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2 Strachan, placed in my hands. Thus it became my mournful privilege to continue the work of my former teacher, Professor Strachan.

§ 2. I have arranged the work in the following order: (1) The sources of the Annals, (2) Orthography, (3) Phonology (an investigation of the dates of the various vowel and consonant changes in Old Irish), (4) Declension, (5) the Verb (including Infixed Pronoun), (6) Syntax. In addition, I propose to add as an appendix a critical edition of the quotations in verse scattered throughout the Annals, together with a translation.

§ 3. In preparing the thesis, I have collated Hennessy's edition down to A.D. 1000 with its two sources:—

(1) H 1. 8, a vellum MS. in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, to which I refer as H.

(2) The Rawlinson MS. B 489, a vellum MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. This I indicate by R.

In the Trinity copy it is possible to distinguish three different hands: A, the original hand in which the bulk of the entries are written; B, a second hand in which some of both the interlinear and marginal glosses are written; C, a continuation of the paragraph in a late hand. The entries in this (C) hand are, as a rule, very late. The scribe of C is also responsible for some of the marginal and interlinear