The bards and seanachies—Six men of outstanding literary eminence—The earliest pioneer of the modern philological movement—Representatives of the older scholarship—Those of the new—The brilliant Zeuss—Foreign periodicals dealing with Celtic—Foremost scholars of the various nations—Italian—German—French—Danish—Scandinavian—American—British, including English, Irish, Welsh, Manx, and Scottish—Many literary problems solved—The promise of future harvests.

In the company of the scholars we still breathe the atmosphere of the past. It is they who have resurrected the MSS. These monuments of by-gone days are the quarries among which they work. As Burns “eyed with joy the general mirth,” so do they scrutinise with eager glance the much-prized vellum.

Only a scholar can know the pleasure it gives to hap upon a long-lost relic of literature, to turn over its leaves, steeping the book in water, if need be, to make its pages come asunder, and even using acid to help the time-worn ancient one to deliver up its secret.

“Why bother with such defunct lore?” asks the man in the crowd, “the past is over and gone. It is long since superseded.” Therein lies the difference between him and the scholar. The scholar thinks it worth while. Nay, he will sacrifice much—we shall repeatedly see—to search out the contribution of the past, and determine its meaning. As Plato, Aristotle, and the master-minds of ancient Greece wrote their books and carried on their studies, knowing full well that these would be read and assimilated by very few in their own day, there being no printing-presses as now, and only a limited education; so many of the Celtic scholars of our own time labour on in solitude, conscious also that even with the printing-press the circle of their readers must be small, yet knowing they are doing a work which in its own way is ever widening the horizons of knowledge and enriching the common heritage of mankind.

In the bards and seanachies, there have not been lacking from remote times men who have interested themselves in the lore and learning of their race; but we need to come down to more recent times to encounter the class of writers we have specially in view in this study.

Happily, they are not confined to any one age or any one country. Yet Ireland, as we might expect from its place in the Celtic group, figures early and largely in the domain of Gaelic scholarship.

During the first half of the seventeenth century—to go no farther back—it produced six men of outstanding literary eminence, who represented a national scholarship in that country, the lustre of which has never since been surpassed. These were Geoffrey Keating, Duald Mac Firbis, and the Four Masters.

Keating, though born in Ireland, was of Norman extraction, and educated abroad for the office of priest. On his return from Spain, a full-fledged Doctor of Divinity, he was appointed to a church and attracted great crowds as a preacher, till an incident, the most trivial and fortuitous in its origin, drove him from the pulpit into literature. The incident is worth recording as a determining factor in his illustrious career. It seems that in his audience one day a young lady, who was reputed to have questionable relations with a high dignitary of the Province, happened to appear, curious, like all the rest, to hear the great preacher. Keating, as fate would have it, was discoursing on this occasion on a theme not likely to commend itself to the dissolute girl; still less, since all eyes pointed the moral in her direction.

She had her revenge, for forthwith soldiers were dispatched by her lordly patron to arrest the offending priest and make him prisoner. But the latter hearing of this in time, made good his escape to the famous glen of Aberlow, where he lived for years a hidden life. It was while thus cashiered and ostracised that he conceived the idea of writing the history of Ireland, from the earliest times to the Norman conquest, afterwards travelling through the country in disguise, with Aberlow as base, to consult the ancient MSS., which were then in the families of the hereditary brehons and in the proximity of the old monasteries. Many documents which existed in 1630, and which he perused, have since disappeared. And his work is thus of great value, as he rewrote and redacted their contents in his own words, like another Herodotus.

Duald Mac Firbis, his contemporary, was equally indefatigable in ransacking the past for the benefit of the future. His magnum opus is The Book of Genealogies. O’Curry thinks it perhaps the greatest national genealogical compilation in the world. In addition, he compiled the Chronicon Scotorum, various glossaries, and, according to himself, a dictionary of the Brehon laws.

Almost at the same time that Keating was writing his history in the south of Ireland, the Four Masters were busy with theirs in the north. Michael O’Clery, born at Donegal about 1580, was author of the Leabhar Gabhala, or Book of Invasions, and other important works, but in compiling the famous Annals, the greatest of all, he had the assistance of other three eminent scholars, known as Farfasa O’Mulchonry, Peregrine O’Clery, and Peregrine O’Duigenan. Hence the name “Four Masters,” given by John Colgan of Louvain, himself worthy to rank after them as the author of the Trias Thaumaturga, a book which owes its origin to the vast collection of material amassed by Michael O’Clery throughout his busy life. The latter work consists of two enormous Latin quartos, the first containing the lives of Patrick, Brigit, and Columba; the second, those of a number of other distinguished Irish saints.

From the middle of the seventeenth century we are carried forward to the beginning of the eighteenth. And the next great name that illuminates the pages of Celtic scholarship is that of a Welshman, Edward Lhuyd. A peculiar interest and distinction attach to the work of this man, inasmuch as he was the earliest pioneer of the modern philological movement, and almost stumbled on the discoveries of Grimm and Rask, which were only reached upwards of a century after his time.

An Oxford don, of Jesus College, he clearly saw the necessity of laying a solid foundation for the scientific study of his own and kindred languages, and, following up his ideal, he set about publishing specimens of the literature and preparing vocabularies of the various dialects. In pursuit of this laudable object he visited Ireland and Scotland, and when his great work, the Archæologica Britannica, began to appear about 1703, enthusiastic Celts from far and near sent him congratulatory odes, some of which he afterwards printed. These poems were either in Latin or in the mother tongue of their contributors. Among the specimens sent from the Scottish Highlands, one, composed by the Rev. John Maclean of Kilninian, Mull, has been justly described by Professor Mackinnon as a “really admirable composition.”

Such is one verse of the ode, as rendered in English by Dr. Nigel Macneill.

Completed and printed at Oxford in 1707, the Archæologica Britannica was, according to the title page, “delivered to the subscribers at 9s. 6d., being the remainder of their payment, and to others at 16s.”

As a scientific linguist, the reputation of its brilliant author was at once established. His calibre may be inferred from the following pregnant note, which he appended to an edition of Kirke’s Gaelic Vocabulary in 1702. The note is in Latin to this effect:—

Of these 360 Gaelic words, 160 agree, in sound and sense, with the British (Welsh) language. The letter p in Welsh equates with the letter c in Gaelic, e.g., pren, crann (tree); plant, clann; pen, ceann; pedwar, ceithir; pymp, cuig; pwy, cia; pasc, casg. Gw of Welsh equates with Gaelic f, e.g., gwyn, fionn; gwin, fion; gwr, fear; gwair, feur; gwirion, firinneach. The Welsh h corresponds with the Gaelic s, e.g., hen, sean; helig, seileach; heboc, seabhag; hil, siol; halen, salann; hyn, sin.

What was to prevent a man of such critical insight travelling towards the interesting discovery of the position of the Celtic in the Aryan group, or even the generalisation formulated in Grimm’s Law? Already he was on the track, observing sound changes. He began with the Celtic dialects, but had he lived, in all likelihood he would have carried his equations to other languages of the Aryan group, and anticipated some at least of the modern results. As it was, his early death occurred before he had time to work out the idea on the wider platform; and the honour of having laid a sure foundation for the new sciences of philology, ethnology, and literary criticism passed a century and a half later to the great German masters.

After Lhuyd’s time, unhappily in this country, his studies were not followed up. On the contrary, the investigation of Celtic questions was determined more by sentiment than by scholarship. Wrangling and partisanship took the place of learning and scientific veracity. And so far were the methods and results of later criticism from being anticipated, that biassed men like Pinkerton and the Ossianic controversialists had a loud voice in the land.

Gradually a better type of scholarship began to emerge both in Scotland and Ireland. Not at first the representatives of the new order, but representatives of the traditional seanachies, scholars of the long past, who interested themselves afresh in the literature, history, and antiquities of the race; and who began with unwearied zest to unearth and bring to light the long lost and forgotten monuments of the past. Of these, in Scotland, the brothers Donald and John Smith, Ewen Maclachlan, Dr. Thomas Maclauchlan, and Dr. Archibald Clerk, were perhaps the most prominent. As scholars they were rather uncritical, and do not rank in the same category with the great names of later times; but they had strong Gaelic sympathies and a large assortment of traditional knowledge.

In Ireland, on the other hand, there were far more who occupied themselves with the earlier periods. Of these it would be hard to rival in patient, conscientious, and solid learning such men as O’Reilly, Petrie, O’Donovan, O’Curry, Todd, Reeves, Hennessy, and Healy.

The first three were associated with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and in that sphere found excellent scope for their Celtic studies, in connection with the place-names of the country.

John O’Donovan was born in 1809. His father, though a small farmer, had been descended from the celebrated O’Donovans of County Cork, and when he died in 1817 his son John, then eight years of age and one of a family of nine, was sent to Dublin to be educated. From the age of seventeen he began to devote himself systematically to Celtic study, and three years later was brought under the notice of the Survey Commission as a youth singularly well qualified to conduct the archæological department of their enterprise. Accordingly he entered the service in 1829, and forthwith instituted a careful investigation of the printed books, MSS., and inscriptions bearing on topography; in due course contributing articles to the Dublin Penny Journal, and laying the first instalment of his research before the British Association in 1835. Subsequently, Petrie and he published the full report.

In 1836 he set about preparing an Analytical Catalogue of the Irish MSS. in Trinity College, and from 1841 was editor of the works published by the Irish Archæological Society. Ever since he undertook the work of the Ordnance Survey, he had in view the idea of writing a Grammar of the Irish Language, and after seventeen years’ study the book appeared in 1847, and was received with enthusiasm both at home and abroad. It is characteristic of the way in which British scholarship followed in the rear of that on the Continent, that so well informed and interested an exponent as O’Donovan did not know when he published his valuable Grammar that aspiration and ellipsis had been explained in Germany eight years before then. Thus he arrived too early to benefit much by the study of comparative philology, though deeply interested in the science.

His masterpiece is really the edition he issued of the Annals of the Four Masters (1848–51). Of this vast effort Dr. Hyde affirms that it is the greatest that any modern Irish scholar ever accomplished. “So long as Irish history exists, the Annals of the Four Masters will be read in O’Donovan’s translation.”

In 1847 he was called to the Bar, but sacrificed his prospects in that line for his Celtic studies. Later, he received the degree of LL.D. from Trinity College, Dublin, and a Government pension of £50 a year, and was appointed Professor of the Irish Language in Queen’s College, Belfast. But having a large family to support on a small income, he contemplated emigrating to America or Australia, when in 1852, most opportunely, the Government resolved to appoint a Royal Commission to publish the ancient Laws and Institutions of Ireland, and he and O’Curry, the two greatest savants on that subject, were chosen for the office. Eight years’ more arduous work undermined his constitution, and he succumbed to an attack of rheumatic fever about the middle of November 1861.

Eugene O’Curry did not long survive him. Neither of them lived to complete the vast undertaking, though they both wrote and translated volumes of text, which have since been published.

The immense labours and success of O’Curry in the difficult fields of Gaelic research are even more astonishing than those of his coadjutor, as he had never received an academical education, and was mainly self-taught, and had to forge his way in new and unexplored directions. In view of this his surprise was great when offered the Professorship in the Catholic University of Ireland, and so diffident was he that it was with difficulty he was persuaded to accept it. His catalogues, editions of texts and translations, and, above all, his famous books, the Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History (Dublin, 1861), and On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish (London, 1873), have rendered him a kind of quarry for subsequent scholars, British and Continental.

To Dr. Todd is mainly due the inception, in 1841, of the Irish Archæological Society for publishing original documents. He figures also as the first editor of the Liber Hymnorum, Dublin, 1855, and as the biographer of St. Patrick, while Dr. Reeves has done masterly service as editor and biographer of Adamnan.

Of the line of scholars we have just passed in review, William Maunsell Hennessy is probably the last great representative. The better part of forty years he spent in close familiarity with the great tomes in Dublin, publishing, translating, and annotating, till the list of his works have become too numerous to mention here. Among the chief of these are his edition of the Chronicon Scotorum, in the Master of the Rolls’ Series, 1858; and his translation of the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, printed by Mary Frances Cusack, 1871, and by O’Leary, New York, 1874.

“Hennessy,” says Standish O’Grady, “was born at Castle Gregory, some twelve miles west of Tralee, and in early life visited the United States. Upon his return to Ireland he became a journalist, and was appointed to the Public Record Office, Dublin, in 1868. He enjoyed the friendship of the Cavaliere Nigra, himself an accomplished Celticist, and was his guest at the Italian Embassy in Paris. In 1885 he was visited by a family bereavement, almost tragic in sadness, and this again was before long followed by a second blow, the effect upon his sensitive and affectionate nature being such that he never fairly rallied, but died at the age of sixty.”

Having thus glanced briefly at the representatives of the older scholarship and their work, we shall now have occasion to retrace our steps to consider the representatives of the new critical and philological movement. After Edward Lhuyd’s demise no further progress seems to have been registered in the elucidation of Celtic philology till the time of Franz Bopp. Even as late as the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Gaelic was regarded by scholars as a peculiar language, unconnected with the other European tongues. It is true that Sir William Jones, from his study of Sanskrit, had thrown out the hint as early as 1786, that Celtic was of the same original stock with the other languages of Europe and South-Western Asia; but when Bopp first published his Comparative Grammar Celtic was omitted. It was Dr. Pritchard, an English ethnologist, who, in 1832, really demonstrated on the lines laid down by Grimm and Bopp, that the Celtic language is a member of the Indo-European group.

His book, entitled The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, from this time drew the attention of continental scholars to the excluded and hitherto neglected language, with the result that three important works soon after appeared, namely, first, one On the Affinity of the Celtic Languages with the Sanskrit, by Adolph Pictet (Paris, 1837); second, the Die Celtischen Sprachen, or Celtic Philology, by Bopp (Berlin, 1839); and the Celtica of Dr. Diefenbach (Stuttgart, 1839–40).

By this time Bopp had studied the Celtic dialects, and published the above work as a supplement to his great Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German, and Sclavonic Languages. Some features of Gaelic phonetics, such as initial aspiration and ellipsis, taking the place of declension, seems hitherto to have baffled scholars, but Bopp’s sagacity enabled him to perceive that these are nothing else than the relics and results of the after-action of the old case-endings, and that the rational explanation is to be found in the final sound of the previous word, or, as we now say, vocalic and nasal auslaut. This discovery has since been fully confirmed by Zeuss, Ebel, and Windisch.

It was with the publication of the Grammatica Celtica, however, that the great moment in the evolution of Celtic scholarship arrived. Its gifted author, J. Caspard Zeuss, stands supreme as the real founder of Celtic philology. He did for it what Grimm did for the Teutonic, and Diez for the Romance. Since the appearance of his monumental work it has been definitely settled that the Celtic languages are pure Indo-European tongues, without any admixture of foreign elements, and thus that they are members of the family in the same sense that Latin or Gothic is. In addition, it has furnished the means of interpreting the most ancient forms of the Gaelic language found in the very old MSS., which before then had defied the efforts of translators.

Zeuss was born in Bavaria in July 1806, and after a brilliant school career, he went to the University of Munich, as his friends intended that he should be a clergyman. But the youth preferred linguistic studies, for which it soon transpired that he had a unique genius; and, college life over, he taught for seven years (from 1832–39) in the Gymnasium of Munich. Meantime he pursued his own favourite science, publishing in 1837 a work which is still authoritative. It dealt with the German chiefly, but from the first his studies included the oriental languages.

To settle in Berlin and support himself by teaching there had now become the objective of his desire, as the Metropolis would furnish him with exceptional opportunities, but being a Catholic, he found this impossible. In 1839, however, he succeeded in getting a professorship in the Lyceum in Spires, and went there from Munich. It was then he began to study Celtic. How enormous the difficulties were for a man in his position one can readily imagine, when it is remembered how widely dispersed, unknown, and unintelligible the materials for the most part were at that time. His income was small, but in order to economise his resources, and have the wherewithal to pursue his researches, it is said that he decided to remain a bachelor. It was his custom annually during the vacation to visit the great libraries of London, Oxford, Würzburg, St. Gall, and Milan for the perusal of the Gaelic documents. In the preface to his great work, he even apologises for not having made full use of the Milan glosses. This we know was not altogether his fault, for he went twice there to study the MS. On the first occasion there happened to be a convention of savants in the city, and the library was closed, much to his disappointment. An epidemic of fever prevailed when he returned the second time, and feeling certain sensations, he imagined he had caught the infection, and left the place without accomplishing the object of his visit. No doubt the overwrought student was nervous on that occasion, and his fears may have got the better of him.

In 1847 he was appointed Professor of History in Munich. But his health not being very robust, though he accepted the chair, he was obliged a few months afterwards to resign. Fortunately, however, he received a similar appointment in the Lyceum of Bamberg, which he was able to maintain. This was his last. The Grammatica Celtica, which was to take the learned world by surprise and revolutionise Celtic studies, appeared in 1853, after thirteen years’ close and laborious work. It is written in Latin, and is so profoundly erudite that it has the reputation, like some other great German books, of being very difficult to grasp. The numerous sources consulted in the production of this masterpiece of scientific scholarship are all carefully given in the preface. Its publication at once established his fame, but the work killed him. In 1855 he was compelled to resign his chair through broken health. That same year Professor Siegfried of Dublin saw him, and afterward wrote the following interesting impression which the appearance of the devoted scholar made upon him. “I paid a visit,” he says, “to this remarkable man in the vacation of 1855, when his health was fast sinking. He was a tall, well-made, rather spare man, with black hair and moustache, giving on the whole more the impression of a Sclavonian or a Greek than a German.” He did not long survive his retirement, for in November 1856, less than three years after the completion of his Grammar, this illustrious linguist but modest and retiring man died in his native village in Bavaria. To him, mindful of his outstanding influence, Dr Whitley Stokes has not inaptly applied the Greek line—

After the publication of the Grammatica Celtica, Celtic studies received a mighty impetus and took great strides forward. Now that the Celtic dialects were proved to be Aryan, their further study became a necessity in connection with the comparative grammar of the whole family. Already in Germany there was the well-known Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachkunde (Journal of Comparative Philology), a journal specially devoted to the Germanic, Greek and Latin languages; but now in 1856, the Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung (Contribution to Comparative Etymology) was started in Berlin to deal with the Aryan, Celtic, and Sclavonic tongues, and giving particular attention to the Celtic. The periodical went through eight volumes, one appearing in four parts every two years; and when it came to an end the Zeitschrift, edited by Dr. Kuhn, began to receive articles on Celtic subjects, and continues to do so still.

Among the contributors to the Beiträge Dr. Hermann Ebel was the most notable. His Celtic studies in the journal were afterwards translated and issued in book form by the late Professor Sullivan of Dublin (1863). Of these the most important are On Declension, and The Position of the Celtic. Ebel taught for thirteen years in Schniedmuhl, and when the Chair of Comparative Philology, once occupied by Bopp, in Berlin, fell vacant, he was appointed thereto, but he did not live long to fulfil its duties, for he died in 1875, only two years later. He left, it is said, in MS. a dictionary of Old Gaelic. His greatest Celtic work, however, is the second edition of Zeuss’s Grammar published in 1871, which embodies the results of Celtic scholarship down to that year.

In 1870 another important periodical, wholly devoted to Celtic studies, began to be published in Paris, namely the Revue Celtique. It was the appearance of this quarterly that ultimately led to the appointment of D’Arbois de Jubainville as Commissioner to the British Isles, to report on the Gaelic MSS. found there. This paper, which still flourishes, has for over thirty years done good service in the interests of scholarship, there being among its contributors such eminent writers as Ebel, Windisch, Max Müller, Count Nigra, Pictet, Jubainville, Stokes, Rhys, Macbain, and others.

Occasional articles continue to appear in several German papers, but it may be of moment in passing to note that a few years ago a new periodical, entitled Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, was floated, as well as an Archiv für Celtische Lexicographie, which shows the interest that is still taken by the German philologists in this department of study.

As the great succession of Celtic scholars after Zeuss and Ebel are more or less contemporary, it will be most convenient to deal with them in the order of nationality. Among foreigners of the first rank are two Italians, Count Nigra and Ascoli of Milan. Nigra was for a time his country’s ambassador in London and Paris. It will be remembered that Hennessy, who enjoyed his friendship, was entertained by him at the Italian Embassy in the latter city. His most important contribution, founded on his own researches in Italy, is the Reliquie Celtiche, published in that land in 1872. Ascoli did similar good work in connection with the Gaelic glosses in the ancient MSS. of Milan and St. Gall, supplementing the labours in that field of Zeuss, Ebel, and Nigra.

In Germany, on the other hand, there are four still actively engaged who rank among the masters. First comes the brilliant Professor Windisch of Leipzig. He is best known for his Irische Texte (vol. i.), published in Leipzig, 1880; and again a second series of the same, in collaboration with Dr. Stokes, in 1884. It is a learned work with a vocabulary arranged alphabetically, which goes most minutely into the structure of the words. Such pieces as Cuchulinn’s Sickbed, the Vision of Adamnan, the Tale of the Sons of Uisneach, Hymns from the Liber Hymnorum, and Irish glosses from the MSS. in the monastery of St Paul in Carinthia are among its varied contents. Windisch is Professor of Sanskrit in Leipzig, and besides an Irish Grammar has published other books bearing on Celtic philology. In some instances he has corrected Zeuss, and in various directions developed and extended his principles. At present he is engaged on a second edition of the above-mentioned grammar, and on an elaborate edition with translation of the Táin Bó Chuailgné.

Next to him comes Professor Zimmer, formerly of Greifswalde, now Professor of Celtic in Berlin University. Two books stand to his credit in 1881, Irish Glosses and Celtic Studies. As a writer he expresses fresh and interesting opinions on a great variety of subjects, such as the pagan character of Irish literature, the ancient Celtic Church, the “Táin Bó Chuailgné,” Old Middle Irish MSS., the Irish scholars upon the Continent, Fiacc’s Life of St. Patrick, and the scansion of the classical Irish metres.

Professor Thurneysen of Jena (now of Freiburg) distinguished himself by preparing, along with B. Gütterbock, an elaborate index to the Grammatica Celtica, which renders that work more complete and accessible. It was published in 1881.

He, along with Dr. Christian Stern, Librarian of Berlin, complete the quartette of famous German Celticists who have been for some time in the field, though not the list of able scholars engaged in like studies in that country. Other significant names are Drs. Holder, Finck, Zupitza, Foy, and Sommer.

Nor has France in recent years been lacking in eminent men of similar research. M. de la Borderie, Gaidos, De Jubainville, Lotti, Ernault, Dottin, and Professor Loth of Rennes have all greatly advanced the interests of Celtic philology and literature. Of these, D’Arbois de Jubainville is perhaps the best known, on account of his literary mission to the British Isles on behalf of the French Minister of Public Instruction in 1881, and his subsequent catalogue of the MSS. As Professor at the College of France and editor of the Revue Celtique, he made numerous interesting contributions in journal and book form to the modern literature of the subject, such as Grammatical Studies on the Celtic Languages and Epopée Celtique en Irlande.

Ernault occupied himself more with the Breton dialect and folk-lore, Professor Loth with the Mabinogion and Welsh metrics.

Other Continental savants of great promise remain to be mentioned. They belong to the northern nations, which have recently begun to develop a lively enthusiasm for Celtic studies. Denmark is well to the front with Professor Holger Pedersen, a pupil of Zimmer’s, and Dr. Sarauw of Copenhagen, while Scandinavia is represented by Dr. Liden of Gothenburg. Much is expected of these men on the lines on which scholarship now travels. Hitherto America, so much engrossed with the problems of the present, has been slow to enter upon a research which burrows so deeply in the past, yet within the last few years two names have emerged which are intimately associated with this subject, namely, those of the Rev. Professor Henebry and Professor Robinson of Harvard. The one is concerned with the translation of O’Donnell’s Life of St. Columcille, the other with the collection of certain early Irish poems and sagas.

And now, returning to our own shores after contemplating the masters abroad, it is pleasing to find so many who have distinguished themselves in one way or another in this field. England, Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and Scotland have each furnished enthusiastic and capable men.

Foremost of these British scholars, and apparently now of all living Celticists, stands Dr. Whitley Stokes. Next to Zeuss he has done more than any other single man in this particular department of study and research. His publications are a library in themselves, and deal with Cornish, Breton, Old Welsh, as well as Irish and Gaelic. He has made himself master of the field in a very thorough and scientific manner. Perhaps his best known books are the Irische Texte, vol. i., 2nd series, 1884; vol. ii., published at Leipzig, 1887; The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, 1887, and his Goidelica (old and early-middle-Irish glosses, prose and verse) which appeared twenty years before the others, and reached a second edition in 1872. In it are given accurate translations of the Gaelic prefaces and hymns of the Liber Hymnorum—that ancient anthology which dates from the eleventh century.

Dr. Stokes, who is a son of Professor William Stokes, Dublin, studied Irish with O’Donovan, and Sanskrit and Comparative Philology with Professor Siegfried in Dublin. After a distinguished career in the Indian Civil Service he retired and took up residence in London. It was in Calcutta that the foundation of his great reputation as a Celtic scholar was laid, and it was from that city that he first issued his Goidelica. The preface is striking in its brevity and simplicity:—

I have three objects in printing this book—one, to save the contents of my transcripts of the glosses at Turin, Milan, and Berne from the destruction which in this country anything solely entrusted to paper MSS. must sooner or later meet with; another, to give those excellent German philologists who, like Schleicher and Ebel, have expressed a desire for trustworthy copies of Old Irish compositions, material on which they may look with confidence; and, thirdly, to lay the first stone of the cairn which I hope to raise to the memory of my beloved friend and teacher, Siegfried.

The cairn has since been raised, and it is indeed a notable one. Besides his books, contributions from Dr. Stokes may be found in Continental journals, such as the Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung of Berlin, and the Revue Celtique of Paris. He is still busy in his island home at Cowes, editing and translating texts, of which the Annals of Tighernach, the Amra Choluimcille, Agallamh na Seanorach, and the Bruiden Da Derga have lately been published.

Other great names in this country are those of Professor Rhys of Oxford, a Welshman; Professor Atkinson of Dublin, a Yorkshireman; Dr. Kuno Meyer of Liverpool, a German; Dr. Strachan of Manchester, Professor of Greek and Comparative Philology, a native of Keith, Banffshire; Dr. Douglas Hyde, whose interesting book on the Literary History of Ireland has just recently appeared; Dr. Norman Moore, the poetical Dr. Sigerson, and the Professors Gwynne, father and son. Of these Principal Rhys has hitherto perhaps been the most prolific in dealing with the early history and problems of Celtic Britain, while the others have interested themselves more in the language and literature.

There are two other outstanding names very familiar to the student of Celtic, the erudite Standish Hayes O’Grady, author of Silva Gadelica, and friend of Windisch for many years, and Mr. Alfred Nutt, an authority on folk-lore and literary antiquities. Besides Rhys, Wales has produced such indefatigable workers as Gwenogfryn Evans and Canon Silvan Evans, the veteran of Welsh philology; Professors Morris Jones and Lewis Jones, of Bangor; the late Charles Ashton; Professor Anwyl of Aberystwyth, and Mr. Brynmor Jones; while the Isle of Man has Mr. A. W. Moore and Mr. Kermode.

In Scotland during the middle of last century Dr. Skene did much to revive interest in the history and monuments of the past, by collecting MS. materials, editing the Four Ancient Books of Wales, and publishing his own voluminous Celtic Scotland.

The first scholar north of the Tweed to assimilate the results of Zeuss’s labours and follow his lead was the late Dr. Cameron of Brodick; very industrious, as may be seen from his contributions to the magazines, and his posthumous work, the Reliquiæ Celticæ, but sadly lacking in system and method. After him come Dr. Macbain of Inverness, a distinguished philologist, whose Gaelic Dictionary is a valuable contribution to Celtic etymology, and the Rev. John Kennedy; the late Sheriff Nicholson; Professor Mackinnon, occupant of the Edinburgh Chair of Celtic Literature, and Dr. Henderson, a former student of his, who has since studied abroad and written various papers and books, and edited poems or tales collected in the Highlands.

These all represent the forces of scholarship in the highways and by-ways of Celtic literature. They are not all masters, in the technical sense of the word; not a few of them are, as we have already seen, and the marvel is, looking back for fifty years, the number of men of the first rank who have appeared, in great part on the Continent but also in our own land. It is truly a recrudescence or re-arising of the Celt. Spent forces seem suddenly to have re-emerged and overflowed the foremost files of time, taking science captive and using it as their instrument. And yet people wonder and inquire and continue to ask for evidence of a Celtic renaissance.

Many literary problems have within the last half-century been solved, but many more remain to be unravelled—questions too, of history, ethnology, and sociology. But so much has already been done—so much that a century ago seemed visionary and impossible, and had not even appeared on the horizon of dreamers, that there is the promise of future harvests, and still unlimited scope for the masters.

Thus the progress. First the available materials had to be ascertained, catalogued, sifted, and examined in every land. Then followed the work of publishing and interpreting the texts which have already yielded such interesting philological and ethnical results, and now we look for a further synthesis in other directions from the hints and suggestions scattered all over these published records, which will throw light on the fascinating problems which confront the students of history, ethnology, archæology, and of the beliefs and customs of the race in its earlier stages—a study in keeping with the human experience, that to go on we must often go back.