Revue celtique - National Library of Scotland

340
The Loss of Îndo-European p
thèse Ir. ire, comparative ireiu, 'ulterior', and he sees the objection ari-
sing from tlie // and r, to dispose of which he gives O. Ir. ferr, 'better'
= Welsh gwell 'better' ; but neither is this convincing. Ir. jerr 'better'
and Welsh goraa possibly go together but gwell I should refer to another
root and range it, as he once did, with Curtius' 659th group. As to
pellj there are unfortunately rather too many than too few possibiHties
of Connecting it with other words in other languages al! implying an
Indo-European qv (^ h] as the antécédent ofp in the Welsh form.
Among others, a) it may be ranged with Curtius^ no. 48 ; h] it may be
connected with Gr. rr^inz, yïlolic râ^K\ji, etc. (Curtius p. 482) ; c) it
might possibly be related to Sanskr. cira, 'long' (of time : so pell fre-
quently in Breton) ; d) pell more probably stands for spalja-oï which the
s is still retained, I think, m anghyspell (= " an-cy-spell) 'distant, outland-
ish, inaccessible' ; thus pell v/ould be referrable to the root SKAR 'to
separate or sever, and would mean originally separaîed, severed and
then remote or jar, but compare Fick's (p. 61 5) SK.ARSA whence Lith.
skersas, 'quer,' 0. Bulg. crêsu, praep. 'durch, hinùber, quer durch,'
0. Prussian kirscha, etc. prsep. c. ace. 'ûber.'
10 (358). Welsh gwobr, gwobrwy, 'reward', gobryn, 'merit', are
connected with 'Kspâw by Stokes : but they cannot be separated from
Welsh pryn-u, to buy', and Ir. crenas, 'qui émit', which hâve been most
satisfactorily equated by Windisch with Sansk. kvinâmx, 'I buy'. Besides
were thèse words connected with Tcspato and the like, we should e.xpect
them to mean to sell rather than to buy.
1 1 (366). Gaelic pailt, 'plenteous,' retains, as Stokes thinks, the
original /? of -([xi^Xr/iJ.-., etc. Thisis an instance which I cannot profess to
dispose of, but pailt does not look unlike a word borrowed from the
English plenty, plenteous, or perhaps, together with Breton paot, Cornish
pals, fromsome such a word as Low German palte, 'hppeu,' paît, 'stùck'
(for instance of bread) : see Dietz, ii, 51, and compare Eng. paltry.
12 (536 b). Welsh lleibio, 'tolick'^ Bret. lipat, point toarootLAP, as
Stokes suggests, while Welsh llyfu points to a LAB or LABH ; but it
may be objected that a nasalized LAMB or LAMBH would also account
for lleibio; Fick (p. 392) postulâtes LAB and LAP for Lat. lambo, Gr.
XacTUTio, 0. Pruss. lap-inis, 'â spoon', etc.
13 (630). With respect to Welsh poeth, 'hot', pohi, 'to bake' and the
other Celtic words referred to the root PAK, I hâve only to add, that
even supposing PAK to be correctly assumed for the Indo-European
mother-tongue, as to which Curtius expresses a very reasonable doubt,
still for the Italo-Celtic branch one must postulate QVAQV (KAK). A