Welsh Journals

So much for the criticism which is likely to be levelled at the grammar by the ordinary Welsh writer, to whom the immediate tradition of the 1 9th century is naturally enough, of more value than the infinitely greater and more varied tradition of past centuries. We may now inquire in what respects the purely grammatical and philological parts of the volume are new, and therefore, provocative of criticism. On one point, we feel somewhat inclined to join the possible critics. Prof. Morris Jones loves strong assertions, and we respect him for it, but here and there his statements are far too sweeping. One example, a fairly innocuous one, will suffice. On page 18, he states that Anne Griffiths's Llwybr cwblgroes i nalur, though so printed in all hymn-books, is intended to be sung dlwybyr cwbwl groes i natur." This state- ment about the hymn-books, though correct as it stands, is quite false in implication. The Caniedydd Cynulleidfaol, for instance, if it had contained the hymn, would have printed it correctly, as Ilwybyr is always so printed when it is intended to be sung as two syllables. (See Hymn 522, 3rd verse, and also dofon in the next hymn.) The two newer portions of the Grammar are the treatment of the relation of Keltic sounds to the original Aryan sounds, with their subsequent development through British into Welsh, and the history of the different grammatical forms in the Welsh language itself. The former of these portions is necessarily highly speculative, and it is on this, particularly on the author's free use of Vowel- gradation (Ablaut) to explain inconsistencies of length and quality in related forms, that criticism will concentrate. It is here, we fancy, that the author is most vulnerable, because it is precisely here, and here only, that modem philologists, Germans and others, are able to follow him. Those who have devoted their lives to the study of Aryan philology, and who, for the most part, hold rigid ideas on this question, will probably resent the intrusion of so much imagination as Professor Morris Jones has shown. He does, indeed, sometimes appear to explain too much, particularly in the sections dealing with verb-inflexions, but we must not call him wrong just because we cannot follow him, and this review will have gained its object if we can persuade the non-philological reader that there is no such thing as Aryan grammar, in the sense in which we apply the word grammar' to Welsh or English. It is purely comparative philology, that is, more or less intelligent conjecture based on comparison, and there can here be no difference of opinion upon fact, but merely upon the interpretation of fact. So that, when one philologist pronounces the work of another to be all wrong, it may only mean that he interprets the facts in a different* and perhaps less imaginative way. There are obviously three ways of interpreting these facts,-first of all, the slavishly unoriginal and safe interpretation, which shrinks from new theories, and which is a mere classification of previous research; secondly, the wildly conjectural, to which nothing is impossible, and thirdly the imaginative, and this third way is undoubtedly Prof. Morris Jones's method. When he misses fire, he does not do so because he has become wildly conjectural, but because his most signal quality is for the moment in abeyance, that is, when his imagination nods. It would be difficult to quote any particular instance of the freshness of his method, but the sections on metathesis (pps. 159-161) are strikingly original, e.g., his derivation of telyn from a hypothetical teleni, formed from teneli by metathesis, and so from the root ten — to stretch, which also gave tant and tennyn or of archen on the same page or of penn on p. 128. (i.e. the Aryan termination-sno added to qvept-which is reduced from a form which gave O.E. heafod, Mod. E. head. Germ. haupt, and which before suffering metathesis of p and v, gave L. caput.) The other new feature is his treatment of the his- torical development of Welsh sounds and words in the Welsh language itself, and this is perhaps the strong- est and most valuable portion of the work. Nothing at all of any value seems to have escaped him, and thus his Grammar forms an excellent basis for an historical and etymological dictionary of the language. Here and there, as was only natural, he has not remembered the best examples of the laws which he describes for instance on p. 187, efelychu from an older hefelychu would have been a better example of the loss of initial h and on p. 179 educher, for veducher from bed ucher till evening has not been noticed as an example of the loss of initial We have to regret also that the author did not devote a chapter to the comparative chronology of the different sound- changes,as ample evidence is furnished in the grammar Itself, and it only requires classification. In a second edition, we hope to see this subject dealt with in Prof. Morris Jones's masterly manner. Statements of fact which can be proved to be wrong are exceed- ingly rare, and even the few that may be found are of little moment. The author is certainly wrong when he states (p. 60) that Pentyrch is accented Pentyrch. The accentuation of this word is Pen Tfrch, like pen dyn, the second accent being the phrase-accent. Now, we may well ask,-what is the value of this Grammar beyond its worth as a contribution to scientific knowledge? In other words, what is its value to Wales itself? It is here, we think, that