(Introduction, [p. xv].)
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN IRISH AND SCOTCH GAELIC.
Dr. O’Donovan, in his Irish Grammar, gives a statement of these differences, which is somewhat meagre. He appears, however, to have had little knowledge of Scotch Gaelic, except what he gathered from Stewart’s Grammar; and this statement of the differences between the two dialects is taken almost verbatim from a prior statement of them by P. M’Eligott, in the Transactions of the Gaelic Society, published in 1808, p. 15.
Dr. O’Donovan, in his account of grammars previously published, gives Stewart very just praise for the excellence of his Grammar; but throughout his own work he never loses an opportunity of carping at him, and is especially indignant at him for daring to state that the Scotch Gaelic wants the present tense of the verb, and very disingenuously quotes Shaw’s Grammar as a superior authority. He likewise attacks Stewart for not producing ancient MSS. to prove it, and for not seeing that the present tense is used by Bishop Carsewell, in 1564. Stewart, however, was not undertaking a grammar of the ancient Scotch Gaelic, but of the dialect then spoken by the people; and most unquestionably, in the spoken dialect of Stewart’s time, the present tense was not used. Dr. O’Donovan denies this fact, and even charges Stewart with dishonesty. His theory is, “that Stewart was induced to reject this tense, in order to establish a striking point of resemblance between the Erse and the Hebrew, which the Irish, supposed to be the mother tongue, had not,”—a most unworthy insinuation, and most unphilosophical, for O’Donovan ought to have known that the changes which take place in the structure of spoken languages proceed from organic laws which cannot be influenced or directed by grammarians. The will of any single man is powerless to alter the minutest particle in the language; and the fact that the inflected present tense is not used in Scotch Gaelic, is evident to any one acquainted with the language, or who has come in contact with those who speak it.
Dr. O’Donovan also finds fault with Stewart for expressing an opinion that, “as the Erse dialect has not the inflections in the termination of its verbs, which characterize the Irish, it is therefore more original than the Irish.” This is, no doubt, an erroneous view; and O’Donovan correctly states “that the mode of inflection, by varying the termination, is more ancient than the use of particles;” but he might have recollected that the contrary opinion was very generally held when Stewart wrote; that the sounder principles of philology, in this respect, were not known or understood till after the publication of his Grammar; and that he could not, with any candour, impute it to him as a fault that he had not anticipated the conclusions of a science which had, so to speak, been created subsequently to his time. That the same peculiarities existed in the language in the last century, is proved by the fact that the Gaelic colonists in Canada, who have been separated from the mother country since that period, speak a form of Scotch Gaelic precisely similar to that now spoken in the Highlands, and possessing all those dialectic peculiarities which distinguish it from Irish. Although the present tense of the verb is usually expressed by the auxiliary, the Highlanders also use the future tense to express the present.
The leading differences between Irish and Scotch Gaelic may be stated generally as follows:—
SOUNDS OF THE LANGUAGE.
1. The initial consonants are not affected to the same extent as in Irish and Welsh; and in pure Scotch Gaelic the eclipsis is unknown, except in the case of the letter S.
The following table will show their relative position in this respect:—
TABLE SHOWING THE CHANGE IN THE INITIAL CONSONANT IN
WELSH, IRISH, AND SCOTCH GAELIC.