Blair Collection > Celtic studies

xii Preface.
their attention in this direction. Perhaps tliis is the less to be
regretted in the case of those who have heretofore devoted
themselves to the study of the ancient language, literature, and
historical monuments of Ireland, because, had the object of their
labours been the mere abstract study of the Irish language, we
should perhaps not have obtained the great results in a national
point of view, wliich those labours have yielded. There is,
perhaps, no country in Europe, in which in the same space of
time and imder a similar amount of difficulty, so much has been
done, in about twenty-five or thirty years, for the collection,
preservation, and publication of the records of its ancient history,
as in Ireland. So, also, it would be difficult to rival in
patient and conscientious work and solid learning such men
as Petrie, O'Curry, O'Donovan, Todd, and Peeves, to speak
only of those who have occupied themselves with the earlier
periods of Irish history and arohaiology. The period has now,
however, arrived, when the cultivation of Comparative Philo-
logy, besides its own intrinsic worth, would confer important
advantages upon Irish Hterature, and very greatly facilitate the
study of the ancient MSS. I thus ran the risk of labouring in
voin, and of missing the opportimity of stimulating some of our
young scholars to enter, and earn for themselves a name in a field
of study which is so peculiarly their own, and for the cultivation
of which they possess so many advantages. Under these cir-
cumstances, I had no alternative but to prepare an explanatory
introduction — to venture in fact upon the hazardous undertaking
of becoming, without any special qualification, the interpreter of
the German School of comparative philology.
My first idea was to make an introduction of two chapters; the
first to contain an explanation of the nature of roots and stems, the
formation of stems and their classification, and of derivation and
composition as distinguished from stems. In the second chapter I
proposed to give a smnmary of the case-endings of nouns in the
several Indo-European languages, in order to afford tire student
an opportunity of comparing the Irish forms with those of the
other members of the family. As the limits which a periodical
necessarily imposes were exceeded by the first chapter, which
was of course the most important for my purposes, I was unable
to add the chapter on the case-endings. For the same reason,