Lithuanian gìrti‘praise’. The second element is the very common verbal
root meaning ‘set in place, create’, as in Greek τθημι. What is particularly
significant is that the same two roots are combined phrasally in Indo-Iranian,
in Vedic gíras ... dha ̄ and Avestan garo ̄ ... da ̄‘offer praises’.^3 This phrase at
least, if not the compound noun designating the eulogist, can be assumed to
go back to (Mature) Indo-European, and so can the idea that it expresses of
conferring praise through poetry, whether on god or man.
The other Gaulish and Irish terms do not take us so far back, but they do
point to connections extending beyond the Celtic sphere. Dru-(w)id- should
mean ‘oak-seer’: it is reported that a tall oak served the Celts as an image of
‘Jupiter’, and we cannot help but recall the ancient mantic oak of Zeus at
Dodona in Thesprotia (an Illyrian rather than a Greek institution).^4 If druidai
had been recorded as the name of the priest-prophets of Dodona, nothing
would have seemed more apt.
Thefili (plural filid) who inherited the druid’s role in Ireland also has a title
to do with the seer’s function. It is related to Welsh gweled‘see’ (cf. telewele
‘television’), and perhaps to Latin voltus‘visage’. It reappears in the name of
the German prophetess Veleda, who enjoyed immense esteem in the time of
Vespasian.^5 For the semantic nexus we may compare the Vedic kaví-‘sage,
seer, priest-poet’, Avestan kəvi-, Lydian kaves ́ (a priest), Samothracian koie ̄s,
all related to a root *keu-‘see, behold’.^6
The term vatis, Irish fáith, appears in Latin as ua ̄te ̄s‘seer, prophet, inspired
poet’, which, however, is under strong suspicion of being a Celtic loan-word.^7
Related forms occur in Welsh gwawd‘cause, theme, poem, prophecy’, and
outside Celtic in Old Church Slavonic ve ̆t i j i‘orator’ and in a set of Germanic
words that link the ideas of poetry and possession: Gothic woþs‘possessed’,
Old High German wuot‘frenzied’, Old English wo ̄d‘frenzied’,wo ̄ð‘song’, Old
Norse óðr‘possessed, inspired; mind, poetry’.^8
(^3) RV 8. 96. 10; Y. 41. 1, cf. 45. 8; E. Campanile, SSL 20 (1980), 183–8; Watkins (1995), 117;
J. Uhlich, TPhS 100 (2002), 414.
(^4) The Celtic oak: Val. Flacc. 6. 90; Max. Tyr. 2. 8. Dodona: Od. 14. 327; [Aesch.] Prom. 830–2.
For Celtic and other sacred groves cf. Chapter 7.
(^5) Tac. Hist. 4. 61, 65; Germ. 8. 2; Stat. Silv. 1. 4. 90.
(^6) Greek κοω, Latin caueo; IEW 587; cf. R. Gusmani in Studi Triestini di Antichità in onore di
Luigia Achillea Stella (Trieste 1975), 255 f.; Watkins (1995), 88; Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995),
734 f.
(^7) If the underlying form is *wo ̄-ti-, this must be the case, as the change [o ̄] > [a ̄] is Celtic, not
Italic. E. Hamp in Papers from the Thirteenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society
(1977), 149, offers a different account.
(^8) Hence the god Woden or Odin has his name (p. 137). See further K. von See, GRM 14
(1964), 2; H. Wagner, ZCP 31 (1970), 46–57=Studies in the Origins of the Celts and Early
Celtic Civilisation (Belfast–Tübingen 1971), 46–58; Meid (1991), 25 f.; Watkins (1995), 118;
Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 734; EIEC 493b.
28 1. Poet and Poesy