Page:Alexander Macbain - An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language.djvu/29

Rh Examples of Ogam inscriptions are:—

Sagramni maqi Cunotami "(The stone) of Sagramnos son of Cunotamus." Maqi Deceddas avi Toranias "Of the son of Deces O'Toranis." Cunanettas m[aqi] mucoi Nettasegamonas "Of Cunanes son of the son of Nettasegamon." Tria maqa Mailagni "Of the three sons of Maolan."

These examples show that the state of declensional inflection was as high as that of contemporary Latin. The genitives in i belong to the o declension; the i, as in Old Irish, is not taken yet into the preceding syllable (maqi has not become maic). The genitives os and as belong to the consonantal declension, and the hesitation between a and o is interesting, for the later language presents the same phenomenon — the o in unaccented syllables being dulled to a. The Ogam language seems to have been a preserved literary language; its inflections were antique compared to the spoken language, and Old Irish, so near it in time as almost to be contemporary, is vastly changed and decayed compared to it.

Irish is divided into the following four leading periods:—