Blair Collection > Vestigia celtica

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character, or Kirk's transliteration of Be-
dell into Roman type, for the use of Scottish
Highlanders. The latter was first printed
in 1690, and was twice afterwards reprinted,
before we had in Scotland a Gaelic Bible
of our own.
Nor is there really any great difterence
in this respect between Gaelic and Manx.
The printed page of the Manx Bible does,
indeed, present to the eye an appearance,
differing in a marked degree from a page
of printed Gaelic. But it is a difference of
orthographic form, rather than of verbal
substance ; a difference, too, which can very
easily be explained. The Manx translators
wrote their language phonetically. After
careful consideration, they came to the
conclusion that, to be understood by the
common people, for whom mainly they
wrote, their Manx translation of the Scrip-
tures must spell out its words as the Manx
people of that time pronounced them. They
came to this conclusion with regret ; for in
acting upon it they felt that they sacrificed
much in regard to " the etymology of