Hello! This question is intended for somebody who owns a copy of volume 1 of the book mentioned in the title of this post.

For example, on page 85, verse (10) says:

And God said unto Cain: What has thought done? the voice and cry of thy brother's blood taketh complaint and call unto me from the earth

and then under that, in smaller text, is a note that describes the "three cry's which made their way to God without delay." It is some sort of commentary. Is this from Macalister himself, or some sort of sacred historian?

Thank you for your time

If you look at page viii, Abbreviations and Critical Symbols, before the introduction, Macalister explains that text this text is an interpolation by a scribe who copied the main text in the manuscript, M. If you look at page 84, you'll see the critical symbol which he uses to mark such interpolations, y, next to the same section of text.

Ah, right. Thank you very much sir.

I have another question:

Page 121 of volume 2 of Macalister's "Lebor Gabála Érenn" verse 2:

(2)
"Gaedelg-- they call it so,
people who are ignorant and have no knowledge:
no nearer to cunning gaedel
than to any conspicuous notable"

___________

I am under the impression that "Gaedelg" is the root of the word Gaelic. Do you know why this word was for fools? Does this verse convince you to stop using the word Gaelic (As well as it's Irish equivalent)?

Gaedelg is the word Gaelic. It is an older spelling of Gaeilg or Gaeilic, still used as the word for the language in Ulster Irish.

The poem does not say that the term Gaedelg is for fools. It suggests that this is not the proper name for the language, though most Irish people do not know its proper name. It goes on to say that it has a different name in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and that its proper name in Irish is Tinoilech. This word seems to be comprised of the root tinól, modern Irish tionól "a gathering/assembly". The Latin name it provides for the language, legulus, also suggests gathering or collecting, though it means "a collector/gatherer". This, I take it, is in reference to the story from the Lebor Gabála, that the Gaelic language was created by the mythical figure, Fénius Farsaid, by collecting/gathering the best elements of the languages resulting from the destruction of the tower of Babel, and named after the legendary ancestor of the Gaelic people, Goidel Glas.

This story, like much of the other contents of the Lebor Gabála, is a fairly overt attempt on the part of early Irish Christians to place the Irish, and their ancestors, within the narrative of the Bible. As such, nobody should be convinced to use any of these terms in reference to the language in any serious way by this poem alone. It may well be that the word Tinoilech was at some point historically used in reference to Gaelic, perhaps with a meaning like "what is spoken when people are assembled" or "the language of assemblies/gatherings". This would map well to the apparent origins of names for some other European languages, like Deutsch, the etymology of which points to Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz “of the people/popular”. Unfortunately, this poem seems to be the only source for the Irish word Tinoilech, and given the context in which it is found, it seems more likely to me that it was invented for the sake of the poem and the story in the Lebor Gabála.

Thank you so much for the great answer ADE. Do you know where I can find out more about other European languages whose name originates from the idea of being popular or used by a gathering?

Also, how would I pronounce Tinoilec in old Irish?

I'm afraid I can't think of any particular resources to point you towards for something that specific, though I can offer a few examples that come close. I think Deutsch and, hence, Dutch, are the most popular examples of something close to this. The Indo-European language Urdu is an abbreviation of Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Mualla, meaning something like "language of the exalted camp". In China, Mandarin is referred to as 普通话 (putonghua "common language"). Perhaps the elephant in the room is the Irish word Béarla. It originates from bél "mouth", and in its earliest usage probably just meant something like "speech", but it clearly adopted the sense lingua franca early on, and has been used to refer to Latin and other languages historically. In Modern Irish it just means English, but this is fairly clearly because English would have been the popular, public language, or the language used at gatherings, etc.

Other than these, you may need to look for European demonyms which are derived from terms meaning something like "the people", "the folk", or "the gathering". Generally the name for such a group's language will be be closely related to their demonym, and hence the name of the language might be taken to mean something like "language of the people/folk/gathering". With that being said, there is no evidence of Tinoilech ever being used as a demonym for the Irish. While it is attested as a name for the language in one or two sources, it almost certainly originated as a reference to the gathering of languages from the Tower of Babel, and not to a gathering of any group of people.



tchyun-OLE-ech