THE SPELLING OF THE CLASSICS 21 



for an eclipsing m, never for an aspirated one. The modern 

 A rh^tAip was represented by AmActiift, and modern A mbfvAc;^i|\ 

 by ArhbtUctnfA. For centuries p stood for both the 

 aspirated and eclipsed p, and even in the time of Keating, 

 whose spelling was not that of his editors, the eclipsed 

 p might be represented by pp, op, bp, up, unp, and other 

 varieties which cannot be represented in ordinary type. 

 Aspirated p is more often expressed in the best manuscripts 

 of Keating by cf than by f alone ; tp and tip were also 

 common. As for the use of v for b, which my friends and 

 I are accused of introducing into the spelling of Irish 

 words, we deprecate the praise or the blame of such a rash 

 innovation. It must have come in at least five hundred 

 years ago, for it is very common in late Middle Irish and 

 early Modern Irish manuscripts. Of course the Irish 

 scribes of the period, like their contemporaries in the rest 

 of Europe, write the consonant v and the vowel u alike, 

 except that they sometimes distinguish the consonant 

 value of the letter by putting the mark of aspiration above 

 it or ti after it. Some scribes are particularly fond of 

 this symbol, which they use in all positions, e.g., veicM 

 (=beit), in uen ( ATI bean), uej\, upep ( = bpe-AtA), T>O ui 



(=00 bl), *001U, T>6lV, -0611111 ( -OOlb), CAU-A1H (=CAbA1f), 



and the like. Some of you may have looked into 

 one of the manuscripts, which Dublin is fortunate 

 in possessing, in the handwriting of that most diligent 

 scribe, Michael O'Clery. Few will accuse the chief of the 

 Four Masters of hostility to Irish tradition, or a hankering 

 after foreign models. Yet this particular symbol is not 

 uncommon* in his transcripts. I do not mean to imply 

 that he avoided the use of b. In his time there was no 

 attempt at uniformity of spelling. But he certainly had 

 no prejudice against the letter v. Later on, in the 

 catechisms and other devotional books printed in roman 

 type, with a simplified or semi-phonetic spelling, in the 

 eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this letter is, 

 of course, fully recognized. 



Altogether it is time for our opponents to revise their 

 dates. The current system has not been in use as long 



