[24] See the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 68a. [↑]
[25] Notably Johannes Schmidt in Kuhn’s Zeitschrift, xxiii. 267, where he gives the following gradations of the stem in question:—1. anman; 2. anaman; 3. naman; 4. nāman. [↑]
[26] See Clodd’s Tom Tit Tot, p. 97. [↑]
[28] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 100. [↑]
[29] The Oxford Mabinogion, p. 35. [↑]
[30] As to Irish, I would not lay much stress on the question ‘What is your name?’ being put, in a fourteenth or fifteenth century version of the French story of Fierabras, as ca hainm tú?—literally, ‘what name art thou?’ see the Revue Celtique, xix. 28. It may be mentioned here that the Irish writers of glossaries had a remarkable way of appearing to identify words and things. Thus, for instance, Cormac has Cruimther .i. Gædelg indi as presbyter, which O’Donovan (edited by Stokes) has translated, p. 30, as ‘Cruimther, i. e. the Gaelic of presbyter’: literally it would be rather ‘of the thing which is presbyter.’ Similarly, Cormac’s explanation of the Irish aiminn, now aoibhinn, ‘delightful,’ runs thus in Latin, Aimind ab eo quod est amoenum, ‘from the word amoenus,’ literally, ‘from that which is amoenus.’ But this construction is a favourite one of Latin grammarians, and instances will be found in Professor Lindsay’s Latin Language (Oxford, 1894), pp. 26, 28, 42, 53. On calling his attention to it, he kindly informed me that it can be traced as far back as Varro, from whose Lingua Latina, vi. 4, he cites Meridies ab eo quod medius dies. So in this matter, Irish writers have merely imitated their Latin models; and one detects a trace of the same imitation in some of the Old Welsh glosses, for instance in the Juvencus Codex, where we have XPS explained as irhinn issid crist, ‘that which is Christ,’ evidently meaning, ‘the word Χριστός or Christus.’ So with regia, rendered by gulat, ‘a state or country,’ in celsi thronus est cui regia caeli; which is glossed issit padiu itau gulat, ‘that is the word gulat for him’ = ‘he means his country’: see Kuhn’s Beiträge, iv. 396, 411. [↑]
[31] Some instances in point, accompanied with comments on certain eminently instructive practices and theories of the Church, will be found in Clodd’s Tom Tit Tot, pp. 100–5. [↑]
[32] For some instances of name-giving by the druid, the reader may consult The Welsh People, pp. 66–70; and druidic baptism will be found alluded to in Stokes’ edition of Coir Anmann, and in Stokes and Windisch’s Irische Texte, iii. 392, 423. See also the Revue Celtique, xix. 90. [↑]
[33] See The Welsh People, more especially pp. 71–4, where it has been attempted to discuss this question more at length. [↑]