The miscellany of the Irish Archæological Society. Vol. I.

  • Irish Archaeological Society
Date:
MDCCCXLVI. [1846]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The miscellany of the Irish Archæological Society. Vol. I. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    retaining the sounds of many consonants, which are now aspirated ; but there is no direct proof of this, as the same letter in the same grammatical situation is found sometimes aspirated and sometimes not, in the most ancient Irish MSS. extant. These aspirations were obviously sometimes omitted through mere carelessness of transcri- bers, and perhaps sometimes intentionally, especially on those letters which were always pronounced as aspirate, as b in the termination of the ablative case plural, and o in the termination of active parti- ciples or progressive active nouns; so the French consider it unne- cessary to mark the d in bled, corn, &c., the pronunciation of the word being well known to be b/e. The same observations will hold good with respect to eclipsed consonants, for the eclipsing letter is most generally omitted in the most ancient MSS., for this reason, apparently, because the grammatical structure of the sentence would in most instances point out to the native whether the consonant was to be eclipsed or not. The only marks introduced by the Editor are hyphens, apostrophes, and stops, which he thinks necessary to the preservation of the lan- guage in proper form.—See some very judicious observations on this subject by Richard M‘Elhgott of Limerick, in Transactions of the Gelic Society of Dublin, pp. 29, et seq. Colum cilli .cc. ocup pe oc mtect a oenan; ocup ip como: oon ci noo Zeba ag oul pop peo. M'oenupnan oam ip m pliab, a 5 Fan pop popao peo, noca n-easlaig) oam ni, na oa m-bemo tpi picic céo. B2 Oa
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