hlands of Scotland and the Manks
of the Isle of Man.

s. 58. Taken altogether the Celtic tongues form a very remarkable class. As
compared with those of the Gothic stock they are marked by the following
characteristics:--

_The scantiness of the declension of Celtic nouns._--In Irish there is a
peculiar form for the dative plural, as _cos_ = _foot_, _cos-aibh_ = _to
feet_ (ped-ibus); and beyond this there is nothing else whatever in the way
of _case_, as found in the German, Latin, Greek, and other tongues. Even
the isolated form in question is not found in the Welsh and Breton. Hence
the Celtic tongues are pre-eminently uninflected in the way of
_declension_.

s. 59. The _agglutinate character of their verbal inflections_.--In Welsh
the pronouns for _we_, _ye_, and _they_, are _ni_, _chwyi_, and _hwynt_
_respectively_. In Welsh also the root = _love_ is _car_. As conjugated in
the plural number this is--

car-wn = am-amus.
car-ych = am-atis.
car-ant = am-ant.

Now the -wn, -ych, and -ant, of the persons of the verbs are the personal
pronouns, so that the inflection is really a verb and a pronoun in a state
of _agglutination_; i.e., in a state where the original separate existence
of the two sorts of words is still manifest. This is probably the case with
languages in general. The Celtic, however, has the peculiarity of
exhibiting it in an unmistakable manner; showing, as it were, an inflection
in the process of formation, and (as such) exhibiting an early stage of
language.

s. 60. _The system of initial mutations._--The Celtic, as has been seen, is
deficient in the ordinary means of expressing case. How does it make up for
this? Even thus. The noun changes its initial letter according to its
relation to the other words of the sentence. Of course this is subject to
rule. As, however, I am only writing for the sake of illustrating in a
general way the peculiarities of the Celtic tongues, the following table,
from Prichard's "Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations," is sufficient.

C[^a]r, _a kinsman_.

1. _form_, C[^a]r agos, _a near kinsman_.
2. Ei g[^a]r, _his kinsman_.
3. Ei ch[^a]r, _her kinsman_.
4. Vy ngh[^a]r, _my kinsman_.

T[^a]d, _a father_.

1. _form_, T[^a]d y plentyn, _the child's father_.
2. Ei d[^a]d, _his father_.
3. Ei th[^a]d, _her father_.
4. Vy nh[^a]d, _my father_.

Pen, _a head_.

1. _f