Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER I: THE CELTS IN ANCIENT HISTORY 21Again, the word frei is found in its earliest Germanic form asfrijo-s, which comes from the primitive Indo-European prijo-s.The word here does not, however, mean free; it means beloved(Sanscrit priya-s). In the Celtic language, however, we find prijosdropping its initial p—a difficulty in pronouncing this letter wasa marked feature in ancient Celtic; it changed j, according to aregular rule, into dd, and appears in modern Welsh as rhydd=free.The Indo-European meaning persists in the Germanic languagesin the name of the love-goddess, Freia, and in the word Freund,friend, Friede, peace. The sense borne by the word in the sphereof civil right is traceable to a Celtic origin, and in that sense [33]appears to have been a loan from Celtic.The German Beute, booty, plunder, has had an instructivehistory. There was a Gaulish word bodi found in compoundssuch as the place-name Segobodium (Seveux), and variouspersonal and tribal names, including Boudicca, better known tous as the “British warrior queen,” Boadicea. This word meantanciently “victory.” But the fruits of victory are spoil, and inthis material sense the word was adopted in German, in French(butin) in Norse (byte), and the Welsh (budd). On the otherhand, the word preserved its elevated significance in Irish. Inthe Irish translation of Chronicles xxix. 11, where the Vulgateoriginal has “Tua est, Domine, magnificentia et potentia et gloriaet victoria,” the word victoria is rendered by the Irish búaidh,and, as de Jubainville remarks, “ce n'est pas de butin qu'il s'agit.”He goes on to say: “Búaidh has preserved in Irish, thanks to avigorous and persistent literary culture, the high meaning whichit bore in the tongue of the Gaulish aristocracy. The materialsense of the word was alone perceived by the lower classes ofthe population, and it is the tradition of this lower class whichhas been preserved in the German, the French, and the Cymriclanguages.” 1818 “Premiers Habitants,” ii. 355, 356.