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    "source_title": "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911)",
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    "chunk_id": "1911:celt:07ddc5bea41d",
    "title": "CELT",
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    "verified_text": "celt, or kelt, the generic name of an ancient people, the bulk of whom inhabited the central and western parts of europe. (for the sense of a primitive stone tool, see the separate article, later.) much confusion has arisen from the inaccurate use of the terms \"celt\" and \"celtic.\" it is the practice to speak of the dark-complexioned people of france, great britain and ireland as \"black celts,\" although the ancient writers never applied the term \"celt\" to any dark-complexioned person. to them great stature, fair hair, and blue or grey eyes were the characteristics of the celt. the philologists have added to the confusion by classing as \"celtic\" the speeches of the dark-complexioned races of the west of scotland and the west of ireland. but, though usage has made it convenient in this work to employ the term, \"celtic\" cannot be properly applied to what is really \"gaelic.\" the ancient writers regarded as homogeneous all the fair-haired peoples dwelling north of the alps, the greeks terming them all _keltoi_. physically they fall into two loosely-divided groups, which shade off into each other. the first of these is restricted to north-western europe, having its chief seat in scandinavia. it is distinguished by a long head, a long face, a narrow aquiline nose, blue eyes, very light hair and great stature. those are the peoples usually termed teutonic by modern writers. the other group is marked by a round head, a broad face, a nose often rather broad and heavy, hazel-grey eyes, light chestnut hair; they are thick-set and of medium height. this race is often termed \"celtic\" or \"alpine\" from the fact of its occurrence all along the great mountain chain from south-west france, in savoy, in switzerland, the po valley and tirol, as well as in auvergne, brittany, normandy, burgundy, the ardennes and the vosges. it thus stands midway not only geographically but also in physical features between the \"teutonic\" type of scandinavian and the so-called \"mediterranean race\" with its long head, long face, its rather broad nose, dark brown or black hair, dark eyes, and slender form of medium height. the \"alpine race\" is commonly supposed to be mongoloid in origin and to have come from asia, the home of round-skulled races. but it is far more probable that they are the same in origin as the dark race south of them and the tall fair race north of them, and that the broadness of their skulls is simply due to their having been long domiciled in mountainous regions. thus the \"celtic\" ox (_bos longifrons_), from remote ages the common type in the alpine regions, is characterized by the height of its forehead above the orbits, by its highly-developed occipital region, and its small horns. not only do animals change their physical characteristics in new environment, but modern peoples when settled in new surroundings for even one or two centuries, e.g. the american of new england and the boer of south africa, prove that man is no less readily affected by his surroundings. the northern race has ever kept pressing down on the broad-skulled, brown-complexioned men of the alps, and intermixing with them, and at times has swept right over the great mountain chain into the tempting regions of the south, producing such races as the celto-ligyes, celtiberians, celtillyrians, celto-thracians and celto-scythians. in its turn the alpine race has pressed down upon their darker and less warlike kindred of the south, either driven down before the tall sons of the north or swelling the hosts of the latter as they swept down south. as the natives of the southern peninsula came into contact with these mixed people, who though differing in the shape of the skull nevertheless varied little from each other in speech and colour of their hair and eyes, the ancient writers termed them all \"keltoi.\" but as the most dreaded of these celtic tribes came down from the shores of the baltic and northern ocean, the ancients applied the name celt to those peoples who are spoken of as teutonic in modern parlance. the teutons, whose name is generic for germans, appear in history along with the cimbri, universally held to be celts, but coming from the same region as the guttones (goths) by the shores of the baltic and north sea. again, the germani themselves first appear in the celtic host destroyed by marcellus at clastidium in 225 b.c. all the true celtae or galatae in france had come across the rhine; the belgic tribes in northern france were cimbri, who also had crossed the rhine: in caesar's day the germans were still constantly crossing that river, and so-called gauls who lived near the germans, e.g. the treveri, closely resembled the latter in their habits, while in later times were to come goths and franks from beyond the great river. it is then not strange that the gallic name for a henchman (_ambactus_) is the same as the gothic (_ambahts_). the earliest invaders, under the name of celtae, had occupied all central gaul, doubtless mixing with the aboriginal ligurians and iberians, who, however, maintained themselves respectively in the later provence and in aquitania. the celts had firmly established themselves by the 7th century b.c. and we know not how long before, the bituriges (whose name survives in berri) being the dominant tribe. in the alps and the danube valley some of the celts had dwelt from the stone age; there they had developed the working of copper, discovered bronze (an alloy of copper and tin), and the art of smelting iron (see hallstatt). the umbrians, who were part of the alpine celts, had been pressing down into italy from the bronze age, though checked completely by the rise of the etruscan power in the 10th century b.c. the invention of iron weapons made the celts henceforth irresistible. one of the earliest movements after this discovery was probably that of the achaeans of homer, who about 1450 b.c. invaded greece (see achaeans), bringing with them the use of iron and brooches, the practice of cremating the dead, and the style of ornament known as geometric. later the cimmerians (see scythia and cimmerii) passed down from the cimbric chersonese, doubtless following the amber routes, and then turned east along the danube, some of their tribes, e.g. the treres, settling in thrace, and crossing into asia; others settled in southern russia, leaving their name in the crimea; then when hard pressed by the scythians most of them passed round the east end of the euxine into asia minor, probably being the people known as gimirri on assyrian monuments, and ravaged that region, the relics of the race finally settling at sinope. at the beginning of the 6th century b.c. the celts of france had grown very powerful under the biturigian king ambigatus. they appear to have spread southwards into spain, occupying most of that country as far south as gades (cadiz), some tribes, e.g. turdentani and turduli, forming permanent settlements and being still powerful there in roman times; and in northern central spain, from the mixture of celts with the native iberians, the population henceforward was called celtiberian. about this time also took place a great invasion of italy; segovisus and bellovisus, the nephews of ambigatus, led armies through switzerland, and over the brenner, and by the maritime alps, respectively (livy v. 34). the tribes who sent some of their numbers to invade italy and settle there were the bituriges, arverni, senones, aedui, ambarri, carnuti and aulerci. certain material remains found in north italy, e.g. at sesto calende, may belong to this invasion. the next great wave of celts recorded was that which swept down on north italy shortly before 400 b.c. these invaders broke up in a few years the etruscan power, and even occupied rome herself after the disaster on the allia (390 b.c.). bought off by gold they withdrew from rome, but they continued to hold a great part of northern italy, extending as far south as sena gallica (_sinigaglia_), and henceforward they were a standing source of danger to rome, especially in the samnite wars, until at last they were either subdued or expelled, e.g. the boii from the plains of the po. at the same time as the invasion of italy they had made fresh descents into the danube valley and the upper balkan, and perhaps may have pushed into southern russia, but at this time they never made their way into greece, though the athenian ladies copied the style of hair and dress of the cimbrian women. about 280 b.c. the celts gathered a great host at the head of the adriatic, and accompanied by the illyrian tribe of autariatae, they overthrew the macedonians, overran thessaly, and invaded phocis in order to sack delphi, but they were finally repulsed, chiefly by the efforts of the aetolians (279 b.c.). the remnant of those who returned from greece joined that part of their army which had remained in thrace, and marched for the hellespont. here some of their number settled near byzantium, having conquered the native thracians, and made tyle their capital. the byzantines had to pay them a yearly tribute of 80 talents, until on the death of the gallic king cavarus (some time after 220 b.c.) they were annihilated by the thracians. the main body of the gauls who had marched to the hellespont crossed it under the leadership of leonnorius and lutarius. straightway they overran the greater part of asia minor, and laid under tribute all west of taurus, even the seleucid kings. at last attila, king of pergamum, defeated them in a series of battles commemorated on the pergamene sculptures, and henceforth they were confined to a strip of land in the interior of asia minor, the galatia of history. their three tribes--trocmi, tolistobogians and tectosages--submitted to rome (189 b.c.), but they remained autonomous till the death of their king amyntas, when augustus erected galatia into a province. their descendants were probably the \"foolish galatians\" to whom st paul wrote (see galatia). ancient writers spoke of all these gauls as cimbri, and identified them with the cimmerians of earlier date, who in homeric times dwelt on the ocean next to the laestrygones, in a region of wintry gloom, but where the sun set not in summer. nor was it only towards the south and the hellespont that the celtic tide ever set. they passed eastward to the danube mouth and into southern russia, as far as the sea of azov, mingling with the scythians, as is proved by the name celto-scyths. mithradates vi. of pontus seems to have negotiated with them to gain their aid against rome, and bituitus, a gallic mercenary, was with him at his death. the celts had continually moved westwards also. the belgae, who were cimbric in origin, had spread across the rhine and given their name to all northern france and belgium (_gallia belgica_). many of these tribes sent colonies over into south-eastern britain, where they had been masters for some two centuries when caesar invaded the island (see britain). but there is evidence that from the bronze age there had been settlers in northern britain who were broad-skulled and cremated their dead, a practice which had arisen in south germany in the early bronze age or still earlier. it is not unlikely that, as tradition states, there were incursions of celts from central gaul into ireland during the general celtic unrest in the 6th century b.c. it is certain that at a later period invaders from the continent, bringing with them the later iron age culture, commonly called la tene, which had succeeded that of hallstatt, had settled in ireland. not only are relics of la tene culture found in ireland, but the oldest irish epics celebrate tall, fair-haired, grey-eyed heroes, armed and clad in gallic fashion, who had come from the continent. the celts in italy, in the balkan, in france and in britain, overspread the indo-european peoples, who differed from themselves but slightly in speech. the celts represented indo-european q by p, whilst the greeks, illyrians, thracians, ligurians, and aborigines of france, britain and ireland represented it by k, c or qu. the umbrian-sabellian tribes had the same phonetic peculiarity as the celts. thus gallic _petor_ (_petor-ritum_, \"four-wheeler\"), umbrian _petur_, homeric [greek: pisures], boeotian (achaean) [greek: pettares], welsh _pedwar_; but gaelic _cethir_, lat. _quatuor_. the celts are thus clearly distinguished from the gaelic-speaking dark race of britain and ireland, and in spite of usage it must be understood that it is strictly misleading to apply the term celtic to the latter language. see also ridgeway, _early age of greece_, vol. i., and _oldest irish epic_; ripley, _the races of europe_; sergi, _the mediterranean race_. (w. ri.) celtic languages _introduction_.--the celtic languages form one group of the indo-european family of languages. as might be expected from their geographical distribution, they hold a position between the italic and teutonic groups. they are distinguished from these and other branches of the family by certain well-marked characteristics, the most notable of which are the loss of initial and inter-vocalic p, cf. ir. _athair_ with lat. _pater_; ir. _lan_, \"full,\" welsh _llawn_, breton _leun_, with lat. _plenus_; gaulish _are-_, \"beside,\" ir. ar. welsh, breton ar, with gr. [greek: peri], [greek: para]; and the change of i. e. e to i, cf. ir. _fir_, \"true,\" welsh _gwir_, breton _gwir_, lat. _verus_. we may further mention that the i. e. labialized velar gv is represented by b, e.g. ir. bo, \"cow,\" welsh _buwch_, gr. [greek: bous], sanskr. _gaus_; ir. _ben_, \"woman,\" gr. [greek: gyne], whilst the medial aspirates bh, dh, gh result in simple voiced stops. i. e. sonant r and l become ri, li. other distinctive features of the modern dialects are not found in gaulish, partly owing to the character of the monuments. such are the -ss-preterite and the fusion of simple prepositions with pronominal elements, e.g. ir. _fri-umm_, \"against me,\" welsh _wrth-yf_, breton _ouz-inn_. the initial mutations which are so characteristic of the living languages did not arise until after the romans had left britain. the celtic languages betray a surprising affinity with the italic dialects. indeed, these two groups seem to stand in a much closer relationship to one another than any other pair. as features common to both celtic and italic we may mention: (i) the gen. sing, ending -i of masc. and neut. stems in o; (2) verbal nouns in _-tion_; (3) the b- future; (4) the passive formation in -r. the various celtic dialects may be divided as follows:--(1) gaulish; (2) goidelic, including irish, scottish gaelic, and manx; (3) brythonic, including welsh, breton and cornish. gaulish and brythonic, like oscan and umbrian among the italic dialects, change the i. e. labialized velar guttural qv to p, whilst the goidelic dialects retain the qv which later gives up the labial element and becomes k, e.g. gaulish _petor-_, \"four,\" ir. _cethir_, welsh _petguar_, breton _pevar_, lat. _quattuor_; ir. _cia_, \"who,\" welsh _pwy_, lat. _quis_; gaulish _epo-_, \"horse,\" welsh _eb-ol_, breton _eb-eul_, ir. _ech_, lat. _equus_. several attempts have been made to prove the existence of celtic dialects with qv on the continent. forms containing p occur in the coligny calendar, discovered in 1897, by the side of others with qv, a state of affairs not yet satisfactorily accounted for. the rom tablets, discovered in 1898, have not been interpreted as yet, but p forms are found on them exclusively. in an excursus we shall deal with the language of the picts. no comprehensive handbook of the celtic languages on the lines of grober's _grundriss der romanischen philologie_ or paul's _grundriss der germanischen philologie_ was available in 1909. the reader may refer to windisch's article \"keltische sprachen\" in ersch und gruber's _allgemeine encyklopadie der wissenschaften und kunste_, and v. tourneur, _esquisse d'une histoire des etudes celtiques_ (liege, 1905; vol. ii. with full bibliography). also h. zimmer, \"die kelt. litteraturen\" in _die kultur d. gegenwart_, t. i. abh. xi. i, berlin and leipzig, 1909. the materials for the study of the older forms of the languages are to be found in zeuss's _grammatica celtica_ as revised by ebel. a comparative grammar of the celtic dialects has been prepared by h. pedersen (gottingen, 1908). see also whitley stokes and a. bezzenberger, _wortschatz der keltischen spracheinheit_ (gottingen, 1894). i. gaulish.--celtic place-names are found as far east as the dniester and dobrudja, and as far north as westphalia. the language of the galatians in asia minor must have stood in a very close relation to gaulish. indeed few traces of dialectical differences are to be observed in continental celtic. unfortunately no literary monuments written in the ancient speech of gaul have come down to us, though caesar makes mention of religious poems orally transmitted by the druids, and we also hear of _bardi_ and _vates_. but a large number of personal and place-names have been preserved. the classical writers have, moreover, recorded a certain number of gaulish words which can generally be identified without difficulty by comparing them with words still living in the modern dialects, e.g. _pempedula_, \"cinquefoil,\" cf. welsh _pump_, \"five,\" and _deilen_, \"leaf\"; _ambactus_, welsh _amaeth_; _petorritum_, \"four-wheeled chariot,\" cf. welsh _pedwar_, \"four,\" and ir. _roth_, \"wheel,\" or _rith_, \"course.\" we have further between thirty and forty inscriptions (three in north italy) which we may without hesitation ascribe to the gauls. these inscriptions are written in either n. etruscan or greek or latin characters. we are thus in a position to reconstruct much of the old system of declension, which resembles latin very closely on the one hand, and on the other represents the forms which are postulated by the o. ir. paradigms. hence gaulish is particularly valuable as preserving the final vowels which have disappeared in early irish and welsh. the few verb-forms which occur in the remains of gaulish are quite obscure and have not hitherto admitted of a satisfactory explanation. the statements of ancient authors with regard to the belgae are conflicting, but there cannot be much doubt that the language of the latter was substantially the same as gaulish. caesar observes that there was little difference between the speech of the gauls and the britons in his day, and we may regard gaulish as closely akin to the ancestor of the brythonic dialects. it is difficult to say when gaulish finally became extinct. it disappeared very rapidly in the south of france, but lingered on, possibly till the 6th century, in the northern districts, and it seems unnecessary to discredit jerome's statement that the speech of the galatians in asia minor bore a strong resemblance to the language he had heard spoken in the neighbourhood of trier. there is no evidence that breton has been influenced by continental celtic. the number of gaulish words which have come down in the romance languages is remarkably small, and though at first sight the sound-changes of french and welsh seem to bear a strong likeness to one another, any influence of gaulish pronunciation on french is largely discounted when we find the same changes occurring in other dialects where there is little or no question of celtic influence. the proper names occurring in classical writers, on inscriptions and coins, have been collected by a. holder in his monumental _altceltischer sprachschatz_ (leipzig, 1896-1908). the inscriptions have been most recently treated by j. rhys in the _proceedings of the british academy_, vol. ii. see also a paper in this volume entitled \"celtae and galli\" by the same author for the text of the coligny and rom inscriptions. the value of gaulish for grammatical purposes is set forth by whitley stokes in a paper on \"celtic declension\" in the _proceedings of the london philological society_ (1885-1886). for the extent over which gaulish was spoken, its relation to latin and its influence on romance, see e. windisch's article on \"keltische sprache\" in the section \"die vorromanischen volkssprachen\" in grober's _grundriss der romanischen philologie^2_, vol. i. pp. 373 ff. cf. further the introduction to j. loth's _chrestomathie bretonne_ (paris, 1890); g. dottin, _manuel pour servir a i'etude des antiquites celtiques_ (paris, 1906); r. thurneysen, _keltoromanisches_ (halle, 1884). ii. goidelic and brythonic.--when the monuments of the celtic dialects of the british islands begin to appear, we find a wide divergence between the two groups. we can only mention some of the more important cases here. the brythonic dialects have gone very much farther in giving up inflectional endings than goidelic. in irish all final syllables in general disappear except long vowels followed by s or r and u < o preceded by i. but these reservations do not hold good for brythonic. thus, whilst o. irish possesses five cases the brythonic dialects have only one, and they have further lost the neuter gender and the dual number in substantives. in phonology there are also very striking differences, apart from the treatment of the labialized velar qv already mentioned. the sonant n appears in brythonic as an, whereas in goidelic the nasal disappears before k, t with compensatory lengthening of the vowel, e.g. i. e. _*kmtom_, ir. _cet_, \"hundred,\" w. _cant_, bret. _kant_; prim. celt. _*jovnko-_, o. ir. _oac_, mod. ir. og, \"young,\" w. _ieuanc_, bret, _iaouank_. t, k standing after a vowel and preceding l, n (and also r if k precede) disappear in goidelic with compensatory lengthening of the vowel, e.g. prim. celt. _*statla-_, ir. _sal_, \"heel,\" w. _sawdl_; prim. celt. _*petno-_, ir. _en_, \"bird,\" o. w. _etn_, mod. w. _edn._ similarly b, d, g disappear in goidelic when standing after a vowel and preceding l, r, n with compensatory lengthening of the vowel, but in welsh they produce a vowel forming a diphthong with the preceding vowel, e.g. prim. celt. _*neblo-_, ir. _nel_, \"cloud,\" w. _niwl_; prim. celt. _*ogno-_, cf. lat. _agnus_, ir. _uan_, \"lamb,\" from _*on_, w. _oen_; prim. celt. _*vegno-_, cf. ger. _wagen_, ir. _fen_, \"wagon,\" o. w. _guein_, mod. w. _gwain_. the goidelic dialects have preserved the vowels of accented syllables on the whole better than brythonic. thus brythonic has changed prim. celt, a (= i. e. a, o) to o (w. aw, bret. eu); and prim. celt. u to i, e.g. ir. _brathir_, \"brother,\" w. _brawd_, bret. _breur_; gaulish _dunum_, ir. _dun_, \"fort,\" w. _din_. already in gaulish the i. e. diphthongs show a tendency to become simple long vowels and the latter are treated differently by goidelic and brythonic. in early times i. e. _eu, ou_ both became o and i. e. ei gave e. in goidelic o, e, in accented syllables were diphthongized in the early part of the 8th century to ua, ia if the next syllable did not contain the vowels e or i, whereas in brythonic o gave =u (written u) and e became in w. ui (wy), and in bret. oe (_oue_), e.g. gaulish _teuto-_, _toutius_, ir. _tuath_, \"people,\" w., bret. _tud_; brythonic _leto-cetum_, ir. _tuath_, \"grey,\" w. _llwyd_, bret, _loued_. similarly in loan-words, ir. _ceir_, _fial_, w. _cwyr_, o. corn. _guil_, from lat. _cera_, _velum_. further i. e. ai, oi are preserved in irish as ai (ae), oi (oe), mod. ir. ao, but in welsh i. e. ai gave either ai or oe, whilst oi changed to _u_ (written u), ir. _toeb_, \"side,\" w., bret. tu; i. e. _*oinos_, ir. _oen_, \"one,\" w., bret. un; prim. celt. _*saitlo-_, cf. lat. _saeculum_, w. _hoedl_, \"age,\" bret. _hoal_. in goidelic accented e changes to i before _i, u_ in the following syllable, cf. ir. _fid_, \"wood,\" gen. sing, _fedo_, o. h. g. _witu_, and i changes to e before a or o under similar conditions. in like manner u becomes o before a or o, whilst o changes to u before i, u, cf. ir. _muir_, \"sea,\" prim. celt. _*mori_, gen. sing. _mora_. of brythonic finals which disappear, a, i, (o), j alone influence preceding vowels, whilst an i (y) which received the stress in o. w. was also able to modify vowels which went before it. in goidelic the combinations _sqv_, sv appear respectively as sc, s (medially, f), but in brythonic they both give _chw_; prim. celt. _*sqvetlon_, ir. _scel_, \"story,\" w. _chwedl_; prim. celt. _*svesor_, ir. _siur_, \"sister,\" but _mo fiur_, \"my sister\" (whence scottish _piuthar_ by false de-aspiration), w. _chwaer_, bret. _c'hoar_. in brythonic initial s becomes h in the 7th century, but this is unknown in goidelic, e.g. ir. _salann_, \"salt,\" w. _halen_, cornish _haloin_, bret, _holenn_; lat. _se-men_, ir. _sil_, \"seed,\" w. _hil_. initial v gives f in goidelic in the course of the 7th century, whereas in brythonic it appears as _gu, gw_, cf. lat. _verus_, ir. _fir_, w., bret. _gwir_. we may also mention that in goidelic initial j and medial v disappear, e.g. gaulish _jovincillus_, w. _ieuanc_, \"young,\" bret, _iouank_, ir. _oac, oc_; w. _bywyd_, \"food,\" ir. _biad_. post-consonantic j in brythonic sometimes gives -id (mod. w. _-ydd_, mod. bret, -ez), e.g. gaulish _nevio-, novio-_, o. bret, _nowid_, w. _newydd_, bret, _nevez_, ir. _nue._ i.e. -kt and -pt both appear in goidelic as _-cht_ but in brythonic as _-ith_, cf. lat. _septem_, o. ir. _secht_, w. _seith_, bret. _seiz_. we unfortunately know very little about the position of the stress in ancient gaulish. according to meyer-lubke in place-names the penult was accented if the vowel was long, otherwise the stress lay on the preceding syllable, e.g. _augustodunum_, o. fr. _ostedun_, now _autun; catalaunos_ (chalons), _tricasses_ (fr. troyes), _bituriges_ (fr. bourges). in goidelic the stress, which is strongly expiratory, is always placed on the first syllable except in certain cases in verbs compounded with prepositional prefixes. in old welsh and old breton, on the other hand, the final syllable, i.e. the primitive penult, received the stress, but in both languages the stress was shifted in the middle period to the penultimate. the goidelic dialects, like the slavonic, distinguish between palatalized and nonpalatalized consonants, according as the consonant was originally followed by a front (e, i) or back vowel (a, o, u), a phenomenon which is entirely unknown to brythonic. finally, the two groups differ radically in the matter of initial mutation or, as it is often called, aspiration. these mutations are by no means confined to initial consonants, as precisely the same changes have taken place under similar conditions in the interior of words. the goidelic changes included under this head probably took place for the most part between the 5th and 7th centuries, whilst in brythonic the process seems to have begun and continued later. it is easier to fix the date of the changes in brythonic than in goidelic, as a number of british names are preserved in lives of saints, and it is possible to draw conclusions from the shape that british place-names assumed in the mouths of the anglo-saxons. in goidelic, we find two mutations, the vocalic and the nasal. initial mutation only takes place between words which belong together syntactically, and which form one single stress-group, thus between article, numeral, possessive pronoun or preposition, and a following substantive; between a verbal prefix and the verb itself. 1. when the word causing mutation ended in a vowel we get the vocalic mutation, called by irish grammarians aspiration. the sounds affected are the tenues k (c), t, p; the mediae g, d, b; the liquids and nasals m, n, r, l, s, and prim. celt. v (ir. f, w. gw). at the present day the results of this mutation in irish and welsh may be tabulated as follows. where the sound is at variance with the traditional orthography, the latter is given in brackets. in the case of n, r, l in goidelic we get a different variety of n, r, l sound. in welsh in the case of r, l, the absolute initial is a voiceless r, l written rh, ll, which on mutation become voiced and are written r, l. in irish s becomes h written sh and the mutation of f is written fh, which, however, is now silent. examples:--irish, cu, \"hound,\" _do chu_, \"thy hound\"; welsh ci, dy gi (do, dy represent a prim. celt. _*tovo_); irish _mathair_, \"mother,\" _an mhathair_, \"the mother,\" welsh _mam, y fam_ (the feminine of the article was originally _*senta, senda)._ +--------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+---------+ |original| | | | | | | | | sound | k | t | p | g | d | b | m | +--------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+---------+ | irish |[chi](ch)| h(th) | f(ph) | z(gh) | z(dh) | v,w(bh) | v,w(mh) | +--------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+---------+ | welsh | g | d | b | nil | d(dd) | v(f) | v(f) | +--------+---------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------+---------+ 2. when the word causing mutation originally ended in a nasal, we get the nasal mutation called by irish grammarians eclipse. the sounds affected are k (c), t, p; g, d, b; prim. celt. v (ir. f, w. gw). in mod. irish and mod. welsh the results are tabulated below. irish f becomes w written bh, whilst w. gw gives _ngw_. examples:--irish _bliadhna_, \"year,\" _seacht m-bliadhna_, \"seven years,\" cf. latin _septem_, welsh _blynedd, saith mlynedd_; irish _tir_, \"country,\" _i d-tir_, \"in a country,\" welsh _tref_, \"town,\" _yn nhref_, \"in a town,\" cf. latin _in._ +----------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+ | original sound | k | t | p | g | d | b | +----------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+ | irish | g | d | b | ng | n | m | +----------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+ | welsh | ngh | nh | mh | ng | n | m | +----------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+ 3. in welsh k (c), t, p undergo a further change when the word causing mutation originally ended in s. there is nothing corresponding to this consonantal mutation in goidelic. in this case k (c), t, p become the spirants [chi] (ch), th, f (ph), e.g. _lad_, \"father,\" _ei thad_, \"her father,\" ei represents a primitive _*esias._ in the interior of words in brythonic, cc, pp, tt give the same result as initial k, t, p by this mutation. the relation in which the other celtic dialects stand to this system will be mentioned below in dealing with the various languages. it will be noted from what has been said above that, with the exception of the different treatment of the labialized velar qv, and the nasal sonant n, the features which differentiate the brythonic from the goidelic dialects first appear for the most part after the romans had left britain. at the beginning of the christian era the difference between the two groups can only have been very slight. and strachan has shown recently that old irish and old welsh agree in a very striking manner in the use of the verbal particle ro and in other syntactical peculiarities connected with the verb. (i.) _goidelic_.--the term goidelic is used to embrace the celtic dialects of ireland, scotland and the isle of man. in each case the national name for the speech is _gaelic_ (ir. _gaedhlig_, scottish _gaidhlig_, manx _gailck_), from ir. scottish _gaodhal, gaedheal_, mid. ir. _goedel_, w. _gwyddel_, \"a gael, inhabitant of ireland or scotland.\" old irish may be regarded as the ancestor of scottish and manx gaelic, as the forms of these dialects can be traced back to old irish, and there are practically no monuments of scottish and manx in the oldest period. scottish and irish may be regarded as standing to one another in much the same relation as broad scottish and southern english. the divergences of scottish and manx from irish will be mentioned below. the language of the ogam inscriptions is the oldest form of goidelic with which we are acquainted. some 300 inscriptions have up to the present been discovered in this alphabet, the majority of them hailing from the south-west of ireland (kerry and cork). in scotland 22 are known, whilst in england and wales about 30 have turned up. most of the latter are in south wales, but odd ones have been found in north wales, devon and cornwall, and one has occurred as far east as hampshire. the isle of man also possesses two. the letters in the oldest inscriptions are formed by strokes or notches scored on either side of the edge of an upright stone. thus we obtain the following alphabet:-- --'----''----'''----''''----'''''-- --,----,,----,,,----,,,,----,,,,,-- h d t c q b l v s n --/----//----///----////----/////-- --.----..----...----....----.....-- m g ng z r a o u e i this system, which was eked out with other signs, would seem to have been framed in the south-west of ireland by a person or persons who were familiar with the latin alphabet. some of the inscriptions probably go back to the 5th century and may even be earlier. as illustrations of the simplest forms of ogam inscriptions we may mention the following: _doveti maqqi cattini_, i.e. \"(the stone) of dovetos son of cattinos\"; _trenagusu maqi maqi-treni_ is rendered in latin _trenegussi fili macutreni hic jacit; sagramni maqi cunatami_, \"(the stone) of sagramnos son of cunotamos\"; _ovanos avi ivacattos_, \"(the stone) of ovanus descendant of ivacattus.\" it will be seen that in the oldest of these inscriptions q is still kept apart from k (c), and that the final syllables have not disappeared (cf. _maqqi_, o. ir. _maicc_), but it appears certain that in ogamic writing stereotyped forms were used long after they had disappeared in ordinary speech. several stones contain bilingual inscriptions, but the key to the ogam alphabet is supplied by a treatise on ogamic writing contained in the book of ballymote, a manuscript of the late 14th century. it should be mentioned that the welsh stones are early whilst the scottish ones are almost without exception late, and several of the latter have so far defied interpretation. in addition to the irish ogams there are a number of christian inscriptions in latin character, but, with one exception, they are not older than the 8th century. see r.r. brash, _the ogam inscribed monuments of the gaedhil_ (london, 1879); r.a. stewart macalister, _studies in irish epigraphy_ (london), vol. i. (1897), vol. ii. 1902, vol. iii. 1907. the welsh inscriptions are contained in j. rhys, _lectures on welsh philology_[2] (london, 1879). the scottish stones have also been treated by rhys in the _proceedings of the scottish society of antiquaries_ (edinburgh, 1892). see also g.m. atkinson for the tract in the book of ballymote, _kilkenny journal of archaeology_ (1874). the irish christian inscriptions were published by margaret stokes as the annual volumes of the roy. hist, and archaeol. association of ireland (1870-1877), and have been republished by r.a. stewart macalister. (a) _irish._--we are able to trace the history of the irish language continuously for a period of 1200 years, and from the time that the literary documents begin we are better supplied with linguistic material for the study of the language than is the case with any other celtic dialect. at the same time that form of irish which is to be found in the oldest documents has preserved a number of features which have entirely, or almost entirely, disappeared from the brythonic languages. for this reason scholars have largely occupied themselves with irish, which for purposes of comparative philology may be regarded as the classic celtic language. the history of irish is divided into three periods:--old irish (700-1100), the documents mainly representing the language of the 8th and 9th centuries; middle irish, extending roughly from 1100 to 1550; modern irish from 1550 to the present day. these periods merge into one another to such an extent that no firm division can be made. the language of some manuscripts of the 14th century contains forms which are really old irish, and middle irish orthography was partly employed by historians and antiquarians in the middle of the 17th century. old irish, as compared with brythonic, preserves a wealth of inflectional forms in declension and conjugation, but many of these tend to disappear very early. in the modern dialects of ireland and scotland there is a rigid rule of orthography that a palatalized, or, as it is termed, slender consonant in medial or final position, must be preceded by a palatal vowel (i), and a non-palatalized consonant by a non-palatal or broad vowel (a, o, u). this is the famous rule of the grammarians known as _caol le caol agus leathan le leathan_ (\"slender to slender and broad to broad\"), but it is not so strictly adhered to in the spoken language as is commonly stated. in the older language the quality of medial and final consonants is only denoted very imperfectly, thus non-palatalized final consonants are regularly not denoted as such, e.g. o. and mid. ir. _fir_, mod. ir. _fior_. in old and mid. irish the initial mutations are only regularly denoted in the case of the vocalic mutation of c, p, t, s, f, and the nasal mutation of b, d, g. the vocalic mutation of c, p, t, s, f was denoted by writing ch, ph, th, sh, fh, the first three symbols of which were derived from the latin alphabet. another method of denoting the mutation was to write a dot over the letter, originally the punctum delens, which was justified in the case of mutated f as the latter early became silent. but no such devices were ready at hand in the case of the medial b, d, g, and the mutated forms of these consonants were consequently not represented at all in the orthography. the same remark holds good in the case of the nasal mutation (eclipse) of the tenues. but it is easy to demonstrate that the same condition of affairs as we find in the modern language must have obtained in old irish. this insufficiency of symbols renders the orthography of the early stages of the language very complicated. we find that b, d, g were used initially to denote the voiced stops, but medially and finally they represent spirants, the voiced stops in this case being denoted by c, p, t. it is not until much later times that the h in the mutated forms of the tenues, or the use of the dot, was extended to the mediae. thus in mid. irish we find _do bochtaib in choimded_ (mod. ir. _dobhochtaibh_), mid. ir. _ro-gab_ = mod. ir. _do ghabh_. the nasal mutation of c, p, t was first denoted by writing these sounds double and finally in the 18th century by writing gc, bp, dt. the spirants arising out of prim. celt. g, d, b came in old irish to be confused with those which developed out of prim. celt, p, t, k, in other than initial positions. in final positions in polysyllables we commonly find d and b written but medially th and ph, e.g. _didnad_, \"consolation,\" gen. sing, _dithnatha_. for the ending -ad cp. lat. _-atu-_. on the other hand we find g written medially and ch finally. these rules, however, are not yet applied in the oldest documents. when we turn to the inflections we find that most of the old terminations have disappeared, but that their influence on preceding consonants is still felt and serves to distinguish one form from another; thus in the declension of _fer_, \"man,\" nom. sing. _fer_, gen. sing. _fir_, dat. sing, _fiur_, acc. sing, _fer n-_, nom. pl. _fir_, gen. pl. _fer n-_, corresponding to prim. celt. (gaulish) _viros, viri, viro, viron, viri, viron_, the influence of the following sound still differentiates the cases from one another. in the later language the initial mutations come more and more to be used for this purpose. in middle irish the declensions and conjugations are much simplified and the neuter gender is given up in substantives. in the verb the athematic conjugation has disappeared and the distinction of primary and secondary endings is not observed. on the other hand irish has developed a peculiar system of absolute and conjoint inflection with different sets of endings. the conjoint endings are always used in the case of compound verbs, and in simple verbs they are employed after certain proclitics, e.g. the negative particles. thus _berid_, \"he bears,\" is an absolute form; _do-beir_, \"he gives,\" _ni beir_, \"he does not bear,\" are conjoint forms. further, the verb system is partly dominated by the various devices employed to express relatival function. there are three main types of conjugation in old irish corresponding to the latin first, third and fourth conjugations, the latin types _moneo_ and _audio_ being difficult to distinguish in irish. in the modern language there is in reality but one conjugation. the old irish verb system comprises present and imperfect indicative, imperative, pres. subjunctive in -a-or -s- with corresponding past subjunctive, future in -f- or -s- or -e- or with reduplication along with corresponding secondary future, -s- preterite, -t- preterite, reduplicated preterite, a preterite containing a long stem-vowel, together with deponential and passive forms in -rd. this system is eked out with the verbal prefix ro, which among other functions changes a preterite into a perfect or a present into a perfect. such a cumbrous system was bound to fall to pieces. a number of isolated forms have come down, but the only tenses which have survived into the modern period are the present and imperfect indicative, the imperative, the present subjunctive, the -s- preterite, the -b- and -e- future with corresponding secondary forms, and some of the passive forms in -r. at the same time in the modern language there is an increasing tendency to use analytical forms. two noteworthy features of the irish verb remain to be mentioned. the one is the use of pronouns as objects infixed between particle and verb, or in a verb compounded with a preposition between preposition and verb. there are two sets of forms according as to whether the verb occurs in a relative clause or not. thus -m- is the ordinary infixed pronoun of the 1st pers. sing., whilst -dom- is the corresponding relative form. in the 3rd pers. sing. aspiration may be employed, e.g. _ni ceil_, \"he does not hide,\" _ni cheil_, \"he does not hide it.\" this has been given up in the modern language. secondly in verbs compounded with prepositions the accent of the verb varies according as to whether the verb is used enclitically or not--thus after the negative ni or in the infinitive and imperative. hence we have _do-beir_, \"he gives,\" by the side of _ni tabair_, \"he does not give,\" infin. _tabairt_; _do-gniu_, \"i do,\" _ni denim_, \"i do not do,\" infin. _denum_. the changes caused by this alternation in addition to others due to the working of the irish accent and to the initial and internal mutations have played havoc with the verb system and render it exceedingly difficult to reconstruct the paradigms. in the later periods of the language analogy naturally plays a great part, and many of the complicated forms are done away with, but even in the modern dialects the alternation between enclitic and orthotonic forms still survives in the commonest verbs, e.g. irish _bheir se_ \"he gives,\" _ni thabhair se_, \"he does not give,\" infin. _tabhairt_; scottish _bheir e, cha toir, toirt_; manx _ver eh, cha der, coyrt_; irish _ni se_, \"he does,\" _ni dheanann se_, \"he does not do,\" infin. _deanamh_; scottish _ni e_, \"he does,\" _cha dean e_, \"he will not do,\" infin. _deanamh_; manx _nee eh, cha jean eh, jannoo_. in the early period irish borrowed a number of words from latin. these are mainly connected with the church or with articles of civilization which would be imported from roman britain. some of these show traces of british pronunciation, e.g. o. ir. _trindoit_, from latin _trinitatem_ with o for a. in others again lat. p is represented in ir. by c, which may be due to the substitution of q as being the nearest irish sound to the foreign p. thus we find ir. _corcur_, \"purple,\" _casc_, \"easter\"; _cenciges_, \"whitsuntide\"; _cruimther_, \"presbyter.\" in addition to these several loans were received from norse. in the mid. irish period many french words came in, and during the middle and modern periods the number of english words introduced is legion. pedersen has tried to show in his _vergl. gramm._ that a considerable number of words were borrowed from brythonic (welsh) at an early date. [for the latin loan-words, see j. vendryes, _de hibernicis vocabulis quae a latina lingua originem duxerunt_ (paris, 1902); kuno meyer has collected a number of loan-words from norse, anglo-saxon, early english, latin and early french in _revue celtique_, xii. 460 and xiii. 505. see also whitley stokes, _bezzenberger's beitrage_, xviii. 56 ff. for celtic names in norse see w. stokes, _revue celtique_, iii. 186 ff., and w.a. craigie, _zeitschr. f. celt. phil._ i. 439 ff.] with regard to the dialects of irish, there is a well-known rhyme which states the peculiarities of the speech of the four provinces, and dialectical differences must have existed at an early period, though they do not make their appearance in the literary language until the 18th century. at the present day the irish of leinster has vanished entirely, and we have unfortunately no records of it. but in the other three provinces the vernacular still lives, and we find the irish of munster, connaught and ulster marked off from one another by well-defined peculiarities. in general it may be stated that the south of ireland is more conservative than the north. in munster there is a tendency to shift the word-stress from the initial syllable to a heavy derivative syllable, e.g. -an. this does not take place in connaught, whilst in ulster the tendency is to shorten the vowel. again in monosyllables ending in ll, nn, m, and under certain other conditions a short vowel becomes a diphthong in the south, in connaught it is merely lengthened, but in ulster the original length is retained, e.g. ulster _ball_, \"member, limb,\" connaught _ball_, munster _baull_. final dh, gh in munster are sounded as g. in certain cases the north prefers the vocalic mutation where the west and south have the nasal, thus notably in the dative singular after preposition and article, e.g. munster-connaught _do'n bhfear_, \"to the man,\" ulster _do'n fhear_. in the south synthetic verb-forms are employed to a much larger extent than in the north. in the early part of the 19th century irish was still the speech of more than half the inhabitants of ireland. a german traveller reckoned that out of a total population of seven millions in 1835 four millions spoke irish as their mother-tongue. the famine of 1846-1847 was felt most in those districts that were purely irish, and these were the parts that were and still are chiefly affected by the tide of emigration. add to this the fact that the influence of o'connell and his satellites, and above all that of the roman catholic clergy, was against the language. in spite of the efforts of the gaelic league (founded 1893), which have met with considerable success, the language is rapidly dying of internal decay. the speakers of irish are chiefly confined to the following counties, where over 20% of the population speak gaelic:--waterford, cork, kerry, clare, galway, mayo, sligo, donegal. the following figures will illustrate the decay of the language since the famine:-- year. monoglots. bilinguists. 1851 319,602 1,204,684 1861 163,275 942,261 1871 103,562 714,313 1881 64,167 885,765 1891 38,192 642,053 1901 20,953 620,189 according to the 1901 census report the speakers of irish were distributed as follows:--leinster, 26,436; munster, 276,268; connaught, 245,580; ulster, 92,858. the gaelic movement, which has thriven largely on account of its anti-english character, would have a much better chance of galvanizing the ancient language of ireland if it were not for the supreme difficulties of irish spelling and phonetics. of the hundreds of thousands of persons who attend the classes of the league not more than one or two per cent. at the outside arrive at any state of proficiency. presbyterian gaels in scotland are taught to read the bible but irish catholics are not encouraged to do so. the result of this is seen in the fact that, whilst many, if not all, of the local nationalist newspapers under the pressure of the league publish badly-printed and little-read columns in irish, there are only two regularly appearing periodicals which contain any large amount of irish. half the contents--and those the most important--of the weekly organ of the league, _an claidheamh soluis_ (\"the flaming sword\"), are in english. the latter was started in 1898 under the title of _fainne an lae_ (\"the ring of day,\" i.e. the dawn). the other periodical is the monthly _gaelic journal_ (_irisleabhar na gaedhilge_), a would-be literary magazine of very inferior quality which has led a precarious existence since 1882. in 1898 it was decided to hold a festival called the _oireachtas_ (\"hosting, gathering\") on the lines of the welsh _eisteddfod_. the venture was a great success and similar meetings have been held every year since, whilst each province and many of the counties have their annual local gaelic _feis_ (festival). the literary output of the movement has been prodigious, consisting in the main of a number of short stories and dramas (mostly propagandist), but nothing of any particular merit has as yet been forthcoming. the best-known writers are dr douglas hyde (collector of folk-stories--_beside the fire_, 1890, _an sgeulaidhe gaedhealach_, 1895 (reprinted from vol. x. of the _annales de bretagne_), _love songs of connaught_, 1893, _religious songs of connaught_, 1905); p. o'leary (author of two lengthy stories, _seadna_, 1904, _niamh_, 1907); p. dinneen (author of an historical tale, _cormac ua connaill_, 1901); p. o'shea, better known as \"conan maol,\" author of a collection of short stories entitled _an buaiceas_, 1903. authorities on irish language.--for the study of old irish--zeuss, _grammatica celtica^2_ (berlin, 1871); b. guterbock and r. thurneysen, indices to the irish words treated in zeuss (leipzig, 1881); e. windisch published the first grammar of old irish in 1879 (trans. by n. moore, pitt press, 1882), but windisch's treatment of the verb was rendered obsolete by the discovery of the laws of the irish accent by h. zimmer, _keltische studien_ (berlin, 1884), and r. thurneysen, _revue celtique_, vi. 309, j. vendreys, _grammaire du vieil-irlandais_ (paris, 1908); r. thurneysen, _handbuch des alt-irischen_ (heidelberg, 1909). mention should also be made of j. strachan, _selections from the old irish glosses_ (dublin, 1904); and the same writer's _old irish paradigms_ (dublin, 1905), _stories from the tain_ (dublin, 1908). see also various papers on the irish verb in the _transactions of the london philological society_ by strachan (1895-1902); h. pedersen, _aspirationen i irsk_ (copenhagen, 1898); c. sarauw, _irske studier_ (copenhagen, 1901); g.j. ascoli, _archivio glottologico italiano_, vols. v. and vi. for the study of middle irish--e. windisch, _irische texte mit worterbuch_ (leipzig, 1880). (other volumes in conjunction with w. stokes.) editions of texts by w. stokes, kuno meyer and others in the _revue celtique, zeitschrift fur celtische philologie, eriu_. k. meyer has issued an exhaustive mid. irish glossary (a-d) as a supplement to the _archiv fur celtische lexikographie_. the remainder is being published under the auspices of the royal irish academy. the first grammar of modern irish was published by francis molloy in 1677 at rome under the title of _grammatica latino-hibernica_. molloy was followed by jeremiah curtin in 1728 with a book called _elements of the irish language_. numerous other grammars were published towards the end of the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century, but few of them have any value. the more important of them are enumerated in the introduction to o'donovan's _grammar_ and to windisch's _kurzgefasste irische grammatik_, and in pedersen's _aspirationen i irsk_, pp. 29-47. we may mention w. neilson's _grammar_ (1808) as it is important for the irish of e. ulster. but the greatest native grammarian was john o'donovan, who traversed ireland in connexion with the ordnance survey, and published in 1854 a comprehensive grammar noting the differences between the various dialects. a little grammar published by molloy in 1867 is instructive on account of the author's peculiar point of view. the most useful books for the study of the living language are the series of booklets (five) published by father o'growney, one of the chief promoters of the present movement. mention should also be made of j.p. henry's _handbook of modern irish_, pts. i.-iv., and of the grammars by p.w. joyce (dublin, 1896) and the christian brothers (dublin, 1901). for the northern form of irish j.p. craig's _grammar of modern irish_ is useful (^2 dublin, 1904). the phonetics of a munster dialect have been investigated by r. henebry, _a contribution to the phonology of desi irish_ (greifswald, 1901). the dialect of the aran islands off the coast of galway has been described by f.n. finck, _die araner mundart_, i. _lautlehre und grammatik_, ii. _worterbuch_ (marburg, 1899). g. dottin has given an account of a dialect of north connaught (mayo) in the _revue celtique_, xiv. pp. 97-137. a study of the speech of the north was published by e.c. quiggin under the title of _a dialect of donegal, phonology and texts_ (cambridge, 1906). for an account of the decay of irish see h. zimmer, \"die keltische bewegung in irland,\" _preussische jahrbucher_ for 1898, vol. 93, p. 59 ff., and the last chapter of douglas hyde's _literary history of ireland_ (london, 1901). the work of the earlier compilers of glosses will be mentioned in the literature section below. the first dictionary of the modern language of any importance was that published by j. o'brien in 1768. next came e. o'reilly with his _irish-english dictionary_ (dublin, 1817). this book contains a vast store of words gathered on no principle whatever from all manner of sources, and has therefore to be used with caution, but even at the present day it renders considerable service. a second edition with a supplement by o'donovan was published after the latter's death in 1864. the first trustworthy dictionary of the modern language was published under the auspices of the irish texts society by p.j. dinneen (london, 1904). english-irish dictionaries have been compiled by d. foley (dublin, 1855); e.e. fournier (dublin, 1903); t. o'neill lane (dublin, 1904). (b) _scottish gaelic._--scottish gaelic is the form of goidelic speech which was introduced into scotland by the dalriadic scots who came over from ireland in the early centuries of our era. we possess practically no early monuments of the language. we have one or two inscriptions in latin characters, such as that at st vigeans and the ogams mentioned above, which have not yet been solved. in the _book of deir_ there is a colophon of a few lines probably written by an irish scribe in the 9th century, and as the language of these lines differs in no wise from the irish of the period, we do not know if they accurately represent the gaelic of scotland or if they may not be pure irish. in the same ms. there are further gaelic scraps belonging to the 11th and 12th centuries. the word-forms in these entries are identical with those current at the time in ireland, but the historical orthography seems to show more signs of decay than is the case in irish. the medieval scottish mss. in the advocates' library at edinburgh are only just being published, but they seem either to hail from ireland or to be written in pure irish. the end of the 15th century brought a change. the lordship of the isles, the great bond between ireland and scotland, was broken up. the gaels of scotland, thrown on their own resources, advanced their own dialect to the position of a literary language and tried to discard the irish orthography. the _book of the dean of lismore_, compiled about 1500, is written in a kind of phonetic orthography which has not as yet been sufficiently investigated. the language of those poems which are not directly ascribed to irish poets, and which may therefore be regarded as representing the literary language of the highlands at the time, seems to occupy a position midway between irish and scottish gaelic. but until the beginning of the 18th century the highlands were under the literary dominion of ireland, so much so that bedell's irish version of the scriptures was circulated in scotland with a glossary from 1690 to 1767, and bishop carsewell's version of knox's prayer-book (1567) is pure irish. the language of the people is poorly represented in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the orthography is not fixed until we reach the 18th century. irish and scottish gaelic differ considerably in point of vocabulary, but there are also important divergences in phonetics and inflections. in the first place, scottish gaelic as written has entirely given up the nasal mutation (eclipse), e.g. scottish _ar bo_, \"our cow,\" irish _ar m-bo_; scottish _nan tir_, \"of the countries,\" irish _na d-tir_. it should, however, be observed that in skye and the outer isles the nasal mutation has been partly restored and in some places there are even parallels to the welsh nasal mutation of c, p, t to _ngh, mh, nh._ secondly, post-vocalic c, p, t are commonly preceded by a breathed sound not represented in writing, thus _mac_ \"son,\" is pronounced _mahk_; _slat_, \"rod,\" as _slaht_. again there is a tendency to insert a sibilant in the group rt, thus _ceart_, \"right,\" is sounded _kearst_, and the distinction between palatalized and non-palatalized sounds is not so rigidly observed as in irish. the group _cht_ is in scotland pronounced as if _chk_. we may also mention that scottish gaelic preserves an old e in a number of words where irish now has a, thus, old ir. _fer_, scottish g. _fer_, irish _far_, but in both cases the spelling is _fear_ (in this respect scottish gaelic goes hand in hand with manx and the almost extinct irish of down). similarly, we find that in scottish gaelic and manx stressed vowels preceding a palatalized consonant have not undergone palatalization to the same extent as in irish, e.g. in ireland _duine_, \"man,\" < _*dunjo-_, is pronounced _din'd_, but in scotland _dun'd_ (in manx written _dooinney_). a further peculiarity of scottish gaelic is that it substitutes lenes or voiceless mediae for the voiced stops, and even l, r, n sounds show a great tendency to give up the voice. scottish gaelic goes farther even than irish in the confusion of vowel-sounds, e.g. lat. _coxa_, ir. _cos_, \"foot,\" sc. _cas_; ir. _codal_, sc. _cadal_. when we turn to the inflections we find that analogy has here played a much greater part than in irish. there is a tendency to make the plural of all substantives except masculine monosyllables end in -an. in the conjugation the synthetic forms have with one or two exceptions entirely disappeared and the present forms have become momentary in force. hence in ordinary grammars it is stated that the present has become a future, thus _ni mi_ means \"i shall do.\" the past participle chiefly ends in -te as against irish -the, -te, or -tha, -ta, according to the quality of the preceding sound. the present (future) and past subjunctive (conditional, representing both the imperfect indic. and secondary future of irish) supply the place of the irish consuetudinal forms. in idiom also scottish has diverged very considerably from irish, e.g. in the use of _tha_ (ir. ta) for is. it seems now to be agreed that the various dialects of scottish gaelic fall into two main divisions--northern and southern. mackinnon states that the boundary between the two passes roughly up the firth of lorne to loch leven, then across country from ballachulish to the grampians. the country covered by the northern dialect was of old the country of the northern picts, whilst the portion of argyllshire south of the boundary line, together with bute and arran, made up the kingdom of dalriada. the gaelic district south of the grampians belonged to the southern picts. the southern dialect is commonly regarded as the literary language. it approaches more nearly to irish and preserves the inflections much better than the speech of the north. the following characteristics of the northern dialects may be mentioned:--(1) the diphthongization of open e to ia is carried much farther in the north than in the south. (2) the vowel ao in the north is more regularly the high-back-narrow-unrounded vowel-sound, whereas the south in many cases has a low-front-wide-round sound. (3) the north has _str_ in initial position where the south prefers sr. further, the northern dialects go very far in dropping unaccented final vowels. it may be remarked that in the reduction of derivative endings containing long vowels scotland goes hand-in-hand with ulster irish, thus connaught _aran_, \"bread,\" is in ulster and scotland _aran_. again, scottish agrees with north irish in the loss of synthetic verb-forms and in using as negative _cha_, mid. ir. _nico, nocha_. but, on the other hand, scotland, with the exception of south argyll and some of the isles, diphthongizes accented a, o, e, in monosyllables, before ll, nn, m, thus resembling the speech of munster. in south argyll the original short vowel is half lengthened. as to the southern limits of gaelic speech in scotland, the boundary between gaelic and english in medieval times was the so-called highland line, and at the war of independence it is probable that it extended to stirling, perth and the ochil and sidlaw hills, the inglis being limited to a very narrow strip along the coast. dr j.a.h. murray traced the linguistic frontier in 1869-1870 with the following results. the line started about 3 m. west of the town of nairn on the moray firth and ran in a south-east direction to the dee, 4 m. above ballater. on the other side of the dee it began 4 m. above balmoral and followed the boundary of perth and forfar as far as glen shee, where it went off to the south-west as far as dunkeld. after passing birnam hill it turned due west until the upper part of glen almond was reached, where it bent to the southward, passing through comrie and along the braes of doune to the teith, 3 or 4 m. below callander. thence it ran along the north shore of lake monteith to gartmore, and from there to rowardennan on the east side of loch lomond. on the west side it passed through glen douglas down loch long and the firth of clyde, leaving bute and arran to the west. at the present day this boundary has probably receded to the extent of several miles, and even in 1870 there were districts such as bute and the region round dunoon where gaelic was only spoken by the oldest natives and the immigrant population. the language is not found in the north-east of caithness, the boundary running, according to murray, roughly from a little north-east of lybster to the mouth of the forss. celtic was driven out of shetland and orkney by scandinavian some time during the middle ages. (see further j.a.h. murray, _the dialect of the southern counties of scotland_, london, 1875; _revue celtique_, vol. ii. pp. 180-187.) until the 18th century gaelic was spoken in galloway and on the uplands of ayr and lanark. the following figures from the census returns illustrate the decrease in the number of persons who speak gaelic:-- monolinguists. bilinguists. 1881 no return 231,594 (this includes gaelic monolinguists) 1891 43,738 210,677 1901 28,106 202,700 in the last-mentioned year it appears that nearly one-half of the speakers of gaelic are reported from the counties of inverness and ross (23,893 monolinguists and 82,573 bilinguists). from about 1300 we find scottish emigrants filtering into the glens of antrim, where the gaelic that is spoken is still unmistakably scottish. there have long been local societies of highlanders for the cultivation of their native tongue, the most important one being _an comunn gaidhealach_ (founded 1891). this society holds an annual gathering called the _mod_ (=eng. \"moot\") on the lines of the welsh eisteddfod, and recently the scottish education department has countenanced the teaching of gaelic in highland schools. but the political element plays little or no part in the language movement in scotland, and the latter is not likely to assume the proportions of the gaelic league in ireland. as a rule, however, highlanders are better able to read their own language than irish gaels, for, the majority being protestants, they are encouraged to read their bibles. there are only two periodicals which devote half their space to gaelic. the one is _an deo-greine_ (\"the sunbeam\"), founded october 1905; and the other is the catholic propagandist quarterly _guth na bliadhna_ (\"the voice of the year\"), started in 1904. up to 1905 a fortnightly newspaper printed wholly in gaelic appeared in prince edward island, under the title of _an mac-talla_ (\"the echo\"), and efforts have been made to revive it. a weekly newspaper wholly in gaelic was started in 1908 by r. stuart erskine under the title of _alba_. authorities on scottish gaelic.--the first grammar of scottish gaelic was compiled by w. shaw (_an analysis of the galic language_, 1778). the most useful one was that published by alexander stewart, _elements of gaelic grammar_ (edinburgh, 1801). a revised edition of this work with many additions and corrections was published by h.c. gillies, london, 1902. this book is rather spoilt by the author's attitude, and requires to be supplemented and corrected. g. henderson and c.w. robertson have published important papers on the modern dialects in the _zeitschrift fur celtische philologie_, the _celtic review_ and the _transactions of the gaelic society of inverness_. the most useful work on gaelic philology is alexander macbain's _etymological gaelic dictionary_ (inverness, 1896) (a later edition by w.j. watson). the chief dictionaries are _dictionarium scoto-celticum_, published by the highland society of scotland (edinburgh, 1828); r.a. armstrong, _gaelic dictionary_ in two parts (london, 1825); n. mcalpine, _pronouncing gaelic dictionary_ (edinburgh, 1847) (this book gives the pronunciation of islay); macleod and dewar, _gaelic and english dictionary_ (latest edition, edinburgh, 1901); _faclair gaidhlig_, published by e. macdonald, herne bay, appearing in parts since 1902. (c) _manx._--our sources of information with regard to the language of the isle of man are even more scanty in the early period than they are in the case of scotland. there are a number of references to the island in irish literature, but the earliest monument of the vernacular we possess is the version of the book of common prayer made by bishop phillips in 1610. in this translation the traditional irish orthography is not followed. the spelling resembles the orthography which was employed in scotland by the compiler of the _book of the dean of lismore_. how far this system was used is a question which it is difficult to decide. in scotland the irish orthography has prevailed in a slightly modified form, but manx writers adhered to a mode of spelling which was as phonetic as any system based on english, or, probably more correctly anglo-scottish, orthography could be. this fact, combined with the rapid phonetic decay of the language, makes it extremely difficult to discover what sound-values are to be attached to the various symbols. at the beginning of the 18th century english was not understood by two-thirds of the natives, and in 1764 the s.p.c.k. issued a paper containing this statement: \"the population of the isle is 20,000, of whom the far greater number are ignorant of english.\" but from this time english gradually crept in. the last edition of the manx bible was issued in 1819, and of the new testament in 1840. the present writer's great-grandmother refused to speak english, his grandfather (b. 1815) preached in manx and english, and his father (b. 1844) only spoke english. the following figures illustrate the rapid decline of the language:-- monolinguists. bilinguists. 1875 190 12,340 (out of a population of 41,084 exclusive of douglas) 1901 none 4,419 manx stands in a much closer relation to scottish gaelic than irish, and fishermen state that they could understand a good deal of what is said in south argyll, though they are quite at a loss at kinsale. manx exhibits the same tendency as scottish to use analytical and periphrastic forms in the verb, thus _jannoo_, \"to do,\" is used like scottish _deanamh_ with an infinitive to express the past and future. the present has acquired a momentary (future) signification, and the past participle ends in -it (scottish -te). the negative is _cha_ as in scotland and ulster. manx goes as far as northern scottish in dropping unstressed final vowels, e.g. _chiarn_, \"lord,\" irish, _tighearna_; -yn is the favourite plural ending in substantives. the nasal mutation has been partly given up. old irish stressed e is frequently retained, e.g. _fer_, \"man,\" irish _far_ (spelt _fear_), and the vowels o and a are confused as in scottish, e.g. manx _cass_, \"foot,\" scottish _cas_, irish _cos_. manx is divided in itself about the treatment of short accented vowels before _ll, nn, m_. according to rhys the south side lengthens, whilst the north side diphthongizes; e.g. irish _crann_, \"tree,\" _clann_, \"offspring,\" s. manx _kron_, _klon_, n. manx, _kroun_, _kloun_ (written _croan_, _cloan_). in the matter of stress manx is quite original, going farther even than the dialects of the south of ireland. not only does it shift the stress in the case of heavy derivative suffixes like -an and reduce the preceding vowel, e.g. ir. _fuaran_, sc. _fuaran_, manx _fran_, \"spring,\" but even in cases like _caghlaa_, \"variety,\" sc. ir. _caochladh_, o. ir. _coimmchloud_; _coraa_, \"voice,\" ir. _comhradh_. the mid. english stress on the final is further retained in words from the french such as _ashoon_, \"nation,\" _livrey_, \"deliver.\" as other features peculiar to manx we may mention the following. an intervocalic s or sh shows a tendency to become lisped and voiced to d. in monosyllables post-vocalic final m, n, are often preceded by an intrusive b, d respectively, thus _ben_ \"woman,\" may be heard as _bedn_. ir. a becomes more palatal and is often ae. ir. sc becomes st, _sht_, e.g. ir. _fescor_, \"evening,\" manx _fastyr_; ir. _uisce_, \"water,\" manx _ushtey_. authorities on manx.--the place and personal names of the isle of man have been collected by a.w. moore in _manx names_[2] (london, 1903) (33% of the proper names are scandinavian). the chief source of information about the spoken language is j. rhys, _the outlines of the phonology of manx gaelic_ (london, 1895) (the book has unfortunately no index and no texts). the only serious attempt to represent spoken manx graphically is the transcription of a song by j. strachan in the _zeitschr. fur celtische philologie_, vol. i. p. 54. the native grammarian is j. kelly, who in 1803 published _a practical grammar of the ancient gaelic or language of the isle of man, usually called manks_. this book was republished by w. gill for the manx society in 1859, and a facsimile reprint of this latter was made for quaritch, london, 1870. a useful little book entitled, _first lessons in manx_ was published by edwin goodwin (dublin, 1901). there are two dictionaries, one by a. cregeen, douglas 1835, which is now being reprinted for _an cheshaght gailckagh_, a douglas society which is endeavouring to encourage the use of manx and to get it introduced into the schools. the other dictionary is by j. kelly in two parts--(i) manx and english, (2) english and manx, published by the manx society in 1866. kelly also prepared a triglot of manx, irish and gaelic, based upon english, which has never been published. a useful paper on the language appeared in the _transactions of the london philological society_ for 1875 by h. jenner, \"the manx language: its grammar, literature and present state.\" (e. c. q.) (ii). _brythonic._ the term brythonic is used to denote the celtic dialects of wales, brittany and cornwall. unlike the goidels the brythonic peoples have no common name for their language. forms of brythonic speech were doubtless current throughout england and wales and the lowlands of scotland at the time of the saxon invasion. the s.e. of britain may have been extensively romanized, and it is not impossible that remnants of goidelic speech may have lingered on in out-of-the-way corners. no literary documents dating from this period have been preserved, but some idea of the character of brythonic may be gathered from the numerous inscriptions which have come to light. in the middle of the 6th century brythonic was confined to the western half of britain south of the clyde and forth. the colonization of britannia minor or armorican brittany during the 5th and 6th centuries will be described later. in the latter part of the 6th century the w. saxons pushed their conquests as far as the estuary of the severn, and from that time the brythons of s.w. britain were cut off from their kinsmen in wales. early in the 7th century the brythons of strathclyde were similarly isolated by the battle of chester (613). the kingdom of strathclyde maintained a separate existence until the 10th century, and it is generally stated that brythonic speech did not die out there until the 12th century. the question as to how far brythonic names and words have survived in these districts has never been properly investigated. certain it is that brythonic numerals survived amongst shepherds in cumberland, westmorland and n.w. yorkshire down to the second half of the 19th century, just as herrings are still counted in manx by manx fishermen otherwise quite innocent of the language. accordingly, from the 7th century onwards brythonic became gradually limited in great britain to three districts--strathclyde, wales, and cornwall and devon. during the 7th century the brythons of wales and strathclyde often fought side by side against the angles, and it is from this period that the name by which the welsh call themselves is supposed to date, _cymro_ < _*combrox_, pl. _cymry_ < _*combroges_, i.e. \"fellow-countrymen\" as opposed to w. _allfro_, gaul. _allobroges_, \"foreigners.\" we have no means of determining when celtic speech became extinct in the petty states of the north which retained their independence longest. the chief features which distinguish the brythonic from the goidelic dialects have already been enumerated. in the course of the 6th and 7th centuries final short vowels disappeared. in compound names the final vowel remains in the first component until the 7th century. short vowels in other than initial syllables when immediately preceding the stress (on the historical penultimate) disappear, whilst long ones are shortened, e.g. welsh _cardawt_ from lat. _caritatem_. other vowels in unstressed position are apt to be reduced, thus o, u, give i in o.w. (mid. w. y). a marked characteristic of welsh as distinguished from cornish and breton is the treatment of a under the influence of a following i. in welsh the result is ei, in corn. and bret. e, e.g. welsh _seint_, \"saints,\" bret. _sent_, sing. _sant_. the mutations seem to have started in the second half of the 6th century in the case of the tenues. see j. loth, _les mots latins dans les langues brittoniques_ (paris, 1892); j. loth, _chrestomathie bretonne_ (paris, 1890). (a) _welsh (cymraeg)._--it is usual to divide the history of the welsh language into three periods--old, middle and modern. to the oldest period belong the collections of glosses, the earliest of which go back to about 800. the middle period extends from 1100 to 1500. as a rule the medial mutation of the tenues and mediae is not denoted in o. welsh. intervocalic g is sometimes retained but generally it has disappeared, whilst after r and l it is still written. in the course of the 9th century initial w (v) becomes gu (later gw). as the o. welsh documents consist almost entirely of isolated words, we know scarcely anything about the morphology of the language during this period. to the middle period belong the ancient poems from the black book of carmarthen, but the language of these compositions is evidently much older than the date of the manuscript (12th century), as it preserves a number of very archaic features. other important sources of information for this period are the o. welsh laws contained in a ms. of the 12th century. to a somewhat later date belong the mabinogion (14th century ms.), and the prose versions of french romances published by r. williams (15th century). in middle welsh the consonant mutations are in general denoted in writing, though not consistently, and from this period dates the introduction of w and y (o.w. u, i) to denote vowel sounds. the symbol ll to denote a voiceless l was already employed in mid. w. but rh (= voiceless r), dd (= eng. th in \"thou\") and f (= v) either do not appear or only become regular during the modern period in mod. w. the orthography is regularized and does not differ materially from that of the late medieval documents. in o.w. the old stress on the final syllable (the historical penult) appears to have been preserved, but during the middle period the accent was shifted to the penult. in consequence of this change aw (a) in final syllables is reduced to o in mod. w., e.g. mid. w. _pechawt_ < lat. _peccatum_, mod. w. _pechod_. the comparative wealth of inflection preserved by o. ir. has almost entirely disappeared in welsh. there are only the faintest traces of the case forms, the dual and the neuter gender. compared with the irish nominal declension according to -o- (-jo-), -a-, -i-, -u-, -s-, guttural, dental and nasal stems, welsh only distinguishes the nom. sing. and plur., the latter sometimes retaining an old formation. thus masc. -o- stems show palatal modification, e.g. _corn_, \"horn,\" plur. _cyrn_ < _*korni_; the plural ending of -u- stems, o. gaulish _-oves_, gives o.w. -ou, mid. w. -eu, mod. w. -au, e.g. _penneu_, \"heads.\" the termination _-ones_ of the -n- stems appears as -on. the infixation of pronominal objects between a verbal particle and the verb itself continues in use down to the present day as in breton. in the third person sing. of the pres. ind. there are instances in the oldest welsh of the peculiar alternation between orthotonic and absolute forms which characterize the irish paradigms, e.g. _pereid_, \"it endures,\" but _ny phara_. the several types of conjugation represented in irish have become obscured, traces remaining only in the endings of the third sing. of the pres. ind., the pret. ind. (mid. w. -as, -es, -is) and the pret. passive (mid. w. -at, -et, -it). the verb system of welsh comprises the following tenses: indic. present (also used as future), imperative, imperfect, preterite (in mid. w. forms with s have become prevalent as in irish, but forms corresponding to the irish preterites in t or with reduplication or unreduplicated with long vowel are not infrequent in the early poetry), pluperfect (a new formation), pres. and pret. passive. in the subj. early w. distinguishes pres. and past, but the latter comes to be replaced by the pluperfect indicative. the sign of the subj. is -h- < s, which reminds one of the irish s-subj., though the formation is somewhat different. there are also traces of a future formation containing h < s. (see also under wales.) history and extent. we have seen already that wales began to exist as a separate entity roughly at the end of the 6th and beginning of the 7th centuries. in the second half of the 8th century the welsh were confined in pretty much their present limits by offa, king of mercia, who constructed the dyke going by his name, which has approximately remained the political boundary between england and wales ever since. from this time onwards the bitter feeling against england which we find expressed in the fervid compositions of iolo goch and other political bards served to prevent any serious inroads of english on welsh-speaking territory. with the advent of the tudors, however, there came a great change. henry vii. owed his throne in large measure to the support he had received from wales and he prided himself on his welsh ancestry. a consequence of this was that throughout the 16th century wales received exceptionally favourable treatment at the hands of the english sovereign and parliament. in 1562 a decree was issued ordering a translation of the bible to be made into welsh. all this could naturally not be without effect on the attitude of the leaders of the people towards england. the change is already apparent in the poems of lewis glyn cothi and others. and the striking difference in the manner in which the reformation was regarded in ireland and wales is worthy of remark. during the stuart wars the welsh nobles fought invariably on the royalist side, and there is plenty of other evidence that the aristocracy of wales was becoming thoroughly anglicized both in sentiment and language. at the same time the practice of the tudors was reversed in many particulars. thus it became the custom to appoint englishmen ignorant of the national language to the welsh bishoprics. in this manner it is not a matter for surprise that a feeling of estrangement should grow up between the bulk of the population, who only knew welsh, and the clergy and nobles, their intellectual leaders. the neglect of the national language is evident from the large number of english words which have even crept into such classical works as prichard's _canwyll y cymry_ and ellis wynn's _gweledigaethau y bardd cwsg_. it is stated that, of the 269 works published by welshmen between 1546 and 1644, 44 were in latin, 184 in english and only 41 in welsh, and of these 37 consist of works of piety. thus at the beginning of the 18th century there seemed a fair chance that welsh would soon become extinct like cornish. an extraordinary change was brought about by the methodist movement in wales. the preachers, in order to get hold of the masses, addressed them in the vernacular, and their efforts were crowned with enormous success. at the same time a minister of the established church, griffith jones, went about wales establishing lay schools to which young and old might come to learn to read the welsh bible. between 1737 and 1761 3395 such schools sprang up, at which no fewer than 158,238 persons of all ages learned to read their native language. after griffith jones's death this work was carried on by others, notably by charles of bala (1755-1814), who passed over to calvinistic methodism and whose schools were transformed after the model of the sunday schools instituted in 1782 by robert raikes. charles of bala was largely instrumental in the founding of the british and foreign bible society, and wales was provided with 100,000 copies of the bible and testament at very moderate prices. bishop's morgan's version of the scriptures made in 1588 (final revision 1620) represents the speech of north wales which had remained more or less free from english influence, so that the language of the welsh bible is rightly regarded as the literary model. three-fourths of the inhabitants of wales belong to the various nonconformist sects, and therefore pass almost without exception through the sunday school, where they are drilled in its sole object of study, the welsh bible. with the increasing employment of welsh owing to the nonconformist movement there was also awakened a new interest in the past history of the principality. a society calling itself the _cymdeithas y cymmrodorion_ was founded in london in 1751, and during the succeeding half-century two periodicals exclusively in welsh were started, the one, _trysorfa y gwybodaeth_, in 1770, the other, _cylchgrawn cymraeg_, in 1793. the year 1792 witnessed the creation of an important society, the _cymdeithas y cymreigyddion_, in london, in which the moving spirits were william owen (pughe), owen jones and edward williams. the results of their indefatigable search for ancient welsh manuscripts were published in three volumes under the title _myvyrian archaiology_ (london, 1801-1807). owen further published an edition of the greatest medieval welsh poet dafydd ap gwilym, and also the first copious dictionary. but this was not all. in goronwy owen (1722-1769) a poet had arisen whose works could stand comparison with the compositions of the medieval writers, and it was owing to the efforts of the three men above mentioned that the national eisteddfod (=session, from _eistedd_, \"to sit\") was revived. the origin of these literary festivals is shrouded in obscurity. it is recorded that a s. welsh prince, gruffydd ap rhys, held a festival lasting forty days in 1135 to commemorate a victorious campaign at which poets and minstrels competed for gifts and other rewards. gruffydd's son rhys ap gruffydd is reported to have instituted a similar contest in 1176, at which the successful competitors received a chair whilst the others were given presents. it would seem that after the loss of welsh independence a carefully graded order and a system of jealously guarded rules came into existence. similar national festivals were held under royal patronage under henry viii. in 1523 and again under elizabeth in 1568. from 1568 until 1819 no general eisteddfod for all wales was held. since 1819 the national festival has been held annually and every little town has its own local celebration. hence the nonconformist sunday school, the pulpit and the eisteddfod may be regarded as the most potent factors in resisting the inroads of english. the whole question of the vitality of welsh and what may be called the political and social history of the language is treated in great detail by h. zimmer, \"der pan-keltismus in gross-britannien und irland,\" i., in _preussische jahrbucher_, vol. xcii. (1898). in elementary schools in wales the use of welsh has been permitted since 1893. with regard to the extent over which welsh is spoken a detailed map is given in j.e. southall's _welsh language census of 1891_ (newport, 1895). a line drawn from the southern end of the estuary of the dee about 2 m. w. of connah's quay to aberthaw in glamorgan would practically include all those districts where welsh is spoken by 60% of the population, and considerable deductions would have to be made for parts of flint, montgomery, most of radnor and the n. part of brecon. little is spoken in the southern half of the gower peninsula or in s. pembrokeshire. over much of anglesey 97-1/2% of the population spoke welsh and in parts of cardiganshire 98.3%. of a total population in 1901 of 2,012,876, 929,824 were returned as speakers of welsh, of whom 280,905 were monoglots. that welsh is a very living language may be gathered from the following statistics. between 1801 and 1898 no fewer than 8425 volumes were published in the vernacular, whilst in 1895 there were appearing regularly 2 quarterlies, 2 bi-monthlies, 28 religious and literary monthlies and 25 weekly papers. in 1909 the number was probably greater. the danger for welsh lies rather in the direction of internal decay. the speech of the people is saturated with english words and idiom, and modern writers like daniel owen submit to the same influence instead of returning to the classical models of the 17th century. much remains to be done as regards the classification of the modern welsh dialects. it is usual to divide them into four groups--(1) powys (n.e.); (2) gwynedd (n.w.); (3) dyfed (s.w.); (4) gwent (s.e.). one of the chief points on which n. and s. diverge is the pronunciation of the vowels i, u, y, which in the s. all tend to become i. the difference between n. and s. was noticeable as early as the time of giraldus cambrensis. see m. nettlau, _beitrage zur cymrischen grammatik_ (leipzig, 1887), also _rev. celt._ ix. pp. 64 ff., 113 ff.; t. darlington, \"some dialectal boundaries in mid-wales,\" _trans, of the hon. soc. of cymmrodorion_, 1900-1901. the only scientific description of a living dialect is \"spoken n. welsh,\" by h. sweet, _trans, of the london phil. soc._, 1882-1884. authorities on welsh language.--for the study of older welsh:--j.c. zeuss, _grammatica celtica_ (berlin[2], 1871)--an index to the o. welsh glosses cited in this work was compiled by v. tourneur, _archiv f. celt. lexikographie_, iii. 109-137; j. strachan, _an introduction to early welsh_, with a reader (manchester, 1909); j. rhys, _lectures on welsh philology_ (london[2], 1879). editions of texts--_the black book of carmarthen_, facsimile edition by j. gwenogvryn evans (pwllheli, 1906); j. rhys and j. gwenogvryn evans, _the text of the mabinogion_ (oxford, 1887); _the myvyrian_ _archaiology of wales_ (1801-1807; reprinted denbigh, 1870); w.f. skene, _the four ancient books of wales_ (2 vols., edinburgh, 1868); aneurin owen, _ancient laws and institutes of wales_ (london, 1841); facsimile edition by a.w. wade-evans, _welsh medieval law_ (oxford, 1909); k. meyer, _peredur ap efrawc_ with glossary (leipzig, 1887); r. williams, _selections from the hengwrt manuscripts_ (london, 1876-1892); j.e. southall, _wales and her language_ (newport, 1892). the earliest welsh grammar was published as long ago as 1567 in milan by griffiths roberts, reprinted in facsimile as supplement to the _revue celtique_ (paris, 1883). an account of the language was prefixed to owen pughe's dictionary (1803). during the 19th century many manuals of indifferent value saw the light of day. the most authoritative works are:--t. rowland, _a grammar of the welsh language_ (wrexham, 1853^1, 1876^4), (still the most complete work), the same author also published a companion volume of _welsh exercises_ (wrexham, n.d.); w. spurrell, _a grammar of the welsh language_ (carmarthen^3, 1870); e. anwyl, _a welsh grammar for schools, (i.) accidence, (ii.) syntax_ (london^2, 1898). other useful manuals for the beginner:--t. jones, _a guide to welsh_, pts. i. ii. new ed. (wrexham, n.d.); s.j. evans, _the elements of welsh grammar_ (newport^3, 1903). dictionaries:--the first welsh dictionary was compiled by william salesbury (london, 1547; facsimile reprint, london, 1877); w. owen pughe, _a dictionary of the welsh language_ (2 vols., london, 1803; reprinted denbigh, 1870); w. spurrell, _welsh-english and english-welsh dictionary_ (carmarthen^6, 1904); a smaller one by w. richards in 2 vols. (wrexham, n.d.), and many others. a dictionary on a large scale was planned by d. silvan evans and subsidized by the government. only a-dd has, however, appeared (carmarthen, 1893-1906), cp. j. loth in _archiv. f. celt. lex._ vol. i. for additions and corrections. a survey of welsh periodical literature is contained in t.m. jones's _llenyddiaeth fy ngwlad_ (treffynnon, 1893). for welsh folklore see j. rhys, _celtic folklore, welsh and manx_ (oxford, 1901). h.h. vaughan, _welsh proverbs_ (london, 1889), also _rev. celt._ iii. 419 ff. see also g. dottin, _revue de synthese historique_, vi. 317 ff.; h. zimmer and l.c. stern in _kultur der gegenwart_, teil 1, abt. xi. 1. (e. c. q.) (b) _breton_.--breton (_brezonek_) is the name given to the language spoken by those britons who fled from the south-west of england to armorica (see brittany) in the 5th and 6th centuries of our era to avoid being harassed by the saxons. the first migration probably took place about 450. the dumnonii and cornovii founded small states in brittany, or britannia minor, as it was termed, and were followed in the second half of the 6th and into the 7th century by a long stream of refugees (cf. j. loth, _l'emigration bretonne_, paris, 1883; a. de la borderie, _histoire de la bretagne^2_, vol. i., 1905). in the earliest stages it is difficult to distinguish breton from welsh. the history of the language may be divided into old breton from the 7th to the 11th centuries, middle breton from the 11th to the 17th centuries, and modern breton. in old breton the only material we possess consists of glosses and names occurring in lives of saints, frankish authors, and charters. however, we find a few characteristics which serve to show that the old glosses are really breton and not welsh. thus, an original a never becomes a diphthong (au, aw) in old breton, but remains o. in bret, gn becomes gr. further, in o.w. pretonic u is weakened to an indeterminate sound written i and later y, a phenomenon which does not occur in breton, e.g. lat. _culcita_ appears in o.w. as _cilcet_, but in o. br. as _colcet_. a marked characteristic of breton is the confusion of i and e, e.g. ir. _lis_, \"court,\" w. _llys_, br. _les_. in old breton as in old welsh neither the initial nor the medial mutations are expressed in writing, whilst in middle breton only the latter are regularly denoted. in this period the language diverges very rapidly from welsh. as prominent features we may mention the following. stressed o (=prim. celt. and ir. a) becomes eu, in unstressed syllables e; thus the suffix _-aco_ becomes _-euc_ and later -ec, but in welsh _-auc_ and later -oc, -og. postvocalic -tr, -tl become -dr, -dl as in welsh, but in middle breton they pass into -zr, -zl, which in the modern language appear as _-er, -el; e.g._ mid. br. _lazr_, mod. br. _laer_, \"robber,\" w. _lleidr_, lat. _latro_. further, -lt becomes -ot, -ut, e.g. br. _aot_, _aout_, \"cliff,\" w. _allt_; br. _autrou_, \"lord,\" ir. _altram_, w. _alltraw_, _athraw_, corn. _altrou_; and, more important still, th, [+a] (w. dd) become s, z, e.g. mid. br. _clezeff_, \"sword,\" mod. br. _kleze_, w. _cleddyf_. the orthography only followed the pronunciation very slowly, and it is not until 1659 that we find any attempt made to reform the spelling. in this year a jesuit priest, julien maunoir (br. maner), published a manual in which a new spelling is employed, and it is usual to date modern breton from the appearance of this book, although in reality it marks no new epoch in the history of the language. it is only now that the initial mutations are consistently denoted in writing (medially they are already written in the 11th century), and the differences between the dialects first come into view at this time. as in welsh the accent is withdrawn during the middle period from the final to the penultimate (except in the vannes dialect), which causes the modern unstressed vowel to be reduced in many cases. again, in old welsh and old breton a short stressed vowel in words of one syllable was lengthened, e.g. _tad_, \"father,\" pl. _tadau_, but in modern breton the accent tends to lengthen all stressed vowels. breton has gone its own way in the matter of initial mutation. the nasal mutation has been entirely given up in the initial position, whilst a new mutation, called medial provection, has arisen in the case of b, d, g, which become p, k, t after a few words which originally ended for the most part in z or ch. the vocalic mutation of initial g in breton is _c'h_. we may also make mention of one or two other points on which breton differs widely from welsh. breton has given up the combination ng, e.g. mid. br. _moe_, mod. br. _moue_, \"mane,\" w. _mwng_, ir. _mong_. the language betrays a fondness for nasalized vowels, and in this connexion it may be noted that v representing an original m (w. f, ir. mh), though generally written ff in middle breton, now frequently appears as nv; mid. br. _claff_, mod. br. _klanv_, \"sick, ill,\" w. _claf_, m. ir. _clam_. final g after r and l and sometimes in monosyllables after a vowel is represented in breton by _c'h_, whilst in welsh in the one case we find a vowel and in the other nil, e.g. br. _erc'h_, \"snow,\" w. _eiry_, _eira_; br. _lec'h_, \"place,\" w. _lle_. in welsh mb, nd immediately preceding the stress appear in the modern language as mm, nn but in breton we find mp, nl, e.g. br. _kantol_, \"candle,\" w. _cannwyll_, lat. _candela_; br. _kemper_, \"confluence\" (in place names), w. _cymmer_, ir. _combor_. with regard to the extent of country over which breton is spoken we shall do well to note the seats of the old breton bishoprics. these were quimper, st pol de leon, treguier, st brieuc, st malo, dol and vannes. under count nominoe the bretons succeeded in throwing off the frankish yoke (841-845) and founded an independent state. at this time of greatest political expansion the language boundary was formed by a line which started roughly a little to the west of mont st michel at the mouth of the couesnon, and stretched to the mouth of the loire. during the next three centuries, however, in consequence of political events which cannot be enumerated here, we find french encroaching rapidly on breton, and the old dioceses of dol, st malo, st brieuc, and in part vannes became romance-speaking (cp. j. loth, _revue celtique_, xxviii. 374-403). so that since the 13th and 14th centuries the boundary between french and breton begins in the north about plouha (west of st brieuc bay), and stretches to the mouth of the vilaine in the south. that is to say, the breton speakers are confined to the department of finistere and the west of the departments cotes-du-nord and morbihan. lower brittany contains a population of 1,360,000, of whom roughly 1,250,000 speak breton. the number of monoglot bretons is stated to have been 768,000 in 1878, 679,000 in 1885, and over 500,000 in 1898. there is an infinity of dialects and subdialects in brittany, but it is usual to divide them into four groups. these are the dialects of (1) leon in finistere; (2) cornouailles in finistere, the cotes-du-nord and a part of morbihan; (3) treguier in the cotes-du-nord and finistere; (4) vannes in morbihan and a portion of the cotes-du-nord. the first three resemble one another fairly closely, but the speech of vannes has gone its own way entirely. the dialect of leon is regarded as the literary dialect, thanks to legonidec. the modern language is unfortunately saturated with words borrowed from french which form at least a quarter of the whole vocabulary. the living speech is further characterized by innumerable cases of consonantal metathesis and by parasitic nasalization. loth gives specimens of the most important varieties of breton in his _chrestomathie bretonne_, pp. 363-380, but here we must confine ourselves to pointing out the two most salient differences between the speech of vannes and the rest of brittany. in vannes the stress has not been shifted from the final syllable. in haute-cornouailles and goelo there is a tendency to withdraw the stress on to the antepenultimate, whilst in treguier certain enclitics attract the accent to the final. s, z of the other dialects representing welsh th become h in vannes, e.g. w. _caeth_, br. _keaz, kez_, \"poor, miserable,\" vannes _keah, keh_. this phenomenon occurs sporadically in other dialects. it may also be mentioned that prim. celt, non-initial d, w. dd, is retained as z in leon but disappears when final or standing between vowels in the other dialects, e.g. o. br. _fid_, w. _ffydd_, \"faith,\" leon _feiz_, in cornouailles, treguier and vannes, _fe_. it is doubtful if the most serious differences between the dialects are older than the 16th century. in the middle ages the language of the breton aristocracy was french. upper brittany was politically more important than the western portion. the consequence was that no patronage was extended to the vernacular, and breton sank to the level of a patois with no unity for literary purposes. but a new era dawned with the beginning of the 19th century. the national consciousness was awakened at the time of the revolution, when the bretons became aware of the difference between themselves and their french neighbours. it may be mentioned by the way that the breton language was regarded with suspicion by the leaders of the first republic and attempts were made to suppress it. a breton named legonidec had to flee to england for fighting against the republic. he came under the influence of the movement in wales, and on his return sought to create a breton literary language. he published an excellent grammar (_grammaire celto-bretonne_, paris, 1807) and a dictionary (_dictionnaire breton-francais_, paris, 1821), from which he omitted the numerous french words which had crept into the language and for which native terms already existed. legonidec's example fired a number of writers with zeal for their native tongue and the clergy became interested. under their auspices manuals of breton were published and the language was utilized in a number of schools. a society called the _association bretonne_ was founded in the year 1844. but under the second empire, for reasons which are not easy to discover, this breton awakening was declared to be contrary to the interests of the state, and all the means at the disposal of a highly centralized government like that of france were employed to throttle the movement. down to the present day the use of breton is strictly forbidden in all the state schools, and the influence of the roman catholic clergy has for the most part been hostile to the language. however, the attitude of the government aroused considerable dissatisfaction in the early 'nineties, and in 1896 the _association bretonne_ (disbanded in 1859 and reconstructed in 1873) appointed a permanent committee with the object of preserving and propagating the national language. at the same time some of the clergy headed by abbe buleon began to move, and breton was introduced into many of the schools not under state control. in 1898 was founded the _union regionaliste bretonne_, the most important section of which endeavours to foster the native speech in conjunction with the _comite de preservation du breton_ (founded 1896). in 1899 the annual meeting of the u.r.b. was modelled on the lines of the irish oireachtas, the welsh eisteddfod and the scottish mod, and festivals of this kind have been held ever since. many breton newspapers publish columns in breton, thus _ar bobl_ (a weekly newspaper founded in 1904 and published at carhaix) frequently devotes half its columns to the language. but there is also a weekly four-page newspaper which is wholly in breton. this is _kroaz ar vretoned_, edited by f. vallee and published at st brieuc. in addition to this there are three monthly magazines wholly in breton. the first is _ar vro_, edited by the poet jaffrennou, and in 1908 in its fifth year. the second is _dihunamb_, written in the dialect of vannes and started in 1905. the third is _feiz ha breiz_, started 1899. authorities for breton.--for the external history of breton see h. zimmer, \"die keltische bewegung in der bretagne,\" _preussische jahrbucher_ for 1899, xcix. 454-497. for old and middle breton, j. loth, _chrestomathie bretonne_ (paris, 1890), and the same writer's _vocabulaire vieux-breton_ (paris, 1884). loth and e. ernault have been indefatigable in investigating the history of the language. their numerous contributions are mainly to be found scattered through the _revue celtique, zeitschrift fur celtische philologie_ and the _annales de bretagne_. ernault has also published _glossaire moyen-breton_ in 2 vols. (paris, 1895-1896); _dictionnaire etymologique du moyen-breton_ (paris, 1888). another etymological dictionary was published by v. henry (paris, 1900). grammars, &c.:--dialect of leon: legonidec, _grammaire celto-bretonne_ (paris, 1807, 1838[2], also contained in h. de la villemarque's edition of legonidec's dictionary); f. vallee, _lecons elementaires de grammaire bretonne_ (st brieuc, 1902); e. ernault, _petite grammaire bretonne_ (st brieuc, 1897, the latter also takes account of the dialects of treguier and cornouailles). dialect of treguier: l. le clerc, _grammaire bretonne_ (st brieuc, 1908); j. hingant, _elements de la grammaire bretonne_ (treguier, 1868); p. le roux, \"mutations et assimilations de consonnes dans le dialecte armoricain de pleubian,\" _annales de bretagne_, xii. 3-31. dialect of vannes: a. guillevic and p. le goff, _grammaire bretonne du dialecte de vannes_ (vannes, 1902); _exercises sur la grammaire bretonne_ (vannes, 1903); h. d'arbois de jubainville, \"etude phonetique sur le dialecte breton de vannes,\" _revue celtique_, i. 85 ff. 211 ff.; e. ernault, \"le dialecte vannetais de sarzeau,\" _rev. celt._ iii. 47 ff., 232 ff.; j. guillome, _grammaire francaise-bretonne_ (vannes, 1836). as a curiosity we mention p. treasure, _an introduction to breton grammar_ (carmarthen, 1903). dictionaries: legonidec, _dictionnaire francais-breton_ (st brieuc, 1847), _breton-francais_ (st brieuc, 1850), both republished by de la villemarque and representing the leon dialect; a. troude, _nouveau dictionnaire pratique francais et breton du dialecte de leon avec les acceptations diverses dans les dialectes de vannes, de treguier, et de cornouailles_ (brest, 1869), and _nouveau dictionnaire pratique breton-francais_ (brest, 1876); e. ernault, \"supplement aux dictionnaires bretons-francais,\" _revue celtique_, iv. 145-170. the breton words in gallo, the french patois of upper brittany, were collected by e. ernault, _revue celtique_, v. 218 ff. (c) _cornish._--the ancient language of cornwall (_kernuak, carnoack_) stood in a much closer relation to breton than to welsh,[1] though in some respects it sides with the latter against the former. it agrees with breton on the following points:--it has given up the nasal mutation of initials but provects the mediae. prim. celt. a is not diphthongized, but becomes e, e.g. corn, _ler_, \"floor,\" br. _leur_, w. _llawr_, ir. _lar_. _ng_ is lost as in breton, e.g. _toy_, \"to swear,\" br. _toui_, w. _tyngu_, ir. _tongu_; nd becomes nt before the stress and not nn as in welsh, e.g. corn. br. _hanter_, \"half,\" w. _hanner_. cornish like breton does not prefix a vowel to words beginning with s + consonant, e.g. corn. _spirit_, later _spyrys_, br. _spered_, w. _yspryd_. on the other hand, o. cornish does not confuse i and e to the same extent as bret., e.g. w. _helyg_, \"willow,\" o. cornish _heligen_, br. _halek_. further, cornish does not change th, d to s, z as in breton, _e.g. beth_, \"grave,\" br. _bez_, w. _bedd_, and initial g disappears in the vocalic mutation as in welsh. peculiar to cornish is the change of non-initial t, d to s, z. this occurs in the oldest cornish after n, l, e.g. o. corn, _nans_, \"valley,\" w. _nant_; corn. _tas_, \"father,\" w. _tad_. a feature of later cornish is the introduction of a d before post-vocalic m, n, e.g. _pedn_, \"head,\" w. _pen_. in later cornish the accent seems to have fallen on the penultimate as in modern welsh and breton. in 936 the \"welsh\" were driven out of exeter by aethelstan, and from that time the tamar appears to have formed a general boundary between english and cornish, though there seems to be evidence that even as late as the reign of elizabeth cornish was spoken in a few places to the east of that river. the decay of cornish has been largely attributed to the reformation. neither the prayer-book nor the scriptures were translated into the vernacular, and we find the same apathy on the part of the church of england in cornwall as in wales and ireland. unfortunately the methodist movement came at a time when it was too late to save the language. by 1600 cornish had been driven into the western parts of the duchy and in 1662 we are informed by john ray that few of the children could speak it. lhuyd gives a list of the parishes in which cornish was spoken, but goes on to state that every one speaks english. in 1735 there were only a few people along the coast between penzance and land's end who understood cornish, and dolly pentreath of mousehole, who died in 1777, is commonly stated to have been the last person who spoke it, though jenner seems to show that there were others who lived until well into the 19th century who were able to converse in the dialect. however, the modern english speech of west cornwall is full of celtic words, and nine-tenths of the places and people from the tamar to land's end bear cornish names. celtic words still in use are to be found in jago's _dialect of cornwall_ (truro, 1882); thus the name for the dog-fish is _morgy_, \"sea-dog.\" authorities for cornish.--a mass of details about cornish is collected in h. jenner's _handbook of the cornish language_ (london, 1904). (cf. j. loth's review in the _revue celtique_, xxvii. 93.) lhuyd's _archaeologica britannica_ (1707) contains a grammar of the language as spoken in his day, and a _sketch of cornish grammar_ is to be found as an appendix to norris's _ancient cornish drama_. a dictionary was published by r. williams entitled _lexicon cornu-britannicum_ (landovery, 1865), to which w. stokes published a supplement of about 2000 words in the _transactions of the london philological society_ for 1868-1869. we may also mention the _english-cornish dictionary_, by f.w.p. jago (plymouth, 1887), and a _glossary of cornish names_, by j. bannister (truro, 1871). w. stokes published a glossary to _beunans meriasek_ in the _archiv fur celtische lexikographie_, i. 101, and important articles by j. loth have appeared in the _revue celtique_, vols. xviii. to xxiv. w.s. lach-szyrma, \"les derniers echos de la langue cornique,\" _revue celtique_, iii. 239 ff. h. jenner, \"some rough notes on the present pronunciation of cornish names,\" _rev. celt._ xxiv. 300-305. iii. the language of the ancient picts.--the evidence from which we can draw any conclusions as to the affinities of the language of the picts is so extremely scanty that the question has been the subject of great controversy. the picts are first mentioned by eumenius (a.d. 297), who regarded them as having inhabited britain in the time of caesar. in the year 368 they are described by ammianus marcellinus as invading the roman province of britain in conjunction with the irish scots. in columba's time we find the whole of scotland east of drumalban and north of the forth divided into two kingdoms--north and south pictland--and it is reasonable to identify the picts, at any rate in part, with the caledonians of the classical authors. galloway and co. down were also inhabited by picts. bede in enumerating the languages of britain mentions those of the britons, picts, scots and the english. the names by which the picts are known in history have aroused considerable discussion. it seems natural to connect lat. _picti_ with the _pictones_ and _pictavi_ of gaul, but in irish they are known as _cruithne_, which appears in welsh as _prydyn_, \"pict\"; cp. _prydein_, \"britain,\" forms corresponding to the earliest greek name for these islands, [greek: nesoi pretanikai]. three conflicting theories have been held as to the character of the pictish language. rhys, relying on the strange character of the scottish ogam inscriptions, pronounces it to be non-celtic and non-indo-european. in this he has been followed by zimmer, who bases his argument on the pictish rule of succession. skene maintained that the picts spoke a language nearly allied to goidelic, whilst stokes, loth, macbain, d'arbois and meyer are of opinion that pictish was more closely related to brythonic. of personal names mentioned by classical writers we have calgacus and argentocoxus, both of which are certainly celtic. the names occurring in ptolemy's description of scotland have a decidedly celtic character, and they seem, moreover, to bear a greater resemblance to brythonic than to goidelic, witness such tribal designations as epidii, cornavii, damnonii, decantae, novantae. in the case of all these names, however, it should be borne in mind that they probably reached the writers of antiquity through brythonic channels. bede mentions that the east end of the antonine wall terminated at a place called in pictish _pean-fahel_, and in saxon _penneltun_. _pean_ resembles old welsh _penn_, \"head,\" old irish _cenn_, and the second element may possibly be connected with gaelic _fal_, welsh _gwawl_, \"rampart.\" the names of the kings in the pictish chronicles are not an absolutely trustworthy guide, as owing to the pictish rule of succession the bearers of the names may in many cases have been brythons. the names of some of them occur in one source in a goidelic, in another in a brythonic form. it is of course possible that the southern part of pictish territory was divided between goidels and brythons, the population being very much mixed. on the other hand there are a number of elements in place-names on pictish ground which do not occur in wales or ireland. such are _pet_, _pit_, \"farm\" (?), _for_, _fother_, _fetter_, _foder_, \"lower\" (?). _aber_, \"confluence,\" on the contrary, is pure brythonic (gaelic _inver_). though the majority of scholars are of opinion that pictish was nearly akin to the brythonic dialects, we are entirely in the dark as to the manner in which that language was ousted by the goidelic speech of the dalriadic scots. in view of the comparatively unimportant part played for a considerable period in scottish affairs by the colony from ireland, it is well-nigh incredible that pictish should have been supplanted by gaelic. authorities.--j. rhys, _celtic britain_ (london[2], 1905), _the welsh people_ (london[3], 1902), \"the language and inscriptions of the northern picts,\" in _proceedings of the society of antiquaries of scotland_ (1892); h. zimmer, \"das mutterrecht der pikten,\" in _savignys zeitschrift_ (1895); also trans. by g. henderson in _leabhar nan gleann_ (inverness, 1898); w.f. skene, _celtic scotland_ (edinburgh, 1876); a. macbain in appendix to reprint of skene's _highlanders of scotland_ (stirling, 1902); a. macbain, \"ptolemy's geography of scotland,\" in _transactions of the gaelic society of inverness_, xviii. 267-288; w. stokes, _bezzenbergers beitrage_, xviii. 267 ff.; h. d'arbois de jubainville, _les druides et les dieux celtiques a forme d'animaux_ (paris, 1906). the various theories have been recently reviewed and criticized by t. rice holmes in an appendix to his _caesar's invasion of britain_ (london, 1907). iv. history of celtic philology.--for many centuries the affinities of the celtic languages were the subject of great dispute. the languages were in turn regarded as descended from hebrew, teutonic and scythian. the first attempt to treat the dialects comparatively was made by edward lhuyd in his _archaeologia britannica_ (oxford, 1707), but the work of this scholar seems to have remained unnoticed. a century later adelung in germany divided the dialects into true celtic (= goidelic) and celtic influenced by teutonic (= brythonic). but it took scholars a long time to recognize that these languages belonged to the indo-european family. thus they were excluded by bopp in his comparative grammar, though he did not fail to notice certain resemblances between celtic and sanskrit. james pritchard was the first to demonstrate the true relationship of the group in his _eastern origin of the celtic nations_ (london, 1831), but his conclusions were not accepted. as late as 1836 pott denied the indo-european connexion. a year later pictet resumed pritchard's arguments, and bopp himself in 1838 admitted the languages into the charmed circle, showing in an able paper entitled _uber die keltischen sprachen_ that the initial mutations were due to the influence of terminations now lost. but it was reserved to a bavarian historian, j.c. zeuss (1806-1856), to demonstrate conclusively the indo-european origin of the celtic dialects. zeuss, who may worthily rank with grimm and diez among the greatest german philologists, rediscovered the old irish glosses on the continent, and on them he reared the magnificent structure which goes by his name. the _grammatica celtica_ was first published in 1853. the material contained in this monumental work was greatly extended by a series of important publications by whitley stokes and hermann ebel, so much so that the latter was commissioned to prepare a second edition, which appeared in 1871. stokes has rendered the greatest service to the cause of celtic studies by the publication of countless texts in irish, cornish and breton. in 1870 the _revue celtique_ (vol. xxviii. in 1908) was founded by henri gaidoz, whose mantle later fell upon h. d'arbois de jubainville. in 1879 e. windisch facilitated the study of irish by publishing a grammar of old irish, and a year later a volume of important middle irish texts with an exhaustive glossary, the first of its kind. since then windisch and stokes have collaborated to bring out some of the greatest monuments of irish literature in the series of _irische texte_. the text of the wurzburg glosses was published by zimmer (1881) and by stokes (1887), and that of the milan glosses by ascoli. an important step forward was the discovery of the laws of the irish accent made simultaneously by zimmer and thurneysen. this discovery led to a thorough investigation of the difficult verb system of old irish--a task which has largely occupied the attention of strachan in england, thurneysen and zimmer in germany, and pedersen and sarauw in denmark. in a sense the publication of the _thesaurus palaeohibernicus_ (cambridge, 1901-1903) may be regarded as marking the close of this epoch. the older stages of irish have hitherto so monopolized the energies of scholars that other departments of celtic philology save breton have been left in large measure unworked. j. strachan had begun to tap the mine of the old welsh poems when his career was cut short by death. j. loth and e. ernault have concentrated their attention on breton, and can claim that the development of the speech of brittany has been more thoroughly investigated than that of any other celtic language. the number of periodicals devoted entirely to celtic studies has increased considerably of recent years. in 1896 k. meyer and l. c. stern founded the _zeitschrift fur celtische philologie_ (now in its 7th volume), and in 1897 the _archiv fur celtische lexikographie_ began to appear under the direction of k. meyer and w. stokes. as a supplement to the latter meyer has been publishing his invaluable contributions to middle irish lexicography. in ireland a new periodical styled _eriu_ was started by the irish school of learning in 1904. the scottish _celtic review_, dealing more particularly with scottish and irish gaelic, began to appear in 1903, and the _transactions of the gaelic society of inverness_ are in the 26th volume. for wales we have _y cymmrodor_ since 1877, and the _transactions of the hon. society of cymmrodorion_ since 1892, and for brittany the _annales de bretagne_, published by the faculty of letters at rennes (founded 1886). see v. tourneur, _esquisse d'une histoire des etudes celtiques_ (liege, 1905). (e. c. q.) celtic literature ogam inscriptions. i. irish literature.--in the absence of a native coinage it is extremely difficult to say when the use of letters was introduced into ireland. it is probable that the latin alphabet first came in with christianity. with the exception of the one bilingual ogam inscription as yet discovered in ireland (that at killeen cormac) all the inscriptions in roman letters are certainly later than 500. indeed, apart from the stone reading \"lie luguaedon macci menueh,\" they are all contemporary with or later than the old irish glosses. with regard to the ogam inscriptions we cannot make any confident assertions. owing to the lack of criteria for dating certain irish sound-changes accurately it is impossible to assign chronological limits for the earlier stones. the latter cannot be later than the 5th century, but there is nothing to show whether they are christian or not, and if pagan they may be a century or two earlier. it is true that the heroes and druids of the older epics are represented in the stories as making constant use of ogam letters on wood and stone, and as the state of civilization described in the oldest versions of the ulster sagas seems largely to go back to the beginning of the christian era, it is not impossible that this peculiar system of writing had been framed by them. the ogam system is certainly based on the latin and not the greek alphabet, and was probably invented by some person from the south of ireland who received his knowledge of the roman letters from traders from the mouth of the loire. it may, however, be regarded as certain that the ogam script was never employed in early times for literary purposes. we are told that the gaulish druids disdained to commit their lore to writing, although they were familiar with the use of greek letters, and their irish confreres probably resembled them in this respect. tradition connects the codification of the brehon laws with the name of patrick, and there is reason for believing, as we shall see later, that the greatest irish epic was first committed to writing in the 7th century. old irish mss. hymns. the great bulk of irish literature is contained in mss. belonging to the middle irish period (1100-1550), and in order to be able to treat this literature as a whole it will be convenient for us to deal first with those documents which are termed old irish, especially as the contemporary remains of the literature of the earlier period are almost exclusively of a religious nature. most of the old irish documents have been printed by stokes and strachan in the _thesaurus palaeohibernicus_, and where no reference is given the reader is referred to that monumental work. the extraordinary outburst of intellectual activity in ireland from the 6th to the 9th centuries and the compositions of irishmen in the latin language, belong to the history of medieval european literature and fall outside the scope of this article. for the _confession of st patrick_ and his \"letter to the subjects of coroticus\" see patrick. the only irish document ascribed to the saint is the strange so-called \"hymn,\" the _faeth fiada_, more properly _foid fiada_, \"the cry of the deer.\" this is a rhythmical incantation which is said to have rendered the saint and his companions invisible to king loigaire and his druids. the trinity and powers of nature are invoked to help him to resist spells of women and smiths and wizards. the hymn, which contains a number of strange grammatical forms, is undoubtedly referred to in the book of armagh, and may very well go back to the 5th century. the latin hymns contained in two mss. dating from the end of the 11th or beginning of the 12th century, a trinity college, dublin, ms., and a ms. belonging to the franciscan monastery in dublin, are of interest to us as exhibiting the influence of the native metrical system. quantity and elision are ignored, and rhymes, assonances, alliterations and harmonies abound in true irish fashion. the line consists of two units which commonly contain either seven or eight syllables apiece. the earliest and best-known of these religious poems are the hymn of secundinus (sechnall d. 447) on st patrick, and the two hymns attributed to st columba (d. 597) beginning \"_noli pater_\" and \"_altus prosator_,\" the latter of which exhibits some of the peculiarities of the so-called hibernian latin of the _hisperica famina_ and the _lorica_ of gildas. the date of the irish hymns in the _liber hymnorum_ ranges, according to stokes and strachan, from the 7th to the 11th centuries. ultan's hymn on st brigit beginning \"_brigit be bithmaith_,\" which is by far the most artistic of the collection, was perhaps composed in the 7th century. definite metrical laws had evidently been elaborated when this poem was written. the beat is iambic, but the natural accent of the words is rigidly observed. the long line consists of two units of five syllables each. the rhymes are dissyllabic and perfect. alliteration is always observed in the latter half of each line and assonances are found knitting up the half-lines. the short prayer ascribed to ninine or to fiacc is a highly alliterative piece without rhyme, the date of which cannot be fixed. the well-known hymn on st patrick traditionally ascribed to fiacc, bishop of sletty, and the piece beginning \"_sen de_,\" traditionally ascribed to colman, are assigned on linguistic grounds to the beginning of the 9th century. the lines going by the name of \"sanctan's hymn\" probably belong to the same century, whilst the metrical catalogue of marvels performed by st brigit contains such a medley of older and later forms, probably due to interpolation, that it is impossible to determine its age. the few lines entitled \"mael-isu's hymn\" are the most recent of all and probably belong to the 11th century (mael-isu d. 1086). the patrician documents by muirchu maccu machtheni, who professed to write at the command of bishop aed of sletty (d. 698), and by tirechan, who is said to have received his information from bishop ultan (d. 656), are contained in the book of armagh, a ms. compiled by ferdomnach in 807. these documents, like the _life of st columba_ by adamnan, the ms. of which was written by dorbbene, abbot of hi (d. 713), contain a number of names and forms of great importance for the study of the language. earliest prose. the earliest pieces of connected prose in irish are three:--(1) the cambray homily, contained in an 8th-century codex at cambray copied by a continental hand from a ms. in the irish character; the language is very archaic and dates from the second half of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century; (2) the additions to the notes of tirechan on the life of st patrick in the book of armagh; these seem to go back to the early 8th century; (3) the tract on the mass in the stowe missal, which is in all probability nearly as old as the cambray homily, though contained in a 10th or 11th century ms. of especial interest are the spells and poems found in the stowe missal and two continental mss. the stowe ms. (now deposited in the royal irish academy) contains three rather badly preserved spells for a sore eye, a thorn and disease of the urine. a st gall codex has preserved four irish incantations of the 8th and 9th centuries. these are respectively against a thorn, urinary disease, headache and various ailments. another charm, which is partly obscure, occurs in the 9th-century codex preserved at the monastery of st paul in carinthia. the same ms. also contains (1) a humorous poem treating of the doings of a bookish writer and his favourite cat pangur ban; (2) a riddling poem ascribed to suibne geilt, a king who is said to have lost his reason at the battle of moira (a.d. 637); (3) verses extracted from a poem ascribed to st moling (d. 697), who may very well have been the actual author; (4) a poem in praise of some leinster princeling called aed. old glosses. for our knowledge of the older language, however, we have to rely mainly on the numerous glosses scattered about in a large number of mss., which it is impossible to enumerate here. indeed, such an enumeration is now rendered superfluous owing to the publication of the _thesaurus palaeohibernicus_, in which all the various glosses have been collected. for our purpose it will be sufficient to mention the three most important codices containing old irish glosses. these are as follows:--(1) the codex paulinus at wurzburg, which contains the thirteen epistles of st paul, and the epistle to the hebrews, with a great mass of explanatory glosses, partly in latin, partly in irish, partly mixed. the chief source of the commentary is the commentary of pelagius, who is often cited by name. the date of this highly important ms. is much disputed; part of the irish glosses seem to date from about 700, whilst the rest may be placed a little before 800. (2) the codex ambrosianus, formerly at bobbio, now at milan, which contains a commentary on the psalter with a large number of irish glosses. in their present state these glosses were copied in the first half of the 9th century. (3) glosses on priscian contained in four mss., of which the most important is the codex sangallensis, dating from the middle of the 9th century. apart from the biblical glosses and scholia the other chief texts or authors provided with irish glosses are augustine, bede, the canons, the computus, eutychius, juvencus, philargyrius, prudentius and servius. the milan and the st gall codices just mentioned both contain several short poems in irish. in two stanzas in the swiss ms. we find expressed for the first time that keen sympathy with nature in all her moods which is so marked a feature of irish and welsh verse. two ponderous religious poems have now to be noticed. to oengus the culdee is attributed the lengthy _felire_ or calendar of church festivals, consisting of 365 quatrains in _rinnard_ metre, one for each day in the year. the language of this dry compilation, which is heavily glossed and annotated, points to 800 as the date of composition, and oengus, who is stated to have lived about that time, may well have been the author. this calendar has been twice edited by w. stokes with an english translation, the first time for the royal irish academy (dublin, 1880), and again for the bradshaw society (london, 1905). it may perhaps be as well to enumerate here the later irish martyrologies. (1) the _martyrology of tallaght_ (tamlacht), founded on an 8th-century calendar, but containing additions down to 900 (ed. d.h. kelly, dublin, 1857). (2) the metrical _martyrology of o'gorman_, c. 1166-1174, edited by stokes for the bradshaw society (london, 1895). (3) the _martyrology of donegal_, an important compilation in prose made by michael o'clery in 1630, edited by j.h. todd (dublin, 1864). a composition which is wrongly assigned to oengus the culdee is the _saltair na rann_ or psalter in quatrains, contained in an oxford ms. (rawlinson b 502) and published without a translation by stokes (oxford, 1883). the work proper consists of 150 poems corresponding to the number of psalms in the psalter, but 12 poems have been added, and in all it contains 2098 quatrains, chiefly in _deibide_ metre of seven syllables. the poems are mainly based on biblical (old testament) history, but they preserve a large measure of medieval sacred lore and cosmogony. the psalter received additions as late as 998, and the oxford ms. belongs to the 12th century. we should perhaps also mention here the famous _amra_ or eulogy of st columba, commonly attributed to dallan forgaill, a contemporary of the saint, but stokes takes the view that it was written in the 9th century, and is intentionally obscure. the oldest but not the best copy of the _amra_ is preserved in the trinity college, dublin, ms. of the _liber hymnorum_, but it also occurs in lu. and elsewhere. it invariably appears heavily gloss-laden, and the glosses and commentary added thereto are out of all proportion to the text. this piece, which is not extant in its integrity, was probably intended as artificial alliterative prose, but, as we have it, it is a medley of isolated phrases and irrelevant comment. old collectors. book of the dun cow. book of leinster. yellow book of lecan. book of ballymote. speckled book. during the 9th and 10th centuries ireland was harassed by the vikings, and a host of scholars seem to have fled to the continent, carrying with them their precious books, many of which are preserved in italy, switzerland, germany and elsewhere. hence very few early irish mss. are preserved in ireland itself. when the fury of the storm was past, irish scholars showed increased interest in the old literary documents, and copied all that they could lay hands on into miscellaneous codices. the earliest of these collections, such as the _cin of druim snechta_, the _yellow book of slane_, the _book of dubdaleithe_, the _psalter of cashel_, exist no longer, though their names have come down and certain of them were known in the 17th century. however, copies of a goodly portion of the contents of these old books are preserved to us in one form or another, but mainly in a series of huge miscellaneous codices ranging in date from the 12th to the 16th century. the oldest is _lebor na h-uidre_, or book of the dun cow, preserved in the royal irish academy and published in facsimile (dublin, 1870). this ms. was compiled in part in the monastery of clonmacnoise by moelmuire maccelechair, who was slain in 1106. the book of the dun cow (where necessary we shall abbreviate as lu.) derives its name from a legend that ciaran of clonmacnoise (d. 544) took down the story of the _tain bo cualnge_ on a parchment made from the hide of his favourite cow. the name seems to have been wrongly applied to the 12th-century ms. in the 15th century. lu. is almost entirely devoted to romance, the stories which it contains belonging mainly to the ulster cycle. the next ms. in point of age is the book of leinster (abbreviated ll.) now in trinity college, dublin. it was transcribed by finn, son of gorman, bishop of kildare (d. 1160). ll. also contains a large number of romances in addition to other important matter, mainly historical and genealogical, bearing more particularly on the affairs of leinster. the yellow book of lecan (ybl.), also in trinity college, dublin, was written at different times by the macfirbis family, but chiefly by gilla isa, son of donnchad mor macfirbis about 1391. the macfirbises were hereditary scribes and genealogists to the o'dowds, chiefs of the hy fiachrach (co. sligo). ybl. contains a vast amount of romance, and is indispensable as supplementing and checking the contents of lu. and ll. the most extensive collection of all is the book of ballymote (bb.), now belonging to the royal irish academy, which was compiled about the beginning of the 15th century by various scribes. the book was in the possession of the chiefs of ballymote for more than a century. in 1522 it was purchased by the o'donnells for 140 milch cows. bb. only contains little romantic matter, but it has preserved much valuable historical and genealogical material. the contents of the _leabhar breac_ (lb.), or speckled book, now in the royal irish academy, are chiefly ecclesiastical and religious. lb. seems to have been compiled in large measure before 1544. all these five codices have been published in facsimile by the royal irish academy with a description of their contents. two important mid. ir. mss. in the bodleian (rawlinson b 512 and laud 610), containing a good deal of romantic material, are also published in facsimile by henry frowde. other mss. material. other mss. which require special mention are (1) the great book of lecan, compiled in the year 1417 by gilla isa mor macfirbis, in the royal irish academy; (2) the book of lismore, the property of the duke of devonshire at lismore castle. this codex was compiled in the latter half of the 15th century from the lost book of monasterboice and other mss. its contents are described in the introduction to stokes's _lives of saints from the book of lismore_ (oxford, 1890). (3) the book of fermoy in the royal irish academy. the contents are described in the introduction to o'beirne crowe's edition of the _tain bo fraich_ (dublin, 1870). (4) the book of hy maine recently acquired by the royal irish academy. the scribe who wrote it died in 1372. o'curry, o'longan and o'beirne crowe drew up a ms. catalogue of the irish mss. in the royal irish academy, and o'donovan performed the same service for the trinity college, dublin, collection. a briefer account of the irish mss. in tcd. will be found in abbott's catalogue of the mss. in that library. o'curry also drew up a list of the irish mss. in the british museum, and s.h. o'grady has printed part i. of a descriptive catalogue of this collection (london, 1901), part ii. by t. o'maille. the twenty-six mss. in the franciscan monastery in dublin are described by j.t. gilbert in the _fourth report of the royal commission on historical mss._ w.f. skene catalogued the collection of mss. in the advocates' library, edinburgh, a printed catalogue of which has been issued by d. mackinnon (edinburgh, 1909; see also _trans. gaelic soc. of inverness_, xvi. 285-309). in order to give some idea of the enormous extent of irish ms. material we may quote some calculations made by o'curry, who states that if the five oldest vellum mss. were printed the result would be 9400 quarto pages. other vellum mss. ranging in date from 1300 to 1600 would fill 9000 pages of the same size, whilst the innumerable paper mss. belonging chiefly to the early 18th century would cover no less than 30,000 pages. the well-known french scholar, d'arbois de jubainville, published in 1883 a tentative catalogue of irish epic literature. his work is by no means complete, but his figures are instructive. he mentions 953 irish mss. containing epic matter preserved in irish and english libraries. to these have to be added another 56 in continental libraries. of this mass of material 133 irish and british mss. and 35 continental mss. were written before 1600. it should, however, be stated that the same subject is treated over and over again, and much of the later material is absolutely valueless. character of middle irish. before we pass on to the consideration of the literature itself, it will be well to make a few preliminary observations on the nature of the language in which the pieces are written and on the status of the poet in medieval ireland. the language in which the huge miscellaneous codices enumerated above are contained is called by the general name of middle irish, which is a very wide term. irish scribes often copied their original somewhat mechanically, without being tempted to change the language to that of their own time. thus in many parts of lu. we find a thin middle irish veneer on what is largely old irish of the 8th or 9th century. hence such a ms. often preserves forms which had been current several centuries before, and it may even happen that a 14th or 15th century ms. such as ybl. contains much older forms than a corresponding passage in ll. of recent years several scholars--notably strachan--have devoted much attention to the old irish verb-forms, so that we have now safe criteria for establishing with some degree of certainty the age of recensions of stories and poems preserved in late mss. in this way a number of compositions have been assigned to the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, though actual written documents belonging to this period are comparatively rare. the \"fili.\" it remains for us to say a few words about the _fili_, the professional literary man in ireland. the _fili_ (from the stem _vel-_, \"to see,\" welsh, breton, _gwelet_, \"to see\") appears to have been originally a diviner and magician, and corresponds to the _vates_, [greek: ouateis], of the ancient gauls mentioned by classical writers. in ireland he is represented as sole possessor of three methods of divination: the _imbas forosnai_, _teinm loida_ and _dichetal di chennaib cnaime_. the first two of these were forbidden by patrick, but they seem to have survived as late as the 10th century. part of the tremendous influence exercised by the _fili_ was due to the belief in his powers of satire. by reciting a satirical poem or incantation he was able to raise blotches on the face of and so disfigure any person who aroused his displeasure. numerous cases of this occur in irish literature. the origin of the science of the _fili_ is sometimes traced back to the _dagda_, one of the figures of the irish pantheon, and they were held in such esteem that the annalists give the obituaries of the head-ollams as if they were so many princes. with the introduction of christianity they seem to have gradually superseded the druid, and their functions are therefore very wide. we are told that they acted in three capacities: (i) as story-tellers (_fer comgne_ or _scelaige_); (2) as judges (_brithem_), including the professions of arbiters, legislators and lawyers; (3) as poets proper (_fercerte_). we are here only concerned with the _fili_ in his capacity of story-teller and poet. in accordance with the minute classification of the various ranks of society in early ireland, the social status of the literary man was very carefully defined. the degrees vary slightly in different documents, but the following list of ten from the _senchus mor_ is very instructive: (1) the highest degree is the _ollam_ (ollave), who knows 350 stories; (2) the _anruth_, 175 stories; (3) the _clii_, 80 stories; (4) the _cana_, 60 stories; (5) the _doss_, 50 stories; (6) the _macfuirmid_, 40 stories; (7) the _fochlocon_, 30 stories; (8) the _drisac_, 20 stories; (9) the _taman_, 10 stories; (10) the _oblaire_, 7 stories. in ll. we are told that the stories (_scel_) are divided into primary and secondary, and that the latter are only obligatory on the first four of the grades enumerated. again, certain styles of composition seem to have been the monopoly of certain grades. thus the poem which was most highly rewarded and demanded the highest technical skill was called the _anomain_, and was the exclusive right of the _ollam_. a notable instance of this kind of composition is the _amra_ of columba, attributed to dallan forgaill. the higher grades were allowed a number of attendants, whom the kings had to support along with the poet himself. thus the _fochlocon_ had two and the _doss_ four attendants. in the 6th century dallan forgaill, the chief _fili_ of ireland, claimed the right to be attended by thirty _filid_, which was the number of the train allowed to the supreme king. the reigning monarch, aed macainmirech, weary of the pretensions of the poets, attempted to banish them, which led to the famous assembly of druim ceta, where columba intervened and reduced the number to twenty-four (the train of a provincial king). in the plan of the hall of tara, preserved in ll. and ybl., the _sui littre_ or doctor in theology has the seat of honour opposite the king. the _ollam brithem_ or supreme judge or lawyer ranks with the highest rank of nobility, whilst the _ollam fili_ is on a footing with the nobleman of the second degree. we have already stated that the stories which formed the stock-in-trade of the poets were divided into primary and secondary stories. of the latter there were 100, but little is known of them. however, several more or less complete lists of the primary stories have come down to us. the oldest catalogue (contained in ll.) gives the titles of 187 of these tales arranged under the following heads--destructions, cow-spoils, courtships, battles, caves, navigations, violent deaths, expeditions, elopements and conflagrations; together with the following, which also reckon as prime-stories--irruptions, visions, loves, hostings and migrations. of these stories sixty-eight have been preserved in a more or less complete form. the tales enumerated in these catalogues, which in their substance doubtless go back to the 8th or even to the 7th century, fall into four main categories: (1) the mythological cycle, (2) the cuchulinn cycle, (3) the finn cycle, (4) pieces relating to events of the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries. meyer has estimated that of the 550 titles of epic tales in d'arbois's _catalogue_ about 400 are known to us, though many of them only occur in a very fragmentary state; and about 100 others have since been discovered which were not known in 1883. the course of training undergone by the _fili_ was a very lengthy one. it is commonly stated to have extended over twelve years, at the end of which time the student was thoroughly versed in all the legendary, legal, historical and topographical lore of his native country, in the use of the innumerable and excessively complicated irish metres, in ogam writing and irish grammar. the instruction in the schools of poetry seems to have been entirely oral, and the course consisted largely in learning by heart the verses in which the native lore was enshrined. these schools of learning existed in one form or another down to the 17th century. in the early days the _fili_ is represented as employing a mysterious archaic form of speech--doubtless full of obscure kennings--which was only intelligible to the initiated. an instance of this _berla feine_, as it was termed, is the piece entitled _acallam an da shuad_ (colloquy of the two sages, _rev. celt._ xxvi. 4 ff.). in this piece two _filid_ of the 1st century a.d. are represented as contending in this dialect for the office of chief _ollam_ of ireland, much to the chagrin of king conchobar, to whom their speeches were unintelligible. it was in consequence of this that conchobar ruled that the office of _fili_ should no longer carry with it of necessity the office of judge (_brithem_). it ought to be observed that the church never showed itself hostile to the _filid_, as it did to the druids. dubthach, chief _fili_ of ireland in the time of st patrick, is represented as the saint's constant companion, and the famous flann mainistrech (d. 1056), though a layman and _fili_, was head of the monastery school at monasterboice. the bard. before leaving the subject of the literary classes, we must notice an inferior grade of poet--the bard. like the official _filid_, the bards were divided into grades. there were both patrician and plebeian bards, each subdivided into eight degrees, having their own peculiar metres. like the _fili_ the bard had to go through a long course of study, and he was generally attached to the house of some chieftain whose praises he had to sing. in course of time the office of _fili_ became extinct, owing to a variety of causes, and from the 13th to the 16th century we find the hitherto despised family bard stepping into the place of the most influential literary man in ireland. his importance was fully realized by the english government, which did its best to suppress the order. medieval romances. the medieval romances form by far the most attractive part of irish literature, and it is to them that we shall first turn our attention. two main groups of stories have to be distinguished. the one is the ulster cycle, with conchobar and cuchulinn as central figures. the other is the southern or leinster-munster cycle, revolving round finn and ossian. further stories dealing with mythological and historical personages will be mentioned in their turn. ulster cycle. the \"tain.\" the ulster cycle may be regarded as ireland's most important contribution to the world's literature. the chief and at the same time the lengthiest romance in which the heroes of this group figure is the great epic, the _tain bo cualnge_ or the cattle-raid of cooley (co. louth). here we find ourselves in a world of barbaric splendour, and we are constantly reminded of the iliad, though the irish epic from a purely literary point of view cannot bear comparison with the work of homer. the main actors in the drama are conchobar, king of ulster, the great warrior cuchulinn (see cuchulinn), ailill and medb, king and queen of connaught, and fergus, conchobar's predecessor as king of ulster, now in exile in connaught. these persons may or may not have actually lived, but the irish annalists and synchronists agree in placing them about the beginning of the christian era. and there cannot be any doubt as to the antiquity of the state of civilization disclosed in this great saga. it has been repeatedly pointed out that the irish heroes are equipped and conduct themselves in the same manner as the gauls described by the greek traveller posidonius, and prof. w. ridgeway has shown recently that several articles of dress and armour correspond exactly to the la tene types of the continent. to mention a few primitive traits among many--the irish champions of the _tain_ still fight in chariots, war-dogs are employed, whilst the heads of the slain are carried off in triumph and slung round the necks of the horses. it may also be mentioned that emain macha, conchobar's residence, is reported by the annalists to have been destroyed in a.d. 323, and that portions of meath, which is stated to have been made into a separate province in the 2nd century a.d., are in the _tain_ regarded as forming part of ulster. noteworthy is the exalted position occupied by the druid in the ulster sagas, showing how little the romances were influenced by christianity. no roman soldier ever set foot in ireland, and this early epic literature is of supreme value as a monument of primitive celtic civilization. ireland has always been a pastoral country. in early times no native coins were in circulation: the land belonged to the tribe. consequently a man's property consisted mainly of cattle. cattle-raids were an event of daily occurrence, and sir walter scott has made us familiar with similar expeditions on the part of the scottish highlanders in the 18th century. hence it is not a matter for surprise that the theme of the greatest irish epic is a cattle-raid. at the time there were two wonderful bulls in ireland, the bond or brown bull of cualnge, and the findbennach or white-horn, belonging to medb. these two animals are of no ordinary nature. other stories represent them as having existed under many different forms before they were reborn as bulls. first they appear as swineherds belonging to the supernatural people of the _sid_ of fairy mounds; then they are metamorphosed successively as ravens, warriors, sea-monsters and insects. it was queen medb's ambition to gain possession of the brown bull of cualnge, and for this purpose she collected the united hosts of ireland to raid the province of ulster and carry him off. medb chooses the season when she knows the ulstermen are all incapacitated as the result of a curse laid upon them by a fairy woman. cuchulinn alone is exempt from this debility. the story is divided into a number of sections, and has been summarized by miss hull as follows:--(1) the prologue, relating, in the form of a night dialogue between ailill and medb, the dispute between them which brought about the raid; (2) the collecting of medb's hosts and the preliminary movements of the army, during which period she first became aware of the presence and powers of cuchulinn. her inquiry of fergus as to who this formidable foe is leads to a long section called (3) cuchulinn's boy-deeds, in which fergus relates the remarkable prodigies of cuchulinn's youth, and warns medb that, though the hero is but a beardless youth of seventeen, he will be more than a match for all her forces. (4) a long series of single combats, of which the first part of the tale is made up; they are at first gay and bombastic in character, but become more grave as they proceed, and culminate in the combat of cuchulinn with his old companion, fer diad. this section contains the account of cuchulinn's \"distortion\" or frenzy, which always occurred before any great output of the hero's energy, and of the rout of the hosts of medb which followed it. (5) the general awakening of the warriors of ulster from their lethargy, and their gathering by septs upon the hill of slane, clan by clan being described as it comes up in order. (6) the final battle of gairech and ilgairech, followed (7) by the rout of medb's army and (8) the tragic death of the bulls. the text of the _tain_ has come down to us as a whole or in part in nearly a score of mss., most of which, however, are modern. the most important mss. containing the story are lu., ll. and ybl. of these lu. and ybl. are substantially the same, whilst ll. contains a longer and fuller text later in both style and language. ll. attempts to give a complete and consistent narrative in more polished form. in ancient times there were doubtless other versions now lost, but from the middle of the 12th century the scribes seem to have taken few liberties with the text, whilst previously the _filid_ were constantly transforming the material and adding fresh matter. the ybl. version preserves a number of forms as old as the o. ir. glosses (i.e. 8th century or earlier), and a curious story contained in ll. seems to point to the fact that the _tain_ was first committed to writing in the 7th century. senchan torpeist, who lived in the first half of the 7th century and succeeded dallan forgaill as chief _ollam_ of ireland, summoned the _filid_ to inquire which of them knew the _tain_ in its entirety. as they were only familiar with fragments he despatched them to discover it. one of them seated himself at the grave of fergus macroig, who appeared to him in a mist and dictated the whole story to him in three days and three nights. at this point it will be well to say a few words about the form of the _tain_. the old irish epic is invariably in prose with poems of varying length interspersed. the narrative and descriptive portions are in prose and are frequently followed by a brief epitome in verse. dialogues, eulogies and laments also appear in metrical form. the oldest poems, termed rhetoric, which are best represented in lu., seem to be declamatory passages in rhythmical prose, not unlike the poetical passages in the old testament, and the original _tain_ may have consisted of such rhetorics bound together with short connecting pieces of prose. at a later date poems were inserted in the metres of the _filid_ (particularly the quatrain of four heptasyllabic lines) which thurneysen and windisch consider to have been developed out of medieval latin verse. when in course of time the old rhetorics became unintelligible they were often omitted altogether or new poems substituted. thus the ll. version contains a larger number of poems than the lu.-ybl. copy, whilst lu. preserves a number of rhetorics which do not appear in the later ms. the prose portions in lu. are very poor from a literary point of view. these passages are abrupt, condensed and frequently obscure, with no striving after literary effect such as we find in ll. the form in which many episodes are cast is not unlike a mnemonic, leaving the story-teller to fill in the details himself. in the 11th century certain portions of the theme possessing great human interest were vastly extended, new poems were added, and in this manner such episodes come to form sagas complete in themselves. the most notable instance of this is the \"fight with fer diad,\" which is not contained in lu. the genesis of the _tain_ may thus be briefly summarized as follows. the story was first committed to writing in the 7th or 8th century, after which it was worked up by the _filid_. extended versions existing in the 10th or 11th century form the basis of the copies we now possess. though the sagas of the ulster cycle are eminently irish and pagan in character and origin, it cannot be denied that traces of foreign influence are to be observed. a number of latin and norse loan-words occur in them, and there can be little doubt that the monkish scribes consciously thrust the supernatural element into the background. however, although figures of vikings are unmistakable in a few cases, and in one story cuchulinn is made to fight with hercules, such foreign elements can easily be detected in the older tales. they only affect minor details, and do not influence the body of the romances. from what we have already said it will be plain that the irish epic is in a fluid state. the _tain_ is of interest in the history of literature as representing the preliminary stage through which the great verse epics of other nations have had to pass, but its value as a work of art is limited by its form. we must now say a few words about the character and style of these romances. as already stated, the atmosphere is frankly pagan and barbaric, with none of that courtly element which we find in the arthurian epics. the two features which strike one most forcibly in the medieval irish romances are dramatic force and humour. the unexpected and weird is always happening, the effect of which is considerably heightened by the grim nature of the actors. in particular the dialogues are remarkably brilliant and clever, and it is a matter for surprise that this gifted race never developed a drama of its own. this is doubtless partly due to the political conditions of the island. and, moreover, we are constantly struck by the lack of sustained effort which prevented the _filid_ from producing great epics in verse. dramatic material is abundantly present in the old epics, but it has never been utilized. as one might expect from the vernacular literature of ireland, these romances are pervaded by a keen sense of humour. we feel that the story-teller is continually expecting a laugh and he exaggerates in true irish fashion, so that the stories are full of extravagantly grotesque passages. in the later ll. version we notice a tendency to linger over pathetic situations, but this is unknown in the earlier stage. perhaps the most serious defect of all irish literary products is the lack of any sense of proportion, which naturally goes hand in hand with the love of the grotesque. far too much attention is paid to trivial incidents and minute descriptions, however valuable the latter may be to the antiquarian, to the detriment of the artistic effect. further, the story-teller does not know when to stop. he goes meandering on long after the main portion of the story is finished, with the result that irish romances are apt to end in a most uninteresting anticlimax. finally we are wearied with a constant repetition of the same epithets and similes, and with turgid descriptions; even the grotesque exaggerations pall when we find them to be stereotyped. but the early epics do not offend our sense of propriety in expression to the same extent as the later finn cycle. the _tain bo cualnge_ formed a kind of nucleus round which a number of other tales clustered. a number of these are called _remscela_ or introductory stories to the _tain_. such are the \"revealing of the tain\" (already mentioned), the \"debility of the ultonians\" (giving the story of the curse), \"the cattle-driving of regamon, dartaid and flidais,\" \"_tain bo regamna_,\" \"the cattle-driving of fraech,\" \"the dispute of the swineherds,\" telling the previous history of the bulls, \"the capture of the fairy mound,\" \"the dream of mac oc,\" the \"adventures of nera,\" the \"wooing of ferb.\" other stories form a kind of continuation of the _tain_. thus the \"battle of rosnaree\" (\"_cath ruis na rig_\") relates how conchobar, as a result of the loss of the bull, sends an army against the kings of leinster and tara, and would have been routed but for the prowess of cuchulinn. the \"great rout of the plain of murthemne\" and \"cuchulinn's death\" tell how the hero's downfall is compassed by a monstrous brood of ill-shapen beings whose father and brothers had been slain by him during the _tain_. he finally meets with his end at the hands of lugaid, son of curoi mac daire (the central hero of a munster cycle which has not come down to us), and erc, king of tara. we are also told of the terrible vengeance taken on the murderers by conall cernach. other stories deal with the \"conception of conchobar,\" the \"conception of cuchulinn,\" \"the glories of conchobar's reign,\" with an account of how he acquired the throne from fergus, \"the wooing of emer and the hero's education in scotland under scathach,\" \"the siege of howth,\" \"bricriu's feast and the exile of the sons of doel dermait,\" \"the battle of the boyne\" (_eriu_, vol. ii.), \"the deaths of ailill, medb and conall cernach,\" \"destruction of bruden da choca,\" \"the tragical death of conlaech at the hands of cuchulinn his father,\" \"the deaths of goll and garbh,\" \"the sickbed of cuchulinn,\" in which the hero is lured away for a time into the invisible land by a fairy, fand, wife of manandan, \"the intoxication of the ultonians,\" telling of a wild raid by night across the entire extent of the island from dun-da-benn near coleraine to the fort of curoi macdaire at temair-luachra in kerry, \"the death of conchobar,\" \"the phantom chariot of cuchulinn,\" in which the hero is brought up from the grave to witness before st patrick and king loigaire to the truth of the christian doctrine. four other stories in connexion with the ulster cycle remain to be mentioned. the first is \"_scel mucci maic datho_\" (\"the story of macdatho's pig\"). various writers of antiquity inform us that at the feasts of the gauls the champion received the best portion of meat, which frequently led to brawls. in this savage but picturesque irish story we find the ulstermen vaunting their achievements against the connaughtmen, until at last the contest lies between conall cernach and cet macmagach. nowhere, perhaps, is the dramatic element better brought out. apart from the _tain_ the greatest and at the same time the longest saga in which cuchulinn figures is _fled bricrend_ (bricriu's feast). bricriu is the mischief-maker among the ulstermen, and he conceives the idea of building a banqueting hall in order to invite conchobar and his nobles to a feast. after much hesitation they consent. bricriu in turn incites the three chief heroes, cuchulinn, conall cernach and loigaire buadach, to claim the champion's portion. he does the same thing with the spouses of the three warriors, who declaim in obscure verse the achievements and excellences of their several husbands in a passage entitled the \"women's war of words.\" loosely attached to this story follows a wild series of adventures in which the powers of the three champions are tested, cuchulinn always proving his superiority. in order to decide the dispute, visits are paid to medb at rath cruachan and to curoi in kerry, and the story ends with the \"beheading incident,\" which occurs in the romance of \"sir gawayne and the green knight.\" _fled bricrend_ presents a number of textual difficulties. the text of the oldest ms. (lu.) shows signs of contamination, and several versions of the story seem to have been current. but the story of the ulster cycle which is better known than any other, is the story of the \"tragical death of the sons of usnech, or the life and death of deirdre,\" one of the \"three sorrows of story-telling.\" this is the only tale of the group which has survived in the minds of the common people down to the present day. it is foretold of deirdre, a girl-child of great beauty, that she will be the cause of great misfortunes, but conchobar, having lost his wife, determines to have her brought up in solitude and marry her himself. however, the maiden chances to see a noble youth named naisi, one of the three sons of usnech, and persuades him to carry her off to scotland, where they live for many years. at length they are induced to return after several of the most prominent ulster warriors have gone bail for their safety. but conchobar resorts to treachery, and the three sons of usnech are slain, whilst the account of deirdre's end varies. the oldest version of the story is found in ll., and the characters are as rugged and unsophisticated as those of the _tain_. but in the later versions the savage features are toned down. before passing on, we must mention several old stories which are independent of the ulster cycle, but which deal with events which are represented as having taken place before the christian era. few of the old romances deal directly with what we may call irish mythology. the \"battle of moytura\" tells of the tremendous struggle between the tuatha de danann and their enemies, the fomorian pirates. connected with the events of this saga is the story of the \"tragic deaths of the sons of tuirenn,\" which, though mentioned in cormac's glossary, is not found in any ms. older than the 18th century. the three sons of tuirenn have slain cian, father of lug lamfhada, who lays upon them a huge eric-fine. they go through terrific ordeals and accomplish their task, but return home to die. this is the second of the \"three sorrows of story-telling.\" an old story dealing with tuatha de danann personages, but having a certain bearing on the cuchulinn cycle, is the \"courtship of etain,\" who, though of supernatural (_sid_) birth, is wedded to eochaid airem, a mortal king. in her previous existence she was the wife of the supernatural personage midir of bri-leith, who wins back etain from her mortal husband in a game of chess and carries her off to his fairy mound. for sake of completeness we may add the titles of two other well-known stories here. the one is the \"story of baile the sweet-spoken,\" which tells of the deaths of two lovers for grief at the false tidings of each other's death. the other is the \"fate of the children of lir,\" the third of the \"three sorrows of story-telling,\" which is only known in a modern dress. it relates how the four daughters of lir (father of the sea-god manandan and the original of shakespeare's lear) were changed into swans by a cruel stepmother, and how, after 900 years of wandering on the ocean, they at length regain their human form through the instrumentality of st mochaomhog. a large number of sagas, which claim to be founded on historical events, present a great similarity to the tales of the ulster cycle. most of them are mentioned in the old catalogues. we can only name the more important here. the \"destruction of dind-rig and exile of labraid loingsech\" relates how the kingdom of leinster was snatched by one brother from another in the 6th century b.c., and how the son of the murdered prince with the aid of a british force sacked dind-rig, the fortress of the usurper. the story of the visit of the pigmies to the court of fergus macleite, king of ulster in the 2nd century b.c., is only contained in a 15th-century ms. this tale is commonly stated to have given swift the idea of his _gulliver's travels to lilliput_. \"_caithreim chonghail claringnigh_,\" which only occurs in a modernized 17th-century version, deals with a revolution in the province of ulster, supposed to have taken place before the christian era. the most important old irish saga after the _tain_ is beyond doubt the _destruction of da derga's hostel_, contained in lu. it deals with events in the reign of the high-king conaire mor, who is said by the annalists to have been slain in 43 b.c. after a reign of seventy years. conaire, who was a descendant of the etain mentioned above, was a just ruler, and had banished among other lawless persons his own five foster brothers. these latter devoted themselves to piracy and made common cause with one ingcel, a son of the king of britain, who had been outlawed by his father. the high-king was returning from co. clare when he found the whole of meath in flames. he turned aside into leinster and made for da derga's hostel. the pirates perceive this, and ingcel is sent to spy out the hostel and discover the size of conaire's force. this gives the story-teller a chance for one of those lengthy minute descriptions of persons in which his soul delighted. this catalogue occupies one-half of the whole story. the pirates make their attack, and the king and most of his followers are butchered. we can do no more than enumerate the titles of other historical tales: the \"destruction of the hostel of macdareo,\" describing the insurrection of the aithech-tuatha (1st century a.d.), \"the expulsion of the deisi\" and the \"battle of mag lemna\" (2nd century a.d.), \"battle of mag mucrime\" (a.d. 195 or a.d. 218), \"siege of drom damgaire\" (3rd century), \"adventures of the sons of eochaid muigmedoin, father of niall noigiallach\" (4th century), \"death of crimthann\" (reigned 366-378), \"death of dathi\" (d. 428), \"death of murchertach, son of erc,\" and \"death of diarmait, son of cerball\" (6th century) \"wooing of becfola, who became the wife of diarmait, son of aed slane\" (reigned 657-664), \"battle of mag rath\" (637), \"battle of carn conaill\" (c. 648), \"death of maelfothartaig macronain\" (7th century), who was a kind of irish hippolytus, \"battle of allen\" (722). it will be well to deal here with another class of story in its various stages of development. we have seen that in the older romances there is a close connexion between mortals and supernatural beings. the latter are represented as either inhabiting the _sid_ mounds or as dwelling in islands out in the ocean, which are pictured as abodes of bliss and variously called _mag mell_ (plain of delight), _tir na n-oc_ (land of youth) and _tir tairngiri_ (land of promise). the visits of mortals to the irish elysium form the subject of three romances which we must now examine. the whole question has been exhaustively dealt with by kuno meyer and alfred nutt in the _voyage of bran_ (london, 1895-1897). condla caem, son of conn cetchathach, was one day seated by his father on the hill of usnech, when he saw a lady in strange attire approaching invisible to all but himself. she describes herself, as coming from the \"land of the living,\" a place of eternal delight, and invites the prince to return with her. conn invokes the assistance of his druid to drive away the strange visitor, who in parting throws an apple to condla. the young man partakes of no food save his apple, which does not diminish, and he is consumed with longing. at the end of a month the fairy-maiden again makes her appearance. condla can hold out no longer. he jumps into the damsel's skiff of glass. they sail away and were seen no more. this is the _imram_ or adventure of condla caem, the oldest text of which is found in lu. a similar story is entitled _imram brain maic febail_, contained in ybl. and rawlinson b 512 (the end also occurs in lu.), only with this difference that bran, with twenty-seven companions, puts to sea to discover _tir na mban_ (the land of maidens). after spending some time there, one of his comrades is seized with home-sickness. they return, and the home-sick man, on being set ashore, immediately turns to dust. a later story preserved in bb., ybl. and the book of fermoy, tells of the visit of cormac, grandson of conn cetchathach, to tir tairngiri. these themes are also worked into tales belonging to the ossianic cycle, and finn and ossian in later times become the typical warriors who achieve the quest of the land of youth. the romances we have just mentioned are almost entirely pagan in character, but a kindred class of story shows us how the old ideas were transformed under the influence of christianity. a typical instance is _imram curaig maelduin_, contained in ybl. and in part in lu. maelduin constructs a boat and sets out on a voyage with a large company to discover the murderer of his father. this forms the framework of the story. numerous islands in the ocean are visited, each containing some great marvel. _imram ua corra_ (book of fermoy) and _imram snedgusa ocus mac riagla_ (ybl.) contain the same plan, but in this case the voyage is undertaken as an expiation for crime. in the 11th century an unknown monkish writer compiled the _navigatio s. brendani_, drawing the material for his episodes from _imram curaig maelduin._ this famous work only appears in an irish dress in a confused and disconnected \"life of st brendan\" in the book of lismore. the same ms. contains yet another voyage, the \"adventure of tadg maccein.\" fenian or ossianic cycle. we must now turn our attention to the later heroic cycle, commonly called the fenian or ossianic. unfortunately the origin of the stories and poems connected with finn and his warriors is obscure, and scholars are by no means agreed over the question (see finn mac cool). in the earlier cycle the figures and the age in which they live are sharply drawn, and we can have no hesitation in assuming that the _tain_ represents in the main the state of ireland at the beginning of the christian era. finn and his companions are nebulous personages, and, although it is difficult to discover the actual starting-point of the legend, from the 12th century onwards we are able to trace the development of the saga with some degree of certainty. a remarkably small amount of space is devoted to this cycle in the oldest mss. of the 134 pages contained in lu. only half-a-dozen deal with finn as against 58 with cuchulinn. in ll. the figures are, ulster cycle 100 pp., ossianic 25 pp., the latter being mainly made up of short ballads, whilst in 15th-century mss., such as the book of lismore and laud 610, the proportion is overwhelmingly in favour of the later group. again in urard maccoisi's list of tales, which seems to go back to the 10th century, only two appear to deal with subjects taken from the ossianic cycle. in the first instance finn seems to have been a poet, and as such he appears in the 12th-century mss., lu. and ll. thus the subjects of the ossianic cycle in the earliest mss. appear in a new dress. the vehicle of the older epic is prose, but the later cycle is clothed in ballad form. of these ballads about a dozen, apart from poems in the _dindsenchus_ are preserved in lu., ll. and ybl., and none of these poems are probably much older than the 11th century. in the commentary to the _amra_ of columbkille a beautiful poem on winter is attributed to finn. at the same time we do find a few prose tales, e.g. \"_fotha catha_ _cnucha_\" in lu., describing the death of cumall, finn's father, and in ll. and rawlinson b 502, part of which zimmer assigns to the 7th century, we have the first story in which finn actually occurs. but it is remarkable that in no case do tales belonging to the finn cycle contain any of the old rhetorics which occur in the oldest of the ulster romances. already in ll., by the side of finn, ossian, cailte and fergus finnbel are represented as poets, and the strain of lament over the glories of the past, so characteristic a feature of the later developments of the legend, is already sounded. hence by the 12th century the stories of the fiann and their destruction at the battle of gabra must have been fully developed, and from this time onward they appear gradually to have supplanted the cuchulinn cycle in popular favour. several reasons have been assigned for this. in the first place until the time of brian boroime the high-kings of ireland had almost without exception been drawn from ulster, and consequently the northern traditions were pre-eminent. this exclusiveness on the part of the north was largely broken down by the viking invasions, and during the 11th century the leading poets were attached to the court of brian and his descendants. in this manner an opportunity was afforded to the leinster-munster fenian cycle to develop into a national saga. john macneill has pointed out finn's connexion with a firbolg tribe, and maintains that the fenian cycle was the property of the subject race. zimmer has attempted to prove with great plausibility that finn and his warriors were transformed on the model of the ulster heroes. thus one text deals with the boyish exploits of finn in the manner of cuchulinn's youthful feats recorded in the _tain_. and it is possible that the _siaburcharpat conchulainn_ gave rise to the idea of connecting ossian and cailte with patrick. as cuchulinn was opposed to the whole of ireland in the _tain_, so finn, representing ireland, is pitted against the whole world in the _battle of ventry_. we have already stated that the form assumed by the stories connected with finn in the earliest mss. is that of the ballad, and this continued down to the 18th century. but here again the irish poets showed themselves incapable of rising from the ballad to the true epic in verse, and in the 14th century we find the prose narrative of the older cycle interspersed with verse again appearing. the oldest composition of any length which deals with the ossianic legends is the _acallam na senorach_ or colloquy of the old men, which is mainly preserved in three 15th-century mss., the book of lismore, laud 610 and rawlinson 487. in this text we have the framework common to so much of the later ossianic literature. ossian and cailte are represented as surviving the battle of gabra and as living on until the time of patrick. the two warriors get on the best of terms with the saint, and cailte is his constant companion on his journey through ireland. patrick inquires the significance of the names of the places they visit, and cailte recounts his reminiscences. in this manner we are given nearly a hundred stories, the subjects of some of which occur in the short ballads in older mss., whilst others appear later as independent tales. a careful comparison of the _acallam_ with the cuchulinn stories, whether from the point of view of civilization or language or art, discloses that the first lengthy composition of the ossianic cycle is but a feeble imitation of the older group. all that had become unintelligible in the ulster stories, owing to their primitive character, is omitted, and in return for that the reminiscences of the viking age play a very prominent part. with the 16th century we reach the later treatment of the legend in the _battle of ventry_. in this tedious story daire, the king of the whole world, comes to invade ireland with all his forces, but is repulsed by finn and his heroes. the _battle of ventry_, like all later stories, is a regular medley of incidents taken from the writers of antiquity and european medieval romance. the inflated style to which the irishman is so prone is here seen at its worst, and we are treated to a nauseous heaping up of epithet upon epithet, e.g. we sometimes find as many as twenty-seven adjectives accompanying a substantive running in alliterating sets of three. of greater literary interest are the later ballads connected with finn and ossian. the latter has become the typical mouthpiece of the departed glory of the fenian warriors, and nutt has pointed out that there is a striking difference in spirit between the _acallam na senorach_ and the 15th-16th century poems. in the latter ossian is represented as a \"pagan, defiant and reckless, full of contempt and scorn for the howling clerics and their churlish low-bred deity,\" whilst patrick is a sour and stupid fanatic, harping with wearisome monotony on the damnation of finn and all his comrades. the earliest collection of these later ossianic poems is that made in scotland by james macgregor, dean of lismore, early in the 16th century. another miscellany is the _duanaire finn_, a ms. in the franciscan monastery in dublin, compiled from earlier mss. in 1627. this \"song-book,\" which has been edited for the irish texts society by john macneill (part i. 1908), contains no less than sixty-nine ossianic ballads, amounting in all to some ten thousand lines. other ossianic poems of dates varying from the 15th to the 18th century have been published in the _transactions of the ossianic society_ (dublin, 1854-1861), including amongst others \"the battle of gabhra,\" \"lamentation of oisin (ossian) after the fenians,\" \"dialogue between oisin and patrick,\" \"the battle of cnoc an air,\" and \"the chase of sliabh guilleann.\" these ballads still survive amongst the peasants at the present day. we further possess a number of prose romances, which in their present form date from the 16th to the 18th century; e.g. _the pursuit of diarmaid and grainne_, _finn and grainne_, _death of finn_, _the clown in the drab coat_, _pursuit of the gilla decair_, _the enchanted fort of the quicken-tree_, _the enchanted cave of ceis corann_, _the feast in the house of conan_. at the present moment it is impossible to give a complete survey of the other branches of medieval irish literature. the attention of scholars has been largely devoted to the publication of the sagas to the neglect of other portions of the wide field. an excellent survey of the subject is given by k. meyer, _die kultur der gegenwart_, i. xi. 1. pp. 78-95 (berlin-leipzig, 1909). nature poetry. we have already pointed out that as early as the old irish period nameless irish poets were singing the praises of nature in a strain which sounds to our ears peculiarly modern. at the present time it is difficult to say how much of what is really poetic in irish literature has come down to us. our mss. preserve whole reams of the learned productions of the _filid_ which were so much prized in medieval ireland, but it is, generally speaking, quite an accident if any of the delightful little lyrics entered in the margins or on blank spaces in the mss. have remained. the prose romances sometimes contain beautiful snatches of verse, such as the descriptions of mag mell in _serglige conculaind_, _tochmarc etaine_, and the _voyage of bran_ or the _lament of cuchulinn over fer diad_. mention has also been made of the exquisite nature poems ascribed to finn, which have been collected into a pamphlet with english renderings by kuno meyer (under the title of \"four old irish songs of summer and winter,\" london, 1903). the same writer points out that the ancient treatise on irish prosody published by thurneysen contains no less than 340 quotations from poems, very few of which have been preserved in their entirety. to meyer we also owe editions of two charming little texts which sufficiently illustrate the lyrical powers of the early poets. the one is a poem referred to the 10th century in the form of a colloquy between guaire of aidne and his brother marban. guaire inquires of his brother why he prefers to live in a hut in the forest, keeping the herds and swine of the king, to dwelling in the king's palace. the question calls forth so wonderful a description of the delights of nature as viewed from a shieling that guaire exclaims, \"i would give my glorious kingship to be in thy company, marban\" (_king and hermit_, ed. with trans. by k. meyer, london, 1901). another text full of passionate emotion and tender regret ascribed to the 9th century tells of the parting of a young poet and poetess, who after plighting their troth are separated for ever (_liadain and curithir_, ed. with trans. by k. meyer, london, 1902). in the _old woman of beare_ (publ. k. meyer in _otia merseiana_) an old hetaira laments her departed youth, comparing her life to the ebbing of the tide (10th century). professional literature. we must now step aside from pure literature and turn our attention to the various productions of the professional learned classes of ireland during the middle ages. the range of subjects coming under this heading is a very wide one, comprising history, genealogies, hagiology, topography, grammar, lexicography and metre, law and medicine. it will perhaps be as well first of all to deal with the learned _filid_ whose works have been preserved. irish tradition preserves the names of a number of antiquarian poets of prehistoric or early medieval times, such as amergin, one of the milesian band of invaders; moran roigne, son of ugaine mor, adna and his successor ferceirtne, torna (c. 400), tutor to niall noigiallach, dallan forgaill, senchan torpeist, and cennfaelad (d. 678), but the poems attributed to these writers are of much later date. we can only enumerate the chief of those whose works have been preserved. to maelmura (d. 887) is attributed a poem on the milesian migrations. about the same time lived flanagan, son of cellach, who wrote a long composition on the deaths of the kings of ireland, preserved in ybl., and flann maclonain (d. 918), called by the four masters the virgil of ireland, eight of whose poems have survived, containing in all about 1000 lines. cormacan, son of maelbrigde (d. 946), composed a vigorous poem on the circuit of ireland performed by muirchertach, son of niall glundub. a poet whose poems are most valuable from an antiquarian point of view is cinaed ua h-artacain (d. 975). some 800 lines of his have been preserved in ll. and elsewhere. contemporary with him is eochaid o'flainn (d. c. 1003), whose chief work is a long chronological poem giving a list of the kings of ulster from cimbaeth down to the destruction of emain in 331. a little later comes macliac (d. 1016), who celebrated in verse the glories of the reign of brian boroime. his best-known work is a lament over kincora, the palace of brian. contemporary with macliac is macgilla coim urard maccoisi (d. 1023). to cuan ua lothchain (d. 1024), chief poet in the reign of maelsheachlainn ii., are ascribed poems on the antiquities of tara. sixteen hundred lines of his have come down to us. a writer who enjoyed a tremendous reputation in medieval ireland was flann mainstrech (d. 1056), who in spite of his being a layman was head of the monastery school at monasterboice. he is the author of no fewer than 2000 lines in",
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