The secret languages of ireland

ABSTRACT SHELTA, or more correctly Sheldrii, a secret language found among a certain class of tramps in England and current among Irish tinkers, was discovered in 1876 by Charles Godfrey

Leland, that enthusiastic, if somewhat erratic, student of everything appertaining to the customs and beliefs of peasantry, gypsies and vagabonds generally all the world over. The results of

his investigations of Shelta were ultimately passed to the late John Sampson, the great authority on gypsy languages, and through him brought to the notice of Kuno Meyer, the Celtic

scholar, by whom the language was at once hailed as a survival of the old Celtic used by the Druids. Unnoted until the time of Leland, it has since been investigated by a number of Celtic

and Romani scholars, with results which would now seem to have failed to justify early enthusiasms. _The Secret Languages of Ireland:_ with Special Reference to the Origin and Nature of the

Shelta Language, partly based upon Collections and Manuscripts of the late Dr. John Sampson. By Prof. R. A. Stewart Macalister. Pp. x + 284. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1937.)

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customer support RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE The Secret Languages of Ireland. _Nature_ 139, 692–693 (1937).

https://doi.org/10.1038/139692a0 Download citation * Issue Date: 24 April 1937 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139692a0 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be

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