Abbé Henri Boudet’s ‘True Celtique Language’

Abbé Henri Boudet’s ‘True Celtique Language’

Paul Smith

24 March 2018
Put Online At: 15:00 PM GMT

Abbé Henri Boudet did not refer to any mysteries or secrets in his 1886 book La Vraie Langue Celtique et le Cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains.

Abbé Boudet claimed that English was the original “primordial language” – comparing it with an imaginary “cromleck” in the region of Rennes-les-Bains – that he in fact described as a circular tour around the mountain ridges (chapter seven of his book) – also comparing it with “resurrection”.

Boudet’s claims about a “primordial language” wasn’t anything new – Umberto Eco wrote about the subject matter in his book The Search For The Perfect Language (Wiley-Blackwell, 1997; La Recherche de La Langue Parfaite, Paris: Le Seuil, 1994).

Paul Le Cour referred to the history of the idea of a “Primordial Language” in several of his articles published in issues of his magazine Atlantis.

Anything could have inspired Abbé Boudet when he decided to write about a “Primordial language”.

From Abbé Henri Boudet’s book La Vraie Langue Celtique

The title given to this work seems, at first sight, too pretentious to be strictly accurate. It is easy, however, to demonstrate its veracity, since the Celtic language is not a dead language, but a living language, spoken in the universe by millions of men.

The language of a nation as powerful as the Gaulish nation, could it have been lost without leaving any trace? Is it any wonder that a people of our Europe still use, in order to express their thoughts, terms that have come out of the mouths of men in the most remote times of the world? Doubtless, this people, who are now eagerly seeking to reconnect with their interrupted traditions, are unaware of the various migrations of their precious ancestors, but with the help of their national language they can indulge themselves to research, which, certainly, will be crowned with the most successful

The living language, to which we allude, has powerfully helped us to discover the magnificent Celtic monument existing in Rennes-les-Bains, and, for its part, the study of this monument has led us safely to etymological deductions which we seem difficult to refute.

This is how the Cromlech of Rennes-les-Bains is intimately linked to the resurrection, or, if you want, the unexpected awakening of the Celtic language.