Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1977, Blaðsíða 6

14
Some traces of Gaelic in Faroese
the primary term. It alone can form compounds, as (Dinneen)
foltleabhar ‘long-haired’, reamharfholt ‘luxuriant hair’, types
going back to the oldest language, thus in Thurneysen
(Grammar, 218) folt-buide ‘yellow-haired’, (Reader, 39) find-
folt ‘white hair’. Indeed, the term is Common Celtic, cf. syno-
nymous Welsh gwallt, etc.
In the light of these facts, gruag in the sense ‘hair of the
head’, attested since the Middle Irish period (Contributions, s.
grúac), appears as a secondary development; the word must
once have had a different meaning. Let us now see if we can
find any indications of what such an earlier meaning would
be. Looking in Dinneen, we find gruagán, i. e. with traditional
diminutive suffix -án, defined as ‘small pyramidal heap of
turf-sods set on end to dry’ further gruaigín, i. e. with more
recent diminutive suffix -ín, with the meaning ‘small heap,
esp. of turf’. (While of no direct concern for our present
problem, it will nevertheless be proper to mention that
Dinneen also quotes the variants grógán, gróigín, and briefly
explain that the interchange of ó and ua (Old Ir. úa) is wide-
spread in Gaelic, see Dinneen, passim, and although ó is
primary, úa also is commonly attested even in the oldest
language (Thurneysen, 39f.). For our purpose, therefore, we
need only operate with the ua-forms).
Comparing now the meanings of gruag and gruagán,
gruaigín, we are faced with the remarkable fact that the
primary word means ‘hair of the head’, but its diminutives
mean something like ‘little stack’. There is no doubt that the
words are etymologically identical, witness gruaigim ‘I set up
pn end, as sods of turf’ (Dinneen), in other words ‘I stack’,
formed directly from gruag which must therefore also have
had the meaning ‘stack’ as well as ‘hair of the head’. Which
meaning will be the earlier? Clearly ‘stack’, for the semantic
evolution must have been ‘stack’ ~ ‘head’ > ‘head of hair’
> ‘hair of the head’ — we may add that, in Scottish, the
sense ‘wig’ is also known, and by yet another considerable