- Chapter Thirty-Six -
was already divided into distinct dialects, recognized as different by contemporaries,
as early as the time of Bede.136 Yet English had only developed dialects since the
Anglo-Saxon settlement of eastern and southern Britain.^137 Their political divisions
- evidently crucial in the development of dialect - were few compared with those of
the Irish. Both because of the longer period since the language was introduced into
Ireland, and because political morcellation was more advanced, one would expect
Irish to have more dialect than English. Yet apart from one or two uncertain items,
it has none.13S In Old High German it almost seems that every monastery had a dif-
ferent form of the language.139 In Ireland, therefore, one might have expected an lona
form of Irish distinct from the Armagh or the Clonmacnois forms. Indeed, given the
multiplicity of small kingdoms in Ireland and the barriers against travel-for the aes
trebtha, but not for the aes dana - it is safe to assume that there were dialects; the
problem is simply why these differences do not surface in the standard form of the
language, which, because it alone was written, is the only form we have. Because it
is the only form we have, I shall use the term 'Old Irish' for the standard form of the
language between c.6oo and C.900.
The uniformity of Old Irish does not show that it was merely a fossilized
Schriftsprache, written but not spoken. It changes through time. Moreover, it was not
a standard of the same kind as Classical Modern Irish in which forms from different
dialects were admitted, for example both synthetic and analytic forms of the verb. If
that had been the case, the presence of dialects would have been clear from the writ-
ten evidence. It is more likely that Old Irish began as a single dialect which was then
given a special status. That is to say, it was more like Standard Late Old English
(probably based on the dialect of Winchester) than Classical Modern Irish.140 Also
orthographic distinctions prove that, in its written form, it was not uniform; the
differences, however, were orthographic rather than phonological.141 The uniformity
of the language is thus clearer in its phonology and grammar than its orthography.
Yet if Old Irish had simply been a Schriftsprache in which an early form of some
dialect was preserved solely in a written form long after it had ceased to be spoken
even in the area of its origin, the orthography should have been the most uniform
aspect of the language. Old Irish was, therefore, a spoken language.
It was not just the language of the aes dana as opposed to the aes trebtha, nor was
it just the language of the craftsmen in words.^142 When the latter wish to display their
136 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, II.5, ed. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford Medieval
Texts, 1969), p. 148, on Caelin versus Ceaulin.
137 A. Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959), p. 3; J. Hines, 'Philology, archae-
ology and the Adventus Saxonum vel Anglorum', in A. Bammersberger and A. Wollmann
(eds) Britain 400-600: language and history (Heidelberg, 1990), 30--1.
138 R. Thurneysen, A Grammar of Old Irish (Dublin, 1946), § 16.
139 W. Braune, K. Helm and W. Mitzka, Althochdeutsche Grammatik, 12th edn (Tubingen,
196 7), §§ 3- 6.
140 H. Gneuss, 'The origin of Standard Old English and A':thelwold's School at Winchester',
Anglo-Saxon England I (1972): 63-83.
141 For example, ro-, do-, as against ru-, du-.
142 McCone appears to regard Irish as simply the language of the aes dana, 'Zur Frage der
Register im fruhen Irischen', 86-7.