Revue celtique - National Library of Scotland

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The Loss of Indo-European p
with rhi- corne from this root and how many from the same origin aj
Latin rex it is not always easy to décide.
50. Welsh erîhyl, 'any animal born before its time'^ would seem te
point to a diminutive * partïla-or partûla- from a base to be comparée
witli Lat. parlas.
1 . Sahattos in Ogam on the Killeen Cormac stone has been supposée
5
by Stokes to stand for * Sapantos of the same origin as Latin sapere.
Similarly it is possible that sei in SEIMETIACO on an early inscribec
stone at Llanaelhaiarn in Carnarvonshire stands for sapja to be comparée
with Lat. sapiens, and ne-sapins. One must not confound with the fore-
going a name Soe in Llan Soe (Myv. Arch. p. 749), now written Llanso)\
in Monmouthshire, and Soy in the Camhro-Brit. SS. p. 89. The samt
name seems to be Seii, which occurs two pages earlier in the lasi
mentioned compilation, as a genitive in a paragraph which betrays
bad readings. A word , by the way, respecting Soy: it woulc
seem to stand in the same relation to syw as aswy , 'left', does
to aseu 'left' (cf. Sansk. savya) ; as to syw Davies observes :
'Nunc significat elegantem, elegantulum. Antiquis videtur significasse
sapientem, doctum, peritum.' He adds to it sywed-ydd, 'Astronomus,
astrologus, sapiens.' The 0. Irish forms quoted by Stokes in his Irish
Glosses, p. 37, are sai and sui, 'a learned man, a sage,' sûithe,
'science;' — rather I should say, looking at the passages quoted by
Stokes in the Ir. Glosses and in the Goidelica- p. 162, that 0. Irish had
a sùithe, masc. corresponding letter for letter tothe Welsh sywedydd and
a sùithe, neuter, meaning 'science,' to which we hâve no exact counter-
part, the nearest being Pughe's sywydd : thus I would suggest that Ba\
sùithe in cach dindsenchas be rendered : He was a sage in every hill-
science, without supplying sab as Stokes suggests. As the Welsh forms
'
do not change s into h it is not improbable that the s stands for st and
that the bases may hâve been "stavja- and * stavetja- (cf. Welsh serch, Ir.
sercc 'love', Gr.