In Welsh one finds a true present without b-forms, and a tense with a b-stem used both as a future and a consuetudinal. [21] The 3 sg. of the latter tense is bydd from earlier *bið. [22] The resemblance between this and the OE form is perhaps made more remarkable if we observe that the short vowel of OE is difficult to explain and cannot be a regular development from earlier Germanic, whereas in Welsh it is regularly derived.
This similarity may be dismissed as accidental. The peculiarity of OE may be held to depend simply on preservation in the English dialect of a feature later lost in others; the anomalous short vowel of bist and bið may be explained as analogical. [23] The OE verb is in any case peculiar in other ways not paralleled by Welsh (the 2 sg. of the true present earð later eart, is not found outside English). It will still remain notable, none the less, that this preservation occurred in Britain and in a point in which the usage of the native language agreed. It will be a morphological parallel to the phonetic agreement, noted above, seen in the English preservation of þ and w.
But this is not the full story. The Northumbrian dialect of Old English uses as the plural of tense В the form biðun, bioðun. Now this must be an innovation developed on British soil. Its invention was strictly unnecessary (since the older plural remained sufficiently distinct from the singular), and its method of formation was, from the point of view of English morphology, wholly anomalous.[24] Its similarity (especially in apparent relation to the 3 sg.) to Welsh byddant is obvious. (The still closer Welsh I pl. byddwn would not have had, probably, this inflexion in Old Welsh.)
In my second example I return to a matter of phonology, but one of the highest importance. One of the principal phonetic developments in Old English, which eventually changed its whole vocalic system and had profound effect upon its morphology, was that group of changes usually called by us umlaut or 'mutation'. These changes are, however, closely paralleled by the changes which in Welsh grammar are usually called 'affection', thus disguising their fundamental similarity, though in detail and in chronology there may be considerable differences between the processes in the two languages.
The most important branch of these changes is i-mutation or i-affection. The problems attending their explanation in English and in Welsh are similar (for instance, the question of the varying parts played by anticipation or 'vowel harmony' and by epenthesis), and the study of them together throws light on both. Also, since the phonology of the place-names borrowed by the English in Britain is of great importance for the dating of i-mutation in their language, it is not only desirable but necessary for the English philologist to acquaint himself with the evidence and the theories on both sides. The English process is also important to the Welsh philologist for similar reasons.
The north-west of Europe, in spite of its underlying differences of linguistic heritage – Goidelic, Brittonic, Gallic; its varieties of Germanic; and the powerful intrusion of spoken Latin – is as it were a single philological province, a region so interconnected in race, culture, history, and linguistic fusions that its departmental philologies cannot flourish in isolation. I have cited the processes of i-mutation/i-affection as a striking example of this fact. And we who live in this island may reflect that it was on this same soil that both were accomplished.[25] There are, of course, many other features of Welsh that should have a special interest for students of English. I will briefly mention one before I conclude. Welsh is full of loan-words from or through English. [26] This long series, beginning in Anglo-Saxon times and continuing down to the present day, offers to any philologist interesting illustrations of the processes of borrowing by ear and spoken word,— besides providing some curious features of its own. The historian of English, so often engaged in investigating the loan-words in his own too hospitable tongue, should find its study of special interest; though in fact it has been mainly left to Welsh scholars.
The earlier loans are perhaps of chief interest, since they sometimes preserve words, or forms, or meanings that have long ceased to exist in English. For instance hongian "hang, dangle', cusan 'a kiss', bettws 'chapel (subordinate church)' and also' a secluded spot', derived from OE hongian, cyssan, (ge)bedhūs. The Englishman will note that the long-lost -an and -ian of Old English infinitives once struck the ears of Welshmen long ago; but he will be surprised perhaps to find that -ian became a loan-element in itself, and was added to various other verbs, even developing a special form –ial. [27] He cannot therefore, alas, at once assume that such words as tincian 'tinkle' or mwmlian 'mumble' are evidence for the existence in Old English (*tincian, *mumelian) of words first actually recorded in Middle English.
Even the basest and most recent loans have, however, their interest. In their exaggerated reflection of the corruptions and reductions of careless speech, they remind one of the divergence between Latin and the 'Vulgar' or 'Spoken Latin' that we deduce from Welsh or French. Potatoes has produced tatws; and in recent loans submit >smit-io, and cement >sment. But this is a large subject with numerous problems, and I am not competent to do more than point out to the English that it is one worthy of their attention. For myself, as a West-Midlander, the constant reflection, in the Welsh borrowings of older date, of the forms of West-Midland English is an added attraction.
But no language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.
It is recorded in the tale of Lludd a Llefelys that King Lludd had the island measured in its length and its breadth, and in Oxford (very justly) he found the point of centre. But none the less the centre of the study of Welsh for its own sake is now in Wales; though it should flourish here, where we have not only a chair of Celtic graced by its occupant, but in Jesus College a society of Welsh connexions by foundation and tradition, the possessor among other things of one of the treasures of Medieval Welsh: The Red Book of Hergest. [28] For myself I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as an adminicle of English philology, more than the practical linguist's desire to acquire a knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience, more even than the interest and worth of the literature, older and newer, that is preserved in it, these two things seem important: Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.
I will not attempt to say now what I mean by calling a language as a whole 'beautiful’, nor in what ways Welsh seems to me beautiful; for the mere recording of a personal and if you will subjective perception of strong aesthetic pleasure in contact with Welsh, heard or read, [29] is sufficient for my conclusion.
21
The association of these two dissimilar functions is again notable. Old Irish uses b-forms in these two functions, but distinguishes between future and consuetudinal in inflexion. The Welsh tense (byddaf, &c.) as a whole blends the two functions, though the older language had also a form of the 3 sg. bid (bit) limited to consuetudinal use. The difference of function is not yet fully realized by Anglo-Saxon scholars. The older dictionaries and grammars ignore it, and even т recent grammars it is not clearly stated; the consuetudinal is usually overlooked, though traces of it survive in English as late as the language of Chaucer (in beth as consuetudinal sg. and pl.).
22
The Irish, Welsh. and English forms relate to older bi. bii- (cf. Latin fis, fit &c.). The development from bii- to bith- in Welsh is due to a consonantal strengthening of i which began far back in British. When ii reached the stage ith is not known, but a date about a.d. 500 seems probable.
23
The influence of the short i in the forms of the true present might be held responsible. In a pre-English stage these would have been uk, is, ist (is).
24
The addition of a plural ending (normally belonging to the past tense) to an infected form of the 3 sg. In this way bithun diners from the extended form sindun made from the old pl. sind. The latter was already pl. and its ending-nd could not be recognized as an inflexion, whereas the ith of bith was the normal ending of the 3 sg.
25
Some philologists (e.g. Förster, in Der Flussname Thenisc) now hold that the English process belonged to the seventh century and was not completed till the beginning of the eighth; it thus belonged wholly to Britain and did not begin until after the completion of the first stage of British i-affection (the 'final i-affection'). But no linguistic matters are simple in this region. The beginnings of the process in English must lie back in pre-invasion times, whatever may be true of its results, or of any of its vocalic effects sufficient to be recognized in spellings. For this process is not peculiar to the English dialect of Germanic, transferred from its native soil west to Celtic Britain. Indeed the native soil of English seems to have been a focus of this phonetic disturbance (in its inception one primarily affecting consonants). Northwards it is found attacking the Scandinavian dialects with almost equal severity; though southwards its effects were more limited or later. Certainly moving west, within the area of the disturbance, the process was not retarded in English – what would have happened if it had moved southwards is another matter – and in the event English became the language of i-mutation par excellence and its results were far more extensive than in any form of British. In British, for instance, long vowels were not affected; but in English nearly all long vowels and diphthongs were mutated.
26
For the most part. The cultivated written language of Wales has naturally, at all times, been less open to invasion. Neither has cultivated English been the chief source of the loans.
27
Probably in origin a dissimilation where the verb stem contained nasals: as in tincian/tincial (ME. tinken); mumial, mumlian 'mumble’.
28
It also possesses in MS. Jesus Coll. Oxford 29 a copy of the early Middle English Owl and Nightingale, which in its history illustrates in other terms the progress of English words. Written in the south-east, it passed to the West Midlands and there received a western dialectal dress; but it was preserved in Wales, and reached Jesus College in the seventeenth century from Glamorgan.
29
For there is concomitant pleasure of the eye in an orthography that is home-grown with a language, though most spelling-reformers are insensitive to it.