Recovering Lost Elements in Cregeen
Recovering lost elements from Cregeen’s Dictionary of the Manks Language Max W. Wheeler January 2018 Archibald Cregeen’s Dictionary of the Manks Language of 1835 has been republished four times in the 20th and 21st centuries.1 In 1910 J. J. Kneen, on behalf of the Manx Language Society, edited a reprint, with a brief new preface, that reset the text. It included translations into English of Cregeen’s Manx proverbs, and an English-Manx index (Kneen 1910). In 1969 Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh published a photographic reprint of the 1835 edition, entitled Fockleyr ny Gaelgey chaglit liorish Archibald Cregeen, with a preface in Manx by R. L. Thomson (Thomson 1969). Then in 1984 Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh published a photographic reprint of the 1910 edition, again entitled Fockleyr ny Gaelgey chaglit liorish Archibald Cregeen, without Kneen’s preface, but with a brief preface in English by R. L. Thomson (Thomson 1984). Finally, in 2015 I published online a reordering of Cregeen’s 1835 Dictionary, with the entries grouped not strictly alphabetically, as previously, but with formally related items grouped under headwords; my edition was entitled Fockleyr Chregeen Aa-orderit (Wheeler 2015). It incorporated the texts, in Manx and English of the Biblical and other passages that Cregeen cited as illustrations of usage. All of these editions purported to reproduce the original text of the 1835 Dictionary. At the respective times of publication, the editors were evidently unaware that there was, in fact, more than one version of the ‘first edition’, and that the texts they had all chosen to reproduce were inferior to the ‘true’ first edition, that was dated 1835, but actually appeared in May 1837.2 In his preface to the 1969 reprint, Thomson says, ‘Tra hie eh er cur magh yn nah cheayrt dy moghey ’sy lhing shoh, va’n obbyr-phrental ooilley jeant ass y noa, as er y fa shen ghow ny fir-aarlee yn caa dy yannoo caghlaaghyn ayns y lioar raad erbee er lhieu dy row feme.
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