On another occasion the St. Gall MS. gives [67b13, 14] inducbal, i. e. gloria, as a gloss on Priscian’s glos gloris, ‘husband’s wife.’
But in other instances the fault is in the editor, especially in the case of words that do not occur frequently, and which differ but slightly from other known words of similar meaning; e. gr. in the Gr. Celt., p. 778, the word dedarnaib (gl. strenuis) is presented as doubtful, the Zeuss indices adding no further information than Ebel’s unlucky suggestion that it should be written cedarnaib, no doubt through the influence of the Welsh cadarn, ‘powerful.’ But the word dedarn is perfectly correct; thus we have Ml. 44a2, dedairnn .i. timmartae, as a gloss on (ultio) arcta; 48c4, gl. strenuum (principem) ; 57 α6, in the comparative ‘ata dedarnnu, .i. ata thimmartu ón ⁊ ata imnedchu,’ glossing arctiores (necessitates); 48 α11, hondedárntui (gl. taciturnitate), ‘from the great [deep, stubborn] silence.’ And indeed O’Davoren gives the word dédhoirnn .i. demin no calma, with a fair appreciation of the meaning.
Again, Ascoli has edited a vox nihili in two places, which a fuller consideration readily sets aright; Ml. 34 b6, the passage, ‘qui devorant plebem meam sicut cibum panis’ is explained thus: “am nadn-gaib lius disuidiu issamlid insin nisgaib som lius difordiuc laimmi-muthaithese,” where the word fordiuc by itself is unmeaning: the word is di fordiuclaimmimÄ mu th[u]aithe-se, “from the swallowing of my people”. This word was evidently a difficulty to the learned editor, for on Ml. 19 d5, he gives it in the same fashion in the gloss on the passage, ‘omnia ut fors tulerit aguntur incerta et more vivitur bestiarum,’ there is nobody who is guided by the dliged remdeicsen ‘dispensatio rationis,’ to distinguish between the good and the bad, ‘do dechrugud etir maithi ⁊ ulcu’; then follows the gloss [:] ocad .i. a con-bad dliged remdéicsen oco-tuistin sidi acht inti bed tressu dofordiuc la : : : : alaile, “the one who is stronger devours the other,” explained in the next note, ishé dǐ ambés adi intí diib bes tresa orcaid alaile, where orcaid is the equivalent of the word in the former case, viz. do-fordiucla[id], to judge from the space. As to the form -aid, we have lenaid, Sg. 9 b17. But to divide dofordiuc is to construct a new word.
The same thing seems to me to have been done in an interesting case in the Irische Texte, where Windisch, in the Corrigenda, has adopted an emendation of Stokes, without apparently exercising the right of private judgment on the matter. He gives, “p. 559, read
