For example: “The Esk” is from Eask (Irish), and Esseg (Dongolan, North Africa), “Water.” “The Usk” or “Ou-isg,” as the word is pronounced by the Welsh, from Uisge, “Water” (Irish), connected with Eask (Irish). “The Ayr” is identical with A.r. “A River,” also “To flow” (Hebrew), “The Yarrow” with Iaro (Egyptian), and the Hebrew words Ee.a.ou.r Ee.a.r (modifications of A.r, Hebrew). Some able Celtic scholars have attempted to explain the origin of such names as “Ayr and Yarrow,” which are very common as names of rivers in Celtic countries, by means of a Celtic term which means “Gentle,” an explanation very inapplicable in many instances. The error of these writers arises from the assumption they are prone to adopt, that the Celtic is an unchanged language, the truth being that the changes which it can be shown to have undergone in more recent times, form a distinct ground for the conclusion that, long prior to the earliest period to which our most ancient Celtic specimens can be referred, the Celts must have lost many words which their forefathers brought with them from the East.
In the names above noticed, not only the general features, but the finer shades of inflection of the Oriental words reappear.
Numerous examples may be pointed out, of words applied in some languages to “Water” generally, appropriated exclusively, in others to the “Sea or Ocean.” Thus we have Shui in Chinese, and Su in Turkish, “Water.” In the German See, the Anglo Saxon Seo Sae, the English “Sea,” and in other analogous terms to be met with in all the Gothic tongues, we [pg 011] recognize the same term as a word for a “Lake,” or for “The Sea.” Adelung has pointed out the resemblance which in some other instances the Turkish bears to the German. The ancestors of the Turks and Germans, it may be observed, are both traceable to contiguous regions of Northern Asia, the great “High Road of Nations” from China to Europe.
Again, in various dialects of the North American Indians we meet with Oghnacauno, Oneekanoosh, &c. “Water.” In Latin and Greek we find the same term “Ocean-os, Ocean-oio”, &c., applied exclusively to “The Ocean.” (See for other examples Appendix A, p. [77].)
Words for Mountains and Hills are almost universally identical with words for “The Head, The Back, The Breast,” &c. Thus even in the English, in which the first meanings of words are often lost, we have “Ridge” (A Back and A Hill), “Head-land,” “Saddle-back” (the name of a mountain.) In the Principality of Wales, in which a less changed and a less conventional language prevails, the common names for hills, “Cevn, Pen, Vron,” &c., are words for “The Back, The Head, The Breast,” &c., appropriated according to the particular shapes of the hills. The same words, as will appear hereafter, were used as names of mountains in ancient Gaul and Spain, &c.
Jugum, “A Yoke and A Hill,” (Latin,) Cadair Idris, “The chair of Idris,” A Fabulous Giant and Astronomer, (Welsh,) are instances of metaphors of a different kind. But generally names of hills are traceable as above described, and are therefore mere forms of terms belonging to the first class.
4. That terms of this Class, viz.: Words descriptive of the Operations and Emotions of the Mind, consist of metaphors derived from words originally appropriated to physical objects and agencies, has been indisputably proved by the celebrated French writer, Court Ghebelin, and by Horne Tooke, [pg 012] whose researches were applied to the analysis of the English language only. Words appropriated to the members of the Human Frame and their Functions, and other terms of the First CIass, are the chief sources of these metaphorical terms.
This philological maxim was supposed by some of the most eminent of those writers by whom it was established, to furnish an argument in favour of the doctrines of Materialism, as when, for example, the English word “Spirit” was derived from the Latin word for “Breath,” Spiritus. But the premises do not appear to furnish any solid support to the inferences they were thought to favour. The same Consciousness which in this case, and in other similar instances, perceives an analogy, perceives also that the connexion is one of analogy only. The true explanation of the relations which exist between these two classes of words may, I conceive, be derived from the consideration, that though Man is endowed with moral and intellectual, as well as with perceptive, faculties,—inasmuch as the perceptive powers are earliest exercised,—the language of his higher sentiments consists of metaphors thence borrowed. “The Hand,” in like manner, as may be inferred from several examples which occur in the course of this work, has, in many instances, metaphorically given names to some of the less conspicuous bodily organs of perception. At the same time, the soundness of the philological principle developed by Ghebelin and Horne Tooke can not reasonably be disputed. In these pages will be found numerous illustrations of its truth. Moreover it will appear that this principle forms the basis of some of the most convincing proofs—that languages afford—of the common origin of nations very remotely situated from each other, as of the Welsh and English, for example, with the Hebrew, and other ancient Syro-Phœnician nations.
5. As regards Pronouns and other Grammatical Forms.
Pronouns enter very largely into the composition of languages, not merely in a separate form, but also as the source from which the most striking peculiarities of other parts of grammar have been derived. It has been shown by Dr. Prichard that the various inflections which distinguish the different persons of the Verb in the Latin and Sanscrit, and other highly-complicated languages of the same class, are identical with pronouns.