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Contents: Preliminary material -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Irish scholars: early medieval Ireland & continental Europe -- Chapter 2. Irish biblical texts, glossarial material, and commentaries -- Chapter 3. Bible influences: early Irish Latin & vernacular literature -- Chapter 4. Christological and historical interpretation in the Psalms -- Chapter 5. Cathach of St Columba & the St Columba series psalm headings -- Chapter 6. Apponius' commentary on the canticle of canticles -- Chapter 7. Josephus Scottus' Abbreviatio commentarii Hieronymi in Isaiam -- Chapter 8. Theodulf of Orléans' Bible commentary and Irish connections -- Chapter 9. Background to Irish gospel texts -- Chapter 10. Glossed text on Matthew's Gospel -- Chapter 11. The Irish origin of Vienna 940: a commentary on Matthew -- Chapter 12. Hiberno-Latin apocalypse commentaries: purpose and theology -- Conclusion -- Appendix 1. Updates to Bernhrd Bischoff's Wendepunkte list -- Appendix 2. Libri scottice scripti in St Gallen Stiftsbibliothek catalogue -- Appendix 3. Critical edition of Canticle section of De enigmatibus -- Appendix 4. Irish gospel texts publication project -- Bibliography -- Indexes.
Les diverses manifestations d'une vaste identité culturelle sont une caractéristique déterminante de l'Europe post-romaine et médiévale et elles continuent de faire l'objet de recherches dont témoigne cet ambitieux ouvrage. Dans le cas de Colomban, l'expression et l'affirmation d'identités collectives distinctes enrichissent chacun des aspects des matériaux linguistiques, historiques et archéologiques qui nous sont parvenus. Celui-ci mit à profit sa formation insulaire (utilisée contre lui en Gaule, comme dans le cas de la tonsure de ses moines et de la datation singulière des fêtes de Pâques), mais il ne perdit jamais de vue l'influence unificatrice et toujours plus puissante de l'Église chrétienne. Il ne se contenta donc pas d'intégrer deux identités, mais il les revendiqua, donnant ainsi un important aperçu du canon intellectuel de l'Église irlandaise médiévale.
Quels sont les auteurs qui ont influencé l'éducation intellectuelle de Colomban, et par conséquent l'Église irlandaise du haut Moyen Âge ? Qu'ont mis au jour les travaux de fouilles et recherches archéologiques sur le site monastique irlandais qui serait le lieu d'éducation de Colomban ? Enfin, qu'en est-il de Colomban et de l'identité sociale de la période médiévale et du problème de la question identitaire à travers des études de cas sur les Francs, les Lombards et les Irlandais, notamment au miroir des propres écrits de Colomban et du témoignage de la Vita Columbani de Jonas de Bobbio ?
This article investigates three allusions to Irish characters in the Middle Welsh ‘Stanzas of the graves’, a poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen (c. 1250).
This paper argues that the inscription engraved in the Alphabet of Lugano in sinistrograde ductus at the so-called Mur d’Hannibal (Liddes, Valais, Switzerland) should be read as Poenino
In 1919 Lambert McKenna published a poem beginning Mairg nach molann máthair Dé in a collection entitled Dánta do chum Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh. The poem edited here, which survives in TCD 1340 (H. 3. 19), begins with the same first line and as a result has been overlooked up to now. Unlike the poem published by McKenna, in which the author emphasises the difficulty in finding original praise for the Virgin Mary, our poem is straightforward in its direct and immediate praise of her.
Harvard University has the largest collection of Irish-language codices in North America, held in Houghton Library, its rare book repository. The manuscripts are a part of the age-old heritage of Irish book production, dating to the early Middle Ages. Handwritten works in Houghton contain versions of medieval poetry and sagas, recopied in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to which period most of the library’s documents belong. Contemporary writings from that time, as well as ones by the post-Famine Irish immigrant community in the United States, are included. This catalogue describes the collection in full for the first time and will be an invaluable aid to research on Irish and Irish American cultural and literary output. The author’s introduction examines how the collection was formed. This untold story is an important chapter in America’s intellectual history, reflecting a phase of unprecedented expansion in Harvard University’s scholarship and teaching during the early twentieth century when the institution’s program of studies began to accommodate an increasing range of European languages and literatures and their sources. This indispensable guide to a major repository’s records of the Irish past, and of America’s Irish diaspora, will interest specialists in early and post-medieval codices. It should prove of relevance as well to scholars and students of comparative literature, cultural studies, and Irish and Irish American history.
Bretha Comaithcheso, “Judgements on Neighbourhood”, is a tract forming part of the great law-book, Senchas Már, dating from c. 700. It expounds the law governing relations between neighbouring farmers, especially those who formed by contract a co-operative group. Already in the pre-Viking period it was attracting layers of comment, both glosses and a dossier of more extended texts that amplify or update or even contradict the main text. The result is a collection of material outstandingly rich among European texts on farming of a similar date.
The ‘Book of Ballymote’ is a late fourteenth-century manuscript written in Ireland and predominantly in the vernacular (the Irish language). In its focus on history, local, regional and global, it draws on and develops biblical and classical themes. It does so in a way that demonstrates how medieval Irish scholars moulded their own language to occupy this international cultural space. Their continued use of Latin in specific contexts underlies their creativity and skill.
Jenkin Thomas Philipps (d. 1755) is not a particularly well-known Welshman. He is remembered as 'a highly accomplished linguist' and as a private tutor, by 1726, to the children of George II, including William Augustus, duke of Cumberland (1721–65) and Mary (1723–72). On 13 November 1732 he was appointed historiographer royal, a position he retained until his death in London on 22 February 1755. His date of birth is given as 1675 in a library catalogue in Basel, but the source for this information is unclear. In his will he left £60 a year towards the maintenance of a free school in his native parish Llansawel, Carmarthenshire, but he died without signing the will.
The post of historiographer royal was a sinecure given either to keep the candidate quiet or to supplement an otherwise insufficient stipend. The latter was likely the case when Philipps was appointed 'historiographer to his Majesty' four days after the death of his predecessor, Robert Stephens. It secured him an income of ?200 per annum. In addition to his teaching activities and this appointment, Philipps managed to author and edit a considerable number of works in various languages, but he is not known as an author in Welsh. So it is a surprise to find a poem by him in what must have been his first language. The search to give some context to this poem reveals a few hitherto unknown facts about his life and adds to the list of his known publications.
This article examines the internal historical evidence of the Third Branch of the Mabinogi. Through a close examination of the historical detail of Manawydan's sojourn as a craftsman in the cities of England, it becomes evident that the Third Branch reflects aristocratic social and economic anxieties in the decades following the Norman invasion of Wales. In light of an as-yet-unrecognized connection between the Third Branch and the twelfth-century royal biography Vita Griffini Filii Conani, this article suggests an early twelfth-century date for the former text.
Priscian’s Latin Grammar was originally written to enable Greek-speakers to study Latin. In this ninth-century manuscript, a further dimension is added by the presence of over 9,400 annotations written sometimes in Latin, sometimes in Old Irish, and often code-switching between the two, all in the service of the study of linguistic science.
A hitherto undeciphered englyn in the early fourteenth-century Hendregadredd Manuscript is here edited and argued to contain a reference to an incident involving a wolf attacking sheep. The englyn is probably contemporary with the writing and provides rare evidence for the survival of the wolf in Wales in this period.
The Hendregadredd Manuscript (Aberystwyth, NLW MS 6680B) of medieval Welsh court poetry was first compiled around 1300 and supplemented through the first quarter of the fourteenth century. These two strata represent stages in the creation of the book which, as Daniel Huws argued, probably took place in the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida in Ceredigion. Soon afterwards, the remaining blank spaces in the book were filled with miscellaneous poems in a number of often informal hands: this phase constitutes the 'third stratum' in Huws's analysis. As much of the material in this stratum relates to Ieuan Llwyd of Glyn Aeron, not far from Strata Florida, it is generally assumed that the book had now left the scriptorium where it was made and had become the property of Ieuan. At his home it was used to record poems of various kinds, most likely by poets who visited the house, over an extended period. This is suggested not merely by the variety of the poems themselves but by the fairly informal nature of the writing, which contrasts with the neat scriptorium work of the first and second strata, around which these pieces were fitted.
This article concerns one of these pieces added as part of the third stratum. On fol.95v, inserted between two poems from the earlier strata of writing, is a single englyn. The hand of the inserter is called 'k' by Daniel Huws and he did not identify it anywhere else in the book.
Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide the closest analogues for Bede’s description of Cædmon’s production of Old English poetry. This ground-breaking study displays the transformations created by the growth of vernacular literatures and bilingual intellectual cultures. Gaelic missionaries and educational opportunities helped shape the Northumbrian “Golden Age”, its manuscripts, hagiography, and writings of Aldhelm and Bede.
This article investigates the links between a group of early medieval (ninth century) glossed copies of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae, including manuscripts from the Irish tradition as well as Carolingian manuscripts without overt Insular connections. The corpus comprises glosses on the chapter De uoce from eight manuscripts. Both Latin and Old Irish glosses are considered. The data is explored with a multi-disciplinary approach combining methodologies of network analysis, philology and intellectual history. At first, network analysis helps to establish overarching connections between the manuscripts based on their shared parallel glosses. These results are corroborated by a case-study of a pair of glosses which occurs across a number of manuscripts and whose origin can be traced back to Hiberno-Latin grammatical commentaries of the eighth and ninth centuries.
For more than two centuries after 1199, Ireland was ruled by Plantagenet kings, lineal descendants of Henry II. The island became closely tied to the English crown not just by English law and by direct administration, but through other networks, above all the allegiance of a settler establishment led by aristocratic, ecclesiastical and civic elites that benefited from being within the orbit of royal patronage and service. This book contains fifteen interlinked studies, several of which appear here for the first time. The opening chapters trace Ireland’s changing place within a wider Plantagenet realm that itself altered geographically and institutionally during the period. In the thirteenth century Gaelic leaders were pushed to the geographical and political margins. In the fourteenth, English control and English custom retreated, posing fresh challenges to the crown and its ministers. Despite the alarmist claims of settler communities, Plantagenet Ireland was far from collapsing. Later chapters explore the altered distribution of power across the island. English chief governors, some of whom had experience of other borderlands of the Plantagenet realm, exercised power in a mixture of cultural modes, which enabled them to draw in, rather than simply confront, Gaelic lords and marcher lineages.
This article considers how gentry antiquarian communities in later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales constructed distinctive local identities. It focuses on four case studies: William Scawen, the West Penwith coterie, Edward Lhuyd and the Teifi Valley group. These antiquaries conceived of the Cornish and the Welsh as ‘ancient Britons’ and established them as historically and culturally distinct from the English, usually through reference to their indigenous languages. However, the reception of their work among wider landed society was shaped by the vitality of each respective language (with still-ubiquitous Welsh contrasting with near-extinct Cornish). By exploring the relationship between intellectual culture and identity formation, the article contributes to a broader understanding of the various and overlapping identities that permeated the British archipelago.
This collection of essays focuses on the medieval Irish tales which modern scholarship has designated as belonging to the category of literature known as the Cycles of the Kings. The five scholars featured in this volume (Neil Buttimer, Clodagh Downey, Ralph O'Connor, Ken Ó Donnchú and Aogán Ó hIarlaithe) have already made a substantial contribution to our understanding of this body of material. In these studies, all the authors engage to a greater or lesser extent with the concept of the cycle, and with its importance to the study of medieval Irish literature.
This book explores the Skelligs, Ireland’s most dramatic and beautiful Atlantic islands, and focuses particularly on Skellig Michael, a famous UNESCO World Heritage Site. It considers why the construction of a remarkable monastic site near the peak of this island over a thousand years ago stands as one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of Christianity.
The Book of the Skelligs combines different approaches to deepening our understanding of the islands, combining the perspectives of history, archaeology, cultural geography, oral tradition, literature and natural science. It interprets distinctive features, both physical and human, that shape the unique character of these islands while also exploring their geology, marine and terrestrial life as well as the historical background and cultural setting of Skellig Michael’s monastic remains.
It also considers the impact of the Vikings, and the construction of lighthouses a millennium later. Drawing on appropriate disciplines, the book reveals how a unique cultural landscape was generated by human activities over long periods of time. The editors and contributors have incorporated a wide range of illustrative material including maps, paintings, and photographs throughout the book, many of which have not been published before. It comprises over forty individual chapters and case studies in which the work of academics and independent scholars is combined with that of poets and artists to provide a wide range of perspectives on Skelligs’ distinctive character – both natural and human – during different periods. The aim of the editors is to produce a well-informed, accessible, highly readable, and generously illustrated volume that succeeds in conveying a true sense of the cultural richness and complexity of these remarkable islands. The blend of text and images is an important part of the book, making it both suitable for the general reader and a wide range of teaching programmes.
The manuscript known as Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 153 contains a copy of Martianus Capella’s Latin text De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae. Written in Wales around 900 CE, it includes marginal annotations in Latin and Old Welsh that open a window on the spread of Carolingian educational culture to Celtic-speaking Britain. Evidence is examined here for close interaction between some of the indigenous languages of the island and the learned Latin of the schools, and even for surviving traces of the variety of spoken Latin that had been current in Britain under the Empire.
Celts, Gaels, and Britons offers a miscellany of essays exploring three closely connected areas within the fields of Celtic Studies in order to shed new light on the ancient and medieval Celtic languages and their literatures. Taking as its inspiration the scholarship of Professor Patrick Sims-Williams, to whom this volume is dedicated, the papers gathered together here explore the Continental Celtic languages, texts from the Irish Sea world, and the literature and linguistics of the British languages, among them Welsh and Cornish. With essays from eighteen leading scholars in the field, this in-depth volume serves not only as a monument to the rich and varied career of Sims-Williams, but also offers a wealth of commentary and information to present significant primary research and reconsiderations of existing scholarship.
As a verb-second language, one expects Middle Cornish to allow only a single argument/complement to appear in the left periphery of affirmative root clauses. Object personal pronouns never occur in the left periphery, but a full non-adjunct XP and subject personal pronoun do, in fact, coöccur in 329 clauses in our corpus—in that order, in all but a single token—, presumably owing to poetic overdetermination, which alters the morphosyntax and surface configuration in order to enable the required syllable-count or end-rhyme in the verse line. George 1990 & 1991, based upon an analysis of Beunans Meriasek, finds five tokens of full object DP and subject personal pronoun which coöccur in the left periphery, which, he states, are not motivated by poetic overdetermination. He concludes, on that basis, that the construction is generated by the grammar. In this paper, we collect all of the tokens of this construction in the verse corpus of Middle Cornish and propose that they are all, ultimately, motivated by poetic overdetermination, not only in order to enable the required syllable-count or end-rhyme, but sometimes also to encode pragmatic information.
This article examines the glosses in the Commentary to the Félire Óengusso on the rather obscure saint Céile Críst from Kilteel, County Kildare, whose feastday is marked in a number of medieval Irish martyrologies on the third of March. An edition and translation of two previously unedited glosses, one from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B512 (R2) and one from Dublin, UCD-OFM A7 (F), are provided.
Der Aufsatz konzentriert sich auf die mittelkymrischeRhamant Otuel, die Übersetzungdes französischen Heldengedichts Otinel. Er analysiert die Prologe und ihre epischen Elemente sowie Erweiterungen durch neue Beschreibungen von Figuren. Dabei zeigen sich un-terschiedliche Antworten auf die Vorlage, die von Reproduktion bis Umarbeitung reichen. Sie ermöglichen wertvolle Einblicke in die sprachliche Kompetenz des Übersetzers, seine Kreativität und seine Interessen und in die Interessen des Publikums. Die Übersetzung gibtauch Hinweise auf walisische Einstellungen zu Otinel-Traditionen innerhalb der insularen Rezeption des Stoffkreises um Karl den Großen.
Cornwall is an ancient nation with its own identity, culture and language. This book marks the exhibition, in 2021, of several of the iconic books of Cornwall – including the Bodmin Gospels and the Ordinalia – at Kresen Kernow, the Cornish National Archives. This is the first time some of them have returned to Cornwall since the Reformation. This book celebrates and contextualises them and introduces the public to the surviving landmarks of the written (and spoken) word and related symbols and images, discussing the issues that they raise for Cornwall and its contribution to our global cultural identity.
Pre-existing digital databases that have been incorporated into CorPH include the following. ChronHib has acquired their respective authors’ authorisation to copy, modify, display and distribute the Work as part of the database ‘Corpus Palaeo-Hibernicum’, or CorPH:
Barrett, Siobhán (2017), A Lexicon of the poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan, as part of an unpublished PhD Thesis, accessible at http://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/10042/
Bauer, Bernhard (2015), The online database of the Old Irish Priscian glosses, originally published at http://www.univie.ac.at/indogermanistik/priscian/
Griffith, Aaron and David Stifter (2013), A Dictionary of the Old Irish Glosses in the Milan MS Ambr. C301 inf., originally published at https://www.univie.ac.at/indogermanistik/milan_glosses/
Lash, Elliott (2014), The Parsed Old and Middle-Irish Corpus, originally published at https://www.dias.ie/celt/celtpublications-2/celt-the-parsed-old-and-middle-irish-corpus-pomic/.
This article provides a critical edition and translation of a dialogue between the mythical king, Cormac, and his son, Coirpre. In the first part, Coirpre confesses to raping a woman. Cormac asks why he did such a thing, and Coirpre’s excuses for his actions follow in a series of repetitive questions and answers. The second part of the dialogue is ascribed entirely to Cormac and forms his ‘instructions’ to his son. They describe the steps from flirtation to kissing to seduction to conception without resorting to violence. Cormac’s ‘instructions’ also touch upon the real legal consequences of begetting a child, whether by rape or consent.
This article presents an edition and translation of an Irish didactic poem found in a large compilation of remedies, charms and prayers that was written in the early sixteenth century by the Roscommon medical scribe Conla Mac an Leagha. The contents of this poem, and of the treatise in which it occurs more generally, are of inherent interest for our understanding of the history of medical learning in medieval Ireland. However, the poem is also of particular significance due to the fact that its penultimate stanza, which invokes the authority of one ‘Colmán mac Oililla’, is attested in two much later sources that provide insight into the transmission and reception of medieval Irish medical texts in the early nineteenth century, as well as into the relationship between manuscript, print and material culture during that period. The two sources in question, one of which is a previously unprovenanced signboard now kept in the Wellcome Collection in London, can both be connected with the work of the Munster ‘herb doctor’ Michael Casey (1752?–1830/31), who in 1825 advertised the publication of a new herbal containing cures derived from much earlier Irish-language medical manuscripts.
When a reader encounters the Latin romances Historia Meriadoci and De ortu Waluuanii in BL MS Cotton Faustina B VI, the romances are only the first two in a set of three texts copied by the same scribe on the same occasion. The third text, following directly on De ortu Waluuanii, is an abstract of books 1–6 of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum. While valuable in its own right as a witness to the DGB’s use and manuscript circulation, the abstract is presented and investigated here for what it may tell us about the Latin romances’ own transmission and reception, which have long been shrouded in mystery. As I argue, the abstract’s juxtaposition with the romances is no accident, and figures importantly in the romances’ presentation. Much as the opening stanzas of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight set the stage for King Arthur, in fact, the Latin synopsis begins with the fall of Troy and Brutus’ foundation of Britain before (much more expansively than the Gawain-poet) recounting the war and wrack of early British history, concluding with Merlin’s revelation to Vortigern of the warring dragons. In this and other ways this Galfridian abstract causes the Latin romances to quicken with correspondences to Geoffrey’s work; this effect may even suggest for the romances a date of composition not distant from that of the DGB itself. By exploring the interpretive possibilities of this widened manuscript context, the present paper seeks to initiate a re-examination of these mysterious Latin romances in relation to their Galfridian companion-text. This article concludes with an edition of the abstract itself, which until now has not been edited or translated.
This article seeks to establish a poetics of irony in Early Middle Irish literature centring on anticlerical irreverence, misogyny, and ethnic stereotyping. Using a cluster of tenth-century narratives in the Book of Leinster, this study reads within and between texts to attempt to delineate conventions of genre and style which can be used to make the case for ironic readings of these and other texts. It is tentatively suggested that such anecdote-length humorous texts may have been used for pedagogical purposes, and the relationship between anticlerical texts and those which critique poets is briefly explored.
This article presents a case study that explores the issue of code-switching in medieval text transmission with initial data mined in a three-year project run at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The case study is based on a bilingual corpus of glosses and notes in Irish and Latin that accompanies the ninth-century Martyrology of Óengus. This collection of material is referred to as the Commentary to the Félire Óengusso and is found in ten manuscripts. This provides an excellent opportunity to compare different versions of a bilingual text in order to analyse the way in which different scribes dealt with the bilingual material that they copied. In my analysis, a twofold approach to the material will be adopted: first, from the perspective of linguistics, I examine whether the grammatical characteristics of a code-switch influence its transmission. For this, I use Pieter Muysken’s typology of code-mixing (2000) to distinguish between complex and simple code-switches. Secondly, from the perspective of palaeography, I examine whether highly abbreviated words that could be interpreted as either Latin or Irish (visual diamorphs) may cause so-called »triggered« code-switches in transmission. The aim of the comparison is to provide a window on scribal practice in bilingual texts.
The legendary Scottish king Máel Coluim III, also known as ‘Malcolm Canmore’, is often held to epitomise Scotland’s ‘ancient Gaelic kings’. But Máel Coluim and his dynasty were in fact newcomers, and their legitimacy and status were far from secure at the beginning of his rule. Máel Coluim’s long reign from 1058 until 1093 coincided with the Norman Conquest of England, a revolutionary event that presented great opportunities and terrible dangers. Although his interventions in post-Conquest England eventually cost him his life, the book argues that they were crucial to his success as both king and dynasty-builder, creating internal stability and facilitating the takeover of Strathclyde and Lothian. As a result, Máel Coluim left to his successors a territory that stretched far to the south of the kingship’s heartland north of the Forth, similar to the Scotland we know today.
The book explores the wider political and cultural world in which Máel Coluim lived, guiding the reader through the pitfalls and possibilities offered by the sources that mediate access to that world. Our reliance on so few texts means that the eleventh century poses problems that historians of later eras can avoid. Nevertheless Scotland in Máel Coluim’s time generated unprecedented levels of attention abroad and more vernacular literary output than at any time prior to the Stewart era.
The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland contains more than 3,800 entries covering the majority of family names that are established and current in Ireland, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland.
It establishes reliable and accurate explanations of historical origins (including etymologies) and provides variant spellings for each name as well as its geographical distribution, and, where relevant, genealogical and bibliographical notes for family names that have more than 100 bearers in the 1911 census of Ireland. Of particular value are the lists of early bearers of family names, extracted from sources ranging from the medieval period to the nineteenth century, providing for the first time, the evidence on which many surname explanations are based, as well as interesting personal names, locations and often occupations of potential family forbears.
This unique Dictionary will be of the greatest interest not only to those interested in Irish history, students of the Irish language, genealogists, and geneticists, but also to the general public, both in Ireland and in the Irish diaspora in North America, Australia, and elsewhere.
The focus of scholarly comment on Irish manuscript illumination has been largely on letters. This paper examines the design and development of the text run-over symbol, a scribal device which has received relatively little analysis to date. It will be seen that the convention of using images to mark text run-overs, while not peculiar to Irish manuscripts (Brown 1996, 19, 192), persisted for a remarkably long time in the scribal tradition. Aspects of the wider manuscript context and function of marginal art, the use of reader’s aids and the relationship between text and image are also considered.
The Stowe Missal is one of the earliest surviving documents of the Early Irish church and is a key witness to the Early Irish liturgy, as well as one of the few manuscripts dating back to the Old Irish period to contain a number of continuous texts in the Irish language. This thesis investigates the origins and history of the Stowe Missal by means of a close study of the manuscript and its scribes. Chapter 1 sets out the manuscript’s contents and the makeup of its quires, and offers a detailed discussion of the Stowe Missal’s scribes. The relative order of their activities is of particular concern and it is shown that the manuscript’s Irish language texts were added to the Stowe Missal by (one of) its original scribe(s). The original purpose for which the manuscript was made is also considered. Chapter 2 examines the available evidence for the Stowe Missal’s dating and its place of origin, before considering the manuscript’s early travels. It is argued that the manuscript’s traditional dating must be reconsidered and that there are strong signs that the manuscript did not long remain where it was made. In Chapter 3, the circumstances of the Stowe Missal’s early nineteenth century rediscovery are explored by reviewing both the contemporary evidence and the more recent hypotheses for the manuscript’s history in the centuries leading up to its rediscovery. Basic editions consisting of a diplomatic transcription and normalised text of the Stowe Missal’s incomplete copy of the Gospel of John, as well as the manuscript’s Irish Tract on the Mass are presented in Appendix 1 and Appendix 2, respectively. For the latter, a new translation and full vocabulary are also included. A third appendix contains an overview of the abbreviations found in these texts.
The formal description of James Stewart’s phonology is less detailed than the corresponding description of East Perthshire Gaelic but, on the other hand, a brief section on his morphology has been added. The greater part of the morphological information is nevertheless, as with East Perthshire, set out in the lexicon.
The lexicon section is more extensive than in the earlier volume, as it includes a detailed excerption of all texts rather than the basic references provided in the East Perthshire account, the latter arrangement having proved somewhat troublesome to use. This volume on West Perthshire is much indebted to the fieldworkers listed at the beginning of Part II. In addition to them, and to the many mentioned with gratitude in the preface to the volume on East Perthshire, this second volume is specifically indebted for their generous assistance and support to: Cathlin Macaulay, Andrew McCarthy, Mark McDonald, Eibhlín Nic Dhonncha, Ruairí Ó hUiginn, Pádraig Ó Macháin, Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh, Michelle O Riordan, Boyd Robertson, Stuart Robinson, and Nóra White.This article offers a critical analysis of the representation of early modern popular violence provided by the 1641 depositions. Exploring the problems of how reported ‘speech’ was produced and recorded in the 1641 depositions, the article challenges the tendency within the depositions to represent violence as a spontaneous and immediate act, explicable by a racialised reading of Irish ‘barbarity’ and Catholic treachery. Exploiting a large cache of depositions and examinations in the relatively resource-rich urban context of Galway, it offers a micro-historical narrative of two brutal episodes of popular violence there in 1642 to reveal the complex histories and politics that might lie behind acts of violence in the Irish rising. Examining the local impact of the state's policies of anglicisation and Protestantisation, the paper recovers the prolonged, but ultimately unsuccessful, negotiations that preceded popular violence. Contextualizing the episodes, the article locates that violence in the more complex (and divided) politics of the city and in the radical challenges it brought to traditional structures of rule in Galway. Referencing the developing body of work on the politics of early modern crowd actions in Ireland, the article argues that the popular violence was political, both a consequence of and contributor to political change there.
It is a familiar cliché, even a trope, to characterise Cú Chulainn as 'the Irish Achilles' and to exemplify this by citing the shared motif of the hero choosing an early death and eternal fame in preference to a long inglorious life. Building on Brent Miles' insight that knowledge of the 'choice of Achilles' story could have come to the Irish literati through the commentary on Vergil known as Servius Auctus, this article aims to reconstruct the reading strategies that might have been applied to this text in the period when Táin bó Cúailnge was taking shape. The argument is pursued by examining two manuscripts of Servius Auctus (MSS Bern, Burgerbibliothek 167 & 172), of which other sections preserve direct evidence for Irish engagement with Virgilian poetry in the form of marginalia focussed on the word picti in connexion with the British race known as the Picts. The picti material provides the model for a hypothetical reconstruction of how the literati might have interpreted and re-contextualised the Achilles material in these or similar annotated manuscripts of Vergil. This encourages a revised assessment of how and why the makers of the Táin may have been engaging creatively with the perceived parallelism between Cú Chulainn and Achilles.
The Cambrai Homily (Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 679 [s. viii2] ff. 37rb–38rb) is a short prose homily found between two chapters of the Collectio canonum Hibernensis; as the Homily is incomplete, it has been suggested that it was copied from a stray leaf inserted into the exemplar of the Collectio. The Homily itself is estimated to date to the seventh or first half of the eighth century. More salient for the purpose of this anthology, however, is the fact that the Homily code-switches between Latin and Old Irish. Some claim that this text provides us with the earliest record of continuous Irish prose; as such it has long been an important source for early Irish linguistics, as well as evidence for sermons in the seventh-century Irish Church. Nevertheless, the aspects of code-switching between Old Irish and Latin in the Cambrai Homily remain underexplored. This article provides an assessment of existing perspectives on the relationship between Latin and Old Irish in this homily, and offers a fresh interpretation of the code-switching that takes place.
This article examines the healing of Caílte in the late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century text Acallam na senórach from a medieval medical perspective. According to the text, Caílte suffers from long-lasting injuries, particularly from mobility issues caused by a poisoned spear. The healing itself, performed mainly by Bé Binn, a female member of the Túatha Dé Danann, takes place in three stages: (1) healing through vomiting; (2) curing Caílte's head afflictions with a head rinse; and (3) extracting the poison and other gore from his legs. After this, as a parting gift, Bé Binn provides Caílte with a potion that restores his memory. This article argues that the healing sequence shows familiarity with medieval medical practice derived from European and Arabic medical sources up to two centuries before the appearance of the earliest medical manuscripts.
This article reopens the question of the relationship between the medieval Welsh version of the Grail narrative, the Historia Peredur vab Efrawc, and the French Conte du Graal of Chrétien de Troyes. It explores the seeming inconsistencies in the Welsh tale’s presentation of the Grail procession, and suggests that the hero’s actions, and in particular his reticence in asking questions about the procession, should be read in the context of medieval Welsh customs and legal tradition. The article concludes with an exploration of the implications of the proposed interpretation for the reading of Historia Peredur as a postcolonial narrative.
This research project places the North Channel at the centre of an active and peopled seascape. Rather than viewing the foundations around its rim as peripheral in relation to more inland centres of power and modern understanding, the goal is to place the North Channel Zone at the centre of an active and connected region. Although modern scholarship widely accepts the existence of an ecclesiastical Community based around Columba and his foundation of Iona, and Dalriadan holdings on both sides of the North Channel, there has been less scholarship surrounding the idea of a North Channel seascape awash in the movement of peoples and community structures.
In order to examine this idea more fully, a case study approach is employed on another proposed Community of monasteries linked by the sea: those related to, or potentially related to, St Comgall and his main monastery at Bangor. The main question asked focuses on whether a Community of Comgall wider than the monastery of Bangor itself existed between the sixth to eleventh centuries. This inquiry is made by selecting specific sites in the west of Scotland: Applecross and the islands of Lismore and Tiree, and undertaking an interdisciplinary analysis of the sites, including textual, art historical, archaeological, and toponymic evidence along with a general phenomenological approach. A chapter is devoted to each site in turn.
The findings indicate that a Community of Comgall is discernible. Additionally, the importance and influence of Applecross, Lismore, and Tiree within their respective seascapes and landscapes are highlighted by the available evidence. The influence and importance of additional ecclesiastical foundations in the west of Scotland, especially those with connections to the Community of Comgall based at Bangor in Ireland, is brought into clearer focus. This allows a fuller understanding of the movement of people and ideas between the west of Scotland and north of Ireland in the early medieval period.
Some European hydronyms (among them also the river-name Inn) have sometimes been explained based on a root PIE “ *en‑/*on‑” (modern spelling: PIE *h₁en(H)-), which has usually been given the meaning ‘flow, river’ vel sim. This root cannot even be found in Pokorny’s Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959). No real proof for that root has been found in the appellative lexicon of any Indo-European language. Moreover, there aren’t any sure continuations of that root in the onymic lexicons of those languages. All names put forward as arguments can either be explained based on a root PIE *pen-/*pon- ‘swamp, (standing) water’ (because they are Celtic) or based on a root PIE *h₂en- ‘haul (water)’. As long as no proof of an appellative use of a root PIE *h₁en(H)- can be offered, which alone might tell us, what that root actually meant, the application of ‘Occam’s razor’ leaves us no other choice but to explain all regarding names from the other two roots.
The Book of Dimma is an Irish pocket gospel book dated to the (late) eighth century. Recent scholarly views are that the first three gospels were commissioned by Dianchride of the Múscraige near Roscrea (or even written by him); that the name of the scribe Dimma that was written over erasures was a fraud inspired by a hagiographical tale in the Life of St Crónán of Roscrea; and that it is unknown when the Gospel of John was added to the other three gospels. These and other views are challenged and alternative explanations are proposed.
For a long time it has been thought that habitation and landscape organisation only changed significantly from the Roman Period onwards. However, many developments were already started long before Julius Caesar's Roman armies arrived in the southern Netherlands. The Iron Age landscapes were ordered and structured, contrasting with the still open Bronze Age landscapes. Iron Age people inhabited the same places for generations. At the same time they structured their immediate environment and surroundings resulting in a sustainable organisation and arrangement of the landscape.Recent excavations and (micro-)regional archaeological studies into habitation and landscape organisation, among others in the north-eastern region of the province Noord-Brabant, show that relicts from the past strongly dictated the organisation and structuring of later landscapes. The past in the past formed a guideline (dutch: leidraad) for later (Iron Age) inhabitants.The past can also be a guideline for the design, protection and preservation of contemporary landscapes. This aligns with a trend in which archaeologists are explicitly seeking the connection with present society. Therefore this book ends with a plea for a transition of the Dutch archaeological system in which living heritage can also be a guideline for the present.
This dissertation provides critical editions of two medieval Irish aideda (‘death-tales’): Aided Ailella ⁊ Chonaill Chernaig (‘The Death-Tale of Ailill and Conall Cernach’) and Aided Cheit maic Mágach (‘The Death-Tale of Cet mac Mágach’). The editions are accompanied by translations, textual notes and linguistic analyses, followed by discussions of the textual traditions of both tales and literary commentary. The thesis consists of two parts. Part I, entitled Texts & Traditions, introduces the manuscripts in which the tales are contained: both tales are preserved in Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 72.1.40, while another copy of Aided Ailella ⁊ Chonaill Chernaig is found in Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, MS 1319. Following Thomas Owen Clancy, it is argued that the former manuscript is of particular interest, since the gathering in which the two tales are found consists of a collection of seven Ulster Cycle aideda. These constitute an independent thematic unit that should be read as an anthology of aideda. An examination of the evidence for the compilation and transmission of the group is provided, tracing the existence of the collection back to the twelfth or possibly tenth century. This is followed by a thematic analysis of the aideda anthology, arguing that the group of aideda constitutes a narrative cycle based on its generic unity. Following on from this discussion of manuscript context, linguistic analyses of both tales are presented, each followed by the edited text and translation. Any textual ambiguities, problematic forms or interpretational issues are discussed in the textual notes. The second part of the dissertation, which is entitled Context & Commentary, is split into two sections. The first section examines how the two extant aideda relate to references to the deaths of Ailill mac Máta, Conall Cernach and Cet mac Mágach in other sources, shedding light on the traditions that surround the deaths of these literary characters. It is demonstrated that the narrative tradition of the death of Conall is depicted relatively uniformly across all sources, and shows a particular connection to East Bréifne. References to the deaths of Cet and Bélchú reveal that the traditions of their deaths may have undergone changes, pertaining specifically to the setting of the narrative and the character of Bélchú, who may once had a different role. The second section presents an analysis of the literary themes and motifs that appear in both tales, focussing in particular on interpreting the narratives as part of the aideda anthology in the Edinburgh manuscript. It is argued that the placement of Aided Chonchobair within the aideda anthology impacts upon the interpretation of the group, and that the tales should be read as anti-heroic tales. The tales depict Irish heroic society as one of dysfunction and self-destruction, caused by the tragic breakdown of the relationships upon which this society was founded. The literary commentary examines how these traditional relationships in Aided Ailella ⁊ Chonaill Chernaig and Aided Cheit maic Mágach are subverted, leading to social chaos and disorder.
This is a new edition and translation of Chwedleu Seith Doethon Rufein, the Middle Welsh version of the popular medieval tales known as ‘The Seven Sages of Rome’. The text found in J MS 111 has already been published in modern Welsh, which limits its usefulness for those who are not fluent in that language. The only English translation available is an archaic, nineteenth century version which needs updating. This has been addressed here. Certain concepts are questioned, such as Lewis’s suggestion that the tales were the original work of a Welsh cleric and therefore constitute the first Welsh novel His opinion that J MS 20 is the oldest extant Welsh version of the tale is also investigated. The Welsh redaction itself is characterised by the usual medieval Welsh practice of abbreviation and concision. Here the translation of French Sept Sages is curtailed by the omission of direct speech and extraneous detail. Any deviation, such as borrowings from traditional Welsh tales, is therefore the more noteworthy. The pointed use of native literary tradition suggests that the author was an educated man, one not only fluent in French, as evidenced from his adaptation of the Sept Sages, but one well-versed in his own literary heritage. His exclusion of the scatological elements present in the French parent version may point to his religious calling but could also indicate that he was writing for a mixed audience: not only for men but also for women and children. The base text used here is the one found in Jesus MS 20, housed at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, though the two other manuscript witnesses, Jesus MS 111 (Llyfr Coch Hergest) and NLW Llanstephan MS 2, are also discussed. This present edition includes a brief history of the transmission of the tales from their Eastern origins to the West: to France and then on to Wales. This is followed by an overview of the cultural and historical background of the period, placing the tales in context. The conclusion drawn is that, though Chwedleu Seith Doethon Rufein, the Welsh redaction of the Sept Sages Romae, is but one small part of the international corpus of this literary tradition, it is a highly individual and therefore invaluable member of the genre.
Buske-Grammatikübungsbücher sind lehrwerkunabhängig, universell einsetzbar und eignen sich als kursbegleitende Übungsgrammatik und zum selbstständigen Lernen. Lernziele: Sichere Beherrschung der Grammatik; Niveaustufe A1/A2 des Europäischen Referenzrahmens. Konzeption: In 30 überschaubaren Kapiteln werden die wesentlichen Phänomene der walisischen Grammatik, Schreibung und Aussprache prägnant und leicht verständlich zusammengefasst sowie anhand von Tabellen, Übersichten und Beispielsätzen mit Übersetzungen veranschaulicht. Jedes Kapitel schließt mit einer Vielzahl abwechslungsreicher praxisnaher Übungen zur unmittelbaren Anwendung des gelernten Stoffes. Im Anhang dienen ausgewählte Sprichwörter als authentische Sprachbeispiele. Ein Lösungsschlüssel zu allen Übungen, ein walisisch-deutsches und ein deutsch-walisisches Vokabelverzeichnis unterstützen das Selbststudium. Ein Stichwortregister hilft beim gezielten Nachschlagen einzelner Aspekte der walisischen Grammatik.
Sa tráchtas seo tá sé dhán as lámhscríbhinn G167 (Leabharlann Náisiúnta na hÉireann) a cumadh do thiarnaí éagsúla Thír Conaill sa séú haois déag. Tá eagráin chriticiúla curtha ar fáil, bunaithe ar chóipeanna na ndánta i LS G167 agus ar na leaganacha a mhaireann i LSí eile, chomh maith le plé ar ghnéithe den stair agus den teanga, agus aistriúcháin go Béarla.
This study examines dreams found in medieval Welsh literature from c. 1100 to c. 1550. The scope of the research covers secular and religious prose and poetry of the period. The purpose of this study is to provide an insight into dream literature in medieval Welsh by analysing the various functions of dreams in different types of texts in relation to the narratives and genres. Chapter 1 lays out the conceptual and methodological framework necessary for analyses in the subsequent chapters, and maps out the European context of medieval Welsh dream literature. Chapters 2 examines dreams in medieval Welsh prose, including the two ‘breuddwyd’ texts of the Mabinogion and three texts belonging to the genre of areithiau pros. Chapter 3 examines dreams in medieval Welsh secular poetry. Chapter 4 examines dreams in medieval Welsh religious writings, including hagiographies and anti-hagiographies, apocalyptic and mystic visions. Finally, a conclusion summarises the roles that dreams play in different textual contexts within the field of medieval Welsh literature, and in which I argue that ‘breuddwyd’ does not constitue a specific genre; instead, working within the various contexts and genres in which Welsh texts containing dreams are situated, the dreams play an essential and dynamic part in the formation of the plot, world-building, liminality, as well as have the capacity for revealing many interesting features of the text.
The ninth-century Irish tale Orgguin trí mac Diarmata meic Cerbaill is something of an outlier, both in terms of the Leinster Cycle, in which it is explicitly included by Rawlinson B 502, and, especially, in terms of the corpus of the tale's featured Uí Néill king, Diarmait mac Cerbaill. So at odds is this tale with elements of the identity established for Diarmait by the rest of his corpus that it appears that he is being used in the text anachronistically and as a proxy. Indeed, certain details in the tale, particularly the names of the titular three sons and the place of the tale's climax, Lagore Crannóg, indicate that the Uí Néill king in the tale would have been better identified as Áed Sláine. However, while Áed is the best match, this reading, too, presents challenges, and it is clear that Orgguin trí mac was not written to describe true events of the sixth or seventh century, but rather to use representatives from the past to comment upon the historical reality contemporary with the tale's composition. Examination of the characters, peoples, and place-names within the tale, as compared to relevant historical figures and events as described in the annals, reveal close ties between the details of the tale and the reality of the ninth century. Specifically, these details combine to provide compelling evidence that Orgguin trí mac Diarmata meic Cerbaill was written ca. 867–868 to explain and justify an alliance between the Laigin and Síl nÁedo Sláine.
This article analyses the Life of St. Deicolus of Lure, a monastery in the Alsace region of east France, written by the cleric Theodoric in the 970s or 980s. It argues that the text contains a notable amount of information on the existence, methodology, and limitations of an ill-understood aspect of monastic integration around the year 1000. Relying on an analysis of the narrative's second prologue as well as scattered comments elsewhere in the text, it reconstructs three phenomena. The first is attempts to (re-)establish a Luxeuil-centered imagined community of institutions with a shared Columbanian legacy through the creation and circulation of hagiographic narratives. A second is the co-creation across institutional boundaries of texts and manuscripts that were designed to facilitate these integration attempts. And the third phenomenon is the limits of this integration effort, which did not tempt those involved to propose the establishment of a distinct ‘neo-Columbanian’ observance. As such, the Life represents an attempt to reconcile the legacy of Columbanus and his real or alleged followers as celebrated at late tenth-century Luxeuil and Lure with a contemporary understanding of reformed Benedictine identity.
The Early Fenian Cycle is concerned with texts primarily written before the end of the Middle Irish period (up to 1200) which deal with Finn mac Cumaill and his fían (‘warrior band’), his son Oisín, his grandson Oscar, and with other fíana and their leaders. This work provides a catalogue of early constituent texts pertaining to this Cycle, with a focus on their dates of composition, on the manuscripts in which they are found and on the editions and translations currently available.
In one corner of Ireland the seanchaidhe of a royal clan wrote down the story of long wars against the English from the point of view of the Gael. This is the Caithreim Thoirdhealbhaigh, or ‘Wars of Turlogh’, the story of the struggles of De Clares and O’Briens in Thomond for fifty years from 1275 A.D. onwards, written by an eye-witness, the clan-historian, Seán Mac Craith, between 1345 and 1360.
This book is the first to explore the archaeology of female monasticism in medieval Ireland, primarily from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Nuns are known from history, but this book considers their archaeology and upstanding architecture through perspectives such as gender and landscape. It discusses the archaeological remains associated with female monasticism in Ireland as it is currently understood and offers insights into how these religious communities might have lived and interacted with their local communities.
It briefly includes female religious of the early medieval period, other female religious, such as anchorites, while providing a wider European monastic context. While some nunneries used what is considered a typical monastic layout—of a church and other buildings arranged around a central area—this research has found that in many cases a nunnery was a small church with attached accommodation, or a separate dwelling; particularly when nuns lived in towns.
Medieval women became nuns for various reasons and followed a daily routine called the divine office, with occasions, like saints’ feast days, celebrated in special ways. It is sometimes suggested that all nuns were locked away, but history and archaeology show that they had many connections with the world outside. Nunneries had to maintain these ties in order to function and stay relevant, so the local community and benefactors would continue to support the nunnery as their church, and for some, their place of burial.Liam Breatnach’s Quiggin Lecture, The Early Irish law text Senchas Már and the question of its date, proposed that the Senchas Már was written in a single effort mounted by the church of Armagh within the date range c. 660 × c. 680. This revised and expanded version of a lecture given in 2017 accepts that there was a link between Armagh and the Senchas Már, sets the latter in the context of the written laws of Western Europe, 400–800, and investigates how the Senchas Már might have fitted into the sequence of seventh-century texts pertaining to Patrick. It also tackles two related issues: the relationship between evolving ideas of Irish nationality, the Patrician legend and the Senchas Már, and how one might bridge the gap between the Patrick of the saint’s own writings and conceptions of Patrick current in the seventh century.
Despite an ever-expanding literature on Irish castles, the relationships between the castle-building tradition in Ireland and those of contemporary Europe have attracted very little attention among Irish scholars. This books seeks to remedy this by approcahing the corpus of Irish castles as a non-Irish scholar might do. Is there a case for dating the first castles in Ireland to the later tenth century in line with the chronology of castle-building on the Continent? Are castles in Ireland typical of their periods by contemporary standards in England and France in particular? Are any castles in Ireland genuinely innovative or radical by those contemporary standards? What inferences about Ireland's place in medieval Europe can be drawn from the evidence of its castles and their forms?
Seán Ó Neachtain and his son Tadhg were at the centre of Gaelic scholarship in Dublin in the first half of the eighteenth century. Much of their work is infused by the impulses of modernity and sensibility, which permeated the city’s intellectual life at the time. The numerous extant manuscripts, which the Ó Neachtains and their learned colleagues wrote, bear testimony to that community’s industry, not only in preserving the literature of earlier periods but in creating new works. This is therefore an account of Gaelic scholarship in an urban setting, told from the inside.
Published here is the first half of the Royal Irish Academy’s edition of the extant, unpublished lexicographical work written and compiled between 1937 and 1946 by the writer, scholar and activist Máirtín Ó Cadhain (1906-70).
Máirtín Ó Cadhain undertook the compilation of this dictionary of Irish as used in his native Galway at the request of the Department of Education, and by 1937 had sent the first samples of his work which were intended, with similar material commissioned from other dialects, to form a basis for a large-scale Irish-English Dictionary; Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, edited by Niall Ó Dónaill, was published in 1977.
Ó Cadhain continued to send material in the following years, eventually ceasing in 1946, by which time he was well on the way to becoming one of the finest exponents of creative writing in Ireland in the 20th century. His groundbreaking novel, Cré na Cille, composed almost entirely in the common speech of his native Connemara, appeared in 1949, giving an enduring platform for his creative talent. Cré na Cille is now available in over a dozen languages.
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The editorial work on Foclóir Mháirtín Uí Chadhain was undertaken as part of the Academy’s ongoing work to produce Foclóir Stairiúil na Gaeilge, a comprehensive historical Dictionary of modern Irish.
Website and blog for the research project OG[H]AM: harnessing digital technologies to transform understanding of ogham writing, from the 4th century to the 21st century (2021–2024). The team includes Katherine Forsyth and David Stifter (principal investigators), Deborah Hayden (co-investigator), Nora White and Megan Kasten (post-doctoral researchers), Luca Guarienti (digital officer) and Clara Scholz (student intern). The website features blogs by team members as well as guest blogs by other researchers, including Karen Murad and Chantal Kobel.
During the early medieval period (c. AD 400–1200), the Baltinglass landscape in eastern Ireland may be interpreted as a major central place connected with important regional dynasties like the Uí Cheinnselaig and latterly the Uí Máil. Its significance is recorded in sources such as the Bórama Laigen and Fingal Rónáin, as well as a number of annal entries, which refer to an important royal fortress in the area known as Dún Bolg. This fortress has been linked with a complex of enclosures on Spinans Hill, including a massive fort of some 131ha, located a few kilometres to the east of Baltinglass. This, along with a number of previously unrecognised early medieval sites, reveals a heavily mythologised landscape that was instrumental to dynasties emerging from the shadows of the Iron Age in central Leinster. This paper attempts to assess the rich textual evidence alongside the archaeological evidence to elucidate the broader importance of the Baltinglass landscape during the early medieval period.
This is the sixth in a series of editions of the poems of Gofraidh Óg (son of Gofraidh son of Brian) Mac an Bhaird, who flourished in the 1640s and 1650s. It is in praise of Maol Muire son of Toirdhealbhach Mac Suibhne and, in supplementary quatrains, of his wife, Gráinne daughter of Báitéar Mac Suibhne. The poet extols Maol Muire’s military prowess by asking rhetorically who trained him, but also lauds him for his performance in peacetime and for his resilience. The poem is edited here from Stonyhurst College MS A II 20, with readings from Trinity College Dublin MS H 6. 7 (1411) and a full discussion of these and other extant MS witnesses.