The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

The Highland Monthly.
SOME FURTHER CURIOSITIES OF
GAELIC PROOF-READING.
MOST
readers of Gaelic must at one time or other
have been surprised, and perhaps also not a little
annoyed, at the numerous and often unaccountable blunders
to be met with in our Gaelic Psalters. Some later reprints
of the Ross-shire Psalms, originally prepared for the press
by the learned and accomplished Dr Thomas Ross, of
Lochbroom, are peculiarly objectionable in this respect. At
first sight one is naturally disposed to say that these typo-
graphical blunders arc all t( be accounted for in one way :
the printer knew nothing of Gaelic and no one was at hand
to correct him. But a. little consideration, and some
knowledge of Gaelic bibliography, will shew that it is not
so. In the faulty reprints of Ross's Psalter, the printer
must have worked from printed " copy ;" for no publisher
would be at the expense of transcribing into MS. a book,,
of which an old copy could simply be handed to the printer.
And everyone knows that an ordinary Edinburgh printer
will, in such a case, turn out a fairly correct reprint of the
" copy " put in his hands. It matters not what the language
is ; if only he works from " copy " in Roman print, he may
be trusted to reproduce it correctly. You may send to your
printer, as the late Dr Small of the University Library did
some years before his death, the unique copy of Ihe
Indian Primer, printed at the Cambridge press in 1669, a
work in a language now wholly unknown, but the printer
will reproduce it, if he is not hurried, with an accuracy well
nigh unerring. Nay, you may, at your own private press,,
or with the typewriter, make up a piece of typographic
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