, have an influence over nouns which others have
not, and before cead, a hundred, and mile, a thousand, do, two, is
changed into da, for it is not customary to say do chead, two hundred,
and do mhile, two thousand, but da chead and da mhile. {29} With respect
to pedwar, the Welsh for four, I have to observe that it bears no
similitude to the word for the same number in Gaelic; the word for four
in Gaelic is ceathair, and the difference between ceathair and pedwar is
great indeed. Ceathair is what may be called a Sanscritic numeral; and
it is pleasant to trace it in various shapes, through various languages,
up to the grand speech of India: Irish, ceathair; Latin, quatuor; Greek,
tessares; Russian, cheturi; Persian, chahar; Sanscrit, chatur. As to
pedwar, it bears some resemblance to the English four, the German vier,
is almost identical with the Wallachian patrou, and is very much like the
Homeric word [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], but beyond
Wallachia and Greece we find nothing like it, bearing the same meaning,
though it is right to mention that the Sanscrit word pada signifies a
_quarter_, as well as a foot. It is curious that the Irish word for
five, cuig, is in like manner quite as perplexing as the Welsh word for
four. The Irish word for five is not a Sanscritic word, pump, the Welsh
word for five, is. Pantschan is the Sanscrit word for five, and pump is
linked to pantschan by the AEolick pempe, the Greek pente and pemptos,
the Russian piat and the Persian Pantsch; but what is cuig connected
with? Why it is connected with the Latin quinque, and perhaps with the
Arabic khamsa; but higher up than Arabia we find nothing like it; or if
one thinks one recognises it, it is under such a disguise that one is
rather timorous about swearing to it--and now nothing more on the subject
of numerals.

I have said that the Welsh is exceedingly copious. Its copiousness,
however, does not proceed, like that of the English, from borrowing from
other languages. It has certainly words in common with other tongues,
but no tongue, at any rate in Europe, can prove that it has a better
claim than the Welsh to any word which it has in common with that
language. No language has a better supply of simple words for the
narration of events than the Welsh, and simple words are the proper garb
of narration; and no language abounds more with terms calculated to
express the abstrusest ideas of the meta-physician. Whoever doubt