plified by gwawd, a Welsh term for poetry, but now restricted to satire and sarcasm. Among the cognate words may be mentioned the Irish fáith, 'a prophet or poet,' Latin vâtes, Old Norse óᵭr, 'mind, soul, song;' also Óᵭenn or Óᵭinn, English Woden, and wood, 'mad,' German wuth, 'rage.'
The appearance in close connection of words relating to poetry and prophecy on the one hand, and to madness and possession on the other, is just what would be expected by the student of anthropology familiar with
'a prophet or poet,' to which the Welsh has no etymological equivalent, since it would have sounded gwawt, gwawd, like the word meaning 'a satire;' but it existed in Gaulish and was probably wātis or vātis, as Strabo, iv. 4, 4, has placed on record the nominative plural in the form of οὐάτεις. Now Latin, though not possessing exact parallels in such verbal forms as vĕnio, vēni, or ăgo, ēgi, matches fáith and wātis exactly in vowel and declension with its noun vātes, 'a poet and prophet.' The following classification will render intelligible at a glance what I mean—the hypothetical forms have an asterisk prefixed to them: 1. Stems with ĕ, of the consonantal declension: Irish, *Fethiu, *Fethenn; Welsh, Gwyd, Gwydion; Latin, *Vetio, *Vetionis. 2. Stems with ā: (1) of the O declension: Ir. fáth, 'learning;' Welsh, gwawd, 'poem, satire;' Lat. *vātum (= vaticinum); the German is wuth, 'rage,' together with the adjective, which was in Gothic vód-s, 'δαιμονιζόμενος, δαιμονισθείς.' Add to these the O. Norse óᵭ-r, 'mad, frantic;' A.-Saxon wód, 'mad;' Mod. English wood; Broad Scotch wud or wuth, 'mad, distracted.' (2) Of the I declension: Ir. fáith, 'poet;' Gaulish wātis, 'poet;' Lat. vātes, 'poet;' O. Norse óᵭ-r, genitive óᵭar, 'mind, wit, soul, sense, spirit, song, poetry.' (3) Derivatives of the O declension: Ir. Elathan (a form of the name of the Fomorian king, husband of the goddess of poetry), in case it be for El-fáthan (with el of the same origin as eol in eolus, 'knowledge,' the vowel variation being produced by the accent, as in beothu, 'life,' genitive bethad); Welsh *Gwodan; Lat. *vātanus; O. Norse, Óᵭen-n, genitive Óᵭen-s; A.-Sax. Wóden, gen. Woden-es, perpetuated in Wednes-day. The relation between Gwydion and Woden did not escape Grimm: see his Deutsche Myth.4 pp. xxiij, 124, 296, 342.
