manner from the point of view both of language and history, which reflects credit on the Irish scholarship of his time.
§ 7. The book, as said, is a compilation, and moreover makes use of an earlier compilation or compilations. This double compilation would naturally be a source of confusion, but when we come to compare the forms from year to year and from decade to decade it is surprising how remarkably free from errors the work is, and how clearly the development of forms can be seen as time goes on. But this is not the case from the first. During the very early period the language is comparatively late, and can be shown in some cases to belong to the late ninth century—some entries at least being as late as this and others not later. After a time, towards the end of the sixth century, the language becomes distinctly older, and during the seventh century we have occasional old entries side by side with later ones. The obvious conclusion from this is that when, during this early period, the compiler had old entries for a year he left them unchanged, hence when we come to the period where all the entries belong to the language of the time it is clear that the compiler was drawing altogether from contemporary chronicles or documents. Further, we must conclude that Mag Uidhir, during the Old and Early Irish period, reproduced what he had got before him with occasional slips, some of which are corrected in the R manuscript. How far Mag Uidhir is responsible for the later form of a familiar name[1] during the Early Old Irish period is not clear.
§ 8. The period when the language of the consecutive entries for each year[2] begins to be contemporary is, as will be seen, the last few years of the seventh century. This can be proved by a comparison of the language of the entries of this and the following decade or so with texts which can be dated with comparative accuracy, such as Adamnán’s Life of Columba and Muirchu Maccu Machtheni’s Memoirs of St. Patrick, and[3] Tirechán’s notes in the Book of
- ↑ The writing of Cellach as Ceallach and the marking the aspiration of the mediae I refer to under Orthography. The various possible instances of modernization I deal with separately under their separate heads.
- ↑ Of course such an entry as at 941, natiuitas Briain mic Cennetig, was not inserted for at least thirty years after this date.
- ↑ Cf. v. Stokes and Strachan, Introduction, Thes. Pal. Hib., Zimmer, K.Z. xxxvi. 474.
