~ 109 ~
In the other two great branches of Celtic speech, the Gaelic and the Irish, things took a different course. Monday, Tuesday and Saturday are the days of Luna, Mars and Saturn, but Sunday is Di-domhnaich, and the three other names are formed on quite another principle. The name for Wednesday means 'the first fast,' Friday is 'the fast' or 'the great fast,' while Thursday is something which is variously interpreted as 'the eve of the fast,' 'the second fast,' or 'the day between the fasts,' but at any rate has some such connexion. Here again it is a natural conjecture that the week reached these tribes which lay outside Roman civilization at a later period and in the wake of Christianity. The names for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday distinctly suggest this, that for Sunday is obviously compatible with it, and those for Monday and Tuesday do not suggest the contrary. For as we have seen, the ordinary Christian of the south, if not the strict churchman, continued to use the planetary names for these two. Saturday is indeed a difficulty on this hypothesis. Perhaps we may account for it partly by the influence of their Welsh kinsmen, partly on the supposition that sabbatum, though the accepted ecclesiastical name, had not the sanctity of dominica and was less likely to be pressed by the Church on the converted or semi-converted population. But all these inferences from names are, as I have said,
