The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

FS AND Q'S 145
that the C in the Goidelic, which represents an earher Q or Qu, is replaced in Brythonic
by a P or perhaps a B. Thus the Celtic languages fall into two well-defined groups which
may be called the Q and P dialects.
Rhys pointed out, too, that in the ItaUan peninsula the same phenomenon appeared.
In Latin, and the dialects most closely allied to it, Q or Qu was found, while in the Urabrian
forms of speech, used over the greater part of the peninsula this sound was replaced by
P. Thus thore were Q and P dialects in Italy also.
He further pointed out that the Greek language, with certain exceptions, was a
true P dialect, for the Latin equus corresponded to the Greek iinrhi. He suggested, however,
that the Ionic dialect used by Herodotus and Hippocrates, which frequently had a k
where the standard Greek had a w,^ was a descendant of a form of Q speech, but that
the Qu had degenerated into k, as it had into C in Goidelic.
Further, he pointed out that the Q dialects, GoideUc, Latin and Ionic Greek, formed
so to speak an outer ring, while Brythonic, Umbrian and standard Greek lay within them.
He argued from this that these tongues had spread in two waves from a common centre,
which he fixed in the mountain zone of Central Europe, and thence the Q tongues had
spread by invasion, to be followed some few centuries later by a second invasion of
P people, who had driven the Q people further from the original home.
He suggested that the change of Q into P had been effected by a conquering
group of aliens, who had adopted the Wiro tongue from their subjects, but retained some
details of the phonological laws of their original language, which accounted for this
labialisation. He further suggested that these ahen invaders were the Alpine
inhabitants of the Swiss lake-dwellings.^
This paper was received with hostile criticism and derision, especially by some
German students of Celtic tongues.* It had little better reception in France, and the
British and Irish Celtic scholars, with a few exceptions, treated the idea with contempt.
The theory has never received the consideration and fair criticism which a paper from
so eminent an authority on Celtic languages deserved.
The main facts as to the Celtic and Itahc dialects are not in dispute. There can be
no question that in both of those areas both Q and P groups are or were in existence,
' Rhys (1894) 119. ' Zimmer (1912); Meyer (1895-6) 55-86.
7 Rhys (1894) 122, 130.
10