tombs of certain tyrants, so called from its cankerous cor- roding what it falls upon. • <f;tt;n, or <xjtjn, another, a second; Lat. «////.v\
, of or belonging to a canker; ^
vid.
, delay, neglect, heedless- ness.
<f;lm, the name of the letter <x in Irish, so called accordii O'Flaherty. from ajlo), which signifies a fir-tree; it is not un- like the Heb. «, and the Chald. and Gr. a.
<f;lnr>, a fir-tree, but more properly the palm-tree ; hence bomnac n<x b<x;lme, i. e. Palm Sunday.
<t;lp, any gross or huge lump, or chaos. Query, if this Celtic word be not the origine and radix of Alps, the mountains so called, rather than from their being high, ab altitudine, or from their being white with snow, quasi a!bi mon- tes.
<()lt, stately, grand, noble; Lat. altv*.
<f;lt, joints, the pi. of air.
if; It, a house ; also any high place, jrujbe Co;n an <xjlc/ -$e-«.?/o alitis in alto. — Vid. Brogan in f'ita S. Brid.
<f;ttj;te, an architect, a carpenter. , unwilling, against con- sent, bdmbeoj/i <x itjtcjl, jbjrt
Lat.
, an abyss ; vid. <vjje;n. if;meou)n, pleasant, agreeable. tf;m;b, a fool or madman, or woman, its diminutive amab&n ; Lat. amens, amenti-s. •& jmlea/% hurt, detriment.
, slothful, indolent.
drowsiness, sluggish- ness. <T;mnea;ttr, force, violence.
disquieted, disturbed, disordered.
strife.
itjmnejbe, the defiles or straits of a place ; bluc-<x;mrte;b na cojlte, the fastnesses of the wood. mismanagement. c
;
•cfjm;tjoc, disguise.
•Cljro/v/b, barren, steril.
<f;mpu jab, temptation ; also to tempt; ex. ;io ba;t /te mac be e ajm/-juj o b;abal, the Son of God was pleased to be tempted by the devil in the wilderness ; vid. leaba/t b/teac.
•cfjn)p/i,time, season ; Wei. aim ser.
<t;n, honourable, praiseworthy, re- spectful.
•Cf;ne, delight, joy, pleasure; Gr. aivr), laus.
iTjnea^, and a;n;o;-, joy; Greek atvog, laus ; but the Irish word <x;n, which signifies honourable, respectful, praiseworthy, is more agreeable to the Greek cuvr? and CLIVOQ, and is in all probability the radical word.
•cfjne, agility, expedition, swiftness ; also music, harmony, melody; also experience.
<f jnbcealac, rough, rugged.
•djnbeac, manifold, copious.
•cT/nbeac, rain.
ignorance, rudeness.
ignorant, from <i;n- ignorance, which comes from an, the negative g^orf vw/e and f)0f or pea^~, knowledge.
<f;nbjre;te, impudence; also stin- giness.
•cTjnbf e;te<xc, rude, ignorant.
•ctjnbpne, a foreign tribe, or strange people ; ex. a cc/<i;oc <x;nbj:;r!e, in a foreign country.
<f;nb; j, rainy weather ; taete <x;n- bj j, oi;nb; j uutm<x/i<x, a terrible squall of wind.
<f;nbte, naughtiness, badness.
tynBrBjl, brave, valiant, intrepid.
•Ctjnceoi^b, and <x;nce<Xfib<xc, a buffoon ; also an ingenious, fal- lacious fellow, an impostor, or a sycophant.
a doubt.
a champion, or warror,
10
great
, a toy or trifle. and <xjnc;alt<xc, peevish- ness, frowardness.
f3jnc;<xtt<x, peevish, froward, testy.
iljncl;u, a peevish person.
•Ctjnbej^e, affliction, calamity ; tan bajnbe;^-e, loaded with afflic- tion; o bu;t nu;le <x;nbe;^"e, out of all your calamities, com- pounded of the negative <xn and be<ty", dextrous, convenient; <xn- beo;n, against one's will.
if;nbe<x/i, a young woman, or vir- gin fit for marriage ; compounded of the intensitive <xn, fit for, and jrea/i, a husband ; it should be more properly <xjnjr;ji. angry.
-Cf;nb;u;b, obduracy in sin, final impenitence ; ab <x;n and b;u;b, tender-hearted.
•cf;nbl; je, trespass ; ro'anbVjgte, my trespasses or transgressions : also usurpation, or an infringe- ment of the old constitution.
•cfjnbljjteac and a;nbt;je<xc, a lawless person, an usurper; 50 7)<x;nbl;je<xc, wrongfully, per- versely.
•cTjneac, horsemanship.
•d;ne<xm and <x;n;m, a blemish, stain, or blot.
•cf;ne<xiTKVC, blemished, maimed.
•cf;r)ea/it and a;tr)ne<x/it:, violence, oj^pression.
-cTjneotu^-, ignorance, from the ne- gative <xn, and eota^*, knowledge.
•cT;neol<xc and <\;»T)eol^ac, illite- rate, not cultivated with learning or knowledge; one ignorant of the road.
, plenteous, abundant. -, a curse, or malediction. , or <x;nj;ol, an angel, or messenger ; Lat. angelus. — Vid.
, sun-shine, light, fire. ngelical, bright. , an angelical state.
ct J
<f;nT;be, malicious, envious, spite- ful.
acc, malice, spite ; ex. cro;be zan ajnjjbeact jan ru<xt, a heart without malice or natred.
ancac, too much, too pow- erful, too many, over-swaying, puissant.
•cTjnjm, or ojnm, a name ; Lat, nomen.
<Tjn;nne, anger.
tT;nbj j, a beast, or brute animal ; vid. by.
•cTjnjmneairmjl, famous, renowned, &c.
•cTjnjmnjujab, to name, to mention.
•cT;n;mn;jte, named; 50 frajnjm- /?;te, namely.
tfjnjoct, oppression.
*fjn;oct:ac, oppressive, tyrannical, also inhospitable, compounded of the negative <in and ;oct, clemency, humanity, hospitality.
<fjnjob<xr), unclean, impure, com- pounded of the negative <xn and ;oban, pure, clean, fit ; Lat. ido- neus.
m, or <x;n;m, a natural spot, or a disagreeable mark in the body ; also a stain or blemish on a person's reputation.
•cfjnle, or jrecifitoj, a kind of creature with four legs and a winged tail always living on trees, called by the Irish c<xt Cfiajnn, i. e. a tree-cat.
tXjnte, well-featured.^
<f;nleo.ct, softness, smoothness.
•djnteanrxvjm, to persecute ; <xjn le- txn jrabme ru, I will persecute you. majnt;, persecution. -, disservice, or great harm done to one's self. J\ote, it is the negative of lea^, advantage, service to one's self; ex. bo ;t;n fe <x lea^, he acted wisely, and to his own advantage ; bo pt;n ye a <v;nte<xy, he conducted 11
himself unwisely, and to his own disadvantage ; trci c5ii)<xj;tle c<xjnle<xy<x pj<xt:, you are re- solved to destroy yourself. I know no language that can ex- press in one word the full mean- ing of either of these Irish words,
, oppression, injustice. , a swallow ; corruptly, fajnteoj. nmejb, a wonder.
;xb<x, excessive, huge ; also inordinate, intemperate. <f;rjme<xy<x/tb<xctr, excess, intempe-
rance.
•cT;nm;an, lust, passion, inordinate desire, concupiscence; ex. <vjn- m;<ma n<x collo., the lusts or concupiscence of the flesh. tT;nm;an<xc, lustful, intemperate. tfjnmjnte, or<x;nb;nte, beasts. •d;nn and <vjn, a great circle ; hence Oel-ajn, (vnlg. Ol;a ja;n) the great circle of Belus, i. e. of the sun, or the annual course of that planet tlirough the ecliptic. Note. Upon these Celtic mono- syllables <x;n and txjnn, the La- tin words anus and annus have been formed. — Vid. Remarks. •cTjnne, vulg. pvjnne, the diminu- tive of <vjnn, a small circle or ring ; Lat. annul us.
, or <x;nyeanc, hatred. and <x;n^;ano.c, and , a furious, extrava- gant man.
destroyed, broken down.
<T;nceann, braced up, over-stiff. U;nce<xy, an excessive or scorching heat, also an inflammation.
; je<xct, idem ; <intea- yu;ie<j.ct; na jrcla, a great heat of blood.
jntftecin, ungovernable, inflexible. Note-. In several of the preceding words beginning with a;n, that
J
particle, which should rather be <xn, but is here changed into <vjn by the abusive rule coel le coel, is a prefix signifying excess ; as in the words <x;nme<ty*<\/iba, <x;n- m;<xn <xjnte<ty~, &c. ; in other words it is a negative particle, such as un in English, as in <xjn;octoic, <x;n;oban, &c.
upon, or over ; in all old writings it is j:o/i, as j:5;t <xn t;/t, instead of <xj;t <xn t;/t. •Ct;/i, numbered, from the verb <V7/i;m, to number, or reckon; fco txjft 7-6, he reckoned. •cCj/i, destroyed; from <x;/ij;ni, to
destroy, rob, or plunder. <fj;i, arise, rectius ojft, as in the
word inuco;/i; je, early rising. -t.t;/t, the second person of the im- perative of the verb <x;/t;m, vulg. pxj/rjm, to watch, or take care. •cTj/1, the genitive case of &/i,
slaughter.
<T;/t, ploughed ; Lat. aro, arare. ttjftbe, ribs. •rt;/iKe, a story. <t;/ibe, ribbed, furrowed.
., divisions ; ex. bo ;t;n- t c/t; J;aj/ibe<xb<x b& ^tu- b, they made three divisions of their armies.
;/ib;;ie, an armful, as much as one may carry between both arms.
, a multitude, a legion ; ;b;jt <x;;tb^ie <x;r> jjol ;to ^u;be<xb e ene;nj:eact le f)enoc <x bp<v/t- ji<xt<\^, he was seated amidst le- gions of angels with Enoc in Pa- radise.— I 'id. Lcotiap b/ie<xc. <f j/tfyte, a host, or army. •-'" "CT;c, the ark ; Lat. «rr«.
, a strait, or difficulty, great hunger ; hence oi;nc;^e<xc, a hungry, starving man.
, a lizard; <xjfic tu<xc/t<\, an emmet.
•Cl ;/-(ce<vcr,^?o^'?/.5 e;/tcedct,hert'sy. <f;/ice<xb<xl, a prophesy. 12
xf;;tce<xllab, sacrilege; from a robbing, and ceall, a church ; Lat. cella, the same as ce<xtt-
u;;tceaitt:/iac, a hind or doe of the third year; also a hind-calf, a hart of the first year.
, certain, positive, un- doubted.
, to lie in wait, or in am- bush.
"CT;/tc;onn, aside.
•Cfjfic;o^c, covetous, greedy of food, hungry, voracious, rave- nous.
, a complaint, or expostula-
tion.
;/tc;^, meeting ; bo cu;/t ^e <x;;tc;^" o/1/ta, he sent to meet them.
, the same ; <x;^ <v;/ice;^t;
j, to wait on, or be of the king's levee ; <vj/t <x;^ice;^t: <xn t^-lucx j, to expect the coming up
of the army. ^{ • ' •
vl;^ce<xc, ingenious.
•Ct;/tc;ll, i. e. co;roe<xb, keeping. <t;ftb, a coast, a quarter or cardinal
point; on titj/tb ^o^t, from the
eastern quarter, or from the east. •Clj/ib, loud, also public; ex. of
Uftb, publicly ; vid. u/tb, Lat.
ardinis. <T;/tb and o;/xbe, order, improve-
ment ; Lat. ordo. <T;/tbbe<xb, to cut down. •Ct;/ibce<xnn, a sovereign or supe-
rior, whether ecclesiastic or civil. n<x^, superiority, sove-
reignty, great power.
height; ex. cd ft&J/tbe,
what lieight (
•cT^tbe and d;/tbean, a sign. tf;/tbecvn<x, tlK* jiosition or situation
of a thing; ex. b/iOc-a;/tbedna
<x c<xca, the diaadvantaeeoCBi po-
sition of his legion. — Vid. C<vjt>
ct;/tb;nt;nn, haughtiness, arro-
gance, high-spirited. tfjnb;nt;njie<xc, high-minded. iTjnbednajb, constellations. ttjnbtijje, any kingdom governed
by one person. •cT;nb^e;irileo;tt. a curious, inqui-
sitive, over-prying body. <t)ne, heed, care, attention; ex.
tabajft bam bajne a Innfj an
Lao;, r;W. Brody's poem. <T;>te, a fishing- ware. ttjfteac, careful, vigilant, circum-
spect.
<f );teac, hostile, violent. tfj'teac, ingenuity. tTjneaba and ojneaba, excellent,
famous.
iT) and a;n;om, to number, to
count : ex. noc bo banmeab bjob,
that were numbered of them. <T; ;te<x/i ac, a beginning. <T;/tea»t, a bay or harbour. •Cfjnecirt, to satisfy. tOrteaft, food, also pleasant. •cfj/tea;-£, the apple of the eye, the
sight.
ttjnel, a bed. •Cljuje. a herd ; pi. ajnjje and
nje. a place for summer grazing in the mountain.
eac. one who has many herds; of or belonging to a herd. ;M jean, a rein : aj-tjeana fj\-)- <i;n; the reins of a bridle.
symptoms, signs, or in- dications ; ex. <XMTean<x an ba;^-, the symptoms of death. jnjjob, money, pro}>erly silver ; Lat. argent um ; Greek apyupoc? derived from the Celtic arg, white, which is like the Greek a/o-yoc, whence they derive their apyuooc, as well as the Lat. aru^ntum ; a^jjob beo, quick- silver.
;tt|jm and C(j't;m, to heed, to mind, to take care of, or ob- seive; ex. mo. aj^jeamujb, if 13
we perceive or observe. <f jnjj't, a cow-calf. itjnjjm, to ask, seek, or demand. <tj'tr;m, to spoil, rob, or plunder, take or drive away ; Lat. arceo ; Greek aok-so. propitlso ; and Hebrew niN, fugio / hence
^n, sacrilege.
e, spoiled, plundered, ra- vaged.
c, a spoiler, robber. c, also signifies bountiful, generous in bestowing silver ; hence Can/id of the Dalgassian princes is said to derive his sur- name aj;tjgre<xc, quasi, <X;KJ;O- bac.
. spectres, visions. no. c^o;ce, the sign of the
t' Certain, particular, especial ; 50 bojft} j, especially. tf jn) j, a prince, nobleman, &c. ttjn;jeacc, a sovereignty, princi- pality ; ex. a^tj^eact C<v;^;l, the sovereignty ot Cashel. — Old Parchment, <T)ft;Ueab, a law.
n, a fashion.
or o;neacr, clans, fac- tions or parties : hence <x;?t;oc- ta^-, an assembly : <x;njoct, also signifies a cantoon, and corres- ponds with the Lat. word regio. j;t;om, ploughing, also agricul- ture, husbandry; Lat. aro-are ; hence ajKe<xm<x;/i, ploughmen, i. e. ;nu;n.
, knowledge ; a;n;^, arise : jn and Jpfe, histon' ; jnfe reanca^--bata, liiston and genealogy ; chronicuinScotonnn. Wfe and a;n;^;n, a rehearsal, or narration.
1PJ0°* an appointment ; <x;;t;^r;n coco., an appointment for battle. jj\jf)m, to watch ; ex. yunn, watch here; vid.
rf J
{Tmleacab and <n;^leac<x;no, to
lend or^borrow.
tt;/ileacab and aj/tleajab, loan, also usury, or any extravagant gain arising from the practice of lending money ; a;;ile, counsel, c, ready or willing to lend money or any other thing, also he that lends.
, a fling, jostle, or toss. , lent, adventitious, bor- rowed.
•cTj/tleojac, enterprising, adventu- rous.
•cfj/tno, arms, weapons. <l';/im, a place ; 50 bajfim a ji<x;B <xn jtj j, to the place where the king was ; ca ??a;/im or ca;/tm, where, in what place, ubinam. •cC;;im6/t;o^, a belt wTorn by a sol- dier to fasten his armour on. •cf/fimea/tt; and a;/tm;b, an order
or custom. <fj;tmjejn and am/-iaje;n, well
born, or descended, •cfj/imeab, a kind of measure. <f;/tmeab, a herd of cattle ; Lat.
armentum, plur. armenta. <T;/im;b;n, honour, reverence. tTjrim;b;r>eac, venerable, respect- ful, as, <x o; j a;/tm;b;neac, vir- go veneranda. •cC;/im;b, an interdict, also a troth,
vow, or promise. •cfj/tne, sloes ; Greek Eptvsoc- • <f j/ine, pi. of a/ta, the kidneys.
, a sitting or watching up all night; hence the diminutive <x;/t- nean, which is the more common word.
ttle,chattels,J/a#. 12.29. , a sitting up late. , all together ; Lat. simul. , a sign ; <x;/tfibe na c/-io;ce, the sign of the cross, L. 13.
;, the hinder part of the neck.
, contemplation. , an article. 14
and <xj;tte;n, a pebble.
I, weariness, fatigue. "CTjfitneam, a soldier's whetstone,
among the old Irish. <(}f, a hill, also a fort of covert, dependence ; ata <\jf ajaro i, I depend upon him ; hence, i, to depend, to have confi- dence in; as aj^;n) <x;/i, I de- pend upon him.
back, backwards; as ta/t <x •, backwards; tug aj/t a;^, to' recall ; hence aj^eaj, resti- tution. ', a loan. •, free, willing ; a^ a;^, no a;/i
i, nolens, volens. -., damage or trespass. :eab and ajj-cjm, to clean, or examine the head or any part of a person's body.
death, applied to a dead person ; Idnc a;^*le;ne, a shroud. jfg, a reproof, reprehension, or chastisement.
a present, or free gift or donation ; bo tug bam an aj^je, he presented t me, or gave me gratis ; aj^jb, freely, gratis.
a mountain ; as a;^e;/t or C;^T;/I I7;aba, the ridge of mountains, which part Leat cu- ;nn from I eat mo j ; vid. Cj^*j;/t. •cT;rbe and a;^te, a poem, also any ingenuity or invention ; Latin, astus.
or a;^teo;ft, a tricking, ingenious, artful fellow, a cheat or impostor ; Lat. astm.us. •cTjr-be or a;^*te, out of it, or of her; ag bul a;^be, departing thence or thereout; compound- ed of a^, from Lat. abs, and e or
she gave up the ghost.
and aj^b^Ort, a journey or peregrination ; a;;t peab a. na^b;/i, during tln^ir journey ; t;i; la a;^b;o/i, three days' jour-
1
ney ; it now vulgarly means missing one's way, and disap- pointment in one's journey.
/tu jab and <vj;Tft;m, to re- move from one place to another, to travel, or sojourn.
•ct;r-b;<xcc and <x;^beo;fie<xcc, play- ing pranks, acting the impostor.
tfj^etxtbd, restitution, also to re- store, or give back in specie. <xc, crafty, ingenious. , i. e. <x;^-;5c, restitution hi tequh'olenti, repayment literally, also vomiting.
<xb and <x;;')c;m, to restore, return, give back.
, a cliadem or crown. , a relic ; as ajfjonna n<x naom, the holy relics ; vid. <