So, after all we have heard, and
truly heard, of the diversity between all things Semitic and all
things Indo-European, there is now an Italian philologist at work
upon the relationship between Sanscrit and Hebrew.
Both in small and great things, philology, dealing with Celtic
matters, has exemplified this tending of science towards unity. Who
has not been puzzled by the relation of the Scots with Ireland--that
vetus et major Scotia, as Colgan calls it? Who does not feel what
pleasure Zeuss brings us when he suggests that Gael, the name for the
Irish Celt, and Scot, are at bottom the same word, both having their
origin in a word meaning wind, and both signifying the violent stormy
people? {68} Who does not feel his mind agreeably cleared about our
friends the Fenians, when he learns that the root of their name, fen,
'white,' appears in the hero Fingal; in Gwynned, the Welsh name for
North Wales in the Roman Venedotia; in Vannes in Brittany; in Venice?
The very name of Ireland, some say, comes from the famous Sanscrit
word Arya, the land of the Aryans, or noble men; although the weight
of opinion seems to be in favour of connecting it rather with another
Sanscrit word, avara, occidental, the western land or isle of the
west. {69} But, at any rate, who that has been brought up to think
the Celts utter aliens from us and our culture, can come without a
start of sympathy upon such words as heol (sol), or buaist (fuisti)?
or upon such a sentence as this, 'Peris Duw dui funnaun' ('God
prepared two fountains')? Or when Mr.
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