Re: Possibly interesting old (lost) books

[Rene Zandbergen <rene@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jacques wrote:

> There has just been a discussion on sci.lang
> about Vlach, which turned out to be Welsh,
> which turned out to be nothing more than
> "foreigner". Once, Donald Laycock turned up
> with an ancient handbook of Welsh. The handbook
> was in English, the language "Welsh". We both
> turned out to know Welsh: it was... a handbook
> of Italian! (From around the mid 17th century
> if I remember correctly).

Hmmm, this gets interesting. In the preface to 'The
alchemical writings of Edward Kelly', A.E.Waite
writes about the MS found by Kelly (translated back
from the French translation):
'He immediately saw not only that the text was written
in old Welsh (6), but also that it dealt with the 
transmutation of metals'.
And note 6:
'Apart from the imagination of Mr. Figuier, we have
no reason to believe that the MS was written in Welsh'.

(Those who can read French:
 http://myweb.worldnet.net/~atluigi/alchimie/kelly/introwaite.html
)
So, even if it was in Welsh, which "kind" of Welsh?
Was Kelly's discovery in fact a Walenbuch?

Cheers, Rene

PS: the confusion is even greater. In French, Wales is
'Pays de Galles', country of Gauls. One of the prominent
Gaulish tribes in Caesar's days were the Veneti.... :-)