The Scottish Celtic review

Gavllc Urtluiijftqih)/— Cumtiioii Mintakcs. 2'JoVIII. Bheil erroneously regarded as the aspirated form of asubstantive verb beil.In the Highland Society's Dictionary, hcil is given as thepres. interrog. and neg. of the subst. verb hi, and the expressions," Am beil mi " (am I) ? " ni 'in beil mi " (I am not), are quoted asillustrations of the use of this form. Beil is used also by SheriffNicolsou in his edition of Mackintosh's Gaelic Proverbs ; and Prof.Blackie (cf. Lang, and Lit. of the Seott. Highlands, p. 38) has" distinctly recognised " in the " am bheil thu ?—are you ?—so'often heard in the mouth of a Highlander," the Greek'.ireXofxatBut the form heil does not exist in Gaelic, except as a colloquialcorruption of bheil, which, as already shown, is for hhfeil, theeclipsed form of the subst. verb/ei7, from the root var (to will, tochoose), whence Lat. velle and Eng. will.Much of the confusion and error prevailing in regard to Umilhas arisen from the present sijelling, which conceals the truecharacter of this verb as an eclipsed form. It would, therefore,be desirable to restore the organic initial letter, especially in thefoi'mula " cha 'n 'eil," which might be written " cha 'n fheil," like"cha 'n fhaigh," "cha 'u fheith," "cha 'n fhogbluim," "cha 'nfhoir," &c.It has been already shown that eclipsis arises from the effectof an original nasal termination upon the initial letter of thefollowing word. This nasal, as previously remarked, is prefixedto the initial letter of the next word, when that letter is a vowelor a medial ; when a liquid, the nasal is assimilated unto it ; andwhen a tenuis or /, it is changed by the influence of the nasal,which combines with it, into its corresponding medial. Accordingly,the nasal disappears before words of which the initial letteris a tenuis, a medial, or /". It disappears also, as we have seen, be-^ Prof. Blackie is equally unfortunate in his remarks on the other Gaelicsubst. verbs. It is true that bhd ( = roblui) and Lat. fid are derivatives from thesame root bhu, but, although b of bhd corresponds to / of fiii, the long a ofbhd, which is a reduplicated preterite, does not agree with the short u of fili.The form ii corresponds, not to Skr. as, the s of which would be dropped inGaelic, but to Skr. asti, and still more closel)' to Gr. ern', whilst tha for td isthe 3rd per. sing, of taa (I am) = * stau, agreeing exactly with Lat. sto = stao.In fact, the pages (29-59) of Prof. Blackie's interesting work that deal withGaelic philology, might well be cancelled in a new edition. Some of the comparisonsare correct, but many are erroneous, wliilst those that are correctare, in reality, with few exceptions, not better than mere guesses which areof no value in accurate etymology.