1 Literature

Nina Cnockaert-Guillou, ‘An Edition and Translation of “Finn and Mac Lesc” including “Fuitt co Bráth” and “Tánicsam” ’, Celtica, 36 (2024), 116–157, offers a translation and introduction to two nature poems within the prosimetric anecdote ‘Finn and Mac Lesc’. The introduction discusses the textual clusters in which ‘Finn and Mac Lesc’ survives, manuscript layout, and textual transmission. The metre of the poems is reconsidered; Cnockaert-Guillou argues that ‘Tánic sam’ fits a syllabic metre rather than a stressed metre. The analysis is followed by the author’s translation of the poems, primarily following the Rawlinson B 502 witness and incorporating elements from the two other manuscript witnesses.

Charlene Eska, ‘Re-examining the Early Irish Marriage Laws’, North American Journal of Celtic Studies, 8:1 (Spring 2024), 49–70, further refines Liam Breatnach’s work on the cétmuinter and other classificatory words for women. The article considers early Irish marriage law and its context, particularly with regard to polygyny.

Elva Johnston, ‘Patterns of Commemoration in Medieval Irish Martyrologies’, Peritia, 35 (2024), 51–73, offers an examination of three Irish martyrologies: the circa ninth-century Martyrology of Tallagh, and two texts that use this as a source: Félire Óengusso and the Martyrology of Gorman. Her comparative work furthers our understanding of topics such as gender, geographical trends, and mapping saints’ cults and ecclesiastical settlements over time.

Roisin McLaughlin, ‘Further Observations on Reader’s Aids in Irish Manuscripts’, Ériu, 74 (2024), 113–125, is a palaeographic guide. It builds on the author’s 2021 article, ‘Text Run-Over Imagery and Reader’s Aids in Irish Manuscripts’, Ériu, 71, 69–115. McLaughlin describes the categories and functions of these symbols, which could be used to clarify the textual layout, draw attention to significant textual or codicological issues, and perhaps to distinguish the contributions of a particular scribe.

In a continuing series on Irish parallels to the Old Norse myth of the death of Baldr, Kim McCone, ‘The Deaths of Baldr and Fergus mac Roig’, Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, 71 (2024), 179–186, identifies a close parallel in the Ulster hero Fergus’ brief death-tale Aided Fergusa mac Roig, in which Fergus is killed by his foster-brother Lugaid, who, like Baldr’s brother Hǫðr, is blind, and who commits the murder with a spear throw. This discussion re-enlivens past discussions of the possibility that Celtic traditions may have been a source for the Baldr stories Old English and Old Norse.

Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, ‘ “Flame of I” and “Crown of Alba”: The Role of Colum Cille in the Dindsenchas’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 87 (Summer 2024), 41–58, considers the role of the saint Colum Cille on dindsenchas’ place-lore literature, which creates ‘an ingenious blend of secular and ecclesiastical motifs’ that position the saint as ‘representing Gaelic civilisation (even including some of the Gaelicized Norse) on both sides of the Irish sea’ (57).

2 Language

Sharon Arbuthnot, ‘Medieval Irish Supernatural Beings’, Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, 71 (2024), 155–178, examines the semantic ranges of the words andregoin, glynnon, and gudemain, especially in texts that are difficult to construe, challenging early misconstruals that later scholarship has continued to build upon. She examines andregoin in Serglige Con Culainn, in which it may survive as a corruption of the collocation ainder trogain, ‘raven woman’, perhaps indicating that an earlier version of this text had to do with Cú Chulainn’s encountering two otherworld women who, like the Morrígan and Badb, could transform themselves into black birds. Arbuthnot examines glynnon in two early glossary texts, O’Mulconry’s Glossary and the Irsan Glossary, positing that it represents the early Welsh gynnon or gynhon, a plural form of the Modern Welsh gynt, ‘tribe, people, nation’, suggesting that early Irish glossators were engaging in word-play with Brittonic. Finally, she examines the rare word gudemain, perhaps derived from gú, ‘false’ + demain, ‘demons’, in Sanas Cormaic, locating it within a nexus of vocabulary related to demons, morrígna, and black birds.

In Sabine Asmus and Mark Ó Fionnáin, ‘The Early Concept of the Celtic Colour Term glas in Welsh and Irish and its Later Semantic Diversification’, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 25 (2024), 1–36, the authors present a diachronic examination of the range of colour shades covered by the word glas, followed by synchronic examinations of its semantic ranges in Welsh and Irish, challenging pre-existing assumptions that it expresses the cross-linguistically rare grue concept.

Art J. Hughes, ‘Saltair na Rann as Both an Old and New Testament of the Gaelic Verb’, Études Celtiques, 50 (2024), 127–180, examines the pronounced degrees of fluctuation in the verbal morphology of the Saltair na Rann and highlights the evident pivotal position enjoyed by this text as one whose linguist makeup is very much caught between two epochs of language: (1) the late Old Irish (the era of the compound verb plus infixed pronouns and infixed perfective particles ro, con, and ad), on the one hand, as opposed to (2) the Modern era of the remodelled neo-simple verb in place of the OIr. regular compound verb and the freestanding independent perfectiec particle ro (> later do) in place of infixed ro, con, and ad. This article proposes especially that the rapid emergence of the post-OIr. modern vernacular was often disguised and/or disdained in the literary tradition of the Middle Irish period, though the remodelled, neo-simple verbs were given the ‘green light’ very early on in literary Middle Irish, from the SR onwards, while the independent object pronoun does not seem to make a literary breakthrough until later on in Middle Irish.

Art J. Hughes, ‘Scottish Gaelic bithidh, Manx bee, Irish bíon: A Synchronic and Diachronic Anatomy of the 3rd Sing. Consuetudinal Present/Future Tense in pan-Gaelic’, Studia Hibernica, 50 (2024), 143–160, includes appendices which provide a synchronic distribution of bíonn, ‘is wont to be’ for most dialects in Ireland, bithidh, ‘will be’ in Scotland, and bee/vees in Manx, and seeks to provide a diachronic analysis of the evidence provided for these verbal forms by two of the most significantly detailed comparative monuments to Gaelic linguistic heritage: (1) Heinrich Wagner, Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish Dialects, 4 vols (Dublin, 1959–1969); (2) Cathair Ó Dochartaigh, Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland, 5 vols (Dublin, 1994–1997).

Damian McManus, ‘The Genius of the Classical Irish Grammarian: The Case of the Unique Finite Verbal Form beith, “May Be”, and the History of the Conjunction cía “Though, If, That” from Old to Early Modern Irish’, Ériu, 74 (2024), 127–148, shows that the finite verbal form beith is unique in Early and Early Modern Irish. It is the only stressed monosyllabic verbal form with 3rd sing. absolute present-tense ending ‑ith/-id in the language. Even after hiatus forms underwent contraction in late Old Irish and the monosyllabic distinction was lost, beith remained unique in having a short main vowel. From these stem an array of other sources of uniqueness that McManus explores. He also argues that the history of the conjunction cía, ‘although’, from Old to Modern Irish, has been misunderstood, and that a correct understanding of it is at the core of statements in the grammatical and syntactical texts.

Dublaídi Dindshenchais: Studies on the Medieval Irish Place-Name Tradition, ed. by Marie-Luise Theuerkauf (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2024), is an invaluable resource for the dindsenchas tradition. It offers new insights into this super-genre of texts, with a wide range of approaches, including Kay Muhr’s work on onomastics, John Carey’s exploration of memory, Kevin Murray’s examination of poetry, Ranke de Vries’ analysis of medical material, and Matthias Egeler’s cross-cultural literary reception study.

Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, ‘The Irish Jerusalem: Etymological Politics and the Study of Greek in Medieval Ireland’, Celtica, 36 (2024), 70–86, examines the etymology of the placename Tara, Irish Temair, in the Old Irish glossary Sanas Cormaic and in the dindsenchas tradition. It focuses on the derivation of Temair from a purported Greek verb teomoro and it is proposed that this etymology may have drawn on the Harleian Graeco-Latin (Cyrillus) glossary and could ultimately have been inspired by the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville. It further addresses the idea that Cormac mac Cuilennáin, king and bishop of Cashel, was the author of Sanas Cormaic, and proposes that medieval etymology, as a branch of Irish learning drawing on Graeco-Roman learned tradition, might reveal contemporary political concerns coded into the origins of words.