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 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 Philology2 (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. -ātu-. 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, virī, virō, viron, virī, 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 -ā- or -s- with corresponding past subjunctive, future in -f- or -s- or -ē- 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 -ē- 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. ní ceil, “he does not hide,” ní 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 ní or in the infinitive and imperative. Hence we have do-béir, “he gives,” by the side of ní tábair, “he does not give,” infin. tabairt; do-gníu, “I do,” ní dḗnim, “I do not do,” infin. dḗnum. 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 sé “he gives,” ní thabhair sé, “he does not give,” infin. tabhairt; Scottish bheir e, cha toir, toirt; Manx ver eh, cha der, coyrt; Irish ní sé, “he does,” ní dheanann sé, “he does not do,” infin. deanamh; Scottish nì 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. trindóit, from Latin trinitātem with ō for ā. 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. Vendryès, 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 Beiträge, 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. -ān. This does