19 Irish is probably an older form of Celtic speech than Welsh. This is shown by many philological peculiarities of the Irish language, of which one of the most interesting may here be briefly referred to. The Goidelic or Gaelic Celts, who, according to the usual theory, first colonised the British Islands, and who were forced by successive waves of invasion by their Continental kindred to the extreme west, had a peculiar dislike to the pronunciation of the letter _p_. Thus the Indo-European particle _pare_, represented by Greek _παρά_, beside or close to, becomes in early Celtic _are_, as in the name _Are-morici_ (the Armoricans, those who dwell _ar muir_, by the sea); _Are-dunum_ (Ardin, in France); _Are-cluta_, the place beside the Clota (Clyde), now Dumbarton; _Are-taunon,_ in Germany (near the Taunus Mountains), &c. When this letter was not simply dropped it was usually changed into _c (k, g)_. But about the sixth century B.C. a remarkable change passed over the language of the Continental Celts. They gained in some unexplained way the faculty for pronouncing _p_, and even substituted it for existing _c_ sounds; thus the original _Cretanis_ became _Pretanis_, Britain, the numeral _qetuares_ (four) became _petuares_, and so forth. Celtic place-names in Spain show that this change must have taken place before the Celtic conquest of that country, 500 B.C. Now a comparison of many Irish and Welsh words shows distinctly this avoidance of _p_ on the Irish side and lack of any objection to it on the Welsh. The following are a few illustrations: _Irish_ _Welsh_ _English_ crann prenn tree mac map ton cenn pen head clumh (cluv) pluv feather cúig pimp five The conclusion that Irish must represent the older form of the language seems obvious. It is remarkable that even to a comparatively late date the Irish preserved their dislike to _p_. Thus they turned the Latin _Pascha_ (Easter) to _Casg; purpur_, purple, to _corcair, pulsatio_ (through French _pouls_) to _cuisle_. It must be noted, however, that Nicholson in his “Keltic Researches” endeavours to show that the so-called Indo-European _p_—that is, _p_ standing alone and uncombined with another consonant—was pronounced by the Goidelic Celts at an early period. The subject can hardly be said to be cleared up yet. 20 The Irish, says Edmund Spenser, in his “View of the Present State of Ireland,” “use commonyle to send up and down to know newes, and yf any meet with another, his second woorde is, What newes?”