Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 73 1982 Anders Ahlqvist THE EARLY IRISH LINGUIST An Edition of the Canonical Part of the AURAICEPT NA nECES With Introduction, Commentary and Indices ANGLO-SAXON NC AND CELTIC LIBR 22-1283 Societas Scientiarum Fennica ‘The Finnish Society of Sciences and Let© by the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters (Societas Scientiarum Fennica). Helsinki 1983, ISBN 9514 ISSN 0069-6587 EKENAS TRYCKERI AB, Ekenis 1988 PREFACE This work will, T hope, be of interest both to Irish scholars and historians linguistics. Both will immediately notice that it is in the nature of a prelimina report: the Irish text edited is only that of the canonical or old part of ti Auraicept na nEces and the analysis of sources and doctrines is not based on comparison with all relevant Latin materials known to exist, but rather on selection of texts that seemed relevant and were available to me. Also, it seems me more than likely that further manuscripts of the Auraicept will turn up in t future, with potentially important implications for a future definitive critical e tion of the text and commentary. This will be a monumental task, but shou prove most rewarding to anyone who is interested in the history of ideas duri the Middle Ages. It seems likely and, to me at any rate, desirable that it will | preceded by the publication, cither in facsimile or diplomatically, of all knov Irish grammatical and similar materials, so as to make available to scholars Corpus Grammaticorum Hibernicorum, that would render to the historian of Iri linguistics the same services that the Corpus Juris Hibernici has begun, since | publication in 1978, to give to students of early Irish Law. In this context, refé fence has to be made to Calder’s pioneering edition of the text, a remarkat achievement for its day, which remained almost unnoticed, or so it seems, | scholars other than Thurneysen (1927) and van Hamel (1946) until O Cuiv start his thorough-going work of investigating Irish grammatical tracts." If the prese work may seem rather less ambitious than Calder’s, it is to some extent due new manuscript material having come to light, so as to make the task of editi that much more extensive. Nevertheless, it is my hope that this work, such as it will provide a modest impetus toward interesting scholars in the earlier gramm tical materials of Ireland, either by inspiring or, as may turn out to be the mo likely case, by irritating them sufficiently to correct my mistakes, for which alone am responsible. Meanwhile, a brief account of the history of this work m be of interest. It was started during postgraduate days in Edinburgh? develop See especially O Cuiv 1966, 1973 and 1980, 2 As my notes (1974) on this text and allied matters will tstlyduring a period of postdoctoral work, in the School of Celtic Studies of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies,’ which was funded by a grant from the Herman Rosenberg Foundation, and finished? rather gradually over five years after 1 joined the staff of University College, Galway, which naturally enough slowed down the work. Finally, I should like to thank the editor of this series, Professor Henrik Zilliacus, for agreeing to publish my work, and at the same time (going back to undergraduate days in the 1960's) for guiding my first steps on the paths of scholarship, Vestanvik, Vestanfjard in July 1982 ANDERS AHLOVIST ) > Ba mhér agam mo bhufochas @ ghabhail le Bord Stidetha Scoil an Léinn Cheiltigh a6 uct cead thabhairt dom said agus leas a Dhaint as diseanna na Scoile sna blianta 1974~6; chomh maith, gabhaim bufochas 6 chrof leo sid viliug a bhf ann le mo linn agus a chabhraigh go fia MithiailKiom fra lin bealach nach féidi liom a ireamh anseo. 2 "Detta arbete hade inte vatit mojligt utan ett resestipendium som beviliades for indamilet ur kammarherre Herman Rosenbergs fond fr resestipendier: for den ytterst virdefulla hj, som bev: jandet av detta for aren 1974—6 kom att ulgOra, Onskar jog rikta ett synnerligen varmt tack till konsistorium for Helsingfors universitet, * In this connection, I have to thank the relevant authorities of all the Libraries, in which 1 studied manuscripts af the Auraicept, for giving me much kind help and, especialy. for gra ‘permission to publish material in their eare. In this respect, Tam very much in the debt ofthe Keeper fof Manuscripts of the British Museum Library, the Director of the National Library of Ireland, the Keeper of Manuscripts of the National Library of Scotland, the Oificers of the Royal Irish Acudemy ‘and the Board of Trinity Collese, Dublin. CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION 1. THE HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE IN EARLY IRELAND 2, THE MANUSCRIPT TRADITION OF THE AURAICEPT 3, LANGUAGE, 4, SOURCES AND DOCTRINE, TEXT AND TRANSLATION . THE PARADIGMS TEXTUAL NOTES COMMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY AND LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, GLOSSARY,THE HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE IN EARLY IRELAND 1. In this chapter, T have tried to give a brief account of the development study of language in Ireland before the modern period in so far as this rel the Auraicept. Language study I take to include what relates to the applica thinking about language to practical purposes, such as the devising of systems, and to more theoretical ones, such as stating facts about the langu ‘a more or less formal way. Early Ireland for this purpose refers to Ireland cultural links with the remainder of Europe began to re-affirm themselves what loosely may be called the Renaissance period. THE OGAM ALPHABET AND LATIN GRAMMAR 1.1 The Ogam alphabet is the first known manifestation of linguistic anal the Trish context. Although there is no possibility of it having been im independently of other writing systems, it contains a certain number of inte innovatory features, some of which point to a fairly high level of linguistic a on the part of its inventor. The alphabet is arranged in four basic gro letters, probably, as Vendryes (1941, 110 £.) and Jackson (1953, 157) pointed out, because the system was based on notches used for counting sh pieces of wood: Bers wf tH Tin Loe ° HAH I MGno ZR AOU ET ‘The addition of a fifth group of letters, denoting diphthongs, would seer later: (Thurneysen 1937, 203; Meroney 1949, 3543): uw_1o Ox EA Ot8 ANDERS AHLOVIST, The Early Irish Linguist Naturally enough, the origin of this alphabet has been much discussed’ and many theories proposed. It is, however, generally agreed that it is based on the Latin alphabet and as I see no reason to disagree with this, I shall not go into theories suggesting otherwise. Also, until recently not a few scholars? agreed that the Latin grammarians’ classification of the letters of the alphabet into vowels, semivowels, mutes and Greek letters is what underlies the Ogam alphabet. Car- ney, on the other hand, believes that the inventor created it as a cipher “in a purely mechanistic manner” (1975, 57), .organising the relevant letters of the Latin alphabet in four vertical rows and re-arranging them subsequently, partly on the principle of "phonetic pairing’. In support of his “Construct” he invokes ‘mathematical probabilities: the score is 13 out of 20, ie. 65 %. However, it must be noted that the same mathematical principles might be better applied to the Latin classification, since this will give 16 out of 20, i.e. 80 %, or (leaving the vowels out) 11 out of 15, i.e. 73 1/3 %, as against Carney’s (1975, 62) 9 out of 15, ie, 60 % in this case. On the other hand, he stresses (1975, 57) that ng, i.e. the agma of Latin and Greek grammarians had its place at the end of the alphabet, or, in the Latin classification into vowels, semi-vowels, mutes and Greek letters, with the last mentioned ones. Removing k, p, x and y, one gets: aeciou uocales flmoars semiuocales bedghqt muta z ng Graecae The statistics already mentioned are based on the fact that only four letters (in italics) need to be moved in order for the Ogam groups to come about. First of all, the last line must be filled from elsewhere and it would seem that g paired itself quite naturally with ng. Secondly, m and r are taken from the second line? and thirdly b is moved to fill up the second line,* thus giving four groups of equal size: ‘Cr. Best 1913, 545 and 1942, 523 for bibliographical details. 2 Keller 1936, 35; Thurneysen’ 1937, 203; Vendryes 1941, 101; van Hamel 1946, 20"; Jackson 1983, 136 and Kuryfowicr 1961; an abbreviated account of the arguments given here is % be found in the fist part of a conference paper that I have published elsewhere (1980, 35~8). 3” The reason for this is less obvious. Perhaps the attempt (cf. Marstrander 1928, 126~34; 183 and ‘Thurneysen 1937, 200) to make the names of the Ogam letters fit the names of trees influenced his choice: mun ‘vine’ and gort ‘vy’ are not part of the Old Irish tree list as established by Kelly (1976) +A possible, but somewhat fanciful reason for the removal of b from this group has been sig- gested by Atkinson (1874, 231), namely that this took place in order to let the remsining letters Tepresent the number of strokes as follows: a hden 'V, a ddw "2, @ Wf '3', @ cetir “and a aig Another is suggested by Kuryfowiez (1961, 3), based on phonetic developments in Old Irish linking b tou (i.e. ), 4 to sand sto.n. On the other hand, the tre lst may have been at work: note that beithe "birch fen “alder and sal ‘willow’ are aithig feo ‘commoners ofthe wood” (Kelly 1976, 1l4—5) and Isis glossed (Auraic. 1165) a eéerthann ‘rowan, mountain ash’, which belongs tothe same group. In ‘any case, it seems to me rather likely that Thurneysen (1937, 204) was right to stress that the similarity ‘Comm, Hum. Litt, Vol. 73 ae iow bfians edhqt zomg mr At this stage, some re-arrangement took place, in my view, on lines similar those proposed by Carney (1975, 60~1) for his Construct. The first step may ha been to put the obvious pairs d r and c q together, leaving h as a leading leu together with a and 6. Some of the remaining re-arrangement probably happen ‘a fairly random fashion, with one exception (as Carney (1975, 61) points ou inside the phonetic pairs 0 u, ¢ i, dt, cq and n ng, there is alphabetical order a in the non-phonetic ones I f, s.n and z r, the order is anti-alphabetic, which age shows that the inventor was thinking on linguistic lines. ‘The Latin classification is usually coupled to the name of Donatus (cf. fn above), but (as Carney (1975, 56) rightly points out), the "name of Donatus h been overused in this connection, and it is quite clear that he did not invent t division of the Latin alphabet into four groups”. He mentions that Quinti (Inst. I, 4, 67) states that the letters should be classified thus: ". . .consonant a uocalibus discernere ipsasque in semiuocalium numerum mutarumque partir However, this does not supply the Greek letters. This is first found in a lz second or early third century metrical composition® as well as in several fou century grammarians, including Donatus.* In origin, it is an adaptation of the Greek classification:” the semiuocales ec respond to the juigwva and the mutae to the cova of Dionysius Thrax.* ( the other hand, the listing of y z as Graecae is of course a Latin innovatio Unfortunately, that part of Varro’s grammar which contained his doctrine phonology and graphemics is now lost, but one fragment survives? which gives ood pointer to his teaching on this point: “Varro dicit consonantes ab e debe incipere, quae semiuocales sunt, et in e debere desinere, quae mutae sunt”. T! between Greek Pitta and Irish beithe was how the tree names came to be applied atleast to som fot all Irish letter-names (beithe luis fern sail wi; (bMiath dair Une coll queri: mun gort ngetl st fuis;ailm onn ar edad: Aurnic. §S12-23), Note thatthe native tradition staes quite clearly that B the frst letter to be written in Ogam: see the tract on Ogam published by Calder (Auraic. $483 ‘quoted in ¥. 2302) and ef. TCD ms, H.3.17 (863, 35-7) for a brief account of this. ® Terentianus Maurus, GL. VI, 328 f; esp. 333.12: "Nil Ausoniis esse opus ¥ sonere dixi et & supremum, nisi gra verba cogent © Chat 4.10-8.7; Diom: 421.33~493.2: Don. Mai, I. 367.9-368.16; Dos.. 311: Mar. Vb 5.5-7.33 (esp. 515-29) Seru., 421.1—4239. For which in general see Steinthal 1891, 193 and Robins 1967, * D. Tha SL I24, CI. especially these passages: [1.1 Ziqguna d¢ ra hour Exranatdex: COXARVER OTH LY. -- ILS Toiruv fpiguava pev gory Gera: LEW huV es... 12.2°AQM ‘BE tore Evvda: By 1018 6 x and see further Collatt 1954, 75~f. "Expl, $20.18-20 (= GRF, 269 § 241) and Prob, 50.219 (GRF, 151-2 § 13), which points similar doctrine having been known to Caesar as well10 ANDERS AHLOVIST, The Early Irish Linguist gives us a probable terminus post quem for the Latin classification and therefore pethaps also for the Ogam alphabet, although it seems to me likely that this was, invented rather later, especially in view of the fact that the Graecae y z did not get into common use until well into the Empire (PW I, 1622). In any case, Varro is of special importance in this context for another reason, namely because of the agma, Our only source for this is Priscian (GL II, 30.12~21): “quod ostendit Varro in primo de origine linguae Latinae his verbis: ut Ion seribit, quinta vicesi- ma est litera, quam vocant agma, cuius forma nulla est et vox communis est Graecis et Latinis, ut his verbis: ‘aggulus’, ‘aggens’, ‘agguilla’, “iggerunt’. in cius- modi Graeci et Accius noster bina g scribunt, alii n et g, quod in hoc veritatem videre facile non est. similiter ‘agceps’, ‘agcora’ ”. This extra letter is not men- tioned by any of the fourth century grammarians referred to above'” and it would thus seem likely that the source used by the inventor of the Ogam alphabet was not one of these, whereas Priscian himself is of course much too late. Thus, it seems to me likely that the invention of the Ogam alphabet took place at a time when Varto’s doctrines were still reasonably well-known in the Roman provinces: if one takes into account the incorporation of the other Greek letters into the Latin alphabet during the Empire, the end of the second century or the beginning, of the third seems like a plausible date, which corresponds nicely with that pro- posed, on quite different historical grounds, by Binchy (1961, 8-9) ‘The phonological part of the teaching in the canonical Auraicept is based on the Latin distinction between mutes and semivowels. Much the same material that was used as the basis for the Ogam alphabet was thus still at the forefront among subjects of study for Irish grammarians a long time after the Ogam alphabet had been devised. However, it is unfortunately impossible for us to tell whether this, came about as the result of an unbroken tradition or because the same elements of Latin grammar became an important field of study with the coming of Christia- nity, Finally, it may be noted that the Ogam alphabet is dealt with, not only in parts of the canonical Auraicept,"' but also in a separate tract, edited by Calder," as an appendix to the Auraicept itself © See the sources mentioned above (Fn. 6) and note Dahimann’s (1970, 72) attempt to restore ‘agma into the section dealing with this matter in Marius Vietorinus’s text (GL. V, 8.11). Maritt's (1967, 7 ef. 163) emendation of this cifficult passage seems preferable to me. About the agma see further Richardson 1941, See the text edited below: 1,14; 2,2; 6,3~7. "2 Aura. 54653829, from BB, 308°44~314. There are at least three other manuscripts of this BM Add, 4783 (Ct. Derolez 1951, 9 and Chadwick and Dillon 1972, 1981); TCD ms. 1.3.18, 5 (CI. Abbott and Gwynn 1921, 141~2) and NLI ms. G $3, 1~22 (Ci. Ni Sheaghdha 1961, 72). ‘See also fn. 4 above. ‘Comm. Hum. Litt. Vol. 73 IRISH LAW AND THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE, 1.2. In one sense Irish law has always invited its students to become linguii well as jurists. The reason for this was and is of course the remarl conservatism! of the texts and, therefore, the need for specialists for their s Even if much of what early glossators and commentators had to contribute t study of their legal material never was of much value, the fact must be noted the attempt was made and kept being made over a fairly long time." Thus, it be said that these commentaries are a promising field of study not only fo students of the language itself,'° but also for those who are concerned wit history of linguistics in Ireland. One important and interesting similarity between much of the legal ma and the Auraicept lies in the fact that the old core or canonical part of the | has been subjected to a treatment not unlike that found in the canonical te the law tracts: a very large amount of gloss and commentary is to be f around the old text. In itself, this may provide a useful pointer to the age c Auraicept."© Also, it reflects how similar attitudes prevailed towards legal grammatical materials. Therefore, it is only to be expected that where a ling comment is made on a legal passage, this should be echoed in the Aurai Thus, in the Céic Conara Fugill (‘Five Paths to Judgment’), one finds the | tion asked: “what are the origin (bunad), quality (inne), application (airbe. the word conar ‘path’ and what is peculiar (ruidles), proper (diles), com (coitchens) and improper (indles) in regard to this word?”"” The same meth analysis is found a number of times in the Auraicept, notably in the comment on the "seven things by which Irish is measured” in the main text of the raicept. These, in turn, are quoted in a later introduction"® to the Coic Co which even ventures so far into linguistics as to list the Latin parts of speech. The details of how this formula came about are not clear to me, but o: whole it looks like a mixture of grammatical terminology of at least partly | See further Binchy 1959, 15 and note especially his comments on the "deliberate fossilizat an ancient and long obsolete text As Binehy (1943, 211) puts it: “The work of glossing the canonical tracts began short their compilation and continued for several centuries. Linguistica, therefore, the glosses very wide field, ranging from Old to Early Modern trish. Most of them, however, are wet “Middle or Modern Irish, a8 are all the commentaries 'S As Binchy (loc. eit.) puts it: "I hazard the opinion that these sources, more especial commentaries, offer a promising field for students ofthe historical grammar of Irish. tn adit ‘would, to me, seem appropriate to argue that a study of how old texts Were understood and (ps ‘more importansly) misunderstood might shed some light on the intellectual life ofthe period in interesting way. "© “Discussing the Uraicecht Bece, Binchy (1958, 47) states: “Indeed [am inclined to lay itd axiomatic that no text later than the eighth century has been glossed on the scale of UB" "Coie Con. Fug... 8 27-9. ™ urate. 739-852 "Coie Con. Fug.. 26 82. "Op. cit. 2786.2 ANDERS AHLOVIST, The Early Irish Linguist origin and legal teaching with dies ‘proper’ providing the link, through which indles ‘improper and ruidles “peculiar were adopted into an otherwise rather Latin-inspired set of terms.” The actual use to which the formula was put seems (in this context, at any rate) to me too vague to be of much interest. On the other hand, it is certainly worth noting where this kind of analysis (or part of it) is carried out.* With the exception of the (genuine) introduction to the Senchas Mar,” all these texts, namely Bretha Etgid, Uraicecht Becc and the Coic Conara Fugil all seem to belong to a poetico-legal school, separate from that in which the Senchas Mar itself had originated.”* It is of course clear that these commentaries are rather later than the texts themselves, but the interesting thing about them is that they provide some evidence that most” of the texts have a similar manuscript tradition and that this included the Auraicept. ‘Also, the tract on the privileges of poets and related matters edited by Gwynn (1940-2) from TCD ms. H.2.15b contains passages (14.y—15.5; 35.27-37.14) that seem to deal with language. Of these, the latter, which deals with the phy- siology of the voice,” is of special interest in this context, because itis also found in the Auraicept ms. D (TCD ms. E.3.3, 23°27—3) at the end of a law-tract on poets that follows on the Auraicept itself. Indeed, it seems to me of particular significance that three manuscripts containing poetico-legal material also include the Auraicept, namely BB (B); H.2.15b (G) and E.3.3 (D): all of these give the Auraicept first; immediately following,” there is legal material on the status of 2 Cl. Crith Gabl., 83 forthe opposition difeslindles in legal terminology. = For this word, see DIL R, 116.34~117.4 and especially 116.702, Note how terms similar to the Irish ones occur together in Irish sources, e. g. Donatus: "Nomen fest pars orstionis cum casu corpus aut rem proprie communiterve signifcans, proprie, ut Roma ‘Tiberis, communiter, ut urbs Dumen. nomini aecidunt sex, qualtas. .. (3732-8, of. 385.5-9; the italics are mine). This would account for ales, coitchenn and inne, whereas the use of bud may well be related to Isidore’s insistence on the importance of etymology: “Etymologia est origo vocabulor- ‘um" (1.29.1; my italies). Further parallels may be found in later sources: see e.2, Sed. mai. 64,16~23 ‘and 65.4952, Lastly, arbert seems to have been brought in hereto fil out the heptad, pethaps as an ‘equivalent for Latin signifcatio (note significans in the quotation from Donatus), especially if ane had been used as the equivalent of qualitas; in Sg. arbert is used both for qualtas and signiieaio (et the listin Thes. Pal. IL, 750. k)- CL, CIH 1, 2514-14; 37-8; H, 4.2831 and V, 1590.2—1591.13, corresponding to Lavws I 88,18-90.18; 94.236; 1, 30.y~224 and V.2.3-6.11 3” For the relationship between this and the pseudo historia! introduction, see Thurneysen 19272, 17487 and Binchy 1976, 16, noting his dating of the pseudo-historial one to ¢, 1100, which may provide us with @ useful pointer to when the bumad inde etc. analysis was in current use % See Binchy 1955 and 1958 and cf. Mac Neill (1922, 26 and 4416). who sought to link the Auraicept to some of these tracts (Bretha Eigid and Uraicecht Becc) on the basis of common au thorship. =" However, caution may be indicated in this respect until we have more information concerning the extent to which the formula was in use: if t turns out to be very extensively attested, it obviously will not be of much use regarding the manuscript tradition as such, 3 Cf. Gwynn’s comments on this passage (1940, 5; 1942, 27) BB, 335~38; H.2.15b, 135-156 and E.3.3, 16°24—23°3 and ote also that N (Ct. 2 below) has ‘material from the Auraicept together with some legal material dealing with the rights of poets. ‘Comm. Hum, Litt, Vol. 73 poets and in the last-mentioned ms. (D), it is moreover quite clear that the sa scribe wrote both the grammatical and the legal part. All this cannot, to my mi bbe due to a coincidence, especially in view of the fact that three different rec sions of the Auraicept are found in the three manuscripts and that the legal tra: although dealing in principle with poets and their status, also represent thre quite different recensions. Therefore, a connection between poetico-legal mz rial and the Auraicept finds reasonably strong support from a good cross-sect of the manuscript tradition. In other words, it seems that, together, the Auraic land the poetico-legal tract were considered as a kind of Scholar's Handbook t ‘gave or at in any case purported to give its owner not only the elements of profession but also an account of his duties and privileges as a practitio thereof. A similar pointer to where the Auraicept was felt to belong among Irish text provided by the fact that in three great North Connaught manuscript books, i found not far from legal and poetico-legal material. Thus, in the Book of Ba mote, the Uraicecht Becc follows immediately (as mentioned in the previ paragraph) after the Trefocul which concludes the Auraicept in this manuser In the Yellow Book of Lecan, this material comes before (197,~205p) the raicept, separated from it by about a dozen pages of other material. In the Be of Lecan, the Auraicept (which begins at 15141) is preceded by material that 1 belong to the poetico-legal school, namely the Senbriathra Fithil.*! ‘The details of these relations are not entirely clear, either as regards the ma script history or the transmission of doctrines, but in general an interest in | guage is certainly what one would expect from what Binchy has called (1955, “a mixed school of poetry and Jaw rather... a school in which filidecht included law and history, as well as poetry”. In the Senchas Mér tradition, on other hand, an interest in language seems less noticeable (apart from the v late prologue already mentioned) and this is consonant with the probability these tracts emanated from a school, whose members, as Binchy puts it (loc. were a “new caste of specialist” which gave us the Senchas Mar showing "us Jaw as seen by a professional jurist", who would be less inclined than his poet legal counterpart to indulge in linguistic speculation. Finally in this context, another text may be mentioned, namely the so-cal “Caldron of Poesy” (Breatnach 1981; Henry 1981), not because I should wist attempt to suggest that it too belongs to the poetico-legal tradition, but rat because it shares with some of the latter material a certain element of obscur ‘Also, the fairly heavy glossing it has been subjected to is reminiscent of the I © fourth one is found in CJM VI, 2211.1=2232.2 = BM ms. Cotton Nero A. VIL, ff 132 (see further O'Grady 1926, 141-6 and Binehy 1955). Beginning at L, 146vd15 and being followed by some related material at 147vbl, the ria Ireland at 147vb19 and an incomplete copy of Jmacallam in da Thuarad at 148val. CT. further Th Zu ir.Hdschr. 1, 11-22.4 ANDERS AHLOVIST, The Early Irish Linguist tracts and may even point to the text being quite old. In any case, it is quite clear that some parts of this tract deal with language, notably that where some possibly quite old terms® relating to grammatical gender are mentioned. These are also found in the commentary part of the Auraicept and in glossaries. On the other hand, the absence of the bunad ‘origin’ type of analysis formula in the commentary of this text may suggest a manuscript tradition somewhat separate from that proposed above for some of the poctico-legal material HIBERNO-LATIN GRAMMAR, 1.3 Although not sufficiently many of the texts existing in manuscript have been edited so far, the importance (cf. Bieler 1975, 217) of Hiberno-Latin grammatical tracts in the history of Latin grammar is well-known: a good and useful guide to what is known about it is given by Léfstedt in the introduction to his edition of Malsachanus’ Ars Grammatica (1965, 18—24). To these have recently been added the editions in Corpus Christianorum (CC CM XL—XLC) of some very important commentaries on Donatus (Laur.; Mur.; Sed.;* Sed. min.; Sed. in Eutych. and Sed. in Prisc.), written by Murethach, Sedulius and others. Also, Holtz’s recent masterly edition of Donatus and introduction to the history of mediaeval gram- mar contains much valuable information, which is very relevant to the history of the study of Latin grammar in Ireland.°> ‘Some mention has already been made of the importance of Latin grammar in the very earliest stages of Irish thinking about language. From the stage that is documented in manuscripts to the beginning of the Modern Irish period around 1200, it becomes crucial. Thus, it is not surprising that one of the earliest known Old Irish glosses should be a grammatical one (see below). As Bischoff stresses (1966, 210), the Irish took the study of the Bible and of Latin grammar as their main scholarly tasks. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that two (Wb. and MI.) of the three main collections of Old Irish glosses should be found in Biblical manu- scripts and that the third (Sg.) should be the heavily annotated manuscript of Priscian’s Latin grammar, preserved in St. Gall. So far, this has been studied mainly for the linguistic forms it contains, but, as Maartje Draak has shown (1967), there can be no doubt that it represents a very thorough and on the whole fairly competent involvement with Latin grammar, as expounded at length by ® seen. 16, above. © Cf, Watkins 1970, 10 and my comments below (p. 32). See Calder’s edition for text references: Auyaic., 347 and 359, 3 OF this text, another edition exists (Brearley 1975), for which see Lofstedt 1978 % See especially chaptets 711 (264322). On the other hand, Vivien Law's book (1982) on Insular Latin Grammarians had not reached me as this was written. Comm. Hum, Litt, Vol, 73 Priscian, not least because certain parts of may turn out to be very useful in ord to ascertain how justified certain recently expressed judgments (Stanford 19 26; Bieler 1975, 222) really were regarding the knowledge of Greek among ea Irish scholars.*° From the point of view of the Auraicept, the main importance of the St. G Priscian lies in that it shows a well-developed body of technical vocabulary, tt had been created, some of it any rate, a fairly long time before the glos: themselves were written. Thus, in the very early (ca 700°?) gloss on Donai already mentioned above, the term agaldemathacha is used to translate the La appellatiua, when Sg. would have doaccaldmach (DIL D, 178. 70-81); the c« nection between the two terms is obvious and this shows that the study of La grammar in Ireland started at a quite early date and, as © Cutv (1966, 158) t suggested, that the grammars of Donatus and Priscian “were in vogue in I land... perhaps even in the 6th century”. From the point of view of the A raicept, this is important, as the two main sources of the quotations in the co mentary are these two authors. Also, the St. Gall glosses contain a good deal of terminology found in t Auraicept, but not afterwards. For instance, the calque dobriathar on the La adverbium is replaced in post-Bardic grammars by reimhbhriathar (cf. RGH. 3 ‘and 1783), whereas the normal meaning of dobhriathar in later Irish is of cou "bad word, Vendryes (1902, 99-100) gives a brief list of grammatical ter borrowed into Irish from Latin, and a short list of grammatical terms, mos from Sg., that is of Latin origin, but a fall picture of how Latin terminology adapted to Irish will not emerge until there is a means of finding out what In term or terms came to be used as an equivalent for a given Latin one.” Hiberno-Latin grammars proper, i.e. tracts written in Latin by Irishmen, a with one possible exception,” not very original. Mostly, they consist of comme taries on basic statements taken from previous authors, such as Donatus a 26 As Draok (1967, 17) has pointed out, a study of the Greck materials in Sg. could be m revealing. T hope to be able to contripate sch an examination in the not too distant future: in ‘meantime, see my comments (1980, 2056 and forthcoming 1983) published elsewhere. 3" Thurneysen 1932, 208. The gloss itself is found in Ambr.; see further Worth. $8 9B, 1 Lafstedt 1965, 21 (with further references) and Carney 1979, 426. DIL D, 217.6-18, However, for some reason the old form has now been revived (the modern occurence known to me (O'Nolan 1908, 8) cites. 16"4) in written Modern Irish: Din records both réamk-Dhriaihar and do-bhriahar (1927, s. vv.) but de Bhaldrathe’s normative dict nary (s. ¥. ‘adverb’) gives only dobhriathar: see also © Searcaigh 1939, 252, O Cadhlaigh 1940, 3 ‘An Caighdedn Oifighil 1962, p.xiis 174 °» “G Cul (1966, 1561) gives some useful indications of what might be involved. so that itis much to be hoped that the forthcoming dictionary of Hiberna-Latin (ef. Stanford 1970. 16) whenever relevant list Old and Middle Irish equivalents of Latin wards, It has recently been proposed (Herren 1979, 69 and passim) that Viegtius Maro Grammati was an Irishman or, at any rate, that his work was written in Ireland. The matter is controversial ( Lafstedt 1981, 206), but it is quite clear that his work was much read in Ireland and that ‘manuscript tration, as we know it now, was largely Irish (see LO‘tedt 1965, 20).16 ANDERS AHLOVIST, The Early Irish Linguist Priscian in particular, but also Agroecius, Consentius, Isidore and Pompeius, to name but a few that are mentioned or quoted in the Auraicept. Finally, it must be mentioned that there are some tracts in quite late Irish manuscripts, that deal with the Latin language. One of these (Ir. Gi.) is in Latin, with Irish glosses on words cited and another is a metrical composition in Irish: both these are concerned with the declensions of Latin. As Greene (1954, 278) points out in his introduction to the latter of these, it shows that what he describes as “the scientific study of Latin continued into what we call the Middle Trish period”. From the point of view of the Auraicept, the tracts on letters‘! are of more importance, since some of the doctrine taught in them is part of Auraicept teaching as well, in that the distinction made in Latin grammar between semi- vowels and mutes is dealt with. On the other hand, another feature, namely the description of i and u as impure vowels because in Latin they can be either vowels or consonants is not found in the Auraicept, but, interestingly enough, in the Introductory part of the Irish Grammatical Tracts (IGT § 9). THE TRACTS ON LE’ 1.4 At present I know of three versions of the tract on the letters of the alphabet in Irish. Perhaps significantly, all three’ also contain material found in the Au- raicept. On the other hand, compared to that text, they are comparatively clean texts, more or less free of commentary and glossing, except in so far as the text as given in the TCD one ends with an account of the “etymologies” of the words gutta "vowel" and consain ‘consonant’, which are rather similar to those found in the commentary on the Auraicept.** Also, it contains some garbled Latin sent. ences, the exact meaning of which I cannot quite make out,“* but which look rather similar to material found in a small slip in TCD ms. H.4.22 (after p. 158) that also contains a passage given in a large hand with much commentary in the other mss. of group c of the Auraicept (= Y.4103~35). The three versions agree as to their contents, but not very closely, as far as arrangement and language are concerned. It is of course clear that they all go 4. Sec further section 1.4 following 2 NLEG 3, 52” 24~52"% (see further Ni Shéaghdha 1967, 27 and O Culv 1973, 188-9); Book of Lecan, 166*37—"22, published by Meyer (1918, 294~5; see also O Cuty, loc. cit.) and TCD H.3.18, 4141-2 (about this tract all Abbott and Gwynn (1921, 149) have to say is that it contains "various short notes"), © 'C B.358~375, “Tn 1.3.18 (414.3) these Latin words may be read: "Cestio falls cur 4 sit prima wocalis”. This is clear enough, but I cannot make out the answer. In GL VII, 302.4~11 a similar question is asked, but the answer given does not seem to resemble that in these tracts. The matter obviously requires further study, Comm. Hum. Litt. Vol. 73 1 back to the same sort of teaching, but there seems to be no very good reason fi postulating a common exemplar. The matter discussed is in any case elementary that it would seem quite reasonable to expect it to be known in mo than one centre of learning, THE AURAICEPT NA nECES 1.5. The esteem’ in which the Auraicept was held by the Irish learned classes well documented. A text that deals with classes of poets and metres gives us t piece of information about the first-year teaching in Middle Irish poetic schoo! This is the first part of the syllabus of the first year: fifty varieties of ogam addition to the correct one, the scholars’ primer with its introduction and declensions and twenty divisions (?) and six varieties of the metre dian’"* In ti later tradition, known as the Bardic Schools, the existence of the Auraicept w certainly known and some of its material is quoted in the Introductory Tract, but it seems to me likely that the very practical bias of these later schools, name to preserve and teach the unified Irish used for Bardie petry (O Cuiv 1973,-1 and passim) in fact made its study not all that useful to these schools, althouj some tenets of Auraicept doctrine were echoed in later teaching, Also, the rath large number of Auraicept manuscripts that have been preserved (see Chapter below) points to its popularity, even if some scribal mistakes would, at tim seem to imply that the text was not always understood all that well. Oth mentions of the Auraicept are to be found in the account of the Battle of Ma Rath and in Keating’s History of Ireland. The quotation from JT, given above, shows that when that was written, t Auraicept was thought to consist of three parts, introduction, main body of te and the declensions. The introduction is mainly pseudo-historical material unlike some parts of the Lebor Gabéla, The Main text deals in turn with the La and the Ogam alphabets, the Latin classification of consonants, that applicable the Ogam alphabet, gender in Latin and Irish, distinctions of compat son, pers + It contrasts sharply with the lack of interest shown in it by modera scholars, as only a f attempts (Including Calder’s 1917 edition) have been made to discuss the subject matter of | Auraicept: see Zimmer 1910, 10%4~9; Thurneysen 1927, van Hamel 1946; O Cuiv 1966, 158— 1973, 115-6 and some remarks of my awa (1972, 271; 1975; 1979; 1980, 38-49; 1980a, 15—7; 198 203-5; forthcoming 1983). 46 “TT IIL, 32 § 2: "ls bi tra cotus foglaim na cetbliadna i, coeca ogum im certoghum 7 siracept neicsin€ cona broluch 7 cana réimendaib 7 fiche drécht 7 sé dianai, ..” See further O'Curry 18 m3. IGT, Introductory § 4: this deals with the story of how ish was discovered (see text 1,11 below) and with the Ogam alphabet, which, as O Cutv (1966, 161) has pointed out, provides names of the letters and the order in which they were normally listed inthe Bardic schools. “8 About this, sce further Borst 1958, 611—18 ANDERS AHLOVIST, The Early Irish Linguist and voice, the seven things to take into account when analysing the Irish Jan- guage, a description of the Ogam alphabet, a table of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin alphabets. The section on declensions is old (Thurneysen 1927, 286), but seems to me, partly on the evidence supplied above, and partly on internal grounds, originally to have been an independent tract, which came to be associ- ated with the Auraicept proper simple because it too contained matter that was felt to be important to the study of language On top of all this, a vast amount of commentary has been added, probably in a number of different strata, so that one has to remember that it is always possible that some of the original may have come to be treated as commentary and some later material slipped into the canonical text. The very fact that this commentary if there at all is in all likelihood very important, in view of Binchy’s statement regarding the age of the Uraicecht Bec," according to which the Auraicept na nEces also would have to be from a time not later than the eighth century, since a similar, if not even greater amount of glossing and commentary is found around the Auraicept; some linguistic archaisms point in the same direction (see p. 36 below). Furthermore, the simplicity of the main text of the Auraicept, as com- pared, for instance, with that of Uraicecht Bece, must be taken into considera- tion: in cases where all manuscripts agree in preservering a late form, one would have to assume that scribes found it easy to modernise forms that, due to the simplicity of the subject-matter, they understood perfectly well anyway. ‘The Latin-inspired material in the Auraicept is not a good pointer to the age of the text, again because of the simplicity and the common-place nature of what is dealt with: this naturally makes it crop up in most Latin grammars. The most important direct borrowing (text 3,12 below) can be traced as far back as Varro (Ling., 602, Fr. 7a) and is therefore not very useful in this connection. At first sight, the mention in the commentary (B.801) of Cenn Féelad as the author of the prologue and therefore of the whole work (due to the shortness of the unglos- sed canonical text) may appear more promising, especially as the two historical sources already mentioned (The Battle of Magh Rath and Keating's History of Treland)* support it. He would seem to have died around 680:*' if correct, this date would imply that a certain amount of modernisation had taken place before our text was established. Cenn Féelad’s authorship has been accepted as historical fact by some modern scholars, but personally I should prefer, at this stage of the enquiry, at any rate, to consider the case as not proven, thereby agreeing for the moment with those scholars who have suggested caution.** In the case of the Ch fn. 16 above. 3 MR, 284.3~4 (cf. 278, note*) and Keat, 1, 80.7 ‘AU: 619; Innisfllen: 678; CS: 675; Ti.: 679 5 O'Curry Tl, 1873, 64; Calder 1917, p. xxvii; Mac Neill 1922, 441; Grosjean 19: 1952, 215%; 1975, 226 and Stanford 1976, 183. 5)" Thueneysen 1927, 281; Meroney 1945, 19; van Hamel 1946, 5 and Mac Cana 1970, 64. 5. 95; Bieler ‘Comm, Hum. Litt. Vol. 73 other “authors” of the various parts of the Auraicept one can only agree v Calder (1917, p. xxvii) that they are spurious, in spite of Zimmer's efforts connect Ferchertne File (B.737) with Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. The m reason for this is simply that the original tract was, I stress this again, too shor have been a compilation of the works of several authors: it would only have b after the process of accretion had been going on for some time that the need assigning different parts of the work to separate authors would have been fel exist The interest shown in the Auraicept by Bardic grammarians has already b mentioned and these may be reckoned as the first scholars no longer belonging the traditional school of Auraicept commentators, but to a new tradition. On other hand, most of the mediaeval glossaries® are part of the older traditi although the history of their manuscripts, as in the case of the Auraicept, 1 often owe more to antiquarian than to scholarly interest in the material. The sa is on the whole true of most of the later interest in the Auraicept, includ O’Donovan’s mention (1845, p. Iv) in his grammar. On the other hand, Sto (Goid., 73-5) prints parts of the declensional paradigms from the Book of Ba mote (collated with the Book of Lecan) and O°Curry (1873, I, 53-4) ascribe date of composition of about 650 to the Auraicept itself. With these the mod study of the Auraicept started.°° As Thave already mentioned, the Auraicept has been much criticized by so modern scholars,*” but this criticism is, it would seem, mostly based on the tex we have it after it had been glossed and commented upon, not on the origi material. One of the most outstanding features of this is that it must be one of very first texts in the Western grammatical tradition that ever even tried contrast a classical language with the vernacular of the writer.‘ Even more s prisingly, he regards his own language as superior to Latin. As far as Lam awz the first other attempt to discuss, through its own medium, another non-class language as something worth studying for its own sake took place in Icelan¢ the twelfth century.” It is perhaps not surprising that this too happened in from the point of view of the rest of Europe, fairly outlying place and that #1910, 1054—76, but ef. Calder 1917, p. 0. For a bibliography of these, see Best 1913, 6-9; 1942, 34 and fora useful survey Knott 19: See also the works mentioned in fa. 45 above and 57 below 5 Notably s0 by Bergin (1938, 307) and Adams (1970, 157. ‘On this point, see Meroney 1945, 20 and Fellman 1978. Edited by Benediktsson 1972, Haugen 1972 (see Henriksen 1975) and Albano Leoni 1975 Ulvestad 1976), ©" However, it is hardly fair to ignore early Irish and Scandinavian grammarians on the grou that “their work. . appears to have hd na impact whatsoever on Medieval scholarship” (Bursl- 1975, 182). See my comments (1980b, 207-8) on how one item of Irish origin spread to Scandin and to the Continent.0 ANDERS AHLOVIST, The Early Irish Linguist first vernacular grammar (of Provencal) on the continent should be from the following century (Percival 1975, 260) BARDIC AND POST-BARDIC GRAMMARIANS 1.5. Mainly because of the work of scholars such as Bergin,°' McKenna® and Cuiv,® the Bardic grammarians are now surely the best-known and certainly the most intensively studied practitioners of linguistics in Ireland before the modern period. The main purpose of the tracts as we have them is a purely normative one, namely to preserve and teach the classical language evolved in the twelfth century jn such a way as to make it used and understood by poets and their patrons all over Ireland and Scotland. This involved the establishment of the forms that were permitted out of the no doubt much larger variety of forms used in actual speech in the whole Gaelic-speaking area. Also, the tracts list forms that for some reason had to be avoided. Thus, it is not surprising that the tracts mostly consist of long lists of forms marked .c. for edir ‘correct’ or .I. for lochtach “faulty”.®! However, the introductory tract, referred to in the previous section builds on certain fea- tures of Auraicept teaching and even one rather faint echo of Latin learning, in that one brief section (§ 9) describes w and i as the two “impure” vowels: in Latin, but not in Irish, they can be both vowels and consonants, This piece of - teaching is not part of the Auraicept itself. On the other hand, it seems to me possible that another feature of Bardic teaching links up with the Auraicept, namely the division of the consonants into sex groups for metrical purposes® and not into the usual Latin semiuocales and mutae. The Auraicept mentions the Latin classification but insists (text 2,1—2,10 below) on how unsuitable it is with regard to the Trish language. These two items have not figured as prominently in scholarly discussion as the question of the parts of speech in Bardic grammar as compared with traditional (i.e. Latin) grammar. The tracts analyse the Irish lan- guage as one that has three parts of speech and it has been maintained that this classification was devised quite independently from a Latin model.®* In this case, however, I hope to have been able to show (1980a) that this feature is a borrow- ing from a Latin source and that it may have certain echoes in the Auraicept tradition. Likewise, it is now clear (O Cuiv 1966) that the terminology found in ©! See especially IGT and his Rhjs Memorial Lecture (1938) © 1940; 1947 and especially Bard. Synt. Tr © 1956; 1966; 1966a; 1960; 1973 and 1980, © See my remarks on ane example: 1980, 206, See further © Cuiv 19660. w® Do 038 900 and Adams 1970. 158. but cf, © Cuiv 1966. 152 and my discussion: 1980a. Comm. Hum. Litt. Vol. 73 the tracts is a mixture of Latin Joan words, Latin-inspired terms and purely nati ones. On the other hand, the “unassimilated classical terms” are no longer fou in the tracts (O Cuiv 1966, 155). In some cases, the adaptation of Latin gramn tical terminology to Irish must be seen, not so much in terms of a strai translation from Latin to Irish, but rather in the fashion of Li terminology being reinterpreted in a particular way."” Thus, there is the m interesting use of the term innsgne (originally = ‘verbum’, ‘dictio’) to refer 1 only to 'gender’ but also to "person’,* which could, I think, be connected with fact that these two distinctions are discussed together in the Auraicept (see t 4,3-6 below). To my mind, the most interesting and important link between | Auraicept and the grammatical tracts is the treatment of the copula, In 4 declensional paradigms (p 21 below), this element is treated as one of a num! of elements that could be prefixed to nouns. In the Irish Grammatical Tracts, copula is treated in a similar way, in so far as it is classified as an iairmbéa together with other pretonic particles:" I have discussed the implications of for modern linguistic theory on a previous occasion (1972, 271); this treatm was not given up by Irish grammarians until the late eighteenth century The main feature of post-Bardic grammar is that the links with Latin gramn and the Continental tradition are established anew. Thus © hEodhasa’s mai script grammar (RGH) is in Latin, as is the first printed one (O’Molloy 1677). the treatment of the parts of speech in these mentions both the Bardic syster and a Latin-based division into the then usual seven parts of speech; by | nineteenth century, during the course of which the native Irish grammatical tr tion can be said to have ceased (Bergin 1938, 231), the Bardic system was | sight of, until the Irish Grammatical Tracts were re-discovered early in the tw tieth century in grammat © Thus, © Catv (1946, 163) has shown Row the we of moladh prs” in the sense of ‘adjec derives fom a passage of Driscin’s (GL MI 0.6~7) See further O Culv 1966 152 and Adams 1970, 160-1 (who probaly draws on Bard. Sy. 260=1; 285-6 and 293) Ci. Bergin 1938, 200; © Cav 1966, 182; Adams 1970, 158-9 and my discussion of how ‘Auraicept treats ths matter (1974, 183), Fr some prateal spplicatons of Barc teaching abou opula, note that John Armrong is preparing an edition of a tact on the subjunctive, which ma elated 10, if not identical withthe LeabharIeimbeariaSuidighhe mentioned in GGB. 2265-7 GOB, 33341 and O'Molloy 1677, 825 ep. my discussion (1980) ofthe pats of spec Bardie grammerTHE MANUSCRIPT TRADITION OF THE AURAICEPT 2. The complexity of the manuscript tradition is a good sign of how important early Irish scholars and antiquarians thought the Auraicept to be. The first and so far only printed edition of the text (Calder 1917) used only a few of the manu- scripts now known to exist. It is not the intention here to publish anything more than the canonical text of the Auraicept, so that this is not an attempt to super- sede Calder’s edition, but rather to complement it in a way that might help toward a more definitive edition being attempted in the future, of the Auraicept itself and of related material Also, I very much hope to spur other researchers to look for further manu- scripts of the Auraicept, as my own selection is based mainly on information to be gleaned from published catalogues of manuscripts, not on a systematic search through the vast amount of early Irish material that still remains unpublished, ‘Therefore, it is not claimed that the following list of manuscripts is complete, but merely that it contains all relevant manuscripts known to me at the time of writing, except for late transcripts! from known exemplars. Abbr. Fam. Libr. Number Place inms. Material Date D a TCD £.3.3/1432 3al-16b23 vellum xv-xvi? M a RIA. Dil/i225—139(E)rbS—_—— vellum ate 143(L)ra60 xiv? B b RIA 23P12/536 314a—-331b34_— vellum —_xiv-xv! 1t seems for example clear that Tadhg © Neachtain used B for his transcript of the Auraicept in TED ms, H.1, 15/1289: 533~70 correspond to B.1~1636 and 659—663 to B.1637~2254 2 Scribe: Diarmuid © Dubhugéin (according to the colophon at 2363-10, which also lists one Uilliam © Loingsib, for whom it was prepared). 5 "'UP (f. the introduction to the facsimile edition: Mulehrone 1935, 41; 56). This is the Book of UMaine, also known as the Codex O Duvegani +" Solamh © Droma wrote this part of the codex, whieh is known @s the Book of Ballymote. Our text corresponds closely to Calder’ edition (lines 1~ 1960). Note thet in order to facilitate looking up references in the text, I have used Calder's lineation rather than that of the manuscript whenever ‘making reference to this version, Comm. Hum. Litt, Vol. 73 E b NLS 19b14—29b32 vellum L b RIA 232/535 1S1ra~161vb27__ vellum A © RIA Aii#/73846a—64 paper Fg ¢ BM Egerton 88 63ra26— vellum T6rb15 G © TCD H.2.15b/1317 105-130 paper xvii? P © NLT G53 50-144 paper xvii'® T © TCD H.4.22/1363 167-198 vellum xv Y © TCD H.2.16/1318 504.23-549.13 vellum xiv-xv!? TCD H.3.18/1337 414.262 vellum 74 NLI G2 Lral7—llvb.2 vellum ca 1345" TCD B.3.3/1432 GlossesonD vellum —_xv-xvi'® TCD E.3.3/1432 23b11-24b.z_ vellum —_xv-xvil® TCD H.2.17/1319 486-487 vellum 27 TCD H.3.18/1337 655-654b36-z vellum —?"* TCD E.3.3/1432 GlossesonD vellum —_xv-xvi TCD H.3.18/1337 519vb15-520 vellum?” 5 Adhamh © Cuirnin was the scribe of what is known a John Beaton’s Broad Book: of Concheanainn 1975, 100. © Seribe: Muread Riabech © Cuindlis. The codex is known as the Book of Lecan or someti ako asthe Great Book of Lecan "See further below, §2.13 and fo, 34 below writen ty Domnall © Duibhéohoirenn © Note that inthis ms the Auracept i followed by a poetico-legal above £8” Seribe: Cacnerche © Clerigh 4 Series: Sairbrethach and Aod "This codex is known a5 the Yellow Book of Lecan (BL): the text corresponds to Cald edition (at lines 2260~5055). The remarks in fn. above apply to all references to this ms. in the t *8°"This corresponds to M, 141(F}b 42-35 and to B.357~70. This is known as the © Ciandin Miscellany after the seibe Adhamh O Ciandin, a membe this wel-Known learned family, These exrets correspond to B.1515~29: 1770-1813 and 1883~95 This correspond to many ofthe glosses incorporated ito the tex in B "© This corresponds to B. 1637 ~ 1925 "This corresponds to B.10—905, preceded by material sinilar to ¥.3619~3625 This corresponds o B. 1-25, followes by ¥.2498~2520. These are marginal glosses, in the same hand as the main text, as written by Diarmui Dubhugéin 20 These are glossed extracts, ef. ¥.2260~ act See further p. 12 and24 ANDERS AHLQVIST, The Early Irish Linguist H, ~ b? TCD 420-421 vellum Hy abe TCD —,,- 643" vellum TCD H.3.17/1336 671.28-672.2 vellum MORE OR LESS COMPLETE MANUSCRIPTS 2.41 Calder had divided the manuscripts of the Auraicept into two families, a “short” and a “long” one (1917, p. xiii), but it seems to me that it might be preferable to distinguish three groups, which I have called a, b and e, Apart from seribal corruptions of individual words, the main differences between these are ‘ones related to how much additional material is found in them and how the ‘canonical part is treated in them. Especially from this latter point of view, Cal- der’s insertion of M in the "short family” together with B, E and L seems to me somewhat misleading, as there are good reasons for considering this manuscript and D as forming one separate group (a) of manuscripts rather shorter than those in the two other groups. Apart from this, a is closer to ¢ than to b, which is the only group to preserve, in any systematic fashion, the distinction between cano- nical text and commentary. This may also be seen in that a and ¢ share some material not included in b. Furthermore, D and D, together give a text that corresponds to much but not all of e. On the other hand, the complete codicolo- gical history would undoubtedly require a much more elaborate examination and collation of the manuscripts than I have been able to carry out. This applies especially to how manuscripts belonging to ¢ relate to each other, not only in terms of material included or omitted, but also in terms of the emergence of the curious pseudo-archaising spelling found for instance in Y and elsewhere. This matter would surely repay further study from a student of the antiquarian circles in late mediaeval Ireland, not only for describing the relations between them, but also as an insight into their ideas and methods. The manuscripts in group a 2.1.1 This is the shortest class of Auraicept manuscripts, of which M is probably older. Its past history is fairly well known and it is usually attributed (o the late fourteenth century.* D, on the other hand, has not been dated with certainty beyond the rough indication given by Abbott and Gwynn (1921, 307) that it “This corresponds to B.1893~1925. 2 This corresponds to B.228~260 and Y.2542—2570, © The frst part (671.2849) corresponds to B.917—26 with extracts from 943961; the remainder corresponds 10 B. 1927-60 2” See Macalister 1942, 1~2 and Mulehrone 1943, 3314-6. Comm. Hum. Litt. Vol. 73 belongs to the fifteenth or the sixteenth century and as I cannot date the pers named in the colophon (see fn. 2 above), this does not help except in this tha provides a tenuous link between the two manuscripts: the scribe has the surna found in the mention of M as the "Codex O Duvegani”.?> The reasons why th manuscripts form one group and why M should not be included in Calder's "sh family” are the following. First of all, both M and D omit the section (B.1-75 ‘Y.2260-2355) starting with the words “incipit Auraicept na nEces”. Second unlike group b, it includes the Latin material (M, 135vb19-36 ~ D, 8646 found in c (e.g. ¥.3235~48), some of which may, in my opinion, be derived ff the writings of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus.”* On the other hand, unlike grou it does not give the Latin glosses on the letters of the alphabet (Y. 4211-2 which represent another, and rather more obvious link with Virgilius.”” Thiré in the section dealing dealing with distinction of person, this recension, like ¢, ‘Y.3355—7) gives a passive paradigm that is, unlike that in a (cf. B.653~5) rec nisably Old Irish. On this point M (135ra.x) is incomplete, whereas D (9b49— gives some good readings. Finally, both the manuscripts break off at the pc that corresponds to B.1636: “conige seo corp ind Auraicepta” ‘hitherto the m body of the Auraicept’, thus leaving out most, but not all of the section conts ing the paradigms Although they are closely related, there can be no question of either D or deriving from the other. In matters of spelling, D is undoubtedly much m modern than M, as witnessed by the opening lines of the text M, 139ra55: Asberat tra augtair nangoedel D, 3al: Asbearad tra ubdair nangaidheal On the other hand, D preserves some better readings, as for instance in case of the passive paradigms already mentioned (see text 4,6 below) and quotation from Virgilius Maro already mentioned, where the reading D, 8b57 hoc iustitia ueiritas permits (as the h(a)ec found elsewhere) us to identify | passage and relate it to Virgilius’ discussion of “natural” and “artificial” gen (ee fn. 26 above). D is of special interest for yet another reason, namely beca it is surrounded by a copious gloss, some (D)) undoubtedly in the same hand « ink as in the main text and some (Ds) that looks like the hand in D3. Adding former amount (D;) of glossing to the main text one arrives at a text comprisin % O'Flaherty 1685, p. 18. See further O’Curry 1873,59; Kenney 1929, 24 and Carey 1969, 127 "There ace three quotations here (Y.3235~9; 3240-2; 32448). OF these, the second is corr attributed to Consentius (GL V, 343,2~344,3), the fist one incorrectly (cf, Thurneysen 1927, 27 Pompeius and the third lacks any identification; both these have certain points in common wi passage in the work of Vieglius, which discusses “natural” and “artificial” gender. If, as ¥inclin think, the connection is genuine, a more comprehensive recension, like that preserved in the qu tion in GL. VII, 82.27-83.7, has been used, rather than that found in the standard editions: Polara (ed.), 184 32—41—Huemer, (ed.) 110.9. # Polara (ed), 164.4252 = Huemer (ed.), 98.17-90.7,