Auraicept na nÉces (Old Irish:[ˈœɾikʲept̪n̪aˈn̠ʲeːgʲes]; "The Scholars' Primer") is anOld Irish text on language and grammar. The core of the text may date to the early eighth century,[1] but much material was added between that date and the production of the earliest surviving copies from the end of the fourteenth century. The text is the first instance of a defence of a western Europeanvernacular, defending the spokenIrish language overLatin, predatingDante'sDe vulgari eloquentia by several hundred years.
The Auraicept consists of four books,
The author argues from a comparison of Gaelic grammar with the materials used in the constructions of theTower of Babel:
Others affirm that in the tower there were only nine materials and that these wereclay andwater,wool andblood,wood andlime,pitch,linen, andbitumen ... These represent noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, participle, conjunction, preposition, interjection
As pointed out by Eco (1993), Gaelic was thus argued to be the only instance of a language that overcame theconfusion of tongues, being the first language that was created after the fall of the tower by the seventy-two wise men of the school ofFenius, choosing all that was best in each language to implement in Irish. Calder notes (p. xxxii) that the poetic list of the "72 races" was taken from a poem byLuccreth moccu Chiara.
TheAuraicept is one of the three main sources of the manuscript tradition aboutOgham, the others beingIn Lebor Ogaim andDe dúilib feda na forfed. A copy ofIn Lebor Ogaim immediately precedes theAuraincept in the Book of Ballymote, but instead of theBríatharogam Con Culainn given in other copies, there follows a variety of other "secret" modes of ogham. TheYounger Futhark are also included, as ogam lochlannach "ogham of the Norsemen".
Similar to the argument of the precedence of the Gaelic language, theAuraicept claims thatFenius Farsaidh discovered four alphabets, theHebrew,Greek andLatin ones, and finally theogham, and that the ogham is the most perfected because it was discovered last. The text is the origin of the tradition that the ogham letters were named after trees, but it gives an alternative possibility that the letters are named for the 25 members of Fenius' school.
In the translation of Calder (1917),
This is their number: five Oghmic groups, i.e., five men for each group, and one up to five for each of them, that their signs may be distinguished. These are their signs: right of stem, left of stem, athwart of stem, through stem, about stem. Thus is a tree climbed, to wit, treading on the root of the tree first with thy right hand first and thy left hand after. Then with the stem, and against it and through it and about it. (Lines 947-951)
In the translation of McManus:
This is their number: there are five groups of ogham and each group has five letters and each of them has from one to five scores and their orientations distinguish them. Their orientations are: right of the stemline, left of the stemline, across the stemline, through the stemline, around the stemline. Ogham is climbed as a tree is climbed
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