The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Curiosities of Gaelic Proof- Readino-.
bamboozlement, without rhyme or reason, and send it to
the printer, with the confident assurance that he will turn
out work which, on the whole, will be " conform to sample."
If the printer of our fault}- Gaelic Psalters then worked
from printed " cop}- " of a book at one time known to have
been fairly faultless, it is not reasonable to la}- on his
ignorance of Gaelic the blame of faults which in the new
work are palpable and undeniable. How, then, are these
blunders to be explained ? I think I can tell. But I shall
do so, or at least I shall tr}- to do it, as we sa\- in the pulpit,
by means of an illustration.
Some \\-eeks ai;"o, in course of conversation with the
manager of one of our great religious societies, he asked
me to glance over the proofs of a little work in Gaelic which
his directors were reprinting for distribution in the High-
lands Of course, I was onl}- too glad to help, if e\cn so
little, in their good work. When the prooi reached me the
booklet—none else than our old friend the Mother's
Catechism—was alread}- divided into pages, and to all
appearance was just read}- to be printed off The printer's
work had evidentl}- been done with a care and intelligence
which surprised mc, for I knew that no one in the establish-
ment, though it is one of the best in town, knew any-
thing of Gaelic. Still there were blunders here and there,
and some of them were so curious that the attempt to get
at their genesis puzzled me greatl}-. In a large
number of instances the letters r or i had taken
the place of n. Not once or twice, but over and
over again the same blundef turned up with per-
plexing, ominous uniformit}-. It was altogether a
strange enigma, till I turned to the " cop}-," one glance at
which, however, rcadih' sohed the curious riddle. Through
one of their agents in. Lewis the Societ}- had procured an
old cop}' of the Catechism, which was sent to the printer
with orders to have it reprinted. Now, this old copy had
obviously in its da}- been printed from stereo-plates, which>