Old Irish

[Steve Gustafson]

Larry Trask writes:

> Don't know.  But a philologist colleague did suggest to me once, years
> ago, that literary Old Irish might have been to a significant extent an
> artificial creation of the scribes, who delighted in introducing and
> maintaining every possible complication, producing as a result something
> which did not represent ordinary speech at any time in history.

I know that literary Irish (and continental missionary Irish) monks
delighted in a strange Latin jargon they called 'Hisperica famina," which
actually meant 'Irish speech.'  (Famina for 'speech' is an interesting bit
of etymologising in itself.)  They mixed up archaic or newly coined Latin
words with bits of Greek and Hebrew.  This flourished in around the sixth
century --- about the time of the earliest OIr. glosses, if I remember
rightly.  St. Columba's -Altus prosator- is one of the best known, if
relatively less extreme, examples of the style.

--

Sella fictili sedeo
Versiculos dum facio.