[Spellyans] bat

[nicholas williams]

Lhuyd's skelli grehan 'bat' really means 'leather wings' and is  
comparable with the Irish sciathán leathair, lit. 'leather wing', one  
of the many Irish terms for 'bat'
I assume that originally there was a Cornish form *askell grohen,  
where the feminine noun askell lenited the initial consonant of the  
following word crohen, used adjectivally to mean 'of skin, of leather'.
Since we have skelli grehan only, we should spell it eskelly grehyn  
and use it both for singular and plural. A bat has more than one wing,  
and so does a belfry full of bats.
I think we should write the aphetic e-. This is exactly comparable  
with eskyjyow 'shoes', which is attested as skyggyow (once in OM and  
once in TH).
An asterisk is not required.

Nicholas

On 27 Du 2009, at 16:24, j.mills at email.com wrote:

> Lhuyd (1707) gives "skerli grehan" [31a] and "sgelli grehan" [173a]  
> for "a bat". How should we spell this? Should we observe the aphesis  
> of <e->? If "sgelli grehan" is singular (a bat), then what is its  
> plural?

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