Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1977, Side 4

12
Some traces of Gaelic in Faroese
Dunna
In the Faroese Bird Names, 12ff., and in a supplementary
note (Fróð., xiii, 44f.) we adduced additional evidence sup-
porting the view, expressed by J. Jakobsen as far back as
1902, that Far. dunna ‘domestic duck’ is indeed a loan word
from (Scottish) Gaelic. The Gaelic forms are Sc. tunnag,
Northern Ir. tonnóg, i. e. with secondary diminutive suffix;
medieval forms are not attested. We explained the change of
Gael. t to Norse d as the generalisation of a Celtic mutation
by which, in certain positions in the sentence, a word beginning
with t alters this to d. We now wish to withdraw this inter-
pretation, because we have come to believe that the mutation
in question would never be prominent enough to have become
generalised in this way. Here will not be the place to go into
the somewhat complex Celtic details; the interested reader
may be referred to R. Thurneysen, Grammar of Old lrish,
148ff.
We therefore propose to make a new start. We first envisage
the Gaelic forms before the addition of the diminutive suffix
and find that *tonn(a)e f. > *tonna (Thurneysen, 62, 185)
>(Scottish) ’'!tunna would be the expected line of development.
Now such a Scottish form, if used in Norse, would fall to-
gether with homophonous tunna ‘tub’ which, although itself
a loan-word, has for long been present in the language, cf. J.
de Vries, Altnord. etym. Wb. In these circumstances may we
not see in Far. dunna a continuation of Old Sc. Gael. *tunna,
subsequently modified to avoid homonymity under the influ-
ence of some native word beginning with d? That native word
could well have been ON dúnn ‘down’.
Grúkur
The meanings of grúkur are set out in Jacobsen-Matras2:
‘hoved pa sælhund; ualmindelig stort hoved; lille barn med
stort hoved; hoved (d. v. s. skal, bold, pære o. lign.)’. Else-