Guide to BDL’s orthographic system

For the purposes of the present edition, a guide to the BDL orthographic system has been compiled from a detailed examination of two poems, BDL VII and XXVII, chosen because (a) their MS texts were easily legible, with only occasional words rendered unreadable by fading, staining or trimming; (b) there were few points in the texts where the interpretation of the MS forms was in doubt; and (c) they were located towards the beginning and the end of the corpus respectively.

The material from BDL VII and XXVII is set out thus:  A: Consonants; B: Vowels. In both sections the evidence of BDL VII is given first in detail. In A, there is much less variety than in B, and for this reason only representations from BDL XXVII not already noted for VII are given (in square brackets). In B the following method is used: the representations in BDL VII are set out, and each is given a number, with its frequency noted in round brackets. The representations occurring in BDL XXVII are then noted according to their numbers, and their frequencies are similarly provided. This allows one to establish whether, when variety exists, the scribes have preferences for particular representations, and whether these preferences correspond in different poems. As in A, representations found in BDL XXVII but not in VII are noted fully, with a number for ease of reference, and an idea of frequency.

The layout of the material is based on the sound-system of Classical Early Modern Irish, and it is simplified in the sense that it does not attempt to examine allophones within vernacular Scottish Gaelic, nor does it explore the influence of the vernacular in determining the spelling of the BDL scribes, although this must have been an important factor. In A, consonant forms are grouped according to their representation in 'normal orthography; in B, the vowel forms are grouped under their phonetic symbols, with examples from BDL, and transliteration of these examples into 'normal' orthography.

In determining this method for handling the orthography of BDL, I am indebted to a lecture on the orthography of Sir Duncan Campbell's verse, given to the Scottish Languages Forum by Professor W. Gillies in November 1980. The present approach modifies that of Gillies by gving (a) data from more than one poem and (b) frequency counts.