Chapter IV: HISTORY OF CELTIC PHILOLOGY.--For many centuries the affinities of

the Celtic languages were the subject of great dispute. The languages were in turn regarded as descended from Hebrew, Teutonic and Scythian. The first attempt to treat the dialects comparatively was made by Edward Lhuyd in his _Archaeologia Britannica_ (Oxford, 1707), but the work of this scholar seems to have remained unnoticed. A century later Adelung in Germany divided the dialects into true Celtic (= Goidelic) and Celtic influenced by Teutonic (= Brythonic). But it took scholars a long time to recognize that these languages belonged to the Indo-European family. Thus they were excluded by Bopp in his comparative grammar, though he did not fail to notice certain resemblances between Celtic and Sanskrit. James Pritchard was the first to demonstrate the true relationship of the group in his _Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations_ (London, 1831), but his conclusions were not accepted. As late as 1836 Pott denied the Indo-European connexion. A year later Pictet resumed Pritchard's arguments, and Bopp himself in 1838 admitted the languages into the charmed circle, showing in an able paper entitled _Uber die keltischen Sprachen_ that the initial mutations were due to the influence of terminations now lost. But it was reserved to a Bavarian historian, J.C. Zeuss (1806-1856), to demonstrate conclusively the Indo-European origin of the Celtic dialects. Zeuss, who may worthily rank with Grimm and Diez among the greatest German philologists, rediscovered the Old Irish glosses on the continent, and on them he reared the magnificent structure which goes by his name. The _Grammatica Celtica_ was first published in 1853. The material contained in this monumental work was greatly extended by a series of important publications by Whitley Stokes and Hermann Ebel, so much so that the latter was commissioned to prepare a second edition, which appeared in 1871. Stokes has rendered the greatest service to the cause of Celtic studies by the publication of countless texts in Irish, Cornish and Breton. In 1870 the _Revue celtique_ (vol. xxviii. in 1908) was founded by Henri Gaidoz, whose mantle later fell upon H. d'Arbois de Jubainville. In 1879 E. Windisch facilitated the study of Irish by publishing a grammar of Old Irish, and a year later a volume of important Middle Irish texts with an exhaustive glossary, the first of its kind. Since then Windisch and Stokes have collaborated to bring out some of the greatest monuments of Irish literature in the series of _Irische Texte_. The text of the Wurzburg glosses was published by Zimmer (1881) and by Stokes (1887), and that of the Milan glosses by Ascoli. An important step forward was the discovery of the laws of the Irish accent made simultaneously by Zimmer and Thurneysen. This discovery led to a thorough investigation of the difficult verb system of Old Irish--a task which has largely occupied the attention of Strachan in England, Thurneysen and Zimmer in Germany, and Pedersen and Sarauw in Denmark. In a sense the publication of the _Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus_ (Cambridge, 1901-1903) may be regarded as marking the close of this epoch. The older stages of Irish have hitherto so monopolized the energies of scholars that other departments of Celtic philology save Breton have been left in large measure unworked. J. Strachan had begun to tap the mine of the Old Welsh poems when his career was cut short by death. J. Loth and E. Ernault have concentrated their attention on Breton, and can claim that the development of the speech of Brittany has been more thoroughly investigated than that of any other Celtic language. The number of periodicals devoted entirely to Celtic studies has increased considerably of recent years. In 1896 K. Meyer and L. C. Stern founded the _Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie_ (now in its 7th volume), and in 1897 the _Archiv fur celtische Lexikographie_ began to appear under the direction of K. Meyer and W. Stokes. As a supplement to the latter Meyer has been publishing his invaluable contributions to Middle Irish lexicography. In Ireland a new periodical styled _Eriu_ was started by the Irish School of Learning in 1904. The Scottish _Celtic Review_, dealing more particularly with Scottish and Irish Gaelic, began to appear in 1903, and the _Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness_ are in the 26th volume. For Wales we have _Y Cymmrodor_ since 1877, and the _Transactions of the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion_ since 1892, and for Brittany the _Annales de Bretagne_, published by the Faculty of Letters at Rennes (founded 1886).

See V. Tourneur, _Esquisse d'une histoire des etudes celtiques_
(Liege, 1905). (E. C. Q.)

CELTIC LITERATURE

Ogam inscriptions.