Glossary of the Igor' Tale

The 'Tale of Igor', also called 'The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, of Igor, Son of Svyatoslav, Grandson of Oleg', describes the unsuccessful campaign of Igor Svyatoslavich, prince of Novgorod-Seversky, against his old enemies the Polovetsians, which took place in 1185. There is need of a dictionary of Old Russian, as well as a need for glossaries of individual works of the period. This want has been felt particularly in the case of the 'Igor' Tale', and several attempts to fill the lacuna have been made in the past. Existing are a brief glossary by K. H. Meyer, a voluminous but outdated one by Barsov, and a concise and useful one by Nahtigal, to mention the principal ones. In the Soviet Union a group of outstanding scholars has undertaken to compile a dictionary-commentary for the 'Igor' Tale'. The description and plan of their project, as well as its subsequent discussion, have already appeared in the 'Trudy' (XVI, 1960, 424-441; XVIII, 1962, 594-595). I was fortunate to be present at the discussion of the project in Leningrad and to make the acquaintance of the participating scholars. I must admit that my own glossary is far more modest and limited in scope than theirs. The Soviet work is expected with interest and will, of course, go far beyond my own. The aim of a glossary of this kind is to record all the words of the monument, to cite all their occurrences in all the grammatical forms in which they appear in the given work, and to identify these instances.