Anecdota from Irish manuscripts

Sanas Cormalc
XVII
torchelltaib t g ina deiscip. Cathbarr . . . ge co
coroin ordai ima chenn. Dealb is airegd le
luchracht bui for dnine fair. Teitt iarsin deissiul
SencLain cona muintir . . aparuit ex illo tempa(re). Dn-
bium itaque .... quod é ille p(o)emates erut xps. 7 rl.
A handy and cheap edition of Cormac's Glossary has
long been a want felt by many students of Irish. When
Stokes in 1862 brought out his eclitio princeps from the
Lebar Brecc, he warned the reader that it was a mere
exóoaiq, the time for óiOQ&cóúíig of Celtic texts not
having yet arrived. So slow has been the progress of
Irish studies that fifty years later we have still to be
content with mere éxóóoeiq. In the case of our Glossary
a critical edition would have to be based not only upon
a collation and stemma of all existing MSS, but would
also involve a minute study of the language, so as to
separate the genuine articles from later additions, and if
i)
possible to establish Cormac's authorship ; a definition
of the relationship of Cormac's work to such other com-
pilations as that which goes by the name of O'Mulconry, 2)
1) See CZ VIII p. 178. To the evidence there collected
we may add § 1103, where a quatrain on Cenn-gécáÍD, Cormac's
predecessor on the throne of Cashel, is quoted, and § 140, where
one of the tributes of the king of Cashel is mentioned.
*) Stokes unaccountably assigns this glossary to the 13*^1
or 14tii century. It belongs undoubtedly to the Old-Irish period,
as the verbal and other forms collected by Stokes on pp. 222
and 22;j prove. To these may be added hue 779, the neuter
a cétleth 417, the inf. do buith 467, 604, and the part. nee.
huithi 300. The quatrain quoted in § 180 was not composed