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SOME NOTICE OF THE
continues William Haliday, " hesitated not to aver that the
language of Ireland, as being the most sequestered
island in
Europe, must be considered as the purest and most unadulterated
dialect of the Celtic now in existence
and the philosophers of Europe," he adds, " seem at length to
admit that no progress can be made in the genealogy of
of Irish . . .
language without a previous knowledge
" "
he also adds to obtain any know-
yet how is it possible
ledge of a language, still enclosed within the sooty envelopes
of moth eaten, half rotten, illegible manuscripts ?"
" Though that inconvenience," observes William Haliday,
" had been often felt and lamented since the invention of
printing, little had been done through the agency of the press
for the Irish language ; a complaint which his work, he
hoped, would tend to remedy." Nor was he disappointed in his
expectations. For as this work of William Haliday's was
the first undertaken in this form, it may be considered as
the parent of that splendid undertaking, the Annals of the
Four Masters, fit rather for a national and governmental
project, than for the enterprise of a private firm of booksellers.
Since the publication of the Annals of the Four
Masters, Parliament has given greater encouragement to the
printing of our earlier Irish historical manuscripts, and many
have been lately edited under the care of the Royal Irish
Academy in a manner worthy of a great country. So
that the press has at length done its services to the Irish
language. The plan of printing the Irish text on one page,
and the literal translation on the opposite, originated by
William Haliday, and followed in the Annals of the Four
Masters has been since adopted in the specimens of our
early national manuscripts, edited by J. T. Gilbert, in the
works of the Irish Archaeological Society, and in the Annals
of Loch C4 by W. M. Hennessy.
But this translation of Keatinge's History of Ireland, was
not William Haliday's only work. In the preface to it he