Atkinson — Two Inflexional Forms of the Verb in Irish. 427 
ivhich he is speaking,' just as in Irish, /^n nix) ts\\ "ocjAAcc^rin 
l^e. Here comes in the new element, a real pronominal element, 
in the that follows the ^ re/;. This ts is the vowel-remnant 
of a pronominal an-, the final n of which manifests itself in the 
eclipse of initial consonants, and in the n- prefixed to initial 
vowels. But, when the tense is 2^ past tense, a difiiculty arises : 
what is to become of the prefix of the past, viz. 'oo (as in "00 
btix^il i^e, ' he struck') ? There were two prefixes in use in the 
older Irish for this purpose, "oo and ]ao ; the latter has wholly 
gone out of modern use, save in the dependent clause, where we 
have ri'io]\ bti^it -pe [for ni ro buail], btiA^it \e, &c. ; this 
remnant r' assimilates the final n of the [prep.) relative to 
itself, giving as a resultant of the relative and the past-prefix, a 
form [for a[n) + r(o)]. Here, as the ro- prefix causes aspi- 
ration of initial consonant following, the eclipsing that would 
otherwise attend the relative is necessarily stopped cf.: — 
Fres., ' the thing of which he is treating,' Ati m't) a|a a "ocjAACCAim fe. 
Past, 'the thing of which he treated,' aii m't) a]a a'ia c|aacc ye. 
After a preposition ending in a long voioel, the vowel of the 
relative element is absorbed, leaving as its only remnant the 
eclipse of the following initial, and the use of the prefix p in past 
tenses : — Keating, 1,7 6 'ii-i^A'p^'OA]i, ' from whom they sprang,* 
[for 0 an ro-f7\ ; 8, 27 le 'b]re^'0]:^'6 [for le anf.~\. Of course, in 
the passive voice where the prefix -00 does not cause aspiration, 
neither does its substitute \\o ; thus 3, 6 le '-p-uuiAn^T). 
The teaching of modern Irish grammars on this point is 
totally wrong : it has produced a relatival a, which [in nom. 
or acc.~\ has no existence, and O'Donovan adds to the confusion 
{Gram., p. 131) by stating that the perfect particle "oo stands 
for the relative. 
Let us consider simple cases. * The man who strikes ' is -mi 
■pex^-p buxMle^-p; * the man whom he strikes' is ye^]! bu/sit- 
e^^Y ye ; it is evident here that the case in which the relative is 
to be taken is not determined b(/ the form of the relative verb. 
But if the sentence be, 'the man who strikes me,' xsn ]?e^i\ 
bu^itexs-p me, or ' the man whom I strike,' -pe^i^ btiA^iLim, the 
very form of the verb makes the meaning clear : the aspiration 
