Katalog der Althochdeutschen und Altsächsischen Glossenhandschriften. Rolf Bergmann und Stefanie Stricker unter Mitarbeit von Yvonne Goldammer und Claudia Wich-Reif. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. 6 Volumes with continuous pagination, pp. xiv, 3017. $1329, € 898.

The Katalog is a richly documented, multivolume treasure trove that contains material of interest and use to historical linguists, philologists, literary historians, folklorists, paleographers, and others. Anywhere from one half to two thirds of the attested Old High German textual evidence comes in the form of glosses (p. 58), and nearly a quarter of the now available gloss material is not considered in the grammars of Old High German, making the Katalog particularly necessary. The last comprehensive treatment of the glosses was Elias Steinmeyer and Eduard Sievers, Die althochdeutschen Glossen 1879–1922, 5 Volumes, Berlin, and its use is problematic because of outdated manuscript referencing and the increase in known gloss manuscripts (p. 61). This is particularly problematic since many other scholarly works that make use of glosses only refer to Steinmeyer and Sievers. That can make it difficult to track down gloss references in the literature to their actual attestation. Because of this, Bergmann and Stricker were not able to give a complete list of scholarly treatments of individual glosses, and on p. 61 they give examples of important works that make heavy use of glosses where they were not able to spend the time to sort out the manuscripts that were referred to.