User:Mellohi!/Old Irish sources

A list for compiling sources for Old Irish quotations and attestations.

Glosses

The glosses can be cited with {{RQ:sga:Glosses}}, and are considered the premier sources of Old Irish due to surviving in near-contemporary manuscripts and more often than not conserving unstressed vowels properly.

Other widely-accepted Old Irish gloss collections are folk-etymological in function:

• Sanas Cormaic made circa 900 (the boundary between Old and Middle Irish) (quotes can be cited with {{RQ:sga:Corm}}). DIL's citations of the many editions of Sanas Cormaic take on the form Corm. (but not Tec. Corm! That's an unrelated text named after a completely different Cormac!).
• De Origine Scoticae Linguae (a.k.a. O'Mulconry's Glossary) composed around 700.

Legal tracts

Legal tracts are a major source of Old Irish prose outside the glosses, and many of them are thought to predate the glosses in composition. Unfortunately, pretty much all of them are extant in later-copied manuscripts and those may contain many spelling mistakes and/or post-Old Irish commentary. Thankfully, Ancient Laws of Ireland, which provides an edition and (albeit very outdated) translation of many of these sorts of texts, marks all post-Old Irish commentary with small text.

Some of these tracts include:

• c. 697-900, Cáin Adomnáin, published in Cáin Adamnáin: an old-Irish treatise on the law of Adamnan (1905, Oxford University Press), edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer
  • A tract composed at the turn of the 8th century. Cite this with {{RQ:sga:CainAd}}. There is a large Middle Irish preface at the beginning; see the template's documentation for more.
• c. 700, Críth Gablach, published in Críth Gablach (1941, Dublin: Stationery Office), edited by Daniel Anthony Binchy
  • An eighth-century law tract about defining the social classes of Irish society at the time.

Poetry

Poetry is another major attested source of Old Irish. Many of these poems are Christian in nature.

Christian poems

• c. 760 Blathmac mac Con Brettan, published in "A study of the lexicon of the poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan" (2017; PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth), edited and with translations by Siobhán Barrett
  • A set of Christianity-influenced poems ascribed to Blathmac Con Brettan. Cite this with {{RQ:sga:Blathm}}.
• Two miscellaneous Christian poems that James Carney, their editor, tended to publish together.
  • c. 700 the Irish Infancy Gospel of Thomas, published in "Two Old Irish Poems", in Ériu 18 (1958), pp. 1-27, edited and with translations by James Carney
  • c. 700 "On the Virgin Mary", published in "Two Old Irish Poems", in Ériu 18 (1958), pp. 26-43, edited and with translations by James Carney
• c. 808, Félire Oengusso; republished as Whitley Stokes, transl., Félire Óengusso Céli Dé: The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee, Harrison & Sons, 1905:
  • A martyrological set of poems composed in the early 8th century by Óengus of Tallaght. Beware of the Middle Irish prose intro that appears before the prologue proper.

Other poems

• c. 700 Immram Brain, published in The Voyage of Bran son of Febal to the land of the living (1895, London: David Nutt), pp. 1-35, edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer and Alfred Nutt
  • An originally circa 700 text consisting of mixed poetry and prose. The prose may have been slightly altered in the 10th century to replace some then-archaic verbs. Thankfully, the poem and prose are clearly marked apart in Kuno Meyer's edition.
• Sét no Tíag, Cétamon, and Tánic sam, published in "Three Old Irish accentual poems", Ériu 22, 1971, pp. 23-80, edited and with translations by James Carney
• Comae ríaguil in Choimded, published in "An Old Irish Metrical Rule", Ériu 1 (1904), pp. 191-208, edited and with translations by John Strachan
• c. 800, Aithbe dam-sa bés mora, published in Early Irish lyrics: eighth to twelfth century (1956, Clarendon Press), pp. 206-208, edited and with translations by Gerard Murphy

Fiction

Fiction (especially in prose) can be considered amongst the least reliable of the many types of sources for Old Irish attestation due to many of the same reasons as the legal tracts, except even more exaggerated. Spelling mistakes and later insertions are extremely likely to infest works of fiction due to their extensive copying history.

These spelling and grammar mistakes are due to many reasons. Middle Irish and Early Modern Irish scribes in the intervening centuries were forced to play guessing games on, among many other things, a majority of unstressed vowels, which by those times all reduced to schwa. Also among the extensive spelling errors are failure to properly mutate words. Neuters, deponents, and even deuterotonic forms as a whole were soon evaporating in post-Old Irish times too. The letter h started to get used by later copyists to write /h/ even though the phoneme is generally unwritten in Old Irish.

Some fiction that has been dated to originate from this period are:

• Táin tales
  • c. 775, “Táin Bó Fraích”, in Book of Leinster; republished as Ernst Windisch, editor, Táin bó Fraích, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1974:
    • Cite this with {{RQ:sga:TBFr}}.
  • c. 700–800 Táin Bó Cúailnge
    • Cite this with {{RQ:sga:TBC}}. See that template's documentation for more details.
• Other Ulster Cycle stories
  • c. 900, Aided óenfir Aífe from the Yellow Book of Lecan, published in “The death of Conla”, Ériu 1 (1904), pages 113–121, edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer
    • A story about the tragic death of Connla, only son of Cú Chulainn and Aífe.
  • Compert Con Culainn, published in Compert Con Culainn and other stories (1933, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), pages 1-8, edited by Anton Gerard van Hamel
    • A story of how Cú Chulainn was born.
• c. 875, Comrac Líadaine ocus Cuirithir, published in Liadain and Curithir: an Irish love-story of the ninth century (1902, London: Nutt), edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer
  • A story originally composed in the 9th century about the tragic aftermath of a romantic affair between two poets. Cite this with {{RQ:sga:Liad}}.
• c. 895–901, Vita tripartita Sancti Patricii, published in Bethu Phátraic: The tripartite life of Patrick (1939, Hodges, Figgis), edited and with translations by Kathleen Mulchrone, line {{{line}}}
  • A tale composed around 900 chronicling the adventures of Saint Patrick. It very clearly shows obvious Middle Irishisms in the making, however, with ro- often in innovated places in compound verbs, the substitution of simple verbs for deuterotonic forms, and deponent decay. Cite this with {{RQ:sga:Trip}}.
• c. 750-800 Tairired na nDessi from Rawlinson B 502, published in "The Expulsion of the Dessi", Y Cymmrodor (1901, Society of Cymmrodorion), edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer, vol. 14, pp. 104-135
  • An 8th-century tale about the Déisi. Cite this with {{RQ:sga:Deisi}}.
• Tecosca Cormaic, published in Tecosca Cormaic. The Instructions of King Cormaic Mac Airt (1909, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy), edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer
  • A dialogue whose main characters are the legendary Cormac mac Airt and his son Cairpre. Cite this with {{RQ:sga:TecCorm}}.
• c. 850-900, The Vision of Laisrén from Rawlinson B 512, published in Otia Merseiana (1899), pages 113-119, edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer
• c. 720, Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig from Royal Irish Academy, MS 23 N 10, published in "On the Dates of Two Sources Used in Thurneysen's Heldensage", Ériu 16 (1952), pages 145-156, edited by Rudolf Thurneysen and Gerard Murphy and with translations by Gerard Murphy

Other tracts

• c. 886, Cáin Domnaig collection: A Christian/law tract on how Sunday is to be observed. It is divided into three parts.
  • Epistil Ísu, published in "Cáin Domnaig", Ériu Vol. 2 (1905), pp. 189-214, edited and with translations by J. G. O'Keefe
  • Published in “Mitteilungen aus irischen Handschriften: IV. Aus Harleian 5280. Göttliche Bestrafung der Sonntagsübertretung”, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 3 (1901): page 228, edited by Kuno Meyer
  • Cáin Domnaig, published in Anecdota from Irish manuscripts, vol. 3, Halle and Dublin, 1910. Pages 21–27, edited by J. G. O'Keeffe
• c. 850–900, Trecheng Breth Féne, published in The Triads of Ireland (1906, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy), edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer
  • A list consisting mostly of groups of three things.
  • Meyer notes that old nominal declensions have begun to decay, although the verbal morphology remained solid.
• Ríagol Ailbi Imlecha, published in "The Rule of Ailbe of Emly", Ériu 3 (1907): pages 92–115, edited and with translations by Joseph O'Neill
• c. 800, Ríagail Pátraic, published in "The Rule of Patrick", Ériu 1 (1904): pages 216-224, edited and with translations by J. G. O'Keeffe
• "An Irish Penitential", Ériu 7, page 168, edited and with translations by Edward J. Gwynn
  • A tract on how to repent after committing the seven deadly sins.
• c. 815-840, “The Monastery of Tallaght”, in Edward J. Gwynn, Walter J. Purton, transl., Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, volume 29, Royal Irish Academy, published 1911-1912, pages 115-179:
  • A ninth-century journal of about life at a monastery in Tallaght.
• c. 700, Immathchor n-Ailella ⁊ Airt, published in "Affiliation of children: Immathchor nAilella ⁊ Airt", Peritia 9 (1995): pages 92-124, edited and with translations by Johan Corthals
• Old Irish treatise on the Psalter, published in Hibernica Minora, (1894, Oxford: Clarendon Press), edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer