is explained by means of the Brythonic word nouitiou,[1] which would, in modern Welsh, be newidiau, the plural of newid, 'change, exchange, barter.' This last is in its turn derived, like the Latin term just mentioned, from the ninth numeral, which is written in modern Breton and Welsh naô and naw respectively. It would thus seem that we have traces here of markets or fairs on the ninth day as an institution common to the Celts and the Italians of antiquity.
It might, however, be objected that the Brythons had merely adopted it from the Romans; but, over and above this, there is Irish evidence to which the objection will not apply, for the Irish term etymologically equivalent to nundinæ occurs in the form noinden or noenden,[2] explained to have meant an assembly,[3] and a compound ard-noenden, 'a great—literally 'a high'—assembly,' with which compare the term 'high festival' in English. Whether the assemblies to which this term would apply recurred regularly, and what the interval might be, I know not; but we have practically irrefragable evidence that the simple term noinden meant just half the duration of the nine-
- ↑ It occurs in the Bodley MS. Auct. F. iv. 32, fol 7b, among the Glosses on Eutychius, which are now reckoned old Breton rather than old Welsh: see Stokes' edition of them in the Trans. of the (London) Phil. Society for 1860-1, p. 233; also the Gram. Celtica2, p. 1054.
- ↑ See O'Davoren's Glossary in Stokes' Three Irish Glossaries (London, 1862), p. 108; also the Berichte der K. Sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (Phil.-Hist. Classe), 1884, p. 336, where Windisch has rendered Celtic scholars the service of publishing (with a translation) two versions of the story accounting for the Ultonian couvade.
- ↑ Such is the meaning in a line in the Bk. of the Dun, 81b, where in nóindin seems to mean the óenach or fair at which the men of Ulster used to meet.
