Page:Irish Lexicography.djvu/16

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ON IRISH LEXICOGRAPHY.

[1871]Shortly after, Ebel, who had been steadily labouring in investigation of the structure of the language, on which he published many important papers in the Beiträge, was enabled, in 1871, to republish the Grammatica Celtica with many valuable alterations and additions;[1872] and the following year Stokes re-edited his Goedelica, with much fresh matter, including glosses from Vienna, Nancy, Berne, Leyden, together with the Old Irish hymns and glosses found in the Liber Hymnorum, as well as the Irish notes in the Book of Armagh.

[1872]The same year, Nigra published his Reliquie Celtiche, giving a detailed account of the MS. of St. Gall, its form, pagination, contents, period and place of compilation, its ogam entries, its marginal readings, its script, with four illustrative photo-lithographic pages, and a selection from the glosses themselves.

[1878]The next important step was taken in 1878 by Professor Ascoli, who, in vol. v. of the Archivio Glottologico Italiano, began the publication of the Milan Codex, under the title Il Codice Irlandese dell' Ambrosiana, of which the second fasciculus was issued in 1882. Between the two fasciculi he published the St. Gall glosses in their entirety, with catchwords from the Latin text of Priscian, which, unfortunately, are not full enough to obviate the necessity of a constant and troublesome reference to the editions of the Latin text by Putsch or Hertz.

[1881]But now, in 1881, a most valuable addition was made to our means of study by the publication of Güterbock and Thurneysen's Indices Glossarum et Vocabulorum Hibernicorum quae in Gr. Celt, explanantur. This excellent piece of work enabled everybody to see at once whether any word was discussed in the Gr. Celt., and, at the same time, brought together the whole of the texts (so far as they are quoted in the Gr. Celt.) of the St. Gall, Turin, and Würzburg Codices, and of the Milan Codex as much as was then attainable; with singularly accurate reference to the place of occurrence of each word in the Gr. Celt., and a suitable classification of the different forms. This work furnished at once a convenient text-book and glossary of the Old Irish material, and freed the student from the enormous labour which had up to this time devolved upon the beginner, of making for himself some provisional index to Zeuss.

In the same year, a further step was taken by Professor Zimmer in the publication of his Glossae Hibernicae, a revised edition of all the