of the Irish accent made simultaneously by Zimmer and
Thurneysen. This discovery led to a thorough investigation of the
difficult verb system of Old Irish--a task which has largely occupied
the attention of Strachan in England, Thurneysen and Zimmer in Germany,
and Pedersen and Sarauw in Denmark. In a sense the publication of the
_Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus_ (Cambridge, 1901-1903) may be regarded as
marking the close of this epoch. The older stages of Irish have hitherto
so monopolized the energies of scholars that other departments of Celtic
philology save Breton have been left in large measure unworked. J.
Strachan had begun to tap the mine of the Old Welsh poems when his
career was cut short by death. J. Loth and E. Ernault have concentrated
their attention on Breton, and can claim that the development of the
speech of Brittany has been more thoroughly investigated than that of
any other Celtic language. The number of periodicals devoted entirely to
Celtic studies has increased considerably of recent years. In 1896 K.
Meyer and L. C. Stern founded the _Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie_
(now in its 7th volume), and in 1897 the _Archiv fur celtische
Lexikographie_ began to appear under the direction of K. Meyer and W.
Stokes. As a supplement to the latter Meyer has been publishing his
invaluable contributions to Middle Irish lexicography. In Ireland a new
periodical styled _Eriu_ was started by the Irish School of Learning in
1904. The Scottish _Celtic Review_, dealing more particularly with
Scottish and Irish Gaelic, began to appear in 1903, and the
_Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness_ are in the 26th
volume. For Wales we have _Y Cymmrodor_ since 1877, and the
_Transactions of the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion_ since 1892, and for
Brittany the _Annales de Bretagne_, published by the Faculty of Letters
at Rennes (founded 1886).

See V. Tourneur, _Esquisse d'une histoire des etudes celtiques_
(Liege, 1905). (E. C. Q.)

CELTIC LITERATURE

Ogam inscriptions.

I. IRISH LITERATURE.--In the absence of a native coinage it is extremely
difficult to say when the use of letters was introduced into Ireland. It
is probable that the Latin alphabet first came in with Christianity.
With the exception of the one bilingual Ogam inscription as yet
discovered in Ireland (that at Killeen Cormac) all the inscriptions in
Roman letters are certainly later than 500. Indeed, apart from the stone
reading "LIE LU