Page:Irish Lexicography.djvu/19

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ON IRISH LEXICOGRAPHY.
11

e. gr. LB. 118 α 19, ‘di-ambe din tiruarsi de’, “if there be a remnant left of it”; cf. LB. 157 α 9 ni h-innister sund acht tiruarsi do na piannaib-sin, “only a remnant of the tortures are described here’; O’Donovan (Gr. p. 457) has an instance from F. Mast., a.d. 1174, and cf. the entries sub ann. 733, 1133, and O’Curry, Lect., p. 555. Again, O’Reilly’s entry of arada ‘a severe punishment,’ was to me a matter of doubt till I found the word referred to; it is a fem. n-stem, as may be seen from (sg. nom.) LB. 154 α 59, ba hí so aradu dobertha forru .i. a ṅgabail ar tus, a mbualad ocus a sroiglead co na facbatís cnáim na ball i cóir re cheli díb, “this was the torture that was inflicted on them, viz., to seize them first, and then to smite and scourge them till they did not leave a bone nor a limb undisjointed”; accus. LB. 165 β 24, o ’tconnairc tra Iudás in tan-sin in aradain tuccad for Isu, “when Judas saw the punishment that was inflicted on Christ”; 169 α 10, tabraid aradain cóir fors-in anmain i fil delb ocus cosmailius Dé, “inflict ye just punishment on the soul”, &c.; but cf. also LB. 49 α 63, doronsat cuiccnecht in n-úain cháscda ocus a aradain, “they prepared the cooking and the punishment (?) of the paschal lamb”.

The material in O’Reilly is of the most varied kind, but it covers an enormous area, and must be judged somewhat leniently. But even the excellent digest of Windisch, which only refers to a very small section of the literature, is by no means impeccable. I do not propose to go into a detailed examination, of course, nor have I the slightest intention of disparaging the work; but I give here a few examples to show that whether based on old glossaries, as O’Reilly’s, or on extant translations, as Windisch’s, all dictionaries for the present have to be regarded with suspicion.

Thus, in the Grammatica Celtica Zeuss had quoted as an example of a substantive ending in -ise, the word semise (gl. attenuatio), Ml. 22d; Windisch must have looked this up in the Ml. codex, for he cites the gloss, but he would not take the hint of the gloss itself, 22 d1, which has ‘armúsemise’ ‘pro ipsa mei adtenuatione’, i.e. mu sémi-se, with the part. augens. The word sémi [53b28] ‘tenuitas’ is common enough; but semise should be deleted as a non-existent form.

In his glossary, Windisch gives the very common word menmarc, 'darling', with only a (?) appended, though one thinks the meaning