ETYMOLOGY. THE WORD "PARDON" AND ITS SYNONYMES IN PARDON one from the clouds of Cader Idris, Mr. Editor, for presuming to obtrude on your pages the result of some wanderings in the regions of etymology, by way of variety, or as a contrast to the discoveries you make in the brilliant atmosphere of London. And, the first word of my text being very necessary to be well understood among friends and foes, I will endeavour to trace its origin and derivation. Pardon is to be found in most of the European languages, but not of very high antiquity in any. It began to appear in the Welsh upwards of 500 years back; and it has been deemed a legitimate word therein by some learned critics. Yet I have always rejected it as an exotic, in writing my native tongue; but I now begin to surmise that I have been over fastidious in so doing. In Welsh the word is written pardwn, and thence, by inflection, the verb pardymu. PAR and TWN are two primitive words, which compounded form purdwn, the t, in twn, taking its soft sound, for want of an appropropriate character in the Roman alphabet, represented by the letter d. PAR implies that is upon, contiguous, or in continuity; a state of readiness, or preparedness; a pair, match, or couple: "I mi àr bar y mae'r bedd,"-To me in preparation is the grave. D. G. 1340, TwN is a break, a frac ture, a rising off; ascale, a splint; adj.-broken, severed, splintered: and its f. is ton, a breaker of the sea; tonau, breakers. Hence the literal meaning of par and twn, forming pardwn, is a break off of what is upon or joined; a separation, The Greek noun apes, and its verb an, and the Latin noun VENIA, with the verb MITTO, which imply pardon, and to remit, shall now be put to the same criterion; because the greater part, perhaps, of the primitives of those two languages are not only preserved also in the Welsh, but they are used in their simple forms, as words of obvious signification. Etymologists refer the noun as, to the verb ainu, to remit, which enables us to identify it with a Welsh primitive. Pi is the state of being in, or possessed; PIANT, possession; PIAW, to own, to become possessed of. The negative a, prefixed to piaw, would form aphiaw, to sever from, to dispossess. The Latin term venia comes next to be considered. But let it be first observed, that the v is not a radical articulation, according to the principle of the Welsh alphabet, of 16 primary characters, but it is either the soft mutation of b or of m*; and it is a character that has not even a place in the Greek alphabet. Therefore, in seeking for a primitive to venia, we must have recourse to one with a radical initial. Many words of common origin, in the Welsh and the Latin, begin with a g in the former, and in the latter: as gwr, vir; gwynt, ventus; gwyrth, virtus; gwir, verus ; and the like. A Welsh word, conformable to this principle, offers itself to notice, which is GWAN, a going through, a severing, a dividing, a thrust, a stab; and the verb is gwanu : "Y neb à wanai, nid adweinid."-Whoever he should send away would not be recognised. Aneurin. The g loses its sound in certain cases in most languages; and in the Welsh it doth so regularly under various rules of construction. The last to be noticed is the Latin verb MITTO, to send, to dismiss, to throw off; and also used in the sense of its derivative, remitto. Etymology refers this to the Greek verb μat, of like import; and which comes to our purpose. The common term in Welsh, for pardon, is maddeuant, from maddeu, and the regular verb is MADDEUAW, to let go, to set at large, to loosen, to liberate, to dismiss, to quit, to pardon. Eneid-vaddeu, that is, about to let the soul depart, one condemned to death; maddeu y dyrva, to dismiss the multitude; maddeuynt eu rhwydau, they left their nets; maddena vy mod hyved, pardon my being so bold. It is remarkable, that there is scarcely a difference in sound between the Greek μ and the Welsh maddeuaw; as may be seen by dividing it thus, ma-ddeu-aw, and pronouncing the middle syllable like the English pronoun they, with ma before and o after it-ma-they-o. Thus it is demonstrated, that the Welsh language has preserved the roots of the words apsis, ubi, mitto, and pardon. The old Cymry must have been of a forgiving disposition, by their bestowing a word to ask pardon on most of their neighbours, except the English, whom they suffered out of spite to put up with their own awkward forgiveness, till they got their pardon, at second-hand, from the French. Digona hyna. * See CAMBRO-BRITON, Vol. i. p. 245, for an account of the Welsh radical letters, and also p. 404, where the principle of initial mutations in the Welsh language is fully explained.-ED. LETTERS ON COLL GWYNFA. LETTER II. To the EDITOR of the CAMBRO-BRITON. SIR,-It cannot have escaped the observation of your readers, —of such, I mean, as may have honoured my former letter with a perusal, that it forms no part of my plan to enter into any examination of the sentiments of COLL GWYNFA, or indeed of any of those beauties that do not depend on the mere language. To do that would be to criticise Milton, and not Mr. Pughe's translation. My principal object is to point out to the Welsh reader the abundant energy and copiousness, of which his native tongue is susceptible in the hands of a competent scholar; and I cannot conceive, that this could be done more satisfactorily than by laying before his view a translation of that author, who is allowed to have excelled all his countrymen in the learned varieties of his style. "Milton's language," says one of his commentators, "both in prose and verse, is so peculiarly his own, that the style of no former or contemporary writer bears any resemblance to it. From his phraseology the idiom of no learned or foreign language is excluded. To a reader, unacquainted with the foreign and ancient English languages, and incapable of tracing their roots in the learned tongues, the sense and spirit of Milton's phrase must be often unattainable."—It will readily be admitted, then, that a successful Welsh version of language, so erudite, and so diversified, would require no ordinary skill, even with all the "appliances and means to boot," which the translator's materials may be presumed to afford. And, certainly, the Welsh tongue offers, in this respect, no common advantages: its elementary qualities, its endless faculty of combination, the comprehensive force of its compounds,all combine to give it an extraordinary superiority in this view, and that too without having recourse to exotic roots or foreign phraseology. But, although Mr. Pughe, versed as he is in his native tongue, had so far all in his favour, he has still had to contend against some disadvantages, arising, as it appears to me, more from a strong and unjustifiable prejudice than from any other cause. I allude now to the popular prepossessions in favour of that peculiar characteristic of Welsh poetry, known by the name of cynghanedd, and which, whatever may be its merits in a mere metrical, or rather musical, point of view, has, undoubtedly, had an injurious effect on the more important attributes of the muse, and has been the main cause, why the works of Welsh poets, especially of a recent date, appear to so little advantage in an English dress. Conceding, as I most willingly do, to this favourite distinction of our national strains all the merit it may possess as a mere accessory quality in the construction of verse, I can never allow, that it tends, in the least degree, to enhance the force of expression, or to give new beauty to poetical thought. Cynghanedd, by which I understand, in its popular acceptation, a harmony of alliteration, dependent, to a certain degree, upon metrical accent, originated, no doubt, in the musical predilections of the bards, and is far from being coeval with the earliest, and perhaps the best, specimens of our poetry*. That such a principle under proper restrictions may have its particular charms it would, perhaps, be too much to deny; but it must be obvious to every one, who has any acquaintance with the modern effusions of our bards, that it has been carried to an unwarrantable and preposterous extent,— that sound has, in many cases, been substituted for sense, that a mere play upon words has superseded energy and variety of diction, and in fine, that our native muse has too frequently been stripped of her ancient splendour, to assume, in exchange, the capricious ornament of a cap and bells. Such do I conceive to be the source of those prejudices, which, as I understand, Mr. Pughe has had to encounter in this novel and bold undertaking. The votaries of cynghanedd, and they are many, have no doubt passed at once to the condemnation of COLL GWYNFA, as wanting the embellishment of their favourite jingle. But the writer has had the good sense not to be daunted by this partial prejudication: he has proved,—and his country is indebted to him for what he has done,-that it is possible to give poetical. expression in Welsh to the most forcible thoughts and the most splendid images, without any aid beyond the innate richness and dignity of the language. I shall now, with your leave, offer some farther extracts from * Cynghanedd, as now used, was established as a constituent part of Welsh verse about the year 1350 at a congress, at which Ivor Hael, patron of Davydd ab Gwilym, presided. It had, indeed, been in partial use before, and was acknowleged at a congress held in the ninth century. It may be here noticed, that there seems a natural tendency in the Welsh language to a sort of chiming of consonants, which has, no doubt, led to that abuse of the practice above noticed by Idwal.-ED. The begin this translation to justify the remark I have just made. I left off in my former letter at the close of the fourth Book. ning of the fifth, which abounds in beauties, has been already copied into the CAMERO-BRITON; and in a note on the passage it is observed, that the conclusion of Adam's address to Eve, as rendered by Mr. Pughe, is remarkable for its sweetness. I shall, therefore, extract the passage, which is that, wherein Adam is described as awakening his consort. "Awake, My fairest, my espous'd, my latest found, O briawd, hwyaf gael i mi, o Nef A alwa y maes gwyrf: äa heibio oed I sylwi twf ein llysiau plydd, ac fal Y saif gwenynen i oddiliaw mel.”—P. 131. Soft, flowing, and melodious as these lines are in the original; the same qualities are at least equally conspicuous in the translation. The last four or five lines are particularly striking in this respect: such words as blodeua, afalau, mera, taena, liwiau, and oddiliaw are not to be surpassed by the softest sounds in Italian or any other tongue, and far exceed the correspondent terms in English. And, when it is considered, that a mellifluence of diction was particularly appropriate to the occasion, much credit must be allowed to the taste, with which Mr. Pughe has selected his language. The superior beauty of the word "deffröa" to the English "awake" cannot fail to be also noticed. The next extract shall be the latter part of the celebrated Morning Hymn, which, like many passages in this sublime poem, VOL. II. * Vol. i. p. 101. EE |