Auraicept Na Néces: a Diachronic Study
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Auraicept na nÉces: A Diachronic Study With an Edition from The Book of Uí Mhaine Nicolai Egjar Engesland A dissertation submitted for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor The 20th of October 2020 Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo τῳ φωτί τῆς οἰκίας Foreword First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Mikael Males at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo for his untiring support and crucial input to the project at all stages. His enthusiasm for the field is unmatched. Der var intet valg, kun fremad, ordren ville lyde: døden eller Grønlands vestkyst. Secondly, I would like to thank Jan Erik Rekdal for having co-supervised the project and for having introduced me to the fascinating field of Irish philology and to Conamara. I would like to thank Pádraic Moran for valuable help with the evaluation of my work this spring and for useful feedback also during the conference on the dating of Old Norse and Celtic texts here in Oslo and on my visit to the National University of Ireland Galway last autumn. A number of improvements to the text and to the argumentation are due to his criticism. The community at NUI Galway has been very welcoming and I would like to show my gratitude to Michael Clarke and Clodagh Downey for accommodating us during our trip. Clarke also provided me with profitable feedback during the initial part of my work and has been a steady source of inspiration at conferences and workshops both in Ireland and in Norway. My colleagues and fellow Ph.D.-students on the Old Norse and Celtic 3rd floor of Henrik Wergeland’s House at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo have been very helpful and have provided good feedback when I have presented my work during our weekly Wednesday lunches. Karl Gunnar Johansson provided me with valuable advice on palaeographic studies. Klaus Johan Myrvoll at the University of Stavanger was a very welcome source of inspiration when he occupied a desk in our Ph.D.-office during the spring term of 2019, to which he also attracted Harald Bjorvand for discussions on Germanic philology. I am very grateful to Michael Benskin for having introduced me to the world of the Anglo-Saxons and for assisting me with the application for this project. I would like to thank Ciaran Arthur at NUI Galway for comments on an article draft that greatly helped me to clarify an argument that will be published in the Journal of Medieval History next year. Also Daniel Watson at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and Deborah Hayden at NUI Maynooth for allowing me to read their unpublished Ph.D.-theses and for useful feedback when I have presented my work. Scholars who shared information and advice on various conferences include Jacopo Bisagni at NUI Galway; Liam Breatnach at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies; Haraldur Bernharðsson at the University of Iceland, Reykjavík; Stefan Schumacher at the University of Vienna and David Stifter at NUI Maynooth. I would like to thank the staff at the Royal Irish Academy and especially Antoinette Prout, for allowing me to consult their MS A ii 4 (A) during the conference on the Book of Ballycummin, on March 8th, 2019, and also the staff at the Manuscript Department of the Library of Trinity College Dublin, especially Sharon Sutton, for their aid in furnishing me with photocopies of the relevant section of Dublin, Trinity College MSS 1289, 1317 and 1363. The images in Appendix 3 have been provided with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy and The Board of Trinity College Dublin, as well as Irish Script on Screen (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), for which I am very grateful. On this note, I would also like to thank Anne Marie O’Brien at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The staff at the University of Oslo Library has also been very helpful in providing me with books, for the most part from Carl Marstrander’s collection hidden away in their magazine. I would like to thank the Research Council of Norway for having financed the project. Special thanks are due to Jacob Ahlqvist, who donated a large part of his late father Anders Ahlqvist’s excellent library to the Old Norse and Celtic milieu at the University of Oslo. This library provided me with access to a number of important books that have greatly improved the quality of the present work. Javnstøladn, Øystre Slidre the 14th of October, 2020 Table of Contents Foreword .............................................................................................................................. 5 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ 7 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 13 1.1. History of Research ........................................................................................... 13 Early modern reception of Auraicept na nÉces ......................................................... 13 Calder and the editio princeps .................................................................................... 17 Rudolf Thurneysen ................................................................................................... 18 Minor contributions ................................................................................................. 19 A. G. van Hamel ....................................................................................................... 20 The Early Irish Linguist: Anders Ahlqvist ............................................................. 20 Later studies .............................................................................................................. 23 Summary of the history of research on Auraicept na nÉces ..................................... 25 1.2. ‘Auraicept na nÉces’: A Diachronic Study ........................................................... 29 An outline of the structure of the argument ........................................................... 34 1.3. Summary of Chapter .......................................................................................... 37 The Manuscript Record ................................................................................................... 40 2.1. The Main Manuscript Witnesses .................................................................... 40 2.2. The Fragmentary Manuscript Copies ............................................................. 42 2.3. Description of the Manuscripts ....................................................................... 43 D: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1432 ...................................................................... 44 M: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 1225 ............................................................ 44 B: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 12 ......................................................... 46 E: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 72.1.1. ........................................ 46 L: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2........................................................... 46 A: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS A ii 4 (738) ...................................................47 Eg: London, British Library Egerton MS 88 ..........................................................47 G: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1317 ....................................................................... 48 P: Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 53 ................................................... 48 T: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1363 ....................................................................... 48 Y: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1318 .......................................................................49 TCD MS 1289: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1289 (H 1. 15.) .................................49 2.4. Excerpts from Auraicept na nÉces ...................................................................... 50 The Lecan Glossary .................................................................................................... 50 Corpus Iuris Hibernici ................................................................................................ 51 In Lebor Ollaman : a commentary on Auraicept na nÉces ....................................... 51 2.5. General Remarks on the Manuscripts .............................................................. 52 2.6. Hyparchetypes ................................................................................................... 54 BEL (γ) ..................................................................................................................... 54 AEgGPY (δ)............................................................................................................... 57 2.7. Stemma codicum .................................................................................................. 59 3. The Linguistic Dating of Auraicept na nÉces ...........................................................66 3.1 The Nominal System ......................................................................................... 68 The article .................................................................................................................. 68 The neuter gender ..................................................................................................... 68 The