und in Ireland, but the oldest Irish epics celebrate tall,
fair-haired, grey-eyed heroes, armed and clad in Gallic fashion, who had
come from the continent. The Celts in Italy, in the Balkan, in France
and in Britain, overspread the Indo-European peoples, who differed from
themselves but slightly in speech. The Celts represented Indo-European q
by p, whilst the Greeks, Illyrians, Thracians, Ligurians, and aborigines
of France, Britain and Ireland represented it by k, c or qu. The
Umbrian-Sabellian tribes had the same phonetic peculiarity as the Celts.
Thus Gallic _petor_ (_petor-ritum_, "four-wheeler"), Umbrian _petur_,
Homeric [Greek: pisures], Boeotian (Achaean) [Greek: pettares], Welsh
_pedwar_; but Gaelic _cethir_, Lat. _quatuor_. The Celts are thus
clearly distinguished from the Gaelic-speaking dark race of Britain and
Ireland, and in spite of usage it must be understood that it is strictly
misleading to apply the term Celtic to the latter language.

See also Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i., and _Oldest Irish
Epic_; Ripley, _The Races of Europe_; Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_.
(W. Ri.)

CELTIC LANGUAGES

_Introduction_.--The Celtic languages form one group of the
Indo-European family of languages. As might be expected from their
geographical distribution, they hold a position between the Italic and
Teutonic groups. They are distinguished from these and other branches of
the family by certain well-marked characteristics, the most notable of
which are the loss of initial and inter-vocalic p, cf. Ir. _athair_ with
Lat. _pater_; Ir. _lan_, "full," Welsh _llawn_, Breton _leun_, with Lat.
_plenus_; Gaulish _are-_, "beside," Ir. ar. Welsh, Breton ar, with Gr.
[Greek: peri], [Greek: para]; and the change of I. E. e to i, cf. Ir.
_fir_, "true," Welsh _gwir_, Breton _gwir_, Lat. _verus_. We may further
mention that the I. E. labialized velar gv is represented by b, e.g. Ir.
bo, "cow," Welsh _buwch_, Gr. [Greek: bous], Sanskr. _gaus_; Ir. _ben_,
"woman," Gr. [Greek: gyne], whilst the medial aspirates bh, dh, gh
result in simple voiced stops. I. E. sonant r and l become ri, li. Other
distinctive features of the modern dialects are not found in Gaulish,
partly owing to the character of the monuments. Such are the
-ss-preterite and the fusion of simple prepositions with pronominal
elements, e.g. Ir. _fri-umm_, "against me," Welsh _wrth-yf_, Breton
_ouz-inn_. The initial mutations which are so characteri