CHAPTER I
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SECTION I.—_The Keltic Race._
We now pass to a class of names whose associations belong almost entirely to the modern world, yet whose history is far more obscure than that of those on which we have previously dwelt.
From the Hebrew, the European family have derived their religion; from the Greek, their ideas; from the Roman, their laws; from the Teuton, their blood and their energy; but from the Kelt they have taken little but their fanciful romance. In only one country has the Kelt been dominant, and then with a Latinized speech, and a Teutonic name, testifying to the large modifications that he must have undergone.
Among the rugged moors and cliffs which fence Western Europe from the Atlantic waves, he did indeed preserve his freedom, but without amalgamation with other nations; and in lands where he fell under subjection, he was so lost among the conquerors as to be untraceable in language or feature, and with the exception of the Gaul, has bequeathed nothing of his character to the fused race upon his soil.
We trace the Hebrew nation with certainty from its majestic source; the Greek shines on us in a dazzling sunrise of brilliant myth; the Roman, in a grave, stern dawn of characteristic legend; but of the earlier progress of the wild, impulsive Kelt we have but the faintest indications.
Much as he loved his forefathers, keen as was his delight in celebrating the glories of his race, oral tradition contented him, and very strong was the pressure from the neighbouring nations before his bards recorded anything in writing, even the long genealogies hitherto preserved in each man’s accumulated names. The beauty of their legends did indeed recommend them to the general store-house of European fancy, but though the spirit may be Keltic, the body through which it comes is almost always Teutonic.
SECTION II.—_The Keltic Languages._
The Keltic nations used languages which showed that they came from the Indo-European root, and which are still spoken in the provinces where they remain. They have no really ancient literature, and were left at the mercy of wild tongues, so that their losses have been very great, and the divergence of dialects considerable.
The great and distinguishing feature of the entire class is their peculiar inflections, which, among other puzzling features, insert an aspirate after the primary consonant, so as entirely to change its sound, as for instance in an oblique case, _mor_, great, would become _mhor_, and be pronounced _vor_, to the eternal confusion of people of other nations, who, however the vowel or the end of a word might alter, always trusted to know it by the main syllable. A large number of guttural sounds distinguished these languages, and some of these were annihilated by the ensuing aspiration; but when spelling began, the corpses of the two internecine letters were still left in the middle of the word, to cumber the writer and puzzle the reader, so that the very enunciation of a written sentence requires a knowledge of grammar.
The vowels likewise sometimes change in the body of the word when it becomes plural, and the identification of plurals and of cases with their parent word is so difficult that few persons ever succeed in the study of Keltic, except those who have learnt it from their mothers or nurses, and even they are not always agreed how to write it grammatically.
The Keltic splits into two chief branches, so different that Cæsar himself remarked that the Gauls and Cimbrians did not use the same language. For the sake of convenience these two branches are called by philologists the Gaelic and the Cymric. The first is the stock which has since divided into the Gaelic of the Highlands, the Irish of Ireland, and the Manx of the little intermediate isle. In fact they are nearly one; old Gaelic and old Irish are extremely alike when they can be found written, and though they have since diverged, the general rules continue to be the same; and some of the chief differences may be owing to the fact, that while the Highlanders have adopted the Roman alphabet, the native Irish still adhere to the Anglo-Saxon.
The Cymric is still spoken in Wales and Brittany, and only died out a century ago in Cornwall. Welsh and Breton agree in so many points that the natives of either country are said to be able to understand one another, though they would be entirely unintelligible to an Irishman or Highlander. Indeed it may be doubted whether Greek and Latin are not more nearly akin than the two shoots of the Keltic tree. One great difference is that the _p_ of the Kymric always becomes _k_ or _c_ hard in the Gadhaelic: thus _plant_ or children in Wales, are the well-known Gaelic _clan_; _Paisg_, Easter, is _Cisg_; _pen_, a head, is _caen_; and the Cornish word _Pentyr_, the head of the land, or promontory, is the same as the Scottish _Cantyre_.[94]
The Gauls had been completely Romanized in the South before they heard of Christianity. They gave up Greek and Roman idols rather than Druidism when they listened to the Gospel. It is thought that the first seeds were sown by St. Paul, and that afterwards the Eastern Church at Ephesus, under St. John, had much communication with them. Britain probably owed her first gleams of light to the imprisonment of Caractacus and his family at Rome; but however this might be, Gaul furnished hosts of martyrs in the persecution, and Britain did her part in testifying to the truth. Many districts long remained unconverted, however, in both countries. St. Martin is said to have completed the conversion of Gaul in the end of the third century, and in Wales St. Germain still found a host to baptize in the fifth century. Indeed, the predominance of heathen remains over Christian, have made antiquaries very doubtful whether Britain could have been by any means universally converted at the time of the fall of the Roman empire. It had, however, sent forth one great missionary, namely, St. Patrick, from the northern province of Valentia. He found a feeble Church in Ireland, but so enlarged its borders and won all hearts, that from his time that island was Christian in name, and filled with such clusters of hermitages and convents as to win its title of the Isle of Saints.
This Keltic Church, with its eastern traditions, was the special missionary Church of these little heeded times. From Ireland, St. Columba went forth to Iona, whence he and his disciples gradually converted the Picts; and though St. Gregory’s mission laid the foundations of the polity of the Anglo-Saxon Church in Britain, there were the Scottish Aidan, the Welsh Chad, and Gallic Birinus doing the work quietly, in which the Roman monks had been less successful. From Ireland again, St. Columbanus, St. Gall, and many others set forth to complete the work of conversion in France and Switzerland, and many churches and convents regard as their founders and patrons, obscure Irish hermits forgotten in their own country. These have been the chief diffusers of Keltic names, being called after some hereditary native word, which their saintliness was to raise to high honour.[95]
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Footnote 94:
Max Müller; _Encyclopædia Britannica_; Villemarqué, _Legoindec’s Dictionary_; Hanmer, _Chronicle_; Clark, _Student’s Handbook of Comp. Grammar_; Prichard, _Celtic Nations_.
Footnote 95:
Knight, _Pictorial History_; Mazzaroth; Knight, _Celt, Roman, and Saxon_; Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_; Jones, _Welsh Sketches_; _Irish Poems_; Montalembert.
SECTION III.—_Keltic Nomenclature._
The Kelts were highly poetical and romantic in their nomenclature. In general their names were descriptive; many referred to complexion, and many more described either masculine courage or feminine grace and sweetness. But, unfortunately, the language is so uncertain, and its commentators are so much at war, that in dealing with these, after the well-criticized ancient tongues, is like passing from firm ground to a quaking bog, and in many cases there is but a choice of conjectures to deal with.
The names to be examined are of various kinds. First, the historical ones that have come through Latin writers, terribly disguised, but the owners of them certain to have existed. These are usually more Cymric than Gaelic, and Welsh and Breton writers find explanations for them. A few truly mythological ones will be considered with these, and placed according to the order—if order it can be called—assigned to their supposed owners in the pedigree of Brut, in which England used to believe on the word of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Welsh on that of their native chronicle of Brut. Then follow a most controverted collection, chiefly of the two Gaelic nations. They were the property of a set of heroes called the Feen, who are the great ancestry of the chiefs of the Scottish race in both islands, and who are said to have performed fabulous exploits at some distant period, which gains some sort of date from the poem representing Ossian, the last survivor of the band, as extremely miserable under the teaching of St. Patrick. The fact was probably that the floating myths of the Gael attached themselves to some real adventurous band, and the date is no more to be depended on than those of Geoffrey of Monmouth; but it gives a point by which to arrange the names still in great part surviving both in Ireland and Scotland, though often confused with those imported from other languages.
After this follows the cycle of names made popular by the romances of King Arthur’s court, which naturally find their place at the time of the fall of the Roman power in England. These, as far as they can be understood or interpreted at all, are Cymric, and some have become tolerably well known throughout Europe.
The different classes connected with one or other of these will nearly dispose of all the Keltic names worth notice. The remaining will chiefly belong to the saints, in which Wales, Brittany, and Ireland were
## particularly prolific. The odd thing is that all the Welsh saints were
in some way or other of royal birth, so that the royalty of Wales must have been peculiarly pious. Brittany, likewise, had sundry hermits; and Ireland deserved its title of the Isle of Saints, though, as will be seen, some of them were of a strangely Irish order, and regarded as strong cursing powers.
The Gaelic race had the remarkable custom of calling their children the servant, the disciple, or the votaress of the patron saint, and it is not till recent times that the prefixes Giolla, Maol, and Cailleach have been entirely dropped, and their traces are often remaining in appellations in Ireland and Scotland.
The name was entirely personal, not hereditary; but the pride of ancestry caused the father’s, grandfather’s, forefather’s names, to the remotest generation, to be heaped upon one head, connected in Welsh by _Mab_, or, as it was contracted, _Ap_.
The Welsh, about the fifteenth century, found these pedigree names unmanageable in contact with ordinary society, and contented themselves each with one ancestral surname for good. Some incorporated their Ap, as Pryce, Ap Rhys, Pugh, or Ap Hugh; some, in English fashion, adding the possessive _s_ to the end of the father’s name, like the hosts of Joneses and Williamses; others took some favourite name from the roll of ancestry, or called themselves after their estates.
In Gaelic the word Mac, the son, or O, or _ua_, the grandson, connected the person with the ancestor whose name was chosen.
The Keltic taste in names was of the grand order, generally in many syllables, and lofty in sense and sound, much in the style of the Red Indian. Thus we find Brithomar, the great Briton; Bathanat, son of the boar; Louarn, the fox; Carvilius, friend of power, among the Kymric nations of England and the Continent: and in less complimentary style, Mandubrath, man of black treason. This man of black treason was, in Britain, Avarddwy Bras, also called one of the three disgraceful men of Britain. It is said that Caswallon had murdered Avarddwy’s father, and afterwards set out on what the _Triads_ call one of the three unwise armaments, which weakened the force of the country. The cause is romantically described by the _Triads_ to have been, that his lady-love, Flur, had been carried away by a Prince of Gascony to be presented to Julius Cæsar; moreover, the _Mabinogion_ says, he and his two friends went as far as Rome to recover her, disguised as shoemakers, whence they are called the three bold shoemakers of the Isle of Britain. The aid that he gave the Gauls does, in fact, seem to have attracted the notice of Cæsar, and the black treason was Avarddwy’s invitation to the Romans. He was the father of Aregwydd Voeddog, whose second name, derived from victory, was certainly the same as Boadicea, though her deed identifies her with Cartismandua. Caswallon, or Cassivellaunus, as the Romans called him, is sometimes explained as Cas-gwall-lawn, chief of great hatred, sometimes as lord of the Cassi. The Gaels have many grand men’s names, but, perhaps, have used the most poetry in those of their women. Feithfailge, honeysuckle ringlets; Lassairfhina or Lassarina, flame or blush of the wine; Lassair, or flame, the same in effect as the Italian Fiamma; Alma, all good, a real old Erse name, before the babes of September 1854, were called Alma, after the Crimean river, which probably bore a Keltic name; Bebhirn, or, as Macpherson writes it, Vevina, the sweet woman; Essa, the nurse; Gelges, white swan; Luanmaisi, moon fairness; Ligach, pearly.
Yet thirst had her namesake, Ita; Diédrè was fear; Dorvenn, sullen; Uailsi, pride; Unchi, contention.
All of these, and many besides, have entirely fallen into desuetude, and all the Keltic countries have a practice of adopting names from their neighbours, supposed to answer to their own, but often without the slightest affinity thereto.
Thus Anmcha, courageous, is supposed to be translated by Ambrose; Aneslis is rendered by Stanislaus; Fachtna, is Festus; Baothgalach, or rashly courageous, Boethius.
Corruptions must be permitted to our English tongues and throats, which break down at a guttural, so it is no wonder that Dorchaidha, or patronymic O'Dorchaidhe, should be sometimes turned into D'Arcy, sometimes D'Orsay, and sometimes into Darkey, which really translates the word; and sometimes Darcy; but it is rather hard when we have to read Archibald for Gillespie, and Edward for Diarmaid.[96]
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Footnote 96:
Villemarqué; O'Donovan; _Highland Society’s Gaelic Dictionary_.
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