Old Irish glosses, except those of St. Gall and Milan, which the edition of Ascoli had already made publici juris.
It is with very considerable eagerness that the remainder of the Milan Codex is awaited from the able hands of its editor, for it is not too much to say that every page of this work[1] adds some valuable item to our stock of knowledge.
Thus, when Ascoli's edition of the Milan Codex shall have been published, the student will have at his command about the entire body of Old Irish extant. It is therefore not too optimistic to expect that, before the completion of the present decade, we shall be in possession of a dictionary in which the whole of the Old Irish material will be sifted and arranged in a manner that will leave little scope for further amelioration.
III. The next important element is the glossaries. From this side, too, something has been done, but not much. The small glossary of O’Clery was edited by A. W. K. Miller, in the Rev. Celtique of 1879–80, tome iv., 351; but already in 1862 Stokes had published the more important glossary attributed to Cormac, together with the valuable law glossary of O’Davoren. In 1868, Stokes edited O’Donovan’s translation of Cormac’s Glossary; but the O’Davoren remained untranslated. The latter was submitted to a careful investigation by Ebel in an admirable Paper in the Revue Celtique, ii. 453, and the publication of the Felire by Stokes, in 1880, gave an opportunity for the further utilization of O’Davoren, who still, however, remains untranslated.
In the Philological Society, 1859, Stokes published, also without translation, some glosses from MS. H. 3, 18, Trin. Coll., Dublin, and the same author in 1860 brought out a valuable little tract on Latin Declension, with Irish Glosses, accompanying it with his usual painstaking indices. But beyond these publications nothing of importance has been done in the way of facilitating the study, or at all events of completing the publication of the extant glosses. This is much to be regretted, because the glosses do undoubtedly contain much excellent
- ↑ In the case of MSS. of this supreme importance, it is a matter of absolute necessity that every word, syllable, and letter should be scrutinized with the closest attention, so as to secure the exactest possible reproduction of these invaluable documents, which form the basis for all scientific study of Celtic speech. It is, therefore, perhaps to be regretted that the MS. could not have been photographed.
