Kuno Meyer

Kuno Meyer


Kuno Meyer (20 December 1858 - 11 October 1919) was a German scholar, distinguished in the field of Celtic philology and literature. His pro-German stance at the start of World War I in the United States was a source of controversy. His brother was the distinguished classical scholar, Eduard Meyer. Meyer was considered first and foremost a lexicographer among Celtic scholars but is known by the general public in Ireland rather as the man who introduced them to Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry (1911). He founded and edited four journals devoted to Celtic Studies, published numerous texts and translations of Old and Middle Irish romances and sagas, and wrote prolifically, his topics ranging to name origins and ancient law. Born in Hamburg, he studied there at the Gelehrtenschule of the Johanneum. He spent two years in Edinburgh, Scotland, as a teenager (1874-1876) learning English. From 1879, he attended the University of Leipzig, where he was taught Celtic scholarship by Ernst Windisch. He received his doctorate for his thesis Eine irische Version der Alexandersage, an Irish version of the Alexander Romance, in 1884.