Revue celtique - National Library of Scotland

. 8.
Etymological Scraps. 191
7. Ystod, 0. Welsh *istot, « an interval of time or space; » but when
applied to space it means only « a swath « in mowing, namely in
S. Wales. This I would dérive from the same origin as Germ. stunde,
« an hour, d which Fick can hardly he warranted in deriving from
stingan or in explaining as meaning a point of time.
0. Welsh nouiîiou in the Oxford Glosses renders the latin nundins
and the two words seem of the same origin as well as signification ; for
the former may safely be taken to stand for "noviddiou from "noven-diou
and the latter for *noven-din£, being composed of novem, « nine, » and
plurals meaning « days »; the Welsh *dioa is the plural oî*diu, in Mid.
W. dyw, « day, » plural dieu, which we hère hâve in its older form
-diou in nouiîiou. The latin -din£ admits of a similar explanation. In
Mod. Welsh nouiîiou has become newid, « change, exchange » also
« bargain » as when we sayy mae newid arno, « it is cheap, » lit. « there
isa bargain on it. » Ail this would point to a fact of history, which I
would leave to Pictet and Fick to discuss,
9. Mod. Welsh mab, 'a son, a boy', 0. W. map, Ir. mac, macc, are
ail represented in Ogam in Wales and Ireland by maqvi, the genitive of
a base 'maqra =5 "mac-va formed by affixing the suffix va 'see Schleicher's
Compendium^, p. 399; to the Cehic root MAC from which we
bave Mod. W. mag-u, 'to breed, to nurse, to rear', and macwy, 'a boy,
ayouth, a groom', =; 0. Ir. mocu, maccu : corresponding to thèse we
hâve in Ogams, both Welsh and Irish, the genitive mucoi — the hésita-
tion between and a will hâve been already noticed in the case of ac
and oc. MAC would, if projected on the common mother-tongue of the
Japhetic nations of Europe, be MANGH, which Fick treats as a by-form
of MAGH, and from which he dérives, among many others, the follow-
ing words : Latin magnus , macîus ; Goth. magu, 'a boy', magaîhisy
Car. magd, Eng. maid; 0. Bulg. ma^zi, 'a man'. With respect to map
and maqvi it may be observed hère that most of our Ogams date ante-
rior to the change in Welsh of qv into p (as well as of s into h), a fact
which hopelessly dissolves the near relation supposed to hâve existed
within the Celtic family between the Cymry and the ancient Gauls of
France.
10. Lleibjo, « lingere, lambere, » said of heat effecting the disappea-
rance of water, Breton lippat, « to lick, » par abus as Le Gonidec
thought for lipa : thèse point apparently to a form *lambja-, whence
'labbj- *lepj-, etc. It is worth while mentioning that we hâve in use in
Wales two kindred verbs : llyf-u, « to lick, » of the same origin per-
haps as Latin labia, English lip, and lli-o, of the same origin and signifi-