Welsh Journals

gMttafllflgia: €mhnmi%. FOURTH SERIES.—VOL. XII, NO. XLVI. APRIL 1881. COMPARISON OF CELTIC WORDS FOUND IN OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE and ENGLISH DIALECTS with MODERN FORMS. In the papers lately published in the Arclwolegia Cainhrensis on "The Celtic Element of the English People", some lists of words were given to shew the existence of such an element in the English language. It is proposed now to compare this class of words with the corresponding modern forms which are in use among the Celtic speaking races in Wales and Ireland. Many of these words do not vary from their modern equiva¬ lents, but in general they present a more archaic form, as if, when they were blended with the prevailing Saxon speech, they had become crystallised, and had thus escaped the process of " phonetic decay" that affects all languages, more or less, during a long course of time. When the poet Chaucer wrote, in the fourteenth cen¬ tury, the word which in modern Welsh is bragawd appears as braket : " Hire mouth was swete as braket or the meth." Cant. T. A., 3261. This form is found as late as the eighteenth century : " Now at the coffee -houses they Do rob the hogs, selling the whey." 4th ser., vol. xn. 7