Page:Irish Lexicography.djvu/28

 I wonder what our mathematical friends would say of a language in which the same word is used for a square and a point! As is also glossed circle, it would prove a very inconvenient term for the geometer. I believe it means a line: the first passage should be, “its lines are straight,” and the second passage makes an ethical application of these straight lines.

In LB. 119 α 28 it is used of the blue scars [lines] which the poisonous serpent left on the body of Goedel Glas, o na títhib glassa do-s-gní in nathair nemi i n‑a thímchell. The singular of this word occurs in the poem attached to this account:—LB. 119 α 49 a tíí glass ní dechad de, “the blue line never left him”; BM. 18 α 20 an tí glas ni dhechaidh dhe (cf. Keating, Halliday, p. 236; Mahony, p. 163.) Therefore we may fairly infer that pl. means lines of any kind, the special meaning being determined by the context, straight as in Cormac, jagged as in LB., or curled, cf. the coil of a tail, as in the Amra (p. 68, Crowe), co tabair tíí di a erbul immpo, and “he puts a line [coil] of his tail around them”.

LB. 137 α 34 indar Hum, a meic (ol se), is celmaine druad ocus methmerchurdacht dogniat, uair ni berait oen chois-cem cen fégad suas, ocus attat oc taccra ocus oc comrad fri araile etarru fen. Before translating the passage, we may consider some other instances of its occurrence : cf. O’Donovan’s Three Fragments, p. 202,, “it is often thou hast boded evil for us”; F. Mast. ., p. 2226, , “an unusual accident and a sad fatality occurred to the camp;” ibid., p. 2292, , “he deemed it to be an omen of good success ; cf. LB. 152 α 40, ba celmaine maithiusa moir do’n cathraig in ní atcess ann; LB. 152 β 37, ba celmaine cuil ⁊ corpaid ⁊ digla De for in popul in ní-sin, “it was an omen of vice and corruption, and