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346 Gaelic Society of Inverness.
suade such of my countrymen as have opportunity and an interest
in these matters to make a systematic investigation of it. It is
not, happily, so necessary now as it was even twenty years ago to
warn Highbinders against being carried away with the childish
idea that such an inquiry as this vvill be barren of result because
the facts are to be gathered about our own doors. Neither in
Nature nor in Science, only to our imperfect vision, is the Gaelic
proverb true— " 'S gorm na cnuic tha fada bhuainn." The laws
of language are the same all the world over : the vocal chords of
the Celt are affected by the same conditions as those of other men.
Philological science as well as patriotic sentiment might dictate
the message which Ossian charged Blackie to deliver to the Highland
people
; ;
And say to my people, Love chiefly the beauty
That buds by thy cradle and blooms at thy door
Nor deem it a pleasure, and praise it a duty,
To prink thee with foreign and far-gathered lore.
On the bank where it grows the meek primrose is fairest.
No bloom like the heather empurples the brae
And the thought that most deep in thy bosom thou l)earost
In the voice of thy fathers leaps forth to the day.
Be true to the speech of the mother that bore thee,
Thy manhood grow strong from the blood of the boy ;
Be true to the tongue with which brave men before thee
Took the sting from their grief and gave wings to their joy.
It is difficult to say where dialect ends, and where language
begins. We all know in a rough and ready way what is meant
by the words. Minute shades of difierence in accent, perhaps
even in diction, are sometimes observed among members of the
same family. In separate parishes and towns such differences become
quite marked. When they reach a certain point, which
cannot, perhaps, in any particular case be very clearly defined, we
call them a difference of dialect. When dialects diverge to such
an exteiit as to become mutually unintelligible, we call them
different languages. But in actual fact, the words are \ised in a
more or less loose way. For example, the Dane understands
the Swede and vice versa, yet we treat Danish and Swedish as
se))aratc languages. The Romance Languages are, in a sense, all
dialects, being descendants, of Latin. Some of them, such as
Portuguese and Spanish, are mutually intelligible, and yet we regard
Spanish and Poi-tuguese as difierent languages. To come
nearer home. The Goidelic branch of Celtic is to all intents and pur-