Note 83 — Chapter VII

The two prepositions de and do have long been confounded together, both being written do. It can hardly be supposed that the composite words dhiom, dhiot, &c. would have been distinguished from dhomh, dhuit, &c., by orthography, pronunciation, and signification, if the Prepositions, as well as the Pronouns, which enter into the composition of these words, had been originally the same. In dhiom, &c., the initial Consonant is always followed by a small vowel. In dhomh, &c., with one exception, it is followed by a broad vowel. Hence it is presumable that the Preposition which is the root of dhiom, &c., must have had a small vowel after d, whereas the root of dhomh, &c., has a broad vowel after d. De is a preposition preserved in Latin (a language which has many marks of affinity with the Gaelic), in the same sense which must have belonged to the root of dhiom, &c., in Gaelic. The preposition in question itself occurs in Irish, in the name given to a Colony which is supposed to have settled in Ireland, A.M. 2540, called Tuath de Danann. (See Lh. "Arch. Brit." tit. x. voc. Tuath; also Miss Brooke's "Reliques of Irish Poetry," p. 102.) These facts afford more than a presumption that the true root of the Composite dhiom, &c., is de, and that it signifies of. It has therefore appeared proper to separate it from do, and to assign to each its appropriate meaning[83].