[235]. Reeves’s Adamnan (ed. 1874), pp. 174-176.
[236]. Verbo Dei a Sancto per interpretem recepto (B. i. c. 27).
Verbum vitae per interpretatorem sancto praedicante viro (B. ii. c. 33).
[237]. The Rev. T. Price of Cwmdû, one of the best and soundest of the Welsh scholars, when he visited Brittany, remarks, ‘Notwithstanding the many assertions that have been made respecting the natives of Wales and Brittany being mutually intelligible through the medium of their respective languages, I do not hesitate to say that the thing is utterly impossible. Single words in either language will frequently be found to have corresponding terms of a similar sound in the other, and occasionally a short sentence deliberately pronounced may be partially intelligible; but as to holding a conversation, that is totally out of the question.’—Price’s Remains, vol. i. p. 35. And Mr. Norris, the highest Cornish authority, says, ‘In spite of statements to the contrary, the writer is of opinion that a Breton within the historical existence of the two dialects could not have understood a Cornishman speaking at any length, or on any but the most trivial subjects. He is himself unable to read a sentence in Armoric of more than half-a-dozen lines without the help of a dictionary.’—Norris, Ancient Cornish Drama, B. ii. p. 458. O’Donovan says: ‘An Irish scholar would find it difficult to understand a Manx book without studying the language as a distinct dialect.’—Introd. to Irish Grammar, p. lxxx. An English Greek scholar cannot follow a conversation in modern Greek, where the difference consists mainly in the vowel sounds and in the accent. This quite accords with the author’s own experience. Although familiar with German from boyhood, and acquainted with most of its provincial varieties, when he first entered the Bavarian Alps he could not understand what was said to him till he made out that the difficulty arose almost entirely from a difference in the vowel sounds, the umlaut being applied almost universally; and at one period of his life, when a branch of the Irish Society employed Irishmen to read the Irish Scriptures to their poor countrymen in Edinburgh, and, as one of the Committee, he had to examine them as to their fitness, he found he could readily understand a Connaught man from the vowel sounds approaching most nearly to those of Scotch Gaelic; but he had great difficulty in following an Ulster man, the vowel sounds being very different, while the position of the accent, which in Irish is on the last syllable, and in Scotch Gaelic on the first, and the use of the eclipsis in the former, which the latter is without, added to the difficulty.
[238]. Fluviusque ejusdem loci in quo idem baptisma acceperat, ex nomine ejus, Dobur Artbranani usque in hodiernum nominatus diem, ab accolis vocitatur (B. i. c. 27). An old Irish Glossary, quoted by O’Reilly, under Aidhbheis, has
Bior, is An agas Dobhar
Tri hanmann d’uisce an domhain.
Bior and An and Dobar,
Three names for water in the world.
[239]. Quidam cum tota plebeius familia (B. ii. c. 33).