In Welsh one finds a true present without b-forms, and a tense with a b-stem used both as a future and a consuetudinal. [21] The 3 sg. of the latter tense is bydd from earlier *bið. [22] The resemblance between this and the OE form is perhaps made more remarkable if we observe that the short vowel of OE is difficult to explain and cannot be a regular development from earlier Germanic, whereas in Welsh it is regularly derived.

This similarity may be dismissed as accidental. The peculiarity of OE may be held to depend simply on preservation in the English dialect of a feature later lost in others; the anomalous short vowel of bist and bið may be explained as analogical. [23] The OE verb is in any case peculiar in other ways not paralleled by Welsh (the 2 sg. of the true present earð later eart, is not found outside English). It will still remain notable, none the less, that this preservation occurred in Britain and in a point in which the usage of the native language agreed. It will be a morphological parallel to the phonetic agreement, noted above, seen in the English preservation of þ and w.

But this is not the full story. The Northumbrian dialect of Old English uses as the plural of tense В the form biðun, bioðun. Now this must be an innovation developed on British soil. Its invention was strictly unnecessary (since the older plural remained sufficiently distinct from the singular), and its method of formation was, from the point of view of English morphology, wholly anomalous.[24] Its similarity (especially in apparent relation to the 3 sg.) to Welsh byddant is obvious. (The still closer Welsh I pl. byddwn would not have had, probably, this inflexion in Old Welsh.)

In my second example I return to a matter of phonology, but one of the highest importance. One of the principal phonetic developments in Old English, which eventually changed its whole vocalic system and had profound effect upon its morphology, was that group of changes usually called by us umlaut or 'mutation'. These changes are, however, closely paralleled by the changes which in Welsh grammar are usually called 'affection', thus disguising their fundamental similarity, though in detail and in chronology there may be considerable differences between the processes in the two languages.

The most important branch of these changes is i-mutation or i-affection. The problems attending their explanation in English and in Welsh are similar (for instance, the question of the varying parts played by anticipation or 'vowel harmony' and by epenthesis), and the study of them together throws light on both. Also, since the phonology of the place-names borrowed by the English in Britain is of great importance for the dating of i-mutation in their language, it is not only desirable but necessary for the English philologist to acquaint himself with the evidence and the theories on both sides. The English process is also important to the Welsh philologist for similar reasons.

The north-west of Europe, in spite of its underlying differences of linguistic heritage – Goidelic, Brittonic, Gallic; its varieties of Germanic; and the powerful intrusion of spoken Latin – is as it were a single philological province, a region so interconnected in race, culture, history, and linguistic fusions that its departmental philologies cannot flourish in isolation. I have cited the processes of i-mutation/i-affection as a striking example of this fact. And we who live in this island may reflect that it was on this same soil that both were accomplished.[25] There are, of course, many other features of Welsh that should have a special interest for students of English. I will briefly mention one before I conclude. Welsh is full of loan-words from or through English. [26] This long series, beginning in Anglo-Saxon times and continuing down to the present day, offers to any philologist interesting illustrations of the processes of borrowing by ear and spoken word,— besides providing some curious features of its own. The historian of English, so often engaged in investigating the loan-words in his own too hospitable tongue, should find its study of special interest; though in fact it has been mainly left to Welsh scholars.

The earlier loans are perhaps of chief interest, since they sometimes preserve words, or forms, or meanings that have long ceased to exist in English. For instance hongian "hang, dangle', cusan 'a kiss', bettws 'chapel (subordinate church)' and also' a secluded spot', derived from OE hongian, cyssan, (ge)bedhūs. The Englishman will note that the long-lost -an and -ian of Old English infinitives once struck the ears of Welshmen long ago; but he will be surprised perhaps to find that -ian became a loan-element in itself, and was added to various other verbs, even developing a special form –ial. [27] He cannot therefore, alas, at once assume that such words as tincian 'tinkle' or mwmlian 'mumble' are evidence for the existence in Old English (*tincian, *mumelian) of words first actually recorded in Middle English.

Even the basest and most recent loans have, however, their interest. In their exaggerated reflection of the corruptions and reductions of careless speech, they remind one of the divergence between Latin and the 'Vulgar' or 'Spoken Latin' that we deduce from Welsh or French. Potatoes has produced tatws; and in recent loans submit >smit-io, and cement >sment. But this is a large subject with numerous problems, and I am not competent to do more than point out to the English that it is one worthy of their attention. For myself, as a West-Midlander, the constant reflection, in the Welsh borrowings of older date, of the forms of West-Midland English is an added attraction.

But no language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.

It is recorded in the tale of Lludd a Llefelys that King Lludd had the island measured in its length and its breadth, and in Oxford (very justly) he found the point of centre. But none the less the centre of the study of Welsh for its own sake is now in Wales; though it should flourish here, where we have not only a chair of Celtic graced by its occupant, but in Jesus College a society of Welsh connexions by foundation and tradition, the possessor among other things of one of the treasures of Medieval Welsh: The Red Book of Hergest. [28] For myself I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as an adminicle of English philology, more than the practical linguist's desire to acquire a knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience, more even than the interest and worth of the literature, older and newer, that is preserved in it, these two things seem important: Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.

I will not attempt to say now what I mean by calling a language as a whole 'beautiful’, nor in what ways Welsh seems to me beautiful; for the mere recording of a personal and if you will subjective perception of strong aesthetic pleasure in contact with Welsh, heard or read, [29] is sufficient for my conclusion.