Obituary Notices. 
XI 
ing of Welsh and J^orse. But, among Scottish historians of the 
first rank, he was the only one since the days of George Buchanan 
who was able to read a Gaelic manuscript. While a growing lad 
his health was delicate, and, on the advice of Sir Walter Scott, his 
father sent him for a season to reside with the Eev. Dr Mackintosh 
MacKay, minister of Laggan in Badenoch, an accomplished gentle- 
man, and, at the time, one of the most scholarly Gaelic students 
living. Under this competent guide young Skene studied modern 
Scottish Gaelic, a step which very probably shaped the future 
course of his intellectual history. In after years he extended his 
Celtic researches, not merely to the sister dialects of Irish and 
Manx, hut to the kindred Brythonic tongues, especially Welsh. 
When, in 1853, Zeuss opened up in his Grammatica Celtica the old 
forms of the Celtic dialects to the world, Mr Skene entered upon 
the study of old Gaelic with ardour. His previous training, com- 
bined with his command of French and German, enabled him to 
follow with ease the development of Celtic studies abroad by 
Ebel, Schleicher, Windisch, Gaidoz, D’Arbois, Loth, and others. 
He was one of the very few in Scotland who bought and read 
the continental magazines devoted to linguistic, and largely to 
Celtic studies — the now defunct Beitrdge zur Vergleichenden 
Spracliforscliung., the Zeitsclirift fur Vergleichende Spradi- 
forscliung, and the Revue Geltigue. For some years back Celtic 
scholarship in the hands of Stokes, Zimmer, Thurneysen, Bhys, 
and others has occupied itself largely with sounds and forms and 
accents — the blood, bone, and muscle of grammar. Here a good 
grounding in phonetics, a minute verbal study of texts, and an 
acquaintance with living dialects are essential. Perhaps Mr Skene 
was not in full sympathy with this latest development in Celtic 
philology. He ceased to buy Killings Zeitsclirift many years 
ago, and even the Revue Celtique was dropped by him in 1887. 
Throughout several of his published works, one observes now 
and again a failure on the part of the author to grasp the subtleties 
of Gaelic and Welsh grammar. One example must suffice. The 
title of his great work is Celtic Scotland : a History of Ancient 
Alban. In a note {Celtic Scotland, vol. i. p. 1), the author 
explains how he adopts the genitive Alban in preference to “ what 
he ventures to call the pedantic affectation of using the form 
