The learned editors of the Christiania edition of the _King’s Mirror_ reached the conclusion that the author did not draw from any literary source but derived his information from current tales and other oral accounts.[58] This is also the opinion of Dr. Kuno Meyer, the eminent student of Celtic philology.[59] Dr. Meyer bases his belief on the form of the Irish proper names. As written in the _Speculum Regale_ they can not have been copied, as the spelling is not normally Irish; he believes, therefore, that they show an effort on the author’s part to reproduce phonetically these names as he heard them spoken. But this theory ignores the fact that in writing them the author employs combinations of consonants which are unusual to say the least. Combinations of _ch_ and _gh_ are used in writing nearly all the Irish proper names that occur in the _King’s Mirror_ and the _gh_-combination is found nowhere else in the work.[60] It was probably coming into the language in the century to which the work is credited, but the author uses it only as indicated above. It seems likely, therefore, that he had access to a written source, though it is also likely that he did not have this account before him when the writing was actually done. As has already been stated, the author seems to have written largely from memory, and his memory is not always accurate. Footnote 58: P. x. Footnote 59: _Ériu_, IV., 14-16. Footnote 60: In a letter to the writer Professor Meyer expresses the belief that the use of _gh_ in the Irish proper names is an invention by the author. The combination of _c_ and _h_ is also used in certain other proper names, the system varying in the different manuscripts. For a discussion of the writing of proper names in the chief manuscript, see the American Facsimile Edition of the _Konungs Skuggsjá_ (edited by G. T. Flom), xxxvii-xxxix. Having discussed the subjects which he considers of chief importance for the education of a merchant, the learned father proceeds to describe the king’s household and its organization, the manners which one should observe at court, and the business that is likely to come before a king. For the part which deals with the royal court, it is probable that no literary sources were used. The author evidently wrote from long experience in the king’s retinue; he is not discussing an ideal organization but the king’s household as it was in Bergen and Trondhjem in his own day. If he drew from any written description of courtly manners, it may have been from some book like Petrus Alfonsus’ _Disciplina Clericalis_, which has already been mentioned[61] and which seems to have had a wide circulation throughout western Europe in the later middle ages. Footnote 61: See above, pp. 9–10.