The phonesis of Welsh as it stands is
modern, not primitive its grammar,--the verbs excepted,--is
constructed out of the fragments of its earlier forms, and its
vocabulary is strongly Romanised, two out of the six words here given
being Latin of the Empire. Rightly understood, this enhances the
value of modern Celtic instead of depreciating it, because it serves
to rectify it. To me it is a wonder that Welsh should have retained
so much of its integrity under the iron pressure of four hundred
years of Roman dominion. Modern Welsh tenacity and cohesive power
under English pressure is nothing compared with what that must have
been.'
{14} Here again let me have the pleasure of quoting Lord
Strangford:- 'When the Celtic tongues were first taken in hand at the
dawn of comparative philological inquiry, the tendency was, for all
practical results, to separate them from the Indo-European aggregate,
rather than to unite them with it. The great gulf once fixed between
them was narrowed on the surface, but it was greatly and indefinitely
deepened. Their vocabulary and some of their grammar were seen at
once to be perfectly Indo-European, but they had no case-endings to
their nouns, none at all in Welsh, none that could be understood in
Gaelic; their phonesis seemed primeval and inexplicable, and nothing
could be made out of their pronouns which could not be equally made
out of many wholly un-Aryan languages.
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