Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/414

 360 Obituary.

on The Creation of the World, and a Cornish drama on the Life of St. Meriasek, besides Middle-Breton Hours, a middle-English Play of the Sacrament, etc.

Dr. Stokes' magnificent physique made him a striking figure in any company, while his large courtesy, his kindness to students, whose efforts he was never too busy to read and criticise and to further by suggestions from his vast stores of knowledge, and his sense of humour and varied interests made him a host whose hospitalities can never be forgotten. If, among the Celtic specialists, blows that resounded like the smiting of the hammer of Thor were sometimes dealt out, the more obscure learner was safe from such terrors ; he always found in Dr. Stokes a patient and kind adviser. Among the interests of his later years the School of Irish Learning in Dublin, designed to give sound grammatical and paleographical training to students of the Celtic languages, held a foremost place, and he aided and encouraged the undertaking in every way.

On his seventieth birthday, several of the leading Celtists of Europe paid honour to Dr. Whitley Stokes by combining to present him with a " Festschrift " to which each contributed a part, and which is preceded by a graceful and glowing expression of homage to the work and genius of the great Irish scholar whose labours it was designed to commemorate. Among the contributors are the names of Kuno Meyer, L. Chr. Stern,. R. Thurneysen, F. Sommer, K. Brugmann, and E. Windisch. In the preface, in commenting on words printed by Hermann Ebel, in his second edition of the Graj?if?iatica Celtica of Zeuss, pub- lished in 1871, — "Post ipsum conditorem ac parentem gram- maticae celticae hand facile quisquam invenietur, qui melius meritus sit de omnibus huius doctrinae partibus quam Whitleius Stokes," — the writer, Dr. Windisch, adds, "Das miissen wir heute, dreissig Jahre spater, erst recht bekennen ! "

Eleanor Hull.