CELTIC place-names may be divided into two classes: simple and compound, the latter being much more numerous. The simple names usually consist of substantives in the nominative, which constitute generic terms denoting the general class of the topographical features, while the compound names have also a second element, almost invariably an affix, which particularizes the place, or distinguishes it from others. A further class I stone to be seen in Raasay displays a superimposed leaf type cross, a style seldom seen, but found interestingly on what is known as Peter's stone at Whithorn. This early leaf cross originated in Ireland where one or two examples can be seen, notably the Stele of Arraglen (County Kerry), and the Stele of Reasg (Dingle Peninsula). A similar stone but of class II is to be seen at Papil in Shetland. These crosses were added to the Pagan stones in Scotland to indicate the displacement of the Druid religion by its Christian successors, and provide indelible proof of the progression of Christianity from Ireland to Whithorn, and from there north through the length of Scotland. The class 1 stone in Raasay, of an earlier type than the Shetland Papil stone, suggests a movement of Ninian's missionaries by sea through the inner Hebrides to Orkney and Shetland.
The oldest written Goidelic language is Primitive Irish, which is attested in ogham inscriptions up to about the 4th century AD. The Cenél nAlbanaich, a Laigin tribe were a branch of the Oirghialla that settled in the northwest Highlands and Islands in very early times. Their chief clans descend from Godfraidh Mac Ferghusa (i.e., "Fergus"), a prince of the Oirghialla in North Ireland who came to Scotland, or Albany, in the ninth century as an ally of Kenneth MacAlpin, first king of the united kingdom of Picts and Scots. Old Irish is found in the margins of Latin religious manuscripts from the 6th century to the 10th century. Old Irish is also an ancestor of Brythonic (Q-Celitc) and Classical Gaelic; it contrasts Cumbric, with constructed cognates in the language only number around 50, and the Celtic Culture of Northwest England has long since been forgotten. All the other living Celtic languages belong to the Brythonic branch.
The greater part of Gaelic place-names date from the 13th century down to recent times, and their grammatical structure indicate the different phases through which the Manx language has gone since the Gaelic immigration subsequent to Norse rule. Manx is a dialect mainly Celtic, and differing only slightly from the ancient Scottish Gaelic. Our mothers were Celts, speaking Celtic, before our Norse fathers came. Was it likely that our Celtic mothers should learn much of the tongue of their Norse husbands. But though our Norse fathers could not impose their Norse tongue on their children, they gave them Norse names, and to the island they gave Norse place-names. Then, our Norwegian surnames often took Celtic prefixes, such as Mac, and thus became Scandio-Gaelic.
The alphabet today for Irish can be called a variant or a derivative of the Roman alphabet that took shape about the 8th cent. A.D. It has 18 letters: 13 consonants and 5 vowels. These texts date back to the 5th cent. A.D. or perhaps earlier and differ as much from the early literary Irish that follows them as Latin does from Old French. Native speakers of Irish are now concentrated in the western counties of Ireland. The phenomena known in Irish as aspiration and ellipsis, and the various complex laws which govern these mutations, must he very perplexing to anyone unacquainted with the Celtic languages.
Aspiration is the changing of a mute consonant to a spirant.
- Thus : b, m change to v, w; c, k, q, to ch, wh; :1, d, g, to y, gh; f becomes quiescent; p changes to ph; and ch, s, t to h.
Ellipsis, also called nasalization, is the changing of a voiceless consonant (mute or spirant) to a voiced one, or a voiced consonant to a nasal one.
- Thus : b changes to m; C, k, q, to g; d to n; f to v; g to ng; and p to b.
Basic consonants in Old Irish are t, p, c (k), d, b, g, th, f, n, m, ng, r, l, and s.
