The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Cir/iositics of Gaelic Proof- Reading. 315
readily to catch the eye, are material and significant in this
inquiry. The modern way of folding the printer's sheet will
not, I am told, admit of an exact equivalence of size in the
page of the old print and the new. The t\-pc also is
slightly lighter. Hence all the trouble of this hyphen
group of blunders. The lines in the " cop)- " and the
new print are not of a length cxacth- equal in both.
Broken words at the end of the line in the new print
must, therefore, be divided otherwise than in the " cop\-."
The printer was thus at sea. sailing by the guidance of his
own unaided lights, lie did his best, but had he done
worse from the point of view of English orthography, the
result in Gaelic would probably have been better. At any-
rate it would have been less ridiculous to the Gaelic eye,
and less glaringly offensive to the Gael's ideals, cultured or
only instinctive, of natural linguistic. The skilled English
printer quite natural!}- takes d a o i n e to be at the least a
dissyllable. How could he know that we make it one
syllable? As often thdn as this or a similar word came to
be di\ided at the end of his line, he h\-phened the divided
word in the English wa\-. Xor could he know that with us
dh, bh, mh, and the like arc really each one letter aspirated.
And so once more he stumbled into the bay of Gaelic
absurdity. It is not his fault, but his misfortune. If
instead of the oldest living language of our country he had
to set up this booklet in Latin, or in French, or in German
the like blunder could ne\-er occur. The work he had to
do was " only a bit of Gaelic ;" and in this old Capital of
Scotland, whose name, and all whose noblest associations
are fragrant of the tongue and brave deeds of the Gael, it is
not worth while having such a thing as a Gaelic press.
The advanced stage of distributed pages, at which the
proof came under my eye, necessarily makes this booklet
come short of what otherwise it might easily have been
made. But none the less is it a truly good and useful
tractate. Its Gaelic will be easily understood. It is not