- The Early Celts -
renowned 1973 Regensburg discussion of 'The Insular Celtic conjunct and absolute verbal
endings' (see Cowgill 1975). With regard to the very complex issue of determining the
relative importance of particular features and trends in languages in connection with Celtic
(in relation to both internal and external relationships) the picture we have, for all the
attempts at refinement, is still blurred and in general unsatisfactory. Here I refer only to
Schmidt 1986a, 1986b, 1986c, 1988a; McCone 199Ia, 1991b, 1992; Kalygin and Korolev
198 9; 27-44 (see especially 27)·
27 The additional evidence adduced in Professor McCone's Leiden lecture (see McCone
1992) is, it seems to me, too limited and may again be underplaying the significance of the
earlier Continental Celtic evidence (not only in its archaisms but also in some secure and
close correspondences with the testimony of Insular Celtic).
28 The differences in location and date and genre of various Continental Celtic sources are
important and the same is true for Insular Celtic, but they all need to be used in conjunc-
tion with each other (and with relevant evidence in other languages) whenever that
produces coherent and/or enlightening results. For just one recent instance of a highly
sophisticated exploitation of a very full range of Celtic evidence by McCone, seeking to
relate that evidence to its ancestry in notional earlier phases (postulated with the vital addi-
tional aid of the testimony of other non-Celtic languages), see McCone 1991b: 115-36
(chapter 6: 'Old Irish beith, -be, Gaulish bueti(d) and the Old Indic root-aorist subjunc-
tive bhuvat'). Compare McCone 1986.
29 We should recall Wagner's by no means mischievous comment again, that
The basic error of comparative grammar is the reconstruction of undivided or homo-
geneous Common Languages or Ursprachen. In reality language or dialect diversity is
always primary, while language unity is the secondary result either of the expansion
of a language over wider territories or the creation of an oral literary standard language.
30 See McCone 1991a: 69.
31 See ibid.: 49-50.(see Wagner 1969: 228, n.9a)32 See Koch 1992. Compare also now Waddell 1991a and 1991b.
33 My views on the great value of so much of this complex and tantalizing evidence and
on the need for delicacy and caution in dealing with them in general syntheses (see, for
example, Evans 1979: 536-7; 1990: 172-7) remain essentially unchanged.REFERENCESArdener, E. (1989) The Voice of Prophecy and Other Essays, ed. M. Chapman, Oxford: Basil
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