[21] "Some of the oldest and deepest morphological changes in Aryan speech are those which affect the Celto-Italic language. Such are the formation of a new passive, a new future, and a new perfect. Hence it is believed that the Celto-Italic languages may have separated from the rest while the other Aryan languages remained united." Taylor's "Origin of the Aryans," p. 257. Mr. Taylor is here alluding to the passive in r and the future in bo, but my friend, M. Georges Dottin, in his laborious and ample volume published last year, "Les désinences en R," has shown that the r-passives, at least, are, in Italic and Celtic, independent creations.
[22] These loan-words "can hardly be later than the time of the Gaulish Empire founded by Ambicatus in the sixth century B.C. We gather from them that at this or some earlier period the culture and political organisation of the Teutons was inferior to that of the Celts, and that the Teutons must have been subjected to Celtic rule. It would seem from the linguistic evidence that the Teutons got from their Celtic and Lithuanian neighbours their first knowledge of agriculture and metals, of many weapons and articles of food and clothing, as well as the most elementary social, religious, and political conceptions, the words for nation, people, king, and magistrate being, for instance, loan-words from Celtic or Lithuanian."—Taylor's "Origin of the Aryans," p. 234.
[23] Also the Gothic word magus ("a slave"), old Irish mug, or mogh, liugan ("to swear"), Irish luigh, dulgs (a debt), Irish dualgus, &c.
[24] Irish liaig. The Finns again borrowed this word from the Germans. It is the root of the name Lee, in most Irish families of that surname, indicating that their ancestors practised leech-craft.
[25] Rhys indeed compares the great Teutonic sky-god Woden with the Welsh Gwydion and Thor with the Celtic Taranucus or Thunder-God, and is of opinion that a good deal of Teutonic mythology was drawn from Celtic sources—a theory which, when we consider how much the Germans are indebted to the Celts for their culture-terms, may well be true with regard to later mythological conceptions and mythological saga. However, it is now generally acknowledged that while all the nations of Aryan origin possess a common inheritance of language, any inheritance of a common mythology, if such exist at all, must be reduced to very small proportions. The complete difference between the names of the Indian, Hellenic, Italic, Teutonic, and Celtic gods is very striking.
[26] "De Bello Gallico," book vii. chap. iv.
[27] Which he speaks of as a mark of folly, in just the same tone as an Anglicised Hibernian does of the Irish-speaking of the native Celts. His words are worth quoting:—"Antiquæ stultitiæ usque hodie manent vestigia. Unum est quod inferimus, et promissum in exordio reddimus, Galatas excepto sermone Græco quo omnis Oriens loquitur propriam linguam eamdem pene habere quam Treviros, nec referre si aliqua exinde corrumperint, cum et Aphri Phœnicum linguam nonnullâ ex parte mutaverint, et ipsa Latinitas et regionibus quotidie mutetur et tempore." His insinuation that they spoke their own language badly is also thoroughly Anglo-Hibernian, reminding one very much of Sir William Petty and others. See Jerome's preface to his "Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians," book vii. p. 429. Migne's edition. In another passage he is more complimentary, and calls them the Conquerors of the East and West—"Gallo-græcia [i.e., Galatia] in qua consederunt Orientis Occidentisque victores." See his "Epistle to Rusticus," book i. p. 935. Migne.
[28] Although Celtic has so long disappeared out of France with the exception of Armorica, it has left its traces deeply behind it upon the French language. This is also true even of linguistic sounds. "Tous les sons simples du français se retrouvent dans le breton, et tous ceux du breton à l'exception d'un seul (le ch ou le χ) sont aussi dans notre langue: l'u et l'e très-ouvert, l'e muet si rare partout ailleurs, le j pur inconnu à toute l'Europe, les deux sons mouillés du n et du l (comme dans les mots bataille et dignité) sont communs à la langue française et aux idiomes celtiques," says Demogeot. Even in French customary law there are "distinct and numerous traces" of old Gaulish habits and legislation, as Laferrière has pointed out in his history of the civil law of Rome and France. Nor is this to be in the least wondered at, when we remember that nineteen-twentieths of the modern French blood is computed to be that of the aboriginal races—Aquitanians, Celts, and Belgæ; whilst out of the remaining twentieth "the descendants of the Teutonic invaders—Franks, Burgundians, Goths, and Normans doubtless contributed a more numerous element to the population than the Romans, who, though fewer in number than any of the others, imposed their language on the whole country" (see Taylor's "Origin of the Aryans," p. 204). The bulk of the French nation is probably pre-Celtic. The modern Frenchman does not at all resemble the Gallic type as described by the Greek and Roman writers.