Revue celtique - National Library of Scotland

in tlie Celîic Langiiages. 357
ecame 5/; the s being then dropped left /, written in Mod. Welsh/and
hanged in Irish into 5 ; other cases are known of Irish changing /
iito s, namely when the Latin fusds, frcniim, furnus became in Irish sust,
{ian, surnn respectively. It is right to add that we seera to hâve p for sp
t least in one instance, namely in poer, 'spittle' ; cf. Lat. spuo, and its
DHgeners'. There may beothers; but paltu, « to fail,'wouId seem to go
;'ith Goth. skal, oov.'/m.
I
Returning to the second part of Windisch's article, he shows that the
pmbination pt as in lat. septem becomes in Irish dit as in secht, 'seven',
lad assumes the Welsh seiîh, ''seven', to hâve been preceded by some
ich a form as secht, but without any évidence, as it does not appear
hy scpht should not just as well make seitli in Welsh. Then he passes
I review the instances which Stokes has on various occasions mentioned
f original p (simple) becoming c in Irish words. A more important
iSue is raised by Stokes in his Remarks (p. 21)^ where he directly
pallenges Windisch's statementinhis préface to Curtius' Greek Etymology
'lat Indo-Germanie /? is never retainedinCeltic. Leaving out of conside-
lition sp and pt, one fmds that Stokes regards p as sometimes retained
nd sometimes lost in the Celtic languages : this is a kind of conclusion
; produced
hich one must be excused from accepting until overpowering évidence
in its favour, and no apology is necessary for reviewing in
etail the instances in question : I hâve found the following in the Remarks :
1 (57). Ir. gabar, Welsh gafr, 'a goat'^ Gaulish gabro-s in Gahro-sentum
id Gabro-magus (Gluck, K. N. 43) =: -/.arpcç, Lat. caper, etc. Thisseems
) me
inadmissible on account of the Celtic g
: besides the représentative
1 Welsh of caper is to be sought, if I mistake not, in the caer of
[iriwrch, 'a roebuck' l'Mabinogion I. 31) a word which Davies writes,
|id I think correctly, cariwrch, though he adds 'pro canviwrch,' a com-
pund which he does not seem to hâve read anywhere : may it not be £=
ipro-^iç:, and is O'Reilly's câirfhiadli, 'a hart or stag', altogether
1. Since the above was written I hâve found a better etymology for poer, which means
:)t only spittle but also foani at the mouth of an animal ; 'to foam at the mouth' being
ihcT malu poer or malu ewyn (ewyn = 'foam'), while /ii7//V would seem to be the old
•ord for spittle properly speaking. If so, then poer {= 'spavira = 'sqvavira-) may be
^luated bodily with the English word shower which Fick (p. 408) would regard as
;anding for *skâvara from SKU a short form of SKYU, p. 209. To the same origin are
!' be referred Ir. ceo 'mist, fog, vapour', ceomhar, 'misty , dark' , ceothach 'dark,
listy', ceothran (query ceoran) 'a small shower' (O'Reilly), Scotch Gaelic ceo 'mist,
'g', ciiirach 'drizzly', and possibly caoir, 'a foam with sparks of fire in it, as in a
'ormy sea' (M'' Alpine). Now Fick's original SKYU would mean in the Celtic languages
'v/u which it would be natural to simplify by dropping the y, whence the *sqvavira,
pavira implied by poer, or else by discarding the v, which would enable us to refer to
•lesame origin the Welsh cawod(ànd cawad) 'a shower', Ir. caoth (O'Reilly), as stand-
ig for a form skjavâtâ or skjavatâ.
Rev. Celt. Il 2 5