- F’ enaid dlos, ni ddaw nosi
- I adail haf y dêl hi.—D.G. 321.
‘My beautiful soul! there comes no nightfall to the summer-house to which she comes.’
iv. Similarly a mas. abstract noun, when personified is occasionally treated as fem., as doethineb in Diar. i 20, ix 1–4.
§ 137. i. Some mas. names of living objects are made fem. by the addition of ‑es, or by changing ‑yn to ‑en; thus brenin ‘king’, brenhines ‘queen’; bachgen ‘boy’, bachgennes Joel iii 3 ‘girl’; llew ‘lion’, llewes ‘lioness’; asyn ‘ass’, f. asen; coegyn ‘fop’, f. coegen b.cw. 14.
arglwyẟ ‘lord’, arglwyẟes w.m. 11 ‘lady’; marchawc w.m. 2, Mn.W. marchog ‘horseman, rider, knight’, marchoges, w.m. 13, b.cw. 58; iarll, iarlles w.m. 254 ‘earl’, ‘countess’; amhérawdɏr w.m. 178 ‘emperor’, amherodres do. 162; cares I.G. 557 ‘relative’ f.; tywysoges ib. ‘princess’; santes do. 559 ‘saint’ f.; arglwyddes a meistres môr Gr.O. 15 ‘lady and mistress of the sea’.
In old formations the ‑es is seen added to the original stem, as in lleidr ‘thief’, f. lladrones b.cw. 21, see § 121 i; Sais ‘Englishman’, f. Saesnes < Brit. *Saxō, *Saxonissā, § 113 i (2). On the vowel change in Cymro, f. Cymraes see § 65 ii (1).
ii. In the following cases the distinction of gender is irregular: nai ‘nephew’, nith ‘niece’; cefnder(w̯) ‘cousin’, f. cyfnither(w̯); chwegrwn ‘father-in-law’, f. chwegr; hesbwrn, f. hesbin ‘ewe’; ffôl ‘fool’, f. ffolog; gŵr, gw̯raig; ci § 132 (i), gast § 96 ii (3).
nai < Ar. *nepōts; nith < Ar. *neptís § 75 vii (2); cefnderw § 76 vii (3) (O. W. pl. ceintiru) and cyfnitherw̯ are improper compounds representing ceifn derw̯ and cyfnith ẟerw̯; for ceifn lit. ‘co-nephew’ see § 75 vii (1); cyfnith < *kom-neptís ‘co-niece’; derw̯ is an obsolete adj. meaning ‘true’, Ir. derb ‘sure’ < *deru̯os, Ar. base *dereu̯‑: E. true, and doubtless W. pl. derw̯yẟ-on[1] ‘soothsayers’ < *dₑru̯íi̯es (: Gaul. druides < Brit., Caesar b.g. vi 13, Ir. drui < Brit. ?): W. dir ‘true, certain’, Ir. dīr ‘due’ < LR *dēru-s.—chwegr § 94 iv; chwegrwn < *su̯ek̑ru-no‑;—hesbin from W. hesb f. of hysb ‘dry’ § 96 iii (5); the formation of hesbwrn is not clear; perhaps for *hesbrwn formed on the analogy of chwegrwn;—gŵr < Ar. *u̯iros: Lat. vir; gw̯raig < *u̯rakī prob. < *u̯(i)r-āk-ī́, a noun in ‑ī (: ‑ii̯ā, cf. pl. gw̯rageẟ) from a derivative in ‑āk- of *u̯ir-os: cf. Lat. virāgo.
- ↑ This is more probable as a derivation of druid than that it comes from the word for oak. There is however a distant connexion, since derw ‘oak’, Gk. δρῦς, etc., are probably derived from the same Aryan base *dereu- ‘fast, hard’.
