Dictonary of the OIr. Glosses in the Milan MS Ambr. C301

The so-called Old-Irish glosses (edited in W. Stokes & J. Strachan, Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, Cambridge 1901- 3) are of the greatest significance for the study of the Irish language history since they are practically the only Old- Irish language remains surviving in contemporary manuscripts. Thus it is assured that the language of these texts shows no interference by the ensuing Middle and Modern Irish stages. The largest sub-corpus among the glosses are those of the Milan glosses (Thes. i 7-483), interlinear and marginal notes and translations to a Latin commentary on the psalter in the Milan codex Ambrosianus C 301. In the proposed project all of the language material of the Milan glosses is to be converted into a complete specialized dictionary, in order to make not only the text, but also the processed lexical material easily accessible. Because of the complexity of Old Irish, a great amount of information on phonology, morphology, morpho-phonology and syntax can practically only be gathered from a lexicon of this type. The material will be published both in printed and digitized form to ensure the widest possible range of usability. The project will be carried out according to the model of the dictionary of the Würzburg glosses (Séamus Kavanagh, A Lexicon of the Old Irish Glosses in the Würzburg Manuscript of the Epistles of St. Paul, Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissen-schaften 2001). On the basis of this dictionary, the study of the phonology, morphology, morpho-phonology and syntax of the language of these texts will be decisively facilitated. This will result in a clearer picture of the state of the language appr. at the beginning of the 9th century, having consequences for future grammars of Old Irish and grammatical monographs and articles.

Old Irish, the precursor to Modern Irish spoken in Ireland from roughly CE 700-900, is known to us through a great variety of texts: sagas, genealogies, histories, and glosses. The latter are short comments written by monks as they copied texts in other languages, typically Latin. The comments range from the banal (e.g. `I am cold` or simple translations of unfamiliar words or expressions) to more substantive explanations of difficult passages. Glosses are particularly important for Old Irish because they represent the only texts that we have which are found in original manuscripts from the period and are not copies made in much later times, often subjected to substantial linguistic modernisation, like all the narrative material. This project reexamined the largest such collection of glosses written in Old Irish in the Old Irish period: the Milan Glosses, so named because they are contained in a manuscript found in the Ambrosian Library in Milan, Italy. This manuscript contains over 8000 such glosses, ranging from single words to long, complex sentences. The last edition of these glosses is from 1903, and given the advances in Old Irish scholarship in the intervening century, a reexamination was long overdue. The specific results of the project are a (forthcoming) lexicon of all words and sub-words found in the glosses, as well as an accompanying CD containing searchable PDF files of the lexicon and an online database of the same. The lexicon and database will give scholars new and up-to-date tools to study the Milan Glosses. The value of these results is several-fold. First, since the previous edition from 1903 contained a number of errors and omissions, the lexicon and database offer the most complete and correct text of the glosses. Second, many of the glosses are translated and completely analysed for the first time here. Third, the tools produced are well- organized and searchable, the value of which should not be underestimated. It is to be expected that the lexicon and database will lead to an increased understanding of Old Irish and will contribute to Indo-European studies as well. Given that the Milan Glosses gloss a commentary on the Old Testament Book of Psalms, the project will also give scholars of religious history and biblical studies better access to early Irish religious thought, and will help to illuminate the history of biblical reception in the early Middle Ages.