Each branch of the Insular Celtic comprises three languages: I. Goidelic (called Gaelic by all its speakers) comprises (a) Irish or Irish Gaelic; (b) Gaelic or Scotch Gaelic, sometimes improperly called Erse, i.e., aIrish.)) This dialect was brought over to Scotland since the end of the 5th century by the Seoul, i.e., "the Irish of Ireland)) who gave their name to the north of Britain; and (c) Manx. Linguistically these are really nothing more than dialects of one language. Until the end of the 18th century, though spoken Irish and Gaelic had diverged to a considerable extent, there was a common literary language among them. Of all thy Celtic languages Irish is by far the most im portant and may be regarded as the classic be cause of its wealth of forms and abundance of material. The transition from Old to Modern Irish is very gradual. Old Irish is the language of the period from c. A.D. 750 to c. I100. Most of the Old Irish material has been several times published, but most completely and conveni ently by Stokes and Strachan in their
IL Were it not for a common vocabulary and syntax, the Brythonic group of Celtic would be separated, at least since the Christian era in Britain, by an unbridgeable gulf from the Goidelic. This cleavage is observable from the earliest monuments and is chiefly due to the following factors: (1) The different treatment of Indo-Celtic qu, which at a very early period became p in Brythonic but which in Goidelic was for a long time preserved and then, even in the oldest Irish, changed to k (written c). Gaulish agrees in making this change with Brythonic of which, rather than of Goidelic, it may be, to that extent at least, regarded as a prehistoric type. E.g., Gaulish peen e, °five," Old Welsh pimp, Breton pemp, Old Irish cdic; Old Irish, macc, Welsh map, °son.° (2) The difference in the place of accent which in Goidelic (with dialectic exceptions) was and is on the first syllable but in Brythonic on the penult. This is one of the principal reasons for the profound differences which separate the declensional and conjugational systems in these two groups of languages. (3) Contact with
the Romans, as a result of which many more Latin words were introduced into Britain than Ireland and the language of the former became much more simplified and °civilize& in its grammatical structure than that of the latter which remained native, wild, unspoiled and, for' that reason, more interesting. Unlike the speakers of Gaelic the speakers of Brythonic have no common name for their languages. Of this group Welsh (native Cymraeg) is the most important. Spoken Welsh is commonly divided into four dialects, in the northwest, the northeast, the southeast and the southwest of the Principality, but with relatively slight differences. Old Welsh extends to the end of the 11th century. Middle Welsh is about synchronous with Middle Irish. Cornish (native Brethanec) is, since the end of the 18th century, a dead language. With Breton it forms a close group over against the Welsh. Of Breton (native Brezonek), sometimes called Armorican Breton, there are four main dia lects: Leonard (spoken in Finistere and the most literary dialect), Trigorrois, Cornouaillais and Vannetais, the most distinctive.
Celtic, once spoken almost over the length and breadth of Europe, now survives only in the extreme northwett where it is subordinate to the English and the French and exists as it were by the sufferance of those two languages over which it once was mistress. Of the lan guages of Europe, Irish, farthest to the west, forms a pendant to the Greek, farthest to the east. Moreover these have the following in common, namely, that they have both fallen low from the place they once held as the cultural languages of Europe and that they are the only languages of Europe which ages ago produced rich literatures independent of foreign litera tures. The five surviving Celtic languages are spoken in the southwest, west and northwest of Ireland, in the Hebrides, parts of the Scottish Highlands, in some fishers' huts in the Isle of Man, in most parts of Wales and in lower Brit tany. Including the Celtic speakers in Aus tralasia, Canada, the United States and other lands to which the Celts came as colonists, the Celtic languages are spoken by approximately 3,500,000 souls, of whom perhaps 1,000,000 are monoglots. Of these over 1,250,000 speak Breton; nearly 1,000,000, or about half the population, Welsh, with more than 250,000 monoglots; nearly 750,000, of whom about 28,000 speak nothing else, Irish; about 250,000, with about 25,000 monoglots, Scottish Gaelic, and about 4,500, Manx. The most marked fall ing off in the use of any Celtic tongue is to be seen in the case of Irish which only about 60 years ago was spoken 1:1N more than 3,000,000 persons, of whom 1,000,000 spoke only Irish. The Celtic languages are more flourishing now and receive more official and academic recog nition than at any time in over a generation. Of all the countries which are at present en gaged in the work of the Celtic revival, Ire land is probably the only one in which the movement embraces the whole of the national life. In Wales the literary position' of the national language (largely due to the Methodist revival) is still far and away beyond that of the other Celtic countries, but for that very reason, perhaps, conscious progressive effort is less strenuous than in Ireland. The Pan-Celtic Union was organized a score of years ago to make known to the world the desire of the Celts to preserve their nationality and to de velop the treasures of language, literature, art and music which they have inherited from their ancestors.