Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER I: THE CELTS IN ANCIENT HISTORY 23When this settled down Gaul and the British Islands remainedpractically the sole relics of the Celtic empire, the only countries [35]still under Celtic law and leadership. By the commencement ofthe Christian era Gaul and Britain had fallen under the yoke ofRome, and their complete Romanisation was only a question oftime.Unique Historical Position of IrelandIreland alone was never even visited, much less subjugated, bythe Roman legionaries, and maintained its independence againstall comers nominally until the close of the twelfth century, butfor all practical purposes a good three hundred years longer.Ireland has therefore this unique feature of interest, thatit carried an indigenous Celtic civilisation, Celtic institutions,art, and literature, and the oldest surviving form of the Celticlanguage, 19 right across the chasm which separates the antiquefrom the modern world, the pagan from the Christian world, and [36]crann prenn treemac map toncenn pen headclumh (cluv) pluv feathercúig pimp fiveThe conclusion that Irish must represent the older form of the languageseems obvious. It is remarkable that even to a comparatively late date the Irishpreserved their dislike to p. Thus they turned the Latin Pascha (Easter) toCasg; purpur, purple, to corcair, pulsatio (through French pouls) to cuisle. Itmust be noted, however, that Nicholson in his “Keltic Researches” endeavoursto show that the so-called Indo-European p—that is, p standing alone anduncombined with another consonant—was pronounced by the Goidelic Celtsat an early period. The subject can hardly be said to be cleared up yet.19 Irish is probably an older form of Celtic speech than Welsh. This is shownby many philological peculiarities of the Irish language, of which one of themost interesting may here be briefly referred to. The Goidelic or Gaelic Celts,who, according to the usual theory, first colonised the British Islands, and whowere forced by successive waves of invasion by their Continental kindred to theextreme west, had a peculiar dislike to the pronunciation of the letter p. Thusthe Indo-European particle pare, represented by Greek παρά, beside or close to,