Note (return) — OLD COVENT GARDEN.

Guthrie, in his "Geographical Grammar," tells us, that the English language is a compound of the Saxon, the French, and the Celtic. As far as this latter is concerned, the assertion appears to me to have been made without due consideration; I do not believe that there are twenty words of genuine Celtic in the English language; there are, it is true, a very few Irish words, which have become as it were, English denizens, and of these I have sent you a specimen above; but I do not believe it possible to increase their number to twenty, even in broad Scotch, in which dialect of the Saxon (from the neighbourhood of the Highlanders who use the Irish language) some Celtic words might be expected, but very few occur;2 there is, however, one very curious exception to this rule, and for which, I confess, I am unable to account, (though perhaps your correspondent, Rupert C. in No. 342, might,) it is this—that in Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, or Cant Language, if the words which are evidently figurative be thrown out, nearly the whole of what remain are pure Irish.