Royal Irish Academy, Todd Lecture Series

This volume closes an undertaking begun more years ago than I care to reckon. It would be tedious to offer excuses for the long delays which have interrupted its progress. I should like, however, to say a word in apology for one of its many shortcomings. A complete edition of the Dindshenchas ought obviously to include both the prose and the metrical versions, the more so that the prose is in part anterior to the verse: the latter is, in fact, as is explained in my Introduction, to some extent founded directly upon the prose. The reason for the procedure adopted in this edition is that when it was first undertaken the Prose Dindshenchas had just been published by Whitley Stokes in the Revue Celtique, and it would have seemed presumptuous for a novice to offer a fresh edition of material which had recently been handled by so eminent a scholar. There was nothing for it but to assume that anyone who might wish to study the verse would keep beside him Stokes’ edition of the prose. It is, however, unfortunate that Stokes neglected almost entirely the older recension of the Dindshenchas, that of the Book of Leinster, and also adopted a method which obscured the true order of the later recension, that of the Rennes codex and of most other manuscripts. It is to be hoped that some day another scholar will publish an edition of the prose and verse together; if my attempt to prepare the ground is of some assistance in his task, I shall be well satisfied.

The Glossary appended to this volume makes no pretence to completeness. It is intended mainly as a help to students pending the publication of the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary.