Princes, Prelates and Poets in Medieval Ireland - Unknown

Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page i
p r i n c e s , p r e l at e s a n d p o e t s i n m e d i e va l i r e l a n d
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page ii
Katharine simms Ba, phd (dubl.), mria, Ftcd (emerita)

Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page iii
princes, prelates
and poets in
medieval ireland
e s s ay s i n h o n o u r o F
K at h a r i n e s i m m s
seán duffy
e d i to r
F o u r c o u rt s p r e s s
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page iv
typeset in 10.5 pt on 12.5 pt ehrhardtmt pro by

carrigboy typesetting services for
F o u r c o u rt s p r e s s lt d
7 malpas street, dublin 8, ireland
e-mail: info@fourcourtspress.ie
and in North America
F o u r c o u rt s p r e s s
c/o isBs, 920 ne 58th avenue, suite 300, portland, or 97213.
© the contributors and Four courts press 2013
a catalogue record for this title is available

from the British library.
ISBN 978-1-84682-280-3 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-84682-923-9 (ebook)
all rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved alone, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of both the copyright owner and
publisher of this book.
printed in england
by cpi antony rowe, chippenham, Wilts.
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page v
contents
ForeWord by Dr Patrick Prendergast, Provost of Trinity College Dublin ix
e d i t o r ’ s p r e Fac e xi
a B B r e v i at i o n s xiv
notes on contriButors xxiii
pa rt i . p r i n c e s
medieval irish genealogies and genetics 3

Bart Jaski
interlaced scholarship: genealogies and genetics in twenty-first-century

ireland 18
Catherine Swift
the two colmáns 32

Eoin O’Flynn
re-examining cáin in scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 46

Dauvit Broun
William Gorm de lacy: ‘chiefest champion in these parts of europe’ 63

Colin Veach and Freya Verstraten Veach
a register of lost deeds relating to the earldom of ulster, c.1230–1376 85

Robin Frame
unity in diversity: a comparative analysis of thirteenth-century

Kilkenny, Kalkar and sopron 107
Anngret Simms
the turnberry Band 124

Seán Duffy
v
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page vi
vi Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
two lists of Ó dubhda chieftains of uí Fhiachrach 139

Nollaig Ó Muraíle
James the usurper of desmond and the origins of the

talbot–ormond feud 159
Peter Crooks
the murder of John dowdall, sheriff of louth, 1402 185

Brendan Smith
irish kings and carinthian dukes: John lynch revisited 196

Annette Kehnel
pa rt i i . p r e l at e s
st patrick and the kings 211

Donnchadh Ó Corráin
the authority of the contemplative in muirchú’s life of patrick 221

Damian Bracken
‘irish pilgrimage’: a romantic misconception 241

Stephanie Hayes-Healy
Quo vadis? mapping the irish ‘monastic town’ 261

Howard B. Clarke
church reform in connacht 279

Helen Perros-Walton
ailbe ua máel muaid, uí chennselaig and the Vitae Sanctorum

Hiberniae 309
Ailbhe MacShamhráin†
heresy in ireland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 339

Bernadette Williams
the medieval bishops of elphin and the lost church at Kilteasheen 352
Thomas Finan
a medieval bronze pax from dunbrody abbey, co. Wexford, and the
fate of ornamenta from suppressed religious houses in ireland 362
Raghnall Ó Floinn
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page vii
Contents vii
pa rt i i i . p o e t s
the court poet in early ireland 377

Alex Woolf
the world of medieval irish learning 389

Edel Bhreathnach
some observations on an unpublished version of the Gospel of Nicodemus 406

Caoimhín Breatnach
a cosmological poem attributed to moses 412

John Carey
ruaidhrí Ó caiside’s contribution to the annals of ulster 444

Daniel Mc Carthy
the landscape and settlements of the uí dhálaigh poets of muinter

Bháire 460
Elizabeth FitzPatrick
the uí dhomhnaill and their books in early sixteenth-century ireland 481

Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie
Ave reversing eva: miscellanea on marian devotion in irish bardic poetry 503
Damian McManus
the portrayal of women in medieval irish religious poetry 514

Kevin Murray
‘once i heard a story … from scripture does it come’: biblical allusions

in irish bardic religious poetry 524
Salvador Ryan
tadhg Ó rodaighe and his school: aspects of patronage and poetic

practice at the close of the bardic era 538
Pádraig Ó Macháin
dán Áráis, 1654 552

Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
a bibliography of the published writings of Katharine simms (to 2012) 561
index 569
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page viii
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page ix
Foreword by dr patrick prendergast,

provost of trinity college dublin
For the last thirty years, dr Katharine simms has taught medieval history in
trinity college dublin. she has a long family association with the college, going
back a number of generations. i have recently learned that a portrait of her
maternal great-uncle looks down at us in the college’s boardroom – provost
edward Gwynn. he was the first provost to be appointed by an irish government
and was a distinguished celtic scholar. her father was George otto simms,
church of ireland archbishop of dublin and later archbishop of armagh and, in
his day, foremost authority on the Book of Kells, a passion that no doubt helped
to nurture her own love for medieval irish history.
With a background like this, it might be thought that dr Katharine simms’
achievements were preordained. But nothing is preordained. every generation
must rise to challenges anew. over many decades, dr simms diligently pursued
the challenge of bringing new interpretations to ireland’s past, beginning when
she was an undergraduate student in trinity in the department of the great
lecky professor, Jocelyn otway-ruthven, and later studying for a phd under
the supervision of prof. James lydon. those two great trinity historians of
anglo-ireland must have been an inspiration to her, but her own research has
brought trinity in a new direction – to a greater insight into the workings of
Gaelic ireland and, in particular, into Gaelic kingship and society in the later
middle ages. her scholarship has led others into the field. her work has fed into
several academic generations, so that not only are her own former students active
researchers, but so too are the students of those students. this is a true measure
of ‘impact’, because a true scholar-teacher is one whose work opens up rich
seams of study for others.
not only has she published the fruits of her research in the scholarly
literature, but she has been concerned to communicate with the enthusiasts of
medieval ireland at a local level, and that has involved a strong commitment to
publishing in local history journals. the current fads of academic publishing
seek to discount such writing but trinity, confident as it is in its global standing,
values the local, values its rootedness in this place and our important role in
presenting the results of scholarship where it may be appreciated by all.
dr Katharine simms and i have only ever had one conversation – on the day
we were both elected members of the royal irish academy. such honours are to
be welcomed, but there is no greater academic honour than to have one’s
ix
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page x
x Foreword
colleagues dedicate their time and their ideas to creating something especially for
you. it is a great pleasure to see the academic reputation of Katharine simms
reaffirmed here in the stellar cast of medievalists who have agreed to write in her
honour in this volume.
p.J. prendergast
provost’s house
trinity college dublin
29 october 2011
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xi
editor’s preface
this has turned out to be a very big book, about as big as a collection of essays
can be and remain manageable and somehow coherent. the problem is that
nearly everybody i asked to contribute (pulled together haphazardly from the
emails in my inbox) said ‘yes’! the volume would be bigger still had i not set an
impossibly tight deadline, which, given the huge demands on everyone’s time
these days, meant that many more scholars who dearly wished to contribute
simply couldn’t make it. i might say too that even in this short timeframe we lost
one of those eager to write, prof. Breandán Ó Buachalla, who died in may 2010
before being able to complete his contribution, while one of our authors, dr
ailbhe macshamhráin, sadly passed away in June 2011 only hours after putting
the finishing touches to the very fine essay that i am privileged to print below.
Suaimhneas síoraí dóibh araon.
the explanation for this general readiness to write isn’t hard to find: it stems
from a universal admiration – personal and scholarly – for our honorand,
Katharine simms, and a recognition on all our parts that this presented an
opportunity to repay a debt. Katharine is one of those rare people about whom
no-one has a bad word to say. at a personal level, we have all been the
beneficiaries of her quiet kindness, and usually failed to notice – sure proof of
the sincerity that underlies it. at a scholarly level, one of the things that stand
out is the sheer absence of vanity that characterizes her work, a rare enough
commodity among academics. those of us who hover at the margins of celtic
studies know that it is a difficult field, being technically challenging, and having
admirably high standards and an intolerance of mediocrity. the latter can have
a sharp edge and appear exclusionist – a tendency to preach only to the
converted. But Katharine simms doesn’t insist on writing in a code intelligible
only to the initiated. she has a lovely uncomplicated writing style and no time
for jargon and so her great achievement has been to bring to life and to make
intelligible to ordinary men and women the extraordinary world of Gaelic
ireland in the later middle ages.
think of her ‘Warfare in the medieval Gaelic lordships’ (1975) or ‘Guesting
and feasting in Gaelic ireland’ (1978) or ‘Bardic poetry as a historical source’
(1987) or ‘the brehons of later medieval ireland’ (1990), to say nothing of
‘nomadry in medieval ireland: the origins of the creaght or caoraigheacht’
(1986) or ‘Frontiers in the irish church – regional and cultural’ (1995) or ‘Bards
and barons: the anglo-irish aristocracy and the native culture’ (1989) or ‘the
contents of the later commentaries on the brehon law tracts’ (1998). one can
xi
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xii
xii Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
well imagine some of these – if anyone else had been brave enough to tackle them
– being pretty impenetrable exercises. When publishing, especially at the start of
one’s career, the temptation is to show off, to over-complicate, in the belief that
we are impressing by doing so. But it is a trait never found in Katharine’s work:
even in her early essays published while still a student, she has always exhibited
a gift for demystifying, without watering down her subject or displaying a hint
of condescension. and that, it seems to me, is deliberate: she simply wants to
communicate her findings to those who want to know. as the provost of trinity
has pointed out in his very generous foreword, she has not been concerned (at
some cost to herself not least in terms of greasy-pole advancement) with peer
review: she has addressed local audiences and published local studies – ground-
breaking and definitive studies – of medieval tír conaill or Fir manach or
oirghialla or Bréifne in the Donegal Annual or the Clogher Record or Breifne or
Seanchas Ardmhacha – and surely eventually will have chapters in all nine ulster
volumes in Willie nolan’s great county history series – where her work has been
read by thousands of people eager to learn more about the history of their home
place.
that would be a wonderful legacy. and yet, it is of course but a small part of
what she has been about as a scholar. only a fraction of those who write a book
write one that will remain indispensable for succeeding generations, as Katharine
did in 1987 when she published From kings to warlords, about which robin Frame
remarked in a review that she ‘has ensured that later medieval ireland – and not
merely Gaelic ireland – will never look quite the same again’.1 in 2009, she
published another book which to date has received remarkably little notice
although for different reasons it is an equally noteworthy achievement. true,
Medieval Gaelic sources is a little book of no more than 130 pages, but what a
godsend it is!2 What it does – in an unfussy, unpretentious, easily comprehen-
sible and characteristically even-handed way – is provide a beginners’ guide to
the Gaelic annals, to the main genealogical collections, to bardic poetry, to the
great sagas and the key prose tracts, to the brehon law texts, and to medical and
other materials. phew! there is so much contention in each constituent
component here that there’s a potential landmine in every sentence, and it is a
measure of Katharine’s great learning – and great discretion – that she has
tiptoed her way through it and emerged unscathed: readers trust what she says
and that makes this guide absolutely invaluable.
oddly though, the thing that has been her life’s work – in the academic field
– may be the least well known to the public, the Bardic poetry database hosted
at http://www.bardic.celt.dias.ie. i think i’m right in saying that she started this
in 1977, while working under prof. Brian Ó cuív at the school of celtic studies,
dublin institute for advanced studies, and it is ongoing (in collaboration now
1 EHR, 105:415 (1990), 446–7. 2 maynooth research Guides for irish local history, no.
14 (dublin, 2009).
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xiii
Editor’s preface xiii
with prof. damian mcmanus of the school of irish at tcd). this seeks to
identify all surviving bardic poems, to classify them by type, and to identity
themes and motifs; it allows researchers to find poems associated with particular
areas throughout Gaelic ireland and scotland, to focus on poems emanating
from a particular period, poems addressed to a particular patron or by a
particular poet – inauguration odes, marriage poems, love poems, elegies, satires
and so forth. it is a phenomenal resource. nowadays a team of researchers,
working under a ‘principal investigator’ (pi), funded by a research council,
would struggle to realize such a project: Katharine seems to have done it in her
spare time – albeit over the course of a third of a century of under-acknowledged
dedication.
Katharine retired in 2010 after three decades of teaching at trinity college
dublin. i would like to thank the provost of trinity; the tcd association and
trust; the Grace lawless lee Fund, administered by the history department
at tcd; the national monuments service, department of arts, heritage and
the Gaeltacht; the school of Geography and archaeology, nui Galway; the
school of history, ucc; and the current head of the department of history at
tcd, dr david ditchburn, for generous contributions towards the cost of
publishing this volume in her honour. i took it upon myself to assemble it
because i personally owe Katharine a great deal. it is largely due to her that i
became a medieval historian (for good or ill). i well remember the savaging i got
as a Junior Freshman from her supervisor, prof. lydon, when i presented my
term essay referenced only to macneill, mac niocaill, Ó corráin and nicholls,
and ne’er a mention of his student miss simms, whose praises he had been
singing in lectures i had failed to attend. so when she began teaching in trinity
i took her special subject on ‘Gaelic society in the later middle ages’ as a Junior
sophister (possibly in the first year it was offered), although i remained the
archetypal errant undergraduate. come examination-time, Katharine ignored
my atrocious attendance-record, giving me a mark sufficiently respectable to ease
my path to a career as a clerk of some variety, but unfortunately for her, i mistook
her kindness for encouragement and stuck around to do an mlitt and a phd
and eventually to inveigle my way into the office next to hers when Jim lydon
retired. she has been very indulgent, she has truly earned her retirement, agus
go maire sí an céad.
sd
trinity college dublin
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xiv
abbreviations
ABM A bardic miscellany: five hundred bardic poems from

manuscripts in Irish and British libraries, ed. d. mcmanus
and e. Ó raghallaigh, léann na trionóide/trinity irish
studies, 2 (dublin, 2010)
AC Annála Connacht: the annals of Connacht (AD1224–1544),
ed. a.m. Freeman (dublin, 1944)
Account roll Holy Account roll of the priory of the Holy Trinity, Dublin, 1337–
Trinity 1346; with the Middle English moral play ‘The pride of life’,
ed. J. mills (dublin, 1891; repr. 1996)
AClon. The annals of Clonmacnoise, being the annals of Ireland from
the earliest period to AD1408, translated into English AD1627
by Conell Mageoghagan, ed. d. murphy (dublin, 1896)
AClyn The annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn, ed. B. Williams
(dublin, 2007)
Admin. Ire. The administration of Ireland, 1172–1377, ed. h.G.
richardson and G.o. sayles (dublin, 1963)
ADowling thady dowling, ‘annales Breves hiberniae’ in The annals
of Ireland by Friar John Clyn, ed. r. Butler (dublin, 1849)
Affairs Ire. Documents on the affairs of Ireland before the king’s council,
ed. G.o. sayles (dublin, 1979)
AFM Annála ríoghachta Éireann: annals of the kingdom of Ireland
by the Four Masters, from the earliest period to the year
1616, ed. J. o’donovan, 7 vols (dublin, 1851)
AH Analecta Hibernica, including the report of the Irish
Manuscripts Commission (dublin, 1930–)
AI The annals of Inisfallen (MS Rawlinson B503), ed. s. mac
airt (dublin, 1951)
AL Ancient laws of Ireland, 1–6, ed. r. atkinson, W.n.
hancock, W.m. hennessy, t. o’mahony and a.G. richey,
6 vols (dublin, 1865–1901)
ALC The annals of Loch Cé: a chronicle of Irish affairs from
AD1014 to AD1590, ed. W.m. hennessy, 2 vols (london,
1871; repr. dublin, 1939)
AMacFirbis ‘the annals of ireland, from the year 1443 to 1468,
translated from the irish by dudley Firbisse, or, as he is
more usually called, duald mac Firbis, for sir James
xiv
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xv
Abbreviations xv
Ware, in the year 1666’, ed. J. o’donovan in Miscellany of

the Irish Archaeological Society (dublin, 1846), 198–302
AMisc. Miscellaneous Irish annals, AD1114–1437, ed. s. Ó hinnse
(dublin, 1947)
Anecdota Anecdota from Irish manuscripts, ed. o.J. Bergin, r.i. Best,
K. meyer and J.G. o’Keeffe, 5 vols (halle, 1907–13)
ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers, 2, ed. alexander roberts and James
donaldson (edinburgh, 1994)
AR ‘the annals of roscrea’, ed. d. Gleeson and s. mac airt,
PRIA, 59c (1957–9), 137–80
AT ‘annals of tigernach’, ed. W. stokes in Revue Celtique,16
(1895), 374–419; 17 (1896), 6–33, 119–263, 337–420; 18
(1897), 9–59, 150–97, 267–303; repr. in 2 vols (Felinfach,
1993)
AU Annala Uladh (‘Annals of Ulster’), otherwise Annala Senait
(‘Annals of Senat’): a chronicle of Irish affairs, AD431 to
AD1540, ed. W.m. henessey and B. maccarthy, 4 vols
(dublin, 1887–1901); The annals of Ulster (to AD1131),
ed. s. mac airt and G. mac niocaill (dublin, 1983)
BBCS Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies
Bl British library [formerly British museum], london
Bl, add. ms additional ms
Bl, harl. ms harleian ms
Bl, lansd. ms lansdowne ms
Bocd Book of o’conor don, manuscript in private collection
Bodl. Bodleian library, oxford
Brooks, Knights’ e. st John Brooks (ed.), Knights’ fees in Counties Wexford,
fees Carlow and Kilkenny, 13th–15th century (dublin, 1950)
Cal. Carew MSS Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts preserved in the
archiepiscopal library at Lambeth, 1515–74, 6 vols
(london, 1867–73)
CChR Calendar of the charter rolls […], 1226–1516, 6 vols
(london, 1903–27)
CCR Calendar of the close rolls […], 1272–[1509], 47 vols
(london, 1892–1963)
CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (turnhout, 1953–)
CDI Calendar of documents relating to Ireland, 1171–1307, ed.
h.s. sweetman and G.F. handcock, 5 vols (london,
1875–86)
CDS Calendar of documents relating to Scotland […], ed. J. Bain,
4 vols (edinburgh, 1881–8)
CFR Calendar of the fine rolls […], 1272–[1509], 22 vols
(london, 1911–62)
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xvi
xvi Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
CGH Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae, i, ed. m.a. o’Brien

(dublin, 1962)
CGSH Corpus genealogiarum sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. pádraig Ó
riain (dublin, 1985)
Chart. privil. chartae, privilegia et immunitates, being transcripts of
immun. charters and privileges to cities, towns and other bodies
corporate […], 1171–1395 (dublin, 1829–30; pub., 1889)
CIH Corpus iuris hibernici, ed. d.a. Binchy, 6 vols (dublin,
1978)
CIPM Calendar of inquisitions post-mortem and other analogous
documents, 16 vols (london, 1904–74)
CJRI Calendar of the justiciary rolls of Ireland, ed. James mills et
al., 3 vols (dublin, 1905–56)
cKs centre for Kentish studies, maidstone
CMCS Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies (from no. 26 onwards
Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies)
COD Calendar of Ormond deeds, 1172–1603, ed. e. curtis, 6 vols
(dublin, 1932–43)
CP G.e. cokayne, The complete peerage of England, Scotland,
Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, ed. v.
Gibbs et al., 12 vols (london, 1910–59)
CPL Calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to Great
Britain and Ireland: papal letters (london, 1893–)
CPR Ire., Hen. Calendar of the patent and close rolls of chancery in Ireland
VIII–Eliz. Henry VIII to 18th Elizabeth, ed. J. morrin (dublin, 1862)
CPR Calendar of the patent rolls […], 1232–[1509], 53 vols
(london, 1911)
CR Close rolls of the reign of Henry III, 14 vols (london,
1902–38)
CS Chronicum Scotorum, ed. W.m. hennessy (london, 1866)
CStM Chartularies of Saint Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, ed. J.t.
Gilbert, 2 vols ( london, 1884–6)
dias dublin institute for advanced studies
DIB Dictionary of Irish biography, ed. J. mcGuire and J.
Quinn, 9 vols (cambridge, 2009)
DIHS Documents illustrative of the history of Scotland, 1286–
1306, ed. J. stevenson, 2 vols (edinburgh, 1870)
DIL Dictionary of the Irish language and Contributions to a
dictionary of the Irish language (dublin, 1913–76; compact
ed., 1983)
Dowdall deeds Dowdall deeds, ed. charles mcneill and a.J. otway-
ruthven (dublin, 1960)
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xvii
Abbreviations xvii
dugdale, William dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. caley et al.,

Monasticon 6 vols in 8 (london, 1817–30)
EC Études Celtiques
eets early english text society
EHR The English Historical Review (1886–)
ellis, Original h. ellis (ed.), Original letters illustrative of English history,
letters 2nd ser., 4 vols (london, 1827)
Extents Ir. mon. Extents of Irish monastic possessions, 1540–1541 […], ed.
possessions n.B. White (dublin, 1943)
Fél Félire Óengusso Céli Dé: the martyrology of Oengus the
Culdee, ed. W. stokes (london, 1905)
Foedera t. rymer, Foedera […], ed. a. clarke and F. holbrooke, 4
vols in 7 (london, 1816–69)
Gilbert, Facsimiles J.t. Gilbert (ed.), Facsimiles of national manuscripts of
Ireland […], 4 pts in 5 vols (dublin, 1874–84)
Gilbert, Hist. & J.t. Gilbert (ed.), Historic and municipal documents of
mun. docs Ireland, AD1172–1320, from the archives of the city of
Dublin (london, 1870)
Giraldi Cambrensis Giraldi Cambrensis opera, ed. J.s. Brewer, J.F. dimock and
opera G.F. Warner, 8 vols (london, 1861–91)
Giraldus, Expug. Giraldus cambrensis, Expugnatio Hibernica: the conquest
Hib. of Ireland, ed. and trans. a.B. scott and F.X. martin
(dublin, 1978)
Giraldus, Topog. Giraldus cambrensis, The topography of Ireland, trans. J.J.
Hib. o’meara (dundalk, 1951)
hmc historical manuscripts commission (royal commission
on historical manuscripts)
ias irish archaeological society
IER Irish Ecclesiastical Record (1864–)
IGT ‘irish grammatical tracts’, ed. o. Bergin in supplements to
Ériu, 8 (1916), Ériu, 9 (1921–3), Ériu, 10 (1926–8), Ériu,
14 (1946), Ériu, 17 (1955)
IHS Irish Historical Studies
ihta irish historic towns atlas
imc Coimisiún Láimhscríbhinní na hÉireann (irish manuscripts
commission)
Inqs & extents Inquisitions and extents of medieval Ireland, ed. p.
dryburgh and B. smith (london, 2007)
Ir. Geneal. Irish Genealogist: Official Organ of the Irish Genealogical
Research Society (london, 1937–).
Ir. mon. deeds, Irish monastic and episcopal deeds, AD1200–1600 […], ed.
1200–1600 n.B. White (dublin, 1936)
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xviii
xviii Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
Ir. parl. h.G. richardson and G.o. sayles, The Irish parliament in
the Middle Ages (philadelphia, 1952)
Irish texts Irish texts, ed. J. Fraser, p. Grosjean and J.G. o’Keeffe, 5
fasicles (london, 1931–4)
its irish texts society (vol. 1–, london, 1899–)
JCHAS Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society
(1892–)
JCS Journal of Celtic Studies, 3 vols (1949–82)
JGAHS Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society
(1900–)
JKAHS Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society
(1968–)
JLAHS Journal of the County Louth Archaeological and Historical
Society (1904–)
JRSAI Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
Kr King’s remembrancer
Liber primus Liber primus Kilkenniensis, ed. c. mcneill (dublin, 1931)
Kilkenniensis
LL The Book of Leinster, ed. r.i. Best, o. Bergin, m.a.
o’Brien and a. o’sullivan, 6 vols (dublin, 1954–83)
Llanthony cartularies The Irish cartularies of Llanthony prima and secunda, e. st
John Brooks (dublin, 1953)
LMG Leabhar Mór na nGenealach: The Great Book of Irish
genealogies compiled (1645–66) by Dubhaltach Mac
Fhirbhisigh, ed. nollaig Ó muraíle, 5 vols (dublin, 2003–4)
LU Lebor na hUidre/Book of the Dun Cow, ed. r.i. Best and
o. Bergin (dublin, 1929)
macl edward maclysaght, Irish families: their names, arms and
origins (dublin, 1957; third revised ed., 1972)
marlborough, ‘henry marleburrough’s chronicle of ireland [1285–1421]’,
Chronicle ed. J. Ware in Ancient Irish histories, 2 vols (dublin, 1809),
ii, pp 1–32
MD The Metrical Dindshenchas, ed. e. Gwynn, todd lecture
series, 8–12 (dublin, 1903–35)
MGH SSRG Monumenta Germaniae historica, scriptores rerum
Germanicarum (hanover, 1871–)
MGH SSRM Monumenta Germaniae historica: scriptores rerum
Merovingicarum (hanover, 1885–)
ml. the milan Glosses on the psalms, Bibl. ambr. c301, in
W. stokes and J. strachan (eds), Thesaurus
palaeohibernicus, 2 vols (cambridge, 1901–3; repr. dublin,
1975), i, pp 7–483
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xix
Abbreviations xix
mmis mediaeval and modern irish series (vol. 1–, dublin,

1931–)
nai national archives of ireland [formerly proi], dublin
nas national archives of scotland
NHI, i A new history of Ireland, i: prehistoric and early Ireland, ed.
d. Ó cróinín (oxford, 1987; repr. with bibliographical
supp., 1993)
NHI, ii A new history of Ireland, ii: medieval Ireland, 1169–1534,
ed. a. cosgrove (oxford, 2005)
NHI, ix A new history of Ireland, ix: maps, genealogies, lists: a
companion to Irish history, part II, ed. t.W. moody, F.X.
martin and F.J. Byrne (oxford, 1984)
nli national library of ireland, dublin
NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. philip schaff and
henry Wace, 38 vols (edinburgh and Grand rapids, mi,
1886–1900)
ODNB Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest
times to the year 2000, ed. h.c.G. matthew and B.h.
harrison, 61 vols (oxford, 2004)
oh John o’hart, Irish pedigrees or the origin and stem of the
Irish nation, 2 vols (1st ed. 1875; 3rd ed. 1887; american
ed., new york, 1915)
orpen, Normans G.h. orpen, Ireland under the Normans, 4 vols (oxford,
1911–20; new ed., 4 vols in 1, dublin, 2005)
otway-ruthven, a.J. otway-ruthven, A history of medieval Ireland, with an
Med. Ire. introduction by Kathleen Hughes (london, 1968; rev. ed.,
1980)
P&P Past & Present: a Journal of Scientific History (1952–)
Parl. writs Parliamentary writs and writs of military summons, ed. F.
palgrave, 2 vols in 4 (london, 1827–34)
Parls & councils Parliaments and councils of mediaeval Ireland, ed. h.G.
richardson and G.o. sayles (dublin, 1947)
PBA Proceedings of the British Academy
Peritia Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland
(1982–)
Pipe roll 14 John ‘the irish pipe roll of 14 John’, ed. o. davies and d.B.
Quinn in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3rd ser., 4, supp.
(July 1941)
PKCI A roll of the proceedings of the king’s council in Ireland […],
1392–93, ed. J. Graves (london, 1877)
PMLA Proceedings of the Modern Language Association (1884–)
PRIA Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1836–)
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xx
xx Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
pro public record office, london [now included within tna]

proi public record office of ireland, dublin [now nai]
proni public record office of northern ireland, Belfast
RBK The red book of the earls of Kildare, ed. G. mac niocaill
(dublin, 1964)
RBO The red book of Ormond […], ed. n.B. White (dublin, 1932)
RC Revue Celtique
RCH Rotulorum patentium et clausorum cancellariae Hiberniae
calendarium, Hen. II–Hen. VII, ed. e. tresham (dublin,
1828)
RChart. Rotuli chartarum in turri Londinensi asservati, 1199–1216,
ed. t.d. hardy (london, 1837)
RDKPRI Reports of the deputy keeper of the public records in Ireland
(dublin, 1869–)
Reg. Alen A calendar of Archbishop Alen’s register, c.1172–1534, ed.
c. mcneill (dublin, 1950)
Reg. All Hallows Registrum prioratus Omnium Sanctorum juxta Dublin, ed.
r. Butler (dublin, 1845)
Reg. Gormanston Calendar of the Gormanston register, ed. J. mills and m.J.
mcenery (dublin, 1916)
Reg. Kilmainham Registrum de Kilmainham: register of the chapter acts of the
hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in Ireland, 1326–1339
[…], ed. c. mcneill (dublin, 1943)
Reg. Mey Registrum Iohannis Mey: The register of John Mey,
archbishop of Armagh, 1443–1456, ed. W.G.h. Quigley and
e.F.d. roberts (Belfast, 1972)
Reg. St John the Register of the hospital of S. John the Baptist without the
Baptist Newgate, Dublin, ed. e. st John Brooks (dublin, 1936)
Reg. St Thomas Register of the abbey of St Thomas the Martyr, Dublin, ed.
J.t. Gilbert (london, 1889)
Reg. Swayne The register of John Swayne, archbishop of Armagh and
primate of Ireland, 1418–39, ed. d.a. chart (Belfast, 1935)
Reg. Tristernagh Register of the priory of the blessed Virgin Mary at
Tristernagh: Registrum cartarum monasterii B.V. Mariae de
Tristernagh, ed. m.v. clarke (dublin, 1941)
Rep. HMC Reports of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
(london, 1870–)
rhs royal historical society
ria royal irish academy
RLC, 1204–24 Rotuli litterarum clausarum in turri Londinensi asservati,
1204–24, ed. t.d. hardy, 2 vols (london, 1833–44)
RLP Rotuli litterarum patentium in turri Londinensi asservati, ed.
t.d. hardy (london, 1835)
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xxi
Abbreviations xxi
Rot. obl. et fin. Rotuli de Oblatis et finibus in Turri Londinensi asservati,

tempore regis Johannis, ed. thomas duffus hardy
(london, 1835).
Rot. parl. Rotuli parliamentorum, ed. J. strachey et al., 6 vols
(london, 1783)
Rot. selecti Rotuli selecti ad res Anglicas et Hibernicas spectantes, ex
archivis in Domo Capitulari West-Monasteriensi, deprompti,
ed. Joseph hunter (london, 1843)
rs The chronicles and memorials of Great Britain and Ireland
during the Middle Ages, published under the direction of the
Master of the Rolls (‘rolls series’), 99 vols (london, 1858–96)
rsai royal society of antiquaries of ireland
SEA Scottish episcopal acta, ed. norman shead, i: the twelfth
century (Woodbridge, forthcoming)
sg. Glosses on priscian, codex sangallensis no. 904, in W.
stokes and J. strachan (eds), Thesaurus palaeohibernicus, 2
vols (cambridge, 1901–3; repr. dublin, 1975), vol. 2, 49–224
SHR Scottish Historical Review (1903–28; 1947–)
simms, Kings Katharine simms, From kings to warlords: the changing
political structure of Gaelic Ireland in the later Middle Ages
(Woodbridge, 1987)
SNG K. mccone, d. mcmanus, c. Ó hÁinle, n. Williams and
l. Breatnach (eds), Stair na Gaeilge in ómós do Phádraig Ó
Fiannachta (maynooth, 1994)
SP Hen. VIII State papers, Henry VIII, 11 vols (london, 1830–52)
Stat. at large Statutes at large passed in the parliaments held in Ireland,
1310–1800, 20 vols (dublin, 1786–1800)
Stat. Edw. IV, pt 1 Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland, first to the twelfth
years of the reign of King Edward the fourth, ed. h.F. Berry
(dublin, 1914)
Stat. Edw. IV, pt 2 Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland, twelfth and
thirteenth to the twenty-first and twenty-second years of the
reign of King Edward the fourth, ed. J.F. morrissey
(dublin, 1939)
Stat. Hen. VI Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland, reign of King
Henry the sixth, ed. h.F. Berry (dublin, 1910)
Stat. John–Hen. V Statutes and ordinances and acts of the parliament of Ireland,
King John to Henry V, ed. h.F. Berry (dublin, 1907)
Stat. of the realm Statutes of the realm, ed. a. luders et al., 11 vols in 12
(london, 1810–28)
Stat. Ric. III–Hen. Statute rolls of the Irish parliament, Richard III–Henry VIII,
VIII ed. p. connolly (dublin, 2002)
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xxii
xxii Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
Studies Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review (1912–)

TBC 1 cecile o’rahilly, Táin Bó Cúailnge: recension I (dublin,
1976)
TBC LL cecile o’rahilly, Táin Bó Cúalnge: from the Book of
Leinster (dublin, 1967)
TBC St. cecile o’rahilly, The Stowe version of Táin Bó Cuailnge
(dublin, 1961)
tcd trinity college dublin
Thes. W. stokes and J. strachan, Thesaurus palaeohibernicus, 2
vols (cambridge, 1901–3; repr. dublin, 1975)
tna the national archives of the united Kingdom [including
former pro], Kew
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1872–)
VCH The Victoria county history of the counties of England
(london, 1900–)
Wb Glosses on the pauline epistles, codex paulinus
Wirziburgensis, in W. stokes and J. strachan (eds),
Thesaurus palaeohibernicus, 2 vols (cambridge, 1901–3;
repr. dublin, 1975), vol. 1, 499–712
WHR Welsh History Review; Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru (1960–)
ZCP Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xxiii
contributors
edel Bhreathnach is deputy director of the mícheál Ó cléirigh institute at

university college dublin.
damian BracKen is a senior lecturer in the school of history at university
college cork.
caoimhín Breatnach is a senior lecturer in the school of irish, celtic studies,
irish Folklore and linguistics at university college dublin.
dauvit Broun is professor of scottish history at the university of Glasgow.
John carey is a statutory lecturer in early and medieval irish at university
college cork.
hoWard B. clarKe is professor emeritus of medieval socio-economic history at
university college dublin.
peter crooKs is an irish research council cara post-doctoral fellow at
trinity college dublin and the university of east anglia.
Bernadette cunninGham is deputy librarian at the royal irish academy,
dublin.
seÁn duFFy is associate professor of medieval history at trinity college dublin.
thomas Finan is assistant professor in the department of history at st louis
university, missouri.
elizaBeth FitzpatricK is associate professor of historical archaeology in the
school of Geography and archaeology at the national university of ireland
Galway.
Áine Foley holds a phd in medieval history from trinity college dublin.
roBin Frame is professor emeritus of history at the university of durham.
raymond Gillespie teaches in the department of history at the national
university of ireland maynooth.
stephanie hayes-healy lectures in the celtic studies program at st michael’s
college, university of toronto.
Bart JasKi is keeper of manuscripts at the university library, utrecht.
annette Kehnel is professor of medieval history at the university of
mannheim.
xxiii
Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page xxiv
xxiv Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
daniel m c carthy is emeritus fellow of trinity college dublin, where he was

senior lecturer at the department of computer science.
damian m c manus is professor of early irish at trinity college dublin.
ailBhe m ac shamhrÁin † led the monasticon hibernicum project (funded by
the irish research council); he passed away in June 2011.
Kevin murray lectures in the department of early and medieval irish at
university college cork.
donnchadh Ó corrÁin is emeritus professor of medieval history at university
college cork.
dÁiBhí Ó crÓinín is professor of history at the national university of ireland
Galway.
raGhnall Ó Floinn is head of collections at the national museum of ireland.
eoin o ’ Flynn holds a phd in medieval history from trinity college dublin.
pÁdraiG Ó machÁin is professor of modern irish at university college cork.
nollaiG Ó muraíle is a senior lecturer in the school of irish at the national
university of ireland Galway.
helen perros-Walton is a teaching assistant professor at north carolina state
university.
salvador ryan is professor of ecclesiastical history at st patrick’s college
maynooth.
annGret simms is professor emeritus of historical geography at university
college dublin.
Brendan smith is reader in history at the university of Bristol.
catherine sWiFt is director of irish studies at mary immaculate college,
university of limerick.
colin veach is a lecturer in medieval history at the university of hull.
Freya verstraten veach is a research associate in the department of history,
university of hull.
Bernadette Williams is an independent scholar who holds a phd in medieval
history from trinity college dublin.
aleX WoolF is a senior lecturer in the school of history at the university of st
andrews.
Part I(a) New_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:53 Page 1
Part I. PrInc es
Medieval Irish genealogies and genetics
B A RT JA S K I
It is unusual that medieval Irish historians make a contribution to fields that are
usually regarded as ‘hard’ science. the exceptions used to be found in the fields
of archaeology and astronomy, but in the last decade this has been augmented
with genetic research. Katharine simms has acted as a pioneer among medieval
Irish historians by her contribution to two articles: ‘a Y-chromosome signature
of hegemony in Gaelic Ireland’ (2006) and ‘Genetic investigation of the
patrilineal kinship structure of early medieval Ireland’ (2008).1
these two publications are widely cited in literature about genetic research,
but their value for our understanding of medieval Irish history is yet to be
analysed. Genetic research with regard to the origins of the celts has been
enjoying a wider appeal, and the three articles dedicated to genetic research in
Celtic from the West (2010) can be regarded as a sign that in celtic studies the
results of genetic research are taken seriously.2 Genetic research can take on
many forms and methods, but for medieval Irish historians investigations
pertaining to Dna in Y-chromosomes are among the most interesting, as they
give data about male lineages that play such an important role in medieval Irish
(political) society. Mitochondrial Dna, which is inherited through female
descent, can also yield information of interest.
the aim of my essay is to discuss some of the opportunities genetic research
offers to medieval Irish historical studies, and a number of pitfalls of which
genetic researchers should be aware with regard to, for example, the use of
sources and methodology. In order to do so, I give some basic information about
genetic research, as understood by me as a historian who tries to make sense of
scientific publications of genetic research without a copy of Genetics for dummies
at hand.
the non-recombining part of the Y-chromosome (the male sex chromosome)
is passed on from father to son. Mutation causes differences in Dna sequences
of individuals, which can be revealed by Dna testing, and be classified
1 Laoise t. Moore, Brian Mcevoy, eleanor cape, Katharine simms and Daniel G. Bradley,
‘a Y-chromosome signature of hegemony in Gaelic Ireland’, American Journal of Human
Genetics, 78 (2006), 334–8; Brian Mcevoy, Katharine simms and Daniel G. Bradley, ‘Genetic
investigation of the patrilineal kinship structure of early medieval Ireland’, American Journal
of Physical Anthropology, 136 (2008), 415–22. all the articles in journals on genetic research
are also published online. 2 Barry cunliffe and John t. Koch (eds), Celtic from the West:
alternative perspectives from archaeology, genetics and literature (Oxford, 2010). the three
articles are ellen c. røyrvik, ‘Western celts? a genetic impression of Britain in atlantic
europe’ (pp 83–106); Brian P. Mcevoy and Daniel G. Bradley, ‘Irish genetics and celts’ (pp
107–20); stephen Oppenheimer, ‘a reanalysis of multiple prehistoric immigrations to Britain
3
4 Bart Jaski
accordingly. Mutations can occur at various loci on the Y-chromosome. a

number of variants (alleles) at certain loci can be used as genetic markers for
ancestry. One of these types of markers is called a single nucleotide poly-
morphism (snP), in which there is a difference in a single unit (either adenine
(a), cystosine (c), guanine (G) or thymine (t), the four bases in our Dna) in a
Dna sequence, for example aGct instead of aGtt. all modern males who
share this difference share the same male ancestor.3 such male groups can be
classified in so-called haplogroups, which themselves are subdivided into smaller
units, haplotypes. the development of haplogroups can be visualized in a tree-
like structure with stems and branches, not unlike a genealogical table. certain
mutations have no visible effect on a person’s looks or health; others can affect
matters such as hair colour or cause hereditary diseases such as cystic fibrosis,
phenylketonuria or haemochromatosis.4 Worldwide genetic research has shown
that most men belonging to a certain haplogroup were historically often confined
to one or a few regions. For example, Western europe is mostly inhabited by
men belonging to haplogroup r1b, specifically the ‘branch’ r1b1b1a (those
within rb1 with marker M412, which signifies a particular mutation).5 the
evolution of haplogroups by analysing snPs is crucial for mapping the genetic
history of the human race and its spread over the continents. However, due to
the slow mutation rate of snPs, few haplogroups have developed in the last
thousand years. Of all the Irish men who have Gaelic surnames and whose
ancestors came to Ireland before recorded history (that is, before the fifth
century), the greater part belong to the same haplogroup, and few to others. to
distinguish between those who belong to one haplogroup, researchers analyse the
relatively fast-evolving short tandem repeats. an str is a sequence of
nucleotides that are duplicated next to each other, two times or more; for
example, aGctaGctaGct, resulting from errors in Dna reduplication.
there are more than two hundred strs on the chromosome. a combination of
several Y-chromosome strs can be used to define a haplotype, a branch within
a haplogroup. Various models exist by which the average mutation rates of snPs
and strs can be estimated. several factors may slow down average mutation
rates, such as relative genetic isolation. From the mutation rate, one can estimate
the time of the most recent ancestor (tMra), that is, when the man lived in
whom a certain mutation first manifested itself, and from whom all others with
the same mutation descend.
In a study published in 2000, it appeared that the population in Ireland with
Gaelic surnames, especially in connacht and Munster, was genetically most
strongly related to the Basques, judging from the snPs and strs they had in
and Ireland aimed at identifying the celtic contributions’ (pp 121–50). 3 certain mutations
can occur at random among various males, but other markers will show whether they are
genetically closely related or not. 4 Mcevoy and Bradley, ‘Irish genetics’, p. 108. 5 nathalie
M. Myers et al., ‘a major Y-chromosome haplogroup r1b Holocene era founder effect in
Medieval Irish genealogies and genetics 5
common.6 this haplotype, which to a smaller degree is also present in the

population inhabiting the atlantic coast from southern spain to northern
scotland, was subsequently named the atlantic Modal Haplotype.7 those
Basques and Irish carrying the atlantic Modal Haplotype Y-chromosome reflect
the effects of genetic drift in both regions: a relatively stable genetic environment
due to relative isolation. their common heritage may date back to the neolithic
(before the Bronze age beginning c.3500Bc). From genetic research among the
present Irish population, there is no evidence of other major migrations of males
afterwards that can be connected with putative migrations of celtic-speaking
peoples.8 this has given the discussion about the coming of celtic language and
‘celtic’ culture to Ireland a new dimension, and has been linked to other theories
as presented in Celtic from the West. even the medieval Irish origin legend has
been drawn into the debate, since it claims that the last people to colonize the
island crossed the sea from spain under the leadership of Míl of spain.9 Yet it
has long been recognized that this literary ‘tradition’ derives from Orosius.10
those males sharing the marker M412, as mentioned above, and additionally
L11 (associated with the atlantic Modal Haplotype), s116, M52911 and finally
the marker M222 (classified as r1b1b1a1b2a), form a specific genetic subclade
originating in Ireland. It largely falls together with the Irish Modal Haplotype as
discussed in ‘a Y-chromosome signature of hegemony in Gaelic Ireland’ of
2006,12 which again was mainly identified by the team from trinity college
Dublin by using str-markers.
the trinity team took their Y-chromosome samples from 796 males, among
whom a distinct group revealed itself, of which the genetic characteristics were
also found among men who descended from Irish immigrants overseas, for
example in the United states. Further investigation claimed that these men
central and Western europe’, European Journal of Human Genetics, 19 (2011), 95–101.
6 emmeline W. Hill, Mark a. Jobling and Daniel G. Bradley, ‘Y-chromosome variation and
Irish origins: a pre-neolithic gene gradation starts in the near east and culminates in western
Ireland’, Nature, 404 (2000), 351–2. 7 James F. Wilson et al., ‘Genetic evidence for different
male and female roles during cultural transitions in the British Isles’, Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 98:9 (2001), 5078–83; røyrvik,
‘Western celts?’, p. 94; Mcevoy and Bradley, ‘Irish genetics’, pp 108–14, who point to the
differences in mammals and plantlife between Ireland and Britain, which suggest a different
post-glacial colonization of the two islands. 8 Brian Mcevoy, Martin richards, Peter Forster
and Daniel G. Bradley, ‘the longue durée of genetic ancestry: multiple genetic marker systems
and celtic origins on the atlantic façade of europe’, American Journal of Human Genetics,
75 (2004), 693–702. 9 Mcevoy and Bradley, ‘Irish genetics’, p. 110; Oppenheimer, ‘a
reanalysis’, pp 130, 144. 10 see, for example, r. Mark scowcroft, ‘Leabhar gabhála, part II:
the growth of the tradition’, Ériu, 39 (1988), 1–66 at 14–15; see further Bart Jaski, ‘the Irish
origin legend: seven unexplored sources’ in John carey (ed.), Lebor gabála Érenn: textual
history and pseudohistory (London, 2009), pp 48–75 at pp 55–68, for more on the link between
the Irish and the Basques and spain in the Irish origin legend. 11 see the chart in Myers et
al., ‘a major Y-chromosome haplogroup r1b’, 97. 12 John Mcewan, ‘r1b1c7 haplogroup
M222 snP aka north West Irish Variety, IMH and r1bstr19Irish’ (2006), see http://
mcewanjc.org/M222.htm, retrieved 30 nov. 2010.
6 Bart Jaski
shared surnames that, according to the medieval Irish genealogies, all belonged
to the Uí néill, the descendants of niall noígiallach. Medieval Irish sources
claim that this niall ‘of the nine Hostages’ was an Irish king who lived in the
fifth century. Many royal and noble families in the north-west and midlands
considered themselves to be his descendants. the northern and southern Uí
néill dominated Irish politics well into the tenth century. the genetic
researchers compared the genetic legacy of niall with that of Genghis Khan, and
niall even made it to many newspapers in Ireland and abroad as the progenitor
of as many as three million men worldwide.13
the publication of the research by the trinity team shows the possibilities of
genetic research for medieval Irish history, but also reveals a number of
limitations, of which the researchers themselves were no doubt aware. central to
the discussion is the importance of surnames, which tend to be passed on from
father to son.14 In Ireland, surnames were formed from the tenth century
onwards. they are all of the type Mac X or Ua (later Ó) X: ‘son of X’ and
‘Grandson/Descendant of X’. this clearly refers to a male ancestor, rather than,
for example, a profession as found in english surnames such as smith, Miller
and Fisher. all genuine members of those who hold the same surname are thus
genealogically and genetically related in the male line. the key word here is
‘genuine’, for a son could be adopted or be fathered by an outsider but still carry
the surname; individuals or families could adopt their lord’s surname to show
their association to him or to further their own careers;15 or surnames could be
corrupted by anglicization, so that they were spelled the same as unrelated
surnames. apart from that, in various places during various times the same
surname could be formed in Ireland, such as Ua (Ó) Murchada or Mac
Murchada (Murphy, the most common Irish surname).16
there are also problems from a genetic point of view. Differences in, for
example, which markers are researched and how many, and the number of
samples taken from a specific region or country, are among the factors that may
cause uneven results in establishing certain haplogroups or haplotypes and their
geographical distribution. More careful and extensive sampling caters for more
stable results. as rapidly expanding sciences, genetic genealogy and phylo-
geography (which tries to explain the geographical spread of haplogroups
or smaller genetically defined groups) have also rapidly developed new
13 For example, ‘High King niall: the most fertile man in Ireland’, Sunday Times, 15 Jan.
2006. 14 see turi e. King and Mark a. Jobling, ‘What’s in a name? Y-chromosomes,
surnames and the genetic genealogy revolution’, Trends in Genetics, 25 (2009), 351–60.
15 catharine nash, ‘Irish origins, celtic origins’, Irish Studies Review, 14 (2006), 11–37 at 20,
calls this ‘strategic surname fluidity’. 16 see Brian Mcevoy and Daniel G. Bradley, ‘Y-
chromosomes and the extent of patrilineal ancestry in Irish surnames’, Human Genetics, 119
(2006), 212–19 at 215; turi e. King and Mark a. Jobling, ‘Founders, drift and infidelity: the
relationship between Y-chromosome diversity and patrilineal surnames’, Molecular Biological
Evolution, 26 (2009), 1093–1102 at 1100, for major clusters in other frequent Irish surnames
classifications. these can be difficult to use or to match with older classifications,

especially for non-experts. For medieval Irish historians, this may cause troubles
combining the various findings of genetic research with each other and with
other historical research. Geneticists are often not sufficiently historically trained
to deal with historical sources and debates with confidence, and often rely on the
works of John O’Hart or edward MacLysaght for information about Irish
surnames.17 However useful these publications are, they are not without errors,
mostly do not refer to sources and mainly focus on the most noteworthy
examples of a certain surname. Medieval and later sources can give additional
examples of the existence of a certain surname of which O’Hart and MacLysaght
were not aware or chose not to discuss. We may take the discussion of the Irish
Modal Haplotype (IMH) as an example of how genetic investigation can enrich
our view of medieval Ireland, but also of the dangers of overlooking important
evidence.
the distribution of the IMH, which is so strongly associated with the Uí
néill, has its peak in north-western Ireland and northern connacht, but is also
present among the population of western and central scotland. this does not
match the territories of the northern and southern Uí néill in the early
medieval period, which did not include parts of scotland,18 whereas north-
western Ireland was mainly the ancestral territory of the cenél conaill. Indeed,
in the sample population of the trinity team, only surnames belonging to the
cenél conaill are represented by four individuals or more: (O’)Gallagher (12
samples), (O’)Boyle (9), (O’)Doherty (5) and O’Donnell (4).19 the cenél
neógain, according to the medieval genealogies the descendants of conall’s
brother eógan, are represented by the surnames Bradley, Mccaul, Gormley and
O’Kane.20 If we take these results as our basis, it appears that the IMH is not
such as ryan, O’sullivan, O’neill and Byrne. 17 OH; MacL; edward MacLysaght, More
Irish families: a new revised and enlarged edition of More Irish families, incorporating
supplement to Irish families, with an essay on Irish chieftainries (Dublin, 1982). I cite from
these works below for easy reference, but for the genealogical relationships I base myself on
85 genealogical tables I compiled myself: see Bart Jaski, ‘the traditional rule of succession in
early Ireland’ (2 vols, PhD, tcD, 1994), ii, pp 67–188. this thesis was supervised by
Katharine simms. 18 On the Irish colonization of scotland, mainly by the Dál riata from
north-east Ulster, but in which the Uí néill also played a minor role: see John Bannerman,
Studies in the history of Dalriada (edinburgh, 1974). 19 according to the genealogies,
O’Gallagher (Ua Gallchobair) ultimately descends from Máel cobo (d. 613), grandson of
ainmire (d. 568); canon (Ua canannáin; one sample) from Domnall (d. 643), also grandson
of ainmire, and O’Boyle (Ua Baigill), O’Doherty (Ua Dochartaig) and O’Donnell (Ua
Domnaill) from ainmire’s brother Lugaid. the dates in the annals have been based on Dan
Mc carthy, ‘chronological synchronization of the Irish annals’, http://www.irish-
annals.cs.tcd.ie/, retrieved 11 Mar. 2011. 20 according to the genealogies, Bradley (Ua
Brolcháin) ultimately descends from suibne Menn (d. 628) son of Fiachna son of Feradach
son of Muiredach son of eógan; Mccaul (Mac cathmaíl) from suibne Menn’s brother
Fiachra; O’Gormley (Ua Gairmlegaig) from Moan son of Muiredach son of eógan, and
O’Kane (Ua catháin) from Muirchertach Mac ercae (d. 532) son of Muiredach son of eógan.
8 Bart Jaski
concurrent with the Uí néill, for the southern Uí néill are excluded. there is
one IMH sample concerning a Molloy, but one cannot draw conclusions from
one sample, and besides this, the surname Molloy can both derive from Ua Máel
Muaid of cenél Fiachach meic néill of the southern Uí néill and from Ua
Máel Áeda (Miley, Mullee, Molloy) in connacht.21 Other surnames that belong
to the southern Uí néill (for example, Ua Máel sechnaill, Ua Máel Uidir, Ua
Lorcáin, Ua caíndelbáin, Ua ciarda, Mac carrgamna, Mac cuinn, Ua
Muirecáin, Ua Lachtnáin, Ua congalaig, Mac Gilla sechnaill) are not
mentioned in the publication by the trinity team.
Yet whereas the southern Uí néill have to be excluded on the basis of the
genetic research, the Uí Briúin of connacht, the descendants of niall’s brother
Brión according to the genealogies, have to be included, seeing that the surnames
O’reilly, O’rourke, McGovern and O’connor belong to the IMH.22 the first
three belong to the Uí Briúin Bréifne of north-east connacht and further
eastwards, and O’connor to the Uí Briúin aí, who were settled in and around
co. roscommon. the first three are also rare surnames, only O’rourke was also
formed independently in Munster.23 the surname O’connor was also formed in
Munster and Leinster, the holders being of royal or noble descent.24 regarding
the fact that the one sample of O’connor belonged to the IMH and was probably
sampled in connacht, it seems that we deal here with an O’connor of the Uí
Briúin, but there remains a margin of uncertainty. so, although the evidence is
not as conclusive as one would want it, based as it is on only four samples, we
may posit that the descendants of niall’s brother Brión are included among the
IMH samples, and this points to the northern Uí néill and the Uí Briúin being
genetically and genealogically related.25
If this is accepted, it is not quite correct to compare niall’s genetic legacy
with that of Genghis Khan (although it was instrumental in bringing the
research to the attention of a wider audience); it is rather one of his forefathers.
21 OH, pp 590–2; MacL, pp 225–6. 22 O’reilly (Ua raigillig) descends from Máel Mórda,
grandson of Dub Doithre (d. 743), according to the genealogies a descendant of Áed Finn son
of Brión Fergna (a quo Uí Briúin Bréifne), a brother of eochaid tirmcharna (d. 556); see OH,
pp 743–7 for their pedigree until the nineteenth century. O’rourke (Ua ruairc) descends from
sellachán, grandson of Dub Doithre, see OH, pp 747–54 and Dermot Mac Dermot, Mac
Dermot of Moylurg. The story of a Connacht family (naas [1996]), pp 430–2, for their pedigree
until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. McGovern (Mac samradáin) descends from
Brénnan son of Brión Fergna. O’connor (Ua conchobair) descends from eochaid
tirmcharna. 23 For Ó ruairc, a minor family of the Érainn in Munster, see Leabhar Mór na
nGenelach: the great book of Irish genealogies compiled (1645–66) by Dubhaltach Mac Firbhisigh,
ed. nollaig Ó Muraíle (5 vols, Dublin, 2004), ii, p. 499 (§574.6–7). I cite this edition here for
easy reference; there are other (mostly earlier) genealogical manuscripts, see ibid., pp 12–13.
For the medieval Irish genealogies in general, see Donnchadh Ó corráin, ‘creating the past:
the early Irish genealogical tradition’, Peritia, 12 (1998), 177–208, and Bart Jaski, ‘the
genealogical section of the Psalter of cashel’, Peritia, 17–18 (2003–4), 295–337. 24 Leabhar
Mór na nGenelach, ed. Ó Muraíle, iv, pp 85–6. 25 as also noted in edwin B. O’neill and
John D. McLaughlin, ‘Insight into O’neills of Ireland from Dna testing’, Journal of Genetic
Indeed, this agrees with the tMra, which was calculated to 1,730 years ago
(c.aD265), using a mutation rate of 1 per 2,131 years for a 17-marker haplotype
such as the IMH.26 according to legend, this is close to the time of conn
cétchathach (‘of the Hundred Battles’), who gave his name to the province of
connacht and to Leth cuinn, the northern half of Ireland, which was dominated
by the Uí néill in the early medieval period.27 another brother of niall according
to the medieval sources was Fiachra, the eponymous ancestor of the Uí
Fhiachrach. among the IMH samples is one with the surname Hynes (Ua
heidhin) of Uí Fhiachrach aidne of southern connacht.28 Other research also
includes an O’shaughnessy (Ua sechnussaig) and an O’Dowd (Ua Dubda), also
of the Uí Fhiachrach.29 Hence the genetic research strongly suggests that the
northern Uí néill and the Uí Briúin and Uí Fhiachrach of the connachta were
related to each other in the male line, and this is an important conclusion.
With other IMH samples, the uncertainty as to which population-group a
bearer of a particular surname belongs is not so easy to solve. For example,
Donnelly (Ua Dongaile) may belong to cenél neógain,30 or to the Uí
Fhiachrach.31 Quinn (Ua cuinn) is a quite common surname, for example
attested in tyrone, but of unknown descent,32 yet Ua cuinn is also listed as chief
of clann cúáin of Uí Fhiachrach Muaide, also of unknown descent.33 the
surname Devlin is current in connacht and among the cenél neógain.34
campbell may be the same as Mccaul (Mac cathmaíl) of cenél neógain, but it
may also be of scottish origin.35 With regard to McMenamin (Mac Menman) we
can only say that they probably belonged to the northern Uí néill.36
In certain cases, we may even deal with surnames outside the northern Uí
néill and connacht. the surname Flynn (Ua Flainn) is current among the Uí
Genealogy, 2 (2006), 18–26 at 22. 26 Moore et al., ‘a Y-chromosome signature’, 337.
27 see, for example, Bart Jaski, Early Irish kingship and succession (Dublin, 1990), pp 218–21;
see also pp 191–228 for the formation of various dynasties from one ancestor due to collateral
succession and acquiring lordships outside the territory of the kindred. 28 Descends from
colmán (d. 622), according to the genealogies a descendant of eochaid Becc son of nath Í son
of Fiachra (a quo Uí Fhiachrach), brother of Brión and niall. 29 O’neill and McLaughlin,
‘Insight into O’neills’, 22; see further below. according to the genealogies, Ua sechnussaig
descends from Áed, brother of colmán (d. 622), Ua Dubda from Fiachra ealgach (a quo Uí
Fhiachrach Muaide of northern connacht) son of nath Í. 30 Gilla Mac Liac Ua Donngaile,
lord of Fir Droma (Ligen), who died in 1177, descended from a son of Domnall (d. 915), the
brother of niall Glúndub (d. 919), whose pedigree is given below. 31 Leabhar Mór na
nGenelach, ed. Ó Muraíle, i, p. 622 (§275.13) (Ó Dúnghaile). 32 MacL, pp 251–2; see also
OH, p. 343 (Muinter Gillagáin of the conmaicne), pp 256–9 (Dál cais). 33 Leabhar Mór na
nGenelach, ed. Ó Muraíle, i, pp 615–16 (§272.8–12). 34 AC, 1248.9, 1316.5; MacL, pp 115–
16; see also Leabhar Mór na nGenelach, ed. Ó Muraíle, i, pp 321–2 (§133.7–143.3). 35 OH,
pp 391–2. 36 MacLysaght, More Irish families, pp 156–7, records that the surname is most
numerous in co. Donegal and west tyrone, and that in the Annals of Loch Cé for 1303
McMenamin is recorded as a follower of O’Donnell (Ua Domnaill) of cenél conaill. Yet the
name Menma figures in the genealogies of cenél Moain (related to O’Gormley) of cenél
neógain: see Leabhar Mór na nGenelach, ed. Ó Muraíle, i, pp 331–2 (§140.1–2), where is noted
that the descent of Muinter croidheagán is contested, they are either of cenél neógain or
10 Bart Jaski
Briúin, but also among the Uí thuirtri of airgialla, who lived to the west of
Lough neagh.37 (Mc)Kee (two samples; the same name as MacHugh, Hughson,
Hews(t)on, Hudson, Mccoy, Magee etc.) is also a very common surname.38 In
the northern part of Ireland it derives, among others, from Áed son of Pilib
(d. 1341/4) son of amlaíb (d. 1306) son of Donn Óc Mag Uidhir (Maguire)
(d. 1302), king of Fir Manach, a branch of the airgialla. But it is also found in
connacht,39 and among the cenél Maine of tethba (southern Uí néill), east of
the shannon.40 McManus (Mac Magnusa) may derive from Magnus, son of art
(d. 1371), son of the Pilib just mentioned above,41 but also from Magnus
(d. 1181), son of toirdelbach Mór Ua conchobair (king of connacht, 1106–56),
and forefather of the lords of tír tuathail in the fifteenth century.42 Finally, there
is the surname egan (Mac Áeducáin), a well-known legal family that belonged
to the Uí Maine of southern connacht, who according to the medieval
genealogists descended from colla fo chríth, one of the forefathers of the
airgialla.43 according to the medieval Irish historians, the airgialla descended
from three brothers, all named colla, whose father was the brother of Fiachu
sraibtine, niall noígiallach’s grandfather. However, even if other surnames
among the Uí Maine (for example, Ua nechtain, Ua Matudáin, Ua hUallacháin,
Ua Gébennaig, Ua cellaig) test IMH positive, this does not mean that the
descent of the Uí Maine from colla fo chríth is correct, merely that they are in
some way related to the northern Uí néill, Uí Briúin and Uí Fhiachrach.
Indeed, this applies to all relationships of which there are no trustworthy
historical sources, including that between the brothers niall, Brión and Fiachra,
and between conall and eógan.
notably absent from the list of IMH names is that of O’neill (Ua néill), the
descendants from niall Glúndub (king of tara, d. 919) which for most of the
later Middle ages was the primary family among the cenél neógain. edwin B.
O’neill and John D. McLaughlin, using as their basis the research from the
trinity team, analysed the data of forty-two anonymous males with the surname
O’neill from the northern part of Ireland. Of these, twelve belonged to the IMH
(also called the north-west Irish (nWI) Modal Haplotype), but thirty to what is
called the O’neill Variety, which does not belong to the IMH. since among these
thirty there is little genetic variation, the tMra was estimated to about aD900,
very close to the establishment of the surname. Yet the thirteen O’neills
cenél conaill. 37 Ua Flainn of síl Maílruain, named after the son of curnán (d. 555) son
of Áed (d. 575) son of eochaid tirmcharna (d. 556). cú Maige Ua Flainn, king of Derluis
(d. 1121), whose sons and brother were kings of Uí thuirtri; see OH, pp 452–3; MacL, pp 148–
9. 38 OH, p. 542, and p. 490 for the same surname among the Uí cheinnselaig of southern
Leinster; MacL, pp 148–9. 39 AC 1267.2, 1307.12 and 1312.4. a Mac aeda family is listed
among the Uí Briúin seóla (to which also O’Flaherty (Ua Flaithbertaig) belongs), see Leabhar
Mór na nGenelach, ed. Ó Muraíle, i, p. 443 (§201.6–202.4); MacL, pp 185–6. 40 see, for
example, Gilla Fiadnatán, son of Mac aeda, lord of Muinter tlamáin (d. 1155). 41 OH, p. 553;
MacL, p. 222. 42 AC 1411.21, 1460.8; MacL, p. 222. 43 OH, pp 438–43; MacL, pp 133–4.
belonging to the nWI show that a putative non-parental event occurred later, for
example in the period between 1036 and 1177 when the O’neill royal lineage is
not attested in the annals. However, since the descent of the O’neill individuals
was unknown because they were sampled anonymously, further analysis is not
possible. the authors state that
It would be of immeasurable help in sorting persons recognized by the

chief Herald as heirs to the clannaboy and the tyrone/Fews O’neills, or
a patrilineal child/grandchild, could be persuaded to agree the Dna
testing. efforts by one of the authors have, as yet, been unsuccessful.44
the authors refer here to various septs of the Ua néill family that were
created from the end of the twelfth century onwards. they were unaware that as
of 2003 the Irish government discontinued the practice of granting courtesy
recognition to chiefs. this courtesy recognition had created controversy in the
past, and a number of chiefs listed by the chief herald were being suspected by
others of having dubious credentials.45 Furthermore, courtesy recognition
happened on the grounds of primogeniture, so that no chief was recognized once
the senior branch had died out, although male members of a junior branch could
still be alive. this applies, for example, to the senior line of Ó néill Mór, which
was still recognized at the end of the nineteenth century, but died out after-
wards.46 Its position as the most ‘noble’ representative of the O’neills was taken
over by Ó néill of clannaboy (clann aodha Buidhe), the male ancestors of
Jorge Maria O’neill (d. 1988), son of Hugo José Jorge (d. 1940), son of
Jorge torlades (d. 1925), son of Jorge torlades (d. 1890), son of José
Maria, son of charles (carlos) (d. 1835), son of John (who settled in
Portugal, d. 1788), son of conn (constantine), son of Phelim (d. 1709),
son of ebher, son of Phelim (fl. 1649), son of conn, son of Domhnall, son
of Muircheartach Duileanach (d. c.1556), son of Brian Ballach (d. 1529),
son of niall Mór (d. 1512), son of conn (d. 1482), son of aodh Buidhe (d.
1444), son of Brian Ballach (d. 1425), son of Muircheartach ceannfhada
(d. 1395), son of enrí (d. 1345), son of Brian (d. 1295), son of Áed Buide
(d. 1283) (a quo clann aéda Buide), son of Domnall Óc (d. 1234), son of
Áed Méith (d. 1230), son of Áed an Macáem tóinlesc (d. 1177), son of
Muirchertach Muige Lugaid, son of tadc Glinne, son of conchobar na
Fidbaide, son of Flaithbertach, son of Domnall, son of Áed athlamán (d.
1033), son of Flaithbertach an trostáin (d. 1036), son of Muirchertach
Midech (d. 977), son of Domnall (d. 980), son of Muirchertach ‘of the
Leather cloaks’ (d. 943), son of niall Glúndub (d. 919) (a quo Ua néill),
44 O’neill and McLaughlin, ‘Insight into O’neills’, 24. 45 see especially sean J. Murphy,
Twilight of the chiefs: the Mac Carthy Mór hoax (Bethesda, MD, 2004). 46 OH, pp 622–30.
12 Bart Jaski
son of Áed Findliath (d. 879), son of niall caille (d. 846), son of Áed
Oirnide (d. 819), son of niall Frossach (d. 778), son of Fergal (d. 722), son
of Máel Dúin (d. 681), son of Máel Fithrich (d. 630), son of Áed
Uairidnach (d. 610), son of Domnall (d. 565), son of Muirchertach Mac
ercae (d. 532), son of Muiredach, son of eógan (a quo cenél neógain),
son of niall noígiallach (a quo Uí néill) son of eochu Muigmedón.47
It would indeed be very useful to have the Dna sampled of a male member of
this lineage, whose forefathers can be traced in the historical records, albeit with
some gaps, to the sixth century. However, if it turned out that their Dna
belonged to the O’neill Variety rather than the IMH, their claims to be the most
‘noble’ representatives of the O’neills would suffer. so one can understand the
reluctance of members of the senior line to cooperate, but members of a junior
line are perhaps less concerned about such matters. If their Dna could be
sampled, it should be compared with other samples of known descent among the
cenél neógain, such as the male descendants of Maurice cane son of richard
claude son of arthur Beresford (d. 1864), descendant of cathán (a quo Ua
catháin), son of Drugán, son of conchobar (a quo clann conchobair Maige
Ítha), son of Fergal (d. 722), as in the O’neill pedigree.48 Here, too, there are
gaps in the historical records, although further investigation may well fill them
up with regard to the post-medieval period. For the medieval period, we rely on
the information from the genealogies (which may exist in slightly different
versions) and the annals. the advantage of having samples of people with a
recorded ancestry until the medieval period is that there is no confusion between
people with the same surname but of different ancestry, and the records can also
point to adoption of one’s forefathers. a non-parental event can never be
excluded, but this could be investigated by comparing Dna of those having the
same surname and related surnames (such as O’neill and O’cahan). Of course,
the better a lineage is covered in the historical records, the more trustworthy the
results. If one were to endeavour to collect genetic samples from Irish men of
known ancestry, the best starting point would be the Mac Dermot (Mac
Diarmata) family, originally of co. roscommon. It has probably the best
documented family history in Ireland from the sixth century. today, male
descendants of the ‘prince of coolavin’, charles edward (d. 1947), are still alive.
His pedigree in the male line can be reconstructed from the historical sources
and runs as follows:
charles edward (d. 1947), ‘prince of coolavin’, son of Hugh Hyacinth

(d. 1904), son of charles Joseph (d. 1873), son of Hugh (d. 1824), son of
Myles (d. 1792), son of charles (d. 1758), son of Hugh (d. 1707), son of
47 OH, pp 730–6; see further http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_ricciardi_ O%27neill,

retrieved 11 Mar. 2011. 48 OH, pp 622–30.
cathal ruadh (d. 1693), son of Brian Óg (d. 1636), son of Brian of the
carrick (d. 1592), son of ruaidhrí (d. 1568), son of tadhg (d. 1499), son
of ruaidhrí Óg (d. 1486), son of ruaidhrí caoch (d. 1421), son of aodh
(d. 1393), son of conchobhar (d. 1343), son of tomaltach (d. 1336), son of
Máel ruanaid (d. 1331), son of Gilla críst (d. 1260), son of conchobar
(d. 1251), son of cormac (d. 1244), son of tomaltach na cairge (d. 1207),
son of conchobar (d. 1197), son of Diarmait (d. 1159) (a quo Mac
Diarmata), son of tadc Mór, son of Máel ruanaid (fl. 1048?), son of tadc
(d. 1040?), son of Muirchertach (d. 967), son of Máel ruanaid (a quo Ua
Maílruanaid), son of tadc (d. 956), son of cathal (d. 925), son of
conchobar (d. 882), (a quo Ua conchobair), son of tadc Mór (d. 810), son
of Muirgius (d. 815), son of tomaltach (d. 774), son of Murgal, son of
Indrechtach (d. 723), son of Muiredach Muillethan (d. 702) (a quo síl
Muiredaig), son of Fergus/Muirgius (d. 654), son of rogallach (d. 649),
son of Uatu (d. 600), son of Áed (d. 575), son of eochaid tirmcharna (d.
556), (a quo Uí Briúin aí), son of Fergus, son of Muiredach Mál, son of
eógan srem, son of Dauí Galach, son of Brión (a quo Uí Briúin), son of
eochu Muigmedón of Dál cuinn.49
For the medieval period, the information on the Mac Diarmata kings of Mag
Luirg (Moylurg) comes from annalistic and genealogical records, some of them
written in or nearby their stronghold of the rock (carrick) in Lough Key (Loch
cé). the Meic Diarmata belonged to the Uí or clann Maílruanaid, named after
a son of tadc, king of connacht, who himself belonged to síl Muiredaig, the
primary royal dynasty of connacht. the first forefather of the Meic Diarmata
named in the annals is eochaid tirmcharna, whose death is recorded in 556.
While one may question the accuracy of the Irish annals in the sixth century,
there is no need to doubt the general accuracy of the annalistic and genealogical
records. Hence charles edward Mac Dermot can trace his ancestors in the male
line back to about 1,450 years in the past, assuming that eochaid tirmcharna
was born about 500. this period is covered by 43 generations, an average of
almost 34 years per generation.
there are several Irish families that can trace their ancestors back in an
unbroken line from father to son from the twenty-first until the seventh or sixth
century, supported by fairly reliable historical documentation. to my knowledge,
this is unique in europe and probably rare in the rest of the world. the
Merovingians, carolingians, anglo-saxon royal houses and other early medieval
dynasties have all died out in the male line centuries ago. this fact alone should
make such Irish families a primary subject of genetic research. this applies
49 Mac Dermot, Mac Dermot of Moylurg, pp 216, 285; OH, pp 521–2, who states that Myles
died in 1777, but this applies to his wife Bridget O’connor of Belanagare, see Mac Dermot,
Mac Dermot of Moylurg, pp 255–6.
14 Bart Jaski
especially to well-documented cases such as the Mac Diarmata male line if their
Dna can be sampled and analysed. Of course, historical sources, no matter how
accurate, may still not reflect biological ancestry. It is therefore important to take
collateral branches into consideration for comparison. In the case of the Mac
Dermot lineage, for example, the male descendants of Brian (d. 1746), son of
Hugh (d. 1707),50 or Diarmait ruad (fl. 1266) (a quo Mac Diarmata ruad), son
of conchobar (d. 1251),51 or Donnchad (d. 1232) (a quo Mac Donnchada), son
of cormac (d. 1244), brother of conchobar (d. 1251),52 whose male members are
still alive today. not all the genealogies of the collateral branches are as well
documented as that of the main line, but they are good enough as a basis for
comparison. Genealogical research will no doubt establish other lineages of
which male members are still alive to this day.
Usually, the problems in reconstructing these lineages are not the late
medieval genealogies of the Meic Diarmata, which are, on the whole, detailed
and trustworthy, but the records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
which are not always preserved or complete. this also applies to the relatives of
the Meic Diarmata, primarily the main Ua conchobair (O’connor) lineages,
which can also be traced from modern times until the sixth century.53 In many
cases, such accurate pedigrees cannot be reconstructed for minor branches,
although perhaps new investigation may produce compelling results. In such
cases, rare surnames that were not or were rarely formed elsewhere in Ireland
may be sampled, as they increase the chance that we are dealing with a member
who genealogically, at least, does not belong to an unrelated lineage. among the
collaterals of O’connor and Mac Dermot, this applies to, for example,
O’Mulrennan or Mulrenin (Ua Máilbrénainn),54 MacGeraghty or Gerty (Mac
airechtaig),55 and O’concenainn (Ua concenainn),56 while surnames such as Ua
Fínnachta, Ua Birn, Ua taidg, Ua Flannacáin and Ua Mugróin also ultimately
descend from Muiredach Muillethan, king of connacht from 696 to 702.57
comparing samples from various individuals bearing these various surnames
may be instrumental in establishing more accurately the tMra on the basis of
genetic analysis, and also minor mutations along parental lines.
the targeting of particular surnames, although not from individuals with a
known ancestry back to the Middle ages, was undertaken by the trinity team in
2008. their main objective was to find out whether the genetic founder-effect
50 Mac Dermot, Mac Dermot of Moylurg, p. 356. 51 Ibid., pp 344–5. 52 OH, pp 523–4,
536–8; see also Mac Dermot, Mac Dermot of Moylurg, pp 399–402. 53 OH, pp 633–8; Mac
Dermot, Mac Dermot of Moylurg, pp 388, 390. 54 OH, p. 601; MacLysaght, More Irish
families, pp 163–4. the family descends from Dub Indrecht (d. 768) son of cathal (d. 735) (a
quo clann cathail) son of Muiredach Muillethan as in the Mac Dermot pedigree. 55 OH,
p. 468; MacL, pp 159–60, who wrongly considers them to be of the Uí Maine. the family
descends from cathal (d. 839) son of Muirgius (d. 815). 56 OH, pp 385–6; MacL, p. 84, who
wrongly considers them to be of the Uí Maine. the family descends from Diarmait Finn (d.
833), brother of Muirgius (d. 815). 57 see also the simplified chart in Jaski, Early Irish
among the Uí néill was also notable among the two main medieval ruling
dynasties of Munster, the eóganachta and Dál cais. Hence sampling was
concentrated on surnames with an eóganacht or Dál cais association. the
eóganachta are named after the legendary eógan Mór, but effectively descend
from corc, according to certain medieval genealogists a contemporary of niall
noígiallach.58 corc is the direct ancestor of the eóganachta of Loch Léin,
rathlind, Glendamain, Áine and cashel (seat of the kingship of Munster),
spread out all over the province. the Dál cais are a northern branch of the Dési
(‘Vassal peoples’) of Munster, and rose to power in the late tenth century. their
king Brian Bóruma (d. 1014) even claimed the kingship of Ireland. compared
with the IMH the common Munster Y-chromosome is not clearly represented
in one specific region, and is genetically more diverse and deep, pointing to a
common ancestor who lived much earlier that the one of the IMH.59
Within the Munster surname samples, two haplotypes dominate, called a
(mainly found among eóganacht surnames) and B (prevalent among Dál cais
surnames). Yet the trinity team notes various inconsistencies, such as the non-
eóganacht surnames of O’Leary, O’shea and O’connor found among haplotype
a,60 and the non-Dál cais surnames O’callaghan and O’Loughlin among
haplotype B.61 this diversity is one of the reasons that the trinity team
concluded that no standard patrilineal kinship structure underlay the foundation
of the eóganachta and Dál cais, but rather a different tribal organization as
compared with the Uí néill.62
this is an interesting theory, but one has to take into account that the
medieval genealogies may reflect a distorted picture of the historical reality.
While they appear fairly accurate with regard to the Uí néill and the connachta
from about the sixth and seventh centuries onwards, it is not said that the genetic
relationship between the Uí néill and the connachta is exactly as it is portrayed
in the genealogies for the earlier period. similarly, it may well be that the corco
Loígde (O’Leary), corco Duibne (O’shea) and ciarraige (O’connor), who all
belong to haplotype a, share the same ancestor as the eóganachta, but that this
was unknown or considered inappropriate by the medieval genealogists.63 these
kingship, p. 314. 58 David sproule, ‘Politics and pure narrative in the stories about corc of
cashel’, Ériu, 36 (1985), 11–28. 59 In Mcevoy et al., ‘Genetic investigation’, 419, the most
recent common ancestor of the common Munster Y-chromosome is dated to about 2,600 years
before the present (that is, c.600Bc). 60 O’Leary (Ua Lóegaire) of corco Loígde (OH, pp
296–7; MacL, pp 207–8); O’shea (Ua seagda) of corco Duibne (MacL, pp 266–7);
O’connor (Ua conchobair) of ciarraige Luachra (OH, pp 330–7; MacL, p. 89) or corco
Modruad (OH, pp 338–9). 61 O’callaghan (Ua cellacháin), descendants of cellachán caisil
(king of cashel, d. 954), of the eóganachta caisil (OH, p. 178; MacL, pp 71–2). the first
recorded member is Donnchad Ua cellacháin (d. 1052). remarkably, Mccarthy (Mac
carthaig), which derives from cellachan caisil’s great-great-grandson carthach (d. 1045),
does not match with haplotype a or B; O’Loughlin (Ua Lochlainn) of corco Modruad (OH,
pp 324–5; MacL, p. 211 calls them a Dalcassian sept). 62 Mcevoy et al., ‘Genetic
investigation’, 421. 63 For tampering with medieval genealogies, see Ó corráin, ‘creating
16 Bart Jaski
population groups inhabited the western parts of Munster, where, according to

legend, the eóganacht also had their ancient power base.64 to substantiate such
a hypothesis, one needs very detailed genetic records of the non-eóganacht
samples within haplotype a, as this may show whether they diverge on various
points as compared with the eóganacht samples.
In this context, one can look at subsequent research about the Dál cais by
Dennis Wright.65 He recognizes a distinctive set of marker values, which he calls
Irish type III, mainly found in cos clare, tipperary and Limerick, and among
surnames belonging to the Dál cais. the markers studied by Wright included
ones not studied by the trinity team (it clearly overlaps with the latter’s
haplotype B) and the result seems to be a more genetically coherent Dál cais,
seeing that the Dál cais surnames (for example, O’Brien, O’casey, McGrath,
O’Hogan) all belong to Irish type III. the main O’Brien (Ua Briain) lineages,
descending from Brian Bóruma, are well represented in the historical and
archival records up to the present.66 the odd ones out are most of the
O’Kennedy samples, which do not belong to Irish haplotype III, although the
surname derives from cennétig, the son of Brian’s brother Donncuan (d. 944).67
the two major research projects of the trinity team discussed above have
yielded interesting results, even if one may be sceptical about certain details. the
main point is that ‘the combination of surnames and Y-chromosomes offer the
surprising potential to explore other aspects of early (prior to aD1000)
Gaelic/celtic society and its organization’.68 It has to be underlined that this
potential can only be made good if surname histories are studied in greater
detail. this can only be accomplished by editing and analysing the medieval
chronological (annalistic) and genealogical records – a desideratum for many
decades – and studying the vicissitudes of the main Irish families of royal and
noble descent from the sixteenth century onwards according to the standards of
modern historical research. such endeavours are worthwhile in their own right,
but it would also enable geneticists to identify individuals with a known long
pedigree, whose Dna-samples, if given voluntarily, could be compared with
individuals related to them in the near or distant past. this could lead to
comparing the Dna of men whose tMra is recorded in the sources, up to
1,300 or 1,400 years from the present. such comparisons are still subject to
historical investigation, for example about the reliability of sources, and to
interpretation of the genetic data, for example with regard to a putative non-
parental event. But the benefits would be great. to my knowledge, such
the past’. 64 David sproule, ‘Origins of the eóganachta’, Ériu, 35 (1984), 31–7. 65 Dennis
M. Wright, ‘a set of distinctive marker values defines a Y-str signature for Gaelic Dalcassian
families’, Journal of Genetic Genealogy, 5 (2009), 1–7. 66 OH, pp 154–77. 67 three out of
four of the Mcnamara (Mac con Mara) samples belong to Irish type III. although Wright
considers them non-Dál cais, the genealogies contradict this; see also OH, pp 150–2. they
descend from cú Mara, grandson of Menma (d. 1014) of the Uí chaisséne, a branch of Dál
cais. 68 Mcevoy and Bradley, ‘Irish genetics’, pp 114–15.
comparisons cannot be undertaken elsewhere in europe, certainly not with

known ancestors from the sixth and seventh centuries, and not with so many
identifiable male descendants of various lineages and population groups still
being alive. Minor mutations in strs could also be analysed accordingly. the
results could add substantially to our knowledge of the formation of population
groups and dynasties in medieval and prehistoric Ireland and the relationship
with populations in Britain, spain and beyond. this could also open up new
views on the origins of the Irish language and the arrival of ‘celtic’ material
culture, such as are already developed in Celts from the West, as quoted at the
beginning of this essay.
Of course, genetic research cannot give us all the answers: the analysis of the
data remains a matter of interpretation and hypothesis. a lot of new data can
already be found on the internet, in articles on websites69 and in non-peer-
reviewed journals. these may be very useful, but for the non-expert this is not
always easy to judge. a clear view on the state of the research so far to inform
historians would be very helpful.70
Finally, parental ancestry is not culture. It excludes many aspects of what
makes an individual, and any research on Irish genetic ancestry should not be
drawn into (political) debates about Irish versus english descent and the like.71
If genetic studies teach us anything, it is that we are all, paternally and
maternally, somehow related to each other.
Perhaps I am positivist and naïve in thinking that a combination of historical
and genetic research with strategic sampling of individuals as outlined above is
useful and can be accomplished in the near future. there are many details that I
have glossed over, and probably some serious problems that I have overlooked.
Yet I am convinced that the value of genetic research for historians is not to be
underestimated, and that the approach of the trinity team is essentially the right
one: a team of historians and geneticists is necessary to fulfil the promise that the
historical and genetic study of Irish surnames contains.
69 see, for example, http://www.ysearch.org/, and http://mcewanjc.org/, retrieved 17 Mar.

2011. 70 see stephen Oppenheimer, The origins of the British: a genetic detective story
(London, 2006); Bryan sykes, Blood of the Isles: exploring the genetic roots of our tribal history
(London, 2006). 71 nash, ‘Irish origins’, 22–4.
Interlaced scholarship: genealogies and genetics in

twenty-first-century Ireland1
C AT H E R I N E S W I F T
as the twenty-first century unfolds, the Irish education system is undergoing

considerable changes. some of these changes can be seen as a by-product of
globalization, such as the use of the internet as a research tool. For smaller
european countries such as Ireland, the avalanche of information available to all
at the touch of a keyboard overwhelms the educational resources that can be
produced locally and thus undermines our potential, as a country, to facilitate the
creation and evolution of a culturally distinctive voice as we move into the future.
Other elements are the result of our own choices as a nation: most notably to
harness our education system ever more closely to the creation of employment
possibilities within the technological and scientific spheres. For this reason, and
for the foreseeable future, it seems probable that the limited amount of state
money available for academic research is likely to be heavily weighted away from
our traditional interests in the humanities and the arts.
such realities throw up questions for historians of what might be called the
‘unfashionable’ periods of Irish history before the island became an integral part
of the anglophone world in the modern era. already suffering from the focus of
Irish universities on the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the study of
medieval Ireland, in particular, seems likely to lose ground despite a widespread
popular interest in Gaelic literature and culture. In that context, our honorand
is to be warmly congratulated for her proactive engagement with one of the
newest of the sciences, the study of human Dna and its integration with that
most traditional element in Irish scholarship – namely the study of dynastic
genealogies.
the earliest texts to be incontrovertibly written on Irish soil are the ogam
inscriptions that are found predominantly in the south-west. there are over
three hundred of these and a number of new discoveries have been made in the
recent past through excavation and arising out of the creation of the
archaeological inventories of counties produced by the Department of the
environment.2 as we have them today, they are inscribed on stone, although an
ogam inscription of later date is found on a bone comb from the Dublin
1 I would like to thank the IrcHss and the aHrc who funded a two-year research project
on the subject of Irish genetic research and its relevance to the humanities in 2008–10, as well
as my collaborator, Dr christina Lee of the school of english studies at the University of
nottingham. 2 Denis Power et al. (eds), Archaeological inventory of County Cork, I (Dublin,
18
Genealogies and genetics in twenty-first-century Ireland 19
excavations at High street as well as on a recently discovered antler handle.3 the

overwhelming majority of our stone inscriptions show the earliest, pre-apocope
forms of Irish and are dated to the fifth century, approximately.4
the inscriptions record the names of individuals using various formulae. In
the secondary literature, attention has focused on those that refer to the
individual as belonging to a Moccu-community and on the nature of what such a
community might be.5 In practice, however, such inscriptions are only found on
a small number of stones – most famously those from the Dingle Peninsula (with
an outlier in Iveragh), which record the MOccU DOVInIas.6 this name-
form later became the corco Duibne, recorded in Irish genealogies and annals
from the eighth century on, when they were seen as a túath kingdom ruled by a
king. When surnames begin to be used by the leaders of this kingdom, during
the course of the eleventh century, we see dynasts recorded in the annals of
Inisfallen as Ua Faílbe (from 1042), which appears to relate to the father of
crinan mac Faílbe who dies as king of the corco Duibne in 1027.7 In their
genealogy as recorded in the late twelfth-century Book of Leinster, this family is
identified as the most prominent rulers of the territory: Claind Fland as mó gabas
ríge and .i. Fálbe 7 Congal (‘the family of Fland which is the greatest who took
kingship there, that is Fáilbe and congal’).8 Despite the continuity in the name
of the community from DOVInIas through to Duibne, therefore, the surname
of the leading dynasts of the eleventh century appears to originate with
characters of the late tenth or early eleventh century. We have no evidence that
would allow us trace this particular family tree back into a more remote past.
a stone originally from rockfield and now kept on the grounds of the adare
Manor Hotel, co. Limerick, refers to cOILLaBOtas MaQI cOrBI MaQI
MOcOI QeraI,9 and this Moccu cerai has generally been understood to be a
1992), p. 124 (carvhoovauler); Denis Power et al. (eds), Archaeological inventory of County
Cork, III (Dublin, 1997), p. 166 (Bunkilla), p. 169 (Lackabane, Liscahane x2); Michael Moore
(ed.), Archaeological inventory of County Waterford (Dublin, 1999), p. 199 (Knockmahon, co.
Waterford); Michael Moore (ed.), Archaeological inventory of County Wexford (Dublin, 1996),
p. 118 (Petersgate); conleth Manning and Fionnbarr Moore, ‘a second ogamstone at clara’,
Peritia, 11 (1997), 370–2 (churchclara, co. Kilkenny); catherine swift, ‘Ogam stones in sligo
and their context’ in M.a. timoney (ed.), A celebration of Sligo (sligo, 2002), pp 127–39
(corkagh Beg, co.sligo); George eogan and Fionnbarr Moore, ‘a fragment of an Iron-age
quern and an ogham stone’, Peritia, 20 (2008), 297–314. 3 Breandán Ó ríordáin, ‘the High
street excavations’ in Howard clarke (ed.), Medieval Dublin: the making of a metropolis
(Dublin, 1990), pp 165–71, fig. 21; H.a. King, ‘an ogham inscribed antler handle from
clonmacnoise’, Peritia, 20 (2008), 315–22. 4 Damian MacManus, A guide to Ogam
(Maynooth, 1990), pp 96, 98. 5 eoin Macneill, ‘Mocu, macu’, Ériu, 3 (1907), 42–9; thomas
charles-edwards, Early Irish and Welsh kinship (Oxford, 1993), pp 149–53. 6 see r.a.s.
Macalister, Corpus inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum (Dublin, 1945), §150, §156, §163, §175,
§178; Judith cuppage (ed.), Archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula (Ballyferriter, 1986),
pp 254, 265; ann O’sullivan and John sheehan (eds), The Iveragh Peninsula: an archaeological
survey of south Kerry (cork, 1996), p. 232. 7 see AI, 1040, 1041, 1042, 1062, 1063, 1096,
1103, 115, 1118, 1124, 1127, 1189. 8 CGH, p. 378 (324g2). 9 Macalister, Corpus, §244.
20 Catherine Swift
reference to the ciarraige or people of north Kerry.10 there is extensive

genealogical material on the ciarraige including a Genelach Ciarriage Luachra,
which begins with an ancestor, Fland Féorna, whose death is recorded in the
annals of Inisfallen under the year 741 and which extends back through nearly
fifty named generations of father-to-son succession to Éber, ultimate ancestor of
human kind in southern Ireland. along the way, the genealogy refers to Mog-art
qui dicitur Cíar (whom we call cíar) and the Ulster champion Fergus mac róich,
the mature hero who leads the connacht army in the major Irish epic, the Táin
Bó Cúailgne.11 Despite this, we are unable to link the adare stone with any known
member of the ciarraige. again, therefore, the mere existence of a community
name, though recorded in a contemporary fifth-century source, does not allow us
trace a particular family tree.
In contrast to the relatively small number of moccu-communities recorded,
over 50 per cent of the ogam inscriptions use the structure that is the normal
name-form in early medieval Irish texts – a named individual with patronymic –
X son of Y (the moccu nomenclature, though present in seventh-century texts
such as the Vita Columbae of adomnán of Iona, is not clearly found in texts later
than aD800). In the absence of contemporary records, it is much harder to relate
such named individuals to a later túath community than it is to make a link
between the moccu names and their later counterparts in various kingdom names.
a rare exception is a stone from Dunbell Big in co. Kilkenny, which reads
naVaLLO aVVI GenIttac (navall grandson/descendant of Genitach). It
has been suggested by Damian McManus that this is to be linked to the Uí
Gentig whose lands are termed the Tír húa nGeintich (the land of Uí Gentig) in
the twelfth-century manuscript rawlinson B502.12 according to the genealogists,
the name refers to an eponymous ancestor, three generations removed from
Óengus Osrithe who, in turn, is the eponym for the kingdom of Osraige or
Ossory (comprising the modern counties of Kilkenny and south Laois). By that
stage, the genealogical author is able to link this named land-unit to three
families – the síl Daimíni, the Uí chuirre and the Uí Gobbáin – but the name
tír húa nGeintich continued to be used and it eventually became the medieval
cantred of anglo-norman Kilkenny known as Ogenty.13 this seems to be the
only example known to date of an ogam inscription in which an aVI naming
formula (meaning ‘grandson/descendant of ’) can be closely linked to a later
family of the same name and in the same area. It should be noted, however, that
despite this close linkage, the name Genitach itself is not well attested in Irish
and, since it seems to refer to the Latin word genitus (the state of being born) or
10 eoin Mac neill, ‘early Irish population groups: their nomenclature, classification and
chronology’, PRIA, 29c (1911), 59–114 at 72–4; charles-edwards, Welsh and Irish kinship, p. 151.
11 CGH, p. 287 (158, 43–50). 12 McManus, A guide, pp 108, 116. 13 CGH, pp 103 (128b54);
114 (130a 30); raghnall Ó Floinn, ‘Freestone Hill: a reassessment’ in a.P. smyth (ed.), Seanchas:
studies in early and medieval Irish archaeology, history and literature in honour of Francis J. Byrne
(Dublin, 2000), pp 12–29 at p. 27; adrian empey, ‘the cantreds of the medieval county of
just possibly to its Irish cognate gainither, it may in origin simply be an

etymological invention rather than a reference to a breathing human being.
the upshot of these particular studies is to underline the point that there are
very few contemporary records of fifth-century communities or kingdoms in
Ireland that can be shown to have survived into better-recorded periods of Irish
history. there is no clear evidence of a recorded individual at all from the fifth
century who can be clearly related to a later dynastic name or community. the
two that have been suggested in the past by earlier writers such as Macneill
(amlongid, ruler of the Uí Fiachrach west of the Moy, and Mac cairthinn of the
Uí enechglaiss) have both been examined as part of a more modern linguistic
analysis of their name-forms by McManus and in both cases the specific form of
the name has been found to be contrary to the mid-fifth-century date proposed.
this is not to say that the dating of Irish linguistic forms on ogam stones is a
precise science,14 but it is worrying that both examples have been deemed to be
a chronological mismatch by approximately two generations.
It is in the light of this reality that one turns to the famous figure of niall
noígiallach or niall of the nine Hostages, the man identified in Irish genealogical
tradition as the ancestor of the royal dynasties that dominated the kingship of
Ireland between approximately aD650 and aD1000. During most of this period,
the two families who held the greatest degree of power were the clann cholmáin
dynasts of Mide and the cenél neógain of central Ulster.15 niall is identified in
both genealogical and saga tradition as a son of eochaid Mugmedón and younger
brother of Fergus, ailill, Brión and Fiachrae. It seems that eochaid had at least
two sexual partners who gave birth to his sons. as t.F. O’rahilly pointed out in
his Early Irish history and mythology, the Irish genealogical tradition is that
niall’s mother was (romano-)British, which, among other things, helped to
distinguish niall from his brothers, who are identified as sons of a mother,
Mongfind, whose father was a king of Munster, normally identified as an
ancestor of the eóganachta (though in one twelfth-century text he is linked to
the Érainn).16 niall’s brothers are ancestors of kingdoms identified with the early
medieval province of connacht: Fergus, associated with the border areas of south
Donegal; ailill, ancestor of the kingdoms along the upper shannon and
sligo/Leitrim border; Brión, ancestor of the kings of south roscommon and
north Galway; and Fiachrae, ancestor of the major kingdoms of north Mayo on
either side of the Moy and south Galway. these regional associations are all
clearly marked in what is one of our earliest sources of genealogical information
on the Uí néill and their ancestors, the Collectanea of Bishop tírechán, which
Kilkenny’, JRSAI, 101 (1971), 128–34 at 29–31. 14 MacManus, A guide, pp 53, 60–1;
catherine swift, Ogam stones and the earliest Irish Christians (Maynooth, 1997), pp 49–69.
15 Bart Jaski, Early Irish kingship and succession (Dublin, 2000), pp 225–8; Immo Warntjes, ‘the
alternation of the kingship of tara, 734–944’, Peritia, 17–19 (2003–4), 394–432. 16 t.F.
O’rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology (Dublin, 1949), pp 217–19; anne connon, ‘a
prosopography of the early queens of tara’ in edel Bhreathnach (ed.), The kingship and landscape
of Tara (Dublin, 2005), p. 251.
22 Catherine Swift
was written in the 660s.17 a genealogical text, Mínigud na Cróeb Coibnesta, written
at a later date, however, identifies Fergus as niall’s full uterine brother and states
that his descendants were located at cell scíre (Kilskeer) in Meath.18
the connachta associations of niall’s siblings continued to be of importance
in the generations following niall. two poems written in praise of colum cille
(columba) of Iona are attributed to the single author, Bécán mac Luigdech,
whose late genealogy places him two generations after colum cille himself and
this agrees with the seventh-century date that the editor, Fergus Kelly, has
suggested for these works on linguistic grounds.19 In the poem Fo réir Choluimb,
colum cille is called caindel Néill (candle/witness of niall) and the best of all
the descendants of niall, while in Tiughraind Bhécáin he is identified as caindel
Connacht and caindel Alban (witness of connacht and witness of Britain/
scotland).20
according to the seventh-century account by Bishop tírechán and the other
early Patrician hagiographers, however, niall’s own sons were located in two
other areas of the country; namely the midlands east of the shannon and the
territories to the north of sligo Bay. More specifically, these are the descendants
of his son Lóeguire, associated with lands either side of the Boyne around trim:
conall cremthainne, linked to the area north of slane in co. Meath and with the
valley of the Blackwater; Fiachu, ancestor of the cenél Fiachach around
Mullingar; and coirpre, located by teltown in co. Meath; as well as his sons who
settled in the north.21 In later traditions recorded long after the seventh century,
niall has acquired yet another son, namely Maine, ancestor of the cenél Maine
in south roscommon and the region of athlone.22 Given the nature of Irish
genealogical records, this ability to procreate after death is not particularly
surprising: as F.J. Byrne has written, ‘to a far greater extent than in the case of
the sagas, the genealogies are contaminated by pseudo-historical doctrines and
even represent them in an expanded version’.23 a more recent writer, thomas
charles-edwards, is equally explicit:
Irish genealogies were far from being the dispassionate observations of

scholars. Detailed analysis shows that, even when made about the remote
past, genealogical statements might have contemporary use in justifying
the claims and flattering the pretensions of ruling dynasties. they might
17 catherine swift, ‘tírechán’s motives in compiling the Collectanea: an alternative

interpretation’, Ériu, 45 (1994), 53–82; Ludvig Bieler (ed.), The Patrician texts in the Book of
Armagh (Dublin, 1979), pp 160–1, 138–41, 146–7, 134–5. 18 CGH, p. 132 (138 a 40);
edmund Hogan, Onomasticon Goedelicum (Dublin, 1910), p. 211. 19 Fergus Kelly,
‘Tiughraind Bhécáin’, Ériu, 26 (1975), 66–98 at 66–9; ibid., ‘a poem in praise of colum cille’,
Ériu, 24 (1973), 1–34; CGSH, 7 (32). 20 Kelly, ‘a poem’, 9, 13, 15, 17, 19; ibid.,
‘Tiughraind’, 80, 81, 83, 84. 21 Bieler, Patrician texts, pp 170–1, 132–3, 136–7, 132–3.
22 CGH, p. 131 (138a 25–30). 23 F.J. Byrne, ‘the history of the Ulaid to aD1201’ (nUI
(UcD) travelling studentship dissertation, 1959), p. 33.
cast a cloak of legitimacy over an embarrassingly recent climb to power or

assert the high rank of dynasties which had been the victims of more
successful neighbours. Genealogies were thus sometimes associated with
the origin legends which explained how peoples had come into existence,
how dynasties had lost or gained dominant positions and even how they
came to have relationships of alliance or enmity with other peoples or
kindreds.24
Without, therefore, insisting that seventh-century records are necessarily more

accurate about fifth-century dynasts than later ones, it is important to stress the
widespread regional associations of the earliest traditions of niall’s family.
a recent study of Dna evidence drawn from modern Irish males has sought
to identify niall as the progenitor of a distinctive genetic strain in the Irish
population and, in the age of the internet and the blog, this argument has gained
traction in popular discourse. It also forms an integral part of a much wider
interpretation of the genetic history of Ireland’s past, which is leading, in turn,
to the creation of important historical arguments concerning the nature of early
Irish kingship and the dynastic longevity of early military leaders:25
… as in many european societies, Y-chromosomes and Irish surnames

share (in the main) patrilineal relationships. these names are among the
oldest cultural lineage markers in the world and emerged from an earlier
tribal nomenclature that also emphasised patrilineal relationships. Hence
Y-chromosome comparisons between surnames may be informative with
respect to older genealogical links that stretch back into Irish prehistory
and mythology. Finally, the indigenous medieval Irish or ‘Gaelic’ social
order differed from that of much of europe, survived until the sixteenth
century and was, arguably, highly patriarchal and pastoralist. these
sociocultural features may have left a distinctive biological legacy.
Leaving aside the speculative suggestions in the last two sentences, it is true that
Irish surnames show parallels with the onomastic formulae found on fifth-
century ogam stones, particularly in the use of patronymics and the use of the
aVI, later Uí, later Ó formula (all meaning ‘grandsons/descendants of X’).
24 charles-edwards, Welsh and Irish kinship, p. 112. 25 L.t. Moore, Brian Mcevoy, eleanor
cape, Katharine simms and D.G. Bradley, ‘a Y-chromosome signature of hegemony in Gaelic
Ireland’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 78 (2006), 334–8; see also Brian Mcevoy and
D.G. Bradley, ‘Y-chromosomes and the extent of patrilineal ancestry in Irish surnames’,
Human Genetics, 119 (2006), 212–19; Brian Mcevoy, Katharine simms and D.G. Bradley,
‘Genetic investigation of the patrilineal kinship structure of early medieval Ireland’, American
Journal of Physical Anthropology, 136 (2008), 415–22, @ http://www.gen.tcd.ie/molpopgen/
publications.php (accessed 22 Mar. 2011).
24 Catherine Swift
However, as noted above, there are no clear instances in which we can identify
surnames, which emerge in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries, with such
fifth-century figures. It is thus difficult to understand what methodology would
allow one to link samples taken from twenty-first century Irishmen, no matter
what their surnames, with individuals of the fifth century even if one deploys
genealogical tracts of the later period, since the latter do not refer to individuals
mentioned on the stones and have clearly been subject to manipulation by the
propagandists who created them.
The authors of the genetic study, Moore, McEvoy et al., first examined 796
chromosomes from all areas of Ireland and the vast majority (85.4 per cent)
belonged to the R1b3 haplogroup. A more detailed study testing for seventeen
microsatellites discovered a particular haplotype that the authors termed IMH
or Irish Modal Haplotype, which showed a distinct frequency peak in north-
western Ireland. The accompanying map showed a concentration along the east
Donegal/Derry/Tyrone border south of Inishowen with a secondary but less
concentrated focus in south Sligo/north Roscommon/east Mayo.26 The authors
noted that ‘this lineage is virtually absent in the south-west’, where 125 people
were sampled (as opposed to 166 in the north-west). Judging by their map, this
IMH haplotype is equally absent from the eastern midlands, although this is not
explicitly noted and the numbers tested there are not listed.
Because of the difficulties in comparing data from different studies, searches
for parallels for IMH outside Ireland were limited to a truncated search for six
of the original seventeen microsatellites in the British Isles (which discovered
parallels in ‘western and central Scottish locations’) and a similarly shortened
seven microsatellites in a much larger study of 28,650 Y-chromosomes drawn
from 249 geographically defined locations. This showed that IMH is relatively
rare outside Ireland, but it did show up in North American population samples,
especially in New York. As the authors noted, ‘large-scale emigration to North
America from Ireland is well recorded’.27
The authors then suggested that ‘as in other polygynous societies, the siring
of offspring was related to power and prestige’ and they identify the specific case
of Toirdhealbhach Ó Domhnaill (Turlough O’Donnell) who died in 1423 and
who had eighteen sons with ten different women and counted fifty-nine
grandsons in the male line. (Perhaps it is not entirely surprising that this
man’s sobriquet in the seventeenth-century Mac Fhirbisigh genealogies is
‘Toirdhealbhach an Fhíona’, Turlough of the wine.)28 The authors state that
Turlough and other O’Donnells were members of the most powerful and
remarkably durable royal lineage in medieval Gaelic Ireland, the Uí Néill,
literally translated as descendants of Niall … [they] claimed high-kingship
26 Moore et al., ‘A Y-chromosome signature’, 335, fig. 1. 27 Ibid., 336. 28 LMG, pp 351
(153.2); 360 (159.14).
of Ireland from the seventh century to the eleventh century aD (Pender

1951). the ultimate origin of this dynasty is attributed to the conquering
sons of the eponymous and possibly mythological fifth-century warlord
niall of the nine Hostages. The historical region under Uí Néill power
coincides with the peak in the frequency of the IMH.29
this last statement is very difficult to justify in terms of the seventh-century

records that provide us with our first detailed information as to the distribution
of niall’s siblings and his sons. It is equally difficult to justify in terms of the two
pre-anglo-norman power-blocs of clann cholmáin and cenél neógain. the
clann cholmáin territory of Mide, with its frequently subordinate territory of
Brega, was located, as the annalists tell us on a number of occasions, ‘between
the shannon and the sea’, entirely outside the area of the mapped IMH, while
the cenél neógain are thought to have conquered eastern Ulster and brought it
into subjection in the battle of Leth cam as early as 827.30 Furthermore, it is
clear that in periods subsequent to the original creation of the Uí néill
kingdoms, there was considerable intermarriage between the leading dynasts of
the various Uí néill groups. so, for example, a daughter of the cenél neógain
king, Derbáil, married Flannacán of Brega (who died in 896) and produced two
sons Máel Finnia and cellach. the same pattern of southern dynast married to
northern princesses is visible in Flannacán’s grandson, congalach mac Maíle
Mithig (who died in aD956), who married eithne, daughter of Fergal of the
cenél neógain. this meant that congalach, as grandson of a sister of niall
Glúndub, chose as his wife a grand-niece of the same niall. While we have no
recorded example of Uí néill men travelling south with the princesses, such a
scenario, whereby Y-chromosomes might move south, does not appear
impossible. In the intervening generations, congalach’s father, Máel Mithig,
married the daughter of the clann cholmáin king, Flann sinna, while his niece,
Derbáil, married the son of this same clann cholmáin king, so potential
northern Y-chromosomes could be passed backwards and forwards between two
of the ruling Uí néíll dynasties of the midlands.31
It is easier to justify the association between Uí néill descendants and the
north-west in terms of the fifteenth-century lord toirdhealbhach Ó Domhnaill
and his descendants during the elizabethan wars of the sixteenth century. an
association of these dynasties with the earlier Uí néill is a tenet of the
genealogies recorded by such authorities as the seventeenth-century genealogist
Dubhaltach Mac Fhir Bhisigh, but the value of his records for the pre-anglo-
norman period is a matter for some scepticism. It has been noted by more than
29 Moore et al., ‘a Y-chromosome signature’, 336 (my emphasis). 30 aU 837, cs 978, AFM
1153, 1155, 1159; F.J. Byrne, Irish kings and high-kings (London, 1973), pp 124–5.
31 catherine swift, ‘the early history of Knowth’ in F.J. Byrne et al. (eds), Excavations at
Knowth, 4 (Dublin, 2008), pp 16, 18, 31.
26 Catherine Swift
one author, for example, that the eponymous conall Gulban, son of niall
noígiallach, who gave his name to tír conaill (Donegal) is a very vague and
shadowy figure and may simply be a literary doublet of his brother, conall
cremthainne, who ruled in the south.32 Despite this, the authors assert that Irish
genealogies, no matter how altered or forged to accord with prevailing political
circumstances, ‘do present the opportunity to directly test the circumstantial
geographic association of the IMH lineage and the Uí néill dynasty’.33
to do this, they looked at the Y-chromosomes of fifty-nine people possessing
names with a purported common origin within the Uí néill genealogies. the
surnames chosen that they identify as ‘up to 1,000 years old’ were as follows:
O’Gallagher (12), O’Boyle (9), O’Doherty (5), O’Donnell (4), O’connor (3),
cannon (3), Bradley (2), O’reilly (2), Flynn (2), McKee (2), campbell (1), Devlin
(1), Donnelly (1), egan (1), Gormley (1), Hynes (1), Mccaul (1), McGovern (1),
McLoughlin (1), McManus (1), McMenamin (1), Molloy (1), O’Kane (1),
O’rourke (1) and Quinn (1).34 the article does not explain on what basis these
names were chosen or whether these individuals were themselves located in the
north-west when sampled. However, the sampling method used for the study as
a whole is identified by the same group in a separate article as follows:
From volunteers, 1,125 usable Dna samples were collected in accordance

with the principle of informed consent. Most were assembled from postal
requests to relevant surname bearers selected from telephone directories.
Irish surnames often show distinct geographic distributions, so attempts
were made, in so far as possible, to reflect these in the major surnames
samples (drawing on the earliest records of distribution dating to the mid-
19th century). Volunteers undertook self-collection of buccal cheek cells
using a sterile nylon cytology brush, from which Dna was later extracted
using a standard phenol/chloroform protocol with Proteinase-K digestion.
the participation rate in response to postal requests was 31.8%. thirty-
one of these samples were first reported elsewhere (Moore et al., 2006). a
general Irish population sample of 765 Y-chromosomes (Moore et al.,
2006) was used as a background control group.35
What strikes this historian, looking at this list, is first the mathematical reality
that the number of O’Gallaghers and O’Boyles tested (twenty-one) is just over a
third of the total fifty-nine ‘people possessing names with a purported common
origin within the Uí néill genealogies’. at the other end of the spectrum, a total
of eighteen surnames are used to produce another twenty-one samples. It seems
32 ailbhe Macshamhráín, ‘Nebulae discutiuntur? the emergence of clann cholmáin, sixth–

eighth centuries’ in smyth (ed.), Seanchas, pp 83–97 at p. 95; thomas charles-edwards, Early
Christian Ireland (cambridge, 2000), pp 458, 494; Brian Lacey, Cenél Conaill and the Donegal
kingdoms, AD500–800 (Dublin, 2006), pp 145–66, 186–8. 33 Moore et al., ‘a Y-chromosome
signature’, 336. 34 Ibid., 337 (notes to fig. 3). 35 Mcevoy and Bradley, ‘Y-chromosomes’, 213.
difficult to believe that this concentration on just two surnames does not have an
impact on the relative frequency of the IMH haplotype. this is particularly true
when one looks in greater detail at the families that are tested in greater numbers.
the genealogical sources used are listed in the O’clery Book of Genealogies.36
to date, this seventeenth-century material has not been tested in detail against
Genealogies contained in other, earlier sources; to quote the editor of
Dubhaltach Mac Fhir Bhisigh,
the riches of the pre-norman genealogical recensions are as yet far from
being exhausted, while those of the later collections listed above are still
largely unexplored – as mentioned already, few of them have been
published or even subjected to even the most cursory of scholarly
examinations. a great deal of work therefore remains to be done, especially
on the later genealogies – first to edit the extant texts, or portions of texts,
and then to analyse and assess them.37
Michael Duignan has published one of the rare studies of this later material,
looking at the Uí Briúin Bréifne genealogies in Mac Fhir Bhisigh, as well as
those in the O’clery Book of Genealogies and the late fourteenth-century Book
of Ballymote. He found that the basic pattern was that the seventeenth-century
genealogies are sufficiently different from the earlier material to require that they
be printed separately in extenso.38 However, as the latest national collection of
Gaelic genealogies and the one nearest in date to the modern individuals being
tested, it has been decided to use Mac Fhir Bhisigh as the main source for the
following examination.
checking the most common names of the genetic study against Mac Fhir
Bhisigh’s seventeenth-century genealogies, we find the following:
• O’Gallaghers (Ua Gallchobair) are said to be descended from a

Gallchobar, seven generations removed from the Irish seventh-century
Irish high king Áed mac ainmerech (that is, Áed son of ainmere);
• O’Boyles (Ua Baígill) from a Baígell who is eleven generations removed
from the brother of ainmere;
• O’Dohertys (Ua Dochartaig) from a Dochartach who is five generations
removed from the same brother of ainmere and who share their
genealogy with the O’Boyles for the initial four generations;
• O’Donnells (Ua Domnaill) from a Domnall who is eight generations
removed from the same brother of ainmere and who share the same
initial dynastic line as the O’Boyles and the O’Dohertys;
36 s. Pender (ed.), ‘the O’clery Book of Genealogies’, Analecta Hibernica, 18 (1951).

37 LMG, p. 14. 38 Michael Duignan, ‘the Uí Briúin Bréifni genealogies’, JRSAI, 64
(1934), 90–137, 213–56 at 92.
28 Catherine Swift
• cannon (Ua canannáin) from a canannán nine generations removed

from Áed son of ainmere (ancestor of the O’Gallaghers whose
genealogy diverges from the Ua canannáin through a different son of
Áed).39
In other words, thirty-three of the fifty-nine individuals sampled are said in

our, admittedly fallible, genealogies to share a common ancestor in ainmere who
is descended from niall through his putative son conall Gulban. this man’s
death is recorded in the Annals of Ulster under the year 569. On the face of it,
there seems little reason why this man, rather than his more remote ancestor
niall noígiallach (thought to have been active approximately 150 years earlier)
could not have been the ancestor whose genes produced the haplotype IMH.
apart from anything else, ainmere and, more particularly his descendants, are
geographically located in the north-west and do not have the extensive
connections in the eastern midlands that we can identify for the Uí néill as a
whole.
Looking through the other names listed in the genetic study, a number of
families are identified by Mac Fhir Bhisigh as descendants of Brión, brother of
niall noígiallach. these included O’reilly (Ua ragallaig), McKee (Mac Áeda),
McGovern (Mac/Mág shamradáin), O’rourke (Uí ruairc) and possibly Molloy
(Ua Maíle Muaid) and Flynn (Ua Floinn). these are not, therefore, descendants
of niall noígiallach though they would share ultimately the genes of niall’s
father, eochaid Mugmedón. similarly, Hynes (Ua heidin) is a descendant of
niall’s brother Fiachrae rather than niall himself and there is no justification in
Mac Fhir Bhisigh’s genealogies for identifying campbells as Uí néill
descendants – he says, on the contrary, that they are descended from the pre-
human Fir Bolg through Dubgall caimbéal. Finally, according to Mac Fhir
Bhisigh, the Quinns might be the Uí chuinn of Muinter Gillagáin or members
of the Dál cais – neither of which are related to the family tree of the Uí néill.
thirdly, only a minority of niall’s sons are ancestors of the families being
listed. apart from conall Gulban and his descendants, the Devlins (Ua
Doibilín), the O’Kanes (Ua catháin) and the McLoughlins (where they are the
Meic Lochlainn of the north rather than the Uí Máel sechnaill of the midlands)
are descendants of eógan mac néill, while the egans (Mac Áeducáin) are
descended from Maine. as noted above, Maine is only a later addition to the list
of niall’s progeny. Mac Fhir Bhisigh has no information on the Bradleys,
Donnellys, Mccauls or McMenamins. the only possible representatives of
southern Uí néill families are the McLoughlins where they are descended from
the Ua Máel sechnaill, descendants of the clann cholmáin kings of Westmeath.
It is not clear why these southern Uí néíll descendants and their surnames are
39 LMG, pp 348–61.
not included in the study but, without such a cohort among the samples, it seems
very difficult to accept as proven the proposition that the IMH haplotype is
derived from niall noígiallach.
In the 2006 article, a scientific argument was used to bolster the identification
with niall noígiallach, though the authors do not place great emphasis on this:
the time to the most-recent common ancestor (tMrca) of this lineage

was estimated with the r statistic (Morral et al., 1994) in netWOrK
with use of a mutation rate of 1 per 2,131 years for a 17-marker haplotype
(Zhivotovsky et al., 2004). at 1,730 (sD 670) years ago, it is at least
consistent with an early medieval time-frame. a similar trMca analysis
of the IMH lineage in the general north-western population sample
(shown in fig. IB) is also roughly consistent with this time frame (1,010
years ago [sD 390]). Furthermore, the presence of the IMH across several
surnames, which are up to 1,000 years old, certainly suggests an origin
predating their adoption.40
In a subsequent study, King and Jobling speak of two other methods of

arriving at the time-depth involved in estimating tMrcas. they state that
Direct analysis of Y-str haplotypes in father–son pairs gives mutation

rate estimates around 2.1 x 10-3 per str per generation (Gusmao et al.,
2005), whereas an ‘evolutionary’ rate based on diversity accumulated in
specific lineages within populations (Zhivotovsky et al., 2004) provides a
rate some three times lower, at 6.9 x 10-4. no mutation study has surveyed
the set of 17 Y-strs we used and the time-scale of neither father–son
pairs nor population-based estimates seem well suited to the situation of
surname studies. We therefore chose to estimate a mutation rate by
typing the 17 Y-strs in a set of deep-rooting pedigrees totalling 274
transmissions of the Y-chromosome and with a mean pair-wise separation
within all pedigrees of 5.6 generations … this gave a rate of 1.5 x 10-3 per
str per generation.41
In practical terms, the use of their method resulted in an overall mean age of
tMrcas of approximately 650 years, whereas the ‘use of the evolutionary
mutation rate (Zhivotovsky et al., 2004) would yield a mean cluster tMrca
of ~1,800 years, more than 2.5 times older than the time of surname
establishment’.42 In other words, the geneticists are currently debating the best
40 Moore et al., ‘a Y-chromosome signature’, 337. 41 t.e. King and M.a. Jobling,
‘Founders, drift and infidelity: the relationship between Y-chromosome diversity and
patrilineal surnames’, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 26:5 (2009), 1093–1102 at 1097.
42 Ibid., 1098.
30 Catherine Swift
methodology for deciding mutation rates and it seems, therefore, that we cannot
necessarily accept that the r test developed by Zhivotovsky et al. and used to
determine the age of the IMH in our study as infallible. the actual tMcra
may, in fact, be much more recent.
King and Jobling compared their British results with those made by the Irish
researchers and pointed out that the relationship of surname frequency with
gene diversity for Y-str haplotypes in Ireland is less strong than it is in Britain.
they suggest that one explanation could be higher recent population-wide drift
possibly arising out of the Great Famine in the mid-nineteenth century or
possibly arising out of high variance of reproductive success due to the medieval
polygynous and patrilineal dynasties in Ireland.43
In terms of these possibilities, it is worth looking at the statistics for the Uí
néill surnames that were listed in the 1890 register of births and published by
Matheson in 1894 in his Special report on surnames in Ireland.44 Looking at the
five names that produced thirty-three of the fifty-nine samples, Matheson
provides the following data:
• there are 488 Gallagher births in 1890, of which 295 are in Ulster; two-
thirds of the Ulster Gallaghers were located in Donegal;
• there are 457 Doherty births in 1890, of which 318 are in Ulster and
160 are in Donegal;
• there are 294 O’Donnell births in 1890, of which 132 are in Ulster,
predominantly in Donegal;
• there are 273 Boyle births in 1890, of which 189 are in Ulster, in
Donegal, antrim, tyrone and armagh;
• there are 49 cannon births in 1890, of which 21 are in Ulster, the
majority in Donegal.
In the light of these statistics, it seems hardly surprising that the IMH
haplotype identified in modern volunteers bearing these surnames was found
predominantly in Donegal and the surrounding area. What is less clear, however,
is whether we are justified in assuming that the best explanation for this pattern
is a relationship between these twenty-first-century men and the eponymous
ancestor of the Uí néill kingdoms who appears to have reigned in the generation
before Patrick arrived in Ireland.
In summary, we have seen that there is little historical evidence for population
names or dynastic families recorded on our fifth-century texts inscribed on ogam
stones. the associations of such names as survive with the later surnames of the
tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries is only very rarely recorded and even then
43 Ibid., 1101. 44 r.e. Matheson, Special report on surnames in Ireland (London, 1894),
published on cD by eneclann.
the surviving names appear to relate to territories and land-units rather than to
individual family pedigrees. the genealogies recorded in the seventeenth century
can often vary substantially, even from those recorded in the fourteenth century,
let alone those of earlier date. Most importantly, however, the geneticists have
limited their data to individuals whose families are associated both genealogically
and geographically with the north-west and have not included any of those
families descended from the kings of the eastern midlands who also claimed
descent from niall. this undermines the potential of the study to reveal the
genetic characteristics associated with this fifth-century dynast.
Other, more general questions are also thrown up by this data. In calculating
mutation rates for Y-chromosomes, for example, one might wonder whether a
habit of close and successive intermarriage between a small group of the leading
dynasts across a number of generations might not have produced peculiar
mutation patterns of their own? Is there any way that such a pattern can now be
modelled, given that such marriage practices no longer exist in our own day? Is
it right to assume that all individuals bearing the surnames associated with the
medieval dynasties are genetic descendants of these same families, or could they,
on occasion, simply be subordinates such as tenants who took on the name of the
landlords who controlled their territories? can the new sciences be used as a tool
with which to interrogate traditional accounts of conquest and sword-land and
identify more precisely the historical realities that led to the creation of new
dynastic kingdoms? Have population movements and the demise (presumably)
of a considerable genetic strain in the Irish make-up arising out of the Famine
cut off our potential for examining our genetic inheritance from the early
medieval period?
these are not questions that can be answered by analysis of our documentary
sources alone; instead, they arise out of an intricate interlace of academic
disciplines that, in their separate strands, might throw up more questions than
answers. Linked together, however, they may well be able, at some stage in the
future, to provide us with new insights into Ireland’s Gaelic past.
the two colmáns
E O I N O ’ F LY N N
the eponymous founder of clann cholmáin, colmán Már, is generally given as

one of three sons of Díarmait mac cerbaill (d. 565); the other two being Áed
sláine and colmán Bec. colmán Már and Áed were progenitors of clann
cholmáin and síl nÁedo sláine, based in Mide and Brega respectively.1 From
colmán Bec was descended the less powerful dynasty known ultimately as coílle
Fallomuin, based around Fore, co. Westmeath.2 ailbhe Macshamhráin and Paul
Byrne have both suggested that this tripartite division of the dynasty represents
an eighth-century genealogical contrivance as the line of Domnall Midi (d. 763),
the first clann cholmáin king to secure the Uí néill overkingship, sought to
distance themselves from their less successful kinsmen. this, it is argued,
involved the division of a single and original colmán into greater and lesser
individuals. Domnall Midi was traced back to the greater of these, colmán Már,
while the less successful branch found itself linked to colmán Bec.3 this paper
argues against that theory and regards any such contrivance as very unlikely.
t H e a n na L I s t I c e V I D e n c e
(key: roman=aU; italic=AT; bold=aI; underline=ar):4
colmán Már:
558 Iugulatio colmain Moir mc. Diarmata in curru suo quem Dub sloit hua
Trena, do Cruithneachaib, iugulauit.
1 For example, see CGH, i, p. 137 (140b18), p. 358 (318b62), where we are told that clann
cholmáin and síl nÁedo sláine meet at Díarmait. 2 colmán Bec is also given as Díarmait’s
son in the fourteenth-century tcD Ms H.2.7 (1298), 29a31. He does not feature in any
earlier genealogical manuscript. 3 ailbhe Macshamhráin, ‘Nebulae discutiuntur? the
emergence of clann cholmáin, sixth–eighth centuries’ in a.P. smyth (ed.), Seanchas: studies
in early and medieval Irish archaeology, history and literature in honour of Francis J. Byrne
(Dublin, 2000), p. 97; Paul Byrne, ‘certain southern Uí néill kingdoms’ (PhD, nUI (UcD),
2000), pp 148–50. Hence, not surprisingly, this suggestion is also found in ailbhe
Macshamhráin and Paul Byrne, ‘Prosopography I: kings named in Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig
and the Airgíalla charter poem’ in edel Bhreathnach (ed.), The kingship and landscape of Tara
(Dublin, 2005), pp 159–224 at pp 215–17. see also the additional notes and corrigenda in F.J.
Byrne, Irish kings and high-kings (Dublin, 1973; repr. Dublin, 2001), p. xvii, where this idea is
accepted, presumably derived from one or both of the above scholars. 4 the translation is
based on that found in t.M. charles-edwards, The chronicle of Ireland (2 vols, Liverpool,
2006). sections from AI, not included in charles-edwards’ Chronicle, are taken from seán
Mac airt’s 1944 edition.
32
The two Colmáns 33
the slaying of colmán Mór son of Diarmait in his chariot; Dub sloit ua
Trena of the Cruithnig slew him.
colmán Már’s sons:

594 Iugulacio Senchain maic Colmain moir.
The killing of Senchán son of Colmán Mór.
600 Iugulatio suibne m. colmaen Moer la haedh slane i mBri Dam for
suaniu, .i. riuulus.
the killing of suibne son of colmán Mór by Áed sláne on Brí Dam by
the suaine, that is a stream.
618 […] iugulatio Fergusa filii colmain Magni, ríg Midi, [ó] Anfartach hu
Mescan, di muintir Blatine.
the killing of Fergus son of colmán Mór, king of Mide, by Anfartach
descendant of Mescán of the community of Blatine.
621 Iugulatio aengusa mc. colmain Maghni, .i. regis nepotum neill.
the killing of Óengus son of colmán Mór, namely the king of the Uí
néill.
colmán Bec:
568 Fecht i nIardoman, .i hi soil 7 in Ili, la colman mBec m. nDiarmato 7
conall mc. comgaill ri Ulad.
colmán Bec son of Diarmait and conall mac comgaill, king of the
Ulaid, made an expedition into Iardoman, that is, into soil and into Íle.
573 Bellum Feimhin ria Cairpre mac Cridain, rí Muman, in quo uictus est
colman Modicus filius Diarmado, a Muminensibus interfectus est,
7 ipse euasit. Inde est Cennach 7 Loch Cend hi Maig Femin de
capitibus eorum qui in bello occissi sunt. Corpre mc. Fedlimthe
m. Oengussa ro bris in cath. Loch Sílend ainm ind locha sein ar
thús. Inde dixit Patricius:
Loch Sílend,
is mairg nod n-ib ara biad!
ro llín Corpre di chennaib
conid crú co rice a grian.
the battle of Femen, won by Coirpre son of Crimthann, king of Munster,
in which colmán Becc son of Diarmait was defeated, slain by the
Munstermen, but he himself escaped. Hence are Cennach and
Loch Cenn in Mag Feimin, from the heads of those who were
killed in the strife. Cairpre, son of Feidlimid son of Aengus, won
34 Eoin O’Flynn
the battle. Loch Sílenn was the name of that lake at first. Hence
Patrick said:
Loch Sílenn,
Alas for him who drinks it with his food!
Cairpre has filled it with heads
So that it is gore to its bottom.
586 Occisio Baetain m. ninnedho filii Duach filii conaill Gulban, regis
temro. cummaene m. colmain 7 cummaene m. Libraen filii Illannon
m. cerbaill occiderunt eum consilio colmain parvi, .i. oc Leim ind
eich.
the killing of Báetán son of ninnid son of Daui son of conall Gulban,
king of tara. cumméne son of colmán and cumméne son of Librén
son of Illand son of cerball killed him according to colmán Becc’s
plan at Léim ind eich.
587 Bellum Bhealaig Doæthe in quo cecidit colman Bec mc. Diarmato.
aedh m. ainmirech uictor erat. Daigh m. cairill obiit; 7 in quo cecidit
Libraen m. Illanndon.
the battle of Belach Daithe, in which colmán Becc son of Diarmait
fell; Áed son of ainmire was the victor; Daig son of cairell died; and in
this battle Librén son of Illand fell.
593 Uel hoc anno: cath Bhealaig Dhaithe in quo cecidit colman Beag mc.
Diarmoda, a quo clann cholman, .i. Hui Maeil eachlainn 7 ceteri.
aedh mc. ainmiręch uictor erat.
Or this year, the battle of Belach Daithe, in which fell colmán Bec son
of Diarmait, from whom are descended clann cholmáin i.e. the Uí
Mhaeil shechlainn, etc. Áed son of ainmere was victor. [this entry is
in a secondary hand in AU].
colmán Bec’s son (?):

628 Iugulatio cummeni filii colmain.
the killing of cumméne son of colmán.
as we can see, the annals simply record colmán Már’s death, the date of which
is crucial to this debate.5 He apparently predeceased his father by some margin
and this early date is central to the theory of later genealogical contrivance
mentioned at the outset.6 If colmán Már died in the 550s, his sons, particularly
5 colmán Már’s death is in fact recorded two further times at AU 555.2 and AU 563.3. the
first entry would appear to be a doublet of the second (reproduced above) while the third is
not in the main hand of AU. 6 Ó cróinín suggests that colmán Már fell against the cruithin
while ‘doubtless attempting to avenge his father’s death’. this is contradicted by the
The two Colmáns 35
Fergus and Óengus, should have been at least in their sixties when they died in
618 and 621 respectively, while evidently ‘still striving to establish themselves
politically’.7 In short, it has been suggested that they might better be regarded
as sons of a single colmán, to whom was later attached the epithet ‘Bec’, and who
died much later, in 587. this would have put them in their thirties or forties
when they died. Macshamhráin viewed colmán Már’s obit with suspicion and
considerd it a later insertion and the man himself a ‘hollow figure’ and ‘artificial
creation’.8
Before considering this further, we might firstly turn to those annal entries
referring to colmán Bec. an initial problem with the 568 entry is the additional
information found in the Annals of Roscrea (AR). the conall mentioned with
colmán Bec was not in fact king of the Ulaid but was rather king of Dál ríata.9
also, Íle was an important part of Dál ríata, raising questions about the nature
of their expedition if this was actually the destination.10 While ‘Iardoman’ is
generally taken to represent the southern Inner Hebrides, it should be pointed
out that it was susceptible to corruption. In the corresponding Annals of
Inisfallen entry we find, under the year 568: Cath i nArd Tómmáin la Colmán Bec
mc. Ailella m. Comgaill.
rather than seeing this as providing us with extra, more specific, information
about the expedition as suggested by Macshamhráin, it seems preferable to
follow the editors of AI and regard the entry as thoroughly corrupt.11 a further
complication stems from the fact that the AU entry is entirely in the vernacular,
something very unusual at this early period.12 though speculative, considering
the early date of the entry, one possibility is that it actually records an expedition
by conall and colmán Bec to the western part of the territory of the Damnonii,
later the British kingdom of strathclyde centred on Dumbarton (ail chluaithe/
alclud). this destination would make more sense from the context.
chronology of events found in the annals where colmán Már predeceases his father. also,
while Díarmait fell against Áed Dub of the cruithni, described as ‘king of the Ulstermen’ in
AT, colmán fell against Dub sloit of the cruithnig, a term which usually refers to the Picts.
see AU 565.1; AT 564 [565]; Dáibhí Ó cróinín, ‘Ireland, 400–800’, NHI, i, p. 214.
7 Macshamhráin, ‘Nebulae discutiuntur?’, p. 89. 8 Ibid., p. 90. 9 He was the person who
had, according to some sources at least, granted the island of Iona to colum cille: see AU
574.2 and anderson and anderson, Adomnan’s Life of Columba, pp 30–1; although Bede
credited the Picts with the donation: see Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people, ed.
B. colgrave and r.a.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), pp 220–3. 10 see Macshamhráin and
Byrne, ‘Prosopography I’, p. 216, where the islands are taken to be seil and Islay. For further
references, see W.J. Watson, The history of the Celtic place-names of Scotland (edinburgh,
1926), p. 41. 11 ‘colman and conall fought a battle at ard tommain, apparently on Islay’:
Macshamhráin, ‘Nebulae discutiuntur?’, p. 90. 12 While there might well be Irish elements
in early entries, to record names for example, entries appearing entirely in the vernacular
account for less than four percent in the annals of Ulster for the first 270 years or so: see
David Dumville, ‘Latin and Irish in the annals of Ulster, aD431–1050’ in Dorothy Whitelock,
rosamond McKitterick and D.n. Dumville (eds), Ireland in early medieval Europe: studies in
memory of Kathleen Hughes (cambridge, 1982), p. 323.
36 Eoin O’Flynn
Our second entry for colmán Bec, recording the battle of Femen in 573, is
equally problematic. While the most basic entry simply records colmán Bec’s
defeat and escape, in some of the other collections his opponent is identified as
the king of Munster, cairpre mac cridain. AI is alone in claiming that colmán
Bec was killed in this battle.13 More generally, the account of the battle in AI
seems suspiciously elaborate, particularly as this text is well known for its
extreme laconicism. It would appear to include Dindshenchas material, claiming
that Loch sílenn was renamed Loch cenn from the number of heads thrown
into it following the battle:
Loch sílend, Loch sílenn,

is mairg nod n-ib ara biad! alas for him who drinks it with his food!
ro llín corpre di chennaib cairpre has filled it with heads
conid crú co rice a grian. so that it is gore to its bottom.14
In the Dindshenchas collection proper, lines quite similar to these appear towards
the end of a far more elaborate piece:
Loch cenn, cid na cinn diatá? Loch cenn – what are the heads whence
adfíatar a iarmata, its name comes? let its traditions be
ó docher la cairpri trá recounted, since colmán mór son of
colmán mór mac Diarmata. Diarmait fell by the hand of cairpre.
colmán mac Diarmata gnó colmán son of comely Diarmait, who

rogab Érinn cen íargnó: ruled erin without annoyance,
dorat a lecht, líth nad gó, put his grave (no cheating treasure) in
i Maig Femin dia tig-ló Mag Femin, at his dying day.
[…] […]
noí cét cenn, ní comdáil gann, nine hundred heads – no meagre share –
im chenn colmáin na corr-lann, with the head of colmán, wielder of pointed
cairpre caisil, coimnert cing, blades, did cairpre of cashel, stalwart
dobert for linn Locha cenn. prince, cast upon the waters of Loch cenn.
[…] […]
Loch cend, Loch cenn,
Mairg doimir for a bruach; woe to him that rows along its shore
dolin cairpri do chinnu e cairpre filled it with heads, till it is,
condad cru e sis isuas all blood beneath and above.15
significantly, it is colmán Már who falls at the battle of Femen according to the
Dindshenchas. this entire process of elaboration might all be traceable to
13 that colmán Bec’s death does not belong here is also suggested by AI 589: ‘Quies Dega
m. cairill m. colmáin Bic m. Diarmata’; the editors suggest that this was originally colmán’s
obit but that the scribe has abbreviated ‘7 mors’ to ‘m’: see AU 587. 14 AI 573. 15 see MD,
iv, pp 258–9. there is also a shorter item in Whitley stokes (ed.), ‘the prose tales in the
The two Colmáns 37
something as simple as a place-name. While the most famous Mag Femen lay
near cashel, there was a lesser-known Femen in Brega.16 It seems probable that
the shorter annal entry is the more accurate, recording a battle in Brega, where
colmán Bec suffered defeat against an unknown opponent, and escaped.17 But
later annalists, working with the Munster Femen in mind, developed a more
elaborate account. the Munster-based and -biased Annals of Inisfallen gave the
king of that province credit for defeating colmán Bec. Perhaps we can see this
tradition reach its culmination in the Dindshenchas proper as the king of Munster
is pitted not against the lesser colmán, but rather his more illustrious brother,
colmán Már.18
the entry at 586 records the death of Báetán of cenél conaill who was killed
in an attack instigated by colmán Bec. Báetán’s father had defeated colmán’s
father in 561, and so this was the continuation of a long-running feud. the
cumméne son of colmán recorded in the 586 entry was surely colmán Bec’s son
and his is most likely the obit found at 628. While there is no other record of
cumméne in the annals, he does appear in two short strands of genealogy in a
mid-fourteenth-century manuscript.19 But he is given as a son of colmán Már
in that source, an example of the confusion that surrounds these individuals in
the genealogies. returning to the annalistic evidence, we learn that colmán Bec
was killed in 587 by another cenél conaill dynast, Áed son of ainmere.20 the
second notice of his death, at 593, is in a secondary hand in AU but again shows
the longstanding confusion about this early section of the family tree as the Uí
Máel sechnaill are traced back to colmán Bec. this is the sum total of annal
entries directly involving colmán Már and colmán Bec and is, quite obviously,
meagre in the extreme. While some may be of genuine antiquity, there are
question marks over several of the entries. We must then turn to evidence that
was certainly compiled at a later date.
Firstly, we might consider Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig (BCC). this text
belongs to a specific genre of Irish literature and purports to record a prophecy
listing the successors of conn cétchathach, legendary king of tara. though only
surviving in late manuscripts, this is our earliest tara king-list and is generally
rennes Dindsenchas, published with translation and notes’, Revue Celtique, 16 (1894), 31–83,
135–67, 269–312 at 164–5. 16 see Donnchadh Ó corráin, ‘topographical notes–II: Mag
Femin, Femen and some early annals’, Ériu, 22 (1971), 97–9. 17 I can find no evidence to
support the claim that colmán Bec was in conflict with Báetán son of ninnid at Femen:
Macshamhráin and Byrne, ‘Prosopography I’, p. 216. 18 the battle of Feimhin has been
described as ‘an early indication of Uí néill ambitions in the south’: Ó cróinín, ‘Ireland, 400–
800’, p. 223. It probably does not warrant such emphasis. 19 tcD Ms 1298 (H.2.7), 29a14.
20 Áed’s father had also faced colmán’s father at cúl Dreimne in 561. Further confusion can
be found in the largely ninth-century Baile in Scáil, where a ‘cath Dathe’ involving suibne
Menn and seeing the death of ‘colmán Mór mac Díarmato’ is recorded. a ‘Bellum Doæthe’
involving colmán Bec appears in the annals at 587, but the crucial point is that suibne Menn
lived in the seventh century, rendering Baile in Scáil’s claim chronologically impossible. see
Kevin Murray (ed.), Baile in Scáil: the phantom’s frenzy (Dublin, 2004), pp 41, 59.
38 Eoin O’Flynn
thought to date from the reign of Fínsnechta Fledach (675–95), though possibly
including some early eighth-century additions. Fínsnechta belonged to the
Brega-based síl nÁedo sláine dynasty, close cousins but bitter rivals of clann
cholmáin. While displaying various biases of its own, BCC is significant both
because of its great age and because it contradicts the ‘official’ succession to the
tara kingship found in later Middle-Irish king-lists. though neither colmán
Már nor colmán Bec are admitted to BCC, the inclusion of one ‘Óengus’ is
significant for our purposes. It seems probable that the individual referred to,
who is regarded as a king of tara, was a son of colmán.21
In the annals, there are only two entries featuring Óengus – his obit,
reproduced above, and the note of a battle between him and a síl nÁedo sláine
dynast:22
AU 612.2 Bellum Odbae re nOengus m. colmain in quo cecidit conall

Laegh Bregh filius aedho slane.
the battle of Odbae won by Óengus son of colmán, in which
conall Lóeg Breg son of Áed sláne fell.
this victory over conall of Brega can firstly be seen as yet another episode in the
ongoing violence between clann cholmáin and síl nÁedo sláine. But the
description of Óengus as ‘king of the Uí néill’ on his death in 621 does not sit
well with his inclusion in BCC. the title ‘king of the Uí néill’ is found attached
to midland kings in the eighth-century annals when the Uí néill overkingship
was held by the northern Uí néill.23 In that context, it appears to represent a
consolation prize. Perhaps Óengus was an early holder of such a position. Or
perhaps he had been able, albeit briefly, to challenge for the kingship of tara
itself, as suggested by his inclusion in BCC.
the context in which BCC was composed may be important in considering
the inclusion of Óengus. Fínsnechta has been described as ‘a highly influential
outsider’.24 He emerged having faced down the opposition of rivals within síl
nÁedo sláine and the commencement of his reign was marked by him slaying
21 see edel Bhreathnach and Kevin Murray (eds), ‘Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig: edition’ in
Bhreathnach (ed.), Kingship of Tara, pp 78, 84–5. In an earlier edition of the text, Gerard
Murphy took ‘Óengus’ as an epithet of the following Domnall, i.e. ‘Domnall shall be a
glorious Óengus’, but both the more recent edition and scholarship prefer to see a simple list
with ‘Óengus’ representing a separate individual. see Gerard Murphy, ‘On the dates of two
sources used in thurneysen’s Heldensage’, Ériu, 16 (1952), 148; charles-edwards, Early
Christian Ireland, p. 492. 22 according to the king-list, ‘ríg Uisnig’ in LL, Óengus reigned
for seven years, ‘Domnall mac Murchada ros marb’. LL, i, 196. this must be a mistake, as this
Domnall, i.e. Domnall Midi, lived in the eighth century, dying in 763. see AU 763.1.
23 charles-edwards, Early Christian Ireland, pp 480–1. Most sources are agreed that suibne
Menn of the cenél neógain was king of tara at this point. 24 edel Bhreathnach, ‘Níell
Cáich úa nasctar géill: the political context of Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig’ in eadem (ed.),
The two Colmáns 39
cenn Fáelad son of Blathmac in 675. Both cenn Fáelad and his brother
sechnussach are regarded as kings of tara by the annals and later Middle-Irish
king-lists. But neither features in BCC, which, while biased against the cenél
conaill in general terms, also reflects this more localized political situation.
While Óengus of the clann cholmáin had clashed with a son of Áed sláine, this
was more than sixty years before the text’s compilation. also, it was not one of
Fínsnechta’s direct ancestors who had fallen by Óengus. Perhaps then the
compiler of BCC, looking for someone with whom to back-fill his list, chose
Óengus as a well-known and powerful midland king who would be a less
controversial inclusion.
Whatever about the actual position held by Óengus, establishing the identity
of his father brings us back to our central question. as we have seen, Óengus is
described in his obit as ‘mc. colmain Maghi’, but this is usually regarded as a
mistake because he is given as a son of colmán Bec in the coílle Fallomuin
genealogies. In fact, the relevant genealogies are far from clear. In the earliest
manuscripts, dating from the twelfth century, there is no coverage whatsoever for
this early period of the coílle Fallomuin line. In later manuscripts, the coílle
Fallomuin genealogy does stretch back to the earliest period but there are
significant inconsistencies and contradictions. a piece of evidence that has been
used in support of the theory of later manipulation is the genealogy found in the
mid-fourteenth-century tcD Ms H.2.7 (1298).
25a3 29a31
ceneL cOLMaIn bic.
qui prius magnus fuit.
[…]
Maile tule meic Maili tule meic
Faelcon Findmona meic Faelcon meic
Maili Uamai m. Mail Umai meic
Oengusa meic Oengusa meic
colmain Moir colman Bic meic
Diarmata
this manuscript contains two very similar strands of genealogy but with
different colmáns. the Latin line after the heading over the second strand is
taken to mean ‘who was previously (the) great’. this, it has been claimed, alerts
us to the ‘spurious nature’ of the tradition of distinct colmáns.25 Before
considering the implications any further, we should firstly refer to some other
early evidence, beginning with the saints’ Lives.
the earliest Lives, those of Brigit and Patrick, contain nothing relevant for
this particular investigation. adomnán’s Vita Sancti Columbae, while written
Kingship of Tara, p. 59. 25 Byrne, ‘certain southern Uí néill kingdoms’, p. 148.
40 Eoin O’Flynn
c.700, and whose subject was a contemporary of those under discussion here, is
primarily concerned with Díarmait mac cerbaill and rather less so with the
succeeding generation. as with the lives of Brigit and Patrick, there is no
mention of colmán, Már or Bec, in adomnán’s Life.
But colmán Bec does feature in the Vita Sancti Cainnici, tentatively dated to
the eighth century.26 according to Macshamhráin, his appearance and colmán
Már’s complete absence from hagiographical works is still more evidence that
colmán Bec is a ‘far more substantial figure’.27 In the first of two relevant
sections, colmán Bec offends the saint Áed mac Bricc by refusing to release a
nun he is holding captive. cainnech decides to come to Áed’s assistance and, on
hearing this, colmán Bec retreats to an island to avoid censure. this island, or
perhaps crannog, is described as located ‘in stagni insula ros’ and ‘in stagno
rosso’ in the respective editions.28 It appears to have been located in coílle
Fallomuin territory.29 colmán then hides from cainnech the rafts necessary to
reach the island. God intervenes to reveal their whereabouts to the saint who, on
reaching the island, finds a still recalcitrant colmán. the king then has a quite
traumatic vision involving a fiery charioteer, before dropping down dead.
cainnech revives him and, suitably impressed, colmán submits and promises to
make good for his offences. In the second relevant section of the Vita Sancti
Cainnici, the saint comes upon a wayside cross marking colmán Bec’s resting
place ‘in regionibus neill’. He prays for the dead king’s soul and saves him from
hell.
the first of these two episodes is strikingly similar to one found in another
eighth-century Life, the Vita Sancti Aedi. as we saw, Áed mac Bricc makes a
brief guest-appearance in cainnech’s Life, the focus shifting to the latter saint
once he turns up at the crannog. In his own Life, Áed is again found attempting
to secure the release of a prisoner held captive by a midland king on a crannog.
though the king is not named, the action seems to have taken place at Loch
Lene near Fore in co. Westmeath.30 as in the Life of cainnech, the king
attempts to prevent the saint reaching him on his crannog but is again bested.
26 W.M. Heist (ed.), Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae: ex Codice Olim Salmanticensi nunc Bruxellensi
(Brussels, 1965), pp 182–98, esp. §§32, 38 at pp 190–2; charles Plummer (ed.), Vitae
Sanctorum Hiberniae (2 vols, Oxford, 1910), i, pp 152–69, esp. §§xxvii, xxxi at pp 162–4. see
sharpe’s discussion of the so-called ‘O’Donohue Group’: richard sharpe, Medieval Irish
saints’ Lives: an introduction to Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae (Oxford, 1991), pp 297–339.
27 Macshamhráin, ‘Nebulae discutiuntur?’, p. 90. 28 Heist, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, §32
at p. 190; Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, §xxvii at pp 162–3. 29 For 14 sept., the
Félire Óengusso has one ‘coeman Brecc’. In the notes, we find the elaboration ‘.i. caeman
Brecc o rus ech i caille Follamin im-Mide’: see: Fél., pp 194, 206–9. the probability that it
is coílle Fallomuin territory being described is increased because the episode appears related
to an encounter in the Vita Sancti Aedi (see below), where the location is specified. 30 We
find ‘insula stagni Lemdin’ and ‘insulam stagni Lebayn’ in the respective editions: see Heist,
Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, §31 at p. 176, i.e. Loch Lébind with b/m and din for ind; Plummer,
Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, §xxiii at p. 41. see also Hogan, Onomasticon Goedelicum (Dublin,
The two Colmáns 41
this time Áed simply walks across the water to the island. the king, suitably
impressed, releases the prisoner. the Lives of Áed and cainnech are quite
obviously related, both containing a virtually identical encounter with the king
on his crannog. the action, in both cases, seems to be set in coílle Fallomuin
territory. the church of Killare, belonging to the community of Áed mac Bricc,
is located about forty kilometres south-west of Fore. While the main church of
cainnech, aghaboe, is located much farther south, there is a possibility that the
community of st cainnech had a church in coílle Fallomuin territory also.31
Hence it seems possible that both of these Lives are making a quite pointed and
specific statement. the hagiographer(s) may well be asserting the rights of these
churches in the area, perhaps in response to pressure from the secular rulers, the
coílle Fallomuin.
We should also note that the author of the Vita Sancti Cainnici had access to
the earlier Vita Sancti Columbae by adomnán. While the saints were on very
friendly terms in that earlier life,32 columba’s sanctity is downplayed in the later
Life and it is cainnech who appears in the most favourable light, often
occupying the high moral ground. It has been suggested that the shift reflects an
increasingly strained relationship between the communities of colum cille and
cainnech in the eighth century. Máire Herbert suggested that the Vita Sancti
Cainnici can be dated even more precisely and that the inclusion of colmán Bec
is a reaction to quite specific events recorded in the annals.33 Following the death
in 763 of Domnall Midi, the first clann cholmáin king to secure the Uí néill
overkingship, the dynasty was thrown into some turmoil as two of his sons
struggled for dominance. she suggests that this upheaval allowed ‘for a brief
interlude of prominence for colmán Bec’s family’, specifically one individual,
Folloman:
AU 766.2 Iugulatio Follamhain m. con congalt regis Midi dolose.

the killing, treacherously, of Follaman son of cú chongalt, king
of Mide.
While Follaman’s killer is not named, Herbert argued that because ‘Donnchad
son of Domnall succeeded to the kingship thereafter, there is at least the
suspicion of his involvement in the killing’.34 according to this interpretation,
the Vita Sancti Cainnici can be regarded as a reaction by the community of
1912), p. 501. 31 ‘the ruins of cainneach’s little oratory are still pointed out in the townland
of Kilkenny. […] near the ruins of cainneach’s chapel still springs a well called Tobar
Chainnigh’: see John O’Donovan, ‘the Ordnance survey letters’ in Paul Walsh, The place-
names of Westmeath (Dublin, 1957), pp 10–11. 32 For example, see anderson and anderson
(ed.), Adomnan’s Life of Columba, pp 110–13. 33 Máire Herbert, ‘the Vitae Columbae and
Irish hagiography: a study of Vita Cainnechi’ in John carey, Máire Herbert and Pádraig Ó
riain (eds), Studies in Irish hagiography: saints and scholars (Dublin, 2001), p. 39. 34 Herbert,
‘the Vitae Columbae and Irish hagiography’, p. 38.
42 Eoin O’Flynn
cainnech to this treacherous killing. the columban community, closely allied to

clann cholmáin, is the main focus of criticism. they stand accused of ‘placing
politics before principle’ and of having lost their ‘moral compass’.35 the murder
of Follomon, which ‘must have been widely deplored’, led directly to the
‘representation of Follomon’s ancestor colmán Bec’ in the Vita Sancti Cainnici.36
this historical context led Herbert to suggest 766–80 as the likely date range for
its composition.37
there are a number of problems with this interpretation. the assumption was
made by Herbert that Follomon was the most powerful midland king on his
death, but this was not necessarily the case.38 Folloman had certainly been around
for quite a while, but an analysis of his career shows that he held a position
subordinate to clann cholmáin kings throughout it, despite his rather grand
‘king of Mide’ title. colmán Bec’s portrayal in the Life is also problematic. While
claimed that he is portrayed ‘in a worldly but ultimately redeemable light’, he
does, we must remember, have to die before coming to his senses and being
reconciled to cainnech.39 One wonders whether colmán Bec might not have
been portrayed a little more sympathetically if the community of cainnech were
attempting to illustrate their solidarity with his descendants and with Follomon
specifically. the suggestion that the inclusion of colmán Bec in the Vita Sancti
Cainnici stems from the slaying of Follomon is then problematic. While we might
question the very specific date range suggested for the Life by Herbert, colmán
Bec does feature in the probably eighth-century Vita Sancti Cainnici and may
also be the unnamed midland king who features in the closely related Vita Sancti
Aedi.
another eighth-century text with implications for this discussion is the
Airgíalla Charter Poem (ACP). this text has been described as defining the
‘relationship of the airgíalla to the Uí néill’.40 though clearly subordinate, the
airgíalla enjoyed a privileged position relative to the Uí néill, probably owing
more to their importance as providers of military service than any genuine
genealogical link. the ACP defines and discusses those services owed by the
airgíalla but also strongly emphasizes the limits to Uí néill power and outlines
the various conditions on which their service was dependent. the poem seems
to present the airgíalla’s perspective on the relationship and most importantly
limits to five those Uí néill branches entitled to service:
35 Ibid. the alliance between clann cholmáin and the columban community was often of a
very worldly nature. For example, in 776, the community of Durrow supported Donnchad
militarily against the forces of Munster: AU 776.11. 36 Herbert, ‘the Vitae Columbae and
Irish hagiography’, p. 38. 37 Ibid., p. 39. 38 see thomas charles-edwards, ‘early Irish
saints’ cults and their constituencies’, Ériu, 54 (2004), 99–100. 39 Macshamhráin, ‘Nebulae
discutiuntur?’, p. 90. 40 thomas charles-edwards, ‘the airgíalla charter poem: the legal
content’ in Bhreathnach (ed.), Kingship of Tara, p. 100. arguing from a historical perspective,
the second quarter of the eighth century has been suggested as the period of the poem’s
composition: see edel Bhreathnach, ‘the airgíalla charter poem: the political context’ in
The two Colmáns 43
Áed allán Áed mac ainmerech at-n-amrammar

Áed sláine síthe ata soírem samlammar.
cland insin conaill chremthainne caín íarmarto
cland cholmáin Bic clann cholmáin Móir maic Díarmato.
Áed allán, Áed mac ainmerech, let us marvel at him,
Áed sláine of peace who are the noblest whom we compare.
then the descendants of conall cremthainne, fair the prosperity,
the descendants of colmán Bec, the descendants of colmán Mór mac
Diarmato.41
as we can see, both the descendants of colmán Már and colmán Bec are
included in the ACP.
Macshamhráin argued that ‘the line of Folloman, as kings of Meath, were
important enough to be included in the schema as descendants of Díarmait son
of cerball – but not on the same terms as Domnall’s line, which was now
supplying kings of tara’.42 But if the purpose of the genealogical contrivance had
been to present colmán Bec as a foil for his more illustrious brother, then why
grant his descendants admission to such a significant document as the ACP and
so soon after that fabrication had taken place? In the genealogies colmán Bec is
lesser, according to the theory, to represent the eighth-century reality. He is not
however a lesser figure in ACP, arguably a more potent textual vehicle than any
genealogy. In short, in the ACP he is included on the same terms as Domnall’s
line. composed from an airgíalla perspective, there seems to be little reason why
a greater and lesser colmán would be admitted unless they were recognized as
distinct by the compiler. For the compiler to admit a grouping of recent creation
into this document and in so doing grant them potential power over the airgíalla
seems quite unlikely.
the evidence from the Banshenchus has also been cited to support the theory
of fabrication. For Macshamhráin, the ‘coincidence that Banshenchus tradition
assigns both siblings mothers from the dynasty of the conmaicne further
strengthens the argument in favour of genealogical contrivance’.43 But this
statement requires significant qualification due to the confusion evident in the
source. While there are two women, Lasair and Brea, described as mothers of
colmán Már and Bec respectively, and who are both described as belonging to
the conmaicne, there are in fact several other women listed as their mothers
across the collection:
Bhreathnach (ed.), Kingship of Tara, p. 99, and charles-edwards, ‘the airgíalla charter
poem’, p. 123. ‘the linguistic evidence, however, cannot support a date much earlier than
800aD’: edel Bhreathnach and Kevin Murray (eds), ‘the airgíalla charter poem: edition’ in
Bhreathnach (ed.), Kingship of Tara, p. 126. 41 edel Bhreathnach and Kevin Murray (eds),
‘the airgíalla charter poem: edition’, pp 130–1. 42 Macshamhráin, ‘Nebulae discutiuntur?’,
p. 97. 43 Ibid., p. 90.
44 Eoin O’Flynn
Mother of colmán Már Mother of colmán Bec

Metrical: Mugain or erc Brea44
Prose: eithne (earc in UM) or Lasair Brea45
the contrast between the consistency in the treatment of colmán Bec and the
utter confusion surrounding colmán Már is marked. Overall, the Banshenchas
does present colmán Bec’s parentage in a much more consistent, plausible way
than that of colmán Már.
When all of the evidence is considered and the individual sources are
weighted appropriately, there appear to be several serious arguments against the
contrivance theory. those arguing for a single original colmán have not thus far
adequately considered the two O’Donohue lives, that of cainnech and Áed mac
Bricc, or the ACP, texts datable to the eighth century. While Macshamhráin
mentioned colmán Bec’s appearance in the Vita Sancti Cainnici, no consideration
is given to the implications of the date of the Vita for the overarching theory.46
Macshamhráin made no mention whatsoever of the ACP, a text that poses the
most serious obstacle to his theory. While Paul Byrne did so, it was only to
comment that ‘the earliest known reference to “colman Mar” and “colman
Bec” is to be found in the poem on the airgialla’, without any further discussion
of the implications.47 this evidence must be given its due. In contrast, perhaps
too much emphasis has been placed on both the contradictory genealogical
material and also the chronological issues thrown up by the annal entries. In
terms of the former, Paul Byrne’s suggestion that the ‘qui prius magnus fuit’
note found in the genealogies alerts us to the ‘spurious nature’ of the tradition of
distinct colmáns must be placed in context.48 the following line can be found
on the folio directly preceding that from which Byrne cited: Tri meic Diarmata:
Colman Mar 7 Colman Bec 7 Aed Slane.49
While this statement cannot be regarded as a crucial piece of evidence in
considering the late sixth century either, it does highlight the confusion and
contradiction that characterize the genealogies on this question. In the opening
paragraph of his article, Macshamhráin noted that the ‘genealogical picture [ … ]
is far from clear’.50 He noted that while late eighth-century levels may have
survived in some of the genealogies, they become ‘progressively less reliable as
one moves back beyond the middle of the seventh century’. Beyond this, there
44 Margaret Dobbs (ed.), ‘the Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique, 47 (1930), 283–339 at 305,
330; Muireann ní Bhrolcháin, ‘an Banshenchas filíochta’ (Ma, nUIG, 1977), §§154–9 at pp
118–19, 188–9. 45 Margaret Dobbs (ed.), ‘the Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique, 48 (1931),
163–234 at 180–1; Muireann ní Bhrolcháin, ‘the prose Bansenchas’ (PhD, nUIG, 1980),
§§290–5 at pp 242–4, 361–3. eithne is also given as both Áed sláine’s wife and his son
Blathmac’s wife a little farther on in the text. 46 Macshamhráin, ‘Nebulae discutiuntur?’, p.
90. 47 Byrne, ‘certain southern Uí néill kingdoms’, p. 148. 48 Ibid. 49 tcD Ms H.2.7
(1298), 28b. 50 Macshamhráin, ‘Nebulae discutiuntur?’, p. 83.
The two Colmáns 45
would ‘be more scope for confusion’ and ‘greater opportunity for mani-
pulation’.51 It may not be necessary to emphasize the latter when the former
explanation appears to deal satisfactorily with the evidence. turning to the
chronology of the annals, it may be unwise to place too much emphasis on the
positioning of information under given years in the early annals, particularly for
the sixth century. also, as we have seen, there is reason to be sceptical about the
antiquity of several of the entries. as a result, the difference in annalistic coverage
for the two colmáns might not be as marked as has been suggested.
While we might then seriously question the notion of an eighth-century
genealogical contrivance, in reality we still know virtually nothing about the ‘real’
sixth-century individuals, and this period in clann cholmáin’s history remains
quite obscure. We are primarily dealing with later conceptions of that earliest
history, but it seems clear that two distinct though closely related midland
groupings existed in the eighth century, clann cholmáin and coílle Fallomuin,
and that these were believed to be descended from distinct individuals, the
brothers colmán Már and colmán Bec
51 Ibid., p. 84.
re-examining cáin in scotland in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries1
DAU V I T B RO U N
In her celebrated book, Fiefs and vassals, susan reynolds observed how
‘feudalism has provided a kind of protective lens through which it has seemed
prudent to view the otherwise dazzling oddities and varieties of medieval
creatures’.2 Her work, whatever side of the debate is taken on her main thesis,
provides much food for thought on the natural impulse to domesticate what
seems strange by clothing it in terms that are familiar. there is, after all, an
expectation that historians should reduce to order even the most unusual and
fragmentary material – an expectation that can be satisfied by resorting to a
generally accepted interpretative framework, or by drawing on comparative
evidence from areas where sources are richer and scholarship more advanced.
this essay will begin with a brief consideration of how our approach to cáin
in scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has been governed by
recourse to existing models with a strong scholarly pedigree. at the same time,
it must be conceded that to date no attempt has been made to investigate cáin in
the plentiful scottish charter record that survives from the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries (something that is now made easier through the database at
www.poms.ac.uk).3 the central purpose of this essay is to bring the charter
evidence to bear on this issue. In doing so, a serious effort will be made to rise to
susan reynolds’ challenge that we should lay our protective spectacles aside and
1 this article originated as a paper on ‘unfamiliar patterns of lordship in scotland in the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries’ delivered on 5 Jan. 2003 to the annual conference of scottish
Medievalists held at Pitlochry. I would like particularly to acknowledge the help I received
from simon taylor in preparing that paper. I am also very grateful to norman shead and
Keith stringer for making their forthcoming editions of episcopal and royal acta available to
me before publication, and to Matthew Hammond, alice taylor and simon taylor for reading
over this piece and making invaluable suggestions. any errors of omission or commission are,
of course, entirely my responsibility. I would also like to thank nerys ann Jones for her
constant support, and seán Duffy for his patience. 2 susan reynolds, Fiefs and vassals: the
medieval evidence reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), pp 6, 11. 3 the database focuses on people
and social relationships in the corpus of 6,016 charters (broadly defined) relating to scotland,
1093–1286. although it is based on charters, it is not a ‘charter database’ as such. In this study,
it has been used to supplement research conducted by traditional means: references will be
given to sources directly, rather than to the database (reflecting the fact that, for charter
research of this nature, the database functions as an indicative guide rather than an ultimate
destination). another major boost for research in this field is simon taylor, with Gilbert
Márkus, The place-names of Fife (5 vols, Donington, 2006–13) [hereafter PNF], a magnificent
resource for tracing the history of social organization in the area of scotland with the fullest
46
Re-examining cáin in Scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 47
adjust our eyes to the dazzling oddities and varieties of creatures that we find
when we track this term in the sources. In the spirit of this exercise, I will
attempt to conduct my safari through the charters denuded (as far as I dare) of
terminology and ways of thinking inherited from previous scholarship: for
example, I will endeavour to make my choice of words as neutral as possible by
referring to ‘settlements’ rather than ‘estates’ or ‘lands’, and will speak of
‘exercising lordship’ rather than ‘holding land’ if control of a resident population
(however small) is involved. It will also be important to distinguish between
control of a settlement (for example, when it is bestowed on an individual and
their heirs), and a more general lordship with an overarching responsibility for
peace and security at its core (expressed in terms of common obligations, such
as military service and the repair of roads and bridges). the existing scholarly
vocabulary for the former, however, tends to be associated with the emergence of
a manorial structure operating within a mosaic of nucleated settlement. When
we imagine the rural landscape of Gaelic scotland in this period – that is, all the
country except the south-east – we should think rather of a scattered pattern of
habitation: named settlements would, in character, have been akin to Irish
townlands rather than english villages. In the quest for a thoroughly neutral
vocabulary, therefore, lordship will be referred to as either ‘specific’ (if control
of a settlement is intended) or ‘general’ (based on common obligations levied
indiscriminately on the settlements of an area).
Cáin is one of the most conspicuously obscure terms found occasionally in
scottish documents relating to lordship from the twelfth to the sixteenth
century. It also appears, of course, in a variety of Irish sources throughout the
Middle ages. It has been observed, as far as Old Irish law tracts are concerned,
that ‘cáin is one of the most elusive words in an already elusive language’.4 It is
used to refer variously to royal or ecclesiastical edicts or promulgated law; or to
a fine; or to tribute owed to a king from peoples under his authority; it is also
used in relation to domestic as well as political subordination.5 the scottish
evidence, as will become apparent, extends the range of applications of this term
yet further. It also allows us a glimpse of the development of lordship in Gaelic
eastern scotland north of the Forth before the introduction of knights, feus and
new monastic foundations; an aspect of the authority wielded by the king of
scots over much of Gaelic scotland in the early twelfth century; and an element
of episcopal authority before diocesan organization was fully formed. these can
be perceived much less certainly than the dynamics of lordship in Gaelic Ireland
that have been revealed so vividly by Katharine simms. By creating such a
compelling example of Gaelic society’s innate capacity for growth and
charter record for the twelfth century. 4 robin chapman stacey, The road to judgment: from
custom to court in medieval Ireland and Wales (Philadelphia, 1994), p. 103. 5 see, for example,
stacey, The road to judgment, pp 103–9; Fergus Kelly, A guide to early Irish law (Dublin, 1988),
p. 71; thomas charles-edwards, Early Irish and Welsh kinship (Oxford, 1993), p. 508; thomas
charles-edwards, Early Christian Ireland (cambridge, 2000), pp 530, 559–69.
48 Dauvit Broun
development, she has made it easier to challenge the image of ‘celtic

conservatism’ that is such a frequent part of any account of scotland in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this sense, her work has inspired the fresh
look at Gaelic eastern scotland before the adoption of the Latin charter that I
have sketched at the end of this paper.
the seminal discussions of cáin in a scottish context are by Geoffrey Barrow.
He has defined it as one of the ‘principal burdens of tribute falling upon the free
and unfree alike’,6 which was ‘sometimes annual but often biennial or triennial,
due to a lord, especially the king, by virtue of his mere lordship’,7 ‘paralleling the
universal obligation of military service for the defence of the realm’.8 He
suggested that it ‘must go far back into the scottish, probably indeed the scoto-
Pictish, past’.9 the basis of his understanding of cáin was fully aired in the core
of a paper on northern english society published in 1969.10 this is significant:
his (and our) current understanding of cáin is grounded chiefly on what is
familiar elsewhere, taking a lead in particular from Jolliffe’s celebrated paper on
northumbrian institutions published in 1926 and William rees’ O’Donnell
lecture on the survival of ancient celtic custom in england, published in 1963.11
as a result, Barrow developed a hypothesis that cáin corresponded to the
triennial cattle levy of cornage in the northernmost counties of england and to
the commorth paid to the princes of Wales. this is not the only parallel he drew
with aspects of Welsh and northern english society: the right of sergeands to free
billeting, particularly in ‘scottish cumbria’, is another case in point.12 Putting
all this together, Barrow argued that
these features seem to have arisen before, and survived through, and
persisted in spite of, all the changes of Welshman and angle, norseman and
Gallovidian, cumbrian, Pict and scot which we have dutifully arrowed and
coloured in and mapped so graphically in all our history books.13
It has been observed by William Kapelle, however, that the cáin of eastern
scotland was a render of various foodstuffs, not cattle; also, it might be added
that no scottish source refers to cáin as specifically a triennial event.14 Kapelle
6 G.W.s. Barrow, ‘the lost Gàidhealtachd’ in William Gillies (ed.), Gaelic and Scotland: Alba
agus a’ Ghàidhlig (edinburgh, 1989), pp 67–88, repr. in his Scotland and its neighbours in the
Middle Ages (London, 1992), pp 105–26 at p. 116. 7 G.W.s. Barrow, Kingship and unity:
Scotland, 1000–1306 (London, 1981), p. 174. 8 Barrow, Scotland and its neighbours, p. 116.
9 G.W.s. Barrow, David I of Scotland: the balance of old and new (reading, 1985), repr. in his
Scotland and its neighbours in the Middle Ages, pp 45–65 at p. 59. 10 G.W.s. Barrow,
‘northern english society in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, Northern History, 4 (1969),
1–28. the importance of this paper for Barrow is indicated by its inclusion more than twenty
years later in his Scotland and its neighbours, pp 127–53. 11 J.e.a. Jolliffe, ‘northumbrian
institutions’, EHR, 41 (1926), 1–42; William rees, ‘survival of ancient celtic custom in
medieval england’ in Henry Lewis (ed.), Angles and Britons (cardiff, 1963), pp 148–68.
12 Barrow, ‘northern english society’, pp 147–8. 13 Ibid., p. 148. 14 the idea of a
concluded that, although these and other differences do not wholly invalidate a
comparative approach, ‘the symmetry upon which they mainly depend for their
force’ is significantly weakened.15 He conceded that a basic similarity in the
exercise of royal lordship at a local level may still be recognized across
northumbria, parts of Wales and parts of scotland; but he averred that ‘there is
only very slender evidence that the systems really had a common origin and were
not the result of … parallel growth’.16 More recently, alice taylor has shown that
the common burdens owed to the king of scots in the twelfth century were
operaciones, auxilia and exercitus (supporting the king through ‘public’ works,
aids and army service), and that these can be paralleled elsewhere: it is very rare
to find cáin mentioned alongside them.17
What happens, then, if we throw away our specs and train our naked eyes over
the bewilderingly fragmented charter evidence? the most obvious result is that
the discussion moves naturally towards differentiation rather than consolidation.
Instead of proposing that as many references to cáin as possible should be
regarded as various manifestations of a single phenomenon, we are likely to end
up with a lengthy catalogue of individual ‘creatures’. One benefit is that this
should avoid the risk of giving undue prominence to those examples that fit what
is argued to be similar elsewhere. the danger of distortion is not completely
avoidable, however, because decisions have to be made about how to pick a trail
through the material. In what follows, the prime consideration is to maintain the
integrity of the data by focusing strictly on cáin as found in charters of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with a result that other evidence of potential
significance is downgraded or set aside. One decision that might cause eyebrows
to be raised is to leave coinnmed (‘obligatory hospitality’, borrowed into scots as
conveth) out of the discussion. In the secondary literature on scotland, this is
repeatedly paired with cáin.18 although it is true that they are occasionally
coupled together in charters (as well as appearing alongside each other in lists of
renders and services), in the clear majority of cases cáin appears on its own.19 It
is also not uncommon to find coinnmed mentioned separately. If contemporaries
‘triennial tribute’ (triennale tributum) comes from William of Malmesbury (as pointed out in
Barrow, David I, reprinted in his Scotland and its neighbours, pp 47, 59). For all we know, the
Wiltshire historian may have assumed that a form of tribute in northern england also applied
to scotland. His statement cannot stand against the scottish charter evidence, of course.
15 William e. Kapelle, The Norman conquest of the north: the region and its transformation
(London, 1979), p. 60. 16 Ibid., p. 83. 17 alice taylor, ‘common burdens in the regnum
Scottorum: the evidence of charter diplomatic’ in Dauvit Broun (ed.), The reality behind charter
diplomatic in Anglo-Norman Britain (Glasgow, 2011), pp 166–234 at pp 187–204. Only three
instances can be found of cáin listed with common burdens: see ibid., p. 187 n. 67. 18 For
example, John Bannerman, ‘the scots language and the kin-based society’ in Derick s.
thomson (ed.), Gaelic and Scots in harmony (Glasgow, 1990), pp 1–19 at p. 8; a.D.M. Barrell,
Medieval Scotland (cambridge, 2000), p. 32; Regesta Regum Scottorum, i: the acts of Malcolm
IV, king of Scots, 1153–1165, ed. G.W.s. Barrow (edinburgh, 1960) [hereafter RRS, i], p. 55;
robert a. Dodgshon, Land and society in early Scotland (Oxford, 1981), p. 69. 19 For
example, Charters, bulls and other documents relating to the abbey of Inchaffray, ed. William a.
50 Dauvit Broun
saw no necessary connection between cáin and coinnmed, we should not do so,
either. there were, nonetheless, contexts in which cáin and coinnmed were linked.
this will have to be postponed until coinnmed is subjected to the same kind of
investigation as cáin in the charter evidence.20 Other material that is not given the
emphasis that might be expected is that of the Gaelic property records in the
Book of Deer. Unfortunately cáin is not mentioned as such: it may have been
subsumed along with coinnmed under the term cuit (‘portion’), which is only used
in this context by the earliest scribe, probably writing c.1130.21 Only once cáin
and coinnmed have been tackled will it be feasible to attain a clear understanding
of cuit in the Deer records. another limitation is the decision to focus on
references to cáin in documents in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, even
though later evidence can provide fresh examples, particularly in relation to
‘specific’ lordship. these will be treated as subsidiary, rather than ignored. two
later sources are particularly eye-catching in their use of cáin: James III’s
confirmation charter of 1471 for st andrews cathedral Priory, and the account
of the revenues of st andrews cathedral Priory in the Book of Assumptions about
a century later.22 there are a number of instances in these documents – such as
rossie, Pitmilly, Ballinbreich and Kinninmonth – where cáin represents a fixed
annual render from a settlement or group of settlements under heritable
lordship.23 there is a risk that this particular usage of the term is a later
Lindsay, John Dowden and J. Maitland thomson (edinburgh, 1908) [hereafter Inchaffray
Chrs], p. 341 ‘cane and coneveth’ is a single item in the index even though, in four of the eight
pages cited, cáin alone is mentioned. the pairing of cáin and coinnmed relates to a series of
charters relating to the apdaine of Madderty. 20 For coinnmed, the starting point for future
discussion is now taylor, ‘common burdens’, pp 189–91. 21 Dauvit Broun, thomas Owen
clancy and Katherine Forsyth, ‘the property records: text and translation’ in Katherine
Forsyth (ed.), Studies on the Book of Deer (Dublin, 2008), pp 131–44. For discussion in relation
to lordship, see Dauvit Broun, ‘the property records in the Book of Deer as a source for early
scottish society’ in Forsyth (ed.), Studies, pp 313–60. 22 Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum
Scotorum, Register of the great seal of Scotland, ii: 1424–1513 [hereafter RMS, ii], ed. James
Balfour Paul (edinburgh, 1882), no. 1039; The books of assumption of the thirds of benefices:
Scottish ecclesiastical rentals at the Reformation, ed. James Kirk (Oxford, 1995). 23 rossie
(Perthshire, originally rossieclerach) was given by the priory to John of Perth for payment of
a measure of wine: The miscellany of the Spalding Club, ii, ed. John stuart (aberdeen, 1842),
‘erroll charters’, no. 23 (1160×99). this became a measure of wine or mark of silver: Liber
cartarum prioratus Sancti Andree in Scotia, ed. thomas thomson (edinburgh, 1843) [hereafter
St A. Lib.], 162–3 (1240). Pitmilly (Fife) was fued to John Monypenny: St A. Lib., 404–5
(1264×1304: see PNF, iii, 381). In the case of Ballinbreich (also in Fife), Laurence of
abernethy granted 10s. annually de redditu uille mee de Balnebrey to st andrews Priory, while
continuing to hold Ballinbreich heritably (St A. Lib., 268: no later than 1246). Kinninmonth
(again in Fife) had already been given by the priory to Matthew by 1159 (RRS, i, no. 120),
whose cousin held it heritably for an annual render of two marks (G.W.s. Barrow, ‘the early
charters of the family of Kinninmonth of that Ilk’ in D.a. Bullough and r.L. storey (eds),
The study of medieval records: essays in honour of Kathleen Major (Oxford, 1971), pp 107–31,
no. 7). not all cases of cáin referred to arrangements established since the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. the cáin from Wester collessie had been granted by the earl of Douglas
earlier in the fifteenth century (St A. Lib., 406–7).
development – indeed, on the face of it, it might have been peculiar to st

andrews in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.24 true, it is bound to have some
relationship with cáin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but that can best
be assessed on the strength of the earlier evidence alone. a final issue arises from
the treatment of Gaelic terms in the documents of the period, which are almost
all in Latin. It is well known that, in charters, standard medieval Latin words
were often preferred to Gaelic terms – more so, it seems, before charters became
more common in the thirteenth century, when some Latinized Gaelic terms are
found more frequently.25 regular Latin equivalents were not abandoned, of
course. there are bound to be instances, therefore, where the choice of redditus
in extant charters has deprived us of a potential reference to cáin. Occasionally,
a render is referred to as ‘ancient’ or ‘old’,26 which could well represent cáin.
this can only be supposed with any confidence, however, if it is first shown to fit
with one of the contexts inhabited by the term cáin in the charters. For the
purposes of this investigation, therefore, mentions of ‘old’ and ‘ancient’ renders
will be left to one side.
Before tracking cáin in relation to lordship over settlements in more detail, it
will be useful to begin with a type of cáin that is familiar but has not enjoyed
much exposure because nobody would regard it as comparable with cornage.
this is the cáin levied by the king on ships, and is mentioned either when a
monastery’s vessels were granted exemption from it, or when it received a sum
derived from the receipts.27 the granting of this privilege in the early twelfth
century implies that there was a significant export trade by that time, and that
the kings were in a position to exploit it. another context for cáin that is less
familiar – indeed, it has not been discussed before – is the cáin levied by a bishop
on churches. In the diocese of st andrews, ten parish churches belonging to
arbroath abbey were freed from cáin and coinnmed by Bishop roger in late 1198
or early 1199.28 earlier in the twelfth century, Bishop robert of st andrews
(1127–59) granted to his cathedral priory half the cáin he received from the
parish of Holy trinity, st andrews.29 south of the Forth, Bishop robert
24 there are no other examples in the Book of Assumptions. 25 a striking example within the
twelfth century itself is the grant of a tenth of his redditus by Morgán, mormaer of Mar (St A.
Lib., 246–7: 1165×71); in Pope Lucius III’s confirmation of the rights and possessions of st
andrews cathedral Priory in 1183, however, ‘kan’ (cáin) is used instead of redditus (ibid., 56–
62 at p. 59). 26 For example, the antiquus redditus (three shillings and six pence) owed to the
bishop of st andrews from Mondynes in the early thirteenth century: Liber S. Thome de
Aberbrothoc, ed. Patrick chalmers and cosmo Innes (2 vols, edinburgh, 1848–56) [hereafter
Arbroath Liber], i, no. 169. 27 Most of the evidence is discussed in RRS, i, p. 54, and, Regesta
Regum Scottorum, ii: the acts of William I, king of Scots, 1165–1214, ed. G.W.s. Barrow with
the collaboration of W.W. scott (edinburgh, 1971) [hereafter RRS, ii], p. 53. there is also
evidence from the reign of alexander I (1107–24): Liber ecclesie de Scon, ed. cosmo Innes
(edinburgh, 1843) [hereafter Scone Liber], no. 3. 28 Scottish Episcopal Acta, ed. norman
shead, i: the twelfth century (Woodbridge, forthcoming) [hereafter SEA, i], no. 256. see also
Arbroath Liber, no. 152. 29 SEA, i, no. 133 (1140); St A. Lib., p. 123.
52 Dauvit Broun
quitclaimed episcopal aid, cáin and coinnmed due from coldingham and its
churches; it may be inferred from this that not all churches were burdened with
cáin, for it is said that this brought coldingham’s dependent churches into line
with other ‘abbatial churches’ in Lothian.30 st andrews was not the only diocese
in which churches rendered cáin to the bishop.31 Mention is made of cáin
received by the bishop of Dunblane from the churches of Menteith;32 Bishop
Gregoir of Dunkeld granted a proportion of his cáin as a temporary measure to
Inchcolm abbey.33 episcopal cáin could help to explain the puzzle of how
dioceses took such complex form on the ground between the Forth and the
Mounth, and to a lesser extent in Lothian: in some areas parishes of the dioceses
of st andrews, Dunblane and Dunkeld were intermingled, while in the case of
Brechin an entire diocese was scattered within territory predominantly within
the diocese of st andrews.34 It has long been recognized that this state of affairs
must reflect pre-twelfth-century forms of authority exercised by major churches
over local ones. episcopal cáin would be the most tangible example of this
authority that has hitherto been identified.
another context for cáin that is well known in the later Middle ages and
beyond is as a generic term in scots for an element of rent in kind that could fall
on even the lowliest inhabitants of a settlement: for example, kane (or cane) fowl,
kane oats and kane cheese, as well as kane salt, kane lime or kane fish.35 turning
to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this association of cáin with specific
produce as rent due from a tenant may be compared with the ‘old cáin of barley
30 SEA, i, no. 116 (27 July 1127); see also SEA, i, no. 243 (2 Feb. 1194). It may be inferred
from this that a church ruled by an ab, with its dependent churches, might have normally been
exempt from episcopal cáin. 31 there are also potential examples of cáin owed to the bishop
of st andrews from churches in the diocese of aberdeen. When David, earl of Huntingdon,
as lord of the Garioch, gave culsalmond and Monkeigie to Lindores abbey, the cáin of six
shillings and six pence from culsalmond and four shillings and four pence from Monkeigie
was reserved to the bishop of st andrews: Keith J. stringer (ed.), ‘the acta of earl David’ in
stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, 1152–1219: a study in Anglo-Scottish history (edinburgh,
1985), pp 212–74, no. 49 (1199×1207) at p. 249. Lindores acquired from earl David the
churches of these settlements as well as the settlements themselves (ibid., no. 51 (1202×3)),
so it is possible that the cáin due to the bishop of st andrews related to the churches.
certainly, the bishop of st andrews claimed the church of culsalmond after it had been given
to Lindores: CPL, i, 30. the other possibility is that the cáin had been given from the
settlements themselves by the king at an earlier stage (assuming this occurred before earl
David was given the Garioch), along the lines of the final context for cáin discussed below.
32 Liber Insule Missarum, ed. cosmo Innes (edinburgh, 1846), no. 11. 33 Charters of the
abbey of Inchcolm, ed. D.e. easson and a. Macdonald (edinburgh, 1938), no. 1. 34 Perhaps
the diocese, whose see was ruled by an ecclesiastical family that included an ab of Brechin,
originated as an ‘abbacy’ with its dependent churches. note also the expression ‘chief church’
(ard chell) in the Deer records (Broun et al., ‘the records’, no. VI) in relation to exemptions
from secular burdens. 35 A dictionary of the older Scottish tongue, ed. W.a. craigie et al. (12
vols, London or aberdeen, 1937–2002) (accessed through http://www.dsl.ac.uk/ on 10 Mar.
2011), s.vv. cane fowl (earliest reference 1483); kane foul (earliest reference 1495); it is also
found as simply kane2 and cane1 (although here the range of references is greater than this
and cheese’ that was received each year by the céli Dé of st andrews from the
person exercising lordship on their behalf over Lambieletham and Kininnis
(constituting a single settlement in Fife),36 before this was commuted to sixty
shillings in 1273×86.37 to find explicit evidence of cáin as a burden falling on
each household within a settlement, it is necessary to look beyond the
relationship between tenant and landlord or its analogues. In the remarkable
record of witnesses’ dispositions in the case of the bishop of st andrews v.
Donnchad of arbuthnott heard by an ecclesiastical tribunal at Perth in 1206,38 a
detailed picture is given of the different kinds of lordship exercised over the
inhabitants of the Kirkton of arbuthnott. the Kirkton was regarded as the
bishop of st andrews’ ‘own land’ (terra propria), from which he was entitled to
hospitality for himself or his officials, as well as an annual render of two cows.
On top of this, however, the inhabitants each year owed the king’s thane of
arbuthnott ten cheeses from each house as well as labour services and provisions
for hosting. One witness declared that the bishops of st andrews ‘had peacefully
possessed that land [the Kirkton], after the cáin owed to the thanes had been
paid, until the time of Isaac of Benvie, who first began to trouble the men of that
land’.39 this cáin was presumably the cheeses from each house.40 although this
degree of detail cannot be matched, the arrangements that are portrayed so
vividly must have been replicated elsewhere. For example, a similar obligation
on each household is likely to lie behind the cheese and oats rendered as cáin to
the thane of Kintore (aberdeenshire) from Dyce and Kinkell (or at least from
the kirktons there).41 this – at least with regard to cheese – might also be
thought to form part of the mechanism that produced the hides and cheese owed
to the king as cáin from his ‘residences’ (maneria) in Gowrie,42 and the cáin
consisting of cheese, malt and corn which the king received from angus.43
Cáin in this context looks like a universal render, a function of the king’s
‘general lordship’. there is no indication, however, that the king was owed cáin
throughout his realm. true, the king’s grant to Jedburgh abbey of a tenth of
his cáin from angus is paralleled by similar grants of his cáin of Fife and
Fothrif, clackmannan and Moray,44 as well as some other regions south of the
specific context). 36 PNF, iii, p. 113. 37 the charter is printed in full as part of the
Calendar of the Laing Charters, 854–1837, ed. J. anderson (edinburgh, 1899), no. 15 (at p. 5).
38 John stuart (ed.), ‘Decreet of the synod of Perth, aD MccVI’, Miscellany of the Spalding
Club: v, ed. John stuart (aberdeen), 209–13. 39 Et quod episcopi Sancti Andree possiderunt
pacifice terram illam soluto debito cano thanis usque ad tempus Ysaac de Banevin qui primus incepit
vexare homines illius terre. Isaac of Benvie held arbuthnott at ferm for six years, initially from
Osbert Olifard when Osbert went on crusade (1183×8: alan Macquarrie, Scotland and the
crusades, 1095–1560 (edinburgh, 1985), pp 29 and 44 n. 17), and then from Osbert’s successor,
Walter Olifard. 40 see Barrow, Kingship and unity, 139. It cannot have been the rent of two
cows, as stated in Marinell ash, ‘the diocese of st andrews under its “norman” bishops’,
SHR, 55 (1976), 105–26 at 114. 41 Regesta Regum Scottorum, v: the acts of Robert I, king of
Scots, 1306–1329, ed. a.a.M. Duncan (edinburgh, 1988) [hereafter RRS, v], no. 397.
42 RRS, i, no. 245. 43 RRS, i, no. 195. 44 David I granted the teind of his cáin in Fife,
Fothrif and clackmannan to Dunfermline abbey: The charters of King David I, king of Scots,
54 Dauvit Broun
Forth.45 It is striking, however, that north of the Forth the king did not make
such grants from areas such as atholl, Mar and strathearn, where (by the late
thirteenth century, at least) most settlements acknowledged the mormaer’s
lordship rather than the king’s. In the case of Mar and strathearn, it was the
mormaer who made an equivalent grant of a proportion of his cáin.46 there is, in
fact, no evidence that the king in the historic heartland of his realm received cáin
of this type from any mormaer.47 another potential complication is the possibility
that the bishop of st andrews, as well as receiving cáin from churches, also took
cáin from settlements as if he functioned as mormaer in some areas. this, at least,
would explain the grant of a proportion of his cáin to st andrews cathedral
Priory from Blebo and ‘from other provinces and places’ (de aliis prouinciis et
locis) where cáin was rendered ‘to st andrew’.48 Blebo was the name of the
secular unit corresponding to the parish of Kemback:49 its use could suggest that
cáin here was levied in a secular context.50 this would not be the only indication
1124–53, and of his son Henry earl of Northumberland, ed. G.W.s. Barrow (Woodbridge, 1999)
[hereafter Chs David I], no. 38. For Moray, see RRS, ii, nos 395, 421. there was also a grant
to bishops of aberdeen of second teinds of royal revenue in aberdeenshire and Banffshire
(where there was a swathe of settlements under the king’s lordship): the relevant charters are
doubtful or spurious, which could explain the fact that cáin is not specified: RRS, i, nos 116,
237; RRS, ii, nos 251, 399. 45 see below, p. 56. 46 For Mar, see above, n. 25. For
strathearn, cynthia J. neville, ‘the earls of strathearn from the twelfth to the mid-fourteenth
century, with an edition of their written acts’ (2 vols, PhD, U aberdeen, 1983), ii, nos 5, 12
and 13; Inchaffray Chrs, nos 5, 16 and 17. 47 the Deer property records have been read as
evidence for this, but I have argued that this has to do with assumptions inherited from mid-
nineteenth-century views of early scottish society, rather than a reading of the records
informed by the latest understanding of early documents: Broun, ‘the property records in
the Book of Deer’. It might be expected, for instance, that some reference to routine payments
from mormaír would be found in the royal accounts that survive for 1264–6 (The exchequer rolls
of Scotland, i: ed. J. stuart (edinburgh, 1878) [hereafter ER, i], 1–34). there is, indeed, a
reference to 80/- gained from the comitatus of angus by the sheriff of Forfar in 1264 (ER, i,
9), but this was presumably because it was administered by the sheriff for the king during the
minority of the mormaer, Gilbert de Umfraville (whose minority was also noted by the sheriff
of roxburgh: ER, i, 28). as far as Moray is concerned, the fact that the lord of Badenoch (a
region in Moray comparable to a small mormaerdom) paid cáin to the king (Registrum
Episcopatus Moraviensis, ed. cosmo Innes (edinburgh, 1837) [hereafter Moray Reg.], no. 76)
suggests that cáin may, indeed, have been a universal render there with a hierarchy of
contributors. But cáin here may have belonged to a different context: the subordination of a
kingdom (see below). the tenth owed to the bishop (see above, n. 44) was pursued by Bishop
andrew of Moray, causing disputes that suggest that those who had been given heritable
lordship over settlements there by the king may no longer have been rendering cáin. For the
resolutions of these disputes in the 1220s and 1230s, see Moray Reg., nos 28, 31, 70, 74 and
85; cáin was also the subject of a dispute resolved in 1258: ibid., no. 122. 48 St A. Lib. at p.
123 (1140). 49 PNF, ii, p. 187. 50 For renders reserved to the bishop of st andrews from
tarvit (in Fife), which on one occasion is called cáin, see G.W.s. Barrow, ‘some east Fife
documents’ in idem (ed.), The Scottish tradition: essays in honour of Ronald Gordon Cant
(edinburgh, 1974), pp 23–43 at pp 35–6, 43. there is a reference to the bishop of Moray
claiming cáin from the aird which can be read as cáin from a settlement rather than a tenth of
royal cáin: Moray Reg., no. 122 (at p. 134) (1258).
that the bishop of st andrews was comparable to a mormaer in some contexts: in

an account of a judicial assembly in the late 1120s or early 1130s, his army is
mentioned alongside the army led by the mormaer of Fife.51 this suggests that
he, like any mormaer in the early twelfth century, led the military service due to
the king from each dabach in their jurisdiction. If, as seems likely, cáin in this
context was a function of general lordship, it seems to have lacked (or lost) the
implicit hierarchy in the mechanics of levying found in other common burdens
under the king’s authority.
Looking more closely beyond the kingdom’s historic core, it is now
recognized much more readily than before that, up to the thirteenth century, the
regions south of the Forth and west of Drumalban were regarded by the king’s
subjects as different countries from ‘scotland proper’ that lay north and east.52
rulers of argyll and Galloway, moreover, were accorded the title of king in at
least some contexts in this period.53 Bearing this in mind, we would be much less
inclined than previous generations of scholars to assume that the king’s cáin,
which is referred to in argyll and Kintyre and throughout the south-west of
what is now scotland, represented the same kind of imposition as north of the
Forth.54 some striking differences between cáin within the kingdom’s historic
core and beyond are immediately apparent. Livestock rather than the products
of livestock and other foodstuffs are prominent in cáin beyond ‘scotland proper’,
suggesting that the yield had to be of a kind that could travel a significant
distance before being consumed.55 It is also clear that cáin was not an annual levy
from argyll and Kintyre or from Galloway; it seems, indeed, to have been
received irregularly.56 Both these features suggest that cáin here operated in a
different context from the cáin rendered annually in foodstuffs north of the
Forth. they would instead be consistent with tribute exacted by an overking
51 Early Scottish charters prior to 1153, ed. a.c. Lawrie (Glasgow, 1905), no. 80. 52 For
example, Dauvit Broun, ‘Defining scotland and the scots before the wars of independence’
in Dauvit Broun, richard J. Finlay and Michael Lynch (eds), Image and identity: the making
and remaking of Scotland through the ages (edinburgh, 1998), pp 4–17. 53 For Galloway, note
the charter of Fergus rex Galwitensium in Keith J. stringer, ‘acts of lordship: the records of
the Lords of Galloway to 1234’ in terry Brotherstone and David Ditchburn (eds), Freedom
and authority, Scotland, c.1050–c.1650: historical and historiographical essays presented to Grant
G. Simpson (east Linton, 2000), pp 203–34 at p. 212. the designation ‘king of argyll’ is
discussed in W.D.H. sellar, ‘Hebridean sea kings: the successors of somerled, 1164–1316’ in
edward J. cowan and r. andrew McDonald (eds), Alba: Celtic Scotland in the Middle Ages
(east Linton, 2000), pp 187–218 at pp 199 (and n. 49), 201, 207, 217 n. 55. 54 For David I’s
cáin from argyll and Kintyre, see Chs David I, nos 147, 172, 185; for cáin from areas of
‘greater’ Galloway, ibid., nos 57, 183. 55 It is clear from Chs David I, no. 57, that, although
the king might in some years be present in the region and presumably consume the cáin, this
was not routine. as well as cattle and swine, there were cheeses: ibid., no. 183; RRS, i, no. 131.
56 Leges Scotie §20 (ed. in alice taylor, ‘Leges Scotie and the lawcodes of David I, William the
Lion and alexander II’, SHR, 88 (2009), 207–88 at 278) has ‘whenever the lord king was owed
his cáin from Galloway’, which implies irregularity; notice also arrangements for when the lord
of Galloway is released from the burden of cáin: stringer, ‘acts of lordship’, no. 9 (p. 215): see
taylor, ‘common burdens’, pp 203–4, for discussion.
56 Dauvit Broun
from a ruler beyond the limits of his regular power. Most information about it is
available for Galloway. In 1187×9 (or, less likely, 1189×95), an assize was enacted
at Lanark, in the presence of the lord of Galloway, in which the levy was made
more systematic by imposing it directly on some of the inhabitants (although this
presumably reflects to some extent the way the lord of Galloway would have
obtained the livestock had he retained sole responsibility for handing over the
cáin).57 the king’s cáin was to be collected by the maír of Galloway bearing a
royal brieve, with a fine of one hundred cows for default. this heavy penalty
suggests that only men of considerable substance were expected to contribute.58
It is also clear that the lord of Galloway collected cáin for his own benefit, much
as a mormaer did:59 the same was very likely true of the lord of argyll, too.60 the
earliest evidence for the levy of cáin on Galloway, however, relates to areas of
‘greater Galloway’ that were not part of the later lordship. this is the cáin in
cattle, swine and cheese received by David from before 1124 from the four
‘cadrez’ of ‘that Galloway which I had when King alexander was living’
(probably strathgryfe, cunningham, Kyle and carrick), a tenth of which he
granted to Kelso (confirmed 1147×52).61 the obscure term ‘cadrez’ has been
identified with ‘kethres’, a class of servants (seruientes) of the earl of carrick who
the region’s inhabitants were obliged to billet.62 If these were the same seruientes
from whose powers of accusation and associated depredations the earl of carrick
released the men of Melrose in 1285,63 then it suggests that each area originally
represented a form of local jurisdiction under its own ruler, independent of the
king, an arrangement which continued in carrick throughout this period.64 If
this jurisdictional independence is what was signified by the term ‘cadrez’,65 then
it would reinforce the suspicion that cáin here continued to function as
recognition by local rulers of subordination to the king of scots.
Before embarking on the final, least familiar context in which cáin is found, it
will be useful to summarize the different kinds of lordship associated with cáin
which have so far been revealed in this study. three broad categories may be
57 taylor, ‘Leges Scotie’, §20 (p. 278). 58 stringer, ‘acts of lordship’, no. 9 (p. 215); taylor,
‘common burdens’, pp 203–4. 59 stringer, ‘acts of lordship’, no. 3 (p. 213). 60 a.a.M.
Duncan and a.L. Brown, ‘argyll and the Isles in the earlier Middle ages’, Proceedings of the
Antiquaries of Scotland, 90 (1956–7), 192–219, appendix IV. 61 Chs David I, no. 183: see
RRS, i, p. 39 for identification of the four ‘cadrez’. 62 Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis, ed.
cosmo Innes (2 vols, edinburgh, 1843) [hereafter Glasgow Reg.], i, no. 139 (an agreement of
1225 in which the clergy of the diocese of Glasgow were released from this obligation). the
connection between ‘cadrez’ and ‘kethres’ is discussed in Barrow, ‘northern english society’,
England and its neighbours, p. 148. 63 Glasgow Reg., i, no. 316: see http://www.poms.ac.uk/
feature/february10.html#fn02 (accessed 20 apr. 2011) for translation and commentary by
David carpenter. 64 the same was true of Lennox: Glasgow Reg., no. 141; G.W.s. Barrow,
The Anglo-Norman era in Scottish history (Oxford, 1980), p. 161. see also Barrow, ‘northern
english society’, England and its neighbours, p. 148. 65 Barrow (‘northern english society’,
p. 148) makes the attractive suggestion that each of the ‘cadrez’ represented a circuit
conducted by these law-enforcement officials. this would imply that there was once a lord of
each region whose judicial powers were serviced in this way.
identified. First is what may be described as a general lordship exercised by the

king or a mormaer north of the Forth over the areas under their direct authority.
there is no indication that each mormaer rendered a proportion of cáin to the
king,66 or that a settlement owed cáin to both king and mormaer. second is cáin
received by the king of scots as overking in recognition of the submission of a
region beyond the bounds of his regular jurisdiction. this was different from the
cáin received by the lord of Galloway and lord of argyll from his own people,
which seems to have represented the same general lordship as that of the king of
scots and a mormaer north of the Forth. third, cáin has also been seen briefly
within the context of lordship over a specific settlement. Here the lord (the céli
Dé of st andrews) delegated control of a settlement in return for cáin as an
annual render (along with unnamed services). If control of the settlement was
given heritably, then this would match the context of cáin found in much later
sources relating to the priory of st andrews. the heritability of delegated
lordship cannot be assumed, however, on the basis of the information to hand,
and would require special consideration on its own. there is one context for cáin
in relation to a single named settlement that has yet to be tackled, however. It is
of particular interest because, according to a reading of the evidence proposed
below, it has the potential to allow us to glimpse the emergence of specific
lordship north of the Forth no later than the mid-eleventh century.
the earliest examples of a render from a specific settlement, to which the
term cáin was applied at some point, are found in the property records of the
céli Dé of st serf ’s Isle, Loch Leven. One relates to Balchrystie, a settlement
within the shire of newburn (a unit of general lordship in Fife), granted by Máel
coluim III and his wife, Margaret, sometime between about 1070 and 1093.67
the other (not found in the main body of the property records, but elsewhere in
the cartulary of st andrews Priory) relates to a settlement called Bolgyne filii
Torfyny, ‘Bogie of the son of torfinn’ (that is, Wester Bogie, also in Fife),
granted by Mac Bethad mac Findlaích (king of scots, 1040–57).68 the st serf
property records are imprecise about the exact nature of these endowments,
which only becomes clear when Bishop robert of st andrews gave st serf ’s Isle
and everything pertaining to it to st andrews Priory.69 In Bishop robert’s
charter, datable to 1152×9, the property rights enjoyed by the céli Dé of Loch
Leven are described in detail, including an annual rent of twenty bolls of barley
from Balchrystie, and, from Bogie, twenty mela of cheese and a pig. the
itemizing of these renders from Balchrystie and Bogie contrasts with other
66 a roll of returns from the comitatus of strathearn was noted in the inventory of royal
archives in 1296: The acts of the parliament of Scotland: i, AD MCXXIV–AD MCCCCXXIII,
ed. thomas thomson and cosmo Innes (edinburgh, 1844), p. 118. Bearing in mind the
returns from angus in 1264 (see above, n. 47), this could relate to the minority following the
death of Máel Ísu, mormaer of strathearn, in 1271, leaving a teenager as his heir (Inchaffray
Chrs, p. lxv). 67 St A. Lib., p. 115. 68 Ibid., pp 11–14 at p. 12; RMS, iv, no. 1890.
69 SEA, i, no. 132; St A. Lib., p. 43.
58 Dauvit Broun
settlements, such as Kirkness and Portmoak, which are said in the charter to
have been given with all their pertinents. Plainly, the céli Dé had ‘specific’
lordship over Kirkness and Portmoak. their relationship with Balchrystie and
Bogie was different. In fact, lordship over Balchrystie and Bogie ‘of the son of
torfinn’ had evidently been retained by the kings. this, at least, would explain
how David I was able to give Balchrystie to Dunfermline in 1150, saving the
right that the céli Dé of Loch Leven had in the place,70 and how William I,
sometime in or between 1165 and 1172, gave Bogie (along with neighbouring
tough) to aed Mac Duib for an annual rent of ten shillings.71 all that the céli
Dé of Loch Leven, and their successors, the priory of st andrews, enjoyed from
Balchrystie and Bogie, therefore, was a fixed render of foodstuffs. none of the
documents mentioned so far describe these renders as cáin. the term does not
appear until st serf ’s Isle was re-established as a priory dependent on st
andrews by Prior John in a charter dated 1268.72 there the property rights of
Loch Leven were stated as including cáin from Balchrystie and Bogie along with
possession of villae such as Portmoak and Kirkness.
In the case of Balchrystie and Bogie, the term cáin was used in relation to a
fixed render due from a settlement under someone else’s lordship. there are
other cases where this situation is found. For example, when the bishop of st
andrews in 1212 leased the apdaine (now the Kirkton) of airlie (in angus) to
coupar angus abbey for twenty years, the cáin due to Máel coluim of Kettins
and his heirs from the apdaine was reserved.73 as far as Balchrystie and Wester
Bogie are concerned, the rendering of cáin to someone other than the lord of the
settlement can be explained by supposing that, when the king granted cáin, he
was the specific lord of these settlements and continued to enjoy this role until
Balchrystie was donated by David I to Dunfermline and Wester Bogie by
William I to Áed Mac Duib. In the case of the apdaine of airlie, the bishop of st
andrews seems to have exercised lordship in the same way as he did in the
Kirkton of arbuthnott. If so, the simplest explanation would be that cáin here
was, as in the Kirkton of arbuthnott, originally due to the king, and so may have
been assigned by the king to Máel coluim of Kettins or an ancestor of his. (the
church of airlie itself was in the king’s gift.)74 It appears that, in this case, the
king had granted his cáin from a settlement under the specific lordship of
someone else (the bishop of st andrews) to a third party. this brings to mind the
grant to Deer by Máel coluim mac cinaeda (king of scots 1005–34) of his cuit
(‘portion’) from two settlements that at some point were themselves in the gift
70 Chs David I, no. 171 (probably 1150). 71 nas, GD 212/15/42; John Bannerman,
‘MacDuff of Fife’ in alexander Grant and Keith J. stringer (eds), Medieval Scotland: crown,
lordship and community: essays presented to G.W.S. Barrow (edinburgh, 1993), pp 20–38 at pp
31–2. 72 St A. Lib., pp 121–2. 73 Charters of the abbey of Coupar Angus, ed. D.e. easson
(2 vols, edinburgh, 1947), no. 21. 74 Regesta Regum Scottorum, iii: the acts of Alexander II,
king of Scots, 1214–1249, ed. Keith J. stringer (edinburgh, forthcoming) [hereafter RRS, iii],
of someone else (in one case the mormaer of Buchan and his wife, who gave the
settlement to Deer a century or more after Máel coluim had granted his cuit).75
the onus of this fixed render evidently fell on whoever exercised lordship
directly over the settlement concerned – either the lord himself or the person to
whom he had given control of the settlement. this is stated explicitly in a charter
of thomas Durward, confirming the grant to the céli Dé of Monymusk
(aberdeenshire) by his grandfather, the mormaer of Mar, and his mother, of ten
bolls of barley and ten stones of cheese, which were to be transported to the céli
Dé each Martinmas by whoever held auchterecht (from which it may be
inferred that the mormaer of Mar was lord of that specific settlement).76 this
render is referred to as cáin in a summary of Monymusk’s revenue made in
1268.77 the most detailed account of how such renders were collected is in the
resolution of a case heard before papal judges delegate in 1212×15 between the
prior of st andrews on one side and the master of the schools of st andrews
with the assent of the archdeacon of st andrews (here in his capacity as fer
léginn) on the other.78 at the heart of the dispute was the maintenance of poor
scholars by the payment of cáin from six settlements. the priory conceded that
cáin of fixed quantities of produce was owed from three settlements in the
priory’s ‘own hands’, as well as from two other places held from the priory by
Giric, and from another held from the priory by adam son of Odo, the priory’s
steward. It was also laid out exactly how the cáin was to be levied in the event of
any changes in the way the priory exercised its lordship over the six settlements
in question. the passage reads (in simon taylor’s translation):
if it happen that any of those lands which are now in their [the priory’s]
lordship [dominium] may have been given to someone in feu [in feodum], let
the cains be demanded from those holding those lands just as from other
feuars [feodati]. similarly, if any of those lands which are now held by
feudatories [feodatarii] might fall to them [the priory] in lordship in
whatever way, the cains of those lands are to be rendered by the same
canons as they are wont to be paid from other lands which they hold in
demesne.
It was further explained that the cáin would be collected every Martinmas by a
servant of the prior along with a servant of the fer léginn, and that the produce
would be delivered by them to the house of the fer léginn in st andrews. It may
be inferred that the dispute arose in part from the change in lordship (in this case
from the fer léginn to the priory according to an agreement in 1212),79 in which
the priory refused to accept that they were now liable for the burden of cáin
no. 32. 75 Broun et al., ‘the records’, nos II.7; II.6; III. 76 St A. Lib., p. 369. 77 Ibid.,
p. 361. 78 Ibid., pp 316–18; translated in PNF, iii, pp 418–20 (p. 420 for quotation). 79 St
A. Lib., pp 315–16; translated in PNF, iii, pp 431–2.
60 Dauvit Broun
attached to their new acquisitions. another instance of a change in lordship

resulting in a dispute over cáin, nearly two centuries later, was when William
Barclay, laird of collairnie, who possessed the lands of tough and Bogie from at
least 1397, stubbornly resisted paying the cáin that, it will be recalled, had
originally been granted by Mac Bethad to the céli Dé of Loch Leven from Bogie
‘of the son of torfinn’. curiously, this was now specified as eight bolls of flour
and a single pig, rather than the earlier burden of twenty mela of cheese and a
single pig. On 28 October 1411, Barclay was still being pursued for mounting
arrears dating back to 1391, despite the best efforts of andrew Wyntoun, prior of
Loch Leven, and the full weight of the st andrews ecclesiastical establishment.80
these disputes underline the suspicion that cáin in this context represented
a distinct burden on top of the render and services due to the settlement’s
specific lord, rather than being merely a portion of the render. this is not to say
that a lord could not assign part of the render he received from a settlement to a
third party. In some cases this is explicit;81 in others it seems probable.82 Where
this occurs in the charters it is a money payment, and is never called cáin.83 If we
are to look for the origin of cáin as an existing additional levy assigned to a third
party, it seems that we should look elsewhere. a potentially significant pattern
may be dimly discerned: in every instance where cáin was owed to someone other
than the settlement’s specific lord, the grant of cáin was originally made by the
king or a mormaer, or possibly the bishop of st andrews.84 all these had respon-
sibility (in the early twelfth century, at least) for levying the most prominent
universal obligation in the charter evidence: military service. this would suggest
that cáin in this context was originally levied by virtue of general lordship. It is
conceivable that the same could be true of cáin where this appears as part of the
renders and services owed from a settlement to its specific lord. When Gille
Brigte (Gilbert), mormaer of strathearn (1171–1223), gave settlements in
strathearn and also Meikleour to his brother, Máel Ísu, he evidently transferred
the cáin due to him as mormaer because Máel Ísu was subsequently able to grant
a proportion of them to Lindores abbey.85
80 St A. Lib., pp 6–20 for the entire proceedings. 81 For example, Barrow, ‘some east Fife
documents’, no. 8 (pp 35–6); neville, ‘the earls of strathearn’, ii, nos 47, 48; see also no. 66
(Inchaffray Chrs, nos 76, 77, 114). 82 For example, the half mark that Máel Ísu, exercising
lordship over Pitmilly (in crailshire, Fife) on behalf of ada, the king’s mother, was instructed by
ada to pay to st andrews cathedral Priory (St A. Lib., p. 209), was presumably part of Máel Ísu’s
existing render for Pitmilly, rather than an extra imposition. When Pitmilly was subsequently
given by ada to st andrews Hospital (which belonged to the priory) (ibid., 208), the half mark
would have become redundant. 83 at some point in the decades around 1200, Fergus, mormaer
of Buchan, granted to the abbey of arbroath an annual render of a mark from Finavon in angus.
an inquest in 1323 found that John comyn, earl of Buchan, had detained this from the abbey
following the coronation of robert I. nowhere in the series of documents about this case is the
render referred to as cáin (except in the index of RRS, v). 84 the settlements from which cáin
was rendered for the support of the poor scholars of st andrews were in the Boar’s raik, which
was restored to the bishop of st andrews by alexander I shortly before his death in 1124: the cáin
could therefore have been assigned originally by either the king or a bishop. 85 neville, ‘the
alice taylor, in her study of common burdens in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, argued compellingly that, of the three that are found in the charter
record (‘public’ works, aids and army service), the first suffered a general decline
in importance after the early thirteenth century, while during the mid-twelfth
century the remaining two came to be levied by significant lords (such as knights
and abbots) in relation to those settlements under their ‘specific’ lordship, rather
than by toísech or mormaer as a function of their ‘general’ lordship.86 this pattern
of ‘specific’ lordship acquiring control over the common burdens owed from its
settlements could have a longer trajectory, originating in the beginnings of
‘specific’ lordship itself exercised by king and mormaer. Where general lordship
developed into specific lordship – as in Balchrystie and Bogie ‘of the son of
torfinn’, where it seems that the king once enjoyed both forms of lordship – the
function of cáin as a recognition of the king’s authority would no longer have
been necessary: his control of the settlement could continue without it by virtue
of specific lordship, making it easy, presumably, to grant cáin to a third party
such as a church. assigning cáin to a third party was presumably already an
established practice (if we allow evidence from the Deer records on this point),
even though it could mean the loss of a regular acknowledgment of lordship over
a settlement. returning to the royal exercise of specific lordship, the example of
Bogie ‘of the son of torfinn’ suggests that this began no later than the mid-
eleventh century. It also suggests how ‘specific’ lordship might have operated:
presumably this part of Bogie was originally designated as ‘of the son of torfinn’
because it was in the hands of the son of torfinn (or maybe we should read this
as the head of a lineage: ‘Mac torfinn’).87 the process need not represent
particularly intense exploitation by the king. Its chief feature may have been the
establishing of control by a local person under royal authority. a further stage
may finally be imagined, in which specific lordship becomes so common for king
and mormaer that cáin is treated as part of the regular render due to them as
specific lord of a settlement.88
this sketch of the development of lordship in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries is, in the end, only likely to be as compelling as the urge to reduce
disparate material to order and create something approaching a narrative. the
analysis of cáin on which it is based could, alternatively, be left to stand on its
own, without further development, as the taxonomy of a term in a particular
corpus of material. It is also incomplete without an equivalent study of coinnmed.
there is a strong suspicion that coinnmed (or ‘waiting’), when found on its own,
earls of strathearn’, ii, additional charters, no. 8; Chartulary of Lindores Abbey, ed. J. Dowden
(edinburgh, 1903) [hereafter Lindores Cart.], no. 24. 86 taylor, ‘common burdens’, pp 202,
210–23. 87 ‘Mac torfinn’ can be identified as a surname in Fife during the reign of David
I: see Dauvit Broun, ‘the presence of witnesses and the writing of charters’ in idem (ed.), The
reality behind charter diplomatic, p. 278 n. 155. 88 this is not to say that everyone had a lord:
it is assumed in the provisions outlined in RRS, ii, no. 281 (1185×9) that some people will live
under general lordship only, (presumably) belonging to a settlement that has no specific lord.
62 Dauvit Broun
relates especially to settlements where king, mormaer or bishop, or those on their

business, would originally have routinely received hospitality, whereas cáin was
owed by the majority of settlements that did not expect such regular close
contact, and was presumably delivered to a centre of general lordship nearby.89
But coinnmed is found on its own in other contexts too.90 as well as lordship, the
analysis of cáin has also pointed to ways in which kings of scots, in the early
twelfth and probably the late eleventh century, sought to bring those regions
beyond their regular power to acknowledge their authority. a suggestion has also
been made about how episcopal cáin could account in part for the complex
diocesan map of the east midlands of scotland. again, all of this amounts in the
end to supposition. at the very least, however, whichever way this material may
be marshalled to make best sense, the attempt to do so is based on the most
abundant local evidence that there is, albeit only reaching a critical mass in the
late twelfth and thirteenth centuries (and even then only in some areas). now
that this evidence has been surveyed and analysed, the stage is set for developing
a comparative perspective without running the risk that this will exert undue
influence on the interpretation of the local evidence itself. the broader picture
that emerges should be better able to embrace variety and even ‘dazzling
oddities’, and as a result be more compelling and meaningful.
89 For example, with regard to the Kirkton of arbuthnott, coinnmed related to the anticipated
physical presence of the bishop or his servants, whereas there was no expectation that the king
or any of his officials would call in. the royal centre nearby may originally have been
arbuthnott itself; or perhaps the thane functioned as a satellite of a royal centre in the Mearns.
90 Lindores Cart., nos 46–8.
William Gorm de Lacy:

‘chiefest champion in these parts of europe’
c O L I n V e ac H anD F r e Ya V e r s t r at e n V e ac H
the study of late medieval Irish history is a tricky business. On the eve of the
anglo-norman invasion, Ireland was by no means inward-looking, yet it had a
complex internal organization. the invasion brought a resident colonial
aristocracy that had its own traditions and support network. the histories of
both communities are to be found in dissimilar sources, and, as a result,
medievalists with a focus on Ireland usually fall into ‘Gaelic’ or ‘anglo-norman’
contingents. the dependence that historians of the colony necessarily have on
anglo-norman commentators and the records of the english royal adminis-
tration means that they tend to be far more at ease with the socio-political
networks of lowland england than, for instance, the dynastic intricacies and local
customs of Ireland. the current trend towards trans-regional studies has pulled
the lens back even farther, making events in Gaelic areas quite remote to
historians whose subjects dictate that they also grapple with continental politics.
similarly, sources from Gaelic Ireland present such complex issues of
interpretation and analysis that its scholars are often more familiar with the
society that produced them, than with the workings of the colony. In short, the
complexity of the communities – and hence the traces they left – are such that
scholars often feel compelled to choose between sources of Gaelic and those of
anglo-norman origin. However, the works of our raison d’écrire, Katharine
simms, are testament to the way in which a more comprehensive approach to the
sources can yield immense benefits. In her unrivalled studies of Gaelic Ireland
she has masterfully fused evidence from all available sources. an example of this
is found in her treatment of the Irish career of William Gorm de Lacy.1 William’s
life exemplifies the way in which Gaelic and settler groups communicated and
blended with each other from shortly after the invasion. What is more, it not only
displays the interconnectivity of the two main communities of Ireland, it also
makes plain Ireland’s position within the lands in the english king’s imperium.
William de Lacy was a younger son of the famous conqueror of Meath, Hugh
de Lacy, by his second wife, a daughter of ruaidrí Ua conchobair, high-king of
Ireland.2 Being the half-brother of Walter de Lacy, lord of Meath, and Hugh de
1 Katharine simms, ‘the O’reillys and the kingdom of east Breifne’, Breifne, 5 (1979), 305–
19. this initially came as part of her doctoral thesis: Katharine simms, ‘Gaelic lordships in
Ulster in the later middle ages’ (PhD, tcD, 1976), pp 375–85.
63
64 Colin Veach and Freya Verstraten Veach
Lacy the younger, earl of Ulster, he has been noticed by a number of Irish
historians over the years. It is especially notable that he is discussed in a variety
of contexts. In 1979, William’s career was discussed by simms as part of her
study of ‘the O’reillys and the kingdom of east Breifne’. In it, William was
characterized as ‘a local tyrant’ in the Irish midlands.3 two decades later, her
former student seán Duffy discussed William in a somewhat broader context,
focusing on his connections to both the native Irish and the Welsh in his analysis
of the phenomenon of degeneracy among the settler community.4 this was a
striking portrait in light of the groundbreaking study of the inter-regional
character of anglo-norman lordship, published by robin Frame five years
earlier. In it, Frame had maintained an even broader view, and had highlighted
William’s territorial amplitude. In fact, he had argued against viewing William
as ‘a mongrel, tethered in the celtic fringe’,5 a warning seemingly disregarded
by Duffy.
that, however, is not to say that either one of the above historians was
incorrect in their valuation of William’s career. the striking point is that all three
historians, writing from Gaelic, anglo-Irish and trans-regional perspectives,
were able to utilize William to illustrate their points. this, surely, is what makes
William such an interesting subject. as a grandson of Ireland’s last high-king he
was thoroughly at home in the native Irish setting with its peculiar traits and
demands. at the same time, he was an anglo-norman baron able to manage his
trans-regional holdings (with varying degrees of success). He was, after all, part
Ua conchobair and part de Lacy. as such, he was often utilized to forward the
de Lacys’ cause in Ireland. Helping his family, they helped him, and it was with
their full support that he was able to adapt to the different worlds in which he
moved. It was that which proved to be the key to William’s strength.
II
the marriage of William’s parents, which took place around 1180, was one of the
first between the principal Gaelic and anglo-norman families in Ireland.
William’s maternal grandparents were ruaidrí Ua conchobair,6 and, possibly,
2 Her first name is unknown. the Dublin annals of Inisfallen call her ‘rois’, which has been
widely accepted as her name. this is likely to be an error on the part of the annalist who
perhaps confused the name of Hugh’s first wife, rose of Monmouth, with that of his second.
see, colin Veach, ‘a question of timing: Walter de Lacy’s seisin of Meath, 1189–94’, PRIA,
109c (2009), 165–94 at 166n. 3 simms, ‘O’reillys’, quotation at p. 308. 4 seán Duffy,
‘the problem of degeneracy’ in James Lydon (ed.), Law and disorder in thirteenth-century
Ireland: the Dublin parliament of 1297 (Dublin, 1997), p. 91. 5 robin Frame, ‘King Henry
III and Ireland: the shaping of a peripheral lordship’ in idem, Ireland and Britain, 1170–1450
(London and rio Grande, 1998), p. 37 (previously published in Thirteenth Century England,
IV, ed. P.r. coss and s.D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1992), pp 179–202). 6 son of toirdelbach
Ua conchobair and caillech Dé, daughter of Ua heidhin: Margaret Dobbs, ‘the Ban-
William Gorm de Lacy 65
Dubchoblaig, a daughter of tigernán Ua ruairc.7 William’s maternal aunts and

uncles were used, in the common fashion, to forge or cement alliances with some
of the most eminent of Irish kings.8 to ruaidrí, marrying one of his daughters
to Hugh de Lacy, a magnate who had such an extensive landed interest in a
region bordering the Ua conchobair heartlands, and who was, moreover, both
exceptionally influential and independently minded, can only have been seen as
a most astute move.
If, as seems quite possible, Hugh’s bride was ruaidrí’s daughter by
Dubchoblaig, then William was descended from the Ua ruairc kings of Bréifne
and, through tigernán’s wife Derbforgaill, the Ua Máel sechnaill kings of Mide.
Hugh de Lacy’s men had killed tigernán Ua ruairc in 1172 and Hugh held
Mide (henceforth called Meath) ‘as well as [Derbforgaill’s father] Murchad Ua
Máel sechnaill had held it’.9 Hugh’s marriage to William’s mother may therefore
have been more symbolically significant than has previously been realized.
through it, Hugh not only gained an alliance with the high-king of Ireland, but
also an association with two territories, Meath and Bréifne, he sought to
control.10
William’s father had been married before, to rose of Monmouth, daughter of
the Welsh marcher lord Baderon of Monmouth and rose de clare. It was this
marriage that produced William’s most overt associations, including his half-
brothers, Walter and Hugh de Lacy. after their father’s death in 1186, Walter
became lord of Meath, and he also inherited their father’s extensive lands in
england, Wales and normandy. Walter was married to a daughter of the
powerful William de Braose (d. 1211), whose impressive territorial portfolio
mirrored the de Lacys’, and included the honor of Limerick in Ireland. Further
marriage alliances saw the de Lacy family connections grow further, and their
influence soar. they were allied through marriage to, among others,11 the
shenchas’, RC, 47 (1930), 283–339; 48 (1931), 163–234; 49 (1932), 437–89 at 191.

7 Dubchobhlaig is mentioned as ‘daughter of o’roirck queen of Ireland, and wife to rory
o’connor king of Ireland’ at her death: AClon., p. 214, s.a. 1181. 8 For instance, ruaidrí’s
son Áed was likely fostered in Munster, presumably with the Uí Briain: for example, ALC, i,
313, s.a. 1233. His daughter nuala upon her death is called ‘queen of Ulaid’ in the annals and
was therefore probably the wife of ruaidrí Mac Duinn sléibe (d. 1201): ALC, i, p. 291, s.a.
1226; AFM, iii, p. 239, s.a. 1226; AC, p. 23, s.a. 1226. another daughter was married to
Flaithbertach Ua Máel Doraid, king of tír conaill: ALC, i, p. 153, s.a. 1176. 9 For the
circumstances of the grant, including the assassination, see colin Veach, ‘Henry II’s grant of
Meath to Hugh de Lacy in 1172: a reassessment’, Ríocht na Midhe, 18 (2007), 67–94. 10 For
Hugh de Lacy and Bréifne, see below, pp 70–1. 11 some other marriage alliances: Hugh the
younger married a daughter of the Louth baron Bertram de Verdon (d. 1192) (Brendan smith,
Colonisation and conquest in medieval Ireland: the English in Louth, 1170–1330 (cambridge,
1999), p. 41), and William’s half-sister, alice de Lacy, married roger Pipard (d. 1225) (COD,
i, nos 98, 852); William’s aunt rose de Lacy married Gilbert de nugent (n.J. synott, ‘notes
on the family of de Lacy in Ireland’, JRSAI, 49 (1919), 113–31 at 119); William’s brother
Hugh married a daughter of Walter de ridelisford after the death of his first wife (Orpen,
Normans, iii, p. 265 (new ed., p. 414)); William’s niece Matilda de Lacy (Hugh’s daughter) was
powerful Irish justiciar and Munster baron, Geoffrey de Marisco,12 the lords of
Galloway in western scotland,13 the cliffords in the central Welsh march,14 the
Bigod earls of norfolk15 and richard de Burgh, lord of connacht, whose uncle,
Hubert, was justiciar of england.16 William’s familial connections, though by no
means unique in their number, present a who’s who of native and colonial
Ireland, as well as influential families in england, Wales, scotland and
normandy.
However, he was to benefit most directly from the help of his siblings. He was
still a child when his father died and his Gaelic mother remarried. Her new
husband was also of anglo-norman extraction, le Blund of surname.16a through
this union, William gained several half-brothers, including thomas, Henry and
an unnamed le Blund, who actively supported William in his Irish ventures. In
the meantime, his de Lacy half-brothers worked together to secure Ulster for
Hugh the younger by 1204, so that by the time William was a young adult, the de
Lacys were the pre-eminent anglo-norman family in Ireland.17
married to David fitz William, baron of naas (Orpen, Normans, iii, p. 264 (new ed., p. 414));
William’s niece (a daughter of Hugh de Lacy) was married to Miles de angulo, son of Philip,
son of Gilbert de angulo (Orpen, Normans, iii, p. 35 (new ed., p. 298)); Maredudd ap rhobert
(d. 1244), native Welsh ruler of cedewain, was married to William’s niece, Juliana de Lacy
(Walter’s daughter) (tna, sc 1/1/111; The acts of Welsh rulers, 1120–1283, ed. Huw Pryce
(cardiff, 2005), pp 6, 157–8); William’s half-sister elayne de Lacy was married to the anglo-
norman lord richard de Beaufou (d. ante 1204), who held stoke Lacy in Herefordshire
through his marriage (CIPM, i, nos 57, 73). In 1172, richard held two knights’ fees centred
on Beaufour-Druval (calvados, cant. cambremer) (The red book of the exchequer, ed. Hubert
Hall (3 vols, London, 1896), ii, p. 630). they were held by his son Henry in 1204 (Recueil des
historiens des Gaules et de la France, tome xxiii, eds Joseph-noël de Wailly, Léopold Delisle and
charles-Marie-Gabriel Bréchillet Jourdain (Paris, 1894), p. 635e; r.n., 97; F.M. Powicke, The
loss of Normandy, 1189–1204:studies in the history of the Angevin empire (2nd ed., Manchester,
1960), pp 332–3). 12 alice de Lacy married Geoffrey after the death of her first husband,
roger Pipard: eric st John Brooks, ‘the family of Marisco’, JRSAI, 61 (1931), 22–38, 89–
112 and 62 (1932), 50–74 at 57. 13 William’s niece, rose de Lacy (Hugh’s daughter) married
alan of Galloway in 1229: Chronicon de Lanercost, MCCI –MCCCXLVI, e codice cottoniano
nunc primum typis mandatum (edinburgh, 1839), p. 40, s.a. 1229; richard Oram, The lordship
of Galloway (edinburgh, 2000), pp 123–4, 128. 14 William’s niece, Katharine de Lacy
(Walter’s daughter), was married to Walter of clifford (d. 1263): Brock Holden, Lords of the
central marches: English aristocracy and frontier society, 1087–1265 (Oxford, 2008), p. 85.
15 William’s nephew Gilbert de Lacy (Walter’s son) was married to Isabella, daughter of earl
Hugh II Bigod of norfolk (d. 1225): Marc Morris, The Bigod earls of Norfolk in the thirteenth
century (Woodbridge, 2005), pp 10–11. 16 richard was married to William’s niece, egidia
de Lacy (Walter’s daughter): Calendar of the fine rolls of the reign of Henry III, 1224–25
(available both on the Henry III Fine rolls Project’s website (http://www.finerollshenry3.
org.uk) and within Calendar of the fine rolls of the reign of Henry III, 1224–1234, ed. Paul
Dryburgh and Beth Hartland (Woodbridge, 2008), no. 171; RLC, ii, p. 35b; CDI, i, no. 1268.
16a although le Blund was not an unusual surname, it is interesting to note that Henry of
London, archbishop of Dublin, was also a le Blund: eric st John Brooks, ‘archbishop Henry
and his Irish connections’, JRSAI, 60 (1930). 17 see colin Veach, ‘King and magnate in
medieval Ireland: Walter de Lacy, King richard and King John’, IHS, 37:146 (2010), 1–25,
esp. 13–18.
III
the first mention one finds of William is in his brother Walter’s earliest known
assertion of lordship in Ireland. at some point between 1189 and 1191, Walter
granted their brother Hugh lands in the family’s lordship of Meath. the charter
was issued in the presence of the elite of the lordship, from its bishop, eugenius,
to the heads of its leading families. William, who could not have been much older
than eleven (and was likely younger), came third in the witness list, between his
great-uncle robert de Lacy and his future brother-in-law roger Pipard.18
William, therefore, was exposed to the fundamentals of english lordship from an
early age. He appears subsequently as a witness alongside his half-brothers at
least four more times by 1207.19 all five grants were issued in eastern Meath,
between trim, Drogheda and ratoath, which may suggest that William spent
much of his early life in this relatively secure region. this notion is strengthened
by the survival of late thirteenth-century records relating to his widow
Gwenllian. From those it appears that he held lands in the very centre of the
triangle, namely in Ballymagarvey (co. Meath).20
While he was certainly involved in the public life of Meath, it is unclear what
part (if any) William played in his brothers’ military endeavours. He may have
been as old as 21 when, in 1201, his elder brother Hugh intrigued in a succession
dispute in connacht with John de courcy, lord of Ulster.21 this was a dispute
that held special significance for William: the de Lacys’ candidate, cathal
crobderg Ua conchobair, was his great-uncle, while cathal’s opponent, cathal
carrach Ua conchobair, was William’s first cousin. although no positive
evidence exists, the connacht succession would have been an obvious place for
William to have cut his teeth, and acquire some of the military experience he was
to utilize later in Bréifne and abroad. Likewise, given the support he was to show
his brothers afterwards, it may be that William was among the ‘foreigners of
Meath’ who helped Hugh and Walter bring down their erstwhile ally, John de
courcy, from 1203 to 1204.22
In 1207, the de Lacy brothers took up arms once again, this time against the
justiciar of Ireland, Meiler fitz Henry, whose heavy-handed administration
18 Reg. Gormanston, pp 142, 190. For the dating and wider significance of this grant, see
Veach, ‘a question of timing’. 19 The Irish cartularies of Llanthony prima & secunda, ed. eric
st John Brooks (Dublin, 1953), pp 82–3, 109–10; COD, i, pp 364–6; BL, add. Ms 4797, fo.
43, where the place of issue, ‘Gallobrum’, likely refers to Galtrim (co. Meath). 20 J.e. Lloyd,
‘Who was Gwenllian de Lacy?’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 6th ser., 19 (1919), 292–8 at 295.
William was to acquire lands in Flintshire and Denbighshire through his marriage, as well as
Britford (Wiltshire) from his brother Walter, and in the territory of the Uí ragallaig in east
Bréifne through conquest, see below, pp 69–72, 78. 21 ALC, i, pp 219–23, s.a 1201; AU, ii,
pp 235–7, s.a. 1201; a. Martin Freeman, ‘the annals in cotton Ms titus a. XXV’, RC, 41
(1924), 301–10; 42 (1925), 281–305; 43 (1926), 358–84; 44 (1927), 336–61 at p. 376, s.a. 1201;
AClon., pp 216–17, s.a. 1200; AFM, iii, p. 121, s.a. 1199. 22 AFM, iii, p. 137, s.a. 1203; ALC,
i, pp 233–5, s.a. 1203, 1205; AClon., p. 220, s.a. 1203; AMisc., pp 83–5 (Mac carthaigh’s
provoked the rancour of the settler community. William was likely with his
brothers as ‘the sons of Hugo de Lacy and the english of Meath marched to the
castle of ardnurcher [Horseleap, co. Offaly], and continued to besiege it for five
weeks’ in the early months of 1207, and involved in the disturbances which then
gripped the colony into 1208.23 thereafter, the issues of 1207–8 were put in
abeyance for some time,24 but, in 1210, John swept the de Lacys from Ireland.25
William’s fate is unclear, but the terms of his release from prison in Gloucester
over four years later imply that he had been captured in 1210 and had been
incarcerated ever since.26 His release was welcome news, not least because the
presence of the newly restored Walter was demanded along the Welsh marches,
and with the unrepentant Hugh crusading in Languedoc, someone was needed
to oversee the family’s extensive Irish interests. On 15 March 1215, a month after
William’s release, Walter negotiated Meath’s restoration. William was to cross
over to Ireland as Walter’s seneschal. the following day, William’s servant
Karolus, who had been captured at carrickfergus in 1210, was likewise freed,
and the pair embarked for Ireland.27
Unfortunately, there was confusion over when seisin, or possession, of Meath
ought to be granted, and this provoked conflict.28 the annals of clonmacnoise
report under 1215 a war between William de Lacy and the Irish justiciar,
Geoffrey de Marisco:
William sonne of Hugh Delacye came from england and tooke upon him
the kingdome of Meath and government thereof. Whereupon there arose
great contention and warrs between the english of the south of Ireland in
generall and him, whereby many Damages and losses of preys and spoyles
were sustained by either party.29
book), s.a. 1203, 1204; AU, ii, p. 241, s.a. 1204 [recte 1203]; Cronica regum Mannie &
Insularum, ed. George Broderick (Douglas, 1979), fo. 41v. 23 ALC, i, 237–9, s.a 1207, 1208;
AFM, iii, 157, s.a. 1207; AClon., pp 221–2, s.a. 1207; RLP, pp 71b–2; CDI, i, no. 328. Four
sons of Hugh de Lacy, the brothers William, Walter, Hugh the younger and robert, were
together on 2 Mar., either immediately preceding or (more likely) following the siege of
ardnurcher, when the others witnessed a grant by Hugh to Hugh Hose at Galtrim (co.
Meath) (Gallotrum). BL, add. Ms 4797. the castle of ardnurcher was in the lordship of
Meath and held by Meiler of Walter de Lacy. 24 RLP, p. 79; CDI, i, no. 374. 25 the 1210
expedition was facilitated by the treason of the allied families of de Lacy and de Braose: Veach,
‘King and magnate in medieval Ireland’, 21–4. 26 there is no mention of William acting as
a hostage for his brother Walter (like there is on a later occasion), and his release was
predicated upon others standing surety that he ‘shall become the king’s liege man, faithfully
serve the king all the days of his life, and never part with his land in Ireland, save at the king’s
pleasure’: RLP, p. 128b; CDI, i, no. 536. 27 RLP, i, p. 131; CDI, i, no. 540; AClon., p. 228,
s.a. 1215; Otway-ruthven, Med. Ire., p. 89. 28 Rot. obl. et fin., pp 562–4, 601–3; RLP, i, pp
148b, 149, 151, 151b, 181; RLC, i, p. 224; CDI, i, nos 596, 612, 628, 631, 632, 638.
29 AClon., p. 228, s.a. 1215. although this stands as a solitary entry without corroboration, it
should not be immediately discounted. Being especially concerned with events within the Irish
midlands, the clonmacnoise annalist was perhaps more likely to notice the feud than his fellow
Irish annalists: Katharine simms, Medieval Gaelic sources (Dublin, 2009), pp 26–7; see also,
after William’s attempt at re-taking Meath, he turned his attentions northwards

and took the castles of Dundrum (co. Down) and carlingford (co. Louth),
which before their confiscation in 1210 had been held by his brother Hugh.
William was ordered to restore them early in 1217.30 Walter in the meantime
worked to make amends for William’s offences, but although William had
forcibly taken Meath, and most likely had de facto control over most of the area,
the justiciar continued to withhold peaceful seisin of the entire lordship. the
crown sided with Walter, but its weakness in the early minority of Henry III
meant that its orders were toothless and many went unheeded.31 While his
brothers Walter and Hugh were away, William was thus left alone to fight for his
family’s position in Ireland.
IV
William’s reward for his efforts was to be an appanage in the Irish midlands. In
a time when primogeniture had taken root, assigning lands to provide for the
maintenance of younger sons was not uncommon. this had already led the de
Lacys to secure Ulster for William’s brother Hugh in 1204.32 the determined
creation of an appanage for William suggests a concerted and premeditated
strategy for the displacement or further subjugation of the Irish dynasties of the
region, most notably the Uí ruairc and Uí ragallaig. In 1220, the family set out
to establish William in Bréifne. according to the Irish annals, Walter came to
Ireland taking with him royal troops. He attacked and took Ua ragallaig’s
crannog (fortified artificial island) in Loch Oughter, after which Ua ragallaig
gave him hostages.33 Within four years, a stone castle was built on the crannog,
which was to become one of William’s strongholds.34
Gearóid Mac niocaill, The medieval Irish annals (Dublin, 1975), pp 21–3. He also seems
relatively well-informed on the de Lacys, recording more than the other Irish annalists. the
timing of this possible dispute is difficult to determine, because the annals of clonmacnoise
have a notoriously loose chronology. that said, they seem to be broadly accurate concerning
other events surrounding the conflict, so it is unlikely that 1215 is very far off. 30 CPR,
1216–25, p. 26; CDI, i, no. 755. the mandate is undated, but appears on the roll between two
other directives to de Marisco concerning Walter de Lacy’s interests. the first, on 20 Jan.
1217, was for the restoration of the castle of Drogheda and the cantred of ardmayle (co.
tipperary) (CPR, 1216–25, pp 25–6; CDI, i, no. 743), and the second, on 23 Jan., dictated
that the lands and castles of richard de tuit be delivered to Walter once a debt of 200 marks
had been paid (CPR, 1216–25, p. 26; CDI, i, no. 748). 31 CPR, 1216–25, p. 74. CDI, i, no.
791 is a much abridged entry, which leaves out several important details so that the severity of
the crown’s rebuke of the justiciar is not conveyed. 32 In the early 1200s, they also worked
to consolidate the position of Walter de Lacy’s father-in-law, William de Braose, in Limerick:
see Veach, ‘King and magnate in medieval Ireland’, 14–16. 33 ‘Uailtér de Laci do thoigheacht
i nÉirinn, agas neart mór lais a hucht rígh Saxan, agas braighde uí Raghallaigh do ghabháil do’ in
Éamonn de hÓir, ‘annala as Breifne’, Breifne, 4 (1970), 59–86, s.a. 1220; ALC, i, pp 261–3,
s.a. 1220. 34 William’s castle is ‘very probably to be identified with the existing ruins of
Bréifne, ‘the rough third of connacht (Garbhthrian Connacht)’,35 was a

buffer region between connacht and the northern Irish kingdoms, the
hegemonic control of which was jealously guarded. the annals of Lough cé
attribute a claim over Bréifne to William’s father, the elder Hugh de Lacy, calling
him at his death ‘king of Mide and Bréifne and airgialla’.36 this expands upon
the title ‘king of Bréifne and Mide’ reportedly given to tigernán Ua ruairc
immediately prior to the english invasion.37 as simms writes, ‘de Lacy was to
replace and eventually to far exceed tighearnán’s power’.38 When Hugh’s men
assassinated Ua ruairc in 1172, they eliminated a major obstacle to the conquest
of Meath. they also provided Hugh the scope to turn the tables and conspire in
Bréifne. Given connacht’s traditional hold on the territory, Hugh de Lacy’s
interests in Bréifne likely contributed to the hostility between himself and the
king of connacht, ruaidrí Ua conchobair. this animosity was only put to rest
with Hugh’s marriage, c.1180, to ruaidrí’s daughter, which, as mentioned above,
may also have forged a link to the Uí ruairc and Uí Máel sechnaill. With
William being a product of that marriage, what better place to form his
appanage?
Hugh de Lacy was himself assassinated in 1186, and the following year Áed
Ua ruairc enlisted the help of the Meath baron, Gilbert de angulo, to help stem
the encroachment of cenél conaill into northern Bréifne.39 De angulo then
began to carve out a lordship for himself at the expense of the Uí ruairc in west
Bréifne. these actions did not sit well with the de Lacys. When Walter de Lacy
gained seisin of his father’s estate in 1189, one of his first actions was to
disinherit Gilbert in Meath.40 In 1196, Gilbert de angelo was finally driven from
Ireland and his lands confiscated by the justiciar.41 these lands, ‘beyond the lake
of tír Briúin’ (Lough Oughter, co. cavan), were eventually granted to Walter
de Lacy, perhaps that same year, for the annals report that the ‘Foreigners of
Mide’ attacked Uí Briúin and were defeated by Ua ruairc.42 Gilbert de angulo
and Walter de Lacy were reconciled in 1207,43 but de Lacy retained an interest
in Bréifne, including the castles of Kilmore and Belturbet (both co. cavan).44
cloch Locha Uachtair’: simms, ‘O’reillys’, 307. 35 Donncha Ó corráin, Ireland before the
Normans (Dublin, 1972), p. 10. 36 ALC, i, p. 173, s.a. 1186. 37 simms, ‘O reillys’, 305.
tigernán was also called ‘king of Meath’ in several english sources, Veach, ‘Henry II’s grant
of Meath’, 75–7. For a very rough sketch of his career, see Domhnall Mac an Ghallóglaigh,
‘Breifne and its chieftains, 940–1300, part 1’, Breifne, 7 (1988), 523–55 at 531–44. 38 simms,
‘O’reillys’, 307. 39 AFM, iii, p. 79, s.a. 1187; ALC, i, pp 175–7, s.a. 1187; AU, ii, p. 211, s.a.
1187; F.J. Byrne, ‘the trembling sod: Ireland in 1169’, NHI, ii, pp 1–42 at p. 37. 40 Veach,
‘a question of timing’, 176–8. 41 tcD Ms 1281, s.a. 1196; AFM, iii, p. 107n; Butler, Some
notices of Trim, p. 10. 42 Reg. Gormanston, pp 7, 179; ALC, i, p. 195, s.a. 1196. 43 RLC, i,
p. 98. CDI, i, no. 363. their reconciliation is mentioned alongside, and may have prompted,
King John’s grant of ardmayle, co. tipperary, to Walter on 5 Dec. 1207. 44 they were two
of the castles restored to Walter in 1215: RLP, p. 148b; CDI, i, no. 612. they are also
documented under Meath in the Irish pipe roll of 14 John: Davies and Quinn (eds), ‘the Irish
pipe roll of 14 John’, 23, 25, 33, 35, 37, 39, 41.
the Irish pipe roll 14 John provides more evidence of the de Lacys’ hegemonic
hold on Bréifne. It shows that the ruling Ua ruairc had accepted de Lacy
dominance, paying a rent of forty cows to the seneschal of Meath. Ua ragallaig
was apparently not so content with de Lacy rulers, for he was in prison.45 Gilbert
de angulo was the custodian of the castles of Belturbet and Kilbixy,46 but,
interestingly, was replaced at Belturbet by a man with the surname of William’s
other half-brothers, one robert le Blund.47
the de Lacys’ stake in Bréifne was therefore as old as their Irish lordship, and
yet the nature of that stake was to change. the immediate precursor to Walter’s
expedition to Bréifne in 1220 was a raid in 1219 by Domnall Mór Ua Domnaill,
king of tír conaill, in which he took hostages from the Uí ruairc and Uí
ragallaig.48 the transient nature of overlordship persuaded Walter to turn to
direct lordship by granting the territories of the Uí ruairc and Uí ragallaig to
his own men in 1221. Walter’s first action was to bestow all the land that Ualgarc
Ua ruairc held in Bréifne to his adversary, Philip de angulo, for the service of
three knights.49 this grant was part confirmatory and part speculative, but the
effect was to place Philip’s lands in Bréifne explicitly under Walter’s lordship.50
William de Lacy was to build three castles to help secure Philip’s grant, but he
was also given his own stake. a later letter from cathal crobderg Ua conchobair
requesting the transference of William’s lands to his son Áed in 1224 (to be
placed in context below), claims that the lands comprised Uí Briúin, conmaicne
and an calad.51 this is clearly an exaggeration, and from the geography of his
activities it emerges that, just as de angulo was to replace Ua ruairc, William
was to be established on the territory of Ua ragallaig.52 the success of cathal’s
45 Davies and Quinn (eds), ‘the Irish pipe roll of 14 John’, 37, 45. 46 Ibid., 39. 47 Ibid., 35.
the date of his custodianship makes it tempting to identify robert as William’s step-father,
though he may have been another half-brother or another relation. Gilbert de angulo died in
1213: ALC, i, p. 249, s.a. 1213. the following year, the annals report that his son Philip’s
territory referred to as crích cairbre (on the border of cos Leitrim and Longford) was
plundered by Uallgarg Ua ruairc: ALC, i, p. 251, s.a. 1214; AFM, iii, p. 185, s.a. 1214, where
the territory is identified as carbury, co. sligo. For its identification in tethba, see Orpen,
Normans, iii, p. 32 (new ed., p. 297). 48 Orpen, Normans, iii, p. 33 (new ed., p. 297); AFM,
iii, pp 197–9, s.a. 1219; ALC, i, pp 261–3, s.a. 1220. 49 CPR Ire., Hen. VIII–Eliz, ii, p. 197.
the grant stretched from Lough Oughter to the shannon and from a place on Lough erne to
slieve carbury in north co. Longford. the territories included: Muinter eolais (bar. Mohill,
co. Leitrim), Mag nissi (in bar. Leitrim, co. Leitrim), Muinter cinaíth (in Drumahaire, co.
Leitrim), cenél Luacháin (in carrigallen, co. Leitrim), and tellach Dúnchada (tullyhunco,
co. cavan): Orpen, Normans, p. 298n (vol. iii, p. 34n); a.J. Otway-ruthven, ‘the partition of
the de Verdon lands in Ireland in 1332’, PRIA, 66c (1968), 401–55 at 412. 50 the reality of
the de Lacys’ hold on the de angulos’ territory in Bréifne can be seen in the eventual partition
of the de Lacys’ lands: see Otway-ruthven, ‘the partition of the de Verdon lands’, 412 and
map. 51 Royal and other historical letters, i, p. 223; CDI, i, no. 1184. an calad (calad na
hangaile) is roughly co-extensive with bar. rathcline (co. Longford). 52 see below, pp 72,
76–8. For more on the Uí ragallaig in this period, see simms, ‘O’reillys’; and ciarán Parker,
‘the O’reillys of east Breifne, c.1250–c. 1450’, Breifne, 8 (1991), 155–80 at 155–7.
petition is instructive.53 Had William, like Philip de angulo, held his Bréifne
lands of Walter de Lacy, then the crown’s transference of them to Áed Ua
conchobair in 1224 would have been outrageous. Instead, William seems to have
held east Bréifne, as his brother Hugh held Ulster, independently of Walter.54
Bréifne gave William a clear role in the extension of de Lacy power, but it was
not his only role. the family’s interests were trans-regional, and he was soon
utilized overseas. William’s brother, Hugh, returned from exile in 1221, and
resolved to retake his lost earldom of Ulster by force.55 Hugh’s first step was to
forge an alliance with two similarly discontented figures, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth
of Gwynedd, and ranulf, earl of chester and Lincoln. William married
Gwenllian, one of Llywelyn’s daughters, and earl ranulf ’s nephew and heir
married another.56 William’s marriage created additional connections to influential
families,57 and brought him lands in modern Flintshire and Denbighshire, close to
chester.58 One might suppose that William joined Llywelyn and Hugh de Lacy
in their subsequent rebellion in Wales in 1223, but, if he did, it was not for long.
Instead, the crown neutralized the other de Lacy brothers, forcing Walter to
53 RLC, i, p. 604; CDI, i, no. 1195. 54 this may also explain why no part of William’s
territory was included in the partition of the de Lacy lands after Walter’s death in 1241:
Otway-ruthven, ‘the partition of the de Verdon lands’. 55 CPR, 1216–25, p. 301; CDI, i,
no. 1012. 56 Hugh witnessed the marriage of Helen to ranulf ’s heir John le scot: Acts of
Welsh rulers, pp 413–14; A catalogue of the manuscripts relating to Wales in the British Museum,
ed. edward Owen (London, 1900–22), p. 357; The charters of the Anglo-Norman earls of
Chester, c.1071–1237, ed. Geoffrey Barraclough (chester, 1988), no. 411; robin Frame,
‘aristocracies and the political configuration of the British Isles’ in idem (ed.), Ireland and
Britain, 1170–1450 (London, 1998), pp 151–70 at pp 159–60; D.a. carpenter, The minority of
Henry III (London, 1990), p. 355. there is no mention of William de Lacy in Wales at this
time, but in 1223 the annals of Lough cé report that William came to Ireland, making the
possibility of the wedding occurring in the previous year all the more likely: ALC, i, p. 267,
s.a. 1223; Lloyd, ‘Gwenllian de Lacy’, 293. the de Lacys already had a longstanding affiliation
with the earls of chester, witnessing several of their charters, and appearing alongside them
in others, throughout the years (see The chartulary or register of the abbey of St Werburgh,
Chester, pt i, ed. J. tait, chetham society, n.s., 79 (1920), nos 5, 21, 77, 329). a charter of
Walter de Lacy granting special privileges to chester is even witnessed by earl ranulf
consanguineo meo, which refers to an otherwise unattested blood relationship, and bespeaks a
close affinity: Eighth report of the royal commission on historical manuscripts, appendix, pt i (sect.
ii) (London, 1881), no. 370a. 57 Llywelyn’s marriage alliances included the earls of chester,
the de Braoses, the Mortimers, the cliffords and the Plantagenet kings of england: r.r.
Davies, The age of conquest: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 2000), pp 239–41, 248–9; John Lloyd,
History of Wales (2 vols, London, 1939), ii, p. 766. Gwenllian seems not to have been the
daughter of Llywelyn’s second wife Joan (King Henry III’s half-sister). In a report by William
Marshal in 1224, she is called ‘daughter of Llywelyn and sister of Gruffudd’, who was
Llywelyn’s son by tangwystl, daughter of Llywarch Goch of rhos: Royal and other historical
letters illustrative of the reign of Henry III from the originals in the Public Record Office, ed. W.W.
shirley (2 vols, London, 1862–88), i, pp 500–3; CDI, i, no. 1203; Lloyd, Wales, ii, p. 686.
58 Lloyd, ‘Gwenllian de Lacy’, 294–5.
fight against Hugh in Wales, and placing William in the king’s service in
Ireland.59 William used his royal commission well, returning to the Irish
midlands to cut out his lordship.
One set of Irish annals claims that in 1223 William built an island fortress on
Loch Láedacháin. although the place-name is now obsolete, it seems probable
that it is, as Margaret Dobbs suggests, Lough creggan (co. Westmeath).60 the
patent rolls make mention of a castle of ‘Lagelacon’ to be delivered to Walter de
Lacy in July 1215,61 which implies that the structure William erected in 1223 was
a re-building of an earlier fortification. the king of connacht, cathal crobderg
Ua conchobair, resented William’s activities, especially those in Bréifne, a region
he had earmarked for his son Áed.62 although Inis was probably located just
south of Bréifne, the fortress was destroyed by a force from connacht shortly
after its reconstruction.63
William’s other activities are hidden, and he was soon called east to aid his
brother Hugh, who in late 1223 brought his war to Ireland.64 the colony had
been recruited heavily for the crown’s war against Hugh in Wales, and so the
brothers’ forces met with very little resistance. together, William and Hugh
garrisoned Meath and threatened Dublin, forcing the Irish justiciar to purchase
a truce.65 William then remained in Meath to look after the lordship while Hugh
moved north to regain his earldom of Ulster.
the key point in William aiding his brother was that he risked as much as, if
not more, than Hugh by so doing. Hugh was a famous crusader who held two
59 at the height of the conflict, on 19 aug. 1223, William was granted £40 yearly for his
maintenance in the king’s service in Ireland: RLC, i, p. 560. CDI, i, no. 1134 incorrectly states
that William’s brother Walter received the sum. 60 ALC, i, p. 267, s.a. 1223. see also AClon.,
pp 229–30, s.a. 1222. Margaret Dobbs, ‘the territory and people of tethba’, JRSAI, 68
(1938), 241–59; 71 (1941), 101–10; 72 (1942), 136–48 at 258. the identification is
problematical, but to be preferred over that made by Otway-ruthven: Otway-ruthven, ‘the
partition of the de Verdon lands’, 414, identifies Loch Láedacháin with Ballyloughloe (Baile
Locha Luatha) (bar. clonlonan). However, tír Láedacháin was headed by the Mac con Meda
family, who until the twelfth century had been called the Muinter Láedacháin, while
Ballyloughloe (in calraige (calry)) was headed by Mac amalgaid: see, for example, AFM, iii,
p. 45, s.a. 1178 and p. 79, s.a. 1187; ALC, i, p. 263, s.a. 1221; AC, p. 401, s.a. 1408, p. 481, s.a.
1439, p. 483, s.a. 1441 and p. 525, s.a. 1464. 61 RLP, i, p. 148b. CDI, i, no. 612, p. 95.
according to a story told in the Life of st Berach, there was an inhabited island on Loch
Láedacháin possibly as early as the early tenth century: Dobbs, ‘territory of people of tethba’,
258. G.H. Orpen, ‘Motes and norman castles of Ireland’, English Historical Review, 22 (1907),
228–54, 440–67 at 242, tentatively identifies the name ‘Lagelacon’ with the parish Loughan
in co. Meath and does not seem to equate it with Inis Láedacháin, mentioned on the same
page. the latter remains unidentified in both his article and later in Orpen, Normans, iii, p.
261 (new ed., p. 412). 62 as much is brought out in his letter to Henry III to be discussed
shortly. 63 ALC, i, p. 267, s.a. 1223. 64 For Hugh de Lacy’s Irish war, see Frame,
‘aristocracies’, pp 157–62; Peter crooks, ‘“Divide and rule”: factionalism as royal policy in
the lordship of Ireland, 1171–1265’, Peritia, 19 (2005), 263–307 at 286–9. 65 ‘annales
prioratus de Dunstapilia’, p. 85; RLC, ii, pp 32, 162b; Orpen, Normans, iii, p. 38 (new ed., p.
300); Otway-ruthven, Med. Ire., p. 91. the rather dismal state of Dublin’s defences was
shown in a 1223 inquiry into the inventories of royal castles in Ireland: James Lydon, ‘the
defence of Dublin in the Middle ages’ in seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin, IV (Dublin,
lordships in Languedoc independent of the english crown.66 William could not

boast of a similar reputation or independent powerbase (apart, perhaps, from his
wife’s lands in Wales). even his embattled lordship in Bréifne was based
ultimately upon his fidelity to the english crown. this point was driven home
when cathal crobderg used the occasion to petition successfully for the
transference of Uí Briúin, conmaicne and an calad, together forming Bréifne,
to his son Áed.67 cathal had been close to achieving such a grant when the de
Lacys were last in trouble in 1210, but was now finally successful.68 For the
family, however, a de Lacy Ulster was worth the hazard. the extent to which
Hugh de Lacy’s Irish war was a family affair has not been brought out in the
historiography of the conflict, but is one that speaks to the levels of family
cohesion possible in this period. In addition to William’s active support, Walter
de Lacy’s involvement was obviously questioned by the crown, and led it first to
charge him with the task of restoring order to Meath, and ultimately to exact a
large fine in the aftermath of the conflict when his half-hearted attempts failed.69
Meanwhile, on 25 May 1224, cathal crobderg Ua conchobair died. Áed
succeeded his father, immediately travelled eastwards and burned Walter de
Lacy’s castle at Lissardowlan (co. Longford), killing everyone within, ‘both
Foreigners and Irish’.70 around the same time, on 19 June, the new Irish justiciar,
William Marshal the younger,71 sent a detachment of horse after William, which
defeated him. During the course of the battle, one of William’s le Blund half-
brothers was killed. William then ‘killed his horse with his own hand’ and fled
into a moor, where he ‘was obliged to throw himself on the mercy of the Irish’.72
the female members of the family, including William’s mother, wife and the
wife of thomas le Blund, made their way to the relative security of William’s
castle on Ua ragallaig’s crannog.73 Áed Ua conchobair’s ally, cathal Ua
2003), pp 63–78 at pp 69–70. 66 the two lordships, granted to him by simon de Montfort,
were Laurac (aude, cant. Fanjeaux) and castelnaudary (aude) near carcassonne. William of
tudela and anonymous, The song of the Cathar wars, ed. and trans. Janet shirley (aldershot,
1996), pp 28, 50, 89, 101–2, 106, 133, 145, 147–8, 164, 168, 183; Recueil des historiens des
Gaules et de la France, tome xix, ed. Léopold Delisle (new ed., Paris, 1880), pp 145, 170, 181.
67 Royal and other historical letters, i, p. 223; CDI, i, no. 1184. the transference was ordered
that June: RLC, i, p. 604; CDI, i, no. 1195. 68 ALC, i, pp 241–3, s.a. 1210. 69 Royal and
other historical letters, i, pp 500–3, 507; CPR, 1216–25, p. 483; CDI, i, no. 1180. 70 ALC, i,
p. 273, s.a. 1224; AC, p. 7, s.a. 1224. the attack on Lissardowlan may also have been in
support of Áed’s brother-in-law, Áed Ua Fergail, who was struggling to maintain control over
angaile. the annals of Lough cé state that Lissardowlan is situated within Bréifne (ALC, i,
p. 273, s.a. 1224). But, although angaile (which included an calad) was situated within
conmaicne, it was becoming increasingly independent: Freya Verstraten Veach, ‘the Ó
Fearghail lordship of anghaile’ in Martin Morris and Fergus O’Ferrall (eds), Longford, history
and society: interdisciplinary essays on the history of an Irish county (Dublin, 2010), pp 51–74 at
p. 53. 71 He was granted the power to take sureties for faithful service from all those of the
king’s adherents in the war against Hugh de Lacy in whom he chose not to confide, and to
receive into the king’s peace all except Hugh de Lacy and others who had broken their
charters through rebellion: CPR, 1216–25, pp 437–8; CDI, i, nos 1185–7. 72 Royal and other
historical letters, i, pp 500–3; CDI, i, no. 1203. 73 Royal and other historical letters, i, pp 500–
ragallaig, was quick to exploit the situation.74 Ua ragallaig invested the crannog
and begged the justiciar to send him assistance. It was therefore with a significant
contingent of anglo-norman knights and men that Ua ragallaig finally wrested
the crannog from de Lacy control. the castle of Kilmore, whose constable was
another of William’s half-brothers, Henry le Blund, was taken a day later:
William was ousted from the region.75
that was not the end. Because Lissardowlan is situated along the borders of
Bréifne, Áed’s attack on it may have been prompted by the king’s grant of
William’s lands in Bréifne to him.76 Unfortunately for Áed, Lissardowlan did not
belong to William, but rather his brother Walter, who was under the king’s
protection.77 consequently, Áed was considered in breach of the king’s peace.
the crown clearly wanted Áed on side, however, and his reconciliation was
achieved through an unlikely intercessor. after her capture at Ua ragallaig’s
crannog, William de Lacy’s mother (Áed’s first cousin, and member of a rival
branch of the Uí chonchobair) was given by William Marshal fifteen days to
return Áed to the king’s peace or face imprisonment (together with her
daughters-in-law).78 Áed was reconciled in time to join the royal army as it
marched against Hugh de Lacy in Ulster.
William de Lacy may have lost his lordship, but his efforts helped the de
Lacys to obtain their common goal. William Marshal led an impressive army
north, but failed to attack.79 Instead, Hugh de Lacy was offered generous terms
for his surrender, which eventually included the restoration of Ulster.80 the de
Lacys even secured a marriage alliance with the english justiciar, Hubert de
Burgh. In about 1225, Hubert’s nephew, richard (son of the great Munster
baron William de Burgh), was married to Walter de Lacy’s daughter egidia. the
alliance was significant for many reasons, not least that it signalled an end to the
english justiciar’s backing of the Ua conchobair kings of connacht. the
following year, Áed Ua conchobair’s support was systematically cut, and he was
called upon formally to surrender connacht to the king, which then was to be
passed on to richard de Burgh.81 the implications for Áed’s hold on Bréifne are
3; CDI, i, no. 1203. 74 For the link between Áed Ua conchobair and cathal Ua ragallaig,
see simms, ‘O’reillys’, 309–10. 75 Royal and other historical letters, i, pp 500–3; CDI, i, nos
1203–4. 76 the statement by Helen Perros [Walton] that Áed may have acted before the
grant reached him may be right, but the agreement was likely to have been made well before
the official documentation was dispatched: Helen Walton, ‘the english in connacht, 1171–
1333’ (PhD, tcD, 1980), p. 53. 77 Otway-ruthven, ‘Partition of the de Verdon lands’, 414–
15. 78 Royal and other historical letters, i, pp 500–3; CDI, i, no. 1203. For the role of women
as peacemakers in contemporary england, see David crouch, The English aristocracy, 1070–
1272: a social transformation (new Haven, ct, 2011), ch. 12, ‘expectations and demands’.
79 ALC, i, pp 265, 271–3, s.a. 1221, 1224; AC, p. 7, s.a. 1224; AU, ii, p. 271, s.a. 1222 [recte
1224]; Orpen, Normans, iii, pp 38–48 (new ed., pp 300–4); simms, ‘the O Hanlons, the O
neills and the anglo-normans in thirteenth-century armagh’, Seanchas Ard Mhacha, 9 (1978),
70–94 at 75–8; Lydon, Lordship of Ireland, pp 77–9. 80 During the prolonged negotiations,
Hugh was provided with a fee to maintain him: RLC, ii, p. 37b. 81 CPR, 1216–25, pp 48–9;
obvious, and a dispute between the Uí Ragallaig and Uí Ruairc in east Bréifne
meant that the time was ripe for William to attack.82 The de Lacy castle of
Kilmore was burned by Áed’s ally, Cathal Ua Ragallaig, that year.83 A poem in the
Book of Fenagh, Eriu oll oilen aingeal, contains two verses on William de Lacy
that suggest he was once again active in the region. After recording the
destruction of the ecclesiastical site of Fenagh (Co. Leitrim) by the English, and
the slaying of Áed Ua Ruairc, a prophetic angel declares:
Stoutly will I avenge

My church upon the Foreigners;
For ’tis a burning to me this day
That William Gorm [de Lacy] should profane me.
I will grant, without deceit,

And the noble saints of Ireland also.
That William Gorm shall not obtain, thereafter,
Power over the Gaedhil, until doom.84
Áed Ua Ruairc was killed in 1226,85 which places William’s raid about that year.
The year 1226 also saw Ulster finally restored to the de Lacys, when custody was
granted to Walter de Lacy as an interim measure.86 Walter then passed on actual
control of the vast territory to William de Lacy,87 who thus had to balance the
administration of Ulster with reasserting his authority in the Irish midlands.
The following year, 1227, was a watershed in Irish politics.88 In the space of a
month, the earldom of Ulster was formally restored to Hugh,89 and Connacht
officially granted to Richard de Burgh.90 As Brendan Smith asserted, this ‘set the
seal on a new chapter in Anglo-Norman relations, and for the next fifteen to
twenty years the fortunes of the English in Ireland rested with a small group of
RLC, ii, pp 124, 127; CDI, i, nos 1395, 1402–3, 1426. In a clear step against Áed, his biggest
English supporter, William Marshal, had been removed from the justiciarship on 22 June
1226: CPR, 1216–25, p. 47; CDI, i, no. 1380; G.H. Orpen, ‘Richard de Burgh and the
conquest of Connaught’, JGAHS, 7:3 (1911–12), 129–47 at 135; Brendan Smith, ‘Irish politics,
1220–1245’ in Michael Prestwich, Richard Britnell and Robin Frame (eds), Thirteenth Century
England, 8 (Woodbridge, 2001), pp 13–32 at pp 15, 18. 82 AC, p. 23, s.a. 1226; AFM, iii, p.
241, s.a. 1226; AU, ii, p. 277, s.a. 1226; ‘Annala as Breifne’, s.a. 1226. 83 AU, ii, p. 277, s.a.
1226; ALC, i, p. 293, s.a. 1226; AC, p. 23, s.a. 1226; AFM, iii, p. 243, s.a. 1226. 84 Book of
Fenagh, p. 73. 85 See above, n. 84. 86 Walter’s son Gilbert was also responsible for the
custody: CPR, 1225–32, pp 31–2, 75–8; CDI, i, nos 1371–4. 87 On 5 Oct. 1226, Richard Fitz
Roger complained that he had been disseised in Ulster by William de Lacy, ‘Walter’s custodian
there’: RLC, ii, 140; CDI, i, no. 1448, p. 219. 88 King Henry III finally gained control of his
seal, marking the effective end of his minority. It was widely held that guardians could not make
permanent alienations from lands held in wardship, which meant that for the preceding decade,
very few permanent grants were made by the minority government: see Carpenter, Minority of
Henry III. 89 CPR, 1225–32, p. 118; CDI, i, no. 1498. The king sent a separate letter to
Walter on the same day, empowering him to retain Hugh’s castles if he saw fit: RLC, ii, p. 182b;
CDI, i, no. 1499. 90 CChR, i, p. 42; CDI, i, no. 1518.
magnates’.91 the grant of connacht in particular meant that it was open season
in the west of Ireland, and William de Lacy was poised to take part. that same
year, while still on the king’s service, William successfully rebuilt the castle of
athleague on the shannon,92 and received another stipend at the Dublin
exchequer.93
With Áed Ua conchobair formally dispossessed of his kingdom, connacht
was in disarray. Áed was forced to flee, leaving behind his wife,94 who was then
captured and delivered to the english (presumably the justiciar). a succession
dispute provided the perfect conditions for intrigue, and William was likely
among the ‘Galls of Meath’ who accompanied his uncle toirdelbach (son of
ruaidrí) Ua conchobair on a raid into west connacht that year (1227).95 Áed Ua
conchobair treated for peace the following year, 1228, and, according to the
clonmacnoise annalist, had the kingship of connacht restored to him. Whether
or not restoration was actually agreed, Áed was murdered in the justiciar’s house
shortly thereafter.96 the annals of connacht contend that ‘this deed of treachery
was done on this righteous, excellent prince at the instigation of Hugo de Lacy’s
sons and of William son of the justiciar’.97 While the de Lacys and de Marisco
may merely have been convenient scapegoats, the circumstances suggest that
they were not. William de Marisco had been captured by Áed the previous year
and had cause to wish him ill.98 What is more, the removal of Áed’s claim on
Bréifne, and the further destabilization of connacht, were both welcome results
of the murder to William de Lacy, his de Lacy brothers and the descendants of
his grandfather ruaidrí (the Meic ruaidrí).
the chance Áed’s murder presented William came to nothing, however,
because he was soon called away to ‘parts beyond the sea’.99 From 1229 to 1233,
there is no record of William in Ireland, and the formation of William’s
appanage in Bréifne ground to a halt. On 26 October 1229, William and his
brothers Walter and Hugh were among those prepared to embark on Henry III’s
continental expedition aimed at the recovery of Poitou from the French king.1
91 smith, ‘Irish politics’, p. 14. 92 the manor of athleague was situated, it seems, on both
sides of the shannon. the settlement is now Lanesborough in co. Longford and on the
opposite shore, Ballyleague, co. roscommon. see Otway-ruthven, ‘Partition of the de Verdon
lands’, 411. 93 AClon., p. 233, s.a. 1227; ALC, i, p. 471, s.a. 1271; RLC, ii, p. 186b; CDI, i,
no. 1520. AC, p. 27, s.a. 1227 contends that the castle was built by the justiciar Geoffrey de
Marisco. 94 ragnailt, a daughter of amlaíb Ua Fergail. For the marriage between ragnailt
and Áed, see AClon., 1227, p. 232 and Éamonn de hÓir, ‘annala as Breifne’, Breifne, 4 (1970),
59–86 at 64, s.a. 1257. 95 AC, p. 27, s.a. 1227. 96 AClon., pp 232–3, s.a. 1227. 97 AC, p.
29, s.a. 1228. the annals of clonmacnoise blame the murder on the englishman’s jealousy at
Áed’s kissing of his wife: AClon., p. 233, s.a. 1227. 98 AC, p. 25, s.a. 1227; ALC, i, p. 293,
s.a. 1227, AClon., p. 231, s.a. 1226 (recte 1227); AU, ii, p. 277, s.a. 1227; AFM, iii, p. 245, s.a.
1227; ‘annals in cotton Ms’, p. 377, s.a. 1227. 99 although his stipend at the Dublin
exchequer was renewed the following year, 1229: CCR, 1227–31, p. 193; CDI, i, no. 1713. the
quote is from a 1230 mandate granting him respite while on the continental expedition: CCR,
1227–31, p. 412; CDI, i, no. 1833. 1 CCR, 1227–31, p. 256.
The army’s departure was delayed,2 however, and William was retained on the
king’s service in England.3 The expedition finally sailed the following year, 1230,
with William and his brothers in its ranks.4 Nothing is known of William’s
activities on the Continent, but the expedition was a dismal failure.5
Upon his return, William remained in the vicinity of Wales, where he held
lands through his wife Gwenllian. His foreign service brought William to the
attention of King Henry III, who soon utilized him. In November 1231, William
was involved in negotiations to extend the king’s truce with William’s father-in-
law, Llywelyn, at the conclusion of which he swore on the king’s behalf to
observe the agreed conditions.6 He was also granted custody by his brother,
Walter, of the manor of Britford (Wiltshire), where he seems to have spent some
time.7 The rewards of royal favour soon followed, and William’s position in
Wiltshire must have contributed to the king’s gifts to him of two deer from the
New Forest on 10 August 1232, and two oaks from the forest of Clarendon on 7
February 1233.8 William split his time between Britford and his marital lands,
and at some point after November 1232 he witnessed a grant by his brother-in-
law, the newly created earl of Chester, John le Scot, to the abbey of St Werburgh,
Chester.9 William may have been in Chester on his way to Ireland (the town had
longstanding trade links with the de Lacys’ port of Drogheda),10 because 1233
marked William’s return to Bréifne.
VI
Unfortunately for William, it was a return that was to see him killed. According
to the annals, William led an expedition into Bréifne and ‘committed great
depredations’ on Cathal Ua Ragallaig and his brother Cú Chonnacht. A number
of Ua Ragallaig’s party, however, tracked the prey that had been taken, and in the
2 F.M. Powicke, King Henry III and the lord Edward: the community of the realm in the
thirteenth century (2 vols, Oxford, 1947), i, p. 72. 3 CPR, 1225–32, p. 324. 4 Ibid., pp 357–
62. 5 Stacey, Henry III, pp 160–73. 6 The acts of Welsh rulers, 1120–1283, ed. Huw Pryce
(Cardiff, 2005), pp 434–5, no. 266. 7 CCR, 1231–4, p. 38. Britford had belonged to Walter’s
son Gilbert de Lacy before his death in 1230. 8 CCR, 1231–4, pp 94, 187. 9 The chartulary
or register of the abbey of St Werburgh, Chester, pt i, ed. James Tait (1920), no. 54. This is the
John le Scot whose marriage to another daughter of Llywelyn Hugh de Lacy had witnessed in
1222; see above. 10 For instance, in an undated charter (now lost), Walter de Lacy remitted
to the citizens of Chester the customary duty of two pence paid to him on every cargo of white
corn exported from his land of Ireland, and granted them the liberty of entering and leaving
his port of Drogheda, and all of his other ports, without paying the customary duty: Eighth
report of the royal commission on historical manuscripts, appendix, pt i (sect. II) (London, 1881),
no. 370a. Chester had also been the intended port of embarkation when John, lord of Ireland,
was to take the lordship of Meath into his hand following the death of Hugh de Lacy in 1186:
Annales Cestrienses; or, Chronicle of the abbey of St Werburg at Chester, ed. and trans. Richard
Copley Christie (London, 1887), pp 34–5; Seán Duffy, ‘John and Ireland: the origins of
England’s Irish problem’ in S.D. Church (ed.), King John: new interpretations (Woodbridge,
1999), pp 221–45 at p. 234.
confrontation between them and de Lacy’s men at a place referred to as Móin

chranncháin, William was mortally wounded.11 the culmination of these events
is supported by the ‘prophetic’ poem in the Book of Fenagh:
’tis in the time of this stainless cú [chonnacht]

that William will come again across the sea:
But though he brings Foreigners into the country
He will be defeated in crandchain
to William Gorm, after that defeat,

three weeks exactly [I allow]
In Meath, until from the poison of his wounds
the knight’s strength is subdued.12
Móin chranncháin can most likely be identified with cranaghan (co.

cavan),13 about nine kilometres west of Belturbet, which was perhaps William’s
destination. several annals give a number of names for the people who were
wounded or died with William. among them was a man referred to as carlus,
son of cathal Gall Ua conchobair. It is not impossible – in fact, it is quite
probable – that this person was the servant Karolus who was in William’s retinue
and imprisoned at carrickfergus in 1210.14 What is more, carlus may have been
a close relation of William.15 Other men who fell alongside William included
Diarmait Bernach Ua Máel sechnaill, niall an tsinnach (the lord of the Uí
chatharnaig), William le Bret, richard de tuit, Piers the Fair (‘son of the foreign
queen’), and simon de Lacy.16 the first two were subject lords possibly in
tenurial relationships with the de Lacys from the northern Offaly and western
11 ALC, i, pp 315–17, s.a. 1233. 12 Book of Fenagh, p. 77. the full name of the Ua ragallaig
referred to in the first line is supplied by us. the same source possibly contains another
reference to William’s defeat: ‘Hugo’s son will hardship meet / the great host cannot protect
him – / His head shall be under the feet of troops’: Book of Fenagh, p. 375. 13 townland in
par. tomregan, bar. Lower Loughtree: Diarmuid Ó Murchadha, ‘a reconsideration of some
place-names from the annals of connacht’, Ainm, 6 (1994–5), 1–31 at 22. 14 see above. In
the published translations of both the 1210 and 1233 incidents, the name is rendered charles.
although repeatedly found in the ninth and tenth centuries (mostly among Ostmen), carlus
is a highly unusual name in thirteenth-century Ireland. One of the very few men bearing this
name in post-invasion Ireland was carlus son of Domnall son of toirdelbach Mór (d. 1156)
Ua conchobair, William’s first cousin once removed: LMG, i, p. 487, §219.18. 15 He was
presumably (also) a close relation of carlus son of Domnall mentioned in the previous
footnote. It is possible that carlus was the son of cathal son of Domnall, tánaiste of Bréifne
and son of toirdelbach Mór Ua conchobair, and therefore a nephew to the carlus found in
LMG (see preceding note), and a second cousin to William: Bart Jaski, Early Irish kingship and
succession (Dublin, 2000), p. 265, and Lec. 63 vd 29–34. With many thanks to Bart Jaski for his
transcription of the relevant folios of the Book of Lecan. 16 ‘annals in cotton Ms’, p. 379,
s.a. 1233; ‘annála as Breifne’ s.a. 1232 (recte 1233); AC, p. 47, s.a. 1233; AFM, iii, pp 269–71,
s.a. 1233; AClon., p. 234, s.a. 1233; ALC, i, pp 315–17, s.a. 1233; AU, ii, p. 291, s.a. 1233.
Westmeath area. simon de Lacy clearly was a relative, most likely of the
rathwire (par. Killucan, bar. Farbill, co. Westmeath) branch.17 William le Bret
held the manor of clogher (bar. Kilnamanagh Lower, co. tipperary), and was
probably the brother of Milo le Bret, who held of the de Lacys at Moyglare (bar.
Upper Deece, co. Meath), and adam le Bret, who also held in tipperary and
had fought alongside the de Lacys in 1207–8.18 richard de tuit was one of the
leading barons of Meath, holding the castle of Granard (co. Longford).19 In
1223, he was granted custody of the royal castle at clonmacnoise (co. Offaly),
which guarded the ancient site patronized by the Uí chonchobair.20 Who Piers
(Feórus Fionn mac na Gaill-rioghna) was is more problematic. He was identified
by John O’Donovan as a son of Isabella, King John’s widow, but this seems most
unlikely.21 It is more probable that (if indeed she was a foreign queen) Piers’
mother hailed from the Hebrides or Man, or had been married to a king from
those regions.
VII
the career of William Gorm de Lacy is a remarkable case study in politics and
regional adaptability on the western frontier of the Plantagenet empire. a
member of the eminent house of de Lacy, William was at home among the elite
of european society. similarly, being descended from the ruling house of
connacht, indeed, the last high-king of Ireland, William was truly of royal stock.
But William was also a frontier lord, used to the rough and tumble of incessant
conflict, and as such, was an invaluable resource to his anglo-norman family. In
Irish conflicts, his de Lacy brothers made use of William’s martial skills as well
as his Gaelic connections. also, his le Blund half-brothers were employed in key
17 a robert de Lacy was granted rathwire by Hugh the elder, who built a castle for him
there, in the initial subinfeudation of Meath: Song of Dermot, ll 3150–1. a simon de Lacy later
witnessed alongside robert de Lacy and thomas le Bret in grant by Hawisia, daughter of
Walter de escotot, of land at Donaghmore (bar. ratoath, co. Meath): Register of the abbey of
St Thomas, Dublin, ed. J.t. Gilbert (London, 1889), pp 65–6. 18 William’s identity is
brought out in eric st John Brooks, ‘review: Feudal charters of the de Burgo lordship of
Connacht by edmund curtis’, IHS, 2:8 (sept. 1941), 440–2 at 441–2, where he also suggests
that William had been with the fitz Griffins in the service of Áed Ua conchobair in connacht
in 1225 (from ALC, i, pp 285–91, s.a. 1225). For the identification of Milo le Bret’s holding in
Meath, see Orpen, Normans, ii, p. 264n (new ed., p. 256n). adam le Bret was among those who
complained to John in 1207, and was arrested for ‘robberies’ and breaking the king’s peace that
same year: RLP, pp 71b–2; CDI, i, no. 328. 19 ‘a rich feoffment’ including Granard and
probably lands about tuitestown and sonnagh (bar. Moygoish, co. Westmeath) had been
given to richard’s father richard de tuit the elder by Hugh de Lacy the elder in the initial
subinfeudation of Meath: Song of Dermot, ll 3148–9; Orpen, Normans, ii, pp 89–90. 20 CPR,
1216–25, p. 433; RLC, i, p. 591; CDI, 1171–1251, nos 1173, 1178. 21 AFM, iii, p. 269 n. f.
this identification is unlikely, firstly because Isabella married a French count. What is more,
one would not expect to find a half-brother of Henry III to have left no records but his death,
positions, and joined William on his military expeditions. Indeed, his career
bespeaks a level of family cohesion heretofore unacknowledged in thirteenth-
century Ireland. as much as William was utilized to push forth the conquest of
Ireland into the midlands, he remained in close contact with his closest Gaelic
relatives. although they are less well documented than his relationship with the
de Lacys, William’s maternal family connections within the Uí chonchobair
were politically pertinent. For instance, they seem to have determined the branch
supported by the de Lacys during connacht’s internal dynastic struggles in the
late 1220s, the Meic ruaidrí. When seen in this light, even William’s conflict
with Áed Ua conchobair over Bréifne takes on the appearance of an extension
of the dispute between the descendants of ruaidrí and cathal crobderg. His
mother’s forced role as peacemaker between Áed and the crown in 1224 implies
that the latter viewed much of the conflict as a family affair.
But William was as much of an asset to his half-brothers as they were to him.
His focused struggle for Bréifne was conducted with the help of his de Lacy and
le Blund half-brothers. It made him a powerful figure in the region; indeed, a
local tyrant. the fact that the only contemporary evidence for William’s Irish
nickname, gorm, comes from the Book of Fenagh, may well reflect a local use of
the epithet and therefore a close familiarity with William.22 Of course, the poem,
written but shortly after his demise, was damning about William: indeed, it
curses him. this is indicative of the threat William posed to Bréifne. the
clonmacnoise annalist, on the other hand, obviously had a different view of de
Lacy than the Bréifne poet, which is possibly reflective of his location in a less
contentious area (while still in geographical proximity). He provides this
flattering eulogy:
William Delacy, chiefest champion in these parts of europe, and the

hardiest and strongest hand of any englishman from the nicene seas to
this place, or Irishman, was hurt in a skirmish in the Brenie [Bréifne],
came to his house, and there died of the wounde.23
under merely a first and a nickname, in an Irish expedition. 22 Within the poem, the
nickname does not appear in rhyming position and is not dictated by the (very loose) metre.
It appears that gorm was a rare nickname, and in the later middle ages current only among the
galloglass families in Ireland (although it is frequently found as part of a first name (for
example, Máel Gorm, or Gormlaith) or surname (for example, Mac Gormáin) even in a much
earlier period). there are several instances (among the galloglass families of Mac Domnaill
and Mac suibne) from the fifteenth century onwards, but no other examples were found of
gorm as an epithet for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is usually translated as
swarthy, or dark blue: see, for example, ‘By rose (sic) O’conor, the earl (sic) had a son called
William ‘Gorm’ (‘dark blue’), probably because his hair was so dark as to appear blue-
black … ’: curtis, A history of medieval Ireland, p. 86. It is also used as a descriptive adjective
relating to arms and armour: DIL, s.v. 23 AClon., p. 234, s.a. 1233.
It is an unusually glowing obituary for one of anglo-norman descent.24 Duffy

has remarked on this, saying that
this notice is something of a watershed, in that such laudatory obituaries

gradually thereafter became commonplace, but that they began with
William Gorm de Lacy is a measure of the man’s status among the native
Irish and an indication of the extent to which he was part of that society.25
What is also striking is that William’s is the only obituary that is placed in a
greater, european, context by the Irish annalists between 1166 and 1278 (and the
only obit placed in this context for an englishman in the medieval period).26
this, perhaps, is an acknowledgment of his success as anglo-norman lord, both
in Ireland and beyond: locally he was seen, at least by some, as one who was
successful in both the Irish and the wider anglo-norman worlds.
In fact, this view taken by the clonmacnoise annalist seems to have persisted
through the centuries. In the late medieval and early modern period, William was
someone to be linked to among descendents of anglo-norman families. Lynch,
Wall, Petit were all claiming descent from him.27 One family in particular, the de
Lacy family of La Garthe/Bruree in co. Limerick, have maintained that
William was their ancestor.28 Yet positive proof of William having any issue is
lacking and seems ultimately to rest heavily on erroneous connections made in
the Irish genealogies. nevertheless, the survival of the claim illustrates the
continued fascination with William.
24 the annals of clonmacnoise are knowledgable about the de Lacys and unusually laudatory
in their obituaries for two of them, notably William and his half-brother Walter, which
incidentally implies that William’s obit was not laudatory merely because his mother was an
Ua conchobair. 25 Duffy, ‘the problem of degeneracy’, 91. 26 AU, i, p. 155, s.a. 1166 and
AU, ii, pp 359–61, s.a. 1278. 27 Wall: Hubert Gallwey, The Wall family in Ireland, 1170–
1970: 800-year history of a distinguished Norman family (naas, 1970; new ed., Ballincollig,
2009), appendix B, p. 221. this was probably written shortly after 1663 (ibid., p. 3). Lynch:
see LMG. Petit: see LMG, iii, p. 175, §834.5 (where it is said that another name for adam Petit
was William, and that he was a son of Hugh de Lacy; see also §1416.5 where, however, adam
is not equated with William) and O’clery §2286, p. 190. the confusion is brought to an
extreme conclusion by roger O’Ferrall, who claims that nicholas Lynch was a son of William
le Petit, who was a son of Hugh de Lacy: Linea antiqua (GO Ms 155, nLI), p. 238. 28 One
source, a genealogical manuscript compiled in the first half of the twentieth century, links the
Limerick Lacys directly to William: Ms GO 177, nLI, pp 476–7. see LMG, iii, §825.5 and
§1400.2. they are found as Lacy in the mid-sixteenth-century fiants. their claim may be
based on genuine confusion of their original surname (possibly de (la) esse (which edmund
curtis thought to compare to Fraxinato / de la Freyne, i.e. of the ash-tree: Ormond Deeds, i,
index)) with de Lacy, although there is no evidence that links William to Limerick. the later
assertion that William held lands there seems based on ‘W’ being read incorrectly for William
rather than Walter: RLC, i, p. 186; CDI, i, no. 529 (p. 83, 1 Feb. 1215). Found in the early
sources as Lees or Lesse, it is difficult to find hard proof of their claim. the manuscript’s
claim that William had a son named nicholas is perhaps supported by the appearance of a
nicholas de Lacy as a witness to several charters concerning William de Bray’s land around
a good measure of William’s celebrity is undoubtedly a consequence of his

premature death, which saved him the ordeal (and possible humiliation) of a
protracted campaign against the rising star of cú chonnacht Ua ragallaig in
Bréifne.29 edmund curtis said of William that he was ‘one of the norman-Irish
adventurers who, had he lived, would have got a fief in the new conquest [of
connacht]’.30 that may have been true, but he might instead have got bogged
down in Bréifne while his brothers’ attentions were elsewhere. William’s death
preserved the illusion of an upward career trajectory; the reality might have been
much different. For instance, while commenting on the spectacular nature of
conquest in Ireland, rees Davies proclaimed William and his brother Hugh’s
‘larger-than-life qualities’, which helped to shape that conquest.31 conspicuously
absent is the third brother, Walter, whose own achievements would have merited
a similar accolade had he died at the height of his power in the 1220s or 1230s.
Instead, Walter lived to lose all: his health, sight, heir and property. William’s
legacy is undeniably important, and is unlikely to be altered greatly by what is
written here, but it is nevertheless important to deliver a balanced assessment of
William’s career that is divorced from his romantic memory.
as one of the first men of ‘mixed blood’ in the new lordship of Ireland, who
then married a native Welsh princess, William had to be able to survive in
multiple worlds. this he did with aplomb, which is shown for instance in
William’s (re)building of the two fortresses on Loch Láedacháin and Lough
Oughter, indicating that he, the son of the conqueror of Meath, nevertheless
appreciated the defensive properties of crannogs, settlements closely associated
with Gaelic Ireland.32 Unfortunately for William, while the ability to adapt might
have been enough for great magnates, such as William Marshal or his own
brother Walter, who could maintain semi-autonomous administrations in each
of their far-flung territories, for him it was not. While placing the de Lacys’
conquest of Meath in its european context, robert Bartlett points out the
difficulties faced by those of the middle stratum of the aristocracy in this
regard.33 the speed of communication and the intimate nature of lordship
colp (bar. Lower Duleek, co. Meath), c.1150xc.1160: Llanthony cartularies, pp 115–20, 122–
3, 125. However, although this is the right part of the world for William’s manor of
Ballymagarvey, it is hardly positive proof of a filial relationship, and in no way supports a
Limerick connection. 29 For cú chonnacht, see simms, ‘O’reillys’, 311–17. 30 curtis,
A history of medieval Ireland, p. 135. 31 r.r. Davies, Domination and conquest: the experience
of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100–1300 (cambridge, 1990), p. 35. 32 this appears not to
have been common practice among settlers, though this may merely be a result of their
distribution: aidan O’sullivan, ‘crannogs in late medieval Gaelic Ireland, c.1350–c.1650’ in
P.J. Duffy et al. (eds), Gaelic Ireland, c.1250–c.1650: land, lordship and settlement (Dublin,
2001), pp 397–417, map at p. 398. see also AC, p. 89, s.a. 1247; AFM, iii, 323, s.a. 1247 and
ALC, i, p. 375 s.a. 1247: Miles de angulo (who was married to a daughter of Hugh de Lacy
the younger) took the crannog of claenloch and left his own garrison in it. 33 robert
Bartlett, ‘colonial aristocracies of the high Middle ages’ in idem and angus MacKay (eds),
Medieval frontier societies (Oxford, 1989), pp 23–47 at pp 38–41.
worked against an absentee.34 William’s stake in Bréifne depended on his

personal attentions, or those of his family. When the de Lacy brothers were all
called away in 1229, William’s position simply dissolved. It may be no
coincidence that William’s only known english estate, Britford, came to him
while he was resident in england in this period. William was a success as a local
tyrant in Bréifne and, had he stayed ‘tethered’ there, may have remained so.
However, he had other interests and other obligations. William could not be in
all places at once and consequently died in a vain attempt to re-establish his
dominance in Bréifne.
Toirdhealbach Mór Tighearnán Dearbhfhorgaill dau.

Ó Conchobhair Ó Ruaire = Ó Maol Seachlainn
Cathal Ruadhrí Ó = Dubh

Croibhdhearg Conchobhair Cobhlaigh
Aodh Conchobhar Toirdhealbach Aodh — le Blund = (2) Dau. = Hugh de Lacy, 1d of Meath = (1) Rose de Monmouth
Maonmhuighe
Cathal Carrach Son Henry le Thomas le William Gwenllian dau. Walter, Id = Margaret Alice = (1) Roger
Blund Blund de Lacy = Llywelyn ap of Meath Braose Pipard
(†1233) Iorwerth = (2) Geoffrey de
Marisco
Isabella = Gilbert Katharine = Walter de Egidia = Richard de Burgh,

de Bigod Clifford = (2) Emaline de
1d of Connacht
Hugh, Riddlesford
earl of = (1) Lesceline de
Ulster Verdon
Matilda = David, baron Rose = Alan of Dau. = Miles de

of Naas Galloway Angulo
5.1 William de Lacy: some family connections.
34 Bartlett has a particularly good example of what could go wrong: Bartlett, ‘colonial
aristocracies’, p. 39.
Part I(b) New_Layout 1 19/02/2013 13:01 Page 85
A register of lost deeds relating to the

earldom of Ulster, c.1230–1376
RO B I N F R A M E
Printed below, from British Library Add. MS 6041, are summary headings of
107 charters and other documents relating to the inheritance, chiefly in Ulster,
of Philippa, the wife of Edmund Mortimer, third earl of March (d. 1381).1
Through her mother, Elizabeth de Burgh, duchess of Clarence (d. 1363),
Philippa was sole heir of the de Burgh earls of Ulster and lords of Connacht.
The majority of the deeds belonged to the time of Richard de Burgh, the Red
Earl (1280–1326), but several dated from the time of his father, Earl Walter
(1263–71), and a few from that of his grandson and successor, Earl William
(1328–33). Two went back to the time of Hugh de Lacy, earl of Ulster from 1205
to 1210 and again from 1227 to 1242, while two belonged to that of Edmund and
Philippa themselves.
The Mortimers, like other major fourteenth-century noble families, kept
well-organized records of their lordships, which now included the de Burgh
estates in Ireland.2 Sadly, most of the de Burgh documents have been lost: so far,
only some 10 per cent of the 107 listed here have come to light, whether as
originals, as enrolled or registered copies, or as later transcripts.3 Their
disappearance means that this manuscript, designed as what today might be
described as a finding-aid, is a precious primary source for the history of the
earldom, even though it gives the barest details of each deed. Its value is all the
greater because north-east Ireland, which, as a great liberty, lay jurisdictionally
as well as geographically outside the normal orbit of the Dublin government and
its records, is so poorly documented. The register bears testimony to what has
been lost. But we should remember that the documents it records themselves
represented a tiny proportion of what once existed. Just occasionally, there are
tantalizing glimpses of the missing archives. In 1310–11, the Red Earl, in a
petition to Edward II, referred to the difficulty of defending his English estates
in the English courts because his ‘charters and other things that might be useful
to him in safeguarding his tenure are with him in Ireland’.4 In 1353, the
seneschal of Ulster, in response to a royal writ, unearthed fines made more than
forty years earlier before the earl’s itinerant justices, and referred to searching
the ‘rolls and memoranda of the chancery of Ulster’.5
1 Of the 107 listed under the heading ‘Ultonia’, five (nos 8, 52, 96, 99 and 105) relate wholly
or chiefly to Connacht. 2 For a recent discussion, see R.R. Davies, Lords and lordship in the
British Isles in the late Middle Ages (Oxford, 2009), pp 36–8. 3 Nos 1, 3, 6, 7, 68, 70, 72, 82,
83, 90, 106. 4 Affairs Ire., no. 86, p. 69. 5 TNA, C47/10/22, no. 10. On the patchy survival
85
86 Robin Frame
The manuscript was not used by G.H. Orpen, whose articles and chapters on
medieval Ulster, which appeared between 1911 and 1920, remain indispensable.6
But it has been known to Irish historians at least since the early 1930s, when
Herbert Wood published some of the more extensive Mortimer material relating
to Meath.7 Edmund Curtis had been responsible for drawing the manuscript to
Wood’s attention, and later in the decade he and his pupil Jocelyn Otway-
Ruthven seem to have planned to publish the Connacht and Ulster lists:
incomplete drafts of a paper survive, together with an English translation of the
text.8 Instead, in 1940 Curtis contributed a full edition of the Connacht list,
though with minimal annotation, to a volume in honour of Eoin MacNeill.9
Otway-Ruthven meanwhile may have intended the translated text to form an
appendix to a paper on the Red Earl, based for the most part on familiar printed
sources, which survives in draft.10 This was never published. Later, she probably
planned to include the material in a volume of de Burgh charters and
inquisitions that she was preparing for the Irish Manuscripts Commission. This
project, too, does not seem to have got very far.11 The main legacy of the work
she did on the manuscript lies in the acute, though characteristically condensed,
discussion of the earldom of Ulster in her general history of medieval Ireland,
published in 1968.12 Since then, as the footnotes to the present edition show, the
manuscript has been exploited by several scholars, including Kenneth Nicholls,
Tom McNeill, Seán Duffy, Brendan Smith, Paul MacCotter and, of course,
Katharine Simms.
Although some of its riper plums have been picked, the value for historians
of the Ulster section of the manuscript is far from exhausted. Above all, perhaps,
it reveals the many-sided character of de Burgh lordship, together with its sheer
strength and ambition during the fifty years before the Bruce invasion of Ireland
in 1315. The family’s position in Ireland, which went back to 1185, rested from
the start on a close and carefully cultivated relationship with the Plantagenet
kings.13 In keeping with this, their title to Ulster came from the future Edward I,
who from 1254 held Ireland, Gascony, Chester and other lands as part of his
of seigneurial records, see Philomena Connolly, Medieval record sources (Dublin, 2002), pp 50–
2. 6 G.H. Orpen, ‘The earldom of Ulster’, JRSAI, 43–5, 50–1 (1913–15, 1920–1); ‘The
Normans in Tirowen and Tirconnell’, JRSAI, 45 (1915); Orpen, Normans, iii, ch. 31, iv, ch.
36. 7 Herbert Wood, ‘The muniments of Edmund de Mortimer, third earl of March,
concerning his liberty of Trim’, PRIA, 40C (1932), 312–55 at 326. 8 TCD, MS 2429 (Curtis
Papers, Box II). I am indebted to Dr Peter Crooks for drawing this material to my attention.
9 ‘Feudal charters of the de Burgo lordship of Connacht, 1237–1325’ in John Ryan (ed.), Féil-
sgríbhinn Eóin Mhic Néill: essays and studies presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill (Dublin, 1940),
pp 286–95. 10 TCD, MS 2456. Before deciding to pursue her doctoral studies at
Cambridge, she had contemplated embarking on a thesis on the Red Earl. 11 IMC:
catalogue of publications, issued and in preparation, 1928–1962 (Dublin, 1962), p. 78.
12 Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 214–16. 13 See, for example, Robin Frame, ‘Historians,
aristocrats and Plantagenet Ireland’ in Chris Given-Wilson, Ann J. Kettle and Len Scales
(eds), War, government and aristocracy in the British Isles, c.1150–1500: essays in honour of
Deeds relating to the earldom of Ulster, c.1230–1376 87
endowment by his father, King Henry III. The sequence of grants, which were
not apparently enrolled in Henry’s chancery, began in July 1263, when Walter de
Burgh was with Edward in England during the opening stages of the Barons’
War.14 Although Henry and his representatives queried other alienations made
by Edward, arguing that they were contrary to the terms on which he had been
awarded his appanage, the grant of Ulster does not seem to have been
challenged. Walter served the king and his son again in 1265–6, in the aftermath
of their victory over Simon de Montfort at Evesham; in May 1266 the royal
chancery first styled him ‘earl of Ulster’, though there is no record of his formal
investiture with the earldom.15
The deeds reveal the earls in numerous roles, reflecting the multi-faceted
character of aristocratic lordship – familial, seigneurial, judicial, military and
more besides – which has been so brilliantly evoked by Rees Davies.16 Viewed as
a whole, they show the de Burghs as alert and detailed managers of their landed
estate. Many deeds were concerned with quite small parcels of land or rights.
Some, however, related to the property of members of significant sub-tenant
families of the earldom, such as Savage, Bisset, de Mandeville, Sandal, Sarazin
and Pedlow (Pel de Lu).17 While documentation of this type was rarely concerned
with the earls’ position as franchise-holders, there are glimpses of the officers,
headed by the seneschal, chancellor and treasurer of Ulster, who ran in effect a
devolved jurisdiction in north-east Ireland.18 Alongside their dealings with the
secular hierarchies, the earls exercised routine patronage over religious houses,
such as the Augustinian abbey of Saul and priory of Muckamore, and over parish
churches, including Coleraine and Kilkeel.19 We know from other sources that
both Walter and Richard de Burgh clashed bitterly with archbishops of Armagh:
quarrels that surfaced, for example, in rival petitions to be allowed to exercise
regalian right over the suffragan bishoprics of the province during vacancies.
Predictably, neither Edward I nor Edward II was prepared to contemplate such
an erosion of crown prerogatives.20 The deeds, however, provide evidence that
the tense relationship between the earls and the archbishops was punctuated by
concordats, going back to the time of Hugh de Lacy.21 Alongside all this, in a web
of ad hoc arrangements that lay outside the constraints of English law, we see the
earls as overlords and patrons of Gaelic Irish lords, a role illuminated in
numerous studies by Katharine Simms.22 Their cross-cultural dimension is
occasionally visible also in the military sphere, in references to, on the one hand,
Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge, 2008), pp 135–40. 14 Nos 1–5. See Robin Frame, Ireland
and Britain, 1170–1450 (London, 1998), pp 62–3, 66–9. 15 CPR, 1258–66, p. 598. Entries
in the Irish annals suggest that he received the earldom in 1264 (AI, pp 364–5; AC, pp 142–3).
16 R.R. Davies, Lordship and society in the March of Wales, 1282–1400 (Oxford, 1978), chs 3–
10; idem, Lords and lordship, passim. 17 Nos 19–21, 23, 24, 43, 62, 72, 73, 104. For the
Sandal family, see below, n. 29. 18 Nos 57, 91. 19 Nos 11–14, 30, 50, 55, 57. 20 Aubrey
Gwynn (ed.), ‘Documents relating to the medieval diocese of Armagh’, Archivium Hibernicum,
13 (1947), 10, 13; Affairs Ire., p. 68. 21 Nos 16–18. 22 Nos 68–72, 75, 101, 102.
88 Robin Frame
the office of marshal of their forces and, on the other, to that of constable of the
troops maintained by the services they imposed on their Gaelic vassal-chiefs.23
Finally, at a more intimate level, they were benefactors and regulators of their
immediate family, and also active heads of what was already a very extensive
wider kin.24 Some brief illustrations may serve to bring out the vigour of the
earls’ lordship, the interconnectedness of its various features, and the usefulness
to the historian of this rather humble documentary survivor.
The deeds show the strength and acquisitiveness of the Red Earl at both
geographical extremities of the earldom. His power, which was as much
waterborne as land-based, came to bridge both Carlingford Lough and Lough
Foyle. In 1305, he recovered the lordship of Carlingford from William of
London, a descendant of Hugh de Lacy’s daughter, Matilda Butler, so re-
absorbing the northern part of the Cooley Peninsula into the orbit of the
earldom. He reinforced his lordship in conventional fashion the following year,
by endowing a new Dominican house at Carlingford.25 Several deeds reveal his
cultivation of his interests in the area.26 His activities in the far north and north-
west are more striking. Many deeds confirm the importance of the group of
lordships on the north Antrim and Derry coasts, and in the valleys of the Bann,
Bush and Roe, and their tributaries, which was long ago pointed out by Orpen.27
The significance of the region is obscured in the 1333 extents of the earldom
because large parts of it had been hived off in 1309–10 as a jointure for the earl’s
heir, John de Burgh (d. 1313) and his wife, Elizabeth de Clare, a granddaughter
of Edward I. Elizabeth held them until her death in 1360. The resilience of the
settlements is apparent in the fact that her ministers were still drawing a
considerable income from them as late as the 1350s.28 In the later thirteenth
century, this was an area that rewarded acquisitiveness: for instance, we glimpse
Master William Sandal, who may have served as a tax collector in Ulster during
the 1290s, and his son Thomas building a property portfolio, which eventually
seems to have come into the earl’s hands.29 But it also formed the base for more
far-reaching intensification and expansion of de Burgh power that was still
proceeding when Edward Bruce landed in 1315.
This is apparent – somewhat paradoxically, in view of the imminent breaking,
by the Anglo–Scottish war, of the single aristocratic world of Britain and Ireland
that it reflects – in Earl Richard’s well-known grant of 1296 to James Stewart of
Scotland, who had married his sister Egidia, of the ‘castle of Roo’ (Limavady)
and extensive lands to the east and north of the Roe. The earl’s charter grants
23 Nos 9, 10, 100. 24 Nos 32–4, 40, 42–5, 56, 94, 105. 25 Nos 22, 76–83, 103. See
Brendan Smith, Colonisation and conquest in medieval Ireland: the English in Louth, 1170–1330
(Cambridge, 1999), pp 60, 141. 26 Nos 84–7, 89. 27 Orpen, Normans, iii, pp 278–9, 288–
90. 28 TNA, SC6/1239/32, 33. There is a summary calendar of these accounts, with some
inaccuracies, in T.E. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster: the history and archaeology of an Irish
barony (Edinburgh, 1980), pp 136–47. See also Robin Frame, English lordship in Ireland, 1318–
1361 (Oxford, 1982), pp 63–4, 67. 29 Nos 15, 38, 39, 41, 46–8, 54, 58, 62, 64.
‘the whole lordship, services and rents of the lands of the English enfeoffed by
me in Keenaght’, together with the area of Magilligan Point, on the Derry side
of the Foyle.30 It is also visible in his heavy-handed acquisition of Derry itself
and lands in its vicinity from the bishops of Derry and Raphoe, transactions that
were to be challenged after the Bruce invasion.31 The earl’s freedom of
manoeuvre had been increased when, as part of the settlement of his feud of the
early 1290s with John fitz Thomas of Offaly, the future first earl of Kildare, he
gained the Geraldine lands and claims in Connacht and Tír Conaill.32 That,
together with the increased need to monitor the seaways between the north coast
of Ireland and the western highlands and islands of Scotland, may explain the
timing of another well-known enterprise: the building of the castle of
Northburgh in Inishowen (Greencastle, Co. Donegal), opposite Magilligan Point
at the entrance to Lough Foyle, which the annals attribute to the year 1305.33
The deeds show that the tightening of the earl’s grip on the Donegal side of
the Foyle involved both the ecclesiastical authorities and the de Burgh family. In
June 1305, in a classic validation and reinforcement of his lordship, the earl
gained leave from the bishop of Derry to have a church with parochial status at
Northburgh.34 Before this, the deeds provide evidence of the involvement in the
area of William Liath de Burgh, his powerful cousin, who during the years before
the Bruce invasion was in effect governor of Connacht. In December 1300,
William appears to have been given charge of Inishowen, which he agreed to
surrender to the earl within a fixed period. The term may have been ten years,
for in the summer of 1310 he formally yielded his rights over dwellings,
advowsons and other holdings there.35 Ironically, it was in Northburgh Castle in
1332 that Walter de Burgh, his son, was to die after his arrest by the young Earl
William, who failed to match his grandfather’s skills as a manager of his own
kinsmen. This was a crucial link in the chain of events that led to William’s
murder in 1333, and to the end of the comparatively brief line of de Burgh earls
of Ulster.
The deeds prompt one other comment. In 1263, the de Burghs were outsiders
in Ulster, introduced by royal action to a world that already had a well-rooted
English (or Anglo-Scottish) tenurial elite, planted by John de Courcy, Hugh de
Lacy and, during periods of forfeiture or vacancy, King John and Henry III.
This lesser nobility of the north-east, while not wholly distinct, had
comparatively few family or tenurial links with its counterparts in other
30 DIHS, ii, no. 401, p. 111; Orpen, ‘Normans in Tirowen’, 283–6. 31 Nos 35–7. See
Orpen, ‘Normans in Tirowen’, 286–8; Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 214–15. 32 No. 8.
Though this is dated 1302, the transactions went back to 1298: CJRI, 1295–1303, pp 235–6;
Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., p. 211; see Seán Duffy, ‘The Turnberry Band’ (in this volume),
pp 129–30. 33 AU, ii, pp 402–3; AC, pp 208–9. 34 No. 49. See, for example, Paul Brand,
‘The formation of a parish: the case of Beaulieu, County Louth’ in John Bradley (ed.),
Settlement and society in medieval Ireland: studies presented to F.X. Martin OSA (Kilkenny,
1988), pp 261–75. 35 Nos 44–5.
90 Robin Frame
provinces. To begin with at least, the de Burghs lacked the sort of associations
that they had in their original lordships in Munster, or in Connacht, where they
had endowed men from Munster and Leinster who participated in their
conquests. There was another, more specific difference. Cadet members of the
de Burgh family, so prominent in Tipperary, Limerick and Galway, had no
footing in Ulster. How far Earl Walter and Earl Richard reshaped the Ulster
landowning elite is a question that only thorough research will answer. But there
are some signs that they attempted to introduce kinsmen to the north. A Sir
Richard de Burgh of Camlin (Crumlin, Co. Antrim) appears in 1302
surrendering his rights there to the earl.36 Whatever lay behind this transaction,
it did not eliminate the family from the area, for in the 1350s John de Burgh of
Camlin was Elizabeth de Clare’s constable of Antrim Castle.37 More intriguing
is a grant that Earl Richard made in 1293 to his brother, Edmund de Burgh.
Edmund was given the manor known as ‘Vadum’ or ‘Le Ford’, centred on the
future Belfast, together with the town of ‘Coole’, or Carnmoney to its north. If
the brief description of the deed can be trusted, this was a grant in perpetuity,
entailed on Edmund’s heirs male: a very early example of a type of conveyance
that was to become common in England, Scotland and Ireland during the
fourteenth century.38 This act amounted to the creation of a substantial,
strategically placed family sub-lordship around the headwaters of Belfast Lough.
The absence of subsequent references to it may suggest that Edmund died early,
and without heirs.39 It is a rare glimpse of an area of settlement that was almost
certainly more significant and more durable than the scant documentary record
might lead us to suppose.40 Like the register as a whole, it is a salutary reminder
of the way in which our image of particular parts of Ireland at this period is
formed by the nature of the written sources that happen to survive.
Note on the edition

Except in the dating clauses, contractions, including those of familiar Christian
names, have been silently expanded, unless the reading is doubtful. However,
apart from the ubiquitous ‘Duluest’ (‘of Ulster’), which the clerk occasionally
expands as ‘Duluestre’, ‘Duluester’ or ‘Duluestier’, family names and place-
36 No. 56. 37 TNA, SC6/1239/32. 38 Nos 33–4, 42–3. He also had property at
Carlingford, Carrickfergus and in the Larne area (nos 32, 61, 84). It is conceivable that the
clerk, writing in the 1370s, might have described the transaction in terms familiar at that
period. On such entails, see Frame, English lordship, pp 22–4, 36–7; and more generally,
Davies, Lords and lordship, pp 145–8. 39 He seems to have left no trace in the annals. The
dated deeds that mention him belong to the period 1290–1302, making it likely that he is the
Edmund de Burgh whose executors in 1308 were to receive wages owing to him for his service
in Scotland in the time of Edward I (RCH, p. 7, no. 33). 40 John O’Keeffe, ‘What lies
beneath? Medieval components in Belfast’s urban development’, Ulster Journal of
Archaeology, 65 (2006), 20–8; P. MacDonald, ‘Medieval Belfast reconsidered’, Ulster Journal
of Archaeology, 65 (2006), 29–48.
names have been left in the form in which they appear in the manuscript. I have
preserved the Roman numerals in the body of the documents, though I have not
followed the original in rendering the final minim in figures such as ‘xiii’ as ‘j’.
For ease of reference, the numbering of the deeds themselves, which the
manuscript gives in large roman, has been changed to arabic numerals. People
and places are, where possible, identified in the footnotes; I have tried to make it
clear whether identifications are certain, probable or merely suggestions. The
manuscript (fos 50–60) contains a contemporary index, of which only the
sections covering the letters A–Gu and St–Y survive. The index frequently
mentions places that are not included in the headings of the deeds, and is a
potential mine of information on Irish place-names. Where the information
clarifies or adds to that given in the text, it is referred to in the footnotes. But it
is important to remember that not all the places indexed were subjects of a grant;
indeed in some cases places may be recorded because the deed explicitly
excluded them from it.41
Nombres endosez42 ULTONIA [fo. 100v]
43
1. La chartre Edward eisnez fitz au Roi dengleterre44 par quele il ad donez
et grantez Wautier de Burg45 toute la terre duluestre en Irlande. Done le
xve iour de July lan del piere de dit E. xlviie. [15 July 1263]46
2. La chartre Edward eisnez fitz au Roi dengleterre par quele il ad mandez a
son Justice en Irlande47 a deliverer seisine a Wautier de Burg de toute la
terre duluester ove toutz les chasteux illoqez. Done lan et iour suisditz. [15
July 1263]
48
3. La chartre Edward eisnee fitz au Roi dengleterre par quele il ad mandez
a Richard fitz Johan seneschal duluestre49 a deliverer seisine a Wautier de
Burg de la terre duluestre. Done le iiie iour de Septembre lan de dit Roy
xlviie. [3 September 1263]
41 I am most grateful to Mrs Barbara Wright, who is engaged in a full reconstruction of the
Mortimer cartulary, for generously sharing her knowledge with me. She has supplied
invaluable references and has saved me from many errors; the responsibility for those that
remain is wholly mine. I am also indebted to Dr William Frame of the British Library for
providing me with digital images of the relevant folios. 42 The original deeds bore these
identifying numbers on the dorse. This heading, together with ‘Ultonia’, appears at the top of
each folio. 43 There is a transcript, without witness-list or dating clause, in BL, Add. MS
4790, fo. 104d. 44 The future Edward I, granted Ireland as part of his endowment by Henry
III in 1254. 45 Walter de Burgh (d. 1271), earl of Ulster. 46 Marked dup’ in margin,
indicating two copies. 47 Richard de la Rochelle, justiciar of Ireland, 1261–6. 48 BL, MS
Lansdowne 229, fo. 98d. 49 A knight of the royal household (Beth Hartland, ‘The
household knights of Edward I in Ireland’, Historical Research, 77 (2004), 169). He witnessed
documents with Richard de la Rochelle and Walter de Burgh (COD, 1172–1350, nos 135–6);
he may possibly be Earl Walter’s brother-in-law, Richard FitzJohn (d. 1297), son of John fitz
Geoffrey, the former justiciar.
92 Robin Frame
4. La patente Edward eisnee fitz au Roi dengleterre par quele il ad mandez a

Henry de Maundeville50 son baillif de Touestard51 destre entendant a
Wautier de Burg de toute sa dite baillie en Uluester. Done le xve iour
dagust lan de dit Roy xlviie. [15 August 1263]
5. La patente Edward eisnez fitz au Roi dengleterre par quele il ad mandez a
toutz ses tenantz duluestre destre entendantz a Wautier de Burg come a
lour seignour. Done le iour et lan suisditz. [15 August 1263]
52
6. La chartre le Roi Edward primer par quele il ad grantez a Richard de
Burg [et] Margaret sa femme53 toute la terre qe Emline qe feut la femme
Hughe de Lacy54 tient iaidis en Uluester. Done le xxviiie iour de juny lan
E.ie xie. [28 June 1283]55
56
7. La chartre le Roi Edward par quele il ad grantez a Richard de Burg conte
de Uluestre frank chace en toutz ses demesnes terres de Tortorie57 et
aillours el countee duluestre Oenye58 et aillors el countee de Lymere en
Irlande.59 [15 April 1305]
8. La chartre Johan fitz Thomas60 par quele il ad donez et confermez a
monsire Richard de Burg counte duluestre Cxx li. de rente ove les
appurtenantz en ses tenementz ou en ses manoirs de loghmeske61 et
autres.62 Done le xixe iour juny lan xxxe. [19 June 1302]
9. Lescrit James de Vale63 come il ad relessez a Richard de Burg counte
duluestre tout le droit qil avoit el le Marchalcie64 del compaignie le dit
Richard en Irlande. saunz date.
10. Lescrit come Richard de Vale65 ad relessez a Richard de Burg conte de
Uluestre tout le droit qil avoit el marchalcie du compaignie de mesme le
countee Dirland. saunz date.
50 See Edmund Curtis, ‘Sheriffs’ accounts of the honor of Dungarvan, of Tweskard in Ulster,
and of Co. Waterford, 1261–63’, PRIA, 39C (1929), 10–11. 51Twescard: An Tuaiscert, Cos
Antrim and Derry, at this time equivalent to the county of Coleraine. See Paul MacCotter,
Medieval Ireland: territorial, political and economic divisions (Dublin, 2008), pp 230–1.
52 CDI 1252–84, no. 2099. 53 Richard de Burgh (d. 1326), the Red Earl, and his wife,
Margaret de Guines (d. 1303). 54 Emeline de Ridelesford (d. 1276), widow of Hugh de
Lacy, earl of Ulster (d. 1242). 55 In margin, ‘Cancellarius mandavit de Rothelan’
(Rhuddlan, North Wales). 56 CChR 1300–26, p. 53 (misdated 1 May 1304 in CDI 1302–7,
no. 304). 57 Uí Thuirtre, Co. Antrim (MacCotter, Medieval Ireland, p. 232). 58 ‘Wetheney’
or ‘Owney’, Co. Limerick (ibid., pp 212–13). Index adds ‘Estermoy’ or Castleconnell, par.
Stradbally, bar. Clanwilliam, Co. Limerick (ibid., p. 192). 59 In margin, ‘xvo die April’
a.r.xxxiiio’. 60 John fitz Thomas (d. 1316), lord of Offaly and (1316) first earl of Kildare.
61 Lough Mask, Co. Mayo. 62 Index mentions ‘Benede’ (Banada, par. Kilmacteige, bar.
Leyny, Co. Sligo), ‘Calry’ (par. Calrie, bar. Carbury, Co. Sligo), ‘Cricarbry’ (Crích Cairbre,
Co. Sligo), ‘Dunmochurne’ (around par. Kilmainebeg, bar. Kilmaine, Co. Mayo),
‘Fermenagh’ (Fermanagh), ‘Tirconyll’ (Tír Conaill or Co. Donegal): see RBK, nos 91–3.
63 Unidentified. See the notes to no. 10. 64 Office of marshal, probably of the earl’s
household troops, a term borrowed into Irish (Simms, Kings, pp 82, 95). Nos 9 and 10 suggest
that the de Valles had a hereditary claim to it. 65 More than one Richard and James de Valle
11. La lettre le covent de Muckemore66 direct a Richard de Burg counte

duluestre de lour donier licence desluire un priour illeqe. Done le vie
kalende septembre lan de grace mill. cc. lxxxv. [27 August 1285]
12. La lettre le covent de Muckemore par quele ils ont mandez a Richard de
Burg counte duluestre dassentier al eleccion dun prior illeqe. Done le ve
kalende septembre lan de grace suisdit. [28 August 1285]
13. La lettre par quele levesqe de Coner67 ad confermez la eleccion de priour
du Muckemore. Done le ve kalende septembre lan de grace suisdit. [28
August 1285]
14. La lettre par quele Levesqe de Coner68 ad mandez a Richard de Burg conte
duluestre a liverer al maison de Muckemore ses temperaltes par cause del
eleccion dun Priour illeqe. Done le dysmenge apres le feste seint Andre
lappostle lan de grace mill. ccc. xiii. [2 December 1313]
[fo. 101]
69
15. La chartre labbe de Clerefonte par quele il ad donez a mestre Sendal et a
Thomas70 son fitz le lieu de Lisschillan.71 saunz date.72
16. Lescrit entre Donat’ Ercevesqe darm[agh]73 et le deon et le chapitre illeqe
et Hugh de Lacy de divers composicions entre eux faitz.74 saunz date.
[1227x1237]
17. Lendenture de diverses composicions faitz entre Patric Ercevesqe
darm[agh]75 et monsire Wautier de Burg counte duluestre.76 Done le xie
iour de marcz lan de grace mill. cc. lxvi. [11 March 1266]77
18. Lendenture de diverses composicions entre Patric Ercevesqe darm[agh] en
Irlande et le deon et le Chapitre illeqe et Wautier de Burg counte duluestre.
Done iiii. kalende daverill lan de grace Mille cc. lxvii. [29 March 1267]
appear in contemporary records, mostly in south Leinster and east Munster. This James and
Richard may belong to a Galway branch of the family: in 1333 Geoffrey de Valle held at
Meelick, bar. Longford (Inqs & extents, no. 264, p. 153). In 1308, a Geoffrey de Valle had been
a leader of William Liath de Burgh’s Connacht troops (Philomena Connolly, ‘An account of
military expenditure in Leinster, 1308’, AH, 30 (1982), 2); at the same period, Richard son of
Gilbert de Valle was disputing lands with Ua Matadain (RCH, p. 11, no. 327). 66 Par.
Muckamore, bar. Lwr Massereene, Co. Antrim (Augustinian canons). 67 Peter ‘de Dunath’,
bishop of Connor, 1275–92. 68 John, bishop of Connor, 1293–c.1319. 69 Macosquin, bar.
Coleraine, Co. Derry (Cistercian). 70 Master William Sandal and Thomas Sandal appear in
many deeds: see note to no. 38. 71 Unidentified, perhaps in bar. Coleraine, Co. Derry, though
index refers to ‘Balidougan’ (?Ballydugan, par. Down, bar. Upr Lecale, Co. Down). 72 Marginal
mark dup’, indicating two copies. 73 Donatus Ua Fidabra, archbishop of Armagh, 1227–37.
74 This may have been a wide-ranging agreement. The index contains district and deanery names
such as ‘Ardlo’ / ‘Arde’ (Ards), ‘Dalboyn’ (Dál Buinne), ‘Dalreda’ (Dál Riata) and ‘Doffran’
(Dufferin): see MacCotter, Medieval Ireland, pp 230–4. 75 Máel Pátraic Ua Scannail,
archbishop of Armagh, 1261–70. 76 Index refers to ‘Drimkara’, probably par. Drumcar, bar.
Ardee, Co. Louth. 77 Marginal mark dup’, indicating two copies.
94 Robin Frame
19. La chartre Hugh de Lacy counte duluestre par quele il ad done a Robert
Salvage78 la Tweuth79 qest appellez Kineltweuthel80 en Dalrod.81 saunz date
[1205x1210, 1227x1242]
20. Lescrit Wautier de Burg counte duluestre par quel il ad grantez a Henry
le Salvage82 de tenir sanz empechement toutes lez terres et tenementz qe
Robert son piere iadis tient du dit counte. saunz date [1263x1271]
21. Lescrit Henry le Salvage par quele il ad suisrenduz a Wautier de Burg
counte duluestre deux chareuz de terre en Lestreuen.83 Done le xiiiie iour
de novembre lan Roy Henry liiiie. [14 November 1269]
22. Lescrit parentre Richard de Loundres et Alisaundre de Loundres84 de
divers composicions entre eux faites de tenement de Molymartel.85 Done
le marsdy devant la nativite nostre dame lan Roy E. xxxe. [4 September
1302]
23. La chartre Esmon de Pendelowe86 par quele il ad donez a monsire Richard
de Burg counte duluestre tout son manoir de Donmales87 et de Inver88 el
countee de Cragfergus89 sauvez lavouesoun du dit manoir en eschange pur
le tenement de Ransiven90 et pur xl s. de rente et pur xx. marcz de terre en
certeins lieux el countee duluestre. Done le xe iour de decembre lan Roy E.
xxxiiiie. [10 December 1305]
24. Lescrit par quele William de Pendelowe ad relessez a Esmon de Pentelowe
tout le droit qil avoit el manoir de Donmalys et de Inver ove les
appurtenantz sauvez lavoueson de dit manoir. Done le xvie iour de marcz
lan Roy E. xxxiiiie. [16 March 1306]
25. La chartre par quele Elys de Berkewey91 seisi Richard de Burk counte
duluester dun annuel rente de xxs. de terre de Newebiggyng.92 saunz date.
78 Robert Savage. See Seán Duffy, ‘The first Ulster plantation: John de Courcy and the men
of Cumbria’ in T.B. Barry, Robin Frame and Katharine Simms (eds), Colony and frontier in
medieval Ireland: essays presented to James Lydon (London, 1995), p. 17. 79 That is, tuath.
80 Or ‘Kineltwenthel’: unidentified. 81 Dál Riata, Co. Antrim (MacCotter, Medieval
Ireland, pp 230–1). 82 Henry Savage was dead by Mar. 1277 (Inqs & extents, no. 32).
83 Or ‘Lestrenen’. Unidentified. 84 Father and son: Reg. Gormanston, p. xiii. See nos 76–
83, 103. 85 Co. Meath, ?near Kilcarty, par. Kilmessan, bar. Lwr Deece (Reg. Gormanston, p.
170). 86 In 1245, Henry III confirmed to Ralph Pel de Lu (Pedlow) Drumaliss and Inver,
which Ralph had received from Hugh de Lacy (CDI, 1171–1251, no. 2771). 87 Drumaliss,
par. Larne, bar. Upr Glenarm, Co. Antrim. 88 Par. Inver, bar. Lwr Belfast, Co. Antrim.
89 Carrickfergus, centre of a county of the earldom of Ulster. 90 Island Magee, bar. Lwr
Belfast, Co. Antrim. 91 Elias de Berkeway, king’s clerk, chancellor and treasurer of Ulster
in the 1270s and collector of subsidy there in the 1290s (CDI, 1252–84, no. 1383; CDI, 1293–
1301, no. 113). 92 Unidentified: a common place-name in England but not in Ireland.
26. La lettre par quele Elys de Berkewey mist Richard de Burg counte
duluester en seisine de xxs. dannuel rente. Done le iiiie iour de July lan Roy
E. xxxe. [4 July 1302]
27. La relees Elys de Berkewey par quel il ad relessez a monsire Richard de
Burg conte duluester tout le droit qil avoit en xxs. de rente en
Newebyggyng. Done le iour et lan suisditz. [4 July 1302]
28. La chartre Robert de Derby93 par quele il ad donez a Richard de Burg
counte de Uluestre la moite dune charue de terre en Dondeuan94 et toute
sa terre de Colrath95. Done le iour de seint Katerine lan E. seconde sysime.
[25 November 1312]
[fo. 101v]
29. Lescrit par quele Richard de Burg counte duluestre ad grantez a Robert
de Derby la moite dune charue de terre en Dondeuan et toute la terre qe
iadis feut au dit Robert en la Brademire96 a avoir a toute la vie le dit Robert.
Done en la fest seint Thomas le martir lan E. iie sysme. [29 December
1312]
30. La lettre par quele levesqe de Coner ad mandez a monsire Richard de
Burg counte duluestre de presentier un able persone al esglise de seint
patric de Culrath par cause de la voidance dicelle. Done le dismenge en
sexagesyme lan de grace mill. cc. lxxxxvii. [17 February 1297 (or 1298)]
31. Lescrit Robert Jolif97 par quele ils soi oblige a Richard de Burg counte
duluester de paier annuelment iii s. vi d. pur la quarte partie dun burgage
en Cragfergus. Done le xve de seint Michel lan Roy E. xxxe. [13 October
1302]
32. La fait Richard de Burg counte duluester par quele il ad donez a Esmon
de Burg98 son frere le molyn de Cragfergus a la vie de Primerole nadgaris
femme a Robert Penewille.99 saunz date.
33. Un fin par quele Richard de Burg ad grantez a Esmon de Burg et as heirs
madles de son corps engendrez le manoir de Vado1 ove les appurtenantz et
la ville de Coule2 un molyn et v. charuez de terre ove les appurtenantz en
mesme la ville et ove tout le seignurie du dite ville. Fait al Cragfergus en la
veyle seint Andre lan Roy E. xxiie. [29 November 1293]
93 In 1302, a Robert de Derby was parson of Coleraine (CDI, 1302–7, no. 27). 94 Dundooan
townlands, pars Ballyaghran and Ballywillin, bar. N.E. Liberties of Coleraine, Co. Derry.
95 Coleraine, Co. Derry. 96 Unidentified. 97 In 1319–20, a Robert Jolif was a controller
of customs at Carrickfergus (RDKPRI, 43, p. 36). 98 Edmund de Burgh, a brother of Earl
Richard. 99 In 1333, Robert and William Speneville were jurors at Carrickfergus, where
Robert held property (Inqs & extents, no. 257, pp 142–3). 1 Otherwise ‘Le Ford’, the castle
and manor of Belfast, Co. Antrim. Index has ‘Forde’. 2 Par. Carnmoney, bar. Lwr Belfast,
96 Robin Frame
34. Lescrit de divers composicions faites entre le comunalte de Coule et

Esmon de Burg touchantz la dite ville de Coule. Done le ixe kalende
novembre lan Roy E. xxviiie. [24 October 1300]
35. La chartre Henry Levesqe de Rathbotens3 par lassent de chapitre illeqe
seisist Richard de Burg counte duluestre en toutes les terres de
Derecolmekille.4 Done le xxviiie iour daverelle lan Roy E. xxxve. [28 April
1307]
36. La chartre Henry Levesqe de Rathbotens par quele il ad donez a monsire
Richard de Burg counte duluestre toute sa terre en Derecolmekille et
autres certeins tenementz la entour. Done xxviiie iour daverille lan Roy E.
xxxve. [28 April 1307]
37. Lescrit par quele Richard de Burg counte duluestre ad lessez a Thomas
Evesqe de Rathbotens5 la moite de la ville de Dery a avoir a la volunte du
dit counte. Done le samady apres le fest translacion seint Thomas martir
lan Roy E. secounde xvie. [10 July 1322]
38. La chartre Estevene de Petrepont par quele il ad donez a mestre William
de Sandal et Thomas son fitz6 la terre de Drumdarath.7 saunz date.
[?1298]8
39. La lettre par quele Estevene de Petrepont ad mandez a ses tenantz del
tenement de Quer et de Dafdeirg9 destre entendantz a mestre William de
Sandal et a Thomas son fitz de la terre de Drumdarath. Done le Lundy
apres le feste seint Vynsent lan Roy E. xxvie. [27 January 1298]10
Co. Antrim. 3 Énrí mac in Chrossáin, bishop of Raphoe, c.1306–19. 4 The city of Derry.
On 16 Dec. 1310, the earl was pardoned for acquiring three townlands in Derry and
Loghlappan, held of the king in chief, from the bishop without royal licence (CPR, 1307–13,
p. 292). He also acquired land without licence from the bishop of Derry (RCH, p. 18, no. 128).
See Orpen, ‘Normans in Tirowen and Tirconnell’, 286–8. 5 Tomás mac Carmaic Uí
Domnaill, bishop of Raphoe, 1319–37. 6 Probably the William de Cendal who appears
between 1294 and 1297 as a collector in Ulster of the Fifteenth granted to Edward I (CDI,
1293–1301, nos 113, 390); dead by 1305 (no. 48). 7 Probably Drumadarragh, par. Killagan,
bars Upr Dunluce and Kilconway, Co. Antrim. Index has ‘Brunderagh’, and also adds
‘Dafderg’ (see no. 39). 8 Marginal mark dup’, indicating two copies. 9 ‘Quer’ and
‘Dafdeirg’ appear to have been dependencies of ‘Drumdarath’. ‘Quer’ or ‘Queur’ was
identified by Reeves as Cargan, par. Dunaghy, bar. Kilconway, Co. Antrim (William Reeves,
Ecclesiastical antiquities of Down, Connor and Dromore (Dublin, 1847), p. 70), near Clough. In
1251, Thurstan de Pierpoint, Stephen’s father, had been given ten librates of ‘waste’, which
he was to cause to be settled (inhabitari), a grant he passed to Stephen: CR, 1247–51, pp 480–
1 (Stephen’s name is omitted in CDI, 1171–1251, nos 3176–7). This area was indeed on the
fringes of colonization, which was bounded to the south by the Cloughwater (McNeill, Anglo-
Norman Ulster, p. 33). In 1252, Stephen was knighted by Henry III (CR, 1251–3, p. 163),
while Thurstan was granted ‘Donederk’ in the county of Coleraine (?Dunderg, par.
Macosquin, bar. Coleraine, Co. Derry): CDI, 1252–84, no. 104. 10 Marginal mark dup’,
indicating two copies. 11 John de Burgh (d. 1313), the Red Earl’s son and heir, and Elizabeth
de Clare (c.1295–1360), dau. of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Joan of Acre, dau. of
40. Lescrit par quele Richard de Burg counte duluestre ad donez a Johan de
Burg son fitz et Elizabeth sa femme11 la tiercz partie de certeins terres et
tenementz en Uluester Connaght Mithe et Leynstre a avoir a terme de vie
la dite Elizabeth come sa Dower pur vi. Mille livres par an. Done le xe iour
daverille lan Roy E. secound iie. [10 April 1309]
[fo. 102]
41. Lescrit par quele Estevene de Petrepont ad fait certeins attornes a liverer
seisine a mestre William de Sandal et Thomas son fitz de toute sa terre de
Drumdarach. Done le lundy apres le fest seint Vyncent lan E. xxvie. [27
January 1298]
42. La chartre par quele le Priour et Covent de seint Patric en Dune12 ont
donez a Esmon de Burg toute la terre qe gist entour la blanke esglise en
Dalthorp.13 saunz date [?1290s]
43. La lettre Martyn de Maundeville14 par quele ils soi oblige sur peine de x li.
a Esmon de Burg et ses heirs de faire les custumez et services pur sa terre
en Dalthorp. Done le vendredy apres le fest seint Michel lan E. xviiie. [6
October 1290]
44. Lescrit par quele monsire William de Burg15 soi oblige de rendre a monsire
Richard de Burg counte duluestre la terre de Inchewyn16 deinz certeine
terme. Done le mesqerdy apres le feste Nativitee nostre Seignur lan R. E.
xxixe. [28 December 1300]
45. Lescrit William de Burg par quele il ad relessez a Richard de Burg conte
duluestre tout le droit qil avoit en toutz les mees et avouesons des esglises
Edward I. Index mentions Antrim, Carlingford, Castleconnell, Connacht, Coleraine,

Carrickfergus, Down, Fermanagh, ‘Estlone’ (Esclon or Carrigogunnell, par. Kilkeedy, bar.
Pubblebrien, Co. Limerick), Grallagh (bar. Clanwilliam, Co. Tipperary), ‘Tiberaght’ (par.
Tibberaghny, bar. Iverk, Co. Kilkenny), Tír Conaill, Tír nEógain, ‘Tirynglasse’ (par.
Terryglass, bar. Lwr Ormond, Co. Tipperary) and ‘Tristellauragh’ (Inch St Lawrence, pars.
Inch St Lawrence and Ludden, bar. Clanwilliam, Co. Limerick). Some of these names
were undoubtedly referred to merely as spatial indicators or as exclusions from the grant. See
also no. 94. 12 The Benedictine cathedral priory of Down. 13 There were several
‘Whitechurches’ or ‘Whitekirks’ in Ulster. As Curtis suggested (TCD, MS 2429), this is
probably Shankill parish, Belfast (Le Ford). Edmund held Le Ford from 1293 (no. 33). The
‘white church of the Ford’ (ecclesia alba de vado) belonged to St Patrick’s, Down, at the
Dissolution (Reeves, Ecclesiastical antiquities, pp 6–7). Reeves identified ‘Dalthorp’ (‘Dalcorp’
in the index) as Dál cuirb, an area associated with the Uí Choltaráin (Coltarans, Coulters?)
(ibid., pp 40–1, 368); and the 1333 extent of Le Ford shows that ‘David Ocoltran, an
Irishman’, had held extensive lands there (Inqs & extents, no. 257, p. 143; Orpen, ‘Earldom of
Ulster’, JRSAI, 43 (1913), 139). 14 The 1333 extent confirms that there had been big de
Mandeville holdings in Le Ford (Inqs & extents, no. 257, p. 143). For a late thirteenth-century
Martin de Mandeville, see K.W. Nicholls, ‘Abstracts of Mandeville deeds, NLI, MS 6136’, AH,
32 (1985), 5. 15 William Liath de Burgh (d. 1324), the Red Earl’s cousin. 16 Inishowen, Co.
98 Robin Frame
et autres tenementz en Incheoin. Done le xxiiiie iour de July lan Roy E.

seconde quarte. [24 July 1310]
46. La copie dune chartre par quele Richard Corry ad donez a mestre William
Sandal et Thomas son fitz xxx. acres de terre en la ville de Portros.17 saunz
date
47. Lescrit par quele Johan fitz Geffrey ad quiteclamez a mestre William de
Sandal et Thomas son fitz et ses heirs tout le droit qil avoit en i. mees ove
les appurtenantz en la ville de Portros. Done le primer iour de marz lan E.
xxiie. [1 March 1294]
48. Lendenture par quele Richard de Burg counte duluestre ad grantez a
James de Langeford toute la terre qa lui appertient par descent en la ville
de Portros par la mort William de Sandal. Done le mesqerdy deins le
symaigne de pentec’ lan E. xxxiiie. [9 June 1305]
49. Lescrit par quele Geffrey levesqe de Derons18 ad donez et grantez conge a
monsire Richard de Burg conte duluestre dordeigner une esglise
parochiale en la ville de Northburgh19 en Incheon. Done le tierce iour de
Juny lan de grace mill. ccc. v. [3 June 1305]
50. La lettre levesqe20 darm[agh]21 par quele il ad mandez a monsire Richard
de Burg conte duluestre de presenter une certeine persone al esglise de
Kelkil22 quele feut voide par privaucion dune persone illeqe. Done le
marsdy apres exaltacion seint croys lan de grace mill. cc. lxxxv. [18
September 1285]
51. Lendenture parentre Richard de Burg Counte duluestre et labbe de
Maynville23 de certeine composicion touchante la rente de novelle ville de
Blathewic.24 saunz date.
52. Lescrit par quele Odyne de Offrawil25 qe feut la femme Fethria Offlyng26
ad relessez sa dowere de iii. villages de Silmoron27 a Richard de Burg
counte duluestre. saunz date.
Donegal. 17 Portrush, par. Ballywillin, bar. Lwr Dunluce, Co. Antrim. 18 Gofraid Mac
Lochlainn, bishop of Derry, 1297–c.1315. 19 Northburgh or Greencastle, bar. Inishowen E.,
Co. Donegal. For its parochial status, see William Reeves (ed.), Acts of Archbishop John Colton
in his metropolitan visitation of the diocese of Derry, 1397 (Dublin, 1850), p. 68. 20 Thus in
MS. 21 Nicol Mac Máel Ísu, archbishop of Armagh, 1272–1303. 22 Par. Kilkeel or
Mugdorne, bar. Mourne, Co. Down. 23 Movilla, Co. Down (Augustinian canons).
24 Newtownards, par. Newtownards, bars. Lwr Ards and Lwr Castlereagh, Co. Down. 25 Ua
Fergail (Ó Fearghail, O’Farrell). 26 Fiachra [?] Ua Floinn: perhaps the lord of that name
killed in 1289 (AC, pp 182–3). This is a misplaced Connacht deed. 27 Síl Máelruanaid, Co.
Roscommon (MacCotter, Medieval Ireland, pp 148–9). The index has ‘Balimckagan’, perhaps
the unidentified ‘Balymackagan’, held of Ballintober (Inqs & extents, no. 263, p. 151).
53. La chartre Johan de Mauneby28 par quele il ad donez a William de

Carliole29 et Agneys sa femme une charue de terre en Rensyuen en frank
mariage.30 saunz date.
[fo. 102v]
54. La chartre Peres de Carliole par quele il ad donez a mestre William de
Sandal et Thomas son fitz la moite dune charue de terre en Ransyvyn.31
saunz date.
55. La lettre le covent de maballo32 par quele ils ont mandez a Richard de Burg
counte duluestre pur assenter al eleccion dun Abbe illeqe et pur escrire al
evesqe de lui confermer. Done le samady apres le feste seint Michel lan de
grace mill. cc. lxxxxvii. [5 October 1297]
56. La relees par quele Richard de Burg S[eignur] de Camalyn33 ad relessez a
Richard de Burg counte duluestre tout le droit qil avoit en la terre de
Camalyn. Done en le34 eotas seint Michel lan Roy E. xxxe. [?6 October
1302]
57. La lettre William de Aura35 tresorer duluestre par quele il ad mandez al
chanceller illeqe de presenter une certeine persone al esglise de seinte Brise
de Dunba.36 Done en la veyle seint Laur’ lan E. xxie. [9 August 1293]
58. La chartre par quele William Brune ad donez a William de Sandal et
Thomas son fitz un mees et autre tenementz en la ville Symond de
Balway37 el tenement de Roffrelik.38 saunz date.
28 In 1333, Robert Manby held one-sixth of a knight’s fee in ‘Manby’, apparently Co. Antrim
(Inqs & extents, no. 265, p. 155). Orpen suggested the reading ‘Mauby’ or ‘Maubery’
(‘Earldom of Ulster’, JRSAI, 45 (1915), 139 and n. 5). 29 In Oct. 1309, a William de
Karliolo was going to Scotland with the earl of Ulster (Cal. chancery warrants, 1244–1326, p.
300). 30 Index refers to ‘Breryton’ (unidentified). 31 Index refers to ‘Whitekirke’, which
was in Ballykeel, par. Islandmagee, bar. Lwr Belfast, Co. Antrim (Reeves, Ecclesiastical
antiquities, pp 58–60). 32 Saballo (Saul), Co. Down (Augustinian canons). The copyist may
have read a beaver-tailed ‘S’ as ‘M’. 33 Par. Camlin (Crumlin), bar. Upr Massereene, Co.
Antrim. 34 The phrase ‘en le’ is repeated. 35 William de Aura, parson of ‘Gnupton’
(Knipton, Leics), had royal permission to travel to Ireland in Mar. 1281 (CPR, 1272–81, p.
427). 36 Unidentified (index has ‘Dumba’). Perhaps Dunboe, bar. Coleraine, Co. Derry,
though that was dedicated to Adomnán (Reeves, Archbishop Colton, pp 77, 84; H.A. Jefferies,
‘Derry diocese on the eve of Plantation’ in Gerard O’Brien (ed.), Derry and Londonderry:
history and society (Dublin, 1999), p. 195). Drumbo par., bar. Upr Castlereagh, Co. Down, is
another possibility. However, Seán Duffy suggests that it may represent ‘Brystone’, and the
church of ‘Kilbritoune’, which Reeves and Orpen associated with the parish of Finvoy, bar.
Kilconway, Co. Antrim; this church was later in the gift of the crown, so it is likely to have
been under the patronage of the earls of Ulster (Reeves, Ecclesiastical antiquities, pp 80–1;
Orpen in JRSAI, 45 (1915), 128; Inqs & extents, no. 261, p. 148; 266, p. 157).
37 Unidentified. 38 Roselick More and Beg, par. Ballyaghran, bar. N.E. Liberties of
Coleraine, Co. Derry.
100 Robin Frame
59. Lescrit par quele Adam fitz Johan ad conge de monsire Richard de Burg
conte duluestre de pescier en la ewe de Banne39 ove son batel a certeine
terme. Done le vendredy apres le fest de assumpcion nostre dame lan E.
xxviiie. [19 August 1300]
60. Lescrit par quele Wautier de Burg conte duluestre ad grantez al Ercevesqe
de Ardmath lysle qest appellez Inisdaville.40 Done lan Henri fitz Johan le.
[October 1265 x October 1266]
61. La chartre Johan Maumatyn41 par quele il ad donez a Esmon de Burg la
vjme partie de ville et terre de Rathlong.42 saunz date.
62. Lescrit Nichol Biset faite a William de Sandal et Thomas son filz de cynk
charues de terre el Chastelsmythan.43 Done en la veyle seint Nichol’ lan
Roy E. xixe. [5 December 1290]
63. La chartre par quele Richard de Burg counte duluestre ad grantez ad
William de Aure une charue de terre en Logan44 el countee de Cragfergus
a terme de la vie le dit William. saunz date.
64. La chartre Thomas Hoppere par quele il ad donez a William de Sandal
clerc un toft ove deux mesons ove les appurtenantz en Ardeberhan.45 saunz
date.
65. La confirmacion levesqe de Serens46 dune composicion faite par Levesqe
de Coner touchant la coniunction des esgleses de Donathy47 et de
Monydof.48 Done lendemayn de ascension notre S[eignur] lan de grace
mill. cc. lxxxv. [4 May 1285]
66. Lescrit par quele Geffrey de Colmon ad relessez a Richard de Burg conte
duluestre tout le droit qil avoit en une charue de terre en Balymethegan
qest appellez Massunton.49 [Undated]
39 The River Bann. 40 Perhaps in Cluain Dabhail or ‘Clondawell’, a low-lying area between
Armagh and the River Blackwater where the archbishops had lands in the later Middle Ages:
see Edmund Hogan, Onomasticon Goedelicum (Dublin, 1910), pp 260, 497; Brendan Smith
(ed.), The register of Milo Sweteman, archbishop of Armagh, 1361–1380 (Dublin, 1996), pp 8,
155, 192. 41 In 1333, Thomas Maumatyn held in ‘Marmadukton’, owing suit of court at
Doagh, par. Doagh Grange, bar. Upr Antrim, Co. Antrim (Inqs & extents, no. 258). 42 Par.
Raloo, bar. Lwr Belfast, Co. Antrim. 43 Index has ‘Castel Meithan’. Probably the
unidentified ‘Castelmylegan’ in par. Camus or Macosquin, bar. Coleraine, Co. Derry (Inqs &
extents, no. 261, p. 148; no. 266, p. 157). 44 In par. Templepatrick, bar. Lwr Belfast, Co.
Antrim. 45 Ardberhan or Ardbegan, near Coleraine, where Elizabeth de Burgh had a mill
(TNA, SC6/1239/32, 33; Orpen, Normans, iii, p. 289; McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster, pp
137, 139, 142, 144). 46 Written thus. Probably Derry (‘Derens’) is intended. 47 Par.
Dunaghy, bar. Kilconway, Co. Antrim (Reeves, Ecclesiastical antiquities, pp 71–2).
48 Probably Moneyduff, par. Dunaghy. 49 There was a Massunton or Masontown in the
manor of Dundonald, Co. Down, which included the Holywood area (Inqs & extents, no. 260,
p. 148, no. 266, p. 156). ‘Balymethegan’ (index ‘Balmithegan’) is probably Ballymaghan, par.
67. Lescrit par quele Johan clerc de Carneglace50 ad relessez a Patric Pallewaut51
tout le droit qil avoit en la terre de Craneglace. Done le dismenge apres
Exaltacion seint croys lan Roy Henry lie. [18 September 1267]
52
68. Lescrit del dette Mxxx et D. vaches destre paiez a Wautier53 de Burg conte
duluestre par Odon Onel Roi de Keneleon54 et autres composicions entre
eux. Done le ii. iour doctobre lan Roy Henry liii. [2 October 1269]
[fo. 103]
69. Lescrit par quele Richard de Burg ad grantez a Henri Onel55 toute la terre
de Glen Okenekahel.56 Done lan Roy E. secounde sysme. [July 1312 x July
1313]
57
70. Lescrit par quele Dermys Ocaan Roi de Fernetreue58 ad grantez a
Richard de Burk la terre de Glen Okenkahil ove les appurtenantz. Done le
primer iour Decembre lan Roy E. sysme.59 [1 December 1312 (?)]
71. Lescrit par quele Donald Ohanelan Roi de Erth’60 soi conust tenir ses
terres de William de Burg counte duluestre sur certeine condicion.
[undated ?133161]
62
72. Lescrit par quele M. Offlen63 Roi de Turterie de certeine composicion
faite entre lui et Hugh Biset.64 Done lan Roy Henry xliiiie. [October 1259
x October 1260]
Holywood, bar. Lwr Castlereagh, Co. Down (Reeves, Ecclesiastical antiquities, p. 12).
50 Carnglass Beg and More, par. Ballyrashane, bar. Lwr Dunluce, Co. Antrim. The index links
‘Carneglas’ with ‘Culfad’, which Reeves identified with Ballyrashane (Reeves, Ecclesiastical
antiquities, p. 74). 51 Or ‘Pallewant’. 52 The manuscripts of Lord de L’Isle and Dudley, i
(London, 1925), pp 31–2. See Katharine Simms, ‘The O Hanlons, the O Neills and the
Anglo-Normans in thirteenth-century Armagh’, Seanchas Ardmhacha, 9 (1978), 82; and
eadem, ‘The legal position of Irishwomen in the later Middle Ages’, Irish Jurist, new ser., 10
(1975), 109. 53 The printed edition has ‘William’, but Barbara Wright informs me that the
original, now in the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone (CKS, De L’Isle Manuscripts,
U1475 T321/3), merely has the initial ‘W’. 54 Áed Buide Ua Néill (d. 1283), king of Cenél
nEógain. 55 Probably Énri Ua Néill of Clann Áeda Buide (d. 1347). 56 ‘Glen Oconcahil’
or Glenconkeen, a former cantred name, bar. Rathlowry, Co. Derry. See MacCotter, Medieval
Ireland, pp 225–6, and the references given there. 57 Text in De L’Isle and Dudley MSS, i,
p. 32; original CKS, U1475 T321/4. 58 Diarmait Ua Cathain, king of Fir na-Craíbe, bar.
Keenacht, Co. Derry. 59 As Kenneth Nicholls has shown (‘Anglo-French Ireland and after’,
Peritia, 1 (1982), 384–6), this document belongs to 6 Edw. II (1312) not 6 Edw. I (1277):
Richard de Burgh received his inheritance only in 1280; the transaction is linked with that in
no. 69 (dated 1312–13); and the witness-list, headed by William de Mandeville as seneschal of
Ulster, also fits the later date. 60 The MS reads ‘Chanelan’. Domnall Ruad Ua hAnluain,
king of Airthír (Co. Armagh). On this text and nos 101–2, see Simms, ‘The O’Hanlons’, pp
89–92. 61 The date is established by no. 101. 62 Text in De L’Isle and Dudley MSS, i, p.
31; original CKS, U1475 T321/2. 63 The words ‘par quele’ are redundant; Barbara Wright
informs me that they appear in the endorsement on the original deed. Ua Floinn was among
the Irish kings who in 1272 supported Henry de Mandeville and Hugh Bisset in their attack
on William fitz Warin, the royal seneschal of Ulster (CDI, 1252–84, nos 953, 1918). 64 For
102 Robin Frame
73. Lescrit par quele Alisaundre Sarrazin ad quiteclamez a monsire Richard

de Burg counte duluestre C s. dannuel rente65 en la ville de Arken.66 Done
le iour seint Mathieu lappostre lan Roy E. xxxiie. [24 February 1304]
74. La relees du priour de seint Patric en dune faite a Richard de Burg conte
duluestr de iiii. acres de terre el tenement de Vert Chastel67 ove le passage
del ewe. saunz date.
75. Lescrit de divers composicions faite entre Salamon Ohadde Roi de
Oueath68 et Dompnald mcgemma duc de Clannenliga69 et Richard de Burg
counte duluestre par levesqe de Drommore.70 Done le xvi. iour de Januerer
lan Roy E. tiercz Tierce.71 [16 January 1330?]
76. La chartre par quele William de Loundres72 ad donez a Richard de Burg
conte duluestre le manoir de Kerlyngford73 et autre certeine terre en
eschange pur un mees et autre certeine terre en molimartel. Done
lendemayn del feste de Trinitee lan Roy E. xxxiiie. [14 June 1305]74
77. La chartre par quele William de Loundres ad faite son attorne de mettre
monsire Richard de Burk en seisine du manoir de Kerlingford et dautres
terres. Done le iour et lan suisditz. [14 June 1305]
78. La lettre par quele William de Loundres ad fait son attorne de mettre
Richard de Burg en seisine du manoir de Kerlingford. Done le iour et lan
suisditz. [14 June 1305]
the family, see Seán Duffy, ‘The lords of Galloway, earls of Carrick, and the Bissets of the
Glens: Scottish settlement in thirteenth-century Ulster’ in David Edwards (ed.), Regions and
rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650 (Dublin, 2004), pp 37–50. 65 The original grant of this income,
on 8 Dec. 1288, is among the Connacht deeds (Curtis, ‘Feudal charters’, p. 291, no. xxxix),
but it almost certainly relates to Ulster, with which the Sarazin family were associated (Duffy,
‘First Ulster plantation’, p. 12). In 1333, Ralph Sarazin held two carucates at Dunsfort, bar.
Lwr Lecale, Co. Down (Inqs & extents, no. 259, p. 146). 66 Index has ‘Ardeken’: Ardkeen,
par. Ardkeen, bar. Upr Ards, Co. Down. 67 The mention of the ferry, together with the earl’s
known interest in Carlingford, suggest that this is Greencastle, par. Kilkeel, bar. Mourne, Co.
Down, rather than the ‘Vert Chastel’ identified by Reeves as Castlescreen, par. Bright, bar.
Upr Lecale (Reeves, Ecclesiastical antiquities, p. 31). 68 ‘Ohaddo’ (written ‘Chaddo’)
represents Ua hAídith, one of the vassal lords associated with Mac Áengusa of Iveagh in
submitting to Richard II (Edmund Curtis, Richard II in Ireland, 1394–95 (Oxford, 1927), p.
177). The kingly title harks back to a bygone political era, when the family were themselves
kings of Iveagh. 69 ‘Mcgemma’ is the ‘Macyghemhna’ of 1395 (Curtis, Richard II, p. 177),
i.e. Mac Duib Emna (Mac Dhuibh Eamhna). ‘Clannenliga’ is Cenél nAmhalaidh, or
Clanawley, bar. Upr Iveagh, Co. Down (Place-names of Northern Ireland, 6: Co. Down, IV, ed.
Kay Muhr (Belfast, 1996), p. 9). 70 Possibly Florentius Mac Donnocáin, bishop of
Dromore, 1309–?, after whom the succession is unclear. 71 The dating clause clearly
indicates the 3rd year of Edward III, i.e. 1330. But the earl of Ulster was then William, not
Richard, which might suggest a scribal error for 3 Edward II (1310). On the other hand, Earl
William was asserting himself in Down and Armagh in the early 1330s (nos 101, 102). 72 In
1304 William (d. 1370) had received a grant of Carlingford from his grandmother, Matilda
Butler, herself a granddaughter of Hugh de Lacy, earl of Ulster (Reg. Gormanston, pp xiii,
148–9). 73 Par. Carlingford, bar. Lwr Dundalk, Co. Louth. 74 Marginal mark triplicat’,
79. /
75
80. La lettre William de Loundres par quele il ad mandez a ses tenantz du
Kerlingford’ destre entendantz a Richard de Burg counte duluestre. Done
le iour et lan suisditz. [14 June 1305]
81. La lettre Richard de Burg par quele il ad fait ses attornes a rescevre seisine
en son noun du manoir de Kerlingford. Done le iour et lan suisditz. [14
June 1305]
76
82. Une chartre faite entre Richard de Burg counte duluestre et William de
Loundres del eschange dun mees et autres tenementz en molymartel pur
le manoir de Kerlingford. Done lendemayn seint Jo[ha]n Baptiste lan Roy
E. xxxiiie. [25 June 1305]
77
83. Une defaisance faite a William de Loundres par Richard de Burg conte
duluestre touchante leschange de certeins tenementz en molymartel pur le
manoir de Kerlyngford. Done lendemayn de Nativite seint Johan Baptiste
lan E. xxxiii. [25 June 1305]78
[fo. 103b]
84. La chartre par quele Philip Crumbe79 ad donez a Esmon de Burk la novele
ville de Coly80 ove un molyn ewerette. saunz date.
85. La chartre Philip Crume par quel il ad donez a Richard de Burg counte
Duluestre touz ses terres et tenementz qil ou ses auncestres avoient en
Coly iouste Kerlyngford. Done le xvie iour doctobre lan Roy E. le primer.
[16 October 1307]
86. La relees Philip Croume a Richard de Burg conte duluestr de vi. marcz de
rente en la novelle ville de Coly. Done le iour et lan suisditz. [16 October
1307]
87. La chartre come Philip de Croume ad relessez a Richard de Burg counte
duluestr touz les arrerages de vi. marcz de rente en la novelle ville de Coly.
Done le iour et lan suisditz. [16 October 1307]
88. La chartre Henri Baroun par quele il ad donez a Richard de Burg counte
duluestre une mees et une charue de terre el Balyleghegan.81 Done le
indicating three copies. 75 Duplicate entries. No. 80 differs only in reading ‘Kerlinford’ and
inserting ‘mons’ before the earl’s name. 76 Reg. Gormanston, p. 149. 77 Ibid., pp 149–50.
78 Nos 82 and 83 are bracketed together with a marginal note ‘south’ une chartre’. 79 Philip,
allegedly illegitimate, was involved in property cases in Cos Dublin and Louth in 1291 and
1306 (CDI, 1285–92, no. 883; CJRI, 1305–7, pp 311–12). 80 The ‘new town of Cooley’ in
the lordship of Carlingford, bar. Lwr Dundalk, Co. Louth. 81 ?Ballylagan or Logantown,
104 Robin Frame
dismenge devaunt le fest seint Laurence lan Roy E. iie sysime. [6 August
1312]82
89. Lendenture par quele Richard de Burg ad baillez a ferme a Elys de
Kendale83 iii. molyns ewerettes cestassavoir de Kerlyngford et de
Engleysgrange84 a terme de vi. anz. Done el fest seint Michel lan de grace
mill. ccc. xiii. [29 September 1313]
85
90. La chartre le Roy E. tiercz par quele il ad mandez a ses Justices
Chaunceller et Tresorer en Irlande por liverer a Leonell’ fitz au dit Roi86 et
Elizabeth sa femme87 file et heir William de Burg iadis counte duluestre
toutes les terres et tenementz queles Elizabeth cousine88 a dite E. tient du
Roi sibien en demesne come en dower ou a terme de vie del heritage
lavantdite E. femme a Leonell en Irlande ensemblement ove feods et
avouesons et toutes autres appurtenantz et ove les issuez dicelles.89 [1
February 1361]
91. Les lettres patentes le Roi Edward directez a seneschal duluestre de
puplier et crier en sa baille suisdite certeins estatutz par le dit Roy et son
consel ordinez a dyvelyn. [10 May ?1320]90
92. La relees Thomas fitz Lucian faite a monsire Esmon de Mortemer counte
de la marche et duluestre91 du manoir de Donoure92 ove les appurtenantz.
[undated, ?1376]
93. Lescrit endentez par quele Esmon de Mortemer counte de la marche et
duluestre ad grantez a Thomas filz Lucian certeinz tenementz a terme de
sa vie deins le manoir de Donoure. Done le primer iour de Feverer lan Roy
E. tiercz cynkantisme. [1 February 1376]
94. La chartre le Roy Edward tiercz par quele il ad exemplifiez diverses fine
touchantz divers manoirs en Uluestre et Connaght.93 [26 April 1353]
par. Ballywillin, bar. N.E. Liberties of Coleraine, Co. Derry (Inqs & extents, nos 261, 266).
82 Marginal mark dup’, indicating two copies. 83 For the name ‘Elias’ among the Sandals in
the thirteenth century, and the rendering of ‘Sandal’ as ‘Kendal’, see Duffy, ‘First Ulster
plantation’, p. 21. 84 Englishgrange, lordship of Carlingford, bar. Lwr Dundalk, Co. Louth
(Inqs & extents, no. 253, p. 137). 85 CCR, 1360–4, p. 165. 86 Lionel of Antwerp, earl of
Ulster and duke of Clarence (d. 1368). 87 Elizabeth de Burgh, countess of Ulster (d. 1363).
88 Elizabeth de Burgh, lady of Clare, grandmother of the countess; she had died late in 1360.
85 In margin, ‘Irrot’ in rotul’ memorand’ scaccarii Dublin in termino sancti hillar’ anno regni
regis E. tercii xxxvio’ (1363). 90 The date, given in the margin, is ‘xo die Maii anno regni
xiiio’. The order almost certainly relates to the ordinances of the Dublin parliament of Apr.–
May 1320, 13 Edw. II (Stat. John–Hen. V, pp 280–91). No parliament or great council is
known to have met in 13 Edward III (1339): H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles, The Irish
parliament in the Middle Ages (2nd ed., Philadelphia, 1964), p. 338. 91 Edmund Mortimer
(d. 1381). 92 ‘Dounoure’ in index: Dunover, par. Ballywalter, bar. Upr Ards, Co. Down,
which was held by Lucian de Arquilla in the time of King John (CDI, 1171–1251, no. 705).
93 In left margin, ‘tenores pedum finium predictorum resident’ in filaciis Cancellarii R.
95. Lescrit endentez par quele labbe et covent de Moibille ont relessez a
Richard counte duluestre et ses heirs xl. cranoks de Farine des aveins qe
lour deveroient rendre pur la ville de Neweton en Blathewik et les molyns
illeqes pur vi. marcz par an. Done le jeody apres la feste seint Davy lan Roy
E. xxve. [7 March 1297]
[fo. 104]
96. La chartre Geffrei Brun par quele il ad donez et grantez au counte
duluestre ccxl. acres de terre en les seignuries de Coul el manoir de
Brunrath94 et la ville de Begerith95 et autres diverses terres et tenementz en
diverses lieux. saunz date.
97. La chartre Johan de Fresyngfeld96 faite al counte duluestre del homage et
tout le service Luce de Netreville du manoir de Duueth.97 Done le
mesqerdy apres le feste de purificacion nostre dame lan E iie unzisme. [8
February 1318]
98. La lettre come Richard de Burg counte duluestre ad fait ses attornes pur
recevre foialte en son noun du S[eignur] du manoir de Doueth. Done le
vendredy apres le feste de purificacion nostre dame lan E. unzisme. [10
February 1318]
99. Une chartre Thomas Hebreg98 par quele il ad grantez a counte duluestre vi.
acres de pree en Clare99 en un lieu appellez Strahleghir.1 Done le vendredy
apres le feste seint Clement lan Roy E. iii. tierce. [24 November 1329]
predicti’. The date is in the right margin. The reference is to the fines made in 1309, when the
Red Earl settled lands upon John de Burgh and his wife Elizabeth de Clare (no. 40). In 1352,
the lands were seized by the seneschal of Ulster (CCR, 1349–54, p. 442); as part of the ensuing
investigation, transcripts of the fines were sent to England (TNA, C47/10/22, no. 10). Index
mentions Antrim, ‘Birkynghen’ (unidentified), ‘Brunrath’ or Uí Briúin Rátha (see no. 96),
Coleraine, ‘Donsomery’ (Dunseverick, par. Billy, bar. Cary, Co. Antrim), ‘Drumtarsy’ (par.
Killowen, bar. Coleraine, Co. Derry), ‘Glancoskery’ or ‘Clancoskri’, bar. Clare, Co. Galway
(MacCotter, Medieval Ireland, p. 142) and Uí Thuirtre. 94 Uí Briúin Rátha, the lordship of
Brunrath centred on Clare, Co. Galway. The index mentions ‘Clare’. There are several
possible ‘Coole’ names thereabouts. There is other evidence that Geoffrey Brun held in the
area (Curtis, ‘Feudal charters’, pp 291–2, nos xxxvii, xxxviii, xl). A misplaced Connacht deed.
95 ?Biggera (Beg and Mór), par. Annaghdown, bar. Clare, Co. Galway, the ‘Beggerry’ of The
Irish fiants of the Tudor sovereigns (repr. Dublin, 1994), iii, no. 5448, p. 113. 96 A royal official
who amassed Irish property. See Paul Brand, ‘A versatile legal administrator and more: the
career of John of Fressingfield in England, Ireland and beyond’ in Brendan Smith (ed.),
Ireland and the English world in the late Middle Ages: essays in honour of Robin Frame
(Basingstoke, 2009), pp 44–54. 97 Par. Dowth, bar. Upr Slane, Co. Meath. 98 Thomas
Haubrige was sheriff of Connacht and Elizabeth de Clare’s sub-receiver there in 1353–4
(TNA, SC6/1239/31). 99 Presumably Claregalway, bar. Clare, Co. Galway: another
misplaced Connacht deed. 1 Unidentified.
106 Robin Frame
100. Lescrit par quele Estevene Mchoulyn2 est obligez a mons’ William de Burg
counte duluestre en CC li. por le constablerie de Bonaght. Done le iiiie iour
de Novembre lan Roy E. quinte. [4 November 1331]
101. Lescrit Donald Ohanloyn Roi de Erthir par quele il conust tenir sa terre
du counte duluestre. Done le vie iour Septembre lan Roy E. tiercz ve. [6
September 1331]
102. Une chartre Donald Ohanloyn Roi de Erthir par quele il ad grantez a
counte Duluestre toutes ses terres et tenementz ove les appurtenantz en
Erthir. [undated]
103. 3La chartre William de Loundres faite a Richard de Burg conte duluestre
du manoir de Kerlyngford en eschange pur certeins tenementz en
Molymartel. [undated]
104. 4Lescrit Esmon de Pendelowe faite a Richard counte duluestre touchantz
les manoirs de Dumales Inver et Ranceven. Done le xie iour decembre lan
Roy E. xxxiiiie. [11 December 1305]5
105. Une chartre levesqe de Cluyn6 par quele il ad grantez a William filz
William de Burg divers rentes en Uluestre. Done le ieody devant le eotas
seint Martin lan Roy E. secounde dyszeptisme. [17 November 1323]
106. 7La patente le Roi Edward tiercz par quele il ad grantez a Elizabeth de
Burg estallement de lxx. li. duez a Roi a son Escheqer de Dyvelyn paiant
x. marcz par an. Done le iiiie iour daverille lan Roy E. tiercz xie. [4 April
1337]
107. La lettre patente nostre sire le Roi Edward tiercz par quele il ad pardonez
a dame Elizabeth de Burg et a ses heirs xxix. li v. s iiii. d ob. de diverses
dettes demandez de la dite dame E. al Escheqer le Roi a Dyvelyn. Done le
xve iour de Marcz lan del dit Roy E. quynzisme.8 [15 March 1341]
2 For the Mchoulyn (MacQuillin) constables of the ‘bonaght’, a military force whose upkeep
was charged on the Gaelic lords of Ulster, see Simms, Kings, pp 138–9; and ‘Gaelic warfare in
the Middle Ages’ in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds), A military history of Ireland
(Cambridge, 1996), pp 108–10. 3 See no. 76. 4 See no. 23. 5 Marginal mark dup’,
indicating two copies. 6 Clonfert. Despite the clerk’s ‘en Uluestre’, this is a Connacht deed.
The index lists ‘Baliabolgoira’, ‘Drocturgi’, ‘Tregoil’ and ‘Yogayn’, and does not mention
Ulster. ‘Baliabolgoira’ (obsolete) and ‘Drocturgi’ (Droughty or Drought) are both in par.
Kilreekill, bar. Leitrim, Co. Galway (K.W. Nicholls, ‘Rectory, vicarage and parish in the
western Irish dioceses’, JRSAI, 101 (1971), 80. See also idem, ‘The episcopal rentals of
Clonfert and Kilmacduagh’, AH, 26 (1971), 140, where ‘Bayleyogan’, ‘Balleacircy alias Tyroil’,
‘Trochte’ and ‘Ballennabolgort’ appear consecutively. 7 CFR, 1337–47, p. 11. 8 This order
does not seem to have been enrolled. It may reflect Elizabeth’s efforts to protect herself
against the financial retrenchment imposed in Ireland by Edward III in 1341 (Frame, English
lordship, ch. 7, pp 243–4).
Unity in diversity: a comparative analysis of

thirteenth-century Kilkenny, Kalkar and Sopron1
ANNGRET SIMMS
When I first came to Ireland I was delighted to be introduced to a member of the

extended Simms family who knew so much about medieval Gaelic society, a
topic that fascinates and eludes most continental researchers in equal parts.
Katharine Simms was always patient when I approached her with my endless
questions. And so we produced a map of the origin of towns in Ireland for the
Atlas of Ireland published by the Royal Irish Academy in 1979.2 This map shows
the complex origins of Irish towns including Gaelic monastic proto-towns,
Viking seaports, Anglo-Norman boroughs, plantation towns, estate towns and
new towns. It set the diachronic framework for the evolution of Irish towns. This
theme is explored in greater detail in the publications of the Irish Historic Towns
Atlas. It is part of a larger European project on historic towns atlases set up in
1955 by the International Commission for the History of Towns. Since then,
some 460 towns and cities in eighteen European countries have been published.3
This body of work, focused on the cadastral map at a scale of 1:2,500, invites
us to attempt comparative studies of European towns.4 The foundation of towns
spread all over Europe in the thirteenth century under the influence of an
apparently common concept. Are we looking at a process of diffusion or
convergence? Our analysis of the morphological agents that created medieval
1 I would like to thank the authors of the three town studies, Mr John Bradley (Maynooth),
Dr Margret Wensky (Bonn) and Prof. Katalin Szende (Budapest), for their help in my effort
to get the stories right. I thank Prof. Ferdinand Opll (Vienna) for help with translating the
introduction of the Sopron charter into German and for corrections in the text. 2 Anngret
Simms and Katharine Simms, ‘Origins of principal towns’, Atlas of Ireland (Dublin, 1979),
p. 43. 3 For a review of the European Towns Atlas project, see Michael Conzen, ‘Retrieving
the pre-industrial built environments of Europe: the Historic Towns Atlas programme and
comparative morphological study’, Urban Morphology, 12:2 (2008), 143–56. 4 The
publications of the European Historical Towns Atlas project have been used for comparative
analysis of towns in the following publications: H.B. Clarke, ‘London and Dublin’ in
Francesca Bocchi (ed.), Medieval metropolises (Bologna, 1999), pp 36–58; Ferdinand Opll,
‘Cologne and Vienna in the Middle Ages: a comparison’, Acta Poloniae Historica, 92 (2005),
5–30; Anngret Simms, ‘Interlocking spaces: the relative location of medieval parish churches,
churchyards, marketplaces and town halls’ in H.B. Clarke and J.R.S. Phillips (eds), Ireland,
England and the Continent in the Middle Ages and beyond: essays in memory of a turbulent friar,
F.X. Martin OSA (Dublin, 2006), pp 222–34; Anngret Simms, ‘Mittelalterliche Gründungs-
städte als Ausdruck regionaler Identität’ in GH. Jeute, J. Schneeweiss and C. Theune (eds),
Aedificatio Terrae: Beiträge zur Umwelt-und Siedlungsarchäologie Mitteleuropas: Festschrift für
Eike Gringmuth-Dallmer zum 65. Geburtstag (Rahden in Westfalen, 2007), pp 347–54.
107
108 Anngret Simms
European towns is based on three case studies: Kilkenny (Ireland), Kalkar

(Rhineland) and Sopron (Hungary). The reason for choosing these case studies
is that the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, the Rheinischer Städteatlas and the
Hungarian Atlas of Historic Towns are among the few within the European Atlas
Project that provide a historical gazetteer that allows detailed historical
comparisons.5
KILKENNY
The Kilkenny fascicle published in the year 2000 by John Bradley in the Irish
Historic Towns Atlas series is used as the basis for this analysis.6 Kilkenny
belongs to those Irish towns whose roots go back into the early Christian period
(pl. 1). The place-name Cill Chainnigh, the church of St Canice, points towards
an early Christian foundation, as does the surviving high round tower, dating to
the eleventh or early twelfth century. The extent of the former monastic
enclosure is indicated by the curving alignment of the present-day streets around
the cathedral. After the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, the fertile land around
Kilkenny was granted to the baron Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare known to us as
Strongbow. He chose Kilkenny as his principal residence and probably
encouraged settlers to follow. Strongbow had built an earthwork castle at
Kilkenny by 1173, and on the same site William Marshal built a stone castle in
1207. In the same year, he gave the inhabitants their first charter of liberties (see
appendix 7.1).
The town consisted of two boroughs: Irishtown, where the Irish lived; and
Hightown, where the Anglo-Norman settlers established themselves. From the
early thirteenth century onwards, Irishtown, dominated by St Canice’s
Cathedral, existed as a separate borough to the Hightown. Anglo-Norman
settlers could only be granted burgage plots along the street between the castle
and the monastery after the bishop of Ossory and William Marshal had agreed
on an exchange of land. According to Bradley, the new area was probably
occupied between c.1207 and c.1231. High Street was widened in order to make
room for the principal market place. Wood, hides, corn and crops (used in
brewing) were the major items on sale in the market. The tholsel where the
hundred court and the council met was first mentioned in 1307 but might be
older. The castle, impressively signifying Anglo-Norman power, was of great
administrative importance in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was an
aristocratic residence, the seat of justice and contained a prison.
Bradley’s map of the principal sites of Kilkenny between c.1200 and c.1550
shows clearly the importance of ecclesiastical buildings for the town (fig. 16.6).
5 H.B. Clarke, ‘Joining the club: a Spanish Historic Towns Atlas?’, Imago Temporis. Medium
Aevum, 2 (2010), pp 27–43. 6 John Bradley, Kilkenny, IHTA, vol. 10, ed. Anngret Simms,
H.B. Clarke, Raymond Gillespie and John Andrews (Dublin, 2000).
Thirteenth-century Kilkenny, Kalkar and Sopron 109
The first Anglo-Norman bishop, Hugh de Rous, oversaw the building of the new
gothic cathedral in the thirteenth century on the site of the pre-Anglo-Norman
cathedral. St Mary’s parish church was in existence by c.1205 on the axis
between the cathedral and the castle. The new mendicant orders of the
Dominicans and Franciscans were represented in the town. William Marshal the
elder founded St John’s Abbey as an Augustinian priory in 1211. William
Marshal the younger founded the Black Abbey church as the Dominican friary
of the Holy Trinity outside the walls near Irishtown in c.1225. The Grey Abbey,
or St Francis’ Franciscan friary, probably erected by Richard Marshal between
1231 and 1234, lay within the medieval walls. These religious houses, with their
precincts extending to about 1ha and enclosed by a wall, would have been
dominant features within the medieval town. Kilkenny’s earliest hospital was St
John the Evangelist’s, established by 1202, which was replaced by St John’s
Abbey.
The properties along High Street were laid out in long narrow burgage plots,
which provided the morphological backbone for the medieval town. This layout,
which echoed how the Romans had subdivided their towns and how the Vikings
had done so in Dublin, Waterford and Wexford, was a considerable innovation
and provided a contrast to the manner in which plots were laid out in Gaelic
cathedral proto-towns, as demonstrated on Bartlett’s map of Armagh in 1602
(pl. 2). In his charter of 1207, William Marshal decreed that the holding of a free
tenant should be 20 feet (6.1m) wide. A burgess would build his house fronting
the street with the gable side. According to Bradley, a relatively small number of
plots along High Street meet this requirement today. Bradley believes that there
were around 236 burgesses in Hightown in the thirteenth century and between
180 and 225 burgesses in Irishtown in the fourteenth century. These figures
would suggest at the maximum 1550 people. The town walls defending the
Hightown, 1.2m to 1.4m in thickness with seven gatehouses, were built in the
thirteenth century and according to Bradley enclosed an area of approximately
28ha. Bradley points out that the building of the medieval wall was the largest
civic enterprise of the medieval townspeople. The walls surrounding Irishtown
enclosed an area of c.6.5ha. The total of enclosed space for medieval Kilkenny
would therefore have been c.34.5ha.
In the fourteenth century, four languages would have been spoken in
Kilkenny: French by the gentile burgesses; English as the common language;
Gaelic by Irish people who were living in the town; and Latin in the context of
the church or legal matters. Bradley tells us that the urban culture of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries remained hostile to the Gaelic Irish. They
did not enjoy the same legal status as the descendants of the Anglo-Norman
families. After the growth of the town in the thirteenth century, the following
century was characterized by both political and economic instability, culminating
in the horrors of the Black Death. The population declined, suburbs were
110 Anngret Simms
deserted and outlying chapels were pulled down. The increasingly Gaelic
hinterland of the town became cut off from Dublin. In the fifteenth century,
urban life picked up again in Kilkenny and most of the public buildings were
repaired. From the late fifteenth century onwards, an oligarchy of about fifteen
families took over until 1650. These families increased their property holdingss
when land became available at the dissolution of the monasteries.7
KALKAR
The German town of Kalkar, once in the Holy Roman Empire, was published in
the Rheinischer Städteatlas series in 2001 and was compiled by Margret
Wensky.8 The town was founded in the thirteenth century by the local count as a
Reissbrett-Stadt, the German word for a town set up on tabula rasa (pl. 5). It was
part of the internal colonization of the count’s land. This example will illustrate
to us, as Kilkenny did, the strong dynamic that had developed among the feudal
elite in their efforts to found towns as a means of developing their territories.
The town of Kalkar is close to the left bank of the lower Rhine near the Dutch
border. Similar to the publications in the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, the fascicle
of Kalkar provides, together with the cadastral map of 1831 at 1:2,500, a glossary
of historical data under specific headings. The Rheinischer Städteatlas was
designed as a reference work, a task it fulfils excellently. But there is no essay
charting the growth of the town and there are no thematic maps reconstructing
medieval Kalkar and therefore the demands on the reader are high.
Kalkar is the oldest medieval foundation town in the region of present-day
Nordrhein, the area north of Cologne. It was founded by Count Dietrich von
Kleve in 1230 on a small sandy ridge lying slightly higher than the surrounding
floodplain of the formerly meandering Rhine. The archbishop of Cologne gave
permission for the foundation of Kalkar with the understanding that none of the
citizens of any of his towns or any of the tenants on his lands would be allowed
to settle there and that the count and his people would accept their obligations
as homines legii (feudal servants) of the archbishop.9 Wensky writes that it is
recorded that the oppidum received its first charter in 1242 but the oldest
surviving Privileg is that of 1347 (see appendix 7.1). The town was established
along a stretch of road that connected Cologne with Nijmegen. The first
marketplace was created where this road intersected with another road that ran
east–west, connecting the Maas and the Rhine; the earliest mention of this
marketplace occurred in 1358 (pl. 4). The town charter suggests that the
7 Bradley, Kilkenny, p. 5; John Bradley, ‘From frontier town to Renaissance city: Kilkenny,
1500–1700’ in Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot (eds), Provincial towns in early modern
England and Ireland: change, convergence and divergence (Oxford, 2002), pp 29–52. 8 Margret
Wensky, Kalkar: Rheinischer Städteatlas, 14:76, ed. M. Wensky and E. Weiss (Köln, Weimar
and Wien, 2001). 9 Wensky, Kalkar, p. 14.
individual property was to be 44 feet in width and 140 feet in length, introducing
a planned element.10 The cadastral map shows the regular layout of the burgage
plots on both sides of the main street that follows a ditch referred to as
Middelgrave in a 1338 document. The burgage plots were also regularly laid out
along the side-street to the east.
The best evidence for the wealth of the citizens of Kalkar in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries is the new town hall that was built 1442–6 (pls 4–5). At
that time, the original marketplace was enlarged. The new town hall is an
impressive three-storey redbrick building to which a Renaissance façade was
added. The municipal court met in the town hall. It is suggested that the
medieval town would have had space for c.1,000 inhabitants. The wealth of the
town was mainly based on trade in wool, cloth and grain. Brewing for the market
became important from the fifteenth century onwards. There are no records
indicating when the fortifications were first built. By the fourteenth century, the
medieval town was enclosed with a double row of banks and ditches. Town walls
were first mentioned in 1349 (supra murum oppidi). In 1657, the elector Friedrich
Wilhelm von Brandenburg started with the building of the citadel in the south-
eastern quarter of the town, whose layout is still visible on the cadastral map
(pl. 4). In the medieval period, the walls encompassed an area of c.25ha.
The first impression of Kalkar’s cadastral map is that someone has swept the
town clean of public buildings. Enforced secularization at the hands of Napoleon
in 1802 explains why in 1831 only two churches remained to be shown on the
map; the Catholic parish church and the Protestant church. Napoleon required
the dissolution of all religious houses. However, a map of medieval Kalkar
supplied by Wensky allows me to present a list of the earlier churches mentioned
in written sources that were subject to the 1802 dissolution (pl. 5).11 The oldest
reference to a church in Kalkar is from 1273 and refers to the parish church of
St Nicholas (pl. 5). Previous to this date, the parishioners attended the village
church in Old Kalkar. In 1293, we hear about the ecclesia oppidi de Kalkar. The
church was damaged by fire in 1409 and a new building was erected in the style
of a late Gothic pillar basilica. It was dedicated to St Nicholas. This was an
important patrocinium for medieval churches connected with merchants.12 The
wealth of the citizens of Kalkar in the fifteenth century is expressed in the
richness of the furnishings of this church that had seventeen altars with precious
carvings and paintings. The payment for these ornate altarpieces came mainly
from the fraternities (Brüderschaften).
In 1358, the Gasthauskirche (pl. 5, no. 4) is recorded. It is a church associated
with a hospital, which was dedicated to St George and St Barbara. The duke paid
10 Handfeste 1347, Wensky, Kalkar, iii, 3, p. 10. 11 Margret Wensky, ‘Kalkar’ in Handbuch
der historischen Stätten Nordrhein-Westfalens (Stuttgart, 2006), p. 524. 12 Karlheinz Blaschke,
‘Stadtplanforschung. Neue Methoden und Erkenntnisse zur Entstehung hochmittelalter-
lichen Städtewesens in Mittel-Ost- und Nordeuropa’, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften
112 Anngret Simms
for a daily early mass in the hospital church. The Gasthauskirche was taken over
by the reformed church between 1647 and 1698. In the first half of the fifteenth
century, there were two Beguine houses in Kalkar, the smaller dedicated to St
Cecilia, erected in 1413, and the larger one to St Ursula, built before 1430 with
the money of private citizens (pl. 5, nos 1 & 2). Beguines were a lay sisterhood
of spiritual women.13 In 1465, with the agreement of the archbishop of Cologne
and the duke of Kleve, the Beguines in Kalkar accepted the rule of St Augustine.
In 1586, St Cecilia and St Ursula were merged, forming an institution that
survived until dissolution in 1802. In 1455, Duke Johan I requested that the
Dominicans in Rotterdam set up a new monastery in Kalkar, keeping a promise
to God he had made while on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He obtained the
permission of the head of the Dominicans, Pope Calixtus III, and from the
archbishop of Cologne, Dietrich von Moers, for this foundation. The Dominican
monastery was erected opposite the Beginenkonvente (pl. 5, no. 3).
On the 1831 cadastral map (pl. 4), a synagogue is recorded located between
the market place and the eastern town wall. During the Middle Ages, only two or
three Jewish families lived in the town of Kalkar, usually connected with a
butcher’s shop. During the eighteenth century, the number of Jewish families
increased and in 1819 the Jewish community bought the Lutheran church in the
Hanselaerstrasse for the establishment of their synagogue, which was opened in
1826.14
At the end of the Middle Ages, Kalkar had c.5,000 inhabitants. With the
decline of the cloth trade in the middle of the sixteenth century came the decline
of the town; the process of decline was quickened by epidemics and by military
devastation during the Spanish–Dutch war (1621–48).
SOPRON
Our last destination is Sopron in western Hungary on the border with Austria.
It is the first town to be published in the Hungarian Atlas of Historic Towns,
appearing in 2010 (pl. 6).15 Its joint author and editor is Kataline Szende, on
whose work this analysis is based. The cultural history of Sopron is complex,
because in the late twelfth century it sat on the German–Hungarian linguistic
border and there was a small but significant Jewish population. Sopron lies on
zu Leipzig, Phil.-Historische Klasse 138, Heft 4 (Stuttgart/Leipzig, 2003). 13 The women

lived together in a democratically organized way independent from the status of their families.
They lived in voluntary poverty and looked after the poor and dying. 14 The Jewish
cemetery was located in the north-eastern quarter of the town (pl. 5). In 1933, there were
fifteen Jewish families in Kalkar. During the Nazi period, the synagogue was burnt down and
the Jewish families who had not emigrated were deported between 1940 and 1944. Today, the
land of the synagogue lies vacant and a memorial plaque recalls the former use of the site.
an old trade-route connecting the interior of Hungary with Vienna. It is built on

the ruins of a Roman town called Scarbanta that was located on the Amber Road
connecting Italy with the Baltic Sea since prehistoric times. The town itself was
probably erected in the first century AD after the province of Pannonia was
included in the Roman Empire. The Roman town had its heyday in the second
century AD. Archaeologists have confirmed the presence of a Roman road under
the north-eastern stretch of the modern road of Varkerulet (Grabenrunde)
(pl. 6). City walls dating from the Roman period were only built in the fourth
century. From the end of the sixth century, the town remained uninhabited for
about four hundred years. The authors of the atlas record that during this time
some 3m of soils accumulated within the enclosing walls. They interpret this
cover of ‘black earth’ as a proof that the new lords, the Avars, did not settle in the
Roman ruins but remained outside. When the Hungarians (Magyars) moved
into the region in the late ninth century, they did not find a ruined town but an
open space surrounded by 6–8m high walls!
The existence of Roman walls must have influenced the Hungarians to select
the site as the location for one of their defensive castles, when, as Szende
suggests, the process of state foundation necessitated the erection of fortifi-
cations. Archaeological excavations have shown that beside the Roman town walls
of Sopron there was a rampart that had been burnt down. The rampart is
impressive, being 18–20m wide at its base and about 8m high, surmounted by a
2m wooden fence. Szende argues that a structure of that size could only have
been erected by a large number of people under central command. The
construction of the rampart is dated between the late tenth century and the
second half of the eleventh century when the region was not yet settled. The
castle remained in use for two hundred years. In 1096, the defences were capable
of keeping out the crusaders of Godfrey of Bouillon and in 1241/2 they deterred
the Mongols.
From the eleventh century onwards, Sopron fulfilled central place functions
on the western border of the Hungarian kingdom and played an important role
in administering that county from the Castrum Suprun. Because the castle was
based on the walls of the Roman town, it covered a large area (8.7ha) and might
have functioned, as Szende speculates, as storage place, refuge and residence.
The local ispán (royal official, comes) would definitely have lived there.
‘Structurally’, Szende writes, ‘it was a conglomerate of discrete sub-settlements
in loose topographical connection, providing military/administrative, trading,
craft and agricultural functions’.16 There was a band of suburbs directly
surrounding the rampart. Because of the convergence of important roads to the
north of the castle, this was a strategically important location and it was here that
St Michel’s parish church, subordinate to the bishop of Györ, was built.
15 F. Jankó, J. Kücsán and K. Szende (eds), Hungarian Atlas of Historic Town, No.1: Sopron
(Sopron, 2010). 16 Jankó, Sopron, p. 15.
114 Anngret Simms
In the middle of the thirteenth century, King Béla IV transformed Sopron

from an ispán’s castle settlement into a free royal town. This development was
part of the king’s policy of founding towns for economic gain but also in part as
protection against Austrians and Mongols. The question is how was the military
castle of Sopron transformed into a medieval town? Szende writes that a charter
connected with the Order of St John gives information on the transformation of
the enclosed space into what became the town centre. The Order of St John was
settled in the northern suburb by King Béla in 1247. The order also claimed
rights to properties inside the walled area, and that is why the charter in question
is relevant. According to Szende, the land within the walls was parcelled up and
streets and plots were laid out during the 1240s.
The land was usually shared out according to a single plan within each
district, taking account of local features. The walls were the line of reference for
the layout of the plots. Therefore, the plots along the walls are, according to
Szende, the oldest (pl. 3). Another row of plots was laid out from what is now
Templom utca (Neugasse). The closed lens-shaped area to the north of these plots
could not be laid out with complete regularity and therefore we get different-
sized plots here. A number of squares were created at the time. The larger
northern square became the later Fö tér, the Main Square (Hauptplatz), where
the most important market was held. On the whole, the town centre was too small
and the access roads too constricted to allow the markets to grow (pl. 3). In the
suburbs, markets were situated outside the ditch of the town wall. Commodities
sold in different sections were grain (Kornmarket), wood (Holzmarkt) and cattle
(Viehmarkt).
The main square is closed on the south side by the Franciscan church and
friary. The Franciscans were settled here by royal charter. They are first
mentioned in 1278. Szende argues from plot analysis that the carving out of the
Franciscan block happened at the same time as the allocation of the building
plots in the neighbouring streets. This is how the friary came to be positioned in
such a central position in the town, unlike western European practice. She argues
that in Sopron the friars did not need to be fitted into the town, as they were part
of the town foundation.
Another indicator of the increasingly urban character of Sopron was the arrival
of Jewish families, which coincided with the foundation of the Franciscans. Space
for these new Jewish settlers was made by splitting plots. The oldest synagogue
in Sopron was built in Uj utca (Neue Gasse, from fourteenth century Judengasse)
(pl. 3). This building has been dated by art historians to the thirteenth/
fourteenth century. Szende suggests that it is very likely that the king endorsed
the building of the synagogue in Uj utca, because it is located on the site of a
storehouse that once belonged to the ispán’s castle and had to be demolished in
order to allow the synagogue to be built. In 1526, Jews were expelled from
Sopron and their houses and synagogues were taken over by Christians.
The transformation of the ispán’s castle into a town is documented in charters

that mention plots and buildings. Sopron’s surviving charter of 1277 (see
appendix 7.1) granted by Ladislas IV, refers to privileges granted by Béla IV.
Szende writes that the several ordinances mentioned in 1277, such as a grant of
freedom to the settlers and regulations concerning the appointment of judges
and jurors and the right of collecting tithes, probably refer to privileges that had
previously been granted to hospites, ‘guest settlers’, as was the custom in other
Hungarian towns at the time. The 1277 charter gave the town complete
immunity against legal interference by the county ispán and restricted his power
to collecting taxes at the Tuesday markets. The charter also included a grant for
the refurbishment of the deteriorating town walls. As a result of this grant, a ring
wall approximately 1m thick was built on the outer side of the red rampart that
prevented it from crumbling. The charter seems to have encouraged people from
Austria and Bohemia to settle and German was used in the town chancellery
from the mid-fourteenth century onwards until the Second World War.
Unlike the other medieval towns that we have looked at, Sopron had strong
suburban growth in the medieval period. There is evidence that between 1283
and 1353 people left the town in protest against royal urban policy that was
considered oppressive, and settled in the suburbs. Royal decrees attempted to
contravene this development as inhabitants who had land inside the town but
lived outside deliberately evaded the burden of defending and maintaining the
town and its defences. Szende tells us that while the building of the town walls
(1297–1340) outside the Roman walls got royal financial support, it was a major
cause of social tension.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Sopron became one of the most
important towns in the kingdom of Hungary. The wine trade expanded and the
population increased. It reached c.4,200 in the early 1440s. The atlas reports that
there were altogether three town halls one after the other. The first dates to 1422,
the second to 1459 and the third to 1496. In 1496, the town inherited one of the
most elegant buildings of the town centre from the heirs of the bishop of Györ
in order to pay for the late bishop’s debts to the town (pl. 3). The town council
moved into this building that was also located at the main square. To this very
day, the town is governed from this site that is most likely the place where the
residence of the ispán once stood.
Historic building research, mainly by art historian Ferenc Dàvid, has
identified the medieval origins for most plot boundaries. From 1379 onwards,
according to Dàvid, the frontage of town centre houses increasingly joined up
into a continuous streetscape, interrupted only by narrow lanes. Some of them
served as through-passages, others were merely rainwater or sewage channels
between the blocks. Every plot had a building of two storeys. During the
fifteenth century, building occurred across the full width of the plot.
116 Anngret Simms
The suburbs grew up around the trade-routes that provided the skeleton of
the suburbs. Nearest to the walls lay the inner suburbs. They were defended by
gates and palisades (pl. 3). The sources say that the people who moved from the
town centre into the suburbs built wooden and stone buildings, which the king
ordered to be pulled down in 1328. Later, he allowed those people, who moved
back into the town centre, to keep their houses and let them to tenants. This
move legalized suburban development and after this date the suburbs extended.
The 1379 list records that ninety-three titleholders lived inside the walls and 290
outside: there were three times as many households in the suburbs than in the
town centre. At this stage, Sopron had reached its greatest medieval expansion,
with an estimated population of 4,070.17
CONCLUSION
In the thirteenth century, Kilkenny, Kalkar and Sopron belonged to feudal

worlds that were geographically distant. It is therefore all the more striking that
these towns have so much in common in their internal organization. How did
this uniformity come about? All three towns were founded by feudal lords who
wished to strengthen the economic development of their territories in order to
raise revenue. The foundation of Kilkenny and Sopron also followed geopolitical
needs. Kilkenny helped to secure the newly established Anglo-Norman colony
and Sopron strengthened Hungarian defences at the western borders against
Austria. Fortunately, the Mongol invasion was not repeated. The charters refer
to the inhabitants of these newly founded towns as cives or burgenses. The way to
become a burgensis was to be granted a burgage plot on which a yearly tax had to
be paid. In the urban environment, this unit was the equivalent to the mansus, the
property unit in the countryside on which yearly tax had to be paid since
Carolingian times. In order to facilitate the collection of taxes, it was convenient
to lay out individual plots of the same size along the street. In order to allow as
many cives as possible access to the street, it made sense to grant long and narrow
plots facing the street. This type of subdivision into individual house-plots is
shown on the early nineteenth-century cadastral maps. Without archaeological
excavations, it is impossible to know how far back these subdivisions date.
The Kilkenny charter of 1207 stipulates that the possession of a burgage plot
measuring 20 feet along the street will make a free tenant. In the Kalkar charter
of 1347, there is a reference to 44 feet for burgage plots but unfortunately no
charters issued to Hungarian towns give any indication of plot sizes. The
17 During the post-medieval period, the expansion of Sopron continued through the growth
of the suburbs. In the socialist period, high-density housing estates were built and, after the
transition, private blocks of flats were built. The centre of the town and the inner suburbs
became a model of heritage conservation where the architects have deliberately left remnants
of the medieval façades in the present-day façades.
archaeologists confirm that the average width of a plot was c.18–20m in Sopron.
In the Sopron charter, there is no reference to burgage plots at all. The German
medieval historian Winfried Schich has carried out a comparative analysis of the
size of burgage plots in different European countries and has come to the
conclusion that the size mentioned in the charters was more an aspiration than
anything else.18 In Kilkenny and Kalkar, the burgage plots are laid out regularly
on both sides of the linear main street between the town gates. Keith Lilley has
raised the question whether the regular layout of towns right across Europe in
the thirteenth century consisting of plots with straight boundary lines and streets
laid out after geometrical ideas was primarily an attempt to facilitate the
collection of taxes or whether the medieval notion that form equated with beauty
also had an influence on the geometrically laid out towns.19 He also poses the
question whether a professional surveyor was necessary to lay out these towns.
In response to the first question, it makes sense that the demands of tax
collection were the main driving force towards the establishment of regular
burgage plots. But it is also true that medieval people got satisfaction in putting
order on the land, which is so impressively demonstrated in the layout of big
monastic houses. Therefore, it is likely that they strove towards geometrically
perfect forms and, for those, surveyors were needed. Some books on ‘practical
geometries’ were published in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, pointing
to the existence of surveyors. Lilley writes that the interesting aspect of these
books, such as the Practica Geometria written by the Italian merchant Leonardo
Fibonacci in c.1220 and the later Geometria Culmnensis of c.1400 from the
territory of the Teutonic Knights, is that they distinguish between the
professional surveyors and those who lay out towns by custom.20 Lilley argues
convincingly that without knowledge of the principles of theoretical geometry,
these medieval towns could not have been laid out so accurately. And how did the
knowledge of theoretical and practical geometry enter medieval Europe on such
a broad front? The English scientist and Arabist, Adelard of Bath, who lived in
the early twelfth century, translated Euclid’s geometry into Latin.21 Without
knowledge of Euclid’s geometry, the teaching of the theoretical and practical uses
of geometry would not have been feasible. Therefore, even if there was no
professional surveyor available when a town was first laid out, the concept of
regularly laid-out plots would have been familiar and local people would have
tried to do their best.
18 W. Schich, ‘Zur Grösse der Area in den Gründungsstädten im östlichen Mitteleuropa nach
den Aussagen der schriftlichen Quellen’ in S. Jenks, J. Sarnowsky and M. Landage (eds), Vera
Lex Historiae. Studien zu mittelalterlichen Quellen (Köln, Wien & Weimar, 1993). 19 K.D.
Lilley, ‘Taking measures across the medieval landscape: aspects of urban design before the
Renaissance’, Urban Morphology, 2:2 (1998), 89. 20 Lilley, ‘Taking measures across the
medieval landscape’, 86. See also Geometria Culmensis, Ein agronomischer Tractat aus der Zeit
des Hochmeisters Conrad von Jungingen 1393–1407 by H. Mendthal (2010). 21 Charles
Burnett (ed.), Adelard of Bath: an English scientist and Arabist of the early twelfth century
118 Anngret Simms
We will briefly look at individual features of our three towns as they are
summarized in Table 7.1. Kilkenny and Kalkar display a regular layout along a
main street, while in Sopron, where the walls of the former Roman settlement
framed the layout of the medieval town, there are three parallel streets and the
plots were wider and shorter. In the case of Kilkenny, a widening of the street
catered for the market; in Kalkar, space was reserved for the market place at the
time of foundation; and in Sopron, the main market place, which was irregular,
was part of the original layout. In all three towns, the parish church was the
earliest public building. Religious houses played a more important role in
Kilkenny than in Kalkar and Sopron. While the major religious houses in
Kilkenny were founded by the feudal family, in Kalkar they were founded by
citizens and in Sopron by the king. Apart from the newly built cathedral and
parish church, Kilkenny had, in the first half of the thirteenth century, an
Augustinian priory, a Dominican priory and a Franciscan friary. In Kalkar, no
religious houses were founded in the thirteenth century. The two Beguine houses
and the Domincans only came in the fifteenth century. In Sopron, the Knights
of St John were founded in 1247 and the Franciscans in 1278. As far as Kalkar is
concerned, Margret Wensky explained verbally that the founder did not have any
need for religious orders. His interest was solely focused on the economic
development of his territory. In contrast, in Ireland, the continental orders were
used by the colonizers as a bulwark against the native Gaelic institutions.
Our three towns had town walls by the fourteenth century. In Sopron, a new
wall was added to the existing Roman walls, which possessed great defensive
capability in the border area, while in Kilkenny and Kalkar walls were built with
the help of murage grants, and their value might have been more symbolic than
military.
Recent debate among continental historians has grappled with the question
of who played the most significant role in the process of medieval urban
formation. The German veteran of medieval history, Karl-Heinz Blaschke,
pointed to long-distant merchants as important agents in this process, whose
achievements included building up trade-networks that also allowed for the
diffusion of ideas. Blaschke believes that it was the law of the market that
overcame feudal law and established a new social and economic system of
European dimensions.22 However, Peter Johanek (Institute for Comparative
Urban Studies in Münster) maintains that the role of the rulers, kings or high-
ranking feudal lords is underestimated in the establishment of medieval towns.23
He argues that the development of crafts in the countryside and in towns was
(London, 1987). 22 Karlheinz Blaschke, ‘Stadtplanforschung. Neue Methoden und

Erkenntnisse zur Entstehung des hochmittelalerlichen Stadtwesens in Mittel-, Ost-und
Nordeuropa’, Sitzungsberichte der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig
(Stuttgart and Leipzig, 2003), pp 3–42. 23 Peter Johanek, ‘Frühe Zentren-werdende
Städte’, J. Jarnut, P. Johanek and M. Wemhoff (eds), Vom Umbruch zur Erneuerung. Das 11.
und beginnende 12. Jahrhundert-Positonen der Forschung (München, 2006), pp 511–38.
dependent on the support of the local lord. Similarly, trade was supported by
local lords or kings as it strengthened their territories. The German emperors
refer to homines et mercatores nostri. The citizens contested their lords’ power, but
Johanek reminds us that they never founded a town themselves. He argues that
the market supplied the topographical and legal framework for the activities of
medieval trade. But, market law was closely connected with the local rulers. The
local lord used the marketplace for announcements and for executions. In the late
medieval period, the market became the space that citizens used for symbolic
communications as, for example, by building that splendid town hall in Kalkar.
The Polish archaeologist Sľawomir Moździoch has developed a model
showing how the medieval origin of towns in Poland was the result of a long
drawn-out concentration process. It would be of interest to apply this model to
the origin of towns in Ireland, for example in relation to the early Christian
cathedral proto-towns. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the concentration
process that we observe across early medieval Europe was accelerated by
territorial lords in an attempt to strengthen economic activities in their
territories. That is the context in which our three towns came into being.24 In
spite of the fact that Kilkenny was rooted in an early medieval monastery and the
origins of Sopron go back to antiquity (though with settlement interruption) and
Kalkar is the only medieval new town among our three examples, the three towns
as they were founded in the thirteenth century have a lot in common.
In conclusion, we affirm that the driving force for the formation of towns in
thirteenth-century Europe was feudal lords or kings, not surprising given that
lordship was the most potent social force of the time. But, contrary to what we
believed some decades ago, the Anglo-Norman lords did not issue a charter to
Kilkenny in order to initiate its establishment. The grant of 1207 is not a
foundation charter but the formalization of the privileges of an existing
settlement in which, as John Bradley put it, certain operational structures were
taken for granted.25 The successful running of certain operational structures was
the achievement of the citizens and their success provides the key to
understanding how the chartered medieval town could spread across Europe,
creating such unity of medieval urban life.
The internal structures of our three towns have so much in common because
the constitutional framework expressed in the charters is reflected in the
topography of these medieval new towns. The burgage plots became the building
blocks for the material evolution of the medieval town. There were also cultural
aspects at the time that produced a considerable degree of integration in Europe,
and foremost among those were Christianity, the use of Latin in legal documents
(see appendix 7.1) and in the church, and the diffusion of the Romanesque and
24 S. Moźdzoch, ‘Zur Genese der Lokationsstädte in Polen in stadtgeschichtlicher Sicht’ in
H. Brachmann (ed.), Burg-Burgstadt-Stadt. Zur Genese mittelalterlicher nichtagrarischer Zentren
in Ostmitteleuropa (Berlin, 1995), pp 149–60. 25 John Bradley, Treasures of Kilkenny: charters
and civic records of Kilkenny city (Kilkenny, 2003), p. 16.
120 Anngret Simms
Gothic building styles. All these major developments contributed to an

astonishing unity in the material, legal and cultural expressions of medieval
urban life. No doubt, thirteenth-century Kilkenny was part of mainstream
Europe.
Table 7.1 Morphological agents and town dominants in thirteenth-century Kilkenny

(John Bradley), Kalkar (Margaret Wensky) and Sopron (Katalin Szende et al.).
Kilkenny (Ireland) Kalkar (Rhineland) Sopron (Hungary)

Founder Richard fitz Gilbert Count Dietrich VI King Béla IV founded the
de Clare von Kleve founded town in the late 1240s on the
(Strongbow) built an the town in 1230 on site of a former Roman town
earthwork castle in tabula rasa (with (no settlement continuity)
Kilkenny by 1173 permission of the succeeded by an ispán castle
south of the early archbishop of
Christian cathedral Cologne)
Charter Charter issued by Oldest surviving Charter by Ladislas IV in
William Marshal, privilege (charter) 1277 referring to privileges
earl of Pembroke, in from 1347 granted by Béla IV and
1207 Stephen V
Street pattern Linear, north–south Linear north–south Three parallel streets plus
main street with main street crossed suburbs following
connecting side- by west–east street communication routes
street across the river
Burgage plot 20 feet wide (charter, 44 feet wide and 140 No contemporary written
1207) feet in length evidence
(charter, 1347)
Market place Widening of main A square, first An irregular square in front
street in order to recorded 1326, later of the town hall for expensive
make space for the enlarged goods; meat sold on salt
market; 1335 market market; fish, poultry and
cross erected vegetables at the gates and
along the town walls, bulky
commodities sold in suburban
markets outside the town walls
Town walls Murage-grants Since fourteenth Medieval town walls built
c.1248; town wall century, town sur- 1297–1340 on remains of
completed by c.1300; rounded by double Roman town walls and the
enclosed area 28ha banks and ditches; walls of the ispán castle.
first stone wall Enclosed area c.8.7ha
recorded in 1349;
enclosed area c.25ha
Kalkar
Kilkenny (Ireland) Sopron (Hungary)
(Rhineland)
Parish church St Mary’s in existence St Nicolai, St Michaelis
c.1205 (closed in 1960) recorded 1273; Pfarrkirche, built
rebuilt after fire before 1278 outside the
in 1409; still in walls to the north of
use as parish the town, still in use as
church parish church
Religious houses, St Canice’s Cathedral: Gasthauskirche St Johanniskirche
hospitals and built c.1205–85 (on site of (hospital), und Konvent der
synagogues Romanesque church); recorded in 1358; Johanniter with
round tower built c.1100; St Cäcilie, hospital (at different
St John’s Abbey, Kleiner location), built 1247,
Augustinian priory, Beginenkonvent church functions as a
founded by William (Small Beguine chapel, monastic
Marshal the Elder in House), founded building replaced in
1211, dissolved in 1540, in 1413 by Albert the nineteenth century,
in ruins; Paepe and his used as orphanage,
Black Abbey church, wife Eva; in 1465 currently under
Holy Trinity priory adoption of rebuilding; hospital
(Dominicans), founded Augustinian rule; demolished in 1797;
by William Marshal the St Ursula, Franziskanerkirche
Younger, in c.1225, Grosser and -kloster, later
dissolved in 1540, Beguinenkonvent Benedictines, built
reopened to RC worship (Big Beguine 1278 by royal order,
in 1816; House), built still in use as a church,
St Francis’ Abbey, before 1430 by former priory
Franciscan friary, Arnd Snoick; in buildings used as old
founded by Richard 1578 merger of people’s home;
Marshal c.1231–4, the two Beguines Gothic Synagogue,
dissolved in 1540; in Houses, built at the turn of the
ruins; dissolved 1802; fourteenth century,
St John the Evangelist Dominican probably by royal
hospital established by abbey, founded endorsement, building
1202, replaced by St by Duke Johann a Jewish museum
John’s Abbey in 1211, I after his return
closed probably in from the Holy
fourteenth century; Land in 1455,
St John the Baptist’s dissolved 1802,
hospital (Knights of St building
Thomas of Acre) demolished
founded by 1219, closed
probably in fourteenth
century;
St Mary Magdalen’s
Hospital, leper hospital
1327, ruined in 1541
122 Anngret Simms
Kilkenny (Ireland) Kalkar (Rhineland) Sopron (Hungary)
Town hall Tholsel on High Old town hall replaced First town hall recorded
Street in thirteenth by new representative in 1422, moved to new
century, demolished building 1438–1446 site in 1496, to a third site
c.1795 on Main Square in 1496,
still in use as town hall
Population c.2,800 people late c.1,000 people during 4,200 people in the early
twelfth century Middle Ages 1440s
(2006 (borough and c.5,000 people at the (2012: c.59,000 people)
environs): c.22,000) end of Middle Ages
(2009: c.1,400)
APPENDIx 7. 1
The charters offer townspeople standard liberties, such as protection against the
claims of other lords or other towns, freedom of movement, trial before equals,
freedom in personal matters (marriage and inheritance), regulation of economic
life, and they fix a permanent rent.
Below are the first sentence of the Kilkenny charter and of the Sopron charter
in Latin, indicating the similarity of the legal framework in which these
documents were written. The first Privileg to be preserved for Kalkar dates from
1347 and is written in middle-high German. But, the content of the charter is
largely similar to the content of the Kilkenny and Kalkar charters.
Kilkenny charter dated 1207:

‘Sciant presentes et futuri quod ego Willelmus Marescallus comes Pembrochie
consilio et consensus uxoris mee Isabelle concessi burgensibus meis de
Kilkennia omnimodas liberates quas decet burgensibus licet conferre habendas
et tenendas imperpetum de me et heredibus meis sibi et heredbus suis’
(Be it known to all present and to come that I, William Marshal, earl of
Pembroke, with the council and consent of my wife Isabella, have granted to my
burgesses of Kilkenny all of the liberties that burgesses ought to have, in so far
as it is in my power to confer them, to have and to hold for ever from me and my
heirs to them and their heirs.) [translation by John Bradley]26
Sopron charter dated 1277:

Ladizlaus Dei gratia Hungarie, Dalmatie, Crouatie, Rame, Seruie, Gallicie,
Lodomerie, Cumanie Bulgarieque rex universis Christi fidelibus presentium
26 Bradley, Treasures of Kilkenny, p. 16.

notitiam habituris salute in omnium Salvatore. Ad universorum notitiam tenore

presentium volumes pervenire, quod accedentes ad nostrum presentiam fideles
nostri cives de Suprvnio a nobis humiliter supplicando petierunt, quod nos
ipsos in libertate ipsorum per carissmos progenitors nostros Belam, avum
nostrum, Stephanum patrem nostrum, illustres reges Hungarie felicium
recordationum concessadignaremur liberalitate regia conservare.
(Ladislav by God’s grace, King of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia,
Galicia, Lodomeria, Cumania and Bulgaria sends to all faithful Christians who
will hear about this charter his blessings in all their endeavours. We want
everybody to know that the citizens of Sopron have visited us and in all humility
have asked that we confirm to them, with royal generosity, the liberties granted
to them by our father, the Hungarian King Béla IV, and by our grandfather,
Stephan.) [Translation with the help of Ferdinand Opll].
The Turnberry Band
SEÁN DUFFY
We have known of the existence of what is usually called the Turnberry Band
since ‘that solemn compact’ was first brought to our attention by the great
Warwickshire historian William Dugdale in the first volume of The baronage of
England, published in 1675:1 he tells us that he found the text among documents
formerly in the possession of a certain Augustine Steward of Lakenheath in
Suffolk.2 It was first printed in 1870 by the remarkable Revd Joseph Stevenson
(instigator of the Rolls Series).3 There has never been much doubt about its
significance, but it has not hitherto been subjected to detailed scrutiny. I became
especially aware of the band’s significance for Irish historians when preparing my
doctoral thesis under the supervision of Katharine Simms, but have not
published on it, and so this may be an appropriate occasion on which to make at
least partial amends.
The Turnberry Band was entered into by a motley assortment of individuals on

20 September 1286. The timing may be significant as this was a very critical
moment in the history of Scotland. Exactly six months earlier, King Alexander
III, whose three children had recently predeceased him in rapid succession, was
accidentally killed at the age of forty-four, leaving no male heir. His only direct
descendant was a 2- or 3-year-old granddaughter (whose father was the king of
Norway) and Scotland was therefore plunged into an unprecedented
constitutional crisis. Six ‘Guardians’ were elected by the self-styled community
of the realm and the hunt was on for a new monarch. The obvious successor was
the late king’s grandchild, the ‘Maid of Norway’, but there was no precedent in
Scotland for female succession, even if she survived to adulthood, which was not
to be. It was also rumoured that King Alexander’s widow was pregnant and
might produce a son, but, if she was, she miscarried.4
1 William Dugdale, The baronage of England; or, An historical account of the lives and most
memorable actions of our English nobility in the Saxons time to the Norman conquest, and from
thence, of those who had their rise before the end of King Henry the Third’s reign deduced from
publick records, antient historians and other authorities (2 vols, London, 1675–6), i, p. 216.
2 This family claimed descent from John Steward, who came to England as part of a Scots
diplomatic mission in the reign of Henry IV and settled in Norfolk, allegedly dying on the
English side at Agincourt; the latter’s grandfather may have been a brother of the Stewards
who were parties to the Turnberry Band. 3 Documents illustrative of the history of Scotland,
ed. Joseph Stevenson (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1870), i, no. xii. 4 There are numerous discussions
124
The Turnberry Band 125
In the circumstances, it was just as likely that the kingship would end up in
the hands of an adult member of the Scottish aristocracy, naturally someone
related by blood to the late king, but ideally also an individual of stature who
could command the loyalty of his fellow Scots in such an emergency. And this is
where the band may come in. It is obviously significant that it was cooked up at
Turnberry, the chief castle of the earldom of Carrick in north-west Galloway,
since this was now firmly in the possession of the Bruce family. Those gathered
for the occasion included the Robert Bruce who was father of the future king,
earl of Carrick in right of his wife, along with his brother Richard and father
Robert, lord of Annandale. The latter, a second-cousin of the late king, fancied
his chances of securing the crown and within weeks of forming the band he and
his family were attempting to force the issue by seizing castles in the south-west
of Scotland belonging to the crown and to their future arch rival, John Balliol
(whose claim was later deemed stronger).5 Archie Duncan wonders whether, by
the Turnberry Band, Bruce was ‘looking for Irish troops in the war which he
must already have been plotting for the possibility that Queen Yolande would not
have a son’, adding that ‘in the winter of 1286–7 … Bruce levied war by seizing
the castles of Dumfries, Buittle and Wigtown, which would lie athwart his route
for shipping in and deploying Irish mercenaries’.6 Geoffrey Barrow is more
cautious, doubting that ‘Bruce the elder made this the occasion of a deliberate
claim to the crown’.7 But at the very least the Turnberry Band surely reveals the
identity of some of those who were willing to line up behind the Bruces should
succession to the kingship become a real prospect. The Scots who joined the
Bruces at Turnberry were Earl Patrick of Dunbar and his three sons; plus five
members of the Stewart family – Walter Walter Stewart, earl of Menteith, and
his two sons, and his nephews James the Steward of Scotland and the latter’s
brother, Sir John Stewart of Jedburgh – plus Áengus Mór mac Domnaill of Islay
and his son Alexander.
It might be worth mentioning that there is possibly a hint in the text of the
band that those involved were preoccupied with the succession, in that it
contains a very convoluted formula whereby the parties saved their fealty to the
heir of King Alexander: ‘salve fide illius qui regnum Scotiae, ratione sanguinis
felicis recordationis domini Alexandri regis Scotiae, qui ultimo obit, adipiscetur
of this momentous period in Scottish history: see for example, Norman Reid, ‘The kingless
kingdom: the Scottish guardianship of 1286–1306’, SHR, 61 (1982), 105–29; G.W.S. Barrow,
‘A kingdom in crisis: Scotland and the Maid of Norway’, SHR, 69 (1990), 120–41.
5 Documents and records illustrating the history of Scotland, ed. Francis Palgrave (London,
1837), p. 42; Rotuli scaccarii regum Scotorum: the exchequer rolls of Scotland, 1264–1600, ed.
John Stuart et al. (23 vols, Edinburgh, 1878–95), i, pp 35, 39; G.W.S. Barrow, Robert Bruce
and the community of the realm of Scotland (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1988), pp 17–18. 6 A.A.M.
Duncan, ‘The community of the realm of Scotland and Robert Bruce: a review’, SHR, 45
(1966), 188, 189; see also idem, The kingship of the Scots, 842–1292: succession and independence
(Edinburgh, 2002), p. 178; idem, ‘Brus, Robert (V) de, lord of Annandale (c.1220–1295)’,
126 Seán Duffy
et optinebit secundum antiquas consuetudines hactenus in regno Scotiae

approbatas et usitatas’. While the unnamed individual who shall obtain
possession of the kingdom ‘by reason of the blood of the Lord Alexander, king
of Scotland’ can be taken to include the Maid of Norway or a posthumous child,
it works hard not to exclude a more distant blood relative, and the stipulation
that this is to be done ‘according to the ancient customs hitherto approved and
used in the kingdom of Scotland’ may be a not very subtle attempt to undermine
the maid’s case in favour of a male relative such as Bruce.8 One cannot help but
see in it an echo of a claim (probably groundless) made on Bruce’s behalf in 1291
that, as far back as 1238, the then childless Alexander II had nominated him as
his heir presumptive.9 It may also be of relevance that one of the related late
sixteenth-century transcripts of the band in the British Library follows a
document described as an amicabilis confoederatio between, on the one hand,
Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick, and his brother, and, on the other, James the
Steward of Scotland and his brother, and Walter, earl of Menteith, and his son.10
No details of the alliance are given and it is assigned to the year 1283, which
seems premature; but its link to the Turnberry Band, both by virtue of the
documents’ location together in the manuscript and of the overlapping of names
involved, seems plausible.
Be that as it may, even if those who assembled at Turnberry in September
1286 were fully briefed on the Bruces’ ambitions, the actual text of the band says
nothing at all of such matters. What it does state is that
We inform all of you by our present writing that we have bound ourselves
and have faithfully promised – and by swearing a corporal oath touching
the holy Gospels and by pledging our faith we have strengthened our
promise – that we, with all our power, shall unfailingly adhere (nos cum tota
potentia nostra indeficienter adhærebimus) to the noble man Lord Richard de
Burgh, earl of Ulster, and to Lord Thomas de Clare, in all their business
(in omnibus negotiis suis), and with them and with their accomplices we shall
faithfully stand against all their enemies (cum eis atque complicibus suis
fidelitur stabimus contra omnes eis adversantes).
That is the extent of the commitment, apart from a clause, as we have seen,
saving their fealty to the late Scottish king’s heir and also to the English king, and
with the addition of an enforcing clause to the effect that de Burgh and de Clare
‘with all their accomplices and confederates (cum omnibus suis complicibus et
ODNB. 7 Barrow, Robert Bruce, p. 26; idem, ‘Robert Bruce and Ayrshire’, Ayrshire
Collections, 13:2 (1980), 82. 8 Duncan, ‘Community of the realm’, 186–9; Michael Brown,
The wars of Scotland, 1214–1371 (Edinburgh, 2004), p. 159. 9 Documents illustrating history
of Scotland, ed. Palgrave, pp 29, 42; Edward I and the throne of Scotland, ed. E.L.G. Stones
and G.G. Simpson (2 vols, Oxford, 1978), ii, pp 144–5, 170, 178, 185–6. 10 BL, MS
Lansdowne 229, fo. 111v.
confederatis)’ may overrun and destroy all the goods of any defaulters on the
Scottish side.
As it stands, the pact is one-sided. It offers nothing to the Scots signatories in
return for their involvement, and evidently there was more to the arrangement
than meets the eye: a bargain was struck at Turnberry in September 1286, and
the Scots confederates could expect a quid pro quo. What is this likely to have
been? What support were they intending to give de Burgh (the ‘Red Earl’ of
Ulster and lord of Connacht) and de Clare (lord of Thomond and Inchiquin),
and why? And how significant is the particular alliance of individuals on the
Scottish side?
It is certainly the case that the Bruces and de Clares had a long-standing
family tie: back in 1240, Robert Bruce of Annandale (grandfather of the future
king) had married Isabel, daughter of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester.11
Although she died c.1264, she was the mother of Robert Bruce of Carrick, who
was therefore Thomas de Clare’s first cousin. In the early 1270s, Bruce of
Annandale and Thomas de Clare were on the future Edward I’s crusade in
Palestine.12 Bruce of Carrick and his brother Richard, a prominent banneret at
the court of the young Edward I, campaigned on the English side in the Welsh
wars of 1277 and 1282–3,13 in which the de Clares, as Marcher lords, were
prominent. The two Bruce brothers were at Edward I’s side in North Wales for
a full six months from February to July 1283, regularly witnessing royal charters
in the company of Thomas de Clare’s brother, the earl of Gloucester.14 And
although Bruce of Carrick then withdrawn from King Edward’s company,
throughout the following year, and until January 1285, his brother Richard
remained the king’s constant companion, and was regularly joined by the Red
Earl of Ulster and Thomas de Clare in witnessing charters issued by Edward at
locations in Wales and England.15 Surely these young men, during the long
months spent soldiering and politicking together throughout 1283 and 1284,
began hatching the intrigue that brought them together at Turnberry in
September 1286.
But since the Scots confederates implicitly offered aid towards a planned
campaign by de Burgh and de Clare, which must surely have been in Ireland, the
solution of the Turnberry Band mystery lies there.16 We must establish what it
was that brought together, in 1286, these two leaders of the English colonial
community in Ireland, and why they needed the assistance of the particular
Scottish accomplices who joined forces at Turnberry in September.
11 See Ruth M. Blakely, ‘The Scottish Bruses and the English crown, c.1200–1290’ in
Thirteenth Century England, 9, ed. Michael Prestwich et al. (Woodbridge, 2003), pp 101–13 at
p. 104. 12 Michael Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), p. 69; Alan MacQuarrie, Scotland
and the crusades, 1095–1560 (Edinburgh, 1985), pp 57–62. 13 J.E. Morris, The Welsh wars of
Edward I (Oxford, 1901), pp 64, 159, 180. 14 Richard Huscroft, The royal charter witness lists
of Edward I (1272–1307) (Kew, 2000), pp 46–9. 15 Huscroft, Witness lists of Edward I, pp
51–8; Blakely, ‘Scottish Bruses and the English crown’, pp 110–11. 16 Sir Maurice Powicke
128 Seán Duffy
A couple of things strike historians as odd about the Irish background to the
arrangement. One is the fact that de Burgh and de Clare seem at first sight like
very unlikely co-conspirators. For most of the thirteenth century, the de Burghs
had prosecuted a long-running feud in Ireland with that other great family, the
Geraldines,17 whereas Thomas de Clare’s loyalties had hitherto lain with the
latter family. Indeed, this association was what brought him to Ireland in the first
place. Back in the late 1260s, following the drowning at sea of the most senior
Geraldine, the third baron of Offaly, Thomas de Clare had been granted custody
of his lands and heir.18 By the mid-1270s, de Clare had actually married into the
Geraldines (fig. 8.1), his wife Juliana being a daughter of Maurice Maol (‘the
bald’) fitz Maurice, younger son of the second baron of Offaly, and since we
know that the latter opposed the de Burghs, having been involved in a famously
violent dispute with Richard de Burgh’s father back in 1264–5, this should
surely also have placed his son-in-law at loggerheads with the Red Earl.19
But what may have forced de Burgh and de Clare together was mutual
ambition in regard to the Geraldine lands. It does not seem to be coincidental
that de Clare’s father-in-law, Maurice Maol, died in the same year in which the
Turnberry Band was formed, leaving only two daughters, Thomas de Clare’s
wife and her sister (we do not know exactly when he died, but it was before 10
November 1286,20 and, one strongly suspects, before the parties to the band met
on 20 September). This mattered because, at the same time, the main line of the
family, by descent from Maurice Maol’s older brother (and bearing the title
‘baron of Offaly’), was in trouble (fig. 8.1).21 Gerald fitz Maurice had succeeded
as fourth baron in the early 1280s while not yet of age, but was obviously ailing
and died in 1287.22 He was a young man, had no children, and succession to his
prestigious barony was in doubt, but Friar Clyn tells us that ‘hereditatem suam
dedit domino Johanni filio Thome, filio adwunculi sui’.23 The emergence from
long since concluded that ‘some Irish enterprise was the occasion of the pact’ (F.M. Powicke,
The thirteenth century, 1216–1307 (Oxford, 1953), p. 598n.) and Geoffrey Barrow has agreed,
Robert Bruce, p. 26; idem, ‘Robert Bruce and Ayrshire’, 82–4; see also, for example, E.M.
Barron, The Scottish war of independence (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1934), p. 112; W.C. Dickinson,
Scotland from the earliest times to 1603 (Edinburgh, 1961), p. 144; Alan Young, Robert the
Bruce’s rivals: the Comyns, 1212–1314 (East Linton, 1997), pp 97–8; Ruth M. Blakely, The Brus
family in England and Scotland, 1100–1295 (Woodbridge, 2005), pp 86–7; Elsa Hamilton,
Mighty subjects: the Dunbar earls in Scotland, c.1072–1289 (Edinburgh, 2010), pp 247–8.
17 Orpen, Normans, iii, pp 241–4; James Lydon, ‘The years of crisis, 1254–1315’, NHI, ii, p.
183. 18 Orpen, Normans, iv, 83–4. De Clare later sold off the custody to raise money to go
on Crusade. 19 Orpen, Normans, iv, pp 241–6; iv, pp 83–4; Michael Altshul, A baronial
family in medieval England: the Clares, 1217–1314 (Baltimore MD, 1965), p. 191; Otway-
Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 196–9; Aoife Nic Ghiollamhaith, ‘Dynastic warfare and historical
writing in north Munster, 1276–1350’, CMCS, 2 (1981), 75; James Lydon, ‘A land of war’,
NHI, ii, p. 253; Beth Hartland, ‘English lords in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century
Ireland: Roger Bigod and the de Clare lords of Thomond’, EHR, 122:496 (2007), 318–48 at
326–7, 341–4. 20 CDI, iii, 277; AC s.a. 1286. 21 See the excellent study by G.H. Orpen,
‘The FitzGeralds, barons of Offaly’, JRSAI, 44 (1914), 99–113. 22 He was dead before 18
Sept.: CDI, iii, p. 207. 23 AClyn, s.a. 1287. We do not have the charter by which the fourth
Maurice fitz Gerald

(d. 1176)
Gerald
1st baron of Offaly
(d. 1203/4)
Maurice
2nd baron of Offaly
(d. 1257)
Gerald (d. 1243) Maurice ‘Maol’ (d. 1286) Thomas (d. 1271)
Maurice Juliana Amabilia Juliana John fitz Thomas,

3rd baron of Offaly =John de Cogan =Thomas de Clare 5th baron of Offaly,
(d. 1268) (d. 1287) 1st earl of Kildare (d. 1316)
Gerald fitz Maurice,

4th baron of Offaly
(d. s.p.1287)
8.1 The succession of the barony of Offaly.
obscurity of this latter individual is extraordinary:24 John fitz Thomas was the
son of Maurice Maol’s younger brother and we know nothing of his early life,
which may possibly have been spent on a small family estate in Banada, Co.
Sligo, but he now found himself the only surviving male Geraldine of the Offaly
line.25 More than likely, Thomas de Clare was unhappy at the prospect of John
fitz Thomas’ succession to the title as he no doubt felt that he (through his wife
Juliana) had a claim to at least part of the estate: and most contemporaries would
surely have agreed with him that the daughters of the first and second sons,
including Juliana, had a better claim than the son of the fourth son, John fitz
Thomas.26
Now, undoubtedly, the latter was a remarkable man. Having succeeded as fifth
baron, John fitz Thomas spent years buying out all the rights and claims of the
baron enfeoffed John fitz Thomas of the barony, but there is some confirmation of Clyn’s
statement in the letter of attorney that Gerald issued on 26 June 1287 authorizing delivery to
John of seisin of his manors at Lea and Rathangan, Co. Laois, and Maynooth, Co. Kildare
(RBK, p. 126 and nos 40, 41). 24 He has been the subject of a very thorough doctoral
dissertation by Cormac Ó Cléirigh, ‘John fitz Thomas, fifth lord of Offaly and first earl of
Kildare, 1287–1316: a study of an Anglo-Irish magnate’ (PhD, TCD, 1996); see also, Helen
Walton, ‘The English in Connacht, 1171–1333’ (PhD, TCD, 1980), pp 284ff. 25 Clyn calls
him primus de hac natione (AClyn, s.a. 1287); Orpen, Normans, iii, pp 128–9; iv, pp 128–9;
Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., p. 205. 26 John’s father Thomas is usually stated to be the third
son of Maurice fitz Gerald, second baron of Offaly, but his biographer suggests that Thomas
was in fact the fourth son: Cormac Ó Cléirigh, ‘Fitzgerald, John fitz Thomas, first earl of
130 Seán Duffy
various female heirs to Geraldine lands,27 and was to end up in no time at all as
the most powerful landowner in Ireland, with the possible exception of the Red
Earl. This explains the rivalry between the two, and indeed the Irish annals for
1288 show the Red Earl leading an army against fitz Thomas and the king of
Connacht, surely a development that followed on in some way from the
agreement at Turnberry:
A hosting by the Red Earl … to Connacht, until he came to Roscommon

against Magnus son of Conchobar Ruad [Ua Conchobair], king of
Connacht at that time, and against Fitz Gerald [that is, John fitz Thomas]
and the king’s men. And they all assembled to oppose him, and challenged
the earl to advance beyond that point, so that the earl then decided to retire
from the country and afterwards disbanded his army.28
The Connacht backdrop to these events is a reminder of another slightly odd

thing about the Turnberry Band and specifically about Thomas de Clare’s
participation in it. As Richard de Burgh was earl of Ulster, it is hardly surprising
to find him rubbing shoulders with his neighbours across the North Channel.
But de Clare’s Irish lands comprised the manor of Inchiquin and the town of
Youghal, in Co. Cork, which he obtained with his wife at their marriage in 1275,
in addition to the rather more notional lordship of Thomond granted to him by
Edward I at about the same time.29 De Clare channelled most of his energies into
conquering Thomond, which was the homeland of the Uí Briain (O’Briens), who
had no intention of relinquishing it without a fight. But it was largely confined
to the present Co. Clare – a long way from Scotland – and it is doubtful that the
Scottish aid secured at Turnberry can have been for a military campaign there.
Why, therefore, did de Clare need Scottish support?
Thomas de Clare may have been a Munster lord, but at his father-in-law’s
death in 1286 he succeeded to a half-share of his estate. Maurice Maol fitz
Maurice held the barony of Carbury (Co. Sligo), traditionally claimed as their
own by the kings of Tír Conaill,30 along with Sligo Castle; he also claimed all the
land of Fir Manach (modern Co. Fermanagh) along with Cáel Uisce Castle on
the Erne, and he considered himself lord of all Tír Conaill (modern Co.
Donegal).31 His estate was divided at his death between his two daughters
Kildare (d. 1316)’, ODNB. 27 For the numerous grants and quitclaims to him of Geraldine
lands in all four modern provinces, see RBK, passim; see also, Cormac Ó Cléirigh, ‘The
absentee landlady and the sturdy robbers: Agnes de Valence’ in C.E. Meek and M.K. Simms
(eds), ‘The fragility of her sex’? Medieval Irishwomen in their European context (Dublin, 1996), pp
101–18 at p. 107. 28 AC s.a. 1288. 29 Orpen, Normans, iv, pp 66–7; A.F. O’Brien, ‘The
settlement of Imokilly and the formation and descent of the manor of Inchiquin, Co. Cork’,
Cork Historical and Archaeological Society Journal, 87 (1982), 21–66. 30 Katharine Simms, ‘A
lost tribe: the Clan Murtagh O’Conors’, Galway Archaeological and Historical Society Journal,
53 (2001), 1–23 at 3–4. 31 RBK, no. 31; by a grant of his father dated 1254x7. The editor is
Amabilia and Juliana, de Clare’s wife. We know what constituted Amabilia’s

share because she sold it off to John fitz Thomas in 1288 and it comprised a
moiety of the manors of Sligo, Calry (barony of Carbury, Co. Sligo), Loughmask
(bar. Kilmaine, Co. Mayo), Ardrahan (bar. Dunkellin, Co. Galway), two cantreds
and two tuatha of Tír Conaill, a moiety of the territory surrounding Lough Erne,
seven tuatha of Fir Manach, and scattered lands elsewhere in Ireland.32 The
other half of this inheritance is what came to Thomas de Clare in 1286 – in other
words, a claim to a vast estate in Cos Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Donegal and
Fermanagh. And although large tracts were not yet subject to Anglo-Norman
jurisdiction, it was by no means an entirely notional claim: the inquisition taken
at Maurice Maol’s death found that he was accustomed to receive an annual rent
of forty marks from the inhabitants of Tír Conaill – a pittance, but a reminder
that the English had made at least some headway in their projected conquest of
Ireland’s far north-west.33 We may suppose therefore that when the Scottish
parties to the Turnberry Band promised to de Clare and de Burgh that ‘in
omnibus negotiis suis … fidelitur stabimus contra omnes eis adversantes’, they
were involving themselves in Thomas de Clare’s attempt to get his hands on
these north-western territories, backed by the region’s greatest magnate, Richard
de Burgh. In doing so, the Scots effectively took sides with de Clare and de
Burgh in opposition to John fitz Thomas (whose bailiwick was in Co. Sligo), and
to the hereditary native rulers. Why should the Scots be willing to do so?
One stumbling block in the way of any English expansion into the north-west
was the reigning king of Tír Conaill, Áed son of Domnall Óc Ua Domnaill (son-
in-law of the Magnus Ua Conchobair against whom the Red Earl marched in
1288).34 Áed’s father had not actually grown up in Tír Conaill but was reared in
fosterage in Knapdale at the landward end of Kintyre with the then rulers of the
area, Clann Suibne.35 In addition, Áed himself had a close personal bond with
Clann Suibne, since his mother was a member of the same dynasty.36 But in the
early 1260s, Clann Suibne were ousted from Knapdale by Walter Ballach (‘the
spotted’) Stewart,37 who had recently acquired the earldom of Menteith. Clann
not quite right to say (p. xii) that this is a ‘Grant by Maurice son of Gerald of lands in Leinster,
Connacht and Ulster to his son Maurice’; the text says that it is a grant of the lands in Carbury
etc. ‘pro quieta clamancia quam michi fecit de tota terra Offalye’ etc. Maurice, in other words,
gave up his right to the Leinster lands in return for a grant of the lands in Sligo and Ulster.
32 RBK, nos 32–4, 73, 85, 87; see also Katharine Simms, ‘The medieval kingdom of Lough
Erne’, Clogher Record, 9 (1976–8), 126–41; Walton, ‘The English in Connacht’, pp 284–5.
33 RBK, p. 113. 34 For Áed’s wife Derbforgaill, see AC s.a. 1316.2, 1316.9. 35 Poems of
Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe, ed. N.J.A. Williams (London, 1980), no. vii, qtt. 2, 22;
Katharine Simms, ‘Gaelic lordships in Ulster in the later Middle Ages’ (PhD, TCD, 1976), p.
524. 36 Paul Walsh, ‘O’Donnell genealogies’, AH, 8 (1938), 377; Simms, ‘Gaelic lordships in
Ulster’, p. 524. 37 For the nickname, and the Gaelic milieu of the Stewart family, see Stephen
Boardman, ‘The Gaelic world and the early Stewart court’ in Dauvit Broun and Martin
MacGregor (eds), Mìorun mòr nan Gall, ‘The great ill-will of the Lowlander’? Lowland perceptions
of the Highlands, medieval and modern (Glasgow, 2007), pp 83–109 at p. 92.
132 Seán Duffy
Suibne then sought to make a home for themselves in Ireland and the origins of
their territorial hold on the Fanad area of Donegal can perhaps be assigned to
these years, although it is many years later before we get hard evidence of it.38
Their presence in Ireland is attested in the annals for 1267, albeit in Mayo rather
than Donegal: Murchad Mac Suibne turned up in the Owles, the territory
surrounding Clew Bay, was captured, and was handed over to Richard de
Burgh’s father, in whose prison he died.39 We may take it from this that the de
Burghs were opposed to the effort by Clann Suibne to find a safe haven on the
western seaboard of Ireland and, wittingly or otherwise, were facilitating the
expansionism of the Menteith Stewarts in Knapdale. Clann Suibne continued to
resist the Menteiths for another generation,40 presumably from their base in Tír
Conaill, backed by their kinsman, Áed Ua Domnaill. If the Turnberry Band had
Ua Domnaill as one of its targets, this would explain why the earl of Menteith,
Walter Ballach Stewart, and his two sons, Alexander and John, were party to it.
Experience showed that the best way to undermine an Irish king was to
espouse the pretensions of a rival. Áed Ua Domnaill’s father had children with
several women, at least two of whom were noblewomen from Gaelic Scotland. As
a result, while Áed Ua Domnaill’s mother was of Clann Suibne, he had a half-
brother, Toirdelbach, whose mother was a daughter of Áengus Mór mac
Domnaill, head of Clann Domnaill of Islay.41 The latter was another of the
parties to the Turnberry Band and there seems little reason to doubt that this
Hebridean lord involved himself in it partly at least to secure his grandson’s
installation as king of Tír Conaill. So, he may have been involved when, in the
very year of the band, and probably linked to it, the Red Earl made his first
attempt after his coming-of-age to assert his authority over the Irish lords of his
vast lordship of Connacht and Ulster. Having led a great army into Connacht
and gained the hostages of the whole province, the earl, the annals tell us, ‘took
hostages from Cenél Conaill and Cenél nEógain, and he deposed Domnall son
of Brian Ua Néill and gave the kingship to Niall Cúlánach Ua Néill on that
expedition’.42 It seems from this that de Burgh left Áed Ua Domnaill in situ for
the time being, but in 1290 – whether or not a direct consequence of the
Turnberry Band is impossible to say – we find Áengus mac Domnaill himself
intervening militarily in Tír Conaill in favour of his own grandson:
Áed Ua Domnaill was deposed by his own brother, i.e. by Toirdelbach Ua
Domnaill, who took the kingship himself through the power of his
mother’s kin, Clann Domnaill, and of many other galloglass.43
38 See Simms, ‘Gaelic lordships in Ulster’, pp 533, 553–5. 39 AC; ALC; AFM, s.a. 1267.
In 1267, Maolmuire Mac Suibne’s wife died; she was Ben Mide, daughter of Toirdelbach son
of King Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair (AC; ALC, s.a. 1269). 40 A.B.W. MacEwen, ‘The English
fleet of 1301’, Notes & Queries Soc. West Highland & Island Hist. Research, 24 (1984), 3–7;
Donald E. Meek, ‘“Norsemen and noble stewards”: the MacSween poem in the Book of the
Dean of Lismore’, CMCS, 34 (1997), 1–49. 41 Walsh, ‘O’Donnell genealogies’, 377.
42 AC s.a. 1288. 43 AC s.a. 1290. It is debatable whether this is what the earl of Ulster had
This refers to Áengus’ family, Clann Domnaill of Islay, and is, incidentally, the
first occurrence of the term gallóclaech. It does not, of course, mean that warriors
from Innse Gall made their first appearance in Ireland on that occasion, but it is
the first time we hear of them actually toppling an Irish king.44 It is a reminder
too that they were no mere mercenaries but dynasts pursuing dynastic ambitions,
and it was surely in this capacity that Áengus mac Domnaill entered into the
Turnberry Band.
II
Áengus Mór is unlikely, however, to have been central to the arrangements made
at Turnberry, and may have been recruited as much for the military and naval
capacity he brought with him as anything else. The fact that the parties to the
band assembled at Turnberry is surely significant. While it may have been a
convenient venue for those travelling from Ireland and the Isles, it was remote
for some of the Scots attending, and this raises the possibility that the earl of
Carrick rather than Bruce of Annandale was the one most closely involved in the
band’s instigation. The Carrick connection with Ireland may therefore be key.
Robert Bruce (father of the future king) was earl of Carrick in right of his
wife, Marjorie, daughter of Earl Niall, son of Donnchad mac Gille Brigde
(sometimes known as Duncan fitz Gilbert or Duncan of Carrick). Back in 1197,
this Donnchad had obtained significant lands in north-east Ireland when he
allied with the Anglo-Norman lord of Ulster, John de Courcy, in a campaign of
expansion there.45 Although the acquisition may soon have been lost, he was
compensated to some extent by a later grant from King John of the lordships of
Larne and Glenarm, Co. Antrim.46 These lands, too, proved hard to hold and by
the middle years of the thirteenth century Larne had ended up in the hands of
intended to come out of the Turnberry Band. Toirdelbach Ua Domnaill’s brother-in-law was
Domnall Ua Néill, whom de Burgh had deposed four years earlier, and it is noticeable that he
reappeared as king in Tír nEógain in tandem with Toirdelbach (AC s.a. 1290). A year later, the
earl restored the status quo ante: he found a replacement for Ua Néill and he also restored Áed
Ua Domnaill in Tír Conaill. When Domnall Ua Néill eventually recovered his kingdom in
1295 (which he was to hold on to for the next thirty years), the Four Masters tell us that both
he and Clann Domnaill of the Isles offered shelter to the exiled Toirdelbach Ua Domnaill, who
continued to trouble Áed until the latter killed him in 1303 (AC, ALCé, AU, AFM, s.a. 1303).
Ua Néill seems to have arrived at a modus vivendi with de Burgh, since it is many years before
we again hear of animosity between them. Toirdelbach Ua Domnaill, one imagines, benefited
from this easing of tension and, though the annals are not clear on the point, the ‘chiefs of the
foreigners of the north’ who were killed in the 1303 battle may actually have been fighting on
his side. 44 See Seán Duffy, ‘The prehistory of the galloglass’ in idem (ed.), The world of the
Galloglass: kings, warlords and warriors in Ireland and Scotland, 1200–1600 (Dublin, 2007), pp
1–23. 45 Seán Duffy, ‘The first Ulster plantation: John de Courcy and the men of Cumbria’
in Robin Frame and Katharine Simms (eds), Colony and frontier in medieval Ireland: essays
presented to J.F. Lydon (London, 1995), pp 1–27 at p. 24. 46 CDI, i, 907; Orpen, Normans,
134 Seán Duffy
the de Mandeville family and the Bissets were holding Glenarm.47 But
Donnchad of Carrick’s claim seems to have remained a live issue and the balance
of the evidence, based on their actions, suggests that when the Bruce family
succeeded to the earldom of Carrick they asserted a claim to these Ulster lands
that lasted all the way to the dying days of King Robert Bruce.48 Bruce prospects
of making anything of the claim were slim without the goodwill of the earl of
Ulster, Richard de Burgh, and perhaps therefore such territorial ambitions in
Ulster were a consideration in the formation of the Turnberry Band. At that
date, the future Robert I was only 12 years of age, but a full sixteen years later,
after he himself had succeeded to the earldom of Carrick, he married the Red
Earl’s daughter:49 we hear of no grant of lands in Ulster or elsewhere, but
presumably she brought some such with her; at the very least, Bruce surely
hoped to exploit the marriage to retrieve his lost Antrim estate.50
It is certainly the case that another party to the band later secured territorial
advancement in Ireland. It may have been at Turnberry that a marriage was
mooted between the Red Earl’s sister and another of the allies, James the
Steward of Scotland, although a full decade passes before we obtain
confirmation that the marriage had taken place. As part of that marriage-deal,
the Steward obtained the earl’s castle at Roo, near Limavady in Co. Derry, along
with the burgh and demesne, and the rents of English tenants enfeoffed by the
earl of Ulster in Ciannachta.51 What may be significant about this latter area is
that it had been held of the English crown by Alan of Galloway, having been
given to him by King John in the aftermath of his Irish expedition of 1210.52
From Alan, it might have been expected to descend, through his daughter
Derbforgaill, to her husband John Balliol, the lord of Galloway. Instead, it now
ended up in the possession of the Steward, a leading opponent of the Balliols and
one of the Bruces’ most loyal adherents. Perhaps this was not just coincidence.
If it is right to see in the Turnberry Band the jockeying for position in the
ii, p. 267. 47 Seán Duffy, ‘The lords of Galloway, earls of Carrick, and the Bissets of the
Glens: Scottish settlement in thirteenth-century Ulster’ in David Edwards (ed.), Regions and
rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650: essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin, 2004), pp 37–50. 48 See
Duffy, ‘Lords of Galloway’; idem, ‘The Anglo-Norman era in Scotland and Ireland:
convergence and divergence’ in T.M. Devine and J.F. McMillan (eds), Celebrating Columba:
Colm Cille á cheiliúradh: Irish-Scottish connections, 597–1997 (Edinburgh, 1999), pp 15–34 at
pp 23–4; Ranald Nicholson, ‘A sequel to Edward Bruce’s invasion of Ireland’, reprinted from
SHR, 42 (1963), in Seán Duffy (ed.), Robert the Bruce’s Irish wars: the invasions of Ireland,
1306–1329 (Stroud, 2002), pp 153–61; Robin Frame, English lordship in Ireland, 1318–1361
(Oxford, 1982), pp 131–42. 49 CStM, ii, 331. 50 See Duffy, ‘Anglo-Norman era in
Scotland and Ireland’. 51 Orpen, Normans, iv, p. 142; idem, ‘The Normans in Tirowen and
Tirconnell’, JRSAI, 45 (1915), 275–88 at 283ff; Robin Frame, ‘A register of lost deeds relating
to the earldom of Ulster, c.1230–1376’ (in this volume), p. 88. 52 Ronald Greeves, ‘The
Galloway lands in Ulster’, Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and
Antiquarian Society, 3rd ser., 36 (1957–8), 115–22; for Alan’s career, see K.J. Stringer,
‘Periphery and core in thirteenth-century Scotland: Alan son of Roland, lord of Galloway and
constable of Scotland’ in Alexander Grant and K.J. Stringer (ed.), Medieval Scotland: crown,
lordship and community. Essays presented to G.W.S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1993), pp 82–113.
succession stakes that followed Alexander III’s death, such Ulster lands may have
been an (admittedly minor) part of the battleground. We know that within a few
months of the king’s death the Bruces had overrun Buittle, the chief castle of the
Balliol estate in Galloway.53 Although their disturbances were soon brought
under control, in the spring of 1290 we hear that they were planning to oust John
Balliol from his third share of the former Huntingdon estate in the Garioch.54
Since the Bruces clearly worked to outmanoeuvre Balliol at every turn, perhaps
they sought to resuscitate the Carrick inheritance in Ulster at the expense of that
of Galloway.
Both families certainly made profitable use of Ireland for themselves and their
friends. In 1282, Bruce of Carrick was granted a licence so that his men could
come to Ireland to buy wine, corn etc., and export them; he received a similar
licence in 1291.55 After succeeding to the earldom, the future Robert I obtained
a safe conduct on 20 April 1294, to last until Michaelmas 1295, ‘in going to
Ireland, remaining there and returning’.56 He had, therefore, legitimate business
to conduct in Ireland, business which might take up to eighteen months to
complete, and one possibility is that he had landed interests to attend to within
the earldom of Ulster. As for the future King John Balliol, he received
confirmation in 1280 of an English royal charter instructing the townsmen of
Dublin and Drogheda to facilitate the monks of Dundrennan in Galloway in
coming to Ireland annually, purchasing 240 crannocks of wheat, ‘and anything
else for the maintenance of their house’, and exporting them to Scotland.57 The
monks of Dundrennan were bringing goods from the Drogheda–Dublin region
because they held land in Co. Meath,58 and others of the Balliol faction were in
a similar position. The Bruce–Stewart–Clann Domnaill association was matched
by that of the Balliols with the Comyn and Mac Dubgaill families. The Comyns
were not short of landed interests in Ireland,59 while, in 1292, Alexander Mac
Dubgaill of Argyll received a safe conduct for him ‘and his men and merchants,
whom he frequently sends to Ireland with his goods and merchandise to trade’.60
III
Where the Balliol–Comyn–Clann Dubgaill faction may have felt the

reverberations of the Turnberry Band is in connection with the status of the Isle
53 Geoffrey Barrow and Ann Royan, ‘James fifth Stewart of Scotland, 1260(?)–1309’ in Keith
Stringer (ed.), Essays on the nobility of medieval Scotland (Edinburgh, 1985), pp 166–87 at p.
172. 54 Barrow, Robert Bruce, pp 43–4; Geoffrey Stell, ‘The Balliol family and the Great
Cause of 1291–2’ in Stringer (ed.), Nobility of medieval Scotland, pp 150–65 at p. 151.
55 CDI, ii, 1928; iii, 945; CDS, ii, 211, 535. 56 CDI, iii, 136. 57 CDI, ii, 1736; CDS, ii,
182. Without such licences, trade was a risky business: in 1295, after things had gone sour
between England and Scotland, the merchants of Dundrennan found themselves arrested
when they docked at Cork (CJRI, i, 77). 58 CDS, iii, 967, 969, 1157. 59 CDI, ii, 1470,
1596, 1619, 1744, 1904, 1906, 1975, 2076, 2128, 2150, 2190–1, 2193; iii, 55, 58, 210. 60 CDI,
136 Seán Duffy
of Man. When John Balliol inherited the lordship of Galloway, he inherited not
just an enmity with the rulers of Carrick, but an interest in Man: the rulers of
Galloway had long coveted the island and Balliol’s maternal grandfather Alan of
Galloway had come very close to making this ambition a reality.61 More recently,
Alexander Mac Dubgaill’s father, Eógan, had attempted to make himself king of
Man in 1250.62 When there was a Manx rebellion against Scottish rule in 1275,
a Scots fleet sailed from Galloway and the Isles to crush it, almost all the leaders
of which had strong Balliol connections, including John Comyn of Badenoch,
Balliol’s justiciar of Galloway, Alan son of Thomas of Galloway (first cousin of
Derbforgaill Balliol, daughter of Alan of Galloway), and Alexander Mac
Dubgaill of Argyll, whose family were later to stand loyally with John Balliol
against the Bruces till the bitter end.63
As the Scottish suppression of the Isle of Man in 1275 was largely a Galloway
affair, done with the backing of the Comyn–Clann Dubgaill faction, it would not
be a surprise to find the rulers of Carrick lukewarm about the enterprise (given
the enmity between them that stretched back over a century): in doing so, the
Carrick faction would be backed, no doubt, by their Stewart henchmen and
Clann Domnaill, motivated in part at least by opposition to the Comyns and
Clann Dubgaill. These were, of course, the very people whose assistance Richard
de Burgh enlisted in the Turnberry Band of September 1286. It may just be
relevant therefore that in 1289, in his capacity as sheriff of Ayr, one of the parties
to the band, James the Steward, accounted for the expenses of ‘duobus
predicatoribus euntibus in Hyberniam cum litteris regis Anglie pro terra
Mannie’.64 If it was not yet clear why Edward I would write in connection with
Man – part of the kingdom of the Scots – and why those letters would go to
Ireland, it became clear in the following year: in February 1290, when Edward
issued a safe-conduct to certain merchants to facilitate their business on the
island, it was addressed to ‘the keepers of the land of Man, and … all other his
friends, bailiffs and faithful subjects’.65 Not long afterwards, at an assembly of
the islanders held at Rushen Abbey, the Manx agreed to ‘bind themselves to obey
the king of England as their lord’, adding that they stood in great need of his
protection.66 Then, on 4 June, more of the story is revealed. Edward issued a
letter to ‘all the inhabitants of the Isle of Man’, noting that ‘dilectus et fidelis
noster Ricardus de Burgo, comes Ultoniae, insulam praedictam cum pertinentiis
ii, 1136. 61 Stringer, ‘Periphery and core’, pp 94–7. 62 Cronica regum Mannie &
insularum, ed. George Broderick (Douglas, 1979), fo. 48r. Also, some slight evidence of a
Comyn connection with the island is revealed in 1292 when the earl of Buchan received a
licence to cover eight turrets of his castle at Cruggleton in Galloway with lead from a mine in
the Calf of Man (CDS, ii, 616). 63 ‘Chronicle of Lanercost’ in A.O. Anderson (ed.), Early
sources for Scottish history, AD500–1286 (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1922), ii, pp 672–3; ‘Annals of
Furness’ in Chronicles of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett (4
vols, London, 1884–9), ii, pp 570–1; Cronica regum Mannie & insularum, fo. 50r; A.A.M.
Duncan, Scotland: the making of the kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), p. 582. 64 Exchequer rolls,
Scotland, i, p. 47. 65 CPR, 1281–92, p. 366. 66 Foedera, i, p. 737; CDS, ii, p. 438.
reddidit in manus nostras’.67 At some unknown date, therefore, between the

death of Alexander III in March 1286 and the first mention of English rule just
under four years later, Richard de Burgh had taken control of the Isle of Man.
This may have had nothing whatever to do with the Turnberry Band! The
Red Earl may have been acting here solely as an agent of Edward I. That said,
the seizure of part of the Scottish realm early in 1290 (or slightly sooner) would
surely have run counter to English policy at a stage when Edward was still
behaving in a reasonable and even-handed manner with the Scots.68 And so the
suspicion persists that de Burgh’s role began as something other than the
implementation of his master’s wishes, and that it was a development originating
in hostility towards the dominance in the Isle of Man of men associated with
Galloway, Argyll and John Balliol – possibly in the interests of the coterie of
Scottish nobles who formed a pact with the Red Earl at Turnberry.
In this regard, it might just be worth pondering the involvement in the band
of Richard Bruce (uncle of the future king), a previously neglected figure whose
English career has now been brought to our attention by the work of Ruth
Blakely. Richard seems to have been a close companion to Edward I, witnessing
at least 120 of his charters in the six years preceding his early death in 1286. In
the latter year, he was in Edward’s company at Paris before the end of July –
remember, the Turnberry Band was concluded on 20 September – and he
witnessed another of King Edward’s charters at Libourne near Bordeaux on 25
October (he died three days later). While it was no doubt physically possible for
Richard Bruce to have made it from France to Turnberry and back in the
timeframe in question, the fact that he continued in the interval to be paid wages
by Edward I suggests one of two possibilities: either he never left France at all
and his name was appended to the band in his absence, or Edward I facilitated
his presence at Turnberry, which, to quote Blakely, ‘would necessitate a
reassessment of Edward’s apparent indifference to Scottish affairs at this stage’.69
Either way, the close links the Bruces had to Edward I make it unlikely that the
English king was completely in the dark regarding their activities in these years:
so fond was he of Richard Bruce that in October 1289 he visited his grave in
Waltham Abbey in Essex, and the link was not confined to Richard since his
brother, Robert Bruce of Carrick, was with King Edward at Bordeaux in May
1288.70 In other words, whatever the Bruces were up to when they made their
pact at Turnberry with de Burgh and Clare, there is every likelihood that Edward
I was in on the act.
67 Documents, ed. Stevenson, no. CIII. 68 For a discussion of this precise point, see Barrow,
‘Kingdom in crisis’, p. 133; idem, Robert Bruce, pp 28–9; Prestwich, Edward I, pp 361–2.
69 Blakely, ‘The Scottish Bruses’, p. 110. Blakely favours the former interpretation, i.e., that
Richard Bruce was not actually present at Turnberry, on the grounds (brought to her attention
by Michael Prestwich) that if Richard Bruce was in Edward I’s pay while on a mission to
Turnberry one would expect his expenses to have been accounted for. 70 Blakely, ‘The
Scottish Bruses’, p. 111.
138 Seán Duffy
IV
There was a lot going on here, and there was much, much more to these events
than we can hope to unearth or understand at a remove of nearly three-quarters
of a millennium. But, leaving all other issues aside, the Turnberry Band links
Ireland and Scotland. And the conclusion to be drawn from the happy survival
of the text of the band is that the relationship between Ireland and Scotland in
the late thirteenth century was a good deal closer and a lot more complex than is
sometimes allowed. It has long been an article of faith among historians that a
steady undercurrent of contact must have flowed between Gaelic Ireland and
Gaelic Scotland. By contradistinction, the tendency has been to minimize the
interfusion between the rest of Ireland and the rest of Scotland. The Turnberry
Band provides a rude awakening from this reverie.
The familiarity with Ireland of those at the highest level of Scottish society,
both native and Anglo-Norman – the Bruce faction (and their allies, the Stewarts
and Clann Domnaill) and the Balliol faction (and their allies, the Comyns and
Clann Dubgaill) – meant that when a crisis erupted in Scotland in 1286 it was
bound to have some implications for Ireland. And when, a decade later, that
crisis became a war between England and Scotland, the war itself was surely –
given the close links of both Gaídil and Gaill in Ireland with the principal actors
on the Scottish stage – likely to spill over onto Irish soil. In that sense at least,
the inauguration of Edward Bruce, earl of Carrick, as king of Ireland in 1315 was
a natural progression from the events of thirty years earlier, when his father,
Robert Bruce of Carrick, first dipped a toe into Irish waters in that mysterious
episode known as the Turnberry Band.
Two lists of Ó Dubhda chieftains of Uí Fhiachrach
NOLLAIG Ó MURAÍLE
In this essay it is hoped to provide an illustration of how those indispensable

sources for the history of Ireland from early to late medieval times – the annals
and genealogies – can be used to complement and supplement each other. All too
often, however, they may contain material that is unique to one and incapable of
being corroborated by recourse to the other. There is a sense of satisfaction when
one succeeds in combining the two to furnish a fuller picture, and a corre-
sponding sense of frustration when the contents of the one find no parallel in the
other. There is also a third state – that of puzzlement when the information in
one is quite at odds with (and sometimes flatly contradicted by) the details
contained in the other. All three of these situations occur in what follows.
The older of the two lists reproduced below is a later insertion in the great
Clann Fhir Bhisigh compilation of c.1400 known as the Book of Lecan (referred
to here as L).1 The list, which has not hitherto appeared in print, occurs on fo.
76rb; it was probably penned in the late sixteenth century when L was already
almost two centuries old. The second list is preserved in Dubhaltach Mac Fhir
Bhisigh’s mid-seventeenth-century Book of Genealogies (referred to here as G);
it occurs on p. 296, §§19–38.2
The L list records twenty Ó Dubhda rulers in north Connacht between the
mid-fourteenth and the late sixteenth centuries. The G list begins considerably
earlier, in the tenth century, but in the edition below, the record of the fifteen
rulers prior to Brian son of Taithleach Muaidhe, alias Sein-Bhrian, who died in
1354, has been relegated to the appendices (appendix 9.4); those fifteen were:
(1) Aodh, (2) Maol Ruanaidh, (3) Muircheartach, (4) Domhnall Fionn,
(5) another Aodh, (6) Ruaidhrí Mear, (7) An Cosnamhaigh, (8)
Taithleach, (9) a second named An Cosnamhaigh, (10) Donnchadh, (11)
Brian Dearg, (12) another Taithleach, (13) Conchabhar Conallach, (14)
Donnchadh Mór and (15) Uilliam.
The Uí Dhubhda ruled, or laid claim to, the territory of Uí Fhiachrach

Muaidhe; this was later more usually termed Tír Fhiachrach Muaidhe, Tireragh
1 L (RIA, MS 23P2) is available in a facsimile edition, The Book of Lecan: Leabhar Mór Mhic
Fhir Bhisigh Leacain, intr. Kathleen Mulchrone (Dublin, 1937). It may also be viewed on
ISOS (Irish Script on Screen) at the website of the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute
for Advanced Studies (http://www.isos.dias.ie/). 2 G (UCD Additional Irish MS 14) is
available in LMG.
139
140 Nollaig Ó Muraíle
of the Moy, which is represented today by the north-west Co. Sligo barony of
Tireragh (part of which, near Ballina, since a change of county boundaries in
1898, is now in Co. Mayo). Some of the earlier rulers also laid claim to Uí
Amhalghaidh (a territory whose name is partially preserved in the adjacent north
Mayo barony-name Tirawley).
For convenience – to avoid usages such as ‘the two lists’, ‘the combined lists’
etc. – lists L and G printed below will be jointly referred to as ‘the catalogue’.
The accounts of the first four rulers in the catalogue (1–4) – Brian, his son
Domhnall Cléireach, and the latter’s two sons, Ruaidhrí and Tadhg Riabhach –
can be backed up by substantial entries in a range of annalistic collections. For
no fewer than ten of those in the catalogue, however, we are virtually bereft of any
annalistic evidence; these are nos 5, 6, 8–11 and 15–18:
(5) Maol Ruanaidh, son of (3) Ruaidhrí;

(6) Domhnall Óg, a younger son of Ruaidhrí;
(8) Seaán Glas, a younger son of (4) Tadhg Riabhach;
(9) Éamonn and (11) Brian Cam, two sons of (1) Sein-Bhrian;
(10) Domhnall Ballach, a son of (5) Maol Ruanaidh son of Ruaidhrí;
(15) Donnchadh Ultach, a son (apparently) to Tadhg Riabhach;
(16) Maghnus and (17) Féilim, sons of Tadhg Buidhe, and grandsons of
Tadhg Riabhach; and
(18) Conchobhar, nephew to (10) Domhnall Ballach.
For the remaining six there is some supporting evidence to be found in the
annals:
(7) Tadhg Buidhe, son of (4) Tadhg Riabhach (and father of Maghnus and
Féilim just mentioned as 16 and 17 respectively);
(12) Eoghan Caoch, a second son of (3) Ruaidhrí;
(13) Uilliam and (14) Brian Óg, grandnephews of (12) Eoghan Caoch; and
(19) Eoghan and (20) Cathal Dubh, two sons of (18) Conchobhar.
Among the most interesting aspects of the work is the number of discrepancies
– many minor, others more substantial – between details in the two lists, or
between what is in one or other list and details found elsewhere in the
genealogical texts in L or G; these relate most notably to lengths of reigns, but
there are also some differences in relation to the name of an individual’s mother.
(Some of the latter differences may be more apparent than real, arising instead
from different ways of translating or interpreting certain statements, which, as
they stand, are rather ambiguous.) There may also be apparent internal
discrepancies such as the rather remarkable suggestion that (5) Maol Ruanaidh
who died in 1447 had a younger brother, (12) Eoghan Caoch, who later
Two lists of Ó Dubhda chieftains of Uí Fhiachrach 141
succeeded to the chieftaincy and died in 1495 – a full 78 years after the death of
their father (3) Ruaidhrí.
After each section relating to a particular chieftain, relevant annalistic extracts
are given, together – when appropriate – with cross-references to John
O’Donovan’s invaluable Genealogies, tribes and customs of Hy Fiachrach [Hy-F]
(1844).3 Relevant genealogical materials, for the purpose of furnishing a general
context, are given from MSS L and G in Appendix 9.3 below.
It will be noted that, due to the absence of dates for some of the chieftains –
and despite indications (sometimes contradictory; for example, nos 1–3, 14 and
17) of the lengths of their reigns – there is considerable uncertainty about the
floruit of several of the figures listed below – for example, nos 5–6, 8–11, 14–19
– that is, twelve out of twenty. For example, note how (5) Maol Ruanaidh is said
to have reigned for eighteen years beginning in 1432 (that is, until 1450), yet (6)
Domhnall is said to have been proclaimed Ó Dubhda in 1447!
Because of such discrepancies, merely adding the number of years attributed
to each reign does not produce very satisfactory results – as demonstrated by the
occurrence of nos 7, 12–13 and 20 at dates that differ (in at least one instance
quite significantly) from the putative dates produced by simply adding reigns.
Thus, (7) Tadhg Buidhe should have a death-date of 1457 but the correct one is
1466. Also, (12) Eoghan Caoch should – on the basis of adding the reigns of (9)
Éamonn, (10) Domhnall Ballach and (11) Brian Cam – have died in 1497 but the
annals give his obit as 1495. Admittedly, this is not a bad discrepancy, and (13)
Uilliam is likewise credible, having reigned half a year, dying in 1496. Nos 13–16
are all ascribed quite brief reigns of no more than one year each; (17) Feidhlim
is said to have reigned for either nine or nineteen years, and his successor, (18)
Conchabhar, for thirty, thus bringing us to either 1537 or 1547 (or thereabouts),
while the next chieftain listed, (19) Eoghan, is given a reign of seven years,
presumably reaching either 1544 or 1554. If the two latter pairs of dates are even
reasonably accurate, the last chieftain listed, (20) Cathal Dubh, would have had
a very long reign, from either 1544 or 1554 until his death in 1582.
Unfortunately, in the absence of corroborative evidence, we must take many
of the suggested dates as very approximate. Indeed, in at least three cases – (1)
Brian, (2) Domhnall Cléireach and (3) Ruaidhrí – where dates of death are given,
the length of reigns ascribed to each king or chieftain nevertheless differs
between the two sources, L and G: 34 or 84, 49½ or 26 and 42 or 37 years for
Brian, Domhnall and Ruaidhrí respectively. How such discrepancies are to be
explained is far from clear.
Another aspect worthy of note is that the catalogue given here differs in some
significant respects from the list of Ó Dubhda chieftains given by O’Donovan in
3 The genealogies, tribes and customs of Hy-Fiachrach, commonly called O Dowda’s Country …
from the Book of Lecan … and from the genealogical manuscript of Duald Mac Firbis, ed. John
O’Donovan (Dublin, 1844).
Hy-F, especially pp 356–61. While his nos 27–30 (Sen-Bhrian, Domhnall

Cléireach, Ruaidhrí and Maol Ruanaidh), and his nos 32–3 (Conchobhar and
Eoghan), correspond respectively, in the catalogue below, to nos 1–3 and 5 and
18–9, the other names in the Hy-F list, 31 (Diarmuid), 34 (Tadhg Riabhach), 35
(Dathí) et al., have no equivalents there, and there is clearly no room for nos 4,
6–17 or 20 – fourteen persons in all! – from our catalogue in the Hy-F list.
All of the foregoing suggests that a good deal of work remains to be done to
elucidate – if that is possible – various details of the royal or chieftainly
succession in Uí Fhiachrach Muaidhe in the later Middle Ages.
C ATA L O G U E O F T H E C H I E F TA I N S O F U Í F H I A C H R A C H
1 Brian (Hy-F no. 27, pp 356–8):

L [76rb11]: Brian O Dubda, ceithre bliadhna deg ar xx. ’na righ & a
eg.
Brian Ó Dubhda was king for thirty-four years until he died.
G [296.19]: 1354 Brian Ó Dubda, rí Ua fFiachrach agus Ua nAmhalghaidh,
d’eg ’na thigh fen iar mbeth 84 bliadhna i ttighearnus.
Brian Ó Dubhda, king of Uí Fhiachrach and Uí Amhalghaidh,
died in his own house having been 84 years in lordship.
Length of reign: 34 / 84 years (to 1354).
Additional data:
AC, 1354.2: Brian Úa Dubda rí Ua Fiachrach mortuus est.
AU, ii, 496 (1354): Brian Ua Dubhda, ri Tire-Fiachrach, mortuus est.
AFM, iii, 604 (1354): Brian Ó Dubda flaithceann Thíre Fiachrach d’écc accus
a mac Domhnall do ghabháil a ionaidh. [cf. ALC, ii, 10]
2 Domhnall Cléireach (Hy-F no. 28, pp 358–9):

L [.12]: Domhnoll Clerech Ua Dubhda, ix. mbliadhna co leth &
da xx. ’na righ, 7 a eg a nDun Nell, & Una inghen
Fhedhlim mec Cathoil Crobdherg a mhathoir.
Domhnall Cléireach Ó Dubhda was king for forty-nine and a
half years; he died in Dún Néill and Úna, daughter of
Féidhlim son of Cathal Croibhdhearg [Ó Conchubhair] was
his mother.
G [296.20]: 1380 Domnall Clereach mac Briain Uí Dubda, ri Ua Fiachrach
agus Ua nAmalghaidh, d’ég iar fflaithius 26 bliadhan.
Domhnall Cléireach son of Brian Ó Dubhda, king of Uí
Fhiachrach and Uí Amhalghaidh, died after a lordship of
twenty-six years.
Length of reign: 49.5 / 26 years (to 1380).

Mother: Cf. L 72vc7–8 (and G 265.10): Barrdub ingen Domnaill I
Concobair a máthair, but this is clearly at odds with the
statement in L, above, that his mother was Úna daughter
of Féidhlim Ó Conchobhair.
Additional data:
AU, ii, 512 (1362): Ingen Uí Maille, ben Domnaill I Dubda [d’ec].
AFM, iii, 604 (1354): … a mac Domhnall do ghabháil a ionaidh.
AFM, iv, 678 (1380): Domhnall mac Briain Uí Dhubhda tighearna Ua
fFiachrach accus Ó nAmhalgaidh fear cosanta a criche
d’aimhdheoin Ghall accus Ghaoidheal batar ina aghaidh
do ég ina baile budhdhéin an 3. Mai, accus a mhac
Ruaidhri do ghabhail a ionaid.
Mac Firb.:4 Qui Donaldus vir bellicosus et hospitalis Anglos et
alienigenas e sua patria ejecit, ecclesiasque et monasteria
construxit.
3 Ruaidhrí (Hy-F no. 29, pp 359–60):

L [.15]: Ruaidhri O Dubda, da bliadhain 7 da xx.’na righ, & a eg a
nDun Nell, & ingen hI Mhaille a mhathair.
Ruaidhrí Ó Dubhda was king for forty-two years, and he died
in Dún Néill, and the daughter of Ó Máille was his mother.
G [296.21] 1417: Ruaidhrí mac Domnaill Chlerigh, ri Ua fFiachrach agus
Ua nAmhalghaidh, d’eg i nDun Nell iar fflaithius 37
bliadhan.
Ruaidhrí son of Domhnall Cléireach, king of Uí Fhiachrach
and Uí Amhalghaidh, died in Dún Néill after a lordship of
thirty-seven years.
Length of reign: 42 / 37 years (to 1417).
Mother: Cf. L 72vc33–5 (and G 266.4): Finduala ingen Domnaill
Ruaid hI Mailli a máthair na mac sin [=Ruaidri … Tadc
Riabach]; see also 4G, below.
Additional data:
AFM, iv, 678 (1380): … a mhac Ruaidhri do ghabhail a ionaid.
ALC, ii, 80 (1398): Sluaighedh la Tomas a Burc, tighearna Gall Connacht,
ocus la Toirdhealbach Ruadh Ó Conchubhair … ocus la
Ruaidhri Ua nDubhda cona bhraithreachaibh … a Tir
nOiliolla, cur milledh leo an tir uile …
AC, 1417.2: Ruaidri mac Domnaill Uí Dubda, rex Ua Fiachrach
Muaide … quievit.
4 Annalistic fragments printed as footnotes to AFM, iii.

AU, iii, 72 (1417): Ruaidhri mac Domnaill Uí Dubhda .i. ri Ua-Fiachrach,

d’eg i n-a longphort fein iar mbuaidh aithrighe.
AFM, iv, 830 (1417): Ruaidhri (.i. Ó Dubhda) mac Domhnaill mic Briain mic
Taichligh Uí Dubhda …. d’ég ina bhaile fein iar fFél
Bríghde i cind miosa dh’errach, accus Tadhg Riabhach a
dearbhrathair do gabail a ionaidh.
Mac Firb. (in AFM, iv, 830n): Liber apud Lecan scriptus (ut supra).
Ibid. J.O’D.: Rodericus O’Dowd (de quo supra), rex Hyfiachriae et
Hyamalgad, vir magnificus, opulentus, prudens, et strenuus;
patriae defensor invitis Anglis, et Hibernis; Qui hostium
muros et castella evertit, sibique ac posteris ditionem, pulsis
exteris vindicavit, erga templa et monasteria aedificantes
beneficus, hospites et peregrinas benignus, et clerum ac
literatos munificus, 37 annos, &c. ut supra.
4 Tadhg Riabhach:
L [.17]: Tadhg Ua Dubhda, v. bliadhna deg ’na rig, 7 a eg a nInis
Sgreabhoinn, 7 inonn mathair do 7 do Ruaidhri.
Tadhg Ó Dubhda was king for fifteen years, and he died in
Inis Screabhainn and had the same mother as Ruaidhrí.
G [296.22] 1432: Tadhg Riabhach Ua Dubhda mac Domnaill Clerigh, ri
Ua fFiachrach, d’écc in Esgir Abhann iar fflaithius 15
bliadhan. Ingean Ui Maille mathair Ruaidrí remhráite
agus an Taidcc-si.
Tadhg Riabhach Ó Dubhda son of Domhnall Cléireach, king
of Uí Fhiachrach, died in Eiscir Abhann after a lordship of
fifteen years; the daughter of Ó Máille was the mother of
Ruaidhrí aforementioned and of this Tadhg.
Length of reign: 15 years (to 1432).
Mother: As indicated above, under 3, L 72vc33–5 and G 266.4
state that his mother was named Fionnghuala, daughter of
Domhnall Ruadh Ó Máille.
Additional data:
AFM, iv, 830 (1417): … Tadhg Riabhach a dearbhrathair do gabail a ionaidh.
AFM, iv, 890 (1432): Tadhg mac Domhnaill mic Briain Ui Dubhda tighearna
Ua fFiachrach fear tucc a duthcus da gach nduine ina thír
eittir cill accus tuaith, fear congmála cadhais d’éiccsibh
accus d’filedhaibh do écc 16 Ianuarii.
AC, 1433.5: Tadc Riabach Ua Dubda ri Ua Fiachrach mortuus est.
5 Maol Ruanaidh (Hy-F no. 30, p. 360):

L [.19]: Maolruanoidh O Dubda, ocht mbliadhna deg ’na righ, 7 a
eg a Liathmuine, 7 ingen Mec Guisdelbh a mhathair.
Maol Ruanaidh Ó Dubhda was king for eighteen years, and
he died in Liathmhuine, and the daughter of Mac Goisdeilbh
was his mother.
G [296.23]: Maolruanaidh mac Ruaidhrí Uí Dubda Tire Fiachrach –
18 bliadhna. Inghean Mec Goisdelbh a mhathair. In anno
1432 do rined Ua Dubda dhe so.
Maol Ruanaidh son of Ruaidhrí Ó Dubhda [king] of Tír
Fhiachrach – 18 years. The daughter of Mac Goisdeilbh was
his mother. He was made Ó Dubhda in the year 1432.
Length of reign: 18 years (1432–1450?). [†1447]
Mother: We learn from G 267.5 that his mother was Eileag,
daughter of Seaán Mac Goisdeilbh.
6 Domhnall:
L [.21]: Domnall Bhaile hI Choitil, vii. mbliadna ’na righ, 7 a eg a
mBaile hI Choitil, 7 ingen Magnuis mec Cathoil Oig hI
Chonchubair a mhathair.
Domhnall of Baile Uí Choitil was king for seven years, and
he died in Baile Uí Choitil, and the daughter of Maghnus son
of Cathal Óg Ó Conchubhair was his mother.
G [296.24]: Domhnull Baile Ui Choitil ’na Ua Dubda 7 mbliadhna,
agus in anno 1447 do rineadh Ua Dubda de so.
Domhnall of Baile Uí Choitil was Ó Dubhda for seven years,
and he was made Ó Dubhda in the year 1447.
Length of reign: 7 years (1447–1454?). [†1454?]
Mother: We learn from G 266.4 that his mother was Fionnghuala,
daughter of Maghnus Ó Conchabhair.
Additional data:
AFM, iv, 916 (1439): Diarmait O Dubhda (.i. mac Ui Dhubhda, Domhnall),
adhbar tighearna Ua fFiachrach, do écc.
(But Domhnall did not become Ua Dubhda until 1447!)
7 Tadhg Buidhe:
L [.23]: Tadhg Buide Ua Dubda, tri bliadna ’na righ, 7 a
mharbadh le Slicht Ruaidhri hI Dhubda, 7 ingen mec Sir
Remoinn a Burc a mhathair 7 mathair hSeaain Ghlais.
Tadhg Buidhe Ó Dubhda was king for three years, and he

was killed by Sliocht Ruaidhrí Uí Dhubhda, and the
daughter of the son of Sir Réamonn a Búrc was his mother
and the mother of Seaán Glas.
G [296.25]: Tadg Buidhe mac Taidg Riabhaigh – 3 bl.
Tadhg Buidhe son of Tadhg Riabhach – 3 years.
Length of reign: 3 years (to 1453?).
Mother: We learn from G 266.4 that his mother was Mairghréag,
daughter of Uilliam son of Sir Réamonn a Búrc.
Additional data:
AFM, iv, 1044 (1466): Ua Dubda accus a mac do mharbhadh i meabhail la
Cloinn Maoilruanaidh mic Ruaidhri Í Dhubhda.
DF Annals,5 260 (1466): O-Dowda and his son deceitfully slaine, by the sons of
Maelruany fitz Ruairy O-Dowda.
DF Annals 261 (1466): Thady Boy O Dowda, King of Ofiachra Muay, being an
old-aged man, was unadvisedly slaine by Maelruany O
Dowda’s sept. [=doublet of preceding entry?; but cf.
Hy-F 121–2 n. (t), which suggests that this Tadhg
Buidhe was slain in 1443!]
8 Seaán Glas:
L [.26]: Seaan Glas, ce(t)thri bliadhna deg ’na righ, 7 a eg a nInis
Sgreabainn.
Seaán Glas was king for fourteen years, and he died in Inis
Screabhainn.
G [296.26]: Seaan Glas, a dhearbhrathair – 14.
Seaán Glas, his brother – 14.
Length of reign: 14 years.
Mother: We have seen under 7 (above) that his mother was
Mairghréag a Búrc
9 Éamonn:
L [.27]: Emonn mac an Chosnamaig, v. sechtmaine 7 lethbliadain
’na righ, 7 a eg a nArd na nGlass; ingen Conchubair
Mec Donnchaid a mhathair.
Éamonn son of An Cosnamhach was king for half a year
and five weeks, and he died in Ard na nGlas; the daughter
of Conchubhar Mac Donnchaidh was his mother.
5 ‘The annals of Ireland, from the year 1443 to 1468, translated from the Irish by Dudley
Firbisse … for Sir James Ware, in the year 1666’ in Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological
Society, ed. John O’Donovan (Dublin, 1846), 198–302.
G [296.27]: Emonn mac an Chosnamhaigh – cuig seachtmuine is

lethbhliadhain.
Éamonn son of An Cosnamhach – half a year and five
weeks.
Length of reign: 31 weeks.
Additional data:
G 267.6: Cosnamhaigh mac Briain mec Taithligh Ui Dubda,
clann les .i. … Emonn (cf. L 72vd9).
AC, 1436.7: Lasur Fina ingen Conchobair Meic Dondchada ben in
Chosnamaig Uí Dubda mortua est.
AC, 1471.22: … cuit meic in Chosnamuig Uí Dubda do Tir
Fiachrach.
AFM, iv, 1072 (1471): Sloiccheadh la hUa nDomnaill i nIochtar Connacht co
ro creachloisc cuid mic an Cosnamhaigh I Dubda do
Thír Fiachrach.
10 Domhnall Ballach:
L [.29]: Domnall Ballach Ua Dubda, bliadain ’na righ, 7 a eg a
nDun Nell, 7 ingen Meic Bhaitin a mhathair.
Domhnall Ballach Ó Dubhda was king for a year, and he died
in Dún Néill, and the daughter of Mac Baitín was his mother.
G [296.28]: Domhnall Ballach – 1.
Length of reign: One year.
Additional data:
G 268.1: Maolruanaidh mac Ruaidhrigh, clann lais .i. … Domhnall
Ballach … (See under 13, below; cf. Hy F 129 n. (j).)
11 Brian Cam:
L [.31]: Brian Cam mac an Chosnamaig, da bliadain ’na righ, 7 a
eg a nArd na nGlas, 7 ingen Conchabair Mec Donnchaid
a mhathair.
Brian Cam son of An Cosnamhach was king for two years,
and he died in Ard na nGlas, and the daughter of
Conchubhar Mac Donnchaidh was his mother.
G [296.29]: Brian Cam mac an Chosnamaigh – 2 bl.
Brian Cam son of An Cosnamhach – 2 years.
Additional data:
L 72vd9 (and G 267.6): In Cosnamaig mac Briain I Dubda, clann maith leis .i.
Brian …
12 Eoghan Caoch:
L [.33]: Eogan Caoch mac Ruaidri, cethri bliadna deg ’na righ, 7
a mharbad le hUa nDomhnoill, 7 ingen (mec – del.)
Sheaain hI Conchubair a mhathair.
Eoghan Caoch son of Ruaidhrí was king for fourteen years,
and he was killed by Ó Domhnaill, and the daughter of
Seaán Ó Conchubhair was his mother.
G [296.30]: Eoghan Caoch mac Ruaidhrigh – 14.
Eoghan Caoch son of Ruaidhrí – 14.
Length of reign: 14 years (to 1495).
Mother: cf. L 72vd7–8 (and G 267.5): ‘Eogan … Anabla, ingen
Sir Remand a Burc, a máthair’. Cf. 7, above – ref. to
‘[Mairgrég] ingen mec Sir Remoinn a Búrc’, mother of
Tadhg Buidhe and Seaán Glas, sons ofTadhg Riabhach
– therefore Anábla (wife to Eoghan Caoch s. Ruaidhrí)
and Mairgrég (wife to his uncle, Tadhg Riabhach) were
at least half-sisters, and possibly full sisters.
Additional data:
AC, 1495.3: Mac Donnchada Tire hOilella .i. Tadc mac Briain Meic
Donnchada do marbad les Ua nDomnaill .i. Aodh
Ruadh mac Neill Gairb a mBel an Droichit. O Dubdo .i.
Eogan Caoch mac Ruadri do marbad ann fós.
ALC, ii, 192 (1495): Mac Donnchadha Thiri hOilealla .i. Tadhg mac Briain
meic Conchubhuir do mharbadh leis O nDomhnuill .i.
Aodh Ruadh mhac Neill Ghairbh a mBel an Droichit. O
Dubhda .i. Eogun Caoch mhac Ruaidhri do marbhudh
ann fós.
AU, iii, 392 (1495): … do marbadh ann … Mac Donnchaidh Tire-hOilella
.i. Tadhg mac Briain mic Conchobair Mic Donnchaidh
agus Ua Dubhda .i. Eogan Caech mac Ruaidhri Uí
Dubda.
AFM, iv, 1216 (1495): Ro marbhadh don chur sin Tadhcc mac Briain mec
Donnchaidh … Eoghan Caoch mac Ruaidhri Í Dubda
tighearna Ua fFiachrach Muaidhe …
13 Uilliam:
L [.35]: Uilliam mc Domnoill Ballaig, lethbliadain ’na righ.
Uilliam son of Domhnall Ballach was king for half a year.
G [296.31]: Uilliam mac Domnaill Ballaigh – lethbhliadhain.
Uilliam son of Domhnall Ballach – half a year.
Length of reign: Half a year (to 1496).

Additional data:
G 269.4: … m. Uilliam Óig m. Domnuill Bhallaigh m.
Maoilruanaidh …
AC, 1496.5: Ó Dubhdo .i. Uilliam mac Domnaill Bhallaig [mortuus
est].
AU, iii, 402 (1496): Ua Dubda d’heg an bliadhain si .i. Uilliam mac
Domnaill Ballaigh mic Maeilruanaigh mic Ruaidhri Uí
Dubhda. Ocus Ua Dubda do dhenam i n-a ínadh do
Brian Og, mac Domnaill Uí Dhubda.
AFM, iv, 1226 (1496): O Dubda Uilliam mac Domnaill Ballaigh d’écc, accus O
Dubda do ghairm ina [i]onadh do Bhrian Ócc mac Brian
Uí Dhubhda.
14 Brian Óg:
L [.36]: Brian Og Ua Dubda, bliadain ’na righ, 7 a eg ’sa
Longphort, 7 ingen Mec Baitin a mathair.
Brian Óg Ó Dubhda was king for a year, and he died in An
Longphort, and the daughter of Mac Baitín was his mother.
G [296.32]: Brian Og – lethbhliadhain.
Brian Óg – half a year.
Length of reign: One year / half a year.
Mother: Cf. L 72vc11: Onora ingen Mec Baitin Baired a máthair;
G 266.1: … inghean Bhaitin Baireud.
Additional data:
AU, iii, 402 (1496): … Ocus Ua Dubda do dhenam i n-a ínadh do Brian Og,
mac Domnaill Uí Dhubda.
AFM, iv, 1226 (1496): … O Dubda do ghairm ina [i]onadh do Bhrian Ócc mac
Brian Uí Dhubhda.
15 Donnchadh Ultach:
L [.37]: Donnchadh Ulltach, bliadain ’na rig, 7 a eg a nInis
Sgreabainn, 7 ingen Cormaic hI Eghra a mhathair.
Donnchadh Ultach was king for a year; he died in Inis
Screabhainn, and the daughter of Cormac Ó hEaghra was
his mother.
G [296.33]: Donnchadh Ultach – l.
Additional data: †1498 – but cf. Hy-F, geneal. table: 30 Donnchadh
Ultach, d. 1439 29 s. Donnchadh 28 s. Domhnall
Cléireach.
16 Maghnus:
L [.39]: Maghnus mac Taidg Buidhi, bliadain ’na rig, 7 a eg a nArd
na Riadh, 7 ingen Mec Shiurtain a mathair.
Maghnus son of Tadhg Buidhe was king for a year; he died in
Ard na Riadh and the daughter of Mac Siúrtáin was his
mother.
G [296.34]: Magnus mac Taidg Buidhe – l.
Maghnus son of Tadhg Buidhe – 1.
Additional data:
G 267.2: Tadhg [Buidhe], dno, as íad a mhec .i. Maghnus ….
17 Feidhlim:
L [.41]: Fedhlim mac Taidhg Buidhi, ix. mbliadna ’na righ, 7 a eg
a nArd na Riadh, 7 inonn mathair do 7 do Maghnus.
Féidhlim son of Tadhg Buidhe was king for nine years; he
died in Ard na Riadh and had the same mother as Maghnus.
G [296.35]: Felim mac Taidg Buidhe – 19.
Féilim son of Tadhg Buidhe – 19.
Length of reign: 9 / 19 years.
Additional data:
G 267.2: Tadhg [Buidhe], dno, as íad a mhec .i. … Fedhlim …
18 Conchubhar (Hy-F no. 32, p. 360):

L [.42]: Conchubhar mac Diarmada mec Maolruanaidh, x.
mbliadhna xx, 7 a eg a Mainistir na Maighne a n-aibid
Sancti Froinses.
Conchubhar son of Diarmuid son of Maol Ruanaidh
[reigned] thirty years, and he died in the abbey of An
Mhaighean in the habit of St Francis.
G [296.36]: Conchabhar mac Diarmada mc Maoilruanaidh – 30.
Conchubhar son of Diarmuid son of Maol Ruanaidh – 30.
Additional data:
G 268.2: … mec Conc[h]abair mec Diarmada mec Maoilruanaidh.
19 Eóghan (Hy-F no. 33, p. 360):

L [.45]: Eogan mac Conchubhair, vii. mbliadna, 7 Mairggred
ingean Tomais Ruaidh a Burc mathair Eoghain mec
Conchubair, 7 Sadbh ingen Bateir mec Ricaird i[n]
Cuilen a Burc ben posta Eogain I Dubda, 7 a n-adlacad

ar an Maigin re ceile, 7 trocaire De co faghuid.
Eoghan son of Conchubhar [reigned] seven years; and
Mairgréad daughter of Tomás Ruadh a Búrc was the
mother of Eoghan s. Conchubhar, and Sadhbh daughter of
Báitéar s. Riocard an Chuiléin a Búrc was the wife of
Eoghan Ó Dubhda, and they were buried in An Mhaighean
together, and may they obtain the mercy of God.
G [296.37]: Eoghan mac Conchabhair – 7.
Eoghan son of Conchabhar – 7.
Additional data:
G 268.2: Eoghan … mac Conc[h]abair mec Diarmada … (cf.
268.7)
ALC, ii, 298 (1536): Téid O Domhnaill tair traigh síar a dTír Fhiachrach
Mhúaidhe … Tiagaid tar Múaidh síar ar tarruing
thSleachta Riocaird a Burc, a ndíaigh choda do
chaoruidheacht Chloinne I Dhubhda. Gabhthur ingen
Bhaitér a Burc leó .i. bean Eoghain I Dhubhda, mailli re
na creich.
AFM, v, 1430–2 (1536): … Tiaghaitt tar Muaidh siar ar tarraing slechta Ricaird
a Búrc hi lenmhain choda do chaoraigheacht chloinne Í
Dhúbhda. Tarrus leó don cur sin inghean Uátéir a Búrc
ben Eoccain I Dhubhda cona creich.
[cf. AFM, 1542]
20 Cathal Dubh:
L [76rb.49]: Cathal Dubh mac Conchubair, 7rl.}
Cathal Dubh son of Conchubhar.
G [296.38]: Cathal Dubh mac Conchabhair.
Cathal Dubh son of Conchabhar.
Additional data:
†1582.
S. Búrc., §16, c 1578:6 ‘Mise Ó Dubhda .i. Cathal Dubh’.
G 268.2: … Cathal Dubh … mac Conc[h]abair mec Diarmada
ALC, ii, 448 (1582): O Dúbhda .i. Cathal Dubh mac Conchobair Uí
Dhubhda … do hec in hoc anno. Emonn Ua Dúbhda do
rígad ’na ionadh.
6 Edition of text in Nollaig Ó Muraíle, ‘Seanchas na mBúrcach agus a chuid logainmneacha’

in Dónall Ó Baoill, Donncha Ó hAodha and N. Ó Muraíle (eds), Saltair saíochta, sanasaíochta
agus seanchais: a Festschrift in honour of Gearóid Mac Eoin (forthcoming).
APPENDIx 9. 1
References to the chieftains in Mac Fhir Bhisigh’s Book of Genealogies (apart

from references in the catalogue printed above)
Brian (Sein-Bhr.) [1] s. Taithleach Muaidhe s. Maol Ruanaidh: 265.4, 10; 266.2,
3, 4, 7; 267.6, 7; 268.9; 269.6; 276.14 (2); 294.10; 831.2; 1087; 1412.3
Cathal Dubh [20] s. Conchabhar s. Diarmuid: 268.2
Conchabhar [18] s. Diarmuid s. Maol Ruanaidh: 268.2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 (2), 14, 15,
16, 17, 18; 269.1 (2), 3; 800.8; 1087
Domhnall Cléireach [2] s. Sein-Bhrian s. Taithleach Muaidhe: 265.10; 266.4;
267.2, 4, 5, 7; 268.9, 16; 269.4, 5; 293.6; 294.1, 6 (2); 295.3, 4, 6; 831.2; 1087;
1412.3
Domhnall Óg (Baile Uí Choitil?) [6] s. Domhnall Cléireach s. Sein-Bhrian (= D.
s. Fionnghuala d. Maghnus Ó Conchabhair): 266.4; 267.4
Domhnall Ballach [10] s. Maol Ruanaidh s. Ruaidhrí: 268.1; 269.4
Eóghan [19] s. Conchabhar s. Diarmuid: 268.2, 7, 8, 9 (2), 12, 13, 14, 15; 1087
Eóghan Caoch [12] s. Ruaidhrí s. Domhnall Cléireach: 267.5
Feidhlim (or Feidhlimidh, Féilim) [17] s. Tadhg Buidhe s. Tadhg Riabhach:
267.2
Maghnus [16] s. Tadhg Buidhe s. Tadhg Riabhach s. Domhnall Cléireach: 267.2
(2), 7; 831.2; 1412.3
Maol Ruanaidh [5] s. Ruaidhrí s. Domhnall Cléireach: 267.5; 268.1, 2, 9, 16;
269.4, 5; 800.8; 1087
Ruaidhrí [3] s. Domhnall Cléireach s. Brian/Sein-Bhrian: 266.4; 267.1; 268.1,
9, 16; 269.4, 5; 296.21, 22, 23, 30; 1087
Seaán Glas [8] (1) s. Tadhg Riabhach s. Domhnall Cléireach: 266.5
Tadhg Riabhach [4] s. Domhnall Cléireach s. Brian/Sein-Bhrian: 266.4, 5, 7 (4);
293.3; 831.2; 1087; 1412.3
Tadhg Buidhe [7] s. Tadhg Riabhach s. Domhnall Cléireach: 266.5, 7; 267.2, 7;
831.2; 1087
Uilliam Óg [13] s. Domhnall Ballach s. Maol Ruanaidh: 269.4
APPENDIx 9. 2
Index of place-names occurring in the catalogue

[tl = townland; p = parish; b = barony; Co = County]
Ard na nGlas (9L, 11L): ‘Ardnaglass’, in tl Ardabrone, p Skreen, b Tireragh, Co

Sligo
Ard na Riadh (16L, 17L): tl Ardnaree, p Kilmoremoy, b Tireragh, Co Mayo
Baile Uí Choitil (6LG): tl Cottlestown, Castleconor, b Tireragh, Co Sligo
Dún Néill (2L, 3LG, 10L): tl Dunneill, p Kilmacshalgan, b Tireragh, Co Sligo

Eiscir Abhann (4G); Inis Screabhainn (4L, 8L, 15L): tl Inishcrone, p Kilglass, b
Tireragh, Co Sligo
Liathmhuine (5L): tl Leaffony, p Kilglass, b Tireragh, Co Sligo
An Longphort (14L): tl Longford Demesne, p Dromard, b Tireragh, Co Sligo
An Mhaighin (18L); Mainistir na Maighne (19L): tl Moyne, p Killala, b
Tirawley, Co Mayo
APPENDIx 9.3
Relevant genealogical extracts (from Lec. [L] and Book of Genealogies [G])
[Personal names occurring in the catalogue printed above are in bold; place-names
are underlined]
1a. [L72vc1] Brian mac Taithlig hI Dubda cland mor lais .i. Domnall
Cleireach, rig Uí Fiachrach 7 O nAmalgaid, 7 Maelruanaig 7 Magnus
Cleireach. Barrdub ingen Domnaill I Concobair a máthair. Mac aili do Diarmaid
Uí Dubda. Mac aili do Aed Uí Dubda, 7 ingen meic Roibin Laigleis a máthair.
In Cosnumach mac Briain 7 Niall 7 Taithleach 7 Brian Og mec Briain, Onora
ingen Mec Baitin Baired a máthair.
1b. [G265.10] Brían mac Taithligh Uí Dhubhda, clann mhór les .i. Domhnall
Cléreach, rí Ua fFiachrach, Maolruanaidh, Maghnus Cléreach; Barrdhubh,
inghean Domhnuill Ui C[h]onchabhair, a máthair; [266.1] mec ele dho Diarmuid
agus Aodh; inghean mec Roibin Laighles a mathair; an Cosnamaigh, Níall,
Taithleach, agus Brian Óg; Onóra, inghean Bhaitin Baireud, a máthair.
2a. [L2vc27] Domnall mac Briain hI Dubda cland mor lais .i. Ruaidri, rig Uí
Fiachrach 7 O nAmalgaid, 7 Eogan 7 Magnus 7 Maeleachlaind, rigdamna O
Fiachrach, 7 Tadc Riabach; Finduala ingen Domnaill Ruaid hI Mailli a máthair
na mac sin. Seaan mac Domnaill .i. Temair ingen I Muirgiusa a máthair.
Dondchad 7 Diarmaid 7 Domnall 7 Aed; ingen Magnusa mec Cathail .i.
Finduala, a máthair. Mac aili do .i. Eogan aile, mac ingine hI Chathan.
2b. [G266.4] Domhnall Clereach mac Briain Uí Dubhda, clann mor les .i.
Ruaidhri, ri Ua fFiachrach, Eoghan, Maghnus, Maol-Eachlainn, rioghdhamhna
Ua fFiachrach, Tadg Riabach (Fionnghuala, inghean Domhnuill Ruaidh Uí
Maille, mathair na mac soin), Seaan agus Domhnall (Teamhair, inghean Ui
Muirgheasa, a mathair), Donnc[h]adh, Diarmaid, Domnall, agus Aodh
(Fionnghuala, inghean Mhaghnusa mec Cathail Ui Conc[h]abhair, a mathair);
mec ele dho Eoghan (inghean Uí Chatháin a mhathair).
3a. [L72vc42] Tadc Riabach im. meic maithi lais .i. Brian 7 Dondchad; Edain,
ingen Domnaill mec Muircheartaig I Conchobair, a máthair. Tadc mac Taidc 7
Sean, Mairgreg, ingen Uilliam mec sSir Remand a Burc, a máthair. Mic aili do
Seaan 7 Niall 7 Domnall 7 Aedh 7 Taithleach.
3b. [G266.5] Tadhg Riabhach, imorra, mec maithe lais .i. Brían, Donnchadh
Ulltach (Eudaoín, inghean Domnaill mec Muircheartaigh Uí C[h]onc[h]abhair,
a máthair), Tadhg Buidhe, Seaan (Mairgreg, inghean Uilliam mec Sir
Remuinn a Burc, a mathair); mec ele dho Seaan ele, Niall, Domhnall, Aodh, agus
Taithleach.
4. [G266.6] Gid mór an c[h]lann sin is ar gabhlaigh uatha in Ard na Riagh, in
Esgir Abhand, …. agus i Longp[h]ort Uí Dhubhda, ní maireann neach da sliocht
i tTír Fhiachrach. [266.7] Na bailte reamhraite, dno, bailte caislén Sleachta
Taidhg Buidhe mec Taidhg Riabhaigh. Goill do thógaibh badhbhdhún an
Longphuirt, …. Esgir Abhann do togbhadh lesin Albanach Mor, oide Taidhg
Buidhe mec Thaidhg Riabhaigh. …. Baile Aird na Riagh do ronadh le Galluibh.
….
5a. [L72vd1] Ruaidri mac Domnaill hI Dubda, cland maith lais .i. Maelruanaid
7 Conchobar 7 Magnus Cleireach; Eileog, ingen tSheaain Mec Coisdelb, a
máthair. Muircheartach 7 Eogan 7 Uilliam, Anabla, ingen Sir Remand a Burc, a
máthair.
5b. [G266.6] Ruaidhrí mac Domhnuill Chlerigh, clann lais .i. Maolruanaidh,
Conchabhar, Maghnus Clereach (Eleag, inghean Sheaain Mec Goisdelbh, a
mathair), Muircheartach, Eogan, agus Uilliam (Anabla, inghean Sir Reumuinn
a Burc, a mathair).
6a. [L72vd9] In Cosnamaig mac Briain hI Dubda, clann maith leis .i. Brian 7
Aed 7 Muirchertach 7 Seaan.
6b. [G267.6] Cosnamhaigh mac Briain mec Taithligh Ui Dubda, clann les .i.
Brian, Aodh, Muircheartach, Seaán, agus Emonn.
7. [G268.1] Maolruanaidh mac Ruaidhrigh, clann lais .i. Diarmuid, Domhnall
Ballach, Maol-Eachlainn, agus Muircheartach Caoch (diobhaidh agus
Maoileachlainn).
8. [G269.4] Ó DHÚN NELL: Uilliam Og, Eoghan Carrach do marbhadh i
cCnoc na nOs, agus Domhnall Ballach tri mec Fedhlim m. Emuinn Buidhe m.
Uilliam Óig m. Domnuill Bhallaigh m. Maoilruanaidh m. Ruaidhrigh m.
Domnuill Chlérigh.
APPENDIx 9. 4
Earlier part of the ‘king-list’ from Mac Fhir Bhisigh’s Book of Genealogies [G]
[Most entries are followed by relevant annalistic data.]
1. [296.2–3] Araile do fhlathaibh Ua nDubhda gus an gairm do bherid
lebhair airisin dóibh … Tuig gurob iad annala ecca na fflath-sa sios sgríobhtar
fúd annso.
Anno Christi
(2) [296.4]: 983 Aodh Ua Dubda, rí thuaisgirt Connacht uile, d’éacc.
AT, 236: Aed Ua Dubda, rí tuaisceirt Con[n]acht uile, mortuus est.

AFM, ii, 716: Aodh Ua Dubhda, tighearna Thuaiscgeirt Connacht uile,
do écc.
(3) [296.5]: 1005 Maolruanaidh Ua Dubda, rí Ua Fiachrach Muirsge.
AU, 1006.2: Mael Ruanaidh Ua Dubtai ocus a mac Mael Sechlainn ocus
a brathair Geibennach, mortui sunt.
AFM, ii, 754: Maolruanaidh, mac Aedha, Uí Dubhda, tighearna Ua
Fiachrach Muiriscce accus a mhac .i. Maolseachlainn,
accus a bhrathair .i. Gebhendach mac Aedha, d’ég.
(4) [296.6]: 1096 Muircheartach Ua Dubda, ri Ua nAmalghaid agus

Ua fFiachrach agus Ceara occisus est.
AU, 1096.5: Muircertach Ua Dubhdai, ri Ua nAmhalgadha, do

marbhadh a suis.
AT, 322: Muirchertach Ua Dubda, rí Ua nAmalgaidh ocus Ua
Fiachrach ocus Chera tre thang[n]acht a suis occisus est.
AFM, ii, 952–4: Muircheartach .i. An Cullach, Ua Dubhda, tighearna Ua
nAmhalgadha, do mharbhadh lá a chenél féin.
(5) [296.7]: 1126 Domhnall Fionn Ua Dubda, ri Ua nAmalghaidh, Ua

Fiachrach, agus Ceara, do badhadh ag t(h)abairt
creche a Tír Conuill.
AU, 1126.6: Domnall Ua Dubhdai, do badhudh iar ndenam creichi i Tir

Conaill.
AT, 353: Domnall Find Ua Dubda, rí O nAmalgaidh ocus O
Fiachrach ocus Cera, do bathadh ac tabairt creche a Tir
Conaill .i. an duine nach tuc éra ar neach riam.
AFM, ii, 1024: Domhnall Finn Ua Dubhda, tighearna Ua nAmhalghadha,
do bhádhadh iar ndénamh creche hi tTír Chonaill.
(6) [296.8]: 1143 Aodh mac Muircheartaigh Uí Dhubda, rí Ua

nAmhalghaid agus Ua fFiachrach an Tuaisgirt.
AT, 377: Aedh mac Muircertaigh Uí Dubda, rí Ua nAmalgaidh ocus

Ua Fiachrach, mortuus est.
AFM, ii, 1070: Aodh, mac Muirchearta[i]gh, Uí Dhúbhda, tighearna Ua
Fiachrach an Tuaisceirt accus Ua nAmhalghadha, d’ég.
(7) [296.9]: Ruaidhri Mear mac Tailtigh mec Nell Ui Dubh[da],

rí o Roba go Codnuigh.
(8) [296.10]: 1162 An Cosnamuigh Ua Dubda, tigearna Ua nAmalghada,

occisus [est].
AU, ii, 142: An Cosnomhaidh Ua Dubda occissus est.

AFM, ii, 1150: An Cosnamhaigh Ua Dubhda, tighearna Ua nAmhalgadha,
do mharbhadh lá a derbhfhine.
(9) [296.11]: 1180 Isin bliadhain-si teasda Sadbh, inghean Mhuirgeasa

meic Taidg [.i.] uí Maoilruanaidh, bean Taithligh Uí
Dubda, ’gá raibhe ó Rodba go Chodhnuigh.
(10) [296.12]: 1181 An Cosnamhaigh mac an Chosnamhaigh Uí Dubda,

rigdamna Ua nAmalghaidh, occisus [est].
(11) [296.13]: 1213 Donnchad Ua <Dubda> go ccoblach 56 long a

hInsibh Gall gur gabh cuan in Inis Raithin ar Insibh
Modh in Umhull, gur bhean a fhearann fén saor gan
chain do Chathal Croibdhearg Ua Conchabair.
(12) [296.14]: 1242 Brian Dearg (Ua Dubda) mac Donnchuidh, rí Ua

Fiachrach, Ua nAmalghaidh, agus Iorruis, occisus
[est].
AC, 1242.6: Brian mac Dondchada Uí Dubda, ri Ua Fiachrach acus Ua

nAmalgaid acus Irrais, do marbad ar sligid ac dol da oilitri
co Manestir na Baille.
AFM, iii, 304: Brian mac Donnchaidh Uí Dubda, tighearna Ua
fFiachrach accus Ua nAmhalgadha accus Iorrais, do
mharbhadh ar slicchidh acc dol dá oilithre co Mainistir na
Búille.
(13) [296.15]: 1282 Taithleach mac Maolruanaidh Uí Dubda, ri Ua

fFiachrach agus Ua nAmalghaidh, occisus [est].
AU, ii, 360: Cath eter na Bairedachaibh ocus in Cimsógach, dú in

romebaidh ar na Bairedachaibh ocus dar marbadh ann
Uilliam Baired ocus Adam Pleimenn ocus daine imda aili,
ocus do badur dias Gaidhelach ar leth in Cimsogaigh do
chinnset ar bheoghacht ocus ar lamhach ar moran do
dainibh ailibh .i. Taichlech O Dubhda ocus Taichleach O
Baighill.
AC, 1282.3: Taichlech mac Maelruanaigh Uí Dhubhda, rí Ua
Fiachrach, in duine rob ferr einech ocus e[n]gnum ocus
innsoighidh do Gaidhelaibh do bí i n-a aimsir, a marbad le
hAdam Cimsóg ar Traigh Eothaille.
AC, 1281.4: Cath eli … etir na Baretachaib acus na Cimsocachaib,…
acus ro marbad ann Uilliam Baret acus Adam Plemend acus
daine imda eli, acus do bi dias do Gaidilaib ann sin do leth
in Chimsogaig do chind ar luth acus ar lamach do chach uli
.i. Taithlech Ua Dubda acus Taithleach Ua Baigill.
AC, 1282.3: Taithlech mac Maelruanaig Uí Dubda, ri Ua Fiachrach
Muade, in fer rob ferr enech acus engnam, robo mo
cendaircc ocus continn re Gallaib ocus re Danaraib ima
duthaig ica diten, do marbad la hAdam Cimsocc ar Trachd
nEothaile an tShair.
AFM, iii, 436: Taichleach mac Maolruanaidh Uí Dhúbhda, ticchearna Ua
fFiachrach, aon do bfearr eneach accus ionnsaicchidh da
chineadh ina aimsir do mharbhadh la hAdam Ciomhsócc ar
Traicch Eothaile.
(14) [296.16]: 1291 Conchabar Conallach Ua Dubda, tighearna Ua

fFiachrach, do badhadh ar Sionuinn.
AU, ii, 376: Concobur Ua Dubhda, ri Ua Fiachrach, do bathadh ar in

tSinainn.
AC, 1291.5: Conchobar Ua Dubta, ri Ua Fiachrach, do badad for
Sinainn ic techt i coinne inn Iarla cetna [.i. Iarla Ulad].
AFM, iii, 452: Conchobhar Ó Dubhda (.i. Concobhar Conallach),
ticchearna Ua fFiachrach, do bathadh ar an Sionainn.
(15) [296.17]: 1337 Donnchadh Mor Ua Dubda, adba(i)r riogh Ua

fFiachrach, d’éacc.
AFM, iii, 562: Donnchadh Mór O Dubda, tanaisi Ua bFiachrach, do écc.
(16) [296.18]: 1350 Uilliam Ua Dubda, easbog Cille hAlaidh, do éacc.
AFM, iii, 596: Uilliam Ó Dubhda, epscop Chill hAladh, fear tógbhala ceall
accus neimheadh, saoí dhiadha, dehercach, dhaonnachtach,
do écc.
(AU, ii, 506–7n: William O’Dowda, canon and acolyte, … appointed by
Clement VI, 26 June 1346.)
James the Usurper of Desmond and the origins

of the Talbot–Ormond feud
P E T E R C RO O K S
Is this the scourge of Ireland?

Is this the Talbot, so much fear’d abroad,
That with his name the mothers still their babes?1
It was, of course, not in Ireland but in France that Sir John Talbot (d. 1453),
Lord Furnival and later earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford,2 secured the
fearsome reputation that inspired the taunts of the countess of Auvergne in
Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 1.3 But our honorand – a famous stickler for
accuracy – might be persuaded to forgive this particular misquotation, because
long before Talbot earned renown in the latter phases of the Hundred Years War
as the ‘scourge of France’, he was already the terror of Gaelic princes and poets.4
Talbot was, in the venomous words of a Gaelic annalist, ‘a son of maledictions
for malice and a devil for evils … and what the learned of Ireland say of him is
that there came not from Herod, by whom was crucified Christ, downwards one
so bad for ill deeds’.5
Sir John Talbot’s appointment as the king’s lieutenant in Ireland, on 24
February 1414,6 heralded an association between his family and Ireland that was
to last until the mid-point of the fifteenth century. His first tour of duty as
lieutenant from 1414 to 1420 was notable for the inauguration of a long-running
antagonism with the leading noble house of English Ireland: the Butlers of
Ormond.7 The principals to this conflict were Sir John Talbot himself and James
1 Misquoted from William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1, act 2, scene 3. 2 Sir John became
sixth baron Talbot in 1421, and was later created earl of Shrewsbury (1442) and earl of
Waterford (1446). See CP, v, pp 591–2; xi, pp 698–703; xii/1, p. 620; xii/2, p. 419. 3 For
discussion of the scene, see James A. Riddell, ‘Talbot and the countess of Auvergne’,
Shakespeare Quarterly, 28:1 (1977), 51–7. 4 For Talbot’s career in France, see A.J. Pollard,
John Talbot and the war in France, 1427–1453 (London, 1983). On the development of Talbot’s
reputation in the century before Shakespeare wrote Henry VI, Part 1, see Matthew Woodcock,
‘John Talbot, terror of the French: a continuing tradition’, Notes and Queries, 51:3 (Sept.
2004), 249–51. 5 AU, iii, p. 161. The passage has more usually been quoted from the
rendering by O’Donovan in AFM, iv, p. 953 n. x: ‘Furnival was a son of curses for his venom,
and a devil for his evils, and the learned say of him that there came not from the time of
Herod, by whom Christ was crucified, any one so wicked in evil deeds’. 6 CPR, 1413–16,
p. 164. 7 For the Talbot–Ormond feud in the period 1420–52, see E.A.E. Matthew, ‘The
governing of the Lancastrian lordship of Ireland in the time of James Butler, fourth earl of
Ormond, c.1420–52’ (PhD, Durham, 1994), pt 2. Some documents of importance are printed
in an appendix to Margaret Griffith, ‘The Talbot–Ormond struggle for control of the Anglo-
Irish government, 1414–1447’, IHS, 2:8 (1941), 376–97. There are also details in Otway-
159
160 Peter Crooks
Butler, the fourth or ‘white’ earl of Ormond (d. 1452). These two men had much
in common. They were both relatively young, being near contemporaries of
King Henry V.8 Both had a background of service in the military enterprises of
the Lancastrian dynasty. Both were to act as the king’s lieutenant in Ireland. And
both were among that increasingly rare breed of magnate who held extensive
possessions on both sides of the Irish Sea.9 The conflict that arose between them,
therefore, requires some explanation.
One point on which the factions differed was in their respective attitudes to
the Gaelic learned orders. Talbot’s predecessor as lieutenant of Ireland, Sir John
Stanley, had died in office on 8 January 1414,10 reputedly from the ‘venom of the
lampoons’ of Gaelic poets.11 Accordingly, after Talbot arrived in Ireland on 10
November 1414, he launched a series of expeditions against several of the more
eminent poets of Munster, Meath and Leinster.12 As Katharine Simms has
remarked,
Either Talbot believed the tale of Sir John Stanley’s assassination by satire
and wished to wreak vengeance on the poets of Ireland, or, as seems more
likely, he feared the story lent them a spurious credibility and hoped to
undermine their pernicious influence by demonstrably surviving
unscathed after a series of outrages against their order.13
Ormond, by contrast, projected his power in part through the patronage of

Gaelic poets. This is not to deny that the English court was a focus for Ormond’s
aspirations and that competition with the Talbots for control of the high offices
in the administration of Ireland was intense. So much is clear from the many
Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 348–58; Ir. parl., pp 170–3, 200–2; R.A. Griffiths, The reign of Henry
VI: the exercise of royal authority, 1422–1461 (2nd ed., Stroud, 1998), pp 162–7, 411–19.
8 The fourth earl of Ormond was born c.1390: Matthew, ‘Butler, James, fourth earl of
Ormond’, ODNB. King Henry V and Sir John Talbot were both born c.1387: Christopher
Allmand, Henry V (New Haven and London, 1997), pp 7–8; Pollard, John Talbot and the war
in France, p. 7. 9 The Talbot family claimed the liberty of Wexford by descent from John
Hastings, earl of Pembroke (d. 1389), while through his wife Sir John Talbot, as Lord Furnival,
inherited lands at Loughsewdy, Co. Westmeath: see R. Ian Jack, ‘Entail and descent: the
Hastings inheritance, 1370 to 1436’, BIHR, 38:97 (1965), 1–19; A.J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘The
partition of the de Verdon lands in Ireland in 1332’, PRIA, 66C5 (1968), 417; A.J. Pollard,
‘The family of Talbot, lords Talbot and earls of Shrewsbury in the fifteenth century’ (PhD,
Bristol, 1968), pp 103–6. 10 Stanley landed in Ireland on 25 Sept. 1413 (see below, n. 88)
and on 1 Jan. 1414 he was at Ardee, Co. Louth: CPR, 1413–16, p. 253. According to the
chronicle of Henry Marlborough, Stanley died a week later on 6 ides Jan. (i.e., 8 Jan. 1414):
Bibliothèque Municipale de Troyes, MS 1316, fo. 52. The date of 18 Jan. 1414 given in NHI,
ix, p. 476, comes from the translation produced by James Ware (Marlborough, ‘Chronicle’, p.
218) in which the date seems to have been calculated by counting forward from the ides.
Another edition ignores the reference to the ides altogether and gives the date of Stanley’s
death in error as 6 Jan. 1414: William Camden, Britannia […] (London, 1607), p. 834.
11 AC, s.a. 1414.16. 12 AC, s.a. 1415.2. 13 Katharine Simms, ‘Bards and barons: the
Anglo-Irish aristocracy and the native culture’ in Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay (eds),
ORMOND
1. James I (d. 1338)
TALBOT/SHREWSBURY
2. James II (d. 1382) Pernel = Gilbert (d. 1387) 3rd lord Talbot
DESMOND
3. Gerald (d. 1398) = Eleanor
Richard (d. 1396) 4th lord Talbot
4. John Maurice 6. James (d. 1463) Katherine of 3. James III (d. 1405) = Anne Welles
(d. 1399) (d. 1401) ‘The Usurper’ Desmond
Gilbert (d. 1418) 1. John (d. 1453) Richard (d. 1449) Thomas
5th lord Talbot 6th lord Talbot & Archbishop of Dublin
5. Thomas (d. 1420) 1st earl of Shrewsbury
Maurice Earls of Desmond Thomas Butler (d. 1419)

Prior of Kilmainham
KILDARE
Fitzgeralds of Broghill William Beauchamp Gerald (d. 1432)
(d. 1411) 5th earl of Kildare
Joan (d. 1430) (1) = 4. James IV (d. 1452) = (2) Elizabeth (d. 1452) Richard
‘White Earl’
James Gallda Edmund Gerald Theobald
(d. 1448) Edmund (d. 1464)
Butlers of Cahir Butlers of Polestown/Pottlesrath
5. James V ‘Ormond’ (d. 1461) 6. John (d. 1477) 7. Thomas (d. 1515) Elizabeth (d. 1473) = 2. John (d. 1473)
Earl of Wiltshire 2nd earl Shrewsbury
10.1 Genealogical table of the earls of Desmond, Ormond, Kildare and Shrewsbury.
James the Usurper of Desmond and the origins of the Talbot–Ormond feud 161
162 Peter Crooks
surviving petitions and counter-petitions that trumpet the virtues of one party
and decry the excesses of another. But a less formulaic glimpse of the cut and
thrust of curial politicking comes from the poem composed by Tadhg Óg Ó
hUiginn to celebrate Ormond’s return to Ireland c.1447 after facing down his
critics at court.14 This source is interesting precisely because such praise-poems
were ‘tailor-made to reflect the individual patron’s preoccupations’.15 The poet
describes the machinations of Ormond’s enemies, including their efforts to bring
about his removal from the office of chief governor of Ireland and his summons
before the king’s council in England:
A secret plot was formed by some Saxons against Séamus [that is, James,
fourth earl of Ormond]; they wished to banish him from Éire; the plot
injured Fódla [that is, Ireland] as well as Séamus.
The only set-back which I can recall being inflicted on his power is that the
earl of Ormond suffered eclipse for a year.
By the wickedness of the Goill he was out of office for a time, and Éire was,
as it were, given over to the rule of the nobles of the Gaoidhil.16
Taken together, the content and form of the poem confirm that Ormond was an
Englishman able to operate at many points along the cultural continuum that
stretched from the Gaelic frontier to Dublin and thence to Westminster.17
Divergences in cultural outlook go some way towards explaining how the
enmity between the Talbot and Ormond factions in Ireland was sustained until
the mid-fifteenth century. Attitudinal differences are not, however, entirely
satisfactory as an explanation for the growth of discord in the first place. The
purpose of the present essay is twofold. First, I seek to trace the course of the
conflict as it unfolded in the reign of King Henry V. Second, I argue that if we
are to seek a single bone of contention then it may perhaps be located amid the
byzantine politics of the resident aristocracy of English Ireland. The Talbot–
Medieval frontier societies (Oxford, 1989), p. 184. 14 For discussions of the poem, which
reach rather different conclusions, see Simms, ‘Bards and barons’, pp 186–7; Matthew,
‘Governing Lancastrian Ireland’, pp 413–20. For the poet, see Lambert McKenna (ed.),
Aithdioghluim dána: a miscellany of Irish bardic poetry (2 vols, Dublin, 1939–40), i, p. xxxv.
15 Simms, ‘Bards and barons’, p. 178. See also Katharine Simms, ‘Bardic poetry as historical
source’ in Tom Dunne (ed.), The writer as witness: literature as historical source (Cork, 1987),
pp 60–7. There are further contextualizing comments on the genre in Katharine Simms,
‘Literary sources for the history of Gaelic Ireland in the post-Norman period’ in Kim
McCone and Katharine Simms (eds), Progress in medieval Irish studies (Maynooth, 1996), pp
207–15; and Katharine Simms, Medieval Gaelic sources (Dublin, 2009), ch. 3. 16 McKenna
(ed.), Aithdioghluim dána, ii, no. 36, pp 84–5. 17 This emerges also from the seigneurial
ordinances of the White Earl, which regulated the imposition of ‘coign’ [coinnmheadh] in
Tipperary and Kilkenny, for discussion of which, see C.A. Empey and Katharine Simms,
‘The ordinances of the White Earl and the problem of coign in the later Middle Ages’, PRIA,
Ormond feud can only be properly understood against the backdrop of the
protracted factional conflict between the Butlers of Ormond and the Geraldines
of Desmond. At the heart of the drama is a wicked uncle, the Geraldine leader
James ‘the Usurper’ (d. 1463), who expelled his nephew Thomas (d. 1420) from
the earldom of Desmond in 1411. Recognition of James the Usurper was, I
argue, the major point at issue between the Talbots and Butlers in the ensuing
decade.
When Sir John Talbot landed in Ireland on 10 November 1414 there was little
reason to suspect that his dealings with the Butler family would descend into the
acrimony that was to dominate affairs of state in colonial Ireland until the mid-
1440s. Indeed, the choice of Talbot as lieutenant may have been considered
appropriate in part because of the blood relationship that existed between the
Talbots and the Butlers of Ormond.18 Before 1352, Pernel Butler – a daughter of
James, first earl of Ormond (d. 1338), great-grandfather of the White Earl – had
married Gilbert, third Lord Talbot (d. 1387), grandfather of the ‘scourge of
France’.19 The marriage brought the interests of the two families together, and
we find them in the records of the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries
acting as agents and attorneys for each other.20 Upon Talbot’s arrival in Ireland,
these ties of blood and friendship were reinforced. On 2 February 1415, Ormond
entered an indenture with Talbot by the terms of which he was to serve with the
lieutenant in Ireland for one year with all his defensible men, on horse and foot,
at a fee of £100.21 In the same month, Ormond benefited from a rush of
patronage, including £10 per year from the fee-farm of the city of Waterford,22
and custody of a moiety of the manor of Inchiquin and the town of Youghal.23 So
far, so cordial. There were, however, some other straws in the wind. Ormond was
75C8 (1975), 161–87. 18 In the Westminster parliament of Oct. 1423, the antagonistic Talbot
and Butler parties were exhorted to recall their ‘mutual links of consanguinity’ and to establish
a ‘perfect link of love and harmony between these our lieges, connected by so close a blood
relationship’: Anne Curry (ed.), ‘Henry VI: parliament of October 1423, text and translation’
in Chris Given-Wilson (ed.), The parliament rolls of medieval England, 1275–1504 (16 vols,
Woodbridge, 2005), available online at http://www.sd-editions.com/PROME [hereafter
PROME], item 9. 19 CP, xii, pt 1, p. 615. See also the genealogical table that accompanies
this essay. 20 Peter Crooks, ‘Factionalism and noble power in English Ireland, c.1361–1423’
(PhD, TCD, 2007), pp 320–3. 21 East Riding of Yorkshire County Record Office (Beverley),
DDx 152/50 (=appendix 10.1.1). The indenture is of special interest because it makes
provision for the ransoming of captured Irish chieftains. The term of one year from 2 Feb.
1415 means that it is unlikely that Ormond fought (as tradition has it) at the Battle of
Agincourt on 25 Oct. 1415. Elizabeth Matthew reaches the same conclusion, arguing from
different evidence, in Matthew, ‘Governing Lancastrian Ireland’, pp 111–12. 22 RCH, p.
207, no. 142; Rot. selecti, p. 70. 23 RCH, p. 208, nos 143, 155; Rot. selecti, p. 64. Ormond
already held the other moiety in his own right, so this grant brought the entire territory under
164 Peter Crooks
later to complain that he had served in five expeditions with Talbot, in the course
of which he claimed to have lost some £300 worth of men and horses.24 More
ominously, an investigation got underway at the Irish exchequer during February
1415 as to the relief that Ormond owed the king for gaining livery of his Irish
lands. The earl’s protests that all such debts had been pardoned were dismissed
as insufficient.25 Notwithstanding the exchequer’s harassment of Ormond, the
breakdown in his relationship with Talbot came later. Butler adherents were still
finding favour early in February 1416, as the term of one year’s military service
specified in Ormond’s indenture came to a close. On 4 February 1416, Robert
Haubryk, one of those to whom custody of the Butler estates had been entrusted
in 1407 during Ormond’s minority,26 was granted a ship called La Trinité of the
port of New Ross;27 while two days later Patrick White, a servant of Ormond’s
half-brother Thomas Butler, prior of the Kilmainham, was granted a pardon for
treasons.28 On the following day, 7 February 1416, Talbot set sail for England at
Clontarf, Co. Dublin.29 It would seem, then, that Ormond and Talbot remained
on good terms throughout the latter’s first period of residence in Ireland.
Matters were rather different a year later. Talbot returned to Ireland in the
latter half of 1416.30 At a parliament held at Dublin in January 1417, the
archbishop of Dublin, Thomas Cranley, was elected as a messenger to King
Henry V of England.31 The precise nature of Cranley’s mission is unspecified,
but it was almost certainly critical of Talbot.32 Cranley’s message was ‘made out
by certain engrossers appointed thereto by authority of the said parliament’; but
the chancellor of Ireland, Sir Laurence Merbury, refused to affix the great seal
of Ireland to the message. Merbury was a retainer and annuitant of Talbot, and
so his refusal cannot be considered the action of an impartial royal minister.33
his control. Ormond’s acquisition of the various purparties of these lands is traced in A.F.
O’Brien, ‘The territorial ambitions of Maurice fitz Thomas, first earl of Desmond, with
particular reference to the barony and manor of Inchiquin, Co. Cork’, PRIA, 82C3 (1982),
80–3. 24 TNA (PRO), C47/10/27, m. 1 (printed in Griffith, ‘The Talbot–Ormond
struggle’, p. 393, item 1). The details of these expeditions can be reconstructed from annalistic
sources (AC, s.a. 1415.2; AU, iii, pp 68–9; AFM, iv, pp 820–1; ALC, ii, pp 144–5) and a letter
sent to the king in 1417 (Ellis, Original letters, i, letter xix, pp 54–63). 25 NAI, RC 8/36, pp
102–4 (printed in C.A. Empey, ‘The Butler lordship in Ireland, 1185–1515’ (2 vols, PhD,
TCD, 1970), i, appendix 5, no. 1, p. xxxi). See also NAI, RC 8/36, pp 113–15, for another case
that arose during the first half of 1415 concerning arrears of accounts owed by Ormond for
the office of sheriff of Co. Cork, granted to his father on 28 May 1400. 26 COD, ii, no. 389.
Haubryg was still benefiting from Ormond’s patronage in 1420: see Parls & councils, pt 2, pp
188–9. 27 RCH, p. 213, no. 114. 28 RCH, p. 212, no. 82. For Prior Thomas Butler, see
below, n. 40. 29 RCH, p. 212, no. 102. 30 AC, s.a. 1416.16; AFM, iv, pp 828–9; Matthew,
‘Governing Lancastrian Ireland’, p. 484 n. 11. 31 9 Hen. V [Ire.], c. 5 (Statutes John–Hen V,
pp 566–7). 32 In a letter to John duke of Bedford, dated 11 July 1417, Talbot refers to the
allegations made at court by persons ill-disposed towards him (mes nient bienveillantz): BL,
Cotton B.xI, no. 31 (=appendix 10.1.2). Cranley’s message of 1417 presumably included
complaints about Talbot’s ‘divers oppressions and extortions’ to which the Irish parliament
was again to refer in 1421. See 9 Hen. V [Ire.], c. 9 (Statutes John–Hen V, pp 570–1). 33
Pollard, ‘Family of Talbot’, appendix 3, ‘Prominent members of John Talbot’s affinity’, p. 417.
Talbot seems to have been anxious both to defend his reputation and to forestall
further attacks. In a letter to Henry V dated 26 June 1417, an impressive list of
the king’s ‘humble lieges’ testified to Talbot’s manifold achievements and his
‘good & gratious government’ as lieutenant of Ireland.34 Yet the roll-call of
prelates, magnates and commons was not entirely representative, being weighted
towards the communities of Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Louth.35 Conspicuously
absent were associates of the Butler family. This may have been no accident. By
this time, Talbot’s relationship with the Butlers was in the process of breaking
down. The conflict became overt on 18 July 1417, when all Ormond’s lands in
Ireland were seized into the king’s hands on the basis of his outstanding debts to
the king.36
Talbot’s seizure of the Butler estates brought matters to the brink. Rich
details of the course of events between the autumn of 1417 and June 1418 are
supplied by a report that Talbot subsequently sent to England to explain the
actions of his administration.37 Its contents have been described more than
once.38 There were two interrelated strands of discord. The more prominent was
the Talbot–Ormond rivalry. The White Earl himself had left Ireland in 1416,39
and in his absence the Butler interest was represented by his half-brother, Prior
Thomas Butler of Kilmainham.40 A substratum of factional conflict increased
the pressure and caused the fissures between the Talbots and Butlers to rupture
into an open breach. Prior Thomas Butler found himself embroiled during
The chancellor’s opposition notwithstanding, Cranley departed for England on 30 Apr. 1417,
dying at Faringdon, Berkshire, on 25 May 1417: Troyes, MS 1316, fo. 52v; The book of obits
and martyrology of the cathedral church of the Holy Trinity, commonly called Christ Church,
Dublin, ed. John Clarke Crosthwaite (Dublin, 1844), p. 26. 34 Ellis, Original letters, i, letter
xix, pp 54–63. 35 ‘Priell’ in the text of the letter should read ‘Uriell’, i.e. Co. Louth (ibid.,
p. 62). 36 NAI, RC 8/36, pp 170–3 (printed in Empey, ‘Butler lordship in Ireland’,
appendix v, no. 2, p. xxxii). The Butler estates nearest to Dublin were the easiest for Talbot to
seize, and the memoranda rolls reveal the arrangements made for their custody. On 9 Oct.
1417, the prisage of wines was granted to John Coryngham (NAI, RC 8/37, pp 20–1); and on
12 Oct. 1417, a receiver was appointed for the Butler manors of Cloncurry, Oughterard and
Donaghdea, Co. Kildare (NAI, RC 8/37, pp 21–2), and for Blackcastle and Donaghmore, Co.
Meath (NAI, RC 8/37, pp 23–4). ‘Blake Castell’ (barony of Lower Navan, Co. Meath) had
been granted to James, third earl of Ormond (d. 1405), by Sir John Stanley (d. 1414): NLI, D
1384/1 (=COD, ii, no. 340, item 1). A transcript of this grant in a late hand is NLI, D 1044.
In his calendar of the latter document (COD, ii. no. 68 at p. 62), Curtis misread the regnal year
in the dating clause as 6 July [1349] 23 Edward III, as opposed to the true date of 6 July [1399]
23 Richard II, exactly half a century later. 37 TNA (PRO), E 163/7/12; a detached
membrane of the same document has survived as TNA (PRO), E 101/698/34. Both MSS
have been printed in modern editions: A.J. Otway-Ruthven (ed.), ‘The background to the
arrest of Sir Christopher Preston in 1418’, AH, 29 (1980), 73–94 (hereafter, Otway-Ruthven,
‘Arrest’); Peter Crooks (ed.), ‘The background to the arrest of the fifth earl of Kildare and Sir
Christopher Preston in 1418: a missing membrane’, AH, 40 (2007), 1–15 (hereafter, Crooks,
‘Missing membrane’). 38 Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire. (2nd ed.), p. 354; Crooks, ‘Missing
membrane’, pp 3–10. 39 Ormond’s movements and service in France between 1412 and 1420
are carefully traced in Matthew, ‘Governing Lancastrian Ireland’, pp 111–15. 40 T. Blake
Butler, ‘Thomas le Botiller, prior of Kilmainham, 1403–1419’, Ir. Geneal., 1 (1937–42), 362–72.
166 Peter Crooks
1417–18 with Walter Burke (de Burgh), a disaffected member of the Burkes of
Clanwilliam of west Tipperary and east Limerick descended from Sir Edmund
de Burgh (d. 1338), a younger son of Richard, the Red Earl of Ulster (d. 1326).41
This Walter Burke was later described as ‘the most rebell of Irelond for malys of
the sayd Erle [of Ormond]’,42 and it was he who had vigorously attacked Co.
Kilkenny in 1407 in alliance with Tadhg Ó Cearbhaill of Éile, only to be put to
flight at Callan by an army led by the then chief governor Sir Stephen Scrope.43
It seems likely that, after the seizure of Ormond’s estates in 1417, Burke took the
opportunity to assault the Butler lordship again.
Towards the end of August 1417, Talbot began a southward itinerary from
Dublin, passing through the towns of Kilkenny, Clonmel and Waterford.44
Ostensibly, his journey was intended to compose the discord between Prior
Thomas Butler and Walter Burke by exacting pledges from each for their good
behaviour.45 A secondary motive was presumably to assert his authority over the
estates of the earldom of Ormond, which had so recently been seized into the
king’s hand. Talbot had reached the city of Waterford by 20 September 1417,
where in the cathedral he received Walter Burke into the king’s peace.46 This
outraged the Butlers and tipped the colony into crisis.47 The winter of 1417–18
was dominated by the vain attempts of the lieutenant to bring Prior Thomas
Butler before sessions of the Irish great council or parliament to answer for
breaches of the king’s peace. Talbot left Ireland in February 1418 with these
issues unresolved. He did not return until 10 July 1418.48 His mission was partly
with the purpose of securing the arrears of pay owed to him as lieutenant;49 but
it is also likely that he sought a remedy for the situation he had left behind him
in Ireland. On 3 June 1418, at the abbey of Bec Hellouin in Normandy, Henry V
issued a warrant arranging for shipping to bring the prior of Kilmainham to
France with a company of two hundred horse and three hundred foot.50 The
41 For this family, see Denis G. Marnane, Land and settlement: a history of west Tipperary to
1660 (Tipperary, 2003), p. 203. For a genealogy of the Burkes of Clanwilliam, see S.H.
O’Grady (ed.), Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh (2 vols, Dublin, 1929), ii, pp 169–71. 42 TNA
(PRO), C 47/10/27, m. 1 (printed in Griffith, ‘The Talbot–Ormond struggle’, p. 393, item
5). 43 Troyes, MS 1316, fo. 51. The sequence of events in 1407 is reconstructed in Crooks,
‘Factionalism and noble power’, pp 307–9. 44 Talbot mentions that his expedition to
Munster took place before Michaelmas 1417 in a letter sent to John duke of Bedford in Oct.
1417: BL, Cotton Titus B.xI, pt 1, no. 46 (=appendix 10.1.3). His itinerary is described in
more detail in Otway-Ruthven, ‘Arrest’, 75–6, 86–7. Independent evidence confirms that
Talbot was testing letters at Naas on 30 Aug. (NLI, D 15844; =Dowdall deeds, no. 400), had
reached Kilkenny by 8 Sept. 1417 (NAI, RC 8/37, pp 189–91) and was at Waterford on 21
Sept. (NAI, RC 8/37, pp 188–9). 45 Otway-Ruthven, ‘Arrest’, 75–6. 46 Otway-Ruthven,
‘Arrest’, 76; BL, Cotton Titus B.xI, pt 1, no. 46 (=appendix 10.1.3). 47 Ormond was later
to complain that after Walter Burke was received into the king’s peace, Talbot encouraged him
to attack the Butler lordship: TNA (PRO), C 47/10/27, m. 1 (printed in Griffith, ‘The
Talbot–Ormond struggle’, p. 393, item 5). 48 TNA (PRO), E 101/698/34 (printed in
Crooks, ‘Missing membrane’, 15). 49 See BL, Cotton Titus B.xI, pt 1, no. 46 (=appendix
10.1.3). This letter was written on 25 Oct. 1417, a few months before Talbot’s departure from
Ireland. 50 TNA (PRO), C 81/1364/59. The full text of the record is in print, but it appears
prior probably arrived in Normandy late in November 1418,51 and he died there
on 10 August 1419.52 The salient point is that the decision to remove Prior
Thomas from the Irish stage was made even before the final act of the drama had
been played. On 24 June 1418, Sir Thomas Talbot, brother and deputy of the
lieutenant, arrested Gerald fitz Maurice, fifth earl of Kildare, and Sir
Christopher Preston at Clane, Co. Kildare.53 Henry Marlborough explains the
arrest with the enigmatic comment that ‘they sought to commune with the prior
of Kilmainham’.54 This can be taken as an oblique confirmation that Kildare and
Preston were sympathetic to Prior Thomas Butler and hostile towards the Talbot
regime. The result was that by June 1418 the lands of two of the colony’s three
resident earls – Ormond and Kildare – had been seized into royal hands, while
the earldom of Desmond (as we shall see) remained in the hands of a usurper.
From this perspective, Talbot’s lieutenancy appears as a disaster.55
II
What was the cause of all the commotion? One suggestion is that the ingredients
of Talbot–Ormond feud pre-dated Talbot’s arrival in Ireland. Late in 1413–14,
Talbot was involved in a major quarrel with his rival in Shropshire, Thomas earl
of Arundel (d. 1415). On 16 November 1413, as a consequence of his dispute
with Arundel, Talbot was compelled to make recognizances of £4,000 to
across two different publications: the French text appears in J.L. Kirby, Calendar of signet
letters of Henry IV and Henry V, 1399–1422 (London 1978), no. 836 (at p. 170); while the
English, in a different hand, is printed in John H. Fisher, Malcolm Richardson and Jane L.
Fisher (eds), An anthology of chancery English (Knoxville, TN, 1984), no. 30 (at p. 98). 51 A
commission addressed to the mayor of Southampton, concerning the passage to France of the
prior of Kilmainham and his company, is dated 27 Oct. 1418: CPR, 1416–22, p. 202. On 7
Dec. 1418, a commission of array was issued for ‘John [recte Thomas] Potillere, prior of St
John of Jerusalem in Ireland and all Irishmen in his service’: ‘Calendar of Norman rolls’,
Forty-First Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (1880), appendix i, p. 720.
52 Troyes, MS 1316, fo. 53; Crosthwaite (ed.), Book of obits […] Christ Church, Dublin, p. 36.
His death is also reported in the Gaelic annals: AC, s.a. 1419.5; AU, iii, pp 82–3; ALC, ii, pp
148–9; AFM, iv, pp 840–1. Mac Fhir Bhisigh states that he died at Rouen, but his genealogy
is not entirely reliable. He states, for instance, that Prior Thomas attained the dignity of
primate of Armagh, which is untrue: LMG, iii, pp 140–1, no. 813.1; pp 738–9, no. 1390.3.
53 Troyes, MS 1316, fos 52v–53. Otway-Ruthven reverses the order of events, so that Prior
Thomas’ summons to Normandy seems to be prompted by the arrests: Otway-Ruthven, Med.
Ire., p. 355. She is followed in this by David Beresford, ‘The Butlers in England and Ireland,
1405–1515’ (PhD, TCD, 1999), p. 48. After their arrest, Kildare and Preston were then taken
to the castle of Trim and they were later forced to enter recognizances of 1,000 marks and 50
marks respectively for their appearance before the king at Westminster at Hilary 1419: Otway-
Ruthven, ‘Arrest’, 74. 54 I have followed the translation in Marlborough, Chronicle, pp 219–
20. The Latin text runs ‘qui voluerunt loqui cum Priore de Kylmainan’: Troyes, MS 1316, fos
52v–53. 55 Comparable, in certain respects, to the justiciarship of Ralph Ufford, for which
see Robin Frame, ‘The justiciarship of Ralph Ufford: warfare and politics in fourteenth-
168 Peter Crooks
maintain the peace, and he was arrested and briefly confined in the Tower of
London.56 Talbot’s appointment as lieutenant of Ireland on 24 February 1414 has
been interpreted as a ploy made under pressure from Arundel to remove Talbot
from the English political scene and allow him to ‘cool his heels’ in Ireland.57
The White Earl of Ormond had recently married Arundel’s niece, Joan
Beauchamp. Consequently, it has been suggested that an unfortunate side-effect
of Talbot’s appointment as lieutenant was that the Arundel–Talbot quarrel was
exported to Ireland.58 It is certainly possible that Ormond’s Beauchamp
affiliations subsequently hardened Ormond in his hostility to Talbot; but the
patronage that Talbot lavished on Ormond early in 1415 suggests that their
relationship was not acrimonious from the outset. The point of contention is,
therefore, to be sought after 1415 and within the colony.
If any pre-existing antagonism sparked the enmity between Talbot and
Ormond, then it seems likely that it was the rancorous relationship between the
earls of Ormond and their neighbouring comital house in Munster, the
Geraldines of Desmond. Tensions between these families dated back to at least
the 1350s.59 The conflict reached a high-point in 1396 when the brother of James,
third earl of Ormond (d. 1405), was killed by one ‘Shane fitz Thomas’ at
Waterford.60 Reprisals followed in the form of a brief but destructive war
century Ireland’, Studia Hibernica, 13 (1973), 7–47. 56 CCR, 1413–19, pp 97–9; Calendar of
signet letters, no. 772. The dispute is described in Edward Powell, ‘Proceedings before justices
of the peace at Shrewsbury in 1414: a supplement to the Shropshire peace roll’, EHR, 91:392
(1984), 535–41; idem, ‘The restoration of law and order’ in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: the
practice of kingship (Oxford, 1985), esp. pp 69–72; idem, Kingship, law and society: criminal
justice in the reign of Henry V (Oxford, 1989), pp 220–3. 57 Powell, ‘Proceedings before
justices of the peace at Shrewsbury in 1414’, 539; idem, Kingship, p. 223 (quotation).
58 Matthew, ‘Governing Lancastrian Ireland’, pp 115–16. 59 For the earlier stages of the
conflict between the Geraldines and Butlers, see Peter Crooks, ‘“Hobbes”, “dogs” and politics
in the Ireland of Lionel of Antwerp, c.1361–6’, Haskins Society Journal, 19 (2005), 117–48;
Crooks, ‘The “calculus of faction” and Richard II’s duchy of Ireland, c.1382–9’ in Nigel Saul
(ed.), Fourteenth Century England, 5 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp 94–115. More generally, see Peter
Crooks, ‘Factions, feuds and noble power in the lordship of Ireland, c.1356–1496’, IHS, 35:140
(2007), 425–54. 60 The annals give the name of the perpetrator as ‘Shane [or, in another
version, ‘Johannes’] fitz Thomas’: ‘Annales Anonymi’ in K.W. Nicholls (ed.), ‘Late medieval
Irish annals: two fragments’, Peritia, 2 (1983), 90, 92 n. b. He has been identified several times
as John, the future fourth earl of Desmond (d. 1399); but it is by no means certain that this
identification is correct. The fourth earl of Desmond’s father was Gerald (i.e. not Thomas).
There was a contemporary ‘John fitz Thomas fitz John Mac Gybon’ of Kilbolane who did
homage to the bishop of Cloyne in 1403: Paul MacCotter and K.W. Nicholls (eds), The pipe
roll of Cloyne: Rotulus Pipæ Clonensis (Cloyne, 1996), pp 128–31, 243–4. It is more probable,
however, that ‘Shane fitz Thomas’ came from the branch of the Desmond Geraldines that
descended in an illegitimate line from Sir Thomas ‘le Neve’, nephew of the first earl of
Desmond; this sept was known as Fitz Thomas (later MacThomas) and had its base in west
Waterford: see Paul MacCotter, ‘Lordship and colony in Anglo-Norman Kerry’, JKAHS, 2nd
ser., 1 (2004), 76 n. 56. This notice of Butler’s death can also be located in the calendared
version of the papers of Meredith Hanmer: Robert Pentland Mahaffy (ed.), Calendar of the
state papers relating to Ireland, 1601–3 (with addenda, 1565–1654) and of the Hanmer papers,
preserved in the Public Record Office (London, 1912), p. 686. The lost ‘Annals of Lecan’ record
between the two comital houses.61 Violence broke out again in 1399 during the
expedition of Richard II to Ireland, during which certain of the king’s magnates
reputedly attacked the son of the earl of Desmond – presumably John, fourth
earl of Desmond, who had only recently succeeded Gerald (d. 1398), the third
earl – and seized Dungarvan Castle from Geraldine hands. After plundering the
area surrounding the castle, they returned with their booty to the king, who was
then resident at Waterford.62 The Geraldines are said to have blamed James,
third earl of Ormond (d. 1405), for the seizure of Dungarvan, and in revenge for
that traitorous act Earl John and a great army of the Irish of Munster entered
Ormond’s lands where they laid waste to the greater part of the barony of Cahir.
At length, the two earls made peace and, while returning with his army,
Desmond was drowned in the River Suir near the ford of Ardfinnan.63
The drowning of the fourth earl of Desmond was the first in a succession of
misfortunes to blight the Desmond earldom in the early decades of the fifteenth
century. Earl John had a son named Thomas, who was around 14 years old at the
time of his father’s premature death and, according to some reports, of doubtful
legitimacy.64 Thomas also had rather too many uncles. On 29 May 1400, custody
of the Desmond inheritance was entrusted jointly to Thomas together with his
uncle, Maurice fitz Gerald, a brother of Earl John.65 It has been suggested that
this Maurice fitz Gerald gained official recognition as earl of Desmond,66 but the
evidence on which this conclusion is based – namely English letters patent of 17
March 1401 in which Maurice is styled ‘earl of Desmond’67 – must be treated
with circumspection. The letters were issued at the petition of John Hethe, a
Bristol merchant who traded frequently with Ireland.68 We cannot, however,
assume that Hethe had mastered the intricacies of power-politics in Munster,
and the description of Maurice as earl of Desmond may well stem from the
unthinking regurgitation by an English chancery clerk of the language of this
merchant’s petition. Certainly there was some confusion surrounding the status
of the earldom of Desmond within the English chancery. A memorandum in the
margin of the patent roll in question records that the enrolment was amended in
December 1402 to read ‘county or lordship of Desmond’.69 Another record,
(s.a. 1396) that Thomas Butler was killed by the Geraldines: AFM, iv, p. 746 n. q.
61 ‘Annales Anonymi’, ed. Nicholls in idem, ‘Late medieval annals’, 90. 62 ‘Annales Galfridi
Hogain’, ed. K.W. Nicholls in idem, ‘Late medieval annals’, 92. 63 Ibid. 64 Nicholls, ‘Late
medieval annals’, 89 n. 7. 65 RCH, p. 157, no. 92; NAI, Lodge MS 19, p. 203. The following
day, instructions were issued for the taking of inquisitions post mortem: RCH, p. 159, no. 8.
66 Nicholls, ‘Late medieval annals’, 89. 67 TNA (PRO), C 66/363, m. 10 (calendared in
CPR, 1399–1401, p. 451). 68 In a petition of a slightly later date, the same John Hethe seeks
a licence to ship wine, cloth and salt to Ireland and to return with salmon and other victuals:
TNA (PRO), SC 8/332/15783. The resultant letters patent are dated 1 Apr. 1406: CPR,
1405–8, p. 170. 69 On each of the six occasions when the ‘county of Desmond’ is
mentioned, the words ‘or lordship [sive dominium]’ have been interlined: C 66/363, m. 10.
These interlineations are not recorded in the calendared version: CPR, 1399–1401, p. 451. The
fact that the liberty of Kerry would theoretically have been resumed into the king’s hands
170 Peter Crooks
dating from after 17 June 1401, describes Maurice merely as ‘Moryssh de

Decymond’, without according him the rank of earl.70 The evidence of literary
sources suggests that this was his true status. In his obit in the annals, he is
described simply as ‘Maurice, the earl of Desmond’s son’,71 while the Mac Fhir
Bhisigh genealogies record that Earl John was succeeded by his son Thomas.72
The reference to ‘Maurice, earl of Desmond’ in the letters patent of 17 March
1401 is, then, probably best interpreted as mistaken in point of fact but
nonetheless an accurate reflection of political realities. After the drowning of Earl
John in 1399, leadership of the Desmond Geraldines had clearly passed to John’s
brother Maurice, and in his custody the earldom might well have prospered into
the fifteenth century.73
It was not to be. Maurice was dead before the end of 1401, leaving his nephew
Thomas in minority.74 The third earl of Ormond sought to project his influence
into this vacuum, and a ‘great war’ arose in 1403 between Ormond and
Desmond in which ‘the two Mac William Burkes with their muster went to assist
the earl of Ormond’.75 The balance of power was redressed on 7 September 1405
when Ormond died at Gowran, Co. Kilkenny.76 His passing prompted a Gaelic
during a minority and assumed the status of a royal county may be the source of the muddle.
On the other hand, the ‘county’ of the calendared version might possibly be better translated
as ‘earldom’. 70 TNA (PRO), E 28/27/67 (calendared in Paul Dryburgh and Brendan
Smith (eds), Handbook and select calendar of sources for medieval Ireland in the National Archives
of the United Kingdom (Dublin, 2005), p. 176). 71 AClon., p. 323 (in quoting AClon. here, I
have modernized the spelling of Conell Mageoghegan’s antiquarian translation). AC
mistakenly describes Maurice as the ‘son of the earl of Desmond’s son [Muris mac meic Iarla
Desmuman]’: AC, s.a. 1400.21. 72 LMG, iii, pp 74–5, nos 787.5, 787.6. Likewise, a verse
genealogy from the Ó Cléirigh pedigrees states that Thomas succeeded his father John:
‘Thomas the earl, who denied not friendship, | In the earlship after John’: Samuel Hayman
(ed.), ‘The Geraldines of Desmond’, JRSAI, 4th ser., 5 (1879–82), 221. It may be worth
noting that Thomas Russell’s ‘Relation of the FitzGeralds of Ireland’, while hardly a reliable
text, also makes no mention of Maurice as earl: see Samuel Hayman (ed.), ‘Unpublished
Geraldine documents: part 1’, JRSAI, 3rd ser., 1 (1868), 364. 73 This does not, however,
seem to me to be sufficient reason to follow the numbering of the Desmond earls in NHI, ix,
pp 168, 233 (in which Maurice is listed as de facto fifth earl of Desmond). See also CP, iv, pp
243–8. 74 The date of Maurice’s death cannot be precisely ascertained. It appears in the
annals under 1400 (AC, s.a. 1400.21; AClon., p. 323), but these annals lag one year behind at
the turn of the fifteenth century. The obit is placed immediately after an entry recording the
arrival of Thomas of Lancaster in Ireland: AC, s.a. 1400.20; AClon., p. 323. If the chronology
within the calendar year can be taken as reliable, this would place Maurice’s death after 13 Nov.
1401, on which date Lancaster landed near Dalkey, Co. Dublin: Troyes, MS 1316, fo. 50.
Maurice was certainly dead by 19 Dec. 1401, when Thomas of Lancaster granted James, third
earl of Ormond, custody of the Geraldine lands in Tipperary: RCH, p. 161, no. 58.
75 Several sets of related annals record the ‘great war’ between Desmond and Ormond under
the year 1402: AC, s.a. 1402.2; ALC, ii, pp 100–1; AFM, iv, pp 774–5. The Annals of Ulster,
drawing from a common source, correctly place the confrontation in 1403: AU, iii, p. 49. A
fragment from Bodl., MS Rawlinson B488, is particularly rich for 1392–1407: here too a ‘great
war between the earl of Desmond and earl of Ormond’ is recorded in the year 1403: AMisc.,
pp 170–1. There is a lacuna in AClon. for 1401–2. 76 Two sets of Latin annals record his
death ‘in vigilia Nativitatis Beate Virginis [7 Sept.]’: CStM, ii, p. 286; Troyes MS 1316, fo. 50v.
annalist to observe that ‘the Galls were very powerless after that [amhneart mór
ac Gallaibh iar sin]’.77 Now both Munster earldoms were in minority and the two
heirs – Thomas of Desmond and James Butler, the future White Earl – spent
some time in each other’s company in the household of Stephen le Scrope, then
deputy lieutenant of Ireland.78 In March 1406, Thomas, while still under age,
received custody of the Geraldine inheritance.79 Little is known of his period of
personal rule as fifth earl of Desmond, and so the chance survival of a record
concerning the Desmond liberty of Kerry is especially valuable. By a mandate
dated 20 December 1410, the treasurer of the liberty was instructed to cause the
tidy sum of £674 13s. to be levied from the issues and profits of assizes held at
Tralee before the seneschal of Kerry between July and December 1410.80 The
document affords us no more than a glimpse of the judicial machinery of the
Desmond earldom at work, but it leaves the impression of a young earl who was
thrusting, perhaps even predatory, in the pursuit of his fiscal rights.
Perhaps, then, there was little sympathy for Thomas when he was banished
from Ireland in 1411 by his uncle James, another of the sons of Gerald, third earl
of Desmond.81 For details of this event we are dependent on the report in the
Gaelic annals that the ‘earl of Desmond was expelled by his own kinsman,
namely by James, son of Gerald, so that he put the earl out from Ireland; that is,
Thomas, son of Earl John’.82 The expropriated earl of Desmond did not lightly
accept his fate. He travelled to England, where he busied himself with the
The obits appended to Grace’s annals place it under 20 Aug.: Annales Hiberniae, Kilkenniensis,
Jacobi Grace, ed. Richard Butler (Dublin, 1842), pp 162–3. The dates in the English
inquisitions post mortem vary, but most attribute his death to 7 Sept.: CIPM, 1405–13, nos
26–30 (7 Sept.), no. 31 (4 Sept.), nos 32–3 (6 Sept.). 77 AMisc., pp 174–5 (s.a. 1405.11).
Ormond is described as the ‘head of valour of Ireland [cenn crodachta na hErenn]’ in his death
notice in the other annals: AC, s.a. 1404.15 (quotation); AFM, iv, pp 780–1; ALC, ii, pp 108–
9; AClon., pp 324–5. 78 Sir Stephen Scrope later sought allowance of £66 13s. 4d. for the
expenses of the earls of Ormond and Desmond who were in his household (BL, Add. Charter
18222). This fragment of Scrope’s account is undated. A note in pencil on the dorse suggests
a date of 1401, but it is more likely that it should be attributed to Scrope’s tenure as deputy
lieutenant in 1406–7, when both the earldoms of Desmond and Ormond were in minority.
79 RCH, p. 182, no. 67. 80 The letter is attested by William fitz Gerald, seneschal of the
liberty of Kerry at Tralee: NLI, Harris MS 4, fos 173–174v. The record is mentioned in
William Lynch, A view of the legal institutions, honorary and hereditary offices and feudal
baronies, established in Ireland during the reign of Henry the second: deduced from court rolls,
inquisitions and other original records (London, 1830), p. 248. 81 On 8 Dec. 1388, Gerald,
third earl of Desmond, had received a licence to send this James to be fostered with the Uí
Bhriain of Thomond: RCH, p. 139, no. 88 (misnumbered in RCH as no. 82). 82 AU, iii, pp
60–1; AFM, iv, pp 806–7. ALC and AC erroneously describe James of Desmond as ‘his
[Thomas’] brother’: ALC, pp 136–7; AC, s.a. 1411.16. James of Desmond’s position was
subsequently legitimized, so it is little surprise to find that later Geraldine tradition tends
either to gloss over the expulsion of his nephew or to stress Earl Thomas’ flaws and culpability.
No mention is made of the usurpation in Séamus Pender (ed.), ‘The O Clery book of
genealogies’, AH, 18 (1951), nos 2137–8; Samuel Hayman (ed.), ‘The Geraldines of
Desmond’, JRSAI, 4th ser., 5 (1879–82), 220–1, 227. The Mac Fhir Bhisigh genealogies do
not refer to the expulsion, but twice state that ‘he [Tomás] died without offspring [d’imthigh
172 Peter Crooks
recruitment of a force for the recovery of his earldom. It was not until the
accession of Henry V in 1413 that Thomas’ activities in exile came to anything.
On 21 August 1413, a commission issued from the English chancery for the
arrest of shipping at Bristol or other ports along England’s west coast to carry a
force of some sixty men-at-arms and three hundred archers to Ireland with
Thomas of Desmond.83 His supporters were drawn from the south-west of
England, an area to which many Munster-men seem to have emigrated in the
later fourteenth century.84 Roland Roche and John Hoigge of Cornwall and Peter
Yorke of Shaftesbury (Dorset) were granted letters of protection in December
1413 because they were about to go to Ireland in the king’s service with Thomas,
earl of Desmond.85 Another recruit who accompanied Desmond to Ireland was
the abbot of the house of Augustinian canons at Keynsham in Somerset.86 It was
presumably in gratitude for the abbot’s support that Thomas petitioned the king
for a licence to make a grant in perpetuity to the abbot and convent of Keynsham
of the advowson of the church of Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, which Desmond
held in chief of the king.87 Thomas seems to have arrived in Ireland during
1414.88 The annals report that the ‘Earl of Desmond came into Ireland this year
gan tsliocht]’: LMG, iii, pp 74–5, nos 787.5, 787.6. 83 CPR, 1413–16, p. 117. 84 A petition
of c.1382 reports the flight of Munstermen to Bristol and Cornwall: TNA (PRO), SC
8/118/5889. 85 CPR, 1413–16, pp 146, 150. 86 For Keynsham, see David Knowles, The
religious houses of medieval England (London, 1940), p. 85. Despite the title of a recent book,
the cartulary of Keynsham Abbey is not extant: Barbara J. Lowe, Keynsham Abbey: a cartulary
(Victoria, BC, 2006). A motivation for the abbot’s support of Thomas of Desmond may have
been a desire to re-establish his right to present to a number of churches in Co. Limerick
whose advowsons the abbey of Keynsham had acquired early in the conquest of Ireland. The
diocese of Limerick had recovered the advowsons of several of these churches in the mid-
thirteenth century (The Black Book of Limerick, ed. James MacCaffrey (Dublin, 1907), pp 84–
5), but Keynsham retained the advowsons of ‘Iniskefty’ and ‘Garthbiboys’ (i.e., Askeaton and
Ballingarry). The abbot’s presentations to Ballingarry were challenged 1411 and 1427: CPL,
1404–15, p. 232; CPL, 1417–31, p. 509. On 16 June 1423, the abbot of Keynsham was granted
a licence to appoint a proctor to look after the Irish lands of the convent: CPR, 1422–9, p. 104.
See also Henry Molony, ‘Ancient churches and topography of Ballingarry parish, County
Limerick’, JRSAI, 35:3 (1905), 258–9; Thomas J. Westropp, ‘Notes on Askeaton, County
Limerick. Part I. The history, AD900 to 1579’, JRSAI, 33:1 (1903), 29. 87 TNA (PRO), SC
8/307/15344 (petition of ‘Thomas count de Dessemond’). On 12 Sept. 1413, Henry V
assented to Desmond’s request, and the lieutenant, chancellor, treasurer and other royal
ministers in Ireland were ordered not to molest either the earl of Desmond or the abbot and
convent of Keynsham on account of the donation: CPR, 1413–16, p. 160. The letters patent
were subsequently enrolled in the Irish chancery: RCH, p. 204, no. 37. Henry Marlborough’s
obit for Thomas, earl of Desmond, cites the granting of lands to Keynsham as one of the
reasons that James ‘the Usurper’ had renounced his nephew, ‘alledging that he was an
unthrift, and had wasted his patrimony both in Ireland and England, and that hee gave or
would give lands unto the monastery of Saint Iames of Keynisham’: Marlborough,
‘Chronicle’, p. 30 (quotation). In fact, Thomas’ licence to grant lands to Keynsham dates from
after he was expelled from Ireland for the first time. 88 His return is recorded in the annals
before the arrival of Sir John Stanley as lieutenant: AC, s.a. 1414.16; AFM, iv, pp 818–19. We
know from other sources that Stanley landed at Clontarf, Co. Dublin, on 25 Sept. 1413
(Troyes, MS 1316, fo. 52), which may indicate that Desmond’s return should be placed in
and a force of Saxons came with him [nert Saxanach do thecht leis] to destroy
Munster’.89 The ensuing campaign failed in its objective of dislodging James the
Usurper. We next hear of Earl Thomas in 1417, when we are told that he had
been ‘falsly & deceatfully taken & detayned in prison by his unkle [James], to the
greate distruction of all the contry of Mounstre’.90
Where did the Butlers of Ormond stand with respect to the turmoil engulfing
their neighbours in Munster? At the time of the expulsion of Thomas of
Desmond in 1411, the incumbent chief governor of Ireland was Thomas Butler,
prior of Kilmainham, deputy of the king’s lieutenant, Thomas of Lancaster.
Prior Thomas may not have been in cahoots with James the Usurper, but there
is a circumstantial case to be made that he was content to look the other way as
the wicked uncle ousted his nephew from power. On 13 December 1411, James
of Desmond was granted custody of the manor of Lemardcale, Co. Kerry, then
in the king’s hand.91 This was a modest show of favour to be sure, but its timing
suggests that it was pregnant with significance. The grant was made in the
aftermath of James’ usurpation of Desmond. Given that the letters patent had
to pass under the great seal of Ireland, it is safe to assume that they were issued
with the assent of the chief governor. In other words, Prior Thomas Butler seems
then to have acquiesced in James’ usurpation of Desmond.92 A further crumb of
record evidence strengthens this interpretation. By Irish-seal letters dated
March 1413, one David son of Odo de Lees, formerly sheriff of Limerick,
received a pardon of treasons and felonies at the request of James of Desmond.93
Here, James the Usurper is seen intervening successfully with the central
government to obtain this small piece of patronage on behalf of a member of the
Geraldine affinity in Munster. The wider significance of this is that the chief
governorship of Ireland was then still in the hands of Prior Thomas Butler of
1413. On the other hand, the fact that men in Desmond’s company were still taking out letters
of protection on 18 Dec. 1413 (CPR, 1413–16, pp 146, 150) suggests that his force may have
only set out after this date and arrived in Ireland during 1414. 89 AU, iii, pp 66–7 (quotation
at p. 67); AFM, iv, pp 816–17. AC, s.a. 1414.11, reads ‘to devastate Meath [do milled na Mide]’,
but this is an error for Munster (Muman). ALC does not record the event. 90 Ellis, Original
letters, i, letter xix, p. 61. 91 RCH, p. 198, no. 10 (the recipient is recorded as ‘Jacobus de
Dessemond’). The manor in question occurs as ‘Lymerkaghell’ (par. Ballymacelligott, bar. of
Trughanacmy, Co. Kerry) in the Desmond survey of Kerry taken in 1584: NAI, MS 5037. I
am indebted to Paul MacCotter for the identification of this place-name. For the cantred of
Acumys, see Paul MacCotter, ‘The cantreds of Desmond’, JCAHS, 105 (2000), 58; idem,
Medieval Ireland: territorial, political and economic divisions (Dublin, 2008), p. 166. 92 The
grant to James the Usurper also coincided with a rush of favours made to other known Butler
supporters, for which see Crooks, ‘Factionalism and noble power’, pp 314–15. 93 The letter
is calendared as follows in NAI, RC 8/34, p. 111 (I have expanded the abbreviations):
‘Henricus &c. ad requisicionem Jacobi Dessemon’ pardonamus David filius Odonis de Lees
nuper vicecomitem Lymer’ sectam pacis nostre que ad nos versus ipsum pertinet pro
omnimodis prodicionibus feloniis &c per ipsum factum &c. […] die Marcii anno regni nostri
quarto decimo.’ The precise day of the month on which the letters passed under the Irish seal
is not given. The omission is explained by a note in the margin of the Irish Record
Commission’s calendar, which states that the original memoranda roll was torn.
174 Peter Crooks
Kilmainham, whose term in office only lapsed with the death of Henry IV on 20
March 1413. It was shortly after the accession of Henry V that the White Earl of
Ormond returned from military service in France. He was destined next for
Ireland. It is not entirely clear whether Henry V expected Ormond to aid
Thomas of Desmond, who was preparing to sail for Ireland in the autumn of
1413 in order to recover his earldom; but it seems probable that this was what the
king had in mind.94 Orders to arrest shipping for Ormond’s company of forty
men-at-arms and 160 archers were issued on the same day and for the same port
as those for Desmond.95 The king’s intentions are one matter. Political realities
are another. There is, in fact, no evidence that Ormond offered Earl Thomas any
assistance in his abortive enterprise.96
Active military support for Thomas of Desmond was, however, forthcoming
during the lieutenancy of Sir John Talbot. The last item in the encomium for
Talbot composed on 26 June 1417 and intended for the eyes of Henry V refers to
a campaign that the lieutenant conducted in Munster with the purpose of
releasing Earl Thomas of Desmond from captivity.97 Talbot himself was to
complain to John, duke of Bedford (left behind in England as the king’s
lieutenant after Henry V embarked upon the reduction of Normandy in 1417),
of the great costs he had incurred in delivering Earl Thomas from the hands of
his enemies: the earl was now said to be resident in Talbot’s household without a
penny of his own.98 Despite Talbot’s best efforts, James the Usurper retained
control of the region: in 1417, the annals report that James killed ‘Tomas mac
Meic Muris Ciarraigi’,99 probably the son of Maurice Óg of the FitzMaurices of
Kerry.1 Nonetheless, Talbot’s intervention in the politics of Munster must have
rankled with the Butlers, and it is surely significant that it was on 18 July 1417 –
as couriers sought to cross the Irish Sea with news of Desmond’s release2 – that
the estates of the White Earl of Ormond had been seized into the king’s hand.
In the autumn of 1417, Thomas of Desmond accompanied the lieutenant as the
latter journeyed through the newly confiscated Butler estates, and he was among
those in Waterford Cathedral on 20 September 1417 when Talbot took the
submission of Walter Burke (the enemy of the prior of Kilmainham). Present at
the same ceremony were some of the principal members of the king’s council in
Ireland (the chancellor and treasurer), as well as the bishop of Waterford and the
mayor of the city.3 That Desmond was fraternizing with these dignitaries may be
taken as indicative of his high standing with Talbot.
94 For an alternative view, see Matthew, ‘Governing Lancastrian Ireland’, p. 112. 95 CPR,
1413–16, p. 117. 96 Ormond’s failure to support Desmond may be reflected in the way in
which the annals report their respective arrivals in 1414 as two separate events with discrete
motives: AC, s.a. 1414.11; AFM, iv, pp 816–17. 97 Ellis, Letters, i, letter xix, p. 61. Pollard
erroneously places this event in the summer of 1418: Pollard, ‘Family of Talbot’, p. 117.
98 BL, Cotton Titus B.xI, pt 1, no. 31 (=appendix 10.1.2). 99 AC, s.a. 1417.5. 1 For
whom, see K.W. Nicholls, ‘The FitzMaurices of Kerry’, JKAHS, 3 (1970), 35. 2 BL,
Cotton Titus B.xI, pt 1, no. 31 (=appendix 10.1.2). 3 Otway-Ruthven, ‘Arrest’, 76, 87; BL,
Cotton Titus B.xI, pt 1, no. 46 (=appendix 10.1.3).
Talbot’s promotion of the cause of Earl Thomas of Desmond is clear enough.

It is more difficult to show a direct connection at this time between the Butlers
and the earl of Desmond’s uncle, James the Usurper. An indirect link is,
however, suggested in a letter ‘writon in grete haste’ by John Marshal, constable
of Athy Castle, Co. Kildare.4 The letter reports that one Mcgilfatrike (that is,
Mac Giolla Phádraig of Osraige) wished to become Talbot’s man. To prove his
good faith, Mac Giolla Phádraig offered to serve at Talbot’s command, in
particular against ‘Acalagh’ (that is, An Calbhach Ó Conchobhair Failghe)5 and
James of Desmond, who were said to be making themselves strong against
Talbot.6 Mac Giolla Phádraig’s offer contains a strong element of self-interest.
His territory was located on the northern marches of the Butler lordship and he
was a traditional enemy of the earls of Ormond.7 His application to Talbot
enables us to delineate the rival parties in Ireland. An Calbhach, whom the letter
identifies as hostile to Talbot, was an ally of the Butlers. Together with Prior
Thomas Butler, An Calbhach laid siege to Roscommon Castle in 1417–18.8 This
was to provide the Talbot party with ammunition. Talbot later alleged that Ormond
extracted ‘black rent and tribute money’ from his manor of Oughterard, Co.
Kildare, and ordered that it should be paid to An Calbhach’s wife, Margaret.9
Ormond was further accused of arresting Thomas Talbot esquire, Sir John
Talbot’s cousin, and passing him into the hands of An Calbhach.10 Thomas was
said to have been ransomed for £10, but before his release his Gaelic captors
‘beat him and laid their cudgels on him, more than he might bear, by which
matter the said Thomas is seriously injured’.11 In this context, it is interesting to
note that on 23 October 1417 Talbot had attacked Ó Conchobhair Failghe’s castle
of Croghan, Co. Offaly, and burned it to the ground.12 The significance of all this
4 TNA (PRO), SC 1/43/176 (=appendix 10.1.4). 5 For whose long career, see Cormac Ó
Cléirigh, ‘The O’Connor Faly lordship of Offaly, 1395–1513’, PRIA, 96C4 (1996), 90–3. He
was son of Murchadh Ó Conchobhair Failghe (d. 1421), lord of Uí Failghe. For a genealogy,
see NHI, ix, pp 150–1. A praise poem (‘Bríathra cogaidh con chath Laighnech’) records his
battle achievements against the foreigners: see Osbern Bergin (ed.), Irish bardic poetry: texts
and translations (Dublin, 1970), no. 40, pp 154–7. 6 TNA (PRO), SC 1/43/176 (=appendix
10.1.4). Pollard misread James of Desmond as ‘James of Ormond’ in Pollard, ‘Family of
Talbot’ (PhD), p. 121, and consequently the significance of the passage is lost. 7 Emmett
O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, 1156–1606 (Dublin, 2002), pp 117–18. A Piers
son of James son of Edmund Butler was slain in 1417 in the house of Donnchadh Mac Giolla
Phádraig, ‘by Donnchad’s blacksmith while they were dancing’ (AC, s.a. 1417.15). He was of
the Butlers of Slieveardagh or Lismallon, tenants of Inchirourke in Tipperary: see K.W.
Nicholls, ‘Anglo-French Ireland and after’, Peritia, 1 (1982), 401, n. 5. A James son of
Edmund Butler, possibly father of the Piers killed in 1417, was elected as seneschal of
Tipperary in 1405: RCH, p. 181, no. 13. 8 Otway-Ruthven, ‘Arrest’, 78; Crooks, ‘Missing
membrane’, 13. 9 Anne Curry (ed.), ‘Henry VI: parliament of October 1423, text and
translation’, PROME, item 9. For a family connection between Margaret’s father, Tadhg Ó
Cearbhaill, and the Butlers, see O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, p. 117.
10 Thomas Talbot esquire is not to be confused with Sir Thomas Talbot, brother of Sir John,
and the latter’s deputy at the time of the arrest of the earl of Kildare and Sir Christopher
Preston. 11 Curry (ed.), ‘Henry VI: parliament of October 1423’. 12 BL, Cotton Titus
176 Peter Crooks
lies in the fact that Mac Giolla Phádraig mentions An Calbhach and James of
Desmond in the same breath. Clearly both men were allies of the Butlers. Since
Talbot was also hostile to Butler interests, Mac Giolla Phádraig seems to have
calculated that the enemy of his enemies might be a powerful friend.
If an alliance between James the Usurper and the Butlers is only hinted at
during Talbot’s tenure, it comes into clear focus soon after Ormond was appointed
as king’s lieutenant in Ireland on 10 February 1420.13 On 10 December 1420,
James of Desmond was appointed to a wide-ranging commission of the peace,14
and Ormond also authorized a payment to James of £100 in response to the
latter’s petition that he had long retained many men-at-arms in resisting the
malice of the Irish enemies and English rebels of Munster and Connacht.15
Given that during the Talbot regime James of Desmond was deemed to be first
among those ‘English rebels’, his reinvention under the aegis of the White Earl
as a respectable pillar of English government in the south-west is highly
impressive. Still greater advancement was to follow. In December 1420, rumours
reached Ireland that Earl Thomas of Desmond had died in France, where he had
been buried in the convent of Friars Preachers in Paris in the presence of Henry
V himself.16 The inquisitions post mortem taken soon afterwards identify James
of Desmond as the next heir of his brother John, fourth earl of Desmond, and
state that since John’s death
Maurice fitz Gerald and Thomas fitz John … have occupied and do
occupy all the said manors and lordships and received the issues and
profits of the same, in virtue, the jurors say, of a grant made by the king
[Henry IV] to Maurice and Thomas by reason of the minority of Thomas
son of John.17
Not only is the matter of James of Desmond’s usurpation brushed over, but the
late Thomas son of John is nowhere accorded the comital title. This outcome was
politically expedient and may have been manipulated.18 In effect, Thomas was
B.xI, pt 1, no. 46 (=appendix 10.1.3). The date on which Croghan was attacked can be
precisely identified because Talbot informed the duke of Bedford that it took place ‘deux jours
devant la faisance dicestes’, i.e. two days before the making of the letters, which are dated 25
Oct. 1417. 13 CPR, 1416–22, p. 256. Ormond assumed office as lieutenant on 22 Apr. 1420.
14 RCH, p. 217, no. 18. The commission’s competence comprehended the counties of
Waterford, Cork and Limerick, as well as the crosslands of the liberty of Kerry. 15 RCH, p.
252, no. 28. 16 Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 614, pp 99–100 (=a late transcript of Henry
Marlborough’s chronicle). 17 COD, iii, no. 45, p. 31. The grant referred to is that made on
29 May 1400 (see above, p. 169), by which custody of the Geraldine inheritance was granted
to Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 1401), and Thomas, the fifth earl of Desmond: RCH, p. 157 no. 92.
18 The suggestion that there may have been sharp practice at work is strengthened by the fact
that some of the jury lists seem to be deficient. K.W. Nicholls noted, for instance, that the jury
list for the inquisition taken at Ardrahan, Co. Galway, ‘would appear to have been copied from
that of an inquisition taken at the same place a hundred years earlier, in 1321’: Nicholls, ‘Late
medieval annals’, 89 (quotation). The text of the earlier inquisition is printed in H.T. Knox,
posthumously disinherited and the jurors’ findings ‘proved’ that the Butlers had
been supporting the rightful heir to the earldom of Desmond all along.19 With
James the Usurper now sporting the title earl of Desmond, the Geraldines’
cooperative relationship with the Butlers could be placed on an official footing.
By an indenture of January 1422, Ormond appointed Desmond as ‘keeper,
governor and supervisor’ of the Butler moiety of the barony of Inchiquin and the
town of Youghal, Co. Cork.20 Two months after this agreement, a testimonial was
composed in favour of Ormond by the community of Co. Limerick. It mentions
both Ormond and Desmond and extols the virtues of their partnership. The
authors report that Ormond ‘made war against the enemies and rebels of our
lord the king in that land, in the most commendable manner, receiving great help
from James of Desmond, the earl of Desmond … to the praise of God, the great
honour of our lord the king [and] the comfort and relief of the loyal people of the
land’.21 Apparently, the two comital houses in the south of Ireland had found a
means of living together and this seems to have acted to the benefit of the colony
at large.
James the Usurper’s affiliation with the Butlers had, therefore, served him
well. He gained a comital title as well as control of the estates in east Cork that
the Munster Geraldines had coveted since the time of his grandfather, Maurice
fitz Thomas, first earl of Desmond (d. 1356).22 The price of accepting Ormond’s
sponsorship was that the new earl of Desmond acknowledged himself to be the
junior partner in the relationship. This was a startling departure. A cardinal
feature of the Geraldine–Butler conflict since the 1350s had been the stubborn
refusal of successive earls of Desmond to bow to the reality that the Butlers held
the advantage. It was not, however, a compromise that succeeded because it
pleased neither party. On the contrary, the Talbot–Ormond feud has its origins
in the fact that, by supporting Earl Thomas of Desmond, Sir John Talbot had
imperiled the modus vivendi that had operated to the satisfaction of the
Geraldines and Butlers since James’ usurpation of 1411. In the event, their spirit
of détente endured no more than a matter of decades. The Geraldine–Butler
‘Ardrahan Castle’, JGAHS, 7 (1911–12), 81. 19 Ormond’s support of James the Usurper
may lie behind the extraordinary charge made by John Geese (d. 1425), bishop of Lismore–
Waterford, at a parliament held before Ormond in 1421 to the effect that the archbishop of
Cashel – Risdéard Ó hÉidigheáin, who is known to have fostered Ormond’s nephew, Edmund
son of Richard Butler – had ‘taken a ring from the image of Saint Patricke (which the earl of
Desmond had offered) and bestowed it upon his Concubine’: Ware, ‘Marlborough’, pp 30–1
(quotation); Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 614, p. 100. For a reappraisal of the episode, see Peter
Crooks, ‘Representation and dissent: “parliamentarianism” and the structure of politics in
colonial Ireland, c.1370–1420’, EHR, 125:512 (Feb. 2010), 14–16. 20 ‘custodem,
gubernatorem et supervisorem’: NLI, D 1578 (=COD, iii, no. 51). Another copy is TNA
(PRO), C 47/10/26/4, listed in James Hogan, ‘Miscellanea of the chancery, London’, AH, 1
(1930), 200. Ormond also appointed Desmond as his seneschal in these lands, and granted
him all rents and profits accruing from them together with 240 acres of demesne land to be
chosen by Desmond himself. 21 TNA (PRO), C 47/10/26/5 (translated in Griffiths,
‘Talbot–Ormond struggle’, p. 392). 22 O’Brien, ‘Territorial ambitions of Maurice fitz
178 Peter Crooks
alliance was strengthened in 1429 – significantly, a year of high tension with the
Talbots – by an agreement under the terms of which Desmond’s infant son,
Thomas, was to marry Anne Butler, daughter of the White Earl of Ormond.23
But it collapsed when, c.1444, the White Earl’s daughter, Elizabeth, was wedded
to Sir John Talbot’s heir and namesake, John (d. 1460). It may have been this act
of reconciliation between the Talbot and Ormond parties that prompted
Desmond to launch a raid deep into Butler territory in 1444.24 Not for the first
time, the resolution of one conflict sowed the seeds for another.25
APPENDIx 10.1
Documents on the origins of the Talbot–Ormond feud
Note on editorial conventions

The language of documents 1, 2 and 3 below is Anglo-Norman. Abbreviations
have been silently expanded and contractions noted only in exceptional cases.
Miniscule i and u have been standardized where they are used for consonantal j
and v. Endorsements are printed at the end of the texts, signalled by the word
‘Dorse’ in angled brackets.
Document 4 is written in a form of Middle English associated with
Nottinghamshire.26 In the edition presented below, italics indicate letters
supplied editorially; superscript is used for superior letters in the MS. Some
modifications have been made to word division: hyphens have been added to
‘a-nother’). I have retained the letter ȝ throughout: it is used consistently as a

words written separately but which are now considered as single (for example,
consonantal y in the text. The letter þ is used in print to represent the thorn
although in the original MS this letter takes the form of a y. Where a Tironian
note is employed for ‘and’ I have supplied the full word in italics.
In all four documents, the vertical bar (|) marks the end of each line in the
manuscript. Paragraphs have been introduced for convenience, as has some
punctuation. Interlineations are printed in superscript set off from the rest of
the text by obliques. Letters enclosed by square brackets indicate a lacuna in the
MS. A barred double-L (for example, worchipfull) is used in documents 2, 3 and
Thomas, first earl of Desmond’, passim. 23 NLI, D 1624. There are, in fact, two MSS
under this number in NLI: Ormond’s portion of the original indenture and a sixteenth-
century copy of the same document. Only the latter is mentioned by Curtis in COD, iii, no.
88. For the historical background to the agreement, see Matthew, ‘Governing Lancastrian
Ireland’, pp 241–2. 24 AMacFirbis, p. 205. The episode is discussed in Matthew, ‘Governing
Lancastrian Ireland’, pp 361–2. 25 The later phases of the Geraldine–Butler feud are
discussed in Anthony McCormack, The earldom of Desmond, 1463–1583: the decline and crisis
of a feudal lordship (Dublin, 2005). 26 Angus McIntosh, M.L. Samuels and Michael Benskin
(eds), A linguistic atlas of late medieval English (4 vols, Aberdeen, 1986), i, pp 129, 231.
4: in each case it appears to be a flourish rather than a mark of suspension and

consequently it is not noted. I have, however, retained the double-F because it
may be of palaeographical interest.
1. INDENTURE between SIR JOHN TALBOT, Lord Furnival, and JAMES BUTLER,
fourth earl of Ormond. Dated 2 February 1415
East Riding of Yorkshire County Record Office (Beverley), DDx 152/5027
Ceste endenture faite parentre John Talbot, Sire de ffurnyvalle, lieutenant a

nostre tressouverain Seignur le Roi en sa terre dirlande | dune part et James le
Botiller, count dormond, dautre part tesmoigne qe le dit count est retenuz et
demurez ovec le dit a (sic) | lieutenant pur luy servir en la dite terre ovec toutz
ses gentz defensibles a chival et \a/ pee sufficeantement mountez, armez et |
arraiez come affiert a guerre pur qeux il vorra respondre durant le temps qils
serront as ascuns journeys et envenantz | et retournantz par un an entire,
preignant du dit lieutenant pur lan suisdit C. livres.28 Et le dit count serra prest a
tout | temps ovec ses ditz gentz de venir a mesme le lieutenant par resonable
garnisment a luy afaire a devant pur travailer, | aler et chivacher29 ovec luy en
toutz ses journeys et hosteynges a faires ou a purposers deinz lavantdite terre par
le lieutenant | suisdit. Et avera le dit count pur luy et ses ditz gentz bouche de
court as coustages le dit leutenant (sic) ou autrement | par soun assignement
enveignantz devers luy a ses journeys y demurantz et retournantz a soun countre.
Et avera mesme le | lieutenant les tierces des gaignes de guerre du dit count et
ses gentz avantditz. Et en cas qil avient le | dit count ou ascun de ses gentz de
prendre ascuns prisoners, cestassaver chieftayn, capitayn ou ascun autre |
comune30 mailefaisour des Irroys ennemys, qils les ne mettront a raunceon saunz
licence del dit lieutenaunt meas | qil ait tielx prisoners, faisant resonable
guerdon a celuy qi les prist. En tesmoignance de quelle chose | as ycestes
endentures les parties avantditez entrechaungeablement ount mys lour sealx.
Doun le secunde jour de ffeverer | lan du regne nostre Seignur le Roi Henri
quint secunde. {Et qe le dit count et ses ditz gentz veignantz as journeys et |
hosteynges du dit lieutenant y demurantz et dilleoqes retournantz soient frankes
et seurez saunz empechement dascuny.}31
27 This edition appears by permission of the East Riding of Yorkshire County Record Office.
28 That is, £100. Abbreviated in MS as ‘li.’. 29 Written in MS with a mark of suspension
through the ascender of the final letter. 30 Contracted in MS. 31 The final sentence,
printed here within curly brackets, appears to have been added after the remainder of the
indenture had been written out. The impression of a seal in red wax is attached to the plica by
a parchment tag.
180 Peter Crooks
2. From SIR JOHN TALBOT to JOHN, duke of Bedford. Written at Lassenhale,

Co. Dublin, 11 July 1417
BL, Cotton Titus B. xI, pt 1, no. 3132
Ao 5. H533
Treshaut et puissant Prince et moun tresnoble et gracious Seignur, Jeo me
recomanc a vostre treshaute Seignurie si humblement come jeo say ou puisse |
od tressoverain desire de lassaver auxi gracious et tresjoious novelx come vostre
tresnoble coer meux savera ymaginer a mespeciale consolacioun | toutvois
lesmerciant des plusours tresnobles et graciouses seignuries qeux lad plu de me
moustrier toutdis sauns desert du ma parte avaunt | ces heures humblement
lensuppliant du graciouse perseverance.
Et treshaut et puissant Prince et moun tresnoble et gracious Seignur please |
a mesme vostre treshaute Seignurie benignement a considerer le grande et
importable charge qe nostre tressoverain Seignur le Roi mad commys a |
perfaire dupardecea ovec trope petite soumme de monoie de la mayntener, come
il est bien conue, par quelle enchesoun ses ennemys | dupardecea toutdis
perceviantz ma nounpoair toutsoit qe jeo eux plusours foitz amesne a peas
encountre lour gree, meyntenant | resourdent a guerre a moy contenuelle labour
et vraysemblable anientisment du ma persone qest forsqe petit perde et mes auxi
| grandes expenses et coustages qeux jay es longe temps entour la deliverance de
le Count de Dessemond hors des mayns de ses | ennemys, qest pleynement
delivere et ovec moy aupresent en hostiell nient aiant ascune denir de ses propres
dont il purra viver | pur ceo que depuis sa enprise toutz ses seignuries chastielles
et villes sont outrement destruez et degastez pur greindre partie, qest trop |
dolorouse a counstre; treshumblement ensuppliant a vostre treshaute Seignurie
desuisdite qala please en salvacioune de lestate nostre | dit Seignur le Roi et sa
dite terre et de ses foialx lieges dicelle si graciousement ordeigner pur moy et en
tielle manere par advys de le | tressage conseille mesme nostre Seignur le Roi qe
jeo purrey aver en mayn ce qest a moy due pur la salve garde diceste terre en
haste, pur ceo qe mes | souldeours ne voillent attendre ovec moy ne le pays eux
respoundre de nulle manere vitaille nautre chose sauns prest paiement en |
mayn, considerantz qe toute la forte guerre de les irroys ennemys et engleys
rebelx est toutdis commenceant chescun34 an le jour de Seint | Patric et
contenuaunt jesqes a la feste de Seint Michell ensuyant.
Entendantz outre ceo, moun tresgracious Seignur, qe jatarde devant le passage
| de nostre dit Seignur le Roi as parties de ffraunce, lou nostre seignur Jhesu35
32 This edition appears by permission of the British Library Board. The contents of the letter
are discussed in Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 352–3. 33 This heading (indicating the fifth
regnal year of Henry V) appears at the head of the MS in a later hand. 34 Contracted in MS.
35 Contracted in MS as ‘ihu’, with a flourish.
par lensupplicacion de sa gloriouse mier luy ottroie tresgracious esploit et

victorie | de ses ennemys, jestoie ordeigne dapprochier sa tresgracious presence
pur y pursuyer pur les \maters/ avantditez et auxi a respoundre as certains |
suggestions a luy faites sur moy en mabsence par mes nient bienveillantz come
jeo suy enfourme come sa tresgraciouse ordenaunce voudra | agarder celle partie
et les foialx lieges espirituelx et temporelx diceste terre considerantz la graunde
guerre eux envyrone et doubdantz la grande | perile et destruccioune semblables
descheier par mabsence, toutsoit qele est forsqe petit vaillant, mont requiz depart
nostre dit Seignur le Roy | dattendre et eux descrier a luy en message pur moy
et pur moun paiement aver en mayn, le quelle message fuist prest a le meer ovec
| monsire Barthelmewe Verdon, lour messanger, pur passer envers nostre dit
Seignur le Roi et sur ceo certains novelx viendroient depardula la meer | qil
estoit passe en soun dit viage, pur quelle cause le dit monsire Bartelmewe
retourna de la meer ovec le dit message tanqe a la | repaire de nostre Seignur le
Roi suisdit, par cause de quelle retourne dicelle message me faute de force de
vous moun tresnoble Seignur certifier de ma | necessitee et distresse ycy sauns
ascun comfort ou relevement sinoun qil soit par vostre treshaute discrecioun
celle partie \fait/, la copie | du quelle message jay gaigne de les lieges avantditz
de vous lenvoier par cause qe le dit messsanger est retourne par moun | servitour
John Kirkam portour dicestes qe vous en purrez estre avisez par le tressage
conseille avantdit et moy covenable et | hastive remedie ordeign’ come le cas
requiert.
Dautre part moun tresnoble Seignur sil vous plese soit riens assav’ de moun
simple labour | dupardecea deux jours devant la faisance dicestes jeo faisoie un
journey sur un fort irroys ennemy Chieftayn’ de sa nacioun nomme | Occonour,
lou jeo dona escomfite sur luy et soun people et furent plusours deux tuez
naufrez et pris prisoners et grande partie de lour | pais aida et preia et un fort
Chastiell appelle le Chastiell de Croghan’ debrusa a terre, a lour tresgrande
rebuke, mercie | dieu.
Treshaut et puissant Prince et moun tresnoble et gracious Seignur, autres ne
say aupresent a vostre tresgraciouse Seignurie escriver meas | qala please
adjoustier graciouse audience a mon dit servitour de tout ces quil ala certifiera
dupart moy et sy isoit chose dupardecea ou | aillours qe faire puisse a vostre
plesieur Vous plese de me commaunder come vostre homme demesne pur
laccomplier sauns feintise du | treslee coer a ma poair. Et luy toutpuissant vous
ottroie tresgraciouse et tresnoble prosperitee toutvois perseverante a sa |
plesance.
Escript a Lassenhale le xi jour de Juylle
Vostre homme demesne |
John Talbot
182 Peter Crooks
<Dorse>36
A treshaut et puissant prince et moun [tresnoble] | et gracious Seignur le Duc
de Bedeford lieu[tenant] | Deng[leterre].
3. From SIR JOHN TALBOT to JOHN, duke of Bedford.

Written at Naas, Co. Kildare, 25 October 1417
BL, Cotton Titus B. xI, pt 1, no. 4637
Ao. 5. Hen 538

[T]reshaut et puissant prince et moun tresnoble et tresgracious Seignur, Jeo moy
recommank a vostre haute Seignurie si humblement come jeo say ou puisse | ove
souveraigne desire de lassavoir auxi graciouses et joiouses novelx come vostre
tresnoble coer meulx savera ymaginer a ma tressingulere | consolacioun
affectuousement lesmerciant des plusours graciouses et tresnobles Seignuries
queux vous ad plu de me moustrer souvent foitz devant | ces heures sauns desert
du ma part, humblement vous ensuppliant de graciouse perseverance.
Et treshaut et puissant prince et moun tresnoble | [et]39 tresgracious Seignur,
si de moun petit estate et governance diceste terre dirlande vous please assavoir,
Jeo suy lesse come homme desolate | [et la] dite terre en pointe destre destruez,
qe dieu defende, saunz ceo qe jeo soy releve par mye vostre | tresgraciouse
Seignurie, pur ceo qe jeo nay null | [p]aiement pur mes souldeours, les queux
departent de moy de jour en autre pur defaute dicelle, ensy qe jeo ne suy de nulle
poair | [p]ur resister la malice des enemys et rebelx en yceste terre sauns hastive
relevement des souldeours dupardela, le quelle jeo ne | puisse faire sauns preste
paiement en main; entendantz moun tresgracious Seignur qe tout ceste an passe
jeo navoie nulle dener hors | dengleterre pur yceste terre sinoun de mes rentz
propres, qe sount forsqe petit al mainteignance des guerres dirlande qare de |
les assignementz dount jeo suy certifie par mes attourneez illeoqes qe jay pur
yceste terre ils nont resceu ascun dener ne ne savont | mye qaunt ils ferront.
Et come a la governance diceste terre, y est oretarde graunde rumour surdee
es parties de Mounestre | parentre le Priour de Kilmaynan, le quelle ait coilee a
luy plusours irroys chiefains et ennemys ovec toute lour poair | al nombre de xv.
batailx, come jeo suy certifie, les queux gisount sur le liege people a lour costage,
par cohercioun del dit Priour | et sauns auctoritee, es countees de Kilkenny et
Typerare au finale destruction de mesmes les Countees entaunt, come jeo suy |
acertes par les foialx des ditz Countees qe eux covient par compulsioun du dit
Priour de paier au present as ditz enemys pur | lour gages outre lour manger et
boier qe amont’ a greindre somme MlDC marcz;40 et un Wauter Burk, graunde
36 Some letters are clipped along the right margin of the endorsement. 37 This edition
appears by permission of the British Library Board. The contents of the letter are discussed
in Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., p. 353. 38 This heading appears at the head of the MS in a
later hand. 39 Some letters have been lost along the left-hand margin of the MS. 40 That
is, 1,600 marks.
chieftain de sa | nacioun, qi ait coilee a luy atauntz des enemys gisantz sur le
liege people es Countees de Lymeryk et Cork en mesme | la manere, au finale
destruccioun dicelles, nient obstante qe oretarde devant le feste de Seint
Michell41 darrein passe jestoie | es ditez partiez lou jeo fesoie peas ovec toutz les
irroys enemys environez les ditz counteez et nomement le dit Wauter | devenuz
liege homme a nostre tressoveraigne Seignur le Roy et par son endenture a ceo
obligeez et sur les seintz Evangeliez estroitement | sermenteez en presence de
levesqe de Waterford’, maire de Waterford’ et plusours autres gentielz de pais
pur la salvement | garder, la copie de quelle endenture jenvoie a vous
tresgracious Seignur pur inspectioun ent avoir par le portour dicestes, sur |
quelle peas jeo chargea les ditz Priour et Wauter sur lour ligeance pur la peas
salvement garder.
Ensuppliant | humblement a vostre graciouse Seignurie suisdite qe vous
please \de/ considerer toutz les matiers et meschiefs avauntditez et ent ordeigner
| remedie come il semble a vostre tressage discrecioun qil soit affaire et moy
ensignifier, en salvacioun de le liege people et la | terre avantditz. Treshaut et
puissant prince et moun tresnoble et tresgracious Seignur, autres ne say au
present escriver a vostre tresgraciousse | Seignurie meas qa la please dajouster
fois et graciouse audience a moun tresame servitour John Kirkham, portour
dicestes, de tout[z] | [c]eo qil a la certifiera touchant les matiers avantditez ou
ascune autre depart moy par bouche, toutdys moy commandantz, moun |
tresgracious Seignur, voz graciouses volunteez dupardecea ou aillours
daccomplier a ma poair sauns feyntise. Et luy toutpuissa[nt] | [D]ieu vous
ottroie tresgraciouse et tresjoiouse vie toutdys perseverante a sa pleasance.
Escript a Naas le xxv. jour doctobre
Vostre homme demesne |
John Talbot
<Dorse>42
A treshaut et puissant Prince et n[ostre] | tresnoble et gracious Seignur le Duc
de Bede[ford] | lieutenant Dengl[eterre].
41 Michaelmas, 29 Sept. 1417. 42 Some letters are clipped along the right margin of the
endorsement. 43 This letter was written in the month of Jan., but no year is given. Otway-
Ruthven ventured a date of Jan. 1418 (Med. Ire., p. 353). Sir John Talbot served in person in
Ireland in the first month of each of the years 1415–19. Consequently, the correct year may be
1420, giving a precise date of 13 Jan. 1420. This would make sense of the author’s reference to
Talbot’s enemies in France, because Talbot was bound for France in the first half of 1420
(Pollard, John Talbot and the war in France, p. 9). From a letter of June 1417, we learn that
Talbot had been responsible for repairing the bridge over the River Barrow at Athy, ‘sett in the
fronture of the borders of the Irish enimies of Laies, for the safe keeping whereof he hath
erected a new tower upon the same for a warde to putt therwith a great fortificac[i]o[u]n
aboute the same for resistance of the sayd enimies … by which bridge your faythfull leiges
were oftentimes prayeda & killed, but now … may suffer their goods and cattels to remayne
184 Peter Crooks
4. JOHN MARSHALL, constable of Athy castle, to SIR JOHN TALBOT.

Written at Adthe [Athy, Co. Kildare] on Sunday after Epiphany [No year]43
TNA (PRO), SC 1/43/17644
My moste worchipfull lorde I commande \me/ to ȝow. And worchipfull lorde if

it like | ȝow to witte þt Mcfaghton45 was ate Adthe and Mcgilfatrike also and forsaid
Mcfaghton prid | me þt I wald send ȝow worde þt Mcgilfatrike wile be-come ȝowre
manne ife it like to | ȝowre lordechippe. And worchipfull lorde ife it like to ȝowre
lordechippe to send | Mcfaghton a letre of ȝowre wile and me a-nother letre iij
Mcgilfatricke be þere to make amends with ȝowre councell | of þis mater and
days befor þe parlement of Mcmorgh | for þe day wile Mcfaghton and
þefore my lorde sais ȝowre avyse to ȝowre councell how þis mater sall | be
governd for forsaid Mcgilfatrike sais he wile be with ȝow agayns þos þat ȝe wile |
Desymond for he | sais þat þai make ham strongke agaynes ȝow and sais ife þai
charge \ham/ to be agayns and namely agayns Acalagh and gayns James of
halde anny castell in ȝowre | countres he sall sige aboute þam to ȝe send him
And also my worchipfull lorde tynkes on ȝowre pore sowdiours of Adthe þat
helpe for þes wordes as Mcfaghton said | to me.
myght | hafe beter liverais þen þai had be-fore, for nowe are we be-hend of owre
My worchipfull lorde I can say nomore46 at þis time bot gode send ȝe victorie
liveray fyfe | wykes.
of alle ȝower enimys in Ingland and Irelande and in France also and þat I gyfe yow
to | to47 ȝowre ȝeres giffte. |
Writon in grete haste ate Adthe in ȝowre awne castell on next Sonnonday
afftir twelfeday.
John Marshall |
yowre servaunt
in the feilds day and night wthout [sic] being stolen, or sustayning any other losse, which hath
not beene seene here by the space of these thirty yeares past’ (Ellis, Letters, i, letter xix, p. 59).
On 28 Jan. 1421, Sir Richard Wellesley was granted custody of Athy, referred to as a very great
fortress and the key to the country (RCH, p. 251, no. 23). The tower mentioned here is now
identified with the White Castle, Leinster Street, Athy. The current structure is, however,
early sixteenth-century and it is not certain that it occupies the same site as the earlier tower.
44 This crown-copyright document appears courtesy of the National Archives of the United
Kingdom. 45 ‘Mcfaghton’ here may be a true patronymic (i.e., ‘son of Fachtna’) and
represent Giollaphádraig, the son of the king of Laoighis, Fachtna Ó Mórdha (d. 1377). The
Irish annals report under the year 1415 that Sir John Talbot, Lord Furnival (named ‘Loard
Furnamal’ by the annalist), plundered Laoghis and ‘the castle of Fachtna O Morda’s son
[caslen meic Factna h. Mordai]’: AC, s.a. 1415.2; AFM, s.a. 1415.2. For Talbot’s fortification of
Athy against the ‘Irish enemies of Laoghis’, see above, p. 183, n. 43. 46 No space in MS.
47 Repeated in MS.
The murder of John Dowdall, sheriff of Louth, 1402
B R E N DA N S M I T H
At Ardee on 13 December 1402, Henry IV’s lieutenant in Ireland, Thomas of

Lancaster, granted a parcel of land in Co. Louth worth £10 per annum to
Thomas Scargill in recognition of his services to the crown. The grant stated that
the land had been forfeited by Thomas White on account of his participation in
the sedition called ‘Verdonsgame’.1 We have here an intriguing reference to the
Verdon rebellion of 1312 in which many of the leading settlers in Co. Louth had
defied the authority of the king for several months. This dramatic act of
disobedience, which had been accompanied by murder and looting on a
considerable scale, had in the intervening ninety years, it appears, acquired a
romantic sobriquet among the English of Louth: Verdon’s Game.2 The
government’s determination to confront the idealization of rebellion in Louth in
late 1402 by offering a blunt reminder of the penalties of sedition was a response
to much more recent disturbances in the county. The lieutenant was in Ardee in
mid-December to deal with the aftermath of the murder some twelve weeks
earlier of the sheriff of Louth, John Dowdall. That those guilty of this crime
included some of the most prominent men in the county, among them Sir
Bartholomew Verdon, the grandnephew of Sir Nicholas and Robert Verdon, the
main players in the ‘game’ of 1312, encouraged all concerned to consider their
current situation in a historical context of conflict and violence between the
officers of the crown and the local community.3
The statement in the chronicle attributed to Henry Marlborough that John
Dowdall was murdered in September is corroborated by the appointment of a
new sheriff of Louth, John Clinton of Cappoge, on 25 September 1402.4 How
1 RCH, p. 173, no. 36.This appears to be the sole reference to Thomas Scargill in our sources.
Patrick Scargill accounted as one of the sheriffs of Drogheda in 1420: TNA, E 101/247/8.
Thomas White [Blound] of Knockdinnin, near Dromin (bar. Ardee), had appealed –
apparently without success – for the return of his confiscated lands c.1327 on the grounds that
he had joined the rebellion of 1312 against his will: CJRI, 1308–14, pp 169, 213, 237–9; NAI,
KB 2/6, p. 4; ‘Irish materials in the class of ancient petitions (SC 8) in the Public Record
Office London’, ed. Philomena Connolly, AH, 34 (1987), 19, citing TNA, SC 8/57/2828. All
SC 8 material can now be consulted online at the TNA website. 2 Brendan Smith,
Colonisation and conquest in medieval Ireland: the English in Louth, 1170–1330 (Cambridge,
1999), pp 97–105. 3 For Bartholomew Verdon’s ancestry: College of Arms [hereafter CoA],
‘Reportory to records of the exchequer, x–xxII Richard II’, p. 301. I am grateful to the
College Archivist, Robert Yorke, for his assistance in consulting this material. See also the
genealogical table in A.J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘The partition of the de Verdon lands in Ireland in
1332’, PRIA, 66C (1968), 401–55 at 445. 4 ‘Henry Marleburrough’s chronicle of Ireland’
in Meredith Hanmer, Edmund Campion and Edmund Spenser, The historie of Ireland
185
186 Brendan Smith
Dowdall died is not recorded, but we know that the fatal attack occurred at
Dunleer.5 More than thirty individuals subsequently sought pardons for their
involvement in his murder, including one woman, four men with Irish surnames,
two clerks and one chaplain.6 Marlborough’s chronicle reports that the plotters
planned their attack to coincide with a meeting of parliament at Dublin, a
parliament convened to help ameliorate the desperate financial situation in which
the government of the lordship of Ireland found itself in the summer of 1402.7
In August, the Irish council had informed the king that his son, the lieutenant,
had ‘not a penny in the world’, and the feebleness of the administration that
summer was exacerbated by the absence in England of Stephen Scrope, who
effectively governed the lordship on behalf of the 14-year-old Thomas of
Lancaster.8 That meetings of parliament were viewed as opportunities for
lawlessness is suggested by the remark in Marlborough’s chronicle that during
the Dublin parliament of 1413 ‘the Irish burned all that stood in their way, as
their usual custom was in times of other parliaments’.9 Clearly this was not a
custom unique to the Irish, and it is probable that some of those who murdered
Dowdall in September 1402 had a few weeks earlier gathered under his authority
as sheriff to elect the two knights who would represent the county of Louth in
the forthcoming assembly.10
If the financial weakness of the Dublin administration emboldened the
enemies of the sheriff of Louth, it also determined how the administration would
respond to this challenge to its authority. For Lancaster and his advisers, the
granting out of land forfeited by those deemed most responsible for the murder,
and the issuing of pardons in return for payment to those whose involvement was
peripheral, were means by which diminished coffers might be replenished. That
the first recorded response of the government to the murder, the appointment of
John Clinton as sheriff of Louth on 25 September, was made in some haste is
(Dublin, 1633), p. 215; RCH, p. 165, no. 215. 5 CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the exchequer,
Henry IV’, pp 274, 277. The calendared version of the relevant letter patent states that he was
killed ‘as he sat in his office’: CPR, 1405–8, p. 443. The phrase in the original Latin reads
sedentis in officio suo, which is more appropriately translated as ‘while in office’: TNA, C
66/379. I am grateful to Paul Dryburgh for checking this reference for me and to him and
Jonathan Mackman for their advice on how the key phrase should best be translated.
6 RCH, p. 173, nos 44–58; p. 174, nos 78–80; p. 175, nos 112–18; CPR, 1401–5, pp 240, 242,
481; ‘List of Irish material in the class of chancery files (recorda) (C260), Public Record
Office, London’, ed. Philomena Connolly, AH, 31 (1984), 17, citing TNA, C 260/118/31.
7 ‘Henry Marleburrough’s chronicle of Ireland’, p. 215. 8 Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp
341–3. Scrope was granted permission to commandeer shipping from Chester and Liverpool
to enable him to join Lancaster in Ireland on 20 Aug. It may have been several weeks before
he actually reached the lordship: CPR, 1401–5, 135. 9 ‘Henry Marleburrough’s chronicle of
Ireland’, pp 218–19. 10 For writs of summons ordering sheriffs, including the sheriff of
Louth, to oversee the election of two knights from each of their counties to attend parliament
in 1375: Ir. parl., 302–5. James Lydon, ‘Parliament and the community of Ireland’ in idem
(ed.), Law and disorder in thirteenth-century Ireland: the Dublin parliament of 1297 (Dublin,
1997), pp 125–38; Peter Crooks, ‘Representation and dissent: “parliamentarianism” and the
The murder of John Dowdall, sheriff of Louth, 1402 187
suggested by the fact that it was superseded on 21 October when John Bellew
was installed as sheriff.11 On 2 October, the lands of the late John Dowdall had
been taken into the king’s hands on account of the debts he had accrued while in
office, and by 28 October the distribution of the forfeited lands of Dowdall’s
killers, who had already been indicted and outlawed, had begun.12 By this date,
the lieutenant was at Trim, having been at Dublin a week earlier to witness the
appointment of Bellew as sheriff of Louth, and he dealt with matters touching
upon the murder, as well as appointing new keepers of the peace for Louth while
at Trim in the four weeks that followed.13 From Trim he travelled to Ardee, which
he reached by 4 December, and he remained there until at least 20 December.
While at Ardee he issued to numerous individuals pardons for outlawries and
felonies other than the death of John Dowdall, and distributed more of the
estates of the outlawed leaders of the murder plot.14 January and February 1403
saw the lieutenant at Drogheda, Dublin and Trim, making more grants of
forfeited land and issuing more pardons that explicitly did not cover the murder
of Dowdall, and in April and May he was at Drogheda and Kells, again granting
lands and pardons.15
The activities of the lieutenant were supplemented by those of other branches
of royal government in Ireland. On 26 September 1402, a panel of justices was
appointed to investigate acts of treason in Co. Louth and one of its members, the
chief justice, Stephen Bray, repeated at Drogheda in February 1403 the
sentences of outlawry passed on the most notable of those who had killed the
sheriff five months earlier. The outlawries were proclaimed again by the sheriff
and coroner of the county at Carlingford on 12 March 1404, the town of Louth
in May 1404 and Ardee and Drogheda in June 1404.16 By this time, however, the
actions of the government in Ireland were being superseded by decisions taken
at Westminster. In July 1403, letters patent were issued pardoning the leaders of
those who had murdered the sheriff and these were exemplified on several
occasions up to June 1407, during which period the killers presented petitions
seeking pardon and the restoration of their lands at three English parliaments.17
structure of politics in colonial Ireland, c.1370–1420’, EHR, 125 (2010), 1–34. 11 RCH, p.
166, no. 1. The appointment was renewed on 12 May 1403: RCH, p. 171, no. 98; p. 172, no. 1.
12 CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the exchequer, x–xxII Richard II’, p. 209; RCH, p. 174,
no. 73. 13 RCH, p. 173, nos 44, 45; p. 167, no. 18. 14 RCH, p. 173, nos 33–4, 36–8, 40–2,
46–58, 65. 15 RCH, p. 173, no. 61; p. 174, nos 78–80, 103; p. 175, nos 118, 133; p. 176, no.
147; p. 169, no. 9; BL, Egerton MS 75, p. 38b. 16 RCH, p. 166, no. 254. The commission is
discussed in Peter Crooks, ‘Factionalism and noble power in the lordship of Ireland, c.1361–
1423’ (PhD, TCD, 2007), pp 266–7. TNA, C 260/118/31, calendared briefly in Connolly
(ed.), ‘List of Irish material in the class of chancery files (recorda) (C260)’, 17. 17 CPR,
1401–5, pp 240, 242, 388, 481; CPR, 1405–8, 176, 284, 294, 295, 296, 443; TNA, SC
8/29/1415 and 1416; SC 8/113/5618, calendared in Connolly (ed.), ‘Irish materials in the
class of ancient petitions (SC8)’, 10, 39. The parliament rolls of medieval England, 1275–1504,
gen. ed. Chris Given-Wilson (16 vols, Woodbridge, 2005) [hereafter PROME], VIII. Henry
IV, 1399–1413, pp 260–2 (Jan. 1404), 301–2 (Oct. 1404), 350–1 (Mar. 1406).
188 Brendan Smith
These petitions and the responses to them provide some information on how
those responsible for Dowdall’s death acted in its aftermath. It appears that Sir
Bartholomew Verdon, Christopher White, James White and Stephen Gernon
fled to England, where all except Verdon were captured and imprisoned at
Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire.18 They escaped soon after, and by the summer
of 1403 had rejoined Verdon, who in the meantime had found service against
Owain Glyn Dŵr under the banner of Henry of Monmouth, prince of Wales.19
Stephen Gernon, at least, was still in arms in Wales in January 1406, but the
prohibition against the former outlaws returning to Ireland was lifted in
February 1407 and it was made clear that it was in return for their good service
against the Welsh and other enemies of the king that they were now fully
rehabilitated and restored to their possessions in Ireland.20
Two obvious questions remain unanswered: why was John Dowdall murdered,
and why were his killers not punished more severely? These are not questions
that have attracted the attention of historians of medieval Ireland, with the
honourable exception of Katharine Simms. She links the murder to a period of
major unrest in the north of Ireland that culminated in an assault on the English
colony in the Mortimer earldom of Ulster by a combination of ‘Irish enemies’,
Scots and ‘rebel English’ in 1403–4.21 She further speculates that anti-
Lancastrian sentiment linked the trouble in Ulster with the attempt by the
Percies in England to replace Henry IV with the young heir to the earldom of
March and Ulster, Edmund Mortimer; an attempt that ended in failure at the
Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403. The same sentiment, Simms suggests,
might explain the involvement of James White and Stephen Gernon in the
killing of John Dowdall, since the traditional links of these men with the
Mortimer family may have roused the suspicions of the new regime in England
and led to their exclusion from favour in Ireland. In this regard, Simms notes the
contemporary accusation that James White had attacked the king’s subjects in
18 CPR, 1405–8, 284, 295, 296. Tutbury Castle and honour had been crucial to Lancastrian
fortunes long before Henry IV became king: Simon Walker, The Lancastrian affinity, 1361–
1399 (Oxford, 1990), pp 209–34; Anthony Goodman, John of Gaunt: the exercise of princely
power in fourteenth-century Europe (Harlow, 1992), pp 301–53. Henry IV resided at Tutbury in
Sept. 1404 in advance of the parliament held at Coventry in the following month that heard
one of the petitions from Verdon and his associates: J.L. Kirby, Henry IV of England (London,
1970), pp 163–77; Helen Castor, The king, the crown and the duchy of Lancaster: public authority
and private power, 1399–1461 (Oxford, 2000), pp 193–224. 19 The 16-year-old Henry of
Monmouth was appointed lieutenant of Wales on 1 Apr. 1403, but had been in service there
since at least the previous August: R.R. Davies, The revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr (Oxford, 1995),
pp 102–26. It is possible that Verdon and his accomplices had had contact with Henry of
Monmouth while he was a captive at Trim during and after Richard II’s Irish expedition of
1399: Michael Potterton, Medieval Trim: history and archaeology (Dublin, 2005), pp 108–9.
20 CPR, 1405–8, 176, 294. 21 For what follows, see Katharine Simms, ‘The Ulster revolt of
1404: an anti-Lancastrian dimension?’ in Brendan Smith (ed.), Ireland and the English world
in the late Middle Ages: essays in honour of Robin Frame (Basingstoke, 2009), pp 141–60.
Louth in 1402 in alliance with ‘Irish enemies’.22 The return of these men and
their accomplices to the king’s favour and to their estates in Louth after July
1403, Simms argues, reflected the realization on the part of the crown that only
the support of local men could guarantee the survival of English interests in this
part of Ireland in the face of attacks by the Ulster Irish.
Although the specific motivation of Dowdall’s killers remains a mystery,
Simms is surely correct to see the issue of royal and seigniorial patronage in a
period of disputed authority in England and Ireland as having played a role in
the murder. For the English of Louth the decades around 1400 represented a
golden age of patronage. Acting on behalf of landlords from England who rarely
if ever visited Ireland was already a well-established marker of social status for
some Louth families by the early fourteenth century, but acquired added
significance from the 1330s, upon the final partition of the Verdon inheritance.23
By the 1360s, the holders of these estates were jointly employing John Dowdall
of Dundalk, a future sheriff of Louth, as their agent in the county, but between
1366 and 1383 they each in turn sold their Irish possessions to members of the
colonial community.24 More long-lasting and significant was the role played in
the politics of Louth by the greatest English family with land in late medieval
Ireland, the Mortimers. Roger Mortimer, who was related through marriage to
the Verdons, took an interest in the affairs of Louth upon acquiring the lordship
of Trim through marriage in 1307, and helped resolve the Verdon rebellion of
1312. He held Louth briefly as a liberty before his downfall in 1330, and in the
course of his career established links with landholding families in Meath and
Louth, such as the Cusacks, which his successors were to inherit.25 Mortimer
influence in Louth increased as a result of the marriage in 1368 of Edmund
Mortimer, earl of March (d. 1381), to Philippa, daughter of Lionel, duke of
Clarence, a union that brought to Edmund among other Irish lands the earldom
of Ulster, which included Carlingford and the Cooley Peninsula.26 It also
22 PROME, VIII, pp 260–2, 301–2 translates the key phrase ‘homicides, arcions ardentz as
enemys Irroiez’ as ‘homicides and acts of arson committed against the Irish enemy’, instead
of the more plausible ‘homicides, arsons and adherence to Irish enemies’. This is clearly the
sense of the pardon granted to White in July 1403 for, among other crimes, ‘having adhered
to the king’s Irish enemies’: CPR, 1401–5, p. 242. I am grateful to Robin Frame for his advice
on this point. 23 Mark S. Hagger, The fortunes of a Norman family: the de Verduns in England,
Ireland and Wales, 1066–1316 (Dublin, 2001), pp 119–23. 24 Otway-Ruthven, ‘Partition of
the de Verdon lands in Ireland’, 417; CPR, 1364–7, p. 218. John Dowdall was sheriff between
1369 and 1374: Dowdall deeds, p. 103; The register of Milo Sweteman, archbishop of Armagh,
1361–1380, ed. Brendan Smith, pp 13–15; CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the exchequer, vol.
1. xLI–LI Edward III’, p. 380. 25 Potterton, Medieval Trim, pp 89–98; Paul Dryburgh,
‘The last refuge of a scoundrel? Edward II and Ireland, 1321–7’ in Gwilym Dodd and
Anthony Musson (eds), The reign of Edward II: new perspectives (Woodbridge, 2006), pp 119–
39; Paul Dryburgh, ‘Roger Mortimer and the governance of Ireland, 1317–1320’ in Smith
(ed.), Ireland and the English world, pp 89–102; Frame, English lordship, pp 189–95. 26 R.R.
Davies, Lords and lordship in the British Isles in the late Middle Ages, ed. Brendan Smith
(Oxford, 2009), pp 38–9, 45–7.
190 Brendan Smith
bequeathed to the Mortimers the services of the White family of Dundalk, one
of whose members, Geoffrey, served as Lionel’s constable of Greencastle, Co.
Down, in the 1360s.27 As one of the keepers of the peace for Louth in 1392,
Geoffrey died defending Dundalk against Ó Néill. His son, James, was one of
the killers of John Dowdall in 1402, but was appointed as his seneschal of Ulster
by Edmund Mortimer, grandson of the first Mortimer earl of Ulster, as soon as
he came of age in 1413.28
For Louth as a royal county, the greatest font of patronage was the king, and
its inhabitants experienced to the full the exercise of the regal will in the early
months of 1395 when Richard II held court at Drogheda and Dundalk.29
Richard’s most important act of patronage concerning Louth was his grant of
the county as a liberty to his chamberlain, William Scrope, on 20 February, with
Drogheda on both sides of the Boyne added on 20 March.30 Scrope, who was also
appointed as justiciar of Ireland with authority in Leinster, Munster and Louth,
employed as his deputy in his new liberty Bartholomew Verdon, who, it appears,
was also his kinsman.31 Scrope returned his grant of Louth and Drogheda to the
crown in April 1397, and, on his advice, Richard II granted them in March 1399
as a liberty to Thomas Holland, duke of Surrey, who by then also had control of
the lands of his late brother-in-law, Roger Mortimer, in Meath and Ulster.32 In
Henry IV’s first parliament of November 1399, Holland was stripped of all titles
and offices he had received since 1397, and Louth returned to its traditional
status as a royal county.33 There was criticism from Ireland in 1399 of the
decision to remove Louth and Drogheda from direct royal control, but it was
during the period 1395–7, when Mortimer and Scrope worked well together and
Meath, Louth and Ulster were all liberties operating under the sympathetic
overlordship of the crown, that significant advances were made in curbing the
power of Ó Néill.34
27 Smith (ed.), Register of Milo Sweteman, pp 7–9, 13–15, 229–30; RCH, p. 42, no. 6.
28 Simms, ‘Ulster revolt of 1404’, pp 144–5, 147, 152–3. 29 Dorothy Johnston, ‘Richard II
and the Submissions of Gaelic Ireland’, IHS, 22 (1980), 1–20. Richard was at Drogheda on
19 and 20 January and again between 5 and 21 March. During this second sojourn, he visited
Dundalk, where he was present on 19 March: Edmund Curtis, Richard II in Ireland, 1394–5,
and the submissions of the Irish chiefs (Oxford, 1927), pp 58–146, citing TNA, E 159/171.
30 CPR, 1396–9, p. 174. Dorothy Johnston, ‘Richard II and Ireland’ in Lydon, Eng. & Ire.,
pp 175–91. 31 Crooks, ‘Factionalism and noble power in the lordship of Ireland’, p. 223 n.
157; Affairs Ire., p. 268. James Verdon, Bartholomew’s cousin, is described in a marginal note
to an entry on a now lost Irish memoranda roll of 1395–6 as ‘consanguineus’ of William
Scrope, sheriff of Louth: CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the exchequer, x–xxII Richard II’,
pp 301–2, 384. 32 CPR, 1396–9, pp 174, 483; CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the exchequer,
Henry IV’, p. 5, states that Surrey held an inquisition as sheriff of Louth at Dundalk in Oct.
1399, but by this time he was already in captivity in England. 33 Alistair Dunn, The politics
of magnate power: England and Wales, 1389–1413, pp 75, 78. 34 Proc. king’s council, Ire.,
1392–3, pp 261–9. For the dating of the relevant petitions, Crooks, ‘Factionalism and noble
power in the lordship of Ireland’, p. 233 n. 207.
Patronage, whether aristocratic or royal, on the unprecedented scale

experienced by the English of Louth in the late fourteenth century, was welcome
to the local elite, but also brought its own dangers. Too close an association with
a magnate who had fallen from royal favour, or the overthrow of the king himself,
might render former beneficiaries suspect in the eyes of the new dispensers of
patronage. By the time they murdered John Dowdall in 1402, both James White,
an associate of the Mortimer family, and Bartholomew Verdon, so recently the
right-hand man of William Scrope, who had been executed by Henry Bolingbroke
at Bristol in late July 1399, might have shifted uncomfortably under the gaze of
Henry IV. Another of the murderers, Stephen Gernon, as Simms points out, had
lost his position as constable of Greencastle and Carlingford – in the king’s
hands because of the minority of Edmund Mortimer – in March 1401.35
There are reasons to doubt, however, that Lancastrian disfavour in the light
of perceived hostility towards the new regime played a significant role in the
murder of Dowdall in 1402. Why would Henry IV have sought to punish the
office-holding gentry of Louth when he bestowed favour from the outset of his
reign upon men of far more exalted position who had served Richard II loyally
in Ireland? William Scrope’s brother and deputy during his absences from
Ireland, Stephen, was the effective governor of Ireland during much of the
lieutenancy of Thomas of Lancaster, while Janico Dartas, who had distinguished
himself in the service of Richard II in Ireland in 1394–5, and who acted as one
of Thomas Holland’s field commanders in the country in 1399, accompanied
Lancaster to Ireland in April 1401 and was one of his most trusted counsellors.36
That both Scrope and Dartas were members of the commission established on
26 September 1402 to enquire into the disturbances in Louth, and that the latter
benefited materially from Bartholomew Verdon’s forfeiture, are circumstances
that suggest that previous loyalties or associations counted for little in early
fifteenth-century Louth.37 Furthermore, how to assess the nature and
significance of support for the Mortimers in this period is complicated by the
fact that royal suspicion of the family began not with Henry IV but with his
predecessor. The death at the hands of the Irish in July 1398 of Roger Mortimer,
earl of March, possibly prevented a confrontation between him and Richard II,
and the realization that the crown would from that moment control the
Mortimer lands until the majority of Roger’s 7-year-old son, Edmund, left
adherents of the Mortimers in Louth and elsewhere with few options but to
follow the example of Stephen Scrope and Janico Dartas and acquiesce in
Lancastrian rule.38
35 Michael Bennett, Richard II and the revolution of 1399 (Stroud, 1999), pp 159, 161; Simms,
‘Ulster revolt of 1404’, p. 152. 36 Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire., pp 341–5; Simon Walker,
‘Janico Dartasso: chivalry, nationality and the man-at-arms’, History, new ser., 84 (1999), 31–
51; Edmund Curtis, ‘Janico Dartas, Richard the second’s “Gascon esquire”: his career in
Ireland, 1394–1426’, JRSAI, 7th ser., 3 (1933), 183–205. 37 RCH, p. 166, no. 254; p. 174,
no. 73. 38 Alastair Dunn, ‘Richard II and the Mortimer inheritance’ in Chris Given-Wilson
192 Brendan Smith
But had there been a Mortimer party in Louth up to this point? Rees Davies
has observed that ‘[f]or the Mortimers, the fourteenth century was a roller
coaster of a century, punctuated by disaster, minorities galore and widowhoods’,
and the minority that commenced with the death of Roger Mortimer in 1398 was
but the latest in a series in the second half of the fourteenth century that meant
that the crown regularly had control of the family’s estates throughout the
British Isles.39 In such circumstances, it was to be expected that in Ireland the
same individuals would be employed to run the liberty of Ulster by its earl when
he had control of his estates and by the crown when he did not.40 This
permeability of office-holding was likely to be even more pronounced in Louth
given that the Cooley Peninsula, which formed part of the economic and
landholding hinterland of Dundalk, was part of the earldom. So it was that
Geoffrey White of Dundalk would act as constable of Greencastle in the 1360s
and keeper of the peace in Louth in 1392.41 His son, James, was appointed as a
keeper of the peace for Louth in November 1400 and is first mentioned in
connection with the Mortimers in 1413 when Edmund Mortimer appointed him
as his seneschal of Ulster upon being given possession of his estates.42 He was
retained in this position by the crown during the minority that followed
Edmund’s death in 1425, and served as sheriff of Louth at the same time.43
Turning to Stephen Gernon, we see that a Mortimer connection is missing in
a career involving service in the earldom of Ulster combined with office-holding
in the county of Louth. Gernon first served as a keeper of the peace in Louth in
1385, and received a royal grant of property confiscated from the abbot of Newry
in the Cooley Peninsula in February 1392, sixteen months before Roger
Mortimer was granted control of his Irish lands.44 It was not until after Roger’s
death that Gernon was appointed constable of Greencastle, Carlingford and
Cooley, and he was receiving additional grants from the crown in support of this
role as late as November 1400.45 Gernon had close links with several members of
the Verdon family in these years, and acted as a mainpernor for Bartholomew
Verdon and others in a case concerning payment of debt in 1397–8.46
Bartholomew’s ancestry made it likely that he would play a leading role in Louth
(ed.), Fourteenth Century England, 2 (Woodbridge 2002), pp 159–70. For the need to treat
some of Dunn’s views with caution, see Crooks, ‘Factionalism and noble power in the lordship
of Ireland’, p. 223 n. 157. 39 Davies, Lords and lordship in the British Isles, pp 142–5,
quotation at p. 144. 40 For the employment of the same individuals in royal and seigniorial
service, Davies, Lords and lordship in the British Isles, pp 179–96. 41 See above, p. 189.
42 Simms, ‘Ulster revolt of 1404’, p. 152; RCH, p. 160, no. 18; Frame, Ire. & Brit., pp 301–
17; Robin Frame, ‘Commissions of the peace in Ireland, 1302–1461’, AH, 35 (1992), 1–43;
TNA, E 101/247/15. 43 CPR, 1422–9, p. 383; Handbook and select calendar of sources for
medieval Ireland in the National Archives of the United Kingdom, ed. Paul Dryburgh and
Brendan Smith (Dublin, 2005), pp 193, 216–23, citing TNA, E 28/48/58; TNA, E 30/1558,
1573. 44 Frame, ‘Commissions of the peace’, p. 21; CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the
exchequer, x–xxII Richard II’, p. 229. 45 CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the exchequer,
Henry IV’, p. 1; RCH, pp 156, no. 62, 160, no. 12. 46 CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the
exchequer, x–xxII Richard II’, pp 229, 283.
political society upon coming of age and inheriting the lands of his father,
Richard, in the mid-1380s, and his two extended sojourns in England in the
1390s may have been undertaken with a view to strengthening contacts with the
members of English political society to whom he was related in various degrees
as a result of the partition of the Verdon inheritance earlier in the century.47 He
was an obvious candidate both to act as William Scrope’s deputy during the time
he held Louth as a liberty between 1395 and 1397 and to serve as a keeper of the
peace alongside James White in November 1400.48 In short, the evidence
suggests that Henry IV was initially happy to employ individuals in adminis-
trative posts in Louth and the vacant earldom of Ulster who had previously seen
service under Richard II or Roger Mortimer. In the earliest years of Henry IV’s
reign, there appears not to have been a Ricardian party or a Mortimer party in
Louth, but simply a patronage party, whose members were as promiscuous in
their attitude to seeking and accepting favour as were their social superiors.
This is not to suggest that the uncertainty that accompanied the change of
royal dynasty was unrelated to the murder of John Dowdall. Simms has
elucidated the build-up and explosion of tension in the earldom of Ulster in the
first years of the fifteenth century, and the great lordship of Trim was also
affected by violent disturbances at this time. In the spring or early summer of
1401, Richard Rede, chief baron of the Dublin exchequer, while travelling from
Drogheda to the deputy lieutenant, Sir John Stanley, at Trim, was abducted by
Sir Thomas Fleming, baron of Slane, at Rathfeigh, and imprisoned in the castle
of his son, Christopher Fleming, at Skreen. The government records he carried
appear to have been the target of his kidnappers, and he was forced to pay a large
ransom for his release. A commission, of which Bartholomew Verdon was a
member, was established in June to arrest those involved, but the willingness of
the government to begin issuing pardons to malefactors as early as October 1401
may have convinced him and other potential disturbers of the peace that even
the most serious illegal activity would not be severely punished by the new
regime.49 The failure of his pledges to produce Stephen Gernon at chancery in
late November 1401 makes it likely that he had by that time placed himself
beyond the law, and the pardons both he and other leading participants in the
murder of John Dowdall eventually received suggest that they were already
involved in attacks on Louth in alliance with neighbouring Irish families before
September 1402.50
47 CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the exchequer, I–x Richard II’, p. 499; CoA, ‘Reportory to
records of the exchequer, x–xxII Richard II’, p. 121; CPR, 1396–9, p. 203; RCH, p. 120, no.
53, p. 133, no. 119. 48 Frame, ‘Commissions of the peace’, pp 21–2. 49 CPR, 1399–1401,
p. 519; Dryburgh and Smith (eds), Handbook and select calendar of sources for medieval Ireland,
pp 167–8, citing TNA, E 28/11/21; RCH, p. 160, no. 15; Malcolm Mercer, ‘Select document:
exchequer malpractice in late medieval Ireland: a petition from Christopher Fleming, Lord
Slane, 1438’, IHS, 36 (2009), 407–13. 50 RCH, p. 161, no. 54; CPR, 1401–5, p. 242; CPR,
1405–8, p. 443; PROME, VIII, pp 260–2.
194 Brendan Smith
Why was John Dowdall targeted for murder? No evidence of any previous
dealings on his part with his killers survives, and the traces he has left in the
records provide few clues about his activities before or during his time as sheriff.
He came not from the main branch of the Dowdall family, based at Dundalk,
which had provided Louth with sheriffs at regular intervals since the 1310s, but
from a junior branch based at Newtown, south-east of Termonfeckin.51 He is
recorded acquiring small parcels of property there from 1390 until early in the
year of his death, and also in 1390 stood as pledge for his cousin John Dowdall,
recently sheriff of Louth, who was permitted to repay his debts of £57 from his
time in office at the rate of £4 per annum.52 In December 1389, he and two other
Louth men were ordered by the king to become knights, but a local jury
subsequently ruled that the annual income of each was less than the £40 per
annum threshold for knighthood.53
It is probable that Dowdall had a working relationship with one of his killers,
Thomas Gernon of Killincoole, who in 1400 had been appointed as one of the
collectors in the barony of Louth of a subsidy raised to oppose the attacks of
Niall Ó Néill.54 Ó Néill pressure on Louth, which had cost Geoffrey White his
life in 1392, had been curtailed by the efforts of Richard II and Roger Mortimer
in the second half of the 1390s, but Mortimer’s death and Richard’s fall left the
county more exposed to Irish attack than ever.55 The indenture drawn up in
December 1401 between Thomas of Lancaster and Eochaidh Mac Mathghamhna
by which the latter was granted the lordship of Farney, abutting the baronies of
Ardee and Louth, in return for an annual rent of £10 and a promise to use his
power against the king’s enemies, revealed the weakness of the government and
was virulently opposed by many colonists who later accused Eochaidh and his
men of spying on their roads and fortresses and planning to destroy the county.56
Association with so unpopular a policy might have played a significant role in the
death of John Dowdall.
The desperate need to offer effective defence against Ó Néill and his allies
explains why Dowdall’s murderers were reinstated so soon after his death. Many
of them held land in the marches of Dundalk, as was the case with James and
Christopher White who held Balregan and part of Roche, north-west of the
town, and Reginald Hadsor who held Raskeagh on the Louth–Armagh border.
It may have been felt that these men could offer more effective resistance to the
Irish than could those to whom their estates had been granted in the aftermath
51 Walter Dowdall, 1309–10: RDKPRI, 39, p. 32; William Dowdall, 1359–63: TNA, E
101/244/4; John Dowdall (of Dundalk), 1369–74: see above, p. 189; John Dowdall (of
Dundalk), 1383–5, 1389: Dowdall deeds, pp 113, 127, 164–5; CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the
exchequer, x–xxII Richard II’, p. 70. 52 Dowdall deeds, pp 125–6, 127, 140, 141. 53 CoA,
‘Reportory to records of the exchequer, x–xxII Richard II’, pp 257–8. 54 CoA, ‘Reportory
to records of the exchequer, Henry IV’, pp 274, 277; RCH, p. 158, no. 119, p. 159, no. 7.
55 Katharine Simms, ‘The archbishops of Armagh and the O’Neills, 1347–1471’, IHS, 19
(1974), 38–55. 56 RCH, p. 165, no. 232; PPC, II, pp 49–50; Elizabeth Matthew, ‘Henry V
and the proposal for an Irish crusade’ in Smith (ed.), Ireland and the English world, pp 161–75.
of Dowdall’s death.57 In 1410, James White, who as early as 1402 had been involved
in alliances with the Irish, was permitted to marry his son to a daughter of the
branch of the Ó Néill family with lands closest to Louth in order to foster peace, and
in 1425 he and Bartholomew Verdon were among those who witnessed an indenture
between the lieutenant, James Butler, and Brian Mac Mathghamhna designed to
bring peace to the marches.58 The fact that another witness to the indenture was Sir
John Dowdall, son of the man murdered by Verdon and White twenty-three years
before, illustrates the capacity of the leaders of Louth society to avoid the
perpetuation of feud in the face of dangers from the neighbouring Irish.59
In attempting to explain the murder of John Dowdall in September 1402, the
authorities sought, by their evocation of the Verdon rebellion of 1312, to pin the
blame on a tradition of lawlessness in the county. Since the murder of John
Bermingham, earl of Louth, by his leading tenants in 1329, however, there had
been no armed disobedience against the crown or its representatives in Louth.60
While all four holders of Louth as a liberty in the fourteenth century – John
Bermingham, Roger Mortimer, William Scrope and Thomas Holland – died
violent deaths, only Bermingham was killed in Ireland. Had the same authorities
focused instead on their own recent activities, they might have found a more
plausible though more uncomfortable explanation for Dowdall’s death. Such
activities included the encouragement given to Roger Mortimer in 1395 to
confront the Irish, followed by the undermining of him and his relatives after
1397; the dispatch of a 13-year-old boy as lieutenant of Ireland in 1401with
insufficient resources to govern effectively; the removal of local men in Louth
from office and their replacement by outsiders; the failure to punish a serious
attack on a senior royal minister in neighbouring Meath; and the raising of local
subsidies to defend the county against Ó Néill at the same moment as
concessions were being made to Mac Mathghamhna. In such circumstances, the
wonder was that John Dowdall was the only representative of the crown to die at
the hands of the English of Louth, and that Verdon’s Game was not replayed.
57 CoA, ‘Reportory to records of the exchequer, Henry IV’, p. 466; RCH, p. 169, no. 9; p. 175,
no. 133; BL, Egerton MS 75, p. 240b. For landholding in the marches of Louth in the late
Middle Ages, see Harold O’Sullivan, ‘The march of south-east Ulster in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries: a period of change’ in Raymond Gillespie and Harold O’Sullivan (eds),
The borderlands: essays on the history of the Ulster-Leinster border (Belfast, 1989), pp 55–73.
58 RCH, p. 196, no. 82; Dryburgh and Smith (eds), Handbook and select calendar of sources for
medieval Ireland, pp 216–22, citing TNA, E 30/1558. 59 Joan Stokes, the widow of Sheriff
John Dowdall, petitioned the king for justice against her husband’s murderers in May 1406,
by which time they had already been issued with pardons: TNA, C 260/118/31; CPL, xi,
1455–1464, pp 243–4. The letter granting John Dowdall, son and heir of the late sheriff,
possession of his father’s estate in Sept. 1407 specifically mentioned that the sheriff had been
murdered by Bartholomew Verdon, James White, Stephen Gernon and others: CoA,
‘Reportory to records of the exchequer, Henry IV’, p. 298. 60 Smith, Conquest and
colonisation, pp 114–21. Tensions appear to have been running high in Dundalk in the summer
of 1377, when its bailiffs were ordered to ensure that arms were carried in the town only by
knights and esquires: RCH, p. 106, no. 113.
Irish kings and Carinthian dukes: John Lynch revisited
ANNETTE KEHNEL
Twenty years ago, Katharine Simms, my supervisor and mentor, challenged me

incidentally with a very continental European phenonemen, an odd Carinthian
inauguration rite, mentioned by John Lynch in 1662. I have often asked myself
what gave her the idea. I suppose it was because I came from continental Europe.
However, I got hooked on this very topic, which since has marked a significant
direction of my research, focusing on the history of power, that is to say, on
political rituals of status elevation. Katharine’s hint to have a closer look initiated
a long-term project. Starting from the well-known inauguration of the Irish king
of Tír Conaill (Donegal) – a marginal example from the Celtic fringes – she
directed my attention to the Carinthian ceremony, away from the Celtic fringes
to the very centre of medieval Europe. In this essay, I will first briefly recapitulate
the Irish case and then move on to present an overview on the source of the
Carinthian inauguration.
IRISH KINGS
Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) reports the following story about the
inauguration of the kings of Tír Conaill in his Topographia Hibernie:
A new and outlandish way of confirming kingship and dominion: […]

There is in the northern and farther part of Ulster, namely in Kenelcunill,
a certain people which is accustomed to appoint its king with a rite
altogether outlandish and abominable. When the whole people of that land
has been gathered together in one place, a white mare is brought forward
into the middle of the assembly. He who is to be inaugurated, not as a chief,
but as a beast, not as a king, but as an outlaw, has bestial intercourse with
her before all, professing himself to be a beast also. The mare is then killed
immediately, cut up in pieces, and boiled in water. A bath is prepared for
the man afterwards in the same water. He sits in the bath surrounded by
all his people, and all, he and they, eat of the meat of the mare which is
brought to them. He quaffs and drinks of the broth in which he is bathed,
not in any cup, or using his hand, but just dipping his mouth into it round
about him. When this unrighteous rite has been carried out, his kingship
and dominion have been conferred.1
1 Gerald of Wales [Giraldus Cambrensis], The history and topography of Ireland, trans. John J.
196
Irish kings and Carinthian dukes: John Lynch revisited 197
The procedure is well known, but nevertheless quite disturbing: we are told that
the king of Tír Conaill, at the day of his inauguration in front of his future
subjects, embraced a white mare (jumentum candidum … ad quod ille … bestialiter
accedens), which was then killed, boiled in water and eaten by the whole assembly.
The king-to-be in the meantime took a bath in the broth.
Historians disagree on the historical value of Gerald’s account. Like other
antiquarian elements, it was and is read as a piece of evidence testifying to the
very roots of civilization, to archaic ideas surviving in the Celtic fringes of
Europe.2 On the other hand, the reliability of the source has often been
questioned, and the passage in the Topographia has been dismissed as a piece of
Anglo-Norman propaganda: Gerald, like other conquest historians in the twelfth
century, was collecting arguments to justify the conquest, for example by
documenting the barbarism of the subjected people. Even though Beryl Smalley
treats Gerald as the most learned among the so-called ‘conquest historians’, we
should still keep in mind that we owe our knowledge about the archaic Tír
Conaill inauguration to its force as a political argument, an argument brought
forth as an agent of a conquering people.3 Gerald probably never visited the
north of Ireland, and thus reports the Tír Conaill inauguration by hearsay. That
said, there are many parallels to the account that can be found in the rituals of
other Indo-European people, which suggest that such practice not implausible.4
The Tír Conaill inauguration inspired modern scholarship to look to
comparative Indo-European anthropological studies from the nineteenth century
onwards. Thus, the involvement of a horse has been identified as one of the most
prominent features in inauguration ceremonies among Indo-European peoples.
A prototype might be traced back to the Indian Asvamedha, the ritual sacrifice
of a male horse in the course of the ascension of a new king to the throne.5 The
fact that a mare and not a stallion is involved in the Irish case gave rise to a
discussion about whether or not the custom was of Indo-European origin. The
ritual intercourse of the king-to-be with the mare would then refer to the ritual
understanding of territorial sovereignty as female goddess or queen. In order to
conquer the land, the future king had to conquer and to lie with her. This
tradition mingles with that of the ceremonial sacrifice: ritual slaughter of the
horse, which is subsequently boiled and consumed by the whole people, and thus
O’Meara (Mountrath, 1982), pp 109f.; for the Latin original, see, Giraldus Cambrensis
Topographia hibernica et expugnatio hibernica, ed. J.F. Dimock (London, 1867), p. 169.
2 Kenneth Jackson, The oldest Irish tradition: a window to the Iron Age (Cambridge, 1964).
3 Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974), pp 121–57; Robert Bartlett,
Gerald of Wales, 1146–1223 (Oxford, 1985), pp 158–77, 187–94; Brian Scott, ‘Introduction’
in Expugnatio Hibernica. The conquest of Ireland; by Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. idem and F.x.
Martin (Dublin, 1978), pp xii–xxxiii. 4 Katharine Simms, From kings to warlords: the
changing political structure of Gaelic Ireland in the later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1987), p. 22.
5 Franz Rudolf Schröder, ‘Ein altirischer Krönungsritus und das indogermanische
Rossopfer’, ZCP, 16 (1927), 310–12; Julius Pokorny, ‘Das nicht-indogermanische Substrat im
Irischen’, ibid., 123–5; Wilhelm Koppers, ‘Pferdeopfer und Pferdekult der Indogermanen.
198 Annette Kehnel
all share in the sovereignty of the land, which can then be transferred onto the
candidate.
Another element is the temporary placing of the future king right in the vessel
with the broth. Pontfarcy interpreted the bath as the completion of the ritual
mating between the future king and the mare, the return into the cosmic uterus
and eternal rebirth.6 The cauldron that boiled the sacrificial meat to be eaten at
the victors’ feast figures as a symbol of sovereignty and has a prominent role in
Pindar’s account of the horse competition at the Olympics of 476BC.7 Another
line of enquiry leads to the concept of the ritual bath, which is transmitted from
early modern Madagascar.8
These components of the royal inaugurations have also been identified as
‘liminal elements’ in the rites de passage described by Arnold van Gennep and
further developed by Victor Turner.9 They described rituals of status elevation
in a threefold scheme of ‘separation’, ‘margin’ and ‘reaggregation’, or else ‘pre-
liminal’, ‘liminal’ and ‘post-liminal’ phase. Humiliation of the candidate is a
ritually prescribed action for the central liminal phase and is followed by final
rites of empowerment in the phase of reaggregation. Gerald’s ‘new and
outlandish way of confirming kingship and dominion’ in Tír Conaill would thus
find an explanation as liminal characteristics in the transformative process of van
Gennep’s rites de passage. An early prototype has been found in the annual
humiliation of the Babylonian kings, in the ‘Akitu’ celebrated in the first
millennium BC. On the fifth day of this twelve-day ritual, the sovereign, upon
being introduced to the temple, was stripped of all his royal insignia, was slapped
across his face and was forced to kneel in front of the divine statue.10 After
Eine ethnologisch-religionswissenschaftliche Studie’ Die Indogermanen- und Germanenfrage.

Wiener Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik, 4 (1936), pp 279–411; Jaan Puhvel,
‘Aspects of equine functionality’ in Myth and law among the Indo-Europeans: studies in Indo-
European comparative mythology (Berkeley, CA, 1970), pp 157–72; idem, Comparative
mythology (Baltimore, MD, 1989), pp 267–76; Johannes C. Heesterman, The ancient Indian
royal consecration (The Hague, 1957); Kim McCone, Pagan past and Christian present in early
Irish literature (Maynooth, 1991), pp 117–20; Yolande de Pontefarcy, ‘Two late inaugurations
of Irish kings’, Études Celtiques, 24 (1987), 203–8; Andrej Pleterski, ‘Die Kärntner
Fürstensteine in der Struktur dreier Kultstätten’ in Der Europäische Fürstenstein im
europäischen Vergleich. Tagungsbericht Symposium Gmünd 20. bis 22. September 1996 (Kärnten,
1997), 84; see also Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Royal inauguration in Gaelic Ireland, c.1100–1600: a
cultural landscape study (Woodbrigde, 2004). 6 Pontfarcy, ‘Inaugurations’, 204. 7 Gregory
Nagy, ‘Sovereignty, boiling cauldrons and chariot-racing in Pindar’s Olympian 1’ in Kingship
(Cosmos 2), ed. Emily Lyle (Edinburgh, 1988), pp 143–7. 8 Maurice Bloch, ‘The ritual of
the royal bath in Madagascar: the dissolution of death, birth and fertility into authority’ in
David Cannadine and Simon Price (eds), Rituals of royalty: power and ceremonial in traditional
societies (Cambridge, 1987), 271–97. 9 Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage. Etudes
systématique de rites de la porte et du seuil, de l’hospitalité de l’adoption, de la grossesse et de
l’accouchement, de la naissance, de l’enfance, de la puberté, de l’initiation, de l’ordination, du
couronnement, des fiancailles et du mariage des funérailles des saisons etc. (Paris, 1909); Victor
Turner, The ritual process: structure and anti-structure (New York, 1995). 10 Lindsay Jones,
Encyclopedia of religion, 1 (Detroit, MI, 2005), p. 221.
assurances that he had not been negligent of Babylon, the gods and the citizens,
he would have been reinvested with the signs of power.11
A more recent example seems to indicate that ritual humiliations might have
been imposed on the candidate with such vigour and at such length that he did
not survive to see his accession to power. It is a non-European example, namely
the inauguration of the kings of Sierra Leone in the seventeenthth/eighteenthth
century and it is reported by James Georges Frazer, whose observations must of
course be read and used with great caution:
The savage Timmes of Sierra Leone, who elect their king, reserve to
themselves the right of beating him on the eve of his coronation; and they
avail themselves of this constitutional privilege with such hearty goodwill
that sometimes the unhappy monarch does not long survive his elevation
to the throne. Hence when the leading chiefs have a spite at a man and
wish to rid themselves of him, they elect him king. Formerly, before a man
was proclaimed king of Sierra Leone, it used to be the custom to load him
with chains and thrash him. Then the fetters were knocked off, the kingly
robe was placed on him, and he received in his hands the symbol of royal
dignity, which was nothing but the axe of the executioner. It is not therefore
surprising to read that in Sierra Leone, where such customs have prevailed,
except among the Mandingoes and Suzees, few kings are natives of the
countries they govern. So different are their ideas from ours, that very few
are solicitous of the honour, and competition is very seldom heard of.12
CARINTHIAN DUKES
Long before the Tír Conaill inauguration inspired modern scholarship to

comparative Indo-European anthropological studies from the nineteenth century
onwards, it had already provoked search for comparable material. In 1662, the
exiled Irish Jesuit John Lynch published a three-volume work, dedicated to the
task of refuting the ‘calumnious charges against the Irish people, princes and
kings’, brought forward by Gerald of Wales.13 Lynch dismissed the assumption
11 Svend Aage Pallis, The Babylonian Akitu Festival (Copenhagen, 1926); Julye Bidmead, ‘The
Akitu Festival: religious continuity and royal legitimation in Mesopotamia’ (Diss., New York
U, 2004), pp 77–86; Claus Ambos, ‘Weinen aus Demut: Der babylonische König beim
Neujahrsfest’ in idem et al. (eds), Die Welt der Rituale. Von der Antike bis heute (Darmstadt,
2005), pp 38–40; idem, ‘Das Neujahrsfest zur Jahresmitte und die Investitur des Königs im
Gefängnis’ in Doris Prechel (ed.), Rest und Eid. Instrumente der Herrschaftssicherung im Alten
Orient (Würzburg, 2008), pp 1–12; Mark E. Cohen, The cultic calendars of the ancient Near
East (Bethesda, MD, 1993). 12 James George Frazer, ‘The burden of royalty’ in idem, The
golden bough: a study in magic and religion, 12 vols, ii (Taboo and the perils of the soul) (London,
1966), p. 18. 13 John Lynch, Cambrensis eversus, seu potius historica fides in rebus hibernicis
Giraldo Cambrensi abrogate, ed. and trans. Matthew Kelly (3 vols, Dublin, 1848), i, p. 111.
200 Annette Kehnel
that there was a historical core to the story about the kings of Tír Conaill. He did
so in arguing that none of the holy bishops of Tír Conaill would possibly allow
such a pagan rite to be practised in his diocese. Furthermore he is convinced that
no country in the world would use such a disgusting way to install its kings –
although, he says there are some customs in other parts of Europe that are not
less ridiculous. And here he brings forth a most peculiar mode to install a ruler,
said to be in practice in Carinthia:
When a new prince is about to assume the reins of government in

Carinthia, a singular ceremony is observed, unknown in any other state. A
marble stone is erected in a wide meadow. When the inauguration is to take
place, a peasant, to whom the office belongs by hereditary right, stands up
on the stone, having at his right hand a black cow in calf and at his left a
lank and half-starved mare. The people are all around, and an immense
concourse of peasants. The candidate, surrounded by a band clothed in
purple, advances towards the stone; the insignia of his office are borne
before him, and the whole train of the procession except himself is
gorgeously dressed. He comes in peasant’s dress, with a cap on his head,
shoes on his feet, and a shepherd’s crook in his hand, and looks more like
a shepherd than a prince. As soon as he appears in sight, the man on the
stone cries out in the Illyrian tongue, ‘Who is he that cometh on so
proudly?’ ‘The lord of the land is coming’, answer the surrounding
multitudes. ‘Is he a just judge?’, he asks. ‘Seeks he the good of his country?
Is he a free man? And worthy of the dignity? Does he practice and promote
Christian piety?’ ‘He does and he will’, answers the crowd. The man then
resumes, ‘Pray tell me by what right can he deprive me of this seat’. The
master of the ducal palace answers: ‘The place is purchased from you for
sixty denarii: these cattle’, he says, pointing to the cow and mare, ‘shall be
yours; you shall have the clothes which the duke puts off, and you and your
whole family shall be free from tribute’. After this dialogue, the peasant
slightly slaps the candidate’s cheek, orders him to be a just judge, and after
receiving the money, retires from his position. The duke then ascends the
marble; brandishes his sword as he turns round and round; addresses the
people, and promises that he will be a just judge. They say, too, that he
drinks water which is presented to him in a peasant’s cap, as a pledge of his
future sobriety, &c. It is the princes of Austria that are thus installed: they
are styled the archdukes.14
The source named by Lynch is a certain Joannes Auban, otherwise known as

Johannes Boemus, John of Bohemia, who in turn cites Eneas Silvio Piccolomini,
14 Lynch, Cambrensis eversus, iii, pp 344–7.

the private secretary and diplomatic adviser of the Habsburgian emperor

Friedrich III, who later made a career as Pope Pius II (1458–64). Piccolomini
reports about the installation of the dukes of Carinthia in De Europe written in
Austria in 1458. He in turn quotes the work of a certain John of Viktring.
John, Cistercian abbot of Viktring (d. 1345/7), is known as the author of the
Liber certarum historiarum, ‘Book of certain stories’ or ‘Book of authentic stories’,
a chronicle for the years between 1217 and 1342. Two recensions, a draft dating
to the year 1339 and a neat copy completed in 1343 are preserved.15 Both give
detailed accounts about the peculiar inauguration rite in use in Carinthia: one
referring to the year 1286, when Duke Meinhard II of Görz Tirol was installed
as duke of Carinthia; another under the year 1335, when reporting on the
installation of Duke Albrecht II (Albrecht the Lame) and Otto the Jovial, and
again in the year 1342, when Albrecht, this time together with his nephew,
repeated the ceremony.
John, the author, was a well-known and influential figure in early Habsburgian
Austria.16 In 1341, the abbot was promoted to the position of private chaplain of
Albrecht the Lame, duke of Austria, and from 1335 onwards also duke of
Carinthia. Albrecht mainly resided in Vienna. It seems that John, the abbot,
wrote most of his chronicle during his time as chaplain under the patronage of
Albrecht. The ‘Book of certain stories’ is dedicated to this duke, who, in 1335,
became the first of the Habsburg dynasty to be installed as duke of Carinthia. In
fact, it was Albrecht’s brother Otto the Jovial who took the ceremony instead of
Albrecht, because of the latter’s handicap. It seems plausible that as abbot of
Viktring, John was personally present at that inauguration of Albrecht and Otto.
What he describes as having happened in the year 1286 might have been much
inspired by what he saw on 2 July 1335.
An earlier account of the ceremony and presumably one of the main sources
used by John of Viktring is Ottokars Reimchronik (‘Ottokar’s metrical chronicle’)
written some thirty years or so prior to the ‘Book of certain stories’.17 The author
of this work, Otacher ouz der Geul (Ottokar from Gaal), was a member of the
lesser Styrian nobility and lived as a vassal of Duke Otto II of Liechtenstein at
the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His chronicle of contem-
porary German and Austrian history is written in Middle High German verses
and contains nearly ten thousand stanzas. Ottokar died some time before the year
1321. We know that he travelled to France and Germany, and that he, like John
of Viktring, for some time during the years 1314–17 was in the service of the
Habsburgian rulers Albrecht the Lame and Friedrich the Beautiful of Austria.
15 Fedor Schneider (ed.), Johannis Abbatis Victoriensis, Liber certarum historiarum (2 vols,
Hannover, 1909). 16 Claudia Fräss-Ehrfeld, Geschichte Kärntens. 1: Das Mittelalter (Klagenfurt,
1984), i, pp 344–5. 17 Ottokars Österreichische Reimchronik, ed. Joseph Seemüller, ed. 1890
(2 vols, Hannover, 1890); Maja Loehr, Der steirische Reimchronist: her Otacher ouz der Geul’
in Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichte, 51 (1937), 89–130.
202 Annette Kehnel
He reports on the Carinthian tradition when dealing with the events of 1286,
when Meinhard II was inaugurated.18 Whether Ottokar was himself present at
the inauguration ceremonies remains unclear.
Together these two early fourteenth-century sources give a detailed report of
the happenings at the ducal stone in Carinthia, corresponding by-and-large to
Lynch’s convenient summary cited above. The duke comes along, finding the
inauguration stone occupied by a peasant. He arrives in the company of his
nobles, after having been dressed in the morning in grey, that is in peasant
clothes, described invariably in great detail (grey trousers, red peasants’ boots
(Bundschuhe) with red straps, a grey robe, without a collar, reaching just a little
below his knees, finally a grey coat without any decoration, and a grey hat – as
they were lately fashionable in Carinthia, as Ottokar remarks). The duke brings
along an ox and a young horse – later versions, like that quoted by Lynch, often
have the peasant holding the cattle from the beginning – and he is led to the
stone by the nobles of the country. There sits the peasant. The right to invest the
duke runs in his family, and whenever a new duke is to be installed, the eldest has
to perform the family duty, that is, he has to sit on the stone with his legs
crossed, to talk, but in the Slavic language, and to interrogate the accompanying
nobles (and the Carinthian people) about the ducal candidate. The nobles explain
the duke’s purpose and defend his good character and his qualities as regards
rulership. The peasant is assured he will receive the ox and mare, plus freedom
from tax for himself and his house, if only he gives way to the duke. Finally, the
peasant agrees and clears his place but not without giving the candidate a slap in
the face. Thereafter the duke eventually takes possession of the stone. According
to Ottokar, he starts immediately to fulfil his ducal duty, which is to hold court
and to enfeoff his vassals. According to John of Viktring, however, the duke first
of all takes his sword and swings it in the four directions. He then takes a draught
of water from a hat, and, as some say, fires are lit. Then the whole assembly
proceeds to the nearby church at Maria Saal, where mass is solemnly celebrated.
After a ceremonial meal, the duke holds court at a second monument, the so-
called ducal chair, situated not far from Maria Saal. Both Ottokar and John end
with a passage on the ducal privileges at the imperial court.
Not all the later ‘Maria Saal details’ are to be found in the oldest report on the
ceremony as described in Ottokar’s metrical chronicle. Ottokar, however, makes
it very clear that the ceremony was hardly known at the time when it was
performed in 1286. Almost as an excuse, he explains in the introductory part of
his report that this mode of inaugurating a Carinthian duke is only performed in
the event of dynastic death, that is, when a new dynasty takes possession of the
Carinthian dukeship. When Ottokar wrote his chronicle, some time in the early
fourteenth century, the last dynastic change in Carinthia lay beyond living
memory. From 1122, the Spanheimer were the ruling dynasty in Carinthia. After
18 Ottokars Österreichische Reimchronik, ed. Seemüller, pp 264–6.
the childless death of Bernhard of Spanheim, in 1256, the Bohemian king

Ottokar of Bohemia held the fief for some time, but he was never formally
invested with the dukedom. After Ottokar’s death in 1278, Meinhard II of Görz
Tirol, a close associate and friend of the Habsburgian king Rudolf I, eventually
was invested with Carinthia in the spring of 1286. The solemn inauguration took
place in September 1286. It was, if we rely on Ottokar’s theory, the first time in
164 years that the ceremony had been performed.
As the third main source, we have the so-called Schwabenspiegel-Einschub. The
Schwabenspiegel is a slightly younger relative of the most famous German law
collection in the vernacular, the so-called Sachsenspiegel, which was composed
around 1225 by Eike von Repgow, juror at the court of the dukes of Anhalt, in
the Elbe-Saale territory.19 This collection, dealing with feudal and municipal law,
was soon adapted to local usage all over Germany. The so-called Augsburgian
Sachsenspiegel, a south German adaption, became the main source for the arche-
typal Schwabenspiegel, which was compiled shortly after the first Augsburgian
municipal law was enacted in 1276. It seems Franciscans from the local convent
had a share in the making of both law texts.20 Only two of the over five hundred
Schwabenspiegel manuscripts, most of them transmitting fragments of the law-
collection together with other texts, include a passage dealing with the dukes of
Carinthia.21 One is a manuscript now kept in the University Library Gießen
(Gießen UB Cod. 973), dated to the mid-fourteenth century, the other in the
Stiftsbibliothek of St Gall (St Gallen Cod. 725) and belongs to the mid-fifteenth
century.
In the Schwabenspiegel Einschub, the rite finds mention as a legal act, with no
reference to the installation of a particular historical figure. The description
differs in some details from that of Abbot John and Ottokar. The account gives
a description of how the Carinthian free-tenants (landsassen) take the duke,
already invested by the emperor, as their lord. They appoint a judge (rihter) who
here bears the role of the peasant; that is, he interrogates the Carinthian people
about the character and suitability of the duke. According to the Sachsenspiegel-
Einschub, the peasants have the right to reject a candidate, to send him back to
the realm and to demand another duke. Great stress is put on the ducal change
of clothes, his new garment – although grey and shabby – is not explained as
representing peasant clothes, but instead as the uniform of the duke, in his office
as the chief hunter of the realm. The act of taking possession of the land is
enforced by the duke riding on a very young horse (veltpfaerit) thrice around the
stone. The symbolic deal between the peasant and the duke, the slap on his cheek
as well as the swinging of the sword in the four directions, are not mentioned.
19 Ulrich-Dieter Oppitz, Deutsche Rechtsbücher des Mittelalters (4 vols, Cologne and Vienna,
1990), i, pp 21–32. 20 Peter Johanek, ‚Schwabenspiegel’ in Die deutsche Literatur des
Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon. Zweite, völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage, 8 (Berlin and NewYork),
903. 21 Karl August Eckhardt, ‘Deutschenspiegel’ in Studia iuris Teutonici, Bibliotheca
204 Annette Kehnel
Again, the rights and duties of the Carinthian duke at the imperial court are
dealt with at some length. The duke has to appear at the court in his ‘hunting
gown’, he has to bring a red deer for the emperor or king, and he has the
privilege that after his enfeoffment he cannot be sued for any tresspasses, and he
has only to respond to pleas brought before him in the Slavic language. Some
scholars are convinced that the Schwabenspiegel version preserved the oldest
traditions about the ceremony and that its scribes worked from sources dating
back at least to the eleventh century.22 Rauch argued for a very late dating in the
mid-fourteenth century.23 Both theories find a synthesis in the assumption that
although a mid-fourteenth-century compilation, the Schwabenspiegel passage
relies on much older, pre-twelfth-century sources.
To these three fourteenth-century sources we might add a slightly later
testimony from the end of the century, the so-called Chronik der 95 Herrschaften
(‘Chronicle of the 95 rulers’), composed by the Augustinian hermit Leopold
from the convent in Vienna. He again describes the enthronement of Meinhard
II, mainly relying on the account of Ottokar. The author ends by stressing
Ottokar’s observation that many people laughed at the rite and thought it to be
ridiculous.24
So far there is – to formulate a first result – solid historical evidence for
Lynch’s allegations regarding old-fashioned inauguration rites in Carinthia. A
number of authentic and reliable sources testify to the rite being practised in the
late thirteenth and in the first half of the fourteenth century. It was in particular
the installation of Duke Meinhard II of Görz-Tyrol as duke of Carinthia in 1286
that inspired historiographers in the first half of the fourteenth century to
comment on this custom.
The custom obviously refers to much older traditions, however, pre-dating
the fourteenth century. A rather vague piece of evidence is to be found in the
ninth-century Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, the Gesta or White Book
of the archbishops of Salzburg, composed around the year 871. The Conversio is
primarily a report on the archiepiscopal deeds, the most outstanding among
them being the conversion to Christendom of the Carinthian people. As a result,
the text supplies an early history of Carinthia and at one stage we find mention
of the fact that in the mid-eighth century the Carinthian people made their
Rerum Historicarum, Studia 3 (Aalen, 1971), pp 127–48. 22 Bogo Grafenauer, Ustoličevanje

koroških vojvod in država karantanskih Slovencev (Installation of the Carinthian Prince and the
State of the Carinthian Slovenes). Slovenska Akademija Znanosti in Umetnosti, Institut za
zgodovino (Ljubljana, 1952), 74, 358f.; Georg Graber, Der Eintritt des Herzogs von Kärnten am
Fürstenstein zu Karnburg (Vienna, 1919), pp 19, 50; Emil Goldmann, Die Einführung der
deutschen Herzogsgeschlechter Kärntens in den slowenischen Stammesverband. Ein Beitrag zur
Rechts- und Kulturgeschichte (Breslau, 1903), p. 96n. 23 Karl Rauch, ‘Die Kärntner
Herzogseinsetzung nach alemannischen Handschriften’ in Abhandlungen zur Rechts- und
Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Festschrift Adolf Zycha zum 70. Geburtstag am 17. Oktober 1941 (Weimar,
1941), pp 173–232. 24 Österreichische Chronik von den 95 Herrschaften, ed. Joseph Seemüller
rulers, more precisely, that they made Cacatius, the son of the former duke, their
ruler (et illi eum ducem fecerunt). Again, after the death of Cacatius, they gave the
dukedom to his cousin Cheitmar (that is, Hotimir) in the year 752 (populi
ducatum illi dederunt).25 No further details are given, but this passage in the
bishop’s register is generally acknowledged as the earliest textual evidence for the
archaic Carinthian inauguration ceremony. However, in the light of contem-
porary practice among other tribes and people the meaning of this passage, as
highlighting a special Carinthian feature, seems to fade. In the seventh century,
Langobardian nobles chose Arioald as their king (in regnum elegunt sublimandum),
and made Rothari his successor (sublimant in regno), to cite only the north-Italian
example.26 This passage, as Puntschart has already pointed out, simply points to
the fact that the Carinthian nobles chose their ruler, as did other tribes at the
time.27 No hints about a special ceremony are contained in this text.
Secondly, we have a twelfth-century letter, testifying to the fact that the
Carinthians invested their duke at a special stone. It was written by Burchart of
Cologne, imperial notary on a mission in Austria, Carinthia and Styria, from
where he wrote a letter to the abbot of Siegburg, telling him among others that
the Carinthians, in the presence of the bishop of Salzburg, installed their duke
in the ducal seat (ducis in sedem Karinthani ducatus intronizavi). The letter is dated
1161. It is lost in the original and was edited from two copies made of it in the
sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. According to a note in one of these, the letter
originally formed part of the letterbook of the abbots of Siegburg.28 The
suspicion that sixteenth-century knowledge was acquired from the copies made
of the notary’s letter cannot be proved, but is not impossible.
Finally, we have a thirteenth-century source, a sermon of the Franciscan
preacher Berthold of Regensburg (d. 1272). In one of his Latin sermons to
monks and nuns (ad religiosos), he makes allusion to the fact that the duke of
Carinthia used to come to the imperial court like a peasant, in plain and simple
clothes, and that in doing so he risked being laughed at.29 Berthold used the
ceremony as an exemplum to enforce his argument that a true religious should be
like a prince (princeps), and that he should behave as such, and not like a peasant,
as the duke of Carinthia does in appearing in peasant clothes at the imperial
court. Berthold is one of the most famous thirteenth-century preachers. He
travelled a lot, and he might have been in Carinthia on his journeys within the
(Hannover, 1909), p. 140. 25 Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum. Das Weissbuch der
Salzburger Kirche über die erfolgreiche Mission in Karantanien und Pannonien, ed. Herwig
Wolfram (Vienna, Colongne & Braz, 1979), p. 40. 26 Reinhard Schneider, Königswahl und
Königserhebung im Frühmittelalter: Untersuchungen zur Herrschaftsnachfolge bei den Langobarden
und Merowingern (Stuttgart, 1972), pp 38, 40. 27 Paul Puntschart, Herzogseinsetzung und
Huldigung in Kärnten. Ein verfassungs- und kulturgeschichtlicher Beitrag (Leipzig, 1899), p. 102;
see also Schneider, Königswahl und Königserhebung, p. 255f. 28 August von Jaksch, ‘Die
Kärntner Geschichtsquellen 811–1202’ in Monumenta Historica ducatus Carinthiae.
Geschichtliche Denkmäler des Herzogtumes Kärnten (Klagenfurt, 1904), iii, p. 387. 29 Beati
Fr. Bertholdi a Ratisbona. Sermones ad Religiosos XX, ed. Petrus Hoetzl (Munich, 1882), p. 21.
206 Annette Kehnel
southern parts of the German-speaking countries between 1250 and 1260.

Moreover, he was often present in the Franciscan convent in Augsburg, and he
might have taken an active part in the compilation of the law collections at the
time.
To sum up the written evidence for the Carinthian rite: prior to the
installation of Duke Meinhard II of Görz Tirol in 1286 there is little to be known
about what actually happened. We have a late ninth-century hint to the effect
that in the eighth century the Carinthian people ‘made’ their chief, or else ‘gave’
rulership to one of them; then there is perhaps twelfth-century evidence of a
‘ducal stone’ and there is a thirteenth-century hint to the effect that the duke of
Carinthia attracted notice (and laughter) at the imperial court by being dressed
in an unusual way.
In contrast to the Tír Conaill case, we still have some material remains
pertaining to the Carinthian ceremony.30 First, there is the so-called Fürstenstein
(the ducal stone), a stone consisting of a Roman pillar turned upside down into
the earth, so that its original base provides a traversable platform. We know that
it was situated on the open field near Karnburg, an ancient imperial palatium,
close to the Roman Virunum. Standing on this stone, the peasant interrogated
the duke to be, and later the duke raised his sword, struck it into the four
directions, and thus took possession of the land and its people.
A second piece of inauguration furniture was the ducal chair (Herzogstuhl,
sedes tribunalis) situated some miles away near Maria Saal. It is explicitely
mentioned as sedes Karinthani ducatus in the letter of the imperial notary
Burchard of Cologne, dated 1161.31 It apparently came into use once the
elevation of the candidate to the dukeship was completed. It is a veritable throne
consisting of two parts, one made from marble, and the other from sandstone.
And certainly has all the appearance of a huge throne, with seemingly two seats.
Here, the newly installed duke enfeoffed his vassals and passed jugdment on
cases brought before him.
The material components of the ceremony survived down to the present day.
The ducal chair is still situated at its ‘original’ site, not far from Maria Saal.32
Thomas Ebendorfer mentions some enclosures around the chair. In 1611, the
provincal diet decreed that the monument be restored. In 1834, after Emperor
Franz I had visited the chair in 1830, it was enclosed with an iron fence. The
ducal stone, in contrast, had a less stable history. Knowledge about its original
location was lost a long time ago. In 1862, the Carinthian Historical Society
(Kärntner Geschichtsverein), at the instigation of the vicar of Karburg, bought
the pillar pedestal from the farmer Jakob Urbal. The stone, then in a very bad
state and deposited at the egde of a gravel quarry near the vicarage of Karnburg,
30 Puntschart, Herzogseinsetzung und Huldigung in Kärnten, pp 11–30; Fräss-Ehrenfeld,

Geschichte Kärntens, p. 349. 31 Von Jaksch, ‘Die Kärntner Geschichtsquellen 811–1202’, no.
was transported to the Klagenfurter Landhaus, the provincial parliament. After

a period in the local museum, it returned to the parliament in 2006.
Like the material parts of the ceremony, knowledge about it survived down to
the present day. The last ‘traditional’ inauguration at the Fürstenstein took place
in the year 1414, when Ernest the Iron (Ernst der Eiserne) was inaugurated.33 His
son and successor in office was Frederic, later Emperor Frederic III (1415–93).
According to the seventeenth-century Carinthian historian Hieronimus Megiser,
he did not want to be enthroned at the stone when he became duke of Carinthia
in 1435, because he felt embarassed and found it difficult to combine the odd
ceremony with his later carreer as emperor. Instead, we are told by Megiser, he
issued a letter for the Carinthian nobility, a Schadlosbrief, declaring that the
failure to observe the rite would have no negative consequences for the
Carinthian people.34
The surviving evidence testifies to the late medieval political use of the
Carinthian rite under the Habsburgian rulers from 1286 to 1414.35 Thereafter,
the ritual developed a literary afterlife in humanist cosmographic scholarship:36
Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini, the private secretary and advisor of Emperor Frederic
III, quotes the Carinthian rite in detail in his Cosmographia, written after 1458.
A century later, Jean Bodin, the French political philosopher, quotes the text in
his Les six livres de la République (1576) as an example of sovereignty being
transmitted by the people. Another century later, in 1662, John Lynch cited the
Carinthian rite to refute Giraldus Cambrensis’ ‘calumnious charges against the
Irish people, princes and kings’ by pointing to continental analogies. It is my
deep conviction that the archaic rite is not so much an indication of a society’s
archaic status as a useful tool in particular political contexts.
1031. 32 Wilhelm Neumann, ‘Der Kärntner Herzogstuhl im Wandel der Geschichte’ in

Bausteine zur Geschichte Kärntens. Festgabe für Wilhelm Neumann zum 70. Geburtstag
(Klagenfurt, 1985). 33 Fräss-Ehrfeld, Geschichte Kärntens, p. 346. 34 ”Diese löbliche
Gewonheit / Freyheit und Gerechtigkeit / des Landes zu Khärndten / ist also von allen
Fürsten festiglich gehalten worden /als offt es zum fall kommen durch der Ertzhertzogen
absterben. Inmassen es dann auch Ottacker eines Königs in Böhem Sohn / und nach ihme
Grafe Mainhardt von Tyrol / und sein Sohn Heinrich als sie Ertzhertzogen in Khärndten
worden / gehalten haben / unnd gleichsfalls die volgenden aus dem Hauß Oesterriich bis auff
Ernestum (inclusive) welcher ebener massen Anno 1414 auff dem Stuel gesessen und
geliehen. Aber sein Sohn Keyser Friedrich wolt nicht auff dem Stuel leihen / umb des willen
/ daß er Römischer König war / doch gab er den Landleuten in Khärnten ein schadlos
Verschreibung / under Dato S. Veit, Anno 1444. daß es ihnen / ihren Erben unnd
Nachkommen an ihren Freyheiten und alten herkommen ohne schaden seyn und daran kein
mangel solle bringen” (Hieronymus Megiser, Annales Carinthiae, Das ist Chronica des löblichen
Erzherzogthumbs Khärndte, fürnehmlich aus H. Gothardt Christallnicks Collectaneis
zusammengetragen (Leipzig, 1612), 479f. 35 Annette Kehnel, ‘toren spil und Geltungsmacht.
Die Geschichte der Symbole der Kärntner Herzogseinsetzung’ in Institutionalität und
Symbolisierung. Verstetigungen kultureller Ordnungsmuster in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed.
Gert Melville (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2001), pp 477–91. 36 Puntschart,
Herzogseinsetzung und Huldigung in Kärnten, pp 72–9.
Part II(a)_Layout 1 19/02/2013 13:15 Page 209
Part II. P rel ates

st Patrick and the kings
DONNCHaDH Ó COrrÁIN
st Patrick’s Confessio and Epistola ad milites Corotici, both genuine uninterpolated

fifth-century documents, contain valuable if exiguous evidence on Irish kingship
that scholars have missed, misunderstood or found difficult to interpret. as we
shall see, there are four passages that bear directly on kingship. the most difficult
one occurs in Confessio §53:
Vos autem experti estis quantum ego erogaui illis qui iudicabant per omnes
regiones quos ego frequentius uisitabam. Censeo enim non minimum quam
pretium quindecim hominum distribui illis, ita ut me fruamini et ego uobis
semper fruar in Deum.1
the italicized words appear to be an echo – and no more than that – of 2 esd
11.24–5: ‘et Fataia filius Mesezebel de filiis Zera filii Iuda in manu regis iuxta
omne verbum populi et in domibus per omnes regiones eorum’.
D.a. Binchy’s understanding of this passage, trenchantly expressed, has been
correspondingly influential: ‘thus, st Patrick’s own writings tell us a certain
amount about the Irish tribal kingdoms in the fifth century, though what he has
to say is sometimes misinterpreted by his modern translators’.2 He keeps his real
point for a barbed footnote:
For example, Dr Bieler explains illis qui iudicabant per omnes regiones quos
ego frequentius uisitabam (Conf. 53) as ‘the kings, not the brehons (lawyers)
who were merely expert advisers’ … this is simply to distort the plain
meaning of the latin words in order to make them conform to a view
expressed by Mac Neill which has no basis either in law or in fact; cf. Early
Irish society, p. 60.3
Binchy was so well satisfied with his interpretation that he reiterated it on p. 41

([he] ‘had been forced to purchase a safe-conduct by making payments to tribal
kings and brehons’), and on p. 58 (‘the sums he had paid to kings and brehons in
return for protection while preaching to their tribes’).
1 ludwig Bieler (ed.), ‘libri epistolarum sancti Patricii episcopi’, Classica & Mediaevalia, 11
(1950), 1–150 at 12 (1951), 79–214; repr. as Libri epistolarum sancti Patricii episcopi (2 vols,
Dublin, 1952); repr. (2 vols in one) as Libri epistolarum sancti Patricii episcopi (Dublin, 1993),
i, pp 86–7. 2 D.a. Binchy, ‘Patrick and his biographers: ancient and modern’, Studia
Hibernica, 2 (1962), 7–173 at 8. 3 Ibid., n. 3. the reference is to ludwig Bieler, The works
of St Patrick. St Secundinus, Hymn on St Patrick (london and Westminster, MD, 1953), p. 90
211
212 Donnchadh Ó Corráin
thomas Charles-edwards takes Binchy’s line: ‘he [Patrick] also had to give
much to “those who were judging throughout all the districts that I was
visiting”’.4 He adds detailed comments that materially develop Binchy’s thesis:
the passages concerning kings and judges are contiguous, which may
suggest that Patrick intended some distinction between the two. Moreover,
although it has been argued that Patrick was referring to judges in an Old-
testament sense by which ‘judge’ meant no more than ‘non-royal ruler’,
detailed scrutiny of the biblical parallels shows that Patrick is much more
likely to have been using it for someone who did indeed exercise judicial
responsibilities. His evidence does not allow us to say whether these men
were called ‘judges’ in Irish (Old Irish brithemain) or were druids or others
exercising judicial powers. the crucial point is that, apart from kings, there
were others whose power was probably derived from a professional skill
and who were crucial to Patrick’s ability to preach.5
In a footnote, he refers to (but does not cite) Deut 16.18 (‘iudices et magistros
constitues in omnibus portis tuis quas Dominus Deus tuus dederit tibi per
singulas tribus tuas ut iudicent populum iusto iudicio’) as the best biblical
parallel to Patrick’s text and as conclusive evidence that ‘the meaning is indeed
“judge” and not “chieftain” as Bieler would have it (commentary on Confessio,
41.4 [recte 53])’. He later uses the same interpretation in a comment on Patrick’s
missionary modus operandi: ‘Patrick himself dealt with kings and judges in
order to facilitate his movement from one people (túath) to another’.6
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín also accepts Binchy’s understanding of the passage: Patrick
‘states quite candidly that it was necessary to purchase the goodwill and
protection of the local kings and their brehon lawyers (illi qui iudicabant, Conf.
§53) …’, but he takes care to build no larger hypothesis upon it.7
translators of this passage have sometimes been cautious and often prudently
vague, but the great Newport J.D. White translated without hesitation:
Moreover, ye know by proof how much I paid to those who were judges
throughout all the districts which I more frequently visited; for I reckon
that I distributed to them not less than the price of fifteen men, so that ye
might enjoy me, and I might ever enjoy you in God.8
n. 116. Bieler’s translation reads unexceptionally: ‘You know how much I paid to those who
administered justice in all those districts to which I came frequently. I think I distributed
among them not less than the price of fifteen men, so that you might enjoy me, and I might
always enjoy you in God’ (p. 38). the work of eoin MacNeill in question here is properly
Early Irish laws and institutions (Dublin, [1935]) and the correct page reference is 99. MacNeill
has a great deal more right on his side than Binchy concedes. Besides, Binchy’s tribes and
tribal kings have no place in Irish history. 4 thomas Charles-edwards, Early Christian
Ireland (Cambridge, 2000), pp 188–9. 5 Ibid., p. 189. 6 Ibid., p. 240. 7 Dáibhí Ó Cróinín,
Early medieval Ireland, 400–1200 (london, 1995), p. 28. 8 N.J.D. White (trans.), St Patrick:
St Patrick and the kings 213
Others, such as a.B.e. Hood, are more cautious:
But you know from experience how much I have paid to those who
administered justice in all the districts, whom I was in the habit of visiting.
I reckon that I must have dispensed to them the price of fifteen men at the
least, so that you may enjoy me and I always enjoy you in God.9
In 1983, Bishop Hanson rendered the passage:
and you have experience of how much I paid to those who administered
justice in all the districts that I used to visit often. I reckon that I spent
among them not less than the price of fifteen men, in order that you should
enjoy me, and that I should always enjoy you in God.10
Fifteen years earlier, the bishop had taken a more definite stand: ‘You yourselves
have experienced how much I paid out to those who used to be judges
throughout all the territories whom I used frequently to visit’.11 However, the
collaborative translation of Hanson and Cécile Blanc reads judiciously:
Vous avez appris combien j’ai distribué à ceux qui rendaient la justice dans
tous les districts et que je visitait fréquemment. Je pense ne pas leur donné
une somme inférieure au prix de quinze hommes, anfin que vous puissiez
jouir de moi et moi toujours jouir de vous en Dieu.12
e.a. thompson, in a discussion of Patrick’s finances, found for the judges:
You have experienced how much I spent on those who used to act as judges
throughout all the regions which I used to visit often. I estimate that no
less than the price of fifteen men was distributed to them in order that you
might enjoy me and I might always enjoy you in God.13
David Howlett’s outstanding translation of the works of Patrick reads:
his writings and life (london and New York, 1920), p. 48. White pertinently cites (pp 117–18),
in translation, tírechán’s understanding of this matter. the original reads ‘et extendit
Patricius etiam praetium quindecim animarum hominum, ut in scriptione sua adfirmat, de
argento et auro, ut nullus malorum hominum inpederet eos in uia recta transeuntes totam
Hiberniam’: ludwig Bieler (ed. and trans.), The Patrician texts in the Book of Armagh (Dublin,
1979), pp 134–6 (§15). apparently tírechán, who had read the passage and who was interested
in druids (ibid., §§8, 19, 26, 39, 42, 49) and legal questions (§§15, 18), found nothing to remark
on here. 9 a.B.e. Hood (ed. and trans.), St Patrick: his writings and Muirchu’s Life
(Chichester, 1978), p. 52. 10 r.P.C. Hanson (trans.), The life and writings of the historical
Saint Patrick (New York, 1983), p. 118. 11 r.P.C. Hanson, Saint Patrick: his origins and
career (Oxford, 1968; repr. Oxford, 1997), p. 107. 12 r.P.C. Hanson and Cécile Blanc (ed.
and trans.), Saint Patrick: Confession et Lettre à Coroticus (Paris, 1978), p. 127. 13 e.a.
You furthermore have proved by experience how much I have paid out to
those who judged through all the regions which I kept visiting quite often.
For I reckon that I have distributed no less than the price of fifteen men so
that you might enjoy me and I will always enjoy you in God.
He glosses ‘who judged’ by ‘that is, the brehons’.14

In her fine study of 1984, elena Malaspina also discerns judges, even druids,
in this passage, and has Patrick calling on them at home:
… il re e i suoi collaboratori druidi e brithemain (illi qui iudicabant: Conf.

53, 1–2) erano insieme autorità politiche e religiose. … a tutti costoro
Patrizio versò somme di denaro – visitandoli spesso nelle respettive sedi,
dice riguardo ai brithemain (Conf. 52, 2–3) – per avere libero accesso nei
loro territori e per garantire l’incolumità propria e dei suoi compagni
durante i loro viaggi missionari, durante i quali Patrizio si faceva anche
scortare da «figli» di capi locali … la somma versata ai brithemain delle varie
regioni da lui visitata ammontava ormai, quando Patrizio scriveva la
Confessio, al prezzo di quidici uomini.15
In her edition of the writings of Patrick published a year later, she translates
rather freely:
Voi avete toccato con mano quanto ho enlargito alle autorità delle varie
regioni, nelle mie frequenti visite. ritengo infatti di aver distribuito loro
una somma non inferiore al prezzo di quindici persone, per far sì che
possiate godere di me e io sempre «godere» di voi «in Dio».16
However, she identifies the authorities Patrick paid as ‘brithemain o legisperiti

ibernici’.17 thomas O’loughlin’s rendering is in more familiar speech: ‘You all
know well how much I paid those who are judges in all the areas I visited
frequently. I suppose I must have paid out the price of fifteen among them, so
that you might enjoy me and I might always enjoy you in God’.18 John t. Koch
discerns brehons lurking in the text of a Patrick who may, he thinks, have known
more about money than most.19 anna Fattovich also finds for the brithemain ‘o
giudici delle varie túatha’.20
thompson, Who was Saint Patrick? (Woodbridge, 1985), p. 95. 14 D.r. Howlett, The book
of the letters of Saint Patrick the bishop (Dublin, 1994), p. 87. 15 elena Malaspina, Patrizio e
l’acculturazione latina dell’Irlanda (l’aquila and rome, 1984), pp 157, 162. see further, ibid.,
pp 199, 257. 16 elena Malaspina (ed. and trans.), Scritti di san Patrizio: alle origine del
cristianesimo irlandese (rome, 1985), pp 129–30. 17 Ibid., n. 326; see also p. 16. 18 thomas
O’loughlin, Discovering Saint Patrick (london, 2005), p. 167. 19 John t. Koch, ‘the early
chronology of st Patrick (c.351–c.428): some new ideas and possibilities’ in Jane Cartwright
(ed.), Celtic hagiography and saints’ cults (Cardiff, 2003), pp 102–22 at p. 107. 20 anna
Fattovich, Saint Patrick: il primo cristianesimo dell’Irlanda celtica (aosta, 2006), p. 144.
though I have no wish to bring a dissonant note to this unwonted if broad

Patrician harmony, I believe there is good reason to think that Confessio §53 has
nothing to do with judges, jurists or druids and much to do with kings.
the interpretation of the passage turns on the meaning we give to iudicare and
indeed iudex in post-classical latin. the best examples – those we can be sure
Patrick was familiar with – will occur in the Bible and especially in the Books of
Kings though, as we shall see, useful examples occur elsewhere. Patrick’s biblical
text is, as Bieler says, ‘partly Old latin, partly Vulgate and partly a transitional
version’.21 the following Vulgate texts, taken as a group, demonstrate that
iudicare can mean ‘to rule as a king’:
1 sam 8.5–7: dixeruntque ei ecce tu senuisti et filii tui non ambulant in viis
tuis. constitue nobis regem ut iudicet nos sicut universae habent nationes.
displicuitque sermo in oculis samuhelis eo quod dixissent da nobis regem
ut iudicet nos et oravit samuhel Dominum. dixit autem Dominus ad
samuhel audi vocem populi in omnibus quae loquuntur tibi. non enim te
abiecerunt sed me ne regnem super eos.
1 sam 8.20–2: et erimus nos quoque sicut omnes gentes et iudicabit nos
rex noster et egredietur ante nos et pugnabit bella nostra pro nobis. et
audivit samuhel omnia verba populi et locutus est ea in auribus Domini.
dixit autem Dominus ad samuhel audi vocem eorum et constitue super
eos regem.
2 sam 8.15: et regnavit David super omnem Israhel. faciebat quoque
David iudicium et iustitiam omni populo suo. With this compare 1 Chron
18.14: regnavit ergo David super universum Israhel et faciebat iudicium
atque iustitiam cuncto populo suo.
2 sam 15.3–4: dicebatque absalom quis me constituat iudicem super
terram ut ad me veniant omnes qui habent negotium et iuste iudicem.
1 Kings 3.28: audivit itaque omnis Israhel iudicium quod iudicasset rex et
timuerunt regem videntes sapientiam Dei esse in eo ad faciendum
iudicium.
1 Kings 10.9: sit Dominus Deus tuus benedictus cui placuisti et posuit te
super thronum Israhel eo quod dilexerit Dominus Israhel in sempiternum
et constituit te regem ut faceres iudicium et iustitiam.
2 Kings 15.5: percussit autem Dominus regem et fuit leprosus usque in
diem mortis suae et habitabat in domo libera seorsum. Ioatham vero filius
21 Bieler, Libri epistolarum, i, p. 34. For detail, see ludwig Bieler, ‘Der Bibeltext des heiligen
Patricius’, Biblica, 28 (1947), 31–58, 236–63; repr. in idem, Studies on the life and legend of St
Patrick, ed. richard sharpe (london, 1986), ch. 2.
regis gubernabat palatium et iudicabat populum terrae. With this compare

2 Chron 26.21: fuit igitur Ozias rex leprosus usque ad diem mortis suae et
habitavit in domo separata plenus lepra ob quam et eiectus fuerat de domo
Domini. porro Ioatham filius eius rexit domum regis et iudicabat populum
terrae.
similar expressions in Judg 10.1–5, 12.7–15, 15.20, 16.31, 1 sam 4.18, 1 sam
7.15–17 and 2 Kings 23.22 are less good evidence because of the ambiguity of
the role of the judges, who were both judges and rulers in diverse and uncertain
circumstances.
However, two further important passages in Chronicles provide clear
corroborating evidence:
2 Chron 1.10–11: Da mihi sapientiam et intellegentiam ut egrediar coram

populo tuo et ingrediar. quis enim potest hunc populum tuum digne qui
tam grandis est iudicare. dixit autem Deus ad salomonem quia hoc magis
placuit cordi tuo et non postulasti divitias et substantiam et gloriam neque
animas eorum qui te oderunt sed nec dies vitae plurimos. petisti autem
sapientiam et scientiam ut iudicare possis populum meum super quem
constitui te regem.
2 Chron 9.8: sit Dominus Deus tuus benedictus qui voluit te ordinare
super thronum suum regem Domini Dei tui quia diligit Deus Israhel et
vult servare eum in aeternum. idcirco posuit te super eum regem ut facias
iudicia atque iustitiam.
the Vulgate text of Ps 2.10 reads: ‘nunc reges intelligite erudimini qui iudicatis
terram’; the Itala ‘reges … qui iudicatis terram’. these sentiments are close to
Wis 6.2–5:
audite ergo reges, et intellegite. discite iudices finium terrae. praebete

aures vos qui continetis multitudines et placetis vobis in turbis nationum:
quoniam data est a Domino potestas vobis et virtus ab altissimo qui
interrogabit opera vestra et cogitationes scrutabitur quoniam cum essetis
ministri regni illius non recte iudicastis neque custodistis legem iustitiae.
the stylistic parallelism of the first sentence requires that ‘reges’ and ‘iudices’
refer to the same entity, namely, the king. there is a like parallelism in Is 32.1:
‘ecce in iustitia regnabit rex et principes in iudicio praeerunt’.
the meaning ‘to rule as king’ attaches to iudicare, and ‘king’ to iudex
elsewhere in post-classical latin. I cite two examples than bear on romano–
barbarian relations, and appropriate perhaps for Patrick’s situation. ammianus
Marcellinus (c.aD330–c.395) refers to the overking of the Gothic tervingi as
‘athanarichus theruingorum iudex’,22 a term that has given rise to a lively

debate. When athanaric was negotiating peace with Valens in 369 the emperor
addressed him as king. to this, he replied that he preferred the title judge since
judge embodied wisdom, that of king only power. Herwig Wolfram concludes
that his was a superior authority: ‘he was a iudex gentis, a judge of the whole tribal
confederation, indeed a iudex regum, “judge of kings”’.23 Of Gothic society as it
was in the late fourth century, Peter Heather writes: ‘at the top of the social scale
[were] leaders such as athanaric, alavivus, and Fritigern – called “judges” and
“kings” in our texts … ’;24 and ‘… the ruler of the tervingi looked to the roman
world very much like a monarch’.25 according to Guy Halsall, ‘below the judge
or overking lay lesser equivalents to the less powerful kings mentioned among
the Germani’.26
Jordanes, writing about aD550, lacks the authority of ammianus as a historian
of the Goths but this hardly affects his latin usage:
Decedente vero Dicineo pene pari veneratione habuerunt Comosicum, quia nec
inpar erat sollertiae. hic etenim et rex illis et pontifex ob suam peritiam
habebatur et in summa iustitia populos iudicabat. et hoc rebus excedente
humanis Coryllus rex Gothorum in regno conscendit et per quadraginta annos
in Dacia suis gentibus imperavit. (‘after the death of Dicineus, they held
Comosicus in almost equal honor, because he was not inferior in
knowledge. By reason of his wisdom he was accounted their priest and
king, and he judged the people with the greatest uprightness. When he too
had departed from human affairs, Coryllus ascended the throne as king of
the Goths and for forty years ruled his people in Dacia.’)27
Here, it appears, iudicare and imperare are synonyms. Mierow’s ‘he judged the
people’ should read ‘he ruled the peoples’.
Other pertinent examples occur in the Fathers and elsewhere in post-classical
texts.28 though far too late to be of much moment, Historia Brittonum of aD829
22 ammianus Marcellinus 31.3.4 (trans. far too loosely by John C. rolfe as ‘athanarichus, the
chief of the theruingi’ in his Ammianus Marcellinus with an English translation (3 vols, london
and Cambridge, Ma, 1950–2), iii, p. 397). 23 Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths, trans.
thomas J. Dunlap (Berkeley, Ca, and london, 1988), p. 94. see also Herwig Wolfram,
‘athanaric the Visigoth: monarchy or judgeship: a study in comparative history’, Journal of
Medieval History, 1 (1975), 259–78. 24 Peter Heather, Empires and barbarians: migration,
development and the birth of Europe (london, Basingstoke and Oxford, 2010), p. 164. 25 Peter
Heather, ‘Goths and Huns’ in Peter Garnsey and averil Cameron (eds), Cambridge ancient
history, xiii: The late empire (Cambridge, 1998), pp 495–6. 26 Guy Halsall, Barbarian
migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge, 2007), p. 135. 27 Jordanes, Getica, xi–
xii, ed. th. Mommsen (1883), 75; trans. from The Gothic history of Jordanes in English version,
by Charles Christopher Mierow (Cambridge and New York, 1966). see also Peter Heather,
Goths and Romans, 332–489 (Oxford, 1991). 28 Thesaurus linguae latinae, vii, 2, fasc. iv
(leipzig, 1990), col. 618, b, II. the statement ‘vergit in vim regnandi’ needs mending.
provides some interesting evidence that iudicare ‘rule as a king’ lived on in the
Insular lands:
Tres magnas insulas habet, quarum una vergit contra Armoricas et vocatur
insula Gueith; secunda sita est in umbilico maris inter Hiberniam et
Brittanniam et vocatur nomen eius Eubonia, id est Manau; alia sita est in
extremo limite orbis Britttaniae ultra Pictos et vocatur Orc. sic in proverbio
antiquo dicitur, quando de iudicibus vel regibus sermo fit: ‘iudicavit Brittanniam
cum tribus insulis’ … Brittones olim implentes eam a mari usque ad mare
iudicaverunt.29 … quando regnabat Britto in Brittannia, Heli sacerdos
iudicabat in Israhel et tunc arca testamenti ab alienigenis possidebatur.30 (‘It
has three large islands, of which one inclines towards the armoricas and is
called the Isle of Wight; the second is situated in the umbilicus of the sea
between Ireland and Britain and its name is eubonia, that is, the Isle of
Man; and the third is situated at the extreme limit of the orb of Britain
beyond the Picts and is called Orkney. Hence it is said in the ancient
proverb, when judges or kings are spoken of: ‘He ruled Britain with its
three islands’. … the Britons long ago filled it up and ruled it from sea to
sea. … When Britto ruled in Britain, Heli the priest ruled31 in Israel and
the ark of the covenant was possessed by foreigners’.)
the later history of iudex, when it came to mean ‘judge, consul, comte, duc,
magnate, prince, officier publique, governor of a province, any state official, from
the highest down to the comes civitatis’, can be traced in the dictionaries.32
In the light of these biblical and other passages, we can now interpret
the text in Confessio §53 more closely:
Vos autem experti estis quantum ego erogaui illis qui iudicabant per omnes
regiones quos ego frequentius uistabam. Censeo enim non minimum quam
pretium quindecim hominum distribui illis, ita ut me fruamini et ego uobis
semper fruar in Deum. (‘You, however, know very well by experience how
much I paid over to those who ruled throughout all the regions and whom
I was visiting quite often. Indeed I estimate that I distributed to them
nothing less than the price of fifteen men so that you might enjoy my
company and that I might always enjoy yours in God.’)
such was the cost of pastoral visits to his Christian communities. How much was
involved is very difficult to say. If the fifteen men were slaves, the average late
29 th. Mommsen (ed.), ‘Historia Brittonum cum additamentis Nennii’ (1894) (Chronica
minora, iii), pp 111–222 at p. 148; see also Dictionary of medieval Latin from British sources,
fasc. v, ed. D.r. Howlett (Oxford, 1997), p. 1508 (judicare 7). 30 Mommsen (ed.), ‘Historia
Brittonum’, p. 153. 31 Or, if one believes that the author of Historia Brittonum could make
the nice distinction, ‘exercised the function of priest’. 32 albert Blaise, Lexicon latinitatis
roman price is twenty gold solidi each (=300 denarii in gold) for the unskilled.
that amounts to 1,350g of gold in all.33 tírechán, writing in the late seventh
century, thought the payment was made in gold and silver.34 If the men were
freemen, the value (éraic) of each in Irish vernacular law in the seventh and
eighth centuries is seven cumala (ancillae ‘female slaves’), the equivalent of
twenty-one milch cows or twenty-one ounces of silver, and thus 315oz (8,930g)
of silver in all.35 all these are merely shots in the dark, but we can be sure that
very large sums are at stake.
Disparagingly, Patrick gives those who graspingly exploit his payments for
safe-conduct no title, but those to whom his remarks are addressed know very
well who they are. Context, terminology, and cost alike indicate that they are
overkings. then, as a preacher of the gospel, his mood changes swiftly: Non me
paenitet nec satis est mihi: adhuc impendo et superimpendam (‘It causes me no regret
nor do I think it enough; I spend up to the present and I will overspend more’).
evidently, he is well funded and the overkings know it. that Patrick should use
the verb erogo ‘pay out, disburse’ is interesting: it tends to be used in connection
with the disbursement of public funds or funds denominated for a specific
purpose. Does he wish to convey that the payments are sanctioned by an
authority other than his own?
two other kinds of kings are mentioned in Patrick’s writings. the first is
called regulus usually defined as ‘king of a small territory, petit roi, roitelet,
comte, chieftain’ and the like.36 the term occurs twice: (1) Epistola §12: et filii
Scottorum et filiae regulorum monachi et uirgines Xristi. Enumerare nequeo (‘both
sons and daughters of the petty kings of the scots [were] monks and virgins of
Christ, I cannot count out’); (2) Confessio §41: … filii Scottorum et filiae regulorum
monachi et uirgines Christi esse uidentur (‘the sons and daughters of the petty
kings of the scots are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ’).37 It is evident that
these two passages are textually interdependent: one is a version of the other or
they are from a common text.
the second, rex, also occurs twice. the first is in Epistola §19: iudicabunt
nationes et regibus iniquis dominabuntur in saecula saeculorum. the word is
embedded in a recollection of Wis 3.8. It is too general to be of any use here and,
besides, it lacks a specific Irish context. the second is in Confessio §52:
medii aevi praesertim ad res ecclesiasticas investigandas pertinens (turnhout, 1975), s.v. judex;
alexander souter, A glossary of late Latin to 600AD (Oxford, 1949), s.v. iudex; Du Cange,
Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, ed. leopold Favre (Niort, 1883–7), s. vv. judex,
judicare. 33 thompson, Who was Saint Patrick?, p. 99; Philip Grierson, ‘the tablettes
Albertini and the value of the solidus in the fifth and sixth centuries aD’, Journal of Roman
Studies, 49 (1959), 73–80; a.H.M. Jones, ‘slavery in the ancient world’, Economic History
Review, new ser., 9 (1956), 188–99 at 197. 34 see above, n. 8. 35 D.a. Binchy (ed.), Críth
gablach (Dublin, 1941), p. 86. 36 Oxford Latin dictionary, ed. P.G.W. Glare (Oxford, 1982),
s.v. Dictionnaire illustré latin français, ed. Felix Gaffiot (Paris, 1934), s.v. Lexion manuale ad
scriptores mediæ et infimæ latnitatis, ed. W.H. Maigne d’arnis (Paris, 1858), s.v. 37 trans. by
Interea praemia dabam regibus praeter quod dabam mercedem filiis ipsorum qui
mecum ambulant, et nihilominus comprehenderunt me cum comitibus meis et illa
die auidissime cupiebant interficere me, sed tempus nondum uenerat, et omnia
quaecumque nobiscum inuenerunt rapuerunt illud et me ipsum ferro uinxerunt,
et quartodecimo die absoluit me Dominus de potestate eorum et quicquid nostrum
fuit redditum est nobis propter Deum et necessarios amicos quos ante
praevidimus. (‘Meanwhile, I kept giving payments to kings over and above
the wages I kept paying their sons who travel with me. Nonetheless, they
seized me with my companions and on that day they most eagerly desired
to kill me, but the time had not yet come. they stole all the property we
had with us and they put me in irons. and on the fourteenth day the lord
released me from their power and our property was returned to us on
account of God and close friends whom we saw to before’.)
Clearly, the payments to the reges are bribes, and their sons, who were paid to
accompany the saint and his retinue, were to be his hired protectors. Clearly, too,
the lot of them were unreliable and Patrick had to use influence to recover his
freedom and his stolen property.38
Patrick’s works then preserve precious evidence for the existence of three
ascending grades of kings in fifth-century Ireland: regulus, rex and an unnamed
kind of overking (of whom there were several) who ruled over larger areas which
he calls regiones. How this fits with the evidence of the vernacular laws, some two
centuries later, is another day’s work.39
Howlett, Book of letters, pp 32–3, 80–1. 38 ludwig Bieler tries to explain this incident in his
‘st Patrick and the Irish people’, Review of Politics, 10:3 (1948), 290–309 at 298. Malaspina,
Patrizio, pp 158–9, points out that Patrick’s necessarii amici and his captors had a good working
relationship. Praevideo seems to be used by Patrick in the sense of ‘provide, take precaution’
(ibid.). see also ibid., pp 190, 234. 39 I am grateful to Fidelma Maguire for her observations
and criticisms.
the authority of the contemplative in

Muirchú’s life of Patrick
Da M I a N B r aC K e N
By the second half of the seventh century, the christianization of Ireland had
advanced to the point where churches began to compete for primatial status and
celebrated their founders’ sanctity in sophisticated lives. Cogitosus completed
his life of Brigit, the saint associated with Kildare, by the middle of the century
and at the end of the century, Columba was commemorated in the remarkable
life by adomnán, his kinsman and successor as abbot of Iona. the life of
Patrick by Muirchú maccu Machthéni was written toward the end of that
century, perhaps in the 680s. It tells of the heroic progress of the missionary to
the Irish.1 For Muirchú, this mission was not limited to any single locality, but
changed the course of Irish history. Patrick celebrates the first easter in Ireland,
he confronts the most powerful ruler in the land, and his opponents warn that
after his mission nothing will remain the same. Muirchú’s heroic thaumaturge
clashes with what some see as the simplicity and sincerity of Patrick the fifth-
century missionary. recent reappraisals of Patrick’s Confession and letter to
Coroticus reveal a practised exponent of the apologetic method. New approaches
to Muirchú’s work draw attention to his skill as a hagiographer and the
ambitious task he set himself as chronicler of Ireland’s greatest saint and founder
of Ireland’s greatest church. In many ways, the life is a gloss on Patrick’s own
writings; otherwise, it sheds little light on the fifth century. It has been mined for
what it may have to say about seventh-century political changes and the designs
of armagh, the ecclesiastical centre that claimed him as its founder, and which
was at the time aggressively and successfully pursuing its claim to be Ireland’s
leading church.2 Muirchú’s activities as a representative of the church of sletty
have been explored in the context of the expansionism of armagh, and scholars
have painted a vivid picture of how the Church in early Ireland operated in its
social and political contexts. However, the life is more than a fig-leaf for
armagh’s naked ambition. It is an extended consideration of the nature of
authority and the role of the leader, both temporal and spiritual, in Christian
society.
1 ludwig Bieler (ed. and trans.), The Patrician texts in the Book of Armagh (Dublin, 1979).
richard sharpe considers some of the difficulties in the Bieler edition in his review ‘the
Patrician texts’, Peritia, 1 (1982), 363–9; see also sharpe, ‘Palaeographical considerations in
the study of the Patrician documents in the Book of armagh’, Scriptorium, 36 (1982), 3–28
and idem, Medieval Irish saints’ Lives: an introduction to the ‘Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae’
(Oxford, 1991), p. 12. 2 Charles Doherty, ‘the cult of st Patrick and the politics of armagh
221
222 Damian Bracken
One of the most compelling accounts of conversion in the life tells the story
of the saxon princess, Monesan.
at a time, then, when all Britain was still frozen in the cold of unbelief, the
illustrious daughter of some king – her name was Monesan – was full of
the Holy spirit. assisted by Him, although many desired to marry her, she
accepted no proposal. Not even when floods of water were frequently
poured over her could she be forced to do what she did not want and what
was less valuable. When, in between beatings and soakings with water, she
was insistently urged (to do so) she kept asking her mother and her nurse
whether they knew the maker of the wheel by which the world is illumined,
and when she received the answer that the maker of the sun was he whose
throne was in heaven, she, frequently urged to enter into the bond of
marriage, said, enlightened by the luminous counsel of the Holy spirit: ‘I
shall never do that’. For through nature she searched the maker of all that
is created, following in this the example of abraham the patriarch …3
the story recalls Patrick’s own account in his Confession of a Scotta pulcherimma,
a ‘very beautiful Irishwoman’ who overcame the objections of her parents to
become a ‘virgin of Christ’. the motif of the pious young woman who rejects
worldly suitors in the search for God is a common feature of Irish saints’ lives.4
However, Muirchú’s embellisments take the story beyond a mere repetition of a
hagiographic stock motif, particularly when he says that Monesan’s belief was
in the seventh century’ in J.-M. Picard (ed.), Ireland and northern France, AD600–850 (Dublin,
1991), pp 53–94; idem, ‘the monastic town in early medieval Ireland’ in H.B. Clarke and
anngret simms (ed.), The comparative history of urban origins in non-Roman Europe, 2 pts
(london, 1985), i, pp 45–75; richard sharpe, ‘st Patrick and the see of armagh’, CMCS, 4
(1982), 33–59; D.a. Binchy, ‘the Fair of tailtiu and the Feast of tara’, Ériu, 18 (1958), 113–
38; edel Bhreathnach, ‘temoria: caput scotorum?’, Ériu, 47 (1996), 67–88; liam de Paor,
‘the aggrandisement of armagh’ in t. Desmond Williams (ed.), Historical Studies, 8 (Dublin,
1971), pp 95–110; P.a. Wilson, ‘st Patrick and Irish Christian origins’, Studia Celtica, 14/15
(1979–80), 344–79. 3 Quodam igitur tempore cum tota Britannia incredulitatis algore
rigesceret cuiusdam regis egregia filia, cui nomen erat Monesan, spiritu sancto repleta, cum
quidam eius expeterent amplexus coniugalis non adquieuit cum aquarum multis irrigata esset
undis ad id quod nolebat et deterius erat conpelli potuit. Non illa cum inter uerbera et
aquarum irrigationes solita esset interrogabat matrem et nutricem utrum conpertum haberent
rotae factorem qua totus illuminatur mundus, et cum responsum acciperet per quod
conpertum haberet solis factorem esse eum cui caelum sedes est, cum acta esset frequenter ut
coniugali uinculo copularetur, luculentissimo spiritu sancti illustrata consilio ‘Nequaquam’,
inquit, ‘hoc faciam’. Quaerebat namque per naturam totius creaturae factorem in hoc
patriarchae abraham secuta exemplum; ed. and trans. Bieler, Patrician texts, pp 98–9. the
story does not appear in the Book of armagh, but the capitulum does (out of sequence) at the
beginning of the life. For discussion, see the idem in n. 1, and r.I. Best, ‘Palaeographical
notes III’, Ériu, 18 (1958), 102–7; ludwig Bieler, ‘ancient hagiography and the lives of st
Patrick’ in F. Paolo and M. Barrera (eds), Forma futuri: studi in onore del Cardinale Michele
Pellegrino (turin, 1975), pp 650–5, repr. as section 11 of ludwig Bieler, ‘studies on the text
of Muirchú, I: the text of manuscript Novara 77’, PRIA, 52C (1950), 179–220. 4 James
The authority of the contemplative in Muirchú’s Life of Patrick 223
inspired by observing the heavens, and that here she followed the example of
abraham. By examining the traditions of abraham, the first monotheist, it is
possible to gain an understanding of Muirchú’s purpose. this story is followed
in the next chapter but one by an account of Patrick observing the night sky, and
how his spiritual vision too penetrates beyond the material to behold Christ and
the heavenly host. His disciple Benignus shares Patrick’s celestial vision and is
judged worthy to be his successor. these accounts reveal something of the nature
of ecclesiastical authority in seventh-century Ireland, especially as it was
perceived in the primatial see of armagh. although the Church had to negotiate
a place on the political landscape, as an institution it was engaged in an internal
struggle between competing views of clerical authority: the monastic and the
episcopal. these differing views were brought into sharp focus in the context of
the debate about easter at the time when Muirchú was writing and these
concerns shaped his portrayal of Patrick as the founder of Christianity in
Ireland.
as suggested by her name, the story of Monesan is intended as a reflection on
the nature of clerical life. James Carney believed that Monesan ‘was a
hypochoristic name in Mo-’. It may be, however, that the name incorporates an
element of monos (single, alone), from which the word monachus ‘monk’ derives.
John Cassian’s Conferences, a foundational text in the development of western
monasticism, influenced Muirchú’s life.5 In his conference with abbot Piamun,
he discusses the various types of monks. Conf. 18.5 gives an account of the
origins of coenobitism and considers, in particular, those who, like Monesan,
‘were separated from the great mass of believers and because they abstained
from marriage and cut themselves off from intercourse with their kinsmen
(a parentum … consortio) and the life of the world, were termed monks or
solitaries …’. Monazon is Cassian’s name for such a renunciant.6 In the
Conferences, Cassian famously interpreted God’s instruction to abraham to ‘Go
forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father’s house’
(Gn 12.1) as the triple renunciation of earthly riches, the old life, and ‘all the
recollection of this world, which the sight of the eyes can afford’. this last is
further defined as a state in which ‘the soul soaring above all things visible, is
actually joined to the word of God by contemplation of heavenly things’. In
Carney, The problem of St Patrick (Dublin, 1961), pp 123–7. 5 Michael Winterbottom,
‘Columbanus and Gildas’, Vigiliae Christianae, 30 (1976), 310–17 at 313 n. 16; id., ‘Variations
on a nautical theme’, Hermathena, 120 (1976), 55–8. More generally, on Cassian and Insular
writers, see G.J. Crites, ‘John Cassian and the development of early Irish Christianity: study
of the state of the literature’, American Benedictine Review, 53 (2002), 377–400; s. lake,
‘Knowledge of the writings of John Cassian in early anglo-saxon england’, Anglo-Saxon
England, 32 (2003), 27–41. More recently, see W. Follett, ‘Cassian, contemplation and
medieval Irish hagiography’ in G.r. Wieland et al. (eds), Insignis sophiae arcator: essays in
honour of Michael W. Herren on his 65th birthday (turnhout, 2006), pp 87–105. 6 see F.-e.
Morard, ‘Monachos, moine. Histoire du terme grec jusqu’au 4e siècle: influences bibliques et
gnostiques’, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, 20 (1973), 391–411, esp. 379–81,
224 Damian Bracken
relinquishing all ties to the earthly in the quest for the transcendant, Monesan
progresses from the knowledge of the sensible to the understanding of the
intelligible. she represents the contemplative ideal.
aBraHaM tHe astrOlOGer
In Jewish tradition, abraham appears as the first monotheist. Jewish apocrypha,

histories and philosophical tracts emphasize different facets of this legend, but
say that abraham’s enligentment came through observing nature. abraham
leaves the city of Ur of the Chaldees (Gn 11.31) and is proficient in the ‘Chaldaic
science’ of astrology/astromony.7 the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha say that
through observing the order of the skies, he concluded that they are signs of
something greater. the Book of Jubilees (135–105BC)8 describes abraham’s
attempt to foretell the year’s rainfall by sitting alone in the night observing the
stars. then, ‘a thought struck him, and he said, all the signs of the stars and the
signs of the moon and sun are all in the hand of the lord’.9 rabbinic literature
also says that abraham arrived at belief in one God through star gazing,
although there is considerable variety in the details of when he came to that
conclusion. some say he was in middle age, others that he was a precocious
infant.10 Barely able to walk, he sees, worships and then dismisses in turn the
stars, the sun and the moon, concluding, ‘there is One who sets them all in
motion’.11 In its broadest outlines, the Irish life follows Jewish apocryphal lore
about the patriarch; indeed, Muirchú says explicitly that Monesan followed the
example of abraham, ‘for through nature she searched the maker of all that is
created’ (Quaerebat namque per naturam totius creaturae factorem). the
importance of such apocryphal literature for the story of Monesan in the life of
Patrick was recognized long ago.12 apocryphal accounts offer intriguing parallels
with the Irish sources and may ultimately lie at the base of Muirchú’s story.
and the discussion of eusebius’ commentary on the Psalms, 404–6 on egeria, and 392. 7 On
the distinction between astronomy and astrology, see M. lejbowicz, ‘Postérité médiévale de
la distinction isidorienne astrologia/astronomia: Bède et la vocabulaire de la chronometrie’,
Documents pour l’Histoire du Vocabulaire Scientifique, 7 (1985), 1–41. 8 Carl r. Holladay,
Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish authors, i: Historians (Chico, Ca, 1983), p. 56, with reference
to r.H. Charles, The apocrypha and pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1913); J.H.
Charlesworth, ‘Jewish astrology in the talmud, pseudepigrapha, the Dead sea scrolls and
early Palestinian synagogues’, Harvard Theological Review, 70 (1977), 183–200 at 199, ‘During
the roman period, “astronomy” and “astrology” were usually synonyms …’. 9 H.D.F.
sparks, The apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford, 1984), p. 48. 10 s. sandmel, Philo’s place in
Judaism: a study of conceptions about Abraham in Jewish literature (New York, 1972), p. 198.
11 l. Ginzberg, The legends of the Jews (7 vols, Philadephia, 1968), i, p. 189; see also Koran,
6.76–9. 12 see Whitley stokes, ‘a legend of abraham’, Academy (22 Mar. 1890), 207.
ludwig Bieler alludes to the possible influence of the Book of Jubilees on the life in
‘Muirchú’s life of st Patrick as a work of literature’, Medium Aevum, 43 (1974), 219–33 at
231, repr. as §9 of Bieler, Studies on the Life, and again in the preface to his edition of the life
Biblical apocrypha have been cited in the past to explain parts of Muirchú’s
life;13 however, the writings of the Fathers contain a great deal of apocryphal
lore and are probably the more immediate, and more mundane, source for early
Irish writers.14 In the Monesan story, Muirchú’s telling of the event and what
follows in the life shows that he was aware not just of the tradition of abraham
the astrologer, but that he also knew of the significance and philosophical
interpretations that were drawn from abraham’s rejection of astrology and the
materialism of polytheism. Muirchú drew on these later elaborations of the
legend that marked abraham out as a leader and a model of spiritual authority.
Josephus is the most prominent Jewish historian to discuss how an interest in
astrology led abraham to monotheism,15 but the number of other Jewish
historians who record the legend indicates that it was a major motif of Jewish
folklore.16 In the fragments preserved from the works of these historians by
eusebius, abraham is described not just as a practitioner, but as the inventor, of
astronomy.17 the stargazing abraham of the legends and the polemical character
of the Jewish histories are replaced by an altogether more complex figure in the
works of Philo Judaeus. In Philo’s On Abraham (Ab.) and On the migration of
Abraham (Mig.), the patriarch conforms to the ideals of the Greek philosopher
who turns away from the material world to cultivate the intellect. although there
is no question of any direct dependence on his work, Philo’s abraham reveals
much of Muirchú’s intention in the life. Philo abandons the traditional picture
in denying that abraham became a monotheist through anything as ridiculous as
astrology. Instead, abraham rejected astronomy and this is tied by Philo to his
journey from Chaldea, the land associated with the practice. the Chaldeans,
through constant observation of the heavens, ‘glorified visible existence, leaving
out of consideration the intelligible and invisible … concluded that the world
itself was God, thus profanely likening the created to the Creator’ (Ab. 69).18
abraham leaves the material associations and comforts of his country, kindred
and father’s house (Gn 12.1), but also the materialism of Chaldean pantheism.
He stops examining the visible world with the eyes of the flesh and begins to
(Bieler, Patrician texts, 20). 13 aideen O’leary, ‘an Irish apocryphal apostle: Muirchú’s
portrayal of saint Patrick’, Harvard Theological Review, 89 (1996), 287–301. 14 aware of the
parallels with the Book of Jubilees apocryphon, ludwig Bieler (Patrician texts, p. 206) himself
pointed to patristic literature as a possible source for Muirchú’s information on abraham’s
conversion. On knowledge, and otherwise, of the Book of Jubilees in early Ireland, see Martin
McNamara, The apocrypha in the early Irish Church (Dublin, 1984), p. 20. 15 Josephus,
Antiquities of the Jews, 1.VII.7. 16 Ben Zion Wacholder, ‘Pseudo-eupolemus’ two Greek
fragments on the life of abraham’, Hebrew Union College Annual, 34 (1963), 83–113 at 87.
17 eusebius’ quotations from alexander Polyhistor in The preparation for the Gospel, IX.17
(e.H. Gifford (trans.), Eusebii Pamphili evangelicae praeparationis libri, XV (Oxford, 1993), pp
450–1) preserve fragments from artabanus and the samaritan anonymous (Ps-eupolemus)
on this theme. see sandmel, Philo’s place, passim; W.l. Knox, ‘abraham and the quest for
God’, Harvard Theological Review, 37 (1935), 55–60. 18 F.H. Colson (ed. and trans.), Philo
226 Damian Bracken
contemplate the invisible with the purified vision of the mind. His change in
name from abram to abraham (Gn 17.5) signifies his progression from
astrologer and meteorologist to sage (Ab. 82–3) and from the material to the
spiritual. ‘Now to the meteorologist nothing at all seems greater than the
universe, and he credits it with the causation of what comes into being. But the
wise man with more discerning eyes sees something more perfect perceived with
the mind, something which rules and governs, the master and pilot of all else’
(Ab. 84). abraham had ‘opened the soul’s eye as though after a profound sleep,
and … discerned what he had not beheld before, a charioteer and pilot presiding
over the world …’ (Ab. 70). In what Philo writes of abraham, ‘there is an
intimate connection between seeing and contemplation’ (Mig. 165),19 for to
contemplate means literally ‘to see’. For the rational being, this life of
contemplation and cultivation of the mind is the most appropriate (Mig. 47). an
essential element in contemplation is the withdrawal from the activity and bustle
of the everyday. the sage ‘withdraws from the public and loves solitude’ (Ab.
22), and must ‘be driven out of all city life’ (Ab. 86) with its distractions that
cloud intellectual discernment. the culmination of the contemplative’s
endeavours is the beatific vision, that is, seeing God. For Philo, scripture shows
that abraham reached this contemplative summit: ‘“God”, it says, “was seen by
abraham”’ (Ab. 77; cf. Gen 12.7). It has been said that Philo’s Hellenized
abraham owes nothing to the rabbinic and apocryphal representations of the
patriarch. this may be so, but all traditions conclude that the spiritual exercise
of using reason leads inevitably to monotheism. In the legends, abraham
observes physical creation with the eyes of the flesh. However, he rises above the
material in himself by engaging his reason, which allows him to rise above the
material world around him by seeing creation as a token of something greater. By
progressing from the creature to its maker, he is led eventually but inevitably to
knowledge of the single prime cause of everything. this same process is at work
in Philo’s depiction when abraham retreats from polytheistic materialism to
cultivate the inner world of the spirit. God advises him that ‘the great is often
known by its outlines in the smaller, and by looking at them the observer finds
the scope of his vision infinitely enlarged’ (Ab. 71). He must retreat from ‘the
greatest of cities, this world’, to the lesser, the self, and there he will ‘be better
able to apprehend the overseer of the all’. through this inner contemplation,
abraham observes within himself that the ‘mind is appointed as your ruler which
all the community of the body obeys and each of the senses follows’ (Ab. 74).
the world, the greatest work of all, he concludes, must also have a ruler ‘who
holds it together and directs it with justice’.
Many of these ideas were compatible, in a general way, with early Christian
concepts of contemplation. as seen in Philo, sight is the principal sense
perception used figuratively in the literature of contemplation. Julianus
(11 vols, Cambridge, Ma, 1950), vi, 39. 19 Ibid., iv, 229.
Pomerius’ On the contemplative life (c.500) is described as the oldest pastoral

instruction that survives in the west. the very first capitulum reads: ‘the
contemplative life is properly that life in which the lord will be seen by the clean
of heart’. Julianus writes that the life that affords the creature of intellect
(creatura intellectualis) sight of its Creator ‘takes its name from contemplation –
that is, seeing’.20 the Venerable Bede traced the Greek roots of the word
see”, in Greek is said θεωρῶ. the word theorica – that is, “the contemplative
‘contemplation’ in his Retraction on the Acts of the Apostles: ‘In latin we say “I
life” – is derived from it’.21 Philo’s abraham, who desired to see God, is followed
by Monesan, whose parents journey to Patrick for the sake of her ardent desire
‘to see God’ (uidendi Deum causa).22 like abraham, she was an observer of the
heavens, but her intellectual curiosity led her to rise above the material and to
recognize them as signs of the Creator. the cultivation of the intellect requires
solitude. abraham journeyed away from his homeland and from city life;
Monesan abjures marriage. Having withstood the false baptism of the ‘floods of
water’ (multis aquis) by which they attempted to coerce her into marriage,
Monesan is bathed by Patrick in the bath (lauacrum ‘baptism’) of the waters of
the Holy spirit. the goal of the contemplative is union with the Creator through
the beatific vision. Muirchú suggests that Monesan had achieved this union, for
he says that afterwards she ‘gave up her spirit into the hands of the angels’.23 In
Philo’s works, abraham represents the contemplative ideal as realized by the
philosopher. In Muirchú, Monesan, following abraham, is the contemplative
ideal as realized in the ascetic rigour of the monastic calling.
abraham and Monesan are figures who must have been of interest to
Muirchú’s Irish readership. although once pagan, they both came to mono-
theism through the application of their intellect and observation of nature.
Monesan, ‘through nature (per naturam) … searched the maker (factorem) of all
that is created’. the reference Bible (an Irish, eighth-century compendious
commentary on much of the Bible) and the exodus commentary of the Ps-Bedan
Commentaries on the Pentateuch both say that nature led abraham to faith and
that he came to know God through creation.24 the putatively Irish commentary
on the Catholic epistles, assigned a date contemporary with Muirchú by its
editor, describes abraham as an astrologer when in the land of his birth, but that
the stars eventually led him to faith.25 the role of creation as instructor in the
20 ‘Contemplativa vita, in qua Creatorem suum creatura intellectualis ab omni peccato
purgata, atque ex omni parte sanata visura est, a contemplando, id est, videndo, nomen
York, 1947), p. 17. 21 ‘Quod latine dicimus video, Graece dicitur θεωρῶ, a quo verbo
accepit’, Pl 43, 418–19; M.J. suelzer (trans.), Julianus Pomerius: the contemplative life (New
derivatum est nomen theoricae, id est contemplativae vitae’, Pl 92, 1014. 22 Bieler,
Partrician texts, 100. 23 ‘… post ea solo prostrata spiritum in manus angelorum tradidit’,
Bieler, Patrician texts, 100. 24 the reference Bible reads: ‘abraham octo principalia pro
domino fecit: prima, agnouit eum per naturam …’, CCCM 173, 123. Ps-Bede has: ‘abraham
quippe post adam primus physicam habuit, quem natura ad Deum adorandum perduxit, et
per creaturas illum cognovit’, Pl 91, 293. 25 ‘Primo nomine nominatur abram, quando in
228 Damian Bracken
faith is a biblical theme. The Pslams proclaim that, ‘The heavens shew forth the
glory of God’ (Ps 18.1), and the Book of Wisdom condemns the foolish who,
beguiled by their beauty, took ‘the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the
sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world … For by the greatness of the
beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, as to be known
thereby’ (Sap 13.2,5). The theme is reprised in Paul’s letter to the Romans. He
criticizes the foolish who worship creation rather than the Creator (Rom 1.25),
because ‘the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly
seen, being understood by the things that are made’ (Rom 1.20). The instructive
role of Creation interested those concerned with the spreading Christianity to all
peoples, particularly to the remotest. St Prosper Tiro is known to students of
Irish history chiefly for the information he gives on the earliest mission to
convert Ireland and on the appointing of the first bishop ‘to the Irish who believe
in Christ’ in both his Chronicle and Against the Collator.26 In Against the Collator,
he contends that contemplation of creation (contemplatio elementorum) and its
most orderly beauty (ordinatissima pulchritudo) draws one to God, and that
through the intellect, the creature can perceive the invisible things of the Creator
(cf. Rom 1.20).27 Prosper pursues the subject in The call of all nations (written
c.AD450), the first treatise in ancient Christian literature on the problem of the
salvation of infidels.28 The Israelites had Scripture, but other nations had ‘the
heavens and the earth, the sea and every creature that man can see’ as their
guides. Their chief purpose was so that ‘the rational beings, when contemplating
so many beautiful things (de contemplatione tot specierum) … must needs learn to
worship and love the Author of them all’.29 The perfect order and unspeakable
beauty (inenarrabilis pulchritudo) of creation constitute tablets of the eternal law
(aeternae legis tabulae) proclaimed with ceaseless preaching (praedicatione
perpetua) to all peoples, even to the remotest. In a time and place closer to
Muirchú, the Catechesis Celtica says that it was particularly appropriate for an
angel, that is, a ‘rational creature’, to announce the birth of Christ to the Jews
who possess the ‘rational law’, and for one of the elements, a star, to bring
knowledge of his coming to the gentiles.30 This was a long-lived theme among
Irish writers. In the twelfth-century glosses on the Gospels of Mael Brigte
patria sua genitus erat, id est excelsus, quia astrologus fuit in sideribus quae duces illius erant
ad fidem’, CCSL, 108B, 66. 26 Prosper Tiro, Epitoma Chronicon, MGH, AA 9, 473; De
gratia dei et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem 21 (PL 45, 1831). 27 ‘Trahit itaque ad Deum
contemplatio elementorum, omniumque quae in eis sunt, ordinatissima pulchritudo.
Invisibilia enim ejus, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta conspiciuntur’ (Rom
1.20), PL 45, 1811. 28 P. De Letter, St Prosper of Aquitaine: The call of all nations (New York,
1952), p. 3. 29 De Letter, Prosper, p. 95. 30 ‘Ideo autem natiuitas Christi per angelum, id
est per rationabilem creaturam ostenditur; gentibus uero, id est III magis ab oriente
uenientibus per stellam indicatur. Aptum namque erat ut Iudaeis per legem rationabilem
creatura rationabilis hoc mirabile indicaret. Et congruum erat ut mutis non dicentibus: Credo
in deum patrem, et reliqua, mutum sidus in signum huius facti mirabilis daretur’; text in A.
Wilmart, Analecta reginensia: extraits des manuscrits latins de la reine Christine conservés au Vatican
(london, Bl, Harley 1802), the glossator comments less positively saying that
the Jews, under the rational law of Moses, possessed scripture to tell them of
Christ’s coming, while the gentiles had an ‘unspeaking star’ mutum sidus because
‘they adored creatures’.31
the sources examined here, from the early Jewish apocrypha to the works of
the fifth-century Christian apologists, contend that the rational being appreciates
creation meaningfully, therefore, when it inquires with the intellect into its
nature and leads from the physicality of the natural world to its cause. the
surface of material creation is apprehended first with the corporeal eyes, but then
the inquiring mind leads from the exterior form to inner meaning. Inquiring into
the causes of the physical leads ultimately to the discernment of the prime cause;
the life of the intellect is intricately bound to monotheistic faith. Prosper’s poem,
De prodiventia dei, puts these issues into sharper focus. He condemns those ‘who
look with your bodily eyes rather than with your mind’,32 and praises the holy:
and when they [the saints] saw the world, this magnificent and beautiful
workmanship,
they did not honor as gods the sea, the sky, the fire, or the starts of the sky,
which they were holding under control through observation and calculation,
but rather, relying on the reason as their teacher, they worshipped
the one Creator and lord of the universe, and not His works.33
For this very reason, the ‘old crime in the Chaldaean astrology’ must be
rejected.34 Man was given dominion over all creation (Gn 1.28), which is to serve
him, and not just provide him with the necessities of life, but to teach him about
its Creator. ‘the elements have been granted no power over us; man possesses
power over them instead’.35 the idea that God attaches ‘a fierce star to
everbody’s birth’ that directs the course of their life is an inversion of the ‘most
orderly beauty’ of creation, and the subversion of man’s position within that
order. Belief in astronomy was condemned as an attempt to reverse the divinely
(Vatican, 1933), p. 105. 31 ‘Quaeritur, cur per stellam ostensus est christus magis, et per
angelum ostensus est pastoribus. Congruenter quidem ostensus est per creaturam
rationabilem, i.e. per angelum, iudeis manentibus sub ratione legis moysi. Congruenter autem
ostensus est per mutum sidus gentibus mutis, infidelitate positis et quia gentes creaturas
adorabant’; text in H.H. Glunz, History of the Vulgate in England from Alcuin to Roger Bacon
(Cambridge, 1933), p. 331. the glossator cites Gregory; see also D. Hurst (trans.), Gregory the
Great: forty Gospel homilies (Kalamazoo, MI, 1990), p. 55. this sermon also gives Gregory’s
critique of astrology. 32 M. Marcovich, Prosper of Aquitaine ‘De prodiventia dei’: text,
translation and commentary (leiden, 1989), p. 13; ‘et plus corporeis oculis quam mente
videntes’, Pl 51, 620. 33 Marcovich, Prosper of Aquitaine, p. 43. On augustine’s treatment
of this theme, see C. Butler, Western mysticism: the teaching of SS Augustine, Gregory and
Bernard on contemplation and the contemplative life (london, 1960), p. 82. For eastern
Christianity, see John Chryssavgis, ‘the sacredness of creation in the sayings of the Desert
Fathers’ in e.a. livingstone (ed.), Studia Patristica, 25 (louvain, 1993), 346–51.
34 Marcovich, Prosper of Aquitaine, p. 45. 35 Marcovich, Prosper of Aquitaine, p. 49.
230 Damian Bracken
ordained order of creation and to make man subservient to the elements.

Monesan represents the right ordering of creation, where man, with his capacity
for rational thought, seeks to know the Creator from creation. Her story also
challenges perceptions of barbarian peoples that originate in classical
representations, but were still alive in the seventh century at the time of Gregory
the Great. While the barbarian may possess a certain uirtus (meaning ‘ability’ or
‘strength’) according to classical ideals, he was incapable of harnassing that
ability to good ends since he was not subject to reason (ratio). the civilized
inhabitants of the roman empire, living in settled communities, were subject to
rational law and therefore capable of using their uirtus to their individual
betterment and the benefit of society; because he is not subject to reason, the
barbarian is unable to control his strength and direct it to positive ends, but uses
his abilities in a way that leads only to destruction.36 Gregory inherited these
ideas and says that ‘an angel, preached to the Jews as persons capable of using
their reason’ because they are subject the rational law of Moses. the star, ‘a sign
and not a voice, guided the Gentiles, who did not know how to make use of
reason’. this is in marked contrast to Prosper, who says that all are capable of
knowing the Creator from creation through the application of reason. Muirchú
portrays barbarian and pagan culture, generally, in a positive light in the life.
Monesan confounds the image of the barbarian incapable of philosophic
reasoning by discerning God from the elements of creation.
t H e N at U r a l P H I l O s O P H Y O F t H e G e N t I l e s
early Christian writers appealed to Philo in their attack on astrology and its
determinism that compromised human free will and divine omnipotence, but
they also quoted him in their critique of the materialism of natural philosophy.
Clement of alexandria (c.150–c.215) quoted from Philo’s dialectic of matter and
creation in the Stromata, in particular, where he describes abraham as one who
had passed from being a ‘natural philosopher to a lover of God’ by the
‘contemplation of heavenly things’.37 In Exhortation to the heathen, he attacks
philosophers who, while confessing that man was made to contemplate the
heavens, worship the objects that appear in the heavens as gods.38 His line of
reasoning is very similar to that followed in lactantius’ telling of an event in the
life of the philosopher anaxagoras, a story that was known to at least one early
Irish scholar. In his compendious notebook, sedulius scottus recast lactantius’
story about anaxagoras, who was asked an awkward question: why was he born?
In reply, sedulius says, anaxagoras pointed to heaven and the stars and replied:
36 Y.a. Dauge, Le barbare: recherches sur la conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation
(Brussels, 1981), pp 422ff, with many references. 37 Clement, Stromata, I.5 and V.1; trans.
in a. roberts and J. Donaldson, ANF, 2 (edinburgh, 1994), pp 306, 446. 38 Clement,
Exhortation, 5; trans. ANF, 2, p. 190.
‘to contemplate all of this’.39 according to lactantius, anaxagoras did not pause
for thought before answering, in case he gave the impression that he did not have
a ready answer for everything, but replied that he was born to look upon heaven
and the sun.40 lactantius says that this may appear at first sight to be a worthy
response, but if one takes time to analyse his reply, one sees that it is full of error.
In placing all of man’s duty on the eyes of the flesh alone, he referred nothing to
the intellect. the philosopher did not exercise his faculty of reason, which leads
one to ‘measure with your mind the excellence, the providence and the power of
Him whose works you admire’.41 He warns that man is not born to see with the
eyes of the flesh, but to ‘contemplate, that is, behold with our mind, the Creator
of all things Himself ’ (ut ipsum factorem rerum omnium contemplemur, id est, mente
cernamus).
the most influential theoretical treatment of these principles is augustine’s
On Christian doctrine, completed about a century later, a work that was highly
influential in shaping the Christian culture of the early Middle ages, including
early Ireland.42 thomas Charles-edwards has described the works of Gildas and
Columbanus as evidence for the degree to which the programme prescribed in
On Christian doctrine was followed in the schools of early Ireland and Britain.43
thomas O’loughlin has shown how it is central to understanding adomnán’s
On the holy places.44 recent studies of Virgil the Grammarian have attempted to
interpret his eccentric works in the context of augustine’s plan.45 augustine
proposes a methodology for the interpretation of all signs, whether the words on
a page, or the physical objects of creation. the carnal appreciation of a sign is to
apprehend it with the corporeal eyes as animals do. Humans are endowed with
reason, and failure to exercise it puts them on the level of animals. to apply the
intellect and attempt to reach the meaning of a sign is the spiritual response
appropriate for the Christian. a ‘reader’ who stays at the surface level of the
narrative, who is struck by the wonders of nature but not inspired to seek
further, or who appreciates literature simply as entertainment, is trapped in what
augustine calls a ‘miserable kind of spiritual slavery’. the reader must move
beyond passive assimilation of information to active interpretation by using
God-given rational faculties so that literature, in the words of John scotus
39 sedulius scottus, Collectaneum miscellaneum, 7.1: ‘anaxagoras philosophus, cum ab eo

queretur cur natus esset, ostenso caelo sideribusque monstratis, respondisse fertur; ad horum
omnium contemplationem’, CCCM 67, lxvii.7. 40 ‘… coeli ac solis videndi’, Pl 6, 371.
41 lactantius, The divine institutes 3.9; trans. ANF, 7, p. 77. 42 augustine’s conception of
the Christian curriculum is set out in De doctrina christiana, ed. K.D. Daur and J. Martin
(turnhout, 1962) (Pl 54, 15–122), a work that has inspired an extensive modern literature;
see D.W.H. arnold and P. Bright (ed.), ‘De doctrina christiana’: a classic of Western culture
(Notre Dame, IN, 1995). 43 t.M. Charles-edwards, Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge,
2000), p. 177. 44 t. O’loughlin, ‘the exegetical purpose of adomnán’s De locis sanctis’,
CMCS, 24 (1992), 37–53. 45 Damian Bracken, ‘Virgil the Grammarian and Bede’, Anglo-
Saxon England, 35 (2006), 7–21; r. Naismith, ‘antiquity, authority and religion in the
Epitomae and Epistolae of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus’, Peritia, 20 (2008), 59–85.
232 Damian Bracken
eriugena, ‘addresses the soul, leads it from the external, corporal senses, to the
perfected understanding of intelligible things’.46
‘No “death of the soul”’, writes augustine, ‘is more aptly given that name
than the situation in which the intelligence, which is what raises the soul
above the level of animals, is subjected to the flesh by following the letter.
… It is, then, a miserable kind of spiritual slavery to interpret signs as
things, and to be incapable of raising the mind’s eye above the physical
creation so as to absorb the eternal light’.47
Material things are not to be dismissed, but used properly to reach a deeper
understanding of the spiritual. any intellect that fails is entrapped by the phsical,
and that leads to idolatry when the reverence owed to the Creator is extended
instead to creation.48 In Muirchú’s story, Monesan, who comes from the ‘cold of
unbelief ’, sees the sun, but through it comes to knowledge of ‘the maker of the
sun … whose throne is in heaven’. early Christian writers, following rabbinic
tradition, defended these ideas by appealing to interpretations of exodus 12.35
where God instructs the Hebrews to take the ‘vessels of silver and gold, and very
much raiment’ with them when fleeing egypt. For Irenaeus, the Hebrews’ theft
of the vessels and garments ‘is the prefiguration of the right Christian use of
material goods’.49 In his homilies on exodus, Origen of alexandria has a low
opinion of the secular poets and the art of dialectic (as examples of human
endeavour spent in the cause of the mundane), comparing them to the plague of
frogs and flies of exodus 8.50 (there are echoes of Origin’s ideas in two biblical
commentaries once assumed by some to be the work of Irish exegetes: the
exodus section of the Commentary on the Pentateuch,51 and the compendious
46 B.F. Huppé, Doctrine and poetry: Augustine’s influence on Old English poetry (New York,
1959), pp 54–5, quoting from John scottus eriugena, Expositiones super ierarchiam caelestem S.
Dionysii (Pl 122, 146); see Bracken, ‘Virgil the Grammarian and Bede’, 8. 47 augustine, On
Christian doctrine, III.9.20–1; CCSL, 32, 83; Pl 34, 69; r.P.H. Green (trans.), Augustine: De
doctrina christiana (Oxford, 1995), p. 141. see r.a. Markus, ‘the Jew as hermeneutic device:
the inner life of a Gregorian topos’ in John C. Cavadini (ed.), Gregory the Great: a symposium
(Notre Dame, IN, 1995), pp 1–15 at p. 3. 48 thomas O’loughlin, ‘the development of
augustine the bishop’s critique of astrology’, Augustinian Studies, 30 (1999), 83–103 at 91.
49 P.F. Beatrice, ‘the treasures of the egyptians: a chapter in the history of patristic exegesis
and late antique culture’ in F. Young, M. edwards and P. Parvis (eds), Studia Patristica, 39
(louvain, 2006), 159–84 at 166. 50 r.e. Heine, Origen: homilies on Genesis and Exodus, the
Fathers of the Church (Washington, 1982), pp 268–9; PG 12, 321–2. 51 ‘secunda vero
plaga, in qua ranae producuntur, significat, ut arbitror, carmina poetarum, qui inani quadam
et inflata modulatione velut ranarum, sonis et cantibus, huic mundo fabulas deceptionis
intulerunt. ad nihil enim aliud hoc animal utile est, nisi quod sonum vocis improbae
importunis clamoribus reddit. Post cinifex producitur. Hoc animal pennis quidem
suspenditur, volitans super aera, sed ita subtile et minutum, ut oculi visum, nisi acute
cernentis, effugiat; corpori tamen cum inciderit, acerbissimo terebrat stimulo, ita ut quam
videre quis non valet, sentiat stimulantem. Hoc ergo animalis genus dignissime puto arti
dialectices comparari, quae minutis et subtilibus verborum stimulis animas penetrat, et tanta
Commentary on the Psalms.52 the Insular glosses on the Psalms in Pal. lat. 68
repeat the condemnation in the gloss on Ps 104, though without maligning poets
or dialecticians.)53 In his letter to Gregory thaumaturgus, however, Origen
famously appealed to the precedent of the spoliation of the egyptians as
justification for Christian appropriation of the philosophical sciences: ‘For just
as the servants of philosophers say concerning geometry, music, grammar,
rhetoric and astronomy that they are adjuncts to philosophy, we say this very
thing about philosophy itself with regard to Christianity’.54 In On Christian
doctrine, augustine begins by exploring the possible sources of wisdom and truth.
Not all knowledge is directly revealed, but depends on the cooperation of the
human intellect. Citing the example of Jethro (ex. 18), he says that even Moses,
one who spoke with God, accepted the advice of his gentile father-in-law and
thereby acknowledged that the truth can come from a pagan source. as another
pagan who could be claimed to be a discerner of truth, Jethro interested the early
Irish. He was cited in the Irish canons, a penitential compilation, to support the
principle that Christians could live by the ‘judgments of the heathen’ (iudicia
gentium) if they were not displeasing to God.55
augustine appeals to the precedent of the despoliation of the egyptians when
considering the teachings of Platonist philosophers. their statements that are
true and consonant with Christianity should not cause alarm, for all truth has a
common source in God. It is therefore perfectly permissible for a Christian to
appropriate pagan wisdom – the silver and gold of their material wealth – using
it in a way appropriate for rational beings in ‘the service of the truth’,56 that is,
for the study of scripture. the so-called ‘Bobbio computus’ (a work with many
Irish associations)57 says that philosophy can be appropriated by Christians
because the philosophic arts have a divine source, for they were discerned, not
invented, by the human intellect:
For the philosophers were not the creators of these arts, but their
discoverers. For the Creator formed them in the natures of all things, as he
wished. In fact, those who were wiser in the world were the discoverers of
calliditate circumvenit, ut deceptus nec videat, nec intelligat unde decipitur’, Pl 91, 301–2.
52 Breviarium in psalmos, Pl 26, 1115, and reprised on 1206–7. 53 M. McNamara, Glossa
in Psalmos: the Hiberno-Latin gloss on the psalms of Codex Palatinus latinus 68 (Vatican, 1986),
p. 219. 54 trans. in J.W. trigg, Origen (london, 1998), p. 211, with corrections in a.J.
stevens, The despoliation of Egypt in pre-rabbinic, rabbinic and patristic traditions (Boston, Ma,
2008), p. 215. 55 ludwig Bieler, The Irish penitentials (Dublin, 1975), pp 168–9.
56 augustine, Doct. christ., 40.60a–61a; Green, Augustine. De doctrina christiana, pp 124–7. the
Commentary on the Pentateuch has the succint expression: ‘In auro et argento et veste
aegyptiorum, significantur quaedam doctrinae, quae consuetudine gentilium non inutili
studio discuntur’, Pl 94.398. 57 the work is described as mainly Irish in Máire Walsh and
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (eds and trans.), Cummian’s letter ‘De controuersia paschali’ and the ‘De
ratione conputanti’ (toronto, 1988), p. 115; for the suggested date of compilation, see C.W.
Jones, ‘Polemius silvius, Bede and the names of the months’, Speculum, 9 (1934), 50–6 at 55;
234 Damian Bracken
these arts in the nature of things, as can be easily understood of the sun,
moon and the stars. What else do we contemplate (consideramus) and
marvel at in the sun, moon, and stars, but the wisdom of the Creator?58
It then goes on to say that Abraham the patriarch discerned the Creator from
astrological computation, and that such knowledge is necessary, although
lamentably rare, for the proper understanding of Scripture. (The computus may
be quoting from Alcuin’s letter to Charlemagne here.)59
In The city of God VIII.3, Augustine makes an explicit association between the
capacity for philosophic and rational interpretation, and moral behaviour.
Socrates was the first of the philosophers, he says, to recognise this because he
was ‘unwilling that minds defiled with earthly desires should essay to raise
themselves upward to divine things’. The ‘mind, delivered from the depressing
weight of lusts’, Augustine writes, ‘might raise itself upward … and might, with
purified understanding, contemplate … the causes of all created natures’. This
connection between philosophical investigation, monotheism and moral
principles is found in the earliest of Irish literature. In the first of his ‘sermons’,
Columbanus ponders the immensity of creation (‘High is the heaven, broad the
earth, deep the sea …’) that brings knowledge of its Creator: ‘Understand the
creation, if you wish to know the Creator’.60 He, too, says that purity is the
essential precondition to discerning the Creator and seeing God (that is, to
contemplation). Although that Creator is invisible, Columbanus says that he can
‘be partly seen by the pure of heart’ (licet ex parte a mundo corde videatur). The
allusion is to the Beatitudes, ‘Blessed are the clean of heart (Beati mundo corde),
for they shall see God’ (Mt 5.8). In Christian tradition, biblical figures such as
Abraham and Moses, who were judged to exemplify this purity, recognised God
through ‘the contemplation of the pure eyes of the mind’.61 Ascent, either
C.W. Jones, ‘The “lost” Sirmond manuscript of Bede’s computus’, English Historical Review,
52 (1937), 204–19 at 206. 58 ‘Nam philosophi non fuerunt conditores harum artium, sed
inventores. Nam Creator omnium rerum condidit eas in naturis, sicut voluit. Illi vero, qui
sapientiores fuerunt in mundo inventores erant harum artium in naturis rerum, sicut de sole,
et luna, et stellis facile potest intelligi. Quid enim aliud in sole, et luna, et sideribus
consideramus, et miramur, nisi sapientiam Creatoris?’, PL 129, 1344. 59 G. D’Onofrio, ‘I
fondatori di Parigi. Giovanni Scotto e la teologia del suo tempo’ in Giovanni Scoto nel suo
tempo. L’organizzazione del sapere in età carolingia. Atti del xxiv convegno storico internationale,
Todi, 11–14 ottobre 1987 (Spoleto, 1989), pp 413–56 at p. 425 n. 21, for text of Alcuin’s letter.
60 ‘Altum caelum et lata terra et profundum mare … Intellege, si vis scire Creatorem,
creaturam …’, G.S.M. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera (Dublin, 1957), pp 64–5; see also
Gregory, Morals on Job, XI.4.6: ‘… all proclaim God to be the creator of all … each crature
when looked at gives as it were its own testimony, [by means of] the very form it has. Cattle,
birds, the earth or fish, if we ask them while we look, reply with one voice that the Lord made
everything. While they imprint their form on our senses they proclaim that they are not from
themselves. By the very fact that they were created, they proclaim by the form they manifest
their creator: [this is] as it were the voice of their confession …’, quoted in R.A. Markus,
Gregory the Great and his world (Cambridge, 1997), p. 48. 61 Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica
II.2; K. Lake (trans.), Eusebius: The ecclesiastical history (2 vols, London, 1980), i, p. 15.
through flight or by scaling a height, is a common image to represent the purity

of the contemplative who turns away from the earthly in the quest for the
transcendent. Gregory the Great interpreted the winged beasts covered with
eyes of Ezekiel’s vision (Ez 10) in this way, for the eyes symbolise the intellectual
vision of the contemplative and wings enable this vision by soaring above the
mundane to glimpse the intelligible world. The Reference Bible62 shows
familiarity with the teaching of Gregory, and Columbanus was profoundly
influenced by it. In his letter to Pope Boniface, he prays that Isaiah may ‘send
you to the mountain, “who publish good tidings to Zion” (Is 40.9), rather may
God through Isaiah place you on the watchtower of true contemplation,
according to the meaning of your name’.63 Columbanus emphasises the
contemplative dimension of pastoral leadership by alluding to the name of
Boniface’s office: he is a bishop (speculator, lit. ‘watchman’) who must not let his
leadership be compromised by earthly concerns; he must climb the mountain or
watchtower (specula) to contemplation. Columbanus emphasises his message
with a typical wordplay for, according to Jerome, Zion means ‘watchtower’
( … Sion quod interpretatur ‘specula’).64
The locus classicus for the formulation of these ideas is John Cassian’s
Conference X.6:
For according to the measure of its purity … each mind is both raised and
moulded in its prayers if it forsakes the consideration of earthly and
material things so far as the condition of its purity may carry it forward,
and enable it with the inner eyes of the soul to see Jesus either still in His
humility and in the flesh, or glorified and coming in the glory of His
62 Gregory, Homilies on Ezekiel, Hom. I.3.2 = Reference Bible (Paris, BN lat. 11561, fo. 100r):
‘Et quattuor penne uni (Ez. 10.21), quia Dei filium Iesum Christum simul omnes concorditer
praedicant et ad diuinitatem eius oculos mentis leuantes penna contemplationes uolant’;
Gregory, Hom. I.3.9; PL 76, 809 = Reference Bible (Paris, BN lat. 11561, fo. 100v): ‘Et manus
hominis sub pinnis eorum in quattuor partes. Quid per manus et pennas nisi actiua et
contemplatiua uita. Manus ergo sub pennis eorum id est uirtus operis sub uolatu
contemplationis quod due mulieres Marta et Maria significabant. Erat ergo una actiue et altera
theorice uite seruiebnat, una mortali alia immortali’; Gregory, Hom. I.3.15; PL 76, 812 =
Reference Bible (Paris, BN lat. 11561, fo. 100v): ‘In quattuor partes, id est in quattuor partes
mundi. Per quattuor enim partes facies et pennas habebant quia in omnibus mundi regionibus
praedicantes demonstrant quicquid de humanitate quicquid de diuinitate Christi sentiunt
quia dum incarnatum dominum ubique praedicant in quattuor mundi partes faciem
demonstrant dumque eum esse cum patre et spiritu sancto adnuntiant ubique penna
contemplationes uolant’. 63 ‘Mittat te Isaias in montem, qui evangelizas Zion, immo per
Isaiam Deus iuxta tui nominis interpretationem in speculam verae contemplationis ponat … ’,
Ep. 5, 5. 64 Jerome, Comm. in Hezech., 14, 45, CCSL, 75, 688. Gregory, Mor., 33, 26, ll 6–9:
‘Sion quippe speculatio interpretatur, et non immerito praedicatores sanctos portas Sion
dicimus, quia per eorum uitam atque doctrinam abscondita supernae contemplationis
intramus’, CCSL, 143 B, 1713. For examples in Augustine and Eastern sources, see C. Morel,
Grégoire le Grand. Homélies sur Ézéchiel, i, SC 327 (Paris, 1986), p. 452 n. 1. Of the Irish
examples, one can cite Ps-Jerome, Expositio quatuor evangeliorum, ‘… ad Sion, id est, specula’,
236 Damian Bracken
Majesty … but only those can look with purest eyes on His Godhead, who
rise with Him from low and earthly works and thoughts and go apart in the
lofty mountain of solitude which is free from the disturbance of all earthly
thoughts and troubles,65 and secure from the interference of all sins, and
being exalted by pure faith and the heights of virtue reveals the glory of
His Face and the image of His splendour to those who are able to look on
Him with pure eyes of the soul.
Cassian then gives the example of the transfiguration to illustrate this process of
purification leading to revelation. Jesus leads the disciples Peter, James and John
in the ascent from the mundane to the solitude of the ‘high mountain’ (Mt 17.1).
leaving behind their earthly entanglements, their purified vision sees Christ in
his divine nature.
these attempts to reconcile philosophy and Christianity, and to show the
central role of contemplation in Christian spirituality, are brought together in
two related passages by the greatest philosopher of the Middle ages.66 In the
Periphyseon, the Irishman John scottus eriugena asks whether it is possible to
advance from knowledge of the sensible to the intelligible; what value are the
corporeal senses to intellectual enlightenment; how does sense perception and
knowledge (sensus; notitia) relate to intellect (intellectus; intelligentia)? the
question invloves a greater one: what is the relationship of the physical world to
the divine nature? eriugena’s attempt to answer reveals Muirchú’s skill in the
life of Patrick in exploring the complex question of the relationship of gentile
culture to the revealed truth of Christianity, and the depth and ramifications of
what appears on first reading to be Muirchú’s simple story. In both passages,
eriugena quotes romans 1.20: ‘from the creation of the world his invisible things
are seen, being understood from the things that have been made’. the question
is, how does one ‘see’ the invisible nature of the divine in the material?
eriugena’s answer is through philosophical investigation, which he sees as the
spiritual exercise of contemplation where the creature, man, uses God-given
rational faculties to see beyond the physical, and the central figure he chooses to
represent this ideal is abraham. When apprehending creation, eriugena argues
that ‘we ought not like irrational animals look only on the surface of visible
things but also give a rational account of the things which we perceive by the
corporeal sense’. When observing the stars, eriugena asks, was abraham ‘simply
regarding the appearances only of the stars as other animals do, without being
able to understand their reasons (rationes)? I should not have the temerity to say
this of the great and wise theologian (de magno et sapienti theologo) …’. Instead,
Pl 30, 556. 65 On this passage, see Martin s. laird, ‘Cassian’s Conferences Nine and ten:
some observations regarding contemplation and hermenuetics’, Recherches de Théologie
Ancienne et Médiévale, 62 (1995), 145–56 at 152. 66 the two passages are eriugena,
Periphyseon III.689C–690a and III.723B–724B; ed. and trans. I.P. sheldon-Williams, Iohanis
Scotti Eriugenae: Periphyseon (De diuisione naturae) (Dublin, 1981), pp 186–9 and 262–5.
abraham was ‘wholly detached from earthly thoughts (terrenis cogitationibus) and
purged by virtue and knowledge’. Because he rose above his own physical nature
through cultivation of the intellect, he was able to see beyond physical signs to
discern spiritual realities and to recognize God ‘in the revolutions of the stars’.67
the use of philosophy by Christians is permitted according to the precedent of
the spoliation of the egyptians, continues eriugena. the improper use of
philosophy occurred when those who were skilled in natural science (mundanae
scientiae) and whose reasoning about the visible creature was correct, did not
penetrate beyond it to knowledge of its creator. every contemplative mind (omnis
contemplatiuus animus) must be like Moses and ascend to the peak of contem-
plation (in summitatem theoriae) as Christ and the apostles did at the moment of
the transfiguration. there, the apostles saw Christ’s physical garments appear
‘white as snow’ (Mt 17.2) and through the speldour of the outward form
recognized his divine nature.
t H e C O s M I C V I s I O N I N t H e l I F e O F Pat r I C K
Muirchú’s story of Monesan serves as a prelude to the next chapter but one in
the life, where he gives another account of revelation of the divine that followed
from gazing on ‘the wonders of heaven’, this time experienced by Patrick
himself, and his protégé Benignus. the outcome of this shared revelation is
significant for, following it, Patrick judges Benignus worthy to be his successor.
For Muirchú and his readership, the ideals conveyed by the story are the ideals
that a successor of Patrick as ‘supreme bishop’ summus pontifex, in the words of
the Liber angeli, must adhere to if he is to exercise authority over ‘all churches
and monasteries of all the Irish’.68
I shall briefly relate a miracle of the godly and apostolic man Patrick, of
whom we are speaking, (something) that miraculously happened to him
when he was still in the flesh; this, as far as I know, has been written about
him and stephen only. at one time when he was in his usual place to pray
during the night, he beheld (uidit) the wonders of heaven, familiar to him,
and wishing to test his beloved and faithful holy boy, he said to him:
‘Please, tell me, my son, whether you experience (sentis) what I experience
(sentio)’. then the small boy, named Benignus, said without hesitation: ‘I
know already what you are experiencing (sentis). For I see (uideo) heaven
open and behold the son of God and His angels’. then Patrick said: ‘I see
(sentio) now that you are worthy to be my successor’.69
67 this is a set formula to explain abraham’s arrival at monotheism, also found in the Ps-
Clementine Recognitions, and Isidore’s Etymologies. see C.W. Jones (ed.), Bedae opera de
temporibus (Cambridge, Ma, 1943), p. 339; F. Wallis, Bede: the reckoning of time (liverpool,
1999), p. 27. 68 Bieler, The Patrician texts, p. 187. 69 Ibid., pp 101–3.
238 Damian Bracken
as in the Monesan story where the reference to abraham would have alerted
his theologically literate readership that Muirchú was framing his account with
reference to the ideals of contemplation, the reference to stephen in the story of
Benignus’ vision makes clear that the hagiographer again has these ideals in
mind. the acts of the apostles gives an account of stephen’s trial and martydom
and of his celestial vision before his martyrdom. Benignus declares: ‘For I see
(uideo) heaven open and behold the son of God and his angels’ (Nam uideo
caelum apertum et filium dei et angelos suos). according to acts, stephen, ‘being
full of the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly to heaven, saw the glory of God
and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. and he said: Behold, I see (uideo)
the heavens opened and the son of man standing on the right hand of God’
(Ecce uideo coelos apertos, et filium hominis stantem a dextris dei; act 7.55). Bede
comments on his verse in his Retraction on the Acts of the Apostles, giving the
Greek equivalent (θεωρῶ) of the latin uideo ‘I see’, relating it to ‘theorica – that
is, “the contemplative life”’ (the passage is discussed above). Bede says that the
joys of the future life can be seen (speculari) by some with the purified eyes of the
heart (cf. Mt 5.8), such as stephen in the passage under consideration, and Paul
who was caught up into the third heaven (2 Cor 12.2).70 Muirchú fits out Patrick
the bishop in the clothes of the monastic contemplative, or accentuates the
monastic and contemplative ideals that he discerned in the writings of the
historical Patrick, and indicates that these are the principles his heirs must
adhere to, as did his first successor chosen by Patrick.
the technical and precise vocabularly of seventh-century Irish theological
tracts contemporary with Muirchú shows their familiarity with the literature of
mysticism. augustine argued in On Christian doctrine that the reasoning mind
penetrates beyond exterior signs to reach their meaning and cause. true
philosophical questioning, therefore, leads ultimately to the prime cause and to
knowledge of God.71 the elect will have this knowledge to the fullest, for they
‘shall see him face to face’ (I Io 3.2). In On the Trinity, augustine writes of ‘seeing
God’ as the act of contemplation that ‘is held forth to us as the end of all
actions’. the inquiring mind’s quest for knowledge will then come to an end,
‘For we shall not seek anything else, when we shall have come to the contem-
plation of Him’.72 Man’s fall, and the corruption of his nature, made it
impossible for him to reach the blessed state in this life. For Gregory, also, ‘the
vision of God alone is our mind’s true repast’.73 God created man so that ‘with
mind erect (stante mente), he might mount to the citadel of contemplation’. But
70 ‘Per quam nonnulli electorum, in hac adhuc vita retenti, mundato diligentius oculo cordis,
futurae vitae gaudia speculari divinitus sublimati, meruerunt, quomodo in praesenti sanctus
stephanus, quomodo Paulus, quando ad tertium coelum raptus est, et multi alii alias’, Pl 92,
1014. 71 For an overview of augustine’s thought, see D.W.H. arnold and P. Bright, ‘De
doctrina Christiana’: a classic of western culture (Notre Dame, IN, 1995). 72 augustine, On
the Trinity, I.9; NPNF, 2, 26; see Butler, Western mysticism, p. 87. 73 Mor., XXXI.49.99;
CCSL, 143B, 1619; quoted in B. McGinn, ‘Contemplation in Gregory the Great’ in Cavadini,
he fell ‘from the innate steadfastness of his standing’ (ab ingenita standi
soliditate)74 before he could reach that state of blessedness. the other rational
being, the angel, through choice, turned to behold God and thereby became
established immoveably in his blessed state, since, having experienced the beatific
vision and contemplated God, it would be impossible ever to turn away. the verb
frequently used in this context is confirmare, meaning not simply ‘to strengethen’
but ‘to confirm (unshakably) in grace’.75 Only a thorough familiarity with these
more obtuse points of the literature of contemplation could have allowed the
mid-seventh-century Irish writer, augustinus Hibernicus, to write the following
lines in his De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae:
the angel, however, established in the highest rank of his honour, could
not change to a higher state, unless confirmed through contemplation of
his Creator (nisi per contemplationem sui Creatoris confirmatus), he would
persist in that state where he had been established. For that reason, once
fallen, he, who had tumbled from the highest order of his state, could in no
way be called back again.76
the Liber de ordine creaturarum, another Hiberno-latin work written towards

the end of the seventh century whose writer was influenced by augustinus
Hibernicus, also discusses the central role that contemplation plays in sacred
history and how the contemplative vision of the divine is the objective of all
rational creatures.77 a masterfully succinct treatment of the subject is found in
the work of Muirchú’s contemporary, ailerán. In his treatise on the inter-
pretation of the names of Christ’s forebears, he draws on the key principles of
contemplation to explain that ‘Jacob’ is one who was ‘pure of heart’, and
therefore one of that few to experience the celestial vision.78 Genesis 35.9–10 tells
how ‘the lord appeared’ to Jacob and changed his name to ‘Israel’. as one to
Gregory the Great: a symposium, p. 148. 74 Gregory, Mor., II.8.10; Pl 75, 813. 75 Dictionary
of medieval Latin from British sources, s.v. confirmare. For example, Gennadius, De ecclesiasticis
dogmatibus, 62: ‘But after his [satan’s] fall the angels who had persevered were confirmed’ Sed
post ejus lapsum ita confirmati sunt angeli qui perstiterunt; Pl 83, 1240. 76 ‘angelus ergo in
summo honoris sui ordine constitutus, immutationem ad exellentiorem statum non habuit,
nisi per contemplationem sui Creatoris confirmatus, in eo statu permaneret ubi conditus fuit:
et idcirco prolapsus iterum revocari minime potuit, qui de sublimissimo sui ordinis statu
proruit’, Pl 35, 2153. Unless otherwise stated, the translations are my own. 77 see, for
example, cap. 15: ‘Moreover, this is what must be considered in what he had said earlier (‘they
shall be like the angels in heaven’ (Mt 22.30)): that just as the angels had originally been
created mutable by nature (which is proved by those who fell), now, indeed, they have been
made immutable through contemplation of God (per dei contemplationem) so that they do not
fear to commit a sin – nor could they: so too with men, who are themselves made changeable
by nature, which can be proven by adam and his seed. On account of the contemplation of
their Creator (conditoris contemplatione), they are created immutable after the resurrection, and
will neither wish, nor be able, to sin’; latin text in M.C. Díaz y Díaz (ed. and spanish trans.),
Liber de ordine creaturarum: un anónimo irlandés del siglo vii (santiago de Compostela, 1972),
p. 196. 78 Gregory the Great presents Jacob’s wrestling with the angel (Gen 32) as the
240 Damian Bracken
whom God had appeared, Israel’s name was interpreted to mean ‘the man, or the
mind, that sees God’.79 Jacob, writes Ailerán,
… having mortified in himself everything that belongs to this earthly life

and become pure of heart (mundus corde effectus) … in passing from the
active to the contemplative life, become worthy to be called by the name of
Israel, that is of a man or mind seeing God, or of a prince of God, or of
one directed toward God, whom he shall behold through faith in this life
and gaze upon face-to-face in the world to come. ‘Blessed’, he says, ‘are the
pure of heart, for they shall see God’ (Mt 5.8).80
The degree to which the early Irish were familiar with the central tenets of the
concept of contemplation has recently been questioned,81 but there can be no
doubt that the contemplative ideal has had a profound impact on Muirchú’s
portrayal of Patrick, and on his concepts of spiritual authority. Although
Muirchú does not use the word contemplation (but neither, famously, does the
Rule of St Benedict), the Novara manuscript of the Life says that Patrick, in
response to Benignus’ description of his vision, says: Quia inquit te tante
comtemplacionis participem conspicio. mei episcopatus hereditate dignum te
indubitanter sencio.82 Muirchú’s repeated use of the verb sentire to indicate an
intellectual rather than a physical experience is a very Gregorian touch. These
ideals are important because they result in an understanding of authority and of
the nature of leadership that is profoundly monastic. The problem of the
relationship between the prelatic authority of the bishop and the charismatic
authority of the holy man or monk was debated from the earliest days of
Christianity and, in the west, from the time of Sulpicius Severus’ Life of Martin
of Tours. Muirchú portrays Patrick the bishop as a proficient of monastic
contemplation; he is the ideal that reconciles this tension between a charismatic
leadership and the institutional or hierarchical authority of the Church. The Life
shows that the problem of different and competing views of spiritual power – one
episcopal, the other monastic – was not a fantasy dreamed up in the modern
historiography of the early Irish Church. It was a pressing issue brought into
sharp focus in the context of the Easter Debate, and which had to be addressed
by the leading clerics, especially those of Armagh, the leading church.
struggle to reach the contemplative vision, and compares his wives, Leah and Rachel, to the
active and contemplative lives in the Homilies on Ezekiel, II.2.9–13. 79 Jerome, Liber de
nominibus hebraicis: ‘Israel, est videre Deum, sive vir, aut mens videns Deum’; PL 23, 788. See
C.T.R. Hayward, Interpretations of the name Israel in ancient Judaism and some early Christian
writings: from victorious athlete to heavenly champion (Oxford, 2005). 80 Aidan Breen (ed. and
trans.), Ailerani: interpretatio mystica et moralis progenitorum domini Iesu Christi (Dublin, 1995),
pp 24–5, 50. 81 Michael Herren and S.A. Brown, Christ in Celtic Christianity: Britain and
Ireland from the fifth to the tenth century (Woodbridge, 2002), pp 145–6. 82 Ludwig Bieler,
‘Studies on the text of Muirchú, I: the text of manuscript Novara 77’, PRIA, 52C (1950), 179–
220 at 197, repr. as section 5 of Bieler, Studies on the Life.
‘Irish pilgrimage’: a romantic misconception
s t e P H a N I e H aY e s - H e a lY
a typical, traditional account of ‘Irish pilgrimage’ appears in J.F. Kenney’s

classic work, The sources for the early history of Ireland: ecclesiastical.1 It begins
with a romantic, sweeping statement: ‘One of the most striking features of Irish
history as a whole, from the earliest records to the present day, has been the
continual stream of emigration which has passed from the shores of the western
isle’. Kenney then described the ‘two most famous of early Irish exiles’, ss
Colum Cille of Iona and Columbanus of Bobbio, and continued: ‘there were,
however, many lesser men whose names have been handed down to us by more-
or-less trustworthy records as followers of the same paths, and hundreds of
others, we may be sure, all traces of whom have long been lost in the debris of
history’. He noted that the primary motive for these numerous departures from
Ireland was ‘the ascetic spirit of Irish Christianity’, an ideal that ‘drove crowds
of devotees to abandon their homes and seek abodes in the islands around the
Irish and scottish coasts, in far-off Iceland, in Cornwall and Brittany and the
lands of western europe’. as concrete evidence of these hordes of faithful
emigrants, Kenney cited the oft-repeated entry from the anglo-saxon Chronicle
dated 891/2, which recorded the landing of two Irish renunciants who had cast
themselves out to sea in a boat with no oars, ‘because they wished for the love of
God to be in exile’.2 Kenney framed his portrait of Irish devotional exile in the
language of pilgrimage, invoking a catchphrase that has become shorthand for
the Irish abroad: peregrinatio pro Dei amore.
this sketch is far from unusual.3 although some of the supporting detail
varies, the basic elements outlined by Kenney are remarkably consistent in
modern discussions of medieval ‘Irish pilgrimage’: that is, a uniquely Irish
1 J.F. Kenney, The sources for the early history of Ireland: ecclesiastical (New York, 1929; repr.
Dublin, 1997), pp 487–8. 2 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 891/2, ed. Charles Plummer and John
earle, Two of the Saxon chronicles parallel: with supplementary extracts from the others (2 vols,
Oxford, 1892–9, repr. 1965), i, p. 82; trans. Dorothy Whitelock, English historical documents,
1: c.500–1042 (2nd ed., london and New York, 1955), p. 200. For the connections made
between these two boatmen and earlier peregrini, see, for example, Kenney, Sources, pp 488–
9; Kathleen Hughes, ‘the changing theory and practice of Irish pilgrimage’, Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 11 (1960), 143–51 at 143–4; Peter Harbison, Pilgrimage in Ireland
(london, 1991), p. 35. 3 For some representative examples, see, for example, louis
Gougaud, Christianity in Celtic lands (london, 1932; repr. Dublin, 1992), pp 129–31; idem,
Gaelic pioneers of Christianity: the work and influence of Irish monks and saints in continental
Europe (Dublin, 1923), pp 5–9; Christine Mohrmann, ‘the earliest continental Irish latin’,
Vigiliae Christianae, 16:3/4 (1962), 216–33 at 233; Ian Wood, ‘the Vita Columbani and
Merovingian hagiography’, Peritia, 1 (1982), 63–80 at 72, labels it ‘Insular’; t.M. Charles-
241
242 Stephanie Hayes-Healy
context for emigration and extreme asceticism, large numbers of pilgrims both
recorded and unrecorded, and a continuous, centuries-long duration. Beneath
this conception of ‘Irish pilgrimage’, however, lies a tangle of assumptions that
fails to cohere upon close examination. In the first instance, the sheer temporal
distance covered by the traditional view of ‘Irish pilgrimage’ should give us
pause: over three centuries divide Colum Cille and Columbanus from the two
Irish renunciants of the anglo-saxon Chronicle. Furthermore, the assignment
of devotional and ascetic motivations to Irish migrants over such a long stretch
of time belies wide variation in patterns of migration. similarly, the overarching
theme of ‘Irish pilgrimage’ has concealed a multiplicity of sources and text-
types, each with its own series of exemplars, influences and concerns. as the
tangle of ‘Irish pilgrimage’ is unpicked, multiple threads of disparate evidence,
diverse actors and varied motivations become apparent.
the modern concept of ‘Irish pilgrimage’ depends largely upon two
problematic binding elements: first, the repeated terminology and imagery of
peregrinatio across a variety of sources and, second, a defined canon of evidence
to which this terminology has been applied – sometimes retroactively – based on
a predetermined sense for what comprised ‘Irish pilgrimage’.
l a N G Ua G e a N D a N a C H r O N I s M
let us turn first to the linguistic aspect. While scholars have frequently assumed
a common, stable set of allusions and associated images in relation to peregrinatio
in medieval Irish and Irish-related texts, in fact it was a versatile and mutable
expression that evolved dramatically throughout Christian history. Indeed,
peregrinatio comprised an intricate collage of secular and religious imagery,
which became attached unevenly over time and geography to a variety of
Christian ideals and practices. Definitions of peregrinus/peregrinatio/peregrinari
therefore can be radically different depending on when, where and by whom a
text was written.
edwards, ‘the social background of Irish peregrinatio’, Celtica, 11 (1976), 43–59 at 57–8;
Hughes, ‘Changing theory’, 143–5; eadem, The church in early Irish society (Ithaca, NY, 1966),
pp 91–5; arnold angenendt, ‘Die irische Peregrinatio und ihre aswirkungen auf dem Kontinent
vor dem Jahre 800’ in Heinz löwe (ed.), Die Iren und Europa im früheren Mittelalter (2 vols,
stuttgart, 1982), i, pp 52–79; idem, Monachi Peregrini. Studien zu Pirmin und den monastischen
Vorstellungen des frühen Mittelalters (Munich, 1972), pp 146–8; Michael richter, Ireland and her
neighbours in the seventh century (Dublin, 1999), pp 41–7; and, in brief, Michael enright,
‘Iromanie-Irophobie revisited: a suggested frame of reference for considering continental
reactions to the Irish peregrini in the seventh and eighth centuries’ in Jörg Jarnut et al. (eds),
Karl Martell in seiner Zeit (sigmaringen, 1994), p. 372; Hans F. Von Campenhausen, ‘the ascetic
ideal of exile in ancient and early medieval monasticism’ in his Tradition and life in the church,
trans. a.V. littledale (Philadelphia, 1968), pp 231–51 at pp 240–5.
‘Irish pilgrimage’: a romantic misconception 243
the terms are rooted in a roman socio-legal vocabulary of alienation and

belonging, of rights and disenfranchisement: a peregrinus in ancient rome was a
resident alien, an individual who lacked the full freedoms and privileges of the
roman citizenry. Hence the explicit and implicit significance of these words
naturally fluctuated, both according to societal differences across the varied
cultures of western europe, and over time as the influence of rome waned.
Beyond the social context, one must allow for an additional array of variables: not
only an author’s access to the works of earlier Christian authorities who shaped
the religious aspect of peregrinatio in completely different ways – for example,
Jerome and augustine – but also what version of the Bible was available, whether
an author had an ascetic sensibility, and even the unique life experiences of the
individual.4
throughout late antiquity and the early Middle ages, the terminology was
multifaceted and multivalent. Peregrinus and peregrinatio continued to function
as socio-legal descriptors long after roman authority receded, but they also
became part of a hagiographical convention – primarily monastic – that carried
complex layers of scriptural and exegetical imagery. Hence peregrinus could
simply denote ‘stranger’, ‘foreigner’ or ‘guest’, but in other contexts might also
signify ‘ascetic monk’, ‘hermit/anchorite’ or ‘devotional traveller’. Peregrinatio
might be a literal journey outside of one’s native land, or a metaphorical state of
alienation from the world. Moreover, different authors were often at odds as to
what constituted peregrinatio and what did not.
translation into english has produced another persistent problem of
interpretation. In modern english, we tend to use the terms ‘pilgrim’ and
‘pilgrimage’ almost exclusively to indicate a pattern of goal-oriented and place-
centred devotional travel. the rigidity of ‘pilgrimage’ has had corrosive effects:
journeys ad loca sancta have so dominated scholarly discussion that variation and
nuance in our understanding of Christian peregrinatio have been lost. thus in
part because of an anachronistic, restricted view of pilgrimage among anglo-
phone scholars, the form of peregrinatio ex patria – that is, departing from one’s
native land as a devotional act – has often been presented as an anomalous sub-
category, a distant relation or aberration from ‘regular’ pilgrimage. some
scholars have not considered it pilgrimage at all.5 It has been erroneously
labelled an idiosyncratically Irish deviation from an otherwise coherent
tradition,6 when in fact Irish articulations of peregrinatio lay squarely in the
mainstream of medieval Christian tradition both as concept and ritual.7
4 From my reading, it appears that the experience of exile, for example, had a particularly
dramatic effect upon some medieval authors’ conceptions of peregrinatio. 5 see, for example,
Claude Jenkins, ‘Christian pilgrimages, aD500–800’ in a.P. Newton (ed.), Travel and travellers
of the Middle Ages (Freeport, NY, 1926), pp 39–69 at pp 40, 43; Gougaud, Gaelic pioneers, pp
6–7; and more recently, Victor turner and edith turner, Image and pilgrimage in Christian
culture: anthropological perspectives (Oxford, 1978), pp 130–1. 6 see, for example, turner and
turner, Image and pilgrimage. 7 stephanie Hayes-Healy, ‘Patterns of peregrinatio in the early
Middle ages’ in eadem (ed.), Medieval paradigms: essays in honor of Jeremy duQuesnay Adams
thus, assumptions regarding the meanings and stability of peregrinatio and

its related forms have produced a distorted reflection of Irish migration in the
Middle ages. Finding an Irishman overseas between the sixth and the ninth
centuries predisposes any scholarly discussion to include peregrinatio. as a result,
individuals who do not belong to the ranks of devotional peregrini are included
in discussions of ‘Irish pilgrimage’ simply by virtue of being Irish outside of
Ireland. the reasoning can also become circular: an individual described in a
medieval text as a peregrinus is sometimes presumed to be Irish based on little
more than this generic label.8 Moreover, when peregrinatio appears as part of a
hagiographical depiction of an Irish saint, it is often exempt from the usual
scrutiny one expects when dealing with medieval saints’ lives. a case in point is
adomnán of Iona’s description of Colum Cille’s departure from Ireland as
peregrinatio, which has been employed as proof of a long-standing tradition
beginning in the mid-sixth century. In fact, the formulaic account reveals
adomnán’s late seventh-century thematic concerns, but sheds little light upon
the motivation for Colum Cille’s journey overseas.9 the vocabulary of
peregrinatio, therefore, has created a misleading sense of ideological continuity
through long stretches of time; while later linguistic anachronism has promoted
a disproportionate sense of Irish exceptionalism. as linguistic assumptions and
misinterpretations are stripped away, notions of an uninterrupted stream of
practice and a uniquely Irish conception of ‘pilgrimage’ begin to disintegrate.
a F r aG M e N t e D C a N O N
the strongest links among the divergent evidence of ‘Irish pilgrimage’ are not
linguistic, however, but result from a predetermined catalogue of texts and
actors. this traditional canon rests upon questionable assumptions of
commonality and continuity, supported by two shaky pillars: ss Brendan and
Columbanus and their respective textual sources. the legend of Brendan has
provided an overarching, defining narrative of Irish pilgrimage, while
Columbanus seemingly confirmed its accuracy.
Brendan, who survives primarily as a literary figure, is not always named in
discussions of Irish peregrini, yet the contours of the extraordinarily popular
Navigatio S. Brendani are identifiable in nearly every modern study of Irish
pilgrimage (and probably underlie some medieval renditions as well).10 the
Navigatio presented a heroic Irish founder-abbot, who journeyed upon the seas
(2 vols, New York, 2005), ii, pp 3–24; Maribel Dietz, Wandering monks, virgins and pilgrims:
ascetic travel in the Mediterranean world, 300–800 (University Park, Pa, 2005), p. 6 and n. 18.
8 see, for example, Kenney, Sources, no. 322a. 9 adomnán, Vita Columbae, praefatio, ed. and
trans. a.O. and M.O. anderson, Adomnán’s Life of Columba (london, 1961), p. 186; see also
Jonas, Vita Columbani, 1.4, MGH ssrG 37:159. 10 On the Navigatio and its popularity, see
John J. O’Meara and Jonathan Wooding, ‘the latin version’ in W.r.J. Barron and Glyn s.
with a band of monks in search of the heavenly land of Promise; their voyage
was portrayed unmistakably as an eremitic act of devotional renunciation.
Brendan’s legendary odyssey was structured within the vocabulary of
peregrinatio: the author employed this imagery-infused terminology with nuance
and wit, using its full multiplicity of meanings to construct an intricate metaphor
for Christian virtue. the influence of earlier monastic hagiography is clear – the
author played upon the same themes expressed in Jonas of susa’s Vita Columbani
and adomnán’s Vita Columbae, for example – but the Navigatio elevated the
structure and vocabulary of ocean peregrinatio to a new literary level.
More than any other work, medieval or modern, the Navigatio has defined our
sense of who the Irish monachi peregrini were: only gazing backwards through the
lens of the Brendan legend produces ‘Irish pilgrimage’ as we now know it.
Brendan ‘the Navigator’ embodied a paradigm that tied together the numerous
disparate actors, practices and themes that now form our sense of ‘Irish
pilgrimage’: founder-abbots, ascetic monks, hermits and overseas renunciants,
interwoven with literal and allegorical themes of peregrinatio. the boundaries set
by the Navigatio help to explain some modern inconsistencies of labelling and
definition: why, for example, Colum Cille of Iona (an abbot-founder) is
traditionally included in the ranks of Irish peregrini, while aidan of lindisfarne
(a missionary bishop) is not; why Cormac Ua liatháin (a would-be hermit)
should be considered an archetypal Irish pilgrim, when he is not named a
peregrinus in adomnán’s Vita Columbae, the text that gives our most detailed
early record of his voyages; or why adomnán (an overseas abbot, but not a
founder) is not defined as a peregrinus. More work remains to be done on the
influence of the Navigatio in both a medieval and a modern context; I think it
likely that the Brendan legend began to shape perceptions of Irish immigrants
from a very early stage, as its outline seems present in Carolingian repre-
sentations of Irish identity.11
While Brendan provides a thematic framework, the body of evidence
surrounding Columbanus of Bobbio has been used as supporting detail, which
is seen as representative of an enduring movement of ‘Irish pilgrimage’. It is
compelling material. the abbot’s own writings afford our best first-person
testimony to the idea of peregrinatio among the Irish: perhaps most importantly,
he identified himself as a peregrinus in his correspondence.12 His letters also
witness that his departure from Ireland was based upon scriptural imperatives,
and that it was his goal to follow in the footsteps of the desert fathers.13 His later
Burgess (eds), The voyage of St Brendan (exeter, 2002), pp 13–25. 11 On the date of the
Navigatio, see David N. Dumville, ‘two approaches to the dating of Navigatio Sancti
Brendani’, Studi Medievali, 29 (1988), 87–102. Based on Dumville’s date, the text could well
have influenced Walafrid strabo, for example: see below, p. 257. 12 Columbanus, Ep. 1.4,
2.6, 3.2, 5.2, 5.14; for his fellow-monks as comperegrini, see 1.8, 5.17; for peregrinatio, see: 3.2.
In Columbanus, Opera, ed. and trans. G.s.M. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera (Dublin, 1957).
13 On scripture as the reason for his peregrinatio, see Columbanus, Ep. 2.6; on the desert
sermons to his monks reveal a multifaceted understanding of peregrinatio as both

a literal state of social alienation – one that might be embraced by a pious monk
– and a metaphorical, ascetic ideal of living as an alien to the world.14 later again,
the abbot’s hagiographer Jonas gave an even more fleshed-out portrait of
Columbanus, as a peregrinus who fled from his homeland to escape the inherent
sinfulness of his fleshly ties, emulating the exemplary obedience of abraham who
left his native land at God’s command.15 this mélange of texts forms a
conveniently complete portrait of renunciative peregrinatio, which has propped
up the theory that Columbanus acted on a pre-existing, coherent ideal of
‘pilgrimage’ when he set off for the Continent.
even within the small collection of Columbanian sources, however, there are
serious problems of context and chronology. the problem of uncritically
accepting hagiographical descriptions of peregrinatio has already been mentioned:
Jonas’ portrait of the abbot’s renunciation was clearly based upon earlier
analogues in monastic discourse and continental hagiography, and was written
more than a half-century after the abbot’s departure from Ireland.16
Furthermore, Columbanus’ varied expressions of peregrinatio spanned several
decades and held multiple meanings; and a close examination of these suggests
that his conception of peregrinatio evolved over time. I argue elsewhere that his
ideas of peregrinatio most likely took shape on the Continent – where Columbanus
experienced first-hand the socio-legal aspect of existence as a peregrinus – and
therefore could not have impelled his journey abroad.17
Columbanus’ journey to the Continent was undoubtedly ascetic, but it is
unlikely that an established ideology of peregrinatio motivated his departure.
Indeed, this terminology with its associated imagery of deracination may have
been carried back to Ireland on the well-trodden paths of Columbanian monks.
Because the expression of devotional exile as peregrinatio has been paramount in
discussions of ‘Irish pilgrimage’, this is a crucial distinction. It forces us to ask
whether our accepted definition of peregrini is medieval or a modern construct,
and compels a re-evaluation of traditional chronologies of Irish migration. as we
shall see in the following section, Columbanus’ ascetic departure from Ireland
was indeed characteristic of a certain segment of devotional migrants – and its
articulation in terms of peregrinatio soon became commonplace – but this group
of renunciants was far smaller in number and of shorter duration than is
generally accepted.
fathers as exemplars, see Ep. 2.8. 14 Columbanus, Sermon, 4.3, 8.1–2. 15 Jonas, Vita
Columbani 1.4, MGH ssrG 37, p. 159. 16 see, for example, Jerome, Ep. 71.2, Csel 55:3–
4; Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum, 4.14, Pl 49:170a; idem, Conlationes, 4, Pl 49:561B–
562B; ibid., 3.6, Pl 49:564C–565a; Hilary of arles, Sermo de Vita Honorati, 2.12, sC
235:100–2; Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Paterni, 12, MGH aa 4, 2:34 (17–18). 17 stephanie
Hayes-Healy, ‘Columbanus and the concept of Peregrinatio’ (forthcoming).
a NeW CHrONOlOGY
Without the problematic binders discussed above, deep fissures appear in the
traditional evidence of ‘Irish pilgrimage’, exposing substantial variation among
its protagonists. Based upon dominant motivations of patterns of activity, they
can be divided approximately into groups, which in turn fall into rough
chronological phases. as with any categorization and periodization, overlaps and
exceptions are inevitable, but table 15.1 gives some basic characteristics and
representative practitioners from each stage.
Table 15.1 A chronology of ‘Irish pilgrimage’, with basic characteristics of each phase
and representative practitioners.
Category Date range Description Examples
Colum Cille of Iona; Comgall of

monastic expansion
Bangor; Brendan of Clonfert;
a c.500–c.590 into Irish territories
Cainnech of aghaboe; lugaid
overseas
of lismore; Donnán of eigg
ascetic peregrini
Columbanus of Bobbio; Fursa
B c.590–c.700 establish monasteries
of Péronne
in foreign lands
continued
immigration to Cellanus of Péronne; abbots of
c.700–c.750
established lorsch; Cummian of Bobbio
monasteries abroad
aidan of lindisfarne; Kilian of

Würzburg; alto? (From c.690,
missionaries
Irish outnumbered by anglo-
C c.635–c.750 evangelize england
saxons, e.g. Wictbert,
and the Continent
Willibrord, swithbert, the two
Hewalds, Willibald, Boniface)
hermits seek ascetic hermits mentioned by Dícuil;

D c.650?–c.800 solitude on islands arnanus of Cahors, st Fiachra
and overseas of Breuil
Virgil of salzburg; Dúngal;

scholars migrate to
e c.740–c.900 Dícuil; Hibernicus exul; sedulius
the Continent
scotus; John scotus eriugena
In the pages that follow, I consider each category, to discern how different
movements in overseas journeying related to one another, and to disentangle the
textual evidence that has been used to merge them together.
Category A: Colum Cille and monastic expansion within Irish territories

(Main phase c.550–c.590, but occurring as late as c.675)
Many discussions of ‘Irish pilgrimage’, like Kenney’s, name Colum Cille (d. 597)
as the earliest documented Irish peregrinus. as has been noted, this can be traced
in large part to imagery used by his hagiographer: adomnán of Iona framed the
saint’s departure from Ireland in terms of peregrinatio.18 But placing Colum Cille
into his appropriate chronological context reveals that Iona was founded during
a time of intensive monastic expansion inside Irish-controlled territories,
including the islands and coastal regions of modern-day scotland. Colum Cille
therefore belonged not to the monachi peregrini who renounced their homelands
entirely (discussed below as category B), but to a class of founder-saints who
remained among their own people.19
In the sixth century, crossing the sea to found an island monastery in the
north-western reaches of Britain was by no means a unique act. according to
later hagiography, several of Colum Cille’s contemporaries – Comgall of Bangor,
Brendan of Clonfert and Cainnech of aghaboe – founded monasteries on the
eastern edge of the Irish sea, not far from Iona.20 there is earlier evidence as
well. according to adomnán, one Findchan, another contemporary of Colum
Cille, established a monastery on tiree in the Hebrides.21 In the annals of Ulster,
the obits of two additional Hebridean founders – lugaid/Moluag of lismore in
loch linnhe (d. 591), and Donnán of eigg (d. 616) – would have them crossing
the Irish sea in the same general time period.22 the majority of this activity
appears to have taken place in the mid-to-late sixth century, but even as late as
the 670s, Máel ruba founded a monastery in apor Crosan (applecross) on a
18 as above, n. 9. 19 Cormac Bourke, ‘Peregrinatio Columbae’ in ailbhe Macshamhráin

(ed.), The island of St Patrick: church and ruling dynasties in Fingal and Meath, 400–1148
(Dublin, 2004), pp 79–88. at times, Colum Cille has also been omitted from the numbers of
early peregrini because of questions regarding the motivations for his journey abroad; vague
hints from his vita have been woven together, forming a possible but ultimately unprovable
case for penitential exile rather than virtuous renunciation. For a concise explanation of the
evidence, see Máire Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry: the history and hagiography of the monastic
familia of Columba (Oxford, 1988), pp 27–8; also t.O. Clancy and Gilbert Márkus, Iona: the
earliest poetry (edinburgh, 1995), p. 10. 20 For Comgall, see Vita Comgalli, 22, ed. Charles
Plummer, Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae (2 vols, Oxford, 1910), ii, p. 11. For Brendan, see Vita et
Nauigatio Brendani, 86 (Oxoniensis, l&s 441), Plummer, VSH, i, p. 143; Vita Brendani, 15
(salmaticensis, l&s 412), ed. W.W. Heist, Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae: ex codice olim
Salmanticensi nunc Bruxellensi (Brussels, 1965), p. 330; Vita Brendani (Dublinensis, l&s 476),
ed. P. Grosjean, ‘Vita s. Brendani Clonfertensis’, Analecta Bollandiana, 48 (1930), 103–21 at
113. Cainnech was thought to have founded several monasteries in scotland, based primarily
on place-name evidence and church dedications, although many of these surely post-dated the
saint: William reeves, The Life of St Columba, founder of Hy, written by Adamnan (Dublin,
1857), p. 417. However, see Pádraig Ó riain’s controversial thesis: ‘Cainnech alias Colum
Cille, patron of Ossory’ in Pádraig De Brún et al. (eds), Folia Gadelica (Cork, 1983), pp 20–
35. 21 adomnán, Vita Columbae, i, 35. 22 lugaid: AU, s.a. 592.1; Donnán: AU, s.a. 617.1.
small isolated peninsula that lies opposite the Inner Hebrides.23 the stories of
these early Irish founders are filled with details of kinship links and friendships
between saints and kings. Far from a mere hagiographical convention, the stature
of these early founders – their connections within their own kinship groups
and/or to ruling dynasties – made their foundations possible. the founder-saints
thus shared similarities that suggest an established pattern of behaviour,
performed by a limited class of individuals who belonged to or were allied with
the groups who controlled the territories of their monastic foundations.24 their
forays into Britain were sometimes framed in terms of peregrinatio in later
hagiography, but were not labelled as such in surviving early sources. these were
journeys of expansion into known territories controlled by Irish kings, who
endowed their religious kinsmen or allies with land and authority to found new
monasteries.25
Unlike Columbanus, who on principle refused to return to Ireland,26 Colum
Cille remained in close contact with his homeland and returned regularly, as did
his successors. He continued to participate in ‘family business’, as it were, well
after his departure across the sea.27 to be sure, the abbot practised an ascetic
form of monasticism, but the kinship ties and political connections that
characterized his foundation of Iona demonstrate that he did not renounce his
worldly bonds after the pattern of the desert fathers, as adomnán later implied
by his invocation of peregrinatio.28 Moreover, there is no evidence in Colum
Cille’s lifetime of a developed conception of ascetic peregrinatio in Ireland. the
earliest account of Colum Cille’s life – the Amra Choluimb Chille, written c.600
23 AU, s.aa. 671.5, 673.7, 722.1. 24 t.M. Charles-edwards has demonstrated the
interconnectedness of kinship, patronage and monastic foundations; this topic is ripe for
further study in relation to these pivotal figures of Irish religious expansion. see ‘Érlam: the
patron saint of an Irish church’ in alan thacker and richard sharpe (eds), Local saints and
local churches in the early medieval west (Oxford, 2002), pp 267–90. 25 Most of the
monasteries Colum Cille is reputed to have founded are clustered in the lands of the Cenél
Conaill, his own kin group: Máire Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry: the history and hagiography
of the monastic familia of Columba (Dubin, 1996), p. 33; Brian lacey, Cenél Conaill and the
Donegal kingdoms, AD500–800 (Dublin, 2006), pp 187–205; a.D.s. MacDonald, ‘aspects of
the monastery and monastic life in adomnán’s life of Columba’, Peritia, 3 (1984), 271–302
at 277–9; reeves, Life of St Columba, pp 240–98. Iona lay in the territory of the Dál riata of
scotland, an almost certain sign of a political alliance between these groups at the time of
Iona’s foundation: Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry, pp 28–9. that relations between the Uí
Néill and Dál riata were peaceable during Colum Cille’s lifetime, and that the abbot helped
to strengthen this alliance, is unequivocal. see adomnán, Vita Columbae, 1.49, 3.5. Comgall
of Bangor appears to have been similarly well-connected in his territory through his kinship
to the Cruithni: adomnán, Vita Columbae, 1.49. Cainnech of aghaboe, although not nobly
born, enjoyed numerous royal alliances: Vita Cainnechi, ed. Heist, Vitae, pp 182–98.
26 Columbanus, Ep. 4.8; Jonas, Vita Columbani, 1.23. 27 Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry,
p. 30. 28 For deracination as ascetic renunciation, see Hans F. von Campenhausen, ‘the
ascetic ideal of exile’, pp 231–51; Giles Constable, ‘Monachisme et pèlerinage au Moyen age’,
Revue Historique, 258 (1977), 3–27 at 6; antoine Guillaumont, ‘le dépaysement comme forme
d’ascèse, dans le monachisme ancien’, Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes, Ve section: Sciences
just after the saint’s death – emphasized his learning, wisdom and ascetic self-
denial: it only briefly and rather obliquely mentioned his works overseas.29
Britain was mentioned only once, as the place where the saint was buried.30
Contrast this early text with adomnán’s vita written c.700, or the mid-seventh-
century poetry of Beccán mac luigdech, for whom the overseas journey
embodied a constitutive act of Christian heroism and sanctity.31 the earlier, near-
contemporary description of Colum Cille gave little attention to the overseas
journey that would later form a crucial aspect of his sanctity, but those texts
written nearly a century and a half later made Colum Cille’s ‘pilgrimage’ a
central theme, a change that reflects a later, seventh-century sensibility.
Category B: Columbanus and the Irish monachi peregrini

(Main phase c.590–c.700, secondary phase c.700–c.740)
Colum Cille’s hagiography belongs to a later, defining phase of Irish migration
– when ascetic renunciants and founders of monasteries in foreign lands
dominated the discussion and performance of peregrinatio – but the saint himself
does not. Only when peregrinatio had been established as a paradigm of virtue did
adomnán sententiously label his predecessor a peregrinus. excluding Colum
Cille from the ranks of ascetic peregrini gives the evidence a different, more
sensible shape: it puts Columbanus of Bobbio into the vanguard rather than in
the second generation of Irish peregrini, a revision that is supported by both
continental and Irish sources.
the Columbanian model of peregrinatio is rightly considered a representative
example – and probably a pre-eminent exemplar – of Irish pilgrimage for the
next several generations. records from Bobbio and other monastic centres
demonstrate that Irish monks followed the trails blazed by Columbanus and
others, and suggest a stage of intensive activity in the final decades of this
phase.32 We find a similar mid-seventh-century example in the career of Fursa
(Fursey) of Péronne, who founded monasteries in anglo-saxon england and
later in Normandy, which quickly became attractive destinations for other Irish
monks both during and after the saint’s lifetime.33 By far the majority of sur-
religieuses: Annuaire, 76 (1968–9), 31–58 at 33–5; Bernhard Kötting, Peregrinatio Religiosa:
Wallfahrten in der Antike und das Pilgerwesen in der alten Kirche (Münster, 1950), pp 302–7.
29 On the Amra and its context, see Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry, pp 1–12; Clancy and
Márkus, Iona: the earliest poetry, pp 96–100. 30 Amra Choluimb Chille, 7.26–7; Clancy and
Márkus, p. 112. 31 see Fo réir Choluimb, 2, 12, 13; Clancy and Márkus, p. 138; Tiugraind
Beccáin, 4–5, 9, 19; Clancy and Márkus, pp 147–9. 32 the majority of records of Irish
monks on the Continent given in Kenney, Sources, place them there in the last half of the
seventh century. awareness of this phase as a particularly active one remained for centuries:
the fabulous tales of Irish saints that appear in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries often
place monastic founders in the same period. see, for example, Kenney, nos 302–5, 309–12,
318. 33 Vita Fursei, MGH ssrM 4:423–49; Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum,
3.19, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and r.a.B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the
English people (Oxford, 1969), p. 221 [hereafter, Bede, HE].
viving evidence of the Irish on the Continent can be connected to Columbanus’

or Fursa’s monastic networks, although records of unrelated Irish peregrini
demonstrate that these were not the only inroads made by Irishmen in this
period.34
a solid collection of texts thus places a number of Irish Christians abroad in
the seventh century, particularly in the second half; thereafter, accounts of
peregrinationes decline precipitously. We find brief glimmers of devotional
migration from Ireland after 700, and the Irishmen who can be found in the
historical record during this time are connected to established monasteries.35
they have no detailed stories attached to them, but their distinctively Irish
names show some level of Irish migration. at this stage, however, the network of
paths between Ireland and monastic centres in Britain and the Continent was
already well trodden; perhaps journeys upon them gave little cause for comment.
Nonetheless, the dearth of evidence following a relative glut suggests a shift,
most likely first in perception and later in practice. It has long been recognized
that the Irish overstayed their welcome in some of their adopted lands and the
appeal of their outlandish austerity wore off.36 It may be that just as the perceived
value of devotional migration diminished, so did the number of its practitioners.
any drop-off in numbers has since been occluded by repeated eighth-century
legislation regarding wandering clergy, which has often been assumed to refer to
the Irish in particular.37 Yet there is no convincing proof that the troublesome
eighth-century wanderers were Irish, save that several generations later the Irish
were called out specifically: once again a misleading blend of sources drawn from
different time periods.38
In sum, surviving evidence suggests sporadic cases of devotional migration
beginning c.590 with the advent of Columbanus, increasing to a peak of activity
in the latter half of the seventh century, and then declining after the turn of the
century: far fewer years than the traditional view allows. the unadorned
historical record also substantiates much smaller numbers than are usually
assumed, undoubtedly due to the influence of later periods, as we shall see below.
34 For example, ansoald of Poitiers’ will, which puts a group of Irish peregrini in charge of
Mazerolles monastery, J.M. Pardessus, Diplomata chartae, epistolae, leges aliaque instrumenta
ad res Gallo-Francicas spectantia prius (2 vols, Paris, 1743–9), ii, p. 239; Kenney, Sources, no.
295.iii. 35 For example, Cellanus of Péronne (d. 706), best known for his correspondence
with aldhelm of Malmesbury, preserved in William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum
Anglorum, ed. M. Winterbottom and r.M. thomson (Oxford, 2007); the abbots of lorsch
from 704 to 729, who had distinctively Irish names: Annales Laureshamenses, MGH ss, i, pp
22–4; and Bishop Cummian of Bobbio, known only from an epitaph dated 712x44, in Kenney,
Sources, no. 321. 36 Hughes, ‘Changing theory’, 145–6. 37 Concil. Vermeriense, can. 14
(ad752/3); J. Hardouin, Acta conciliorum et epistolae decretales, ac constitutiones summorum
pontificum (11 vols, Paris, 1714–15), 3:1992; Concil. Vernense, can. 13 (ad755); J.D. Mansi,
Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova Amplissima Collectio (53 vols, 1692–1769), xii, p. 583. 38 Concil.
Cabillon II, can. 43 (aD813); Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum, 14:102, specifically condemned
Irish bishops; also Concil. Calch., can. 5 (27 July 816), Hardouin, Acta conciliorum, 4:1220.
another pattern of surviving evidence merits further comment. strangely, the

actual, successful practitioners of ascetic peregrinatio – those who left their native
Ireland and never returned – were rarely honoured in their own homeland. In
great contrast to the founder-saints of category a, who were remembered and
celebrated widely among the Irish, I have found no evidence that Columbanus
was commemorated in Ireland;39 Fursa was remembered, but usually for his Irish
foundations and his famous visions that occurred before his departure. a few
obits, such as that of Cellanus of Péronne, can be found in the Irish annals,40 but
in general few of the Irishmen who departed for continental monasteries appear
anywhere in Irish records. this further indicates a qualitative difference between
the actors of categories a and B; one wonders if it might reflect a sort of self-
imposed damnatio memoriae, a voluntary sacrifice of remembrance among one’s
own people. Whatever the reason, it is ironic that these intrepid monks, whose
peregrinationes have become so closely identified with early Christian Ireland,
were so poorly documented among the Irish themselves.
Category C: missionaries abroad

(Main phase c.635–c.700; extending to c.750, but dominated by Anglo-Saxons from
c.690 onward)
also virtually forgotten in medieval Ireland were the missionaries who went
abroad in the seventh and eighth centuries. I consider these separately from the
monks of category B, although there is a long chronological overlap and many
similarities among the two groups. Indeed, peregrinatio and mission should be
seen as points on a spectrum of possible outcomes abroad, rather than a strict
binary division of practice.
Figures such as aidan of lindisfarne (to england c.635; d. 651) and his less
successful predecessor – both of whom were recruited by the anglo-saxon king
Oswald to evangelize the pagans in his newly won territories – represent an early
stage of Irish missionary activity abroad.41 aidan was a monk, an ascetic, and set
up his home base in lindisfarne as a place of monastic solitude, but a
fundamental difference separates him from the monk-pilgrims of phase two: he
served as an active missionary bishop in his adopted land. Monastic bishops like
aidan might continue to live a form of monastic life, withdrawing to their
communities or into isolation periodically when their duties allowed.42 But
separation from worldly society – the devotional deracination that defines ascetic
peregrinatio – was rendered virtually impossible by the public nature of an active
39 Contra roy Flechner, ‘Dagán, Columbanus and the Gregorian Mission’, Peritia, 19 (2005),
65–90 at 69, n. 14, and p. 79. 40 AU, s.a. 706; see also Annales Laureshamenses, MGH ss
1.22. 41 Bede, HE, 3.3, 3.5. It is of course possible that there were earlier missions. Bishop
Dagán, for example, was active in the south of Britain at the same time Columbanus had
settled in Gaul, and may have been a missionary. On Dagán, see Flechner, ‘Dagán’, 77–85.
42 Bede, HE, 4.27.
evangelical ministry: missionary bishops tended to follow apostolic, not eremitic,

models of behaviour.
several details given by Bede help to characterize the spectrum of motivations
behind these overseas journeys. He described, for example, that aidan and his
predecessor were consecrated as bishops prior to leaving their home monastery;43
Columbanus, in contrast, was surely made abbot before he departed Ireland with
his twelve monks. this emphasizes a divide between the monks of categories B
and C: the offices held by the leaders of these two expeditions demonstrate that
their departures from Irish soil were divergent from their inceptions. lest we see
the division too starkly, however, consider also Bede’s portrayal of augustine of
Canterbury, who was elevated to the office of abbot as he and his troop of monks
left rome, with the knowledge that he ‘was to be consecrated bishop in the event
of their being received by the english’.44 as thomas Charles-edwards has noted,
the consecration of a new bishop required some expectation of both religious
and political stability.45 some of the major differences between the monks of
categories B and C therefore lie in their relationship to secular power, and in the
amount of authority granted them in their adopted lands. another factor that
dictated whether a monastic journey became a mission was the receptiveness of
local peoples to Christianity.46 Hence there was some element of chance to
whether an overseas journey ended up primarily a renunciative/monastic or
evangelical/episcopal venture. this suggests the possibility that Columbanus
and Fursa, who according to their hagiography both engaged in evangelizing at
various stages of their careers, could have been promoted to episcopal office as
well, had they only been received on the Continent in different circumstances.47
However, at least in the case of Columbanus, evangelization does not appear to
have been high on the abbot’s list of priorities: both his writings and hagiography
indicate a passionate confidence in the superiority of monastic life and a rather
lukewarm disposition towards both episcopal status and missionary activity.48
One can easily imagine monks who left their lands firmly committed to the
ascetic ideal, who would have been loath to undertake such worldly involvement.
43 Bede, HE, 3.5. 44 Bede, HE, 1.23. also see Jonas, Vita Columbani, 1.4. 45 thomas
Charles-edwards, ‘Conversion to Christianity’ in idem (ed.), After Rome (Oxford, 2003), p.
121. 46 Jonas, Vita Columbani, 1.4, MGH ssrG, 37:160(17–20), related that Columbanus
and his band of monks would leave any land with an obdurate populace. similarly, see the
contrast made by Bede, HE, 4.13, between the small monastery started by the Irish monk
Dícuil in Bosham, where ‘he and five or six brothers served the lord in a life of humility and
poverty: but none of the natives was willing to follow their way of life or listen to their
preaching’, and the fiery preaching of Bishop Wilfrid, who came to convert the same people.
47 the question of whether Columbanus should be considered a missionary has engendered
a lively debate. some – myself included – consider evangelism a by-product rather than a goal
for Columbanus: see for example, Ian Wood, ‘the Vita Columbani and Merovingian
hagiography’, Peritia, 1 (1982), 63–80 at 75; idem, The missionary life: saints and the
evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050 (london and New York, 2001), pp 31–5; G.s.M. Walker,
‘st Columban: monk or missionary?’ in The mission of the church and the propagation of the faith
(Cambridge, 1970), pp 39–44. 48 see, for example, Columbanus, Ep. 3.5, Walker, p. 30 (10–12).
Nevertheless, it is clear that these are neither mutually exclusive nor necessarily
coincident categories of behaviour.
Bede recounts that many Irishmen, most of them monks, followed aidan to
evangelize the english.49 Irish participation in the conversion of the anglo-
saxons is well known; it is more difficult to gauge the scale of Irish missionary
activity on the Continent. When one excludes the fabulous and unreliable
hagiography of the tenth and eleventh centuries, we are left with only a handful
of references to possible Irish missionaries, most placing them on the Continent
from the second quarter to the end of the seventh century.50 Bishop Kilian of
Würzburg can be found ministering to the thuringians and Franconians in the
last quarter of the seventh century; he was martyred c.689.51 less sure is the
existence in the mid-eighth century of st alto, an Irish missionary to Bavaria.52
Overall, evidence of Irish overseas missions outside of Britain is thin, and
there are long gaps in it. the rare indications are outnumbered in the early
stages by more concrete testimony of continued monastic activity in the
generations after Columbanus and Fursa; and thereafter the paltry evidence of
Irish missions quickly gives way to anglo-saxon pre-eminence. It is a tantalizing
detail that, according to Bede, the anglo-saxon missions were conceived in
Ireland at around the same time of Kilian’s departure: from his place of
peregrinatio among the Irish, the anglo-saxon holy man egbert planned a
journey to convert the Frisians to Christianity. He never managed the journey
himself but convinced several of his disciples to go.53 However Irish the origins
of the Germanic missions might have been, from this point onward, anglo-
saxons dominate all evidence of Insular missionary activity.54
Category D: hermits and ‘island soldiers’

(c.650?–800)
‘Hermit’ or ‘anchorite’ seems a self-explanatory title, yet within this category
there is remarkable diversity: a ‘hermit’ might live in isolation within the
confines (or just outside of) an established monastery, in an isolated place away
from human habitation, or even in the middle of a foreign society, with
differences of language and culture providing the ‘desert’ of solitude. the focus
here is upon those monks who crossed the sea.
49 Bede, HE, 3.3. 50 For example, Bishop Falvius in Vita Eligii 35, MGH ssrM, 4:692,
and Vita Sigmarini, 9–10, MGH ssrM, 4:611. also Cadoc and Fricor, two Irishmen who
converted st richarius of Celles in Vita Richarii, 2, MGH ssrM 7:445. 51 Kenney,
Sources, p. 513. 52 tradition preserved by Othlo, Vita Alti, MGH ss, 15.2:843–6, dated
c.1060. 53 Bede, HE, 5.9–10. 54 For example, Wictbert, Willibrord, swithbert, the two
Hewalds, Willibald, Boniface and sturm, among others. For general discussion, see
rosamund McKitterick, ‘england and the Continent’ in The New Cambridge Medieval History
(7 vols, Cambridge, 1995–2005), ii, pp 64–84. On the relatively abundant hagiographical
evidence of these missions, see Ian Wood, ‘Missionary hagiography in the eighth and ninth
centuries’ in Karl Brunner and Brigitte Merta (eds), Ethnogenese und Überlieferung:
Our evidence of these renunciants is suggestive, but exceedingly sparse. It is

difficult in the first instance to establish a firm date range for eremitic activity.
the earliest and most famous Irish would-be hermit was Cormac Ua liatháin,
a contemporary of Colum Cille whose journeys to find a ‘desert in the sea’ were
described in fabulous detail by adomnán. We cannot safely place the beginnings
of eremitic activity in Cormac’s lifetime, however, as he is so clearly a literary
figure, with little outside evidence to corroborate adomnán’s mythologizing
narrative. slightly more compelling are several mentions of Irish hermits in
continental vitae, which place them in the latter half of the seventh century; but
most of these texts are quite late.55 Our most concrete evidence lies in
correlations between adomnán’s Vita Columbae and Dícuil’s De mensura orbis
terrae. Dícuil, an Irishman writing in the early ninth century, indicated sustained
eremitic activity in a group of islands to the north of Britain, probably beginning
c.700 and continuing for almost a century.56 adomnán’s vita, written around the
same time that the earliest of Dícuil’s northern monks were setting off from
Ireland, brings a number of these figures to life;57 and corroborating stories of
island anchorites occur in other early Irish hagiography, such as the Vita I S.
Brigitae and the Vita Albei.58 Material evidence on the small islands surrounding
Ireland and Britain is similarly suggestive but, unfortunately, few of these sites
have been subject to full archaeological analyses. all available indications point
to c.700 as a time of either intensive activity or awareness of eremiticism; Dícuil
is our single most important text that testifies to continuous eremiticism for any
great length of time, although only at a single location. the most plausible date
range for active overseas eremiticism, then, is c.700–800, possibly starting as
early as the mid-seventh century if we can put our trust in eighth-century and
later hagiography. (this range deliberately excludes Cormac Ua liatháin’s
legendary sixth-century journeys as well as the famous ninth-century renun-
ciants of the anglo-saxon Chronicle, whose extreme act of devotion can be more
convincingly connected to popular literary figures of their time, such as Brendan
Angewandte Methoden der Frühmittelalterforschung (Vienna, 1994), pp 189–99. 55 One

arnanus, Vita Desiderii, 32, MGH ssrM, 4:589; Kilian of aubigny, MGH ssrM, 5:173–4
(whose name form corresponds to an early date according to Kenney, Sources, no. 282); a later
and less reliable mention of the hermit-saint Fiachra in Brie, ibid., no. 283; and Disibod, ibid.,
no. 318. 56 Dícuil, De mensura orbis terrae, 7.14–15: my estimated dates are based on Dícuil’s
description that Irish hermits had lived on the islands ‘for nearly a hundred years’, but left
after the Vikings began to raid them. the first recorded raid in the British Isles occurred in
793. assuming that it took several years for the monks to decide to leave – Iona, for example,
was abandoned in 807 after a series of attacks – according to Dícuil’s rough figure, monks
would have begun to inhabit the islands c.700. 57 adomnán, Vita Columbae, 1.6, 1.20, 1.49,
2.42, 3.23. 58 Vita I Brigitae, 72, Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur. 1 Feb. (2nd ed.,
Paris, 1863), pp 119–35; trans. seán Connolly, ‘Vita Prima Sanctae Brigitae’, JRSAI, 119
(1989), 14–49. Vita Albei, 29, Heist, Vitae, p. 129. On the eighth-century date of this text, see
Máire Herbert, ‘literary sea-voyages and early Munster hagiography’ in ronald Black et al.
(eds), Celtic connections: proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Celtic Studies, 1 (east
the Navigator or the protagonists of vernacular Irish immrama, than to early

eremitic exemplars.)59
anchorites, as Kathleen Hughes pointed out more than fifty years ago, were
the closest inheritors of the ascetic traditions of Columbanus, as opposed to the
court scholars who appear in the following section.60 Columbanus’ first-person
testimony that a blend of scripture and monastic discourse motivated his
departure from Ireland represents an ideology of renunciation that was surely in
play in some form as monks continued to depart the shores of Ireland. a pattern
of references throughout adomnán’s Vita Columbae adds a necessary note of
caution to this discussion, however. In this vita, the reader meets a number of
pious hermits and would-be anchorites whose paths led them overseas: but
adomnán never labelled these monks peregrini nor their voyages peregrinationes,
although their form and expression were decidedly ascetic. (Bede, incidentally,
did the opposite.) adomnán preferred the phrase miles Christi, a clear invocation
of the desert fathers and the martyrs before them. Yet, in modern studies of Irish
pilgrimage and spirituality, Irish hermits are unhesitatingly labelled peregrini;
indeed, from our modern perspective, a holy anchorite fits seamlessly into the
pattern of ascetic peregrinatio. But adomnán’s characterizations of different
types of overseas travel reinforces the idea of ‘Irish pilgrimage’ as a modern
construct of multiple practices and ideas, which would not necessarily have been
considered part of a single theme in their own time.
Category E: court scholars

(c.740s–c.900)
It is commonplace to include the Irish court scholars of the eighth and ninth
centuries – such as Dúngal, Dícuil, the poet now called Hibernicus exul, sedulius
scotus and John scotus eriugena – on the same spectrum of behaviour as earlier
peregrini such as Columbanus.61 Hughes, for example, described a process of
evolution and adaptation in overseas pilgrimage, thus implying connection,
continuity and descent from the sixth century to the ninth.62 Others have gone
further to define the court scholars as part of a lasting ‘Irish diaspora’ whose
motivation to emigrate remained peregrinatio pro Dei amore.63 But the Irishmen
whom we find in the courts of europe in the eighth and ninth centuries were
linton, 1999), pp 182–9 at p. 182. 59 On the Navigatio, see above, nn 10–11. On the dates
of extant immrama, see thomas Owen Clancy, ‘subversion at sea: structure, style and intent
in the immrama’ in Jonathan Wooding (ed.), The otherworld voyage in early Irish literature
(Dublin, 2000), pp 194–225 at pp 197–8. 60 Hughes, ‘Changing theory’, 148. 61 For
detailed discussions of these figures, see Mary Garrison, ‘the english and Irish at the court
of Charlemagne’ in P. Butzer et al. (eds), Charlemagne and his heritage: 1200 years of
civilization and science in Europe = Karl der Grosse und sein Nachwirken: 1200 Jahre Kultur und
Wissenschaft in Europa (2 vols, turnhout, 1997), i, pp 97–123; John Contreni, ‘the Irish in the
western Carolingian empire’ in Heinz löwe (ed.), Die Iren und Europa im früheren Mittelalter
(2 vols, stuttgart, 1982), ii, pp 758–98; intr. in J.J. tierney (ed. and trans.), Dicuili: Liber de
mensura orbis terrae (Dublin, 1967), pp 3–11. 62 Hughes, ‘Changing theory’, 147–8. 63 For
fundamentally different from earlier monachi peregrini. they were not eremitic,
nor even discernibly ascetic. their departures from Ireland cannot be
convincingly defined as devotional, but instead appear to have been standard
examples of migration for gainful employment.
the Irish court scholars were the product of a time and place when travelling
Irish churchmen inhabited a social stratum inferior to continental secular
nobility, a dramatic change from Columbanus’ view of his own status, for
example, among the secular and ecclesiastical authorities in Gaul. the scholars’
works were commissioned by noble patrons and could range from panegyric to
cosmological texts. Overall, the tenor of their writings and their servile
relationship to continental nobility demonstrate a distinct division from their
predecessors. Presumably because they sometimes referred to themselves as
peregrini, and from the mere fact that they were Irish churchmen abroad, they
have been painted with the broad brush of Irish peregrinatio pro amore Dei.
although the Irish court scholars do not belong in the ranks of ascetic
peregrini, continental reactions to them have helped to create some of our lasting
misconceptions regarding ‘Irish pilgrimage’. It appears that numerous Irishmen
could indeed be found on the Continent in this period, which has informed
romanticized descriptions of a ‘continual stream of emigration’ from Ireland
beginning in the sixth century.64 During this period, there was also a great deal
of interest in the Irish immigrants of earlier centuries; and in some discussions
of the Irish–continental past, peregrinatio was becoming a description with
specifically Irish connotations. these factors are evident in Walafrid strabo’s
frequently cited quotation from his vita of st Gall (a companion of
Columbanus), that the ‘habit of peregrinating’ (consuetudo peregrinandi) had
become almost second nature to the Irish.65 this medieval sound bite has been
employed as confirmation of a popular Irish movement of peregrinatio, but is
often presented without any critical discussion of its context. strabo’s statement
undoubtedly reflects Irish influence on the Continent in his own era, and
probably also indicates his less valuable supposition of similarly large numbers
of Irish immigrants in earlier periods. More importantly, strabo’s description
assigns a penchant for peregrinatio to the Irish ‘race’ (natio Scotorum), a
perception that has endured for more than a millennium.66
When we combine the various factors implicit in strabo’s account of Irish
emigration – large numbers, the presumption of a uniquely Irish proclivity for
devotional migration, and a sense of continuity from the sixth century to the
example, Garrison, ‘english and Irish’, p. 97; similarly Kenny, Sources, p. 523. 64 Quotation
from Kenney, Sources, p. 487. also see, for example, Catherine thom, Early Irish monasticism:
an understanding of its cultural roots (london, 2006), pp 155–6; Helen Waddell, The wandering
scholars (london, 1927), pp 27–36; Michael Maher, ‘Peregrinatio pro Christo: pilgrimage in the
Irish tradition’, Milltown Studies, 43 (1999), 5–39; Brendan Bradshaw, ‘the wild and woolly
west: early Irish Christianity and latin Orthodoxy’, Studies in Church History, 25 (1989),
1–23. 65 Walafrid strabo, Vita Galli, 2.46, MGH ssrM, 4.336 (5–7). 66 as above. also
ninth – we have clearly found a major medieval source of modern (mis)con-

ceptions of ‘Irish pilgrimage’.
‘IrIsH P I lG r I M aG e ’ ?
the question thus looms: how Irish was ‘Irish pilgrimage’? as an act of devotion,
peregrinatio ex patria was entirely conventional. the actual ascetic peregrini from
Ireland – those described under category B above – followed patterns of behaviour
set out in scripture, in mainstream Christian exegetical and prescriptive texts of
the fourth and fifth centuries, and in the monastic hagiography of the fifth and
sixth centuries.67 they in no way expressed that their pilgrimages were peculiarly
Irish. Moreover, there are earlier and contemporary analogues for most if not all
aspects of peregrinatio that have been subsequently labelled ‘Irish’ or ‘Celtic’.
to be sure, the Irish stood out in their adopted lands, just as they stand out
today in the textual and material sources of the medieval period. In the same way
that their distinctive script and textual ‘symptoms’ now jump off the pages of
medieval manuscripts, they must have cut outlandish figures, with their eccentric
styles of tonsure and, one imagines, exotic clothing. their thickly accented latin
learned as a literary rather than a living language would have identified them
immediately as outsiders. a more problematic aspect of difference was their
calculation of easter, which caused them considerable trouble. More positive was
their reputation for asceticism and extensive learning. their austere practices
and their well-developed educational systems set them apart to the extent that it
is possible to identify Irish influence long after the Irish no longer made up the
majority of participants in a monastic centre. It is also likely that the dangers
inherent in their journeys from their homeland – the peril of an overseas crossing
and the permanence of their sacrifice of home and kin for Christ’s sake – lent
them an unusually enhanced air of ascetic virtue. Purely on a practical level an
overseas pilgrim needed a good deal of physical courage, which a renunciant who
simply headed for the nearest mountain cave did not require. thus, another
difference lies in the assumed intensity of motivation, and the expected lengths
to which an Irish peregrinus had to go to achieve salvation. But these are all
differences of perception rather than practice. the major factor that seems to
differentiate the Irish practitioners of peregrinatio from their contemporaries is
the rapid success of their monastic foundations, in terms of their attractiveness
to local Christians, whether they sought to be educated by learned men or to
embark upon the vita perfecta themselves. In this sense, however, the
renunciations and Irish monastic expansions onto the Continent were no more
see idem, Carmen, 45, MGH PlaC, 2:394. 67 Jean leclercq, ‘Mönchtum und Peregrinatio
im Frühmittelalter’, Römische Quartalschrift, 55 (1960), 212–25.
idiosyncratically Irish than Benedict of Nursia’s was distinctively Italian, or

Honoratus of lérins’ was peculiarly Provençal.
the Irish did have a unique context by which to understand the idea of
peregrinatio, however, as thomas Charles-edwards pointed out over thirty years
ago.68 He argued rightly that the small, strictly regulated social/legal units of
Irish society and the geographical boundary of the sea created starkly defined
gradations of renunciation. the Irish also would not have had a deeply ingrained
roman legal context for the vocabulary of peregrinatio (at least prior to arriving
on the Continent). their own legal traditions presented an even more rigid
contrast between belonging and alienation than one finds in roman law, which
undoubtedly informed their translations of the latin terminology and their
interpretations of these terms and concepts as they appeared in scripture and
exegesis. the Irish had peculiar rituals of exile – for example, the practice of
setting a criminal adrift in an oarless boat – that appear to have been embraced
in a devotional milieu.69 these legal and social contexts surely contributed to an
intense sense of sacrifice in deracination, for to be a stranger or foreigner in Irish
law represented not only disenfranchisement but the potential for personal harm
with no recourse. It was a state of vulnerability and isolation, which could be
either a severe punishment for a grievous offence or a virtuous sacrifice. But
these differences were shaped more by geography than by distinctive theology.
It is moreover debatable whether Ireland’s exceptional context for under-
standing peregrinatio translated into more numerous Irish practitioners of ascetic
pilgrimage. scholars have drawn this conclusion based primarily upon the
repetition of images across a broad swath of medieval Irish texts, most of them
saints’ lives, often forgetting the usual caution with which one should approach
non-contemporary hagiographical texts. In fact, a safer conclusion would be that
the ‘social background of Irish peregrinatio’ resulted not necessarily in a more
popular mode of behaviour, but in a more frequent replication of images such as
abraham’s renunciation of his homeland, which would have been instinctively
understood by an Irish audience as a supreme form of sacrifice.
Indeed, as we have seen, the Irish and their admirers continued to celebrate
this severe form of self-abnegation well after the eremitic peregrini – who were,
oddly, forgotten – had ceased to roam the seas. In the eighth and ninth centuries,
peregrini became figures from a valiant past, actors in Christianized epic
adventures. as Ireland looked back into her history, legendary monks and
ascetics of an earlier age appeared as superhuman champions for Christ, sailing
the treacherous seas to find paradise. It was surely no accident that idealized
visions of heroic Christian peregrini surfaced at a time when actual practices of
68 Charles-edwards, ‘social background’, 43–59. 69 Mary e. Byrne, ‘On the punishment

of sending adrift’, Ériu, 11 (1932), 97–102 at 98–100; also Fergus Kelly, A guide to early Irish
law (Dublin, 1988), pp 127–8, 219–20.
ascetic self-denial and sacrifice were fading, and as the performance of

journeying ex patria had shifted to less heroic models of behaviour. as tales of
Brendan the Navigator swept through the latin west and a vernacular genre of
monastic voyage tales began to take shape in Ireland, crowds of Irish scholars
flocked to the Continent, where the myth of ‘Irish pilgrimage’ was born.
Quo vadis? Mapping the Irish ‘monastic town’1
H OWa r D B . C l a r K e
the honorand of this volume has long been a friend of the Irish Historic towns
atlas (IHta), which began its programme of publication a quarter of a century
ago. Indeed, to mark that fact, a special guide to twenty-two individual fascicles
in the series, together with two pocket maps, has recently been issued.2 at an
early stage in the atlas programme, Katharine simms lent her considerable
expertise in Irish source material to the preparation of the Kells fascicle.3
thereafter, she advised on the place-name evidence for a large number of
fascicles. even earlier, anngret simms and Katharine simms had jointly
composed a key map classifying the origins of the island’s principal towns.4 Here,
Gaelic ecclesiastical sites and Viking sea-ports dating from the ninth to the
twelfth century were all denoted as proto-towns, defined as ‘early settlements
which were not towns in the sense of possessing a charter but for which there is
evidence of urban functions, i.e. streets and trade’.5 Now that archaeological
investigations have revealed abundant signs of genuine urbanism at Dublin and
Waterford in particular, at least from the mid- to late tenth century onwards,
specialists in the Viking age will certainly presume to differ. this means that
Gaelic ecclesiastical sites – the so-called ‘monastic towns’ – must be treated
separately, as indeed they have been by a succession of modern scholars. Can the
resources of the IHta, a project in which Katharine simms has played a
valuable supportive role, be of assistance in furthering our understanding of this
essentially modern concept? Of one thing we can be certain: in the early Middle
ages no one in Ireland wrote about, or presumably talked about, monastic towns
as such in any language then in use.
One feature common to most writers on the subject of monastic towns (to
persist with this usage for immediate purposes) is that they tend to stop short at
1 Besides being a tribute to the scholarship of the honorand of this volume, this essay is
intended to highlight the immensely valuable (and unpaid) labours of the authors and co-
authors of the eight IHta fascicles in question and the general utility of this long-term
project of the royal Irish academy. In an era of rapidly changing technology, the maps were
drawn by the two successive cartographic editors, Mary Davies and sarah Gearty. With one
necessary modification, the captions given here are those of the IHta fascicles themselves. I
am also grateful to Jennifer Moore, editorial assistant, for assembling the eight text maps for
republication here. 2 Jacinta Prunty and H.B. Clarke, Reading the maps: a guide to the Irish
Historic Towns Atlas (Dublin, 2011). 3 anngret simms with Katharine simms, Kells, IHta
no. 4 (Dublin, 1990); repr. in Irish Historic Towns Atlas, 1 (Dublin, 1996), separately paginated.
4 anngret simms and Katharine simms, ‘Origins of principal towns’ in J.P. Haughton (ed.),
Atlas of Ireland prepared under the direction of the Irish National Committee for Geography
(Dublin, 1979), p. 43. 5 Ibid., p. 98.
261
262 Howard B. Clarke
the twelfth century. What occurred after that is generally ignored or mentioned
only briefly. For a proper perspective on these settlements, however, we should
look in more detail at the period of twelfth-century ecclesiastical reform (also so-
called) and indeed beyond. Where were these places going by the twelfth
century? the IHta, by its nature, tells us. Now that a critical mass of examples
has been published in this series, something like a definitive answer can be
proposed. the sample comprises armagh, Derry, Downpatrick, Kells, Kildare,
Kilkenny, trim and tuam; only the province of Munster is not represented.6
Dublin, as so often, is a special case, since the presumed monastic and episcopal
site of Duiblinn (modernized as Dubhlinn) was taken over by Vikings in 841 and
ceased to exist as such. Prior to that, there is a succession of documentary
references to abbots and bishops starting in the second quarter of the seventh
century. the context for such allusions is always Duiblinn and never Áth Cliath
– the even older secular settlement situated on the natural ridge overlooking the
eponymous ford across the river liffey.7 this admittedly unsatisfactory written
evidence is powerfully reinforced by that of the curving street pattern
representing an ecclesiastical enclosure belonging to the late leo swan’s biggest
size category.8 this religious community was presumably not in the vanguard of
Christian revival being promoted by the Céli Dé (Culdees) in the last decades of
the eighth century, unlike those at Finglas and tallaght, which were located in
neighbouring petty kingdoms. Duiblinn therefore did not attract the same
degree of annalistic attention, but this does not mean that it lacked importance
in its own local political context. thanks to Viking attention, however, its
historical destiny is unknowable.
Before embarking on a survey of the material generated by the atlas
programme, I propose to examine briefly the arguments and conceptualization
of four modern scholars. It is particularly appropriate to start with leo swan
because his approach, based on maps and on aerial photography, is replicated in
the atlas fascicles themselves. ‘swan’s way’ was always a pioneering one, which
is why he was invited by the editors to contribute to a major international
conference volume.9 the emphasis was placed on physical remains and five of his
dozen selected sites coincide with IHta fascicles.10 these enclosed sites were
clearly planned, at least to some degree. all but Finglas in swan’s sample
comprised two concentric enclosures with the principal church and sometimes
other structures inside the inner one. Finglas may have been similar to Duiblinn
6 relevant fascicles under active preparation are for Cashel and Cork. 7 H.B. Clarke,
‘Conversion, church and cathedral: the diocese of Dublin to 1152’ in James Kelly and Dáire
Keogh (eds), History of the Catholic diocese of Dublin (Dublin, 2000), pp 27–8 and fig. 1.
8 Best seen in H.B. Clarke, Dublin, part I, to 1610, IHta no. 11 (Dublin, 2002), map 4.
9 leo swan, ‘Monastic proto-towns in early medieval Ireland: the evidence of aerial
photography, plan analysis and survey’ in H.B. Clarke and anngret simms (eds), The
comparative history of urban origins in non-Roman Europe: Ireland, Wales, Denmark, Germany,
Poland and Russia from the ninth to the thirteenth century, 2 pts (Oxford, 1985), i, pp 77–102.
10 armagh, Downpatrick, Kells, Kildare and tuam.
Quo vadis? Mapping the Irish ‘monastic town’ 263
in having one large enclosure and a single church positioned asymmetrically.

round towers, where they existed, stood towards the north-west or south-west,
with their doorway facing the west front of the principal or sole church. Market
spaces, where they can be identified, were usually located towards the east, either
between the two enclosures or externally altogether. the market space at
Glendalough, outside the stone gatehouse, has a somewhat exceptional
orientation on account of the local topography. such planning and organization
would ‘have taken place well before the end of the eleventh century’.11 swan saw
the twelfth century as a turning point when some sites ceased to exist as
functioning monasteries and others embarked on a new course as ‘centres of
trade and commercial activity and ultimately [were transformed] into focal
points of administrative units and political power’.12 as his main title implied,
they had never been more than proto-towns and, in this respect, swan’s
interpretation echoed that of anngret and Katharine simms six years earlier.
the same composite volume contains an essay by a historian with a very
different emphasis, signalled by its forthright title.13 there is a thoughtful and
thought-provoking discussion, although the interpretation swings somewhat
disconcertingly from an urban to a non-urban identity for the sites under review.
the date for the basic model of a ceremonial complex is put at c.800, ‘public
buildings’ being added to the sacred ones about a century later. Mention of a
‘defined market-place’ on the outskirts of the complex then leads to a bold leap
forward: ‘It is at this point that one might with confidence begin to use the term
“urban”’.14 this is despite the citation shortly before of the canonical definition
of areas of sanctity at such sites where the core (sanctissimus) was very clearly the
preserve of priests and holy women.15 In other words, in this construct, trading
activity was peripheral and the central functions were devotional and religious.
One of Doherty’s case studies relates to Clonmacnoise, whose proto-urban phase
is said to have begun in the early tenth century. By c.1070, we have a town with
a ‘high street’ and, just over a century later still, the reported destruction of 105
houses is used to reinforce the impression of urbanization.16 turning to the
monastic economy in general, we are informed, tellingly as it happens, that
‘wealth was generated on the basis of agriculture and livestock’.17 Quite so: the
monastic economy was fundamentally rural in nature. In perfect harmony with
this, the population ranged from an educated aristocratic elite (the churchmen)
down to labouring serfs and the destitute. One could be reading about a typical
ecclesiastical manorial caput in Domesday england (1086). the whole issue is
occluded in the final section: no single monastic site demonstrates urban
characteristics; collectively, these sites may be described as ‘urban’ from the
11 swan, ‘Monastic proto-towns’, p. 100. 12 Ibid., p. 101. 13 Charles Doherty, ‘the
monastic town in early medieval Ireland’ in Clarke and simms (eds), Comparative urban
origins, i, pp 45–75. 14 Ibid., p. 60 (italics mine). 15 the latin reads: ‘in quem praeter
sanctos nullum introire permittimus omnino, quia in eum laici non accidunt et mulieres, nisi
clerici’. 16 Ibid., pp 64–5. 17 Ibid., p. 66.
tenth century onwards; their main function was religious; and the greater
monasteries ‘were probably not urban in the sense normally understood in
contemporary society’.18
Notwithstanding this lack of consistency in relation to the core concept, there
is a great deal of nuanced and sophisticated discussion in Doherty’s essay, which
continues to be regarded as a landmark and even definitive.19 the subject clearly
called for reassessment and this came most comprehensively in 1998.20 Coming
to the concept from a Weberian perspective, Mary Valante pinpointed the
influence of Paul Wheatley’s vision of urbanism originating ultimately in
ceremonial complexes.21 a sharp distinction is drawn by Valante between an
urban economy based on craftworking (manufacturing), trading (commerce) and
the provision of services on the one hand, and a rural economy based on
agriculture (that is, field cultivation) and animal farming. archaeology is used to
demonstrate that the ‘monastic economy was mostly agricultural’.22 turning to
the famous description of seventh-century Kildare by Cogitosus, it is pointed
out, correctly, that the word civitas denoted a place with a bishop and did not
imply urban status.23 the tribal óenach is identified, again correctly, as an
essentially secular assembly sponsored by a king. accordingly, ‘ninth-century
Irish monasteries cannot be called market centres or towns since they did not
function as true trade centres’.24 Following Brian Graham, Valante concludes her
argument by asserting that it was
only with anglo-Norman patronage that towns evolved around a very

small number of Irish monasteries, and this in the context of anglo-
Norman support of urbanization in general, shown by the granting of
burgage and murage charters to places such as Drogheda.25
It was, to all appearances, a conclusion reached without recourse to the IHta

fascicles for Kildare (1986), Kells (1990) and Downpatrick (1997).
If John Bradley in 2008 went back towards Doherty, with differences of
emphasis, Colmán etchingham two years later went back towards Valante, again
with differences of emphasis.26 academic pendulums swing to and fro just like
18 Ibid., p. 68. 19 Most notably, with some differences of emphasis, in John Bradley,
‘towards a definition of the Irish monastic town’ in C.e. Karkov and H. Damico (eds),
Aedificia nova: studies in honor of Rosemary Cramp (Kalamazoo, MI, 2008), pp 325–60.
20 M.a. Valante, ‘reassessing the Irish “monastic town”’, IHS, 31 (1998), 1–18, where much
of the relevant literature is cited in the footnotes. For widespread acceptance of Doherty’s
views, see ibid., p. 6 n. 27. 21 Paul Wheatley, The pivot of the four quarters: a preliminary
enquiry into the origins and character of the ancient Chinese city (edinburgh, 1971); Valante, ‘Irish
“monastic town”’, pp 4–6. 22 Valante, ‘Irish “monastic town”’, p. 7. 23 For civitas, see
Catherine swift, ‘Forts and fields: a study of “monastic towns” in seventh- and eighth-century
Ireland’, Journal of Irish Archaeology, 9 (1998), 112–14. 24Valante, ‘Irish “monastic town”’,
p. 12. 25 Ibid., p. 17. For some corrections, see Bradley, ‘Irish monastic town’, p. 337 n. 59.
26 Colmán etchingham, The Irish ‘monastic town’: is this a valid concept?, Kathleen Hughes
16.1 early Christian and medieval armagh.
mechanical ones. the argument is multipart. First, óenach in early as distinct

from modern Irish (aonach) is established as having had primary meanings of
‘political assembly’ and ‘horse and chariot race-meeting with ritual associations’;
it should therefore not be translated as ‘fair’. second, the evidence for
manufacturing and marketing activities is shown to be slim; too much weight has
been attached to the comb-maker at Kildare. third, the built form and social
functions of the greater monasteries were essentially ecclesiastical and non-
urban: the ‘major church settlements were, economically, almost entirely
orientated towards farming, with an elite that appropriated the surplus product
of an agrarian labouring class’.27 Fourth, the so-called Kells charters, better
described as ‘transaction records’, are concerned with transactions in agricultural
assets, mostly land but also two granaries within the settlement. the details are
compared with those relating to armagh at a much earlier date, the eighth
century. the evidence, all in all, points in the direction of both ‘minimal
urbanization’ and ‘minimal trend towards urbanization’, even in the twelfth
century.28 again, this is a conclusion reached without reference to relevant
fascicles of the IHta, which by 2010 included Kilkenny (2000), trim (2004),
Memorial lectures, 8 (Cambridge, 2010). 27 Ibid., p. 23. 28 Ibid., p. 30. For a similar
Derry (2005), armagh (2007) and tuam (2009). the purpose of the present
discussion, therefore, is to extend the enquiry beyond the arrival of the anglo-
Normans, as well as to examine critically the treatment in the atlas series of the
monastic phenomenon itself. the eight examples will be surveyed, briefly, in
neutral (alphabetical) order. What was the nature of these places by the late
twelfth century and where were they going in reality?
armagh, of course, was arguably the greatest of all the Irish monasteries
founded in the early Middle ages. Its drumlin location lent itself naturally to the
formation of an unusually symmetrical double enclosure, with the principal
church dedicated to the national saint in the centre (fig. 16.1).29 though it was
not the burial place of st Patrick, armagh acquired a formidable collection of
relics, including that known as the staff of Jesus. lacking st Patrick, it took in
with great honour the body of a secular hero who could be portrayed, at a pinch,
as a Christian martyr – that of King Brian Bóruma in 1014. almost a century
later, armagh was an obvious candidate for archiepiscopal status, even from a
Munster perspective, at the synod of ráith Bressail (near Cashel) in 1111. the
ecclesiastical core came to be encompassed by three named districts (triana) and
the space allocated to marketing activity, provided with a cross first documented
in 1166, was situated classically outside the second enclosure on the eastern side.
Farther east again there may have been an important assembly site, corre-
sponding nowadays to the Mall.30 the church authorities at armagh embraced
the reforming spirit of the twelfth century, notably with the consecration in 1126
of an augustinian house dedicated jointly to ss Peter and Paul. Yet at no stage
in the Middle ages did armagh take on a predominantly or even significantly
urban character. What we see in the famous map-view drawn by richard Bartlett
in 1602 is primarily a ruinous ecclesiastical complex, not a ruined town.31 the
new Blackwater fort, shown separately, occupied a site some distance to the
north. sixteen years earlier, sir Henry Bagenal, the english military commander,
had described armagh as a small village. It would become a town in a meaningful
sense only as part of the programme of plantation, when evidence for regular
manufacturing and marketing activity starts to be recorded in the fascicle’s
topographical information section, though in a patchy manner. even so, much
of this plantation town was in turn destroyed in the early 1640s.32
degree of caution regarding the scandinavian sites, see H.B. Clarke, ‘Proto-towns and towns
in Ireland and Britain in the ninth and tenth centuries’ in H.B. Clarke et al. (eds), Ireland and
Scandinavia in the early Viking Age (Dublin, 1998), pp 331–80; Bradley, ‘Irish monastic town’,
pp 344–7. 29 like all IHta text maps depicting the medieval layout, that for armagh is a
composite one that does not represent the settlement at a single point in time. the purpose of
such maps is purely topographical. this map, together with historical details, can be found in
Catherine McCullough and W.H. Crawford, Armagh, IHta no. 18 (Dublin, 2007); repr. in
Irish Historic Towns Atlas, 3 (Dublin, 2012), separately paginated. see also swan, ‘Monastic
proto-towns’, p. 84 and figs 4.4, 4.16. 30 In the light of etchingham’s analysis of the term
óenach, this site should not have been labelled ‘fair’ on fig. 1 nor treated as such in the
fascicle’s section on trade and services: McCullough and Crawford, Armagh, p. 17. 31 Ibid.,
map 4. 32 Ibid., pp 2–4, 15, 17.
16.2 Medieval Derry.
the story of Derry (londonderry) is not dissimilar. It is summarized in one

of the fascicle’s opening sentences: ‘[Derry’s] association with an early monastic
centre, though part of the prominent Columban group, does not appear to have
led to a strong urban settlement and so the site required redevelopment as a town
in the post-medieval period’.33 like that at armagh, the early monastery
occupied a hill-top site, but in this case a virtual island beside the fast-flowing
river Foyle (fig. 16.2). Beyond that, however, the layout of the monastery is
poorly understood, apart from the round tower’s probably classical location west
of the main church, tempall Mór, the latter being constructed as late as 1164.
the annalistic reference two years earlier to the demolition of eighty or more
33 avril thomas, Derry~Londonderry, IHta no. 15 (Dublin, 2005), p. 1; repr. in Irish Historic
Towns Atlas, 3 (Dublin, 2012), separately paginated.
16.3 Medieval Downpatrick.
houses, churches and a ‘square’, all surrounded by a stone wall, is indicative of

an important settlement, but not necessarily an urban one or at least primarily
an urban one.34 anglo-Normans first put in an appearance in 1197, but the site
‘was never apparently developed as a town’.35 With the collapse of the earldom
of Ulster in the early fourteenth century, Derry continued as an essentially
Gaelic and religious centre. an urban programme began soon after the arrival on
the Foyle of a government expedition led by Henry Docwra in the summer of
1600. a map drawn in that year shows the ‘great forte or towne’ located to one
side of the much-decayed monastic site.36 the charter of 1604 recognized Derry
as ‘a place very convenient and fit to be made both a town of war and a town of
merchandise’.37 even so, Docwra’s initiatives proved to be fragile and what had
been built was destroyed by an Irish force under sir Cahir O’Doherty in 1608.
the famous walled town first arose in the years 1613–18, with well-known
consequences. as in the case of armagh, manufacturing and trading began in
earnest, and in the historical record, at the same time.38
34 But see also Bradley, ‘Irish monastic town’, p. 352. 35 thomas, Derry~Londonderry, p. 2,
citing Brian lacey, Siege city: the story of Derry and Londonderry (Belfast, 1990), pp 48–9.
36 thomas, Derry~Londonderry, map 5: ‘three broken kloysters, and one high piramide or
tourret of antiquity’, the latter being the still standing round tower. 37 Ibid., p. 2. 38 Ibid.,
pp 22–3, 29.
16.4 Medieval Kells.
as a monastery, Downpatrick ‘was not in the same league’ as armagh and

Derry;39 for one thing, its patrons were not members of the Northern Uí Néill.
Instead, Dún dá lethglas may have signified from the early eleventh century a
monastic/cathedral site and an adjacent civic settlement alongside two tidal
inlets of the river Quoile, all under Dál Fiatach control (fig. 16.3).40 two
important developments in the twelfth century, prior to 1177, were a possible
rebuilding of the principal church and the foundation of st John the evangelist’s
priory, a house of canons regular of st augustine east of Cathedral Hill. that
there was ever any significant level of marketing activity on the eastern side of
Cathedral Hill during the monastic phase is thought unlikely by the authors of
the fascicle.41 What brought change to Downpatrick in the direction of town life
was John de Courcy’s dramatic conquest in 1177. some sort of defensive line
was established and what is now english street became the core of the small
borough, as Downpatrick had become by 1260. the earliest evidence for large-
scale manufacturing is the pottery kiln of c.1200 excavated due east of the
presumed site of the medieval parish church. Outside the defences, a small
suburb developed along present-day Irish street. Marketing was eventually
relocated to the narrow confines of the english street–Irish street junction.
apart from the pottery, evidence for manufacturing and trading survives only
from the seventeenth century and later.42 Despite Downpatrick’s undoubted
39 r.H. Buchanan and andrew Wilson, Downpatrick, IHta no. 8 (Dublin, 1997), p. 1; repr.
in Irish Historic Towns Atlas, 2 (Dublin, 2005), separately paginated. 40 Ibid., pp 1–2, 8.
41 Ibid., p. 4. see also swan, ‘Monastic proto-towns’, pp 95–7 and figs 4.15, 4.16.
42 Buchanan and Wilson, Downpatrick, pp 11, 12.
Patrician associations, it cannot be said with any degree of conviction that there
had ever been a monastic town on that site.
Kells is unusual in that we know precisely when and why it was founded as a
monastery. the site was granted c.804 to monks fleeing from the first Viking
raids on the monastic island of Iona. at some point in time, a monastery at Kells
was laid out in the classical manner as a double enclosure, with the main church
in the centre (fig. 16.4).43 Given that Kells was a high-status Columban
foundation under powerful southern Uí Néill patronage, it is a reasonable guess
that the basic layout was established early in the ninth century. the first
reference to the round tower is in 1076 and st Columb’s House – a stone-built
hermitage with a steeply pitched roof and located halfway between the two
enclosures – is documented at around the same time.44 Both could date from the
previous century. Otherwise, monastic buildings are cited in the twelfth-century
transaction records. the so-called ‘charters’ mention the margad Cenanndsa,
‘market of Kells’, the market space being located due east of the ecclesiastical site
and just outside the outer enclosure, as at armagh.45 this market and its
associated cross are as close as we get to the notion that early medieval Kells had
urban attributes. they are important, but literally peripheral – on the edge of the
primary focus on religious devotion and observance. In conformity with their
earlier stance in the Atlas of Ireland, ‘we can describe Kells in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries as a proto-town’.46 Market space and cross became central when
the anglo-Normans took over in the 1170s and Hugh de lacy, the new and
powerful lord of Meath, made Kells a manor protected by a motte-and-bailey
castle. the known castle site at Kells was near Market Cross at the junction of
Cross street and John street, in the middle of the main convergence of roads,
and Castle street would remain the town’s commercial focus down to the late
eighteenth century. Burgesses are first mentioned in a (genuine) charter datable
to 1194x1211. the medieval defensive wall enclosed a large area that included
the whole of the outer enclosure of the earlier monastery together with
commercial parts of the town to the east and south. It is to be doubted whether
all of this space was ever fully occupied by buildings during the Middle ages.
the parish church, still dedicated to st Colum Cille (Columba), was the old
monastic one that had been endowed with cathedral status in the diocesan
reorganization of 1152, but demoted in 1211. accordingly, the core of the
medieval town was the castle, not the parish (monastic) church.
topographically, the layout of Kildare in the early Middle ages was similar to
that of Kells (fig. 16.5).47 If the latter was being established in the first half of the
43 swan, ‘Monastic proto-towns’, pp 84–6, 99 and figs 4.5, 4.16. see also Bradley, ‘Irish
monastic town’, p. 348. 44 simms and simms, Kells, p. 8. 45 the authors’ use of the term
‘charter’ was standard at the time of writing, but contrary to the more acceptable
interpretation expressed in Dauvit Broun, The charters of Gaelic Scotland and Ireland in the
early and central Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1995), pp 29–47. 46 simms and simms, Kells,
p. 1. 47 swan, ‘Monastic proto-towns’, pp 86–9, 99–100 and figs 4.6, 4.16.
16.5 Curvilinear road and fence alignments at Kildare.
ninth century, could Kildare have been a conscious model? there are, however,
some differences too. Present-day Market square, triangular in shape, is situated
between the probable alignment of the inner and outer enclosures, though also
extending beyond in the direction of Dublin street. Part of the main axis of the
anglo-Norman town appears to have been Claregate street, slicing through the
trajectory of the outer enclosure rather than following its course.48 On the other
hand, the siting of William Marshal’s castle reinforced the shift of Kildare’s
centre of gravity towards the east.49 But apart from the stone street or terrace and
the famous comb-maker’s workshop of 909, there is no evidence for meaningful
urbanization before the thirteenth century, while the construction of a town wall
was apparently delayed until as late as 1515.50 Whatever preceded the
development of the anglo-Norman town was essentially of the nature of a proto-
town forerunner.51
48 J.H. andrews, Kildare, IHta no. 1 (Dublin, 1986), p. 3; repr. in Irish Historic Towns Atlas,
1 (Dublin, 1996), separately paginated. see also Bradley, ‘Irish monastic town’, pp 349–50.
49 andrews, Kildare, p. 3. and fig. 3. 50 Ibid., pp 3, 9, 11 and fig. 4. 51 Ibid., p. 3.
16.6 Principal sites in Kilkenny, c.1200 to c.1550.
an entirely different outcome evolved at Kilkenny, to the extent that the

monastic town argument is rarely used of it.52 the earliest recorded pre-urban
nucleus was not st Canice’s, but st Patrick’s, outside the later south wall of the
medieval town (fig. 16.6). this apparently large church, founded probably as
early as the fifth century, was eclipsed by a rival located on an elevated site
farther north in the course of the seventh century.53 st Canice’s was more
favourably positioned in that its enclosure commanded a major ford across the
river Nore, nowadays represented by Green’s Bridge, and it may be significant
that the thirteenth-century bridge was regarded as being more substantial than
John’s Bridge near the castle.54 at that time, too, the main market-place in
Irishtown was situated at the junction of the street called Irishtown and st
Canice’s Place, that is to say, south-east of the cathedral though inside the single
52 For one exception, see Bradley, ‘Irish monastic town’, pp 331 (coin finds), 336 n. 57 (antler
tines), 337 (a king’s house), 338–9 (a burgage), 355 (general classification). 53 John Bradley,
Kilkenny, IHta no. 10 (Dublin, 2000), p. 1; repr. in Irish Historic Towns Atlas, 2 (Dublin,
2005), separately paginated. 54 Ibid., p. 21.
16.7 Possible sites of the early ecclesiastical enclosure and ford at trim.
enclosure of its monastic and episcopal predecessor. anglo-Norman Hightown,
on the other hand, was focused firmly on the castle. as is well known, William
Marshal’s charter of 1207 gave formal recognition to earlier and more hesitant
colonial initiatives. Prior to this grant, the new town had evolved northwards
from the castle as far as James’ street (corresponding to present-day High
street); then, c.1207, an exchange of land between Marshal and the bishop of
Ossory permitted expansion farther north again towards the Breagagh river
(corresponding to present-day Parliament street). In other words, the town of
Kilkenny was fundamentally secular and castle-based in its origins. Other than
in terms of geographical proximity, it owed little as an urban entity to its two
ecclesiastical predecessors, the one to the south and the other to the north.55
another instance that is normally excluded from the monastic town debate is
trim. It shared with Kilkenny three components: a very early church, a single
enclosure and proximity to a ford across an important river (fig. 16.7, site a).
Judging by the place-name, this ‘ford of the elder tree’ was the aboriginal
determinant of human settlement there. On purely topographical grounds, the
earlier of the two potential fording sites is likely to have been that towards the
west.56 the street pattern between the enclosure and the river Boyne is non-
standard and difficult to interpret: the fascicle’s author suggests tentatively that
some sort of civic settlement may have existed prior to the anglo-Norman
takeover.57 trim was selected as the manorial caput of another great lord, Hugh
de lacy, who created two further settlement nuclei. One was an earth-and-
timber castle, followed in short order by a stone hall-keep. the other was the
possible refoundation of st Mary’s abbey for canons regular of st augustine, on
the site now occupied by the Yellow steeple. Urban development had already
begun by the time, c.1194, that Walter de lacy granted ‘to [his] burgesses of
trim all liberties which they have had […] before they received my charter’.58
the principal focus was Market street adjacent to, but not aligned on, the castle;
this alignment appears to reflect a desire to link the bridging point downstream
to the earlier north–south routeway. real town life began at trim, under colonial
inititative, in the late twelfth century.59
the final example, tuam, provides us with yet another set of variations on a
theme. the first monastic site lay to the south, at toberjarlath (‘Jarlath’s well’),
but commemoration of this local saint had been relocated to a natural gravel
ridge on the south bank of the river Nanny by the year 1032. Medieval tuam
came to be positioned at a focal point of esker trails and near a river crossing in
an essentially low-lying landscape. a powerful local ruler at that time, Áed Ua
Conchobair, may have been anxious to promote the new site as a useful
bridgehead in that part of Connacht. thus was created a large double-enclosure
55 the complex development of Kilkenny is summarized cartographically in ibid., map 6.

56 For another example of road deflection, created in different circumstances, see sarah
Gearty, Martin Morris and Fergus O’Ferrall, Longford, IHta no. 22 (Dublin, 2010), map 22
(Battery road). 57 Mark Hennessy, Trim, IHta no. 14 (Dublin, 2004), p. 3; repr. in Irish
Historic Towns Atlas, 2 (Dublin, 2005), separately paginated. 58 Ibid., p. 2. 59 again, for a
growth map of considerable complexity, see ibid., map 10.
16.8 Medieval tuam.
system around the church known as temple Jarlath (fig. 16.8). Nearly a century
later, in 1119, toirdelbach Ua Conchobair became high-king of Ireland and the
suggestion is that it was he who envisaged tuam both as a royal and as an
ecclesiastical showpiece.60 In 1127, toirdelbach seems to have ordered the outer
enclosure to be extended towards the south-west, so as to incorporate st Mary’s
Cathedral, the diocese having been established at the synod of ráith Bressail.
toirdelbach then had a number of high crosses erected, one of which was a
market cross on the eastern side, just as at armagh and Kells.61 In c.1140, he
founded a house for augustinian canons outside the outer enclosure towards the
south-east. the climax to all this secular initiative came in 1152 when tuam’s
cathedral was chosen, by toirdelbach, as the metropolitan church for the whole
60 J.a. Claffey, Tuam, IHta no. 20 (Dublin, 2009), p. 2; repr. in Irish Historic Towns Atlas, 3
(Dublin, 2012), separately paginated. see also swan, ‘Monastic proto-towns’, p. 89 and figs
4.7, 4.16. 61 Ironically, for conservation purposes, this cross has been transferred to the
commercially peripheral cathedral.
kingdom. But, apart from a market space, peripheral as always at double-

enclosure sites, there was nothing specifically urban about tuam at this stage. a
major boost came in 1164, when toirdelbach’s son, ruaidrí, built a castle there
just two years before he became high-king in his turn. so impressive was this
royal building, again outside the outer enclosure, that it was designated by one
native annalist as a ‘wonderful castle’ (caislén ingantach). Farther east again stood
the reliquary church of templenascreen, housing the relics of st Jarlath and
situated in its own small enclosure; the relics were probably translated there in
King ruaidrí’s time.62 Disaster would soon strike, however, for in 1177
(coincidentally with de Courcy’s occupation of Downpatrick), the anglo-
Norman adventurer Miles de Cogan led a force that used tuam as a plundering
base. Before that, the inhabitants had destroyed much, including some churches,
and had retreated with their cattle to the wilds of the hinterland. For the rest of
the Middle ages, the signs are that tuam led a rather fitful existence as a small
town, constantly beset by warfare and by political instability. It would seem that
revenues with which to build a proper defensive town wall were never found in
practice.
It cannot be claimed that any of these monastic and episcopal sites was
insignificant. Without exception, their topographical footprint was extensive, or
at least came to be so at some stage. Derry and Downpatrick occupied natural
sites mainly surrounded by water. armagh, Kells, Kildare and tuam were laid
out, again at some stage, with double enclosures; only Kilkenny and trim were
defined by a single enclosing arrangement. some of these ecclesiastical enclosure
sites acquired ‘suburban’ quarters, corresponding to the threefold idealized
model of sanctity. Normally there was just one principal church in a central or
near-central position, all but one of which (trim) was granted cathedral status
in the twelfth century. another aspect of ecclesiastical advancement before the
advent of the anglo-Normans is that at least one house of a reformed order of
continental origin was established at most of these places, Kildare and trim
excepted. Political patronage was a common factor at all stages in the lifespan of
these institutions, raising the important, if unanswerable, question of how far
they were secular in nature. But, whatever sort of answer is forthcoming, these
monastic and episcopal (even before 1111) sites were not primarily towns. the
scattered references to streets, market spaces, houses and workshops, commonest
between the tenth and the twelfth centuries, are of course significant. they can
be thought of as urban phenomena, but then tens of thousands of medieval
european villages had streets, market spaces, houses and workshops. these are
not exclusively urban features. What determined the differences between a
village and a town in the traditional economies of medieval europe was
functionality. thus, a village of farming folk existed primarily to produce food,
and drink as a by-product. a town of craftworkers and traders existed primarily
62 Claffey, Tuam, p. 3.
to produce and to distribute artefacts made locally and imported from elsewhere,
with a support system derived from the rural economy. and a monastery of
monks and sometimes nuns of the Irish type existed primarily to provide the
highest level of religious devotion and observance, with a support system shared
to some extent with those of both the village and the town.
If the concept of proto-town can be accepted (there are dissenters in this
context),63 the early Irish (Christian) ecclesiastical sites are best regarded as a
species of that essentially intellectual construct, as anngret and Katharine
simms classified them back in 1979. this particular species of proto-town was
called a ‘cult settlement’ in an essay summarizing a substantial body of material
six years later.64 the word ‘cult’ was chosen because of a recognition that pagan
cult centres as well as Christian ones were capable of performing proto-town
functions. examples cited were arkona on the island of rügen off the Baltic
coast of Germany, Odense (‘Odin’s sanctuary’) on the Danish island of Fyn, and
Viborg (‘sanctuary hill’) in central Jutland. In this ‘non-roman’ context,
Carolingian monastic and episcopal centres in Germany east of the river rhine
were included. It was observed that ‘practioners of the Christian cult looked
down on those of the pagan cults, but there may have been more common
ground than either side was prepared to admit’.65 In all such cases, the primary
dynamic was of a religious nature, operating in some kind of ceremonial
complex. the so-called Irish monastic town was not an isolated, purely insular
phenomenon, but an aspect of urban origins in many parts of europe and
beyond. the tendency to confine discussion to the island of Ireland has
contributed to widespread misunderstanding.
When we ask ourselves at what stage did the places in this sample of eight
become primarily urban, the answer can be found in the relevant IHta fascicles.
a group of five located in the more forcibly colonized parts of the island were
promoted as towns in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. these were
Downpatrick, Kells, Kildare, Kilkenny and trim. In every case, a powerful
aristocratic family of foreign origin was the agent of change: de Courcy and de
lacy at Downpatrick, de lacy at Kells, Marshal at Kildare and Kilkenny, and de
lacy again at trim. they belong to the model of colonial urbanization advocated
by Brian Graham.66 except at Downpatrick, for which protection was provided
at Carrickfergus and Dundrum,67 a castle came to act as a new focus of urban
generation. the two other examples from Ulster – armagh and Derry – became
63 For example, richard Hodges, Dark Age economics: the origins of towns and trade, AD600–
1000 (2nd ed. london, 1989), p. 23; tadhg O’Keeffe, ‘space, place, habitus: geographies of
practice in an anglo-Norman landscape’ in H.B. Clarke et al. (eds), Surveying Ireland’s past:
multidisciplinary essays in honour of Anngret Simms (Dublin, 2004), pp 96–7 n. 45. 64 Howard
Clarke and anngret simms, ‘towards a comparative history of urban origins’ in Clarke and
simms (eds), Comparative urban origins, ii, pp 684–6. 65 Ibid., p. 686. 66 Brian Graham,
‘anglo-Norman colonization and the size and spread of the colonial town in medieval Ireland’
in Clarke and simms (eds), Comparative urban origins, ii, pp 355–71. 67 Buchanan and
towns only in the early seventeenth century in a programme of plantation, the

first impelled by the english (anglo-scottish) crown and the second by the
london trading companies. this leaves tuam as something of an exception and
indeed of exceptional interest. tuam was excluded, quite properly, from John
Bradley’s list of anglo-Norman planned towns.68 We have already seen that the
anglo-Norman arrival was destructive of an existing castle town of recent and
native origin. as the fascicle’s author states, ‘the building of this church
[templenascreen] east of ruaidrí’s castle indicates that tuam, an entirely Gaelic
settlement, had acquired an urban dimension by the late twelfth century’.69 Just
as at the anglo-Norman colonial sites, the primary dynamic towards genuine
urbanization was the castle rather than the much older monastic and episcopal
centre. With the drive towards the development of a more forceful and sophis-
ticated kind of kingship, other major ecclesiastical sites would undoubtedly have
followed suit had not foreign intervention occurred when it did.70 the lesson of
tuam is that ‘monastic town’ is a contradiction in terms that should henceforth
be excised from all archaeological and historical discourse.
Wilson, Downpatrick, p. 3. 68 John Bradley, ‘Planned anglo-Norman towns in Ireland’ in

Clarke and simms (eds), Comparative urban origins, ii, pp 411–67. 69 Claffey, Tuam, p. 3.
70 On the important distinction between kingship and feudalism, see H.B. Clarke, ‘1066, 1169
and all that: the tyranny of historical turning points’ in Judith Devlin and H.B. Clarke (eds),
European encounters: essays in memory of Albert Lovett (Dublin, 2003), p. 31.
Church reform in Connacht
H e l e N P e r rO s - Wa lt O N
although some scholars have suggested that there was some enthusiasm for
church reform in Connacht in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries,1 it has
more typically been characterized as slow to take hold there due to the hostility
of entrenched interests.2 the king of Connacht and high-king ‘with opposition’,
toirdelbach Mór Ua Conchobair (1106–56), has been given credit for the
creation of the archdiocese of tuam at the synod of Kells in 1152, but he has
also been faulted for taking ‘remarkably little interest in st Malachy’s labours for
the reform of the church’,3 and for failing to exploit church reform more
effectively.4 also, although Connacht’s Cross of Cong and its ‘school of the
West’ churches5 have long been admired and placed within their historical
context to a degree,6 they have not been fully integrated into the reform story.
Connacht’s apparent lack of a charismatic reforming cleric like st Malachy,7 or
of a king with recognized reform credentials like Muirchertach Ua Briain,8
together with Pope Innocent III’s condemnation at the beginning of the
thirteenth century of rampant hereditary succession in the archdiocese of
tuam,9 have all helped to create a lingering impression that church reform never
really flourished there. But has enough attention been paid to the evidence? Was
Connacht really so out of touch with what was happening in the Western church
in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries?
1 Pádraig Ó riain, ‘sanctity and politics in Connacht, c.1100: the case of st Fursa’, CMCS,
17 (1989), 1–14 at 9–10; Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Pagans and holy men: literary manifestations
of twelfth-century reform’ in Damian Bracken and Dagmar Ó riain-raedel (eds), Ireland and
Europe in the twelfth century: reform and renewal (Dublin, 2006), pp 151–7. 2 J.a. Watt, The
church and the two nations in medieval Ireland (london, 1970), pp 32 n. 2, 67; The church in
medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1972), pp 96–7; Máire Herbert, ‘Caithréim Cellaig: some literary and
historical considerations’, ZCP, 49–50 (1997), 320–32 at 330. 3 F.J. Byrne, Irish kings and
high-kings (New York, 1973), p. 261. see also M.t. Flanagan, Irish royal charters: texts and
contexts (Oxford, 2005), pp 199–200; Peter Harbison, ‘Church reform and Irish monastic
culture in the twelfth century’, JGAHS, 52 (2000), 2–12. 4 M.t. Flanagan, ‘High-kings
with opposition’, NHI, i, p. 928. 5 H.G. leask, Irish churches and monastic buildings: Gothic
architecture to AD1400 (3 vols, Dundalk, 1958), ii, pp 53–76. 6 see P.e. Michelli, ‘the
inscriptions on pre-Norman Irish reliquaries’, PRIA, 96C (1996), 1–48 at 2–12; B.
Kalkreuter, Boyle Abbey and the school of the west (Bray, 2001). 7 St Bernard of Clairvaux’s
Life of St Malachy, ed. and trans. H. lawlor (New York, 1920). 8 seán Duffy, ‘“the western
world’s tower of honour and dignity”: the career of Muirchertach Ua Briain in context’ in
Bracken and Ó riain-raedel (eds), Ireland and Europe in the twelfth century, p. 56, where he
references aubrey Gwynn, The Irish church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, ed. G. O’Brien
(Dublin, 1992). 9 see below, p. 302.
279
280 Helen Perros-Walton
toirdelbach Ua Conchobair showed such devotion to st Ciarán, the sixth-

century founder of Clonmacnoise, that he might easily be dismissed as simply a
religious conservative. In 1115, he fasted at the monastery and gave God and the
saint gifts of a drinking horn, silver goblet and copper paten, all ornamented with
gold.10 In 1124, he helped the abbot of Clonmacnoise, Gilla Críst Ua Máel eoin,
build the round tower that can still be seen today,11 and in 1156 he was buried
beside st Ciarán’s altar in the cathedral there.12 His faith in the saint came from
his father ruaidrí na saide Buide. When he had defeated Áed Ua ruairc in 1087,
simultaneously avenging his own father’s death and eliminating his rival for the
kingship of Connacht, Chronicon Scotorum credited the victory in part to
‘Cormac ua Cillín, chief vice-abbot of síl Muiredaig, with the staff of Ciarán in
his hand before the battle when it was being fought’.13 this relic may well have
been the exquisite Crozier of the abbots of Clonmacnoise, now in the National
Museum of Ireland, that has been dated stylistically to c.1100.14 ruaidrí retired
to Clonmacnoise after he was blinded by another rival, Flaithbertach Ua
Flaithbertaig, in 1092: he would die there twenty-six years later, in 1118, ‘a chief
elder’,15 ‘happily as a cleric’,16 ‘on pilgrimage’,17 ‘after a victory of repentance,
and after receiving the Body of Christ and wine out of Fraochán Ciaráin’.18
However, fidelity to tradition did not necessarily mean an unwillingness to
embrace reform. Clonmacnoise was a successful and envied monastic establish-
ment on the shannon: it was possibly showing some early signs of urban
development.19 It was also connected with the wider world – one of its prized
possessions was the little rock of solomon’s temple20 – and it was determined
to keep up with the times. No stranger to adversity,21 it managed eventually, in
spite of enormous opposition, to achieve recognition as an episcopal see. after
losing out to Clonard in the synod of ráith Bressail in 1111 when dioceses were
first set up in Ireland,22 its abbot Gilla Críst Ua Máel eoin and Murchad Ua
10 AMisc.; AT; CS; AFM. 11 CS. It may have been much taller than it is today, the top
having being rebuilt after damage by lightning in 1135: CS; AFM; Conleth Manning, ‘some
early masonry churches and the round tower at Clonmacnoise’ in Heather King (ed.),
Clonmacnoise studies, ii: seminar papers, 1998 (Dublin, 2003), pp 91–2. 12 AT; AFM;
Conleth Manning, ‘Clonmacnoise cathedral’ in Heather King (ed.), Clonmacnoise studies, i:
seminar papers, 1994 (Dublin, 1998), pp 77–9; Clonmacnoise (2nd ed., n.p., 1998), p. 28.
13 CS. ‘Cormac ua Cillín, chief vice-abbot of síl Muiredaig’ and superior of the guesthouse
of Clonmacnoise died in 1106: ibid. see also seán Duffy, ‘Ua Conchobair, ruaidrí’, ODNB,
55, p. 836. 14 see www.museum.ie/en/exhibition/list/8-major-pieces.aspx. Griffin Murray
read a paper entitled ‘the tale of two croziers’ at the Clonmacnoise studies iii seminar in 2009.
15 AT. 16 CS. 17 AU. 18 AMisc. 19 John Bradley, ‘the monastic town of Clonmacnoise’
in King (ed.), Clonmacnoise studies, i, pp 42–55; see also Howard Clarke, ‘Quo vadis? Mapping
the Irish ‘monastic town’, above, pp 261–78. 20 stolen in 1129 but retrieved in 1130: AT;
CS; AClon.; AFM; Cormac Bourke, ‘Cairrecan tempuill solman’, Peritia, 16 (2002), 473–7.
21 It had been the target of attacks since the ninth century and would suffer numerous attacks
in the twelfth century: AFM, s.a. 1106; AFM, AT, CS, s.aa. 1111–12; CS, s.a. 1115; AClon.,
s.a. 1133, CS, AFM, s.a. 1141; AFM, AT, AU, s.a. 1163; AT, AFM, s.aa. 1178, 1179. 22 see
below, p. 284.
Church reform in Connacht 281
Máel sechnaill, king of Mide (Meath), made it the see of western Mide at a local
synod at Uisnech later that year.23 However, the synod of Kells did not ratify this
decision in 1152, even though the bishop of Clonmacnoise attended it,24 and it
was not until the synod of Birr in 1174 that ‘the clerics of Ireland’ consented to
its annexation of the western Mide diocese.25
toirdelbach has been credited with establishing augustinian or more probably
the more austere Cistercian-influenced arrouasian canons at Clonmacnoise
sometime between 1140 and his death in 1156.26 these were hybrid orders of
priest-monks that came into being in the late eleventh and early twelfth
centuries; they were central to church reform because they made it possible for
clerics to live a celibate life in communities that renounced personal property.
For church reformers, known for their admiration for the early church, they
provided clerics with a way to live the apostolic life.27 st Malachy made it his
mission to establish both orders in Ireland – the former from the 1130s, the latter
from 1140 – his goal being to reform and revitalize both monastic and clerical
life.28 Both orders had convents of canonesses: although fewer than male abbeys
and without any pastoral role, they enabled some women to participate more
fully than would otherwise have been the case in the reform movement that was
sweeping though Western Christendom. st Malachy, who had learned the
fundamentals of his faith from his mother, according to st Bernard, promoted
the foundation of arrouasian convents with considerable success from 1144
onwards.29 He seems to have felt remorse, after his worldly sister had died
unexpectedly, that he had neglected her salvation, something he ultimately
rectified through visions and prayer,30 but the experience may have given him an
additional incentive to provide new spiritual homes for women.
the evidence is not altogether satisfactory,31 but it seems likely that, unlike
other communities of canons attributed to toirdelbach that have left evidence of
23 CS. 24 the attendance of Muirchertach Ua Máeluidir, bishop of Clonmacnoise, at Kells

was noted in the annals of Clonenagh: Forus feasa ar Éirinn: The history of Ireland by Geoffrey
Keating, trans. edward Comyn and Patrick Dinneen (london, 1902–14: ex-classics Project,
2009, www.exclassics.com/ceitinn/foras.pdf), pp 309–10. Clonmacnoise’s absence from the
1152 list of suffragan bishops of tuam has been attributed to a scribal error: Gwynn, The Irish
church, pp 247–9. But it is not clear why a diocese covering Westmeath would have been
assigned to tuam. see also NHI, ix, pp 102, 277 nn 10–11. the lack of episcopal recognition
was galling to Clonmacnoise because it had had bishops since the late ninth century, see
annette Kehnel, Clonmacnoise – the church and lands of St Ciarán: change and continuity in an
Irish monastic foundation (sixth to sixteenth century) (Münster, 1997), pp 268–71. 25 AT;
AFM. 26 aubrey Gwynn and r.N. Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, with an
appendix to early sites (Bristol, 1970), p. 165. 27 C.H. lawrence, Medieval monasticism: forms
of religious life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (2nd ed., london, 1989), pp 163–9.
28 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, pp 146–52: P.J. Dunning, ‘the
arroasian order in medieval Ireland’, IHS, 4 (1945), 297–315. For the most recent appraisal,
see M.t. Flanagan, The transformation of the Irish church in the twelfth century (Woodbridge,
2010), pp 136–54. 29 Dianne Hall, Women and the church in medieval Ireland, c.1140–1540
(Dublin, 2003), pp 66–80. 30 Life of St Malachy, pp 7, 14–15, 25–6. 31 Kehnel,
their existence down to the suppression of the monasteries in the sixteenth

century, the one at Clonmacnoise petered out sometime after 1268.32 the canons
did not form the cathedral chapter, but the fact that Clonmacnoise ended up a
pitifully poor diocese, losing much of its territory to the aggressive bishopric of
Clonard–Meath after the arrival of the anglo-Normans, suggests an explanation
for their early disappearance: limited resources.33 their existence in the middle
decades of the twelfth century is strongly suggested by the fact that there were
two abbots of Clonmacnoise coexisting peacefully then: tigernach Ua Máel eoin
(d. 1172),34 who probably headed the old monastic community – he had the same
last name as the abbot who built the round tower with toirdelbach – and Máel
Mochta Ua Fidabra (d. 1173),35 abbot since at least 1141, when toirdelbach’s son
Conchobar, who ruled the neighbouring Uí Maine on behalf of his father,
restored booty to him that had been seized by raiders.36 that the two abbots were
colleagues is evident from an incident in 1158, when they and the bishop of
Clonmacnoise joined Áed Ua hOissíne, archbishop of tuam, and the bishops of
Connacht as they were making their way to the synod of Brí mac taidg, near
trim, which the papal legate, Gilla Críst Ua Connairche, had summoned ‘to
ordain rules and good morals’. a major objective of the Connacht party was
undoubtedly to secure approval of the western Mide diocese for Clonmacnoise.
as they approached the wooden bridge over the shannon, however, soldiers of
Diarmait Ua Máel sechnaill, king of Mide, attacked them, ‘as he did not wish to
let them into the synod’. the roughing-up worked. robbed and beaten, and with
two lay members of their party killed, ‘they returned to their homes’.37 However,
Diarmait would donate lands to the abbey of Clonmacnoise in 1163,38 which may
help to explain why temple rí, which seems to date to the early years of the
thirteenth century, came to be called temple Melaghlin (that is, tempull Uí Maíl
sechnaill). However, if this was indeed the abbey church, as Kalkreuter asserts,
it was not built with a nave and chancel, like some other augustinian–arrouasian
foundations, but stayed within the earlier building traditions of Clonmacnoise,39
except for the two tall rounded windows in its east wall that are typical of the
school of the West.40 temple Finghin, a twelfth-century nave-and-chancel
Clonmacnoise, pp 154–5, has questioned the existence of the canons, but see Gwynn and
Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p. 165. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., pp 64–5. When we
last hear of the abbot in 1268, he was suing the bishop and others for lands: ibid., p. 165.
34 AT; AU; AFM. 35 AT call him chief abbot of Clonmacnoise. AFM call him Máel
Mochta Ua Máel sechnaill, while AU give this as an alternative name. 36 CS; AFM;
AClon., s.a. 1133. 37 AClon.; AFM. AT describe ‘the bishop of Connacht and the bishop of
Cluain’ as two successors of st Ciarán, but there is no evidence either Áed Ua hOissíne,
archbishop of tuam, or Muirchertach Ua Máeluidir, bishop of Clonmacnoise, were ever
abbots of Clonmacnoise, which suggests that an ‘and’ has been omitted between the bishops
and the abbots. the new monastic community would eventually replace the old one.
38 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p. 165. 39 Kalkreuter, Boyle
Abbey, pp 71–3. tadhg O’Keeffe, Romanesque Ireland: architecture and ideology in the twelfth
century (Dublin, 2003), p. 104, notes that ‘virtually nothing remains of the earliest augustinian
establishments’. 40 leask, Irish churches, ii, p. 59; Manning, Clonmacnoise, p. 32.
church with an attached round tower, or Temple Connor, with its transitional
arched doorway dating to c.1200, might also be considered candidates.41
The Arrouasian convent of St Mary’s at Clonmacnoise provides a clearer
example of twelfth-century rebirth and renewal, quickly replacing as it did the
convent that had been in existence there since 1026 at least,42 and having an
identifiable and beautiful nave-and-chancel church to show for it.43 The Nuns’
Church that Derbforgaill, of consensual-abduction fame, built for St Mary’s in
Clonmacnoise in 1167 is small,44 but the rounded arches of its western doorway
and chancel, with their exuberant patterned carvings, make it a true Romanesque
jewel, as riveting as any other in Europe. The convent’s motherhouse was St
Mary’s in Clonard that Derbforgaill’s father Murchad Ua Máel Sechnaill had
founded c.1144 and where her kinswoman Agnes was abbess,45 but by 1223 it had
become part of a network of Arrouasian convents in Connacht that were subject
to Kilcreevanty, a formerly Benedictine convent founded by Toirdelbach’s
youngest son Cathal Crobderg c.1200.46
Toirdelbach’s links with the Uí Briain ensured he was introduced to reform
ideas early on. He was, after all, the nephew and protégé of the Munster king and
high-king ‘with opposition’ Muirchertach Ua Briain, who corresponded with
Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, and who convened the first two great Irish
church reform synods – Cashel in 1101 and Ráith Bressail in 1111. He was also,
of course, the grandson of Toirdelbach Ua Briain, the recipient of reform letters
from Anselm’s predecessor Lanfranc and from Pope Gregory VII (1073–85)
himself.47 His mother Mór must have given him her father’s name before dying
shortly after he was born, ‘Toirdelbach’ being ‘then very much an Ua Briain
family name’,48 not one used by the Uí Chonchobair. Thus, it is not altogether
surprising that shortly after the 18-year-old became king with Muirchertach’s
support in 1106,49 he appears with Bishop Máel Muire Ua Dúnáin, one of
Muirchertach’s leading reformers,50 in ‘a charter-type text’ of the early twelfth
century. The two men are listed as guarantors of the stone church of the pilgrims
that the Elder Cathasach rebuilt at Mayo of the Saxons ‘in the reign of Ruaidrí
and his son … Toirdelbach’. Ua Dúnáin heads the list of guarantors, followed by
the community of Killaloe, the Elder Cathasach, Toirdelbach, ‘king of Connacht’
41 For descriptions, see ibid., pp 33–5. In the 2009 Clonmacnoise seminar, Manning
suggested that Temple Finghin might have been a second nuns’ church. 42 Gwynn and
Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p. 315. Remnants of this older convent’s stone
church can still be seen: Manning, ‘Some early masonry churches’ in King (ed.), Clonmacnoise
studies, ii, pp 82–3. 43 Manning, Clonmacnoise, pp 36–7; Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh, ‘“But what
exactly did she give?”: Derbforgaill and the Nuns’ Church at Clonmacnoise’ in King (ed.),
Clonmacnoise studies, ii, pp 175–207. 44 Hall, Women and the church, pp 97–9. 45 Flanagan,
Transformation of the Irish church, p. 201 n. 155. 46 See below, p. 298. 47 M.T. Flanagan,
‘High-kings with opposition, 1072–1166’, NHI, i, pp 903–7, 911–16. 48 Katharine Simms,
‘Ua Conchobair, Toirdelbach Mór’, ODNB, 55, p. 839. 49 AT; CS; AFM. 50 Donnchadh
Ó Corráin, ‘Mael Muire Ua Dúnáin (1040–1117), reformer’ in Pádraig de Brún et al. (eds),
Fodia Gadelica (Cork, 1983), pp 47–53.
and two Connacht bishops, Ua Cnaill (d. 1117) and Ua Dubthaig.51 the
transaction must have taken place before the synod of ráith Bressail in 1111,
where Ua Dúnáin played a key role, not least in ensuring that Clonard won out
over Clonmacnoise as the see for western Mide. a Meathman himself (he had
called himself bishop of Mide c.1096, before moving into Muirchertach’s orbit),
he would retire to and die at Clonard in 1117.52 Of course, Muirchertach was also
hostile to Clonmacnoise – in fact, he had the Dál Cais plunder it in 1111,53
presumably after the counter-synod at Uisnech – his pet project being to
promote the church of Killaloe on the shannon south of lough Derg. Killaloe
lacked early Christian credentials, appearing in the record only with the rise of
Brian Bóruma in the late tenth century, but it was awarded a large diocese at
ráith Bressail, one that extended north-eastwards across the shannon right up
to the diocese of Clonard.54 toirdelbach endured Muirchertach’s domination
until 1114, when he was 26 and the older man was stricken with a disease that left
him ‘a living skeleton’.55 From then on, his goal was to become king of Ireland.
However, he expressed his gratitude to Murchad Ua Máel sechnaill for
supporting Clonmacnoise in 1111 by meeting him there in 1115, after it had
undergone a second plundering by the Munstermen,56 and ‘they made peace and
an alliance’. later in 1115, after almost two years of successful campaigning,
toirdelbach returned to Clonmacnoise to fast, presumably in repentance for the
bloodshed, and to give his gifts to God and st Ciarán.57
each of the parties involved in the Mayo agreement was no doubt staking
some sort of claim to the prestigious church, which was located a few miles to the
north-east of loughs Mask and Carra and famous in the wider world because of
Bede’s glowing account of it in 731.58 However, the Mayo text makes it clear that
the parties were collectively determined that it should remain a place of
pilgrimage. the community there had donated one-tenth of their enclosure to
God and st Michael to build an enduring stone church for the pilgrims of God,
but ‘Muintir Mailfinneoin’ had knocked it down, killing both people and cattle.59
since Muintir Máelfináin lay to the north-west of lough Derg, within the
kingdom of Uí Maine,60 Killaloe should have had some leverage in the area,
especially since Muirchertach Ua Briain had extended his personal rule over
both Uí Maine and Uí Fiachrach aidne. In 1095, when he had made Domnall
Ua ruairc (d. 1102) ‘high-king of Connacht’, he had detached these areas in
south Connacht as well as luigne in the north-east from Ua ruairc’s rule,61 and
the fact that the síl Muiredaig ‘invaded aidne to consume its grass and corn’
51 Flanagan, Irish royal charters, p. 16. 52 Ó Corráin, ‘Mael Muire Ua Dúnáin’, pp 47–8,
49–50. 53 AT; CS; AFM. 54 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p.
86. 55 AFM. 56 CS. 57 AMisc. 58 Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people, with
Bede’s letter to Egbert and Cuthbert’s letter on the death of Bede, trans. l. sherley-Price et al.
(london, 1990), pp 211–12. 59 Flanagan, Irish royal charters, p. 16. 60 Paul MacCotter,
Medieval Ireland: territorial, political and economic divisions (Dublin, 2008), p. 141. 61 AI.
when he became ill in 111462 suggests he may have maintained a presence in

south Connacht until then.
In europe as a whole, pilgrimage flourished as never before from c.1000, as
the Viking and other attacks of the ninth and tenth centuries subsided and an
expanding economy enabled more and more people to travel not just to local but
to distant shrines such as rome, Compostela and even Jerusalem. an increase in
Irish pilgrims to rome and Jerusalem in the eleventh century can be observed in
the annals also.63 However, pilgrimage had always had a special importance in
Ireland. Not only is there evidence of sites dating back to 606 – the earliest
attested being Clonmacnoise, its Pilgrims’ Way still visible today – the idea of
transforming one’s life into a pilgrimage for Christ had been one of the
hallmarks of early Irish Christianity.64 the ascetic ideals of white martyrdom and
repentance had propelled many to live as peregrini, as strangers or exiles: they
abandoned home and in many notable cases Ireland itself, oftentimes ending up
as renowned spiritual leaders abroad. this tradition of foreign exile continued to
inspire: it lay behind the Irish monastic foundations in Germany in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries.65 But so too did the pilgrimage that drew clerics and
presumably others across political boundaries in Ireland. Its sanctity is implicit
in the Mayo text, and this ongoing tradition, which was particularly vibrant in
twelfth-century Connacht,66 was one that caught the attention of an increasingly
receptive Western Christendom, as church reform, by demanding more from
both clergy and laity alike, created greater anxiety about salvation.
Croagh Patrick, with its arduous climb and unrivalled location overlooking
Clew Bay to the west of Mayo of the saxons, had Holy land and biblical
associations, thanks to the late seventh-century Patrician writer tirechán. a
native of tír namalgado (tirawley) to the north of Clew Bay, he linked Croagh
Patrick with Mount sinai, Mount Carmel and the Mount of temptation itself
when he said that st Patrick, following the example of Moses, elijah and Christ,
went there to fast for forty days and forty nights.67 By 1113, pilgrimage to
Croagh Patrick was a well-established tradition, but we learn about it only
because a ‘thunderbolt fell … on the night of the festival of st Patrick, which
destroyed thirty of the fasting people’ there, the only named pilgrim being the
superior of ardpatrick (Co. limerick).68 With the coming of the anglo-
62 AT. 63 Colin Morris, The papal monarchy: the western church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford,
1989), pp 15–17, 312–15; Diana Webb, Medieval European pilgrimage, c.770–c.1500 (New
York, 2002), pp 1–30; Flanagan, Transformation of the Irish church, pp 225–33. 64 see
stephanie Hayes, ‘“Irish pilgrimage”: a romantic misconception’, above, pp 241–60.
65 Peter Harbison, Pilgrimage in Ireland: the monuments and people (london, 1991), pp 29–54;
t.M. Charles-edwards, Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge, 2000), pp 8, 103; Flanagan, Irish
royal charters, pp 181–3. 66 Not only in practice, but also in literature: see Caoimhín
Breatnach, ‘the transmission and structure of Immram Curaig Ua Corra’, Ériu, 53 (2003), 91–
107. 67 liam de Paor, Saint Patrick’s world: the Christian culture of Ireland’s apostolic age
(Dublin, 1993, 1996), pp 168–9. 68 ALC; CS; AU.
Normans, Croagh Patrick’s fame spread outside of Ireland. In his Vita sancti
Patricii episcopi, which was written at the request of John de Courcy c.1185, the
Cistercian monk Jocelin of Furness says that ‘on the summit of this mountain
many are wont to watch and to fast’, hoping thereby to avoid hell, some, after
passing the night there, having claimed ‘to have suffered grievous torments,
whereby they think themselves purified of all their sins; and for such cause many
call this place the Purgatory of st Patrick’.69
However, st Patrick’s Purgatory in lough Derg (Co. Donegal) would soon
eclipse Croagh Patrick internationally, thanks to the popular book written about
it, probably in the mid-1180s, by another anglo-Norman Cistercian monk, H.
of saltrey, who related what a fellow Cistercian called Gilbert had told him about
the otherworldly experiences of a knight called Owein there sometime between
1135 and 1154, Owein having served as Gilbert’s interpreter while he was in
Ireland founding a monastery.70 the fact that toirdelbach plundered termann
dá bheócc (termon Magrath) on saints Island, lough Derg, in 1111 suggests
that the early monastic community there had amassed some wealth by then,
thanks to the pilgrimage business,71 even though st Patrick’s Purgatory itself
seems to have been on station Island. However, Owein’s visit takes place after
the augustinian and then the arrouasian canons had established a well-organized
priory on saints Island, c.1132–40, one that was a dependent of the abbey of ss
Peter and Paul in armagh and thus well connected.72 In 1216, while the
archbishops of tuam and armagh contested each other’s rights to Croagh
Patrick and other churches in Connacht – the papacy favouring tuam’s73 –
Cathal Crobderg built a striking ‘school of the West’ augustinian abbey about
fifteen miles to the east at Ballintober, the starting point of tóchar Phádraig,
Ireland’s longest pilgrimage road, which appears in the annals in 1224 as ‘the
road to Cruach’.74
H. of saltrey acknowledged the Irish penitential tradition in his book on st
Patrick’s Purgatory, but he also provided the exemplum of the twelfth-century
Irishman who had never received the eucharist and did not know that homicide
was ‘a damnable sin’75 – presumably in case anyone should mistakenly think that
the Irish did not need the benefits of anglo-Norman rule. at the same time, he
cast Owein, despite his implied Irish or Welsh background, very much in the
role of the knight with a vocation that the Cistercian powerhouse st Bernard had
written so passionately about in his In praise of the new knighthood in the 1130s to
drum up support for the new and controversial hybrid crusading order of monk-
69 Saint Patrick’s purgatory: a twelfth-century tale of a journey to the other world, trans. J-M.
Picard and intro. Y. de Pontfarcy (Blackrock, 1985), pp 17, 19. 70 Ibid., pp 14–18, 42–78.
71 AT; CS; AFM. 72 Saint Patrick’s purgatory, pp 9–14; Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval
religious houses: Ireland, p. 193. 73 M.P. sheehy, Pontificia Hibernica: medieval papal chancery
documents concerning Ireland, 640–1261 (2 vols, Dublin, 1962), i, no. 100. 74 AC. see also
Harbison, Pilgrimage, pp 139–40; Jack Mulveen, ‘tochar Phadraic: Mayo’s penitential and
sculptured highway’, JGAHS, 51 (1999), pp 167–81; and below, p. 299. 75 Saint Patrick’s
knights known as the templars.76 Just as he had once fought with an iron sword,
Owein ‘now armed with faith, hope and justice’, hurled himself into battle with
demons in ‘a novel and unusual act of chivalry’ and, true to type, after doing his
stint in st Patrick’s Purgatory, did another as a crusader, so that he saw ‘the
sepulchre of the lord’s body in Jerusalem’.77 Marie de France, famous for her
exquisite French renditions of Breton lais and of alfred the Great’s english
version of aesop’s fables, made the story more of a religious adventure for a lay
audience in her Espurgatoire Seint Patriz, c.1190, and scrupulously avoided the
bias of the original by transferring the ignorant Irishman to the time of st
Patrick, while also acknowledging the Irish penitential tradition.78
even before the anglo-Normans arrived in Ireland, Western Christendom
had tapped into another product of this tradition, st Brendan’s Navigatio,
something on which churches he had founded in Connacht could capitalize,
especially Clonfert, near the shannon, where he was buried, and his sister’s
church at annaghdown, east of lough Corrib, where he is said to have died.79
Benedeit’s French translation of the Navigatio that Henry I’s first wife Matilda
commissioned in 1101–6 (or, less probably, his second wife adeliza, shortly after
1121) represents the first use of Celtic material in French literature80 – the
arthurian material becoming available only in the mid-twelfth century81 – and
the first of several vernacular translations of the work. st Brendan’s story, as
retold by Benedeit, resonated with many in Western Christendom because it
combined the quest for salvation with the thrill of the potentially perilous
journey, something that this religiously motivated, expanding society could easily
identify with.82 Indeed, death itself became another frontier, the afterlife another
land to explore, Dante producing the final imaginative masterpiece in his native
tuscan in the early fourteenth century.
It may have been early twelfth-century anglo-Norman enthusiasm for st
Brendan that prompted the abbot of lagny east of Paris to commission, c.1100–
6, a new Life of the seventh-century Irish st Fursa, who had founded the church
of Killursa east of lough Corrib near annaghdown before becoming ‘a pilgrim
for the love of our lord’83 and establishing monasteries in east anglia and Gaul,
one of which was lagny. the new Life, which Uí Dubthaig in Connacht
purgatory, pp 46–7. 76 Bernard of Clairvaux, In praise of the new knighthood, trans. M.C.
Greenia and intr. M. Barber (Collegeville, MN, 2008). 77 Saint Patrick’s purgatory, pp 52–
3, 72. 78 Saint Patrick’s purgatory: a poem by Marie de France, trans. M.J. Curly (tempe, aZ,
1993, 1997), pp 1–11, 19–33, 56–9. Marie’s was the first in a long series of vernacular
translations: ibid., p. 2. 79 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, pp 64,
312; The voyage of St Brendan: representative versions of the legend in English translation with
indexes of themes and motifs from the stories, ed. W.r.J. Barron and G.s. Burgess (exeter, 2005),
pp 1–3. 80 G.s. Burgess, ‘the anglo-Norman Version’ in The voyage of St Brendan, pp 66–
7, 69–70. 81 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The history of the kings of Britain, trans. l. thorpe
(london, 1966), p. 29. 82 It ‘can be read as an account of a spiritual quest … or as an
adventure story’: Burgess, ‘the anglo-Norman version’ in The voyage of St Brendan, p. 70.
83 Bede, Ecclesiastical history, p. 172.
apparently helped to write, created family links between st Brendan, st Fursa

and themselves, thereby both enhancing st Fursa’s reputation abroad – Bede
had already described one of his visions of the afterlife84 – and establishing Uí
Dubthaig claims to Clonfert, annaghdown and Killursa, churches at some
distance from their home base in the Ua Conchobair heartland just west of the
shannon.85 since a Bishop Ua Dubthaig was one of the guarantors of the
pilgrims’ church in Mayo in north-west Connacht, the family clearly had wide-
ranging ecclesiastical interests in early twelfth-century Connacht.
that said, the Connacht clergy seem as conspicuous by their absence at the
1111 synod of ráith Bressail as they had been at the 1101 synod of Cashel
before toirdelbach became king. the synod of ráith Bressail set up five
Connacht dioceses, but added that, ‘If the Connaught clergy agree to this
division, we desire it, and if they do not, let them divide it as they choose, and
we approve of the division that will please them, provided there be only five
bishops in Connaught’.86 the fact that Muirchertach Ua Briain had convened
the synod was probably enough to keep most of the Connacht clergy away. adept
at exploiting the rivalry between the Uí Conchobair (of the Uí Briúin aí in east
Connacht), the Uí Flaithbertaig (of the Uí Briúin seola in west Connacht) and
the Uí ruairc (of the Uí Briúin Bréifne, to the north-east of Connacht), he had
come close to dismembering Connacht after toirdelbach’s father had been
blinded in 1092.87 He does seem to have given toirdelbach a chance to rebuild in
1106, but it was only when he became ill in 1114 that toirdelbach was able to take
control of the whole province.88
the dioceses established in 1111 reflect Connacht’s political disunity at the
time: Clonfert covered the Ua Briain-dominated south noted above, while
ardcarn or ardagh, which extended across the shannon from Connacht into
Bréifne, reflects the control that the Conmaicne continued to have west of the
shannon after Domnall Ua ruairc died in 1102.89 In fact, the Conmaicne appear
to have held the key area of Mag aí (to the south of ardcarn) until 1114 when
84 Ibid., pp 173–5. 85 Pádraig Ó riain, ‘sanctity and politics in Connacht, c.1100: the case
of st Fursa’, CMCS, 17 (1989), 1–14. 86 Keating, Forus feasa, p. 306. 87 after
Flaithbertach Ua Flaithbertaig had blinded ruaidrí in 1092 (AT), Ua Briain had assumed the
‘high-kingship of Connacht’ himself and imposed Gilla na Náem Ua heidin of Uí Fiachrach
aidne in south Connacht as king of the síl Muiredaig (AI). Ua Briain expelled the síl
Muiredaig from the province when they rebelled in 1193 (AT) and again in 1095 (AI) after
they had made a comeback under ruaidrí’s son tadc and had defeated the Uí Flaithbertaig
(AT, s.a. 1094). later, in 1095, Ua Briain made Domnall Ua ruairc ‘high-king of Connacht’,
but detached the subkingdoms of luigne, Uí Fiachrach aidne and Uí Maine from his rule
(AI). after his death in 1102, toirdelbach’s brother Domnall ruled síl Muiredaig and
Connacht until deposed by Ua Briain and the Connachta in 1106 (AT, s.aa. 1102, 1103, 1106;
CS, 1118). 88 CS says he took the kingship of Connacht in 1114, expelled his brother
Domnall into Munster (see preceding note) and the Conmaicne from Mag aí. AT also note
the two expulsions and say the síl Muiredaig invaded aidne to consume its grass and corn.
AFM say he became king of the síl Muiredaig in 1106. 89 see above, p. 284; AT; AFM.
toirdelbach finally expelled them from it.90 the synod’s indecision as to whether
to call the see ‘ardcarn’ in Connacht or ‘ardagh’ in Bréifne indicates it had up-
to-date information about this power struggle: in 1110, toirdelbach had defeated
the Conmaicne in Mag aí near rathcroghan (Cruachain) itself, but they then
defeated him later that year at Magh Bréngair (unidentified).91 If Mag aí was still
in Conmaicne hands in 1106, we have a possible explanation for why toirdelbach
was not inaugurated at Carnfree, the traditional Uí Chonchobair inauguration
site, since it was also in Mag aí. Áth an termainn (‘Ford of the sanctuary’),
where he was inaugurated instead, is mentioned in the 1111 synod as marking
the boundary between the eastern see of tuam (‘from ath an tearmainn to the
sionainn’) and the western see of Cong (‘from ath an tearmainn westward to the
sea’),92 implying it was somewhere in-between, possibly at shrule on the Black
river, which later formed part of the boundary between the dioceses of
annaghdown and tuam and is the boundary between Cos Mayo and Galway
today.93 Whatever its precise location, Áth an termainn marked where east and
west Connacht met and thus was vitally important to toirdelbach, who seems to
have started off simply as king of the síl Muiredaig.94 If his actual power was
confined to east Connacht in 1106, his inauguration at Áth an termainn
proclaimed that he was laying claim to west Connacht too, and indeed in the
Mayo text, which seems to date from early in his reign, his title is ‘king of
Connacht’.95
Connacht’s rejection of the synod of ráith Bressail is evident in the way
bishops did not use the names of the dioceses it created unless they were already
well-established before 1111, as was the case in Clonfert: there were bishops of
Clonfert before and after 1111.96 Killala shows some evidence of making a
transition: bishops called Ua Máel Fogair are mentioned in the annals without
dioceses in 1086 and 1137,97 but the one who died in 1151 is called bishop of Uí
amalgado and Uí Fiachrach Muaide,98 in effect, bishop of Killala as defined in
1111. there is no evidence of any bishop of Cong or ardcarn before or after
1111, and tuam, although its sixth-century founder had been both a bishop and
and abbot, has only one coarb (d. 1032) on record who was also a bishop prior to
1111, and likewise did not produce a bishop after ráith Bressail.99
90 CS; AT. 91 AT; CS; AU; AFM; ALC. 92 Keating, Forus feasa, p. 306. 93 assuming
the fords of 1106 and 1111 are one and the same, this would rule out or render doubtful
termonbarry on the shannon or Áth Carpait on the Boyle as locations for toirdelbach’s
inauguration: elizabeth Fitzpatrick, ‘the inauguration of tairdelbach Ó Conchobair at Áth
an termoinn’, Peritia, 12 (1998), 351–8. termonkeelin near Castlerea is also problematic: M.J.
Connellan, ‘the see of tuaim in rath Bresail synod’, JGAHS, 24 (1950), 19–26 at 22–4.
94 see above, n. 88. the east–west rivalry had flared up again in 1097 when Flaithbertach Ua
Flaithbertaig, who had blinded toirdelbach’s father ruaidrí in 1092, made himself king of the
síl Muiredaig on tadc son of ruaidrí’s death, but was killed in 1098 in revenge for ruaidrí’s
blinding: AT, s.aa. 1092, 1097, 1098. 95 see above, p. 283. 96 922 (AI); 951 and 961
(AFM); 1031 and 1040 (AI); 1117 (AU); 1149 (CS). 97 AU, s.a. 1086, where he is called
‘chief bishop of Connacht’; AFM, s.a. 1137. 98 AFM. 99 AI, where he is called ‘coarb of
Of course, tuam would become an archiepiscopal see at the synod of Kells

in 1152, the province created then still recognizable in today’s roman Catholic
province of tuam. the synod of Kells changed the 1111 plan. Mayo and
achonry now flanked a reduced Killala in the north, while Kilmacduagh took its
place west of a reduced Clonfert in the south. tuam’s own diocese now covered
much of western and central Connacht: it gained 1111’s diocese of Cong to the
west but lost land to the east to the new diocese of roscommon, which became
the diocese of elphin in the 1170s. Cathedrals built in Connacht in the later part
of the twelfth century show romanesque building techniques reaching new
heights there: tuam’s cathedral has the broadest and grandest romanesque
chancel arch in Ireland and an impressive set of three arched east windows, while
Clonfert’s west doorway is regarded as the zenith of Irish romanesque
sculpture, a fitting entrance into the reliquary of the fabled st Brendan.1 the
fifteen heads, arranged 1-2-3-4-5 from top to bottom in the triangular gable, may
represent st Brendan leading his original fourteen companions to the promised
land of the saints.2 a papal legate suppressed the diocese of Mayo in 1202,
uniting it with tuam, which in the meantime had lost territory to the diocese of
annaghdown that had come into being by 1189 with the approval of the english
crown although the anglo-Normans did not conquer Connacht until 1235–7.3
Its first bishop, Conn Ua Mellaig, who had no doubt played the st Brendan card
for all it was worth, attended richard I’s spectacular coronation in Westminster
on 3 september 1189,4 and must have also witnessed the anti-semitic riots that
erupted in london that night after Jews, recently tallaged at one-fourth of their
assets for the upcoming third Crusade and no doubt pivotal in funding the
coronation itself, tried to enter the banquet, though not invited to it.5 the
crown’s favoritism toward annaghdown was probably motivated by its interest in
Iarlaithe [Jarlath] and a learned bishop’: Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses:
Ireland, p. 98. the general assumption has been that ‘bishops of Connacht’ prior to 1152 were
bishops of tuam, but this seems unwarranted because this is not what they were called.
AFM’s entry for 1085 reporting the death of Áed Ua hOissíne, successor of Iarlaith and
archbishop of tuam, is clearly misplaced. He became archbishop of tuam at the synod of
Kells and died in 1161. For an alternative view, see Colmán etchingham, ‘episcopal hierarchy
in Connacht and tairdelbach Ua Conchobair’, JGAHS, 52 (2000), 13–29 at 19–20. 1 leask,
Irish churches, i, pp 137–42, 153–4; roger stalley, Ireland and Europe in the Middle Ages:
selected essays on architecture and sculpture (london, 1994), pp 129–30, 159–60; Jacqueline
O’Brien and Peter Harbison, Ancient Ireland: from prehistory to the Middle Ages (New York,
1996), pp 129–31; O’Keeffe, Romanesque Ireland, pp 268–78. 2 The voyage of Saint Brendan:
journey to the promised land, the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, trans. J.J. O’Meara
(Mountrath, 1976), p. 7. 3 Gwynn, The Irish church, pp 230, 243–7; Gwynn and Hadcock,
Medieval religious houses: Ireland, pp 60, 64, 75–7, 85–6, 87, 93–4, 95, 98–100; NHI, ix, pp
318–32. It has been suggested that the diocese of annaghdown was created at the synod of
Clonfert in 1179: ibid., p. 324 n. 5. 4 Gesta Regis Henrici secundi Benedicti: the chronicle of the
reigns of Henry II and Richard I, AD1169–1192, ii, ed. W. stubbs (london, 1867), pp 78–83.
5 Ibid., pp 83–4; robert Chazan, The Jews of medieval Western Christendom, 1000–1500
(Cambridge, 2006), pp 158–60.
Galway as a potential royal port, an idea that surfaces c.1200,6 but which was later
abandoned. With the anglo-Norman conquest of Connacht, Galway became a
de Burgh town and by 1252 the crown was supporting annaghdown’s
reunification with tuam.7
toirdelbach’s horizons widened as he matured between the synods of ráith
Bressail (1111) and Kells (1152). like other kings from Brian Bóruma (978–
1014) onwards who had striven to become kings of Ireland by tapping into the
new resources, including a growing population, that became available as Viking
raids morphed into Hiberno-Norse urban development, he deployed fleets, built
forts and waged lengthy campaigns with increasingly large armies.8 However, the
terminology used in the annals for some of his fortifications shows that he was
influenced by european as well as by Irish developments. Indeed, a poem written
for him, probably in the first half of his reign, reveals William the Conqueror’s
influence on him. It says that gaisgeadh, after leaving France, visited london
and, after staying with the saxons for a while in ‘that fair land’, moved to Ireland
to be with toirdelbach, the first Ua Conchobair to be so named.9 McKenna
translated gaisgeadh as ‘gallantry’, but ‘heroism’ or ‘valour’ conveys the meaning
better.10 William had, of course, left his imprint on london with his still-
impressive White tower.11 It is well known that the european term ‘castle’
(castellum in latin, chastel in French, Gaelicized as caistél and caislén) debuted in
the Irish annals to describe the fortresses that toirdelbach built in Connacht at
Galway, Collooney and Dunlo in 1124, at athlone in 1129, and at loch Carrigán
by 1136.12 the loanword was undoubtedly used to signify their resemblance to
castles abroad, presumably the numerous motte-and-bailey castles of england
and France that still outnumbered stone keeps in the early twelfth century:13 it
was used later for anglo-Norman castles in Ireland.
toirdelbach, who is called ‘king of Ireland’ in the annals from the time of
Muirchertach Ua Briain’s death in 1119,14 must have been the king of Ireland
who in 1121 notified Henry I that Gregorius had been chosen as bishop of
6 sometime before May 1201, John, who had been lord of Ireland under richard and was now
king, tried to exclude William de Burgh, to whom he had granted Connacht c.1195, from
‘Dungalve’ by granting it to richard tyrel: CDI, 1171–1251, no. 153; RChart., 1199–1216, p.
103. 7 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p. 61. 8 M.t. Flanagan,
‘Irish and anglo-Norman warfare in twelfth-century Ireland’ in thomas Bartlett and Keith
Jeffrey (eds), A military history of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp 52–75. 9 Aithdioghluim
Dána, ed. lambert McKenna (Dublin, 1939–40), i and ii, no. 2. 10 I am very grateful to
Máire Cruise O’Brien for helping me with this poem during her stay in North Carolina,
1993–5. 11 sidney toy, Castles: their construction and history (New York, 1985), pp 66, 70–1.
12 Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘aspects of early Irish history’ in B.G. scott (ed.), Perspectives in
Irish archaeology (Belfast, 1974), pp 69–71. see also the map in Donncha Ó Corráin, Ireland
before the Normans (Dublin, 1972), p. 156. 13 It was only in the 1120s that Henry I
reconstructed in stone many of his timber castles in Normandy: r.l.C. Jones, ‘Fortifications
and sieges in Western europe, c.800–1450’ in Maurice Keen (ed.), Medieval warfare: a history
(Oxford, 1999), p. 172. 14 AT; AFM.
Dublin and sent to the archbishop of Canterbury for consecration, his colleague-
like approach to Henry evident in Henry’s own writ to the archbishop informing
him that ‘[m]andavit mihi rex Hiberniae per breve suum, et burgenses Dublinae, quod
elegerunt hunc Gregorium in episcopum, et eum tibi mittunt consecrandum’.15
toirdelbach’s objective here was to deny armagh’s encroachment on Dublin,
whose bishops had been consecrated in Canterbury in the past.16 the problem
was not that Cellach, archbishop of armagh, had made two visitations of
Connacht, obtaining ‘his full tribute’ in 1108 and 1116,17 but that his peace-
keeping measures were obstructing toirdelbach’s political agenda. In 1120, the
latter burst through those restrictions: in violation of the guarantees he had given
Cellach earlier, he made what the annals of Inisfallen call a ‘shameful foray’
against the men of Mide.18
By 1123, toirdelbach was sufficiently in touch with developments in Western
Christendom to request to be allowed to keep a fragment of the true Cross when
it arrived in Ireland that year. He had the relic enshrined in a magnificent
processional cross, the tiny but precious fragment, now lost, being magnified
under a piece of polished rock crystal in the centre. It is known as the Cross of
Cong because that is where it would soon find a home, but the annals tell us it
was made in roscommon,19 and the inscription on the Cross itself supports
this.20 there has been relatively little attempt to explain the arrival of this major
relic in Ireland, but ryan was undoubtedly right to place it after the First
lateran Council,21 which began on 18 March 1123 and ended on 27 March, or
6 april at the latest.22 Flanagan’s suggestion that it was brought to Ireland ‘as a
fund-raising strategy for the recovery of the Holy land’ is unsustainable,23 but
Pope Calixtus II did try to recruit manpower for the ongoing crusade effort in
both the Holy land and spain. In the 1123 lateran Council, he repeated Urban
II’s 1095 grants of both the remission of sins for ‘those who set out for Jerusalem
and offer effective help towards the defense of the Christian people’, and the
protection of st Peter and the roman church for their families and property. He
also decreed that those ‘who have put crosses on their clothes, with a view to
15 C.r. elrington, The whole works of the most rev. James Ussher DD (Dublin, 1864), iv, p. 534.
16 etchingham, ‘episcopal hierarchy in Connacht’, pp 25–6; M.t. Flanagan, Irish society,
Anglo-Norman settlers, Angevin kingship: interactions in Ireland in the late twelfth century
(Oxford, 1989), pp 29–31. 17 AU; ALC. 18 AI. see also: AT; CS; AFM. 19 AT; CS.
20 Michelli, ‘the inscriptions on pre-Norman Irish reliquaries’, p. 26. the inscription also
could mean that Clonmacnoise was involved. 21 John ryan, Toirdelbach O Conchubair
(1088–1156): king of Connacht, king of Ireland co fresabra (Dublin, 1966), p. 21. 22 Decrees
of the ecumenical councils, i, Nicaea I to Lateran V, ed. N.P. tanner (Georgetown, 1990), p. 187.
23 Flanagan, Irish royal charters, p. 310 n. 10. the recovery of the Holy land had already been
achieved and crusading fundraising had not yet been conceived of. Flanagan’s more recent
suggestion in Transformation of the Irish church, p. 224, that the true Cross relic ‘had been
brought to Ireland to raise funds for crusading activity, possibly under the auspices of the
patriarch of Constantinople, or the Byzantine emperor, who is known to have given a relic of
the true Cross to Queen Matilda (ob. 1118), wife of Henry I’ has also little to recommend it.
journeying to Jerusalem or to spain, and have taken them off ’ are ‘to wear the
crosses again and to complete the journey between this easter and the following
easter’.24 the sense of urgency is palpable, and pieces of the true Cross may
have gone on circuit to assist with recruitment, especially if clerics attending the
council indicated that this would yield results in their country. toirdelbach had
too much on his plate to become a crusader, but the latin refrain that is repeated
at the beginning and end of the Cross of Cong’s inscription suggests that he
shared the religious emotion that drew westerners to the Holy land as crusaders:
‘With this cross, the Cross is covered, by which suffered the creator of the
world’.25 aiding the suffering saviour was at the heart of crusading ideology.
the Gaelic inscriptions on the Cross of Cong provide valuable evidence about
the clergy closest to toirdelbach at the time, as well as their rank and titles.
Muiredach Ua Dubthaig, ‘the senior of Ireland’, heads the list of those asking
for the viewer’s prayers, preceding even toirdelbach ‘king of Ireland, for whom
was made this object’. after toirdelbach comes Domnall son of Flannacán Ua
Dubthaig, ‘bishop of Connacht, coarb of Commán and Ciarán, in whose house
was made this object’, and then the actual craftsman.26 Domnall (d. 1136) is
usually portrayed as having a higher authority than Muiredach (d. 1150), who is
seen as succeeding him as archbishop of Connacht.27 However, the Cross of
Cong makes it clear that Muiredach had the higher rank, and so he, not
Domnall, presumably carried it in processions.28 the Cross of Cong says very
little about toirdelbach’s wish to have metropolitan status for Connacht and a
lot about his ambition to be king of Ireland. It describes him as such and places
him under the spiritual guidance of Muiredach, Ireland’s elder, who held a
position analogous to Ua Dúnáin’s under Muirchertach Ua Briain earlier on.29
Domnall Ua Dubthaig was, of course, important as bishop of Connacht and
abbot of roscommon and Clonmacnoise. the son of Flannacán ruad Ua
Dubthaig former abbot of roscommon and lector of tuam (d. 1097),30 Domnall
personifies how the system of hereditary succession so reviled by church reform
could produce able, reform-minded, church leaders, Malachy himself being the
son of a lector.31 the fact that Domnall proudly oversaw the manufacture of the
the Byzantines were deeply mistrustful of crusaders. 24 Decrees of the ecumenical councils,
pp 191–2. 25 Hac cruce crux tegitur qua pasus conditor orbis: Michelli, ‘the inscriptions on
pre-Norman Irish reliquaries’, p. 26. 26 Ibid. 27 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious
houses: Ireland, pp 98–9; etchingham, ‘episcopal hierarchy in Connacht’, p. 23; Ó riain,
‘sanctity and politics in Connacht’, p. 10. 28 Ó riain’s suggestion that the reference to
Muiredach as senóir indicates a later addition seems unwarranted: ibid., as is the similar one
made by Dagmar Ó riain-raedel, ‘Irish kings and bishops in the memoria of the German
Schottenklöster’ in Proinsias Ní Chatháin and Michael richter (eds), Irland und Europa: die
kirche im frühmittelalter (struttgart, 1984), p. 395 n. 43. see the photographs of the Cross in
Michelli, ‘the inscriptions on pre-Norman Irish reliquaries’, pp 44–7. the inscription was
made after Domnall became abbot of Clonmacnoise, presumably in 1127 when Gilla Críst Ua
Máel eoin died. 29 Ó Corráin, ‘Mael Muire Ua Dúnáin’, pp 47–53. Muiredach was 48 years
old in 1123: AFM, s.a. 1150. 30 AU; AFM. 31 Katharine simms, ‘the brehons of later
Cross of Cong suggests as much, while his death after celebrating mass at
Clonfert in 1136 shows that he did function as archbishop of Connacht, as he is
called in some annals.32 However, the claim in the annals of Boyle (repeated in
the annals of loch Cé under 1137) that he was bishop of elphin may simply
mean that their compiler, working c.1220,33 used a more meaningful contem-
porary term to describe his position as coarb of roscommon and bishop of
Connacht.
Muiredach Ua Dubthaig did indeed succeed Domnall as bishop of Connacht,
but he retained his special position as spiritual adviser to toirdelbach as king of
Ireland: he is described as ‘archbishop of Connacht and Ireland’ in 1150 when
he died at Cong at the age of seventy-five,34 presumably with the Cross of Cong
still in his possession. It is likely that he had attended the lateran Council in
1123 – rome had an Irish monastic community by 109535 – and that he had
returned to Ireland with both the relic and eyewitness accounts of the castles of
europe, including the tower of london. It is hardly a coincidence that
toirdelbach built his first castles in 1124. It is significant that both Muiredach
and toirdelbach’s son ruaidrí are the only Connachtmen commemorated in the
necrology of the largely Munster-supported Irish monasteries in Germany.36
this does not make them visitors there, but it does make them benefactors.
Muiredach’s generosity as a bestower of jewels and food is noted in the Irish
annals along with his chastity and wisdom,37 and while we simply do not know
whether he visited regensburg, he probably did influence ruaidrí’s donation. He
had stood up for ruaidrí against his father, becoming one of the guarantors of
his safety and demanding his release when toirdelbach imprisoned him in 1143.
this was the second such incident, but in contrast to the first one in 1136, when
ruaidrí seems to have been released without difficulty,38 his second imprison-
ment led to a full-blown conflict between church and state, as dramatic as
Canossa but in reverse, with Muiredach and the clergy of Connacht fasting at
rathbrennan in what turned out to be a failed attempt to put psychological
pressure on toirdelbach. this triggered an even greater church effort: a huge
assembly of the clerics of Connacht and Ireland – a reported five hundred priests
and twelve bishops – demanded ruaidrí’s release and prevailed eventually, in
1144.39 later, when ruaidrí’s own son Conchobar Máenmaige ousted him from
the kingship in 1183, he followed Muiredach’s example and retired to Cong, and
although he spent some years thereafter trying to make a political comeback, he
is credited with rebuilding Cong and he did eventually return there, dying
medieval Ireland’ in D. Hogan and W.N. Osborough (eds), Brehons, serjeants and attorneys:
studies in the history of the Irish legal profession (Dublin, 1990), p. 56. 32 AClon.; AFM.
33 D.P. Mc Carthy, The Irish annals, their genesis, evolution and history (Dublin, 2008), pp 219–
20. 34 AT; CS; AFM; AB. 35 Kathleen Hughes, Early Christian Ireland: introduction to
the sources (Cambridge, 1972), pp 277–8. 36 Ó riain-raedel, ‘Irish kings and bishops’, pp
395, 403. 37 AFM. 38 AT. His brother Áed and also Uada Ua Conchenainn were,
however, blinded: AT, s.aa. 1136, 1138; AFM, s.aa. 1136, 1137. 39 1143–4: CS; AFM; AT,
among the canons in 1198.40 there is other evidence that Muiredach was
revered. Flannacán Ua Dubthaig, ‘bishop of the tuatha’ and ‘chief doctor of the
Irish in literature, history and poetry and in every kind of science known to man
in his time’, would die in Cong in 1168 in Muiredach’s former bed,41 and in 1201
Cadla Ua Dubthaig, archbishop of tuam, would also die at Cong.42
Muiredach played an increasingly prominent role as peacemaker in Ireland
after Cellach, archbishop of armagh, died in 1129. Malachy was elected and
consecrated as Cellach’s successor in 1132 but was not installed until 1134.43
Cellach had made a year and a half ’s peace between Connacht and Munster in
1128,44 but resentment towards toirdelbach was building in much of Ireland, and
Connacht was subjected to multiple attacks from 1130 on. In 1132 and 1133,
even toirdelbach’s castles of Galway and athlone as well as his forts at Dunmore
and Doon were burned down and demolished.45 In 1134, when Cormac Mac
Carthaig assembled forces from Munster, leinster, Bréifne, Mide, Dublin,
Waterford, Wexford and Cork to invade Connacht, Muiredach ‘came from
toirdelbach’ seeking peace with Munster, and both Cormac Mac Carthaig and
Conchobar Ua Briain obliged at aball Ceithernaig near Uisnech.46
accompanying Muiredach on his peace mission, and another guarantor of
ruaidrí’s safety,47 was Áed Ua hOissíne, abbot of tuam from before 1128.48
although not named, it was undoubtedly he who was the successor in 1227 of st
Jarlath (Iarlaith) – the new abbot – who made a circuit of the commons of tuam
with toirdelbach when toirdelbach granted land ‘from Áth mBó to Caill
Clumain … to every good cleric of the síl Muiredhaig who should dwell in
tuam’.49 tuam lay to the west of the Ua Conchobair heartland, but its central
location made it the ideal spot for Connacht’s ecclesiastical capital. Áed would
become the first archbishop of tuam in 1152, but he had made himself a
candidate well before that, most visibly in two high crosses he commissioned that
are now in the Church of Ireland cathedral. the Market Cross has a wonderful
romanesque Christ on the Cross, very different from earlier high-cross
crucifixions. His strikingly straight arms convey his willing self-sacrifice, but his
head tilts slightly to his right under the weight of his stoical suffering. His head,
s.aa. 1139–40: AClon. 40 1183: ALC; 1198: AFM. He came out of retirement in 1185 (ALC)
and was still at large in 1191 (AFM). He would be buried like his father in Clonmacnoise next
to st Ciarán’s altar. 41 AU. the tuatha may represent the emerging see of elphin. Máel Ísu
Ua Connachtáin, bishop of east Connacht, had attended the synod of Kells in 1152, when
the diocese of roscommon was set up, and died bishop of the síl Muiredaig in 1174. In 1170,
the coarb of roscommon had the relics of st Commán enclosed in a shrine covered with gold
and silver (AFM; AT), but an unnamed bishop of elphin, possibly Máel Ísu, did fealty to
Henry II in 1172: Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, pp 76, 95. 42 AI.
43 NHI, ix, p. 68. 44 AU; ALC; AFM. 45 AT; CS; ALC; AFM; AMisc.; AClon.
46 AMisc.; AT. For Ua Briain’s peace, see AFM, s.a. 1133 and AClon., s.a. 1135. 47 AT, s.a.
1136. 48 Muirghius Ua Nioc, described as superior of tuam ‘for a time’, died on Inis an
Ghoill in lough Corrib in 1128 (AU; AFM), clearly while in retirement. 49 AT. It is
tempting to identify Áth an termainn with Áth mBó, described as being in West Connacht
when toirdelbach was wounded there ‘by his own people’ in 1115 (AMisc.), but that appears
which is elongated by its royal crown and full but groomed moustache and
beard, depicts his divine rule over all, but the soft curves of his chest and ribcage,
which are emphasized by the rigid lines of his triangular loincloth, brilliantly
convey his humanity. It is, in short, another romanesque jewel, as well as a
remarkable visual rendition of the idea expressed in latin on the Cross of Cong
of the suffering Creator. the large central figure on other side of the cross was
presumably tuam’s sixth-century founder st Jarlath, who was both a bishop and
an abbot. the base, which apparently belonged to a different cross, has two
intriguing sets of figures and partially legible inscriptions in Irish asking for
prayers for toirdelbach and Áed Ua hOissíne. all that remains of the other cross
is the shaft with its inscriptions asking for prayers for toirdelbach, Áed and the
sculptor.50
Muiredach and Áed’s lofty leadership and idealism did not get the respect
they deserved when they attended the consecration of Cormac’s Chapel at
Cashel in 1134. at least this is what the annals imply when they record that ‘the
clerics of Connacht went away in displeasure’ and that ‘the malediction of the
clerics of Ireland and Connacht’ caused two battles in Munster. In probably
related incidents in 113451 and 113552 when Munstermen desecrated st Jarlath’s
relics, namely his cathach and throne, they soon learned to respect his miraculous
powers: he was, after all, the disciple of st enda and the mentor–friend–disciple
of st Brendan himself.53 Cormac Mac Carthaig would make amends, probably in
1137, for any disrespect shown to the Connacht clergy at Cashel by building the
church of st John the apostle and evangelist in Cork for ‘Mauritius, archbishop,
and Gregorius and their successors, pilgrims from Connacht, compatriots of st
Bairre’.54 Mauritius was undoubtedly Muiredach, and Gregorius, Gilla Áeda Ua
Maigín55 originally from the monastery of errew in lough Conn to the north-
east of Clew Bay.56 Gilla Áeda was such a devoted disciple of Áed Ua hOissíne
that he took the name ‘the servant of Áed’ in Irish,57 while his latin name
suggests his admiration for the zealous reform pope Gregory VII (1073–85). Not
only do the annals say he was ‘a man full of the grace of God’ and a ‘tower of
virginity and wisdom’,58 but st Bernard also sang his praises in his life of st
Malachy, saying he was ‘holy and learned’ as well as ideal as an unworldly
outsider when describing how Malachy, then papal legate, appointed him as
bishop of Cork,59 a position he held from c.1148 until his death in 1172. He was
probably abbot of st John’s, Cork, at the time: it would later be named Gill
in the grant as close to tuam. 50 Peter Harbison, The high crosses of Ireland: an
iconographical and photographic survey (Bonn, 1992), ii, pp 365–6; and iii for photos; Irish high
crosses: with the figure sculptures explained (Drogheda, 1994), pp 105–6. stalley has drawn
attention to the similarity with the Glendalough cross in Ireland and Europe, pl. 11 and pp
158–60. 51 AT; CS. 52 AT; CS. 53 The voyage of St Brendan, p. 5. 54 Flanagan, Irish
royal charters, p. 335. For the date, see ibid., p. 188. 55 Ibid., pp 336–7 nn 3–4. 56 AFM,
s.a. 1172. 57 AMisc., s.a. 1159. 58 AFM, s.a. 1172. 59 Life of St Malachy, pp 92–4.
abbey after him.60 His sanctity would be remembered by the thirteenth-century

religious poet Donnchad Mór Ua Dálaigh, who invoked him as a saint alongside
Malachy.61
Malachy had the opportunity to become involved in Connacht first as
archbishop of armagh (1134–6) and then as papal legate (1140–8). st Bernard
was undoubtedly referring to toirdelbach when he described how Malachy,
acting as a peacemaker, gathered a great crowd of his disciples before ‘the king’,
who had captured and bound ‘one of the nobles’. When the king refused to
release the noble, he and his clerics spent a day and night fasting and in prayer,
which caused the king to lose his sight until he was humbled.62 It is likely that
Bernard had been told of blindings in the Ua Conchobair family and that he
conflates three occasions mentioned in the annals when clerics successfully
prevailed upon toirdelbach to release prisoners: in 1143–4, when he imprisoned
ruaidrí; in 1143, when he confined Murchad Ua Máel sechnaill, king of Mide,
in Dunmore;63 and in 1147, when he held tadc Ua Briain in fetters.64 Unlike
Muiredach, who is mentioned in each episode along with others, Malachy’s
name is mentioned only in connection with the third incident, but since he is
described there as the successor of Patrick, it is possible he was the ‘successor of
Patrick’ also involved in ruaidrí’s release.
the links if any between the Irish church’s peacemaking tradition dating back
to adomnán (d. 704), the abbot of Iona famous for his life of st Colum Cille
(Columba) and for his detailed description of the Holy land,65 and the peace
movement that sprang up in the Western church in the late tenth century is a
subject that could be further explored.66 However, it is clear that, while
Muiredach, Áed and Malachy used sureties and fasting instead of the Peace and
truce of God to get results, they had the same goal of creating a more peaceful
society. they were on a mission and were not afraid to stand up to toirdelbach
Mór himself. He, for his part, although infamous for his relentless campaigns on
land, river and sea, allowed them to influence his actions. He also continued to
recognize the archbishop of armagh’s jurisdiction over Connacht: he even
bestowed a twenty-ounce gold ring on Malachy’s successor during the second of
his visitations in 1151.67 Muiredach’s title ‘archbishop of Ireland’ meant simply
60 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p. 167. 61 Katharine simms,
‘Frontiers in the Irish church: regional and cultural’ in t.B. Barry, robin Frame and
Katharine simms (eds), Colony and frontier in medieval Ireland: essays presented to J.F. Lydon
(london, 1995), p. 186 n. 31. 62 Life of St Malachy, pp 106–8, 154. 63 CS; AFM; AClon.,
s.a. 1139; AT. toirdelbach’s imprisonment of Murchad was in violation of the protection of
major relics and guarantees, his objective being to install his own son Conchobhar as king of
Mide. Under pressure from the clergy and other sureties, he set Murchad free after a month,
the latter being escorted to Munster. 64 AFM. 65 thomas O’loughlin (ed.), Adomnán at
Birr, AD697: essays in commemoration of the law of the innocents (Dublin, 2001); adomnán of
Iona, Life of St Columba, trans. richard sharpe (london, 1995); adomnán, De locis sanctis,
ed. Dennis Meehan and ludwig Bieler (Dublin, 1958). 66 a good foundation has been laid
in Flanagan, Transformation of the Irish church, pp 171–84. 67 AFM.
he was the king of Ireland’s primary spiritual advisor, and although he

predeceased his king, his influence is detectable in toirdelbach’s generous
bequest to the churches of Ireland, which he himself distributed, of gold, silver,
treasures, horses, cattle, fidchell boards and even hunting-weapons such as bows,
quivers and slings. the sixty marks of refined silver alone would have amounted
to 9,600 denarii (pennies).68
However, Muiredach did not monopolize toirdelbach: he worked in
conjunction with other clerics. Malachy’s influence is evident in the numerous
augustinian and arrouasian houses that toirdelbach established in Connacht,69
the earliest being the augustinian abbey he founded c.1134 at Cong,70 where
Muiredach would die in 1150.71 Cork’s Gill abbey was an offshoot c.1137, but
Cong became arrouasian c.1140 whereas Gill did not.72 ruaidrí (r. 1156–1183; d.
1198) also made endowments to Cong and is said to have rebuilt the abbey,73 but
construction continued into the early thirteenth century in the delightful
transitional style between romanesque and Gothic that reached new heights in
the school of the West. Particularly noteworthy is Cong’s Cistercian-inspired
plan with cloister and conventual buildings, and the Gothic pointed-arch
doorways with late romanesque sculpture.74 toirdelbach also established a
priory or hospital at tuam dedicated to st John the Baptist c.1140, but it soon
became arrouasian too,75 as did his priory at Cloontuskert on the shannon north
of lough ree,76 and probably, as we have seen, his abbey at Clonmacnoise. at
roscommon, Derrane and ardcarn, all in eastern Connacht, he established
arrouasian houses of both canons and canonesses, who seem in each case to have
shared the same church, and this was also true of the arrouasian houses at
annaghdown and Clonfert, which also date back to Malachy’s influence in the
1140s.77 the priory church of st Mary de Portu Patrum at annaghdown has
jambs and capitals that might date to the 1150s or 1160s.78
these foundations undoubtedly inspired others in the latter part of the
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In c.1223, the former Benedictine, then
arrouasian, convent that Cathal Crobderg founded c.1200 at Kilcreevanty
became the head house of all arrouasian convents in Connacht, which included,
68 AT, s.a. 1156. according to Ware, toirdelbach established a mint at Clonmacnoise, and
AClon. say money was coined there in 1170. For a discussion of money, see Flanagan, Irish
royal charters, pp 233–4. 69 toirdelbach has been called ‘perhaps the most assiduous
promoter of all of the augustinian canons’: Watt, The church in medieval Ireland, p. 46.
70 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p. 166. two of toirdelbach’s
donations are given in the 1501 Cong rental: M.J. Blake, ‘an old rental of Cong abbey’,
JRSAI, 73 (1905), 130–8 at 132–4. 71 AFM. 72 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious
houses: Ireland, pp 166–7; Flanagan, Irish royal charters, p. 188. 73 Blake, ‘an old rental of
Cong abbey’, 134; Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p. 166. 74 leask,
Irish churches, ii, pp 59–61; O’Brien and Harbison, Ancient Ireland, pp 172–3. 75 Gwynn and
Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p. 197. 76 Ibid., pp 165–6. 77 Ibid., pp 156–
7, 164–5, 168, 191–2, 312, 315–16, 323. 78 tessa Garton, ‘the corpus of romanesque
sculpture in Britain and Ireland’ (london, 2008), www.crsbi.ac.uk.
in addition to those named above, Cloonoghil, Drumalgagh and Killeentrava,

and even Clonmacnoise outside Connacht.79 after 1223, the annaghdown
canonesses seem to have relocated to Inishmaine, which has some impressive
school of the West windows,80 and a similar relocation occurred from
roscommon and Derrane to termonkeelin.81 these convents were small, but
their proliferation indicates considerable monastic vitality in Connacht, as does
the foundation of male augustinian and arrouasian houses by a variety of
patrons in the latter part of the twelfth to early thirteenth century: abbey-
gormacan, aughrim, aughris, Ballysadare, Clontuskert, elphin, Kilmacduagh
and Kilmore na sinna.82 But most impressive of all is Cathal Crobderg’s
augustinian foundation at Ballintober, begun in 1216 and ‘finished with great
labour’ in 1225.83 Important as the starting point of the pilgrimage road to
Ireland’s holy mountain, it exemplifies the outstanding work of the school of the
West, with its Cistercian-inspired cruciform church and cloister, rib-vaulting in
the chancel, transept chapels and well-defined arched crossing, all of which are
part of a functioning church today because of restoration work completed in
1966.84 the fact that it was not only dedicated to st Mary and the apostle John,
but also to st Patrick,85 is symbolic of how the church reform’s focus on the
apostolic church could combine with fidelity to Irish tradition. Both it and
aghagower, a Patrician foundation with a round tower and a Gothic church
along the same pilgrimage route, are evidence that Croagh Patrick continued to
thrive. they are both mentioned in the Acallam na Senórach, which was written
with Connacht patronage c.1200 and which weaves the pre-Christian heroic
Fianna into the story of Ireland’s conversion to Christianity and secures a place
for them within Ireland’s historical topography. Close to the climactic end, st
Patrick reports he has purged both places of demons and other evil forces, which
supports the idea that Croagh Patrick may have once been a place of pagan
pilgrimage associated with the Celtic god lug of the long arm.86
Because Boyle abbey, founded in 1161, has become synonymous with
‘Cistercian’ in Connacht, it is easy to overlook the fact that the first Cistercian
house was established there some thirteen years earlier, shortly before Malachy
died unexpectedly in Clairvaux on 2 November 1148. He had become smitten
79 sheehy, Pontificia Hibernica, i, no. 154; Calendar of papal registers, 5, pp 335–6. the ruins
of the convent at Kilcreevanty were visible in 1904: t.B. Costello, ‘some antiquities of the
tuam district’, JRSAI, 34 (1904), 254–6 at 254. 80 leask, Irish churches, ii, pp 66–8:
Kalkreuter, Boyle Abbey, p. 146. 81 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland,
pp 312, 315, 316, 318–19, 321, 323–4. 82 Ibid., pp 156, 158, 160, 165, 175, 183. 83 Ibid.,
pp 158–9; AC, s.a. 1225. 84 leask, Irish churches, ii, p. 63; O’Brien and Harbison, Ancient
Ireland, pp 171–2; t.a. egan, The story of Ballintubber Abbey (3rd ed., Naas, 1967, repr. 1971);
Kalkreuter, Boyle Abbey, 86–9. 85 AC, s.a. 1225. 86 the well (tobar) mentioned is
undoubtedly that of Ballintober: Tales of the elders of Ireland, trans. ann Dooley and Harry
roe (Oxford, 1999), p. 216; The dialogue of the ancients of Ireland: a new translation of Acallam
na Senórach, trans. Maurice Harmon (Dublin, 2009), p. 180; Máire MacNeill, The festival of
Lughnasa: a study of the Celtic festival of the beginning of harvest (Oxford, 1962), p. 83.
with the order in 1140 and oversaw the foundation of Mellifont in 1142. Monks
from there settled at Grellachdinach (unidentified, but possibly in the later
diocese of elphin) in august 1148, construction having begun in 1147, but this
was just the beginning of a Connacht odyssey under abbots Peter Ua Mórda,
Áed Ua Macáin and Muirgius Ua Dubthaig that would take them to
Drumconaid (diocese of elphin) c.1156 and Bunnina (diocese of Killala) c.1158–
9, before they finally settled at Boyle in 1161.87 Boyle took almost sixty years to
build – it was not consecrated until 1218–20 – but the commitment of time,
treasure and talent produced an abbey of incredible spiritual grandeur and
beauty, with ‘school of the West’ stamped all over its unapologetically con-
trasting pointed and rounded arches and its rich Hiberno-romanesque sculpture
that hints at the trouble that lay ahead with the Cistercian authorities abroad who
disapproved of such frivolous distractions.88 Boyle was the motherhouse of
Connacht’s other more sombre Cistercian house, Knockmoy, founded by Cathal
Crobderg c.1190, very probably in thanksgiving for surviving a violent storm on
lough ree that year.89 Its school of the West church is even larger than Boyle’s
and has some of the earliest rib-vaulting in Ireland. a fascinating feature is the
carved crowned head on one of the nave piers, which it is tempting to view as
Cathal Crobderg himself:90 its very French fleurs-de-lis that rise from the refined
metalwork of the crown and its branching curled locks that seem to embody Irish
bardic ideals appear to reflect the ease with which he could function in both
worlds.91 the fact that he was buried there,92 and not at Clonmacnoise, is
emblematic of the change that church reform had brought to Connacht.
that French and anglo-Norman influences are detectable in school of the
West stonework is not altogether surprising, given the origin and diffusion of the
reform orders. More remarkable is how the only Cluniac foundation in Ireland,
the priory of ss Peter and Paul at athlone, which tradition credits toirdelbach
with establishing c.1150,93 would ultimately provide the anglo-Normans with a
bridgehead in Connacht: it first appears in the record in 1210, when it gives the
justiciar land west of the shannon on which King John can build athlone
Castle.94 John (d. 1216) himself seems to have been the original founder of the
augustinian, later ‘Fratres Cruciferi’, hospital of st John the Baptist at
87 AB, s.a. 1161; Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, pp 128–9.
88 leask, Irish churches, ii, 32–5; 61–3; roger stalley, The Cistercian monasteries of Ireland: an
account of the history, art and architecture of the white monks in Ireland from 1142 to 1540
(london, 1987), pp 80–1, 87–92, 243; O’Brien and Harbison, Ancient Ireland, p. 170;
Kalkreuter, Boyle Abbey, pp 28–64; rachel Moss, ‘romanesque sculpture in north
roscommon’ in thomas Finan (ed.), Medieval Lough Cé: history, archaeology and landscape
(Dublin, 2010), pp 119–41. 89 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p.
124. 90 stalley, The Cistercian monasteries, pp 187–8. another carved head with a coronet of
half-palmettes and similar eyes and forehead curls was excavated in the cloister: P.D.
sweetman, ‘archaeological excavations at abbeyknockmoy, Co. Galway’, PRIA, C9 (1987), 6,
8. 91 Helen Perros-Walton, ‘Ó Conchobhair, Cathal’, ODNB, 41, pp 437–9. 92 AC.
93 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, pp 110–11. 94 CDI, 1171–52,
rinndown on the west shore of lough ree, where a castle would be built for
Henry III in 1227,95 while richard de Burgh (d. 1243) founded the first
Premonstratensian house in Ireland, Holy trinity, at tuam in 1215–16.96 Both
were staking claims to important sites before the conquest of Connacht. another
noteworthy development is the ecclesiastical patronage of new religious houses
that becomes possible once the diocesan system begins to take hold. the bishop
of annaghdown, Murchad Ua Flaithbertaig, is thought to have founded the
Premonstratensian house of st John the Baptist at annaghdown before 1226, but
richard de Burgh was also apparently involved, since this was a daughter house
of Holy trinity at tuam.97 another Premonstratensian founder was Clarus Mac
Mailin, archdeacon of elphin, who established Holy trinity priory on lough
Key in c.1217.98 some churches were burned during the anglo-Norman
invasions of Connacht in 117799 and 1188,1 and in 1202 William de Burgh used
Boyle as a barracks, and in 1203 fortified Meelick, razed Cong and plundered
Clonfert, tuam, Clonmacnoise, Meelick, Mayo, Cong, elphin, Oran and
roscommon.2 In 1227, richard de Burgh burned Inishmaine, but in 1230,
complied with the request of the canons of Ballintober not to camp nearby. In
1235, his forces burned roscommon and elphin, but the anglo-Norman
commanders did not like it when the soldiers attacked Boyle, recovering, and
paying compensation for, the stolen items afterwards. they even granted
protection to Clarus Mac Mailin and his canons and joined them in prayer on
trinity Island, but in 1236 the justiciar burnt termonkeelin, and the annals that
year complain about the armed bands and evildoers who used churches as
sanctuaries and dormitories. However, churches were also plundered in warfare
between ruaidrí’s two sons Áed and toirdelbach in 1228, and Connacht’s
‘clerics and men of skill’ were ‘driven to far foreign regions, having been exposed
to cold and hunger through the war’,3 an event that Harbison argues brought
masons to Germany and helped bring an end to the school of the West.4
the evidence suggests that although Connacht’s clergy did not attend the
reform councils of Cashel and ráith Bressail, toirdelbach, an ambitious
modernizing king, in touch with developments in the wider world, and guided
by reform-minded clergy who found ways for him to make amends for his war
crimes and other sins, began the process of church reform in Connacht. the
evidence can be seen in the Cross of Cong, tuam’s high crosses, the archdiocese
of tuam and the profusion of new religious communities, both male and female,
founded during his reign and afterwards, many of which would continue to use,
until their dissolution in the sixteenth century, the beautiful buildings that
nos 507, 693, 2289; RLC, 1204–24, pp 170, 693. 95 Gwynn and Hadcock, Medieval religious
houses: Ireland, pp 215–16. 96 Ibid., p. 106. 97 Ibid., p. 203. 98 Ibid., p. 215; Miriam
Cline, ‘the rental of Holy trinity abbey, lough Cé’ in Finan (ed.), Medieval Lough Cé, pp
67–96. 99 AT. 1 ALC. 2 Ibid.; AClon., s.aa. 1202–5. 3 For the attacks from 1227, see
AC. 4 Peter Harbison, ‘twelfth- and thirteenth-century Irish stonemasons in regensburg
(Bavaria) and the end of the “school of the West”’, Studies, 64 (1975), 336–46.
benefactors, architects and sculptors produced in such large numbers in

Connacht in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In the meantime,
church reform continued to be promoted in councils that were held in Connacht
and that archbishops of Connacht and their suffragans attended in rome. In
1172, archbishop Cadla Ua Dubthaig attended the anglo-Norman council of
Cashel with his suffragans5 and held a council of his own with ruaidrí at tuam,
where he consecrated three churches.6 In 1179, the papal legate, lorcán Ua
tuathail, presided over a council at Clonfert, where seven lay bishops were
stripped of their livings,7 after he and Cadla had attended the third lateran
Council earlier in the year.8 In 1202, the papal legate, John of salerno, presided
over a council at athlone, and in 1215 Felix Ua ruanada, archbishop of tuam,
attended the Fourth lateran Council, as did the bishops of achonry,
annaghdown and Killala along with the bishop-elect of Mayo,9 after presiding
over a council in Connacht in 1211.10
But were the key goals of church reform implemented in Connacht? With
regard to lay control of ecclesiastical appointments, Innocent III in 1200–1
confirmed Cathal Crobderg’s prerogative to assent to ecclesiastical elections
within his kingdom, but warned him not to abuse this right.11 this was standard
papal policy with regard to kings; what is striking is the recognition of
Connacht’s independent status within the papally approved english lordship of
Ireland.12 In 1216, the pope told Cathal to help archbishop Felix implement the
decrees of the Fourth lateran Council, suppress hereditary succession and allow
free elections.13 Hereditary succession had been an issue in Connacht. In fact,
Felix had been appointed precisely in order to prevent Cadla Ua Dubthaig’s
nephew, consecrated before Cadla’s death in 1201, from succeeding. the papal
legate, John of salerno, had dealt with the matter at a council in athlone in 1202,
where he had the nephew replaced by Felix, who was appointed with the consent
of the suffragans. In his report to the pope, he spoke of the detestable abuse in
Ireland, found especially in the church of tuam and other places in the west,
whereby sons succeed their fathers, not only in lesser ecclesiastical positions but
even in archbishoprics and bishoprics. In tuam itself, he said, there had already
been a grandfather and a great-grandfather in office.14
this particular claim is problematic, because, as we saw above, there is no
record of any bishop of tuam. as an archiepiscopal see, tuam had just had two
incumbents and they were not related.15 However, regarding the legate’s main
5 Expugnatio Hibernica: The conquest of Ireland by Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. and trans. a.B.
scott and F.X. Martin (Dublin, 1978), pp 98–101. 6 AT; AFM. 7 AClon., s.a. 1170.
8 Watt, The church in medieval Ireland, p. 132. 9 P.J. Dunning, ‘Irish representatives and Irish
ecclesiastical affairs at the Fourth lateran Council’ in J.a. Watt et al., Medieval studies
presented to Aubrey Gwynn SJ (Dublin, 1961), p. 91. 10 AClon., s.a. 1210. 11 sheehy,
Pontificia Hibernica, i, nos 47–8. 12 P.J. Dunning, ‘Pope Innocent III and the Irish kings’,
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 8 (1957), 17–32 at 22–31. 13 sheehy, Pontificia Hibernica, i,
no. 92. see also Dunning, ‘Irish representatives’, pp 102–3. 14 sheehy, Pontificia Hibernica,
i. no. 53. 15 the archbishops of tuam were Áed Ua hOissíne and Cadla Ua Dubtaig.
point, the last names of bishops in the dioceses of achonry, annaghdown, Killala
and Kilmacduagh do indicate hereditary succession in at least some parts of the
province of tuam in the second half of the twelfth and early decades of the
thirteenth century.16 But hereditary succession would be undermined by church
reform and would disappear at the episcopal level in the thirteenth century, the
trend being reversed in the fourteenth century with the sale of dispensations by
the avignon papacy.17 It is hard to say whether the anglo-Norman conquest of
Connacht speeded up the reform process. anglo-Norman bishops do not emerge
until the latter part of the thirteenth century. an examination of episcopal
elections in the province of tuam for the period c.1254–72 shows Henry III
mindful of his rights of granting licence to elect and assent to elections but aloof
from the process of choosing bishops, this being the job of the cathedral
chapters, who do it with gusto and with inevitable splits and factions, disputed
elections and other local problems ending up as cases before both the king and
the pope.18 It is a very different world to the type of transitional twelfth-century
monastic bishop depicted in Caithréim Cellaig.19 Most striking of all is the
disappearance of the Uí Dubthaig from the Connacht episcopate. the last one
seems to have been Céle Ua Dubthaig, who died as bishop of Mayo in 1210 and
was possibly the nephew of Cadla ousted from tuam in 1202, the Mayo diocese
having also been suppressed in 1202 by the same papal legate.20 the Uí
Dubthaig were one of the great learned ecclesiastical families that rose to new
heights with church reform – Cadla, archbishop of tuam, being the most
famous because he represented ruaidhrí Ua Conchobair at Windsor, where the
famous treaty with Henry II was made in 1175, ruaidrí’s other representatives
being his chancellor and Cantordis, abbot of Clonfert, with that important st
Brendan connection.21 However, as simms has noted, ‘a number of factors
combined to end this period of honeymoon between the hereditary church
families with their traditional mixture of Irish and latin learning and the
Gregorian reform’, a key one being the new dynamics at play in the new system
of elections.22 Uillaim Ua Dubthaig, a Franciscan, was bishop of Clonmacnoise
c.1290–7,23 but the family seem to have remained most prominent in Cong, the
Domnall Ua Dubthaig (d. 1136) and Muiredach Ua Dubthaig (1150) are both called bishops
of Connacht, but neither is called bishop of tuam. Domnall’s father Flannacán had been
lector of tuam, so that might give us a grandfather and a great-grandfather, if we accept that
Domnall was bishop of tuam (not elphin, as aB claim) and that he was the father of Cadla.
16 NHI, ix, pp 318–32: Uí ruadáin in achonry; Uí Mellaig in annaghdown; and Uí Máel
Fogmair in Killala; and two Uí ruaidín in Kilmacduagh. tomás Ua Mellaig, who was allegedly
the son of nun and a bishop, probably the one who had attended richard’s coronation, was
accused of simony in intruding himself into the see of annaghdown in 1247. 17 Kenneth
Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 1972), pp 92–8. 18 a.F.
O’Brien, ‘episcopal elections in Ireland, c.1254–72’, PRIA, 73C (1973), 129–76 at 140–3.
19 Máire Herbert, ‘Caithréim Cellaig: some literary and historical considerations’, ZCP, 49–
50 (1997), 320–32. 20 NHI, xi, p. 332 n.18. 21 Irish historical documents, 1172–1922, ed.
edmund Curtis and r.B. McDowell (london, 1943), pp 22–4. 22 simms, ‘the brehons of
later medieval Ireland’, p. 56. 23 NHI, ix, p. 276.
telling pieces of evidence being the death of abbot Dubthach Ua Dubthaig there
in 1223,24 and the compilation of the rental of the abbey by tadhg O’Duffy for
abbot William Flavus O’Duffy in 1501.25
Cathal Crobderg had a strained relationship with archbishop Felix, who
sought the protection of the justiciar, Henry of london, in Dublin in 1213,26 and
was imprisoned by the Connachtmen and Máel Ísu Ua Conchobair, coarb of
roscommon, in 1216.27 However, Cathal stands out as being deeply influenced
by the church reform’s ideal of monogamy, his enduring marriage to Mór,
daughter of Domnall Ua Briain, contrasting sharply with the marriage practices
of his father toirdelbach and brother ruaidrí, both of whom seem to have had a
succession of wives.28 the ideal of a lifetime marriage to one spouse was heavily
promoted in Acallam na Senórach, which was probably written with Ua
Conchobair and Mac airechtaig patronage c.1200: both families are shown as
‘converts to monogamy’. Indeed, the story pretty much ends with Patrick
performing a marriage service for the king of Connacht – his first in Ireland –
and predicting that three kings of Connacht would rule Ireland.29 Monogamy
fitted in well with Cathal’s efforts to prevent the anglo-Norman conquest of
Connacht by having the kings of Connacht, starting with himself, hold the
kingdom as tenants-in-chief of the english crown, and passing it down to their
heirs through primogeniture.30 the fear that an anglo-Norman conquest was
imminent prompted Cathal to seek papal protection for himself, his son Áed and
his kingdom, which Honorius III granted in 1220–1.31
Church reform made significant headway in Connacht during Cathal’s reign.
the council that Felix held in 1211 consolidated Connacht’s diocesan structure
by transferring pre-reform monastic lands to the bishoprics in which they lay.32
However, as simms has pointed out, ‘in many cases, families whose ancestors had
ruled the church as hereditary lords remained in occupation of their ancestral
lands, as tenants or vassals of the bishop, their traditional title of coarb or erenagh
becoming an administrative one, exercised under the bishop’s authority’.33 Both
they and other ecclesiastical tenants often made up the parish and lesser diocesan
clergy, the tendency in the later Middle ages being for these positions to become
24 ALC; AFM. 25 M.J. Blake, ‘an old rental of Cong abbey’, JRSAI, 73 (1905), 130–8.
Cong abbey had a dependent priory at lissonuffy, which was named after the family: Gwynn
and Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Ireland, p. 185; edward Maclysaght, Irish families:
their names, arms and origins (4th ed., Blackrock, 1991), p. 80. 26 RLC, 1204–24, p. 148.
27 ALC. 28 Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Women in early Irish society’ in Margaret Mac Curtain
and Donnchadh Ó Corráin (eds), Women in Irish society: the historical dimension (Baldoyle,
1978), p. 7. 29 Tales of the elders of Ireland, pp 179–81, 186–7, 217–18. 30 Helen Perros,
‘Crossing the shannon frontier: Connacht and the anglo-Normans, 1170–1224’ in Colony and
frontier, pp 131–8. Whether Cathal remained as chaste as his obituary eulogy suggests is
another matter. a charter of c.1230 mentions ruaidrí, who was a brother to Cathal’s son
Fedelmid and nephew to archbishop Felix: CStM, ii, p. 5. 31 sheehy, Pontificia Hibernica,
i, no. 147. 32 AClon., s.a. 1210. 33 simms, ‘Frontiers in the Irish church: regional and
hereditary and for ordained priests to have ‘concubines’.34 The payment of tithes,
a big item on the Irish church reform agenda since the Synod of Kells (1152) at
least, was also introduced into Connacht during Cathal Crobderg’s reign.35 This
meant in effect the setting up of parishes, something that Anglo-Norman
settlement after 1235 also helped to shape in some parts of Connacht. Nicholls
has described a complicated parochial system in Connacht, with tithes being
split up between sinecure rectors, serving vicars and bishops by right of office,
with rectories in both lay fee (under lay control in Anglo-Norman areas) and in
ecclesiastical fee (of church lands belonging mostly to cathedral chapters) and
with the bishops normally appointing the vicars.36 Some qualification is
necessary, but bishops were clearly major beneficiaries of church reform in
Connacht.
Simms has also drawn attention to how the church reform’s disapproval of
secular pursuits brought to an end the church’s role as the custodian of secular
literature and learning, something that had a devastating effect, not only on some
learned ecclesiastical families, but on Clonmacnoise’s once prodigious literary
output.37 A huge cultural change occurred between the early twelfth century,
when it produced Lebor na hUidre, ‘a veritable treasure trove of Old and Middle
Irish literature, both secular and religious’,38 and the early thirteenth century,
when a bardic poet complained about the lack of literary patronage there. After
he had fashioned a moving commemorative poem naming several of those of
royal and noble blood who were buried at Clonmacnoise, including Toirdelbach
and Ruaidrí on either side of St Ciarán’s altar, and numbering them – thirty
Uí Conchobhair, twenty Meic Diarmata, eighteen Uí Chellaig, eighteen
descendants of Tadc of the Household and seventeen Uí Chonchenainn – the
abbot and the clerics sent him away, saying ‘sing not thy songs to us!’ but rather
to the Síl Muiredaig at their feasts, advice he took by finding patronage with
Cathal Crobderg,39 who proved to an exemplary literary benefactor. Church
reform also brought to an end Clonmacnoise’s venerable tradition of chronicling,
dating back to the eighth century. Chronicon Scotorum appears to terminate in
1150 and the Annals of Tigernach in 1178, although Mc Carthy has argued that
the latter continued to be written until c.1227, when chronicling at Clonmacnoise
finally ceased. The Annals of Clonmacnoise, which end in 1408, have been
misnamed, since they were not written there but were derived from the work
of the hereditary secular historians in Connacht who took up where the
cultural’, p. 188. 34 Ibid., p. 182. 35 AC. 36 K.W. Nicholls, ‘Rectory, vicarage and parish
in the western Irish dioceses’, JRSAI, 101 (1971), 53–84 at 53–63. 37 Simms, ‘The brehons
of later medieval Ireland’, 55–8; ‘Frontiers in the church’, pp 191–3; Medieval Gaelic sources
(Dublin, 2009), pp 25–31, 44–50. See also Edel Bhreathnach, ‘Learning and literature in early
Clonmacnoise’ in King (ed.), Clonmacnoise studies, ii, pp 97–104. 38 Máire Ní Mhaonaigh,
‘Lebor na hUidre’ in Seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Ireland: an encyclopedia (London and New
York, 2005), p. 267. See ibid., pp 267–9, for references to Tomás Ó Concheanainn’s studies,
which reveal the wide provenance of material used in the Book of the Dun Cow. 39 R.I. Best,
Clonmacnoise chronicle left off in the 1220s, specifically the Uí Máell Chonaire,
who were patronized by the Uí Chonchobair kings,40 a partnership that would
produce the magnificent obituary eulogy for Cathal Crobderg (d. 1224), with
which the annals of Connacht begin.
among the bardic poems written for Cathal Crobderg was one that was
composed near Monte Gargano, the popular pilgrimage site in south-east Italy
dedicated to the archangel Michael. the poet, identified as Muiredach albanach
Ua Dálaigh, describes himself as a palmer, meaning he had made a pilgrimage to
the Holy land, and because he states, ‘we were four; but half, alas, of our party
died’,41 we can date the poem to 1224, the year that Cathal’s grandnephew Áed, son
of Conchobar Máenmag, ‘died on his journey from the river (Jordan) and
Jerusalem’.42 another poet, Gilla Brígde albanach, wrote a poem during an earlier
stage of their journey when they were sailing in the east Mediterranean within sight
of the mountains of Greece and headed for Damietta,43 the egyptian port on the
Nile that was held by crusaders from 4 November 1219 to 8 september 1221 during
the Fifth Crusade. the earliest contingents of this crusade had reached acre late in
1217 – acre being the capital of the crusader kingdom since saladin’s capture of
Jerusalem in 1187 – but in the spring of 1218 the decision was made to attack egypt,
which had long been viewed as a back door to Jerusalem, the crusaders arriving at
Damietta from May 1218 onwards, and besieging it from February 1219.44 Gilla
Brigde’s reference to the dark clouds coming from acre is an indication that acre
was their original destination and that they were now making what he called ‘a hard
decision’ to ‘strive to make Damietta’.45
all of this suggests that they were part of the Fifth Crusade. But while Áed,
son of Conchobar, and the other person who had died may well have been
trained warriors, why would poets be crusaders? a clue is provided by the poem
A Mhuireadhaigh, meil do sgín, which has been mistakenly described as Cathal
Crobderg’s address to Muiredach albanach Ua Dálaigh on their entrance into a
religious community. In fact, it must have been written by Gilla Brigde
albanach. the monastic atmosphere is indeed suggested by the first stanza,
‘sharpen your knife, Muiredach, so we may tonsure ourselves for the high-king.
let us sweetly give our vow and our two locks to the trinity’. But the last two
lines, ‘Protect us in the hot climate, gentle branch, O Mary’, suggest at least a
pilgrimage to the Holy land.46 Innocent III’s recruitment strategy for the Fifth
Crusade, which was supposeed to be the jewel in the crown of his papacy, makes
it virtually certain that these were crusader vows. to quote Powell,
‘the graves of the kings at Clonmacnois’, Ériu, 2 (1905), 163–71. 40 Mc Carthy, The Irish
annals, pp 21–6, 190–7, 245–52. 41 Gerard Murphy, ‘two Irish poems written from the
Mediterranean in the thirteenth century’, Éigse, 7 (1953–4), 71–9 at 74–9. 42 AC.
43 Murphy, ‘two Irish poems written from the Mediterranean’, 71–4. 44 t.F. Madden, A
concise history of the Crusades (Oxford, 1999), pp 146–55. 45 Murphy, ‘two Irish poems
written from the Mediterranean’, 72. 46 ‘A Mhuireadhaigh, meil do sgín go mbearram inn don
airdRigh; tabhram go milis ar móid ‘s ar dhá dtrilis don Tríonnóid … [D]éana ar gcoimhéad san
tír the, a roighéad mhín, a Mhuire’: Measgra Dánta: Miscellaneous Irish poems, ed. t.F. O’rahilly
Where Innocent’s plan for the crusade differed most from its predecessors
was in its broadening of the meaning of participation in the crusade.
Innocent specifically instructed the procurators of the crusade to
administer the crusade vow to all who were willing, without raising the
question of their suitability to serve in the army … thus the crusade
indulgence was available to all Christians, both men and women.47
the crusade was promoted as a vocation, a way for those outside the religious
orders to imitate Christ, to live the apostolic life. It extended st Bernard’s idea
of the templars’ vocation to all those who participated in it.48 the vocational
aspect of becoming a crusader is crystal clear in Gilla Brigde’s poem that has just
been cited, but the penitential aspect, the inward repentance and conversion
required of crusaders49 is exquisitely illustrated in Muiredach’s equivalent poem,
which focuses on his and his companion’s tonsuring: ‘grievous till now have been
my sins: I offer my hair in their requital’, the inspiration being ‘thy (comely)
body which was – the cruelty of it! – wounded for our sake’.50 the inclusivity of
the Fifth Crusade helped to finance it, and the fact that Gilla Brigde’s poem
addressed both Cathal Crobderg and Donnchad Cairbrech Ua Briain51 makes it
virtually certain that they provided funding for it. Not only could those
unsuitable for crusading redeem their vows with a payment equivalent to the
amount they would have spent as crusaders, as did the bishop of Clonmacnoise
between February 1215 and July 1216,52 those who sponsored others to go on the
crusade were also entitled to the indulgence and other crusader privileges.53 the
protection that Honorius III granted Cathal, Áed and their kingdom in 1220–1
should undoubtedly be seen in this context. this was a time of great anxiety for
Cathal. richard de Burgh’s uncle Hubert had become a dominant figure in
Henry III’s regency council with the death of William Marshal in 1219. Cathal’s
willingness to support the crusade helps to explain the glowing reports that the
justiciar Henry of london, archbishop of Dublin, sent to the king in 1224 about
(Dublin, 1927), ii, pp 179–80, 224–6. I am very grateful to Máire Cruise O’Brien for
translating this poem for me in the 1990s. 47 J.M. Powell, Anatomy of a crusade, 1213–1221
(Philadelphia, 1986), p. 20. 48 Ibid., pp 52–4, 56–8. 49 Ibid., pp 19–20, 63.
50 Aithdioghluim Dána, i and ii, no. 43. 51 Measgra Dánta: Miscellaneous Irish poems, ii, p.
180. 52 sheehy, Pontificia Hibernica, i, no. 87; P.J. Dunning, ‘letters of Innocent III to
Ireland’, Archivium Hibernicum, 13 (1947), 27–44 at 37. the letter was probably issued shortly
after the Fourth lateran Council, 11–30 Nov. 1215: the bishops of Clonmacnoise (Áed Ua
Máel eoin) and Killaloe both attended it, the latter being the one told to make the
commutation. the archbishop of Cashel, another attendee, must have also vowed to go on the
crusade: King John exempted him from being impleaded from his departure for Jerusalem
until his return: Dunning, ‘Irish representatives’, 91–2, 100. We also hear of Gilla
Croichefraich Mac Carrgama and ‘the priest H [Ua] Celli’ who died in 1216 ‘after they had
crossed themselves and determined to go to the river (Jordan)’: ALC. 53 Powell, Anatomy of
a crusade, 1213–1221, pp 20–1, 45, 47, 78, 93–4. He wanted kings, princes, lay and
ecclesiastical lords and cities to supply ‘an agreed number of warriors with necessary expenses
for three years’ (p. 20). the usual subsidy paid to a knight departing for the crusade was 25
Cathal and Áed as well as his support for their request for a new charter.54 Henry
and the abbot of Mellifont had been made the papal commissioners for the
crusade in Ireland in 1213–14.55
the crusade party’s departure late in 1219 is suggested by Muiredach’s words,
‘Four years till this night has this fresh mass of hair been on me’.56 If he had
attended the lateran Council in November 1215 as Cathal’s representative, he may
have made a penitential tonsure then as a commitment to go on the crusade, which
was as important a part of the Council as church reform itself.57 Gilla Brigde was in
rome, but it is not clear when.58 the crusade’s original departure date was June
1217, but Innocent III’s death in July 1216 made delay inevitable. the idea that the
Irish crusaders might have crossed paths with st Francis in egypt is immensely
appealing,59 but did they arrive there in time? st Francis arrived at the crusader
camp in late august 1219, to establish conversion as a peaceful alternative to
crusading, and sometime between then and late september 1219 he preached to the
sultan al-Kamil.60 that the Irish party eventually made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem
is clear from the evidence cited above. Ó Cuív has suggested that a poem on the
infancy of Christ that was composed in the Holy land was written by Gilla
Brigde.61 Connacht’s interest in the Holy land continued into the mid-thirteenth
century. Máel Muire Ua lachtáin, archbishop of tuam and master of canon law
who died in 1249, was a palmer,62 and in 1255 archbishop Florence Mac Flainn
complained to the pope that royal judges in Ireland prevented the faithful from
making bequests for such pious purposes as the crusade.63
the evidence suggests that church reform had a profound impact on
Connacht and that Connacht was very much connected with the wider world in
the twelfth and early thirteenth century. However, it also drew on a vibrant
spiritual tradition that had its roots in early Christian Ireland.
marks, the same amount as for four armed sergeants with horses: ibid., p. 99. 54 Perros,
‘Crossing the shannon frontier’, pp 133–4; CDI, 1171–1251, nos 1174, 1183–4; Royal and
other historical letters illustrative of the reign of Henry III, i, ed. W.W. shirley (london, 1862–
6), pp 177–8, 183–4, 223–4. 55 Powell, Anatomy of a crusade, p. 25; sheehy, Pontificia
Hibernica, nos 76, 108. the abbot of Mellifont was deposed in 1217 in the opening round of
what came to be called the ‘Conspiracy of Mellifont’: Hand, The church and the two nations, pp
87–8. 56 Aithdioghluim dána, i and ii, no. 43. Contingents under the leadership of both royal
and baronial partisans left from england in 1219, Powell, Anatomy of a crusade, p. 77.
57 Ibid., p. 45. In apr. 1213, the kings of Cork, limerick and Connacht were invited to the
council: sheehy, Pontificia Hibernica, i, no. 77. Dunning thought that the pope’s letter urging
Cathal Crobderg to implement the decrees of the council might indicate he was represented:
Dunning, ‘Irish representatives’, p. 91. 58 Brian Ó Cuív, ‘an Irish poet at the roman curia’,
Celtica, 14 (1981), 6–7. 59 robin Flower, The Irish tradition (Oxford, 1947), p. 87.
60 Powell, Anatomy of a crusade, pp 158–61. 61 Brian Ó Cuív, ‘a poem on the infancy of
Christ’, Éigse, 15 (1973–4), 93–102. that their sojourn abroad was lengthy is suggested by the
poem, possibly written by Gilla Brigde, expressing sadness that he was parting company with
the cross he had borne on his shoulder for three years. It also mentions africa and acre: anne
O’sullivan, ‘a palmer’s poem’, Éigse, 17 (1977–9), 456. 62 AC. 63 Watt, The church and
the two nations, p. 123.
Part II(b)_Layout 1 19/02/2013 13:21 Page 309
Ailbe Ua Máel Muaid, Uí Chennselaig and the

Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae
A I L B H E M AC S H A M H R Á I N †
I . UA M Á E L M UA I D A N D U í C H E N N S E L A I G
In the course of the last two decades, Ailbe Ua Máel Muaid (Albinus O’Mulloy;
d. 1223), bishop of Ferns, has attracted a modest degree of scholarly attention –
from medieval historians, Latinists and scholars of Old and Middle Irish
language and literature. Heretofore, some discussion by Gwynn aside, his name
was encountered only in episcopal succession lists or in footnotes; then recently
he was included in the Dictionary of Irish biography, where the focus is for the
most part on his legal battle with Earl William Marshal, and his appeal to King
Henry III of England.1 That said, Ua Máel Muaid is of interest for several other
reasons. Considered by the English chronicler Matthew Paris to have been a
saintly man,2 he was the last pre-Reformation Gaelic Irish bishop to occupy the
see of St M’Áedóc at Ferns. His diocese, at the time of his appointment in 1186,
encompassed the then surviving native Irish kingdom of Uí Chennselaig.
However, with ecclesiastical organization (especially in Leinster) rapidly
undergoing a process of Anglicization, he became involved in issues of ethnic
conflict within the church and, to a large degree, accepted and supported the
new English establishment. Aside from his politico-ecclesiastical concerns, he
was arguably a significant contributor to Irish hagiography; as tentatively
suggested by Sharpe, he may have initiated the anthology known as Vitae
Sanctorum Hiberniae, while Ó Riain argues that he produced the Latin Life of St
Abbán of Mag Arnaide (tld and par. Adamstown, formerly Moyarney, Co.
Wexford).3 Nevertheless, even when taken together, such insights in relation to
Ua Máel Muaid still do not amount to a full picture, underlining the need for a
re-examination of his life and career and the political context in which he
worked.
At first glance, the politico-ecclesiastical position of Ailbe Ua Máel Muaid
might seem difficult to reconcile with his Gaelic cultural background and Irish
1 Aubrey Gwynn, ‘The coming of the Normans, I: Irish Cistercian bishops and the Anglo-
Norman invaders’ in idem, The Irish church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, ed. Gerard
O’Brien (Dublin, 1992), esp. pp 274–83; this paper was written c.1969/70 (as appears from n.
51). See now Emmett O’Byrne, ‘O’Mulloy (Ua Máel Muaid), Ailbe (d.1223)’, DIB, vii, pp
724–5. 2 Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica majora, ed. H.R. Luard, 7 vols
(London, 1872–89), iv, p. 493; Richard Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ Lives: an introduction to
Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (Oxford, 1991), p. 353. 3 Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ Lives,
309
310 Ailbhe MacShamhráin†
dynastic associations. On the basis of his surname, he was probably born in Fir
Chell, a territory in west Co. Offaly that, in medieval times, was included in the
province and diocese of Mide. Fir Chell, the ‘Men of the Churches’, was a
geographical designation applied to the southern part of the Early Christian
kingdom of Cenél Fiachach. In turn, Cenél Fiachach was one of the Uí Néill
group of dynasties, tracing its ancestry to Fiachu, reputedly a son of the fifth-
century king of Tara, Niall Noígiallach. Having been sidelined in power-
struggles within Uí Néill at an early date, the dynasty claiming descent from
Fiachu was left to rule one of the poorer areas of the south midlands, much of it
consisting of bog and woodland. Originally extending from Uisnech almost as
far as Birr, the kingdom later contracted, and split into two small lordships. By
the eleventh century, the northern section, retaining the name Cenél Fiachach
and largely corresponding to the barony of Moycashel, Co. Westmeath, was
ruled by the family of Mac Áedacáin (Mageoghegan). The southern division, Fir
Chell, roughly coterminous with the barony of Ballycowan, Co. Offaly, already
had as its local lords the family of Ua Máel Muaid. As its name implies, Fir Chell
was well endowed with churches – the principal ecclesiastical sites in the district
being Durrow and Lynally.4 It seems reasonable, therefore, to infer that
significant numbers of the local people, including members of the Ua Máel
Muaid family, pursued ecclesiastical careers. To judge from the silence of the
annals on that matter, however, not many appear to have achieved distinction,
although the paucity of the surviving record might be a factor here. Another
matter worthy of notice in passing is that, following the English intervention in
Ireland in 1171, and their rapid conquest of Leinster and the midlands, Fir
Chell, isolated from the new lordship of Meath by its bogs and woods,
apparently retained de facto independence throughout the Middle Ages. The
Annals of Clonmacnoise record Ua Máel Muaid ‘Princes of Fearcall’ from the
tenth century to the fifteenth. It seems that the family ranked among the minor
midland dynasties that resisted English efforts to advance into what remained of
the kingdom of Mide.5 On the surface at least, this scarcely fits with Bishop
Ailbe’s own relationship with the English crown, which had proclaimed a
lordship of Ireland in 1171, appointing Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare – known as
Strongbow – as the first vice-regent.
It is likely that Ua Máel Muaid’s political stance was influenced, to some
degree, by his close association with the dynasty of Uí Chennselaig. He was
pp 354, 362; Pádraig Ó Riain, ‘St Abbán: the genesis of an Irish saint’s Life’ in D.E. Evans et
al. (eds), Proceedings of the seventh International Congress of Celtic Studies (Oxford, 1986), pp
159–70; idem, ‘Abbán, 6thc’, DIB, pp 1–2. 4 Ailbe MacShamhráin with Nora White and
Aidan Breen, ‘Early Christian ecclesiastical settlement in Ireland, fifth to twelfth centuries:
the database of the Monasticon Hibernicum Project’: http://monasticon.celt.dias.ie (Dublin,
2009). Fourteen sites are situated in Ballycowan, while a further three unlocated sites are
perhaps to be sought within the barony. 5 AClon.: an Ua Máel Muaid ruler of Fir Chell,
Fergal, was treacherously killed by the English of Athboy in 1268; a later dynast was similarly
slain in 1400; Ua Máel Sechnaill maintained a rump kingdom of Mide, straddling south
Ailbe Ua Máel Muaid, Uí Chennselaig and the Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae 311
almost certainly known to the ruling family, and its king Muirchertach Mac
Murchada (d. 1193), before 1180, by which time he was abbot of Baltinglass, Co.
Wicklow. The Cistercian house of Baltinglass was an Uí Chennselaig foundation,
endowed by the colourful Diarmait Mac Murchada in 1148 when, as Byrne
observes, he granted it a large swathe of Uí Máil and so separated the south-
Kildare kingdom of Uí Muiredaig from their newly acquired lordship of Uí
Máil, which extended to Glendalough.6 When Ua Máel Muaid was elected
bishop in 1186, he and Muirchertach became neighbours – the settlement of
Ferns being at once the cathedral see and the location of the MacMurchada
castellum. Presumably, as bishop, he worked closely with the local king – there
being a certain expectation, no doubt, that he would represent the latter’s
interests in politico-ecclesiastical affairs. Muirchertach was the last king of Uí
Chennselaig recognized by the English, and the last recorded in Irish sources as
ruler of the dynasty before it faded into obscurity, it seems, for almost a century.
In the course of the 1170s, before Ua Máel Muaid had come to notice,
Muirchertach developed a close rapport with the English crown and with the
Dublin administration. The extent to which such relationships represented
conscious choice is difficult to assess; he may well have considered that the rapid
conquest of the east and midlands left him little option other than compliance.
The fact remains that, as early as 1172, he abandoned the position adopted by
his father, Murchad, and made peace with the English.
II. Uí CHENNSELAIG AND THE ENGLISH
Presumably, long before his appointment to bishopric or abbacy, even as priest

and as clerical student up through the 1170s, Ua Máel Muaid knew well that
there was no over-arching policy in relation to the English within Uí Chennselaig
as a dynasty. Murchad Mac Murchada, brother of Diarmait and father of
Muirchertach, had asserted himself in May 1171, when, on the death of
Diarmait, his son-in-law Strongbow – married to his daughter Aífe – ‘claimed
the right to succeed him in the kingship of Leinster’.7 Murchad was declared
king of Uí Chennselaig under Irish law, in opposition to his nephew Domnall
Cáemánach, son of Diarmait, who had secured English support for his claims.
Hastily assembling a coalition of Leinster dynasts – including Mac Fáeláin and
Ua Tuathail – Murchad supported a failed attempt by high-king Ruaidrí Ua
Conchobair to blockade Dublin that August. The coalition soon disintegrated.
Several of its members, but not Murchad, were among the Irish rulers who
submitted to King Henry II in the winter of 1171. Some months later, in the
Westmeath and west Offaly – his retainers including Mac Áedacáin and Ua Máel Muaid.
6 Francis John Byrne, ‘The trembling sod: Ireland in 1169’, NHI, ii, p. 23. 7 Simms, Kings,
p. 13, introduces Ireland’s first experience of political change thus. Discussion of Strongbow’s
prior agreement with Diarmait and the substance of his claim to kingship lies outside the
spring of 1172, Murchad was hunted down and killed by English colonists – in
treacherous circumstances, according to the Irish annalist.8
Given the way in which Irish dynastic politics worked, as Ua Máel Muaid no
doubt understood, it need not follow that positions adopted by individual rulers
would be consistently maintained, either by the dynast himself or by his family.9
Even Muirchertach Mac Murchada’s cousin and overlord in the early years of
his reign, Domnall Cáemánach, may not have been as constant in his support for
the English as has been assumed. Granted, assessment of his stance is not helped
by the lack of a native Leinster chronicle for this period, while the few surviving
notices providing testimony from an Irish perspective, made outside the
province, are terse and at times contradictory. Hence, Martin maintains that
Domnall Cáemánach ‘never wavered in his loyalty … to Strongbow’, while
O’Byrne claims that he openly opposed the vice-regent from 1173 onwards.10
Either way, the evidence is not entirely persuasive. Certainly, at first, Domnall
did support the English; after all, Strongbow had been his father’s ally. Rushing
to Dublin ahead of the blockade in July 1171 to warn the defenders, he was
welcomed by the Anglo-Norman nobles. How he viewed Strongbow’s claim to
the kingship of Leinster is not clear. An Anglo-Norman chanson de geste, often
called ‘The Song of Dermot and the Earl’, relates that the earl ‘bailled the pleas
of Leinster’ to Domnall – generally taken to mean that he was made seneschal of
the province.11 However, it is apparent that Domnall considered himself no mere
steward, but king of Leinster, and was seen as such by his own people. A native
account of the visit to Ireland by King Henry II in 1171 lists the provincial and
regional rulers, including Domnall Cáemánach ‘over the Leinstermen’ – the
same formula used for all the other kings. Moreover, in reporting his death, the
annals style him rí Laigen.12 Perhaps, therefore, the pragmatic Strongbow was
prepared to accept him as mesne-king of the Leinster Irish. Domnall indeed
submitted to King Henry in October 1171 and accepted him as his overlord,
although his subsequent loyalty to the English crown has been questioned.
Noting how the chanson describes Domnall’s contingent that accompanied
Strongbow’s invasion of Mide in early 1173 as the latter’s ‘enemies of Leinster’,
parameters of the present short paper. 8 AT, s.a. 1172 (no. 9) has: ‘Murcadh Mac Murcadha
do marbadh do muntir Maic na Perisi tria mebail’. 9 Emmett O’Byrne, War, politics and the
Irish of Leinster, 1156–1606 (Dublin, 2003), ch. 2, traces changes in political position on the
part of Leinster dynasties in the course of the thirteenth century. 10 F.X. Martin, ‘Allies and
an overlord, 1169–72’, NHI, ii, p. 86; O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, pp 15, 18.
11 Evelyn Mullally (ed. and trans.), The deeds of the Normans in Ireland: La geste des Engleis en
yrlande: a new edition of the chronicle formerly known as The song of Dermot and the earl (Dublin,
2002), ll 2185–6; Martin, ‘Allies and an overlord’, p. 86; O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of
Leinster, p. 13. 12 AMisc., s.a. 1172 (=1171), includes ‘Domnall Cáemánach … ar
Laighnibh’. The list may have been taken from the Clonmacnoise record, but this is not
certain. Domnall’s death is noted in AT, s.a. 1175, and AU, s.a. 1175. See O’Byrne, War,
politics and the Irish of Leinster, p. 18; Ailbhe MacShamhráin, ‘MacMurchada, Domnall
O’Byrne suggests that Domnall was among the leaders of the revolt in the
province that summer.13 Certainly, Uí Chennselaig dynasts were involved in the
conflict, which erupted in Leinster, after the earl had been summoned to defend
English interests in France. Presumably, the absence of a number of King
Henry’s nobles was viewed as an opportunity to demand better terms, and moves
were made against the English in Munster and the midlands. However, the
defeat of an English force in Uí Chennselaig territory, which left two hundred of
the invaders dead, should probably not be attributed to Domnall Cáemánach, as
the late source known as Mac Carthaigh’s Book has it.14 Duffy, who points out
that this revolt was paralleled by upheavals against Strongbow in Wales, settles
for describing the Uí Chennselaig leader as a ‘disinherited grandson of Diarmait
Mac Murchada’.15 It seems reasonable that he was a son of Domnall Cáemánach
– quite possibly the Domnall Óc known from later genealogies – who at that time
was probably little more than 21 years of age.
As already observed, the quality of the evidence makes it difficult to ascertain
whether or not Domnall Cáemánach himself ultimately changed his loyalties.
The version of events in the ‘Annals of Tigernach’, that Domnall was slain in
1175 by Uí Nialláin, is accepted both by Martin, who assumes that he was acting
on behalf of the earl, and by O’Byrne, who suggests that he may have sided
against Strongbow in an ongoing conflict in west Leinster.16 One problem here
is that the location – and hence the loyalty – of Uí Nialláin has not been
ascertained. The lineage in question is listed among the forslointe (‘alien
kindreds’ – settlers from elsewhere in the country) of Uí Fáilge, following on
from the pedigree of Uí Riaccáin; it is, therefore, possible that they were in or
near their territory (bar. Tinnahinch, Co. Laois) and so adjacent to Clann Máel-
ugra (Clanmaliere, approximates to bar. Portnahinch). If Uí Nialláin were among
the retinue of Ua Díumassaig of Clann Máel-ugra who, O’Byrne suggests, had
sided with the English from c.1173 onwards,17 Domnall Cáemánach was perhaps
moving against Strongbow – but if these local gentry were followers of Ua
Conchobair Fáilge, then leading resistance against the English, Domnall was
supporting the earl. However, there is a further problem in that the Annals of the
Cáemánach (d. 1175)’, DIB, vi, pp 113–14. 13 Mullally, The deeds of the Normans in Ireland,
ll 3206–7; O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, p. 15. 14 AMisc., s.a. 1174 (=1173),
has it that Domnall defeated the earl, as accepted by O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of
Leinster, p. 15. However, the generally more reliable AT, s.a. 1173, has ‘impodh do mac
Domnaill Caemánaigh ar mac an íarla, & ár do thabairt leis ar Gallaib’. 15 Seán Duffy,
Ireland in the Middle Ages (London, 1997), p. 79. 16 AT, s.a. 1175, names the killers as Uí
Nialláin which, on balance, seems more plausible than Uí Nualláin (of Fothairt, Co. Carlow),
as given by AFM, s.a. 1175. 17 O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, p. 17;
Rawlinson B502, 123f 13; CGH, p. 65. Their location is unclear; Edmund Hogan, Onomasticon
Hibernicum (Dublin, 1910), p. 677, merely places them ‘in Uí Fáilge’.
Four Masters, which attributes the killing to Ua Nualláin, also implicates Ua

Fortcheirn (local gentry on the Carlow–Wexford border) and adds that the killing
was carried out i ffioll (in treacherous circumstances).18 It appears, therefore, that
there is more involved here than mere vowel substitution; the addition of further
data leaves it distinctly possible that this late Ó Cléirigh compilation – perhaps
drawing from a lost source – offers a more reliable account than the earlier
‘Tigernach’ of Domnall Cáemánach’s death. Even so, the report presents the
same difficulty – it remains unclear as to whether native sub-chieftains killed him
because he was seeking to impose his own rule or that of Strongbow.
Even if some degree of uncertainty remains regarding the loyalty of Domnall
Cáemánach to the English crown, the position of his cousin, Muirchertach – in
whose reign Ua Máel Muaid was appointed to the bishopric – seems clear
enough. As already noted, Muirchertach accepted English lordship and worked
with the new administration from the autumn of 1172 onwards. Initially, he
sought to continue Murchad’s armed resistance, burning Ferns that summer in
an apparent sequel to his father’s military initiatives against the fledgling English
colony. However, shortly afterwards, as a guest of King Henry II, he travelled
with the burgesses of Wexford to visit Winchester.19 Seemingly, links were
established between Uí Chennselaig and this city which, although extensively
damaged by fire in 1141 and not fully rebuilt by the 1170s, had served as the
capital of England until the early twelfth century. Indeed, Winchester retained
considerable importance for many years after that, as the transfer of adminis-
trative and commercial focus to London was very gradual. It was also an
important episcopal see, whose bishop was a key figure in English royal service
and, later in his career, Ua Máel Muaid acted as suffragan locum tenens there, as
discussed below. In the years that followed, Muirchertach’s continued loyalty to
the English crown is perhaps indicated by his epithet na maor (of the stewards)
– and indication, as O’Byrne suggests, that he coordinated revenue collection for
the Dublin administration.20 This could indeed have been the case, whether or
not his predecessor, Domnall Cáemánach, ever in fact filled such a role. After the
death of Muirchertach in 1193, the English, as observed above, ceased to
acknowledge further kings of Uí Chennselaig. It was the last native kingdom in
the Leinster–midland region to be accorded formal recognition, although, even
in parts of Ireland firmly under crown control, it is likely that native leaders of
distinction retained royal status in Irish eyes. Available evidence suggests that
headship of Uí Chennselaig passed in turn (although the sequence is uncertain)
to Muirchertach’s sons Domnall Remor and Diarmait Muimnech.21 One of
these men is probably to be identified with the Mac Murchada killed in 1196, on
a hosting in which the English – accompanied by Leinster nobles including
18 AFM, s.a. 1175. 19 CDI, i, p. 7, no. 39; O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, p.
14. 20 O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, p. 28. 21 Ibid.
members of Uí Chonchobair Fáilge – supported their Ulster vassals against

Cenél nEógain22 Even if this identification is accepted, there is no record as to
when the second brother died, or in what circumstances headship of Uí
Chennselaig reverted to the line of Domnall Cáemánach. Nor is it clear if
members of the latter’s family, including Domnall Óc, continued to resist
English control into the 1180s and beyond. Information is lacking as to whether
they had any connection with the men who, as Ua Máel Muaid recognized (see
below), were in arms in 1186 or with those who, in the early thirteenth century,
led raids into areas of English settlement.
The question of dissidents aside, however, the Uí Chennselaig leadership
under Muirchertach and his sons did remain loyal to the English – even if they
did so because the rapid and effective conquest of the east and midlands had left
them with a sense of powerlessness. With Dublin and the coastal towns under
English control from 1171, the closing years of the decade had seen the
displacement of Uí Fáeláin and Uí Muiredaig local kingships from Co. Kildare,
further tightening the net on Uí Chennselaig and its remaining satellites. With
the subinfeudation of Leinster, whereby the province was apportioned into
lordships held from the English crown, followed by encastellation and
manorialization, native local rulers left in place found themselves as vassals of
English nobles. In all likelihood, Uí Chennselaig, situated in east Leinster, had
less scope for manoeuvre than certain dynasties on the wooded, boggy, western
fringe; Uí Fáilge, a bastion against the invaders in the 1170s, could serve English
interests, as in the Ulster campaign of 1196, only to feature again among the
resistance in the early thirteenth century. For Muirchertach and his immediate
family, however, survival of the lineage and retention of its lands called for
recognition of political realities.
I I I . UA M Á E L M UA I D , T H E C I S T E R C I A N S A N D O S R A I G E
In all likelihood, his close association with Uí Chennselaig was not the only
influence on Ailbe Ua Máel Muaid’s political outlook. The extent to which he
may have represented the prevailing views of his own lineage is hard to tell.
Certainly, Uí Máel Muaid of Fir Chell feature among the defenders of the
Gaelic enclave in the south midlands. At least, that was a reputation they
acquired in the course of the thirteenth century. Their situation in the decades
following the initial English conquests is not so clear. However, it is probable
that, even if they supported the resistance of Ua Máel Sechlainn in the 1170s
and re-emerged to do likewise in the early to mid-thirteenth century, they had
slid silently into compliance by the 1180s; the fact that Murchad Ua Máel
Muaid, ruler of Fir Chell, was slain in 1215 by Ua Conchobair Fáilge, who was
22 Emmett O’Byrne, ‘MacMurchada, Murchad (d. 1172)’, DIB, vi, pp 114–16.

allied with Cormac son of Art Ua Máel Sechnaill in a new war against the
English, might suggest as much.23 It may well be the case, therefore, that Ailbe
Ua Máel Muaid had not departed radically from the position of his kinsmen at
that time.
Meanwhile, having entered the church, Ua Máel Muaid presumably
encountered political perspectives then current in ecclesiastical circles. Allowing
that he was appointed to the abbacy of Baltinglass (Co. Wicklow) by c.1180, it
might be reasonable to assume that he joined the Cistercians as a clerical student
in the mid-1160s.24 Apparently, as a young cleric, he was known to the pious
archbishop of Dublin, Lorcán Ua Tuathail (the future St Lorcán/Laurence),
and was possibly in the latter’s entourage on his last journey to England and
Normandy in 1180.25
Certainly, he later supported the case for the archbishop’s canonization –
despite his own political position by that time, as explained below. It is possible
that he studied at Mellifont, a house that had particular significance for Irish
Cistercians. Aside from the fact that it was their first foundation (1142) in Ireland
and the principal reform-era monastery within the ambit of the Ua Máel
Sechnaill overkingdom of Mide, it was the mother-house of twenty-three other
communities, including Baltinglass, founded c.1148 and endowed, as remarked
above, by Diarmait Mac Murchada. The Gaelic Irish ethos of these early
Cistercian houses continued to be very strong, even after the English inter-
vention in Ireland in 1171. While the English proceeded to endow new
monasteries in areas under their direct control, many of the existing native
foundations maintained almost exclusively native communities. Indeed, frictions
between this ‘Mellifont group’ of houses and the English foundations led to a
series of crises involving visitations from the Cistercian General Chapter in 1217
and again in 1228.26
Another possibility, which may merit serious consideration, is that Ua Máel
Muaid was an alumnus of Jerpoint (Co. Kilkenny); apparently, he had high
regard for Felix Ua Duib Shláine (d. 1202), first abbot of Jerpoint, and, clearly,
links were established between this monastery and Uí Chennselaig-orientated
Baltinglass. Indeed it appears that, in this way, Jerpoint was drawn within the
23 AClon., s.a. 1215; however, AClon., s.a. 1227 records that ‘they of fferceall’, the rulers of
Fir Chell, defeated the son of Domnall Bregach, which might suggest that, by that time, they
were supporting the war-effort of Cormac son of Art Ua Máel Sechnaill. 24 The limited
data available allows an estimated, but not an exact, chronology of the life and career of Ailbe
Ua Máel Muaid; if at his death in 1223, he was aged in his early to mid-seventies (which seems
reasonable, given his thirty-six-year episcopate), this would place his birth c.1150. On that
basis, it is probable that he entered the church in the mid-1160s, was ordained in the early
1170s, was appointed abbot of Baltinglass c.1178–80 (aged about 28 or 30) and was consecrated
bishop in 1186 when in his mid- to late thirties (the canonical minimum age was thirty).
25 Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ Lives, p. 352. 26 F.X. Martin, ‘John Lord of Ireland, 1185–
1216’, NHI, ii, pp 154–5.
reach of Ferns. Founded in the mid-1160s, when Donnchad (sl. 1170) son of
Domnall Mac Gilla Pátraic ruled the Nore Valley overkingdom of Osraige, it was
not a Cistercian house to begin with but, as Gwynn suggests, probably followed
a Benedictine rule.27 The founding abbot, Ua Duib Shláine, belonged to a local
aristocracy in northern Osraige although the family name – recalling the River
Slaney – suggests Uí Chennselaig origins. Their lands lay in what is now the
barony of Galmoy (Co. Kilkenny), in the local kingdom of Cenn Caille,28 where
the ruler, Ua Bróigte, was apparently an Uí Chennselaig appointee. The territory
of Cenn Caille extended in the form of an arc into the neighbouring barony of
Clandonagh (Co. Laois), where Ballybrophy is today. If not actually within its
bounds, both Achad Bó, the main foundation of St Cainnech and ecclesiastical
caput of Osraige, and Cluain Ferta of St Mo Lua (Clonfertmulloe, Co. Laois) lay
close by. This may well be significant in the context of the hagiographical
compilation associated with Ua Máel Muaid, as discussed below. In 1165, when
Diarmait Mac Murchada’s dominance of Leinster was commencing to unravel,
Ua Bróigte of Cenn Caille was killed along with a certain Domnall, presumably
promoted by Diarmait as a rival for the kingship of Osraige, and a cleric named
Paitín Ua hÁeda, hailed as ‘the candle of all Uí Chennselaig’.29 The latter was a
kinsman of Ióseph Ua hÁeda, predecessor of Ua Máel Muaid as bishop of Ferns,
who belonged to the ruling line of Uí Déga, a branch of Uí Chennselaig. The
instigator of these killings, Ua Mórda king of Loíges, was among the allies of
Donnchad Mac Gilla Pátraic.
When Diarmait Mac Murchada had first secured dominance of northern and
western Leinster in the 1140s, he embarked on a strategy of ‘political
engineering’ on a grand scale – uprooting long-established local dynasties and
replacing them with families that had supported him in the course of his rise to
power.30 His interventions in Osraige in particular would, in due course, have
important implications for Ua Máel Muaid as hagiographer, as the dynastic links
he created facilitated the dissemination of the cults of various saints (including,
as we shall see, Abbán and Mo Lua) to Ferns. In addition to Ua Bróigte in north-
western Osraige, Diarmait made Ua Duib of Uí Chremthannáin (of Múscraige
Tíre, bar. Ormond, Co. Tipperary) ruler of a territory that apparently corre-
sponded to the early historic kingdom of Loíges Cúile Réta. This included Mag
Réta (hence the townland of Morett) and Mag Aibne, covering most of the
baronies of Coolbanagher and Stradbally and extending as far as Dún Masc – the
Rock of Dunamase. The aim here was to counterbalance Ua Mórda of Loíges. In
the same vicinity was Uí Chuilinn, an offshoot of the early Leinster dynasty of
27 Gwynn, ‘The coming of the Normans, I’, pp 303–4; Jerpoint and Kilkenny were founded
between 1162 and 1166. 28 Hogan, Onomasticon, p. 224, locates Cenn Caille in bar. Galmoy.
29 AU, s.a. 1165; this Domnall Mac Gilla Pátraic is styled ‘king of northern Osraige’.
30 Byrne, ‘The trembling sod’, pp 25, 27–8, cites several examples of Diarmait’s
machinations; the phrase ‘political engineering’ is used by Ailbhe MacShamhráin, Church and
polity in pre-Norman Ireland: the case of Glendalough (Maynooth, 1996), p. 103.
Dál Chormaic, and Síl mBrain, whose ancestry is traced to Uí Dúnlainge but is
subsequently found in Uí Chennselaig. These minor lineages were reputedly
given lands in Loíges by Énna Cennselach.31
Of particular importance in the context of Diarmait’s west Leinster political
schema was his imposition of the Ua Cáellaide family as local kings in Osraige,
with the intention of restraining Mac Gilla Pátraic.32 The descendants of
Cáellaide had an especially close relationship with Diarmait, the head of the
family having been his aite, or foster-father. Dúngal Ua Cáellaide (d. 1181),
Diarmait’s foster-brother, became bishop of the Uí Chennselaig-aligned diocese
of Leighlin, and presumably knew and worked with the above-mentioned Ióseph
Ua hÁeda, bishop of Ferns.33 Áed Ua Cáellaide (d. 1178), perhaps a brother of
Dúngal, was bishop of Clogher, became a significant contributor to the twelfth-
century church reform, and was the king of Leinster’s teacher and confessor.34
The origin of the family is not clear but, especially in the light of later
developments, it may well be that their eponymous ancestor belonged to Clann
Lugair of the Araid.35 One line of this population group, Araid Tíre, occupied
the barony of Owney and Arra, Co. Tipperary, just south of the baronies of
Ormond. It was here, around Tír dá Glas (Terryglass, Co. Tipperary), that Uí
Chrimthannáin originated, and the Book of Leinster, which became something
of an Uí Chennselaig document, was commenced. Clann Lugair was closely
associated with the cult of St Ailbe of Emly, and claimed to have found the infant
saint when he had been abandoned in the wild to be raised by wolves.36
The territories assigned to Ua Cáellaide would play an important part in the
dissemination of saints’ cults and the sourcing of hagiographical data by Ua
Máel Muaid and his associates. One branch of the family was placed around the
31 Rawlinson B502, 119bb; Lec 85Vc 30; CGH, pp 31–2. Morett is in par. Coolbanagher, bar.
Portnahinch, near Emo; see Hogan, Onomasticon, p. 511. 32 Byrne, ‘The trembling sod’, pp
25, 27. 33 Giraldus, Expugnatio Hib., ch. III, p. 35, relates how the surrender of Wexford to
the English in 1170 was facilitated by two bishops, whom Martin, p. 295 n. 37, tentatively
identifies with Ua Cáellaide and Ua hÁeda. Martin also observes, p. 298 n. 54 (+ index), that
the bishop’s son was executed by the high-king Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair that same year, along
with Diarmait’s son Conchobar (AU, s.a. 1170). Dúnlaing Ua Cáellaide (d. 1181, ALC),
bishop of Leighlin, was a brother of Áed. 34 For Áed Ua Cáellaide, bishop of Clogher-
Louth, 1138–78, see Katharine Simms, ‘The origins of the diocese of Clogher’, Clogher
Record, 10 (1980), 180–98; Marie Therese Flanagan, ‘Irish church reform in the twelfth
century and Áed Ua Cáellaide’ in Michael Richter and J.-M. Picard (eds), Ogma: essays in
Celtic studies in honour of Próinséas Ní Chatháin (Dublin, 2002), pp 94–104. 35 LL 326 I 23;
CGH, p. 387; Cáellaide, son of Donn, son of Máel Chiaráin, on the basis of a generation
count, probably flourished in the mid-eleventh century. Byrne, ‘The trembling sod’, p. 27, had
tentatively suggested an origin among the Eóganacht, followed by Aidan Breen, ‘Ua Cáellaide,
Áed (d. 1182)’, DIB, ix, p. 563. 36Vita S Albei, §1; Charles Plummer (ed.), Vitae Sanctorum
Hiberniae (2 vols, Oxford, 1910), i, p. 46; Clann Lugair held the abbacy of Emly in the late
eighth century when the original version of the Life was probably written; however, the
prominence of Ua Cáellaide in the early thirteenth century when the Lives were being revised
may explain why their particular line of Lugar’s descendants is given in the genealogical
diocesan see of Achad Bó (Aghaboe, Co. Laois), in north-western Osraige.

Another offshoot was appointed to rule Uí Bercháin, in the south-east of Co.
Kilkenny, where the main ecclesiastical site was Ros Ua mBercháin (Rosbercon,
bar. Ida, Co. Kilkenny), while the leading family was promoted to the kingship
of Uí Buide, a petty realm that occupied the hilly area north-east of Castlecomer,
in the barony of Fassadinin, Co. Kilkenny, reaching across part of Slievemargy
into the barony of Ballyadams, Co. Laois.37 The name Uí Buide is preserved in
the deanery of Oboy, diocese of Leighlin – within which the Synod of Kells–
Mellifont, in 1152, included various small territories around Loíges. It is hard
not to see Diarmait’s hand in this design, given his political ambitions and the
fact that his foster-brother, Dúngal, was bishop of Leighlin from before 1152
until his death. Of more immediate importance in the present connection is that
this particular Ua Cáellaide petty kingdom included the ecclesiastical site of
Kilabban; this, according to hagiographical tradition, was St Abbán’s principal
foundation and the original caput of a west Leinster/Munster network of
ecclesiastical sites associated with him.
The hegemony of Mac Murchada began to unravel with the fall of
Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn in 1166, when Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair became
high-king and Domnall (d. 1185), son of Donnchad, Mac Gilla Pátraic ruler of
Osraige. It seems that the latter, after the arrival of the English, made a point of
conceding to the new settlers lands in northern Osraige belonging to the Ua
Cáellaide line, which he considered hostile to his ambitions.38 Some of the family
fled to Uí Chennselaig – seeking protection from the king at Ferns – along with
non-conformist members of Ua Mórda and Síl mBrain. For the most part, these
were accommodated in the southern reaches of Uí Chennselaig territory, where
the barony of Shelburne (Síl mBrain), Co. Wexford, was later created. Ironically,
however, after the death of Diarmait Mac Murchada, his nephew Muirchertach,
having attained headship of his dynasty (as already discussed), found common
cause with Domnall Mac Gilla Pátraic. Both having submitted to the English
crown, one was accepted by the English as ruler of a shrunken Uí Chennselaig
realm, the other as king of the northern part of Osraige, while the southern part,
directly under English control, was intensively colonized. It may be worthy of
note that, in 1175, Domnall and Muirchertach campaigned together in support
of Strongbow’s initiative against Domnall Ua Briain of Tuadmumu (Thomond,
northern Munster).39
In considering Osraige as an influence on Ua Máel Muaid, whether in
relation to politics or tradition, it must be allowed that the Ua Cáellaide family
corpus. 37 Byrne, ‘The trembling sod’, p. 25. The genealogical tradition which makes the
original Uí Buide an offshoot of Dál Chormaic, a Leinster dynasty of the early historical
period, seems more persuasive than that which represents them as a branch of Uí Dúnlainge;
see Rawlinson B502, 119ab, 50; 124b 35; CGH, pp 29, 73; Ailbhe MacShamhráin, Ailbe of
Emly, in preparation. 38 O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, p. 41. 39 AMisc.,
s.a. 1175; Martin, ‘Allies and an overlord’, p. 86; O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster,
and its neighbours was only one channel of contact. As suggested above, Felix
Ua Duib Shláine, abbot of Jerpoint, was perhaps a teacher of Ua Máel Muaid or
at least seems to have inspired him. Ua Duib Shláine became bishop of Osraige
in 1179, a year before, it seems, Ua Máel Muaid was appointed to the abbacy of
Baltinglass. It is scarcely coincidental that the ‘Cistercianization’ of Jerpoint, as
Gwynn observes, dates from c.1180, planned by Ua Duib Shláine and
implemented by monks from Baltinglass.40 That Ua Duib Shláine had his own
connections with the Uí Chennselaig dynasty by this time is illustrated by his
role as witness, with Ióseph Ua hÁeda, then bishop of Ferns, and others, to the
foundation c.1180 of the English-endowed Cistercian house of Dunbrody
(barony of Shelburne).41 Indeed, Dunbrody provides us with one example of
common cause between Ua Máel Muaid and Ua Duib Shláine. After his promotion
to the see of Ferns in 1186, the new bishop confirmed to the Cistercians of
Dunbrody all the rights and privileges that the bishop of Osraige had earlier
witnessed.42 Another instance of mutual interest is the Victorine abbey of St
Thomas, Dublin. In 1192, Ua Máel Muaid granted property (unlocated, but
probably in Uí Chennselaig) to the canons of St Thomas; it so happens that Ua
Duib Shláine (over a period of time) issued three charters to them confirming
their possessions in Osraige.43 More telling, perhaps, is the episode at Christ
Church Cathedral, Dublin, in which views expressed by the abbot of Baltinglass
were defended by the bishop of Osraige. On 22 March 1186, the first day of
Archbishop Cumin’s provincial council, Ua Máel Muaid had delivered a sermon
‘de continentia clericorum’. Drawing upon the archbishop’s own censure for
concubinage of certain Wexford-based English clergy, he maintained that the
newcomers were a corrupting influence on the Irish. Giraldus Cambrensis
having replied the following day, taunting the Irish for their lack of Christian
martyrs and alleging that they were drunkards, Ua Duib Shláine complained to
the archbishop, refuting the claims of this visitor from St Davids.44
Notwithstanding his enthusiasm for upholding the honour of Irish clergy, Ua
Máel Muaid soon found himself conforming to an increasingly English-
dominated ecclesiastical and civil administration. Before the council concluded,
he supported a resolution of Archbishop John Cumin against ‘bowmen … who
sell their skill … for shameful gain and rapine’.45 The implication seems to be
p. 15. 40 Gwynn, ‘The coming of the Normans, I’, p. 272. 41 CStM, ii, pp 151–4. The
foundation of Dunbrody (and later Tintern) had the effect of containing Ua Mórda lands into
the Hook Head area, but it is not clear if there was any intention here of creating a barrier to
shield them from settler encroachment, or to ‘box in’ potential enemies. 42 CStM, ii, pp
168–70, 172–3. 43 Reg. St Thomas, nos 340–2; ibid., p. 225. Ua Duib Shláine’s charters were
issued between 1186 and 1201. Ua Máel Muaid’s grant was confirmed by papal legate John of
Salerno in 1202. 44 Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), De rebus a se gestis, in Opera
Giraldi, ed. J.S. Brewed et al., 8 vols (London, 1861–91), i, p. 72; Giraldus, Expugnatio Hib.,
pp 324–5 n. 248; Gwynn, ‘The coming of the Normans, I’, p. 273; Sharpe, Medieval Irish
saints’ Lives, p. 353. 45 Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Provincial and diocesan decrees of the diocese of
that there was still, in the late 1180s, some armed resistance against the English,
albeit on a small scale. The identity of those who employed the bowmen is not
known, but, for this period, surviving native records for Leinster are scant to say
the least. We know little of the dynastic politics of the region’s Gaelic areas now
for the most part encompassed within settler manors, which, at least in theory,
extended into the uncharted mountains and forests of central Leinster. While
Muirchertach Mac Murchada and his sons after him supported the new English
regime, the position of his first-cousin once-removed, Domnall Óc, may have
been a different matter. Moreover, it is likely that the dispossessed rulers of Uí
Muiredaig (south Co. Kildare), having been accommodated after 1178 by
Archbishop Lorcán Ua Tuathail and Abbot Thomas on ecclesiastical lands
around Glendalough, were aggrieved and inclined towards revenge.46 In such
circumstances, it may be presumed that Mac Murchada, anxious not to have his
own position undermined by dissidents, approved of the decree as issued by the
council. It may further be presumed that Ua Máel Muaid was aware of the local
king’s views and bore them in mind in supporting the archbishop’s resolution.
The loyalty and, no doubt, ability of the young abbot of Baltinglass were
promptly rewarded. Immediately after the council, he was appointed to the
bishopric of Ferns, vacant since the death of Ua hÁeda three years earlier.
I V. UA M Á E L M UA I D , T H E A R C H B I S H O P R I C A N D T H E E N G L I S H
C ROW N
Certainly one would expect to find that Ua Máel Muaid, as bishop of Ferns from
1186, had a close working relationship with the archbishop of Dublin – his
immediate superior in the church hierarchy – and actively supported the latter’s
initiatives when called upon to do so. As a young cleric, he had loyally served
Lorcán Ua Tuathail. The fact that the next occupant of the archiepiscopal see,
John Cumin, was an Englishman and crown official was, in a way, beside the
point. Each bishop in the province, including Ua Máel Muaid, owed him his
obedience in ecclesiastical matters. We find, therefore, the new bishop of Ferns,
as a matter of course, attending the archbishop’s court at Dublin, witnessing
charters and attending councils. In particular, he witnessed several transactions
of property to the Cistercian house of St Mary, Dublin, including a grant in 1186
by Mac Gilla Mo-Cholmóc,47 formerly a king under the native dispensation, now
a local lord. More importantly, following the general synod of bishops in 1192,
Dublin during the Anglo-Norman period’, Archivium Hibernicum, 11 (1944), p. 44; idem,
‘Archbishop John Cumin’, Reportorium Novum, 1:2 (1956), 306. 46 MacShamhráin, Church
and polity, pp 105–6. 47 CStM, i, p. 31. The Mac Gilla Mo-Cholmóc kingdom of Uí
Dúnchada had extended in an arc from NE Co. Kildare to NE Co. Wicklow. St Mary’s, a
Savigniac foundation, had become Cistercian c.1147.
he witnessed the transfer from Patrician control of a large estate at Ballyboghil,

Co. Dublin, to St Mary’s; in 1207, he attested to a confirmation of this grant.48
It is equally clear that, on several occasions in the course of his episcopate, Ua
Máel Muaid was actively involved on behalf of the papal see. In summer 1198,
he was commissioned by Pope Innocent III to excommunicate the English heir
to the kingdom of Cork, along with two senior churchmen, for alleged
harassment of Daniel, native Irish bishop of Ross. As it happens, Rome having
learned that Daniel had concealed the relevant fact of his own intrusion into the
see of Ross, this particular commission was cancelled the following September.49
Later, in 1203, Ua Máel Muaid was called upon, in conjunction with other
bishops, to act in relation to a serious crisis involving the dioceses of Waterford
and Lismore, which threatened to inflame ethnic tensions within the church. An
Anglo-Norman churchman, Robert, the first candidate of the English crown
elected (before 1195) to the small, mainly Hiberno-Norse, bishopric of
Waterford, had determined to annex the adjacent native-Irish diocese of
Lismore, using every available means. The incumbent bishop, Felix, had been
forced by Waterford to resign in 1202 and his successor Malachias, OCist., on
deciding to go to Rome, was violently seized, fettered and whipped at Robert’s
behest. The papal legate, John of Salerno, had further aggravated the situation,
by openly expressing support for Waterford and making Robert administrator of
Lismore. However, Malachias, on his release, protested strongly to Rome,
whereby a mandate was issued to Ua Máel Muaid, the archbishop of Tuam, Felix
Ua Ruanada, and the bishop of Kilmacduagh, Mac Gilla Cellaig Ua Ruaidín, to
publicly proclaim the excommunication of Robert until he obeyed an order to
reinstate the bishop of Lismore.50 Apparently, Robert did comply but, after his
death the following year, his successor, David, began again to persecute
Malachias, and so the crisis long remained unresolved.51 The commissioning of
48 CStM, i, pp 142–3, 146–7; Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Six Irish papal legates, 1101–98’ in idem, The
Irish church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, pp 145–6, 147; idem, ‘The coming of the
Normans, I’, pp 275, 276. The grant was made by Tomaltach Ua Conchobair, archbishop of
Armagh. Other witnesses included Ua Duib Shláine, bishop of Osraige. Confirmation of the
grant in 1207 by Echdonn Mac Gilla Uidir, archbishop of Armagh, was witnessed by, among
others, Felix Ua Ruanada, archbishop of Tuam. 49 Maurice P. Sheehy (ed.), Pontificia
Hibernica: medieval papal chancery documents concerning Ireland, 640–1241 (2 vols, Dublin,
1962), i, pp 93–6; Bishop Daniel had cited Richard Carew, the lord of Cork, with the bishop
of Cork and dean of Ross. On cancelling the original commission, the pope appointed
Archbishop Tomaltach Ua Conchobair to lead proceedings against Daniel. Apparently he was
acquitted, and survived as bishop of Ross until 1223. 50 Sheehy (ed.), Pontificia Hibernica,
i, pp 124–5; Gwynn, ‘The coming of the Normans, I’, pp 275–6, 284. 51 Sheehy (ed.),
Pontificia Hibernica, i, pp 125–6, 153; AI, s.a. 1209; AFM, s.a. 1208; Gwynn, ‘The coming of
the Normans, I’, pp 284–5. After the involvement of Ua Máel Muaid had ceased, David ‘in
Gallesgob’, a nephew of the justiciar Meyler fitz Henry and confidant of King John,
recommenced the harassment of Malachias, who visited Rome in 1207 to protest in person.
David was killed in 1209 by Ua Fáeláin, king of Déise, but annexation of Lismore continued
to be pursued by his successor, Robert II. Malachias apparently died before 1216. A succession
Ua Máel Muaid (and, indeed, Ua Ruanada) to defend Irish interest against

English politico-ecclesiastical expansionism is curious – given his apparent
support for Dublin initiatives to annex the Irish-dominated diocese of
Glendalough. This development, however, needs to be assessed in the context of
Ua Máel Muaid’s close relationship not only with the Dublin administration –
ecclesiastical and civil – but most particularly with the English crown.
The bishop of Ferns was one of three Irish prelates at the coronation of King
Richard I, at Westminster Abbey, on 3 September 1189. If Ua Máel Muaid had
not already met Count John, the king’s younger brother, on his much-discussed
visit to Ireland four years earlier, he had apparently made his acquaintance by
this time – as on this occasion, or shortly afterwards, he witnessed a grant by
John to Archbishop Cumin of Dublin.52 Ua Máel Muaid was again in England
at the king’s invitation late in the year 1192, when he witnessed an inspeximus of
a grant by Cumin to Geoffrey de Marisco.53 His close involvement with the
crown, however, developed more after the accession of John in 1199. There is a
certain irony here, for in his early ventures as lord of Ireland, John, in his
youthful arrogance, had managed to alienate a number of the native Irish kings,
driving several of them to take up arms.54 Perhaps the new king had learned from
earlier mistakes, or else the bishop was prepared to overlook instances of
dismissive behaviour. In any event, Ua Máel Muaid was invited to act as a
suffragan bishop in the royal diocese of Winchester in 1201. That November, he
dedicated a chapel in the abbey of Waverley, Surrey, the earliest Cistercian
foundation in England, before returning home.55 Throughout the reign of John,
Ua Máel Muaid continued to experience royal favour. The king endorsed his
candidature for the archiepiscopal see of Cashel, as successor to the Cistercian
Muirghes Ua hÉnna, dispatching a letter to the archdeacon and chapter on 3
April 1206; apparently, Ua Máel Muaid was then at the royal court, as a writ of
liberate was also issued, ordering a payment of ten marks to the bishop of Ferns,
styled elect of Cashel, as a personal gift from King John.56 In the event, this
particular plan failed; it seems that the English crown had less influence in
Cashel than the Dál Cais dynasty of Thomond, which had successfully promoted
candidates for the see over the previous two centuries. The contest did delay
matters, but in c.1208 Donnchad Ua Longargáin was appointed as archbishop of
Cashel.
of English bishops at Lismore commenced, if not with Thomas (1216–18), certainly with
Robert of Bedford (1218–23). 52 Roger of Howden, Gesta regis Henrici secondi, ed. William
Stubbs, 2 vols (London, 1867), ii, p. 79; CChR, i, p. 120. 53 RBO, pp 86–7. 54 Duffy,
Ireland in the Middle Ages, pp 101–3. There is ample evidence, as Duffy observes, for John’s
arrogant and erratic behaviour even if the florid account of Giraldus Cambrensis invites a
sceptical response. 55 ‘Annals of Waverley’ in Annales monastici, ed. H.R. Luard, 5 vols
(London, 1864–9), ii, p. 253. The bishopric of Winchester was held by Godfrey de Luci
(1189–1204); the appointment of his immediate successor, Richard Poore, having been
quashed, the see was held by Peter des Roches from 1205 to 1238. 56 RLP, 61; RLC, 1204–
24, i, p. 51b; Gwynn, ‘The coming of the Normans, I’, p. 276.
Meanwhile, Ua Máel Muaid had returned to Ireland and, in 1207, was in

Dublin. Here, he witnessed a confirmation by the archbishop of Armagh,
Echdonn Mac Gilla Uidir, of grants to St Mary’s in the company, it may be
noted, of Felix Ua Ruanada, archbishop of Tuam, and of William Piro, bishop of
Glendalough. The following year, when King John was under interdict in
England, he appointed Ua Máel Muaid, Meyler fitz Henry and Philip of
Worcester, as ambassadors to inform the king of Connacht, Cathal Crobderg Ua
Conchobair, and other Irish rulers, of their obligations to him, despite the
difficulties which then beset him.57 In the summer of 1210, King John made his
second expedition to Ireland, to restrain some of his more rebellious barons,
create firmer bonds with the more significant native kings, and re-stabilize the
colony, threatened as it was by localized warfare – especially in the midlands.
Although the expedition succeeded in re-establishing, at least for a time, English
crown authority with barons and regional kings alike, King John had only
departed for home when the midlands again erupted into warfare – the Irish led
by the redoubtable Cormac son of Art Ua Máel Sechnaill – with much of the
action fought in or adjacent to the Ua Máel Muaid territory of Fir Chell.58
However, Ailbe Ua Máel Muaid’s relationship with King John was apparently
unaffected by these developments, and in 1214 he was again in England. As the
oldest extant register of Salisbury notes, in that year, he was acting as vicar of the
bishop of Lincoln.59 On 10 July, he made another visit to the Cistercian caput of
Waverley, where he dedicated five altars in the monastery church.60
By 1215, Ua Máel Muaid was one of only two Gaelic Irish bishops remaining
in the ecclesiastical province of Dublin – the other being Conn Mac Fáeláin,
bishop of Kildare – and both accompanied the new archbishop, Henry of
London, to the Fourth Lateran Council.61 Presumably, Ua Máel Muaid
witnessed what was, in some respects, from an Irish perspective, the most
significant action of the council when, on 25 February 1216, Pope Innocent III
formally confirmed the diocesan union of Dublin and Glendalough.62 This
confirmation was secured largely on foot of a deposition made by Archbishop
57 RLP, 84b; Gwynn, ‘The coming of the Normans, I’, p. 276. 58 AI, s.a. 1210; ALC, s.aa.
1210, 1212; AClon., s.aa. 1208, 1211, 1212; Roger of Wendover, Chronica sive flores historiarum,
ed. H.O. Coxe (4 vols, London, 1841–2, repr., 1964), ii, p. 56; RChart., 219a; CDI, 1171–1301,
i, pp 100–1, no. 654; Duffy, Ireland in the Middle Ages, pp 103–4; O’Byrne, War, politics and
the Irish of Leinster, pp 46–7; Martin, ‘John Lord of Ireland’, pp 140–6. 59 The register of S.
Osmund. Vetus registrum Sarisberiense alias dictum Registrum S. Osmundi episcopi, ed. W.H. Rich
Jones, 2 vols (London, 1883–4), i, p. 304. 60 Annales monastici, ii, p. 282. 61 Sheehy (ed.),
Pontificia Hibernica, i, pp 26–31; Patrick Dunning, ‘Irish representatives and Irish
ecclesiastical affairs at the Fourth Lateran Council’ in J.A. Watt, J.B. Morall and F.X. Martin
(eds), Medieval studies presented to Aubrey Gwynn SJ (Dublin, 1961), pp 91–3. With Dublin
(from 1180) and Glendalough (from 1192) already held by English bishops, Johannes OCist.,
bishop of Leighlin, who died c.1201, was succeeded by an Anglo-Norman Cistercian named
Herlewin. Felix Ua Duib Shláine of Ossory died the following year and was succeeded by
Hugo de Rous. 62 Charles McNeill (ed.), Calendar of Archbishop Alen’s register, c.1172–1534
Felix Ua Ruanada of Tuam (and supported by other Irish prelates), which

averred that the union had been planned by Cardinal Paparo as far back as the
Synod of Kells in 1152 and that now, by the early thirteenth century,
Glendalough had degenerated to a state of complete desolation and was ‘a den
of thieves and a pit of robbers’.63 In fact, however, while the proceedings of the
council were important insofar as papal recognition was secured, the union of the
two dioceses was already a fait accompli. King John had issued a grant, for the
third time, on 30 July 1213, of Glendalough to Henry of London, archbishop of
Dublin.64 This time, oversights of earlier efforts to unite the dioceses were
avoided; most importantly, the see was vacant, the incumbent having died that
spring. The king and the previous archbishop, John Cumin, had waited patiently
for this opportunity, although the latter did not live to see it. Twenty years
earlier, they had acted together to ensure that future episcopal succession at
Glendalough would be in their hands. In 1192, after the death of Bishop
Macrobius, Cumin had secured the election of an Anglo-Norman career
churchman, William Piro (or Peryn). It was then that King John made a grant,
to Cumin, with Ua Máel Muaid among the witnesses, of the capellania, chapelry
or patronage of Glendalough – ‘so that when the cathedral church falls vacant,
the archbishop of Dublin shall hold it in his hand’.65 The terms of the grant
make it clear that the role envisaged for William Piro was little more than that of
archdeacon. However, the fact that William increased the possessions of the
episcopate, and apparently had the cathedral remodelled, might suggest that, for
his own part, he strove to be more than a mere ‘caretaker bishop’.66 Be that as it
may, on William’s death the archbishop of Dublin, now Henry of London, took
control of the bishopric of Glendalough. The only concession that Abbot Thomas
could wrest from John was to have the possessions of the abbacy confirmed to
him for life (and as he was then aged over seventy, he was hardly expected to
survive for long), after which these, too, would pass to the archbishop.67
V. UA M Á E L M UA I D , T H E C H U R C H A N D E N G L I S H E X PA N S I O N I S M
The relationship of Ua Máel Muaid with Glendalough is worthy of some

comment, especially given his role as witness to Lord John’s grant of the
bishopric to Dublin in 1192. As remarked above, it is probably reasonable that
(Dublin, 1950), p. 38. 63 Cal. Alen’s reg., p. 40. 64 CChR, i, p. 194; Gearóid MacNiocaill
(ed.), ‘The charters of John, lord of Ireland, to the see of Dublin’, Reportorium Novum, 3:1
(1963–4), pp 285–8, 300–3. 65 Cal. Alen’s reg., p. 22; Mac Niocaill (ed.), ‘Charters of John
to the see of Dublin’, pp 285–8, 300–3; Crede mihi, ed. J.T. Gilbert (Dublin, 1897), §xli; M.V.
Ronan, ‘The union of the dioceses of Glendalough and Dublin’, JRSAI, 60 (1930), 60;
MacShamhráin, Church and polity, pp 162–3. 66 Ailbhe MacShamhráin, ‘The emergence of
the metropolitan see: Dublin, 1111–1216’ in James Kelly and Daire Keogh (eds), History of
the Catholic diocese of Dublin (Dublin, 2000), p. 69. 67 CDI, 1171–1307, i, p. 77;
many such apparent acts of assent should be viewed in the context of the
obedience and court-attendance owed by suffragans to the archbishop. In that
event, need inclusion of the bishop of Ferns in this particular witness-list have
any more significance than, for instance, his having attested to property
transactions of St Mary’s Abbey? Perhaps it is mere coincidence that Ua Máel
Muaid is the only Gaelic Irishman attesting to the grant of Glendalough and that
all the other signatories are Anglo-Norman. However, at the time, there were still
three other native Irish bishops in the province of Dublin, none of whom,
apparently, were involved in witnessing transfers of ecclesiastical possessions to
archiepiscopal control. The question is whether Ua Máel Muaid was chosen for
such a role, or put himself forward as a guarantor. His personal friendship with
Cumin is presumably of key importance here. This was the prelate to whom he
owed his advancement – his promotion to Ferns and invitations to Winchester,
not to mention his introduction to Lord John, who in turn had shown him
favour. His own association with Glendalough aside, therefore, would Ua Máel
Muaid not ‘show cause’ in a matter that was clearly of great importance to both
his benefactors?
Indeed, his assent to this grant by John seems to imply an acceptance on Ua
Máel Muaid’s part of English aims and methods in their quest for diocesan
union, which, ecclesiastical issues aside, had important political objectives. It
may well be that later developments alerted Ua Máel Muaid more to the political
motivation of such unions. After all, in 1202, he was called upon, with
Archbishop Felix Ua Ruanada (the choice of whom, in view of his later role at
the Lateran Council, seems ironic) and Bishop Ua Ruaidín of Kilmacduagh, to
enforce a papal judgment against the bishop of Waterford, who sought to annex
Lismore using violent means. One might expect Ua Máel Muaid to have noticed
how, a year or so later, Bishop Rochfort of Meath seized four parishes from
neighbouring Clonmacnoise – or that other small bishoprics, including Ross,
were under pressure from English-dominated neighbours. Presumably, Irish
dynastic interest in the dioceses concerned, a common factor in each case, was
widely recognized at the time. In contrast, the quest to annex Glendalough
apparently proceeded without violence, but involved a high-handed usage of law
by the archbishop of Dublin and the lord of Ireland, working in tandem. When
Lord John first issued a grant of Glendalough to Dublin in 1185, the incumbent
bishop, Máel Calainn Ua Cléirchén, was still alive. The transaction, therefore,
contravened English ecclesiastical regulations, which officially applied in
Ireland.68 In the event, the grant did not take effect; Macrobius was elected to fill
MacShamhráin, Church and polity, pp 163, 164–5. When Thomas died some two years later
(date unknown), it seems that termination of the abbacy and transfer of its possessions to the
archbishopric proved more difficult than had been envisaged. The Uí Muiredaig interest was
still strong. One Tadc Ua Tuathail apparently succeeded as abbot of Glendalough, but how
much authority – or what extent of temporal possessions – he retained is difficult to establish.
68 Liam Price, The place-names of Co. Wicklow, 7 (Dublin, 1967), p. xliii n. 106;
the vacancy, and held office from 1186 to 1192. Even if he was not alert to such
disregard for church law, as witness to charters, Ua Máel Muaid was party to a
process whereby the episcopal possessions of his neighbouring diocese were
systematically dismantled by the concerted actions of Lord John and Archbishop
Cumin.69 By the terms of one of these charters, Bishop Macrobius conceded to
the archbishop properties in the vicinity of Holywood (north-west Co. Wicklow),
in exchange for sites in and around the Early Christian foundation of Cell moccu
Birn (Killickabawn, east Wicklow). As is clear from another, a number of
episcopal holdings in what is now west Co. Wicklow were granted to the
archbishop by the lord of Ireland c.1189–90. It emerges that much of this land
was subsequently used for manorial settlement, as Ua Máel Muaid must surely
have known.70
As outlined above, the charter of 1192 clearly indicates the subject role
planned for William Piro; however, at the time, even some rather prominent
members of the laity apparently believed the arrangement to mean that, even if
the local bishop was to have lower status, episcopal succession at Glendalough
would continue.71 John’s later grant of 30 July 1213, issued to Henry of London,
archbishop of Dublin, not long after the death of Bishop William, is more
explicit regarding union of the dioceses. Moreover, the determination of the
archiepiscopate and English crown to secure – at almost any cost – de facto
control of Glendalough is clearly illustrated in the request for papal confirmation
of the diocesan union, presented at the Lateran Council in 1215. Much of the
testimony produced on this occasion consisted of dubious claims and biased
accounts, the nature of which will be discussed presently.
It is of course the case that, in 1192, when Ua Máel Muaid witnessed the
grant of the patronage of Glendalough to the archbishop of Dublin, many of
these developments still lay in the future. Besides, Ua Máel Muaid’s own
relationship with Glendalough and its community seems to involve some
inconsistencies. As already noted, as a young cleric, Ua Máel Muaid was a
disciple of Lorcán Ua Tuathail, whose Glendalough background is well known,
and later campaigned to have him canonized. Clearly, this was a long-term
commitment on his part. At some stage in the 1190s, Ua Máel Muaid obtained
a copy of the Liber de miraculis by Máel ísu Ua Cerbaill (Malchus, bishop of
Clogher–Louth, 1178–c.1186/7), which documented instances of miracles
MacShamhráin, Church and polity, p. 162. The grant was issued by John after he arrived in
Ireland to commence his visit. 69 See, for example, Cal. Alen’s reg., p. 20. 70 Linzi
Simpson, ‘Anglo-Norman settlement in Uí Briúin Cualann, 1169–1350’ in Ken Hannigan and
William Nolan (eds), Wicklow: history and society (Dublin, 1994), p. 203 n. 106; Price, Place-
names, 7, p. xliii. Geoffrey de Marisco, who was granted properties at Holywood, was the
archbishop’s nephew. 71 Note, for example, a grant made between 1208 and 1212 ‘to
William, bishop of Glendalough, and his successors’ of Clarthyaune, Bogerin and ten
carucates in the fee of Wicklow by William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, and lord of Leinster,
and a grant of the church of St Nicholas on the Barrow by Robert de Lyuett, whose family
held lands in the town and suburbs of Dublin and whose kinsman, John, later served as mayor
ascribed to the saintly Lorcán, to bolster the case for his canonization. Later, in
1207, the bishop of Ferns was one of five Irish prelates who wrote to Pope
Innocent III to promote this particular cause.72 The distinctly apolitical character
of the campaign is emphasized by the extent to which the early English
archbishops of Dublin recognized the sanctity of their last Irish predecessor.
John Cumin, the first to pursue diocesan union, endorsed Lorcán’s candidature
for sainthood, while Henry of London apparently compiled materials for a Life.73
All this in spite of the fact that the prospective saint’s nephew, Abbot Thomas,
steadfastly opposed their designs in relation to Glendalough. Opposition from
the Glendalough community to annexation from Dublin related at least as much
to secular politics as to issues of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. When, in 1178, Uí
Muiredaig was uprooted from its patrimonial kingdom (which had extended
from south Co. Kildare into south-west Wicklow), it seems that remnants of the
dynasty were accommodated on monastic properties of Glendalough, through
the agency of Archbishop Lorcán and Abbot Thomas.74 As remarked above, it is
possible that the bowmen against whom Archbishop Cumin issued his ordinance
in March 1186 were hirelings of Uí Muiredaig. Another possibility is that
Macrobius, elected to the bishopric of Glendalough around that time or shortly
afterwards, was a member of the same dynasty – especially if he is the Macrad
Ua Tuathail who witnessed a property transfer to St Mary’s Abbey.75 While Uí
Muiredaig had been promoted by Diarmait MacMurchada, they were not
favoured by his successors, Muirchertach and his family – Ua Máel Muaid’s
secular superiors. It is also the case that Uí Muiredaig were dynastic rivals of Uí
Fáeláin (located in north Co. Kildare) – the lineage of Bishop Conn Mac Fáeláin,
who accompanied Ua Máel Muaid to the Lateran Council.
Presumably, Ua Máel Muaid and Mac Fáeláin attended the presentation of
Archbishop Felix Ua Ruanada’s controversial testimony in relation to
Glendalough. The character of this deposition, whereby the Dublin archi-
episcopate sought sanction for its proposed union with the neighbouring diocese,
the motivation behind its pursuit of this goal and the circumstances that led to
Ua Ruanada’s participation in a project that had clear political undertones, have
been widely discussed.76 Suffice to say that, in support of their case, it was alleged
(1233–4, 1235–6); see Cal. Alen’s reg., pp 35, 36. 72 Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ Lives, p.
353. 73 M.V. Ronan, ‘Anglo-Norman Dublin and diocese’, IER, 45 (1935), 284; Sharpe,
Medieval Irish saints’ Lives, pp 28, 395n.; this is the ‘Arsenal Life’ of MS 938, fos 81r–96v,
Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal, Paris. 74 Price, Place-names, 7, pp xl, xliv; MacShamhráin,
Church and polity, pp 105, 106, 162. 75 Aubrey Gwynn, ‘The Irish dioceses after the Synod
of Kells’ in idem, Irish church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, pp 269, 360 n. 132. See
CStM, i, p. 38, for reference to one Macrad Ututothelan. The personal name here may have
been Latinized as Macrobius, while the surname looks to be Ua Tuathail. Another possible
identification for this bishop is with In tEspoc Ua Mongaig (d. 1192: AI). As bishop,
Macrobius is mentioned in at least three charters between c.1186 and 1192; see Ailbhe
MacShamhráin, ‘Prosopographica Glindelachensis: the monastic church of Glendalough and
its community, sixth to thirteenth centuries’, JRSAI, 119 (1989), 79–97 at 91–2. 76 Ronan,
that such a union had been planned by Cardinal Paparo back in 1152, when
territorial dioceses for Ireland were revised at the Synod of Kells–Mellifont.
This, however, is not borne out by the surviving ordinances of Paparo; besides,
in 1179, the diocesan temporalities of Glendalough were confirmed by a papal
bull. Curiously, there is no mention of this alleged plan in connection with the
1192 grant of the bishopric to Dublin.77 The submission also maintains that
Glendalough, one of the premier ecclesiastical sites of Leinster, was a ruinous,
half-abandoned settlement, which served as a shelter for robbers and outlaws. It
is clear from the surviving historical and archaeological record that such claims
were without foundation, and were advanced solely to shock the authorities in Rome
into sanctioning the diocesan union. Ua Ruanada’s testimony was apparently
supported by other Irish bishops present at the council. The record states that
he submitted the deposition on his own behalf and that of his suffragans. These
can be identified as the bishops of Kilalla, Achonry and Annaghdown.78 The role
of Ua Máel Muaid and of Mac Fáeláin of Kildare in this connection, given that
their archbishop was the beneficiary of the papal sanction they were seeking, may
have been limited. Moreover, aside from the fact that he was a member of the
delegation that presented the above-discussed testimony, it is possible that Ua
Máel Muaid’s relationship with the archiepiscopate and the English crown – and
hence his sympathy for their aims – was already waning.
V I . UA M Á E L M UA I D , T H E N E W E N G L I S H A D M I N I S T R AT I O N A N D
G ROW I N G C O N F L I C T
Certainly, by this time, there were serious difficulties between Ua Máel Muaid
and William Marshal, whom King John had lately appointed as lord of Leinster.
William was already well established in the province. Having married Isabella,
daughter of Strongbow and Aífe, he had received a grant of all the fiefs in
Leinster previously held by his father-in-law from King Henry II in 1189. For
some years afterwards, as Ua Máel Muaid was well aware, the earl was a
benefactor of the Cistercians – richly endowing the Anglo-Norman foundations
of Tintern in 1200 and of Duiske in 1207. It was not until the Marshal’s port
town of New Ross, which he established c.1200, had begun to expand as the
‘The union of the dioceses’, pp 56–62; John Watt, The church in medieval Ireland (Dublin,
1972), pp 120–1; Gwynn, ‘Irish dioceses after the Synod of Kells’, pp 266–70; Duffy, Ireland
in the Middle Ages, pp 105–7; MacShamhráin, Church and polity, pp 161–4; MacShamhráin,
‘The emergence of the metropolitan see’, pp 65–70; Margaret Murphy, ‘Archbishops and
anglicisation: Dublin, 1181–1271’ in Kelly and Keogh (eds), Catholic diocese of Dublin, pp 83–
4. 77 MacShamhráin, ‘The emergence of the metropolitan see’, pp 67–8; Cal. Alen’s reg., p.
41; see also Gwynn, Irish church in eleventh and twelfth centuries, pp 268–9; Liam Price
‘Glendalough: St Kevin’s Road’ in John Ryan (ed.), Féilsgríbhinn Eoin Mhic Néill (Dublin,
1940), p. 247. 78 Gwynn, ‘Irish dioceses after the Synod of Kells’, p. 266.
century entered its second decade, that relationships between bishop and earl
began to sour. The earl took possession of ecclesiastical estates around Ferns and
Templeshanbo, for manorial settlement, and persisted in holding these despite
repeated requests for their return.79 By 1214, Ua Máel Muaid, frustrated by the
earl’s continued defiance of his episcopal authority and disregard for his sentence
of interdict, had already decided to put the case before Pope Innocent III at the
Lateran Council.
By way of response (30 May 1216), the pope commissioned the archbishops
of Dublin and Tuam to warn the earl that if he failed to return the properties by
an agreed date, papal confirmation of the Ferns excommunication order would
be publicly circulated.80 In the event, the earl’s persistent obstinacy in retaining
the estates led Ua Máel Muaid to pursue the matter through legal channels and,
it seems (as discussed below), to undertake the production of hagiographical
tracts as a means of demonstrating the antiquity of episcopal claims. It was the
escalating conflict between Ua Máel Muaid and the Earl Marshal that prompted
King John, already a sick man and beset by political difficulties at home and
abroad, to push for the translation of the bishop of Ferns to Killaloe during the
last weeks of his reign, in September 1216.81 The death earlier that year of
Bishop Conchobar Ua hÉnna seemed to present an opportunity for such a move,
but again John had not allowed for the influence of Dál Cais, for whom Killaloe
was the home diocese. The Dál Cais-dominated chapter elected Domnall Ua
hÉnna who, after a contest with a rival whose election had been secured in the
name of the English crown, eventually received papal confirmation of his
appointment.82
Meanwhile, from the death of King John (18 October 1216), with powers of
regency in the hands of the Earl Marshal because of the minority of the new king
Henry III, it seems that Ua Máel Muaid found himself increasingly detached
from the English crown and administration. The Marshal having ignored the
ultimatum to return the Ferns properties and his excommunication having been
duly published, Ua Máel Muaid brought the case before an ecclesiastical court
presided over by the archbishops of Dublin and Tuam, in early April 1218. The
Marshal, as regent, used his influence at court in London and Rome to frustrate
the plans of the bishop of Ferns. Having convinced Henry III that Ua Máel
Muaid’s appeal to an ecclesiastical court to adjudicate on a lay fee gave cause for
concern, the young king issued a writ of prohibition to the two archbishops,
instructing them not to hear the case, on the grounds that he, as a minor, could
not warrant his vassal – the Marshal!83 Further letters were promptly dispatched,
79 Modern scholars have charted Ua Máel Muaid’s conflict with the Marshal in various
degrees of detail. See, for instance, Gwynn, ‘The coming of the Normans, I’, pp 280–1;
Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ Lives, p. 351; O’Byrne, ‘O’Mulloy (Ua Máel Muaid)’, DIB, VII,
p. 725. 80 Sheehy (ed.), Pontificia Hibernica, i, p. 180; Dunning, ‘Irish representatives’, pp
91, 106. 81 RLP, p. 196b. 82 Martin, ‘John Lord of Ireland’, p. 149. For discussion of the
rival, Robert Travers, see below. 83 Patent rolls of the reign of Henry III, 1216–[1232], 2 vols
forbidding Ua Máel Muaid from pursuing the matter further through legal
channels, and ordering the justiciar, Geoffrey de Marisco, to ensure that no court
would deal with it in the future.84 The wily Marshal then sent his own report of
events to Rome, whereupon Pope Honorius III wrote to the judges (25 June
1218), ordering them to compromise on the case, and requesting that the bishop
of Ferns and the Marshal reach an agreement between them.85 No such
agreement was ever reached. The well-known story related by Matthew Paris, of
how Ua Máel Muaid placed a ‘curse’ on the family of Marshal, was possibly
invented by the Ferns camp in an effort to save face. According to this account,
after the earl’s death in May 1219, the elderly bishop travelled to London, where
he proposed that if Marshal’s five sons would reach a compromise regarding the
ecclesiastical estates, he would lift the excommunication on their father.
However, they steadfastly refused, so the bishop pronounced that ‘his sons shall
be deprived of the Lord’s blessing, and they shall all die miserably and their
inheritance shall be dissipated’.86 Needless to say, this came to pass; all the sons
died prematurely without issue, and the Leinster properties, which their father
had inherited from Strongbow, were divided between heiresses. It seems that
some of the ecclesiastical properties at the centre of the long-running dispute
were restored to Ua Máel Muaid’s Anglo-Norman successor, John of St John, in
1227, with the concession to the latter by Philip Prendergast of two manors near
Ferns, and his receiving a royal grant of a weekly market for Templeshanbo.87
Apparently, these changes in the administration of the lordship of Ireland
following the death of King John, whereby Ua Máel Muaid found himself
detached from the centre of political power, were paralleled by changes in the
ecclesiastical sphere after the death of John Cumin in late 1212, which led to the
bishop of Ferns being gradually distanced from the archbishopric. Relations
between Ua Máel Muaid and the new archbishop of Dublin, Henry of London,
are difficult to assess for the opening years of Henry’s archiepiscopate. When Ua
Máel Muaid received his last invitation to Winchester in 1214, and was included
in the delegation to the Lateran Council the following year, King John was still
alive. Indeed, the latter, as noted above, having already learned of the escalating
conflict between Ferns and the Earl Marshal, had striven to have the bishop
translated to Killaloe. Had this plan been successful, it would also have had the
effect of placing Ua Máel Muaid outside Henry of London’s ecclesiastical
province. However, after King John’s death, the appointment of the Marshal as
regent for the young king Henry III facilitated the emergence in Ireland of a new
style of administration which would take new directions. Archbishop Henry, who
(London, 1901–3; repr. Nendeln, 1971), i, pp 148–9. This writ was issued on 18 Apr. 1218.
84 Pat. rolls Henry III, i, pp 173–4. 85 Sheehy, Pontificia, I, pp 199–200; Gwynn, ‘The
coming of the Normans, I’, pp 280–2; O’Byrne, ‘O’Mulloy (Ua Máel Muaid)’, DIB, VII, pp
724–5. 86 Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, iv, pp 491–4. 87 Gwynn, ‘The coming of the
Normans, I’, p. 280; Edward Culleton, Celtic and Early Christian Wexford (Dublin, 1999), p. 145.
had heretofore been very much a king’s man, now aligned himself with the
administration and formed part of a triumvirate along with the Earl Marshal and
Geoffey de Marisco, all three of whom had similar views in regard to extending
English control in Ireland and dealing with the natives.88 The controversial
directive issued by the Marshal in January 1217, in the name of King Henry III,
forbidding the promotion of Irish clergy to the episcopate, was almost certainly
an outcome of collaboration between these three, it being Archbishop Henry’s
responsibility to implement the policy in the ecclesiastical province of Dublin.
His appointment three months later as papal legate for Ireland, arranged
through the influence of the Marshal at Rome, gave him added authority. It may
be assumed that the ageing Ua Máel Muaid understood the implications of the
new order for Ferns; future succession to the bishopric would be limited to
English churchmen, and the composition of the chapter would be changed
accordingly. The church would become an English institution throughout
Leinster and Meath, and in any part of Ireland where the writ of the English
crown ran. However, attempts to force the appointment of crown candidates in
areas where native dynasties were still strong proved rather less successful. The
attempt by the new administration to fill the vacant see at Killaloe, to which King
John had earlier tried to translate Ua Máel Muaid, provides what is probably the
best example. De Marisco, who had already asserted his influence west of the
Shannon – symbolized by the building of a castle adjacent to the ecclesiastical
site of Killaloe – secured the appointment of his nephew, Robert Travers. The
latter, however, who was not canonically elected, did not get possession of the see
while the influence of Dál Cais is clearly reflected in the election of Domnall Ua
hÉnna. The Cistercian archbishop of Cashel, Donnchad Ua Lonngargáin,
himself a member of a Dál Cais line, ensured that Domnall’s appointment was
confirmed by Honorius III in 1219 and subsequently persuaded the pope to
dismiss Archbishop Henry from his legateship for abuse of his office.89
Undoubtedly, Ua Máel Muaid, having supported the English kings Henry II
and John for a number of years, was poorly repaid by the actions of the Earl
Marshal. Indeed, the ‘new direction’ for administration of the lordship of
Ireland instituted by the Marshal and his partners was responsible for changes
in attitude towards the church from the second decade of the thirteenth century,
as it was increasingly seen as an instrument of colonial expansion. However, for
Ua Máel Muaid, the die was cast. He was held firmly in place by a powerful
politico-ecclesiastical combination, which sought to eradicate Gaelic Irish
influence within the church in Leinster and had already ensured that his own
successor would be an Englishman. In the secular sphere, attitudes towards the
English were hardening; his own lineage of Fir Chell seems to have joined the
Ua Máel Sechnaill war effort at least by the 1220s. It may not be entirely
88 Martin, ‘John Lord of Ireland’, pp 149–50, 152–3. 89 Martin, ‘John Lord of Ireland’, pp
149, 153; Duffy, Ireland in the Middle Ages, pp 107–9.
coincidental that the Cistercian house of Baltinglass, where Ua Máel Muaid had
served as abbot, along with the Osraige foundations of Jerpoint and Inis
Lounaght, were prominent in the ‘Mellifont Conspiracy’ of that time.90
Apparently, it was when he found himself drawn into conflict with the English
administration from 1214 onwards that Ua Máel Muaid – as Sharpe and Ó
Riain, for different reasons and with some reserve, have suggested – saw a
potential role for hagiography in supporting his case, and so undertook to work
on the Life of St Abbán, and perhaps played some part in the revision of several
other Munster and Leinster vitae.
V I I . UA M Á E L M UA I D , T H E L I F E O F S T A B B Á N A N D T H E V I T A E
SANCT ORUM HIBERNIAE
Regarding the Lives of the Saints, it is probable that Ua Máel Muaid was well
aware of their role in affirming title to property, and sought to establish if the
estates seized by the Marshal found mention in existing Ferns hagiography. If no
reference to these sites could be found, the temptation to revise appropriate
Lives accordingly might well have been hard to resist. In such circumstances, the
Life of M’Áedóc, patron saint of the diocesan see of Ferns, would normally be
considered the most relevant. It is a curious fact that, in this connection, the vita
of M’Áedóc has not been the main focus for modern scholars. Nonetheless, some
reworking of the Life has been observed, and Sharpe has noted two ‘trademarks’
that seem to fit with late twelfth-/early thirteenth-century revision. For one, the
patron saint is styled archiepiscopus (archbishop) – which in this context seems to
mean ‘overbishop’ of the Uí Chennselaig realms.91 Another point is that
Brandub, the most powerful early historical overking of that dynasty, is
deliberately linked with Ferns. More immediately relevant to the present study,
however, is the apparent recasting in the Dublin recension, previously observed
by Doherty, of the episode concerning Brandub and Áed mac Ainmirech, a son
of the Uí Néill king of Tara.92 Here, the encounter between the dynasts, which,
as is clear from the context of the episode (and from versions of the story related
in the Bóruma Saga and elsewhere), took place near Cluain Mór in Uí Felmeda
(in north-eastern Co. Carlow), is pointedly located at Cluain Mór Dícholla Gairb
(tld Bree, par. Clonmore, bar. Bantry). This relatively minor foundation is about
three miles east of Moyarney, a site that held particular importance for Ua Máel
90 Gwynn, ‘The coming of the Normans, I’, p. 289. 91 Vita S Maedoc, D §55 (also D §59);
Plummer, Vitae SS Hib., ii, pp 161, 162; Colmán Etchingham, Church organisation in Ireland,
400–1000 (Maynooth, 1999). 92Vita S Maedoc, D §24; see also §26; see also Salamanca Life
§§24, 29; Plummer, Vitae SS Hib., ii, p. 149; W.W. Heist (ed.), Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae ex
Codice Salmanticensis (Brussels, 1968); Charles Doherty, ‘The Irish hagiographer: resources,
aims, results’ in Tom Dunne (ed.), The writer as witness: literature as historical evidence (Cork,
1987), pp 14–15; Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ Lives, pp 223–4, 356.
Muaid and that, as we shall see, he was anxious to represent as the caput of St
Abbán’s possessions in Uí Chennselaig. It may be significant that the following
episode (D §25) has M’Áedóc visit Senboth Sine (Templeshanbo, bar.
Scarawalsh), where a local boy is said to have become one of his disciples. This
foundation, regarded as one of the earliest in the region, about six miles west of
Ferns, was apparently the focus of several estates seized by the Marshal. It might
be added that other sites associated with M’Áedóc by tradition were also near
Moyarney, including Cluain (Clone, bar. Scarwalsh, which carried a medieval
dedication to St Aidan) and Cluain Chaín (Clongeen, bar. Shelmaliere West).
However, there is considerable agreement that the Vita S. Abbani more clearly
reflects what look to be Ua Máel Muaid’s concerns, with Ó Riain and Sharpe
both suggesting that the bishop of Ferns may have worked on this Life or, at any
rate, commissioned it, c.1214–18. For one thing, it is distinctly possible that the
souring of relationships between Ua Máel Muaid and the English regime, which,
as suggested above, developed during these years, is reflected in the Abingdon
episode of the Life of St Abbán. This narrative, which has Abbán visit Abingdon
in Berkshire, where he restores to life the queen-consort of the local king
(presumably ruler of the West Saxons), has been interpreted by Ó Riain and by
Sharpe as a reply to criticism of the Irish church by the English. They contend
that the episode was meant to counter English claims that their intervention in
Ireland was justified by a need to ‘spread the faith’ among their ‘pagan’
neighbours to the west.93
Interpretations of the Abingdon story aside, there are other, perhaps clearer,
indications of an Ua Máel Muaid imprint on the Vita S. Abbani. As it survives,
the tract appears to be the Life of an early church founder, closely connected
with the west Leinster and north Munster areas. This ‘saint in the Irish
tradition’ already had an identity as Abbán, and was traced by the genealogists to
Dál Chormaic, the regional rulers of the early historical period. Significantly, the
Life substitutes a link with Dál Messin Corb – while his mother, Mella, is said
to have been a sister of the early Leinster saint, íbar.94 It seems that his caput was
Cell Abbáin (Kilabban, bar. Ballyadams, Co. Laois), expressly located (D. §27) in
93 Vita S Abbani, D §; Plummer, Vitae SS Hib., i, p. xxv n. 5, 12; Ó Riain, ‘St Abbán: the
genesis of an Irish saint’s Life’, pp 159–70; Ó Riain, ‘Abbán, 6thc’, DIB, i, pp 1–2; Sharpe,
Medieval Irish saints’ Lives, p. 353. On the supposed link of Abbán with Abingdon, see W.W.
Heist, ‘Over the writer’s shoulder: St Abbán’, Celtica, 11 (1976), 83. The association is of
uncertain antiquity, but an Anglo-Saxon martyrology from Abingdon has an addition of
eleventh-century date that tells of the supposed link of Patrick (recte Palladius) with
Glastonbury – see D.N. Dumville, Saint Patrick, AD493–1993 (Woodbridge, 1993), pp 241,
243–4. 94 In the (possibly) late eighth-century Martyrology of Tallaght, he is Abbán m.h.
Chormaic at 16 Mar. and 27 Oct.; notes to the Martyrology of Óengus at these dates
indicating Uí Muiredaig domination of this district (probably eleventh century) may explain
the linking of Abbán with Dál Messin Corb and Glendalough interests; genealogical
annotation claims he was originally called Blat, a name with Dál Chormaic associations; see
LL 352a 52, 372d 10; LL, vi, pp 1570, 1695; CGSH, §§287, 722.79, pp 46, 178, 201 n. 287;
Uí Buide, which, as already explained, was a lordship of the Ua Cáellaide family,

so closely connected with Uí Chennselaig and Ferns.95 In a previous section (D.
§22), the Life had its subject visit Munster, and a number of his possessions in
this province are charted, with particular emphasis on Múscraige Breogain and
Mag Femen, territories in the south of modern Co. Tipperary, which are
particularly associated with St Ailbe. This overlap with the founder-saint of Emly
is more distinctly reflected in a later episode (D. §32), in which Abbán is said to
have visited the kingdom of Mide. Here, his foundations included the church of
Cell Abbáin, and another which is named as Cell Ailbe. Meanwhile, there is a
lengthy account (D. §23) of the saint’s sojourn in Éile (bar. Eliogarty, Co.
Tipperary), where the people grant him the site of Ráith Beccáin.96 More
importantly, a neighbouring king, who had on several occasions plundered the
territory, is converted by the saint (D. §26) and becomes, through one of his sons,
ancestor of a population-group at Abbán’s civitas – so that the writer is a
descendant of that son. Ó Riain considers that the reference here is to Ailbe Ua
Máel Muaid, and his ancestral lineage of Fir Chell.97
However, it is Abbán’s journey to the land of Uí Chennselaig, where he will
finally settle, that holds particular interest for Ua Máel Muaid. His direction
there by an angel (D. §28) is undoubtedly significant, as this is a common
hagiographical motif employed to convey that the saint is thus being guided to
his ‘place of resurrection’. The foundation he is now destined to make is where
he will die and be entombed, to await the Last Judgment. Therefore, it is a
location of particular significance. The narrative has him travel via Ros Ua
mBercháin (Rosbercon, bar. Ida, Co. Kilkenny), the main ecclesiastical site in Uí
Bercháin, another Ua Cáellaide lordship, where he appoints the local holy man,
Eimíne. This site increased in importance for Ua Máel Muaid and the clergy of
Ferns from the early thirteenth century, as it was overshadowed by the Earl
Marshal’s town of New Ross, where several houses of religious were being
developed – with English communities. The saint’s chosen place of settlement,
though, is Mag Arnaide (par. Adamstown, formerly Moyarney, bar. Bantry, Co.
Wexford), which, for Ua Máel Muaid, is the caput of all Abbán’s possessions and
is enshrined in the title of the Life. It is worthy of note, in this connection, that
a segment of Uí Buide is located at Moyarney by a gloss of probable late twelfth-
Vita Abbani, D §3; Plummer, Vitae SS Hib., i, p. 4. 95 Vita S Abbani, D §27; Plummer, Vitae
SS Hib., i, p. 21. The text has ‘in plebem Hua Midhi’, which, as Plummer rightly noted (n. 2),
is a phonetic rendering of (in plebem) hUa mBudi. The genealogies associate Abbán with
several minor foundations lying between Kilabban and Monasterevin. Hogan, Onomasticon,
p. 663; the Taxation of Irish dioceses, 1302–6, located Kilabban in Oboy (Uí Buide).
96 Otherwise Cell Beccáin (Kealbecan etc. in medieval sources), now corruptly Kilbrickane,
par. Loughmoe East, bar. Eliogarty, where two enclosures are extant; Jean Farrelly and Caimin
O’Brien (eds), Archaeological inventory of Co. Tipperary, I: North Tipperary (Dublin, 2002),
p. 196; Pádraig Ó Cearbhaill (ed.), Cill i logainmneacha Co. Thiobraid Árann (Dublin, 2007),
p. 68. 97 Plummer, Vitae SS Hib., i, pp 18, 20; Ó Riain, ‘St Abbán: the genesis of an Irish
saint’s Life’, pp 159–70; idem, ‘Abbán, 6thc’, DIB, i, p. 2.
century date in the Martyrology of Óengus.98 Such a move could well have
resulted from the expulsion of the Ua Cáellaide lords from their Loíges
territories in the 1170s by the new Mac Gilla Pátraic regime. Of other sites
named in the vita, Cam ros (tld Camaros, par. Kilgarvan), is nearby (in the
adjacent barony of Shelmaliere West), while Druim Chaín Cellaig, although
unlocated, is clearly in the same vicinity. Elsewhere in the Life (D. §33), it is
related how Cormac mac Diarmata, an early king of south Leinster, attacks Cam
ros, but, due to the miraculous power of St Abbán, then repents and donates the
site of Find Mag – again, only a short way distant. The fact that these
foundations, all of minor importance in themselves, form a cluster near
Moyarney, suggests that they were included in the Life because they were among
the possessions already sequestered by the Marshal in 1214, or were facing the
prospect of imminent seizure.
Several other tracts in the Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae anthology, as Sharpe
observes, display at least some features of apparent revision, as discussed above
in relation to the Lives of M’Áedóc and Abbán. In particular, there are pointed
references to Uí Chennselaig. For instance, the vita of Mo Lua (D §39) of
Clonfertmulloe repeats the claim that Abbán founded Ros Ua mBercháin for
Eimíne. Curiously, it locates the site of Ros near the River Barrow ‘in regione
Cennselach’.99 The dynasty of Uí Chennselaig and its Early Christian overking
Brandub, accorded particular emphasis in the Vita S Maedoc, are the foci of a
clearly significant episode (D. §8) in the Life of St Mo-Ling of Tech Mo-Ling
(St Mullin’s, Co. Carlow). Here, King Brandub constitutes Mo-Ling as
archiepiscopus (archbishop) in succession to M’Áedóc at Ferns. It is also
noteworthy that the hagiographer stresses the location of Tech Mo-Ling in the
western plain of Uí Chennselaig, adjacent to Osraige, so that his foundation and
Ferns were ‘in una regione’ (D. §§2, 8).1 The Life of St Fintan of Clonenagh (Co.
Laois), features a bishop named Brandub from Uí Chennselaig, described as
‘celebrior pars Laginensium’, who meets with Fintan in Achad Firglais (Agha,
bar. Idrone East, Co. Carlow), stated to be near Leighlin. However, not all
references to Uí Chennselaig in Leinster saints’ Lives are quite so
complimentary. In an episode of the Vita S Coemgeni, Brandub’s huntsman,
having loosed his dogs in the valley of Glendalough, finds them tamely lying
down on the resting saint – imagery that may reflect a peaceful solution to a
potential military threat.2 Elsewhere in the Life, Uí Chennselaig receive a rather
98 Féilire Óengussa at 27 Oct. (where, it may be noted, Kilabban is located in Uí Muiredaig)

has ‘Aban … ó Muig Ernaidi i n-Uib Ceinnselaig i. i n-Uib Buide’; Stokes (ed.), Martyrology
of Oengus, p. 228; Hogan, Onomasticon, p. 663. 99 Plummer, Vitae SS Hib., ii, p. 220; Sharpe,
Medieval Irish saints’ Lives, p. 353. 1 Plummer, Vitae SS Hib., ii, pp 191, 193; Sharpe,
Medieval Irish saints’ Lives, p. 354. 2 Vita S Coemgeni, D §19; Plummer, Vitae SS Hib., i,
p. 244. In §27, dogs are more explicitly an image for warriors, in another episode (D. §27),
which seems to reflect a military offensive by Uí Chennselaig in 1040; MacShamhráin, Church
and polity, pp 94, 148–9. Canine/lupine imagery for warrior and brigand behaviour has been
‘bad press’ – it is in their land that the unfortunate Moelgubi is crucified, while
some of their constituent kingdoms are shelters for thieves.3
To summarize, therefore, if the role of Ua Máel Muaid as hagiographer was
limited to a revision of the Life of Abbán, while an anthology of the Lives of the
Irish saints was separately compiled at Ferns, this could well explain the
respective openings of the Vita S Abbani and the Life of St M’Áedóc. The Vita
S Abbani opens with a florid description of Ireland and its situation, followed by
an episode in which St Patrick visits Uí Chennselaig, where he foretells that
Abbán will be foremost among the saints of Leinster, with Cóemgen and Mo-
Ling next in rank. St Brigit, who is widely regarded as a cult figure of
international status, is quietly placed further down. On the one hand, the
dramatic introduction and prophetic endorsement given to Abbán seems to
suggest the preparation of a Leinster legendary, in which this relatively minor
saint is accorded the privilege of the opening chapter. On the other, the Life of
M’Áedóc proposes a different – rather more conventional – sequence, with
M’Áedóc in fourth place after (the generally agreed) ‘national’ patron saints,
Patrick, Brigit and Columba.4
Ua Máel Muaid’s interest in the Life of Abbán, several of whose foundations
were located around the Ferns estates seized by the Earl Marshal – an action
which had prompted hagiographical support for counter-claims to the properties
in question – has already been discussed. The identification of Abbán of
Moyarney as an alter-ego of St Ailbe of Emly, highlighted by Ó Riain, may help
to explain this curious choice of a Life on the bishop’s part. The circumstantial
evidence for identifying St Ailbe with the founder of Moyarney finds
considerable support from the politico-ecclesiastical links examined above. In
this connection, the central role of the Ua Cáellaide family, extending from
Kilabban, via Rosbercon, to Ferns – and their links with the petty kingdom of Uí
Buide, the Mac Murchada line, and with other Osraige-based families such as
Ua Bróighte, Ua Duib Shláine and Ua hÁeda – must surely be significant.
Moreover, it is possible that the origins of Ua Cáellaide lay among the Araid
of north-west Tipperary, from which several of the eighth-century abbots
claimed descent and which, because of their reputed role in finding the infant
Ailbe in the forest, had promoted the production of the Vita S Albei in the first
instance. Indeed, the same family, especially if they can be identified with the Uí
Buide of Ferns, was quite possibly behind the compilation of the Vitae
Sanctorum Hiberniae in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. While Ua
Máel Muaid’s personal contribution as hagiographer was apparently limited, it
discussed at length by Kim McCone, Pagan past and Christian present in early Irish literature
(Maynooth, 1990), esp. pp 213, 218–19. 3 Vita S Coemgeni, D §25, 42; Plummer, Vitae SS
Hib., i, pp 247, 254. Ailbhe MacShamhráin, ‘Uí Máil and Glendalough’ in Charles Doherty,
Linda Doran and Mary Kelly (eds), Glendalough: city of God (Dublin, 2011), p. 196.
4 Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ Lives, pp 361, 362.
seems that the original anthology of Latin Lives of Irish saints was assembled
during his tenure of office. This foray on his part into the field of hagiography,
however, and the network of politico-ecclesiastical links that it implied, adds
another entire dimension to the life and career of a bishop from a Gaelic Irish
milieu, whose complex relationship with the English church, crown and
administration for Ireland, provides ample scope for future research.
Heresy in Ireland in the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries
B E R NA D E T T E W I L L I A M S
It has always been assumed, both in the Middle Ages and by modern historians,
that Ireland was never heretical. In a letter to the pope, Columbanus said:
For all we Irish, inhabitants of the world’s edge, are disciples of Saints
Peter and Paul and of all the disciples who wrote the sacred canon by the
Holy Ghost, and we accept nothing outside the evangelical and apostolic
teaching; none has been a heretic, none a Judaizer, none a schismatic; but
the catholic faith, as it was delivered by you first, who are the successors of
the Holy apostles, is maintained unbroken.1
Columbanus was not the only person who asserted that Ireland had never
deviated from the true faith. In 1324, during the notorious Alice Kyteler case,
Arnold le Poer declared: ‘As you well know, heretics have never been found in
Ireland, which has always been called the “Island of Saints”’.2
The term heresy could be highly flexible.3 Heresy is a deviation from the
orthodox beliefs of the church that were expressed in such doctrines as the
Trinity, the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Last Judgment and the
Authority of the church. To disagree with one or all of these dogmas meant that
the heretic risked eternal damnation as it was a revolt against a divinely
constituted authority; but such revolt had to be persistent and obstinate to be
declared formal legal heresy.4 Heresy had existed in the church from the time of
the apostles, but St Paul looked upon heretics as having simply made the wrong
choice and the recommended action was simply to shun them: ‘Give a heretic
one warning, then a second, and after that avoid his company’.5 It was the duty
1 Sancti Columbani opera, ed. G.S.M. Walker (Dublin, 1957), pp 38–9. I am grateful to
Colmán Ó Clabaigh for bringing this to my attention. 2 A contemporary narrative of the
proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, prosecuted for sorcery in 1324, by Richard de Ledrede,
bishop of Ossory, ed. Thomas Wright (London, 1843), p. 17; hereafter Narrative. 3 Richard
Kieckhefer, Repression of heresy in medieval Germany (Liverpool, 1979), p. 80. For a general
discussion of medieval heresy, see M.D. Lambert, Medieval heresy: popular movements from the
Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford, 2002); Edward Peters, Heresy and authority in
medieval Europe (Philadelphia, 1980); R.I. Moore, The birth of popular heresy (London, 1975);
idem, ‘Heresy as disease’ in D.W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (eds), The concept of heresy in
the Middle Ages (Louvain, 1976), pp 1–11. 4 Gratian defined heresy as the continued
rejection of orthodox doctrine after the truth has been demonstrated and Thomas Aquinas
defined it as the denial of faith as defined by the church. 5 3 Titus, 10–11.
339
340 Bernadette Williams
of the bishop to search out heretics in his diocese and then excommunicate and
exile them; there was no temporal punishment, the heretic being perceived as in
need of salvation, not a criminal subject to punishment.6 However, once
Christianity became the established religion and the church became the most
important institution in medieval Europe then the way was open for civil law to
be used against the heretic who was also now a rebel against the state. The
Emperor Theodosius was the first legally to execute heretics in AD383, but it was
not until 1022 that this action was repeated. When the church became regulated
at the parochial level, the awareness of heresies became more evident. As a result,
heresy itself was additionally perceived as an attack on the social structure of
society. It was then a challenge to the spiritual and political authority of both the
church and the state.
As the church grew more powerful and wealthy, there arose a corresponding
desire for reform, and the development of the ideal of apostolic poverty served
to highlight the excessively wealthy church.7 The striving for church reform
raised expectations and when they did not materialize, heresy manifested itself,
often initially due to a desire for reform. Wandering preachers, strong
charismatic men, appeared and called for a more idealistic life in imitation of
Christ as portrayed in the gospels, the vita apostolica. The church came to realize
and accept the difficult truth that the spiritual needs of the majority of the people
were not being met and deviation and then heresy was the result. Several new
heresies came into being with the common elements of a desire to return to the
apostolic practices of early Christianity, a protest against the concentration of
authority in the church and a challenge to the sacraments. Heretical episodes
now became more frequent and more aggressive. The most famous of those
heretics, the Cathars or Albigensians in southern France, were considered by the
church to be the most dangerous, as they rejected nearly everything associated
with the Christian tradition, and the Dominicans came into being as a direct
result of the Cathar heresy.8 In 1215, at the most important Fourth Lateran
Council, Pope Innocent III, who saw the church as beset by heresies, legislated
against heresy in the third canon of that council. In 1229, the Synod of Toulouse
established the idea of inquisitors in every parish, one priest and two laymen,
and in the 1230s, Pope Gregory IX gave special responsibilities and powers to
the Dominican and Franciscan theologians.9 Additionally, in 1243, Pope Innocent
IV approved the civil laws of the Emperor Frederick II and King Louis IX of
France, which meant that torture could be applied and the heretic burnt at the
stake by civil authorities. Those accused of heresy, if relapsed, were to be handed
6 Kieckhefer, Heresy in medieval Germany, pp 76, 78. 7 In the 1250s, ‘Milan’s sophisticated
population’ boycotted the sacraments from their own clergy who were both married and guilty
of simony: Andrew Roach, The devil’s world: heresy and society, 1100–1300 (Harlow, 2005), pp
14–15. 8 St Dominic believed that heretics were merely wayward souls who could, with
loving guidance, be brought back into the fold. 9 Kieckhefer, Heresy in medieval Germany,
pp 4, 9; Bernard Gui, The inquisitor’s guide: a medieval manual on heretics, trans. Janet Shirley
Heresy in Ireland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 341
over to the lay authorities to be punished. Those who supported heresy were to
be deprived of public office, the right to a trial and the right to draft a will, and
the hereditability of their fiefs and offices was denied. In the early fourteenth
century, a Dominican, Bernard Gui, emerged as the foremost authority on
heresy, as he vigorously pursued heretics, regarding them as treasonable and an
evil and pernicious influence within the church.10
A major problem for the historian when dealing with heresy in this period is
to determine exactly what the medieval writer himself meant by the word heresy;
the accusations were not always theologically accurate. In the famous
Remonstrance written by the Irish to the pope in 1317, the word heresy is used
against the English: ‘For not only their laymen and secular clergy but some also
of their regular clergy dogmatically assert the heresy that it is no more sin to kill
an Irishman than a dog or any other brute’.11 That assertion, appalling as it was,
was not heresy.
Despite the claim of Columbanus and Arnold le Poer, there was some
heretical activity in Ireland, that is, if a Dominican archbishop was correct in his
claims. In 1256, Gilla Pátraic Ó Scannail, Dominican bishop of Raphoe (later
archbishop of Armagh), discovered heresy in his diocese. His predecessor had
resigned because he was ‘aged, infirm and blind’ and Ó Scannail of Armagh was
young and active and, furthermore, was made vicar of the archdiocese of Armagh
while the archbishop was in Rome until his death in 1256.12 Ó Scannail was
himself in Rome in early 1256 and could have discussed this situation with the
archbishop and perhaps even with Pope Alexander IV himself.13 From the pope
we learn what this particular accusation of heresy encompassed:
you … have reported that some laymen of your diocese have been spurred
on by the devil to such a pitch of insanity that they not only worship idols
but marry their own kinfolk and relations. Moreover, if they are rebuked
for such excesses by you … they have the temerity to argue, like sons of
perdition, against the catholic faith and against that authority which has
been divinely bestowed upon the apostolic see. In short, their wickedness
goes as far as to devise plots for the assassination of those who censure their
conduct. For this cause, you have come to seek prompt and salutary
direction from us … when there is reason to fear – which God forbid – that
(Welwyn Garden City, 2006), pp 9–10, 11. 10 Gui operated in the Languedoc among the
Cathars whom he called ‘modern Manicheans’: The inquisitor’s guide, pp 15, 19. 11 Edmund
Curtis and R.B. McDowell, Irish historical documents, 1172–1922 (London, 1968), p. 46; J.R.S.
Phillips, ‘The Irish Remonstrance of 1317: an international perspective’, IHS, 27:106 (1990),
112–29. A similar accusation was levied against the Irish in 1331, to the effect that ‘they say it
is not a sin to kill any Englishman’: L.S. Davidson and J.O. Ward (eds), The sorcery trial of
Alice Kyteler: a contemporary account 1324 together with related documents in English translation,
with introduction and notes (Binghamton, NY, 1993), p. 88; for Latin text, see J.A. Watt,
‘Negotiations between Edward II and John XXII concerning Ireland’, IHS, 10 (1956–7), 19.
12 AU, s.a. 1253 (p. 317). 13 M.H. MacInerny, A history of the Irish Dominicans, Irish
Dominican bishops, 1224–1307, from original sources and unpublished records (Dublin, 1916), p. 177.
the contagion may spread more widely. Relying on your prudence,

therefore, we authorize you … to regard the aforesaid laymen as manifest
emissaries and ministers of Antichrist; to wield the sword of ecclesiastical
censure against them; and likewise to invoke the secular arm in the event
of their refusing …
On the same day, 21 March 1256, the pope addressed a letter to the superior of
the Dominicans in Ireland, commanding him to send two of his brethren to the
assistance of Ó Scannail, who had requested the help of his confreres.14
These heretics in Raphoe were being accused of worship of idols, illegal
marriage, denial of the catholic faith, denial of the supremacy of the Holy See
and murder. One of the points that worried the archbishop was illegal marriage.
This was perfectly understandable as multiple marriages were not unknown
among the Irish aristocracy.15 If that was all that was going on in Raphoe – illegal
and multiple marriages – then it was not heresy; it was merely deviation from the
norm. However, the denial of the catholic faith and the supremacy of the Holy
See was serious and does come within the cloak of serious heresy. Archbishop Ó
Scannail was a Dominican and, as such, was well versed in the theological
understanding of what exactly constituted heresy. So, because the accusation was
the denial of the catholic faith and the denial of the supremacy of the Holy See,
there must have been some very serious deviation in Raphoe in the mid-
thirteenth century.16
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, heresy was very much in the air
because of accusations against the Templars.17 One would expect the mendicant
chroniclers of medieval Ireland to have extensive comments about the Templars,
especially as the mendicants were founded to combat heresy, but the silence is
14 For translation, see MacInerny, Irish Dominicans, pp 178–9. There are two letters, from the
pope to the bishop and from the pope to the Dominicans’ vicar: Vetera Monumenta
Hibernorum et Scotorum historiam illustrantia, ed. Augustin Theiner (Rome, 1864), nos 174,
175, p. 71; CPL, i, 1198–1304 (1893), pp 329, 330. 15 Marriage was a sacrament, but the
church had not formulated a clear policy in regard to it until the eleventh century, at which
time the church view of marriage came into conflict with the secular view. 16 Katharine
Simms informs me (in a personal communication) that she looked for signs of heresy among
the Gaelic Irish of Ulster but found nothing; her conclusion was not that they were
extraordinarily orthodox, but that the archbishops of Armagh did not travel around enough
to keep a check on any heterodoxy. 17 Malcolm Barber, The trial of the Templars (Cambridge,
1978); Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar (Stroud, 2004); Malcolm Barber, ‘Propaganda
in the Middle Ages: the charges against the Templars’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 17
(1973), 42–57. For Ireland, see Herbert Wood, ‘The Templars in Ireland’, PRIA, 26C (1907),
327–77; M.H. MacInerny, ‘The Templars in Ireland’, IER, 5th ser., 2:2 (1913), 240–5;
Gearóid Mac Niocaill, ‘Documents relating to the suppression of the Templars in Ireland’,
AH, 24 (1967), 183–226. For recent research, see Helen Nicholson, ‘The testimony of Brother
Henry Danet and the trial of the Templars in Ireland’ in Iris Shagrir, Ronnie Ellenblum and
Jonathan Riley-Smith (eds), In Laudem Hierosolymitani: studies in crusades and medieval culture
in honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar (Aldershot, 2008), pp 411–23; eadem, ‘The trial of the
Templars in Ireland’ in Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford and Helen J. Nicholson (eds), The
nearly deafening! The Dublin Dominican, John de Pembridge, only states that
the Templars, ‘condemned of certain heresies, as was said, were seized and
imprisoned by papal mandate’. Later, when the order was disbanded, Pembridge
was more forthcoming, stating that ‘there was seen an astonishing moon of
different colours in which [day] it was decided that the order of Templars should
be abolished forever’.18 The Kilkenny Franciscan chronicler, John Clyn, merely
states that they were seized and the order was disbanded.19 It is very interesting
that neither the Dominican Pembridge nor the Franciscan Clyn mention the
Templar trial at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, where among those present were
three Dominicans and two Franciscans, not identified as inquisitors, but simply
said to be present and perhaps also acting as witnesses against the Templars. It is
more than likely that the two Anglo-Irish mendicant chroniclers were well aware
of the situation in Europe concerning the Spiritual Franciscans and were worried
that what happened to the Templars might also happen to another order. Also,
the mendicant orders in Britain and Ireland were closely connected with the
Templars.20
Apart from the Dominicans and Franciscans, also present at the trial in St
Patrick’s was the dean of St Patrick’s, Thomas de Chedworth, who, in 1310,
charged Philip Braydock, an Augustinian canon of Holy Trinity (at Christ
Church Cathedral, Dublin), with being a relapsed heretic. This accusation does
not concern a comparatively remote area of Ireland or Irish marriage customs,
but lies at the very core of the English colony in Ireland: the principals were
high-ranking Anglo-Irish ecclesiastics and de Chedworth was a significant
member of the English administration in Ireland.21 When he accused Braydock
of being a relapsed heretic, de Chedworth was dean of St Patrick’s and also one
of the justices of the king’s bench and vicar-general of the absent archbishop who
authorized the action to be taken against Braydock:
The archbishop-elect has seen … the process transmitted to him by

Cheddiswoure, from which it appears that Braibrok, having fallen into
heresy and having abjured the same before Cheddiswowre, had relapsed.
As he is again penitent, Cheddiswowre is directed to cause him, in the
places where he had promulgated his error, to revoke it and teach the
catholic faith in the presence of Cheddiswowre and other learned men.
His punishment was only excommunication and imprisonment at the city’s

priory of All Hallows for a year, on one meal a day.22
debate on the trial of the Templars (1307–1314) (Farnham, 2010), pp 225–35. 18 CStM, ii, pp
336, 341. 19 AClyn, pp 158–60. 20 Helen Nicholson, ‘Testimony of Brother Henry
Danet’, p. 42. 21 W.M. Mason, The history and antiquities of the collegiate and cathedral
church of St Patrick, near Dublin: from its foundation in 1190, to the year 1819 (Dublin, 1819),
pp 113–17; MacInerny, ‘Templars in Ireland’, 245. 22 H.J. Lawlor, ‘Calendar of the Liber
Niger and Liber Albus of Christ Church, Dublin’, PRIA, 27C (1908–9), 53. Braydock would
A closer examination of the two principals, Philip Braydock of Holy Trinity

and Thomas de Chedworth of St Patrick’s, reveals that these two men had a
track-record of conflict. This followed the settlement of a long-running dispute
for pre-eminence between the chapters of Dublin’s two cathedrals, Holy Trinity
and St Patrick’s; it was not an easy settlement by any means, and both men were
important participants. Additionally, both Holy Trinity and St Patrick’s brought
forward their own candidates for the archbishopric of Dublin. During the 1299
vacancy, both Adam de Balscham, prior of Holy Trinity, and de Chedworth were
chosen by their respective chapters; however, neither of these elections was
approved and the new Dublin archbishop, Richard Ferings, succeeded in
establishing the final agreement.23 Ferings then went overseas, and, thinking
everything settled, constituted Thomas de Chedworth as his vicar-general.
It was at this point that a big internal row took place in Holy Trinity. In 1300,
its prior was Adam de Balscham and, in 1301, a ‘John’ de Braybrok returned
from Rome. This must be a scribal error for Philip: in the Christ Church ‘book
of obits’, Philip is there as ‘our canon’, but no John.24 John [recte Philip] returned
from Rome with a papal bull concerning the settlement between the two
cathedrals. But it was not all clear sailing, as Holy Trinity was not willing to agree
and so de Chedworth threatened, as vicar-general, to visit the convent and an
appeal went to Rome. A long altercation ensued, that is now difficult to
disentangle, but both Braybrok and de Chedworth were central figures. It is clear
that the antagonism inside Holy Trinity and between Holy Trinity and de
Chedworth was intense.25 To cut a long and confusing story short, the altercation
ended up involving the colonial government in Ireland, with the king’s justiciar
and treasurer being on opposite sides. The case continued to reverberate, because
in 1306 Pope Clement ordered that anything that was ‘rashly’ done by the
archbishop against Braydock while he was absent in Rome on business should
be revoked.26
Then, in 1310, Philip de Braybrok was accused of heresy by Thomas de
Chedworth. This is a difficult case to fathom. On the one hand, there is the rivalry
to consider, and the fact that de Chedworth had in this same year been involved
in the trial of the Irish Templars means that he would perhaps be preoccupied
by the idea of heresy. In 1309, the justiciar, John Wogan, was ordered to arrest
the Templars and imprison them in Dublin Castle and we are told that de
Chedworth joined with others to examine the Templars. Then came the
accusation of heresy against Braydock, a man well respected in his own order
of course claim benefit of clergy. 23 Ibid., pp 8–10; Cal. Alen’s reg., pp 155–7; CPL, i, 1198–
1304, p. 583; G.J. Hand, ‘The rivalry of the cathedral chapters in medieval Dublin’, JRSAI,
92:2 (1962), 193–206. 24 The book of obits and martyrology of the cathedral church of the Holy
Trinity, commonly called Christ Church, Dublin, ed. J.C. Crossthwaite and J.H. Todd (Dublin,
1844), p. 51. 25 Christ Church deeds, ed. M.J. McEnery and Raymond Refaussé (Dublin,
2000), pp 65–6. I wish to thank Adrian Empey for a long discussion on this episode in Holy
Trinity history, which he considers is worthy of greater examination. 26 Ibid., p. 68.
and considered suitable to represent his community on at least one and probably
more visits to Rome (although that on its own does not make heresy impossible).
Looking carefully at the wording of the accusation, we are told that Braybrok
had espoused heresy before, confessed to heresy, and now had repeated the error.
The next sentence is significant: Braydock had to return to where he had
preached the error and re-preach the correct dogma in the presence of de
Chedworth and other learned men. This, if true, means that he had been
preaching heresy in various places, presumably in some of the multiple churches
to which the canons of Holy Trinity had rights, and these churches ranged from
local Dublin churches to as far away as Glendalough. On its own, this accusation
of heresy could be dismissed as part of the cathedral rivalry and internal dispute
in Holy Trinity and also because heresy was very much in the air, with the trial
of the Templars. However, when this serious and explicit accusation is considered
together with the accusation and conviction of Ádhamh Dubh Ó Tuathail (Adam
Duff O’Toole) in 1327 and with a letter of 1331 from the Irish justiciar and
administration to the pope, then it deserves serious consideration.
As with the Templars, one cannot discuss accusations of heresy in this period
without mentioning Kilkenny, where, in 1324, Richard Ledrede, bishop of
Ossory, accused Alice Kyteler and her associates of sorcery and heresy.27 It has
usually been accepted that the Kyteler case was simply a case of witchcraft, which
Ledrede elevated to heresy because of his Avignon background and association
with Pope John XXII.28 However, in the light of the case against Philip Braydock,
Ledrede’s accusations are worthy of re-examination. In brief, Ledrede, an
English Franciscan, was appointed bishop of Ossory by Pope John XXII in
August 1317. On his arrival in Ossory in September, he immediately held a synod
and spoke about heresy.29 He ordered that all who knew of heresy in the diocese
or of those ‘preaching it’ were to report the cases to him within a month.30 Was
Ledrede looking for heresy or was heresy already present, or perhaps at least
unorthodoxy (bearing in mind that this was a period when accusations of heresy
were flying backwards and forwards, even between popes and philosophers)?31
Whatever the truth, when a case of witchcraft (maleficium) was brought before
27 For a full account, from the viewpoint of the Richard Ledrede, see Narrative. For an
English translation, see The sorcery trial of Alice Kyteler. For Alice Kyteler, see Anne Neary,
‘The origins and character of the Kilkenny witchcraft case of 1324’, PRIA, 83C (1983), 333–
50; Bernadette Williams, ‘“She was usually placed with the great men and leaders of the land
in the public assemblies”: Alice Kyteler: a woman of considerable power’ in Christine Meek
(ed.), Women in Renaissance and early modern Europe (Dublin, 2000), pp 67–83. For
interrogation of Petronilla, see Narrative, pp 31–3. 28 Neary points out the similarity of
Ledrede and Jacques Fournier: Neary, ‘The origins of the Kilkenny witchcraft case’, 339.
29 William Carrigan, The history and antiquities of the diocese of Ossory (4 vols, Dublin, 1905,
repr. Kilkenny, 1981), i, pp 46–9. 30 Neary, ‘The origins of the Kilkenny witchcraft case’,
341. 31 McGrade, ‘The medieval idea of heresy: what are we to make of it?’ in Peter Biller
and Barrie Dobson (eds), The medieval church: universities, heresy and the religious life: essays
in honour of Gordon Leff (Woodbridge, 1999), pp 111–39 at pp 115, 116.
Ledrede, he identified it as heresy and claimed that his diocese had ‘a diabolical
den of heretics’.32 Alice escaped, but her maidservant, Petronilla de Midia, was
found guilty of heresy and burnt at the stake. This was clearly a shock to
Kilkenny; the chronicler Clyn was of two minds about it. As a Franciscan, he
accepted that the legal penalty was death, but he stated that, although the sin
had happened before, such a penalty had never been exacted.33 While all the
evidence leads to the conclusion that the Kyteler affair was purely witchcraft,
maleficium, it does not automatically follow that heretics did not exist in Ledrede’s
diocese of Ossory. Despite being widely discredited, Ledrede continued to
believe that heretics were rife in his diocese.34 He also managed to convince the
pope, who, in 1335, wrote to Edward III, saying that the heretics in Ossory
asserted that Jesus Christ was a mere man and a sinner, and was justly
crucified for His own sins … others thought otherwise of the sacrament of
the Body of Christ than the catholic church teaches, saying that the same
venerable sacrament is by no means to be worshipped; and also asserting
that they are not bound to obey or believe the decrees, decretals and
apostolic mandates; … they despise the sacraments of the catholic church
and draw the faithful of Christ after them by their superstitions.35
The pope also asked the king to order his justiciars to ‘give the help of the secular
arm’ to Ledrede ‘and other prelates of that country against heretics’.36
Still in Leinster and in the archdiocese of Dublin, a few years later Ádhamh
Dubh Ó Tuathail was also accused of heresy and burnt as a heretic:
Ádhamh Dubh, son of Walter Dubh of Leinster, of the cognatio Uí

Thuathail, was convicted on a charge of denying the incarnation of Jesus
Christ, contrary to the catholic faith, and he said that there were not three
persons and one God and he said that the most blessed Mary Mother of
God was a harlot and he denied the resurrection of the dead and he said
that the sacred scriptures were fables and no more than that. On account
of all or any of this, Ádhamh Dubh was pronounced a heretic and
blasphemer, for which reason the same Adam, by church decree, was
burned at Hoggen Green [College Green] in Dublin on the Monday after
Easter in 1328.37
Is this, as it seems, a genuine case of heresy, or could it be Dublin hostility

towards the Uí Thuathail (O’Tooles)? The Uí Thuathail certainly had a
chequered relationship with the Dubliners and their archbishop, and a long
32 Narrative, p. 18. 33 AClyn, pp 178–80. 34 CPL, ii, p. 520, CPL, iii, p. 227. 35 St John
D. Seymour, Irish witchcraft and demonology (Dublin, 1913), pp 48–9; Theiner, Vetera
monumenta, p. 269; Carrigan, Ossory, i, p. 54. 36 CPL, ii, p. 520. 37 CStM, ii, p. 366.
history of animosity due to Uí Thuathail attacks on the city and its hinterland.
Additionally, Saggart and Tallaght, manors of the archbishopric of Dublin, were
under regular attack, rustling of livestock from the archbishop’s manors being
virtually endemic, with Saggart referred to as being ‘beside the land of war’.38
Tensions between the Irish and Dublin were especially high at this time, as, in
1327, the Irish of Leinster had elected a king who then ordered his banner to be
placed two miles from Dublin.39 However, the burning of Ádhamh Dubh Ó
Tuathail cannot simply be written off as animosity against the Uí Thuathail,
because a mere year later Pembridge reports that
David Ó Tuathail, a great thief, enemy of the king, a burner of churches

and destroyer of people, was taken from Dublin Castle to the Tholsel of the
city … dragged at the tails of horses through the middle of the city to the
gallows and afterwards he was hanged on a gibbet.40
So there was clearly no need to manufacture a charge of heresy to get rid of a

troublesome Ó Tuathail.
It is interesting to note that there is a very precise identification of this man,
that is ‘Ádhamh Dubh, son of Walter Dubh of Leinster, of the cognatio Uí
Thuathail’. Walter is known,41 but it is very difficult to identify Ádhamh; the only
other Ádhamh Ó Tuathail in the extant medieval records is a Brother Adam
O’Toole who was appointed in 1302 by the Cistercian abbot of Dunbrody (a
daughter house of St Mary’s, Dublin) to represent him during his absence.42 It
is unlikely that this is our Ádhamh Dubh, as, if he were a Cistercian monk, he
would have been in a position to claim benefit of clergy.43 The account is quite
specific: Ádhamh Dubh denied the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Resurrection,
the scriptures and, in slandering Mary, the Incarnation. This is heresy. The case
was also viewed with concern by the Dublin administration, who perceived it as
part and parcel of the Irish discontent with English rule. A letter from the
38 For a full analysis of the situation, see James Lydon, ‘Medieval Wicklow: “a land of war”’
in Ken Hannigan and William Nolan (eds), Wicklow, history and society: interdisciplinary essays
on the history of an Irish county (Dublin, 1994), pp 151–89; Margaret Murphy and Michael
Potterton, The Dublin region in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 2010), pp 76–84, 90–5, 106–8; James
Mills, ‘Notices of the manor of St Sepulchre in the fourteenth century’, JRSAI, 19 (1889),
33–4. 39 CStM, ii, pp 365–6; Emmett O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, 1156–
1606 (Dublin, 2003), pp 89–90. This may have been an Irish reaction to the events in England:
J.R.S. Phillips, ‘Edward II and Ireland (in fact and in fiction)’, IHS, 33:129 (2002), 14 n. 67.
40 CStM, ii, pp 366–7. 41 O’Byrne, War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, p. 26. CDI, v, 1306,
no. 563, p. 163. 42 CStM, ii, p. lxxxvi; RCH, p. 5, no. 28: ‘Brother William, abbot of
Dunbrody (de Portu Sancte Marie), going [etc.], appoints Brother Adam O’Thothyl and
William [Kerdiff] as his attorneys’ (my thanks to Peter Crooks for locating this latter reference
for me). 43 In 1294, a lay brother of St Mary’s was hanged for robbery: E.B. Fitzmaurice
and A.G. Little, Materials for the history of the Franciscan province of Ireland, 1230–1450
(Manchester, 1920), p. 60. But in 1320, the abbot of St Mary’s was emphatic that no one but
he could punish the monk who had murdered two fellow monks: CStM, i, pp 6–7.
justiciar and council of Ireland to the pope in 1331 throws more light on the
subject.44 After the customary preamble, the letter leads straight to the problem:
In recent times … in this same land of Ireland, heresy and dissension have
pullulated and pullulate among the Irish, who are an ungovernable and
sacrilegious race inimical to God and man. … who burned three hundred
and forty churches in the province of Dublin … with the priests in their
sacerdotal vestments holding the Eucharist, … blasphemed against the
Holy Spirit and the blessed Virgin Mary mother of Christ and specifically
denied the resurrection of the dead. … manifesting the savour of heretical
depravity.
Then we get the usual complaint about Irish marriage practices, after which the
letter then mentions Ó Tuathail specifically, saying that he was
properly convicted of heretical depravity, relapse and blaspheming against

his spiritual judge, and for this reason abandoned to the secular court for
punishment, his perverse preaching and doctrine and the erroneous
information he held contrary to the holy catholic faith, resulted in many
souls among the Irish being lost (to the faith) and damned.
Then a sentence follows that is open to different interpretations:
for those struggling incessantly in these days against deep-set (absomata)

rebellion and the burdensome mass of Irish, with certain people in Ireland
of English origin – the very sons of iniquity – agreeing with and
supporting [the rebels] in the above-mentioned matters, correction can
only be effected with great difficulty unless you extend the helping right
hand … against them and their promoters and agents of whatever nation,
condition, language, rank or status.
It appears from this sentence that some people of ‘English origin’ are among
those heretics who agree with the Irish rebels, and, while this does appear to refer
to the heresy, it is also possible that it could be interpreted as meaning that they
support the Irish in their rebellion. The pope is then requested to grant a
crusade (crucesignationem) or a just war (bellum licitum) unless they recant and
return to the church. This letter adds weight to the premise that Ó Tuathail was
part of a heretical sect in the Dublin Mountains, and, if that is so, it raises the
possibility that Philip Braydock might have been part of that group.
44 Sorcery trial of Alice Kyteler, pp 87–9. For the Latin text, see A.J. Watt, ‘Negotiations
between Edward II and John XXII concerning Ireland’, IHS, 10 (1957), 18–20.
Another sensational accusation of heresy was reported in Munster in 1353.45

The incident occurred while the justiciar, Thomas Rokeby, was subduing the
area and restoring Bunratty Castle.46 While he was there, it is stated that two of
the Meic Conmara (McNamaras) were convicted of heresy, ‘namely of a gross
insult to the Blessed Virgin Mary’, in the presence of Roger Craddock, bishop of
Waterford, and they were burned.47 A gross insult to the Blessed Virgin Mary
implies that the Incarnation was denied.48 To identify the incident as racially
motivated is too simplistic and it is important to examine the principals involved.
The Meic Conmara were the principal Irish family in east Clare and were
politically allied to Uí Bhriain.49 They were also on familiar terms with the earls
of Ormond and Desmond and were even accused of conspiring to make
Desmond king of Ireland in 1331, and, a year later, they were implicated in the
capture of Bunratty Castle.50 The Meic Conmara had also served with the
justiciar in 1345.51 Thomas Rokeby, formerly sheriff of Yorkshire, was primarily
interested in fulfilling his function as justiciar and restoring law and order to the
country by peaceful or military means, in order to make Ireland profitable again.
Rokeby brought a military force with him, which, together with local contin-
gents, was, at its largest, a thousand men.52 While Rokeby included Irish in his
45 BL, MS Vespasian B.XI; the manuscript chronicle, originally a roll, was reorganized into
folios and consequently the order was distorted. On fo. 133r, in a new hand and different ink,
there are four lines for an entry for the year 1353 and these four lines are re-entered in the
same colour ink and hand on fo. 127v: Bernadette Williams, ‘The “Kilkenny Chronicle”’ in
T.B. Barry, Robin Frame and Katharine Simms (eds), Colony and frontier in medieval Ireland
(London, 1995), pp 76, 78; ‘Kilkenny chronicle in Cotton MS Vespasian B.XI’, ed. Robin
Flower, in AH, 2 (1931), 336; D.F. Gleeson and Aubrey Gwynn, The history of the diocese of
Killaloe (Dublin, 1962), pp 364–6; Dermot Gleeson, ‘A fourteenth-century Clare heresy trial’,
IER, 5th ser., 89 (1958), 36–42; E.B. Fitzmaurice and A.G. Little (eds), Materials for the
history of the Franciscan province of Ireland, 1230–1450 (Manchester, 1920), p. 144. 46 Robin
Frame, ‘Thomas Rokeby, sheriff of Yorkshire, justiciar of Ireland’, Peritia, 10 (1996), 274–96;
A.J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘Ireland in the 1350s: Sir Thomas de Rokeby and his successors’,
JRSAI, 4th ser., 97 (1967), 47–59. Rokeby was in Munster subduing Meic Conmara among
others: Philomena Connolly, Irish exchequer payments (Dublin, 1998), pp 435, 459–60.
47 Gleeson and Gwynn, Diocese of Killaloe, p. 365. 48 Apart from being denial of
Incarnation, Colmán Ó Clabaigh considers that denial of the Virgin Birth or the perpetual
virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (promoted by Duns Scotus) would be heresy. Gleeson in
Diocese of Killaloe and ‘A fourteenth-century Clare heresy trial’, gives two different and
incorrect references to the comment on the case by the renowned seventeenth-century
Franciscan historian, Luke Wadding, and states that Wadding calls it ‘not heresy but an insult
offered to Blessed Virgin’; this is not correct. Wadding only states ‘combussit hic 2 de Clanballan
propter contumeliam prolatam in Virginem Mariam anno MCCCLIII qua de causa orta est inter
ipsum et arch. Cas. Magna Discordia’; the correct reference is Annales Minorum (Florence,
1932), tom. viii, 106, p. 124. Wadding claims that the offence occurred on 5 Kal Apr. [28
Mar.]. 49 Aoife Nic Ghiollamhaith, ‘Kings and vassals in later medieval Ireland: the Uí
Bhriain and the MicConmara in the fourteenth century’ in Frame, Barry and Simms (eds),
Colony and frontier, pp 201–16. 50 Nic Ghiollamhaith, ‘Kings and vassals’, pp 214–15; G.O.
Sayles, ‘The rebellious first earl of Desmond’ in idem, Scripta diversa (London, 1982), p. 247;
Otway-Ruthven, ‘Thomas de Rokeby and his successors’, p. 50. 51 Nic Ghiollamhaith,
‘Kings and vassals’, p. 212 n. 25. 52 Otway-Ruthven, ‘Thomas de Rokeby and his
military entourage, he also considered it most important for the incoming bishop
of Cloyne to be an Englishman.53 The question arises as to why Roger Craddock,
Franciscan bishop of Waterford, was with Rokeby at Bunratty. The answer
probably lies in the fact that soldiers were to be provided with pastoral care while
on campaign and perhaps it was felt that an Anglo-Irish bishop was more suitable
than an Irish one.54 The bishop of Killaloe, Tomás Ó hÓgáin (Thomas
O’Hogan), a fellow Franciscan, apart from being Irish, was probably too ill or too
old to be with Rokeby’s military entourage, as he died soon afterwards.The Meic
Conmara were also patrons of the Franciscan house in Ennis.55 When the two
men were brought before Rokeby, having been convicted of heresy by the bishop,
Rokeby would have had no option but to accord them the full legal censure, as
had happened to Ádhamh Dubh Ó Tuathail in Dublin and Petronilla de Midia
in Kilkenny.
Repercussions quickly followed. Roger Craddock’s superior, as metropolitan,
was the Carmelite archbishop of Cashel, Ralph Ó Ceallaigh (O’Kelly), and
Craddock had acted without his permission. The archbishop set off for
Waterford, and, just before midnight, secretly entered the cemetery by the
postern gate with armed men and assaulted, wounded and robbed the bishop.
There may well have been a hidden agenda in this affair, if the Walter Reve, who
pretended to be dean of Waterford, is connected with Thomas Reve, bishop of
Lismore, as there had been a continuing controversy concerning the proposed
union of the episcopal sees of Lismore and Waterford.56 In 1327, the pope
ordered the union to take place the next time one see became vacant; this
happened in 1356, and Edward III duly ordered Lismore to be delivered to
Roger Craddock. Instead, Thomas Reve was appointed to Lismore by the pope.
It was not until Craddock was translated to Llandaff in 1361 that the two sees
were united under Thomas Reve. Interestingly, a decade later, this same Thomas
Reve physically assaulted the archbishop of Cashel using armed force.57 This
Clare heresy trial raises more questions than our meagre sources allow us to
answer.
There is a tantalizing reference to heresy in 1374. This is a mere mention in
the records stating that William Lyn, late vicar of Any in the diocese of Emly,
and David Browery had been convicted of heresy by William, bishop of Emly,
and as a result their property had been seized by the sheriff of Limerick and they
were now asking for its return, pending an appeal to the apostolic see.58 As there
successors’, p. 50. 53 Frame, ‘Thomas Rokeby’, p. 288. 54 D.S. Bachrach, ‘The friars go
to war: mendicant military chaplains, 1216–c.1300’, Catholic Hist. Rev., 90:4 (2004), 617–33.
55 Nic Ghiollamhaith, ‘Kings and vassals’, p. 203. 56 Richard Huscroft, ‘Edward I’s
government and the Irish church: a neglected document from the Waterford-Lismore
controversy’, IHS, 32:127 (2001), 423–32. 57 F. Donald Logan, ‘The visitation of the
archbishop of Cashel to Waterford and Limerick, 1374–5’, Archivium Hibernicum, 34 (1977),
50–4. 58 CIRCLE, CR 48 Edw. III, §107; RCH, p. 88, no. 95. I would like to thank Peter
Crooks for the full transcript of the Tresham entry.
appears to be no further information in the sources, this case will remain an

anomaly unless new information comes to light. Its importance, however, lies in
the fact that the men were Anglo-Irish, furthering the conclusion that these
accusations of heresy were racially impartial.
What constituted heresy was clearly understood by papal theologians, but,
when it came to local situations, the definition may not have been as clear cut.
What is clear is that racial tension was not a factor. On the one hand, we have
Archbishop Ó Scannail and the Irish of Raphoe, the case of Ádhamh Dubh Ó
Tuathail and the Meic Conmara in Clare. On the other hand, we have Philip de
Braydock, Alice Kyteler and then in 1374 William Lyn and David Bowery. So
therefore, accusations of heresy were to be found in Ulster, Munster and
Leinster. There is no solid evidence to support a proposition that the accusation
against Ádhamh Dubh Ó Tuathail was motivated by Uí Thuathail/Dublin
tension. The Bunratty accusation of heresy exists in the ambit of a complex
ecclesiastical situation; it could be heresy in so far as it is implicitly denying the
Incarnation or it could be an overzealous reaction by a Franciscan bishop. The
most interesting aspect is that both Ádhamh Dubh Ó Tuathail and the Meic
Conmara insulted the Virgin Mary. The final reference to heresy in 1374 adds
little to our understanding except to emphasize once again that these accusations
of heresy occurred among both nations.
The medieval bishops of Elphin and

the lost church at Kilteasheen
T H O M A S F I NA N
The discrepancies in ecclesiastical organization between those areas that had

undergone significant Anglo-Norman colonization in the first fifty years of
English rule (and hence a more fully developed diocesan and administrative
structure in line with the twelfth-century reform movement in Ireland) and
those areas that did not has been a focal point of medieval Irish ecclesiastical
history for the last half century, but we have Katharine Simms to thank for
putting these discrepancies in greater focus; the impact of her research has, of
course, had wide-reaching implications, especially since it has essentially
remained free of the ideological biases of nationalism, revisionism or empiricism.
Simms has managed this tightrope walk by reminding us all (her colleagues and
students) that the most productive research agenda is one that first and foremost
considers the actual sources, and then places those sources within the context of
an interdisciplinary analysis that includes other sources from seemingly disparate
fields. Her work on Gaelic politics extracted from bardic poetry is of course the
primary model for this method, and few have managed to pull as much historical
data from repetitive and propagandistic material.1 Simms has also shown that the
same approach is applicable to understanding the medieval church in Gaelic
Ireland.2 This model of interdisciplinarity provided the background for a
decade-long study of the medieval diocese of Elphin in the Anglo-Norman era
and more particularly the parish at Kilteasheen, Knockvicar, Co. Roscommon.
The diocese of Elphin was created in the aftermath of the great ecclesiastical
reform synods in the twelfth century. The first confirmed bishop of the diocese
was Domnall Ua Dubthaig, who may have been consecrated as early as 1111 and
died c.1137.3 He was succeeded by Flannacán Ua Dubthaig, who died in 1168.4
For the next century, Elphin was effectively controlled by the Ua Conchobair
and Mac Diarmata families, with the abbots of the Cisterican abbey at Boyle and
the Praemonstratensian abbey at Trinity Island, Lough Key, providing a
1 Katharine Simms, ‘Bardic poetry as a historical source’ in Tom Dunne, The writer as witness:
literature as historical evidence (Cork, 1987), pp 58–75; Katharine Simms, ‘Bards and barons:
the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and the native culture’ in Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay
(eds), Medieval frontier societies (Oxford, 1989), pp 177–97. 2 Katharine Simms, ‘Frontiers
in the Irish church: regional and cultural’ in Barry, Frame and Simms (eds), Colony and
frontier, pp 177–200. 3 ALC, s.a. 1137.10; see Helen Perros-Walton, ‘Church reform in
Connacht’, above, p. 293. 4 AFM, s.a. 1168.1.
352
The medieval bishops of Elphin and the lost church at Kilteasheen 353
significant number of those bishops. Tomaltach Ua Conchobair, grandson to

King Toirdelbach Ua Conchobair and nephew to Ruaidrí and Cathal Ua
Conchobair, was ordained bishop of the diocese in 1172, and in the next couple
of years may have travelled to Rome.5 He also may have founded one of the only
Cluniac houses in Ireland at Athlone.6 In 1179, he attended a council in Dublin
hosted by Archbishop Lorcán Ua Tuathail. Subsequently, Ua Tuathail, the papal
legate, appointed Tomaltach archbishop of Armagh after a succession dispute
within Armagh.7 In 1247, another Tomaltach Ua Conchobair, dean of Annagh-
down, was anointed bishop of Elphin. Like his predecessor, he was later elevated
to archbishop, in this case to Tuam in 1258. The following year, he arrived back
from Rome with his pallium.8 We know very little in terms of the actual process
by which bishops were selected in the diocese in the thirteenth century; in 1244,
however, a dispute arose in the election of the successor to Donnchad Ua
Conchobair in which the canons of the diocesan chapter chose Muiredach Ua
Conchobair, the coarb of Roscommon, and the rest of the diocesan clergy elected
Tomás Ua Cuinn OFM.9 Like much of Gaelic Ireland in the Middle Ages, the
historian has very little to work with in terms of exploring the political and social
elements of medieval Elphin.
In 2002 and 2004, the remains of the medieval parish churches in the diocese
of Elphin mentioned in the fourteenth century ecclesiastical valuation were
surveyed as part of a project funded by a Heritage Council archaeological
research grant.10 The primary goal of the survey was to assess the architectural
remains within the diocese and perform statistical and geo-statistical measure-
ments of the churches with the ultimate goal of performing a comparable type
of study undertaken by Ní Ghabhláin in the medieval diocese of Kilfenora.11 By
taking measurements of the internal dimensions of cathedrals, churches and
chapels within Kilfenora, and then statistically correlating those dimensions with
the Irish fourteenth-century ecclesiastical valuations, she was able to show how
churches functioned within Gaelic society, how they correlated with secular
settlement, and the position of the churches within the wider Burren landscape.
In theory, her analysis is applicable to any medieval diocese in Ireland mentioned
in the fourteenth-century taxation; in practice, however, the ecclesiastical
valuations vary greatly from diocese to diocese, making true comparisons
difficult. It is quite apparent that the dioceses in the eastern part of Ireland were
assessed by visitors who recorded significant details about the values of not only
the parish churches, but the temporalities of bishops in control of the diocese, as
in the case of Clonfert, where the rent and revenues of the bishop, dean and the
5 Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Tomaltach Ua Conchobair, coarb of Patrick (1181–1201)’, Seanchas

Ardmhacha, 8 (1977), 235–6. 6 Gwynn, ‘Tomaltach Ua Conchobair’, p. 237. 7 Aubrey
Gwynn, ‘Tomaltach Ua Conchobair’, pp 245–52. 8 AC, s.a. 1265, 1279. 9 AC, s.a.
1244.11. 10 Thomas Finan, ‘The parish churches of the medieval diocese of Elphin’,
unpublished research report submitted to the Heritage Council, 2004–6. 11 Sinéad Ní
Ghabhláin, ‘Church and community in medieval Ireland: the diocese of Kilfenora’, JRSAI,
354 Thomas Finan
archdeacon are listed along with the prebends or, of Dublin, where the deans,
archdeacons, vicars and prebends are listed.12 In the west of Ireland, one wonders
whether official visitors even assessed the parishes in person. In the diocese of
Elphin, for instance, no temporalities of the bishop were noted, and while, on
one end, the significant wealth of Boyle Abbey and Holy Trinity Abbey were
mentioned, at the opposite end, no mention was made of chapels, deaneries,
vicarages or other non-parish ecclesiastical settlements.13 The temporalities and
spiritualities of the abbot and monks of Boyle were taxed in the diocese of
Achonry at twenty-two shillings.14
The existing remains of the parish churches in the diocese of Elphin are
typically in such ruined condition that precise internal and external dimensions
of the churches are difficult to note without excavation. At least three gable
corners are usually necessary to provide meaningful measurements. Many
medieval church ruins are still used as cemeteries, and it is no doubt the case
that, over time, stone in the walls of the churches was used when interring
human remains or for rebuilding enclosure walls around the cemetery.
Subsequent early modern churches were often built on the remains of earlier,
medieval churches. In some cases, the medieval churches were used as foun-
dations for the newer churches. In this situation, the measurements of the later
church were used as an approximation for the medieval church in the recorded
database. In other cases, though, later churches are likely to have been built on
top of the remains of earlier churches, since contemporary topographical survey
would tend to reveal that there is a limited number of potential locations for a
church within an ecclesiastical settlement. Reaching definitive conclusions about
the size of the medieval parish churches in the diocese of Elphin, therefore, is
tenuous at best. The overall distribution of the churches within the diocese is a
little more secure, given that the location of churches usually corresponded with
modern townlands. What is clear from that distribution is that the parish
churches of the diocese were located in relation to the two secular political power
centres of the diocese located around Moylurg and Roscommon town (pl. 7).
A further goal of the 2004 survey was to indentify a church for further
research through geophysical surveying and, perhaps, ultimately, excavation. The
challenges with this goal were apparent during the survey, as the overwhelming
majority of the medieval parish churches are found within active cemeteries.
While Brady has shown that even contemporary cemeteries can provide
substantial clues to medieval occupation and settlement, in most cases the
remains of medieval churches in the diocese of Elphin were completely
overwhelmed with graves.15 One particular parish church stood out, though, as
being slightly ‘different’, in that what was recorded as the church at the ‘Bishop’s
125 (1995), 61–84. 12 CDI, 1171–1307, v, p. 241. 13 Ibid., p. 223. 14 Ibid., p. 218.
15 Niall Brady et al., ‘A survey of the priory and graveyard at Tulsk, Co. Roscommon’,
Discovery Programme Reports, 7 (2005), 40–58; Finan, ‘Survey of the medieval parish churches
Seat at Kilteasheen’ by the first edition Ordnance Survey map was not
surrounded by a cemetery at all. In fact, ‘the Bishop’s Seat’ was surrounded by
a significant number of earthworks and other features. The map incorrectly
identified the earthworks as a single ringfort, and subsequent field surveys by the
Archaeological Survey of Ireland noted that the earthworks and field boundaries
extend into a number of fields on an inland peninsula formed by the Boyle River
as it joins with Lough Key.
Kilteasheen was also notable because of the atypical number of references to
the site in the Annals of Connacht in the thirteenth century. These references,
though, were hardly ecclesiastical in nature; in 1243,
Cathal son of Aed Ó Conchobair, foster-child of the Muinter Raigillig,

turned against them and raided Muirchertach Mac Gilla Suilig in Mag
Nise. Muirchertach himself was captured by him and slain in […]. … at
Cell tSesin. He made another raid immediately on Clann Fermaige and
Dartry.16
This particular hosting was part of a wider conflict between the Uí Chonchobair
and their Síl Muiredaig allies and the Uí Ragallaig in Bréifne throughout the
middle of the thirteenth century. The matter was not resolved at that point, for
in 1256 we read that
The Ui Raigillig came to Loch Allen, to Port na Cranne, which is called

Fuarchosach on Loch Allen, but the Galls did not come to meet them there
for fear of Aed Ó Conchobair, who was then at Cell tSesin in Uachtar Tire,
waiting upon the two armies to east and west of him, [until he could decide]
which of them to attack. But Aed, when he heard of the arrival of the
Muinter Raigillig, agreed upon a plan with O Ruairc, to leave their horses,
armour and accoutrements at Cell tSesin and cross on foot to the east bank
of the Shannon to attack the Ui Raigillig. They crossed the Shannon into the
Enga, and when they heard that they had gone away they sent some followers
and soldiery ahead to overtake them, as we have said above.17
These two references, taken in sequence over a decade, show that Kilteasheen
was a staging point for the Ua Conchobair, and was utilized as such by two
separate members of the dynasty, Cathal mac Áed and Áed mac Fedlimid. The
second reference to Áed and his forces leaving their horses, armour and
accoutrements at Kilteasheen while they crossed the Shannon to attack the Ua
Raghallaigh on foot implies that Kilteasheen was at least a secure location where
the Síl Muiredaig could leave their battle gear in safety. It is curious that in these
references there is no mention of a church or the ecclesiastical settlement;
of Elphin’. 16 AC, s.a. 1243.9. 17 AC, s.a. 1256.13–14.
356 Thomas Finan
compare this to references made around the same time to the roofless church at
Fenagh, where Fedlimid Ua Conchobhair camped with his forces in 1244, much
to the displeasure of the coarb who was away for the night.18
Two other curious references in the middle of the thirteenth century are
notable because of particular features mentioned in the sources:
Tomaltach O Conchobair, Bishop of Elphin, built a palace [cuirt] in Cell

tSesin this year.19
The Bishop’s palaces at Elphin and at Cell tSesin were pulled down by Aed
O Conchobair, for fear – in my, that is Patin’s, opinion – the Galls should
occupy them.20
Unlike the previous references to the Uí Chonchobair using Kilteasheen as a

staging site for their conflicts in Bréifne, these two references clearly imply an
ecclesiastical presence at the site, if only because the bishop of Elphin himself
built the cúirt at the site. The juxtaposition of Kilteasheen and Elphin in the
1259 reference also implies an ecclesiastical function to the site, in that the two
sites seem to have the same sort of structure. Nevertheless, despite the fact that
the bishop himself patronized the construction of the cúirt at Kilteasheen and it
is termed ‘the bishop’s palace’ in 1259, when it was torn down by Áed Ua
Conchobair, it is curious that in neither reference is there a hint of a particular
church at the site. Later surveys of Co. Roscommon state that land in the
townland of Kilteasheen was still a property of the bishop as late as the
seventeenth century.21
With this historical background, and the reference to the site in the
fourteenth-century ecclesiastical valuation, Kilteasheen was selected for further
topographical and geophysical survey in the summer of 2004. Several features
became readily apparent as a result of the survey. First, and foremost, the outline
of a structure with two to three courses of stone exposed was highlighted; this
had been identified as the church on the Ordnance Survey maps and in the
Archaeological Survey of Ireland. To the south of the stone structure, a 20 by
20m platform was identified. The platform appeared to be surrounded by a ditch
around 2m wide. A large amount of rubble was noted immediately below the
surface as a result of an electrical resistivity survey. The platform, although most
obviously square, lies in the spot noted as the ‘ringfort’ on the first edition map.
Excavations at Kilteasheen began in 2005 after the 2004 topographical and
geophysical survey in a partnership between the Institute of Technology at Sligo
and St Louis University, funded by the Royal Irish Academy. One cutting was
placed within the stone structure, while two cuttings transected the platform
18 AC, s.a. 1244.5. 19 AC, s.a. 1253.16. 20 AC, s.a. 1259. 21 Robert Simington (ed.),
Books of survey and distribution, vol. 1: county of Roscommon (Dublin, 1949), p. 136.
along one side and on one corner. A layer of dense rubble was discovered
immediately below the sod on the platform; within this thick layer of rubble, six
pieces of highly decorated stones were found (pl. 8). These stones, stylistically
dated to the late twelfth century, were all parts of architectural features from the
ruins of a church. The stones include a section of stringcourse carved with a flat
band with repeating pattern of trefoils with concave leaf surfaces and diagonal
bands; a section of jamb carved on two faces with chevron and lozenge design,
formed from beaded rolls with additional foliate ornamentation; a section of
jamb with engaged half-hexagonal colonette and two voussoirs, each carved with
slightly different beaded chevron designs.22 Because the stone arches used in
Romanesque churches in Ireland were of particular sizes and proportions, it is
possible to reconstruct the arch by extrapolating from the known pieces
discovered. Moss’ analysis is worth quoting in full:
Assuming an original arch that was roughly semi-circular, the first voussoir
comes from an arch with a radius of roughly 1.24m.23 Although it is
possible that it belonged to a chancel arch, it is more likely that it comes
from a portal. Radii of intact twelfth-century doorway arched openings (at
springing point) include Freshford, 0.475m, Aghadoe, 0.41m, Clonkeen,
0.465m, Monaincha, 0.405m, suggesting that it most probably belonged to
the third, or possibly fourth order of a multi-ordered portal.24
The arch, therefore, would indicate a fairly elaborate entrance to the church,
suggesting a structure with high status, especially considering that the
decorations on the stone are so comparable to those found at nearby (and
contemporary) Boyle Abbey.
Immediately below the thick layer of rubble, a number of graves were exposed
in 2005. The decorated stone was probably used as grave markers as early as the
fourteenth century, although it was very difficult to associate the decorated stone
with particular graves. The first level of graves excavated immediately below the
surface is dated roughly to the fourteenth century by a decorated silver pin and
two silver pennies. Over the course of the next three years, over 120 graves were
excavated. Radiocarbon dating securely dated the earliest graves in the cemetery
to the seventh century.25
22 Rachel Moss, ‘Romanesque sculpture in north Roscommon’ in Thomas Finan (ed.),

Medieval Lough Cé: history, archaeology and landscape (Dublin, 2010), pp 131–7.
23 Calculations are based on the method devised by de Paor and Glenn in their reconstruction
of the doorway of St Caiman’s Church, Inishcaltra in Liam de Paor and Deirdre Glenn, ‘St
Caimin’s, Inis Cealtra. Reconstruction of the doorway, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 36
(1995), 87–103, and checked using trigonometrical methods. 24 Moss, ‘Romanesque
sculpture in north Roscommon’, p. 133. 25 Christopher Read and Thomas Finan, ‘The
Kilteasheen Archaeological Project, 2008 season report’, report presented to the Royal Irish
Academy and the National Committee on Archaeology.
358 Thomas Finan
Excavations in the stone structure that had been identified as ‘the Bishop’s
Seat’ on the Ordnance Survey map yielded very little in the way of
archaeological interest in the first season; a small 5 by 3m cutting was opened on
the interior east end of the building. During the second season, a further cutting
was opened on the west end of the interior. Students cleared a great deal of
brush and ivy from the exposed courses of stone on the north wall and from the
interior of the structure. At this stage, two points led to the conclusion that this
stone structure was not the parish church of Kilteasheen and was, in fact, a
medieval hall house. First, the interior dimensions, once fully exposed, yielded
a ration of 2:1, which would make the structure a very short church, especially
in relation to the others in the diocese, which average a ratio of around 3:1.
Second, when the brush was cleared from the external walls on the north side, a
very clear and pronounced batter was discovered. The top of the wall measured
over 1.5m thick; given the angle of the batter and the known height of the extant
walls from excavating the interior, we estimated that the walls were likely to have
been up to 2m thick at the base, a figure confirmed through excavation in 2008
and 2009. Given the dimensions, the batter and the known historical references,
it was clear that the structure was an example of a hall house.
Hall houses, particularly in Connacht, are now known to be a common
enough medieval stone structure in Ireland.26 Additionally, they have fairly
typical characteristics. Usually two storied with an entrance on the first floor,
their internal dimensions average approximately 7 by 14m, with walls measuring
between 1.5 and 2m thick. In some cases, the base of the walls displays a batter.
These hall houses generally date to the thirteenth century and served as
manorial, quasi-fortified residences. The hall house at Kilteasheen displays most
of these features. The internal dimensions measure approximately 6.5 by 14m,
while the walls are 2m thick at the base. The Kilteasheen hall house was
apparently intentionally built outside of the ecclesiastical enclosure, with no
additional field defences. Aerial photography at the site has tentatively identified
a platform feature to the north of the hall house, but this has not been fully
explored. In an Anglo-Norman context, hall houses seem to have been built by
mid-level lords in the thirteenth century, particularly in the newly settled regions
of Galway; in a Gaelic context, though, hall houses are almost exclusively
constructed within ecclesiastical foundations, as at Kilmacduagh.27
Given the identification of the stone structure as a hall house (and, in all
likelihood, the cúirt mentioned in the annals) and the recognition that the
platform to the west of the hall house was in fact a multi-period managed
cemetery, the initial topographical and resistivity survey completed in 2004 was
26 Tom MacNeill, Castles in Ireland (London, 1999), pp 149–57; David Sweetman, Medieval
castles of Ireland (Dublin, 1999), pp 89–104; Thomas Finan, ‘The hall house at Kilteasheen,
Co. Roscommon, Ireland’, Chateau Gaillard: Etudes de Castellogie Medievale, Stirling, 24
(2010), 87–91. 27 Finan, ‘The hall house at Kilteasheen’.
re-examined in an effort to identify potential locations for the church. Again,

three pieces of evidence point to the fact that a twelfth-century church existed
at the site: the excavated decorated stone, the annalistic reference to the mid-
thirteenth-century cúirt being constructed at ‘the church at Kilteasheen’ and the
reference to the church in the fourteenth-century ecclesiastical taxation. We
could likely expect that the church existed with one or two of these facts; these
three points together are more than convincing proof.
The 2004 and 2005 topographical surveys highlighted the platform area in
particular, but did not include the area to the south/south-east of the platform
due to heavy vegetation and brush. However, this area was cleared towards the
end of the 2005 season and a further electrical resistivity survey of the platform
area was completed in 2006, this time at a closer spacing (0.5m) than the spacing
in 2004 (1m). The resulting image reveals in much greater detail the extent of the
platform and the ditch surrounding it. But, more importantly, upon further
review, a stone feature is discernible in the southern half of the image, just to the
south of the platform itself. In the electrical resistivity survey of 2004, this was
identified as a zone of high resistivity, but given the large amount of rubble
excavated near the surface at the outset of excavations in 2005 and the 1m survey
density, the area seemed to be in keeping with the stratigraphy noted in the core
of the platform (pl. 9).
Is it possible that this dense area of rubble was the medieval church at
Kilteasheen? While the arch at the entrance of the church can be defined based
upon the proportions of the stones discovered, it is not really possible to further
extrapolate the size of the church from the excavated stone. On the other hand,
it is possible to return to the original Elphin survey conducted in 2002 and 2004
in order to arrive at a very rough estimation of the dimensions. The original
survey was organized into a database with fields for size and value (which was
recorded in the ecclesiastical valuation). The value of each of the parish churches
was converted into shillings for efficiency. Within the diocese, the values of the
churches in Elphin did not vary extensively. In fact, the mode of the values was
ten shillings. The mean value of all of the churches was around thirteen shillings.
Given that the value of Boyle Abbey far exceeded any of the other churches at
two hundred shillings, the mean without Boyle was calculated at eleven shillings.
Even without Boyle, the majority of the churches in Elphin were valued below
the mean.
The churches of the highest value were those located in two main clusters,
one around Roscommon town and the other around the modern town of Boyle.
The Cistercian monastery at Boyle, the abbey on Trinity Island, Lough Key, the
church at Drum outside Boyle and the church at Ballintober all had values in
excess of thirty shillings. In Roscommon, the churches of high value were the
two cathedral churches at Roscommon town, as well as the church at Rindoon.
A good number of churches were valued at ten shillings. At the opposite end of
360 Thomas Finan
the spectrum, five churches did not receive a value as they were described as
having nothing, as a result of waste or being burnt down. These five churches are
located in the south-eastern section of the diocese.
Ní Ghabláin has shown that there is a very strong correlation between the size
of the church, the value of the church and the population of the community
associated with it.28 In one sense, the churches had a religious and sacramental
function within the church, and each was supposed to serve a given population
that gathered for those religious and sacramental functions. Hence, the size of
the church can reveal an approximation of the size of the population served, and,
when correlated with the value of the church, can reveal a ‘perceived’ value of
the church itself. Statistically, there is a strong correlation between the internal
dimensions of the churches and the reported value of the churches for the
diocese of Elphin. The returned Pearson correlation statistic was 0.923, which
suggests a strong, positive correlation. Boyle Abbey, valued at two hundred
shillings, is clearly an outlier in the sample. Nevertheless, when the correlation
analysis was run without Boyle, a nearly identical Pearson statistic of 0.926 was
returned. In other words, even though Boyle was far and away largest and most
valuable, it was still in proportion to the other churches of the diocese.
The values and dimensions of the churches are therefore correlated. If the
value of the church is known, therefore, it is likely (although not certain) that the
dimensions of the church will lie within a certain range comparable to the other
churches of that value. In the case of Kilteasheen, the value of the church was
listed in the valuation as five shillings. Eighteen other churches in the diocese
were assigned a value of five shillings. The mean value for the size of the
churches in this category was 16.2 by 5.7m; the standard deviation for this
sampling would put the potential size of the church within the following
proportions: 16.2±3m by 5.7±0.74m.
When the project at Kilteasheen began in 2002, access to satellite and aerial
photography was limited to what was available through the Ordnance Survey of
Ireland, and, in the case of Kilteasheen, the data available did not reveal much
more than what was known from the ground survey. In 2007, though,
GoogleEarth made a number of swaths of high-quality sweeps of images of
Ireland available freely online. Fortunately, Kilteasheen is located within one of
these high-density swaths. The level of detail in the satellite data covering
Kilteasheen is around 0.5m/pixel, which, while not ideal for creating detailed
topographical maps, is precise enough for creating site overview maps.
GoogleEarth also has the capability of adding layers of data like a very
rudimentary GIS; it was possible, therefore, to add layers of geophysical
surveying to the GoogleEarth imagery. So, given the rough size of the church
estimated through the Elphin survey (again, 16.2±3m by 5.7±0.74m), the
28 Ní Ghabláin, ‘Church and community in medieval Ireland: the diocese of Kilfenora’, 81–4.
location of high resistivity to the south of the cemetery platform, and the re-
examination of the topographical survey completed in 2005, it becomes clear that
the church could only be located in one spot on the site. No other area within the
D-shaped enclosure could possibly be the location for a church of this size.
Human remains were uncovered in nearly every area excavated in proximity to
the platform. For this reason, the hypothetical location of the church at
Kilteasheen can not be tested with future excavation (pl. 10).
The proposed location of the church seems to fit well with the medieval
landscape, in that the entrance to the church would have directly overlooked
Lough Key and the River Boyle, which would have been the primary mode of
access to the site. The decorated stone and the Romanesque arch of the church
would have enhanced the prominence of the church. If an observer arrived at the
site from the River Boyle, the church would have sat high on the hill, overlooking
Lough Key. If we are to trust the historical records, at least for a decade the
church was in turn topped by the hall house at the top of the rise on the
peninsula. It would have been a dramatic site indeed for a visitor, friend or foe
(pl. 11).
Aside from a few very brief references to Kilteasheen in antiquarian articles
of the nineteenth century, the site itself all but disappeared for almost seven
hundred years. The townland retained the name of the site, and in early modern
surveys and taxations the site does not retain any semblance of status aside from
its ownership by the bishop of the diocese.29 However, when all the disparate
pieces of the interdisciplinary puzzle are put together, it becomes clear that the
site was much more prominent than any one piece of evidence might suggest.
Work continues on the post-excavation analysis of the site, and further projects
have been initiated at St Louis University, including an examination of the diet
and mobility patterns of the skeletal remains through dental micro-wear analysis,
remote sensing of the entire Lough Key area using infra-red imagery, and the
study of monuments in the neighboring fields by the cemetery, church and hall
house. As Katharine Simms has reminded us, using only one type of source
material to study the past often leads down a misguided path, while using a
multiplicity of different types of sources can reveal what has often been hidden
for centuries.
29 Simington, Books of survey and distribution, p. 136.

A medieval bronze pax from Dunbrody Abbey,

Co. Wexford, and the fate of ornamenta from
suppressed religious houses in Ireland1
R AG H NA L L Ó F L O I N N
A hitherto unrecorded fragment of a bronze pax dating to c.1500 and described

as being found at the Cistercian house at Dunbrody, Co. Wexford, in the
nineteenth century is described and discussed here. Its discovery raises
interesting questions about the survival, deposition and recovery of church
furnishings, particularly those associated with monastic houses in Ireland.
The pax (pl. 12; reg. 1875.6–25.5) was acquired by the British Museum in 1875
from the widow of the English antiquary and collector, Albert Way (1807–90).
It was obtained as part of a small eclectic collection of half a dozen antiquities
ranging in date from the Bronze Age to the late medieval period. It is described
in the accession register as being found at Dunbrody Abbey, Co. Wexford.
When and under what circumstances it was found are not recorded, but one
presumes it was a chance find made in the precincts of the monastic buildings.2
Other finds are known to have been recovered at Dunbrody in the early
nineteenth century: a bronze seal depicting SS Peter and Paul (its device
apparently based on a papal bulla) was found in a niche in the tower in 1814,3
and an exceptionally large hoard of some 1,600 Anglo-Saxon coins, deposited
c.1050 was found there around 1836.4 It is not known how the pax came into
Way’s possession, but as a member of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, an
honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy and a prominent officer both of
the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Archaeological Institute, which
included many of the leading Irish antiquarians of the time (including
Redmond Anthony of Piltown, Co. Kilkenny, who was involved in reporting the
1 I would like to thank James Robinson (curator, Department of Prehistory and Europe,
British Museum) for assistance with the acquisition details of the Dunbrody pax; John
McCafferty (UCD) for useful historical references; and Annette Quinn (Tobar Archaeological
Services) for permission to refer to the Boyle Abbey discovery in advance of her definitive
excavation report. 2 Albert Way, ‘Notices of ancient ornaments, vestments and appliances
of sacred use … the pax’, Archaeological Journal, 2 (1845), 145–51. 3 T.P. Walsh, Dunbrody
through the ages (n.p., n.d.), pp 27–8. 4 R.H.M. Dolley, Sylloge of coins of the British Isles: the
Hiberno-Norse coins in the British Museum (London, 1966), p. 67.
362
A medieval bronze pax from Dunbrody Abbey, Co. Wexford 363
Dunbrody hoard of 1836), he would have been well placed to acquire antiquities
of Irish provenance.5
The pax consists of the greater portion of a cast openwork plaque of copper
alloy depicting the Crucifixion. The left side, which would have depicted the
figure of the mourning Virgin, is now missing. The object is bent along its long
axis, presumably in an attempt either to deface it deliberately or to break it into
smaller pieces. It measures 89mm in height. The back is plain except for a series
of small bosses of metal around the outer edge. These perhaps represent chaplets
or fixing pins used in the original two-piece mould in which the plaque was cast.
There are also some flanges of untrimmed metal around the outer edges. The
object decreases in thickness from top (3.5mm) to bottom (2.5mm), indicating
that the two halves of the mould did not lie exactly parallel to one another.
The Calvary scene is surrounded by an arched frame with a cast-on loop
above. The frame consists of three elements: an outer band in imitation of a
twisted moulding; a thin, plain central fillet and an inner beaded border. The
figure of the crucified Christ on the cross is intact as also is that of the mourning
St John to the right, his right arm raised to the figure of Christ. The figure of St
John is shown in three-quarter view rather than in profile. He is nimbed and
clothed in a long tunic. The folds of a cloak or cowl are seen draped from the
right over the left shoulder. The cross bears a titulus with the letters INRI in
Roman script. It is set on a low mound containing a skull and long bones
representing the hill of Golgotha, the place of the skulls. The raised skull is
particularly worn. The figure of Christ is shown erect, arms outstretched, His
nimbed head is inclined to His right and bears a crown of thorns. He is clothed
in a loincloth gathered in a knot at the right hip.
The openwork mount would originally have been fitted to a back plate of
sheet metal. Judging from similar, complete examples, this back plate is likely to
have been decorated with an engraved trellis or other geometric pattern. The
worn condition of the raised areas, particularly the skull at the base of the cross,
indicates that the object saw some use before loss or burial.
The object can be readily identified as a pax – a devotional plaque usually
(though not exclusively) depicting the Crucifixion. The origin of the pax lies in
the custom in which members of the congregation offered each other a kiss of
peace during the mass in obedience to the injunction ‘Greet one another with a
holy kiss’. Subsequently, the kiss appears to have been transferred to an object,
called an osculatorium or tabula pacis (pax-board), which usually took the form of
a flat panel with a handle at the back, bearing a sacred subject, often (but not
universally) the Crucifixion. The pax was passed among the faithful ‘after the
consecration and Lord’s Prayer, during the Agnus Dei and directly before the
priest’s communion’.6 Medieval paxes were made in a variety of media: wood,
ivory, bone, enamelled copper, silver and copper alloy.
5 Joan Rockley, Antiquarians and archaeology in nineteenth-century Cork (Oxford, 2008), pp 45–6.
6 Craig Koslofsky, ‘The kiss of peace in the German Reformation’ in Karen Harvey (ed.), The
364 Raghnall Ó Floinn
Surviving English paxes of copper alloy are of two types: openwork examples
with arched frames and separate back plates or solid single-piece castings of
oblong form with the design engraved or cast on as a separate element.7 The
Dunbrody pax is clearly an example of the former and there are particularly
close parallels with a pax from Ipswich.8 It is difficult to be certain of its date of
manufacture, but it is likely to date to the decades around 1500.
This is the only medieval pax with a secure Irish provenance. There are two
others in the collections of the National Museum of Ireland.9 One of these is of
the same openwork type as that from Dunbrody and, measuring 97mm in
height, is of similar size (pl. 13). Like the latter, the surface shows evidence of
extensive wear through use. Formerly in the collection of George Petrie and
acquired by the Royal Irish Academy in 1866, it is registered as P1249. Nothing
is known of its provenance, save that it was ‘procured from Mr Leonard of
Dublin, in whose family it had been preserved’. It is likely to date to the early
sixteenth century and is probably of Flemish or Rhenish rather than English
manufacture: there is a comparable example dating to around 1500 in the
collections of the Royal Museum, Brussels.10 Its worn surface indicates
considerable use.
The second medieval pax in the National Museum of Ireland is more
accomplished and shows less evidence of wear (pl. 14). It is larger, measuring
100mm in height, and is a solid single-piece casting with the Crucifixion scene
engraved on sheet bronze against a hatched background; it has a raised, beaded
frame with a cresting of upright leaves along the top. This was acquired by the
Museum of the Royal Irish Academy as part of the collection of Henry Dawson,
dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in 1843 and it is registered as R2919.
Unfortunately, nothing is known of its history and it cannot be identified in
Dawson’s sale catalogue. It may have been found in Ireland, but its condition
allows of the possibility that it may have been acquired as a collector’s piece. Like
the Petrie example cited above, it must therefore be regarded as unprovenanced.
An almost identical pax, of English manufacture and dating to c.1400, is
preserved in Moyse’s Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds, and the National
Museum of Ireland pax may well be a product of the same workshop.11
The Dunbrody pax and the others described above represent fairly standard
products of English or Low Countries workshops that produced such items of
ecclesiastical furnishings in large quantities, especially in the later fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries. They may be compared with the larger number of altar
kiss in history (Manchester, 2005), pp 18–35 at p. 8. 7 Charles Oman, ‘English medieval base
metal church plate’, Archaeological Journal, 109 (1962), 195–207 at 201. 8 N.F. Layard,
‘Notes on some English paxes’, Archaeological Journal, 61 (1904), 120–30, fig. 3. 9 Joseph
Raftery, Christian art in ancient Ireland (Dublin, 1941), p. 164 and pl. 121, 1 and 3. 10 A.
Jansen, Art Chrétien jusqu’à la fin du moyen age (Brussels, 1964), no. 125, pl. LIX, 110.
11 Layard, ‘English paxes’, fig. 2; Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski (eds), Age of chivalry:
art in Plantagenet England, 1200–1400 (London, 1987), no. 120.
crosses and processional crosses of English workmanship that have been found
at a number of Irish churches and monasteries.12
Dunbrody, a Cistercian house founded in 1182 from St Mary’s Abbey,
Dublin, was dissolved in 1536,13 and one can assume that the pax was once used
by members of the community there. The property was granted to Sir Osborne
Eckingham in 1545 and part of the south transept was later converted into a
manor house.14 Its damaged condition indicates that it may have been
deliberately defaced, perhaps at the time of the Dissolution.
II
The Dunbrody pax is a welcome addition to the relatively small number of

objects associated with Cistercian houses in Ireland.15 Two other fragments of
altar vessels from Cistercian sites deserve particular mention in view of the fact
that both show evidence of reuse or reworking before they were buried. Both
consist of the foot or base of a standing vessel of some kind; one is from
Mellifont, Co. Louth, the other from Boyle, Co. Roscommon.
The gilt copper-alloy object from Mellifont Abbey in the late Gothic style
(pls 16, 17) has been variously described as the foot of a chalice16 and a
monstrance.17 Like the Dunbrody pax, its precise find-circumstances are
unknown. It was entered in the Royal Irish Academy museum’s register as a
‘brass monstrance’ and assigned the registration number (R)3010, but without a
provenance. In William Wilde’s manuscript ‘Catalogue of ecclesiastical
antiquities in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy’, it is listed as no. 196 and
recorded as ‘Found at Mellifont Abbey, county of Louth’. This is accompanied
by a pencilled note indicating that it may have formed part of Dean Dawson’s
collection, but if this is indeed the case and while there are a number of objects
in Dawson’s sale catalogue that are described as ‘stand of a chalice’, it is not now
possible to identify which of these is from Mellifont.
The object consists of a foot and stem, measuring 140 mm in height. The
upper part is missing so that it is not now possible to determine its exact
function. It has a wide hexagonal foot with incurved sides with small projecting
openwork decorations or toes at each angle. These take the form of the letter M
and are presumed to be a monogram for the Virgin Mary. The stem is hexagonal
in section with twisted colonnets at each angle. At the junction of stem and foot
is a projecting architectural element with pierced trellis work. In the centre is a
12 Colum Hourihane, ‘“Holye crossys”: a catalogue of processional, altar, pendant and crucifix
figures for late medieval Ireland’, PRIA, 100C (2000), 1–85. 13 Aubrey Gwynn and R.N.
Hadcock (eds), Medieval religious houses: Ireland (Dublin, 1970), p. 131. 14 Roger Stalley,
The Cistercian monasteries of Ireland (London and New Haven, 1987), p. 244. 15 Stalley,
Cistercian monasteries, pp 220–5. 16 J.J. Buckley, Some Irish altar plate (Dublin, 1943), p. 209
and pl. LXIV, fig. 2. 17 Stalley, Cistercian monasteries, p. 221 and pl. 263.
wrythen knop with six projecting lozenge-shaped collets inset with plaques of
silver engraved with floral patterns and highlighted with niello.
Five of the facets on the foot are engraved alternately with the monograms
IHC and XPC in Gothic lettering, flanked by leaf forms (pl. 17). The sixth has
been cut away and this undoubtedly contained a figure of the Crucifixion
originally. This would have been engraved on a separate plate attached to the foot
from behind. It most likely would have been made of silver, enamelled or, more
likely inlaid with niello as are the collets on the knop. The silver panel would
have contrasted with the gilt silver of the surrounding metal, making the image
of the Crucifixion more visible. A similar arrangement occurs on a gilt silver
chalice from Nettlecombe, Somerset.18 This bears a London hallmark of 1479–
80 and has an enamelled silver panel depicting the Crucifixion inset into one of
the panels of its gilt silver hexagonal foot.
The form and decoration of the Mellifont stand can be readily paralleled on
Irish and English silver chalices of the later fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries. The construction of the foot and stem is almost exactly replicated on
a gilt silver chalice bearing the names of William Archer and his wife Katherine.
This chalice, with its matching paten, is now in the Museo Christiano in the
Vatican.19 William Archer was a member of one of the principal civic families of
Kilkenny, serving as sovereign of Kilkenny city in 1466–7 and later as councillor
in 1499, 1501 and 1515.20 It was presumably made as a gift for some church in
Kilkenny, perhaps even for St Canice’s Cathedral. This is a far more accom-
plished piece than the Mellifont stand, but has the same hexagonal foot with
ornamental toes and twisted colonnettes. Another Irish chalice, recorded at St
Canice’s Cathedral in the nineteenth century also had a hexagonal base with
floral toes.21 This latter is also a feature of English chalices, including two bearing
hallmarks of 1494 and 1496.22 Other elements of its design, however, suggest a
somewhat later date in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The use of
cable-like mouldings made of twisted wires at the angles of the stem is found on
a well-dated series of English chalices that bear dates of between 1507 and
1529.23 However, the feet of these chalices are of the six-lobed rather than the
earlier hexagonal form and thus the form of the Mellifont base would be
considered somewhat archaic by English standards. A typical feature of such
chalices is an engraved figure of the Crucifixion on one of the panels of the base.
The parallels with English chalices are so close that the object must either be an
English import or was based on English prototypes.
The function of the Mellifont stand is uncertain. Despite its similarities with
English chalices, such a function can be ruled out because it is made of gilt
18 Richard Marks and Paul Williamson, Gothic: art for England, 1400–1547 (London, 2003),
p. 413. 19 Giovanni Morello, I Doni dei Papi: Ori e Argenti della Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticana (Rome, 1999), pp 84–9. 20 Buckley, Irish altar plate, pp 205–7 and pl. LXIV, fig. 1.
21 Ibid., pl. LVI, fig. 3. 22 W.J. Cripps, Old English plate (London, 1906), pp 226, 228–9.
23 Cripps, Old English plate, pp 228–34.
copper alloy (rather than silver) and the foot is also too large for a chalice. Its
identification as a monstrance rests on the fact that its relatively wide base (190mm)
presupposes that it supported a tall object such as a reliquary monstrance or tower
monstrance. The reliquary monstrance developed in the thirteenth century as a
distinctive type of receptacle for the display of small relics (pieces of bone or
objects connected with a saint). It took a variety of shapes, the more usual being
a transparent cylindrical vessel of crystal or glass mounted on a tall metal stand
and topped with a detachable metal lid.24 The monstrance proper or ostensorium,
had a similar function, but in this case was reserved for the exposition of the
Blessed Sacrament. With the initiation of the feast of Corpus Christi by Urban
IV in 1264, vessels were designed specifically for this purpose. In subsequent
centuries, the monstrance developed its own distinctive form and, like the
reliquary monstrance, became more elaborate and architectural in form. What
distinguished the monstrance was the fact that the consecrated host was set in a
lunate-shaped holding within the crystal or glass vessel. Eventually, in the
seventeenth century, the monstrance developed its modern disc-shaped sunburst
form with rays emanating from the central circular receptacle displaying the
host. The reliquary monstrance and tower monstrance are closely related in form
– the Eucharistic vessel taking its shape from the earlier reliquary – and, as only
the stem and foot survive in the case of the Mellifont object, it is not possible to
state whether the latter originally functioned as a reliquary or a monstrance;
indeed it could also have formed the base of a ciborium.
The Mellifont vessel, whatever its precise function, was at some point in its
history converted to profane use as a drinking vessel: the word BACCHUS was
inscribed in pointillé on the foot at the base of the empty panel where the image
of the Crucifixion would have been set. It is executed in Roman rather than
Gothic lettering, probably in the sixteenth century. Indeed, the image of the
Crucifixion on the foot may have been deliberately removed at the same time.
This calls to mind Donatus Mooney’s account of the conversion by Oliver
Lambert, governor of Connacht, of the plate and vestments of the Franciscan
friary of Donegal to profane use, including chalices pressed into service as
drinking cups (calices in cyphos profanes convertit).25
The fragment from Boyle Abbey was recovered during archaeological
excavations carried out in 2006–7 by Tobar Archaeological Services as part of a
programme of conservation works. The object (reg. E2399:18:6) is of silver,
partly gilt (pl. 15) and consists of the lower portion of a vessel with a plain
circular foot, 190mm in diameter with a ribbed rim which is gilt. The stem has
been wrenched from the rest of the vessel and the base has been folded over on
itself and flattened. There are traces of an engraved inscription around the edge
24 Jerzy Pietrusiński, ‘Hugo d’Oignies et les ostensoirs des clarisses de Cracovie’ in Robert
Didier and Jacques Toussaint (eds), Autour de Hugo d’Oignies (Namur, 2003), pp 181–9.
25 Brendan Jennings, ‘Brussels MS 3947: Donatus Moneyus, De Provincia Hiberniae S.
executed in Lombardic script. The style of the foot and the Lombardic lettering
suggest a date in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century. Its wide base is
somewhat large for a chalice and it may have been part of an object such as a
ciborium, candlestick or reliquary monstrance. The piece was found at the base
of a layer of backfill in a robber trench where part of the outer, north wall of the
nave was removed. According to the excavator, this backfill is provisionally dated
to the late medieval or early post-medieval period. Of interest here is the fact that
the object was deliberately broken up and the foot folded into a neat packet
presumably with the intention of melting it down and converting it into silver
bullion. It would also appear that prior to its destruction, an attempt was made
to obliterate the inscription. Somehow, this fragment was lost or discarded and
was incorporated into the backfill of the robbed-out north wall.
III
In the case of each of the three objects described above, there is evidence of
deliberate damage, defacement or conversion to secular use prior to deposition
and it is tempting to suggest that this occurred either at the time of the
Dissolution or at some later period. Evidence of the fate of altar plate and other
valuables confiscated from dissolved religious houses in Ireland is scarce and the
written sources are rarely specific. A survey of the lands and properties of the
suppressed religious houses carried out in 1540–1 under the lord deputy, Sir
Anthony St Leger, remains the principal source.26 Jewels and ornaments taken
from shrines and images, gifted as votive offerings by pious pilgrims to the relics
held at centres of pilgrimage such as the Baculus Iesu and the Speaking Crucifix
at the priory of the Holy Trinity (Christ Church Cathedral) in Dublin or the
statue of the Blessed Virgin in St Mary’s Abbey at Trim, Co. Meath, were
accounted for separately from the goods and chattels of the suppressed houses.27
A unique inventory of such votive offerings removed from the church of the
crutched friars in Limerick in January 1539 survives. Twenty-seven ounces of
silver along with ‘divers stones’ were recovered from the image of the Holy Rood
while the image of Our Lady in the same church yielded some six ounces of
silver, along with precious stones, fifteen buttons, nine crosses and a pair of
rosary beads, all of silver.28 From St Saviour’s Dominican friary in the same city,
ten ounces of silver and precious stones were confiscated, along with four
crystals bound in silver, weighing an estimated additional two ounces.29
Francisci’, AH, 6 (1934), 12–138 at 41. 26 N.B. White (ed.), Extents of Irish monastic
possessions, 1540–41, from manuscripts in the Public Record Office, London (Dublin, 1943).
27 M.V. Ronan, The Reformation in Dublin, 1536–1558 (London, 1926), pp 112–19, 144–5;
Charles McNeill, ‘Accounts of sums realised by the sales of chattels of some suppressed Irish
monasteries’, JRSAI, 52 (1922), 11–37. 28 Brendan Bradshaw, The dissolution of the religious
orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1974), p. 102. 29 Ibid.
Examples of the latter, used as personal protective amulets and believed to effect
cures, survived in Ireland until recent times.30
Despite such depredations, the returns recorded by the commissioners at
such places of pilgrimage are, as Bradshaw noted,31 suspiciously low: only £40
from the shrine at Trim and £35 15s. 6d. from Christ Church. This suggested to
him either that the custodians of the shrines had already removed most of the ex
voto offerings, leaving a token amount to be seized, or that the commissioners
exercised restraint. In the same way, while the Irish sources imply the wholesale
destruction of images, there is evidence of leniency: the Holy Rood at Limerick,
stripped of its ornaments in 1539, seems to have been venerated at least until the
reign of Mary, while there is a tradition that the image of the Virgin at Trim
survived until the seventeenth century.32 At St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, the
reforming Protestant bishop of Ossory, John Bale, broke down the statues and
effigies of the saints in the cathedral, but stopped short of taking down the
magnificent stained glass windows, which included those that depicted the
history of the life, passion, resurrection and ascension of the Lord, and these
survived into the seventeenth century.33 Marmaduke Middleton, Protestant
bishop of the neighbouring diocese of Waterford and Lismore, was similarly
pragmatic, writing to Sir Francis Walsingham in June 1580 that ‘the windows
and walls of the churches [are] full of images. They will not deface them and I
dare not for fear of tumult’.34 At the Dissolution, the Franciscan friary in
Waterford became a hospital and a heterogeneous collection of medieval stone
and wooden statues was preserved there into modern times. Eamonn McEneaney
has argued that these represent statues gathered into the hospital from the
various houses of the regular orders around the city and that the Franciscans
continued to minister to the inmates into the modern period.35
While the dissolution procedure involved the drawing up of an inventory of
the possessions (both fixed and portable) of the suppressed houses, the surviving
accounts rarely mention individual items and these are typically included as
sums under the general heading of ‘goods and chattels’ or under the catch-all
phrase ’divers vessels, jewels, and ornaments of silver, and silver-gilt’.36 Bells are
often itemized and valued separately, no doubt because of their high scrap value
and the difficulty in removing them: four bells from the priory of St Peter,
Newtown Trim, Co. Meath, weighing 1,405lbs, fetched £13 13s. 10½d.37 In many
30 W.G. Wood-Martin, Traces of the elder faiths of Ireland (2 vols, London, 1902), ii, pp 74–9.
31 Bradshaw, Dissolution of the religious orders, pp 105–6. 32 Ibid., p. 108. 33 James Graves
and J.G.A. Prim, The history, architecture and antiquities of the cathedral church of St Canice,
Kilkenny (Dublin, 1857), 69. 34 W.M. Brady (ed.), State papers concerning the Irish church in
the time of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1868), p. 40. 35 Eamonn McEneaney, ‘Politics and
devotion in late fifteenth-century Waterford’ in Rachel Moss, Colmán Ó Clabaigh and
Salvador Ryan (eds), Art and devotion in late medieval Ireland (Dublin, 2006), pp 33–50 at pp
45–9. 36 McNeill, ‘Chattels of some suppressed Irish monasteries’, 16. 37 White (ed.),
Extents of Irish monastic possessions, p. 298.
cases, church bells were either recorded as unsold or were given to the local
parishioners.38 Some altar vessels escaped the crucible, such as that from the
Dominican priory of St Saviour’s in Dublin, which was given to the former prior
to celebrate mass at the chapel of St Mary du Grace, situated next to the priory.39
Elsewhere, single chalices and old vestments were given by the commissioners
for use in the local parish church, such as those from the nunnery of
Kilculliheen, Co. Waterford, and the Cistercian abbey of Kilcooly, Co.
Tipperary.40 Worthy of separate note, no doubt on account of their high value,
were the ‘two silver crosses called “holye crossys”’ from the Cistercian houses of
Kilcooly and Inisloughnaght, both in Co. Tipperary, which realized 67s. 6d.; but
these are exceptional instances.41 Those charged with directing the process were
not averse to self-enrichment, and when the personal effects of one of the
commissioners, Lord Deputy Leonard Grey, were recovered at Maynooth Castle
after he was suspected of embezzlement, they included along with altar
vestments, ‘chalices … [and] a cross of silver gilt, to set on a church altar’.42
In some cases, the goods of the suppressed houses survived by being taken
away in advance of the commissioners’ arrival, as happened at the Carmelite
friary in Ardee, Co. Louth, where in 1540–1 the commissioners found no goods
and chattels ‘as they were stolen and taken away by the friars long before the
Dissolution’.43 Indeed, news of the suppression in England would have reached
Ireland and measures were no doubt taken to protect the possessions of the
regular orders.44 There is evidence that church furnishings were concealed,
particularly as the pace of reform quickened under Edward VI, only to be
brought out of hiding and reinstated during the accession of Mary.45 Elsewhere,
the portable furnishings might be entrusted to individuals in the locality. At
Limerick in 1539, the Franciscan friars distributed their goods among the
townspeople: David Mitchell received a silver chalice, John Scallan, merchant,
was given two candlesticks of brass, while service-books, vestments and glasses
were left with others.46 At the same time, some of the friary’s property was leased
to prominent local families at nominal rents, perhaps to provide an income for
the community.47 This pattern was repeated again and again throughout the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Franciscan Donatus Mooney, in his
account of the Irish province compiled in 1617–18, describes how at that time,
for example, the gold and silver altar vessels from Quin Friary, Co. Clare, were
entrusted to the MacNamaras of Knappoge Castle, and the chalices, reliquaries
38 For example, ibid., pp 77, 188, 193, 262, 264, 280. 39 Ibid., p. 78. 40 Ibid., pp 206, 324.
41 McNeill, ‘Chattels of some suppressed Irish monasteries’, 15; Hourihane, ‘“Holye
Crossys”’, 6. 42 Ronan, Reformation in Dublin, p. 179. 43 White (ed.), Extents of Irish
monastic possessions, p. 228. 44 Colm Lennon, ‘The dissolution to the foundation of St
Anthony’s College, Louvain, 1534–1607’ in E. Bhreathnach, J. MacMahon and J. McCafferty
(eds), The Irish Franciscans, 1534–1990 (Dublin, 2009), pp 3–26 at p. 5. 45 Brendan Scott,
Religion and reformation in the Tudor diocese of Meath (Dublin, 2006), p. 53. 46 Bradshaw,
Dissolution of the religious orders, pp 152–3. 47 Lennon, ‘St Anthony’s College, Louvain’, pp
and great gold cross belonging to Youghal Friary were in the hands of the
Fitzgeralds of Dromana Castle, Co. Waterford.48 Towards the end of the
seventeenth century, inventories of the possessions of Franciscan houses were
drawn up, in particular following the decision to comply with the Act of
Banishment of 1698, and these inventories were to include the names of those
into whose custody the goods were to be consigned.49
There are a number of instances where deliberate burial of church objects for
safe-keeping at or near such sites can be demonstrated. One such is the altar
cross accompanied by a small altar bell and a candlestick (all of copper alloy) and
dating to around 1500 discovered in a quarry at Sheephouse, Co. Meath.50
Armstrong suggested that the proximity of the find-place to the Cistercian
monastery of Mellifont, Co. Louth – which lies on the other side of the River
Boyne only 6km to the north-east – indicated that it may have once belonged to
the abbey. This suggestion can now be strengthened in view of the fact that at the
time of the dissolution Mellifont owned lands at ‘Shephowse’.51 Other instances
of the concealment in the immediate vicinity of religious houses may be cited.
The magnificent gilt silver processional cross found in 1871 in boggy land at
Ballymacasey, Co. Kerry, bears an inscription indicating that it was commis-
sioned in 1479 by the Kerry lord Conchobhar Ua Conchobhair (Cornelius
O’Connor) and his wife Avelina Fitzgerald. Conchobhar’s father, Seaan (John),
had founded the Franciscan friary of Lislaughtin some years earlier and it is very
likely that the cross was made for the friary and hidden in boggy ground at
Ballymacasey less than 2km to the south for safekeeping.52 The same is also likely
in the case of the mid-fifteenth-century gilt bronze processional cross now
preserved in the Catholic church at Rathgormack, Co. Waterford, which was
found in a field near the abbey of the Augustinian canons at Mothel, Co.
Waterford,53 or the double-armed cross with crucifix figure found in a sand-pit
at Kilkenny West, Co. Westmeath, only 1km from the house of crutched friars.54
In the above instances, it seems likely that the buried objects belonged to the
religious houses nearby, although there is no evidence of when such concealment
took place. Less easily explained is the discovery of a late medieval crucifix near
a ringfort at Cloonaheen, Co. Offaly55 as there is no ecclesiastical site in the
immediate vicinity to which it may once have belonged.
9–10. 48 Jennings, ‘Brussels MS 3947’, 60, 73. 49 Malgorzata Krasnodębska-d’Aughton,

‘Franciscan chalices, 1600–50’ in Bhreathnach, MacMahon and McCafferty (eds), The Irish
Franciscans, pp 287–302 at pp 299–301. 50 E.C.R. Armstrong, ‘Processional cross, pricket-
candlestick and bell, found together at Sheephouse, near Oldbridge, Co. Meath’, JRSAI, 45
(1915), 27–31. 51 White (ed.), Extents of Irish monastic possessions, p. 216. 52 Raghnall Ó
Floinn, ‘The Lislaughtin Cross’ in Griffin Murray (ed.), Medieval treasures of County Kerry
(Tralee, 2010), pp 82–96. 53 Hourihane, ‘“Holye Crossys”’, 15–16 and pls XV–XVI.
54 Raghnall Ó Floinn, ‘Irish Romanesque crucifix figures’ in Etienne Rynne (ed.), Figures
from the past: studies in figurative art in Christian Ireland in Honour of Helen Roe (Dublin,
1987), pp 168–88 at p. 170 and fig. 10.3. 55 A.T. Lucas et al. ‘National Museum of Ireland
archaeological acquisitions in the year 1957’, JRSAI, 88 (1958), 135 and fig. 7.
As an aside, there are cases where reliquaries were deliberately concealed in

buildings in the vicinity of the churches where such objects were housed.
Although the majority survived above ground in the hands of families entrusted
with their safety, they might on occasion be hidden in times of danger. The
Shrine of the Stowe Missal, associated with St Rúadán of Lorrha, Co. Tipperary,
which was refurbished in the 1370s by Philip Ua Ceinnéidigh (O’Kennedy) of
Ormond, was discovered in 1735 in the walls of Lackeen Castle, only 3km to the
east.56 Lackeen is a tower house and bawn of the sixteenth century that was in
ruins by the 1650s.57 It was one of the strongholds of the Uí Cheinnéidigh and
the shrine and its manuscript were no doubt secreted in the walls of the castle by
one of Philip’s successors. The circumstances surrounding the concealment of
the twelfth-century Lismore crozier are less certain. It was discovered in 1814 in
a built-up recess in a wall at Lismore Castle, when it was being rebuilt in the
Gothic style.58 When found, the crozier was accompanied by a manuscript
compiled in the latter half of the fifteenth century known as the Book of Lismore
(Leabhar Mhic Cárthaigh Riabhaigh). The manuscript (now in the possession of
the duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, Derbyshire) was known to have been in
Timoleague Abbey in 1629, when it was consulted by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh and
thus it, and the crozier, must have been concealed at a later date, perhaps during
the short period when the castle was captured and held by the Catholic
Confederates under Lord Castlehaven in 1645.59
In other instances, liturgical objects are recorded as being found at the sites
of religious foundations. The thirteenth-century silver chalice and paten from
Mellifont, Co. Louth,60 and the enamelled copper crozier of Limoges work-
manship found at Cashel,61 were both buried in graves with their owners. Unless
particulars are given as to their find circumstances, it is not clear whether they
were deliberately discarded, accidentally lost or buried, either in a grave or with
the intention of recovery. The presence of late medieval crucifix figures at the
Premonstratensian friary of White Abbey, Co. Antrim,62 those from the
Franciscan friary at Kilcrea, Co. Cork,63 or the base of a medieval censer from
Fore Abbey, Co. Westmeath (NMI reg. 1891:19), could be explained by any of
the above reasons. On the other hand, the large processional cross measuring
56 Raghnall Ó Floinn, ‘Shrine of the Stowe Missal’ in Michael Ryan (ed.), Treasures of
Ireland: Irish art, 3000BC–1500AD (Dublin, 1983), pp 163–5. 57 Jean Farrelly and Caimin
O’Brien, Archaeological inventory of County Tipperary, I: north Tipperary (Dublin, 2003), pp
251–2. 58 Henry O’Neill, The fine arts and civilization of ancient Ireland (London and
Dublin, 1853), pp 39–45. 59 Samuel Lewis, A topographical dictionary of Ireland, 2 vols
(London, 1837), ii, p. 283. 60 Liam de Paor, ‘Excavations at Mellifont Abbey, Co. Louth’,
PRIA, 68C (1968), 109–64 at 138–9. 61 John Bradley, ‘The sarcophagus at Cormac’s
Chapel, Cashel, Co. Tipperary’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 27 (1984), 14–35 at 6–18.
62 Mary Cahill, Aideen Ireland and Raghnall Ó Floinn, ‘James Carruthers, a Belfast
antiquarian collector’ in Colum Hourihane (ed.), Irish art historical studies in honour of Peter
Harbison (Dublin and Portland, 2004), pp 219–260 at pp 245–7 and pl. 15. 63 Peter
Harbison, ‘Another crucifix figure from Kilcrea Friary’, Journal of the Cork Historical and
some 576mm in height said to have been found at the ‘abbey’, Kilkenny,64 or the
altar crosses from the house of Premonstratensian canons at White Abbey, Co.
Antrim,65 and from the ‘Greek Church’ at Trim, Co. Meath,66 are more likely to
have been deliberately concealed. Other late medieval processional crosses are
associated with mendicant houses, although it is not known how ancient such
associations are: one has been preserved at the Franciscan friary at
Multyfarnham, Co. Westmeath, since at least the nineteenth century, and the
other was given to the Dominican friary at Sligo by an elderly woman who had
found it in her attic.67
What is remarkable is that, insofar as it is possible to establish, the majority of
such objects have been recovered at, or near, religious houses of the reformed
orders and not from parish or other churches. Precisely why this is the case
remains problematic and it may well be in part due to a process of selective
recovery as a result of more intensive exploration of and grave-digging at
religious houses. It may, on the other hand, reflect the fact that the houses of the
regular orders were, by-and-large, richer than the establishments of the secular
church, attracting wealthier patrons.
The precise circumstances surrounding the deposition of objects such as the
Dunbrody pax or the Mellifont and Boyle vessel fragments are uncertain and we
cannot even be sure whether their burial was as a result of the Suppression and
indeed their loss or concealment could have occurred much later. The pax was
perhaps discarded as of little intrinsic value, and yet its condition indicates that
it was broken deliberately either in order to deface it or to consign it to the
crucible. The object from Boyle, being of silver, was almost certainly intended to
be melted down. The stand from Mellifont, on the other hand, would appear to
have been converted from ecclesiastical to secular use before it was buried. In all
cases, however, their deposition as grave-goods can be ruled out. A full survey of
the exact find-place and find circumstances and the nature and condition of
items of ecclesiastical use from Ireland of all periods would reveal much about
how such objects have survived and why (and when) they were consigned to the
ground in the first place.
Archaeological Society, 112 (2007), 29–31. 64 Most likely the Franciscan friary of St John’s:
Hourihane, ‘“Holye Crossys”’, pl. III. 65 Cahill et al., ‘James Carruthers’, p. 245 and pl. 14.
66 The precise identification of the ‘Greek Church’ is not known: Hourihane, ‘“Holye
Crossys”’, pl. XVII. 67 Hourihane, ‘“Holye Crossys”’, 11, 15 and pls VI–VII and XIII–XIV.
Part III(a)_Layout 1 19/02/2013 13:29 Page 375
Part III. Poets

the court poet in early Ireland
a L e X Wo o L F
In this essay, I wish to address what Liam Breatnach has called ‘the striking
contrast between the wealth of praise poems from the post-Norman period in
Ireland and the paucity of such poems surviving from the pre-Norman period’.1
Breatnach himself cautiously suggests that ‘as for the question of survival of
early praise poems, it is hardly one that can be addressed in isolation from that
of early Irish writing as a whole’.2 Doubtless he is wise to draw our attention to
the need to avoid considering the poetry in isolation from other forms of
literature, but there is a danger that in stressing the poor survival of manuscripts
produced in Ireland from before the twelfth century he is perhaps failing to
distinguish, clearly enough, the manuscripts themselves from works of the old
or Middle Irish period preserved in them. In what follows, I wish to approach
this problem from an altogether different angle. While not denying that praise
poetry, for secular patrons and honorands,3 may have been composed in the old
Irish period, and certainly was, to some extent, in the Middle Irish, I would like
to take my lead from James Carney’s misgivings about Caerwyn Williams’
willingness to conflate evidence drawn from Norse, anglo-saxon and above all,
of course, Welsh sources in producing an image of The court poet in medieval
Ireland.4
In what follows, it will be argued that one factor, doubtless among many,
contributing to the paucity of secular praise poems composed for living
honorands surviving from early Ireland was that the social and physical
conditions of the period did not lend themselves to the production of such
works. It will be argued that the retained court poet, if we can term him such,
was largely absent from royal households in the old Irish period and only
gradually began to emerge in the course of the Middle Irish period. Indeed, it
might be argued that the emergence of such figures in the literary and social
landscape went hand in hand with the transformations of Irish rulers from kings
to warlords that our own honorand, Katharine simms, has done so much to
elucidate. For a panegyric tradition to flourish, both an appropriate audience and
an appropriate venue must present themselves. We must, therefore, turn our
attention to the king’s household and the king’s house.
1 Liam Breatnach, ‘satire, praise and the early Irish poet’, Ériu, 56 (2006), 63–84 at 63.
2 Ibid., 82. 3 the significance of this distinction should become clear in what follows.
4 James Carney, ‘society and the bardic poet’, Studies, 62 (1973), 233–50, responding to J.e.
Caerwyn Williams, The court poet in medieval Ireland, sir John rhŷs Memorial Lecture
(oxford, 1971), which is reprinted in PBA, 56, 1971 (1973), 85–135.
377
378 Alex Woolf
Williams’ synthetic construct of a court poet is perhaps best encapsulated in

his description of the anglo-saxon scop:
Like the ollav, the pencerdd and the skald, the scop had at court an
important post which he might lose to another, or leave to take up a similar
post elsewhere. His primary function was to compose and sing to the
accompaniment of his harp songs which would spread the fame of his royal
patron. He could also sing songs which celebrated the mighty deeds of
ancient heroes: indeed, his mind was full of the traditional and heroic lore
which he needed as court genealogist and historian.5
What I would like to question here is Williams’ assertion that composing and
singing ‘songs which would spread the fame of his royal patron’ was the ‘primary
function’ of the early Irish poet. In the commentary to his edition of Uraicecht
na ríar, Breatnach adverts to a variety of passages in the legal corpus that suggest
that in the old Irish period the ollam was ‘rather an official of the túath’ than ‘an
official appointee of the king’.6 this important observation gives weight to the
unease expressed by David Dumville when considering the history of Gaelic
poetry, which arises, he argues
from the fact that the received scholarly history of medieval Gaelic
literature has for more than a century insisted on the essential continuity
of the public and political role of the poet from a remote Celtic antiquity.
that has rested above all on arguments from the vocabulary of poets and
poetry in the Celtic languages, and their etymological analysis using the
techniques of comparative Indo-european philology, which have created a
picture of the imagined forebear in Celtic prehistory of the later medieval
Gaelic public poet, the court poet as he is commonly known.7
archaeology and historical studies have increasingly emphasized the dynamic

nature of medieval Irish society and it is to this area that we must now turn to
investigate the context of performance in the old Irish period. If poets
performed panegyrics to living secular patrons, where did they do this and who
was there to listen to their performance?
the great public sites of early medieval Ireland were open-air venues, the sites
of inaugurations and óenaig. What strikes the visitor to royal residence sites is
how cramped they appear. For me, this was brought home most forcefully on a
visit to the twin Clann Cholmáin sites at Dún na sciath and Cró-inis on Lough
5 Caerwyn Williams, The court poet (1971), p. 6; idem, ‘the court poet’ (1973), p. 91. 6 Liam
Breatnach (ed.), Uraicecht na ríar: the poetic grades in early Irish law (Dublin, 1987), pp 89–94,
quotations at p. 92. 7 D.N. Dumville, ‘What is mediaeval Gaelic poetry?’ in D.F. smith and
H. Philsooph (eds), Explorations in cultural history: essays for Peter Gabriel McCaffrey
(aberdeen, 2010), pp 81–153 at p. 82.
The court poet in early Ireland 379
ennell. From the ninth to the eleventh century, these were among the most
favoured residences of some of the most powerful kings in Ireland. recent
reanalysis of the archaeological evidence from another Clann Cholmáin royal
site, at Uisnech, by roseanne schot, allows us to have a greater understanding
of the spatial layout of such a royal residence at rathnew. this is a bivallate
ringfort made up of two conjoined enclosures, a larger one to the east (with an
internal diameter of 65m) and a smaller to the west (enclosing an area of
approximately 37 by 30m).8 Most significant for our present purposes is the
largest building found within the ringfort, the so-called ‘eastern House’,
apparently in use between the eighth and the eleventh century, at a conservative
estimate, with the possibility of extending this period at either end of the span.
this building was modified, with additional small chambers added, in the course
of its lifetime, but its earliest, largest and principal chamber enclosed a ‘sub-
rectangular space with maximum dimensions of approximately 6.7m east–west
by 6m north–south’.9 this gives an overall floor area of about 40.2m2. When we
compare this with the well-known seventh-century anglo-saxon royal hall from
Yeavering, in Northumberland, which comes in with a clear floor area in the
main chamber of 226m2, we have to concede that we are looking at two buildings
with very different functions.
It cannot be emphasized strongly enough at this point, however, that what
concerns me here is not the relative wealth or power of the kings of Clann
Cholmáin and those of the Bernicians. the former may well have been able to
muster as many or more fighting men. What is under scrutiny here is the social
use of space in the practice of kingship. When we think of the royal feasting hall
in the Germanic-speaking world, the archetype in literary terms is probably
Heorot, the hall of the Danish King Hrothgar in the poem Beowulf. the
historical prototype for this hall has, apparently, now been identified and
excavated at Lejre in Denmark, and it has a floor space of over 550m2.10 Lejre is
remarkable, even in scandinavia, but it is nonetheless the case that for much of
what we might consider the old Irish period, which also coincides with the
heyday of the ringfort (c.600 to 900), royal residences in Germanic-speaking
europe were considerably larger than those in Ireland.
In anglo-saxon england in the period up to about 600, the average house was
10 to 12m long and about 5m in breadth, giving a floor area of 50 to 60m2. Large
halls, like that found at Yeavering, emerge in the decades around 600 and, in the
course of the seventh century, houses less than 6m in length but of the same
proportions (and thus with less than 18m2 of floor space) also became
increasingly common.11 this clearly reflects a quite dramatic, if somewhat
8 roseanne schot, ‘Uisneach Midi a medón Érenn: a prehistoric “cult” centre and a “royal site”
in Co. Westmeath’, Journal of Irish Archaeology, 15 (2006), 39–71 at 55, 57. 9 Ibid., 60.
10 t. Christiensen, ‘Lejre beyond the legend: the archaeology evidence’, Journal of Danish
Archaeology, 10 (1991), 163–85. see now also J.D. Niles (ed.), Beowulf and Lejre (tempe, aZ,
2007). 11 Helena Hamerow, Early medieval settlements: the archaeology of rural communities
380 Alex Woolf
gradual, change in social structure, widening the gap between kings and their
people. In Ireland, the average floor area of excavated houses from the early
medieval period is in the region of 45m2, slightly smaller than the normal early
anglo-saxon examples, but perhaps not appreciably so, since their very
roundness may have made the use of space more flexible.12 at the time Chris
Lynn made his survey of early medieval houses, the largest round house to have
been identified was that excavated by John Bradley at Moynagh Lough crannog,
Co. Meath.13 this early medieval phase of the crannog had a secure postquem
date, supplied by dendrochronology, of 748. the larger of the two houses found
on the platform had an internal diameter of 10m, giving it an area of about
78m2.14 When compared to the anglo-saxon evidence, this is still, however
massive for Ireland, on a scale nearer to that of the average early house than it is
to a hall like Yeavering, which has almost twice the floor space and was situated
in a complex with multiple other relatively substantial buildings.
the impression that we gain from archaeology, that even the largest houses in
the old Irish period were considerably less capacious than their anglo-saxon or
scandinavian equivalents, finds support in the textual evidence. the starting
place is, inevitably, Crith Gablach:15
§45. What is the due (córus) enclosure of a king (dún rí) who is always in
residence at the head of his people (túath)? seven-score feet of proper
(inraic) feet are the measure of his dún on every side; seven feet are the
thickness of its earthwork (talmatha); and twelve feet its depth (domnae).
It is then that he is a rí, when [earth-]works of vassalage (dréchtai gíallnai)
surround him.16 What is the drécht gíallnai? twelve feet are the breadth of
its opening and its depth and its measure towards the dún; thirty feet are
its measure outwardly. there are clergy (cléirig) for making the prayers of
his house: a wagon of charcoal, a wagon of rushes, for every man [of
them?]. the lord (flaith) who has taken the clerical-staff (bachall) is not
entitled to have his dún made, but only his house; his house [measures]
thirty-seven feet, there are seventeen beds in a royal house.
in North-west Europe, 400–900 (oxford, 2002), pp 46–8. 12 C.J. Lynn, ‘Houses in rural
Ireland, aD500–1000’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3rd ser., 57 (1994), 81–94. For a more
recent and very useful discussion, see aidan o’sullivan, ‘early medieval houses in Ireland:
social identity and dwelling spaces’, Peritia, 20 (2008), 225–56. 13 John Bradley,
‘excavations at Moynagh Lough, County Meath’, JRSAI, 121 (1991), 5–26. 14 Ibid., 13–16.
15 the translations of this text used below are from a slightly modernized rewording of eoin
MacNeill’s translation from ‘ancient Irish Law: the Law of status or Franchise’, PRIA, 36C
(1921–4 [1923]), 265–316, collated with editorial comment and corrections from D.a.
Binchy’s edition of the text (Dublin, 1941), by James Fraser of the University of edinburgh.
James Fraser prepared this presentation of Crith Gablach as an aid for teaching history
students and has been good enough to share it with me. It is with his permission that I
reproduce sections of it here. the footnotes within the quotations are his. 16 as Binchy,
Críth Gablach, 38, observed, the drécht gíallnai must relate back to the labour (drécht)
as aidan o’sullivan has pointed out, the proportion given here for the king’s
house, 37 feet, is almost exactly the diameter of the house found on the Moynagh
Lough crannog and, indeed, edel Bhreathnach has concluded that this crannog
is very likely to be Loch Dé Mundech, a royal site of the Mugdorna.17
Crith Gablach also gives us a description of the social arrangements within the
royal house:
§46. How is the house of a king (tech ríg) arranged? the rí’s hirelings
(amuis) on the south. Question: What amuis are proper (coir) for a rí? a
man freed (sóeras) from blood (crú) [that is, being killed], a man freed from
the branch (gabul) [that is, lynching], a man freed from captivity
(cimbidecht), a man freed from service (fognum), from base-cottership
(dóerbothus), from base-tenancy (dóerfuidrius); he does not keep a man
saved from battle (róe), lest he betray him or slay him from feelings of
grievance (sóeth) or patriotism (condalbae). What number of amuis is proper
(coir) for a rí? Four, to wit, a frontman (rigthid)18 and a rearguard (seirthith)19
and two side-men (tóebthaid), these are their names; it is these that are
(coir) to be in the south side of a rí’s house, to accompany him from house
into field, from field into house. a man of pledge for vassals (fer gill
gíallnai) next to these inward. What is this man’s dignity (míad)? a man
who has land of seven cumala, who stands over their séoit in regard to lord
(flaith) and church (andón) and common law (córus Féne).20 Next to him
inward, messengers (techta); next to these guest-companies (dáama); poets
(éicis) next to these; harpers (cruitti) next, pipers (cuislennaig), horn-players
(cornairi), jugglers (clessamnaig) in the south-east. on the other side, in the
north, a man-at-arms (fénnid), a warrior (fergniae) to guard the door: each
of them having his spear in front of him always against chaos (cumascc) of
the ale-house (cuirmthech). Next to these inward, the free clients (sóerchéli)
of the lord (flaith) – these are the folk who are company (coímthecht) to a rí;
hostages (géill) next to these, the judge (brithem) next to these; his wife or
his brithem next to him;21 the rí next. Forfeited hostages (géill díthma) in
fetters in the north-east.
at first glance, this looks like a very crowded house, but it may be that the large
number of ‘entertainers’ includes interchangeable or alternate categories, not all
of whom would be present at any one time. the internal circumferences of the
performed by the base-client (céle gíallnai) for his lord (§9). 17 o’sullivan, ‘early medieval
houses’ at 245, edel Bhreathnach, ‘topographical note: Moynagh Lough, Nobber, Co
Meath’, Riocht na Midhe, 9/4 (1998), 16–19. 18 Literally ‘forearm’. 19 Literally ‘heel’.
20 Binchy, Críth Gablach, 38, supposed that the meaning of this description of the fer gill
gíallnai is that he was responsible for ensuring that the king’s base-clients discharged their
obligations to lord, church and common law, and pledged his entire property as security.
21 Binchy, Críth Gablach, 38, suspected that ‘or his brithem’ was a mistake, though he
382 Alex Woolf
house at the wall was less than 32m and so this limits the number of people who
could sit around in a circle, particularly when we consider that furnishing and
storage probably restricted access to the wall itself and that the circumference of
the social space would have been considerably smaller. If the back wall was a
metre behind people’s backs, the circumference of the social circle would be only
25m around. Bearing in mind that the doorway and other features may have
prevented the seating from encompassing a full circle, then we are probably
looking at a building with a capacity for seating only about twenty-five adults.
What I would like to focus on now is what one might term the military retinue,
which is often represented as the principal audience for court poetry in
Germanic and Welsh literature. Here we have the fénnid, the fergniae and
possibly the amuis, whose status, whether principally guards or man-servants, is
ambiguous. this gives us a maximum of six retained household warriors, four of
whom have decidedly base origins.
this brings me to the central thesis of my argument: before the Viking age,
early Irish kings did not retain war-bands and thus the social context that led to
the existence of retained court poets in some other medieval societies did not
exist. Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica has a number of stories that illustrate the
practice of young men of good birth seeking out service as members of kings’
military retinues. Most famously, he talks of oswine, king of the Deiri (c.642–
51), to whom ‘noblemen from almost every kingdom flocked to serve him as
retainers (ad eius ministerium)’.22 It seems to have been expected that young men
would join the king’s retinue for a few years in their teens and early twenties and
that, having survived, they would be given land to hold of the king and become
something more like the sóerchéli of Irish legal texts.23 as young men, however,
‘the comitatus ate and slept in the hall at the king’s expense. It was at feasts in the
great hall that the pledges of loyalty were made and gifts in the form of weapons
and other items of a warrior’s equipment were handed over’.24
the absence of the comitatus, the retained hearth-troop, marks a significant
difference between old Irish society and the world of Beowulf and Bede. to
some extent, this analysis occupies some of the same territory travelled by Daniel
Binchy in his seminal o’Donnell Lectures delivered in oxford in 1968,25 though
I would not agree with Patrick Wormald’s caricature of Binchy’s Irish king as a
supposed that the meaning of the phrase could have been that the judge sat beside the king
when his wife was absent. 22 Bertram Colgrave and r.a.B. Mynors (ed. and trans.), Bede’s
Ecclesiastical history of the English people (oxford, 1969) (hereafter HE), III.14. 23 For a
cautious but sound discussion, see James Campbell, ‘early anglo-saxon society from the
written sources’ in Essays in Anglo-Saxon history (London, 1986), pp 131–8 at pp 132–3.
24 Barbara Yorke, Kings and kingdoms of early Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1990), p. 17. For
more in-depth studies of the institutional basis, see, inter alia, John Lindow, Comitatus,
individual and honour: studies in North Germanic institutional vocabulary (Berkeley, Ca, 1976);
Jos Bazelmans, By weapons made worthy: lords, retainers and their relationships in “Beowulf ”’
(amsterdam, 1999). 25 D.a. Binchy, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingship (oxford, 1970).
‘priestly vegetable’.26 Frazer and Dumezil appear too frequently, perhaps, for
many modern tastes in Binchy’s essay, but there was a great deal more to it than
that and his kings engaged in military activity and diplomacy on behalf of the
túath.27 More recently, in Wormald’s Festschrift, thomas Charles-edwards has
also reemphasized these aspects both of Binchy’s analysis and of further
evidence for the practice of dynamic and at times aggressive kingship in the old
Irish period.28 It seems clear, however, that when Irish kings led armies across the
frontier it was the slógad of their sóerchéli that provided the backbone of their
armies.29 even in the legendary Ulster Cycle, the warriors who surround King
Conchobar are married men who live at home, not iuuenes sleeping on his mead-
benches; even the ever youthful Cú Chulainn.30
Iuuenes are not absent from early Ireland, of course, but they fulfil a very
different role as members of fíanna living outside of, or at least on the edge of,
ordered society.31 Crith Gablach does make provision for a single fénnid (a fían
member) in the king’s household, but we should perhaps imagine him as a
veteran of fíanaigecht who was not yet ready to settle down. among the anglo-
saxon sources, there is only one passage that seems to suggest the existence of
an institution parallel to that of the Irish fían. this is the account of the youth of
st Guthlac, which appears in the Life of the saint written by Felix sometime
between 721 and 749.32 Guthlac’s youth can be dated quite closely, since he was
apparently both born and received into religion at the age of twenty-four in the
reign of Æðelræd of Mercia who reigned from 675 to 704. this allows us to
locate the first twenty-four years of Guthlac’s life within a twenty-nine-year
window. We are told that at the age of about fifteen he ‘remembered the valiant
deeds of heroes of old, and as though awaking from sleep, he changed his
disposition and gathering bands of followers (adgregatis satellitum turmis) took up
arms’.33 We are told that he ‘gathered together companions (sociis) from various
races (diversarum gentium)34 and all directions (undique)’ and ‘amassed great
booty’. after nine years, he obtained his vocation and told ‘his companions
(comitantibus) to choose another leader (ducem alium) for their expedition (itineris)’.35
26 C.P. Wormald, ‘Celtic and anglo-saxon kingship: some further thoughts’ in P.e. szarmach
(ed.), Sources of Anglo-Saxon culture (Kalamazoo, MI, 1986), pp 151–83 at p. 153. 27 Binchy,
Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingship, pp 20–1. 28 t.M. Charles-edwards, ‘Celtic kings: “priestly
vegetables”?’ in s. Baxter, C.e. Karkov, J.L. Nelson and D. Pelteret (eds), Early medieval
studies in memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009), pp 65–80. 29 see t.M. Charles-
edwards, Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge, 2000), pp 112–13, for the case that the ‘retinue’
(his word) of kings and lords was made up of their clients. 30 Kuno Meyer (ed. and trans.),
‘the oldest version of Tochmarc Emire’, RC, 11 (1890), 433–57. 31 Much discussed in the
secondary literature but examined most thoroughly in Kim McCone, Pagan past and Christian
present in early Irish literature (Maynooth, 1991), pp 203–20. 32 Bertram Colgrave (ed. and
trans.), Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge, 1956), henceforth VG. the date of the Life
is discussed at pp 18–19 and the youthful exploits appear in §§16–19. 33 VG, §16.
34 Whether gens, here, has the meaning of ‘ethnic group’ or ‘lineage’ seems a moot point.
35 VG, §19. one might question whether Colgrave’s ‘expedition’ is the best translation for
384 Alex Woolf
this information (that the band of warriors were to choose their own leader as a
replacement for Guthlac) is very suggestive, as indeed is the account of his
gathering of socii initially, that his is a freelance troop of warriors living by
predation rather than a retinue attached to a landed lord or king. It seems likely
that Guthlac’s role was that of the Irish rígfennid in an anglo-saxon reflex of a
fían.
Guthlac’s father is described as belonging to the Mercian stirps and as being
descended from Icel, the eponymous founder of the Mercian dynasty.36 this
dynasty is notable in providing the clearest evidence from anglo-saxon england
that the kind of predatory segmentation we associate with Irish dynastic
expansion was present in the early phases of english history.37 the first well-
attested Mercian king, Penda (d. c.656), was said by Bede to have placed his son
Peada as king over the Middle angles (the people occupying the western
drainage of the Fens).38 eleventh-century sources claim that the king ruling in
the english-controlled areas between the Wye and the severn in the mid-seventh
century, Merewalh, was also a son of Penda.39 Guthlac’s own father, Penwalh,
was said to dwell in the land of the Middle angles and to have great wealth and
more than one hall (aula) and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he
held some form of kingship there.40 Bearing in mind Charles-edwards’
suggestion that, on their appearance in the Midland kingdoms of Ireland, the
Connachta rígdamnai Coirpre and Fiachu may have been ‘acting as leaders of
Fíanna rather than as the kings of peoples’,41 we might imagine that the arrival
of Icling rulers in various territories in the english Midlands resulted from a
similar process. We have seen that among the anglo-saxons the great hall made
its first appearance in the decades around 600, about the same time as princely
burials appeared, so we might speculate that before this transformation took hold
across the country the military organization of the saxons may have been closer
to that which we can see in our old Irish evidence. the rise of the great hall, and
the culture that went with it, might be seen, in some ways, as a reflection of the
domestication of the fían by kings.
If the idea of a royal military household, such as the old english híred or
Welsh teulu, can be seen, to some extent, as a coming together of the rígthech and
the fían, we should, perhaps, also look at a third institution in old Irish society
that fulfilled some of its functions. an institution with which no student of early
Irish literature can be unfamiliar is that of the ‘hostel’, as it is conventionally
iter. 36 VG, §§1 and 2. 37 the multiplicity of contemporary members of the West-saxon
dynasty bearing the title ‘king’ before the 680s might suggest something similar in that part
of the country but our sources do not allow us to identify their geographical distribution.
38 HE, III.21. 39 Margaret Gelling, The west midlands in the early Middle Ages (London,
1992), pp 80–3. 40 VG, §§1 and 11. While it is common for anglo-saxon hagiography to
draw attention to the identity of nuns as the daughters of kings, no male monastic saints are
explicitly stated to be the sons of kings. this may have more to do with the sensibilities of the
hagiographers than the origins of their subjects. 41 Early Christian Ireland, p. 468.
translated, in old Irish bruiden. these are the venues for encounters of groups
of warriors from different communities that begin with uneasy cordiality but
inevitably break down into extreme violence.42 In anglo-saxon literature, such
encounters tend to take place in the context of the royal hall; one thinks
immediately of the falling out of the Danes and Frisians in Finn Folcwalda’s hall
at Finnsburgh, or the falling out of the Danes and Heathobards at Ingeld’s court
predicted by the eponymous hero of Beowulf.43 In the Irish literature, it is notable
that the bruiden is not presided over by the king but by a proprietor bearing the
title briugu. His status is described in the legal text Uraicecht Becc:44
a hospitaller (briugu) is of the same status as a lord (flaith) if he have twice

as much again as every grade of land and tillage on account of his lineage
and the excess renders of lordship. He is not a hospitaller (briugu) who is
not hundredfold (cétach). He does not exclude any condition (of person).
He does not refuse any company. He does not reckon it against anyone,
however often he come. He is a hospitaller (briugu) in that. He has the same
honour-price as the king of a petty kingdom (túath). the superior
hospitaller (briugu leitech), he has twice as much property, possesses an
immovable cauldron, [and there are] three highways by him.
What is notable here is that the briugu has the same honour-price as a king, a
distinction he shares with the bishop and the ollam. this may suggest that he too,
like the ollam, was originally an ‘official of the túath’.45 as simms has shown, by
the later Middle ages, the term briugu (or rather its early modern form
brughaidh) seems to have become almost synonymous with biatach (‘someone
who provides food-rent’) and lost the very specific sense that it had in the law
codes,46 and it seems likely that the institution described in the earlier period was
no longer present in Irish society. If in the earlier period the briugu was a unique
individual within the túath paralleled in status with the king, the bishop and the
ollam, then we should probably see him as the provider of a communal venue for
feasting, entertainment and performance, a role played by the royal hall in anglo-
saxon society from the seventh century onward. If the bruiden provided a
potential venue for much of the activity of the filid, then it might go some way
towards explaining the absence of panegyric as a major part of his repertoire.
42 the locus classicus of this trope is Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó, edited by rudolf thurneysen
(Dublin, 1935), but a bruiden is also the principal setting for Togail Bruiden Da Dega, ed.
eleanor Knott (Dublin, 1936) and Bruiden Da Choca, ed. Whitley stokes, RC, 21 (1900), 149–
65, 312–27 and 389–402. 43 For the Finnsburgh episode, see J.r.r. tolkien, Finn and
Hengest: the fragment and the episode, ed. a. Bliss (London, 1982); for Heathobards and Danes,
see Beowulf, ll 2020–69. 44 the translation is that of Kim McCone from his paper ‘Aided
Cheltchair maic Uthechair: hounds, heroes and hospitallers in early Irish myth and story’, Ériu,
35 (1984), 1–30. the text can be found in CIH, 1608. 45 to reprise Liam Breatnach’s
phrase, cited above. 46 Katharine simms, ‘Guesting and feasting in Gaelic Ireland’, JRSAI,
108 (1978), 67–100 at 71–3.
386 Alex Woolf
one difficulty with this interpretation of the bruiden is the absence of

archaeological evidence for large halls in early medieval Ireland, outlined above.
If, however, the arguments laid out so far allow us to detach the concept of a
‘feasting hall’ from that of a ‘lordly residence’, several possibilities present
themselves. Firstly, if the bruiden was not primarily a domestic residence it need
not have been as substantial as some other buildings and may even have been
temporary or semi-permanent in structure. secondly, even if it were a substantial
timber-framed building, if it was not located within a ringfort or on a crannog,
but on an unenclosed site, then examples may have avoided detection and
investigation by modern archaeology. Identifying structures from unenclosed
sites has proved a perennial problem in Ireland, where modern agricultural
practice does not lend itself to the identification of crop-marks through aerial
photography.
to summarize the argument so far, I have attempted to make a case that at
least one factor affecting the paucity of surviving praise poetry from before 1200
and particularly from the old Irish period may be that the social context which
produced analogous poetic traditions, such as old Norse skáldic verse or the
poetry of the Gogynfeirdd in Wales, that is to say the feasting hall in which the
king or other great lord retained a standing body of warrior iuuenes, was not
present in early Ireland. Let us now look back at James Carney’s catalogue of
early poetry and see how compatible what survives is with this interpretation.47
the Leinster poems that Carney would place earliest in the sequence are of
dynastic and genealogical concern and seem to focus on glorifying the
descendants of Cathaír Már, the apical figure of the Laigin dynasties.48 there is
no particular focus on an individual king and none of the hectoring demands that
usually accompany the full-blown panegyric and so these poems may well have
been a part of the repertoire of a poet performing for a public audience, that of
the túath, or in this case the coíced, the province, as a whole. a similar public
audience can be imagined for the surviving poems of Luccreth moccu Chíara,
whose floruit Carney placed in the decades around 600, but which must have
been in the second half of the seventh century if we accept his authorship of Cú-
Cen-Máthair, which celebrates the descent from adam of a Munster overking
whose predecessor died in 662 and whose own obit is noticed under the year
665.49 as a scottish historian, Cú-Cen-Mathair immediately puts me in mind of
the Gaelic poem allegedly recited at the inauguration of alexander III in 1249
that also traced the king’s descent back to adam.50 the pedigree in the Munster
poem has been demonstrated to be dependent upon the ordering of nations
found in Isidore of seville’s Etymologiae.51 this dependence on Latin learning
47 James Carney, ‘the dating of early Irish verse texts, 500–1100’, Éigse, 19 (1982/3), 177–
216. 48 James Carney, ‘three old Irish accentual poems’, Ériu, 22 (1971), 23–80 at 65–73.
49 AU, s.aa. 662.4 and 665.4. 50 John Bannerman, ‘the king’s poet and the inauguration of
alexander III’, SHR, 68 (1989), 120–49. 51 F.J. Byrne, review of CGH, I, in ZCP, 29
might suggest that Luccreth moccu Chíara was either in the clerical grades or at
least had access to an ecclesiastical education. He has been identified with the
Luccrad son of Áine in the Ciarraige pedigrees, who is said there to have had no
issue and to have had ‘his dwelling place on the south side of the church of
Cluain’.52 this last phrase presumably refers to his grave being in the sunny half
of the churchyard.53 If this is so, then, together with childlessness and the
knowledge of Isidore, this strongly supports the idea that Luccrith moccu Chíara
was an ecclesiastic.54
two earlier poets also display their connections with the church. the author
of Amra Choluimb Chille, identified as Dallán Forgaill, makes many references to
ecclesiastical texts and personalities that it is hard to account for unless we see
him as having had at least some elements of an ecclesiastical education.55 stanza
eight of this poem names an Áed, plausibly as the commissioner of the poem,
and there seems to be some consensus that this is the Cenél Conaill dynast Áed
mac ainmerech, whose death is recorded as having occurred in the year after
Colum Cille’s.56 this identification has principally been used to argue that the
Amra is indeed an immediate response to the death of the saint.57
the second early poet with ecclesiastical connections is Colmán mac Lénéni,
whom Carney treats in some detail in his 1971 paper on ‘accentual poems’.58
Carney’s optimism about our ability to fix on the chronology of Colmán’s career
reflects the age in which he was writing; we must be a little more circumspect.
His death is recorded in AT s.a. 604. Colmán is celebrated as the founder of
Cloyne and thus there may be an institutional connection between him and
Luccrith. In the historical tract ‘Conall Corc and the Corcu Luígde’, Colmán is
described as one of the three ex-soldiers of Ireland and the foundation of Cloyne
is ascribed to the Munster king Coirpre mac Crimthain.59 In the relatively late
Vita Prima Sancti Brendani, Colmán’s conversion to religion is attributed to
Brendan of Clonfert but there is no particular reason to regard this as an early
tradition.60 Coirpre’s death is noted in AT s.a. 579 and Brendan’s in AU, AT and
CS, s.a. 577.6. Brendan’s foundation of Clonfert is placed at AU 558.3. Were we
to take these chronological markers at face value, it would give us a relatively
close foundation date for Cloyne between 558 and 579. However, it is not at all
clear that we should take them seriously, although two poems attributed to
Colmán do have potential ‘historical tags’. one is a fragment of a lament for Áed
(1962–4), 381–5 at 383. 52 Carney, ‘three poems’ at 74. 53 the Irish reads: is[s]í a ráth
fil ar bélaib Cilli Cluaine andess. It is not clear which ‘Cluain’ is intended, when used as simplex
Clonmacnoise (Co. offaly) and Cloyne (Co Cork) are the most likely places intended.
54 the use of moccu rather than the patronymic may also support this suggestion. 55 For an
edition, translation and discussion, see t.o. Clancy and Gilbert Márkus (eds), Iona: the
earliest poetry of a Celtic monastery (edinburgh, 1995), pp 96–128. 56 AU, s.aa. 595.1 (recte
597) and 598.2. 57 rudolf thurneysen, ‘Colmán mac Lénéni und senchán torpéist’, ZCP,
19 (1933), 193–209. 58 Carney, ‘three poems’ at 63–5. 59 the tale is edited by Kuno
Meyer in Anecdota from Irish mansucripts, III (Halle, 1910), pp 57–63 and trans. by Vernon
Hull in PMLA, 62 (1947), 887–909. 60 Charles Plummer, Vita Sanctorum Hiberniae, I
388 Alex Woolf
sláine, who died in 604, and thus must date from Colmán’s time as abbot of
Cloyne, if the attribution stands. the other, known by its first line as Luin oc
elaib, mentions a Domnall who compares favourably to kings (ríg oc Domnall).
thurneysen identified this Domnall with Domnall mac Áeda, the son of that
Áed mac ainmerech whom we met in connection with the Amra. to Carney, it
‘seems likely’ that the Domnall in question is the joint-king of tara in 565,
Domnall mac Maic ercae, on the grounds that Domnall mac Áeda did not
become king of tara until 628.61 If this identification, and the attribution of the
poem to Colmán, were correct, then it would pre-date the lament for Áed sláine
by nearly forty years and would probably be a product, it is argued, of Colmán’s
pre-monastic career. Weight is given to this assumption by the final line of the
poem, colg oc mo chailg-se, ‘sword next to my sword’, reminding us of the claim
in ‘Conall Corc and the Corcu Luígde’ that Colmán was an ex-soldier. there are
problems here though. the line itself may have been the source of the belief that
Colmán had been a soldier. the line might be metaphorical – we need think only
of st Patrick’s lorica. all in all, neither the identification of the Domnall nor the
content of the poem is enough to assure that this is definitely not an ecclesiastical
product and it may well be that the evidence for the date of the verses on Áed
sláine is the best guide to Colmán’s floruit as a poet.
the evidence presented here, then, suggests that these early poems addressed
to kings were produced by churchman and were not panegyric in character.
Churchmen of course looked to kings for patronage, protection and
endowments, and it may be that it was the incorporation of some of the filid into
the ecclesiastical grades that first encouraged poets to look to kings as patrons
rather than as colleagues in the running of the túath. Did secular ‘hall culture’
appear in Ireland towards the end of the old Irish period or in the course of the
Middle Irish? the archaeological record has yet to reveal great halls of this
period, but a number of clues in the archaeological record might incline us to
imagine that it will before too long. one is the well-known change of the
predominant house design from circular to rectangular, which more-or-less
coincides with the period of transition from old to Middle Irish around aD900.62
the motivation for this change has been much discussed, but no consensus has
as yet emerged. one possible explanation is that while the rectangular houses
identified so far are not much larger than their round predecessors, they may be
a product of elite emulation and that elsewhere, particularly as kings began to
interact with, and adopt aspects of, scandinavian culture, royal halls were taking
on a new form and function. In such new spaces, new social practices, growing
organically out of those that had been developing over the previous centuries,
may have emerged and we may have begun to see the emergence of the retained
court poet.
(repr., Dublin, 1997), pp 98–151 at p. 102 (§8). 61 Carney, ‘three poems’, 64. 62 see
o’sullivan ‘early medieval houses’.
the world of medieval Irish learning
e D e L B H r e at H NaC H
the well-known Middle Irish text Acallam na senórach (‘the colloquay of the
elders’) at one point proclaims that the tales of the fíanna were written down i
támlorguibh filed 7 i mbriathraibh ollaman,1 ‘on poets’ tablets and in refined
language’. another term apparently related to támlorg occurs in an addendum to
the early Irish law on status Críth gablach, which lists the insignia appropriate to
various members of society: the cleric has his three-angled staff or crozier
(treslisen, cáembachall), the woman her distaff (cuicél), the layman or warrior
(láech) his two spears with his silver-wrought horsewhip (echluisc nairidhgha) and
the poets their taball lorg according to their grade.2 one of the eight grades of
base bard in the law on poetic grades Bretha nemed is the bard loirge, who is said
to have had a staff (lorg) in front of him.3 the Middle Irish tale Baile Binnbérlach
mac Buain relates how poets, prophets and wise men felled the yew-tree that had
grown from Binnbérlach’s grave at tráig Baile (near Dundalk), ocus musgníit
taball filidh de, ocus sgrioboit físe ocus fese ocus serce ocus tochmarca Uladh inti (‘and
they fashioned a Poet’s tablet from it, and they wrote the prophecies and feasts
and loves and wooings of Ulster on it’).4 they also added the wooings of Leinster
to it. What are these objects, the támlorg, taball lorg, lorg of the bard loirge, or the
taball filidh carved out of the yew-tree? are they mere fanciful literary fictions or
do they refer to some form of genuine object carried around by poets in medieval
Ireland? the compilers of the Dictionary of the Irish language [DIL] (q.v. taball)
found it difficult to explain these terms or to visualize what they might be and
suggested that they might describe a ‘tablet-stone, a sheaf of tablets in the form
of a fan’.
the rather unclear note in DIL reflects a much greater issue to do with many
terms entered in the same great dictionary, that of a difficulty in providing
precise definitions or descriptions for technical terms, especially those describing
material objects. In the case of the compounds of taball and of lorg quoted here,
it is likely that we are dealing with a number of different and genuine objects. to
determine what such objects might have been, we need to turn to a few related
disciplines: linguistics, literature, art history, archaeology and material culture.
Continuing with an analysis of támlorg/taball lorg, we seem to be dealing with
two objects and three compounds: taball + lorg, ‘a writing tablet on a stand’,
1 Acallamh na Senórach, ed. Whitley stokes, in idem and ernst Windisch (eds), Irische texte,
i, 4th ser. (Leipzig, 1900), 1–438 at 29 §29.300. 2 AL, iv, pp 360–1. 3 Liam Breatnach (ed.),
Uraicecht na Ríar (Dublin, 1987), pp 50–1. 4 eugene o’Curry, Lectures on the manuscript
materials of ancient Irish history (2 vols, Dublin, 1861), repr. in one vol. (Dublin, 1995), p. 473.
389
390 Edel Bhreathnach
perhaps a type of lectern; taball + filid, ‘a poet’s writing tablet’, perhaps a

portable writing tablet that has yet to be found in Ireland but is known from
sources elsewhere;5 tám + lorg, an intriguing compound of lorg ‘staff, stick, rod’.
Clearly, the first element of the compound, tám, is not taball or táball (< Lat.
tabella), ‘writing table’, even though the Acallam assumes that it is the same as
taball lorg. Is it possible that the compound of tám, tam, ‘plague, pestilence,
swoon, stupor’, and lorg describes some form of staff carried during plague and
then transferred to mean ‘a staff ’, part of the insignia of poets as carried by the
bard loirge? as far as can be ascertained, such staffs have not been recognized in
the corpus of Irish material objects, although an early wooden staff, likely to be
an ecclesiastic’s staff, was discovered adjacent to a medieval trackway in
Lemanaghan Bog, Co. offaly.6 We know of the existence of the slat na ríge or slat
tigernais ‘ceremonial rod, staff ’ associated with the inauguration of kings in late
medieval Ireland.7 a description of the inauguration of the Ó Dubhda as lord of
Uí Fhiachrach tells how ‘it is not lawful ever to nominate the o’Dubhda until
o’Caomhain and Mac Firbis [first] pronounce the name, and until Mac Firbis
brings the body of the rod [corp na slaiti] over the head of o’Dubhda’.8
the basis of any approach to understanding medieval intellectual culture in
Ireland must scrutinize the terms that this culture used to describe its own
activity: all those terms in Irish and in Latin that cover grammar, law, thought,
discourse and preaching, scripture, narrative, history, poetry, memory, numeracy,
music, medicine, art, teaching, prophecy and technical terms to do with script
and the production of books.9 each term has an origin. Many terms in Irish, for
example, are borrowings from Latin, english or French, as in the case of
aintemhain, ‘antiphon’, borrowed from either english or Latin and attested only
in the sixteenth-century Beatha Choluim Chille,10 annál, ‘annal, record’, also
attested in a small number of late medieval texts, caitirne, ‘quaternion (of vellum
or paper), tract’ and dechtaid, ‘composes, informs, dictates’, an early borrowing
from Latin dictare. Many terms have distinctive histories. a common pattern
emerges in that they occur in early Irish glosses and then sporadically only in
medieval Irish glossaries through the late medieval period to the seventeenth
century. Clearly, the seventeenth-century occurrences indicate the plundering of
5 Illustrations of hand-held tablets are known from ottonian books. 6 Margaret Quinlan and
rachel Moss, Lemanaghan, County Offaly: conservation plan (Kilkenny, 2007), p. 31 (3.3). see
www.heritagecouncil.ie (Lemanaghan). 7 simms, Kings, 30–1; elizabeth FitzPatrick, Royal
inauguration in Gaelic Ireland, c.1100–1600: a cultural landscape study (Woodbridge, 2004), pp
1, 6, 11. 8 John o’Donovan (ed.), The genealogies, tribes and customs of Hy-Fiachrach,
commonly called O’Dowda’s country (Dublin, 1844), p. 441. 9 Pierre-Yves Lambert has
examined a range of these terms: see, for example, ‘Le vocabulaire du scribe irlandais’ in Jean-
Michel Picard (ed.), Ireland and northern France, AD600–850 (Dublin, 1991), pp 157–67. this
present contribution is based on research conducted by the author as postdoctoral fellow,
UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute, 2002–6. on the basis of this research, it is hoped to
prepare a lexicon of Irish learning in the future. 10 Betha Colaim Cille. Life of Columcille, ed.
andrew o’Kelleher and Gertrude schoepperle (Urbana, IL, 1918; repr. 1994), p. 444.11.
The world of medieval Irish learning 391
earlier texts by scholars such as Mícheál Ó Cléirigh and Geoffrey Keating. Ó

Cléirigh even produced his own lexicon of difficult terms, Sanasán nua,
published in Louvain in 1643. other terms occur only at one period or in one
category of text and a large preponderance are often poorly attested. there are
various possible reasons for this pattern. Many terms are technical, do not occur
in sagas, poetry, laws, annals or hagiography and do not have lengthy tracts
written about them. terms often survive in glossaries. thus, caitirne, ‘a
quaternion of vellum, a tract’ (from Latin), or cín, ‘a book, booklet, manuscript’
(< quinio), are rare and yet, with regard to the technical culture of manuscript
production, are fundamental terms describing the physical compilation of a
book. Sanas Cormaic, exactly the type of work in which such words tend to be
attested, says of cín: cīn memraim a quinque, ar it cōic tūaga ata tēchta do bith innti
(‘cín of parchment (from quinque), for five sheets of parchment are the correct
number in it’).11 Despite appearing only in glossaries or unusual texts that form
part of the discourse on learning in medieval Ireland, close examination of this
lexicon provides an insight into a whole culture of intellectual and material
activity. a further aspect to any such study, to which I alluded when trying to
explain taball lorg, is the interdisciplinary aspect, and in particular the need to
associate words with actual material objects or illustrations of likely objects in
manuscripts and on sculptures. the creation of a lexicon of medieval learning in
Ireland would offer a new approach or at least develop approaches already taken
elsewhere to our manuscript tradition and bring the Irish evidence to the
attention of a wider audience of medievalists.12 this paper investigates the
potential of adopting new approaches to the intellectual culture of medieval
Ireland by examining the evidence for libraries and book collections, some
terminology and the composition of a medieval Irish miscellany. I offer this
exploratory study, with pleasure, to Katharine simms, whose work in this field
and in many others has advanced medieval Irish studies throughout her career.
Go leanfaidh sí lena cuid sár-scoláireachta go ceann i bhfad!
a DIVersItY oF BooKs
If one had visited a medieval Irish repository of books or a scriptorium, be it in

a religious foundation or in a school of learning established in a rural settlement
(ringfort, cashel or stone castle), what books and objects would have furnished
such an establishment? Very few catalogues of medieval Irish libraries survive,
the most complete being the catalogue of the Franciscan friary in Youghal, Co.
Cork, compiled between 1490 and 1523,13 and the two versions of a list of books
11 Sanas Cormaic. Cormac’s glossary, ed. Kuno Meyer, in Anecdota, 5 (repr. Llanerch, 1994),
p. 21.230 (Y). 12 Possible templates would include olga Weijers (ed.), Vocabulaire du livre et
de l’éctriture au Moyen Age: actes de la table ronde, Paris, 24–26 septembre 1987 (turnhout,
1989). 13 Colmán Ó Clabaigh, The Franciscans in Ireland, 1400–1534: from reform to
in the possession of the earl of Kildare compiled c.1510 and in 1526

respectively.14 Dom Louis Gougaud attempted to list books that may have
belonged to the libraries of individual medieval Irish monasteries, and while it
remains a useful hand-list and provides some impression of the major works
emanating from some foundations, his paper does not provide an idea of the
physical environment of any of these libraries.15 Indeed, the apparent absence of
substantial physical evidence for medieval Irish libraries and scriptoria has
hindered studies in this field. the existence of a school or scriptorium has been
postulated for the monastery of Nendrum, at which thirty slate motif-pieces and
four iron styli were discovered in a rectangular stone house.16 However, the date
and function of the house is far from clear. a considerable amount of detail
relating to the layout and various buildings in armagh survives in the annals,
among them a reference in the annals of tigernach under 1020 to the burning
of the city, which caused great destruction in the area known as the trian and to
the great stone house (damliag mór), the belfry (cloiccthech) with its bells, its
pulpit (in cathair proiceptra) and all its prayer-houses (cona durthigib). Its library,
or tech screbtra ‘scripture-house’, survived the fire.17 some idea of the contents,
furnishings and functioning of the book repositories at armagh and Monaster-
boice is gained from the remarkable note in Lebar na hUidre (fo. 39a):18
Fland tra 7 eochaid eolach hua Cérin is iat ro thionolsat so a llebraib

eochoda hui Flandacan i nard Macha 7 a llebraib Manistrech 7 asna
lebraib togaidib archena .i. asin Libur Budi testo asin carcar i nard Macha
7 as in Libur Girr boí i mManistir 7 is side ruc in mac legind leis i ngait dar
muir 7 ni fríth riam di éis.
Fland [Mainistrech (d. 1056)] and eochaid eolach Ua Céirín, it is they
who gathered this [Senchas na Relecc] from the books of eochaid Ua
Flannacáin [d. 1004] in armagh and from the books of Monasterboice and
from the other excellent books, namely, from the Yellow Book, which has
been lost from the strong room in armagh and from the Lebar Gerr that
was in Monasterboice and that is the book that the student took away by
stealth overseas and it was never recovered after that.
reformation (Dublin, 2001), pp 158–80 (an ed. of the catalogue). 14 Gearóid Mac Niocaill
(ed.), Crown surveys of lands, 1540–1, with the Kildare rental begun in 1518 (Dublin, 1992), pp
312–14, 355–6. I wish to thank Colmán Ó Clabaigh for his generous advice with regard to
these catalogues and to the book repositories of the mendicant orders in late medieval Ireland.
15 Louis Gougaud, ‘the remains of ancient Irish monastic libraries’ in John ryan (ed.), Féil-
sgríbhinn Eóin Mhic Néill: essays and studies presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill (Dublin, 1940;
repr. 1995), pp 319–34. 16 Cormac Bourke, ‘the monastery of saint Mo-Choí of Nendrum:
the early medieval finds’ in thomas Mcerlean and Norman Crothers (eds), Harnessing the tide:
the early medieval tide mills at Nendrum monastery, Strangford Lough (Belfast, 2007), pp 144–9.
17 ATig., s.a. 1020. 18 LU, 39a2919–24 (p. 94).
From this brief note, we can deduce that both monasteries were book repositories
and that armagh had a carcair (Latin carcer), ‘prison, hermit’s cell, strong-room’
– perhaps an allusion to a chained library. Private collections of books existed, as
in the case of the learned eochaid Ua Flannacáin’s collection in armagh
mentioned above. as might be expected of any substantial monastic book
repository used by masters and students, Monasterboice probably operated a
form of lending system that was transgressed by the student who brought the
Lebar gerr overseas with him.
In his work on the mendicant orders in late medieval Ireland, Colmán Ó
Clabaigh judiciously pointed out that while every mendicant house had a
collection of books, not every convent had a library room, and that such
dedicated spaces were confined to larger communities or studia. He referred to
the variety of spaces in which books might have been kept, from what appears to
have been a separate library building erected by Bishop edmund de Coursey for
the Franciscans of timoleague in 1518, to the library and scriptorium at Kilcrea,
and the less sophisticated space for book chests found in chapter houses, cloisters
or aumbries in sacristies, as found in ennis friary.19 an indenture dated to 1616,
which includes part of the grant of Kilconnell Friary given to Ludovic Briskett
in 1595, incorporates a relatively detailed description of the layout of the friary
quae continent unam capellam vocatam ‘Tawhell Donellans Chapell’, unam

cameram vocatam ‘A Counsel House’, unam aulam, unam cameram Le
Lybrary, unam promptuarium, quatuor cameras cum caminis, viginti et octo
parva cubicula vocata dormitorium.
which consisted of a chapel called ‘tawhell Donellans Chapell’, a room
called the Counsel House, an aula, a room called Le Lybrary, an assembly
room, four rooms with fireplaces, twenty-eight small cubicles called the
dormitory.20
thus, Kilconnell Friary in the late sixteenth century had a space specifically
dedicated to books and reading. Private book collections could sometimes be
deposited in a religious foundation, not always very safely, as the learned Ó
Cuirnín found to his cost, when his books including the Lebar gerr of Muintir
Cuirnín, along with his ornamental cup, timpe and harp were all burned in a fire
on Church Island, Lough Gill, in 1416.21 excavations at late medieval religious
houses have occasionally led to the discovery of materials associated with literacy
and manuscripts. the augustinian priory at Kells, Co. Kilkenny, yielded a lead
papal bulla of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), writing leads or lead points for
19 Colmán Ó Clabaigh, The friars in Ireland, 1229–1540 (Dublin, 2012). 20 Brendan

Jennings, ‘the abbey of Kilconnell: two documents’, JGAHS, 21 (1945), 184–9 at 185–6. I
wish to thank Keith smith for bringing this reference to my attention. 21 AConn.
writing on prepared parchment, parchment prickers or styli used to lay out a

folio prior to writing, and narrow, delicate copper-alloy buckles that may have
been used as bookmarkers, ties or fasteners for books.22 as is clear from the
numerous books and colophons that survive from the late medieval period,
collections and spaces for books were not confined to religious foundations.
Learned schools or the residences of patrons, such as the Mac Fhir Bhisigh
castle at Lecan, Co. sligo,23 or the Ó Mathghamhna castle at ros Broin
(rosbrien), Co. Cork,24 were places where books were kept, copied and produced.
a small number of original book covers have survived, as in the case of the
leather hand-tooled sixteenth-century cover of Maghnus Ó Domhnaill’s Beatha
Choluim Cille.25 From the surviving corpus of medieval manuscripts, their
various functions can be detected from their size, decoration, colophons and
content. the pleasure of leafing through a catalogue of medieval Irish
manuscripts or consulting these manuscripts is that a scholar is confronted with
a vibrant intellectual culture engaged in writing and compiling chronicles,
grammars, glossaries, laws, medical tracts, religious and pious texts, narrative
literature, poetry and many other genres of texts.
a cursory glance at the range of words for books in medieval and early
modern Irish also reveals the diversity of books circulating in medieval Ireland.
the common word lebar, similar to Fr. livre and W. llyfr, is a borrowing from
Vulgar Latin librum, possibly mediated at an early stage through British.26 Lebar
is a general term for a book or volume and, like liber/librum, it spawned a series
of derivative words and compounds. Its meaning extends to any written
document, treatise or book written on a particular subject, as is clear from old
Irish glosses: tar hési denmo ind libuir ‘after the writing of this treatise’.27 there is
little indication in the Irish sources as to the physical nature of the lebar and its
relationship to other terms for books and wax or wooden tablets. of particular
interest, however, are the various categories of books known from compounds
and diminutives to have been in circulation in medieval Ireland: these
descriptions divide into categories of books described either for their contents
or their physical characteristics. the diminutive lebrán, literally ‘little book’,
occurs almost exclusively in ecclesiastical contexts, and where a connection can
be made with a specific text, possibly refers to a martyrology, the scriptures or
the psalter. since many of the examples of lebrán occur in poems and are
specifically associated with Colum Cille, its use as a word to describe a particular
type of book is likely to be limited. It is also a convenient word for the purposes
of rhyme and alliteration: is findither gelbáin gréin / lebráin Eouin úaigh (‘fair as
the white shining sun are the books of John the pure’).28 there is a suggestion,
22 Miriam Clyne (ed.), Kells Priory, Co. Kilkenny: archaeological excavations by T. Fanning &
M. Clyne (Dublin, 2007), pp 390–1, 397–8, 506. 23 For example, NLI, Ms G10 was
compiled at Lecan. 24 rIa, MC 24P15 was compiled at ros Broin. 25 UCD-oFM Ms
a8. 26 Damian McManus, ‘a chronology of the Latin loan-words in early Irish’, Ériu, 34
(1983), 21–71 at 57 n. 96. 27 sg. 2a7. 28 Lucius Gwynn, ‘the reliquary of adamnan’,
understood from Maghnas Ó Domhnaill’s Betha Cholaim Cille in the tale of

Diarmait mac Cerbaill’s judgment concerning Colum Cille’s copy of Finnén’s
book, that the term lebrán could be the copy or transcript of another book and
hence the phrase re gach lebar a lebhrán ‘to every book its copy’.29
the concept of a notebook or an abbreviated version of a larger work is
encapsulated in the title accorded to manuscripts described as in lebar gerr, ‘the
short book’, such as those kept at Monasterboice, Co. Louth, or lost by Ó
Cuirnín in the Church Island fire. an additional entry in Lebor na hUidre (37b),
which dates to 1470, relates that in lebar gerr was taken by force from the
Connachta along with Lebar na hUidre by aodh ruadh son of Niall Garbh Ó
Domhnaill.30 other books described as gerr, ‘short’, are known to have existed.
the Mac Fhir Bhisigh genealogies mention Leabhar gearr Tuilen, ‘the short
book of Dulane’,31 also cited in the o’Clery Book of Genealogies as the source of
information about the kings of Muintir tadhgáin of tethba.32 Given that the
adjective gerr means ‘short’ or, in grammatical terms, ‘syncapated’, perhaps these
books were not physically as large as the great medieval miscellanies such as
Lebar na hUidre, the Book of Leinster or the Book of Ballymote, or they were
confined in their subject matter (for example, to the genealogy of a particular
family), or consisted of summary notes taken from a more extensive compilation.
this latter process is suggested by a note in the fifteenth-century version of the
Life of Findchua of Brí Gobann in UCD-oFM Ms a9 (p. 24), which states that
the life was copied by a Friar (Bráthar) Ó Buadhacháin from the Book of
Monasterboice into his own lebar gerr, which was known as Libur gerr I
Buadhachain.33
In the Graeco-roman world and with the development of Christianity, books
were classified on the basis of their contents.34 thus, the Liber censualis
(Polytychum) contained an inventory of lands held by lay people or by the church
compiled for taxation purposes, as in the case of William the Conqueror’s
‘Domesday book’; the Liber claustralis related to monastic life; a Liber judicum
was a legal code; the Liber provincialis listed the provinces of the church in rome;
the Liber plenarii Evangeliorum contained the four Gospels; and a Liber vitae was
a martyrology. similarly, different categories of books occur in Irish, as in the
lebar aithffrind, ‘missal’, and the lebar espuic, ‘bishop’s book’, containing psalms
and prayers mentioned in a Middle Irish tract on the consecration of a church
in the fifteenth-century Lebar breac.35 the lebar airissen was a book of chronicles
Arch. Hib., 4 (1915), 199–214 at 204, §2. 29 Betha Colaim Cille, ed. o’Kelleher and
schoepperle, p. 140.20. 30 LU 37b2774–82 (p. 89). 31 LMG, i, p. 454, §207.5.
32 séamus Pender, ‘the o’Clery book of genealogies’, AH, 18 (1951), §843: Conidh dona
riogaibh sin as-rubrad innso. Slicht Luib … girr Tuilen. 33 Paul Grosjean, ‘Ms a9 (Franciscan
Convent, Dublin)’, Ériu, 10 (1926/8), 160–9 at 163. 34 Du Cange, Glossarium mediæ et
infimæ latinitatis (Liber) consulted at http://ducange.enc.sorbonne.fr/LIBer. 35 see
http://www.isos.dias.ie (rIa, Ms 23P16, fo. 277a: Incipit Coisecrad Eclaisi indso (catalogue)).
glossed annali.36 Airisiu implies the giving of witness to something (derived from
the old Irish verb ar-fíad) and covers a range of meanings, ‘record(ing), history,
narration, story, event’. as a term for a chronicle, it occurs occasionally in
references from the old Irish glosses to Geoffrey Keating’s Foras feasa ar Éirinn.
Keating claimed to have found the sources for his narrative history of Ireland i
seanleabhraibh iris 7 annálach Éireann (‘in old history books and chronicles of
Ireland’).37 the Irish Life of st Molaise relates how the saint happened upon a
synod of clerics ocus do bhí leabhar maith slighedh accusén ocus ro b’áil dosom ní do
scríbeann ass (‘and they had a good book of roads and he wished to copy
something out of it’).38 this is the only occurrence of this term in Irish and may,
therefore, not reflect a genuine type of book. Nevertheless, it is most likely that
drawings or books listing the important points of major roadways (from one
major church to another) must have existed. they may have corresponded to the
Latin itinerarium, ‘a book that prescribed the rules for travelling’. the equivalent
of the Liber censualis in Irish may have been the Lebar sochair, ‘Book of dues,
revenues’, or even Lebar na cert, ‘Book of rights, tributes’. a Lebar sochair Lothra
(Lorrha, Co. tipperary) is quoted as a source for secular genealogies.39 Perhaps
this explains the association made between sochair, ‘privileges’, and books in the
eulogy of ruaidhrí mac taidhg mic ruaidhrí Óig in the annals of Loch Cé in
1568: colomhan cosanta cirt ocus córa clainni Mhaolruanaidh do reir a sochar ocus a
senleabar (‘the defending column of the right and justice of Clann Maolruanaidh,
in accordance with their privileges and old books’).40
the term lebar-choimét, ‘book cover, a case for holding books’, occurs only
once, in the Life of st Patrick known as the Vita Tripartita. among the objects
given by assicus to Patrick were leborchométa chethrachori.41 the term lebar-
chométa chethrachori is glossed bibliothicas quadratas, simply suggesting a
quadrangular box for a book. a similarly rare term, which may allude to a more
valuable book cover or even a book shrine, is cumtach, ‘a case, cover, shrine’, used
on the inscription of the eleventh-century Soiscél Molaise: or Do … FaILaD
Do CHoMarBa MoLaIsI LasaN DerNaD IN CUMtaCHsa Do …
aNLaN 7 Do GILLaBaItHIN CHerD Do rIGNI IN Gressa (‘Pray
for (Cenn) Fáelad for the successor of Molaise who caused this shrine to be
made, for (sc)anlan and (a prayer) for Gillabaithín goldsmith who made it’).42
the term tiag, from Latin theca, is also rare and, as demonstrated by richard
36 sg. 106b15. 37 Geoffrey Keating, Foras feasa ar Éirinn, ed. edward Comyn and P.J.
Dineen (4 vols, London, 1902–14), iii, p. 317. 38 s.H. o’Grady (ed.), Silva Gadelica (2 vols,
London and edinburgh, 1892), i, 23.16. 39 The Book of Lecan: Leabhar mór Mhic Fhir
Bhisigh Leacain, with descriptive introduction and indices by Kathleen Mulchrone (Dublin,
1937), fo. 114va. 40 ALC, iii, p. 398. 41 Kathleen Mulchrone (ed.), Bethu Phátraic: the
tripartite Life of Patrick (Dublin and London, 1939), p. 59:1075–7. 42 raghnall Ó Floinn,
‘the soiscél Molaisse’, Clogher Record, 13/2 (1989), 51–63 at 58.
sharpe, was borrowed into Irish specifically to mean ‘satchel, wallet’ from theca,
a word with a much wider range of meanings.43
there is no indication in Irish that derivatives were created from lebar, such
as Latin libraria/librarium, ‘library’, dim. librariuncula; libraries, ‘copyist, scholar,
scribe, author, librarian’; libricola, ‘cultivator of books’. It should not be
concluded, however, that librarians did not exist and although they are not often
mentioned in the sources, they do appear, as in the obit of Máel Ísu mac Máel
Coluim, chief keeper of the calendar of armagh (prímh challadóir) and its chief
antiquary (prímh críochaire) and librarian (leabhar choimédaigh).44
that the psalter was essential to monastic and ecclesiastical life in medieval
Ireland is well-attested by the numerous psalters, texts, studies and references
relating to the psalms originating from Irish schools both in Ireland and abroad.45
the earliest evidence for the introduction of writing in Ireland – the writings of
Patrick, the springmount Bog wax tablets and the Cathach – suggests an
immediate reception and diffusion of the psalms as part of the process of
conversion. With the establishment of Christianity, this understanding of the
centrality of the psalms strengthened. Familiarity with the psalter led to the
production of many commentaries in Latin and in Irish. the word saltair (Latin
psaltērium), probably an early borrowing into Irish from Latin,46 originally meant
‘a psalter’.
In Middle Irish (if not earlier), however, there seems to have been an
extension beyond that original meaning. In this later period, the word saltair
became associated with one particular text, Saltair na rann, and two books,
Saltair Chormaic/Chaisil and Saltair na Temrach. Clearly, none of these are
psalters: Saltair na rann is a lengthy metrical treatise in Middle Irish, which
covers biblical world history, natural phenomena, astronomy, cosmology and
historical events. Saltair Chormaic and Saltair na Temrach, neither of which
survives, appear to have been miscellanies containing a wide range of material
including genealogies and topographical poems. Hence, the concept of saltair in
the Middle Irish period is that of a dossier or a miscellany of material linked
together under a common theme. Saltair Chormaic/Chaisil, which Pádraig Ó
riain has argued probably survived until the seventeenth century, appears to
have contained such documents as a list of the coarbs of Patrick, a version of
Dindshenchas Érenn, secular genealogies, saints’ pedigrees, the Historia Britonum
and miscellaneous poems attributed to Colum Cille and Cormac mac
Cuilennáin.47 Ó riain describes it as ‘the first miscellaneous manuscript ever
produced in Ireland’, which ‘set the fashion for all the great codices that were to
43 richard sharpe, ‘Latin and Irish words for “book-satchel”’, Peritia, 4 (1985), 152–6.
44 AFM, s.a. 1136. 45 Martin McNamara and Maurice sheehy, ‘Psalter text and psalter
study in the early Irish church (aD600–1200)’, PRIA, 73C (1973), 201–98. 46 McManus,
‘Latin loan-words’, 29, §25. 47 Pádraig Ó riain, ‘the Psalter of Cashel: a provisional list of
come in the second half of the eleventh, twelfth and subsequent centuries’.48 one
could extend that definition also to Saltair na rann, which is encyclopaedic in
that it covers such a wide range of material relating to the medieval view of the
history of the world. Ó riain dismisses Saltair na Temrach as an eleventh-
century fraud concocted by Máel sechnaill mac Domnaill’s poet Cuán úa
Lóthcháin to counter the genuine existence of Saltair Chormaic/Chaisil. While
there is no evidence for the survival of a manuscript known as Saltair na
Temrach, an extensive body of material relating to tara and Clann Cholmáin
survives that can be dated generally to the eleventh century.
In a marginal note added later than the original compilations of the
manuscript, Laud 610 is given the title Saltair mic Ruisderd Buitleir .i. Emainn
Buitiler int saltair seo no go dtuca maidm baile in fPuill air (110v). this note refers
to the defeat of edmund Butler by thomas Fitzgerald, eighth earl of Desmond,
in 1462. edmund was taken prisoner and Laud 610 and another manuscript
known as Leabhar na Carraige were given to the earl as ransom. Laud 610, which
comprises two manuscripts compiled in the fifteenth century, contains a
miscellany of vernacular material.49 In a manner similar to Lebar na hUidre,
rawlinson B502 and the Book of Leinster, Laud 610 is a repository of texts.
Considering that Saltair Chormaic/Chaisil was one of the exemplars used for
Laud 610, the term saltair was already part of the pedigree and culture of the
later miscellany that may indeed have been viewed by the medieval learned class
as a successor to that venerable Munster saltair, ‘miscellany’.
other rarer terms for books in Irish occur in medieval literature. For example,
the word barc/bárc may be a borrowing from bark (Middle english in turn
borrowed from old Icelandic börkr) and cognate with borke (German).50 this
rare word is glossed in o’Davoren’s Glossary (239) as leabhar, ‘book’, which also
alludes to a barc pendaiti, ‘book of penance, penitential’. a sixteenth-century
scribe noted in BL Harley Ms 432:
A dia tabair trócaire dom anmain misi .f. agus ná tabhradh f[er] in bairc
masán orum agus olcas mo cairti agus nár mebraighes in senabarc agus i ndisert
Labhráis mo log agus is olc linn réd égin cidh bé é.
o God, have mercy on my soul! I am F., and let not the man of the book
(barc) reproach me, considering the badness of the manuscript (cairt); and
sure I had not even studied the old codex (senbarc). Dysartlawrence is my
place of writing; and I am sorry for a certain thing, be that as it may.51
contents’, Éigse, 23 (1989), 107–30. 48 Ibid., 110. 49 Brian Ó Cuív (ed.), Catalogue of Irish
manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and Oxford college libraries (2 vols, Dublin, 2001–
3), p. 67. 50 J. Loth, ‘Notes étymologiques et lexicographiques: no. 188’, RC, 38 (1870),
303–4; Vendryes, Lexique, B-17. 51 s.H. o’Grady (ed.), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the
British Museum (London, 1926; repr. Dublin, 1992), p. 147.18.
In this case, the scribe is referring to a vellum manuscript and in one passage
mentions three distinct terms, bárc, senbárc and cairt. similarly, one of the scribes
of the annals of Loch Cé wrote in the margins: Is im sgítac do bhárc Briain míc
Diarmada. Ao. Do. 1589. Misi Pilip Badlaigh (‘I am tired of the book of Brian Mac
Diarmada. aD1589. I am Philip Mac Badlaigh’).52 the use of the term in
glossaries and among scribes and poets might suggest that it was a rare learned
word that was in circulation during the late medieval period. In origin, although
apparently not in Irish tradition, the term could refer to birch bark documents,
strips of bark on which messages were incised in ink, such as the large number
found during excavations of medieval Novgorod.53 the latter material dated to a
period between the eleventh and the early fifteenth century, with a prepon-
derance towards the later date. earlier ‘leaf tablets’ – small, thin slivers of smooth
and fine-grained wood made for writing with pen and ink – were found in Britain
at Vindolanda.54 Bark may have been used in Ireland but, due to the fragility of
such material, perhaps ‘leaf tablets’ have not survived or they have not been
recognized.
C o N s t rU C t I N G a M I s C e L L a N Y I N M e D I e Va L I r e L a N D :
r aW L I N s o N B 5 0 2
a parallel exercise to that of determining the details of a lexicon of medieval Irish

learning is to examine how this intellectual and technical activity was put into
practice in reality. the construction of medieval Irish manuscripts, and more
especially the intellectual exercise involved, is a field that remains relatively
unexplored, or at least that has not had the same principles applied to it that have
been used in medieval studies elsewhere. Whereas american, British and
continental scholars have studied codices or miscellanies as entities,55 scholars of
Irish manuscripts have tended to approach manuscripts from a different
perspective. Manuscripts are studied to establish the relationship between
various recensions of individual texts leading to a possible stemma; as witnesses
to the work of a particular monastery or learned school; and very occasionally as
evidence for art historical features and developments. While the approaches to
their medieval manuscripts taken by scholars elsewhere do not necessarily fit into
the predominantly lexicographical and purely textual tradition of Irish medieval
52 ALC, i, p. 58 n. 4. 53 M.W. thompson, Novgorod the Great: excavations at the medieval

city directed by A.V. Artsikhovsky & A. Kolchin (New York, 1967), pp 55–63. 54 a.K.
Bowman and J.D. thom, Vindolanda: the Latin writing tablets (London, 1983). 55 M.B.
Parkes, ‘the influence of the concepts of ordinatio and compilatio on the development of the
book’ in J.J.G. alexander and M.t. Gibson (eds), Medieval learning & literature: essays
presented to Richard William Hunt (oxford, 1976), pp 115–41; s.G. Nichols and siegfried
Wenzel, The whole book: cultural perspectives on the medieval miscellany (Kalamazoo, MI, 1996);
M.a. rouse and r.H. rouse, Authentic witnesses: approaches to medieval texts and manuscripts
studies, there is merit in looking afresh at Ireland’s medieval codices.56 a number

of questions spring to mind. For instance, did the scribe(s) have a plan in mind
when compiling a manuscript? Can the influence of exemplars be detected in the
layout or ornamentation of a manuscript? are different texts in a particular codex
presented in different formats (for example, in the use of various scripts and
script sizes, the use of capitals or rubrication of headings, colours, numbers of
columns and hierarchies of headings and capitals)? a good codicological account
provides a description of many of these features but does not always deal with
the more ‘philosophical’ approach to the construction of a codex. and
unfortunately, for many of our medieval Irish manuscripts we do not yet have full
codicological descriptions, although the publication of a work such as Brian Ó
Cuív’s Catalogue of the Irish manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford – which
considers many technical issues – and the development of the online facility Irish
Script on Screen will inspire scholars into more detailed studies of these
manuscripts.57
the second part of this essay is a tentative attempt to examine the twelfth-
century Irish codex known as rawlinson B502, from the perspective of its
compiler/scribe/illuminator who decorated the manuscript (assuming that they
were the same person!).58 We gain an insight into the modus operandi of
compilers of medieval Irish miscellanies from personal exchanges such the letter
written by Áed mac Crimthainn, successor of Colum of terryglass, to Finn úa
Cíanáin, bishop of Kildare, preserved on folio 206 of the twelfth-century Book
of Leinster. Áed asks Finn to send him the dúanaire of Mac Lonáin, co faiccimis
a cialla na nduan filet ann (‘so that we may discover the meaning of the poems
that are in it’).59 as I have observed elsewhere, the Book of Leinster and other
similar medieval Irish miscellanies reflect the methods of a network of scholars,
scribes and illuminators who were not simply antiquarians and not randomly
choosing texts, but when compiling substantial miscellanies worked to a plan that
was often dictated by their sources, the wishes of patrons or their own scholarly
concerns.60
In his consideration of the physical composition of rawlinson B502, Brian Ó
Cuív made some very significant observations on the gatherings, condition of the
vellum, script, layout of the folios and decoration.61 He postulated eight
(Notre Dame, IN, 1991). 56 For a new approach, see D. schlueter, History or fable? The
Book of Leinster as a document of cultural memory in twelfth-century Ireland (Münster, 2010).
57 For a recent exemplary discussion of an Irish manuscript, see Pádraig Ó Macháin, ‘an
introduction to the Book of the o’Conor Don’ in idem (ed.), The Book of the O’Conor Don:
essays on an Irish manuscript (Dublin, 2010), pp 1–31. 58 Ó Cuív, Cat. Irish MSS Bodl., i, pp
163–200. 59 s.L. Forste-Grupp, ‘the earliest Irish personal letter’, Proceedings of the
Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 15 (1995), 1–11. 60 edel Bhreathnach, ‘two contributors to the
Book of Leinster: Bishop Finn of Kildare and Gilla na Náem Úa Duinn’ in Michael richter
and Jean-Michel Picard (eds), Ogma: essays in honour of Próinséas Ní Chatháin (Dublin, 2002),
pp 105–11. 61 Ó Cuív, Cat. Irish MSS Bodl., i, pp 166–74.
gatherings and three chasms. In content, the miscellany can be seen to be divided
into booklets or dossiers of related texts (best described by the French
codicological term cahiers),62 and these booklets are in most instances (except
where a leaf is missing) marked by highly ornate capitals and a change in the
textual content. they are also closely related, although not identical, to Ó Cuív’s
eight gatherings. all this evidence leads to the belief that this twelfth-century
Irish miscellany was carefully constructed and texts were grouped thematically.
the booklets in rawlinson B502 fall into the follow sections:
Booklet I: World history/biblical history, fos 19ra–46vb (Ó Cuív’s gatherings

(1)–(3)):
airbertach Mac Coisse and texts attributed to Dublittir úa Úathgaile

19ra Saltair na rann
40vb16 Sex aetates mundi
45rb Rofessa hi curp domuin dúir
46ra1 Fichi rig cia rim as ferr
46rb41 A De dulig adateoch
46vb16 Ro chuala crecha is tir thair
46vb45 Ad fet Augustin (short note on monster in India)
Booklet II: Prose and poetry of Leinster (Ó Cuív’s gathering (4)):

47ra1 Orcguin Néill Noígiallaig
47rb21 Gein Branduib 7 Aedáin m. Gabráin in so sis
47va9 [Aided Maelodráin]
47vb5 Laidsenchas Lagen in so sis
47vb6 Is mo chen a Labraid lain
47vb28 Cethri mc. Airtt Mis Telmann
47vb38 Ochtur Criathar cid dia ta
47vb52 [Orcuin trí mac nDiarmata meic Cerbaill] (see
73vb34)
48ra34–50vb49 Leinster poems
[CHasM]
Booklet III: Genealogies of Irish saints (Ó Cuív’s gathering (4)):63

51r Genealogies of Irish saints (Ó riain, CGSH)
[acephalous]
62 Françoise Fery-Hue, ‘L’organisation du volume’ in Paul Géhin (ed.), Lire le manuscript

médiéval (Paris, 2005), pp 53–76. 63 see Ó Cuív’s note on the loss of leaves at this point in
gathering (4), 166.
Booklet IV: Colum Cille dossier (Ó Cuív’s gathering (5)):

54ra1 Amra Choluim Chille preface
56ra5 Beginning of Amra canonical text
59vb18 Dia dommerail i tias nimustias
59vb42 anecdote about Mac Lesc m. Ladain and Finn
60ra18 Colum caid cumachtach, attributed to Cainnech
60ra34 Guidim mac Feidelmid, attributed to Cainnech
Booklet V: Legal, pseudo-legal and gnomic (Ó Cuív’s gathering (5)):

60rb17 Introduction to Imacallaim in dá thuarad
62vb44 Gubretha Caratniad
63va1 Cóic Conara Fugill
Booklet VI: Leinster genealogies and scélshenchas Lagen (Ó Cuív’s gathering (6)):
Leinster genealogical lore and genealogies divided into different sections and
layouts:
64ra1 Leinster genealogical verse
65va1 account of Labraid Loingsech and other prehistoric
kings of Leinster
65vb Genealogies of Leinster
[CHasM]
69ra1 Leinster genealogies continue, followed by
scélshenchas Lagen
71vb14 Orguin Denna Rig inso
72rb19 Tairired na nDessi inso
73rb30 Esnad Tige Buchet inso sis
73va49 Comram na Cloenfherta inso
73vb34 (cf. 47vb52) Orgguin Tri Mac nDiarmata
[CHasM]
Booklet VII: account of kings and dynasties of Ireland (Ó Cuív’s gatherings (7)–
(8)):
section a:
74ra1 accounts of pre-Christian and Christian kings of
Ireland
section B: Descendants of Éremón to eochu Mugmedón:

75rb15 Framed heading: Minigud na croeb coibniusta inso sis
75va52 Temair Breg baili na fian
section C: síl Chuind:

76rb30 Minigud senchais Sil Chuind inso sis (descendants of
Conn Cétchathach)
section D:
77va10 other peoples of Leth Cuinn
section e: Descendants of Ébir:

80ra1 Minigud senchais Ebir inso
80rb30 Munster genealogies
83v Contemporary Munster genealogies
87r and 87v Contemporary Ulaid genealogies
section F: twelfth-century regnal poems:

88ra1 Remend rigraide sis 7 rig hErenn a hAiliuch prius
(seven dynastic poems: ailech, Caisel, Uisnech,
Brega, Connacht, Dál naraide, Ulaid)
the compiler of the rawlinson B502 miscellany is primarily concerned with

history: world history, Irish history and the history of his own province, Leinster.
His medium of communication is solely vernacular and he can navigate around
an array of texts: genealogies, sagas, poems, legal texts and tracts on the different
ages of the world. He belongs to the intellectual class of the many learned Irish
historians known from annalistic records down to the seventeenth century and
even later. Not surprisingly, rawlinson B502, as well as other early miscellanies
such as the Book of Leinster, were consulted by leading historians and
antiquarians, including the seventeenth-century scholars Mícheál Ó Cléirigh,
Geoffrey Keating, archbishop James Ussher and sir James Ware. Whether
rawlinson B502 was Lebar Glinne Dá Locha (the Book of Glendalough) is not
a particular concern of this essay.64 Instead, the approach of the leading scholar
of Welsh manuscripts, Daniel Huws, who argued that the medieval codex was ‘a
complex object’, and ‘to understand is to be archaeological’, might offer a new
perspective.65 Much can be said about the manner in which this compiler/scribe
presents his texts through his ‘page design’. as previously mentioned, he
indicates a change from one booklet or text to another with the use of an ordered
system of ornamental capitals. a particularly fine example of the variety of
capitals occurs on folio 64r, the first page of the Leinster genealogies, which
opens with a highly ornate capital and on which paragraphs and lines are marked
64 For the debate on the identification of rawlinson B502 as Lebar Glinne Dá Locha (the
Book of Glendalough), see Pádraig Ó riain, ‘the Book of Glendalough or rawlinson B502’,
Éigse, 18:2 (1981), 161–76; ‘NLI, G2 f. 3 and the Book of Glendalough’, ZCP, 39 (1982), 29–
32; ‘rawlinson B502 alias Lebar Glinne Dá Locha: a restatement of the case’, ZCP, 51 (1999),
130–47; ‘the Book of Glendalough: a continuing investigation’, ZCP, 56 (2008), 71–88; and
Caoimhín Breatnach, ‘rawlinson B502, Lebar Glinne Dá Locha and saltair na rann’, Éigse,
30 (1997), 109–32; ‘Manuscript sources and methodology: rawlinson B502 and Lebar Glinne
Dá Locha’, Celtica, 24 (2003), 40–54. 65 Daniel Huws, ‘the medieval codex: with reference
to the Welsh lawbooks’ in idem (ed.), Medieval Welsh manuscripts (Cardiff, 2000), pp 24–35 at
by less ornate capitals of two different sizes. another splendid capital occurs on
folio 56ra5, with the opening line of Amra Choluim Chille, and, as often
throughout the manuscript, the actual text is in majuscule letters while the
commentary is in miniscule. the intention of the compiler/scribe to fill each
folio to capacity and to use a multiplicity of devices to do so can be seen on folio
43r, a page of the text Sex aetates mundi, on which genealogies and regnal lists are
enclosed by a framing device – aptly described by Ó Cuív as ‘narrow vertical and
horizontal scroll-type bands or ribbons of varying lengths’66 – which are
decorated with animal heads and paws. Headings and glosses between columns
and at the top of the folio are framed in red ink. He expresses a difference
between the content of various texts in his ‘page design’. the most pronounced
and carefully planned layout occurs in the dossiers of genealogies. the folios of
saints’ pedigrees are divided into seven to nine orderly columns that were
carefully ruled by dry points on the recto leaves. one of the finest genealogical
folios is at 65r, which lists all the prominent twelfth-century Leinster dynasties,
no doubt including many of the royal contemporaries of the compiler/scribe. It
might be argued that the care with which this folio was planned and written was
deliberate, as it contained a statement of affiliation beginning with Uí
Chennselaig, the dynasty holding the provincial kingship, followed by Uí
Bairrche, which may be an indication of local affiliation.67
the reproduction of exemplars by scribes can be reflected in orthography,
preservation of an earlier form of language or early text, and the employment of
a particular script or copying of a style of decoration. an exemplar can also
influence a ‘page design’. Is this phenomenon evident in rawlinson B502? the
stark difference between the layout of Saltair na rann, with its orderly divisions,
hierarchy of headings and capitals, the heavily glossed legal texts, Amra Choluim
Chille with its canonical texts, glosses and dialogue, and the workbook style of the
Leinster laídshenchas poems and the contemporary dynastic poems at the end of
the manuscript, suggest the influence of exemplars. a noteworthy feature in a
small number of texts, most visible in the layout of the text Is mo chen a Labraid
lain, a dialogue between Labraid Loingsech and his lover Moriath, and her
mother scoriath (fo. 47vb), is the use of initials (L, M, s) framed in red ink to
mark the speakers involved in the dialogue. such a practice is interpreted in
other cultures as a pointer to a dramatic or performance text, especially in
scandinavian eddic poems.68
While the compiler/scribe of rawlinson B502 does not refer to any particular
source for his material, is it possible to visualize that he had access to book
collections similar to those available to Flann Mainistrech and eochaid eolach
pp 24–5. 66 Ó Cuív, Cat. Ir. MSS Bodl., p. 173. 67 edel Bhreathnach, ‘Killeshin: an Irish
monastery surveyed’, CMCS, 27 (1994), 33–47 at 41–4. 68 terry Gunnell, The origins of
drama in Scandinavia (Woodbridge, 1995), pp 187–94.
ua Céirín in armagh and Monasterboice or to networks open to Áed mac

Crimthainn and Bishop Finn mac Cianáin in Kildare and elsewhere? the seven
booklets described above signal the possible range of sources available during the
compilation of the manuscript. significantly, Booklet VII, section F, the seven
regnal poems of which three of the legible poems end with twelfth-century kings
(Cormac mac Cárthaig (d. 1138), Donnchad mac Murchada (d. 1106) and
toirdelbach Ua Conchobair (d. 1156)), brings the miscellany right up to date.
the inclusion of such poems at the end of the manuscript suggests that the
compiler/scribe was part of the learned network of senchaide, ‘historians of
traditional lore’. Who he was remains a mystery.
some observations on an unpublished version of the

Gospel of Nicodemus
C ao I M H Í N B r e at NaC H
the purpose of this paper is to draw attention to some noteworthy features of an

unpublished adbridged version of the apocryphal work now generally known as
the Gospel of Nicodemus.1 the text in question is found on fos 43a–45b of Ms 10
of the Irish manuscripts in King’s Inns Library Dublin, dated to the fifteenth
century.2 our text (hereafter referred to as K) is preceded by a homily on the
birth of Christ (fos 33a–36b), a text on the passion of Christ (fos 36c–39c) and a
homily on the resurrection (fos 39d–42d). I intend to edit and discuss this text
in detail elsewhere. the text is very similar to the abridged version of the Gospel
of Nicodemus found in royal Irish academy Ms 23P16 (1230), commonly known
as An Leabhar Breac and written in the early fifteenth century. the latter version
(hereafter referred to as LB) has been edited and translated into english by both
robert atkinson and Ian Hughes.3 An Leabhar Breac also contains the longer
version of the Gospel of Nicodemus.4 Both LB and K clearly derive from a
common original that was translated from Latin. With LB and K we may also
compare a Latin version of the abridged Gospel of Nicodemus contained in a
single surviving copy, Ms royal 13a14 in the British Library, London (hereafter
referred to as r).5 Lewis notes that, with the exception of one item, the
manuscript ‘is in several hands, all of which are book-hands datable to about
1300’ and that it ‘was written in Ireland and belonged at one time, according to
a note in a hand of about 1400 (fo. 10v), to the Dominicans of Limerick’.6
one of the interesting features of K is that it preserves some Latin material
that, with the exception of two items (nos 5 and 12 below), has been translated
into Irish in LB. I give this material below. I cite first Hughes’ published text and
translation of LB.7 this is followed by the corresponding text from K (reference
1 For a discussion of this work and some Irish versions of it, see Martin McNamara, The
apocrypha in the Irish church (Dublin, 1984), pp 68–71. 2 see Pádraig de Brún (ed.),
Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in King’s Inns Library, Dublin (Dublin, 1972), pp 20–4.
3 robert atkinson (ed.), The passions and the homilies from Leabhar Breac (Dublin, 1887), pp
143–51 (text), 392–400 (trans.); Ian Hughes (ed.), Stair Nicoméid: the Irish Gospel of
Nicodemus (London, 1991), pp 80–99. 4 ed. and trans. atkinson, ‘The passions and the
homilies’, pp 113–24, 359–71. Hughes based his edition of the longer version on another
manuscript. In his section on the manuscripts in which different Irish versions of the Gospel
of Nicodemus are to be found, Stair Nicoméid, p. ix, there is no reference to K. 5 ed. David
J.G. Lewis, ‘a short Latin Gospel of Nicodemus written in Ireland’, Peritia, 5 (1986), 262–75.
6 Ibid., 263. 7 reference is to page and line numbers in Hughes’ edition (see above, n. 3).
406
An unpublished version of the Gospel of Nicodemus 407
is to column and line numbers). I then give the corresponding text from r where
this is found.8
[1a]
Ercid 7 forcnaid in uli chinedach 7 baitsid iat i n-ainm in athar, in meic, in spiruta
noím. Ocus in tíi baitsither 7 creitfes, biaid sé slán.
‘Go and teach every nation, and baptise them in the name of the Father, the son
and the Holy Ghost. and he who is baptised and believes shall be saved’.
LB, pp 82–3, ll 42–4

[1b]
Ite et docete omnes gentes et batisantes eos i[n] nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti et qui crediderit et batisatus fuerit hic salus erit. K, 43rb30–3
‘Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the son and
the Holy spirit and he who believes and is baptized will be saved’.
[1c]
Euntes in mundum uniuersum predicate euangelium omnibus gentibus, baptizantes eos
in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, amen; qui crediderit et baptizatus fuerit,
saluus erit.
r 22–4
[2a]
Is bennachda in tíi tánic i n-ainm in tigerna.
‘Blessed is he who is come in the name of the Lord’.
LB, pp 82–3, l. 76
[2b]
Benedictus qui uenit in nomine domini. K, 43va37–8
‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’.
[3a]
In sollsi so athair na sollsi marthanaigi do gell dún a shollsi fén is í tic cucaind anois.
‘the father of everlasting light promised us his light – this is it, which now
comes to us’.
LB, pp 86–7, ll 118–19
[3b]
Lux ista autor luminis sempiterni est qui nobis permisit transmittere sempiternum
lumen suum nobis. K, 44ra13–15
‘that light is the father of everlasting light who promised to send us his
everlasting light’.
8 reference is to line numbers in Lewis’ ed. (see above, n. 5).
408 Caoimhín Breatnach
[3c]
Lux ista auctor luminis eterni est. r 69
[4a]
In popul do shuid sa dorchacht do-cífet siat sollsi mór. In tí atá i flaithemnus dorchatu
in éca, dellraigfid sollsi mór forru.
‘the people that have sat in the darkness shall see a great light. on them that are
in the kingdom of the darkness of death, a great light shall shine’.
LB, pp 86–7, ll 121–2
[4b]
Populus qui sedet in tenebris uitebit lucem magnam 7 qui sunt in regione umbre mortis
lux fulgebit super eos. K, 44ra18–21
‘the people who sit in darkness will see a great light and those who are in the
region of the shadow of death, a light will shine upon them’.
[4c]
Populus qui sedebat in tenebris uidit lucem magnam. Nunc aduenit et illuxit nobis.
r 73–4
[5]
Nunc dimite seruum tuum, Domine, quia uiterunt occuli mei et reliqua. K, 44ra29–30
‘Now send away your servant, o Lord, for my eyes have seen et reliqua’.
there is no corresponding text in LB, p. 86, l. 127.
[6a]
Ac so uan Dé nech tócbus pectha in uli domain.
‘Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of all the world’.
LB, pp 86–7, ll 130–1
[6b]
Ecce Agnus Dei qui tollit pecata mundi. K, 44ra35–6
‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’.
[6c]
Ecce Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi. r 77–8
[7a]
Ac so mo mac dil fén ná derna ní acht mo thoil.
‘this is my dear son, who has done nothing save my will’.
LB, pp 86–7, ll 133–4
[7b]
Hic est filius meus dilectus in quo mihi bene conplacui. K, 44ra39–41
‘this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased’.
[8a]
Tuirrsech m’animm co huair m’éca.
‘My soul is sorrowful to the hour of my death’.
LB, pp 88–9, l. 155
[8b]
Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem. K, 44rb24–5
‘sorrowful is my soul until death’.
[8c]
Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem. r 81–2
[9a]
Oslaicid bar ndoirrsi iarnaigi a thaísechu Iffirn co ndechsad ríg na glóri isin tech!
‘open your iron doors, o chiefs of Hell, that the King of Glory may enter the
abode!’
LB, pp 90–1, ll 198–9
[9b]
Tollite portas, princcipes, uestras, et ele[uamini], porte eternales, et introibit Rex
Glorie. K, 44vb1–3
‘Lift up your gates, princes, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of Glory
will enter’.
[9c]
Tollite portas, principes, uestras, et eleuamini, porte eternales, et introibit Rex Glorie.
r 106–7
[10a]
A hIffirn, oslaic do doirrsi co ndechsad rí na glóire isin tech!
‘o Hell, open your doors so that the King of Glory may enter in!’
LB, pp 90–1, ll 208–9
[10b]
O inferne apiri portas tuas ut intret Rex Glorie. K, 44vb22–3
‘o Hell, open your gates so that the King of Glory may enter’.
[10c]
Aperi portas ut intret Rex Glorie. r 112
[11a]
Ar do oslaic sé na doirrsi umaide 7 do bris sé na lut[h]raigi iarnaigi.
‘For he opened the brazen doors and broke the iron bolts’
LB, pp 90–1, ll 212–13
410 Caoimhín Breatnach
[11b]
Quia contriuit portas esaias [sic for ereas] et uectes ferros confrecit. K, 44vb29–30
‘For he destroyed bronze gates and broke iron bolts’.
[11c]
Quia contriuit portas ereas et uectes ferreos confregit. r 113–14
[12]
Ubi est, mors, aculi idus [sic for aculeus] tuus? Ubi est, inferne, uictoria tua?
K, 44vb34–6
‘Where, o death, is your sting? Where, o Hell, is your victory’?
there is no corresponding text in LB, p. 90, l. 214.
[13a]
Tócbaid bar ndoirrsi, a thaísechu Iffirn, co ndechsad astech rí na glóire!
‘Lift up your gates, o princes of Hell, that the King of Glory may enter in!’
LB, pp 90–1, ll 219–20
[13b]
Tollite portas principes uestras et ele[uamini] porte eternales et introibit Rex Glorie.
K, 44vb43–6
‘Lift up your gates, princes, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of Glory
will enter’.
[14a]
Cia so fria a n-abair rí na glóire?
‘Who is this that is called the King of Glory?’
LB, pp 90–1, ll 221–2
[14b]
Quis est iste Rex Glorie? K, 45ra1
‘Who is this King of Glory?’
[14c]
Quis est iste Rex Glorie? r 116
[15a]
Tigerna láidir 7 cumachtach, tigerna cumachtach isin cath is é sin rí na glóri!
‘the lord mighty and powerful, the lord mighty in battle, he is the King of
Glory.’
LB, pp 90–1, ll 224–5
[15b]
Dominus fortis et potens, Dominus et potens in bello ipse est Rex Glorie. K, 45ra5–6
‘the lord mighty and powerful and the lord powerful in battle, he is the King of
Glory’.
[15c]
Dominus fortis et potens, Dominus potens in prelio ipse est Rex Glorie. r 118–19
of particular significance concerning the Irish material from the text of LB

above is that it contains linguistic features that are later than those found in the
rest of the text. there are four occurrences of independent subject pronouns:
biaid sé (1a), do-cífet siat (4a), do oslaic sé (11a), do bris sé (11a). there are four
occurrences of do for ro in the augmented preterite: do gell (3a), do shuid (4a), do
oslaic sé (11a), do bris sé (11a). there are no other instances of independent
subject pronouns in the rest of the text of LB and there is only one other
example of do for ro, namely, the problematical verbal form do driuchtatar (p. 92,
l. 238). It would seem to be the case, therefore, that the Latin passages as found
in K were translated at a subsequent stage to the translation of the rest of the text
in the transmission of the text of LB. the dating and linguistic analysis of Irish
translations of Latin texts must consequently allow for the possibility that a
complete Irish translation may be the result of several stages of translation.9
although LB is sometimes linguistically more conservative, K, in addition to
preserving more of the original Latin text, also contains a number of linguistic
features that are earlier than corresponding forms in LB. among these features
are earlier forms of the article, such as the frequent use of inna, where LB has
na; acc. pl. of nominal forms as in feghaid i nd-adhnaclu (43vb16) against fégaid a
n-adnocuil, ‘inspect their graves’ (LB, pp 84–5, ll 91–2); dat. pl. of adjectives as
in cona timtirechtaib eccraibdechaib (45ra18–19) against cona timthirechtaib cróda
écráibdechu, ‘and their cruel impious officers’ (LB, pp 90–1, l. 231); infixed
against independent pronouns as in corro n-atnaighed (43rb4–5) against coro
adnaiced hé, ‘so that he might bury it’ (LB, pp 80–1, l. 28); earlier augmented
preterite passive plural ro tinóilte (43vb36) against cor tinóilit, ‘were assembled’
(LB, pp 84–5, l. 103). It is clearly the case that the text of K has an important
bearing on dating the original Irish translation. a preliminary analysis of the
linguistic evidence of both K and LB suggests that this may have been done no
later than the eleventh century.
9 In the light of the above, Hughes’ analysis of the language of texts of the Gospel of
Nicodemus in LB, Stair Nicoméid, fos xl–xliv (esp. xli–xlii), will have to be revised.
a cosmological poem attributed to Moses
JoHN CareY
MaNUsCrIPts aND steMMa
the poem edited below is known to me from thirteen manuscripts:
L London, British Library additional 30512, fo. 17r. the manuscript as a

whole dates from the fifteenth century; but our poem is found in a batch of
leaves added by an Cosnamhach Mac Flannchadha, writing in Cahir, Co.
tipperary, in 1561.1 this copy contains an additional quatrain (§11a); omits the
second couplet of §13; and transposes §§19 and 20.
H Dublin, trinity College 1399 (H5.28), fos 187v–188v. some leaves carry
the date 1679.2
D Dublin, royal Irish academy 24C39 (1169), pp 26–9. apparently written

in the eighteenth century; the scribe’s name does not appear.3
U Dublin, royal Irish academy 23H18 (707), p. 138. Most of the

manuscript was written by Uilliam Mac Cairteáin in 1701–2; but the catalogue
notes that this page is in a different hand.4 this copy’s first quatrain is a
conflation of the beginning of §1 and the end of §2; it transposes §§5 and 6; and
it contains an additional quatrain (§14a).
r Dublin, royal Irish academy 23M46 (147), pp 14–15. the portion of the
manuscript in which our poem appears was written by richard tipper (fl.
1728).5 the poem is headed ‘sgéal léir a dhearbhus líonna 7 tráighe na bochna 7
cionnus tigiod na habhainne líonas an mhóiraibheis da ngoirrthair an
mhóirfhairge nó an mhuir mór 7c-’.
G Dublin, National Library of Ireland G137, pp 89–90. Written by

stiabhna ríghis in 1730.6
1 Description in robin Flower (ed.), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Museum, 2
(London, 1926), p. 476. 2 t.K. abbott and e. J. Gwynn (eds), Catalogue of the Irish
manuscripts in the library of Trinity College Dublin (Dublin, 1921), p. 265. 3 t.F. o’rahilly et
al. (eds), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy [hereafter RIA cat.] (Dublin,
1926–70), fasc. xxv, p. 3147. 4 RIA cat., fasc. xvii, pp 2143–4. 5 Ibid., fasc. iv, pp 411–12.
6 Nessa Ní shéaghdha, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland, fasc.
412
A cosmological poem attributed to Moses 413
t Dublin, trinity College 1360 (H4.19), pp 221–5. Written by aodh Ó

Dálaigh in 1742.7 the poem is headed ‘sgéul lear derbhus lionadh, & trǽthadh
na bochnadh, & cionnus a tigid na haibhne lionnus an mhóraibheis d’a ngorthar
an mhorfharrge, no an muir mhór’.
L1 Dublin, trinity College 1285 (H1.11), fo. 116. Written in 1752 by aodh
Ó Dálaigh, copying from L above.8
a Dublin, royal Irish academy 23a32 (786), pp 332–6. Written by Peadar

Ó ruoghann in 1758.9 the poem is headed ‘Dan mhaoise anso’.
B Dublin, royal Irish academy 23B38 (30), pp 222–4. Written by séamus

Ó Murchúghadh, at ‘Droitchiod Ceann-puill’, in 1778–9.10 the poem is headed
‘Do chraobhsgaoile air an muir .i. mar líonus agus thrághus, agus air uisgidhibh
éagsamhla eile na cruinneadh ceatardha’.
M Dublin, royal Irish academy 23M39 (344), pp 4–5. Written by Brian

Mac Ionaigh of Pullis, Co. Monaghan, in 1810.11 this copy contains the
following quatrains, in the following sequence: §§9–15, 2, 4, 3, 5–6, 16, 18, 17,
20, 21/19, 22. the poem is headed ‘DaN Mæise anso sios’.
C Cork, University College Cork, Murphy 7, pp 34–6. Written by seán Ó

Dála in 1853.12 the poem is headed ‘Do chraobhsgaoile air an muir, mar líonas
agus thrághas, agus air uisgidhibh críosdamhla na cruinne ceatharda 7c-’.
C1 Cambridge, University Library, additional 6558, p. 240. Copied from C
by standish Hayes o’Grady early in the second half of the nineteenth century.13
as L1 and C1 are copies of existing witnesses, no use will be made of them in the
edition.
With respect to the interrelationships of the manuscripts, it is immediately

evident from their shared headings that r and t are closely akin, as are a and M,
and B and C. these connections are confirmed by further readings peculiar to
each of these pairs:14
iv (Dublin, 1977), p. 81. 7 abbott and Gwynn (eds), Catalogue, p. 187. 8 Ibid., pp 24–5,
28. 9 RIA cat., fasc. xx, p. 2482. 10 Ibid., fasc. i, p. 90. 11 Ibid., fasc. viii, p. 951.
12 Breandán Ó Conchúir (ed.), Clár lámhscríbhinní Gaeilge Choláiste Chorcaí: Cnuasach Uí
Mhurchú (Dublin, 1991), p. 25. I have published a translation of this copy as ‘the rivers of
Paradise and Hell, and the nine suckers of the sea’ in James Hogg (ed.), The road to Parnassus:
homage to Peter Russell on his seventy-fifth birthday (salzburg, 1996), pp 425–8. 13 Pádraig de
Brún and Máire Herbert (eds), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in Cambridge libraries
(Cambridge, 1986), pp 71–2, 75. the poem’s presence in the manuscript is not mentioned in
the main text, but is noted in the index (p. 152). 14 It will be observed that I have been able
to cite very few readings common only to r and t; this is due to t’s tendency to differ from
all of the other witnesses.
414 John Carey
rt
§1b: geintar r ginnter t vs. cantar vel sim. LHDUG sganntar vel sim. BC
§16c: anois om. only rt
aM
§4a: geinter a gheintir M vs. scaoilus L sgáinter vel sim. HDUrGtBC
§11c: hesperia a Hispéria M vs. isperne vel sim. LHDUrGtBC
§12a: mor a móir M only
§13a: se a sé M vs. sin L seision vel sim. HDUrGtBC
§16c: ceilfad a cheilfedh M vs. ceal vel sim. LHDG … nochtaigh me U cheilemh
vel sim. rtBC
§21d: longaibh a longabh M vs. long- L longa vel sim. HDrG long U loingeas
BC
§22b: is only in aM
BC
§1b: sganntar B sgantor C vs. cantar vel sim. LHDUG geintar vel sim. rt
§4b: gacha BC vs. gach vel sim. LHDUrGtaM
§9b: fuasgailtear B fuasgaltar C vs. fuasclann vel sim. LHDUrGM
fhúaisgeolaidhe t fuasagailt a
§21d: loingeas BC vs. long- L longa vel sim. HDrG long U longaibh vel sim. aM
the pairs rt and BC are also bound together by several shared readings:
rtBC
§3d: mes a bfuil r meas a bios t measamhail B measamhuil C vs. abuigh vel sim.
LHDUGa suidhe M
§6d: ’s ná rB ’s na tC vs. na LDUaM no vel sim. HG
§13d: a ccennairdé r a cennairde t a ceannairde B a cceannairde C vs. a
ccetharde vel sim. HG na cceatha a n-áirde D ag certfhairge U d’fíoráirdibh M
om. La
§14d: acht tigid rtBC vs. go tic L is tigid DG anuar thid U an tradh thuitid a 7
tigios M
§16c: cheilemh r ceilim t cheileam B cheiliom C vs. ceal vel sim. LHDG …
nochtaigh me U ceilfad vel sim. aM
§17a: lé rt le BC vs. o vel sim. LHDUGaM
§18d: mhiolltách r mhiltech t mhillteach B mheilltioch C vs. eallach L
mhilltenach vel sim. HDGM mheilt-ch a om. U
§19b: róith- rB roidhe- t roith- C vs. reo 7 L reo vel sim. DG roin H om. UaM
U is the manuscript most closely related to the pair aM. (In assessing the list of
variants that follows, it will be noted that there are, unsurprisingly, instances in
which either a or M has adopted a peculiar reading; further, M’s omission of

several quatrains means that there are cases in which its evidence cannot be
cited.)
UaM
§1b: aisia U asia a vs. inniadh vel sim. LHDrGtBC om. M
§2c: ar ndáil U air ndail a air náil M vs. dar ndail L inar ndáil vel sim.
HDrGtBC
§3a: ttabhar U tabhair a vs. do-bher vel sim. LrBC dobhar HDG thig a om. M
§4b: ar an U air an aM vs. ar vel sim. LHDrGBC air a t
§5b: cobhar U cabhur a cabhar M vs. an domh- L cabhair vel sim. HDrGtBC
§5c: mar Ua vs. gur vel sim. HGtBC agar D ór r om. LM
§6a: tromdha U troma aM vs. terma vel sim. LHDrGtBC
§6b: éanuighecht U ionghantach a ineignaidh M vs. a ngnae L eisíodha vel sim.
HDrGtBC
§8a: f< > an U fan a vs. timceall in L a ttimchioll vel sim. HDrGtBC om. M
§8b: na tri haibhne Ua vs. na aidhbne vel sim. LHDrGtBC om. M
§9c: ce U cia a vs. cad L crét vel sim. HDrGtBC om. M
§9d: no ce as U no cia is aM vs. cad is L crét is vel sim. HDrGtBC
§10a: suamaire U súmárigh a súmaire M vs. sughmare vel sim. LHDrGtBC
§14a: do-beir U do-ber a toiginn M vs. bere L beiridh HDrGtBC
§15d: ceisd e Ua ceisd sin M vs. cest vel sim. LHDrGtBC
§16a: add. ann UM na suidhe a
§17a: feadha U fiodha a vs. fedh vel sim. HrGBC subh D fiodh t om. LM
§18a: thigh U thig a tig M vs. atha L thegmhus vel sim. HDrGtBC
§21b: tinntri U thintri a vs. ngeinntiligh L tteintighe vel sim. HDrGtBC om.
M
L, a manuscript that is of particular interest both because it is considerably the
oldest and because of the extent to which it diverges from all of the other
witnesses, appears to be most closely related to this group UaM. the picture is
somewhat complicated by a case in which t agrees with these four, an issue to
which I shall return:
LUaM
§4d: senaidbne L senaibhne Ua seannaibhne M vs. seanaibhnibh vel sim.
HDrGtBC
§5a: tig L a thig U thig aM vs. sgáoileas vel sim. HDrGtBC
§14a: om. le LUtaM
§17c: amach La amac U vs. fo seach vel sim. HDrGtBC om. M
of the remaining manuscripts, D sometimes agrees with manuscripts in the

group LUaM against HrGtBC. Here too there are cases of agreement with t:
416 John Carey
LDUaM
§6a: cloch- L chlocha D cloca U clocha a vs. clochaibh vel sim. HrGtBMC
§14c: add. is LDUtaM
§14c: dar linn LDaM ara lion- U vs. mar sin HrGtBC
§15b: om. a bfuil vel sim. LDUtM entire line missing a
the agreement of HG with rtBC in the inferior readings Scail vel sim. at §2d
indicates that all six of these manuscripts belong to a single branch of the text
tradition, over against LDUaM (on the forms of the name in question, see note
on §4 below). Note too that only LDUaM preserve the arguably original reading
na at §6d (discussion in note).
Finally, a few evidently inferior readings are peculiar to the pair HG:
§6d: no H nó G vs. na LDUaM ‘s ná vel sim. rtBC

§13d: a ccetharde H a ccethairde G vs. na cceatha a n-áirde D ag certfhairge U a
ccennairdé vel sim. rtBC d’fíoráirdibh M
§19c: o vel sim. HG vs. 7 o L is ó DrtaBC
§19d: fromud H fromad formad G vs. formad vel sim. LDrtaBMC
§20a: neimh HG vs. nime vel sim. LDUta neimhe rBC
L H G
U L1
A M B C R T
C1
25.1 stemma.
these patterns of agreement suggest the stemma shown in Figure 25.1. there
are, however, certain anomalies that require mention. First, as noted above, there
are three instances of t’s agreement with L(D)UaM, to which a few more may
now be added:
L(D)UtaM
§14a: om. le LUtaM
§14c: add. is LDUtaM
§15b: om. a bfuil vel sim. LDUtM entire line missing a
§19ac: nimh vel sim. LDta vs. neimh HGrBC entire quatrain missing UM
§20ac: nimhe, nimh vel sim. LDUtaM vs. neimh HG neimhe, neimh vel sim.
rBC
Besides this, t shares two readings specifically with U, both in the first couplet
of §7:
Ut
§4a: a theid Ut vs. teid vel sim. rell.
§4b: greige U ghreige t vs. ghrég vel sim. rell.
two other manuscripts also contain several readings that are not in accord with
the stemma: a and M, although they share a heading not found elsewhere and
have many other features in common, also disagree with one another and with
the other manuscripts while agreeing with U, or at least giving readings closer to
U’s than are those in any of the other manuscripts.
UM vs. (L)HDrGtaBC
§10b: do twice UM om. LHDrGtaBC
§10d: do UM om. LHDrGtaBC
§12d: do throgios U do tráighios M vs. tarnghes a tarruingus vel sim.
LHDrGtBC
§13a: do reir mar U do réir mar M vs. an uair L mar HDrGtaBC
§16b: hinntri U thintri M vs. tinntighi vel sim. LHDrGtaBC
Ua vs. (L)HDrGtBMC
§10a: magh U moigh bhreunuidh a vs. mhbeatha M mbith vel sim.
LHDrGtBC
§11a: assia U adanæ a vs. tesailli vel sim. LHDrGtBMC
§14c: om. is Ua only
§17c: shinnis U sginnes a vs. glúasis M tét L glúaister vel sim. HDrGtBC
In connection with the latter should be noted further instances where M agrees
with HDrGtBC against U(a):
418 John Carey
U(a) vs. (L)HDrGtBMC

§15c: lionus LU líontar HDrGtBMC fhagus a
§16d: occais L athir U athis a acois vel sim. HDrGtBMC
§17c: tét amach L a shinnis amac U a sginios amach a glúaister fo seach vel sim.
HDrGtBC a glúasis M
It accordingly seems clear that both a and M made some use of a second source
for the poem: the former in quatrains §§10–16, the latter in quatrains §§10–17.
For the possibility that a’s second source may have closely resembled L, and that
this influence may be reflected in §2a, see the notes below.
C o N t e N t a N D BaC KG ro U N D
the poem is not long, and its content can be summarized fairly briefly. the poet
begins by speaking of three rivers that flow into ‘our land’: the text as it stands
appears to equate this land with India, but may originally have said that it is from
India that the rivers come to us. they are named sgáile, teibhir and Dunán, and
their source is in Paradise. Dunán is the origin of produce – hay, grain, honey,
milk, fruit and nuts – while all the fish in the world come from sgáile. out of
teibhir flows the Jordan, making it responsible for our spiritual wellbeing;
teibhir itself consists not of water but of stones, jewels more precious than gold.
teibhir flows ‘into the Dead sea, in the red sea surrounding Greece’, sgáile
into the english Channel, and Dunán into the tyrrhenian sea. extending
through the world, these three rivers are the source of all streams and springs
(§§1–8).
the poet now asks rhetorically concerning the causes of tides and rain. He
explains the former as being due to the activities of nine ‘suckers’ (súghmhaire)
distributed throughout the world: there are two in thessaly, three in the
mysterious region of teamplainn, three in a lake in ‘Hesperia in the east’, and
one – the greatest of them all – in the ‘sea of Jerusalem’. the ebb tide is due to
the suckers drawing water into their mouths, the flood tide to their spewing it
forth again. the clashing together of bodies of water causes the waters to rise up;
wind then carries them into the heavens, where they remain until they descend
as rain to moisten the earth and fill the lakes (§§9–15).
the poem’s third and final section deals with three further rivers, these
located ‘in the fiery cave of hell’: there is some variation in their names, but the
forms most likely to be original are Neimh, agh and acois. acois blights flowers,
grass and fruits, and is responsible for meteors and thunder; agh is the source
of disease and plague; while Neimh is responsible for frost, snow and ice in the
outer world, and anger, hatred and jealousy in the human heart. the wind from
the Neimh causes the afflictions of old age, and a drop of it would be sufficient
to exterminate ‘the men of the world’. these three rivers flow into a fiery, putrid
sea whose waves overwhelm ships and islands (§§16–21).
the poet concludes by identifying himself as Moses son of amram, who
received from God the gift of eloquence, the tablets of the law and the staff with
which he performed his miracles (§22).
the poet’s sources for all of this information are scarcely more puzzling than
the extent of his ignorance. that the Dead sea, the red sea and Greece are not
contiguous is of course basic geography; nor is there any body of water that
could be described as the ‘sea of Jerusalem’. the location of Hesperia in the east
(§11c; shoir confirmed by rhyme with domhuin) conflicts not only with standard
doctrine but also with the direct testimony of medieval Irish sources.15 the
number and names of the rivers of Paradise as set forth in Gen 2.10–14 would
also have been known to any even partly educated person,16 and Irish texts
likewise reflect familiarity with the four infernal rivers styx, Cocytus, acheron
and Phlegethon of classical mythology.17 Whether inadvertently or for some
reason now impossible to fathom, the poet wrote in flat contradiction of all of
this common knowledge.
there are only three elements in the poem for which I can suggest parallels
elsewhere. In §6 the river teibhir is described as a ‘torrent of dry stones’ (‘tuile
do chlochaibh tíorma’), these stones then being described as jewels (‘clocha
buadha’), ‘better than the gold of the enduring world’. In the Irish translation of
the Travels of Sir John Mandeville (conveniently designated ‘the Gaelic
Maundeville’ by its editor Whitley stokes), the author describes the landscape
of India as being shaped by the rivers which flow from Paradise.18 He then goes
on to speak of a sea of gravel, which ebbs and floods like the salt sea:
From that sea is a journey of three days as far as the great hills out of which
comes a river wherein was abundance of precious stones (‘do clochaib
búadha’) from the earthly Paradise. and there is not a drop of water
therein, and it goes along with a great storm thence as far as the sandy sea,
15 thus Isidore, Etymologiae, XIV.iv.19, 28, speaks of the ‘vera Hesperia’, which ‘in occidentis
est fine’. see also Acallam na senórach, where the phrase ‘from taprobane to the garden of the
Hesperides’ (‘ó theprofáne co Garrdha na nIsperdha’) refers to the eastern and western
extremities of the world: Acallam na senórach, ed. Whitley stokes (Leipzig, 1900), ll 228–9;
see also 2774–5. 16 see, for instance, The Irish Adam and Eve story, ed. and trans. David
Greene and Fergus Kelly, 1 (Dublin, 1976), pp 20–3. 17 thus, a tract in Liber Flavus
Fergusiorum lists the streams of hell as ‘aceron, Coticus, asericus, stix, Flegiton, Mannog’;
Gearóid Mac Niocaill (ed.), ‘Na seacht Neamha’, Éigse, 8 (1956–7), 239–41 at 241; acheron
and styx are also mentioned in the Irish translation of the Aeneid; George Calder (ed. and
trans.), Imtheachta Æniasa: the Irish Æneid (London, 1907), for example, ll 1345, 1366.
18 ‘and it is this that causes the country of India to be islands, the rivers that come out of
Paradise separating from each other’ (‘7 issé dobir in Innia ina hoilénaib na srotha thicc a
pardhus acca dealugud re chéle’); Whitley stokes (ed. and trans.), ‘the Gaelic Maundeville’,
ZCP, 2 (1899), 1–63, 226–312 at 284–5. 19 Ibid., 288–9.
420 John Carey
three days in the week, and thenceforward no one can describe it till it
comes again. and during the four other days of the week men are
gathering those stones; and thus it is in every single week for them.19
this dry torrent of stones that are gems, flowing out of Paradise into India, is
strikingly reminiscent of teibhir in our poem, and I suggest that it may have
provided its inspiration. there is, however, another possibility: the Letter of
Prester John, which was in fact the source of the passage just quoted. Versions of
this text were also translated into Irish in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries;
the copy in London, British Library egerton 1781, contains the following:
and a journey of three days from that sea there is a mountain from which
comes a stream of stones without water, and that stream goes a journey of
three days until it goes into the same sandy sea. and that stream carries
stones and trees with it into that sea, and they are swallowed up, and it is
not known what happens to them. and there is a stream under the earth in
the same country, and no one who goes into it can come from it until it
bursts from the earth; and it is then that it is possible to come out of it and
to go into it at once, so that the earth may not close up behind them. and
everything which is brought from it, is gems and precious stones (‘as gema
iad 7 is lega loghmhara’). and that stream goes into another stream, which
is broader than it is itself, and there is nothing at all in that stream save an
abundance of precious stones (‘imad leaga loghmhara’).20
although several of the same features are present in this passage, they appear
here in conjunction with several other elements in such a fashion as to render
them less clear-cut; furthermore, the waterless stream of stones is not identified
with the river(s) of precious stones, the precious stones are not called clocha
buadha, and none of the rivers involved is said to come from Paradise. all in all,
while I think that it would be rash to exclude the possibility that it was this text
that influenced our poem, it seems to be the less likely candidate of the two.
one further consideration may be mentioned in this connection. ‘the Gaelic
Maundeville’ is the only other text of which I am aware that calls the Dead sea
Muir Téacht (literally ‘Congealed sea’), rather than Muir Marbh; elsewhere, the
former designation is applied to the mare congelatum of the frozen north.21 While
the poet’s geography is sufficiently extravagant that the possibility of his linking
the red sea with the arctic ocean cannot be ruled out categorically, it is more
probable that he had the Dead sea in mind – and this would furnish another link
between his composition and the Travels. the poet’s use of the phrases clocha
20 David Greene (ed.), ‘the Irish versions of the Letter of Prester John’, Celtica, 2:1 (1952),
pp 117–45 at p. 123; my translation. 21 thus, the Irish alexander romance: ‘und nicht ging
alexander weiter in die nördlichen Länder auf das eismeer zu’ (‘7 ni deachaid alaxandar
secha sin isna crichaib borethaib i leith re Muir techt’); erik Peters (ed. and trans.), ‘Die
buadha and Muir Téacht appears, then, to reflect a specific indebtedness to ‘the
Gaelic Maundeville’, rather than to its english original; to the Letter of Prester
John (in Irish or in Latin); or to more diffuse tradition.
If this text indeed provided the direct or indirect inspiration for the stones of
the river teibhir, this has a bearing on our poem’s date. the translator of ‘the
Gaelic Maundeville’, Fínghen Ó Mathghamhna, tells us in the preface that he
produced it in the year 1475.22 L, the oldest copy of our poem, was executed as
we have seen in 1561. this leaves an interval of less than a century for the poem’s
composition, particularly when we allow, as the stemma requires, for the
existence of at least two intermediate copies between L and the exemplar.23
another part of the poem for which there are analogies elsewhere is the
account of the ‘suckers’ in §§10–13. the idea that the tides are caused by
enormous creatures that suck in the waters of the sea and then spew them forth
again is attested in various Irish sources, and elsewhere as well.24 only
occasionally, however, are they called súghmhaire, a term that attaches to the
verbal stem súgh-, ‘suck’, the same double agent suffix that is seen in old Irish
círmaire, ‘comb-maker’.25 apart from our poem, only three other instances of the
word in this sense appear to be attested. two of these three occur in versions of
a single story, suggesting the relatively limited currency of the term. the Fenian
frame-tale Acallam na senórach, probably composed early in the thirteenth
century,26 describes how all Leinster was once flooded by the bursting forth of
the waters of the spring that ultimately became Loch Lurgan:
and it is then that Finn performed the mighty, pre-eminent exploit which
is the best that anyone ever did, before and after: that is, [bringing] a sucker
(sughmaire) from the land of India, and the druids from the land of
Germany, and the female warriors from the lands of the saxons and the
Franks, so that they sucked up that rippled lake of cold pools.27
the same event is alluded to, in somewhat different terms, in Feis tighe Chonáin:
another collection of Fenian stories, which appears to have been composed rather
irische alexandersage’, ZCP, 30 (1967), 71–264 at 120, 197. 22 stokes, ‘the Gaelic
Maundeville’, 2. 23 If the Irish Letter of Prester John were in fact the source, this would not
change the picture greatly: Greene notes that the Letter appears to have reached these islands
quite late, and proposes for the egerton translation ‘a date in the fifteenth century’ (‘the Irish
versions’, p. 118). 24 Discussion in John Carey, ‘the sun’s night journey: a pharaonic image
in medieval Ireland’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 57 (1994), 14–34 at 16–
17; Jacqueline Borsje and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, ‘a monster in the Indian ocean’, Nederlands
Theologisch Tidjschrift, 49 (1995), 1–11; Jacqueline Borsje, From chaos to enemy: encounters with
monsters in early Irish texts (turnhout, 1996), pp 43–58; John Carey (ed. and trans.), In tenga
bithnua: the ever-new tongue (turnhout, 2009), pp 347–8. 25 Fergus Kelly, ‘a note on old
Irish círmaire’, Celtica, 21 (1990), 231–3. 26 the case for this dating has been argued most
recently by ann Dooley, ‘the date and purpose of Acallam na senórach’, Éigse, 34 (2004), 97–
126. 27 stokes, Acallam, ll 4533–7 (my translation).
422 John Carey
later than the Acallam.28 Here, we are told that one Conán Cinn shléibhe was
also called Conán Chinntsumaire, ‘for it is he whom Finn first brought [to
Ireland], and the sucker (sumaire) of the red sea along with him, to drain Loch
Luirg in search of Mac an Loin’.29 It is interesting to see this sucker variously
associated with India and the red sea, places that figure in our poem: probably
well before its composition, the suckers were assigned to faraway regions.
the remaining reference is found in a quatrain written in the upper margin
of a page in An Leabhar Breac, a manuscript of the early fifteenth century:
Aocca occa ella en.

calla colla cella cel.
ethiop ahethoip hille.
itiatsin nasugmaire.
aocca, occa, ella, en,

Calla, Colla, Cella, Cel,
ethiop from ethiopia, thus far:
those are the suckers.30
If I have interpreted this verse correctly, at least one of these suckers is said to be
from ethiopia, a place not mentioned in our poem; a noteworthy point of
agreement, however, is that the suckers appear to be nine in number. all of these
references evidently draw upon an idea that we nowhere find clearly explicated,
except in our poem, the latest of the texts and a work that seems (to the extent
that we can form any impression of these) to have taken considerable liberties
with its sources.
Finally, the statement in §20cd that ‘a drop from Neimh, thus, / would kill
the men of the world’ recalls a passage from the cosmological treatise In tenga
bithnua:
Ata do brentus a lochaib pian ifrinn, da licthea ænbaindi fo thalmain uile de,
do murfed na huili anmanna ata ’san bith.
such is the stench in the lakes of the torments of hell, that if a single drop
of it were released throughout the whole earth, it would kill all the animals
that there are in the world.31
28 I am not aware of any attempt having been made to date this text securely; it has been
described as ‘early Modern Irish’ by Gerard Murphy (ed. and trans.), Duanaire Finn, 3
(Dublin, 1953), p. xxii. 29 Maud Joynt (ed.), Feis tighe Chonáin (Dublin, 1936), p. 59. this
passage is corrupt, and the reference to the sucker missing, in the manuscript which Joynt
used as the basis for her edition, a copy written in 1686; but it seems clear that it formed part
of the original text. ‘Mac an Loin’ was the name of Finn’s sword. 30 Dublin, rIa 23P16
(1230), p. 98, in upper margin. 31 Carey, In tenga bithnua, p. 206. this is the text of the
second recension, that of the first recension being given on the facing page. the copy of the
also reminiscent of these lines is a passage from the account of hell in the
Leabhar Breac copy of Fís Adomnáin:
Clóthi derga romora rindaithi iarnaide and-side, siat cómdluthi comremra

comrindaithe comarda, co ndrúcht neme for barr cech oen chlúi, co mbáidfed
ocus co loiscfed firu in talman uli neim cech clúi dib-side.
there are great red pointed iron nails there, all of them equally close, equally
thick, equally sharp, equally long, with a drop of poison on the point of each
nail, so that the poison of every one of those nails would drown and burn the
men of the whole world.32
It seems clear that it is accounts of hell of this kind that inspired our poet’s
description of the lethal potency of the river Neimh (‘Poison’).
L a N G Ua G e a N D M e t r e
the poem’s language appears to be compatible with the date of c.1500 proposed
above on grounds of content. such relatively conservative features as the dative
plural ending -(a)ibh (§4c maighribh, §4d seanaibhnibh, §5b d’anmannaibh, §14a
néallaibh; but of course not with the attributive adjective in §6a chlochaibh
tíorma);33 the preservation of some deuterotonic verbs (here only do-bheir, at §5b
and §20a; and a-tá(id) at §§9a, 10a, 12b, 16a); the suppletive preterite nduaidh for
ithid at §2b;34 and the é-future ní chéal at §16c,35 can all be paralleled in texts of
the sixteenth and indeed of the seventeenth century.
the innovative features in the language are in no case too late for the date
proposed. thus, the consistent use of nominative for accusative forms (§2b ant
ubhall, §18b colonn (rhyming with trom), §20d fir, §21d oiléin) matches the usage
of ‘the Gaelic Maundeville’.36 Later stages of the poem’s transmission,
especially in the group UaM, frequently add do as a relative particle with verbs
in primary tenses: thus §5b do bherus a, §10b do lionus vel sim. UM, do thraigus
second recension in rennes, Bibliothèque municipale 598/15489 comes closer to the wording
of our poem, speaking of ‘a single drop’ (ænbrǽn), and saying that all the humans as well as all
the animals in the world would be killed by it. 32 ernst Windisch (ed.), ‘Fís adamnáin: Die
Vision des adamnán’ in Whitley stokes and ernst Windisch (eds), Irische Texte 1 (Leipzig,
1880), pp 165–96 at p. 191. 33 ‘tugtar faoi deara nach bhfuil aon rian den tabharthach iolra
in -(a)ibh san aidiacht sa teanga chlasaiceach’: Damian McManus, ‘an nua-Ghaeilge
chlasaiceach’ in SNG, pp 335–445 at p. 384. 34 Ibid., p. 411; and see Nicholas Williams, ‘Na
canúintí a theacht chun solais’ in SNG, pp 447–78 at p. 458. 35 see nocha chéal (rhyming
with léan) in a poem by one seán Ó Cléirigh in the early seventeenth century: Lambert
McKenna (ed. and trans.), Iomarbhágh na bhfileadh: the contention of the bards, 2 (London,
1918), p. 234, quatrain 28. 36 Murphy, Duanaire Finn, 3, p. cx. see John Carey, ‘remarks on
dating’ in John Carey (ed.), Duanaire Finn: reassessments (Dublin, 2003), pp 1–18 at pp 5–6; and
McManus, ‘an nua-Ghaeilge chlasaiceach’, pp 359–60, 363–6.
424 John Carey
vel sim. Ua, §10d do throgios vel sim. UM, §15a do fhliuchus vel sim. UrtBM,
§15b do bheirios U, §20a do phiollas M, §21b do bhios a, §21d do bhaithis M. only
§10c do líonas, however, appears to have stood in the original poem. Use of do in
this way used to be regarded as a feature first attested in the later sixteenth
century,37 and it was never accepted in strict verse;38 Myles Dillon, however,
found evidence allowing the development to be assigned ‘to the middle of the
fifteenth century and probably earlier’.39
the metre of the poem is deibhidhe of the ógláchas variety: no attempt is made
to observe the requirements for alliteration and internal rhyme stipulated for dán
díreach, and there are a number of isosyllabic rhymes (§7ab, §10ab, §13ab, §15ab).
a few rhymes depend on the development of glides to full vowels: §4ab nimh :
talmhain, §17ab feadh : talmhan, §20ab neach : crotach, §20cd sin : domhuin, §22cd
glic : teghaid.40 other rhymes, however, do not meet even a relaxed standard:
thus, slender and broad consonants are rhymed in §5ab sruth : cabhair, §9cd ann
: doininn, §10cd cuan : athuair, §11ab thall : Teamplainn and §19ab mbith :
oighreadh. there are also several lines with only six syllables (§§4b, 7a, 16a, 16d,
19d, 20b) or with eight syllables (§§5c, 6d, 12d, 14b, 14d), while §8a has nine. as
a versifier, then, our poet appears to have been neither very ambitious nor
exceptionally competent.
Various of the remarks in the last few pages have called into question the
extent of the poet’s knowledge, or the degree of his verbal skill. It should be
stressed that neither of these limitations can cast any shadow on the remarkable
power of his imagination. Drawing on sources only very imperfectly known to
us, and for the most part very possibly on his own unaided fantasy, he created in
a mere twenty-two quatrains a coherent and dynamic model of the world. all of
the good and bad fortune of mankind, it seems, whether physical or spiritual, can
be derived from the six paradisal and infernal rivers; while the nine suckers, in
various distant lands, determine the movements of the sea, which are in turn
responsible for the cycle of the rain. It is water that binds the whole vision
together – the last object to be mentioned is the rod of Moses, which brought
water from the rock. For all its eccentricity and occasional uncouthness, this is
an arresting and evocative composition: it is perhaps not too difficult to
understand how it could have intrigued scribe after scribe, across something like
three and a half centuries.
the edition below endeavours to represent the exemplar shared by all of the
surviving witnesses. two quatrains (§§11a, 14a) appear only in single
manuscripts: these are given in square brackets, and in semi-diplomatic form.
the apparatus presents all of the other variants; illegible or doubtful segments
are enclosed in angle brackets. Where variant readings involve changes of
meaning, these are included in the discussion in the notes.41
37 Murphy, Duanaire Finn, 3, p. cxiv. 38 McManus, ‘an nua-Ghaeilge chlasaiceach’, p. 422.
39 Myles Dillon, ‘History of the preverb to’, Éigse, 10 (1961–3), 120–6 at 123–4. 40 on this
shift, see McManus, ‘an nua-Ghaeilge chlasaiceach’, pp 346–7. 41 For help in resolving a
t e X t a N D t r a N s L at I o N
§1. tiaghaid trí haibhne inar dtíor,

san Innia a gcantar gach fíor.
Is uatha siltear, go rath,
a dtig aran mbith mbraonach.
three rivers go into our land,

in India where every truth is chanted.
From them is poured forth, with grace,
whatever comes upon the dewy world.
om. M a tiaghaid tri haibhne: tri haibhne thig a tiaghaid: tigit vel sim. LBC
teagaid D tagoid t ata U inar: anbar L a a b san: assin L san ł a H ansan U asan
a Innia: aisia U asia ann a ninnad r ninniadh t a: mar D len U om. r a: om.
DUrtBC gcantar: geintar r ginnter t sganntar B sgantor C gach: go rtBC
gacha a om. LDUa c Is uatha: uadtha sud U, which omits the rest of the quatrain
siltear: sin shilios a go: gach r d a: da La aran: air t fann a mbith mbraonach:
mhoigh b-haigh a
*
§2. a mbun aibhne i bPárrthus thall
mar a nduaidh ebha ant ubhall.
Is as thiaghaid inar ndáil
sgáile is teibhir is Dunán.
the source of the rivers is yonder in Paradise,

where eve ate the apple.
It is thence that they come to us:
sgáile and teibhir and Dunán.
ab and first half of c om.U a a: ó a mbun: bun vel sim. LDa aibhne: aoidhble L
aibhle a aibhain D i: a HDrGtaBMC om. L thall: om. M b mur: mar a: mur vel
sim. HG marar t nduaidh: ith t d’ith a ebha: adhamh a c Is as: as an M om. a
is: mur (expuncted) is D thiaghaid: tigit L teagaid D a thagus U tiaguid vel sim.
Gt thig a thigid BC théid M inar: dar L ar U air aM inar ar t ndáil: add. scail
L d sgáile: scail vel sim. LHGtBC sgáilis r first is: om. UtaM teibhir: tibir L
teimhir D theibhmhir U theibir r teib t uibhir a tiobhar M second is: illeg. M
Dunán: domna L dúnán G ortannan a dúnnán B dúnann M dunnán C
palaeographical puzzle, I am grateful to emma Nic Cárthaigh, Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh and
seán Ó Duinnshléibhe. the edition as a whole has benefited greatly from the careful scrutiny
and penetrating comments of Kevin Murray; I remain responsible for its shortcomings in its
final form.
426 John Carey
*
§3. o Dhunán, dobhar go rath,
tig ar bhféar dhúinn ’s ar n-arbhar,
mil is toradh is lacht lán,
is gach meas abaidh iomlán.
From Dunán, a water with grace,

come to us our hay and our grain,
honey and fruit and ample milk,
and every ripe abundant crop of nuts.
a o: om. L Dhunán dobhar go rath: ó dhu< > rata M Dhunán: domhna L

damhnan U dhúanann a dobhar: dobher L dabhar D a ttabhar U dobhir r thig
t tabhair a dobhear B dobheir C go: gaca U a a om. L b tig: ar L dha dtig U a
tig t om. a ar bhféar dhuinn: drucht is fer L dhuine ar bhféar U air bhfeur
thuidh dúinn a air an bhféur M ’s ar n-: is L ar n- a & M is ar C c is toradh is
lacht: torrtha lachta U is céir is lacht a 7 tortha lachta M lacht: leas B d is: ’s
HGBrCt & UM om. L gach meas: gach braon L g< >a M abaidh: a bhfuil r a
bios t ee apighe a amhail vel sim. BC suidhe M iomlán: is o domhná L iomshlán
G
*
§4. o sgáile sgáinter, do nimh,
síol gach éisg ar thalmhain,
go leathnaighid, ’na maighribh,
ó sgáile ’sna seanaibhnibh.
From sgáile is scattered, from heaven,

the seed of every fish upon the earth,
so that they spread abroad, as spawn,
from sgáile in the ancient rivers.
a o: om. L sgáile: scail L sgáinter: scaoilus L sginnter t geinter vel sim. aM add.
a U do nimh: don innbher L do nibh HrG gon nimh U go nemdha a o nemh M
b síol: thig síol U gach: gacha BC thalmhain: domhuin L talmhuin vel sim.
HDrGBMC an talamh vel sim. Ua a talamh t an tallamhuin M c go lethnuighid
’na maighribh: mar lennas ann mhur fa seach a ó líonnaid siad muire M go: om.
U leathnaighid: leathaid D leitnuingn’ U léathnuid t ‘na: in L ina D ar U
maighribh: mhaoidhré L maighre go mbuaid U d ó sgáile ‘sna: om. M sgáile:
scail L ’sna: annsna vel sim. LDt bhunad na U na a seanaibhnibh: senaidbne
with aidbne marg. sup. and connected to main text by construe marks L senaibne vel
sim. UaM
*
§5. Ó theibhir sgaoileas an sruth
do-bheir d’anmannaibh cabhair,
gur baisteadh eoin is Críost cáidh
i sruth áluinn orthannáin.
From teibhir bursts the stream

which gives help to souls,
so that John and holy Christ were baptized
in the fair stream of Jordan.
a Ó theibhir sgaoileas: assin scail tig L theibhir: theibhar H themhior U thibir

t uibhir a tiobhair M sgaoileas: a thig U a sgaoileas t thig aM an sruth: na
srotha M b do-bheir d’anmannaibh cabhair: saorus anumanna an domhuin L do-
bheir: do bherus a d’anmannaibh: dar n-anmanna U dar n-anman a cabhair:
cobhair DBC cobhar U c gur baisteadh eoin is Críost cáidh: assin sgail tig dar
ndail L gur: agar D mar Ua mor r dara M baisdedh: baisde a Críost: criosta
LHGtaB ic-t a cáidh: cáich DM cáigh C d a sruth: an sruth sin U i: a
HDrGtBC ag a om. LM orthannáin: ortain L orrathnáin t oirrthalainn M
*
§6. tuile do chlochaibh tíorma
teibhir go ngníomh eisíodha;
ferr ná ór an bheatha bhuain
na clocha buadha re haonuair.
teibhir, with contentious action,

is a torrent of dry stones;
better than the gold of the enduring world
are the precious stones, all at once.
a tuile... tíorma: thig tuilte do cloca tromdha U chlochaibh: cloch- L chlocha
Da tiorma: troma aM b teibhir: a tiber L o theimhir vel sim. DU thig ó uibhir a
go ngniomh eisíodha: ni fra a ngnae L lan éanuighecht U na ngiom ionghantach
a go n-: gan D ó M eisíodha: ineignaidh M c ferr: fo feairr U is ferr vel sim. aM
ná: nó HG no at d na: no HG ’s ná rtBC clocha: cloch- L clacha H clochaibh
tC re haonuair: a n-aonuair L ar áonuair vel sim. DUaM
*
§7. teibhir téid i Muir dtéacht,
’san Muir ruaidh a dtimchioll Ghréag;
sgáile i Muir nIocht go dian,
is Dunán i Muir dtoirrian.
428 John Carey
teibhir goes into the Dead sea,

in the red sea surrounding Greece;
sgáile swiftly into the english Channel,
and Dunán into the tyrrhenian sea.
om. M a teibhir téid: theid uibhir a teibhir: a tteimhir D téid: a theid Ut i: a

LHrGtBC an D san U annsa a dtéacht: théchta vel sim. Ua techtaidhe t b
’san: issa L ansa a ruaidh: .r. L om. C i dtimchioll: temceall LU timcl na a
Ghréag: man greige U ghreige t c sgáile: sgail L theid sgaile a i Muir nIocht:
muir dtigh U sann mur ruadh a i: a LHrGtBC an D om. U nIocht: nios D d is:
7 U is theid a Dunán: .d. L domhnan U duanann a i: a LHrGtBC an D san U
ansa a dtoirrian: tteoranadh t ro ionnghanach a
*
§8. Leathnaighid a dtimchioll an domhuin
na haibhne nach éadomhuin.
is uatha tigid ’nar ndáil
srotha is tobair is fuaráin.
they extend around the world,

the rivers which are not shallow.
It is from them that there come to us
streams and wells and springs.
om. M a Leathnaighid: < >nuighid preceded by letn-h at foot of previous page H

lanfuid sin a a ttimchioll: timceall L f... U fan a b haibhne: tri haibhne so U tri
haibhne a nach éadomhuin: nach head domuinn U c is uatha: uadhtha suid U
tigid: tocrad L thegaid D thigios U a thigid t thig a ’nar: dar L ionar DrtBC
bhar U ar a d first is: om. UrtaBC tobair: tobar H tobruid U second is: 7 U
*
§9. a-tá ceist mhaith agam dhíobh:
ní fhuasglann í acht eólaidh.
Créad líonas, créad thráigheas ann?
Créad as máthair don doininn?
I have a good question for you:

none save a scholar solves it.
What floods, what ebbs there?
What is the mother of foul weather?
a a-tá ceist: only < >d legible M ata: atha agam L ta DUa mhaith: mór maith a
om. U agam: om. Lr dhíobh: oruib anoir U dhaoibh r dhíobh sup. lin. daoib
cancelled G dhíbh vel sim. tC re a cur a om. L b ní fhuasglann: only < >asglann
legible M ní: is ní D 7 gan a a fhuasglann: fosgluinn U fhúaisgeolaidhe t
fuasagailt a fuasgailtear vel sim. BC í acht: é acht U acht ag a í acht le B aon é
acht M eólaidh: eolach L fíoreoluige U eolaidhe vel sim. rtaBC c first Créad:
cad L ce U creid á t cia a illeg. M second créad: 7 L no che U as ced t nó cia a
no M d Créad: cad L no ce U is ced t no cia aM no cread BC as: is
LHDrGaBMC don: do M doininn: duinuinn L doinnionn D donuinn U
donnuin a doinnuin M
*
§10. Naoi súghmhaire a-tá fón mbith
líonas is thráigheas ’na rith.
Is iad do líonas gach cuan,
is thráigheas iad an athuair.
there are nine suckers throughout the world

who flood and ebb by turns.
It is they who flood every harbour,
and drain them again afterwards.
a Naoi: ta naoi a súghmhaire: suamaire U súmárigh a súghmuiridhe B súmaire

M a-tá: tá D om. a fón: san DtaB faoi an UM mbith: magh U moigh
bhreunuidh a mhbeatha M b líonas: do lionus vel sim. UM is: 7 LUaM agus D
thráigheas: do thraigus vel sim. Ua rith: srothaibh t cd 7 lionus gach re n-uair /
7 traighus gach aon cuan L c Is iad… cuan: san muir fagus gach cuann cuan lán
a is úaibhte so do liontar gach cúan M Is iad: siad sud U iad: add. sin D do: om.
D gach: gaca vel sim. UBC d is: & U 7 aM thráigheas: do thraighios U iad: é U
an athuair: a gceirtuair U air athuair a
*
§11. a dó dhíobh ’san teasaill thall,
a trí eile ’san teamplainn;
a trí ’san Isbeirne shoir,
i loch dhíoghuinn an domhuin.
two of them in thessaly yonder;

three others in teamplainn;
three in Hesperia in the east,
in the plentiful lake of the world.
a a: atá D an UM tá an a sa: san DU ansa M teasaill: tesailli vel sim. Lt tsasáilla

D assia U adanæ a tesalia M thall: tim L thim a b a trí … teamplainn: om. a a:
430 John Carey
an U & M trí: do LU eile: bhiobh U dhiobh san affrica ata an 3’ atha M san: sa
LHU teamplainn: tiompluinn D taimpirne U c a trí san: aige M a: agus a D an
U 7 a trí: do diob L tri dhiobh Ua Isbeirne: iospirne U nisbhernne vel sim.
rtBC hesperia a hispéria M shoir: toir L tshoir vel sim. HGt thoir U tshíor vel
sim. rB d a loch... domhoin: mur a bhforlach diogaire san < > M i: a
LHDUrGtBC ag a dhioghuinn: lógmhara U dídan a
*
[§11a. a dó diob sa tshaoile thiar,
a n-aigen a laighenn grian,
a tibra Bó Faoinne finn,
’sa thaob seo thiar daruinn.
two of them in the sea in the west,

in the ocean where the sun sets,
in the white spring of the White Cow,
on this side to the west of us.
This quatrain only in L.]
*
§12. I bhfairge Hierusailéam
a-tá an súghmhaire rothréan,
thráigheas a dteagmhann ’na bhéal,
is thairngeas srotha na n-aigéan.
In the sea of Jerusalem

is the very powerful sucker,
which causes what comes into its mouth to ebb,
and pulls the streams of the oceans.
a I: a LHDUrGtBC sa a < > san M bhfairge: .kar. L bhfaruige mor vel sim.
aM Hierusailéam: hierusalemm H iesarlalem U hiariusailm t darab ainm egían
M b a-tá: is ann atha L súghmhaire: suamare U súmuire t sumuire mor vel sim.
aM rothréan: tren L rothein a r’o < > M c thráigheas… bhéal: lionus cuanta na
cruinne L thráigheas: a thraighios D thargnis U súmas cuige M a dteagmhann:
a ttegaibh D an fhairge U a ttig a an teag- M ’na bhéal: an bheal U inna béul
followed by srotha is aibhnne na cruinne crossed out r ina a bhéul t ana bhel vel
sim. Ca d is: 7 LUM agas t thairngeas: tarruingus vel sim. LrGBC do throgios
vel sim. UM tararghes a srotha na n-aigéan: int aigen qice L rotaigh an aigein U
srotha na n-eccuine a srotha < > agan M
*
§13. Mar thairngeas seisean chuige
srotha is aibhne na cruinne,
éirghid tonna na fairge
i gceann a chéile i gceannairge.
When it draws to itself

the streams and rivers of the globe,
the waves of the sea arise
against one another in conflict.
a Mar… chuige: do reir mar bheir thige U do réir mar shúmas se chuige M Mar:
an uair L thairngeas: tarringius vel sim. LrGBC seisean: sin L se a b srotha is
aibhne: cuantha is sroth- L cd a ccuine cheile a om. L c eirghid: éirghe a is ann
< >in éirghios M na: is t d i gceann a chéile: 7 teid a ccuinne cheile U a ccoinne
a chéile M i: a HDrGtaBMC i gceannairge: a ccetharde vel sim. HG na cceatha
a n-áirde D ag certfhairge U a ccennairdé vel sim. rtBC d’fíoráirdibh M
*
§14. Beiridh gaoth lé ’na néallaibh
tonna na mara móiréarmhaidh.
Is gearr fhanaid shuas mar sin,
is tigid anuas ’na ndoininn.
the wind carries with it in its clouds

the waves of the great lively sea.
they remain above thus for a short time,
and come down as rain.
a beiridh: bere L do-beir U do-ber a toiginn M gaoth: an gaoth LDUM gáotha

t lé ‘na néalluibh: [nime nealluibh sup. lin.] a n-airde L leitha ina néulta D leis
isna nealaibh U na néullaibh t ansna neulta a ansna néultaibh M b na: om. L
mara: fairge U moréarmhuidh: mereanuigh L mor eirma U móréarmuidhe t
móra tréana M c Is: om. HrGBC fhanaid: bios L a bhios U a fhanuid t fanus M
shuas: tuas vel sim. LU tshúas vel sim. HrGtB fhúas D mar sin: dar linn
LDaM ara lion- U d is: go L a n-uar U acht rtBC an tradh a 7 M tigid: tic L
teaguid D thid sup. lin. U tigid r thuitid a tigios M anuas: orain anúas M add.
arís a ndoininn: donnuinn L dhoinuinn vel sim. UM
*
[§14a. snechta geal 7 fearuinn dub,
go deoidh mar thigidh cugam:
432 John Carey
an gaoth a thig ó iffrion attuath,

do techtus e an athuair.
White snow and black rain,

as it comes to me ever:
it is the wind which comes from hell, from the north,
which freezes it a second time.
This quatrain only in U]
*
§15. Is é sin fhliuchas an chruinne,
a bhfuil aran mbith mbuidhe;
is as líontar gach loch lán –
is ceist anocht ar mhorán.
It is that which wets the globe,

whatever there is in the yellow world;
it is from that that every full lake is filled –
it is a question tonight for many.
a Is é sin: ag sin L se suid U as íad sin t is leis sin a aige sin na súmhairighe M
Is: as HrGBC fhliuchas: fleoch- L do fhliuchus vel sim. UrtBM fluichtar a an
chruinne: na cruinne L b a bhfuil... mbuidhe: om. a a bhfuil: ferus L eiraighios
D do bheirios U sa bhfuil t 7 thráighios M aran: fan L ar a U an M mbith:
mbiadh U mbiothe t mbuidhe: amuich U mbráonuidhe vel sim. rt mbraonaidh
vel sim. BMC c is as: is La se U úaithe M líontar: lionus LU líonter r a líontar
t fhagus a gach: gacha U loch: locha U cúan a d is: 7 as a ceist: add. e Ua add.
sin M anocht: anois D added sup. lin. U om. a mhórán: mhorár B
*
§16. a-táid trí haibhne eile.
a n-uaimh ifrinn thinntighe.
Ní chéal a n-anmanna anois:
Neimh, agh agus acois.
there are three other rivers

in the cave of fiery hell.
I will not now conceal their names:
Neimh and agh and acois.
ab atá a n-úaimh iffrionn thintri, 3’ haibhne eile ann M a a-táid: at< > U ta a
eile: ee ann U ee ‘na suidhe a b a n-uaimh: a tuaith L a mbru U a n-uaidhe t air
uaidh a thinntighe: tinntighi vel sim. LGB theinntighe Dr hinntri U c ni ceil...

anois: a n-anmana orra ni ceilfad a ni ceil: < >nochtaigh me U chéal: ceil H
cheilemh r ceilim t cheileamh B cheilfedh mé M cheiliom C n-anmanna: n-
amanna L n-ainm U n-amm< > air áon M n-anma C anois: anios U annios M
om. r d Neimh: nim 7 L neimh is H nimh DUt néimh r nibh a .i. nimh M
agh: aghuid HG ach D acis U aghuidh rtB eug a fúat M agus: 7 LUaC &
HGtM acois: occais L achais D athir U acuis tM athis a
*
§17. Ó acois milltear bláth feadh,
féar is toradh na talmhan.
Ó acois gluaistear, fo seach,
caora tinntighe is tóirneach.
By acois the blossoms of woods are blighted,

grass and the fruits of the earth.
By acois are set in motion, in turn,
meteors and thunder.
a Ó: lé vel sim. rtBC is o a acois: acais LD accois H acuis Ut achois r accos

G athis a nimh M milltear: a mhilltir vel sim. Uta bláth feadh: gach fer blath L
bláth subh D gac blat feadha U blath fiodha a tórtha bládha M b féar... talmhan:
féir & tallman M féar is: 7 tor- L 7 gach tortha eile U faertha 7 a toradh: tor- L
tortha a c Ó: is o vel sim. LrtBC acois: acais LD achis U acuis t athis a nim
fós M add. millter bláth crossed out r gluaistear fo seach: tét amach L a shinnis
amac U a gluaister fó seach t a sginios amach a a glúasis M d caora tinntighe:
gaoth 7 tene L caorthinntigh r tromcháortha < > M tinntighe: teintighe vel sim.
HDBC is: 7 LUa & t agus M tóirneach: tornighthe a
*
§18. Ó agh theagmhas galar trom,
chlaoidheas is chráidheas colonn;
is ó agh sginneas amach
an phláigh mharbhthach mhillteanach.
From agh comes the heavy sickness

which lays low and afflicts the body;
and from agh there springs forth
the deadly ruinous pestilence.
a Ó: is ó a agh: aghaidh HG ach D athir U elighuid r aghaidh G aghuidh t éug

a aghuid B fhúath M aghmhuid C theagmhas: atha in L thigh vel sim. UaM
434 John Carey
add. in vel sim. La galar trom: cugainn U tinnas M b chlaoidheas... colonn:

plaigh 7 claime is econn L galar trom 7 aicid fhada U chlaoidheas: a chrinas a a
chlaoithis M is: agus t 7 a & M chráidheas: craidheas vel sim. HaM chaidheas
vel sim. BC colonn: an cholann vel sim. tM c is: 7 L om. UM agh: aghaidh H ach
D athir U aighuidh r aghuid GBC aghuidh t éug a acuis M sginneas amach:
tét a fad L sgingas amach vel sim. HrB tig chugain U a sginios amach a a sgeing
amach M d an: gach U om. M mharbhthach mhillteanach: millus gach eallach L
da ttiged galar U mhillteanach: mhiolltách vel sim. rtBC mheilt-ch a
*
§19. Ó Neimh leathnaigheas fón mbith
reó, sneachta agus oighreadh.
Is ó Neimh sgaoiltear a bhfad
tnúth, fuath agus formad.
From Neimh extend, throughout the world,

hoarfrost, snow and ice.
From Neimh are scattered afar
rage, hatred and jealousy.
om. UM, apart from d in M a Neimh: nimh L nimh Dt nibh a add. a ta

leathnaigheas: lthnuighios H shinnas a fón mbith: for bith L fan mhoigh a b reó
sneachta: reo 7 snect- L roin sneachta H róithshneachta vel sim. rBC
róshneachta G roidhesneachta t snechta a agus: 7 LraC & Gt oighredh: óigri
vel sim. LD oidhreaghe t ædhrach a c Is: 7 L om. HG Neimh: nim L nimh Dt
nibh a add. a t sgaoiltear: tét L sgioltior D thig a a bhfad: ann a d tnúth: add. 7
L fearg a agus: 7 LHGa & t om. M formad: fromud H fromad crossed out and
replaced with formad G
*
§20. Gaoth Neimhe do-bheir gach neach
ársaidh, liath, críon, crotach.
Braon do Neimh do bhuain riu sin
do mhairbhfeadh fir an domhuin.
the wind of Neimh causes everyone to be

aged, grey, withered, stooped.
a drop from Neimh, touching them,
would kill the men of the world.
a Gaoth: preceded by gaoth at foot of previous page H ‘s e gaoth a Neimhe: nime

L neimh HG nimhe DUtM nibhe a do-bheir gach neach: doni neach L do
phiollas go cnáimh doghnídh gach áon M do-bheir: do mháirfedh D bhfagus U

bher a neach: add. ee a b ársaigh… crotach: crion líath arsiodach crithach U
cr< > líath airsuidh M ársaigh: airsighe a crotach: crothach a c neimh: nim L
nimh DUtM nibh a do bhuain riu sin: do buain ris sin L mur sin vel sim.
HrGtBC bunrugh gein U leis fein a da mbainfedh rinn M d do: is do D is
deimin go U go a domhuin: add. ar aonreimh U
*
§21. Is iad sin na haibhne neimhe
téid isin muir thinntighe:
tonna borba bóchna bréin
bháitheas longa is oiléin.
those are the rivers of poison

which go into the fiery sea:
the rough waves of a stinking ocean
which drowns ships and islands.
ab om. M a Is iad … neimhe: insigh < > dhibh 6 arna tri haibhne nibhe a Is iad
sin: ag sin L as íad sin vel sim. HDrGtBC ag so U as iad san C na: add. tri U
neimhe: nime L nimhe vel sim. DUt b téid: do teid U a theid t do bhios a isin:
asan D ‘san U fan t na a thinntighe: ngeinntiligh L dteinntighe vel sim.
HDrGB tin-tri U thintri (?) nísdaighes a c tonna: ar ttonaibh a borba: in betha
L om. Ua bóchna: na bpocarne U na bochna a bréin: bain L bréun D bréine vel
sim. UrtM bruighnadh a breinneadh B bréana C d bháitheas: do baidfed L go
mbaithionn si U a bhathas a do bhaithis M longa: long- L long U longadh t
longaibh vel sim. aM loingeas BC is: 7 LUC & tM agis a agas B oiléin: ailen L
oiléun D olein U oilenedh vel sim. rBC oileanuibh t oileann a oille M
*
§22. Is mé Maoise mac amhra:
ó Dhía fuaras urlabhra,
an dá chlár ’s an tshlat go glic,
is mé sgríobhas mar teaghaid.
I am Moses son of amram:

from God I obtained eloquence,
the two tablets and the staff, cleverly.
It is I who write how they come.
a Is: as HrGtBMC mé: misi L Maoise: maoys vel sim. taC amhra: amhraide
U amhrádh t abhradh a b o Dhía … urlabhra: fuarus anoir o dia morda L aig
436 John Carey
criosd do bhiam ar slabhr- U ó: is ó a & is o M fuaras: fhúarais H fúarios D fúar

r do fuaras M urlabhra: m’airlabruis M om. a c an: is me fuar an U ’s an: is an
L ’s a HDrGtBC 7 a U 7 an a & an M go glic: om. U go: om. LM d is mé
sgríobhas mar: is dim fisraduid cinnus L sgriobaim e mar U is me scrio< > mar
M mar: mar a t teaghaid: tigid L thigim U thigidis a do thuigios M dúnad
t/i/g/i/d L teagh-d tri H tegaid D 7 c- finit teigid trí haibhn-e r téaghaid //
tri // G Finis M Críoch C
Notes
§1. san Innia: H hesitates between san ‘in’ and a ‘from’. the former is supported
by the bulk of the manuscripts, but the latter gives easier sense: this presumably
explains the readings assin L asan a. If we take the viewpoint to be either that of
Moses or that of the Irish poet and his audience, it is difficult to see how India
can be described as ‘our land’. If I am correct, however, in suggesting that one of
the poet’s sources was a description of the fabulous India of Prester John,
whether drawn from the account in ‘the Gaelic Maundeville’ or from one of the
versions of the Letter of Prester John itself, then this phrasing may echo the
perspective of that source.
there are not many other differences between the witnesses. a speaks of asia
instead of India; and for gcantar ‘is chanted’ rt read geintar, ginnter ‘is born’,
while BC have sganntar, sgantor ‘is scanned, composed’ (?).
§2. A mbun aibhne: Literally ‘their source of rivers’. L and a appear to have
independently altered this to a bun aihble ‘from the base of an apple tree’ (with
aibhle for normal abhla, genitive singular of abhall). or perhaps a’s second
source, mentioned above, was a manuscript closely resembling L.
a substitutes adam for eve in the second line, but otherwise there is little
variation among the manuscripts. the names of the rivers in the final line are
surprisingly uniform, apart from a’s eccentric Uibhir and Ortannan ‘Jordan’ for
Teibhir and Dunán; for the latter, L is unique in giving Domna.
§3. dobhar: this word is almost unattested outside glossaries and placenames, and
has been preserved here only in HDG. the branch of the text tradition
represented by rtBC appears to have taken it to be a form of the verb do-bheir
‘gives’, still attested in early Modern Irish; L’s dobher seems to reflect the same
interpretation, while a ttabhar, tabhair Ua give a univerbated and/or conjunct
form of the same verb. M is unfortunately illegible at this point.
the list of phenomena obtained from the Dunán is similar in most of the
manuscripts. L adds drúcht ‘dew’ in the second line, and a curiously replaces
toradh ‘fruit’ with céir ‘wax’ in the third; leas for lacht ‘milk’ in B, also in the third
line, is probably due to omission of a suspension mark over an s. In the fourth
line, the phrase meas abaidh ‘ripe crop of nuts’ has become meas a bhfuil/a bios
‘crop of nuts which is’ in rt; while amhail for abaidh in BC is difficult to
understand – perhaps their exemplar read measamhail as a single word, taking it
to mean something like ‘estimable’.
§4. It is interesting that all of the manuscripts apart from L confirm Sgáile as the
correct reading here, a form found only in DUaM in §2d above; cf. §7c below.
that L disagrees with all of the other witnesses in the present instance indicates
that its adoption of the monosyllabic form in §2 was independent of HrGtBC.
that HG agree on an inferior reading with rtBC shows that all six Mss belong
to a single branch of the text tradition.
rather than use the relatively rare verb scaoinidh ‘scatters’, L has scaoilus with
the same meaning; other variants are sginnter ‘is flung’ (?) t, geinter vel sim. ‘is
born’ aM. UaM also reflect the change of the phrase do nimh to something
beginning with go, although their readings thereafter differ too much for
reconstruction to be possible.42
§5. L gives a considerably simplified version of this quatrain, saying only that it
is from Scail (not teibhir) that there comes a stream that ‘saves the souls of the
world ... the fair stream of Jordan’. otherwise, the only real difference between
the witnesses is that a names the river Uibhir; the same form, already found in
§2 above, recurs in §§6–7 below.
In the third line, the peculiar form Criosta, common to LHGtaB, appears to
be the lectio difficilior; but it yields a hypermetric line.
§6. the stones of the teibhir are heavy rather than dry in UaM, and the
readings of LUaM reflect considerable confusion in the second line: I cannot
tell, however, what variant may lie behind these. although HG agree on a reading
nó clocha buadha ‘or precious stones’, while rtBC have ’s ná clocha buadha ‘and
than precious stones’, I take this to be another case where LDUaM have the
original reading: na clocha buadha ‘the precious stones’ is the subject of the
copula.
§7. D represents the Dead sea as issuing from the teibhir, rather than vice versa;
while a, presumably inadvertently, has the sgáile flow into the red sea. Both a
and t have garbled the name of the tyrrhenian sea, but in different ways.
§8. srotha is tobar is fuaráin: With this collocation cf. ‘tobair 7 fhuarána 7 srotha
fíruisci’ in the late Middle Irish In Cath Catharda.43
42 I am grateful to Kevin Murray for proposing for the variants in a and M the translations
‘as it follows the sea separately/in turn’ and ‘since they fill seas’ respectively. 43 Whitley
stokes (ed. and trans.), In cath catharda (Leipzig, 1909), l. 1742.
438 John Carey
Instead of tigid, L reads tocrad: the corresponding form of tochraidh,

univerbated from do-cuirethar, in the sense ‘comes’.
§9. dhíobh, doininn: Both of these forms are problematical, in that they are
vouched for by nearly all of the manuscripts, but do not rhyme with éolaidh and
ann respectively.44 Perhaps the faulty rhymes are original to the poem;
alternatively, they may reflect a corrupt reading in an intermediate exemplar
shared by all of the witnesses.
eólaidh: this reading, supported by DGM, is the lectio difficilior, contrasting
with the forms eólach and eólaige reflected repectively by L and UrtaBC. DIL
cites one other instance from a poem attributed to the seventeenth-century poet-
priest Pádraigín Haicéad;45 this attribution has been dismissed by Haicéad’s most
recent editor, but the same word appears in another poem that does seem to be
his work.46
§10. Ua differ from the other manuscripts in locating the suckers not
‘throughout the world’ or ‘in the world’ (the latter reading in DtaB), but
‘beneath the plain’ (U) or ‘beneath the dewy plain’ (taking bhreunuidh to
represent bhraonaigh) (a). For the third line, a substitutes another, which can be
translated ‘in the sea which leaves every harbour full’. t describes the suckers as
flooding and ebbing ‘in their streams’ (’na srothaibh) rather than ‘by turns’; and
U has the harbours drained ‘at the right time’ (a gceirtuair) rather than
‘afterwards’.
§11. the variants in this quatrain for the most part pertain to the group LUaM.
thus U and a locate the first two (or three, uniquely in U) suckers in asia and
in Adanæ respectively, rather than in thessaly; and L describes thessaly as tim
‘feeble’, dropping the adverb thall ‘yonder’. a omits the second line, in which
LU reckon two suckers as against three in the other manuscripts; U locates these
in Taimpirne rather than teamplainn, while M inserts an extra line situating
three more suckers in africa. In the third line, L has two suckers rather than
three; aM interpret Isbeirne, surely correctly, as Hesperia. the readings of all of
the manuscripts agree fairly closely for the last line, apart from M, whose version
I cannot translate.
§11a. L, which has assigned two suckers rather than three to both teamplainn
and Hesperia, here makes up the nine by adding two further suckers in the
western ocean. It further associates them with a ‘spring of the White Cow’
44 the exceptions (dhibh vel sim. tC, and the cancelled variant daoib G; doinnionn D) are
presumably secondary attempts to rescue the rhyme. 45 tadhg Ó Donnchadha (ed.),
Saothar filidheachta an Athar Pádraigín Haicéad d’órd San Doiminic (Dublin, 1916), p. 42.
46 Máire Ní Cheallacháin (ed.), Filíocht Pádraigín Haicéad (Dublin, 1962), pp xxi, 7.
(Tipra Bó Finne), a name otherwise attested only of a spring at tara;47 the poet
may have been thinking of Inishboffin (Inis Bó Finne), off the Mayo coast.
§12. For bhfairge (mór) ‘(great) sea’, L substitutes .kar., evidently for cathraigh ‘city’;
M deals with the incongruous reference to a ‘sea of Jerusalem’ differently, changing
the first line to read ‘In the great sea whose name was ocean’. L differs markedly
from all of the other manuscripts in the second couplet, with text that can be
translated ‘which fills the harbours of the globe, and draws the ocean to itself ’. the
variants in the other manuscripts have no real bearing upon the meaning.
§13. i gceannairge: I have here emended against all of the manuscripts, as

confusion seems to have set in at an early point in the poem’s transmission. H
reads a ccetharde, closely followed by a ccethairde in G; the word ceathardha,
meaning ‘fourfold’ or (as a substantive) ‘tetrad’, seems, however, to make no
sense here. the other manuscripts offer a cceannairde (the reading that appears
to lie behind the variants in rtBC), na cceatha a n-áirde ‘as showers on high’ (?)
D, ag certfhairge ‘at a true sea’ (?) U, d’fíoráirdibh ‘to true heights’ (?) M; this bit
of the text is omitted in L and a.
§14. In the second line, L speaks of the ‘wild sea’, and M of the ‘great mighty
waves of the sea’. the phrase na mara móiréarmhuidh is peculiar in that the
article points to feminine gender and the adjective to masculine. originally a
neuter noun, muir was later inflected either as masculine or feminine but usually
as the latter: the situation in our text could be explained by postulating that the
poem originally had an mhara moréarmhuidh, and that a subsequent copy that
served as the exemplar for all of the surviving witnesses changed the article to
match the word’s more familiar treatment as a feminine, but kept the form of the
adjective for the sake of rhyme.
In the third line, the copula found at the beginning in LDUtaM is necessary
for correct syllable count. agreement of LU against all of the other manuscripts
in reading b(h)ios is hard to reconcile with the pattern of their other readings;
perhaps coincidence is responsible. Where HGrtBC end the line with mar sin
‘thus’, LDaM have dar linn ‘in our opinion’, and U the isolated variant ara
lionad ‘for its filling’.
§14a. U here introduces an additional quatrain, further describing the foul

weather mentioned at the close of §14. the idea that hell is situated in the north
is common in medieval thinking generally, and well attested in Ireland.48
47 edmund Hogan, Onomasticon goedelicum (Dublin, 1910), s.n., cites edward Gwynn (ed.
and trans.), The metrical dindshenchas, 1 (Dublin, 1903), p. 22, where this is given as one of the
names of a well at tara in the poem ‘temair toga na tulach’, variously attributed to Cúán ua
Lothcháin and Cináed ua hartucáin. see Whitley stokes, ‘the prose tales in the rennes
dindshenchas’, RC, 15 (1894), pp 272–336, 418–84 at p. 281 §10. 48 For some discussion,
440 John Carey
§15. M departs sharply from the other manuscripts in the first couplet, with a
version that can be rendered as ‘those are the suckers who wet the globe, and
drain the dewy world’. there is further variation in the second line on the part
of LDU (the line is omitted by a): instead of a bhfuil ‘whatever there is’, L reads
ferus ‘which pours’ and D eiraighios ‘which arises’; while U’s version of the line
appears to mean ‘which carries (do bheirios garbled from ferus ‘which pours’, as
in L?) on whoever will be outside’. rtBC (joined, curiously, by M) call the world
braonach ‘dewy’ rather than buidhe ‘yellow’. there is quite close agreement
among the manuscripts in the second couplet, although a has ‘and which leaves
every harbour full’ in the third line. Anois ‘now’ for anocht ‘tonight’ in D must
be due to the omission of a suspension stroke over final s.
§16. there is relatively little variation in most of this quatrain: note, however,
that L and U speak of the rivers as being respectively in the ‘kingdom’ or
‘border’ of hell rather than in its cave; and that the old future 1 sg. form ní chéal
is only preserved in LHDG (vs. forms of ní cheilfead aM, of pres. 1 pl. ní
cheileam rtBC; and nochtaigh me ‘I revealed’ in M). In the final line, the near-
unanimous witness of the other manuscripts indicates that is in H is not original;
& should accordingly be expanded as agus.
With regard to the names of the rivers, the branch of the text tradition
represented by HrGtBC agrees in taking them to be Neimh (‘Poison’?),
Aghuidh and Acois. the readings of LDUaM clearly reflect Nimh as the name
for the first river; but for the remaining two the evidence is more complicated. If
we except Acis in U (which may simply be due to the scribe’s having skipped
ahead to the third name), the variants for the second river are all monosyllables:
Agh (‘Fight’) L, Ach (‘alas!’) D, Eug (‘Death’) a, Fúat (‘Loathing’) M; see the
note on §18 below for evidence that the name’s original form was in fact
monosyllabic. For the third name, Occais L and Achais D point to a form like that
in HrGtBC; while mistaking c for t has given Athis (‘shame’) a, and a further
mistaking of s for r gives Athir U. (M here seems to have drawn on a secondary
source, as occasionally elsewhere, as it disagrees with Ua to read Acuis.)
the branch of the text tradition represented by Ua appears to have
influenced one of the redactors of the Fenian tale Bruidhean Chaorthainn, who
gives the three sons of the king of Inis tuile (that is, thule) the names Nimh,
Ágh and Aithis.49
It is curious that almost all of the manuscripts show lenition in the phrase
ifrinn thinntighe, although lenition of t after n is normally avoided at all stages of
the language.
see my note, ‘Where is Hell?’, Béaloideas, 50 (1982), 42–3; and see also my remarks in In tenga
bithnua, p. 346. 49 Pádraic Mac Piarais, ed., Bruidhean Chaorthainn: sgéal fiannaidheachta
(Dublin, 1912), p. 15; see also Jeremiah Curtin, Irish folk-tales (1943), p. 116, for an oral
version in which the names appear as ‘Neim, aig, aitceas’.
§17. In this quatrain, the testimony of U confirms Acois as the original form of
the name of the third river listed in §16 (M, which transposes the quatrain’s
couplets, substitutes the name of the first river, Nimh; see further the note on §21
below). While all manuscripts are essentially agreed that the river blights
blossoms, grass and fruits, there is some slight variation in detail; thus D speaks
of ‘the blossoms of berries’ (bláth subh). Where most of the manuscripts end the
third line with some version of gluaistear fo seach, LUa have variants ending in
amach, with later rhyme: tét amach ‘goes forth’ L, a shinnis amac ‘that strikes
forth’ (?) U, a sginnes amach ‘that springs forth’ U. all of these probably go back
to a sginneas amach, taken inadvertently from the corresponding line in the next
quatrain (M, reading a glúasis, seems again to be drawing on the other branch of
the text tradition here). Instead of meteors, L has ‘wind and fire’ (gaoth 7 tened).
§18. the forms of the river’s name here conform to the variants already given in
§16: in the first line, Agh L, Aghaidh vel sim. HGtBC, Ach D, Athir U Éug a
Fhúath M (Elighuid r is peculiar: a form like Aghaidh has evidently been
conflated with another word); in the third line, Agh L, Aghaidh vel sim.
HGrtBC, Ach D, Athir U, Éug a and the peculiar Acuis M. It is the
monosyllabic variants in LDUaM that give correct syllable count: although the
presence of several other hypermetric lines in the poem means that this is not a
secure argument, it places the balance of likelihood in favour of this branch of
the text’s transmission in this case.
For the afflictions caused by the river, LUa have the following variants:
‘plague and leprosy and senselessness’ L, ‘heavy sickness and long fever’ U
(which does not have ‘heavy sickness’ in the preceding line), ‘which withers and
afflicts the body’ a. M’s agreement with the other manuscripts may reflect either
conservatism here or, as occasionally elsewhere, the use of a second source. For
‘the deadly ruinous pestilence’, L has ‘the pestilence which blights every herd’,
while U reads ‘every pestilence from which comes sickness’.
§19. U omits this quatrain, as does M apart from the last line (see note on §21
below); while L has transposed it and §20. there are several points at which the
readings of H are inferior: in reading roin (perhaps for ráin ‘torrents’) for reó
‘hoarfrost’; in omitting the copula in the third line, required by syllable count
and present in DrtaBC (this reading shared with G); and in reading fromud
‘trial’ (?) for format ‘jealousy’, as in LDrtaBMC (the erroneous reading having
also been originally present in G, which, however, crossed it out and replaced it
with the correct one).
a few other isolated variants are not of much significance. there is the same
division between the forms Neimh and Nimh for the river’s name that was
observed in §16, save that t here opts for the Nimh form in line with its
occasional agreement with the other branch of the text tradition. Where most
442 John Carey
manuscripts have Neimh extend its influence throughout the world, in L it is

‘upon the world’ and in a ‘throughout the plain’; a furthermore substitutes the
verb shinnas, perhaps for shíneas ‘stretches’. rGtBC run ‘hoarfrost’ and ‘snow’
together in a compound róithshneachta vel sim. ‘freezing snow’. In the second
couplet, ‘are scattered afar’ in most manuscripts is replaced by the simpler ‘goes
afar’ in L and ‘comes there’ in a, while a adds fearg ‘anger’ to the list of hostile
feelings of which the river is the cause.
§20. the reading Neimh rather than Neimhe (or Nimhe), clearly inferior on
grounds of both metre and grammar, is shared by HG: a further reflection of the
closeness of these two manuscripts. the distribution of forms of the river’s name
among the manuscripts is the same as in the preceding quatrain.
In the first line, the deuterotonic verb do-bheir seems to have disconcerted
some copyists, as there is a good deal of variation. Instead of do-bheir gach neach
‘causes everyone to be’, L has do-ni neach ‘makes anyone’, while M offers two
clauses: do phiollas go cnáimh, do-ghnídh gach áon ‘betrays to the bone (?), makes
everyone’. a simplifies the verbal form to bher, while D and U replace it
respectively with do mháirfedh ‘would kill’ and bhfagus ‘leaves’. apart from some
variation in sequence, the list of the debilities caused by Neimh is the same in all
manuscripts save that M omits crotach ‘stooped’, and U changes it to crithach
‘trembling’. Crothach in a would have the meaning ‘shapely’: incongruous in this
context, and evidently simply a slip.
at the end of the third line, HrGtBC agree in reading mur sin vel sim.,
leaving the line two syllables short (as does leis fein ‘by itself ’ in a). of the
remaining readings, D’s do bhúain ríu sin ‘touching them’ seems to give the best
sense, with do buain ris sin ‘touching it’ (the world?) L and da mbainfedh rinn ‘if
it should touch us’ M as variants. I can make nothing of bunrugh gein in U. U
goes on to give a hypermetric version of the final line, which can be translated ‘it
is certain that it would kill the men of the world in one go’.
§21. there is general agreement among the manuscripts with respect to the first
couplet, apart from L’s associating the rivers with the ‘pagan sea’ rather than the
fiery one, and the presence in a of evidently corrupt and in any case only partly
legible variants for which I can offer no confident translation.
In the second couplet, the variants reflect disagreement as to whether bóchna
is inflected (as elsewhere) as a feminine: HG read bréin, rhyming with oiléin, D
gives the pair bréun : oiléun, while L has instead bain ‘white’; the readings of the
other manuscripts reflect feminine genitive singular bréine. although
grammatically preferable, bréine yields a hypermetric line; it is also noteworthy
that Ua, despite reading bréine and bruighnadh respectively, end the fourth line
with olein, oileann. these considerations (together with the stemmatic weight of
the agreement of LHDG in ending the third line with a monosyllable) indicate
that the anomalous bréin is the form that stood in the exemplar. Note further that
L speaks (less disagreeably) of ‘waves of the world, of the white ocean’; and that
instead of longa vel sim. ‘ships’ BC have loingeas ‘a fleet’.
the penultimate quatrain in M requires separate treatment. It runs as
follows:
Ó acuis do thig
tonna borba bochne bréine,
do bhaithis longabh & oille:
tnúdh: fuath formad biadan [for bíd ann?],
cluadan [for cluan-dán?] 7 culchainte.
From acuis come

the rough waves of a stinking ocean
which drowns ships and islands.
rage, hatred, jealousy are there (?),
the art of trickery (?), and slander.
Here, the first line recalls the opening of §17, which is, as we have seen, altered
in M; the second and third lines correspond to the second couplet of §21; and the
fourth line is a version of §19d. the final line resembles nothing in other copies
of our poem, and I can only guess at the meaning of the word cluadan that it
contains.
§22. that D agrees with HG throughout this quatrain is a strong indication that
these manuscripts preserve it in its original form. there is, in fact, little variation
among all of the witnesses. In the second line, L has ‘I received honour from
great God’; while U, altering airlabhra to air shlabhraidh, has ‘I belong to Christ,
on a leash’.50 the word airlabhra is omitted entirely by a. Introducing the phrase
is me fuar ‘it is I who received’ into the third line, U omits the cheville go glic
‘cleverly’; while LM simply omit the go, turning glic into an attributive adjective.
there is a little further variation in the final line, where L reads ‘From me is the
investigation how they come’, and M has ‘It is I who write, as I understand’.
50 Compare the line ‘guth senchon ar slabraid’ (‘the voice of an old hound on a chain’), from
a satirical verse in the third Middle Irish metrical treatise: roisín McLaughlin (ed. and trans.),
Early Irish satire (Dublin, 2008), pp 162–3 §69.
ruaidhrí Ó Caiside’s contribution to the

annals of Ulster
Da N I e L M C C a rt H Y
an essay discussing the compilation of the annals of Ulster (aU) seems an

appropriate celebration of Katharine simms’ distinguished academic career for
at least three reasons. First, her contribution to the 1983 edition of aU by seán
Mac airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill is emphatically acknowledged in the preface
to that edition.1 second, her article ‘Charles Lynegar, the Ó Luinín family, and
the story of seanchas’ surveyed the intellectual tradition and family background
of the principal scribe of aU.2 third, at a personal level, in 1992 she gave me
valuable advice when I first began to study the trinity manuscript of aU, tCD
1282 (Ms H), and then early in 2002 she crucially drew my attention to Brian Ó
Cuív’s identification of ruaidhrí Ó Caiside as the first scribe of the Bodleian
manuscript of aU, Ms rawlinson B. 489 (Ms r).3 this was to have far-reaching
consequences for my understanding of the compilation of aU, and it is the
purpose of this essay to set forth in summary fashion an account of this
compilation and Ó Casaide’s role in it.
I D e N t I F I C at I o N o F Ó C a I s I D e ’ s C o N t r I B U t I o N t o a U
Modern scholarship mentioned Ó Caiside’s name neither frequently nor

prominently in discussions of aU and its manuscripts, despite the fact that his
obit in Ms r at 1541 includes the statement that ‘he wrote this book for the
greater part’.4 In 1901, Bartholomew Mac Carthy, while denying him any scribal
role, inferred from his obit that ‘he was the author of that recension’ up to 1506,
evidently considering him responsible for the numerous textual variants found
1 AU, ed. Mac airt and Mac Niocaill, pp vii, xii (‘the collation has been carried out … with
the aid of Dr Katharine simms … and I should like here to express my gratitude for her
unstinted help’, ‘to Dr Katharine simms … for her unflagging assistance in collating the text
of H’). For her most recent contribution, see Katharine simms, Medieval Gaelic sources
(Dublin, 2009), pp 19–38 (ch. 1, ‘annals’). 2 Katharine simms, ‘Charles Lynegar, the Ó
Luinín family and the study of seanchas’ in toby Barnard, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and Katharine
simms (eds), A miracle of learning. Studies in manuscripts and Irish learning: essays in honour of
William O’Sullivan (alderhurst, 1998), pp 266–83 at pp 267–73 (intellectual tradition), pp
275–6 (Ó Luinín family). 3 Brian Ó Cuív (ed.), Catalogue of Irish language manuscripts in the
Bodleian library at Oxford and Oxford College libraries (Dublin, 2001), pp 156–9 (identification
of Ó Caiside). 4 AU, iii, p. 633.
444
Ruaidhrí Ó Caiside’s contribution to the Annals of Ulster 445
in Ms r.5 In 1958–9, aubrey Gwynn, citing the authority of richard Best and
Ludwig Bieler, stated that it was to Ó Luinín we owe ‘the whole of the B-text
[Ms r]’, and so rejected the assertion in Ó Caiside’s obit as ‘simply not true’.
Instead, Gwynn conjectured that he ‘was probably responsible for the last
section of the B-text which runs from 1528, with exceptionally full entries, to the
year of his death in 1541’.6 Gearóid Mac Niocaill did not mention Ó Caiside in
either his valuable monograph of 1975, The medieval Irish annals, or his preface
to the 1983 edition of aU.7 In 1979, Francis John Byrne essentially repeated
Gwynn, writing that Ms r ‘was continued after … 1528 by ruaidhrí Ó
Casaide’.8 In 1998, Nollaig Ó Muraíle similarly repeated Gwynn’s view in his
introduction to the reprint of the Hennessy and Mac Carthy edition of aU as
‘ruaidhrí Ó Caiside … continued adding to the B-text from the time of Ó
Luinín’s death until his own death thirteen years later’.9
In 2001, however, Ó Cuív, having first consulted with tomás Ó Concheanainn
and William o’sullivan, authoritatively identified that Ó Caiside had written fos
1–32ra9 of Ms r, and that Ó Luinín, the principal scribe of Ms H, had written
fos 32ra10–107vb12, and he remarked of their writing that ‘the two hands are
similar in many respects’.10 From this, and the fact that earlier Best, Bieler,
Gwynn, Byrne, Mac Niocaill and Ó Muraíle had all considered Ó Luinín the
sole scribe of Ms r up to the early sixteenth century, it was apparent that Ó
Casaide had learned to reproduce a convincing facsimile of Ó Luinín’s
handwriting. Further, Ó Cuív listed eleven points of differentiation between the
two hands, the fifth of which was ‘roman numerals are more commonly used for
dates (we may contrast the second scribe’s ‘.dcccco.lo iiio’ with Ó Caiside’s
‘952’)’.11 this detail immediately attracted my interest, because I had often
remarked the use of arabic numerals by the main interpolating hand of Ms H,
given the siglum ‘H2’ in the Mac airt and Mac Niocaill edition. While arabic
numerals are found as marginalia in Irish annalistic compilations, they were not
used systematically for the chronological apparatus until 1627, when Conall
Mageoghagan undertook to translate an ‘old Irish booke’ into english, and in
this he regularly represented the chronological apparatus in arabic numerals.
Not long afterwards, in 1632, Micheál Ó Cléirigh similarly employed arabic
5 AU, iv, p. x. 6 aubrey Gwynn, ‘Cathal Óg Mac Maghnusa and the annals of Ulster’, pt I,
Clogher Record, 2 (1958), 230–43 at 233 (Best and Bieler), and pt ii, ibid., 3 (1959), 370–84 at
382 (citation). reprinted with an introduction in Nollaig Ó Muraíle, Cathal Óg Mac
Maghnusa and the Annals of Ulster (enniskillen, 1998), pp 27–51. 7 Gearóid Mac Niocaill,
The medieval Irish annals (Dublin, 1975), p. 37 (scribes of Mss H and r); Mac airt and Mac
Niocaill (eds), AU, pp viii–ix (scribes of Mss H and r). 8 F.J. Byrne, 1000 years of Irish
script (oxford, 1979), p. 32. 9 Nollaig Ó Muraíle (ed.), Annála Uladh: Annals of Ulster from
the earliest times to the year 1541 (4 vols, Dublin, 1998), a facsimile reprint of Hennessy and
Mac Carthy (eds), AU, i–iv, with Ó Muraíle’s ‘Introduction to the 1998 reprint’ at vol. 1, pp
[1]–[45]; p. [6] (citation), see p. [19]. see also Ó Muraíle, Cathal Óg, pp 8, 17 (the same view
repeated). 10 Ó Cuív (ed.), Catalogue, pp 153–63 (rawlinson B. 489), p. 158 (citation).
11 Ó Cuív (ed.), Catalogue, p. 157.
446 Daniel Mc Carthy
numerals throughout his compilation of the annals of the Four Masters.12 thus,
Ó Caiside’s use of them to write the aD datum ‘952’ in the early sixteenth
century was innovatory. In consequence, I examined fos 1–32r of Ms r and
found that Ó Caiside had indeed repeatedly, but erratically, replaced the aD data,
which in Ms H had been written by Ó Luinín systematically in roman
numerals, with arabic numerals.13 Collation of these with the many instances of
arabic numerals in the H2 interpolations in Ms H showed that they had been
written by the same hand (see fig. 26.1).14 Moreover, Ó Cuív remarked the
blackness of Ó Luinín’s ink compared to that of Ó Caiside, and the same colour
contrast is seen with the H2 interpolations. Ó Cuív also remarked the
differentiation in some of their letter forms, especially ‘a’ and ‘g’, and indeed
collation of these independently confirmed the identification of hand H2 with Ó
Caiside.15 In 1901, Mac Carthy had identified these Ms H interpolations as the
work of Cathal Mac Maghnusa, and had been followed in this identification by
Mac Niocaill and Ó Muraíle.16
Ó Caiside’s arabic numerals were indeed to prove an invaluable index to his
scribal and compilatory contributions to aU. For example, in his account of Ms
H, Mac Carthy had noted that at fo. 130r a ‘very coarse and large’ hand had
commenced, followed, he supposed, by another hand that continued to the end
at fo. 143v.17 However, examination of these concluding folios immediately
disclosed Ó Caiside’s distinctive arabic numerals dispersed throughout the text,
and likewise his characteristic ‘a’ and ‘g’s, and moreover that this ‘coarse and
large’ hand had, by fo. 133v, converged towards a good facsimile of the hand of
Ó Luinín.18 thus, his arabic numerals helped to establish that these concluding
folios were all written by Ó Caiside. Moreover, it was now apparent that it was
here he had practised in order to be able to reproduce his convincing facsimile
of Ó Luinín’s handwriting found in Ms r. thus, at this point, the enquiry
12 D.P. Mc Carthy, The Irish annals: their genesis, evolution and history (Dublin, 2008), pp 286–
7 (Mageoghagan’s ‘old Irish booke’), pls 4, 6–8, 10–11 (arabic marginalia), pls 12–13
(Mageoghagan and Ó Cléirigh’s arabic chronological apparatus). 13 Ó Luinín wrote the aD
data systematically in roman numerals up to aU 1484; over aU 1485–9, he mostly reproduced
Ó Caiside’s arabic numerals in a format that changed erratically from year to year. 14 D.P.
Mc Carthy, ‘the original compilation of the Annals of Ulster’, Studia Celtica, 38 (2004), 69–
95 at 74, fig. 1 (Ms H vs Ms r arabic numerals). on 20 Nov. 2004, I presented a paper
entitled ‘the identity and contribution of hand H2 to tCD 1282 (aU)’ to an tionóil, school
of Celtic studies, DIas. 15 Ó Cuív (ed.), Catalogue, p. 157 (ink contrast and letter form
differences). 16 Mac Carthy (ed.), AU, iv, pp ii, ix (identification of Mac Maghnusa as
author of the ferial and epactal data, and other entries including the births of his children);
Mac airt and Mac Niocaill (eds), AU, p. ix (‘one of the interpolating hands (H2) is that of
Cathal Mac Magnusa’); Ó Muraíle, AU i, p. [6] (citing and endorsing Mac Niocaill). 17 Mac
Carthy (ed.), AU, iv, p. ii. 18 a good example of Ó Caiside’s own hand is found on the
bottom margin of Ms H, fo. 35r, where he has inscribed the quatrain commencing, ‘sgith mo
crodh ón sgribinn …’, see also Kuno Meyer, ‘anecdota from Irish Mss’, Gaelic Journal, 8
(1897), 49 (ed.). remarkably, neither the Hennessy edition nor the Mac airt and Mac Niocaill
edition registers this entry. In view of the sentiments of scribal weariness expressed it seems
likely that Ó Caiside wrote it while transcribing this folio into Ms r, for he ceased
Figure 26.1 on the left, the first three lines of aU 952 from Ms H fo. 50va written by Ó
Luinín except for the least significant digits of the aD ‘l∙iio’ and the super-linear ‘ał∙953o’,
which were written by Ó Caiside.1 on the right, the last line of Ó Caiside’s transcription in
Ms r fo. 32ra9 wherein he has substituted the arabic ‘952’ for the roman ‘dcccc°∙l∙ii°’, and
then Ó Luinín has taken over the transcription in the following line. Note Ó Caiside’s
facsimile in Ms r of Ó Luinín’s handwriting, his lighter ink and his arabic numerals in both
manuscripts. Note also the rubrication of initial letters in Ms r, giving it a more impressive
appearance than Ms H.
1 For aU 923–81, Ó Caiside has completed the aD in space left by Ó Luinín, usually in roman but occasionally
in arabic numerals, for example, aU 948–9. He also superscribed an alias aD for aU 890–1012.
prompted by simms’ notification of Ó Cuív’s identification had revealed that Ó

Caiside had made three major contributions to the compilation of aU, namely,
the numerous H2 additions to Ms H, the writing of Ms H fos 130r–143v, and
the transcription of aU 431–952 of Ms H into Ms r fos 1–32r, which included
many of his own H2 additions. In fact, James Ware had identified two of these
contributions in 1639 when he wrote of Ó Caiside that ‘praeter partem regesti
[Clochorensis] scripsit posteriorem partem annalium Ultonensium, una cum
varijs interpolationibus prioris partis’, but no subsequent scholar had taken heed
of his statement.19 Consequently, I undertook to publish an account of these
observations, which has since appeared.20 In this account, because of Ó Caiside’s
overt predilection for arabic numerals and his having interpolated a large
amount of the ferial, epactal and alternative aD data into Ms H, I characterized
his primary role as ‘the authority on chronological matters’, while at the same
time drawing attention to substantial evidence indicating ‘that Ó Caiside’s actual
competence in chronological matters was moderate, and not adequate to the
considerable demands of his task’.21
However, subsequent to the publication of that paper I began to observe
features of the text of aU that implied rather that Ó Caiside had served as the
compiler of the exemplar used by Ó Luinín for the writing of Ms H. this
conclusion arose from the observation that frequently Ó Caiside’s H2 additions
exhibited the following distinctive features:22 first, his preference for arabic
numerals; second, his desire either to furnish chronological precision for entries,
transcription just fifteen folios later. 19 James Ware, De scriptoribus Hiberniæ (Dublin, 1639;
repr. Farnborough, 1966), p. 83 (citation); Walter Harris (trans.), The history and antiquities of
Ireland (3 vols, Dublin, 1739–46), ii, p. 93 (translated as: ‘Besides part of the Registry of
Clogher … he writ the latter part of the annals of Ulster, together with many amendments of
the first part’). 20 D.P. Mc Carthy, ‘the original compilation of the Annals of Ulster’, Studia
Celtica, 38 (2004), 69–95. 21 Mc Carthy, ‘original compilation’, 76. 22 Mc Carthy, Irish
or to provide an additional entry with alternative chronology, typically

commencing with ‘uel’; and third, his repeated use of brief phrases emphasizing
the year as ‘hoc anno’ or ‘hic’ or ‘in bliadhain-si’. these temporal emphatics are
incongruent and alien in an annalistic context where the year boundaries are
clearly delimited by the successive ‘K’s.
For example, all of the eight entries registering the births of Cathal Mac
Maghnusa’s children were written by Ó Caiside, and all commence either with
‘Hic’ or ‘Hoc anno’, five provide chronological precision using either a feast day
or a season, and two others incorporate arabic numerals defining Julian dates.23
However, when I began to encounter entries exhibiting all of these features that
were written by Ó Luinín, I realized that the most likely explanation was that
these entries had in fact been first drafted by Ó Caiside, and then subsequently
transcribed by Ó Luinín. For example:24
aU 1395.1: Pilib Mag uidhir do eg in bliadhain-si … fa buaidh ongtha 7

aithrighi 17 Kl. Apr.
aU 1420.8: Goffraigh h-Ua Daimhin d’h-eg 13 Kalendas Iulii …
aU 1432.20: Cíthruadh Mac rithbertaigh do marbadh in bliadhain-si, 12
Kalendas Augusti.
Here, we find arabic numerals identical in shape to those of Ó Caiside – precise

Julian dates, and the temporal emphasis ‘in bliadhain-si’ – all written by Ó
Luinín, but these features all suggest that the entries had been first compiled by
Ó Caiside. the frequency with which Ó Caiside had employed ‘Hoc anno’ or
‘Hic’ in his earlier H2 additions prompted me to survey all instances of this
feature over aU 431–1179, using the invaluable CeLt electronic edition, and
this disclosed seventy-seven instances in all, of which Ó Luinín wrote sixty-one
and Ó Caiside sixteen.25 again, from their textual features I concluded that Ó
Caiside had compiled all of these entries. Further, forty-two of these instances
commenced with ‘uel’, and so supplied a duplicate entry with an alternative
chronology, and eighteen of these specifically cited an alternative source as
‘alios’, ‘alium librum’, ‘in aliis libris’, ‘alii dicunt’, ‘Dicunt scoiti’ or ‘Librum
Monachorum’.26 Now, on a number of considerations I had already concluded
that the primary source for Ms H up to c.1484 had been a chronicle originally
compiled by the Uí Chianáin of Fermanagh in c.1338, and subsequently
annals, pp 316–17 (H2 features). 23 Mac Carthy (ed.), AU, iii, pp 256, 260, 262, 268, 280,
284, 300, 310 (Mac Maghnusa births). 24 Mac Carthy (ed.), AU, iii, pp 28–30, 88, 124
(citations, except on p. 30, where Mac Carthy misrepresents ‘17’ as ‘decimo septimo’). see also
Mc Carthy, Irish annals, p. 317 (Ó Luinín transcribing Ó Caiside’s exemplar). all references
to aU entries by anno Domini in this paper are to the manuscript aD datum. 25 the
CeLt (Corpus of electronic texts) edition of aU is available at www.ucc.ie/celt/irllist.html.
26 Mc Carthy, Irish Annals, p. 317 (survey of ‘hoc anno’ and ‘hic’).
continued by them down to c.1484.27 From the explicit allusions in these entries
to other sources it was clear that these duplicates were the consequence of Ó
Casaide collating this Uí Chianáin chronicle with other sources, but, rather than
endeavour to synchronize their common entries, he duplicated them, typically
commencing his duplicate with ‘uel’. Furthermore, examination of those entries
citing the sources of Liber Cuanach and Liber Dub dá Lethe, which entries,
while principally written by Ó Luinín but with additions by Ó Caiside,
convinced me on similar grounds that it was Ó Caiside who had first drafted
them.28 From all these observations, I concluded that Ó Caiside had been
collating a variety of sources against the Uí Chianain chronicle, which he had
repeatedly interpolated, and this was then used as the exemplar for writing Ms
H by Ó Luinín up to c.1484. It thus emerged that Ó Caiside had been involved
in an editorial role from the earliest stages of the compilation of Ms H.
Consequently, in 2008 I published the conclusion that ‘the editorial compiler of
the text and chronological apparatus of aU was Ó Caiside, not Mac Maghnusa’,
whose contribution had in fact been ‘as patron’ of the compilation.29
More recently, however, I have had an opportunity to examine more closely
the distribution of Ó Caiside’s other temporal emphatic, his repeated insertion
of ‘in bliadain-si’, the Irish equivalent of ‘hoc anno’. the earliest occurrence of
this in aU is his marginal H2 inscription of aU 752.13, which recounts the
arrival of a ‘whale’ on the Boirche coast. In the Clonmacnoise group of annals,
this entry is located at 744, but Ó Caiside retarded it by nine years, and, to
emphasize this, he concluded his addition as ‘… an bliadain-si, scilicet anno
Domini 752’.30 While most of the subsequent instances of ‘an bliadain-si’ up to
1200 were written by Ó Luinín, some of them show very clearly by their content
that they were drafted by Ó Caiside. For example:
aU 999.1: Hic est octauus sexagissimus quincentisimus ab aduentu sancti

Patrici ad babtizandos scotos. Bissextilis & embolismus isin bliadain
sin. Hic est millisimus annus ab Incarnatione Domini. [a marginal entry by Ó
Caiside.]31
aU 1014.1: Hic est annus octauus Circuli Decinouinalis & hic est .ccccc. &
.lxxxii. annus ab aduentu sancti Patrici ad babtizandos scotos. Feil
Grigoir ria n-Init & Minchaisc I samradh isin bliadain-si quod non
auditum est ab antiquis temporibus.
27 Mc Carthy, Irish Annals, pp 267–9 (Uí Chianáin chronicle). the chronological apparatus
of Ms H is written in a uniform format over aU 431–1484, but thereafter it varies randomly
from year to year. 28 Mc Carthy, Irish Annals, pp 198–203 (Liber Cuanach), pp 224–5 (Liber
Dub da Leithi). 29 Mc Carthy, Irish annals, p. 316 (citations), pp 316–22 (Ó Caiside, Ó
Luinín and Mac Maghnusa contributions to the compilation of aU). 30 Mac airt and Mac
Niocaill (eds), AU, p. 208 (aU 752.13); Mc Carthy, Irish annals, pp 165–6 (discussion of the
meaning of the entry); D.P. Mc Carthy, ‘Chronological synchronisation of the Irish annals’ at
www.irish-annals.cs.tcd.ie, s.a. 744 (retardation of aU 752.13). 31 Mac airt and Mac
Here we have repeated instances of ‘hic’ introducing chronological synchronisms,

together with the Irish temporal emphatic ‘isin bliadain-si’ embedded in
substantially Latin text, all written by Ó Luinín, while Ó Caiside has subse-
quently added the marginal inscription asserting aU 999 to be the thousandth
year from the Incarnation. all these details attest to Ó Caiside’s authorship of Ó
Luinín’s exemplar.
of course, in these earlier centuries of aU, Latin predominates, and so it was
more appropriate for Ó Caiside to employ ‘hoc anno’ or ‘hic’, but in the later
centuries where Irish prevails, even a casual examination shows ‘in bliadain-si’ to
occur very frequently. thus, again with the assistance of CeLt’s electronic
edition of aU, I surveyed the distribution of this feature over 1300–1539,
counting the number of instances in successive twenty-year intervals, together
with the number of ‘hoc anno’ instances and the number of entries, and the
results of this survey are shown below (table 26.1).
Table 26.1 A survey over 1300–1539 at twenty-year intervals of the number of

occurrences of ‘in b[h]liadain-si’ (No. ‘bliad.’), of ‘hoc anno’ (No. ‘hoc’), of entries
not including the initial chronological apparatus of each year (No. Entries), and the
ratio No. Entries/No. ‘bliad.’ (Entries/‘bliad.’). Totals of all counts are shown below.
AD No. No. No. Entries

range ‘bliad.’ ‘hoc’ Entries ‘bliad.’
1300–19 3 0 151 50.3
1320–39 10 0 149 14.9
1340–59 12 1 223 18.6
1360–79 33 1 213 6.5
1380–99 37 4 160 4.3
1400–19 74 1 153 2.1
1420–39 86 2 190 2.2
1440–59 90 1 168 1.9
1460–79 126 4 244 1.9
1480–99 341 16 605 1.8
1500–19 125 5 272 2.2
1520–39 130 12 280 2.2
Totals 1067 47 2808 –
this survey disclosed well over a thousand instances of ‘in bliadain-si’ and
almost fifty instances of ‘hoc anno’, with the great majority occurring within the
years 1400–1539, which period effectively includes the combined lifespans of
Mac Maghnusa and Ó Caiside. they occur most frequently over 1480–99,
during which period Mac Maghnusa initiated the compilation and it clearly was
at its most intense, where ‘in bliadain-si’ is found in more than half of the 605
entries. While the number of entries per year reduces in the subsequent four
decades, ‘in bliadain-si’ still occurs in about half of these. on the other hand it
can be seen that, while Ó Caiside never completely abandoned his use of ‘hoc
anno’, its incidence does not compare with that of his Irish version. regarding
the implications of these results, firstly it seems inevitable that we should
attribute to Ó Caiside the compilation of those entries incorporating ‘in bliadain-
si’ or ‘hoc anno’, whether written by himself or Ó Luinín. this then implies that
Ó Caiside compiled over eleven hundred entries. Moreover, since Ó Caiside did
not include ‘in bliadain-si’ in every entry that he compiled and inscribed as H2,
then he must also be considered the probable compiler of most of the entries that
do not incorporate ‘in bliadain-si’. secondly, we note that the incidence of ‘in
bliadain-si’ remains virtually constant over 1500–39, and this surely implies that
Ó Caiside similarly compiled most of these 552 entries over these forty years. I
conclude, therefore, that Ó Caiside remained the principal compiler of entries
for aU throughout the entire period from the initiation of its compilation by
Mac Maghnusa up until Ó Caiside’s death in 1541, when annalistic compilation
ceased.32 Indeed, given that Ó Caiside had played the primary editorial role in
the compilation of both Ms H and Ms r, one would surely expect him to
maintain an interest in and responsibility for the continuation of Ms r for as
long as he was able.
t H e C o M P I L at I o N o F a U ’ s M a N U s C r I P t s
since the evidence rehearsed above shows that Ó Caiside played the crucial role
of editor in the compilation of aU from its inception, it seems worthwhile to
review this compilation and identify the separate contributions of Mac
Maghnusa, Ó Caiside, Ó Luinín and ruaidhrí Mac Craith, and also to construct
an approximate chronology for these. While there are no interjections by either
scribe to indicate their time of writing, there are a number of implicit time
constraints on this as follows:
Niocaill (eds), AU, p. 428 (identify the marginal addition to aU 999.1 as ‘add. Marg. H1’, but
the details of the hand show it to be Ó Caiside). 32 after 1541, the only years with entries
are 1549, 1551, 1564, 1580, 1584, 1586 and 1588. Mc Carthy, Irish annals, pp 320–1 (proposed
that Ms r was in the control of Ó Luinín over 1507–28, but I do not maintain that view now).
1. the fact that Ó Luinín ceased writing Ms H at fo. 129v in the middle of the
obit for ‘siuban ingen emuinn’, who died in 1489, requires that he must have
been writing after that year.33
2. Mac Magnusa died of smallpox on 23 March 1498, and considerations
discussed below imply that compilation of Ms H was not quite complete at
the time of his death.
3. Ó Caiside completed writing the entries for 1504 in Ms H, leaving blank 24
lines of fo. 143vb, which suggests thereby that he was writing after 1504 but
before the end of 1505.
4. Ó Luinín completed writing the entries for 1506 in Ms r at fo. 107vb12, and
there are eight blank lines between his last entry and the third scribe’s
commencement of the entries for 1507. these suggest, therefore, that Ó
Luinín completed his writing of Ms r after 1506 but before the end of
1507.34
5. Ó Luinín died in 1528.
6. Ó Caiside died in 1541.
From the description in his obit that Mac Maghnusa ‘projected and collected
and compiled this book from very many other books’, there can be no reasonable
doubt but that it was he who initiated the whole project of compilation and
provided the patronage for it.35 this almost certainly involved his gathering the
source books and writing materials, including at least 143 vellum folios, and
engaging the services of Ó Caiside and Ó Luinín, and presumably remunerating
them. Ó Caiside was a member of a medical family from Cuil, Co. Fermanagh,
who served as the hereditary physicians to the Meig Uidhir of that county, and
ruaidhrí’s partiality for arabic numerals suggests that he had received a medical
education, for indeed it was in medical treatises that these numerals reached
Ireland.36 However, his actual career appears to have been ecclesiastical, serving
as vicar in Kilskeery, Co. tyrone, and as archdeacon of Clogher from 1502, and
in c.1525 he compiled the Register of Clogher for the bishop of that diocese. on
the other hand, Ó Luinín was a member of a hereditary erenagh family from
ard, Co. Fermanagh, and it is clear from the high quality of his writing that he
was a fully trained scribe.37
While we have no explicit information regarding when Mac Maghnusa
initiated his compilation project, since Ó Luinín has transcribed annals
continuously to 1489, just nine years before Mac Maghnusa’s death, it was
clearly his intention to bring the chronicle right down to his own time. From this,
33 Mac Carthy (ed.), AU, iii, p. 338 (obit). 34 Mc Carthy, ‘original compilation’, 93 (stated
incorrectly that Ó Luinín completed his writing of Ms r at1507). 35 Mac Carthy (ed.), AU,
iii, p. 431. 36 I gratefully acknowledge the generosity of aoibheann Nic Donnchadha of the
school of Celtic studies, DIas, in sharing her knowledge of Irish medical manuscripts with
me. 37 Mc Carthy, Irish annals, p. 316 (Ó Caiside biography), p. 319 (Ó Luinín biography).
it can be seen that the compilation was almost, but not quite, completed at the
time of Mac Maghnusa’s death. on the other hand, the fact that Ó Caiside used
the final fourteen folios of Ms H to practise reproducing a facsimile of Ó
Luinín’s hand shows both that he was not concerned to maintain the professional
quality of Ó Luinín’s writing in Ms H, and that Ó Caiside anticipated that he
would himself make a transcription of Ms H. a similar conclusion is implied by
the multitude of his H2 interpolations, the great majority of which make no effort
to preserve the quality of Ó Luinín’s writing or presentation. these consider-
ations effectively require that Mac Maghnusa was dead when Ó Caiside both
completed and interpolated Ms H, and also that both Ms H and the source
material remained in Ó Caiside’s control thereafter. In these circumstances, I
conclude that Mac Maghnusa died between Ó Luinín’s completion of fo. 129v,
breaking off at the very last line of the folio in the middle of an obit, and Ó
Caiside’s completion of that obit on fo. 130r. thus, it emerges that the
compilation and its transcription were almost complete by 1498. In order to
deduce an approximate starting time for Mac Maghnusa’s project, we may make
an estimate of how much time would be required for Ó Caiside to compile an
exemplar for approximately 129 folios, and for Ó Luinín to transcribe this. a
period of three years would provide about one week per folio, and this would
then suggest a starting date of c.1495. of course, this estimate effectively
provides an approximate later limit, because it assumes that all three activities of
gathering, compiling and transcribing proceeded without any serious delays.
since Ó Luinín’s transcription extended to 1489 it is clear that by 1498 Ó
Caiside had completed that part of his compilation based upon the Uí Chianáin
chronicle extending to c.1484. regarding his compilation of the exemplar for the
remainder of Ms H, he must have been engaged at this until at least 1505 in
order to include events for 1504. However, it is clear from the structure of the
last quinion of Ms H that when Ó Caiside was writing the last three folios he
knew that it was not to be continued to 1505.38 this then suggests that he also
knew the account for 1505 was to be carried forward in Ms r, and thus that his
compilation for Ms H was completed in c.1505.
regarding the reason for the compilation of Ms r, because of the assertions
in their obits that Mac Craith was ‘the one for whom this book was written’ and
that Ó Luinín was ‘the one who wrote the choice part of this book’, it is normally
simply stated that he wrote it for ruaidhrí Mac Craith, but this does not provide
any motivation for the undertaking.39 However, we may observe that it was Ó
Caiside who interpolated the account of the Mac Craith succession of holders of
the office of coarb of termon Dabeocc, alias termon Magrath, into Ms H as H2
over 1423–69, extending from Marcus up to Diarmait, father of ruaidhrí.40 He
38 Mc Carthy, ‘original compilation’, 93 (Ó Caiside’s termination of Ms H). 39 Mac

Carthy (ed.), AU, iii, p. 573 (citation). Gwynn, ‘Cathal Óg’, 30, 49; Ó Muraíle, AU, i, pp [18–
19] (Ó Luinín and Ms r). 40 Mac Carthy (ed.), AU, iii, pp 94, 138, 146, 226 (interpolated
then included an entry announcing ruaidhrí’s own appointment as both coarb

and head of the Mac Craith sept in 1491, followed by a detailed account of
ruaidhrí’s endeavour in 1496 to use his office to protect members of the Meig
Uidhir.41 From his incorporation of all these details, it appears that Ó Caiside
had established a favourable relationship with Mac Craith well before
completing Ms H, so that it is likely that about this time he and Mac Craith
arranged that Ms H should be transcribed. Indeed, a comparison of Mss H and
r shows that the latter is not merely a copy of Ms H, but was intended to
supersede its exemplar. the vellum of noticeably superior quality, the frequent
rubrication of initial letters, and the integration of many of the H2 interpolations
into the main text all give Ms r a significantly more prestigious appearance.
these considerations, together with Ó Caiside’s repeated defacement of Ms H,
show that even before it had been completed he had relegated it to the role of a
working exemplar. the more prosaic obit for Mac Craith at 1528 describes him
as ‘intelligent, informed and … a learned antiquarian’, and so it is apparent that,
even before the completion of Ms H, Mac Craith had replaced Mac Maghnusa
as the patron of Ó Caiside’s annalistic compilations.
regarding the questions of when Ó Caiside and Ó Luinín commenced and
completed their transcription for Mac Craith of Ms H into Ms r, it seems clear
from the foregoing that Ó Caiside must have commenced after 1504. then the
fact that Ó Luinín transcribed entries up to 1506, but not for 1507, suggests that
he was writing in 1507. thus the transcription by both Ó Caiside and Ó Luinín
of aU 431–1504, plus a two-year continuation for 1505–6, is likely to have been
done by them between 1505 and 1507.
In his transcription, Ó Caiside commenced at the year 431, omitting thereby
all of Ms H’s pre-Palladian annals, which now commence acephalously at aD81
on fo. 12r. However, when Ware inscribed this foliation into Ms H in the
seventeenth century, there were clearly eleven folios preceding fo. 12, so it is
plain that originally the compilation began deep in pre-Christian times, almost
certainly with the creation of adam.42 Ó Caiside’s commencement of Ms r at
431 resulted in the widespread belief that the ‘annals of Ulster start at 431’, and
this misconception has pervaded virtually all modern scholarship discussing
aU.43 In 2004, I wrote that the words ‘IHC, Mei est incipere, tui est finire’, with
which Hennessy had commenced his edition of aU 431–1056, were not to be
found in either Ms H or Ms r.44 However, in 2008, Nicholas evans pointed out
that the vestiges of an inscription may be seen above aU 431 on the heavily
stained upper margin of Ms H fo. 16ra, which he read as follows:45
termon Dabeocc comharb succession, 1423–69). 41 Mac Carthy (ed.), AU, iii, pp 356, 404–
6 (ruaidhrí’s appointment and use of his office). 42 Mc Carthy, ‘original compilation’, 89–
92 (Ware’s foliation and the original extent of the pre-Palladian section). 43 Kathleen
Hughes, Early Christian Ireland: introduction to the sources (London, 1972), p. 118 (citation);
Mc Carthy, Irish annals, p. 80 (discussion of the ‘aU–431’ hypothesis). 44 Mc Carthy,
‘original compilation’, 79. 45 Nicholas evans, transcription from the handout for his paper,
Line 1: 3 letters were clearly once written: [.i]c

Line 2: q(or ‘ci’?)[i]ei[……]ip[.]nf cr (or ‘cis’)[…]e
Both the legible letters and their positions correspond sufficiently closely to
Hennessy’s initial entry to support Evans’ conclusion that it had derived from
this inscription. Re-examination of the MS confirmed Evans’ observation, and
also disclosed that the legible letters were written by Ó Caiside. This, together
with its location on the very upper margin of fo. 16r, makes it certain that this
inscription was interpolated by Ó Caiside after Ó Luinín had written this folio.
Consequently, the inscription cannot be used to argue, as Evans has recently
done, that ‘there is no reason to assume that the pre-431 and post-430 sections
were copied from the same text’.46 Rather, given the sentiment expressed, ‘Jesus,
Mine it is to Begin, Thine it is to Finish’, there is every reason to assume that
this inscription was written by Ó Caiside as he embarked upon the writing of MS
R, and that, with it, he asserted his right to choose where to commence his
transcription, so that it represents a tacit acknowledgment by him of his decision
to omit the entire pre-Palladian section of his exemplar.47 Indeed, the sparseness
of Ó Caiside’s annotations on the surviving three pre-Palladian folios clearly
demonstrates his lack of interest in this era, especially when compared with the
multiplicity of his annotations in the immediate post-Palladian era.
Next, regarding the continuation of MS R over 1507–40, from the incidence
of ‘in bliadain-si’ in the entries written incrementally by about ten scribes, it is
apparent that Ó Caiside drafted their exemplars over the remainder of his life,
c.1507–41.48 On fo. 125vb Ó Luinín’s grandson, Matha, wrote in 1579 ‘I regret
how badly the son of Ó Caiside wrote these five or six folios at the end of this
book’, and fos 121–6 are indeed written by about ten scribes to a significantly
lower standard of writing and presentation. For example, all rubrication ceases
at fo. 121vb, there is no attempt to decorate initial letters, and the standard of
handwriting varies significantly from scribe to scribe. I have suggested that
Matha’s remark refers to Ó Caiside’s poor supervision of the scribes that he
employed to write these folios.49
Finally, regarding the numerous H2 interpolations, it seems quite unlikely that
Ó Caiside was interpolating MS H as he was compiling its exemplar, especially
‘The medieval Irish annals: continuations of Late Antique chronicles or separate creations?’,
presented 11 July 2008 to the conference The Late Antique Chronicle and its Continuators,
UCC. See Nicholas Evans, The present and the past in medieval Irish chronicles (Woodbridge,
2010), p. 10 n. 61 (transcription). 46 Evans, Present and past, p. 10. 47 W.M. Hennessy
(ed.), AU, i (Dublin, 1887, repr. 1998), p. 3 (citation). The reason for the heavy staining on
the upper margin of fo. 16r is that reagent has been applied to the area of the inscription. It
seems most likely that this was done by Todd or O’Curry in 1841 when the latter was
transcribing MS H into RIA, 3C16–17. This would explain why O’Curry delayed
transcription of this inscription: see Mc Carthy, ‘Original compilation’, 79 (discussion of the
inscription). 48 Ó Cuív (ed.), Catalogue, pp 159–60 (discussion of the hands of fos 107–26).
49 Ó Cuív (ed.), Catalogue, pp 159–60 (citation and ten scribes); Mc Carthy, Irish annals,
while Mac Maghnusa was alive. on the other hand, since the majority of his
interpolations over aU 431–952 were transcribed by him in c.1505 into Ms r, it
is apparent that he had busied himself following Mac Maghnusa’s death with
these additions. at the same time, there is compelling evidence that he continued
interpolating after Ms r had been written to 1506 by himself and Ó Luinín.
there are, for example, instances of his H2 interpolations that he scarcely would
have omitted to transcribe, such as his three-way chronological synchronism at
aU 481.3, which is not found in Ms r. Furthermore, immediately below Mac
Maghnusa’s obit on fo. 139v he inscribed an account of a gunshot wound
inflicted on edmond Mortel in Kinsale in 1498, to which he added ‘more than a
score of children were born to him after that’.50 this entry is not found in Ms r
and it is clear from the number of births indicated that he must have written it
well over a decade after 1498 and so after Ó Luinín had transcribed this section.
regarding the identification of Ó Caiside’s interpolations in Ms H, it should be
noted that some of those identified as the work of ‘H1’ in the Mac airt and Mac
Niocaill edition, which siglum they used to identify what they considered to be
Ó Luinín’s subsequent additions, will be found on closer inspection to be Ó
Caiside reproducing his facsimile of Ó Luinín’s hand.51 For example,
examination of the ‘a’s of the marginal addition to aU 999.1 (‘Hic est millisimus
annus ab Incarnatione Domini’) is sufficient to identify it as the writing of Ó
Caiside.52
I summarize below (table 26.2) the various contributions by Mac Maghnusa,
Ó Caiside, Ó Luinín and Mac Craith discussed above, together with the
approximate chronology deduced for them.
CoNCLUsIoNs
examination of the palaeographic, codicological, textual and chronological

details of Mss H and r reveals that Ó Caiside served as the editorial compiler
of both manuscripts, drafting the exemplars for many of the entries, as well as
serving as scribe for part of both manuscripts. Consequently, Ó Caiside must be
regarded as the principal architect of the text of aU, and so the belief reiterated
throughout the twentieth century, that Mac Maghnusa was the ‘scholar’
responsible for the compilation of aU, is unsustainable.53 as well as the evidence
p. 321 (Matha Ó Luinín’s remark). 50 Mac Carthy (ed.), AU, iii, p. 439 (citation, not in Ms
r). 51 Mac airt and Mac Niocaill (eds), AU, p. viii (‘H indicates the first hand of ms. H, and
H1, H2, H3, H4 the successive hands of interpolators and glossators’. H1 refers, therefore, to
annotations attributed to Ó Luinín). 52 Mac airt and Mac Niocaill (eds), AU, p. 428.
53 Mac Maghnusa identified as the scholar of aU: Mac Carthy (ed.), AU, iv, p. ix: ‘the work
of Mac Manus consisted in selection, mainly with reference to Ulster events, from the
chronicles he had collected. His well-applied diligence in this direction merits ample
acknowledgment’; Gwynn, ‘Cathal Óg’ ii, 373, ‘Cathal Óg the faithful copyist – one
Table 26.2 The contributions of Mac Maghnusa, Ó Caiside, Ó Luinín and Mac
Craith to the compilation of MSS H and R, with the approximate range of years
within which they executed these.
Years Contribution
Initiation of the compilation project by Mac Maghnusa wherein he

c.1495 gathered the source books, the necessary writing materials and
engaged the services of Ó Caiside and Ó Luinín.
Compilation by Ó Caiside of the exemplar for Ms H using as

primary source the Uí Chianáin chronicle extending to c.1484,
c.1495–8 collated with and interpolated from Liber Cuanach, Dub dá Lethe,
and Monachorum, and other unidentified sources, especially
Fermanagh sources from the early fourteenth century onwards.
Compilation by Ó Caiside of the continuation of the exemplar for

c.1495–1505
Ms H over c.1484–1504.
transcription by Ó Luinín of Ó Caiside’s exemplar into Ms H up to

c.1495–8
1489.
transcription by Ó Caiside of his own exemplar for 1489–1504 into

c.1499–1505
Ms H.
c.1499–1541 Interpolations (H2) by Ó Caiside into Ms H.
Patronage by Mac Craith for Ó Caiside to make a more prestigious

c.1505
edition from Ms H.
c.1505–7 transcription by Ó Caiside of aU 431–952 from Ms H into Ms r.
transcription by Ó Luinín of aU 952–1504 from Ms H into Ms r,

c.1505–7
plus a two-year continuation for 1505–6.
Drafting by Ó Caiside of exemplar entries for the incremental
c.1507–41 continuation of Ms r over 1507–40, which were transcribed by
about twelve different scribes.
characteristic of this whole early section of the annals of Ulster is to be noted as an example
of the fine sense of accurate scholarship which was a special gift of Cathal Mac Maghnusa.
When he has an ancient text before him, he copies it (or has it copied) with the utmost
fidelity’; Ó Muraíle, AU i, p. [13], ‘Cathal Óg was a man of many talents. First and foremost,
he deserves to be remembered as a scholar whose crowning achievement was the compilation
of these annals of Ulster’. Mac Niocaill was an exception: Medieval Irish annals, p. 37 (‘the
text was compiled for Cathal Mac Maghnusa by one ruaidhrí Ó Luinín’), p. 21 (‘the text of
U [aU] cannot be treated as unitary; it has been carpentered together in, often, a fumbling
fashion’); AU, p. ix (‘It was written by ruaidhrí Ó Luinín for Cathal Mac Maghnusa’).
adduced above, it should be recalled that, at the time of the compilation, Mac
Maghnusa was in his late fifties and so is unlikely to have possessed vision
adequate for the collation of thousands of manuscript entries. Furthermore, he
was effectively the acting bishop of Clogher from 1484, and head of the Mac
Maghnusa sept from 1488, and the burden of these responsibilities would
scarcely allow him the freedom to undertake such a large-scale project of
compilation himself.54 rather, Mac Maghnusa provided the patronage,
leadership and resources to initiate the project, and he entrusted the editorial
role to Ó Caiside and the scribal role to Ó Luinín. In these circumstances, it is
important to assess Ó Caiside’s ability as a scholar, and in particular his
performance as a compiler, chronographer and scribe. all of these may be readily
evaluated by examination of his H2 interpolations in Ms H, and his transcription
of aU 431–952 into Ms r. Critical evaluation of these reveals him to have been,
on the one hand, extremely energetic, enthusiastic and capable, and, on the
other, erratic, inconsistent and unreliable, untrained either as an annalist or
scribe. two instances of his erratic scholarship may be mentioned: his habit of
randomly writing in Mss H and r the aD datum in a mixture of arabic and
roman numerals; his practice when transcribing of repeatedly introducing
textual deviations from his exemplar.55 In these circumstances, it is not enough
simply to depend on entries written by Ó Luinín in Ms H, as some scholars
have proposed, as a means of ensuring reliability, for Ó Caiside may well have
drafted the exemplar entry copied by Ó Luinín.56 similarly, naive assertions such
as ‘in the annals of Ulster we have the best text of the early annals’, are seriously
misguided and misleading.57 Furthermore, Ó Luinín’s transcription of Ms r
similarly deviates from its exemplar; for example, it may be seen (fig. 26.1) that,
while transcribing the two lines written by himself, he has made four
orthographical changes.58 since Ó Luinín cooperated with Ó Caiside in the
production of Mss H and r for over a decade, he can hardly have escaped the
influence of his colleague’s erratic scholarship. rather, if aU’s entries are to be
used, it is necessary first to collate them against all other parallel annalistic
entries, and then to use this collation as a basis for critical judgment. Many of the
54 Mc Carthy, Irish annals, p. 315 (Mac Maghnusa’s biography). 55 these assertions may
be verified by collation of Mac airt and Mac Niocaill (eds), AU, pp 38–397 with Ms r, fos
1–32r, which folios are all available on the oxford University website, www.image.ox.ac.uk.
56 F.J. Byrne, ‘seventh-century documents’, IER, 108 (1967), 164–82 at 178 (‘the seventh-
century annals (best represented by the original hand of the oldest manuscript of the Annals
of Ulster)). 57 t.e. Charles-edwards, The chronicle of Ireland (2 vols, Liverpool, 2006), i, p.
3 (citation). 58 orthographic changes, Ms H vs Ms r: Muman vs Muman; Cothaid vs
Cothaig; Mocolmoc vs Mocholmog; Gailenga vs Gailenga. tomás Ó Máille, The language of
the Annals of Ulster (Manchester, 1910), p. 3, wrote ‘as r contains many old forms not present
in H, I conclude that r was based on H, with, however, the help of some of the original
sources’. But it seems far more likely that these differences represent deliberate archaicisms
parallel entries are tabulated at www.irish-annals.cs.tcd.ie, and an instance of this

collation process is given in my Peritia article of 2000.59
Finally, examination of the various time boundaries implicit in the writing of
Mss H and r by Ó Luinín and Ó Caiside, together with their dates of death and
that of Mac Maghnusa, yield an approximate chronology for the compilation. It
was initiated by Mac Maghnusa in c.1495 and was nearly complete at the time of
his death in 1498; by c.1505, Ó Caiside had completed Ms H and with Mac
Craith’s patronage had undertaken to compile a more prestigious edition. By
c.1507, Ó Caiside and Ó Luinín had completed their transcription of post-
Palladian Ms H, and in the ensuing years until his death in 1541, Ó Caiside
drafted the exemplars for the entries of the continuation of Ms r up to 1540,
while continuing to interpolate additions to Ms H.
on the part of Ó Caiside. 59 D.P. Mc Carthy, ‘the chronology of st Brigit of Kildare’,

Peritia, 14 (2000), 255–81 at 258–63 (collation and evaluation of Brigit’s annalistic natiuitates
and obits).
Part III(b)_Layout 1 19/02/2013 13:34 Page 460
The landscape and settlements of the Uí Dhálaigh

poets of Muinter Bháire1
E L I Z A B E T H F I T Z PAT R I C K
Katharine Simms has published much on the works and social world of Gaelic
hereditary learned families and especially about those who practised poetry and
law in later medieval and early modern Ireland.2 Inspired by Simms’ scholarship,
my current concern as an archaeologist of Gaelic peoples is to identify and
interpret some of the settlements and material culture of legal, bardic and
medical families, with particular reference to their school buildings and
residences c.12–15. In this essay, the landscape and settlements of the Uí
Dhálaigh poets of Muinter Bháire are brought back into view and placed in the
context of what is currently known about the preferred settlement forms of
learned families.
1 My thanks to Ita O’Daly and the community of Sheepshead Peninsula for their support
during the survey of the Uí Dhálaigh settlements, to Paul Naessens and Cormac Bruton for
their contributions to the survey, and to Paul Walsh, director of the Archaeological Survey of
Ireland, for sharing the findings he made at Dromnea in 1985. 2 Katharine Simms, ‘Gabh
umad a Fheidhlimidh: a fifteenth-century inauguration ode?’, Ériu, 31 (198), 132–5; ‘Irish
literature: bardic poetry’ in J.R. Strayer (ed.), Dictionary of the Middle Ages (New York, 1985),
pp 53–9; ‘Bardic poetry as a historical source’ in Tom Dunne (ed.), The writer as witness
(Cork, 1987), pp 58–75; ‘The poet as chieftain’s widow: bardic elegies’ in Donnchadh Ó
Corráin, Liam Breatnach and Kim McCone (eds), Sages, saints and storytellers: Celtic studies
in honour of Professor James Carney (Maynooth, 1989), pp –11; ‘Bards and barons: the
Anglo-Irish aristocracy and the native culture’ in Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay (eds),
Medieval frontier societies (Oxford, 1998), pp 177–97; ‘The brehons of later medieval Ireland’
in Daire Hogan and W.N. Osborough (eds), Brehons, serjeants and attorneys (Dublin, 199),
pp 51–7; ‘Images of warfare in bardic poetry’, Celtica, 21 (199), 8–19; ‘An Eaglais agus filí
na scol’ in Pádraig Ó Fiannachta (ed.), An dán díreach (Maynooth, 199), pp 21–3; ‘Literacy
and the Irish bards, in Huw Pryce (ed.), Literacy in medieval Celtic societies (Cambridge, 1998),
pp 238–58; ‘The contents of the later commentaries on the brehon law tracts’, Ériu, 9 (1998),
23–; ‘Charles Lynegar, the Ó Luinín family and the study of seanchas’ in T.C. Barnard,
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and Katharine Simms (eds), A miracle of learning. Studies in manuscripts and
Irish learning: essays in honour of William O’Sullivan (Aldershot, 1998), pp 2–83; ‘The
dating of two poems on Ulster chieftains’ in A.P. Smyth (ed.), Seanchas: studies in early and
medieval Irish archaeology, history and literature in honour of Francis John Byrne (Dublin, 21),
pp 381–; ‘Native sources for Gaelic settlement: the house poems’ in P.J. Duffy, David
Edwards and Elizabeth FitzPatrick (eds), Gaelic Ireland: land, lordship and settlement (Dublin,
21), pp 2–7; ‘References to landscape and economy in Irish bardic poetry’ in H.B.
Clarke, Jacinta Prunty and Mark Hennessy (eds), Surveying Ireland’s past: multidisciplinary
essays in honour of Anngret Simms (Dublin, 2), pp 15–8; ‘Bardic schools, learned families’
in Seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Ireland: an encyclopedia (New York and London, 25), pp 35–
7; ‘Muireadhach Albanach Ua Dálaigh and the classical revolution’ in Ian Brown, T.O. Clancy,

The landscape and settlements of the Uí Dhálaigh poets of Muinter Bháire 1
The Uí Dhálaigh poets are associated with Muinter Bháire, which is

synonymous with Sheepshead Peninsula between Bantry Bay and Dunmanus
Bay in the barony of West Carbery in Co. Cork (pl. 18). In the pre-Anglo-
Norman period, Sheepshead formed part of the territory of Corca Loígde in the
overkingdom of Desmuman. During the later medieval period, it lay in the small
Ó Mathghamhna lordship of Fionn Iartharach in the Mac Cárthaigh Riabhach
overlordship of Cairbreach.3 The Uí Dhálaigh of Muinter Bháire are an
interesting case study of the circumstances in which Gaelic hereditary learned
families received and held their landholdings and the types of settlements that
they established on their lands.
THE Uí DHáLAIGH
The progenitor of the many Uí Dhálaigh poetic families in the Gaelic lordships
of the four provinces of Ireland was Cúchonnacht Ua Dálaigh, also known as
Cúchonnacht na sgoile, who at the time of his death in the monastery of Clonard
in 1139 was recorded as ard-ollamh le dán or ‘chief ollamh in poetry’. Mac Cana
has suggested that ‘the school which gave him his epithet was presumably the
monastic school of Cluain Iraird [Clonard]’.5 He is also associated with Leckin
near Bunbrusna in the kingdom of Tethba (in what is now Co. Westmeath),
which is regarded as the original patrimony of the Uí Dhálaigh sept. Between
the twelfth century and the seventeenth century, new branches of Uí Dhálaigh
became established in Clare, Cork, Roscommon, Sligo and Bréifne.7 They are
found in south Munster by the end of the twelfth century and were certainly well
established in Muinter Bháire by c.13. The Irish chronicles note that Ragnall
Ua Dálaigh, who died in 111, and Gilla na Trinóite Ua Dálaigh, who was slain
in 115, both held the office of ollamh Desmhumhan lé dán or ‘ollamh of
Susan Manning and Murray Pittock (eds), The Edinburgh history of Scottish literature, 1: from
Columba to the Union (until 17) (Edinburgh, 2), pp 83–9; ‘The poetic brehon lawyers
of early sixteenth-century Ireland’, Ériu, 57 (27), 121–32; ‘Images of the galloglass in poems
to the MacSweeneys’ in Seán Duffy (ed.), The world of the galloglass (Dublin, 27), pp 1–
23; ‘The Donegal poems in the Book of Fenagh’, Ériu, 58 (28), 37–53; ‘The transition from
medieval to modern in the poems of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn’ in Padraigín Riggs (ed.), Tadhg
Dall Ó hUiginn: his historical and literary context (London, 21), pp 119–3; ‘The selection
of poems for inclusion in the Book of the O’Conor Don’ in Pádraig Ó Macháin (ed.), The
Book of the O’Conor Don (Dublin, 21), pp 32–; ‘Bardic poems of consolation to bereaved
Irish ladies’ in Conor Kostick (ed.), Medieval Italy, medieval and early modern women (Dublin,
21), pp 22–3. 3 K.W. Nicholls, ‘Lordships c.153’ in Duffy et al. (eds), Gaelic Ireland,
pp 2–5. 4 AFM, s.a. 1139; Simms, ‘The poetic brehon lawyers’, 121–2, explains that two
words were used to describe the privileged arts: ‘dán, which meant primarily a talent, a gift
from God; and cerd, which meant rather a craft, an acquired skill’. 5 Proinsias Mac Cana,
‘The rise of the later schools of filidheacht’, Ériu, 25 (197), 12– at 3. 6 John
O’Donovan, The tribes of Ireland: a satire by Aenghus O’Daly (Dublin, 1852), pp , 1. 7 Mac
Cana, ‘Rise of the later schools’, 128 n. 8.
2 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
Desmond in poetry’,8 with the implication that they were in the service of
Diarmait Mac Cárthaig, king of Desmond, in the late twelfth century. Ragnall
may have been the direct ancestor of the Uí Dhálaigh of Muinter Bháire.9
Simms has highlighted the mobility of learned families and the fact that an
outsider, like Ragnall for instance, could be appointed to the service of a king or
lord on the basis of ‘superior proficiency in his art’ and that in many cases the
descendants of a newly appointed ollamh subsequently established hereditary
claims to the office that he had held and to its attendant lands.1 The Uí Dhálaigh
were particularly successful at bedding themselves into new positions and
consolidating hereditary claims to their ollamhships in lordships such as Carbery
and Duhallow.
There are conflicting accounts about how the Uí Dhálaigh came to settle on
the Sheepshead Peninsula. Sir Richard Cox in Regnum Corcagiense (written in
187) claimed that Muinter Bháire was, ‘according to Irish custome, given to
O’Daly, who was successively bard to O Mahown [O’Mahony] and Carew, and to
O Glavin, who was their Termond or Steward’.11 In his later work, Carbriae
notitia, compiled in 19, Cox revised this statement, claiming instead that it was
Carew who granted the Muinter Bháire lands to the Uí Dhálaigh.12 It has been
convincingly argued by Anne O’Sullivan that it was the Anglo-Norman Carew
family, sometime allies of the Meic Cárthaig,13 who settled the Uí Dhálaigh onto
the Muinter Bháire lands of the Sheepshead Peninsula at some point after the
late twelfth century.1 This claim was made by the ollamh and family head of the
senior Uí Dhálaigh line of Muinter Bháire, Tadhg Ó Dálaigh, in his poem Gabh
mo gherán a Sheóirse (‘Heed, O George, my complaint’), addressed to Sir George
Carew and compiled c.118. Tadhg wrote: Rinn cheana do chin fine mar fuair cenn
ar gceirdi-ne; deantar lat usaile oram, glac an uair-se a uraghall – ‘The head of our
poetic family once got a promontory from the head of your family; deal
generously, as I advise, receive now my complaint about it’.15 That the Uí
Dhálaigh had settled in Muinter Bháire by c.13 is attested by a plea roll dated
1299–13, which records that Maurice Carew sued them for lands there.1 Their
association with the Carew family is also noted by Sir George Carew in his
Pacata Hibernia, in which he wrote:
This odalies [O’Daly’s] Ancestor had the county of Moynterbary given

unto him by the lord presidents ancestor, many hundred yeares past, at
which time Carew had to his inheritance the moiety of the whole kingdome
8 AFM, s.a. 111; AI, s.a. 115.. 9 J.E. Doan, ‘The Ó Dálaigh family of bardic poets, 1139–
191’, Éire–Ireland, 2:2 (1985), 19–31 at 22. 10 Simms, Kings, pp 87–8. 11 NLI, MS
119, p. 27. 12 Anne O’Sullivan, ‘Tadhg O’Daly and Sir George Carew’, Éigse, 1 (1971–
2), 27–38 at 29 n. 19. 13 AI, s.a. 1198.5. 14 O’Sullivan, ‘Tadhg O’Daly’, Éigse, 1 (1971–
2), 27–38 at 3. 15 Lambeth Palace, MS 5, fo. 239; O’Sullivan, ‘Tadhg O’Daly’, 27, 3,
37. 16 ‘Repertory of plea rolls’ in Reports from the commissioners […] respecting the public
records of Ireland: with supplements and appendices (3 vols, London, 1815–25), ii (Rept vi), pp
of Corke, which was first given by King Henry the second unto Robert fits
Stephen; the service which odaly and his progenie were to doe, for so large
a proportion of lands unto Carew and his successors, was (according to the
custome of that time) to bee their rimers, or chroniclers of their actions.17
The Uí Dhálaigh of Muinter Bháire, or the Carbery O’Dalys as they are

sometimes designated,18 constituted a senior and junior line. The senior Uí
Dhálaigh are associated with Dromnea and Farranamanagh and the junior line
held lands at Ballyroon towards the western end of the Sheepshead Peninsula.
Both families are also probably related to the Uí Dhálaigh Fionn family of
Nohavaldaly, who were poets to the Uí Chaoimh of Duhallow.19 Members of the
senior and junior lines are cited in English administrative documents for the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the death of the ollamh of the senior
line, Aonghus, son of Aonghus Caoch Ó Dálaigh Cairbreach, is recorded in the
Irish chronicles for 157.2 The last known professional poet of the Dromnea
branch of the family, Conchobhar Cam Ó Dálaigh Cairbreach, was still
practising as late as 1, at which time he composed an elegy on the death of
Domhnall Ó Donnabháin, chief of Clann Chathail.21
THE LANDS OF MUINTER BHáIRE
Sheepshead Peninsula first features on a map of the province of Munster made

by the cartographer Francis Jobson for Lord Burleigh in 1589 (pl. 19). The map
refers to the entire peninsula as ‘Rymers’, thereby identifying it as the land of the
Uí Dhálaigh poets.22 Art Hughes has argued that Jobson’s map is accurate in its
designation of the whole peninsula as Uí Dhálaigh land because, in his poem to
Sir George Carew, Tadhg Ó Dálaigh of the senior Dromnea branch of the family
emphasizes the large amount of land that had been granted by Carew’s ancestors
to the Uí Dhálaigh sept.23 Tadhg writes: ‘Though every ollamh thinks that this
grant of land we got was enormous, we gave your family renown that lasted long
after’. Baptista Boazio’s somewhat later map of Ireland attaches the legend ‘Sr
Peter Carew Monter Varie [Muinter Bháire]’ to the peninsula and the place-
name ‘Sheepesheade’ is attributed to the most westerly point.2 A seventeenth-
century map of the province of Munster by John Speed, dated 11, shows the
peninsula with ‘Moenker Vary’ marked along the southern coast of the central
area of the peninsula where the townlands of Dromnea and Farranamangh are
391, 573. 17 Thomas Stafford, Pacata Hibernia; or, A history of the wars in Ireland during the
reign of Queen Elizabeth: taken from the original chronicles (2 vols, London 133; repr. London,
181), i, pp 528–9. 18 O’Sullivan, ‘Tadhg O’Daly’, 27. 19 Ibid. 20 AFM, s.a. 157.
21 O’Donovan, Tribes of Ireland, pp 12–13. 22 TCD, MS 129, no. 3. 23 A.J. Hughes,
‘Land-acquisition by Gaelic bardic poets: insights from place-names and other sources’,
Ainm: Bulletin of the Ulster Place-name Society,  (199–5), 7–11 at 97. 24 TCD, MS
 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
situated.25 The position of the place-name on Speed’s map may suggest that the
core or ceann-áit (head place) of the patrimonial lands of Muintir Bháire was
originally identified with Dromnea and Farranamanagh and that the name came
to be applied to the whole peninsula, which was coterminous with the parish of
Kilcrohane. The combined senior and junior lines of the family held thirty-six
ploughlands (three ploughlands of which were church lands) on the peninsula in
1599.2 However, when the first population census of Kilcrohane parish was
taken in 159, there was a total population of two Irish and no English in
Dromnea and eight Irish and no English in the adjoining townland of
Farranamanagh. On the lands of the junior line of the family at Ballyroon, there
was a much larger population of thirty-nine Irish, with no English present in
159. Significantly, the tituladoe to the lands of the parish at that time was
Eoghan Mac Cárthaigh.27
The Sheepshead Peninsula is an upland region, 2.5km long and 5km wide
at its widest point, projecting into the Atlantic between Bantry Bay and
Dunmanus Bay. The spine of the peninsula is characterized by upland extending
from Knockboolteenagh north of Durrus at the eastern end of the peninsula, to
Ballyroon Mountain at the narrow tapering western point of the headland named
‘Muntervary’ or ‘Sheep’s Head’. The principal heights are Rosskerrig Mountain,
Caher Mountain and Seefin (Suidhe Finn), which, at 35m above sea level, is the
highest point on the peninsula (pl. 18). The upland character and marginal
quality of the land there prompted Richard Cox to remark that it was ‘a
barbarous country, in which there is nothing observable but Coolnalong, a pretty
seat belonging formerly to Mucklagh, a seat of the Carthyes’.28 During the
medieval period and probably well into the seventeenth century, parts of the
Sheepshead Peninsula had woodland cover. This is suggested in particular by the
use of the root word ‘Ross’, from the Irish ros, meaning wood, used in the
townland names Rossmore, Rossnacaheragh and Rosskerrig on the southern side
of the peninsula. One nineteenth-century reading of the townland name
Dromnea suggests that it is Drom an fheadh/fheadha – ‘hill of the wood’.29 The
extent to which the woodland of the Sheepshead Peninsula was exploited for
charcoal for iron smelting is not known, but the Bantry woodlands were felled by
175 for that purpose.3 Bedrock geology on the peninsula is characterized by
green and purple sandstones, fine-grained grey sandstones, siltstone and minor
mudstone.31 Significant deposits of copper on the northern coastline and
129, no. 83. 25 Pacata Hibernia; or, A history of the wars in Ireland during the reign of Queen
Elizabeth especially within the province of Munster under the government of Sir George Carew, ed.
Standish O’Grady (2 vols, London, 189), i, map between p. xxii and p. 1. 26 J.S. Brewer
and W. Bullen (eds), Calendar of the Carew Papers, 1589–1600 (London, 189), p. 352.
27 Séamus Pender (ed.), A census of Ireland, circa 1659 (Dublin 1939), pp 22–7. 28 NLI,
MS 119, p. 27. 29 www.logainm.ie (Place-names Database of Ireland), s.n. 30 J.K.
Hourihan, ‘Rural settlement and change near Bantry, 1–185’, Bantry Historical and
Archaeological Society Journal, 1 (1991), –53 at –. 31 Markus Pracht and A.G.
lead/silver at the eastern end of the peninsula were mined in the modern period.
The bedrock generally yields poor quality building stone, which tends to be quite
friable and shatters easily. For masons, working this stone, especially for
architectural features such as windows, doorways and arches, would have been a
challenging task. This is evident in the remaining walls of the late medieval
buildings on the Uí Dhálaigh lands at Dromnea and Farranamanagh and in the
surviving high medieval masonry of Kilcrohane parish church.
Uí DHáLAIGH SETTLEMENTS ON THE PENINSULA
The Uí Dhálaigh settlements avoid the precipitous northern coastline of the

Sheepshead Peninsula and concentrate on the south coast at Dromnea,
Farranamanagh, Kilcrohane and Ballyroon (pl. 18). The upstanding pre-modern
archaeology of the peninsula consists of prehistoric stone circles, stone rows and
standing stones, promontory forts, medieval enclosed settlements, a later
medieval parish church at Kilcrohane, burials grounds, holy wells, cillíní, tower
houses at Rossmore and Farranamanagh and the early modern Coolnalong
fortified house at Gearhameen, west of Durrus. Dromnea townland is
traditionally regarded as the location of the senior line Uí Dhálaigh bardic
school, at least in the late medieval to early modern period.32 The tower house at
Farranamanagh, west of Dromnea, is generally proposed as the late medieval
residence of the family,33 and Kilcrohane was the parish church of the peninsula
and the Uí Dhálaigh burial place.3 Ballyroon at the western end of the peninsula
was the settlement of the junior line of the family that included a residence and
possibly another school attributed to Aonghus Ó Dálaigh.35
Residences of Uí Dhálaigh senior and junior lines

Dromnea, from the Irish drom Naoi (‘hill of Naoi’),3 drom an fheadha (‘hill of the
wood’) or drom an fhéich (‘hill of the debt’),37 is a low but distinctive domed hill
south of Rosskerrig Mountain on the south side of the Sheepshead Peninsula. It
rises to a height of 58m OD at its north-eastern end and gradually declines
south-west to Dunmanus Bay (pl. 2). It commands extensive views over the bay,
looking out to Carbery Island, Cold Island, Furze Island and Horse Island and
further south to Mizen Head Peninsula. The hill is characterized by exposed
sandstone outcrop, blanket bog and marginal rough grazing, with a dense cover
of gorse and heather on its upper reaches. A stand of conifers on the northern
Sleeman, Geology of west Cork: a geological description of west Cork and adjacent parts of Kerry
to accompany the bedrock geology 1:100,000 scale map series, sheet 24, West Cork (Dublin, 22),
pp 5, 12, 13, 15, 7–7. 32 O’Donovan, Tribes of Ireland, p. 12; O’Sullivan, ‘Tadhg O’Daly’,
27, 31. 33 J.N. Healy, The castles of County Cork (Cork, 1988), pp 2–1. 34 O’Donovan,
Tribes of Ireland, p. 13. 35 Ibid., pp 13–1; O’Sullivan, ‘Tadhg O’Daly’, 31. 36 O’Donovan,
Tribes of Ireland, p. 12. 37 www.logainm.ie (Place-names Database of Ireland), s.n.
 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
down-slope of the hill are the only trees in this environment now, but an
interpretation of the place-name Dromnea as drom an fheadha suggests that the
hill was formerly wooded. Within the c.38 acres of Dromnea townland38 there
is a holy well, a large rath, a stone row and the remnants of a late medieval
building that is regarded in local tradition, of at least two centuries, as the bardic
school of the senior line of the Uí Dhálaigh poets. The well is designated
‘Tubberdromnea’ on the nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey Fair Plan map
and has been recorded as ‘holy’ although it is locally known as the ‘Well of the
Poets’. It lies directly south of the old Sheepshead road or Sheepshead way
(pl. 18). Situated on a gentle down-slope commanding extensive views south to
Dunmanus Bay, the rath, which is enclosed by a single bank and outer fosse, was
recorded by the first Ordnance Survey as ‘LisDromnea’ (pl. 18). It is a
convincing candidate for the pre-tower house residence of the senior line of Uí
Dhálaigh on the Sheepshead Peninsula, an impression that is compounded by
the former presence of a monumental prehistoric stone row just 5m north-east
of the rath. The hereditary learned classes were dedicated to the past and it is
likely that their obsession was not just confined to the written word but extended
to fixed and portable antiquities in their immediate environments.39 The entrance
to the rath is positioned at north/north-east, facing the former great stone row
of Dromnea, which was cleared during agricultural improvements in the more
recent past. Fortunately, the stone row was recorded in 185 by John Beirne, a
civilian assistant with the first Ordnance Survey. Beirne’s sketch (pl. 22) shows
three standing stones, one of which is extraordinarily large. Beirne described the
alignment ‘about 3 chains east of the old fort [LisDromnea]’ as ‘three remarkable
Gallauns placed E and W, one of which is about 1 feet high and about  feet
broad, inclining a little to the south’.
In keeping with some hereditary learned families, such as Meic Aodhagáin of
Ballymacegan and Park, Uí Chléirigh of Kilbarron, Uí Chonchobhair of
Aghmacart, Meic Fhlannchadha of Knockfinn and Urlan, and Uí Mhaolchonaire
of Rossmanagher, Uí Dhálaigh of Muinter Bháire were tower house-dwellers by
the late fifteenth or sixteenth century. West of Dromnea Hill, the base of a tower
house can be seen on the northern shore of Farranamanagh Lough (pl. 21). In
the nineteenth century, the place-name Farranamanagh was believed to be a
corruption of fearann na manaigh meaning ground or land of the monks or lay
brethren (on a monastic estate), but in modern scholarship the place-name is
interpreted as an fearann meánach, which reads as ‘the medium or middle
ground’.1 The tower house was constructed on the brow of the east/north-east
end of a broad ridge, overlooking the lake and Dunmanus Bay. It was reached
from the bay through a channel to the lake, which is now marked by a footbridge.
38 www.archaeology.ie. 39 See, for instance, John Bradley, ‘An inscribed stone axehead from
Gorteen, Co. Clare’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 21 (1979), 11–1. 40 Ordnance
Survey Memorandums for Co. Cork, 2, pp 57–8. 41 www.logainm.ie (Place-names
Apart from the obvious advantages of being positioned in close proximity to the
lake and the sea, this setting has an aesthetic or pleasurable quality that would
have been a consideration in choosing the site for the tower house.2 There is no
evidence to suggest that the tower house was built on an earlier fortification or
on the site of the castle allegedly built in 121 by Mac Cuidithi.3 Just the ground
floor of Farranamanagh tower house, with internal dimensions of .8m north-
west–south-east by m north-east–south-west, remains (pl. 23). The north-west,
north-east and south-east walls preserve a large amount of wall fabric that
consists of blocks of green sandstone laid down in quite even courses and
levelled up with thin sheets of shale and slate throughout. The bonding material
is rough shell-based mortar with lots of aggregate of small stones, probably from
the lake bed, which was also the material that would have originally been used to
harl the walls of the building. The stout batter at the base of all four walls is a
surviving feature of the defences of the building. Part of the embrasure of what
was once a large window that looked south-east onto the lake, also remains in
place. The doorway of the tower house was formerly situated in the north-west
wall. There is no trace of a surrounding bawn, but it perhaps ran west and south
of the tower house to a mooring area on the lake shore.
The junior line Uí Dhálaigh, represented in the seventeenth century by
Aonghus Ó Dálaigh or Aonghus Ruadh, author of the infamous satire ‘Tribes of
Ireland’, and referred to as Ó Dálaigh of Cahir, held lands at Ballyroon at the
western end of the peninsula (pl. 18). Local knowledge points to the remains of
Aonghus Ruadh’s residence on the brow of a south-facing slope at Ballyroon.
The site is marked by a native enclosed settlement, probably a cashel (implicit
perhaps in Aonghus’ epithet ‘of Cahir’) which is masked by a thicket of briars.
To the immediate south side of it, there are wall-footings of a rectangular
building, out of which cut stone, including the remains of the frame of a square-
headed two-light window of late sixteenth- or seventeenth-century type, has
been recovered.5
The Uí Dhálaigh bardic school

The remains of a late medieval building, recorded in nineteenth-century local
tradition as a ‘college’ used by the senior line of the Uí Dhálaigh, lie in a
secluded flat-bottomed shallow valley, orientated north-east–south-west, on the
northern side of Dromnea Hill (pl. 2). The building would have been visible
from the Uí Dhálaigh tower house at Farranamanagh Lough and probably
reached from there by a natural route running south-west from the hill. The
schoolhouse building was the source of considerable discussion during the
progress of the first Ordnance Survey of Co. Cork in 185. The key people in
Database of Ireland), s.n. 42 O.H. Creighton, Designs upon the land: elite landscapes of the
Middles Ages (Woodbridge, 29). 43 AMisc., p. 91. 44 O’Donovan, Tribes of Ireland, pp
13–1; O’Sullivan, ‘Tadhg O’Daly’, 31. 45 The window fragment has been incorporated into
8 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
that enquiry were John Beirne, who recorded the physical remains of the
building and local traditions about it, John O’Donovan, historian and antiquary
with the Ordnance Survey, who commented on Beirne’s findings and on the
memorandums of Captain Larcom, who was head of the Ordnance Survey. It is
important to note that O’Donovan did not set foot in Co. Cork during the survey
of that county, and that he conducted all of the work on the place-names of the
county from his office in Dublin. The value of O’Donovan’s comments,
therefore, lies, not in a comprehensive evaluation of the physical remains of the
‘college’, but in his understanding of the history of Muinter Bháire and how the
building at Dromnea should be classified on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map.
In describing the ruins at Dromnea in his edition of Tribes of Ireland published
in 1852, seven years after the building was surveyed by Beirne, O’Donovan made
some amendments to Beirne’s original notes. Beirne had recorded the family
name of the occupants of the valley at Dromnea in 185 as ‘Nicholson’ but
O’Donovan corrected it to ‘Nicholas’.
In his report to Captain Larcom, dated 19 April 185, Beirne described what
he had seen at Dromnea:
In the townland of Dromnea there stands the remains of an ancient edifice

now incorporated within the dwelling house of George Nicholson [recte
Nicholas] and said to be the remains of an old college. The northern side
wall is about 1 feet high and 25 feet long, in which there is a small window
similar to one in the western end of Kilcrohan old church. This ruin is
evidently one of considerable antiquity, although I could not obtain any
information from the gentry of this part of the country respecting it except
its being called by the peasantry ‘the old college’.7
Captain Larcom subsequently wrote to the antiquary George Petrie, seeking his
assistance in identifying the building. Larcom believed that it might be ‘an old
residence and not an ecclesiastical building’, but Petrie replied that he had never
heard of the building and suggested that Larcom might contact William Hackett
of Midleton for further information.8 The outcome of that contact is not
recorded.
Beirne also collected folklore in the locality about the use and founder of the
building, but in his account he does not cite his sources at Dromnea. On 2 May
185, he wrote:
A family of the O’Dalys founded a college at Drumnea, one of whom was

Carroll O’Daly … Another of his family became a priest who afterwards
founded the church of Kilcrohan. Tradition says that the king of Spain
an outbuilding on the local O’Mahony farm. 46 O’Donovan, Tribes of Ireland, p. 12.

47 Ordnance Survey Memorandums for Co. Cork, 2, pp 55–. 48 Ibid., p. 5.
sent over three of his sons to be educated here, one of whom died and was
interred in Kilcrohan church. It is further stated that the daughter of the
earl of Cavan eloped with this Carroll O Daly and returned with him to his
own country and made a portion of this college their residence for some
time.9
Beirne suggested that the ‘college’ might have been noticed in Comerford’s
History of Ireland. O’Donovan was subsequently engaged to comment on
Beirne’s findings. He was scathing of the suggestion that Comerford’s history
might be useful and he debunked the local tradition collected by Beirne. He
wrote: ‘Comerford’s History of Ireland, so much talked of by the Irish peasantry,
is a bad abstract of Keating’s, but neither Comerford nor Keating have a word
about this place’. He continued, ‘The tradition about this place is all false. There
never was a college there. Carroll O’Daly did not belong to this house and the
Muntervary were not the O’Dalys but a collateral branch of the O’Driscolls. This
is a grand specimen of the fabrications of local traditionalists!’5 However,
O’Donovan’s scholarship brought new clarity to what Beirne had seen and
recorded at Dromnea in 185: ‘The fact is that the O’Dalys came here in the
1th century from Clare as poets to McCarthy Reagh and O’Mahony the
Western, and this house was their dwelling and schoolhouse’. O’Donovan’s
interpretation of the building at Dromnea as a native schoolhouse was pioneering
and, over a century and a half later, there is now a programme of research in
place to identify the types of buildings erected by Gaelic learned families, among
the most diagnostic of which was the sgoilteach or schoolhouse. O’Donovan
understood that ‘college’ meant native schoolhouse because he had already
encountered traditions relating to the schoolhouses of the Meic Aodhagáin
lawyers in north Galway and the Uí Dhálaigh poets in north Clare during the
progress of the respective Ordnance Surveys of those counties:
Now, from the names which the peasantry give the ruins of the houses of
the MacEgans of Galway and O’Dalys of Corcomroe or Burren in Clare, I
am inclined to believe that this is the ruin of O’Daly’s houses. Whatever
name was applied to MacEgan’s house at Duniry, Co. Galway might be
safely used here.51
He should have been less dismissive of the local tradition at Dromnea, since,
after all, what was preserved in the collective memory was knowledge of a seat of
learning, regardless of the term used to describe it. O’Donovan advised Larcom
that what local tradition called the ‘old college’ at Dromnea must be designated
49 Ibid., pp –1. 50 Ibid., p. 3. 51 Ibid., p. 58.

7 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
‘ruins of O’Dalys bardic schoolhouse or seminary’ on the Ordnance Survey six-

inch map.52
The south-west end of the small valley in which the remains of the bardic
school are situated is today occupied by a suite of farm buildings that were
constructed after 182–5 (pl. 2). These include two dwellings and five
outbuildings. A comparison between the present set of buildings and those on
the site when Beirne conducted his survey in 185 shows that, apart from a
length of the north wall of the bardic school, nothing of the upstanding masonry
of the pre-185 buildings was preserved above ground level. This was also
confirmed by the building inspection conducted on the site by the author in
March 21. In 185, the remains of the school, as recorded by Beirne, consisted
of the northern long wall of the building, c.7.2m long and c.3.5m high, which
was incorporated into the dwelling of George Nicholas (fig. 27.8). The Nicholas
house was aligned east–west. Beirne did not suggest that any other part of it
contained wall fabric of the school. However, O’Donovan, who did not actually
see the site but was perhaps drawing on additional notes recorded by Beirne,
wrote in his Tribes of Ireland in 1852:
The ‘Old College House’ still remains and forms the residence of a farmer,
Mr George Nicholas. The walls are well built, and cemented with lime and
mortar, and from fragments of ruins still to be seen close to what remains,
it may be inferred that it was once a house of some importance.53
The ‘fragments of ruins’ to which O’Donovan refers are not explained by him
or by Beirne; he could have been referring to architectural features such as
window- and door-stones from the schoolhouse itself or additional ruined
buildings associated with the schoolhouse.
Sometime after 185, the current dwelling on the site, which has a north–
south alignment, was built in the general location of the Nicholas house. The
new dwelling preserved some of the remains of the north wall of the school
which was examined by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland in 1985, at which
time it was interpreted as the possible remains of a tower house and recorded as
being 5.1m long, 2.m high with a batter at the north-east corner.5 Today, those
remains consist of a length of wall, 9cm thick, set against the north gable of the
house. It is considerably shorter, at just .5m, and lower, at 2m, than that
recorded by Beirne in 185 (pl. 25) and by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland
in 1985. The presence of modern cement in the upper masonry courses indicates
that the wall fabric of green, grey and purple sandstone was rebuilt in more
52 Ibid., p. 3. 53 O’Donovan, Tribes of Ireland, p. 12. 54 Archaeological Survey of

Ireland, SMR129-15; Denis Power et al. (eds), Archaeological inventory of County Cork: 1:
west Cork (Dublin, 1992), p. 357; in the same year, Paul Walsh also made some notes on the
site and produced an elevation and plan of the remains.
The landscape and settlements of the Uí Dhálaigh poets of Muinter Bháire 71
recent times. There is no trace of the ‘batter’ earlier observed by the

Archaeological Survey of Ireland. The wall contains a rectangular single-light
cut-stone window, which is chamfered and punch-dressed in a style typical of
late medieval stone dressing. The eastern jamb-stone has been reset back to
front, with the chamfer turned inwards rather than outwards, which suggests
that the wall fabric has been considerably disturbed over time, albeit in its
general appearance it reflects that seen in Beirne’s sketch of 185 (pl. 25). An
examination of the interior of the current house on the site did not reveal any
additional features. It may be concluded that the ‘old college’ was not a tower
house but probably a single-storey sgoilteach of which a sizeable portion of the
northern long wall remained in 185, but which has been considerably altered
since.
At the north-east end of the floor of the valley that housed the school, there
is a covered well and early field walls constructed of very large upright slabs
(pl. 2). The well chamber, that once contained a fresh spring providing the
valley settlement with water, is a dry-stone construction, the greater part of the
south or back wall and the angle between the south and west walls being natural
rock outcrop topped with neatly coursed small blocks of green sandstone and
shale. The roof is corbelled using large stone slabs, a technique that suggests that
the well is of some antiquity.
South of the school, on the south-eastern declivity of Dromnea Hill, there is
a nest of four roofless and ruined stone huts, and one isolated hut nearby that is
buried in dense vegetation cover. They are low-slung mortared structures, the
largest of which is 7.5 by 3.7m internally, with walls 7cm thick, constructed of
the local green and purple sandstones. This group of buildings is noted on the
first Ordnance Survey and two of the huts are specified in the Primary valuation
of 1851–3 as ‘houses’ occupied by Denis and Timothy Sullivan. Both parties are
documented as having leased the houses, but with no attendant land. During the
eighteenth century, the settlement pattern in the greater Bantry region, inclusive
of Sheepshead Peninsula, was a combination of clustered and dispersed houses
associated with the rundale field system. Each hut cluster had infield used for
arable farming, usually for the growing of potatoes and oats, as well as outfield
for grazing, and mountain pastures for summer grazing.55 The hut cluster at
Dromnea could therefore be interpreted as vernacular dwellings of farming
tenants at Dromnea during that period or, as the Primary valuation indicates, the
dwellings of herds during the nineteenth century. However, there are certain
aspects of the huts that suggest that their primary construction and original use
could have been associated with the school. The dramatically exposed location
of the hut cluster on the edge of the hill, overlooking Dunmanus Bay and its
islands, sets it apart from the nineteenth-century farming settlements of the
peninsula, which tend to be located in sheltered areas such as valleys. Features of
55 Hourihan, ‘Rural settlement and change’, 7.

72 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
the huts, such as their wall fabric, dark and comfortless interiors without hearths,
and the ample provision of keeping-holes or wall-cupboards in their gables and
long walls, also hint at an earlier purpose. At bardic schools, the sgoilteach or
schoolhouse was part of a suite or complex of buildings. An anonymous
seventeenth-century poem, Aonar dhamhsa eidir dhaoinibh, refers to the ‘three
forges’ of the bardic school, in other words to three buildings that were central
to the layout of a bardic school. These were teach meabhraighthe, the house of
memorizing, teach luighe, the house of reclining (meaning composition); and
teach breithimh, the house of the critic (meaning examiner).5 As McManus has
observed, these activities of memorizing, composition and being examined are
also cited in Thomas O’Sullevane’s posthumous eighteenth-century account of
a typical bardic school. He describes one of the buildings, possibly the ‘house of
composition’, as
a snug, low hut, and beds in it at convenient distances, each within a small
apartment, without much furniture of any kind, save only a table, some
seats and a conveniency for cloaths to hang upon. No windows to let in the
day, not any light at all us’d but that of candles, and these brought in at a
proper season only.
He goes on to explain that each pupil worked his poem
each by himself upon his own bed, the whole next day in the dark, till at a
certain hour in the night, lights been brought in they committed it to
writing. Being afterwards dress’d and come together into a large room,
where the masters waited, each scholar gave in his performance.57
The large room referred to here may be the schoolhouse or ‘house of the critic’.
There are also earlier references to the physical surroundings of a bardic school
in Tadhg Óg Ó hUiginn’s Anocht sgaoilid na sgola or ‘On the breaking up of a
school’, written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. It refers to na
leabtha (beds) and na botha (huts) where Fearghal Ruadh Ó hUiginn used to
conduct his school, and it implies that the students composed while sitting or
lying on beds in the dark in separate huts.58 This method of learning how to
compose in darkness is also referred to in Fear Flatha Ó Gnímh’s sixteenth-
century poem ‘Art versus nature’, where he chastises a fellow poet for composing
in the open air, which was regarded as a breach of professional etiquette – he
56 Damian McManus, ‘The bardic poet as teacher, student and critic: a context for the
grammatical tracts’ in C.G. Ó Háinle and D.E. Meek (eds), Unity in diversity: studies in Irish
and Scottish Gaelic language, literature and history (Dublin, 2), pp 12–3. 57 Memoirs of
the Right Honourable the Marquis of Clanricarde, lord deputy general of Ireland … with a
digression containing several curious observations concerning the antiquities of Ireland (Dublin,
17), pp 18–9. 58 Osborn Bergin, Irish bardic poetry (Dublin, 197), p. 282.
writes ‘without a dark hut, without hardship, with leave to take delight in lofty
invention, a grassy scaur, a view of mountains, an airy prospect are thine’.59 For
the archaeologist, all of these comments are potentially useful clues to the
physical manifestation of the bardic school on the landscape.
Kilcrohane parish church

Sheepshead Peninsula was coterminous with the medieval parish of Kilcrohane.
The parish church of Cill Crocháin and its attendant graveyard are positioned
on a south-east-facing slope, east of Dromnea on the south coastline of the
peninsula with ready access to the sea. From the quay at Kilcrohane, the
principal view is to the Uí Dhálaigh settlements at Farranamanagh and Dromnea
and to Rosskerrig Mountain (pl. 2). The sizeable church (pl. 27) is 13 by 5.5m
internally and constructed of the local green sandstone. An examination of the
wall fabric suggests that there are three phases of construction in the building
relating to the high, late and post-medieval periods. There is no evidence for any
building fabric earlier than c.12. Very few of the architectural fixtures of any
period survive in the building, but the remains of the high medieval round-
headed doorway, the head of which is dressed with diagonal tooling indicative of
a twelfth- to fourteenth-century date, is incorporated into the south long wall,
and a plain single-light window of late medieval type remains in the east gable.
There is also an attic window in the west gable and the external face of that gable
is battered. Both of those features suggest that there was a first floor at the west
end of the building, perhaps a priest’s apartment. There was considerable
instability where the coarbship of Cill Crocháin was concerned, with the vicarage
void in the later fifteenth century and usurped by the priest Diarmuid Ó
Suilleabháin between c.175 and 181. In 1515, the perpetual vicarage was
again declared vacant, so long in fact that it had devolved to the apostolic see. It
was unlawfully detained by the priest Risteard Ó Mathghamhna, who was
ordered to be removed and replaced by one Cornelius Ó Ceallacháin, priest of
the diocese of Ross.1 In the later medieval period, the offices of coarb and
erenagh were distinguished by two things – the possession of old monastic lands
subject to a bishop’s levy, and the facility of learning, which the holders of these
hereditary offices used in the service of their lords. Mac Cana has noted that
several of the learned families who emerged as poets, historians, physicians and
lawyers in the Gaelic and gaelicized lordships of Ireland during the later
medieval period performed the dual role of either coarb or erenagh of church
lands combined with learned person who had appropriate knowledge to resolve
legal disputes.2 A third attribute of those offices, particularly where bardic
59 Ibid., p. 25. 60 J.A. Twemlow (ed.), Calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to
Great Britain and Ireland: papal letters, 1471–84, 13:2 (London, 1955), p. 71. 61 Anne
Fuller (ed.), Calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: papal
letters, 1513–21, 2: Leo X Lateran registers, pt 1 (Dublin, 25), pp 218–19. 62 Mac Cana,
7 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
families were concerned, was the obligation to dispense hospitality. Several

bardic families kept a tighe aoidhedh coitchinn (‘general guest house’), which has
important implications for archaeological investigation of the settlements of
these families.
Since the Uí Dhálaigh of Muinter Bháire originally emerged from the early
medieval monastic school at Clonard, a later role for that branch of the sept as
erenaghs of Kilcrohane might be expected, but that does not appear to have been
the case. Kilcrohane is regarded in local tradition as the Uí Dhálaigh burial site
and within the graveyard there is a plain ledger attributed to the family, mounted
on a more recently constructed stone table on the immediate south-west side of
the church (pl. 27). Cut from the local very friable green sandstone, the original
surface of the slab has eroded. A more recent inscription ‘O’D – M’ meaning ‘Ó
Dálaigh Muinter Bháire’ has been cut into the upper end of the slab surface.
THE Uí DHáLAIGH SCHOOL IN CONTExT
In late medieval and early modern Europe, schools were built almost exclusively
in urban environments, with the school invariably tied to the church, and indeed
schools were often situated next to parish churches in the towns and cities.3 In
contrast, the Gaelic school was usually in a rural and often sequestered location,
the geographic insularity of the setting conveying a sense of monastic retreat
from the world. This is most obviously seen in respect of those institutions
dedicated to the art of poetry in coastal Gaelic lordships on the western seaboard,
such as the bardic school at Dromnea and that of the Uí Chléirigh at Kilbarron
in south-west Donegal. However, it must be added that the schools were not so
remote as to be inaccessible and were generally located at a convenient but
discrete distance from a routeway.
A sense of physical exile from the concourse of society characterizes the
setting of the Uí Dhálaigh bardic school. Apart from the fact that the school
building was secluded in a depression, the hill itself has the appearance of an
island in the bay, especially when looking south from the old road to Ahakista
(pl. 2) and west from the quay at Kilcrohane (pl. 2). On the eastern declivity
of the hill, the stark exposure of the hut cluster (of as yet undetermined date) to
the Atlantic also evokes a sense of isolation. Those who contrived the school
settlement in this environment could have been consciously imitating the
hermitical setting of an early medieval island monastery. Thomas O’Sullevane’s
eighteenth-century description of a bardic school in the introduction to Carte’s
Life of the duke of Ormond (notwithstanding the fact that O’Sullevane has been
accused of forgery and an over-active imagination) supports a view of the bardic
‘The rise of the later schools’, 129–31. 63 Annemarieke Willemsen, Back to the schoolyard:
the daily practice of medieval and renaissance education (Turnhout, 28), pp 23–, 92–3.
schools as sequestered institutions. Damian McManus has explained that, in

respect of the educational routine and conditions of a bardic school, ‘much of
O’Sullevane’s account is supported by the evidence of poetry’. O’Sullevane’s
comment about the ideal location of a bardic school – that ‘it was likewise
necessary the place should be in the solitary recess of a garden, or within a sept
or inclosure, far out of reach of any noise, which an intercourse of people might
otherwise occasion’5 – should therefore be given some credence, not least
because the landscape settings of known school settlements tend to support that
opinion.
What the Gaelic schools, especially those dedicated to poetry, share in
common with their European urban counterparts is their general proximity to a
parish church and/or their location within land denominations that have ‘kil’
(cill, church) as a root or stem word in their place-names. Some of the many
examples include Kilbarron (Uí Chléirigh), Kilronan (Uí Dhuibhgeannáin),
Kilcrohane (Uí Dhálaigh), Kilsarkan (Uí Dhálaigh) and Kilbrack (Uí
Dhuibhdábhoireann). The correlation of ‘kil’ place-names with learned families,
and/or the occurrence of a church on the lands of bardic families, often points
to their role as lay erenaghs and coarbs of those church lands. This finding has
important implications for the identity of the Gaelic schoolhouse or sgoilteach.
There are several important clues in the literature produced by the schools
themselves about the types of buildings that housed their activities. The use of
schoolhouses is attested in three instances in sixteenth-century manuscripts,
specifically in relation to two law schools and a medical school. In each case, the
schoolhouse building is variously referred to as sgoilteach and tig na scoile. The
schools concerned are the medical school of the Uí Chonchobhair of Aghmacart,
Co. Laois, and the respective law schools of the Meic Aodhagáin at Park, Co.
Galway, and the Uí Dheóradháin of Ballyorely in Co. Wexford. A marginal
comment scribbled by one of Domhnall Ó Duibhdábhoireann’s pupils who was
working on the legal glossary now known as MS Egerton 88, which was compiled
155–7 and mostly in the Meic Aodhagáin law school at Park, north-east of
Tuam, refers to the sgoilteagh (‘schoolhouse’), while the schoolhouse of the Uí
Dheóradháin legal family at Ballyorely, Co. Wexford, is also mentioned in a
marginal note in the same manuscript. Ó Duibhdábhoireann’s school was
typically peripatetic, and he is found not only at Park in Galway but also at
Ballyorely in Wexford in the spring of 15, gathering manuscript material for
his legal glossary. The note reads Misi Domnaill a dtig na scoile dam.i. a mBaile
Orlaith aniu (‘I am Domhnall who is in the schoolhouse, that is, in Ballyorely
today’).7 Another schoolhouse in use in the sixteenth century was situated in the
64 McManus, ‘The bardic poet as teacher’, p. 121. 65 Memoirs of the marquis of Clanricarde,
pp 17–8. 66 S.H. O’Grady (ed.), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Museum
(London, 192), p. 12. 67 Nerys Patterson, ‘Gaelic law and the Tudor conquest of Ireland:
the social background of the sixteenth-century recensions of the pseudo-historical prologue
7 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
settlement of the Uí Chonchobhair medical family at Aghmacart. Risteard Ó

Conchobhair, while transcribing a copy of Liber pronosticorum, recorded his place
and circumstances of writing as a bhfhocair mo magistir agus mo brathar a ttech na
sgoili a nAchadh Mhic Airt in .6. la do Mharta agus dar mo urethir sum iotmhar
ocarac.1590 (‘in the company of my master and kinsman [Donnchadh Óg Ó
Conchubhair] in the schoolhouse in Aghmacart on the th day of March. And
upon my word, I am thirsty and hungry’).8
For the archaeologist, the appearance of the sgoilteach or schoolhouse and its
material culture are of particular interest. Do we have any idea what a native
schoolhouse looked like and are the schoolhouses such as those mentioned in
relation to the Meic Aodhagáin, Uí Dheóradháin and Uí Chonchobhair, in
sixteenth-century contexts, quite late developments? Is there a distinction
between the types of school buildings used by legal and medical families who had
no association with hereditary church roles, and bardic families who were also
erenaghs and therefore stewards of church lands and responsible for maintaining
the fabric of the church in their care; and were the school settlements of the late
medieval period broadly similar to those used in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries or are there significant changes in the settlement arrangements of the
schools of learned families in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries?
As to the appearance of the sgoilteach, the English Jesuit and martyr, Edmund
Campion (15–81), in his History of Ireland (1571), described the interior of a
law school of the late sixteenth century, apparently based on a personal
encounter. He wrote:
I have seene them where they kept school, ten in some one chamber,
grovelling upon couches of straw, their bookes at their noses, themselves
lying flatte prostrate, and so to chaunte out their lessons by peece-meal,
being the most part lustie fellowes of twenty-five years and upwards.
This description implies that a group of students used a single chamber to chant
their lessons. There is material evidence too for what may now be defined as the
sgoilteach of native learned families, at least as it appeared in the sixteenth
century. Simms has noted that for the fourteenth century ‘we have evidence for
fixed schools, each located at the home of a chief poet, using books in their
studies’,9 but it can be argued that by the fifteenth or sixteenth century there
existed a specific building, referred to as a sgoilteach, devoted to the scribal and
learning activity of Gaelic professional schools. It assumed a particular
architectural form that has gone unnoticed by field archaeologists and
of the Senchas már’, IHS, 27:17 (1991), 2; William O’Sulllivan, ‘The book of Domhnall Ó
Duibhdábhoireann: provenance and codicology’, Celtica, 23 (1999), 27–99. 68 Aoibheann
Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The medical school of Aghmacart, Queen’s County’, Ossory, Laois and
Leinster, 2 (2), 11–3 at 13–1. 69 Simms, ‘Bardic schools, learned families’, p. 35.
architectural historians. Research to date suggests that it was a private

institutional space, often sequestered on the landholding of the family and
separate from the residence of the ollamh. The gated defensive aspect of several
ollamhs’ residences, such as the walled and gated promontory of the Uí
Chléirigh in Kilbarron, the Uí Dhálaigh tower house at Dromnea, which would
have had an attached bawn with gate entrance, and the cashel of Cahermacnaghten
with its late medieval strong gate-house entrance, which was the Ó Duibh-
dábhoireann ollamh’s ceann-áit before the fashionable sixteenth-century tower
house in nearby Lissylisheen became the main residence of the family, may point
to the fact that manuscript libraries of learned families were generally housed in
the security of the ollamh’s residence. On the basis of current field evidence, the
sgoilteach on the other hand appears to have been a non-defensive building,
single-storey and generally open-plan, with the proportions of a medieval hall or
parish church, ranging in size from c.1 by 5m to 15 by 7m.
Archaeological investigation of a building known as Cabhail Tighe Breac,
tucked away in the small Kilbrack sub-denomination of the Cahermacnaghten
landholding of the Uí Dhuibhdábhoireann, in the Burren, Co. Clare, supports a
case for its role as a sgoilteach of the Cahermacnaghten law school from the close
of the fifteenth century through to the early seventeenth century. From the mid-
seventeenth century, it was modified for use as a domestic residence after
Kilbrack was apportioned to Turlough O’Brien.7 The combined seasons of
excavation directed by the author in 28 and 21 (licences 8E35 and
1E1) in the interior of Cabhail Tighe Breac suggest that when first
constructed it was a single-storey rectangular building, 15.5 by 7m internally, the
long axis of which was aligned east to west. The original plan of the building was
bipartite, consisting of a large eastern room and a smaller, perhaps subdivided,
western chamber. The building was entered at the east end of the north wall
through a semi-pointed doorway decorated with a continuous half-roll and fillet
moulding more typical of an ecclesiastical building, and which finds its closest
correspondents in the moulded doorways of the some of the late fifteenth- or
early sixteenth-century parish churches of the Burren. A total of seven windows
of Tudor late gothic form, originally shuttered and not glazed, provided a
relatively bright interior. Two large wall-cupboards or keeping-holes for storage
were placed in each gable. The roof was probably thatched and of cruck
construction, with the crucks springing from the tops of the thick walls. Due to
the fact that the building had an afterlife as a domestic residence in the mid- to
late seventeenth century, and had intermittent use in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, finds from its primary period of use are, unsurprisingly,
rare. The building would have been cleaned out many times. During the 28
season, a small fragment of slate bearing a single inscribed character was
70 R.C. Simington (ed.), Books of survey and distribution, 4: Co. Clare (Dublin, 197), p. 5.
78 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
recovered from a primary floor deposit at the west end of the building. It is
potentially diagnostic of school activity and a fortunate survival of the cleaning
out of the building that took place in the later periods of its use. Cabhail Tighe
Breac appears to have been first built and used in the late fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, as is suggested by a radiocarbon age-range of 188–13 (2 sigma)
obtained from a faunal sample in a primary occupation layer of the entrance
through the western partition of the building. The wall-footings of a building of
similar proportions occur on the landholding of the Uí Dheóradháin in
Ballyorely, Co. Wexford, and recent electrical resistance survey (licence 1R)
conducted in the Uí Chonchobhair medical family landholding at Aghmacart,
Co. Laois, has confirmed the presence of building foundations on the site of the
‘infirmary field’ north-east of the Augustinian priory and north of the tower
house residence of the Uí Chonchobhair. The foundations appear to constitute
two buildings, the larger of which is 1 by 5m and therefore a possible candidate
for the sgoilteach of the medical school in which Risteard Ó Conchobhair
transcribed a copy of Liber pronosticorum in 159.
The Uí Chléirigh family of poets and historians are associated with the tower
house and complex of buildings on a walled promontory overlooking the Atlantic
in the townland of Cloghbolie in the parish of Kilbarron in south-west Co.
Donegal. One of the very ruined buildings on the windswept promontory is
comparable in scale to Cabhail Tighe Breac and could have been a schoolhouse
but, as already noted, an initial reading of the arrangement of late medieval
learned family settlements suggests that, if this is a consistent pattern, the
ollamh’s residence and the schoolhouse dedicated to learning and writing
combined with accommodation for pupils, were placed at a discrete distance
from each other. Less than 1km north-east of the promontory, there is a building
in Kilbarron townland, 1.3 by .9m internally, which has been classified as a
church and a possible adjoining priest’s residence of fifteenth- or sixteenth-
century date,71 but it lacks several key characteristics of a church. It has no
evidence of an east window, or important liturgical fixtures such as an aumbry or
a piscina, it has an odd juxtaposition of doorways in the long walls of the
building and it appears to have a dais at the east end of the interior, which has
been misinterpreted as an altar base. The ground around the church is regarded
as a graveyard that marks the location of an early ecclesiastical site dedicated to
St Barrind, but there is no evidence at all for any grave-markers. In 193, F.W.
Lockwood noted that there were foundations of other buildings or ‘cells’
adjacent to the Kilbarron building.72 Traces of one of those, abutting the north
wall of the main building, have been proposed as a priest’s residence, but an
agglomeration of ‘cells’ observed by Lockwood could suggest a bardic
71 Brian Lacey, Archaeological survey of County Donegal (Donegal, 1983), p. 27. 72 F.W.
Lockwood, ‘Kilbarron Castle and Church, Co. Donegal’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 9
(193), 111–1.
schoolhouse settlement. It is tempting to suggest that ‘Kilbarron church’ is a

sgoilteach and attendant settlement created by the Uí Chléirigh when they
succeeded the Uí Scingín,73 as chroniclers and poets to the Uí Dhomhnaill, in
the fifteenth century.
As only a portion of the north long wall of the building traditionally regarded
as the Uí Dhálaigh schoolhouse at Dromnea survives above ground level, it is not
possible to determine the overall dimensions of the sgoilteach there, and it can
only be assumed that it was comparable to those already noted. Branches of the
Uí Dhálaigh elsewhere in Ireland are attributed buildings that may be
recognized as schoolhouses. In the lines ‘The house of O’Dalaigh, great its
wealth/bestowing without folly at a white house/it were a sufficiently loud organ
to hear his pupils reciting the melodies of the ancient schools’, Aonghus Ó
Dálaigh refers to what appears to have been the schoolhouse of his kinsmen, the
Uí Dhálaigh of Finnavara in Corcomroe.7 The Uí Dhálaigh of Corcomroe were
also keepers of a tigh aoidhedh coitchinn, reference to which is made in the
obituary of Tadhg son of Donnchadh who is described as ollamh of poetry and
keeper of a house of general hospitality on his death in 151.75 It is not yet known
whether the sgoilteach and tigh aoidhedh coitchinn of the late medieval and early
modern periods were two separate buildings or one building that combined both
of those functions, but the tigh aoidhedh coitchinn was an enduring feature of
bardic settlements, mentioned for instance as early as 12 in the obituary for
Donnchadh Ó Dálaigh, who is described as a ‘man renowned for poetry and for
a guest-house’,7 and as late as 112 in respect of Eochaidh Ó hEoghusa, who is
described as fear tighe aoidheadh go comhchoitchionn.77 In most cases, it seems,
keepers of a tigh aoidhedh coitchinn were bardic families who were generally also
erenaghs of church lands. The schoolhouse buildings already discussed here are
late in origin and their users were not erenagh families, but they appear to
borrow their basic plan and proportions from the medieval parish church or
medieval hall. Where the ollamh of a school was also an erenagh, it is possible
that school activity took place in a building attached to the church in his care or
even within the church itself, at the west end of a long parish church for instance,
where an upper floor might otherwise be interpreted exclusively as a priest’s
residence. The recovery, in a colonial context, of slates carrying medieval
Hiberno-English inscriptions from the interior of Smarmore Church, Co.
Louth, in 1959, suggests that some parish churches may have served educational
purposes as well as the cure of souls.78
73 Patrick Woulfe, Sloinnte gaedheal is gall: Irish names and surnames (Dublin, 1923), p. 39.
74 O’Donovan, Tribes of Ireland, pp 82–3. 75 AFM, s.a. 151. 76 AMisc., pp 122, 123.
77 Pól Breathnach, ‘Short annals of Fir Manach’, Irish Book Lover, 23 (1935), 7–1 at 8.
78 A.J. Bliss, ‘The inscribed slates at Smarmore’, PRIA, C (195), 33–; Derek Britton
and A.J. Fletcher, ‘Medieval Hiberno-English inscriptions on the inscribed slates of
Smarmore: some reconsiderations and additions’, Irish University Review, 2:1 (spring 199),
55–72.
8 Elizabeth FitzPatrick
To conclude, this study of the Uí Dhálaigh settlement on Sheepshead

Peninsula, and its broader context, shows that an integrated approach to the
various buildings that constitute the cultural landscapes of these families is
essential to understanding the way in which Gaelic learned professions settled
their landholdings and organized their activities. Despite the often exiguous
nature of the evidence, some certainties are beginning to emerge – the presence,
at least by the sixteenth century, of the sgoilteach as a particular building
dedicated to writing and learning, and the separation in the late medieval period
of the ollamh’s gated residence from school buildings. Unclear as yet is whether
the arrangement of bardic, legal and medical schools differed, and whether their
layout altered in tandem with architectural fashion between the fourteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. There also remains much work to be done in
materializing the tigh aoidhedh coitchinn and in clarifying the physical identity of
bardic school buildings where ollamhs were also erenaghs.
The Uí Dhomhnaill and their books in

early sixteenth-century Ireland
B E R NA D E T T E C U N N I N G H A M
A N D R AY M O N D G I L L E S P I E
Charting the distribution and redistribution of power among the lordships of

Gaelic Ireland, an area in which Katharine Simms has made a distinguished
contribution, is a frustrating yet important aspect of the study of that society.
The frustration arises from the nature of the sources, which are relatively
substantial yet infuriatingly silent about wide areas of how authority was
dispersed and maintained in late medieval and early modern Ireland. Annalistic
and genealogical compilations allow the principal lineages to be reconstructed
and something of their fortunes to be charted. However, annalistic sources can
conceal as much as they reveal. Their narratives are concerned, in the main, with
what may be described as transactional power, that is, the ability of individual
lords to bring other, lesser, lords under their control through the use of force, a
pattern that becomes clear as local kings transformed themselves into warlords
in the later Middle Ages.1 Yet what is clear from the annalistic records themselves
is that transactional power was not the only sort of secular authority that lords
could utilize. The obituaries compiled by the annalists for their political masters
certainly emphasized their martial prowess, but they also cast light on other
aspects of the late medieval idea of lordship as the dominant expression of power
in that society. Combining annalistic entries with other fragmentary evidence can
sometimes help elucidate those enigmatic stories to reveal something of the
articulation of various forms of power in early sixteenth-century Irish society.
While this procedure is illuminating, its use can be rather restricted.2 Another
approach has been illustrated by Simms when pointing to the importance of the
reuse of earlier stories as propaganda tools in the creation of lordship.3 Likewise,
Caoimhín Breatnach has examined the changing political contexts in which
certain stories were retold to new audiences. The aim of this essay is to broaden
yet further the canvas on which the pattern of power was depicted, by
considering the making and use of manuscripts as a marker for the accumulation
and manipulation of cultural power in one lordship in early sixteenth-century
Ireland.
1 Simms, Kings. 2 For this methodology, see Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond
Gillespie, Stories from Gaelic Ireland: microhistories from the sixteenth-century Irish annals
(Dublin, 23). 3 Katharine Simms, ‘The propaganda use of the Táin in the later Middle
Ages’, Celtica, 15 (1983), 12–9. 4 Caoimhín Breatnach, Patronage, politics and prose
81
82 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie
In a characteristically forensic essay on late medieval Donegal, Simms has

pointed out that ‘throughout the sixteenth century, it is an undeniable fact that
Tír Chonaill played an unusually prominent part in Irish history as a whole’. A
variety of factors can be advanced for this, ranging from economic prosperity as
a result of fishing, through the military power associated with galloglass activity,
to the intellectual activity associated with the fusion of the Franciscans and the
learned class.5 Put another way: the late-medieval family of Ó Domhnaill were
remarkably successful in manipulating various sorts of power to their own ends.
In doing so, they created a cohesive lordship that did not fragment in the way
that other lordships did and formed not just a political but a cultural focus for
power. In this process, two men had central roles: Aodh Ruadh (lord from 11
to 155 with a brief break of a few months in 197) and his son Aodh Dubh (lord
from 155 to 1537). It was under Aodh Ruadh that the families of Mac an Bhaird
and Ó Cléirigh became established as the learned families employed by Ó
Domhnaill, and he was also credited with building the friary at Donegal for the
Franciscans. The achievements of Aodh Dubh are perhaps less obvious at first
glance, but it is clear that he built on the earlier attempts to consolidate cultural
power characteristic of his father. Aodh Dubh’s near-contemporary obituary in
the Annals of Connacht stressed his military power and his imposing personal
appearance, as well as the other usual lordly attributes of generosity, wisdom,
honour and good judgment. He was the equal of any earlier hero, the annalist
asserted
the like of Conn Cétchathach for making war and raising battle and strife,
co-equal of Art Énfher in bounty and fidelity, image of Cairbre in
proficiency and understanding of all arts in use among the Gaels, peer of
Guaire son of Colmán for succouring poets and exiles.7
Underpinning these lordly qualities was the wealth amassed by Ó Domhnaill

through the aggressive extension of his political jurisdiction. Given his military
achievements, it was little wonder that Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill could afford
to be ‘the full moon of nobility and bounty of the North’, in the words of the
Annals of Connacht.8
(Maynooth, 199). 5 Katharine Simms, ‘Late-medieval Donegal’ in William Nolan, Liam

Ronayne and Mairéad Dunlevy (eds), Donegal, history and society (Dublin, 1995), p. 197. For
Ó Domhnaill’s economic power derived from fishing, see Cal. Carew MSS, 1515–74, p. 38.
6 Simms, ‘Late-medieval Donegal’, pp 19, 19. 7 AC, p. 75. 8 AC, p. 11.
The Uí Dhomhnaill and their books in early sixteenth-century Ireland 83
II
One little-examined facet of this creation and manipulation of cultural power or

cultural capital is the use made of both old and newly commissioned manuscripts
in this process. Both Aodh Ruadh and Aodh Dubh Ó Domhnaill were collectors of
older manuscripts. The late fourteenth-century manuscript known as the Book of
Ballymote contains a note connecting the manuscript with the Uí Dhomhnaill:
A true, choice, king assumed the kingship and lordship of Cineál Conaill,
i.e. Aodh Óg son of Aodh Ruadh son of Niall Garbh son of Toirdhealbhach
of the Wine. It was that king, i.e. Aodh, that most increased the orders and
churches and all the learned class, since Conall Gulban. A king who
lowered the powerful and raised the weak was that king. A king who was
fond of and friendly to friends and to the doers of good deeds. A king who
was angry and displeased with enemies and with those who did misdeeds.
A king who dispensed most rewards and gifts to the poets of Ireland. A
king who brought most neighbouring lands under the control and power
of Cineál Conaill was that Aodh. These are the names of those territories
that Aodh brought under his influence: Oireacht Uí Chatháin and Cineál
Mongáin and Cineál Fearadaigh and Fir Manach and the two Breifnes and
Muinntear Eolais and Magh Lurg and Magh Aoí and Clann Goisdealbh
and Ceara and Conmhaicne and Tír Fiachrach and Tír Amhalghaidh and
Umhall, Luighne and Cúil Ó bhFinn and Tír Oilealla and Tír Tuathail and
Coillte Conchobhair and Cairbre Droma Cliabh. Not alone indeed is this
hope and expectation of society that something greater will come under his
power since prophets and visionaries and learned men have prophesied
that that Aodh would obtain the high-kingship and lordship of Fodhla. It
is that Aodh that got this book and he took it for 1 milch cows from Mac
Donnchadha with the permission of his family and his brothers with the
agreement and knowledge of people, though it is a good book it was
purchasing a book from an unlearned man to purchase it from Mac
Donnchadha. The year of the Lord at that time was 1522. It was that year
also that that Aodh at Loch Monann defeated Con Bacach, son of Conn,
son of Henry, son of Eoghan Ó Neill and those of the Gaeil and Gaill that
were with him. And it is not possible to count or give testimony as to how
many good and evil people fell in that defeat. Bad is the ink and the pen
and the letter, 1522.9
It is uncertain whether 1522 was the date of writing the colophon or the date of
the events described and the identity of the author of the note is not recorded.
9 RIA, MS 23P12, p. 333a, Irish text printed in Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the Royal Irish
Academy, 28 fascs (Dublin, 192–7), p. 113.
8 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie
Two conjectures may be offered. While the form of the note is similar to that of
some obituaries in the late medieval annals, the reference to expectations of
greater achievements by Aodh Dubh suggest that it was written while he was still
alive. This would imply a date between 1522, when the book was acquired, and
Aodh Dubh’s death in 1537. Secondly, the hand strongly resembles that of
Giolla Riabhach Ó Cléirigh, active in the Dhomhnaill lordship in the 153s,
suggesting that if it was not Giolla Riabhach himself it was the hand of a scribe
trained in the same school as the Uí Chléirigh or perhaps even by them.
One of the closest parallels to this annotation is found in a later insertion in
the twelfth-century manuscript Lebor na hUidre:
A prayer for Aodh Ruadh son of Niall Garbh Ó Domhnaill who carried off
this book by force from the Connachtmen and the Leabhar gearr along
with it, after they had been absent from us from the time of Cathal Óg Ó
Conchobhair to that of Ruaidhrí son of Brian [Ó Conchobhair], and ten
lords were over Cairbre in the interval. And in the time of Bronchiolar son
of Aodh Ó Domhnaill they were taken to the west and in this manner they
were taken, i.e. the Leabhar gearr in ransom from Ó Dochartaigh and
Leabhar na hUidhre going in ransom for the son of Ó Domhnaill’s ollamh
of history, it being taken by Cathal as a pledge from him from Cineál
Conaill … from Conchobhar to Aodh.1
There are no indications of date or authorship of this note but, again, some
inferences might be drawn. The note appears to have formed the basis of the
account of the acquisition of these manuscripts subsequently recorded in the
Annals of the Four Masters under the year 17. This would certainly suggest a
date after 17 and, given that the note asks for a prayer for Aodh Ruadh, it
might suggest that it was written after his death in 155. The hand is not the
same as that which wrote the note in the Book of Ballymote, discussed above, but
there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that Lebor na hUidre was in the
possession of the Ó Cléirigh family in the sixteenth century. Most obviously, the
use of the note as a basis for the entry in the Annals of the Four Masters suggests
that in the 13s the manuscript was still available to the Uí Chléirigh scholarly
circle, whereas the Book of Ballymote had already passed into the hands of James
Ussher and was not used for a comparable entry on the events of 1522. Secondly,
there are few copies of the texts in Lebor na hUidre known to have been made in
the sixteenth century. In the case of Amra Cholaim Cille, which is contained in
Lebor na hUidre, two of four known sixteenth-century copies have a Donegal
provenance with Uí Chléirigh connections.11 It seems likely, therefore, that the
note inserted into Lebor na hUidre was added in the early sixteenth century by
someone in the circle of the learned family of Ó Cléirigh. That the poets should
10 LU, pp x–xi, 89. 11 Bodl., Laud Misc. 15, pp 2– and NLI, MS G5.
have acted as keepers of the manuscripts of the lordship seems highly likely, since
one poem composed in the late sixteenth century on the castle of Lifford
describes Ó Domhnaill and his guests being ‘a while with the fair books of the
poets’ that had, presumably been brought to the castle for that purpose.12 This is
not a common motif in bardic poetry and may be taken, in this case, to represent
reality.
These two early sixteenth-century notes in these older manuscripts are of
some interest in casting light on the workings of the Uí Dhomhnaill lordship.
First, and most obviously, they highlight the activities of the late medieval Uí
Dhomhnaill as collectors of manuscripts. Some indication of a minimum level
of manuscript ownership may be provided by the activity of Maghnus Ó
Domhnaill, son of Aodh Dubh, in his 1532 work Beatha Cholaim Chille. Using
this text, it is possible to reconstruct what sort of manuscripts may have been at
the disposal of the family perhaps under the guardianship of the learned families
associated with the lordship. For example, Richard Sharpe has suggested that the
compilers of Beatha Cholaim Chille had at least one collection of saints’ Lives
with contents similar to that of Marsh’s Library MS Z3.1.5, and it seems likely
that their source was a manuscript of some antiquity.13 The compilers of Beatha
Cholaim Chille appear to have had another older manuscript available to them.
For instance, the Life repeats the well-known stories of the making of the two
hymns Althus Prostator and Noli Pater by Colum Cille.1 The stories told about
the composition of these hymns come not from the hymns themselves but from
the prefaces to them in the twelfth-century text known as the Liber hymnorum,
which now exists in just two medieval copies.15 One hymn from the Liber
hymnorum, ‘Brigit bé bithnaith’ also appears in Bodl., Laud Misc. 15, which can
be connected to the circle working on Beatha Cholaim Chille, suggesting that the
compilers of this work also had access to a copy of the Liber hymnorum. Neither
of the two surviving copies of the Liber hymnorum contains all the material that
was used by Maghnus Ó Domhnaill and it is possible that other copies of the text
existed that have now disappeared.
There are also indications from Beatha Cholaim Chille that other older
manuscripts may have been used in the compilation of the work, although the
evidence is less clear.1 On five occasions in Beatha Cholaim Chille, there is a
story about a miraculous discovery of a gospel book. In one version of the story,
the book was entrusted to Brigit for Colum Cille, in another the gospel was
12 Eleanor Knott (ed.), The bardic poems of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn (2 vols, London, 1922–),
i, p. 3, ii, p. 2. 13 Richard Sharpe, ‘Maghnus Ó Domhnaill’s source for Adomnán’s Vita S.
Columbae and other vitae’, Celtica, 21 (199), –7. 14 Betha Colaim Chille [hereafter
BCC], ed. Andrew O’Kelleher and Gertrude Schoepperle (Urbana, IL, 1918, repr. Dublin,
199), §77 (pp –8), §§21–17 (pp 28–12). 15 UCD-OFM, MS A2 and Trinity College
Dublin, MS 11. J.H. Bernard and Robert Atkinson (eds), The Irish liber hymnorum (2 vols,
London, 1898), i, pp 87, 2–5, ii, pp 28, 123–. 16 For a list of sources compiled from
citations in the text, see BCC, pp xlvi–xlvii.
8 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie
buried with St Martin and discovered by Colum Cille, and in another account it
was an angel that revealed the gospel to Colum Cille.17 These would all appear to
be variants of one story and, given the liking of the author of the Life for weaving
stories around books, they may well refer to a manuscript then extant though not
now identifiable. It has been suggested that this may be a manuscript known as
the Gospel of Martin, which was one of the chief relics of Derry in the twelfth
century that vanished from the record in 1182 and was reinvented as the
manuscript now known as the Cathach.18 This seems unlikely, given that one is
clearly described as a gospel book and the other is a psalter and the account in
Beatha Cholaim Chille keeps them distinct. Despite this, one poem in Bodl.,
Laud Misc. 15 (a manuscript compiled by those working on the Life) beginning
‘Taiscfidhter mo shoiscela’, which relates the copying of the Cathach by Colum
Cille, is annotated ‘Scoiscel Martain a nDoire’ and clearly links the Cathach with
the Gospel of Martin.19 A further possibility is that these stories describe a
gospel manuscript with Columban associations but which was not held by the Uí
Dhomhnaill and the most likely candidates for this are the Book of Durrow or
the Book of Kells. However, in the seventeenth century, both of these gospel
books were thought to have been written by Colum Cille rather than discovered
by him.2 A third possibility, which combines a gospel book with a text known as
the Book of the Angel (one of the terms used in Beatha Cholaim Chille) with a
Life of Martin, is the Book of Armagh. However, this is a manuscript with
Patrician rather than Columban associations and not enough is known about its
history in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries to determine whether it
may have fallen into the hands of Ó Domhnaill through raiding, as happened
with Lebor na hUidre, or otherwise. There are no ready answers to this problem
and indeed the author may have intended the identity of the manuscript to
remain vague, but the myth-making process that went on around books is clear
from such stories.
In the 153s, the dynamic of the Uí Dhomhnaill manuscript collection
changed significantly. As part of the project to write the new Life of Colum Cille,
a wide range of older manuscripts was digested to provide material. Bodl., Laud
Misc. 15 appears to be such a digest, comprising poems on Colum Cille
transcribed by at least three scribes, one of whom was Eóghan Carrach Ó
Siadhail. Bodl., Laud Misc. 15 was a new compilation, possibly assembled to
act as a working document for the Life of the saint. Secondly, it seems that older
lives of Colum Cille were sought out. The version of the Middle Irish life that
Maghnus Ó Domhnaill appears to have had at his disposal, to judge from the
versions of the stories from it that he includes, was one that was very similar to
17 BCC, §28 (pp 15–1), §3 (pp 18–21), §11 (pp 9–7), §1 (pp 17–7), §25 (pp 258–9).
18 Raghnall Ó Floinn, ‘Insignia Columbae I’ in Cormac Bourke (ed.), Studies in the cult of
Saint Columba (Dublin, 1997), p. 153. 19 Máire Herbert, ‘Duanaire Choluim Chille i Laud
15: an teacs’ (MA, NUIG, 197), p. 18. 20 Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Some notes on the history of
the Book of Kells’, IHS, 9:3 (195), 159; William O’Sullivan, ‘The donor of the Book of
that in Leabhar Chlainne Suibhne, which had been compiled in Donegal between
1511 and 151, and included a number of additions to the life not in earlier
versions.21 It seems likely that this version of the life had only recently come into
Donegal. In addition, three citations from the early sixteenth-century redaction
of the Book of Fenagh in the new Life of Colum Cille, together with a new 153s
recension of the Book of Fenagh that has Donegal connections, indicate that
Maghnus Ó Domhnaill also had access to this work.22 Those working on the Life
of Colum Cille also had access to a copy of the Martyrology of Óengus, since a
number of stories from this source appear in Beatha Cholaim Chille.23 There were
a number of copies of this work in existence in the early sixteenth century,
including one late fifteenth-century copy produced close to Donegal in
Fermanagh.2 However, most of these manuscripts are unlikely candidates for Uí
Dhomhnaill ownership. The exemplar of the Uí Dhomhnaill copy of the
Martyrology of Óengus is more likely to have been a manuscript which is now
lost. A strong candidate for this is a manuscript of the Martyrology of Óengus
that was copied by Siodraidh Ó Maolchonaire in 153 and re-copied by the
Franciscan hagiographer Mícheál Ó Cléírigh in the early seventeenth century.25
It appears that members of the learned family of Ó Maolchonaire may well
have been part of the circle around Maghnus Ó Domhnaill at this point, thus
allowing him access to a considerable manuscript collection owned by this family.
The early sixteenth-century redactor of the Book of Fenagh, Muirgheas Ó
Maolchonaire, also appears to have used Bodl., Laud Misc. 15, or some of its
sources, to compile a manuscript including poems on Colum Cille, later seen by
Mícheál Ó Cléirigh.2 The connections between Ó Domhnaill and Ó
Maolchonaire may be even more complex than this. In 129, Mícheál Ó Cléirigh
copied an Irish Life of St Brendan of Clonfert. According to a colophon on his
manuscript, Ó Cléirigh made his copy
from a book which Siograid Úa Maolchonaire wrote for Rose, daughter of

Aodh Dubh, son of Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill, wife of Niall the younger,
son of Art, son of Conn Ó Néill in the place of Sean-Chaisleáin
[Newtownstewart, Co. Tyrone] beside Sliabh Truim. The age of Christ as
the writer shows was then 153.27
Kells’, IHS, 11:1 (1958), 5–7. 21 RIA, MS 2P25. The versions and additions are edited
and discussed in Máire Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry (Oxford, 1988), pp 213–1, 25–7,
21–2, 2, 25–9. 22 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie, ‘Muirgheas Ó
Maoilchonaire of Cluain Plocáin: an early sixteenth-century Connacht scribe at work’, Studia
Hibernica, 35 (28–9), 1–3. 23 For example, the stories about Colum Cille, see Fél, pp
1–7, 15–9, 198–9, 2–5, appear to be the source for BCC, §35 (pp 2–3), §27 (pp 28–
8), §221 (pp 21–19), §158 (pp 1–7), and the verse in Fél, pp 18–9 also appears in Bodl.,
MS Laud Misc. 15, p. 18. 24 UCD-OFM, MS A7. 25 Nollaig Ó Muraíle (ed.), Micheál
Ó Cléirigh, his associates and St Anthony’s College, Louvain (Dublin, 28), p. 73.
26 Cunningham and Gillespie, ‘Muirgheas Ó Maoilchonaire’, 1. 27 Bethada náem nÉrenn,
ed. Charles Plummer (2 vols, Oxford, 1922), i, p. 95; ii, p. 92.
This Rose, wife of Niall Óg Ó Néill was thus a sister to Maghnus Ó Domhnaill.
Moreover, she was aware of what her brother had done four years earlier in
gathering manuscripts dealing with Colum Cille and reworking these into a new
saint’s Life. Her husband, Niall Óg, had a copy of Ó Domhnaill’s Life of the
saint transcribed for him by Eoghan Carragh Ó Siadhail, the same scribe who
had been involved in the compilation of Bodl., Laud Misc. 15.28 The
manuscript produced for Niall Óg Ó Néill, now UCD-OFM, MS A8, is clearly
a prestige manuscript, written on high-quality vellum and in a well-laid-out
professional scribal hand. The Life of Brendan, as commissioned by Rose Ó
Néill and known only from Ó Cléirigh’s copy, is a conflation of the medieval Irish
Life and the Latin Navigatio Brendani and is the earliest known copy of this
version. It is therefore tempting to suggest that the manuscript prepared for her
was not just a copy of a pre-existing Life but rather a new recension compiled
by, or under the direction of, Rose in emulation of the work of her brother on the
Life of Colum Cille. The 153 Life of St Brendan did not merely conflate two
older Lives, but also reordered the sequence of events to make a unified whole.
This methodology certainly resembles the approach adopted elsewhere by
Maghnus Ó Domhnaill in his Life of Colum Cille. If this is so, Rose may also
have followed the Uí Dhomhnaill trait of collecting manuscripts and using the
Ó Maolchonaire family as her agents, although evidence to prove this has not
survived.
One other piece of evidence points to Maghnus Ó Domhnaill using contacts
with the learned family of Ó Maolchonaire for manuscripts and information.
Maghnus includes in his Life a story of Munda Ma Tulchain, who was educated
in a school where Colum Cille was said to have taught in Cell Mór Dithruimhe,
or Kilmore, Co. Roscommon.29 The story was not a new invention, as it came
directly from the Latin Life of St Munnu, but its inclusion may have a particular
significance here.3 By the sixteenth century, this area was the location of the
school run by the learned family of Ó Maolchonaire. Two manuscripts, BL,
Harley 528 and RIA, 23N1, can be assigned to this school.31 Moreover, at least
one of the Uí Dhomhnaill learned family of Ó Cléirigh – Giolla Riabhach –
seems to have been trained in that school and there also appears to have been a
link between another Uí Dhomhnaill learned family of Mac an Bhaird and this
school, one where Muirgheas Ó Maolchonaire had also probably trained.32 This
suggests that the inclusion of this episode of Colum Cille as teacher, which does
not fit with the narrative thrust of the Life at this point, may well reflect the close
28 UCD-OFM, MS A8. 29 BCC, §11, pp 172–3. 30 Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, ed.

Charles Plummer (2 vols, Oxford, 191), ii, p. 228. 31 R.I. Best, Facsimilies in collotype of
Irish manuscripts: iv: 23N10 (Dublin, 195), p. vi; S.H. O’Grady and Robin Flower (eds),
Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Library (3 vols, London, 192–53, repr. Dublin,
1992), ii, p. 299; R.C. Simington, Books of survey and distribution, i: County Roscommon
(Dublin, 199), pp 28, 31; Paul Walsh, Irish men of learning (Dublin, 197), p. 8.
32 Cunningham and Gillespie, ‘Muirgheas Ó Maoilchonaire’, 22.
contacts between Ó Domhnaill and the learned family of Ó Maolchonaire, which

would certainly have provided access to a considerable resource of older
manuscripts for copying.
In addition to this scouring of older manuscripts for material on Colum Cille,
the project utilized more recent material, mainly for comparative purposes.
Bodl., Laud Misc. 15, for instance, refers to works by St Bernard, whose
sermons are quoted by Maghnus Ó Domhnaill at the beginning of the Life, and
thus copies of these may have been in the Uí Dhomhnaill book collection.33 The
origin of such material probably did not lie with the traditional learned class. A
possible source was the Franciscans, who were established at Donegal by Aodh
Ruadh Ó Domhnaill in 17. Certainly Bernard was one of the authorities most
cited by the friars, and his works were owned by a number of friaries.3 The
Franciscans may also have provided material from Augustine and Ambrose and
perhaps the material from ‘lectionaries’ referred to in the Life.35 However, there
are hints that Maghnus Ó Domhnaill’s relationship with the friars may have
been rather uncertain, which raises questions over the assumption that they were
natural providers of material to the Uí Dhomhnaill.3 At times in Beatha Cholaim
Chille when one might expect a Donegal Franciscan presence, it is difficult to
detect. In the fifteenth century, the Donegal friary had a copy of Jocelin’s
twelfth-century Life of St Patrick, but there appear to be no citations or
allusions to the sections of this work dealing with Colum Cille in Beatha Cholaim
Chille, suggesting Maghnus did not know about it.37 Again, it appears that the
Donegal Franciscans had a copy of the Life of Colm of Terryglass among their
manuscripts and, while this contains material relating to the early life of Colum
Cille, it does not seem to have been known to Maghnus Ó Domhnaill.38 There
may be another way of explaining the use of the works of Bernard and others by
Ó Domhnaill. It is clear from the accuracy of the Biblical quotations that Ó
Domhnaill, or his scribe, had a Vulgate Bible before him and one might think of
the friary in Donegal as a source of a Bible, but there is an alternative
explanation. In 151–11, Aodh Ruadh had gone on pilgrimage to Rome through
England and it is possible that he may have encountered a printed Vulgate in
Rome and brought it to Ireland for its novelty value.39 A number of printed
33 BCC, §5–7, pp –5; Brian Ó Cuív, Catalogue of Irish language manuscripts in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford and the Oxford college libraries (2 vols, Dublin, 21–3), i, p. 91. 34 Colmán
Ó Clabaigh, The Franciscans in Ireland, 1400–1534 (Dublin, 22), pp 112, 121, 13.
35 BCC, §3 (pp 2–3) §387 (pp 3–1) §9 (pp 2–3). 36 See the satires in Cuthbert Mhág
Craith (ed.), Dán na mbráthar mionúr (2 vols, Dublin, 197–8), i, pp 375–, compared with
the story, which seems to relate to Maghnus, in Brendan Jennings, ‘Brussels MS 397’, AH,
 (193), 7. 37 Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum Latinorum antiquiorum caeculo XVI qui
asservantur in Bibliotheca Nationali Parisiensi ( vols, Brussels, 1889–93), iii, p. . 38 For
the life, see Paul Grosjean, ‘Notes d’hagiographie Celtique’, Analecta Bollandiana, 72 (195),
33–7. The life is clearly not a copy by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh since he does not appear to have
been aware of it either in his collections or in his entry for Colm of Terryglass in the
Martyrology of Donegal. It can only be concluded that this was a manuscript from the old
sixteenth-century friary that made its way to Louvain. 39 AU, iii, p. 97.
9 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie
editions of the Vulgate were certainly available in Italy by the early sixteenth
century and exposure to such a work may have shaped the appearance of Beatha
Cholaim Chille, its paragraphing resembling that of a printed book. Thus, the
use of these religious works may well be the result not of an encounter with the
Franciscans but of a dalliance with the even more modern world of print
mediated through pilgrimage and translated into the world of manuscripts.
III
Collecting and making the sort of manuscript material described above was not
an innocent pastime and the early sixteenth-century notes added to the Book of
Ballymote and Lebor na hUidre are more than simply marks of ownership. The
notes provide a context within which the manuscripts were understood to have
existed. Most fundamentally, the context was that of lordship. The note in Lebor
na hUidre, for instance, was concerned with the assertion of power by Ó
Domhnaill in the context of raiding. In seeking to extend the authority of the
lordship, he was revealing a fundamental attribute of lordly power. Indeed, part
of this activity was the regular seizing not only of cattle but, as this note suggests,
of other goods, including manuscripts. In 197, for instance, the manuscript
psalter known as the Cathach, together with its shrine, was captured from Ó
Domhnaill by Mac Diarmada. It remained in Connacht until 199, when it was
taken again in the course of a raid.1 Again, at least part of what is now Bodl.,
Laud Misc. 1 was taken in ransom by the earl of Desmond, presumably in the
context of raiding. Perhaps of even greater significance for discerning the
motivation for collecting manuscripts is the ‘1522’ note in the Book of Ballymote.
This note echoes some of the elements present in the Connacht annals obituary
for Aodh Dubh, not least the reference to the prophecies about his future
activities and its listing of territories held.2 Such a resemblance was probably
intentional. Annalistic obituaries provided a prism through which a lordship
could be viewed at a particularly crucial point in its history, as power passed from
one lord to another. Such moments were often opportunities to reshape power
relations within a lordship and the obituary recorded in an historical text was one
way in which the traditional values of lordship could be articulated and
innovations validated.3 In this way, the obituary differed from the bardic lament
on the death of a lord, which tended to concentrate on the past and the
40 For editions of the Vulgate, see T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, Historical catalogue of the
printed editions of Holy Scripture (2 vols, London, 193), ii, pp 913–17; Françoise Henry and
G.L. Marsh-Micheli, ‘Manuscripts and illuminations, 119–13’, NHI, ii, p. 88. 41 AU,
iii, pp 2–1, –5. 42 RIA, MS 23P12, p. 333a; AC, pp 72–5. 43 Bernadette
Cunningham, O’Donnell histories (Rathmullan, 27), pp 5–2. For other literary activity in
such an interregnum, see Raymond Gillespie, ‘The making of O’Rourke, 153’ in Brendan
Scott (ed.), Culture and society in early modern Breifne-Cavan (Dublin, 29), pp 8–8.
individual. When Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill died in 155, the lament ‘Cionas tig
Éire gan Aodh?’ composed by Conchubhar Ruadh Mac an Bhaird articulated
well-worn themes in well-established motifs of landscapes withering at the king’s
death, the collapse of lordship, poets in mourning keeping vigil at the grave and
general grief contrasting with formal joy. The prose obituaries in both the
Ulster and Connacht annals struck a very different note. These focused on the
consolidation of lordship, the extraction of rents and military service, and the
establishment of his authority in north-west Ulster, in addition to his founding
the Observant Franciscan house in Donegal. The Ulster annalist also noted that
he died in his seventy-eighth year ‘and in the forty-fourth year of his lordship’
as though a dating system based on regnal years was in operation.5 All this
suggests that the note in the Book of Ballymote was about validating the Ó
Domhnaill lordship as much as about ownership and that the manuscript in
some sense articulated the idea of lordship.
These two manuscript notes do more than provide context for the existence
of particular manuscripts at the beginning of the sixteenth century. They also tell
the story of the acquisition of the manuscripts and hence provide a provenance
for the works and reveal a concern with their authenticity. Moreover, given that
the additions are roughly contemporary with each other, albeit in different
hands, it suggests that the manuscript collection was sorted, ordered and notes
added to at least some manuscripts to identify their contents, probably under
Aodh Dubh after 155. This concern not just to own a copy but to possess a
particular manuscript needs to be seen in the context of the reworking of a
specific Uí Dhomhnaill history at the beginning of the sixteenth century with a
view to producing a new version of the past. The collection of older manuscripts
gave way to the making of new ones, as old texts were recycled to new ends.
Some of the evidence for this process is sketchy. Two works are possible
contenders for inclusion in this class of new compositions but neither of them
has survived. The first is a genealogical tract of which a copy appears to have
been preserved in the early seventeenth-century Ó Cléirigh book of genealogies.
Paul Walsh has dated the work to c.1537 and hence it was probably made shortly
after the bulk of the manuscripts discussed above. The genealogy replicates that
of the Uí Dhomhnaill over six generations in the Book of Ballymote, but, unlike
Ballymote, it begins with Domhnall Mór rather than his father Éigneachán and
it carries the geneaology down to the 153s.7 Without the manuscript it is
difficult to know much about the context or author of this tract but the later
44 R.A. Breatnach and P.A. Breatnach, ‘Elegy of Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill (d. 155)’, Éigse,
35 (25), 27–52; Katharine Simms, ‘The poet as chieftain’s widow: bardic elegies’ in
Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Liam Breatnach and Kim McCone (eds), Sages, saints and storytellers
(Maynooth, 1989), pp –11. 45 AC, pp 1–11; AU, iii, pp 72–. 46 Beatha Aodha
Ruaidh Uí Dhomhnaill, ed. Paul Walsh (2 vols, London, 198–57), ii, pp 157–89. 47 Using
Domhnaill Mór as the starting point of the line became normal Ó Domhnaill practice: see P.A.
Breatnach, ‘The methodology of seanchas’, Éigse, 29 (199), 9.
Ó Cléirigh context may point to this family as its originator. The second
manuscript was a set of annals that no longer survive but were referred to by the
Four Masters as ‘a portion of the book of Cú Choigcríche, the son of Diarmait,
son of Tadhg Cam Ó Cléirigh, from the year 1281 to 1537’.8 This book’s owner
can be identified as the Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh active in 15 as poet and
protector of Domhnall, brother of Maghnus Ó Domhnaill, who was murdered
by Ó Gallchobhair. He was subsequently banished to Clare from where he
composed a number of poems for Maghnus asking that he might return to
Donegal.9 Since the manuscript containing these Ó Cléirigh annals has not
survived it is difficult to determine exactly what sort of text this was but the
chronological precision of the work suggests that it was a set of annals. Whether
this was an old set of annals that had been recently added to or, more likely, a new
compilation made by Cú Choigcríche in the late 153s is not certain and they
may have been made as one of a pair of manuscripts, the other being the
genealogical tract discussed above. From what can be gleaned from the contents
of the text, which appears to have been absorbed into the later Ó Cléirigh Annals
of the Four Masters, it was strongly biased in favour of Maghnus and hence was
probably the product of that scholarly circle.5
The most obvious examples of this making of new books that had messages
about cultural power are Beatha Cholaim Chille itself, the poem book of the Uí
Dhomhnaill, now bound with a copy of the Life in Bodl., Rawlinson B51, and
the collection of Colum Cille’s poems in Bodl., Laud Misc. 15. Each of these
manuscripts drew on material in the Uí Dhomhnaill collection and reworked
some aspect of their story for new circumstances. Thus, Maghnus Ó Domhnaill
could claim to be inspired to produce Beatha Cholaim Chille by ‘the love of a
brother for his high saint and kinsman by lineage and his dear patron’.51 In this
way, the Life of the saint was connected to the present lordship through
genealogy as well as bonds of lord and patron and hence the Life provided a
model for lordship. The reason for the frequent comparisons between Colum
Cille and Moses was not simply tradition but the fact that Moses in the Life was
a political figure among the Israelites as well as a holy man. The connection is
even clearer in the Uí Dhomhnaill poem book compiled between 153 and 15
and now in Bodl., Rawlinson B51.52 The poems in this book are arranged
chronologically. Twelve of the first fifteen are drawn from the Book of Fenagh,
which Ó Domhnaill had through the Ó Maolchonaire connection, and another
is also in the Colum Cille poem book in Bodl., Laud Misc. 15.53 The sequence
begins with Conall Gulban, the eponymous ancestor of the Uí Dhomhnaill,
48 AFM, i. p. lxvi. 49 AFM, v, p. 19; ABM, pp 23, 285–7, 3–5, 7–7. 50 Bernadette
Cunningham, The Annals of the Four Masters (Dublin, 21), pp 5–5, 188–21. 51 BCC,
§12, pp –7. 52 Brian Ó Cuív, The Irish bardic duanaire or ‘poem book’ (Dublin, 197), pp
3–5. Two further leaves may be in TCD MS 1319, pp 82bis–85. 53 The Book of Fenagh,
ed. W.M. Hennessy and D.H. Kelly (Dublin, 1875, repr. Dublin, 1939), pp 312–31, 338–,
moves through the rights, the territorial divisions and the rights of the Cineál
Conaill and then gives a number of poems of prophecy before transcribing a
number of poems to the Uí Dhomhnaill in chronological order, and thus
showing the evolution of the lordship to the present day. These were particularly
important to the Uí Dhomhnaill, since prophecy linked past and present and
validated the present configuration of power in historical terms. Of particular
importance was the poem by the thirteenth-century poet Giolla Brighde Mac Con
Midhe, which contained the prophecy by Berchán and Colum Cille of the coming
of Aodh Eanghach who would save Ireland and presumably transform Uí
Dhomhnaill power.5 This prophecy was revitalized in the early sixteenth century
as Uí Dhomhnaill power began to rise and it became central to their self image in
the early modern period. It appears in the Annals of Connacht obituary for Aodh
Ruadh and again at the beginning of Beatha Aodha Ruaidh Uí Dhomhnaill, which
narrated the exploits of a later Aodh Ruadh. In the 19s, it attached to yet
another Aodh Ó Domhnaill.55 The collection and reorganization of older material
thus shaped the Uí Dhomhnaill sense of themselves as the family of Colum Cille
who were prophetically destined to be rulers of Ireland. In such ways were
manuscripts made in specific circumstances linked with political power.
The value attached to particular known manuscripts is also suggested by the
myths that the Uí Dhomhnaill wove around at least some of the major
compilations they owned. In some cases, this may have been implied as much as
stated. Kuno Meyer, for instance, speculated that the drawing together of Colum
Cille’s poetry in Laud Misc. 1 may have been an attempt to create a psalter of
Colum Cille to rival the iconic Psalter of Cashel or that of Tara.5 This is
undoubtedly speculative, but one piece of evidence in the case of Lebor na
hUidre, recaptured from Uí Chonchobhair at Sligo in 17, provides some
evidence of how myth-making worked. Probably by the early thirteenth century
there were two traditions circulating about the finding of the Táin, a text now
extant in its earliest form in Lebor na hUidre, among other manuscripts.57
Maghnus Ó Domhnaill drew on the second of these traditions for his account of
the finding of the Táin and the writing of the text in Lebor na hUidre. He
explicitly recorded that he had drawn the story from the early thirteenth-century
tale Tromdhámh Ghuaire.58 According to the version of the finding of the Táin
3–5, 33–5, 39–9, 358–5, 35–8, 12–55, 19–21, 158–3, 15–8. 54 Irish texts, ii, pp
8–72; Nicholas Williams (ed.), The poems of Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe (Dublin, 198),
pp –73. 55 AC, p. 11; Beatha Aodha Ruaidh, ed. Walsh, i, pp 2–5, Breandán Ó Buachalla,
‘An mheisiasacht agus an aisling’ in Pádraig de Brún, Seán Ó Coileáin and Pádraig Ó Riain
(eds), Folia Gadelica (Cork, 1983), pp 72–5. 56 Kuno Meyer, ‘The Bodleian MS Laud 15’,
Ériu, 5 (1911), 7–8. 57 The literature is surveyed in Kevin Murray, ‘The finding of the
Táin’, CMCS, 1 (summer 21), 17–2. For excellent summaries of the tales, see James
Carney, Studies in Irish history and literature (Dublin, 1955), pp 1–9; the oldest extant
manuscript containing the Táin is Lebor na hUidre. 58 BCC, §157, pp 11–5; Tromdámh
Guaire, ed. Maud Joynt, MMIS (Dublin, 1931); Seán Ó Coileáin, ‘The making of Tromdám
Guaire’, Ériu, 28 (1977), 32–7; Seán Ó Coileáin, ‘Tromdhámh Ghuaire: an aoir agus an
9 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie
related in the second recension of Tromdhámh Ghuaire, the poets of Ireland, led
by Senchán, are unable to tell the story of Táin Bó Cúailnge and the company of
poets is sent out to find the story. They travel through Ireland and Scotland but
fail to find the story, but then they meet St Caillín, Senchán’s stepbrother, whose
cult centre lay at Fenagh, just outside Uí Dhomhnaill territory, who informs
them that only the hermit Marbán can tell them how to find the story. Marbán
is summoned but tells them that no one living knows the story, and that among
the dead only Fergus mac Róig, one of the figures around whom the narrative is
woven, knows it. Marbán says that they should gather the saints of Ireland and
fast with them against God at Fergus’s grave. Caillín emerges as the principal
saint and organizer of the action and Fergus appears and recites the Táin,
whereupon St Ciarán of Clonmacnoise writes down everything he says on the
hide of the dun cow. Marbán then requires that the poets return to their homes.
While this is a story about the finding of the Táin, it is also a story about the
making of a manuscript, ‘the book of the dun cow’, since the text that St Ciarán
wrote was held to be Lebor na hUidre, which, in the early sixteenth century, was
in the hands of the Uí Dhomhnaill. When Maghnus Ó Domhnaill came to write
his version of the finding of the Táin from Tromdhámh Ghuaire, he modified it to
fit more naturally with Uí Dhomhnaill tradition. The text was shortened and the
central role of Caillín in recovering the Táin was omitted. Caillín’s role was
reduced to telling Senchán to go to Colum Cille and get the story of the Táin
from him, ‘for to him was naught unknown that ever was or will be in heaven or
on earth’.59 Colum Cille, a man of learning himself, cannot refuse what is asked
of him for God’s sake. It is Colum Cille, not Caillín, who knows what is to be
done and how Fergus mac Róig is to be resurrected. Thus, the man who makes
possible the creation of Lebor na hUidre, written by Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, is
none other than Colum Cille. At one other point, the story was also stitched
firmly into Colum Cille’s story, since, in Maghnus Ó Domhnaill’s version,
although the poets return to their homes, they continue to exert unjust demands
– the point from which the original story started – and it is left to Colum Cille at
the Convention of Druim Ceat to finally resolve the problem. It may be no
coincidence that that event is also described in the preface to the text Amra
Cholaim Chille, also recorded in Lebor na hUidre. Thus, the sixteenth-century
note in Lebor na hUidre, which provides a provenance for the text, is only part of
a wider literary strategy to weave a set of stories or myths around these
manuscripts, giving them an importance beyond their content and integrating
them into the wider cultural context that underpinned Uí Dhomhnaill power.
Unfortunately, there is relatively little evidence of what myths enhanced the
value of other manuscripts with stories about their acquisition, but it seems very
insint’, Léachtaí Cholm Cille, 18 (1988), 2–38. 59 BCC, §157, pp 12–3. 60 For the
hagiographical contest between Caillín and Colum Cille in the sixteenth century, see
Raymond Gillespie, ‘Relics, reliquaries and hagiography in south Ulster, 15–155’ in
likely that such stories did exist. This may explain why Aodh Dubh Ó Domhnaill
was prepared to go to such lengths to acquire the Book of Ballymote rather than
commission a scribe to assemble a similar compilation of texts. One indication is
the large price of 1 milch cattle that he paid for the manuscript. By any
standard, this was a high price even for a vellum manuscript of about 25 folios.
In 1598, Mac Donnchadha was prepared to sell the very substantial castle of
Ballymote to Ó Domhnaill for £ and three hundred cows.1 Moreover, the
medical manuscript now styled BL, Egerton 89, which contains 183 folios,
changed hands at the beginning of the sixteenth century for just twenty cattle.2
Evidently, the Book of Ballymote commanded a considerable premium because
of its reputation. At one level, this was built on the practical use that could be
made of its large collection of genealogies in creating historical justifications for
current political realities. In addition to this practical use, it was also seen by
contemporaries as an enigmatic manuscript. While Ó Domhnaill was prepared
to pay a considerable premium for the book, Mac Donnchadha appears not to
have held it in the same high regard. One short note, presumably inserted before
it left Ballymote, observed that ‘It is small loss to me for Ó Domhnaill to take this
book from me because of its femmachus’: the meaning of femmachus here is
uncertain – perhaps ‘grubby appearance’ – but it is clear that divergent opinions
could attach to one manuscript.3 On the one hand, what was desired by Ó
Domhnaill was clearly little valued by Mac Donnchadha. The Book of Ballymote
is also paradoxical in its appearance. As it currently survives, the manuscript is,
by Irish standards, ornate. This level of decoration has led John Carey,
reasonably, to conclude that ‘the lavishness of its illustration indicates that it was
from the first intended for a patron’.5 There is much to favour this argument,
including the fact that the book was in the hands of the Mac Donnchadha family
before it passed to Ó Domhnaill and indeed much of the work was written in the
house of Mac Donnchadha, almost certainly at Ballymote. Yet, in content it is
quite unlike some of the other lordly books of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Ireland, such as Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 17 and the Seanchas Búrcach.8 Apart
Rachel Moss, Colmán Ó Clabaigh and Salvador Ryan (eds), Art and devotion in late medieval
Ireland (Dublin, 2), pp 18–22. 61 Beatha Aodha Ruaidh, ed. Walsh, i, pp 18–8.
62 O’Grady and Flower (eds), BL cat. Ir. MSS, i, p. 221. 63 RIA, MS 23P12, p. 1
[margin]; we are grateful to Ruairí Ó hUiginn for this suggested translation of femmachus.
DIL, s.v. ‘fem(m)achus’, translates the word as ‘grossness’, a meaning taken from Peter
O’Connell’s manuscript Irish–English dictionary in the RIA. Robert Atkinson, in his
introduction to Book of Ballymote (Dublin, 1887) translated the word as ‘silliness’. 64 Henry
and Marsh-Micheli, ‘Manuscripts and illuminations, 119–13’, pp 798–81. 65 John
Carey, ‘Compilations of lore and legend’ in Bernadette Cunningham and Siobhán Fitzpatrick
(eds), Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy library (Dublin, 29), p. 23. 66 Tomás Ó
Concheanainn, ‘The Book of Ballymote’, Celtica, 1 (1981), 19–2, 2–5. 67 While much of
the content of the Book of Ballymote overlaps with the near-contemporary Book of Lecan
(RIA, MS 23P2), the latter was never a lordly book, having been prepared by a learned family
for their own use. 68 TCD, MS 1.
496 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie
from the two tales at the end of the volume, there is little that would provide
entertainment or religious instruction or elucidate practical matters of levies on
other lordships in the Book of Ballymote. It contains material more suitable to
the collection of a learned family with its pedantic disquisitions on ogham and
its miscellaneous historical tracts than to that of a secular lord. Moreover, there
is a marginal note that records that ‘Maghnus Ó Duibhgeannáin is the man of
this book’, indicating that he was its owner.69 This all suggests that the Book of
Ballymote was an enigmatic book, capable of moving between the worlds of
lordship and learning and as such defied easy classification.
Iv
There are a number of possible models that might help in understanding this Uí
Dhomhnaill engagement with manuscripts. The first approach might be to
invoke the description of Maghnus Ó Domhnaill, son of Aodh Dubh, as
‘Renaissance prince’.70 The most immediate parallel is with Maghnus’s brother-
in-law, the earl of Kildare, who was also a significant collector of both books and
manuscripts, some of them in Irish.71 It is clear that there are similarities of
interest between the two men. Kildare’s booklist, for instance, contains an Irish
translation of a work by St Bernard, and other works by Bernard were used by
Maghnus Ó Domhnaill and his circle in the compilation of the Life of Colum
Cille. Again, the ‘Concullyn’s acts’ in Kildare’s booklist of Irish manuscripts
could well refer to a copy of the Táin and ‘another book wherein is the beginning
of the chronicles of Ireland’ could well be a version of the Lebor Gabála, such as
was probably contained in Lebor na hUidre when it was in Uí Dhomhnaill
hands.72 The list that contains Kildare’s Irish books is undated and, if a late date
were ascribed to it, it might be possible to see the marriage between Kildare’s
sister, Eleanor, and Maghnus Ó Domhnaill in 1538 as a channel along which
such manuscripts moved across cultures. However, this connection is difficult to
sustain since the Kildare library list should probably be dated c.1500 rather than
in the 1530s.73 Moreover, the marriage alliance between Ó Domhnaill and
Kildare was one of convenience and proved to be brief and it is unlikely that the
union had any long-term cultural impact.74 Rather, the cultural context in which
Maghnus should be located was a more traditional one. He appears to have
69 RIA, MS 23P12, p. 55. 70 Brendan Bradshaw, ‘“Manus the magnificent”: O’Donnell as

renaissance prince’ in Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney (eds), Studies in Irish history
presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp 15–38. 71 Gearóid Mac Niocaill (ed.),
Crown surveys of lands, 1541 (Dublin, 1992), pp 312–14, 355–6. 72 Mac Niocaill (ed.), Crown
surveys, p. 356; BCC, §5–7, pp 4–5; Ó Cuív, Cat. Ir. MSS in Oxford, i, p. 91. The portion of
Lebor na hUidre that may have contained a text of the Lebor gabála is no longer extant.
73 Catherine Moore, ‘The library catalogues of the eighth earl of Kildare’ (MPhil, TCD,
1998), p. 2. 74 Carol O’Connor, ‘The Kildare women: family life, marriage and politics’
studied in the traditional manner with a bardic poet, Tadhg Mór Ó Cobhthsigh,
and there is little sign that he was exposed to wider cultural influences, unlike his
father, who travelled to Rome.75
A more plausible self-perception of the Uí Dhomhnaill is provided by the
annalistic obituaries of Aodh Ruadh on his death in 1537. A terse entry in the
Annals of Ulster simply notes that ‘Ua Domnall, namely Aodh son of Aodh Ó
Domnaill, died in the end of summer of this year. And there came not from
Brian Bóruma downwards a king that was of better sway and rule than he’.7 This
motif was echoed by the other annalists. The Annals of Connacht, for instance,
described him as a ‘veritable worthy kinsman of Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig’.77
The allusions to Brian Bóruma do not end there. In 155, the Annals of Ulster
obituary for Aodh Dubh claimed that ‘there came not, from Brian Bóruma …
down, a king or lord that was of better sway and rule and was of more power than
that king’. Moreover, the annalist continued that ‘it were fitting to name him the
Augustus of the whole north-west of Europe’. This same language was used in
the Ulster annals to commemorate Brian Bóruma on his death in 11.78 The
links here are not easy to establish, but there was certainly a genealogical
connection, since Aodh Ruadh’s wife, Fionnghuala, was described as being of the
kin-group of Dál Cais, to which Brian Bóruma had belonged. Her sister was also
married to Eoghan Ó Ruairc of Leitrim.79 There were other connections between
Munster and Donegal along which traditions might move. The Carmelite friary
at Rathmullan, in north Donegal, for instance, was founded in 151 by Máire
Mac Suibhne, who ‘brought to that community a community from the south,
from Munster’.8 There was also movement southwards. A note on the poem
‘Fada a ccairt ó Chloinne Dalaigh’ in an eighteenth-century manuscript explains
that it was written by Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh, who had been banished from
Donegal in April 15 [recte 15] to Thomond, perhaps suggesting some
previous connection with the area.81 It is possibly through such contacts that
ideas about Brian Bóruma and his son Murchad circulated in south-west Ulster
in the sixteenth century.82 Perhaps more importantly, there was a copy of the
early twelfth-century saga Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib, a propagandist text for Brian
Bóruma, in Donegal in the early sixteenth century and it was read and cited by
Maghnus Ó Domhnaill in his Life of Colum Cille.83 It may well be that it was
from the traditional world of the twelfth-century renaissance rather than the
(PhD, NUIM, 28), pp 33–. 75 P.A. Breatnach, ‘In praise of Maghnas Ó Domhnaill’,
Celtica, 1 (198), 7. 76 AU, iii, p. 1. 77 AC, p. 11. 78 AU, i, pp 72–5. For the
obituaries of Brian, see Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Brian Boru: Ireland’s greatest king? (Stroud,
27), pp 11–13, 29. 79 AU, iii, pp 57–1; Beatha Aodha Ruaidh, ed. Walsh, ii, p. 171.
80 Leabhar Chlainne Suibhne, ed. Paul Walsh (Dublin, 192), p. 7. 81 Nessa Ní Shéaghdha
(ed.), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland: fascicule v (Dublin,
1979), p. 1. 82 James Carney (ed.), Poems on the O’Reillys (Dublin, 195), pp 1–17; ABM,
p. 55; Eleanor Knott, An introduction to Irish syllabic poetry (2nd ed., Dublin, 1957), p. 23.
83 BCC, §8, pp 5–7.
sixteenth-century one that the Uí Dhomhnaill drew their idea of the perfect
ruler on which they modelled their actions. Significantly, one of the things that
Brian Bóruma, as the ideal ruler, did in times of peace was to engage with books
and manuscripts. As Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib explains, after the banishment of
the foreigners from Ireland,
by him [Brian] were erected also noble churches in Erinn and their
sanctuaries. He sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and
knowledge, and to buy books beyond the sea and the great ocean, because
their writings and their books in every church and in every sanctuary
where they were, were burned and thrown into water by the plunderers
from the beginning to the end, and Brian himself gave the price of learning
and the price of books to every one separately who went on this service.8
In this way, the Uí Dhomhnaill of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
were emulating the actions of an ideal lord whom they encountered in the texts
they read. This emulation extended to include the collection of manuscripts
subsequently shared with the learned families as Ó Domhnaill appears to have
done with the two manuscripts discussed above.
Similar images of Brian Bóruma as learned patron were current in the
seventeenth century. When, in 127, the Westmeath antiquarian and manuscript
broker Conall Mac Eochagáin dedicated his Annals of Clonmacnoise to his
brother-in-law, Toirdhealbhach Mac Cochláin, he followed the same lines of
argument as Maghnus Ó Domhnaill had drawn from Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib,
concluding that all learning had disappeared from Ireland with the Viking raids,
but that
the said K[ing] Bryan [Bóruma] seeing into what rudeness the kingdom
had fallen after setting himself in the government thereof … he caused
open school to be kept in the several parishes to instruct their youth, which
by the said long wars were grown rude and altogether illiterate, he
assembled together all the nobility of the kingdom as well spiritual as
temporal to Cashel in Munster and caused them to compose a book
containing all the inhabitants, events and septs that lived in this land from
the first peopling, inhabiting and discovery thereof after the creation of the
world to the present, which book they caused to be called by the name of
the Psalter of Cashell,
which henceforth became the standard history of Ireland.85 The events described
in this passage are remarkably similar to the actions of the Uí Dhomhnaill in the
84 The war of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, ed. J.H. Todd (London, 187), pp 138–9. 85 AClon.,
early sixteenth century. The myth of the creation of the Psalter of Cashel added
authenticity to a manuscript that contemporaries, such as the historian Geoffrey
Keating, regarded as one of the main sources for the early history of Ireland. Just
as Brian Bóruma was connected with the making of the Psalter of Cashel, so the
Uí Dhomhnaill were connected with Lebor na hUidre (and both texts probably
held versions of the Lebor Gabála) through the actions of Colum Cille, discussed
above. The collection and annotation of manuscripts may well have been
engaged in by the Uí Dhomhnaill in response to an image of the ideal lordship
fed by stories of Brian Bóruma, either in Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib or other stories
associated with renowned and revered manuscripts such as the Psalter of Cashel.
The final model that may have helped to shape the behaviour of the Uí
Dhomhnaill with respect to manuscripts may be that of Colum Cille himself.
The association of Colum Cille with manuscripts in Maghnus Ó Domhnaill’s
Life is striking. Maghnus Ó Domhnaill’s Life refers to a tradition of Colum Cille
as author of three hundred books that could not be defaced by water, and this is
supported by a verse, although no independent source for this tradition can be
traced.8 The tradition is much expanded in the Life of Colum Cille included in
the Annals of Clonmacnoise, which, to judge from its length and the contem-
porary references it contains, was written by the compiler of the annals in the
12s rather than copied from an earlier exemplar. It recorded the tradition that
Colum Cille
wrote 3 books with his own hand. They were all New Testaments, he left
a book to each of his churches in the kingdom, which books have a strange
property which is that if they or any of them had sunk to the bottom of the
deepest waters they would not lose one letter, sign or character of them
which I have seem partly myself of that book of them which is in Durrow
in the K[ings] county for I saw an ignorant man that had the same in his
custody when sickness came upon cattle for their remedy put water on the
book and suffered it to rest there a while and saw also cattle return thereby
to their former or pristine state and the book to receive no loss.87
Of even greater significance is the role of manuscripts in the structure of

Maghnus Ó Domhnaill’s Beatha Cholaim Chille itself. According to the preface,
Maghnus collected the evidence about the saint that was scattered through the
ancient books ‘and much time did he give thereto, conning how he might put
each part thereof into its own fitting place as it is writ here below’.88 It seems,
therefore, that the structure of the life was carefully thought out and was
intended to carry its own message. The Life falls into two parts dealing with the
pp 7–8. 86 BCC, §39, pp 3–5. For Colum Cille as scribe, see Timothy O’Neill, ‘Columba
the scribe’ in Cormac Bourke (ed.), Studies in the cult of St Columba (Dublin, 1997), pp 9–
79. 87 AClon., pp 95–. 88 BCC, §11, pp 5–7.
5 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie
saint’s time in Ireland and Scotland respectively. Between these sections is a

shorter section on which the whole work pivots, and which announced in clear
terms at the beginning of the section: ‘Here begins the sending of Colum Cille
to Alba and the causes of his exile to Alba as his Life soon will show’.89 This
structure differs dramatically from previous lives of Colum Cille. In the seventh
century, Adomnán had adopted a tripartite structure of prophecy, miracles and
angelic visitations for his Life of Colum Cille. The twelfth-century Middle-Irish
Life, which was the dominant tradition into the sixteenth century, used a more
conventional hagiographical structure of prediction, birth, education, wonders
and preaching. The journey to Scotland was depicted as having been his own
decision as a result of a desire to go on pilgrimage and teach the Scots, Britons
and Saxons.9 Ó Domhnaill invents a much more complex story, linking in the
illicit copying by Colum Cille of a book that belonged to St Finnian of Drum
Finn. The matter was brought before Diarmait mac Cerbaill, the high-king who
ruled against Colum Cille retaining the copy, judging ‘to every cow her young
cow, that is her calf, and to every book its transcript’.91 Matters rapidly spiralled
out of control as Colum Cille’s relatives became involved and the battle of Cúl
Dreimne resulted. Although Colum Cille was victorious, he was forced into exile
because God was displeased with his actions in provoking the battle. The
manuscript at the centre of the problem was clearly identified by Maghnus Ó
Domhnaill:
The Cathach for a sooth is the name of that book by reason whereof the
battle was fought. And it is covered with silver under gold. And to open it
is not lawful. And if it is borne thrice sunwise round the host of the clan of
Conall when they go into battle, they come back safe in triumph. And it is
in the bosom of a successor or a cleric that is so far as it may be without
mortal sin, that the Cathach should be borne around the hold.92
This entire story, as narrated by Ó Domhnaill in 1532, is best regarded as part

of the process of creating a myth around a manuscript in the same way as a myth
was woven by him around Lebor na hUidre to explain its connection to the Uí
Dhomhnaill. There is little that is pure invention but there is much that is
reworked. Colum Cille can certainly be associated with a manuscript known as
the Cathach and the shrine in which the manuscript was preserved probably
dates to the late eleventh century. The iconography of the elaborate shrine
included an image of Colum Cille.93 However, the other elements of the story
connecting the copying of the manuscript to the Battle of Cúl Dreimne are late.
The earliest evidence linking the copy and the battle comes in a fragment, not
89 BCC, §17, pp 17–7. 90 Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry, pp 23, 2. 91 BCC, §18,
pp 178–9. 92 BCC, §178, pp 182–5. 93 Colum Hourihane, Gothic art in Ireland, 1169–
1550 (New Haven, CT, 23), pp 117–22.
The Uí Dhomhnaill and their books in early sixteenth-century Ireland 51
part of the main Life of Colum Cille, in the fourteenth-century Latin Codex
Salmanticensis.9 This Latin version was subsequently incorporated into the Life
of Colum Cille as part of the collection of saints’ Lives made on Saints’ Island
in Lough Ree in the fifteenth century.95 Geoffrey Keating certainly knew of an
Irish version of the story in the 13s, which he claimed he had taken from the
Black Book of Molaga but the date of his source is unknown.9 By the early
sixteenth century, another version of the story linking the manuscript and the
battle appeared in Irish in a Donegal manuscript, Leabhar Chlainne Suibhne, and
in a poem in Bodl., Laud Misc. 15.97 It is clear that the explanation of Cúl
Dreimne as the result of Diarmait’s judgment was only one of a number of
explanations then circulating. Keating, for instance, cited two stories still current
in his day and a number of others also appear to have been known to Maghnus
Ó Domhnaill.98 However, it was only in Maghnus Ó Domhnaill’s work that all
the stories, including that of the copying judgment, were synthesized into an
Irish text. Whatever the wider literary effect of all this, the immediate effect of
the rewriting was to provide an origin myth for the Cathach and to place a
manuscript at the centre of one of the most significant political moments in the
life of Colum Cille. It demonstrated clearly that books were items of power and
were to be treated as such. Since Maghnus Ó Domhnaill claimed that he had ‘the
love of a brother for this high saint and kinsman by lineage and his dear patron
that he was bounded to in steadfast devotion’, it suggested that the Uí
Dhomhnaill should behave in a way similar to the saint, thus placing revered
manuscripts near the centre of their interest and actions.99
The relationship of the sixteenth-century Uí Dhomhnaill with their books was

a complex one. Despite having a desire to own important manuscripts and being
prepared to raid or pay significant sums for them, they showed little interest in
writing as a functional tool. There is little indication that they used writing or
documents as ways of managing their lordship. Power relationships and land
claims tended to be managed in alternative ways. Beatha Cholaim Chille, for
instance, contains hagiographical stories that define boundaries and detail
ownership in a world without written deeds.1 That is not to say that deeds and
94 Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. W.W. Heist (Brussels, 195), pp 112–13. 95 Bodl., MS
Rawlinson B85, fos 38v–9v; Rawlinson B55, fos 119v–2v. 96 Geoffrey Keating, Foras
feasa ar Éirinn, ed. David Comyn and P.S. Dinneen ( vols, London, 192–1), iii, pp 88–9.
97 RIA, MS 2P25, fo. , Herbert, ‘Duanaire Choluim Chille’, pp 183–. 98 Keating,
Foras feasa, iii, pp 8–9; for inconsistencies in Ó Domhnaill’s account, which seems to point
to other versions, see H.J. Lawlor, ‘The Cathach of St Columba’, PRIA, 33C (191–17), 292–
329. For the Battle of Cúl Dreimne, see Brian Lacey, ‘The Battle of Cúl Dreimne: a
reassessment’, JRSAI, 113 (23), 78–85. 99 BCC, §12, pp –7. 1 A good example is the
52 Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie
other legal documents did not exist. The Ulster annals refer to ‘old charters’
being confirmed and new charters made between Ó Néill and Ó Domhnaill in
151, while in 1539 a written agreement was drawn up between Ó Domhnaill
and Ó Conchobhair over Sligo Castle and in 159 it was claimed that Maghnus
had given Belleek Castle to his former wife, Joan, daughter of Ó Raghailligh, ‘by
a writing in the Irish tongue’.2 Such deeds were of a highly traditional form,
mainly memoranda of transactions rather than deeds in a common-law tradition.
As one Dublin government official commented in 153, Ó Domhnaill exhibited
‘divers writings, confirmations or releases’ for Inishowen in a dispute with Ó
Neill, but these were ‘certain old parchments or bills confirmed by no seal,
signature or other testimony but such as are composed by vain poets or
ploratoves of Irish histories who are often times hired for small reward and are
blinded by affection for their lords’.3 Again, lists of dues to be rendered to lords
appear in Bodl., MS Rawlinson B51, fos 3–3v, but it was only in a more text-
based world, in the early seventeenth century, that the Uí Dhomhnaill dues were
written down in prose in any detail although the sixteenth-century genealogical
tract claimed that this had been done by Domhnall Mór as early as the thirteenth
century. The Uí Dhomhnaill understanding of the relation of writing to power,
which persisted into the sixteenth century, was on the highly traditional level of
display. Thus, manuscripts were valued not only for their content but for the
myths with which they were surrounded, some old and some of recent creation.
They were important in demonstrating that the behaviour of a lord in acquiring
and displaying manuscripts was an attribute appropriate to good lordship and the
exercise of cultural power, as determined by the traditions culled from
hagiography, in the case of Colum Cille, and heroic saga in the case of Brian
Bóruma. These actions in acquiring and mythologizing manuscripts were as
significant in establishing Uí Dhomhnaill power in traditional terms as the cattle
raid or the patronage of bardic poetry.
origin story of the termon of Kilmacrennan, which does not appear in any earlier lives and
may represent a contemporary tradition: BCC, §93, pp 8–7. 2 AU, iii, pp 51–15; Maura
Carney (ed.), ‘Agreement between Ó Domhnaill and Tadhg Ó Conchobair concerning Sligo
Castle’, IHS, 3:11 (193), 282–9; Cal. Carew MSS 1515–74, p. 222. 3 Cal. Carew MSS
1515–74, p. 2. 4 Beatha Aodha Ruaidh, ed. Walsh, ii, p. 158. An edition of the three early
seventeenth-century texts is in preparation by Tomás G. Ó Canann and Nollaig Ó Muraíle.
AVE reversing EVA: miscellanea on Marian devotion

in Irish bardic poetry1
DA M I A N M C M A N U S
The contribution Katharine Simms has made to the study and elucidation of
bardic poetry is incalculable. In articles too numerous to mention, and in her
book, From kings to warlords,2 her unrivalled insight into, and understanding of,
the political background to much of the work of the professional poets is evident
on every page, and her recently published monograph, Medieval Gaelic sources,3
will be of huge value to scholars working in the field and will, owing to the clarity
it brings to it, attract more scholars to this area of study.
Another work of Katharine’s which may not be well known to scholars
working outside the area of bardic poetry, but which has a claim to magnum opus
status, is the electronic corpus, or Bardic Database, hosted on the website of the
School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The
nature of publications of this kind is such that the huge volume of material they
make available to scholarship, and the extent of the labour involved in preparing
them, are not immediately apparent to the user. This project was a labour of love.
Katharine began it back in the seventies and worked on it all through her career
in Trinity College Dublin. The Database is eloquent testimony to her energy,
commitment and expertise in this area of study, and to her very considerable
linguistic and palaeographic skills, as shown by her ability to profile many poems
(about a third of the total of two thousand which have survived) direct from the
manuscripts, without the assistance of an edition, much less a translation. A huge
amount of information is provided about the poems: a profile for each by type,
patron, area, period, poet, printed source, citation in the grammatical and
syntactical tracts, length, metre, motifs (with a complete motif-index) and,
finally, manuscript sources. All those working in the field of bardic poetry would
readily acknowledge the enormous contribution this work has made to the task
of understanding, editing and bringing to a wider public this valuable literary
heritage.
The devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which we can trace back in Irish
literature to the Old Irish period, in particular to the Blathmac poems edited by
1 I would like to thank Cathal Ó Háinle and Eoin Mac Cárthaigh for reading through a draft
of this paper and suggesting several improvements and corrections. For any remaining errors,
I am responsible. 2 Simms, Kings. 3 Katharine Simms, Medieval Gaelic sources (Dublin,
29). 4 The database will be found at www.bardic.celt.dias.ie. An index to the poems will
be found on the website of the Department of Irish, Trinity College Dublin, at
53
5 Damian McManus
James Carney,5 and in Hiberno-Latin to Cú Chuimne’s (d. 77) famous hymn

Cantemus in omni die, did not wane in the bardic period. At the touch of a key or
two on the keyboard, the Simms Database reveals that there are over sixty poems
to or about her, more than to any one secular chief or patron, in the complete
corpus, and I cannot say exactly how many complimentary quatrains in strictly
secular verse are addressed to her, but there are very very many. The
Annunciation, the Immaculate Conception, the Nativity, Mary’s suffering at her
son’s Passion, all figure very strongly in the poetry, and also prominent,
especially in the complimentary verses in secular poetry as well as in religious
verse in general, is her role as advocate on behalf of humanity, pleading against
her own son’s claim for retribution for the wounds inflicted on him at the
Crucifixion.7 The great paradox (or heresy) of Mary as mother, wife and
daughter of her son fascinated the poets,8 as did that of the divine king born in a
www.tcd.ie/Irish/database. 5 James Carney, The poems of Blathmac son of Cú Brettan

(London and Dublin, 19). 6 See J.F. Kenney, The sources for the early history of Ireland:
ecclesiastical. An introduction and guide (New York, 1929), pp 29–7, and Peter O’Dwyer,
Mary: a history of devotion in Ireland (Dublin, 1988), pp 5–. For the full text of the hymn,
see J.H. Bernard and Robert Atkinson, The Irish liber hymnorum (2 vols, London, 1898), i, pp
32–. 7 McKenna expressed the opinion early in his career (Lambert McKenna, Dánta do
chum Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh (Dublin, 1919), p. ix) that this view of the Passion and of
Christ’s retribution for it was not usual in the compositions of poets other than Aonghus
Fionn, but in subsequent works he would publish many poems that proved this contention to
be incorrect (see, for example, idem, Dán Dé: the poems of Donnchadh Mór Ó Dálaigh, and the
religious poems in the Duanaire of the Yellow Book of Lecan (Dublin, 1922), p. xvii, to mention
but one collection). It is, in fact, one of the most common themes of the bardic iargcomharc,
or envoi, addressed to Mary. For a discussion of the matter, see Salvador Ryan, ‘Fixing the
eschatological scales: judgement of the soul in late medieval and early modern Irish tradition’
in Peter Clarke and Tony Claydon (eds), The Church, the afterlife and the fate of the soul
(Woodbridge, 29), pp 18–95 at pp 18–8; Salvador Ryan, ‘Florilegium of faith: the
religious poems in the Book of the O’Conor Don’ in Pádraig Ó Macháin (ed.), The Book of
the O’Conor Don: essays on an Irish manuscript (Dublin, 21), pp 1–87 at pp 72–. 8 See
Andrew Breeze, ‘The Virgin Mary, daughter of her son’, Études Celtiques, 27 (199), 27–83.
The most frequently cited poem in this connection is the beautiful Éisdidh riomsa, a Mhuire
mhór, by Muireadhach Albanach Ó Dálaigh (Osborn Bergin, Irish bardic poetry (Dublin,
197), no. 21), which uses the unique dvandva compound fearathair ‘husband and father’ in
reference to the burden in Mary’s womb (qt 19). Other less well-known examples of the
paradox are: Is é is mac dhuit Día ro-d chruthaigh, cía nach tuig ré tachail, gidh ingnadh é a
sháorshlat shuthain, is é th’áonmhac th’athair (‘The God who created you is your son; who, after
consideration, does not understand this? Though it be a wonder, eternal noble woman, your
only son is your father’) (IGT, ii, 1188); Ní bean Muire mar gach mnaoi / is gan fhear do luighe
lé / saorshlat do rathoil an Rí / aonmhac di ’s a hathair é (‘Mary is not a woman like other
women as no man lay with her; a noble woman whom the King favoured, he was both her only
son and her father’) (Trí mic do Mhuire mac Dé, ABM, no. 73.5); [Is] tú máthair Dé gan dianlot
/ gan ghné mur ghné th’aolghlac / is é mac Dé t’fhear, a óghshlat, / gidh eadh is é th’aonmhac
(‘You are the mother of God without loss of virginity, nothing compares to your great beauty;
the son of God is your husband, virgin lady, though he is also your only son’) (A Mhuire, a
mháthair ar nAthar, Database no. 17.2); Ní curtha a cumhacht i n-iongna / inghean dá mac
máthair Dé (‘Her power should not be wondered at, the mother of God is daughter to her
[own] son’) (Ní cara acht cara na héigne, ABM, no. 359.19ab). As most hitherto unedited texts
Marian devotion in Irish bardic poetry 55
stable, a feature of Mary’s most endearing quality, her humility.9 Whereas women
in secular poetry are depicted as passing their leisure-time at embroidery, Mary
stitches torn pieces of cloth into swaddling-clothes for the infant Jesus out of
necessity.1 Similarly, whereas in secular poetry the lavish adornment of the
patron’s house is a stock theme, the ‘house’ in which Mary gave birth is known
in bardic tradition as teach/adhbha an aondaimh is asail, ‘the house of the one ox
and donkey’.11
In this short essay I want to draw attention to the evidence of recently
published bardic verse in relation to some aspects of the annunciation and, in
particular, to a topos that is well known in Marian devotional literature elsewhere
in Europe, but which, as far as I know, has not been noted before in Irish bardic
verse. I will draw, for the most part, on three poems: A-niu céaduchtach chlann
nÁdhaimh (‘Today is the first hope of the children of Adam’), attributed to Tadhg
mac Dáir[e Mac Bruaideadha(?)] (1th-17th century), I n-ithir ghrás do ghein Dia
(‘God was begotten in a womb of grace’), without ascription in either manuscript
in which it has survived, and Crann seóil na cruinne an chroch naomh (‘The holy
Cross is the shipmast of the universe’), attributed to Tadhg Ó Cobhthaigh (1th
century). These poems are numbered 1, 117 and 525 respectively in the
Bardic Database referred to above, where all information regarding their
manuscript sources will be found, and the last two are ABM, nos 27 and 118.12
For the purpose of this discussion, I reproduce here the first ten quatrains of A-
niu céaduchtach chlann nÁdhaimh with translation:
1 A-niu céaduchtach chlann nádhaimh;

d’éis na tuitme tarla dháibh
ní fhuil ní nar fhill ’na n-aghaidh,
gur chinn an Rí cabhair cháigh.
cited in this paper are available for consultation in diplomatic form either in the Bardic
Database or in ABM, I have standardized the spelling throughout. Major departures from
original readings are discussed in the notes. 9 See Andrew Breeze, ‘Two bardic themes: the
Virgin and the Child, and Ave-Eva’, Medium Aevum, 3 (199), 17–33 at 17–22. 10 Gan
bhiadh gan teach gan teinidh / gan charaid acht coimhidhigh / mur sin do bhábhair, a bhean, / dár
shlánaigh sibh bhur sinsear. An t-éadach do fhógair dó / ’na bhréidibh brisde beaga / is amhlaidh
do fhuaigh tusa / a ghruaidh mharmair mhórdha-sa (‘Without food, house or fire, without a
friend except for strangers, thus were you, woman, when you saved your people. The clothing
provided for him in the form of small torn strips of cloth, it is you, noble, beautiful lady, who
stitched them together’) (A bhean do bhí san Bheithil, ABM, no. 1.3 and 5). 11 See
Laimhbhearteach Mac Cionnaith (ed.), Dioghluim dána (Dublin, 1938), no. 17.7 and ABM,
no. 38.3c, and for a brief discussion of Old Testament prophecy regarding the ox and the
donkey, see Martin McNamara, Caoimhín Breatnach, John Carey, Máire Herbert, J.-D.
Kaestli, Brian Ó Cuív, Pádraig Ó Fiannachta and Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire (eds), Apocrypha
Hiberniae I. Evangelia infantiae (Turnhout, 21), p. 321 n. 5. The poem Sgéal doiligh ar
Mhuire mhóir (ABM, no. 2), which deals very sensitively with the nativity and Mary’s
anxiety for her son, makes the humble nature of the abode in which Christ was born one of its
5 Damian McManus
‘Today is the first hope of the children of Adam; since the fall they
endured there is nothing that did not turn against them, until the King
decided to come to the aid of all.’
2 Ón tráth fá nduaidh Éabha an t-ubhall

gus an am-soin, aitheasg fíor,
ní dhearna síol ádhaimh uile
gníomh do shlánaigh duine dhíobh.
‘From the day Eva ate the apple up to that time (i.e. the annunciation),
it is true, no descendant of Adam did anything to save any one of them.’
3 Lá na Sanaise is sé an lá-so,
lá ionar labhradh leas gach fhir,
glór réidh as ar hobadh ainmhian,
tré chogar séimh Ghaibhrial ghil.
‘Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, the day on which the salvation
of every man was mentioned in the soft message of fair Gabriel – a calm
utterance devoid of lust.’
 Go13 dtáinig aingeal an Athar

d’fhios na hÓighe ar aitreabh Dia;
sloinnfead go mín tré chóir gcoinne
brígh an ghlóir do-roinne ria.
‘[This is the day] when the angel of the Father came to see the Virgin in
whom God resided; I will recount accurately the substance of what he
said to her.’
5 ‘Beannacht1 dhuit’, a-dubhairt Gaibhrial

‘a ghnúis ruithneach go r[osg glé(?)]’;15
main themes. 12 A-niu céaduchtach chlann nÁdhaimh was not published in ABM owing to
the fragmentary nature of the only surviving manuscript witness, RIA, 782 (3/C/18), 259–
. The first ten quatrains are reasonably well preserved but the left-hand side of p. 2 has
been lost, leaving many gaps in the remaining quatrains. 13 The sense of the opening Go is
unclear to me. I have taken it as the equivalent of dá (also dar/dár), the temporal partitive
demonstrative, with Lá na Sanaise of the preceding quatrain as antecedent. For a discussion
of this construction, see R.A. Breatnach, ‘The syntax of Mod. Ir. lá dá raibh sé’, Ériu, 2
(19), 28–11; R.A. Breatnach, ‘Lá dá raibh sé (2)’, Celtica, 1 (1973), 171–3; and P.A.
Breatnach, ‘A note on the syntax of the particle dar’, Éigse, 27 (1993), 13–2. 14 The
manuscript has an otherwise unattested form beannchaidh, which may be an error for
beannachadh, verbal noun of beannachaidh ‘greets, blesses’. A disyllabic form, however, is
required by the metre. 15 Only the r (possibly ro) of my tentative restoration rosg glé can be
seen, although there is plenty of space to finish the line, albeit on a worn part of the page.
labhra(?)1 nár hiompódh le héara,

tionntódh anma Éabha é.
‘“Hail”, said Gabriel, “you [of] glowing complexion and [pleasing eye];”
[the] salutation, which was not turned away with refusal, was a reversal
of the name Eva.’
 ‘Lán do ghrásaibh a-tá tusa,

a-tá an Tighearna – is tuar báidh –
ma-raon ruibh, a ríoghan iodhan’
dár sguir díoghal chionadh cháigh.
‘“Full of grace are you, the Lord is with you – a good omen – pure
queen”; so ended the avenging of the sins of all (i.e. the Fall was
reversed).’
7 ‘[Is]ad beannaighthe idir banntracht,17

beannaighthe fós – fearr gach cnuas –
toradh do bhronn ar lí an lile
ionar18 chrom Rí nimhe a-nuas.’
‘Blessed are you among women, blessed too – and better than all fruit –
is the fruit of your lily-white womb, into which the King of heaven has
descended.’
8 Criothnaighis le clos an aingil,

inghean Anna, iongnadh lé,
níor ghabh an ainnear go hathlamh
ar chan aingeal dathghlan Dé.
‘Anna’s daughter started with wonder on hearing the angel; the maiden
did not grasp immediately the import of what God’s splendid angel had
said.’
9 Ré Muire a-rís do ráidh Gaibhrial:

‘Ná gabh romham19 eagla, a Ógh
16 The manuscript has a chara at the beginning of this line. This leaves the line a syllable too
long and fails to provide rhyme with anma in l. . My emendation is suggested by the fact that
the word required is referred to pronominally with the final word of the quatrain, é, and must,
it seems to me, refer to Gabriel’s salutation. The verb labhraidh was used in quatrain 3 in
reference to Gabriel’s message of salvation. I readily admit, of course, that labhra for a chara
is a major emendation. 17 For a discussion of this line, see Damian McManus, ‘Miscellanea
on bardic poetry: metre, language and style’, Ériu, 55 (25), 17– at 18–9. 18 Here and
in 9d (ar) the scribe has written s for r (i.e. ionas and as). 19 The manuscript appears to read
úam or úain here; my restoration to romham, therefore, is tentative, but supplies the extra
508 Damian McManus
fuarais ón [Rígh]20 grás tréd ghníomhraidh21

ar fhás tríbh is míorbhail mhór.’
‘Again Gabriel spoke to Mary: “Fear me not, maiden; you have been
favoured by God for your deeds; what has come about through you is a
great miracle.”’
10 ‘Géabha id bhroinn is béara daghmhac,

a-déarthar Íosa d’ainm r[is],
mo-chean bean do thuair an toircheas,
mo-chean fuair an foilcheas [fis].’
‘“You will conceive in your womb and bring forth a fine son, and he will
be called Jesus; blessed is the woman who has deserved the offspring;
blessed is she who has received the secret tidings.’”
Our poem is one of a small number of bardic compositions22 that record the
words of Gabriel23 to Mary on the occasion of the annunciation, and the poet
implies in line 3a that it was either composed on, or was composed for recitation
on, the Feast of the Annunciation, Lá na Sanaise. The annunciation is celebrated
as a turning point, the beginning of the salvation of man,24 who had been
doomed, as the poet puts it (2ab), ón tráth fá nduaidh Éabha an t-ubhall ‘from the
day Eve ate the apple’, gus an am-soin ‘up to that time’.25 The turning point is
syllable required. 20 The line is a syllable short and is missing a word to rhyme with tríbh.
21 The manuscript reads ghníomhaibh, which does not rhyme with míorbhail. 22 For others
see Tosach sídh sanas Gaibriail (McKenna (ed.), Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh, no. 1) and A Mhuire,
a mháthair ar nAthar, Database no. 107, qts 16–19. 23 The words in quatrain 7b–c are
actually Elizabeth’s salutation on Mary’s visit to her (Lk 1.42), not part of Gabriel’s address
(Lk 1.28). 24 God’s decision to come to the aid of all, as qt 1 puts it, was, according to the
evidence of I n-ithir ghrás … (qts 7–8), in response to the angelic orders’ dissatisfaction with
this state of affairs: Gabhais maoith muintir nimhe / caoinid na hoird ainglidhe / ar ndul dóibh as
a seilbh sin / na slóigh ar dheilbh an Dúilimh. Sléachtaid i n-aoinfheacht ann sin / cromaid a gcinn
don Choimdhidh / do bhí gan shódh naoidhe ar nimh / brón mar dhaoine dá dhéinimh (‘Sadness
seized the heavenly host; the angelic orders lamented their loss of [the company of] those
created in the image of God. Thereupon they all prostrated themselves, and lamenting, like
humans, the absence of any (newly arrived) happiness in Heaven, bowed their heads to the
Lord’). 25 The period between the Fall and the Annunciation is recorded in bardic poetry
as ‘five thousand years’ (Database, poem 1908.8), following the millenarian interpretation, or,
more loosely, cúig aimseara (‘five ages’) (poems 273.9, 718.12, 868.40, 1585.4 and 1875.28), that
is, the five ages from Adam to the birth of Christ. In Crann seóil … (qt 15) and I n-ithir ghrás
… (qt 5), however, we get the Eusebius–Jerome calculation of 5,199 years from Creation to
Advent, and it is worth noting how one poem helps us in filling a lacuna in the other: Achd
aoinbhliadhain do bhuain de / feadh dhá chéad is cúig míle / ar gcrann seóil nár síneadh lais / ar
bhfhírfhear eóil ’nar n-éagmhais (‘Save for the deduction of one year, for a period of five
thousand and two hundred years we were deprived of our true pilot and had no mast raised on
it (i.e. the ship of the universe)’), and Dá chéad [acht] bliadhain a-bháin / cúig mhíle – gár mhó
diombáidh ?– / do bhí grás an Ríogh gan roinn / a shíol nó gur fhás againn (‘Two hundred years
mentioned in line d, if I have understood it correctly. Line 5d, however, locates
it more specifically after Gabriel’s opening salutation ‘Beannacht dhuit …’. When
I read it first, the meaning of the line tionntódh anma Éabha é, ‘it was a reversal
of the name Eva’ was a mystery to me, except that, in as much as it referred to
the salutation of line 5a, presumably translating ‘Ave’, it might mean that
Gabriel’s greeting Ave was Eva’s name in reverse. The deeper significance of
these words was lost on me, however, until I later came across a study of the
subject by Andrew Breeze.2 I had, in fact, stumbled upon what is, as far as I
know, the only example in Irish bardic poetry of a topos that is very common
elsewhere in medieval Marian literature, namely the idea that Mary’s reversal of
the Fall caused by Eve was given expression in the first word uttered by Gabriel
to her, i.e. Ave, ‘a reversal of the name Eva’, as the poet puts it.27 The topos, it
seems, makes its first appearance in the second stanza of the eighth- or ninth-
century Latin hymn Ave Maris Stella:
Sumens illud AVE

Gabrielis ore
Funda nos in pace
Mutans Evæ nomen.
‘Receiving that “Ave”, from the lips of Gabriel, establish us in peace,
changing Eva’s name.’28
The popularity of the hymn, as witnessed by the many translations of it in

vernacular literature, was, according to Breeze, the reason for the widespread
occurrence of this topos in medieval European literature.29 He cites examples
from English, French, Portuguese-Galician and Catalan, and devotes a
considerable section of his paper to examples in Welsh bardic poetry. The Welsh
poets took to it with delight, it seems. For them, the ‘three letters’ each of Eva
and Ave held a fascination as instruments of damnation and salvation
respectively, as in a poem by Gruffudd ap Maredudd (fl. 1352-82):
[save for] one, and five thousand – what greater sadness? – was God’s grace withheld [from
man], until His [own] seed grew among us’). Without acht (‘save for’), line a of this quatrain
is a syllable short, and makes no sense. For the figure 5,199, see Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, The Irish
sex aetates mundi (Dublin, 1983), p.  and McNamara et al., Apocrypha Hiberniae, p. 5 n. 8.
26 Breeze, ‘Two bardic themes’, 23–31. 27 I have failed to find any reference to this topos in
connection with Irish bardic poetry. O’Dwyer’s detailed study of devotion to Mary in Irish
literature (Mary: a history of devotion), including bardic poetry, makes many references to the
contrast between Mary and Eve, but not specifically to this wordplay on the salutation Ave.
28 Breeze, ‘Two bardic themes’, 2. 29 That our example derives from the hymn is also
suggested by its wording, which is very close to the relevant line of the hymn. Compare the
actual translation ag iompódh anma Éabha in the poem Dia do bheatha, a Mháthair Dé (see
51 Damian McManus
Teir llythyren wenn windut

an duc ynghyvyrgoll gollet
a their veir a vawr garyat
an duc nef on dygyn ovit.
‘Three fair letters in paradise brought us total loss in perdition; and three,
Mary, out of great love brought us heaven from our sore affliction’.3
Ifor Williams, in a discussion of the ‘three-letter’ topos,31 points to the belief in

Welsh tradition, not surprising in view of the above, that Mary conceived Christ
as the word Ave was being spoken to her by Gabriel, and that the three letters of
the salutation, therefore, mark the transition from Fall to Salvation.32 In Irish
bardic poetry, Mary is said to have conceived Christ at Gabriel’s address,
variously designated by the words sanas,33 briathra,3 fuighle,35 comhrádh3 and
cogar.37 However, the poem Crann seóil, at 9ab, specifies one word as the point of
conception:
An toircheas táinig do nimh

fuair Ógh d’éinbhréithir aingil
‘The pregnancy that came from Heaven was conceived by a Virgin
through one word of an angel’
below). 30 Breeze, ‘Two bardic themes’, 27. 31 Ifor Williams, ‘Cywydd cyfrinach Rhys
Goch Eryri’, BBCS, 1 (1921–3), 3–5 at 7. 32 In an addendum to the same paper (‘Ave,
Eva’, BBCS, 1 (1921–3), 33), Williams records Robin Flower’s comments to him on the
popularity of the teir llythyren ‘three letters’ formulation of the topos in Welsh tradition,
including the remark that it was also ‘a commonplace in Middle High German, and survives
in a modern German proverb: drei Buchstaben machen uns eigen und frei’ (‘three letters make
us unique and free’). 33 Mac tre shanais Gaibhriail do ghabh / bainliaigh na mban (‘At
Gabriel’s word, she, a woman-healer of all women, conceived her son’) (Dlighthear muinntear
ag máthair Dé: Lambert McKenna (ed.), Aithdioghluim dána (2 vols, London and Dublin,
1939/), no. 82.9cd). 34 Sibh ’n-a broinn ó bhriathraibh Ghaibhriail / do ghabh Muire –
maith an t-am (‘Mary conceived Thee at Gabriel’s word – blessed hour!’) (Do-ní éanMhac
ionad cloinne: McKenna (ed.), Aithdioghluim Dána, no. 77.19ab). 35 Rí ó aingeal dá ainglibh
/ do ghabhais id chlí choimghil; /… sibh d’fhuighlibh ó thol toirrghidh (‘In thy bright round breast
(O Mary) thou didst receive the king from one of His angels; … With loving word he makes
thee a mother’) (Bréagthar bean le séad suirghe: McKenna (ed.), Aithdioghluim Dána, no.
85.12abd). In view of this and other examples, I would suggest that we correct McKenna’s
translation, ‘her entreaties’, to ‘his (i.e. Gabriel’s) words’ in the following: An t-eitne do chin ón
chnaoi / nocha shir nach leigthe lé / níor an ’gá chuinghidh ’n-a clí / gur ghabh sí ó fhuighlibh é
(‘She asked not that the “kernel from the nut” be not given her; she ceased not asking for Him
till by her entreaties she conceived Him in her bosom’) (Aoidhe meise ag máthair Dé: McKenna
(ed.), Dán Dé, no. 2.7). 36 Don chomhrádh do chan an t-aingeal / do fhás mac ó Mhuire óigh
(‘From the words the angel spoke, the Virgin Mary conceived a son’) (Fada deoraidheachd na
ndaoine: Mac Cionnaith (ed.), Dioghluim dána (Dublin, 1938), no. 2.22; my trans.). 37 Mac
Dé ba rí sul rugadh / tugadh é i gclí le cogar (‘The Son of God was a king before he was born;
he was conceived by a whispered message’) (Mairg clann do chroch a nAthair: ABM, no.
Marian devotion in Irish bardic poetry 511
And I n-ithir ghrás … (11) goes further by identifying this as the first word of
Gabriel’s address, i.e. Ave:
Don chéidbhréithir do chan ria,

aingeal Dé ar ndul go Mairia,
níor bhoing as a hóighe an Óigh,
’s do-róine cloinn i gcéadóir.38
‘At the first word God’s angel spoke when he came to Mary, the child
was immediately conceived; nor did it blemish the Virgin’s virginity.’
I can find no example of the ‘three letter’ formulation of this theme in Irish
bardic poetry, and a search of the digital corpus of texts for more examples of the
topos itself yielded only one result. This is the seven-quatrain poem Dia do
bheatha, a Mháthair Dé (Database no. 7), which was published, along with
other verses, by T. Ó Gallchóbhair in 1915.39 On inspection, however, it emerges
that this is not an independent bardic composition but a translation of Ave Maris
Stella itself, as the relevant quatrain (no. 2) will show when compared with the
verse given above from the Latin hymn:
Ag gabhail na fáilte ód bheól

Gaibriel an díognas deaghóil
ár síth dúinn daingnidh is damh
Ag iompódh anma Éabha.
Finally, a brief note on Joseph. Given the ‘central role’ he plays in the infancy
narratives preserved in the Liber Flavus Fergusiorum and the Leabhar Breac,
Joseph is conspicuous by his absence from the vast majority of Irish bardic
Marian poems,1 even those on the nativity, in which, at the very least, we might
expect him to be present. In Déanadh go subhach síol Ádhaimh,2 he is given credit
for finding lodgings for one night in Bethlehem, but in many nativity poems one
could be forgiven for thinking, if it is not actually stated, that Mary was alone
with her child until the arrival of the magi.3 One reason for this is possibly the
38.32cd). Ón chogar do dáileadh di / do bhí torrach trí ráithe (‘She was pregnant for three
quarters as a result of the whispered message she was given’) (I n-ithir ghrás … 1ab). For a
discussion of the idea that Mary conceived through the ear, see Douglas Gray, Themes and
images in the medieval English religious lyric (London, 1972), pp 1–2. 38 Manuscript bhain,
hóghacht and do-rín in the second couplet have been emended to secure rhyme. 39 T. Ó
Gallchóbhair, ‘A selection of anonymous addresses to the BVM’, Irisleabhar Muighe Nudhad
(1915), 7– at 75. 40 See McNamara et al., Apocrypha Hiberniae, p. 13, for a discussion.
41 I can find only four examples of him mentioned by name (Io-seph, Iosef, Iósebh and
Iosebh, poems 5, 7a and 175, 292 respectively in the Database). To these can be added
references to him as saor (‘carpenter’), seanóir saoir (‘an old carpenter’), oide (‘fosterfather’) to
Christ, and references to Christ as dalta an tsaoir (‘fosterson of the carpenter’) (see below).
42 Mac Cionnaith (ed.), Dioghluim Dána, no. 17. 43 See, for example, A bhean do bhí san
512 Damian McManus
view that Joseph was not a ‘husband’, nor Mary a ‘wife’, in the usual sense of
those words, and that Christ was not a ‘wife’s son’ but the son of a virgin.5 The
marriage of Mary and Joseph was not a normal one, as it was not to be
consummated, and Joseph is usually depicted in the poetry as an old man. His
anger on discovering that Mary was pregnant is referred to in two poems, one of
which regards it as the only ‘reproach’ (toibhéim) Mary’s virginity suffered as a
consequence of her pregnancy.7 The marriage took place, according to Fearr
beagán cloinne ná clann,8 when Mary was a young girl, but I n-ithir ghrás … (qts
12-13) is unique in bardic poetry, I think, in referring to the dilemma of divine
parenthood, i.e. the invisible or unknown father, and the public shame to which
it might give rise:
Toghthar ag Dia ógh eile

d’iomchoimhéad na hinghine
mar budh bean mar aonchruth í
fear ’na caomhthach9 do-cífí.5
Na críocha fá dhúthaigh dhi
do bhí reacht acu an uair-si
nárbh áil bean do bhreith gheine
’s a beith gan fhear d’áiridhe.
Bheithil (ABM, no. 1), where she is said to be gan charaid acht coimhidhigh (‘without a friend
save for strangers’) (qt 3). Similarly, in Sgéal doiligh ar Mhuire mhóir (ABM, no. 2), which
beautifully captures her anxiety as a mother fearing for her son, she is said not only to be gan
bhuidhin (‘without company’) (qt 3), but also ’na haonar (‘alone’) (qt 11). Other poems
containing an account of the nativity with no mention of Joseph are Database nos 992, 11
and 1872. 44 See Múin damh do mholadh, a Mhuire (McKenna (ed.), Aithdioghluim dána, no.
97.22cd and 23a): ní goirthe fear don mhóir mhálla / ’s ní cóir bean do rádha ria. Mairg do
bhraithfeadh mac mná innte (‘one may not speak of a husband of the great stately maid, nor is
she to be called a wife. Woe to anyone who would think that she had within her womb a (mere)
wife’s son’). 45 Nor was he the ‘son of a carpenter’ but his fosterson, and he is frequently
referred to as dalta an tsaoir; to judge by Fearr beagán clainne ná clann (Mac Cionnaith (ed.),
Dioghluim dána, no. 27a.17), the designation mac an tsaoir (‘son of the carpenter’) was received
as an insult (aithis), referring perhaps to John :2. 46 Fear sean nar dhoshnaidhme dhí / i
gcomhairle na neamh naoi / an saor ní do luighe lé / do aomh sé Muire mar mhnaoi (‘An old man
was the carpenter, yet in Heaven’s design worthy to wed her; but not to unite with her did he
take her as his wife’) (Aoidhe meise ag máthair Dé: McKenna (ed.), Dán Dé, no. 2.13). 47 A-
tám i n-easbhaidh amhoirc (McKenna, ‘The soul’s blindness’, Irish Monthly, 58:8 (193),
–8 at 5): Acht éad ar an seanóir saoir / fan mac nar thuill a thathaoir, / d’fhoiléim mar do-
chuaidh ’n-a corp / toibhéim ní fhuair a hóghacht (‘When God leaped into her womb her
virginity was intact, except that the aged carpenter was jealous about the son who merited not
his reproach’). The other reference is Aoidhe meise ag máthair Dé (Dán Dé, no. 2.1), where
McKenna questions his own translation of the line Do sgar sé re meanmain móir as ‘With a
noble spirit he separated from her’. Perhaps we should translate ‘He was disheartened’.
48 Mac Cionnaith (ed.), Dioghluim dána, no. 27a.1.
Marian devotion in Irish bardic poetry 513
‘A chaste [partner] was selected by God to look after the girl (i.e. Mary) in
order that, like any normal woman, a man would be seen to be her partner.
The lands which were home to her had a law at that time that it was not
desirable for a woman to bear a child and not to have a designated partner.’
Readers of early Irish literature will be familiar with the same dilemma and its
resolution in the story of the birth of Cú Chulainn, whose mother, Deichtine,
had conceived him immaculately after a visit from the god Lug: Ba ceist mór la
hUltu nádcon fess céle fora seilb. Domét ba ó Chonchubur tre mesci, ar ba leis no foed
ind ingen. Ar-nenaisc íarom Conchubur a ingin do Súaldaim mac Róich (‘The Ulaid
were troubled by the fact that she [Deichtine] was not known to be married. It
was thought that she was pregnant by Conchobar [her father], in drunkenness,
as it was with him she used to sleep. Conchobar betrothed her to Súaldaim mac
Róich’).51
49 Manuscript cum(h)thach for caomhthach (: aonchruth) is a natural error given that the words
have more or less the same meaning. 50 The manuscript has the correct form do-cífidhe, but
the rhyme will permit only one syllable after stressed –cí. For a discussion of the loss of the
dental in such forms, see SNG, p. 2. 51 A.G. Van Hamel, Compert Con Culainn and other
stories (Dublin, 1933), p. ; my trans.
The portrayal of women in

medieval Irish religious poetry
K E V I N M U R R AY
Female characters play a prominent role in many early Irish sagas. Because of
this, ‘the question has been posed whether a society that accorded women such
a high status and independence in its literature would deny it in real life’.1 Any
tendency to exaggerate the status of women in early medieval Ireland has found
its corrective in medieval Irish law which shows that women enjoyed a restricted
independent legal capacity.2 However, this legal status was on the increase from
the eighth century onwards, particularly in the areas of marriage, property rights
and contracts.3 Continued medieval Irish literary interest in socially important
women is evidenced by the existence of the late Middle Irish collection of
genealogical lore about women, the banshenchas, which is unique in early
European literature.
The perceived disconnect between the actual status of women in early
Irish society (as portrayed in the laws, for example) and the strong representation
of women in native literature came under renewed scrutiny in the
1 Proinsias Mac Cana, ‘Women in Irish mythology’, The Crane Bag, :1 (198), 7–11 (repr. in
M.P. Hederman and Richard Kearney (eds), The Crane Bag book of Irish studies (Dublin,
1982), pp 52–). 2 See Neil McLeod, Early Irish contract law (Sydney, [1992]), pp 71–8.
3 Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Women in early Irish society’ in Margaret Mac Curtain and
Donnchadh Ó Corráin (eds), Women in Irish society: the historical dimension (Dublin, 1978), pp
1–15. See also idem, ‘Marriage in early Ireland’ in Art Cosgrove (ed.), Marriage in Ireland
(Dublin, 1985), pp 5–2; ‘Women and the law in early Ireland’ in Mary O’Dowd and Sabine
Wichert (eds), Chattel, servant or citizen: women’s status in church, state and society (Belfast,
1995), pp 5–57. However, as pointed out by C.E. Meek and Katharine Simms (eds), ‘The
fragility of her sex’?: medieval Irish women in their European context (Dublin, 199), p. 7
(‘Introduction’), we must acknowledge ‘the nature and limitations of sources for the history
of women in the Middle Ages, predominantly written from a male, and even clerical
perspective, and the question of the extent to which women were able in practice to take the
initiative and make their wishes and opinions felt’. 4 Ed. M.E. Dobbs, RC, 7 (193), 283–
339 (metrical version); RC, 8 (1931), 13–233 (prose version); RC, 9 (1932), 37–89
(indices). For further details on this important text, see Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin, ‘The
manuscript tradition of the banshenchas’, Ériu, 33 (1982), 19–35; eadem, ‘A possible source
for Keating’s Foras feasa ar Éirinn’, Éigse, 19:1 (1982), 1–81; eadem, ‘An banshenchas’ in
Pádraig Ó Fiannachta (ed.), Léachtaí Cholm Cille, 12: ‘Na mná sa litríocht’ (Maynooth, 1982),
pp 5–29. The banshenchas was traditionally assumed to be a list of the wives of kings of Tara,
but Anne Connon (‘The banshenchas and the Uí Néill queens of Tara’ in A.F. Smyth (ed.),
Seanchas: essays in early and medieval archaeology, history and literature in honour of Francis J.
Byrne (Dublin, 1999), pp 98–18) has demonstrated that the list makes most sense when
interpreted as a list of the mothers of the kings of Tara.
51
The portrayal of women in medieval Irish religious poetry 515
199s.5 For example, the traditional picture of the role of the sovereignty goddess
in the bestowal of legitimacy on the rightful king was re-examined by Máire
Herbert. She argued that the diminution of the role of the goddess in Baile in
scáil as the king-god, Lug, usurped her function reflected historic reality as ‘royal
rule had become a matter of achievement by male sovereign rather than of
assignation by female sovereignty’. Important re-examinations of the
presentation of women in Táin bó Cúailnge were undertaken by Patricia Kelly,
Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin and Ann Dooley,7 while results from the re-
investigation of the presentation of Emer’s character in the Ulster Cycle were
published by Joanne Findon.8 These studies, taken together, have served to
illustrate that medieval Irish narrative literature is full of mixed messages with
regard to women, with many of the female characters in these texts presented in
a less than positive light.9
Similar attitudes to women are also evident in medieval Irish poetry,1 and
5 On the status of women in medieval Irish society in comparison with their European
counterparts, see Dorothy Dilts Swartz, ‘The legal status of women in early and medieval
Ireland and Wales in comparison with western European and Mediterranean societies:
environmental and social correlations’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 13 (1993),
17–18; Bart Jaski, ‘Marriage laws in Ireland and on the Continent in the early Middle Ages’
in Meek and Simms (eds), ‘The fragility of her sex’?, pp 1–2. Another volume with much to
offer to scholars of medieval Ireland is Dafydd Jenkins and M.E. Owen (eds), The Welsh law
of women (Cardiff, 198). 6 Máire Herbert, ‘Goddess and king: the sacred marriage in early
Ireland’ in L.O. Fradenburg (ed.), Women and sovereignty (Edinburgh, 1992), pp 2–75 at p.
29. 7 Patricia Kelly, ‘The Táin as literature’ in J.P. Mallory (ed.), Aspects of the Táin (Belfast,
1992), pp 9–12, esp. pp 77–8; Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin, ‘Re tóin mná: in pursuit of
troublesome women’ and Ann Dooley, ‘The invention of women in the Táin’ in J.P. Mallory
and Gerard Stockman (eds), Ulidia (Belfast, 199), pp 115–21 and pp 123–33. 8 Joanne
Findon, ‘A woman’s words: Emer versus Cú Chulainn in Aided Óenfir Aífe’ in Mallory and
Stockman (eds), Ulidia, pp 139–8; eadem, A woman’s words: Emer and female speech in the
Ulster cycle (Toronto, 1997). 9 It may be noted, however, that this conclusion had already
been reached with regard to the Táin by Frank O’Connor, The backward look: a survey of Irish
literature (London, 197), p. 32, who argued that ‘the purpose of the original author would
seem to have been to warn his readers against women, particularly women in positions of
authority’. 10 Among the best and most accessible collections are: Kuno Meyer (ed.),
Selections from ancient Irish poetry (London, 1911); idem (ed.), Über die älteste irische Dichtung
(2 vols, Berlin, 1913–1); idem (ed.), Bruchstücke der älteren Lyrik Irlands (Berlin, 1919);
Kenneth Jackson, Studies in early Celtic nature poetry (Cambridge, 1935); Gerard Murphy
(ed.), Early Irish lyrics: eighth to twelfth century (Oxford, 195; repr. Dublin, 1998); Seán Ó
Conghaile and Seán Ó Ríordáin, Rí na n-uile (Dublin, 19); James Carney (ed.), Medieval
Irish lyrics (Dublin, 197); David Greene and Frank O’Connor (eds), A golden treasury of Irish
poetry, AD600–1200 (London, 197); T.O. Clancy and Gilbert Márkus, Iona: the earliest poetry
of a Celtic monastery (Edinburgh, 1995). Among the best general guides to this material are:
Gerard Murphy, ‘The origins of Irish nature poetry’, Studies, 2 (1931), 87–12; Robin
Flower, The Irish tradition (Oxford, 197); James Carney (ed.), Early Irish poetry (Cork, 195);
Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Early Irish hermit poetry’ in idem, Liam Breatnach and Kim
McCone (eds), Sages, saints and storytellers: Celtic studies in honour of Professor James Carney
(Maynooth, 1989), pp 251–7; Próinséas Ní Chatháin, ‘Some themes in early Irish lyric
poetry’, Irish University Review, 22:1 (1992), 3–12; Liam Breatnach, ‘Poets and poetry’ in Kim
51 Kevin Murray
particularly in the body of work that may be loosely titled ‘religious poetry’.11
Such material is extant from numerous disparate sources.12 Among these we may
instance the early religious poems preserved in certain later manuscripts, such as
those found in RIA, MS 23N1 and MS B.iv 2.13 A number of compositions
survive that are attributed to particular authors,1 while others are put into the
mouths of famous saints.15 Further materials have come down to us as part of
larger prosimetric compositions: for example, a substantial body of verse,
religious and otherwise, is preserved in the Middle Irish commentary to Félire
Óengusso,1 though certain of these compositions had independent existences
before being incorporated into this text.17 A number of devotional poems are in
essence hymns and, unsurprisingly, some of these are preserved in the Irish Liber
hymnorum.18 These poems deal, inter alia, with the interrelationships between
God and nature, God and man, and with beseeching God for His help and
protection. Authorial attitudes to women in religious poetry may be explored by
examining the representative sample of the corpus assembled by Gerard Murphy
in his anthology Early Irish lyrics (henceforth EIL),19 particularly the first thirty-
three compositions therein, which he dubs ‘monastic poems’.2
Certain depictions of women dominate these compositions,21 with the wanton
McCone and Katharine Simms (eds), Progress in medieval Irish studies (Maynooth, 199), pp
5–77; D.N. Dumville, ‘What is mediaeval Gaelic poetry?’ in D.F. Smith and Hushang
Philsooph (eds), Explorations in cultural history: essays for Peter Gabriel McCaffery (Aberdeen,
21), pp 81–153. 11 This is the title used by Meyer (ed.), Selections from ancient Irish poetry,
p. xiii. There is also a substantial body of poetry in Latin, religious and otherwise, which lies
outside of the scope of this paper. For further details, see F.J. Byrne, ‘Latin poetry in Ireland’
in Carney (ed.), Early Irish poetry, pp 29–; Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, ‘Hiberno-Latin literature to
119’, NHI, i, pp 371– at p. 391 (and bibliography at pp 132–3). 12 See J.F. Kenney,
The sources for the early history of Ireland: ecclesiastical (New York, 1929), ch. vii: ‘Religious
literature and ecclesiastical culture’. 13 For details, see Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the
Royal Irish Academy, fasc. 22, ed. Kathleen Mulchrone (Dublin, 1937), pp 279–8, and fasc.
2, ed. Elizabeth FitzPatrick (Dublin, 1938), pp 321–9. 14 Among the most famous is the
religious poetry of Máel ísu Úa Brolcháin: for the man and his oeuvre, see Muireann Ní
Bhrolcháin, Maol Íosa Ó Brolcháin (Maynooth, 198). 15 See, for example, the
heterogeneous collection of poems in Bodleian Library MS, Laud Misc. 15, associated with
Colum Cille. For details, see Brian Ó Cuív, Catalogue of Irish language manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford and Oxford College libraries, pt 1: Descriptions (Dublin, 21), pp
88–11. 16 Fél. 17 A similar compilatory process is also envisaged for Acallam na senórach:
see G. Parsons, ‘Acallam na senórach as prosimetrum’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic
Colloquium, 2–5 (29), 8–1. 18 J.H. Bernard and Robert Atkinson, The Irish Liber
hymnorum (2 vols, London, 1898). 19 Texts and translations below are drawn from this
volume, which was reprinted by Four Courts Press in 1998. For some reservations about its
editorial methodology, see James Carney, ‘Notes on early Irish verse’, Éigse, 13: (197), 291–
312. 20 For problems with this terminology, see Tomás Ó Cathasaigh’s foreword to the reprint
(pp v–vii) and Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Early Irish hermit poetry’. 21 The most recent large-
scale work on women in medieval Ireland is that of L.M. Bitel, Land of women: tales of sex and
gender from early Ireland (Ithaca, NY, and London, 199). The most important legal text
concerning women, Cáin Lánamna, has recently been re-edited by Charlene M. Eska, Cáin
Lánamna: an Old Irish tract on marriage and divorce law (Leiden and Boston, 21). These
volumes, together with Meek and Simms (eds), ‘The fragility of her sex’?, contain extensive
woman as the primary negative female image utilized.22 Women are classed ‘with
nature rather than culture’,23 portrayed as unable to repress their lustful feelings
and presented as constant temptations to men. For example, in the poem ‘The
bell’ (EIL, no. 3) the author emphasizes his adherence to the monastic ideal by
telling how he would prefer to answer the bell to prayers than to meet with
female temptation:
Clocán binn Bell of pleasant sound ringing on a

benar i n-aidchi gaíthe windy night: I should prefer to tryst
ba ferr limm dul ina dáil with it to trysting with a wanton
indás i ndáil mná baíthe. woman.
In the poem ‘Sell not heaven for sin’ (EIL, no. 7), an unnamed woman tries to
entice her anmcharae (‘confessor’), the abbot of Lismore, Daniél ua Líathaiti (d.
83), with her charms. The poem serves as his reply to her entreaties. The
introductory prose section reads:
At-rubairt Daniél ua Líathaiti, Daniel grandson of Líathaite, abbot of

airchinnech Lis Móir, ocá guide don Lismore, spoke these verses when a
mnaí. Esseom ropo anmchara disi. woman was entreating him. He was her
Baí-si immurgu ocá thothlugud-som. confessor, but she was soliciting him.
The impression is created throughout the poem that the central male character
has prevented his unnamed suitor from expounding on her feelings for him. The
fault is shown to lie with her, associated ‘by nature with sex, pollution and sin’,2
and his reaction to this woman is presented solely in terms of pity for her
perceived shortcomings.
In stanza 2, Daniel replies to the woman who is trying to entice him as follows:
Im-ráidi baís cen bríg mbaí: Thy mind is set on profitless folly:
is súaichnid ní gaís fris-ngní. clearly it is not wisdom thou pursuest.
A n-as-bir-siu bid rád fás: What thou sayest will be empty speech:
bid nessa ar mbás ’síu ’ma-rrí. our death will be nearer before
it comes to pass.
bibliographies of the scholarship on women in medieval Ireland. 22 Two useful collections

of medieval Irish writings concerned with women are those of P.L. Henry, Dánta ban: poems
of Irish women, early and modern (Cork, 1991), pp 2–91; Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha (ed.),
‘Medieval to modern, –19’ in Angela Bourke et al. (eds), The Field Day anthology of Irish
writing, –5 (Cork, 22), iv, pp 1–57. 23 J.N. Radner, ‘“Men will die”: poets, harpers, and
women in early Irish literature’ in A.T.E. Matonis and D.F. Melia (eds), Celtic language, Celtic
culture: a Festschrift for Eric P. Hamp (Van Nuys, CA, 199), pp 172–8 at p. 183. 24 Bitel,
518 Kevin Murray
Her human desire for him is deemed foolish and there is no recognition of the
complexity of the human condition. She is the temptress: her very feelings for
him are imprudent; his reactions are those of an automaton. There is never a
moment in the poem in which one feels that her desire is in any way tempting to
him. His presentation is idealized and much less believable for being so, while
her presentation is one-dimensional: she serves only to provide the temptation
that his piety helps him overcome.
The brevity of the aside in ‘Shame on my thoughts’ (EIL, no. 17) is all the
more revealing for being given in a passing comment. Therein, a cleric is shown
chastizing himself for being unable to concentrate during psalms. His mind
wanders in many different directions:
Tre airechtu athlama, Through eager assemblies, through

tre buidne ban mbóeth, companies of foolish women, through
tre choillte, tre chathracha – woods, through cities – swifter than
is lúaithiu ná in góeth. the wind.
The use of the alliterating collocation buidne ban mbóeth (‘companies of foolish
women’) is symptomatic of a male mindset that is unsympathetic to women. The
fact that the clerical mind wanders to the opposite sex, quite naturally, during
prayer is seen as a cause of shame. The presentation of the companies as ‘foolish’
serves both to increase the cleric’s shame while highlighting the futility of any
such engagement with women, and in the process the cleric attempts to transfer
his weakness onto an anonymous female cohort. Only in verse 11 of the poem
beginning A Choimdiu, nom-choimét (‘Lord, guard me’) (EIL, no. 2) do we get
a mention of male lust that does not seek to blame womankind for its presence.
Another pertinent image in medieval Irish religious poetry is that of the guilty
woman, with particular importance attached in Christian doctrine to Eve’s role
in man’s fall from grace. The repeated emphasis on Eve’s guilt is well
documented in writings from medieval Christian Ireland, with works such as
‘The Irish Adam and Eve story’ from Saltair na rann attesting to the recurrent
power of this narrative.25 It is further expressed in the poem beginning Mé Éba
(‘I am Eve’) (EIL, no. 21), dated by Murphy to the eleventh century. This is
short enough to be cited in its entirety:
Mé Éba, ben Ádaim uill; I am Eve, great Adam’s wife; it is I that

mé ro sháraig Ísu thall; outraged Jesus of old; it is I that stole
mé ro thall nem ar mo chloinn: Heaven from my children; by rights it is I
cóir is mé do-chóid sa crann. that should have gone upon the Tree.
Land of women, p. 33. 25 The Irish Adam and Eve story from Saltair na rann, 1 (David Greene
and Fergus Kelly): text and trans.; 2 (Brian Murdoch): commentary (Dublin, 197).
Ropa lem rígtheg dom réir; I had a kingly house at my command;

olc in míthoga rom-thár; grievous the evil choice that disgraced me;
olc in cosc cinad rom-chrín: grievous the chastisement of crime that has
for-ír! ni hidan mo lám. withered me; alas! my hand is not clean.
Mé tuc in n-uball an-úas; It is I that plucked the apple;

do-chúaid tar cumang mo chraís; it overcame the control of my greed;
in céin marat-sam re lá for that, women will not cease from folly
de ní scarat mná re baís. as long as they live in the light of day.
Ní bíad eigred in cach dú; There would be no ice in any place;

ní bíad geimred gáethmar glé; there would be no glistening windy winter;
ní bíad iffern; ní bíad brón; there would be no hell; there would be no
ní bíad oman, minbad mé. sorrow; there would be no fear, were it not
for me.
The images of wickedness, pollution, folly and terror combine to isolate and
condemn Eve: her guilt encompasses not only the sorrow she has chosen but the
paradise she has lost for all mankind. Her awareness of this leads her to say in the
first verse that it would have been better if she, rather than Jesus, had been
crucified. Such acceptance of guilt is similar to that found in Longes mac
nUislenn,2 where the central character, Deirdre, is portrayed as accepting
responsibility for the tragic events of the tale, especially for the death of Naoise,
mirroring Eve’s acceptance of responsibility for man’s downfall in this poem.27
Notwithstanding the misogyny of Mé Éba, Thomas Owen Clancy has raised the
intriguing possibility that it may have been composed by a woman: ‘it seems
possible that a woman might choose just this aspect of the contemporary world-
view when composing a poem of repentance and sorrow’; however, he candidly
admits that ‘this is not to suggest that Mé Éba is indeed a product of female
authorship; there is no evidence either way’.28
To return to ‘Sell not heaven for sin’; therein, the woman soliciting the abbot
of Lismore is swayed by the force of his arguments and desists from trying to
seduce him. After the poem concludes, she speaks a line acknowledging the
correctness of his arguments but is portrayed doing so in a very servile way: ‘Bid
fír ón’, or sisi. Ro shlécht-si for a bith-denma-som in eret ro boí i mbethaid (‘“Thus it
26 Longes mac nUislenn: the exile of the sons of Uisliu, ed. Vernam Hull (New York, 199).
27 Máire Herbert, ‘The universe of male and female: a reading of the Deirdre story’ in C.J.
Byrne, Margaret Harry and Pádraig Ó Siadhail (eds), Proceedings of the Second North American
Congress of Celtic Studies (Halifax, NS, 1992), pp 53– at –1. See also Máire Herbert,
‘Celtic heroine? The archaeology of the Deirdre story’ in Toni O’Brien Johnson and David
Cairnes (eds), Gender in Irish writing (Philadelphia, 1991), pp 13–22. 28 Clancy, ‘Women
poets in early medieval Ireland: stating the case’ in Meek and Simms (eds), ‘The fragility of
52 Kevin Murray
shall be”, said she. She bowed before his perpetual purity as long as she lived’).
Similar images of servitude and weakness are found, for example, in ‘Prayer for
tears’ (EIL, no. 27 §3):
Uchán, a Chríst cáidh, Alas, holy Christ, that thou bringest

cen sruthán dom grúaid, no stream to my cheek as thou didst bring
feib tucais in linn a flood to the weak wretched woman.
don banscáil timm thrúaig.
The tears of the ‘weak wretched woman’ invoke the image of the unnamed
woman sinner in Lk 7.3–9 who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears.29
The regular positive female image in this corpus, though not quite as
frequently attested in Murphy’s collection as one might imagine, is that of the
religious woman who aspires to be like the Blessed Virgin Mary, as ‘the model of
Christian life specifically appropriate to the female sex is not “imitation of
Christ” but “imitation of Mary” (imitatio Mariae)’.3 Thus, in ‘Jesus and St íte’,
beginning Ísucán (EIL, no. 11), St íte is presented as a substitute for Mary,
fostering and nurturing the baby Jesus in her hermitage.31 In the poem beginning
A Maire mín (‘Gentle Mary’) (EIL, no. 2), Mary’s praises are sung and her help
is invoked, and in the invocation she is called rígain na rígraide (‘queen of all who
reign’), minn mórmaisech (‘loveliest jewel’), and máthair na fírinne (‘mother of
truth’). In the poem beginning Isam aithrech (‘I am repentant’) from Saltair na
rann (EIL, no. 1), the poet asks repeatedly for forgiveness, mentioning holy
virgins and wondrous Maiden Mary as the ideals of womanhood though
broadening this category out significantly to include bantracht na prímlaíchas
translated by Murphy as ‘distinguished laywomen’.
Many of these images, both positive and negative, recur in medieval religious
literature generally, and thus are commonplaces of this genre.32 While there is an
understandable reluctance among some commentators to embrace the notion of
genre, it seems self-evident nevertheless that ‘speakers and writers construct
utterances which can be recognized and construed by readers and listeners as
utterances of a certain kind’, and that literary genres, therefore, ‘establish for the
reader, more-or-less precisely, what kinds of meaning he may expect to find in a
text’.33 The audience for this material is also of central concern. Consistent
recourse to such negative presentation of women demonstrates the existence of
her sex?’, pp 3–72 at p. 71. 29 This woman was sometimes identified as Mary Magdalene in
medieval commentaries. Elsewhere, in John 11.2 and 12.3, the feet of Jesus are anointed by
Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus. 30 Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Medieval to modern, –19’,
p. 3. 31 The poem, preserved in the commentary to Félire Óengusso, ‘is for all practical
purposes Old Irish. The prose is quite clearly Middle Irish. But the tradition it embodies may
well be earlier’: E.G. Quin, ‘The early Irish poem Ísucán’, CMCS, 1 (summer 1981), 39–52
at 51. 32 With regard to medieval England for example, see Rosemary Woolf, The English
religious lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 198), pp 11–57. 33 J.A. Burrow, Medieval writers
a set audience, probably Christian and predominantly male, one ‘the implied
author expects to recognize and respond to certain strategies he uses in the
text’.3
Consequently, an important question to be posed is to what extent negative
portrayals of women in religious poetry might reflect general male societal
attitudes to women in medieval Ireland. The authors of these poems are thought
to have been predominantly men,35 educated Christians, and many of them
would have been clerics. Therefore, are their negative attitudes to women
reflective of general male attitudes of the time or are they more reflective of
misogynistic attitudes of male clerics typical of this genre of literature?3
Furthermore, certain of these poems occupy a marginal place in our manuscript
culture, occasional verse so to speak, and thus may not in their very expression
have occupied a central place in society nor have represented fully societal
attitudes to questions of gender.37
There is no doubt but that the authors of these poems would have been well
aware of the Biblical parallels to the various negative images of womanhood
portrayed in their work. Thus, the wanton woman of such poetry seems mild
compared with the harlot of Revelations 17. Subservience to men is emphasized
by I Corinthians 11, I Timothy 2 and I Peter 3, while the image of the weak
woman is directly comparable with that of Mary Magdalene. Lastly, there is
agreement in basing the ideal of womanhood on the qualities of the Blessed
Virgin Mary. Irish male clerical authors would have shared attitudes with clerics
in other medieval European Christian societies ‘which assigned to women a
limited set of roles to play, but women in Ireland, as elsewhere, colluded in
creating and maintaining those roles as well as subverting them. Literate men
recorded a profusion of ideas about women, positive and negative’.38
and their work (Oxford, 1982; rev. OPUS ed., n.d.), pp 5–7. 34 D.F. Melia, ‘A poetic klein
bottle’ in Matonis and Melia (eds), Celtic language, Celtic culture, pp 187–9 at p. 189.
35 Recently, however, some scholars have advocated female authorship for certain
compositions. For example, Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Medieval to modern, –19’, p.
111, has argued that ‘The lament of the old woman of Beare’ was composed by ‘a female poet
named Digde of the Corco Duibne, who at some stage in her life became a nun’ (an opinion
she first mentions in print in the 1993 School of Celtic Studies Newsletter, DIAS (Dublin,
1993), p. 15); eadem, ‘Two female lovers’, Ériu, 5 (199), 113–19 at 113–1. T.O. Clancy,
‘Women poets in early medieval Ireland’, has investigated this issue in some detail. This topic
is made more complex by the fact that medieval Irish poets regularly adopted personae in their
compositions ‘to conceal themselves and convey the desired message’ though there is also a
‘small body of personal verse’ extant: see Gregory Toner, ‘“Messe ocus Pangur Bán”:
structure and cosmology’, CMCS, 57 (summer 29), 1–22 at 9–1, and Maria Tymockzo, ‘A
poetry of masks: the poet’s persona in early Celtic poetry’ in K.A. Klar, E.E. Sweetser and
Claire Thomas (eds), A Celtic florilegium: studies in memory of Brendan O Hehir (Lawrence,
MA, 199), pp 187–29. 36 Fear of the power of women and of sexuality comprises a large
part of medieval male clerical attitudes in Ireland as elsewhere. See, for example, the dispro-
portionate emphasis placed on lust and sexual transgression in the penitentials: Ludwig Bieler,
The Irish penitentials (Dublin, 193). 37 On the issue of marginality, see Dumville, ‘What is
medieval Gaelic poetry?’, pp 18–1. 38 Bitel, Land of women, p. 11.
522 Kevin Murray
Male clerical responses to women do not seem to have alienated women from
the medieval church, probably because similar attitudes were prevalent in wider
society.39 For example, roles for women in medieval England tended to be socially
regulated, as is evident from texts concerned with ‘the purity of virgins, the
fidelity of wives, the loyalty of widows’. Similarly, the medieval Irish laws
inform us that:
adagair a athair imbi ingen; her father watches over her when she is a
adagair a cetmuinter imbi be girl; her cétmuinter watches over her when
cetmuintere; adagairet she is the wife of a cétmuinter; her sons
a mme[i]cc imbi be clainne; watch over her when she is a woman with
adagair fine imbi be fine; children; her kin watch over her when she is
adagair eclais imbi be eclaise. a woman of the kin; the Church watches
over her when she is a woman of the Church.1
Later records suggest that ‘a strong-minded female could make nonsense of the
legal fiction that she was perpetually under the guardianship of her husband’.2
Furthermore, the church offered women who became nuns a chance to have a
role and status in society which was largely independent of men,3 while in the
later period it ‘defended women’s rights against the inadequacies of secular law,
refusing to recognize child marriages as binding unless confirmed by both
parties when they came of age, and insisting that no contract was valid unless
entered into of free will’. Finally, clerics played an important role in educating
women of the upper classes, and the close attachment to the church felt by many
women is reflected in their property donations.5
Two caveats need to be entered with regard to our contextualization of
medieval Irish religious poetry. Firstly, when compared with native narrative
literature, and particularly with medieval Irish poetic compositions which do not
contain an overtly religious element, this poetry is seen to contain an extra
39 See Fergus Kelly, ‘The place of women in early Irish society, with special reference to the
law of marriage’ in Anders Ahlquist and Amela O’Neil (eds), Language and power in the Celtic
world: papers from the seventh Australian conference of Celtic Studies (Sydney, 211), pp 159–79.
40 Margaret Hallissy, Clean maids, true wives, steadfast widows: Chaucer’s women and medieval
codes of conduct (Westport, CT, 1993), p. 189. 41 D.A. Binchy, ‘The legal capacity of women
in regard to contracts’ in Rudolf Thurneysen et al. (eds), Studies in early Irish law (Dublin,
193), pp 27–23 at pp 213–1; see Myles Dillon, Celts and Aryans: survivals of Indo-
European speech and society (Simla, 1975), p. 115. 42 Katharine Simms, ‘Women in Norman
Ireland’ in Mac Curtain and Ó Corráin (eds), Women in Irish society, pp 1–25 at p. 22.
43 The important societal position of such women is evident from D.A. Binchy, ‘Bretha
Crólige’, Ériu, 12 (193–8), 1–77 at 27, §32. 44 Simms, ‘Women in Norman Ireland’, 17.
45 On this topic, see Lisa Bitel, ‘Women’s donations to the churches in early Ireland’, JRSAI,
11 (198), 5–23. 46 A convenient corpus of this material is to be found in the second half
of EIL, in the material titled ‘Secular Poems’ by Gerard Murphy. However, I can only agree
with Tomás Ó Cathasaigh’s reservations (EIL, ‘Foreword’) about Murphy’s usage of the terms
dimension of anti-female bias. Notwithstanding the fact that recent scholarship

has highlighted the mixed messages about women contained in much of our
narrative literature, positive images of women are still commonplace in non-
religious poetry, and more sympathetic treatment of fundamental human themes
such as love and sexual desire is evident throughout. Secondly, much of our
religious poetry contains no mention of women whatsoever, with its focus on
man’s relationship with God and on how that relationship might be improved,
and shows particular delight in articulating man’s appreciation for nature and
God’s creation of it; some of these compositions are among the most beautiful
poems ever written in the Irish language.
Nevertheless, it is evident that the central literary weakness of much medieval
Irish religious poetry is its depiction of women: nowhere in the body of material
under examination do we get a rounded picture of womanhood; nowhere are
female characters presented as individuals; nowhere are they named.7 Instead,
they are presented as ciphers, present in the interaction between man and God,
with their Christian roles defined for us by male clerical authors.8 Because a
believable picture of living, breathing female characters fails to emerge from the
images sketched in these compositions, the literary quality of such poetry is
constantly undermined. The frequent one-dimensional portrayals of women,
and consequently of the men who interact with them, tend to negate much of the
effect of the beautiful and sophisticated use of language, metre and imagery
found in these poems. Nevertheless, the best of them are inspired, many contain
verses and images of sustained brilliance, while for the remainder we might
follow the proffered advice of ‘Sell not heaven for sin’ (EIL, no. 7 §7): Ná bí for
seilg neich nád maith, ‘Pursue not that which is not good’.9
‘secular’ and ‘monastic’ poetry. This problem of genre is exemplified, for example, by the
poem ‘Líadain and Cuirithir’ (EIL, no. 35), classed as a ‘secular’ poem by Murphy but which
transcends any attempt at systematic classification; it is discussed by Clancy, ‘Women poets in
early medieval Ireland’, pp 7–7. 47 The only exception to this among the ‘monastic
poems’ in EIL is the presentation of St íte as the foster-mother of God (EIL, no. 11), likened
in all virtues to His mother. The non-naming of female protagonists is also a feature of some
medieval Irish narratives such as Fingal Rónáin (Fingal Rónáin and other stories, ed. David
Greene [Dublin, 1955]), where the central female character is called ingen Echdach ‘Echaid’s
daughter’. 48 On this, see Bitel, Land of women, pp 31–. 49 I wish to thank Pádraig Ó
Riain and Diarmuid Ó Murchadha for their many helpful comments on the final draft of this
essay.
‘Once I heard a story … from scripture does it come’:

biblical allusions in Irish bardic religious poetry
S A LVA D O R RYA N
INTRODUCTION
Those of us whose academic work is concerned with the religious compositions

of Irish bardic poets owe a particular debt to the Irish Jesuit scholar, Lambert
McKenna (187–195), whose many editions and translations of these poems
have opened up a fascinating and, for many years, under-utilized source for the
history of native Irish religious culture in the later Middle Ages.1 Given
McKenna’s enormous contribution to scholarship in this area, it is quite curious
to find him, in introductory notes to his collections, remarking upon this type of
devotional poetry’s lack of artistic and theological merit. In drawing attention to
the ‘artificial religious mentality’ exhibited by the poems, he states that ‘we do
not find in them the outpouring of the religious heart which is found in much of
the poetry attributed to Columcille and Moling, and in the work of Níníne,
Sanctan and Mael ísa’.2 Moreover, their ‘esoteric character’, for McKenna,
‘lessens their value for the lover of poetry’.3 Indeed, in his introduction to the
poetry of Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, he warns readers that ‘some of the concepts
and conceits of the bardic style are not merely quite unknown in the religious
literature of any other country, but are such as to surprise – even unpleasantly –
the ordinary pious mind’. Furthermore, from a theological standpoint,
McKenna clearly regards the poems as ‘strange’ and ‘the strangest part of all
bardic poetry [is] its treatment of the Passion’.5 For instance, he incorrectly
regards the idea that the wounds and instruments of torture of an angry Christ
acted as tools of indictment and perdition on Judgment Day as unique to bardic
verse and ‘unknown elsewhere in medieval literature’. Yet, McKenna did not
just wonder at what bardic poets saw fit to include in their compositions. Indeed,
he frequently alluded to what he might have expected to find therein and did not;
and chief among those elements missing from the bardic poems were allusions
to sayings and events from the public ministry of Christ in the gospels.
1 See, for instance, Dánta do chum Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh (Dublin, 1919); Dán Dé (Dublin,
1922); Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn (Dublin, 1931); Aithdioghluim dána (2 vols, London, 1939–)
and numerous editions of poems published in volumes of the Irish Monthly in the 192s and
193s. 2 Dán Dé, p. x. 3 Ibid., p. xii. 4 Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, p. xiv. 5 Ibid., p. xvii.
6 Dánta do chum Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh, p. ix.
52
Biblical allusions in Irish bardic religious poetry 525
In his collection of bardic poems entitled Dán Dé, which was drawn from the
so-called ‘Yellow Book of Lecan’, McKenna has the following to say on the
question of the poets’ treatment of gospel themes:
Very remarkable is the limitation, common to all the poems of this

collection (and, indeed, as far as I know, to all such poems), as regards the
portions of the Scripture narrative laid under contribution. References to
the Incarnation and the Child-Life of Our Lord, to His Last Supper, His
Passion, His Resurrection, His Descent into Hell, His Coming on the Last
Day are constant; on the other hand, except for the story of Mary
Magdalen, there is no reference to His public life, His miracles, parables
and teachings.7
The reason for this, McKenna surmises, is the fact that the poets themselves
were not clerics who could have drawn on the whole range of the
Scriptures, and on much of the writings of the Fathers for an abundance
of ideas and imagery. They were lay-folk, often doubtless not particularly
pious-minded, often too, not very highly gifted with poetic imagination.8
Nearly a decade later in the introduction to his collection of poems by friar-poet,

Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, he would attribute the lack of a Franciscan quality in
these works to the possibility that Ó hUiginn was far too ‘deeply imbued with the
tradition and mentality of the bards’ when he entered religion (which McKenna
assumes was later in his life). This, too, McKenna will suggest, accounts for the
dearth of scriptural references in his work:
One may fairly conclude from the poems that Philip had not gone through
the six years’ ecclesiastical studies by which, according to the custom of
that day, a Franciscan was prepared for the exercise of his priestly function.
Had he done these studies, he would have acquired a fair knowledge of the
Scriptures, parts of which he would have to read daily in choir … now in
these poems there is no trace of any such professional instruction, or of any
special knowledge of Scripture, the Fathers or works of piety; nor are the
characteristics of Franciscan devotion to be found in them.9
However, McKenna does not leave it at that; he proceeds to comment on the

most surprising element, which he identifies as ‘the manner in which [Ó
hUiginn] handles his themes’, for ‘in dealing with some Scriptural event or with
some point of the spiritual life, his thoughts and emotions are not those which
arise spontaneously in the devout Christian heart, and which are expressed with
7 Dán Dé, p. x. 8 Ibid., p. xi. 9 Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, pp xii–xiii.

52 Salvador Ryan
such charming freshness in the Franciscan poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries; they are exclusively the conceits, fancies and far-fetched notions
distinctive of the bardic treatment of religious subjects’.1 Harsh words indeed.
McKenna’s surprise at the scant reference to Scripture in bardic poetry is
compounded by what he considered to be its potential usefulness. Noting the
fact that there are ‘surprisingly few quotations of his words or references to his
parables’ (and here McKenna takes into consideration all of the poems he has
edited to that year, 1931), he comments that
as subjects for ‘uirsgéala’ the incidents of the Gospels would have been
most appropriate, yet only a few of them are chosen, the conversion of
Magdalen … and the Feeding of the Five Thousand. It is not quite easy to
explain why the bards neglect almost completely the Gospel story from the
Flight into Egypt till the Passion.11
The purpose of this essay is simply to demonstrate that when this corpus of
religious verse is surveyed, the bardic neglect of Scripture is not as complete as
Lambert McKenna clearly assumed it to be. What follows is a representative
sample of what might be more fully discussed in a larger study.
O L D T E S TA M E N T
Given the predominance of Christ’s redemption of humanity as a theme in

bardic religious poetry (something to which Lambert McKenna repeatedly
draws attention in his introductory notes on the prevalence of material on
Christ’s passion), it is perhaps not surprising that the theme of humanity’s ‘Fall’
in the Garden of Eden, which the medieval mindset largely viewed as
precipitating Christ’s incarnation, passion, death and resurrection, features
prominently in many bardic poems. The story of Adam and Eve was routinely
set within the broad sweep of salvation history in much of medieval religious
literature, best exemplified, perhaps, in the late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-
century Speculum Humanae Salvationis (‘Mirror of human salvation’), one of the
most popular texts of the later Middle Ages. Moreover, medieval texts would
greatly expand upon the few short verses that are found in Scripture,
introducing a dizzying array of additional details and interpretations to the story
as found in Genesis.12 One would therefore expect some of these retellings to
appear in bardic verse.
The creation of Adam and Eve, and thus of all humanity, was understood by
Augustine in his monumental City of God to be God’s way of filling up and
10 Ibid., p. xiii. 11 Ibid., p. xvi. 12 See especially Michael E. Stone, A history of the
literature of Adam and Eve (Atlanta, GA, 1992); Brian Murdoch, The medieval popular bible:
repairing the vacancies left by the fallen angels who rebelled and were cast out,
thus ensuring that the heavenly city would enjoy its full complement of citizens,
lacking nothing.13 In bardic verse, this idea is communicated, predictably enough,
in a work which was not concerned with the story of the Fall in the Garden per
se, but rather the felicitous result at the far end of salvation history: thus it
appears in a poem entitled Marthain duit a Chroch an Choimhdhe. Addressing the
cross, the poet states: ‘I will reveal a heavenly secret, a story, noble story of thee
[…]’.1 He begins by recalling how the ‘Father of all’ created a heavenly city
which was populated by angels until, through envy, they were expelled.15 It was
only then that ‘God made Adam and Eve – easy task! – so that men, being born
and dying, should fill heaven above’.1 This poem relates how, through her sin,
Eve offended the Creator and ‘broke the peace and all her race fell too’.17 In the
verse following, Cain’s slaying of Abel ‘with a long hard camel’s jaw’ is briefly
mentioned before the poet moves on to the more pertinent tale of Seth and his
encounter with the withered tree of paradise in a version of one of the countless
‘Holy Rood’ legends that became increasingly associated with Adamic literature
from the twelfth century onwards.18 In this version, on Seth’s return to paradise,
he notices that ‘early blight had seized that once bright fairy tree’.19 However,
when a ‘comely youth’ lies upon the tree, life is restored to it and it brings forth
fruit and three apple seeds land on Seth’s breast. Upon returning to his father,
Adam admits that it was he and Eve who withered the tree and thereby laid waste
the world.2 In this version of the tale, when Adam dies, Seth places the three
apple seeds in his mouth, from which three saplings later grow.21 One of these
will eventually become the cross of crucifixion upon which a ‘comely youth’ will
once again be stretched out. Here, then, in this first example of a reference to
biblical material, we find the story of the Fall in Genesis eclipsed by the cross of
redemption – the tree of knowledge superseded by the tree of salvation.
Bardic poems that more closely examine the subject of Adam and Eve’s
disobedience also tend to project late medieval religious mentalities and concerns
onto the narrative. In A-táid trí comhruig am chionn, a fifteenth-century poem
attributed to Tadhg Óg Ó hUiginn, the poet relates how, in the immediate
aftermath of their disobedience, God ‘would have asked of them only penance as
expansions of Genesis in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 23). 13 Saint Augustine, The City of
God, ed. Henry Bettenson and Gillian Rosemary Evans (London, 2), bk xxII, ch. 1.
14 ‘To a crucifix’, The Irish Monthly, 5 (1922), 117, v. . 15 Ibid., vv 5–. 16 Ibid., v. 8.
The same idea is also found in the poetry of Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, who states in the poem
Dlighthear deachmhadh as an dán that ‘in heaven of the ten roads, for each angel cast into the
fire, God will put a soul into a young body’ and ‘when pride seized the angels, heaven of the
nine races became a vacant realm offered to the chosen folk’; Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, poem 8,
vv 1–12. Fittingly, the figure of St Francis is accorded the primordial place among the angels
– that vacated by Lucifer. 17 ‘To a crucifix’, The Irish Monthly, 5 (1922), v. 9. 18 See
especially Barbara Baert, A heritage of holy wood: the legend of the True Cross in text and image
(Leiden, 2). 19 ‘To a crucifix’, The Irish Monthly, 5 (1922), 119, v. 1. 20 Ibid., v. 2.
21 Ibid., v. 2.
528 Salvador Ryan
éiric; he would have pardoned had they only asked him, that couple’s breach of
the Commandments’,22 and thus the tale becomes instructive in the necessity of
the full admission of sin and the timely pursuit of forgiveness in the Christian
life, something that was a staple of later medieval preaching, particularly that
associated with the friars. However, the pair does not excel as medieval penitents,
instead denying their guilt, blaming others, and failing to repent. It should be
noted that the couple break ‘the Commandments’ (something later medieval
Christians were increasingly expected to know and, of course, observe) and that
although they denied their sin, ‘Jesus [my emphasis] saw their heart’.23 The pair
are ‘driven from paradise’s wood’ not for having sinned, but for ‘not consenting
to repent’.2 Here, then, Adam and Eve are medieval characters and the lessons
to be drawn from their foolishness are likewise medieval.
The same Ó hUiginn, in a poem entitled Trom an suan-so ar síol Adhaimh,
continues in this vein by viewing the sweep of salvation history through
Christocentric eyes. Claiming that Adam’s race remains in deep slumber since
the plucking of the apple, he alludes to the many chastisements meted out to
humanity by God as recounted in the Old Testament. However, once again, the
main protagonist is Jesus: ‘Many reproaches of old, Jesus uttered in wrath – I
should have trembled at them! – till he afterwards took human form’.25 What
follows is a list of prominent instances of God’s punishment of humanity for
their sins; the first sin committed was that of the angels who were cast down into
tortures as a result (v. 18); Adam’s wife was punished for her treachery – here the
poet wonders what punishment might be in store for him given what Eve
suffered for an apple (v. 19); the first murder in the world was that of Cain’s
slaying of Abel (v. 2); a whole generation was destroyed in ‘God’s wrath’ by the
waters of the flood (v. 21); the Egyptians were likewise punished for their pursuit
of Moses to the Red Sea (v. 22); five ancient cities were destroyed because of their
sins (v. 25); the builders of the tower of Nimrod (Babel) are thrown into
confusion by God’s introduction of strange tongues among them (v. 2); yet,
once again, it is the person of Jesus who is the principal actor in these incidences
of divine retribution: ‘Jesus had no mercy for sinful Cain or his race, but
destroyed them for the sins of them all’ (v. 23). Verses such as these, which place
the figure of Jesus at the centre of salvation history, are not merely reading the
Old Testament through Christian lenses (an approach that can be traced to the
earliest Christian writings), but are also adapting the lessons to be learned to the
capabilities and experience of their audiences, as might be done in a medieval
sermon.
A similar approach can be found in a seventeenth-century poem by Fearghal
Óg Mac an Bhaird on the patience of Job, entitled Ní maith altuighim m’onóir.
Here the poet contrasts his angry reaction to the loss of his native land (owing to
22 ‘The soul’s three foes’, The Irish Monthly, 57 (1929), v. 2. 23 Ibid., v. 2. 24 Ibid., v.
27. 25 Dán Dé, poem 17, v. 1.
his ‘exile’ in Louvain) with Job’s patient acceptance of God’s will despite being
deprived of all he owned and loved. The story of Job is related at length, but
from the outset it is specifically Jesus who tests him: ‘Jesus thought to test his
servant’s endurance; all he owned he was soon deprived of ’.2 The gradual
denudation from Job of all that he holds dear is met with the memorable
utterance ‘By his will hath God given and taken’.27 Yet, in this poem, Job is not
simply an Old Testament figure; rather, he is a pious and observant medieval
Christian. As his wife seeks alms to support her family during Job’s illness, Job,
with perfect resignation, ‘thanked the dear God and the sweet gracious Virgin for
any alms given his wife or for her being refused it’.28 Not only does he display
impeccable Marian devotion, but also observes closely its late medieval
counterpart: devotion to the passion of Christ: ‘patiently he bore his sufferings
till he got relief; and prostrate by his wounds he wept for the Lord’s piercing’.29
Mac an Bhaird comments many times how little he himself has emulated Job in
his particular distress; in presenting Job as a model to be imitated, then, the poet
updates some of the details of the story in order that they might resonate with
his audience. Medieval homilies and treatises often progressed from recalling a
biblical scene to extracting a moral lesson from it and finally eliciting a personal
response from the hearer.3 Making Job a devotee of the Virgin and Christ’s
passion rendered him, and the moral his story carried, particularly relevant. In
a similar vein, the thirteenth-century poet, Gilla Brigde Mac Con Midhe, in a
composition entitled Crann do chuir amach Naoi nár, while including the
traditional identification of Noah as the first tiller of the soil with a plough,
nevertheless uses the story to make a very clear statement about medieval
sacramental practice.31 The ‘pole’ (crann) that Noah put out across the field is
interpreted by Mac Con Midhe as ‘correct authoritative faith’ and the
ploughman ‘the man who fasts and fulfils the obligations of piety’.32 The good
ploughman will recognize that the dark-brown clod of earth is preferable to the
bright green clod (which, although more seemly, cannot produce crops); this,
then, becomes an opportunity to impart a teaching on best practice in confession
in a highly imaginative manner:
Though one’s sole be dirtied and one’s shoe darkened, abundant produce
comes from that [dark-brown] earth
The loamy, upper sod is confession that conceals nothing; the green,
grassy, overgrown thicket is the complacent and loud-mouthed man …
Confession with its grass showing is a creation pleasing to the eye but
26 ‘Ingratitude to God’, The Irish Monthly, 5 (1928), 23–8 at 23, v. 9. 27 Ibid., v. 1.
28 Ibid., v. 1. 29 Ibid., v. 15. 30 Siegfried Wenzel, Preachers, poets and the early English
lyric (Princeton, NJ, 198), p. 1. 31 Nicholas Williams (ed.), The poems of Giolla Brighde
Mac Con Midhe (London, 198), poem 22, pp 28–57. 32 Ibid., vv 1–11.
53 Salvador Ryan
fraught with filth; the craftsman of the elements is displeased with it when
the earth-side is not uppermost.33
In the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council’s decree Omnis utriusque sexus of
1215, which mandated the annual reception of the sacraments of Penance and
Eucharist, a flood of works of instruction on confessing sin emerged throughout
Europe, placing particular emphasis on such aspects as the simple, honest and
clear recitation of all sins committed, without holding any back out of shame.
The concerns reflected above in Mac Con Midhe’s poem on Noah are typical of
such literature.
The friar-poet, Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, in the poem Maith an sgéalaidhe an
sgriobtúir, contrary to McKenna’s dismissal of his knowledge of scripture and
lack of emotional depth, claims that ‘A good storyteller is Scripture; cold is the
heart unmoved by the rejection of Heaven’s host for their rebellious will’.3 In
this poem, Ó hUiginn covers a broad range of biblical history, beginning with
‘Adam, weak-hearted man’, the loss of Noah’s innocence (when he got drunk),
Abraham’s coupling with Hagar and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.35
Once again, like his kinsman, Tadhg Óg, Philip Bocht speaks specifically of Jesus
bringing the Israelites across the Red Sea.3 Ó hUiginn continues by mentioning
the sins of David, the licentiousness of Saul, the hatred of Joseph’s brothers
towards him, the weakness of Solomon in his love for a woman, and the linguistic
confusion introduced during the construction of Nimrod’s tower.37 In another
composition by the same poet, Togbham croich i ndeaghaidh De, which concerns
itself from the outset with the ‘carrying of Christ’s cross’ in the poet’s own life,
Ó hUiginn introduces the story of God’s request to Abraham to sacrifice his son,
Isaac.38 The typological reading of this event is hinted at in the verse that
introduces the story: ‘Once, when the world was young, a cross was borne in a
foreign land, a lesson from Scripture for my guidance’.39 Isaac is, at the last
moment, spared and an alternative sacrifice procured. Interestingly, adopting the
theme of Isaac foreshadowing Christ, Ó hUiginn states that ‘God’s Son stood
approving at the altar, waiting to see the sacrifice and grateful for it’. Because
Abraham was obedient to God’s command, Ó hUiginn notes (paraphrasing the
biblical promise) that ‘for that deed God promised that the noble father’s seed
would outnumber sand and stars’.1 However, the friar-poet includes an
additional element in the promise in the succeeding verse: ‘In return, the mother
of God’s Son came of his race’.2 Just as Isaac routinely appears in patristic works
as a type of Christ (as does both Abraham and the ram also), so too Abraham’s
33 Ibid., vv 17, 19, 2. 34 Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, poem 1, v. 1. 35 Ibid., vv 3–.
36 Ibid., v. . 37 Ibid., vv 8–15. 38 Ibid., poem 23. 39 Ibid., v. 27. Although not explicitly
mentioned here, Isaac’s carrying of the wood for the sacrifice was frequently understood as a
foreshadowing of Christ’s carrying the wood of the cross to the place of his sacrifice.
40 Ibid., v. 3. 41 Ibid., v. 37. 42 Ibid., v. 38.
faith and obedience foreshadows that of the Virgin Mary. Philip Bocht displays
knowledge of both here, and this is exemplified in the verses following.
Addressing God’s Son, he states:
For Thy good mother’s sake, give me, to save me, a share of Thy obedience,
O fragrant tree of our wood.
Remember, ’twas owing to Mary’s obedience to her poor brethren, Thou
didst drink at her breast to save us, Thou choice wine of the tavern.3
Here, then, Ó hUiginn makes use of an Old Testament story to strengthen his
argument regarding the centrality of the cross and, ultimately, sacrifice in the
Christian life. And, in this case, as in many more across the bardic corpus,
Scripture proved to be a very good storyteller indeed.
N E W T E S TA M E N T
Bardic references to the principal events of Christ’s life routinely drew from both
canonical and extra-canonical material, something that was entirely in keeping
with broader medieval devotional trends. Apocryphal gospels were particularly
popular in the Irish tradition; for instance, as early as the eighth century the poet
Blathmac produced a vernacular version of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that
portrays Jesus as something of a naughty boy before he is taught to control his
powers. Tadhg Óg Ó hUiginn in the poem Beag nach táinig mo théarma
prepares for death and judgment and relies on the intercessory power of the
Virgin Mary to calm Christ’s anger. However, before doing so, he is careful to
establish his kinship with the Virgin. This he does through the non-canonical
figures of the Virgin Mary’s own parents, Joachim and Anna: ‘We are close akin
to Mary through Anne and Joachim; my kinship to her is closer than my nearest
kindred’.5 Gilla Brigde Mac Con Midhe in the poem Fuigheall beannacht brú
Mhuire prefaces his account of the Annunciation and Christmas story (which is
heavily reliant on apocryphal material) with a tale of how Joachim and Anna
conceived the Virgin Mary and how Joachim became ‘grandfather of God’.
Whereas much of this poem is embellished by apocryphal material, canonical
elements include the gifts of gold, incense and myrrh (v. 19) and the massacre of
the innocents by Herod (v. 22). Of course, poets routinely drew inspiration from
43 Ibid., vv 2–3. 44 See The poems of Blathmac, son of Cú Brettan, ed. James Carney
(Dublin, 19). See also Martin McNamara (ed.), Apocrypha Hiberniae I: Evangelia Infantiae
(2 vols, Turnhout, 21). For an introduction to Irish apocrypha, see idem, The apocrypha in
the Irish Church (Dublin, 1975). 45 Dán Dé, poem 5, v. 19. The figures of Anna and Joachim
feature first in the second-century Protoevangelium Jacobi or ‘Infancy Gospel of James’. See
Paul Foster (ed.), The non-canonical gospels (London and New York, 28). 46 Aithdioghluim
532 Salvador Ryan
late medieval artistic and literary conventions that themselves were already
shaped by apocryphal works; for instance, in Tadhg Óg Ó hUiginn’s poem
Aoidhe meise ag máthair Dé, the poet remarks that ‘an old man was the carpenter,
yet in Heaven’s design, worthy to wed her; but not to unite with her did he take
her as a wife’.7 Incidentally, Joseph’s old age is not commented upon in the
canonical gospels but appears first in the Protoevangelium Jacobi and its later
Latin imitators such as the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. Other ways of describing
the Incarnation, however, can be ultimately traced to patristic writings. The
renowned thirteenth-century bardic poet, Donnchad Mór Ó Dálaigh, in the
poem Aithrighe sunn duid a Dhé, speaks of ‘eight great leaps’ of the Son of the
Virgin – ‘thy leap from Heaven … the leap into Mary’s womb … the leap into
the world … the leap onto the Cross … the leap ’neath the tomb … the leap into
the grave … the leap from the grave’.8 Such language mirrors that of Ambrose,
fourth-century bishop of Milan, who employs the imagery of the bounding
gazelle from the Song of Songs 2.8 to speak of Christ’s redemptive mission:
He leaped from heaven to the Virgin; from her womb to the crib; from the
crib to the Jordan; from the Jordan to the cross; from the cross to the tomb
and from the tomb to heaven.9
Thus, the bardic poets can be seen to draw inspiration not just from the
scriptural verses of the canonical gospels, but also from their apocryphal
counterparts and, in addition, patristic writings.
The figure of John the Baptist features prominently in some bardic poems,
both in connection with the Visitation scene and also with his own ministry as an
adult. Both Tadhg Óg Ó hUiginn and Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn make much of the
statement by Elizabeth recorded in Lk 1. that the child in her womb (John)
leaped for joy upon hearing Mary’s greeting. In the poem Gabh m’éagnach a Eoin
Baisde, Tadhg states that ‘When the Lord came from heaven to the Virgin’s
womb, ere his body was formed John saluted him’ while in Tugas grádh éagmhaise
d’Eoin, Philip Bocht recalls how ‘The sweet child in her (Elizabeth’s) bosom was
the first child to do homage to God’s Son, the first to receive grace; in her old
age she conceived him’.5 Philip Bocht proceeds to note how, owing to Mary’s
nursing of John the Baptist, he was kept free from sin (vv 7–8). Both poems also
tell of John the Baptist’s later life and his condemnation of the adultery of
Herod: ‘When Herod and his brother’s wife sinned with each other, John showed
them the evil consequences of it, but in vain’.51 Tadhg Óg incorporates some
dána, poem 9. 47 Dán Dé, poem 2, v. 13. 48 Dán Dé, poem 29, vv 18–21. For the wider
tradition of these ‘leaps’, see Cristina Maria Cervone, Poetics of the Incarnation: Middle English
writing and the leap of love (Philadelphia, 213). 49 Finbarr G. Clancy, ‘Christ the scented
apple and the fragrance of the world’s redemption’ in D. Vincent Twomey and Dirk
Krausmüller (eds), Salvation according to the Fathers of the Church: the Proceedings of the Sixth
International Patristic Conference, Maynooth/Belfast 2005 (Dublin, 21), p. 7. 50 Dán Dé,
poem 11, v. 17; Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, poem 27, v. 5. 51 Ibid., v. 23.
non-canonical elements into his account, stating that when John was beheaded,
Herod’s wife hid his head in a lake, which subsequently was seen to catch fire.52
Philip Bocht, however, states clearly that he is drawing the story of John’s death
from Scripture, albeit the text is not in front of him at the time: ‘I will tell you
the Scripture story from memory, no tale of a tale – and shortly set forth my
account of John’s suffering’.53 Much of the poem is comprised of a portrayal of
John the Baptist’s asceticism, which establishes him as a kind of proto-Desert
Father: his body is in chains (v. 12); as ‘desert-prophet’ he urged men to holiness
(v. 13); ‘he was not subject to his body’ (v. 1); his eye, ‘never dry in socket’, shed
copious tears (of repentance), thus gaining victory over the devil (v. 15); ‘his
body fought his will’ (v. 1); ‘buried alive in the cave, in willing bondage to God,
his flesh was kept under his soul’s control till he subdued it’ (v. 18); ‘’Twas a
cross to live in the strait cave of piled stones; yet sore as was this willing burial,
it was not enough’ (v. 19). These elements, however, owe more to ascetical
models from the Vitae Patrum than to the pages of the gospels and testify to the
renewed attention paid to this form of life in the later Middle Ages.5
While the accounts of Jesus’ early life in the gospels – his conception, birth
and flight into Egypt, and those of his last days – his passion and death
particularly – do feature in bardic poetry, Lambert McKenna drew special
attention to the dearth of reference to Christ’s public life, miracles, parables and
teachings. However, a closer examination of the corpus suggests that McKenna
may have overstated his case, and the remaining part of this essay seeks to
provide evidence of this. If one takes, for example, a prominent gospel theme
such as the Good Shepherd (found at Jn 1.11), a number of poets include
references to this in their compositions. The late sixteenth-century poet,
Gofraidh, son of Brian Mac an Bhaird’s poem A Dhé Athar, t’fhaire rum, is a
good example. Here, the poet speaks in the following terms: ‘my soul is a lamb
of thy flock’, and proceeds to refer to the worldly dangers surrounding it:
Behold a sheep belonging to Thee which Thou didst put in a fold

surrounded by wolves; to save her and the fold depends on Thee; save
them from the danger of the pack.55
There is also a brief allusion to the parable of the lost sheep as found in Lk 15.3–
7 and Mt 18.12–1: ‘the sheep was once lost on thee …’5 The sixteenth-century
poet Diarmuid Ó Cobhthaigh, in his poem Díon cloinne i n-éag a n-athar,
continues with the shepherd theme, but draws on Jn 1.11 (albeit with a twist),
which states that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep:
52 Ibid. 53 Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, poem 27, v. 2. 54 For an important recent study of
one aspect of this revival, see Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), Anchoritic traditions of medieval
Europe (Woodbridge, 21). 55 Aithdioghluim dána, poem 5, vv 1–2. 56 Ibid., v. 5.
53 Salvador Ryan
In the clearness of his love he sees the vision of his race turning away from
their home; everything depended on his death at the hands of the flock of
which he, the Lord of Heaven, was shepherd.57
Here, though, Ó Cobhthaigh stresses that Christ’s death is at the hands of his
sheep, which have turned from him. In verse 22, there is evidence, perhaps of the
influence both of John’s Gospel and Is 53. (‘All we, like sheep have gone
astray’): ‘When all thy folk had erred from the true path, thou wert slain in love
for them; did man ever before thee seek death for love’s sake?’58 Elsewhere, in the
poem Mairg nach taithigh go teagh ríogh, the same poet imaginatively links the
lost sheep theme with Christ’s passion: ‘His great love sustained God’s Son
when he came shepherding us, but as he got his feet wounded when seeking his
flock, he found it hard to rescue them’.59 Meanwhile, in another link to the
passion, Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn notes in the poem Do gineadh inghean ón umhla
how Christ the shepherd was abandoned by his flock while on the cross.
Many of Christ’s parables and teachings are also alluded to in bardic poetry –
and more frequently than McKenna suggests; however, the parables are rarely
fully told; some of the allusions are partial and can be difficult to spot at first.
Take, for example, one of the best known of the parables: that of the Sower (Mt
13.3–23; Mk .2–2; Lk 8.–15). Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, in the poem Gach oige
mar a hadhbhar, relating the parable to Original Sin, states that ‘From our
mother Eve, who betrayed our race – pity she was ever created! – I inherit no
flower or fruit; barren is seed by roadside’.1 In the poem Cara mná an tighe ag
an teinidh, he adds that ‘Good seed is wasted on my field’.2 The unidentified
author of Ceithearn coilleadh clann Ádhuimh uses the parable similarly: ‘Adam’s
race is road-side seed, seed whence no fruit is got; his race’s fruit has fallen; for
thee men are a fruitless wood’.3 The late sixteenth-century Fermanagh poet,
Eochaidh Ó hEodhusa, in his poem Mairg iarras iomlaoid cháinte, takes up the
Christian theme of non-retribution: ‘Woe to him who seeks to return an insult.
If I revile my neighbour and am reviled in turn ’tis a traffic causing ill-feeling’,
which echoes the tenor of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5.38–) and
more closely still 1 Pet 3.9. Ó hEodhusa perhaps had the ‘turn the other cheek’
(Mt 5.39) image in mind when he stated that ‘No man ever reddened cheek but
was himself scorched’,5 and he also paraphrases the words of Jesus to Peter in
Gethsemane (Mt 2.52) when he states that ‘“No man reddens a sword but is
struck by a sword” – so spake Jesus to his chief apostle’. In addition, Ó
57 Ibid., poem , v. 3. 58 Ibid., v. 22. 59 Ibid., poem 7, v. 3. The foot-wounding of
Christ refers to the nail wounds in his feet on the cross and reinforces the theme of the
shepherd giving over his life for his sheep. 60 Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, poem 9, v. 33.
61 Ibid., poem 12, v. 3. 62 Ibid., poem , v. 29. 63 ‘Men are outlaws of God’, The Irish
Monthly, 57 (1929), 212, v. 1. 64 Aithdioghluim dána, poem 7, v. 1. 65 Ibid., v. 3.
66 Ibid., v. 1.
hEodhusa, in a prelude to relating the story of the woman caught in adultery (Jn
8.1–11) links this pericope to the question posed by Christ in Mt 7.3–5 about
highlighting the splinter in one’s neighbour’s eye while ignoring the plank in
one’s own: ‘When thou seest my fault, my friend, thou wouldst, if thou didst
obey the Gospel, look on thy own too’.7
The teaching that it is impossible to serve two masters (Mt .2) opens a
poem by Sligo poet, Mathghamhan Ó hUiginn, entitled Deacair foghnamh do
thoil dá thighearna and he may just have sermons in mind when he states:
‘according to every wise cleric it was said of yore that to serve two lords is folly’.8
Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn had already captured the kernel of this teaching when
he stated that ‘the strait I am in is this; God and his foe cannot both find place in
a heart; it is not made in two parts’.9 Another injunction of Jesus, again from
Matthew’s gospel (Mt .1–) on secret almsgiving, is reflected in the poetry of
Donnchad Mór Ó Dálaigh. In Uasal céad-obair an Choimhdheadh, the poet states
that ‘to proclaim in church one’s good intentions is often like flash from flint; to
promise good deeds is deceit; secret alms are better to win peace’.7 Philip Bocht
Ó hUiginn, meanwhile, follows Christ’s words as reported in Lk 1.11 (‘those
who humble themselves will be exalted’) when he remarks in the poem Mairg
nach ísligheann é féin, ‘Woe is he who humbles not himself; ’tis seen from the
Gospel that, if I will to humble myself, I shall get God’s love in return’.71
Elsewhere, in the poem Maith agus maithfidhir duid, he draws from Lk .37 when
he enjoins his hearers to ‘give pardon and thou shalt get it; Christ, made a foe by
thee, demands that if thou wouldst have requital for offence to thee, thou must
requite offence given by thee’.72 In a later verse in the same poem, he quotes a
teaching of Christ found in Matthew’s gospel (Mt 5.2): ‘Unless a man forget
his wrath with his brother, ’tis vain to pray to God; so says the Lord’s teaching’.73
Aspects of the Last Judgment scene in Matthew’s gospel (Mt 25) are to be found
in the poem Garbh éirghidh iodhna an Bhrátha, which is attributed to Donnchad
Mór Ó Dálaigh in the manuscripts. These include the statement of Christ that
‘I was every poor man, the woman in rags; every beggar naked and destitute’.7
Yet, in an earlier verse, the inspiration is clearly from a passage in Luke’s gospel
regarding the coming of the Kingdom (Lk 17.3–5): ‘Every man shall be torn
away from his wife, every son from his mother so that no couple on earth but
shall be separated by God’.75
Some bardic echoes of scriptural passages are harder to hear than others;
nevertheless, they are there. One example of this is the passage in Rom 5.2 that
states that ‘where sin increased, grace increased all the more’. This can be found
reflected in some bardic poems such as Tuile gan tráigh daonnacht Dé, a poem on
67 Ibid., v. 12. 68 Ibid., poem 7, v. . 69 Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, poem 15, v. 3. 70 Dán
Dé, poem 31, v. 19. 71 Philip Bocht Ó hUiginn, poem 1, v. 1. 72 Ibid., poem 15, v. 1.
73 Ibid., v. 7. 74 ‘The signs of the judgment’, The Irish Monthly, 55 (1927), 23, v. 27.
75 Ibid., v. 19.
53 Salvador Ryan
God’s mercy by sixteenth-century poet, Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh: ‘Greater

than all the growth of our offences shall be the Lord’s grace’.7 The poem Fóir
mh’amhghar, a Dhé bhí, attributed variously to Donnchad Mór Ó Dálaigh or
Fearghal Óg Mac an Bhaird in the manuscripts, has the following plea ‘Healing
herb of the six hosts … greater your grace than my sin; do not allow my poor
soul to be in torment’.77 An unidentified poem entitled Tearc oidhre díleas ag Dia
uses this scriptural theme in an appeal to St Michael the Archangel: ‘O Michael,
help me out of my evil plight, and prevail over strict justice; though sins grow
apace in me, the seed of graces in thy garden is more abundant still’.78 Other
allusions to biblical verses are fainter still, but nevertheless need to be taken into
consideration. Examples include Gofraidh, son of Brian Mac an Bhaird’s
opening verse, ‘O Christ, now is the time to help (me); O love great as thy glory
(?), O sea whose ebbing abounds in fish’,79 which may recall the ‘draught of
fishes’ miracle of Lk 5.2–11 or, indeed, a similar tale in Jn 21.. Furthermore, in
the poem Braon re ndubhadh diomhdha Dé it is impossible to tell whether the
unidentified poet had the parable of the wedding feast (Mt 22.1–1) in mind
when he composed the following lines: ‘Thy banquet is offered cheap to men if
only they be thus got to partake of it; our drinking of it free of charge is a poor
price to get for thy wounded heart’.8 However, references to the marriage of the
Virgin Mary to her ‘King’ earlier in the poem and subsequently to the ‘royal
feast’ are supportive of such a conclusion. In other cases, the scriptural source is
somewhat easier to identify, as in Gofraidh Ó Cléirigh’s vow to ‘don God’s
armour daily’,81 echoing Eph .1–18.
Without question, one of the most poignant scriptural allusions in bardic
poetry is that found in the poem Ar iasocht fhuaras Aonghus, which is ascribed to
Donnchad Mór Ó Dálaigh, and grapples with the sorrow of a father losing a
child: ‘To God’s son, with my blessing, I resign Aonghus’ soul; I can do naught
better now; to be angry with him is not meet’.82 The poet then goes on to relate
over a number of verses the story of Jesus’ raising of Lazarus (Jn 11.1–) and
contrasts that happy conclusion with his own lot:
That miracle – for which I would thank Him! – did the marvellous Son
work; a pity He works it not now for Aonghus.
Though I get not this favour as she through my prayer to the Creator,
Yet seeing His miracle wrought for Martha, I must persist in praying to
Him.83
76 Dánta do chum Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh, poem 29, v. 2. 77 ABM, poem 25, v. 3 (my
translation). 78 Aithdioghluim dána, poem 1, v. 35. 79 Ibid., poem 51, v. 1. 80 Ibid.,
poem 8, v. 2. 81 Aithdioghluim dána, poem 2, v. 23. 82 ‘Poem ascribed to Donnchadh
Mór Ó Dálaigh’, The Irish Monthly, 8 (192), 371, v. 8. 83 Ibid., vv 17–18.
This poem evidences a rawness of emotion rarely encountered in the bardic

corpus as the characteristic words of a bereaved parent are uttered: ‘My son has
gone before me; a pity I went not before him’.8
CONCLUSION
The brief survey above of biblical allusions in bardic poetry should make one
thing clear: bardic poets routinely drew upon a store of biblical imagery and
themes in their religious compositions. Many of these borrowings were heavily
embroidered with inclusions from apocryphal writings; some biblical verses were
closely adhered to; others were paraphrased or acted as more remote inspirations
for bardic verse. Much has been omitted from the above survey. For instance,
there is much from the gospel accounts of Christ’s passion and death that has
been purposely overlooked here; after all, Lambert McKenna did admit that this
was a favourite topic of the poets, and thus there can be found a preponderance
of passion material therein, inspired both by canonical and non-canonical
accounts. Likewise, popular biblical exemplars of penance and conversion, such
as Mary Magdalene and St Paul, feature prominently in many bardic poems but
are not treated of here. Incidentally, the title of this essay is drawn from a poem
on penance by Tadhg Óg Ó hUiginn that tells the story of the sinner ‘Mary
Magdalene’ washing Jesus’ feet and drying them with her hair.85 Rather, what I
have attempted to highlight here are the areas that McKenna considered the
most poorly represented – parables, teachings and miracles of Jesus from his
public life and ministry. What has gone before comprises a tiny sample of the
biblical allusions to be found, implicitly or explicitly, in the bardic corpus. This
is an area in which much work remains to be done. A fuller study might well
provide us with important new insights into the lay reception of biblical and
extra-biblical material in late medieval Ireland.
84 Ibid., v. 23. 85 Dán Dé, poem 5, vv 22–3.

Tadhg Ó Rodaighe and his school: aspects of patronage

and poetic practice at the close of the bardic era
Pá D R A I G Ó M AC H á I N
In Irish literary tradition, bardic poems could be used in a variety of situations.

Apart from the primary functions of praise or lamentation, exhortation or advice,
and the performance of such compositions for the patrons for whom they were
composed, poems were employed in other areas, most obviously as items of study
in bardic schools. This was one way in which lines, quatrains and sections of
poems could migrate beyond the bounds of their original compositions. It was
also a means by which a pantheon of respected authors and a canon of exemplary
poems came to be established over time, some of these poems eventually gaining
the status of what Katharine Simms has referred to as ‘golden oldies’.1 The use
of such compositions at some remove from the time and place of their original
performance is illustrated by the recitation of a poem, which was composed in
the fourteenth century by Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh, as an item of
entertainment over two hundred years later for Aodh Mág Uidhir (d. 1).2
Somewhat different from the case of Aodh Mág Uidhir is the oft-quoted story
of Ó Conchobhair Sligigh and the Dublin merchant. With a reputation for
generosity to maintain, Ó Conchobhair was willing to pay twice what the
merchant had paid (£1) for a poem that was over a hundred years old, and
which had no connection with either of them.3 Ó Conchbhair’s generosity and
the merchant’s cupidity form the theme of this anecdote, but underlying it is the
poets’ readiness to service or exploit both. This was the case particularly at a time
when the market for bardic poetry was increasingly contracting. In the second
half of the seventeenth century, the point is underlined by the testimony –
admittedly hostile – of Fr Thomas Carew, who recounts how a poet tried
unsuccessfully to pass off as a praise-poem for the duke of Ormonde a poem that
he had earlier composed in honour of Oliver Cromwell.
Apart from the attitude of the poets, matters of comprehension and perhaps
also of literacy are implicit in these examples. The well-known one-liner – ‘Is
maith in duan … gibe do tuicfedh hi’ (‘It is a good poem, whoever would
1 Katharine Simms, ‘The selection of poems for inclusion in the Book of the O’Conor Don’
in Pádraig Ó Macháin (ed.), The Book of the O’Conor Don: essays on an Irish manuscript
(Dublin, 21), pp 32– at pp 3–5. 2 James Carney, The Irish bardic poet (Dublin, 197),
p. 15; Pádraig A. Breatnach, ‘A covenant between Eochaidh Ó hEódhusa and Aodh Mág
Uidhir’, Éigse, 27 (1993), 59–. 3 Leabhar Branach: the Book of the O’Byrnes, ed. Seán Mac
Airt (Dublin, 19), pp 215–1; James Carney, Studies in Irish literature and history (Dublin,
1955), pp 25–. 4 Responsio veridica ad illotum libellum, cui nomen Anatomicum Exemen …
538
Tadhg Ó Rodaighe and his school 539
understand it’) – spoken by the king of Airghialla in Tromdámh Guaire in

response to a poem by Dallán Forguill, may have described the mind-set of many
of the bardic patrons.5 The commissioning by them of manuscripts, however,
and, in particular, manuscript anthologies of bardic verse (duanaireadha) as early
as the fourteenth century is suggestive of some degree of understanding of the
written text among those for whom the manuscripts were made. Simms has
argued that there is a discernible increase in the spread of literacy among the
Irish aristocracy from that time, culminating in the sponsorship by them of the
new genre of letter-poems at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning
of the seventeenth. It is one of the ironies of Irish literary history that praise of
a patron’s capacity for learning and literary comprehension enters the thematic
range of bardic verse just when the entire aristocratic support-system for that
poetry and its practitioners was about to crumble.7 Furthermore, Simms has also
observed that this learning and literacy meant that the patrons became more
dependent on legal grants and deeds than on bardic praise for confirming them
in their noble status. As a result, she argues, bardic poetry in the seventeenth
century began to drift towards less strict formats, and towards the composition
of poems of a general type ‘suitable for recitation on a number of occasions, to
different auditors’.8
Learned men of status were still in a position to extend patronage to their
fellow aos ealadhna, however, and it is not surprising therefore to find praise of
learning among the themes in addresses or elegies for such figures in the
seventeenth century. An example is the short letter-poem addressed by Seaán
Ballach (mac Fróinsias mheic Sheaáin Bhallaigh) Ó Duibhgeannáin to Tadhg Ó
Rodaighe, of the family of coarbs of Fenagh, Co. Leitrim, and a major figure in
the continuation of traditional learning in north Connacht in the second half of
the seventeenth century. In the poem, Tadhg is praised for his reading and
writing, his knowledge of Greek and Latin, and his accomplishments as poet,
historian, philosopher and teacher of the poetic art.9
This poem is preserved in a collection of Ó Rodaighe material, now TCD MS
119 (H..15), which was transcribed in 171–15 by Maurice Newby, probably
in Dublin,1 and presumably from a manuscript previously in Tadhg Ó
Rodaighe’s possession. This book might be described as a duanaire, but it is
data a Reverendo Domino Thoma Carve (Solisbaci, 172), pp 17–18; Thomas Wall, ‘Bards and
Bruodins’ in Franciscan Fathers (eds), Father Luke Wadding commemorative volume (Dublin,
1957), pp 38–2 at p. 53. 5 Tromdhámh Guaire, ed. Maud Joynt (Dublin, 191), p. 3 (ll 7–
1); see also Thomas F. O’Rahilly, Irish dialects past and present (Dublin, 1932), p. 252.
6 Katharine Simms, ‘Literacy and the Irish bards’ in Huw Pryce (ed.), Literacy in medieval
Celtic societies (Cambridge, 1998), pp 238–58 at pp 251–3. 7 For example, Pádraig Ó
Macháin, ‘A crosántacht for Uilliam Búrc’, Celtica, 25 (27), 175–9 at 178–9. 8 Katharine
Simms, ‘The transition from medieval to modern in the poems of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn’ in
Pádraigín Riggs (ed.), Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn: his historical and literary context (London, 21),
pp 119–3 at p. 12. 9 Tomás Ó Raghallaigh, Filí agus filidheacht Connacht (Dublin, 1938), pp
xvi–xvii. 10 See RIA, MS 17 (23L3) by the same scribe in Dublin, 1711 and 171–15.
5 Pádraig Ó Macháin
much more informal and occasional than any other surviving poem-book. It
contains a number of poems associated with Ó Rodaighe and his circle; the poets
named in the manuscript are Peadar Ó Maolchonaire, Pádraig Óg Mac an
Bhaird, Seaán Ó Duinnín, Seaán Ballach Ó Duibhgeannáin, Diarmaid mac
Laoisigh Mheic an Bhaird, Éamonn Ó Caiside, Fearghal Muimhneach Ó
Duibhgeannáin, Cú Choigcríche Ó Duibhgeannáin,11 An tAthair Pádraig Ó
Coirnín and Tadhg Ó Rodaighe himself. This appears to be a record of the
proceedings of a school of poets gathered under the patronage of Ó Rodaighe. It
is therefore valuable as evidence, not just of details of Tadhg Ó Rodaighe’s
biography,12 but also of the modalities of poetic practice in one of the last pockets
of bardic poetry and patronage – the Leitrim–Roscommon region – towards the
end of the seventeenth century. One aspect in particular of this practice tends to
lend weight to the observations of Fr Thomas Carew, mentioned above.
Among the poems in the manuscript are two versions of the same
composition (pp 9–78), commiserating with Tadhg following his eviction from
Carraig an tSleabhain (Carrickslavan, par. Kiltoghert), Co. Leitrim, in 19. The
poem is a late bardic composition. The author is not named but in a preamble to
these items he is stated to be a learned young man unpractised in dán. The first
draft of the poem is said to reflect this lack of learning, while the second draft is
said to represent the same poem emended by the author when he had acquired
the necessary knowledge through the inspiration of ancient poets.13
The two drafts are instructive in showing, firstly, the practice of re-drafting
that was indulged in under Ó Rodaighe’s supervision; and, secondly, the state of
what was regarded as bardic poetry at the time. On the latter point, we can
compare the first two quatrains of both versions.
Draft 1 Draft 2
1 Barr orchra ar phréimh Rossa 1 Barr orchra Aicme Rossa
ler milleadh méin a macnossa dár chlaoí mein a maithiossa
aicme mhóirfhial na sleadh sen cioniodh roichían na ngal nglan
a roiphían leam is dúrsan a móirphian dhamh as dursan
2 Iomdha curaigh do shíol Róigh 2 Iomdha curadh do chrú Róigh

gasraidh na meirgeadh maothshróil gasraigh na meirgeadh maothshroill
ro dhíosc do rannaibh lann mo núar do ro dhiosc do gach dreim
ag díon measa na heireann a Chriost as truagh a ttuitim
11 The compositions by Fearghal Muimhneach and Cú Choigcríche (one of the Four Masters)
are addressed to an earlier Tadhg Ó Rodaighe, and date from the mid-seventeenth century.
12 John Logan, ‘Tadhg O Roddy and two surveys of Co. Leitrim’, Breifne,  (197–5), 318–
3; William O’Sullivan, ‘The Book of Domhnall Ó Duibhdábhoireann, provenance and
codicology’, Celtica, 23 (1999), 27–99 at 278–82. 13 The first draft was published in Ó
Raghallaigh, Filí agus filidheacht Connacht, pp 37–7.
Tadhg Ó Rodaighe and his school 51
The metre is deibhidhe: seven syllables are required in each line, together with a
pair of alliterating stressed words; correct end-rhymes (rinn/airdrinn) are
required within both half-quatrains, as are internal rhymes in the second half-
quatrain. The first draft is very deficient in these requirements: lines 1 and 7 are
short a syllable, while line 2 is too long; alliteration is missing in lines 1, , 5, 7
and 8; and bad end-rhyme is in evidence in lines 3–, 7–8; and there are loose
internal rimes in lines 7 and 8. Most of these imperfections are addressed in the
second draft, although some new ones have been created: for example, there is
bad end-rhyme between lines 1 and 2; and line 7 is now a syllable too long. We
should note also that, in both drafts, vernacular influence is evident in the forms
roiphian and roichian in the first quatrain, where the intensifier rois treated as
ró-. Confirmation that such shortcomings were frequent in Ó Rodaighe’s own
poetry can be found in his autograph poem (mentioned below) to Cormac Ó
Néill (d. 17) of Broughshane, Co. Antrim, in which poor rhymes and syllabic
faults are plentiful.1
The changes that were effected in the second draft of the poem were
occasioned by some sense of metrical decorum, informed by what was becoming
a hazy knowledge of strict bardic regulations. While the poem in question only
concerned Ó Rodaighe himself, evidence for the reworking of poems addressed
to different patrons is to hand among the work of his colleagues, the group of
poets represented in TCD 119 as being part of Tadhg Ó Rodaighe’s circle and
listed above, whom Brian Ó Cuív identified as ‘some of the last of the
professional Connacht poets’.15
One of these poets is Diarmaid mac Laoisigh Mheic an Bhaird, who
composed an elegy (TCD 119, pp 85–9) on Ó Rodaighe after hearing
unfounded reports of his death.1 This Diarmaid has been identified with the
author of a series of poems in RIA MS 92 (2P) addressed to members of the
Mac Mathghamhna family of Farney, Co. Monaghan, one poem of which is
deliberately modelled on Eochaidh Ó hEodhasa’s famous poem addressed to
Aodh Mág Uidhir during the winter campaign of 1599/1.17 It is presumed
that this is a deliberate act of homage both to the earlier poet and to Brian mac
Briain Mheic Mhathghamhna (fl. 187) to whom Diarmaid’s poem is addressed.
From modelling poems on the work of others to remodelling one’s own work
for presentation to different patrons is probably not a great step. In the work of
another of Ó Rodaighe’s circle, Pádraig Óg Mac an Bhaird, we find just such a
phenomenon. A eulogy addressed by Pádraig Óg to Ó Rodaighe is preserved in
TCD 119.18 Other surviving poems confirm this poet’s floruit as the second half
of the seventeenth century, one of those poems being an address to Ruaidhrí
14 Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, ed. Tadhg Ó Donnchadha (Dublin, 1931), poem xLVI.
15 Brian Ó Cuív, ‘Irish language and literature, 191–185’, NHI, iv, pp 37–23 at p. 398.
16 Ó Raghallaigh, Filí agus filidheacht Connacht, pp 372–8. 17 A.J. Hughes, ‘Fuar liom
longphort mo charad’, Celtica, 19 (1987), 1–7. 18 A fhir thaisdil Chríche Cuinn, see Ó
Raghallaigh, Filí agus filidheacht Connacht, pp 31–7.
52 Pádraig Ó Macháin
(mac Cormaic) Ó hEadhra (d. 172) preserved among a handful of late poems
inserted in vacant spaces in the Ó hEadhra family duanaire.19 This deibhidhe
poem, beginning Clú gach fheadhma ar fhuil Chéin, is notable for a number of
metrical deficiencies, most obviously in the first line, which is a syllable short.
That fault passed unnoticed by the poem’s editor, Lambert McKenna, but he
did mention others, particularly (a) the first two lines of quatrain 1, both of
which, having eight syllables, are a syllable too long:
Do fhaguibh éigsi innsi Fáil

a tteisd a maitheas re a mórdháil
and (b) the last two lines of quatrain 27, where the end-rhyme (on: rochtain) is
imperfect:
fos flatha, féile gan on,

tréighe an ratha dá rochtain.
The editor suggested emendations that might restore these lines to metrical
conformity, but a better understanding of how they came to appear as they do is
provided by another poem ascribed to Pádraig Óg Mac an Bhaird, beginning Clú
gach f[h]eadhma ar fhuil Dálaigh. This poem is found in the four-hundred-page
manuscript of í Dhomhnaill poetry compiled in 1727 by Séamus Mág Uidhir.
The scribe informs the reader in an introduction that he was retained by Aodh
Ó Domhnaill (of Larkfield, Co. Leitrim)2 to make the anthology. The
manuscript exemplifies the value of the bardic duanaire as status-symbol, even at
this late date, and it survives as NLI, MS G17.21 About forty pages towards the
end of the book are devoted to sixteen poems in bardic metres concerning
members of Aodh’s family, and part of the purpose of the anthology must have
been to present these creations as natural successors, in artistic and cultural
terms, to poems to the í Dhomhnaill of earlier generations. One of these late
poems is the item in question here, the heading to which (p. 3 (352)) informs
us that Pádraig Óg made the poem for Conall Ó Domhnaill, ‘mac Seaáin meic
Aodh Buidhe meic Cuinn’. Conall was father of Aodh of Larkfield, the patron
of the manuscript. He was created lord lieutenant of Donegal in 189, and was
considered by many to be the ‘Ó Domhnaill’.22
19 NLI, MS G133, p. . The Book of O’Hara: Leabhar Í Eadhra, ed. Lambert McKenna
(Dublin, 1951), poem xxVI. 20 Éamonn Ó Tuathail, ‘On Hugh O’Donnell of Larkfield’,
Éigse, 3 (191–2), 21–. Rupert S. O Cochlain, ‘Hugh O’Donnell of Larkfield’, Donegal
Annual, 37 (1985), –5. Proinnsíos Ó Duigneáin, ‘Hugh O Donnell of Larkfield: patron of
Gaelic literature (191–175)’, Breifne,  (1982–), 39–. 21 Tomás Ó Cléirigh, ‘A poem
book of the O Donnells’, Éigse, 1 (1939), 51–1, 13–2. Nessa Ní Shéaghdha, Catalogue of
Irish manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland, 5 (Dublin, 1979), pp 8–15. 22 AFM, vi,
p. 2398.
An examination of this poem to Conall Ó Domhnaill shows that the poem to

Ruaidhrí Ó hEadhra was not merely modelled on it, but that it is a replica of the
Ó Domhnaill poem with changes effected to accommodate different genealogical
affinities; hence, for example, fhuil Dhálaigh in the first line of the Ó Domhnaill
poem becomes fhuil Chéin in the Ó hEadhra poem, losing a syllable in the
process. This alteration to the first line serves as an index to what happens in the
rest of the poem. In the case of the two instances noted by McKenna and quoted
above, the original lines in the Ó Domhnaill poem are metrically correct, and
they read:
(a)
Do fhág Coluim an chrádhbhuidh [recte chrábhuidh]
ar aicme réidh rioghDhálaigh
(b)
draig mhearchuartach s glas ar ghoid
leathRuarcach bras on mBuannoid
The first couplet refers to Colum Cille and the second to Conall’s mother, who
was of the í Ruairc, and neither allusion would have any relevance in a poem to
an Ó hEadhra.
One benefit of the identification of the origin of the Ó hEadhra poem is that
an error made by McKenna in editing the manuscript may now be corrected.
The item immediately following the poem to Ruaidhrí is presented in the edition
as Poem xxVII, a seven-quatrain piece beginning Inghean tSearluis nach claon
cuing and ascribed to Maol Muire Ó hUiginn. Comparison with the Ó
Domhnaill poem, however, shows that these quatrains, rather than representing
a new poem, are in fact versions (with one quatrain omitted and two new ones
added) of the additional quatrains to Ó Domhnaill’s wife Gráinne (‘inghean
Rughraidhe’ [Uí Dhomhnaill]), here modified to suit Ruaidhrí Ó hEadhra’s wife,
Brighid (‘inghean tSearluis’ [Búrc]). The ascription to Ó hUiginn, as McKenna
admits, occurs after these verses: it belongs properly to a poem that was intended
to follow them but that was never entered in the manuscript.
As with the main section of the poem, these additional quatrains display some
of the same features caused by an imperfect adaptation, thus:
Original Replica
31. Inghean Rughraidhe an ruisg ghlais 1. Inghean tSearluis nach claon cuing
deaghua míndealbhach Maghnais Brighid iathghlan inghill
32. Dealradh seirce a ngruaidh Ghrainne 2. Deallramh seirce ’n-a haghaidh óig,
inghean fhialghlan Siubháine gnúis áluinn nar thuill conspóid
5 Pádraig Ó Macháin
Here, in the modified verses, the first couplet lacks correct rhyme, line 1b wants
a syllable, 2a is a syllable too long and 2b lacks alliteration.
This is not to say that the change from one version to the other was
everywhere accompanied by metrical failure. In fact, most of the changes thus
effected are sound in their results. For example:
Original Replica
13. O Eamhain abhloigh tar tuinn 1. Ruaidhrí laoch an aignidh fhéil
mar tháinig Conall chuguinn i n-aonchúis nar thuill toibhéim
19. Nós a chinidh leis leanta[i]r 2. Nós a chinidh leis leantair
clann Dálaigh meic Muircheartaigh le deighgníomh ’s le deighbheartoibh
27. Mac cródha Chaitreach Fhíona 28. Mac Máire nach cleasach cuing
do thír as dlaoi deighdhiona dá dháimh as díon ar dhoghruing
Nor was every change occasioned by genealogical considerations. While two new
genealogical quatrains occur in the additional verses at the end of the Ó hEadhra
poem, an extra quatrain, with no genealogical content, was also added after q. 1,
and this must have been done for aesthetic reasons or reasons of emphasis. There
were also areas in the original version that were imperfect to begin with and that
were transmitted unchanged. Thus the bad rhyme beóbhras : heólus noted by
McKenna in q. 3 is identical in the original. So too the hypermetric line ’s a
saoilfidhe iadsan d’imtheacht (q. 8/9), which may be due to vernacular
pronunciation of saoilfidhe, is identical in both versions. Vernacular trends are
also in evidence in the rhyme mórdhálach : comhdhálach in q. 5 of both poems,
and in oil: Seaáin in q. 2 of Conall’s poem, which shows the name Seaán still
treated as disyllabic but with the length considered to be on the first rather than
the second syllable. In the change necessitated by the transfer of the lines to
Ruaidhrí’s poem, this latter detail disappears.
Original Replica
2. Fear chosnus a chlú gan oil 27. Fear cosnumha clú gach uair
Conall seasmhach mac Seaáin an t-Iollánach re hiolbhuaigh
To the late bardic era belongs the increased interaction with scribes and poets
by diocesan priests, which was to become an important feature of Irish literary
tradition in the eighteenth century. In this regard, it is of interest that the
relationship between the two poems analysed above is paralleled by two further
poems, both beginning Cá bhfuair an tineach iostadh: one addressed to Conall Ó
Domhnaill’s son, Aodh of Larkfield – another unique survival in Aodh’s
manuscript, G1723 – and the other addressed to Fr Aodh Ó Raghallaigh, vicar

capitular (189) of the diocese of Kilmore.2 Both poems present a situation
mirroring that of Clú gach fheadhma discussed above, in that the Ó Raghallaigh
poem was remodelled as a composition for Aodh Ó Domhnaill. The Ó
Raghallaigh poem is anonymous, while the Ó Domhnaill poem bears an
ascription to Fr Pádraig Dubh Ó Coirnín.25 Pádraig Breatnach’s suggestion that
they are by the same author is surely correct.2 It is clear that Aodh, who would
later pay Séamus Mág Uidhir for ‘his work and his trouble’27 in compiling his
duanaire G17, was an important source of patronage in Leitrim. Taken together,
these poems by Pádraig Óg Mac an Bhaird and Ó Coirnín are evidence of two
poets of the Ó Rodaighe circle functioning in similar ways by recycling their own
compositions to suit different patrons.
In the light of the evidence of Barr orchra aicme Rossa – the redrafted poem
addressed to Ó Rodaighe – one wonders if this practice of redrafting and
recycling was something that was indulged in as a practical exercise by Tadhg Ó
Rodaighe and his colleagues, who seem to have conducted an establishment
transitional between the bardic school of old and the eighteenth-century cúirt
fhilíochta.28 As a token of this latter point, one may observe that the similarity in
the first lines of two poems addressed to Ó Rodaighe (and preserved in the
transcript of his manuscript) by Peadar Ó Maolchonaire and Pádraig Ó Coirnín
– Niamhadh na huaisle an eagna and Deirbhshiúr don uaisle an eagna respectively
– may be indicative of their origins as an exercise, or a challenge, to create a poem
based on the first line of an older poem beginning Deirbhshiúr don eagna an
éigse.29
School exercise or not, these recycled poems show that opportunism, which
was always a factor in a bardic poet’s way of life, may now have become
important to his survival. With the contraction of patronage, and the reduction
in prospects for poets, many of whom appear to have been drawing on the same
sources of patronage, the remoulding of prefabricated compositions may, in
some situations, have been a way of earning a quick reward. It is possible that the
practice may also reflect a reduction in the size of such rewards, relative to the
halcyon days of the late sixteenth century.
The case should not be overstated, however, and on the basis of surviving
evidence it could not be claimed that recycled poems form a significant
proportion of poems from this period. Rather, their principal value is that they
23 NLI, MS G17, pp 37 (32)–375 (33). 24 James Carney (ed.), Poems on the O’Reillys
(Dublin, 195), poem xxVII. Francis J. MacKiernan, Diocese of Kilmore: bishops and priests,
1136–1988 (Cavan, 1989), p. 155. 25 For Ó Coirnín, see Cuthbert Mhág Craith, Dán na
mBráthar Mionúr (2 vols, Dublin, 197, 198), ii, pp 215–17. 26 Pádraig A. Breatnach,
Téamaí taighde Nua-Ghaeilge (Maynooth, 1997), pp –2. 27 ‘tug lúach a sháothair et a
thrioblóide don sgribhneóir’, G17, p. 1. 28 Pádhraic P. Ó Ciardha, ‘Tadhg Ó Rodaighe’,
Breifne, 5 (197–81), 2–77. 29 See Breatnach, Téamaí taighde, p. 2.
5 Pádraig Ó Macháin
provide us with a glimpse of an interesting aspect of poetic composition that took

place in the context of productive scholarly enterprise in the Leitrim–
Roscommon area at the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of
the eighteenth. One work in particular may be taken as indicative of this
endeavour: the composite manuscript now known as RIA MS 5 (C iv 1). This
manuscript comprises four distinct yet interrelated parts. The first part contains
an acephalous copy of Keating’s Forus Feasa belonging to the Ó Maolchonaire
family of Rathmore, Co. Roscommon, and dating to c.192. The second part was
made in 1713 for Séamus Mág Uidhir – scribe of G17 – and consists mainly of
a selection of poems transcribed from the duanaire of Cú Chonnacht Mág
Uidhir, a vellum manuscript dating to the late sixteenth century.3 These
transcripts were made in Dublin by the Clare poet and scholar Aodh Buidhe
Mac Cruitín and an unidentified collaborator. Typical of the time, this section
contains an explanatory address to the reader, in the course of which Aodh
Buidhe makes it clear that not only is he transcribing the poems, but he is also
adjusting some of the language, in order to make the poems more intelligible to
his reader.31
The third part of RIA MS 5 consists of 1 pages containing late bardic
poetry, mainly material from the duanaireadha of the Roscommon families of Ó
Conchobhair of Ballintober, Ó Maoil Mhuaidh of Hughestown, and Mac
Dubhghaill of Mantua. These locations were little more than a day’s journey at
most from Ó Rodaighe’s house at Carrickslavan or, after 19, at Crossfield near
Fenagh. The same could be said of Aodh Ó Domhnaill’s house at Larkfield to
the north, near Manorhamilton, of the house of Ó hEadhra at Templehouse, Co.
Sligo, or of the Dillon estate at Loughglynn, Co. Roscommon, with which family
another late duanaire is associated, RIA MS 7 (A v 2). These six family
collections – seven if we include the Ó Rodaighe manuscript – of varying
quantities of late bardic verse, accounting for at least thirty named poets,
represent a high level of bardic patronage and productivity in a relatively small
area of the country. Poets connected with Tadhg Ó Rodaighe – particularly
Peadar Ó Maolchonaire32 – are to be found in many of these collections, and the
work of other poets such as Maol Muire Ó hUiginn,33 not represented in the Ó
Rodaighe manuscript, also illustrate the boon that the proliferation of sources of
patronage in Roscommon and Leitrim was to bardic poets in the second half of
the seventeenth century. It is clear, moreover, that at least two of these poets
enjoyed the repeated patronage of certain families: Gofraidh Mac an Bhaird in
the case of the family of Ó Maoil Mhuaidh and Diarmaid Mac an Bhaird in that
30 Royal Library Copenhagen, Ny kgl. Samling 28b; Duanaire Mhéig Uidhir: the poembook
of Cú Chonnacht Mág Uidhir, Lord of Fermanagh 1566–1589, ed. David Greene (Dublin,
1972). 31 Pádraig Ó Macháin, Téacs agus údar i bhfilíocht na scol (Dublin, 1998), pp 18–23.
32 See H.R. McAdoo, ‘Three poems by Peadar Ó Maolchonaire’, Éigse, 1 (1939), 1–.
33 Eoin Mac Cárthaigh, ‘Three poems by Maol Muire Ó hUiginn to An Calbhach Ruadh Ó
Domhnaill’, Ériu, 8 (1997), 59–82 at 1–2.
of Mac Mathghamhna. This may be a hint that the position of family ollamh, in
some form, was not yet entirely obsolete.
Using the material considered here, and including the evidence of literary
activity in the areas of poetry and manuscript production among the í
Raghallaigh in Co. Cavan at the time,3 a case could be made for mapping late
bardic activity as a belt extending from south Monaghan, westwards through
Cavan, Leitrim, Roscommon and Sligo. It may be added here that the
connection of poets of the Ó Rodaighe school with most surviving collections of
late bardic poetry is practically complete if we take into account the duanaire
assembled for Cormac Ó Néill of Co. Antrim in 18, a section – known as
Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe – of a composite manuscript, RIA MS 17
(2P33). Possibly on account of Cormac’s maternal connections with the í
Eadhra of the Route, Co. Antrim,35 a cadet branch of the í Eadhra of Co. Sligo,
the Ó Néill poembook has strong north Connacht connections. This is especially
true of its scribe, Ruaidhrí Ó hUiginn, for example, and of the presence in the
anthology of Tadhg Ó Rodaighe’s autograph poem (mentioned above), and of
poems by his colleagues Diarmaid Mac an Bhaird and Peadar Ó Maolchonaire.3
The fourth part of RIA MS 5 is a mainly genealogical collection, centring
in particular on the í Ruairc of Co. Leitrim, a collection that was one time in the
possession of that family. Among the sources cited in the compilation are
manuscripts associated with Ó Rodaighe, including Leabhar Caillín (RIA MS
79 (23P2)). These genealogies are also distinguished by the compiler’s
addresses to the reader at a number of points, during the course of one of which
(fo. 211va) he refers to information he received from Tadhg Ó Rodaighe before
his death regarding the surnames Ó Rodaighe and Ó Rodacháin.37
This manuscript, therefore, provides a microcosmic view of aspects of literary
activity in north Connacht of the period. The reinterpretation of old poems, the
creation of new poems, the compilation of manuscripts where the material was
introduced or interpreted in formal addresses to the reader: all of this bespeaks
both continuity and change in traditional learning, and in bardic practice
particularly, in a form reflective of the fluidity and brittleness of both creativity
and patronage. The diagnostic elements detected in the activities of Ó
Rodaighe’s school are also to be found elsewhere, for example in the work of
Séamus Mág Uidhir, or in that of the poet Seaán Ó Gadhra in Sligo, who
composed an address to the reader for both the Book of O’Gara and Éinrí Ó
Carraic’s anthology of poetry and genealogy (Maynooth MS B 8) and who, in his
own poetry, acknowledged Ó Rodaighe as one of the masters of his era.38
34 Manuscripts from this period with Ó Raghallaigh associations include British Library MS
Add. 7, and TCD MSS 1381 (H5.9) and 1383 (H5.11). 35 See Cormac’s notes recorded
in Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, p. 37. 36 Leabhar Cloinne
Aodha Buidhe, ed. Ó Donnchadha, poems xV, xLV, xLVI; note also poem xxxII by
Domhnull Ó hEachuighéin, referring (ll 25–32) to that poet’s presence in Sligo. 37 James
Carney, ‘A tract on the O’Rourkes’, Celtica, 1 (19–5), 238–79 at 239. 38 Pádraig Ó
58 Pádraig Ó Macháin
This scholarly activity in Leitrim-Roscommon appears to us today like the

last curtain-call of bardic scholarship; but to the poets at the time it must have
seemed like a renaissance in native learning. What Tadhg Ó Rodaighne himself
thought of it is probably more complex. His complaint about the inability of
contemporary scholars to read the old manuscripts is well known,39 and perhaps
it was for such scholars that he provided glosses to poems by Seaán Ó
Maolchonaire, just as Aodh Buidhe Mac Cruitín felt obliged to modernize –
‘do réir na nuadhaimsire’ – some of the poems in the Mág Uidhir duanaire. It
may be that Tadhg’s encouragement of bardic poetry, and of bardic traditions
such as the eirreadh nuachair,1 was indulged in as much as a stay against the
decline of an ancient art-form, as it was to assist his followers to exploit the
patronage available from the local Irish gentry.
Like poets such as Mathghamhain Ó hIfearnáin and Dáibhidh Ó Bruadair,
Tadhg Ó Rodaighe was a witness to the changing times, and was aware that the
status of the learned man could no longer be guaranteed. North Connacht had
been at the centre of learning and manuscript production since the very
beginning of the bardic era, a position reflected by some of the material included
in a manuscript compiled at the eastern limits of the late medieval Gaelic world,
the Book of the Dean of Lismore. Now, in the wake of the Williamite wars, and
with the introduction of the Penal Laws, that pre-eminence was gradually
coming to an end. In future, one of the few productive areas of the seanchas so
beloved of Tadhg and his colleagues would be in providing evidence of noble
lineage for Wild Geese seeking commissions in foreign armies, scions of families
who had once been strongholds of bardic patronage.
Tadhg’s most caustic comments on the new order are to be read in lines
inscribed by him in 197 in a space in yet another duanaire, that of the family of
Mac Suibhne Fánad, which was one of the many manuscripts in his library, and
which may have come into his possession via the Ó Domhnaill family of
Larkfield who had a marriage connection with Clann Suibhne Fánad.2
Lamenting the fact that, following the obliteration by foreigners of native
families such as Clann Suibhne, the anuasal (‘ignoble’) were now regarded as
uasal (‘noble’), Ó Rodaighe says:
acht, ata seanchus na mbachlach anois na ccinnlitribh, agus na cceapuibh,

ria seanchus sleachta Eimhir, Ir et Eireamhoin, agus Iotha mhic Breogain
Macháin, ‘“One glimpse of Ireland”: the manuscript of Fr Nicolás (Fearghal Dubh) Ó Gadhra
OSA’ in Raymond Gillespie and Ruairí Ó hUiginn (eds), Irish Europe: language, learning and
texts, 1600–1660 (forthcoming). 39 Pádraig Ó Macháin, ‘“A llebraib imdaib”: cleachtadh
agus pátrúnacht an léinn, agus déanamh na lámhscríbhinní’ in Ruairí Ó hUiginn (ed.),
Oidhreacht na lámhscríbhinní (Maynooth, 2), pp 18–78 at p. 157. 40 Brian Ó Cuív, ‘A
poem by Seaán mac Torna Uí Mhaoil Chonaire’, Éigse, 11 (19–), 288–9; TCD MS 1391,
pt III, p. 79. 41 Proinsias Mac Cana, ‘An archaism in Irish poetic tradition’, Celtica, 8 (198),
17–81 at 175. 42 Beatha Aodha Ruaidh Uí Dhomhnaill, ed. Paul Walsh (2 vols, Dublin,
fós. acht biodh oramsa nach bfuil i nEirinn aonchairt ag cothughadh

sheancuis na ndaor nuaibhrioch ndobheusach úd, óir atáid na cartacha
agumsa agus ag morán eile ar ndoigh, agus gabhuim orum nach bfuil an
bachlachsheanchus úd ionnta.3
But, the history of the fools is now in capital letters and block [letters] as
opposed to the history of the seed of Éimhear, íor and Éireamhón, and of
íoth son of Breóghan moreover. But I hold that there is no written source
in Ireland that supports the history of those haughty, ill-mannered low-
lives, since I have the sources, as many others do indeed, and I swear that
such fools’ history is not to be found in them.
Had he been able to see the future, Tadhg might have drawn consolation from
the fact that the gap between the last of the bardic schools at the end of the
seventeenth century and the formation of the new learned societies of the Irish
enlightenment a hundred years later would be bridged by the figure of Charles
O’Conor of Belanagare, Co. Roscommon. Intimate in his youth with members
of the families of Ó Maolchonaire, Ó Duibhgeannáin and Ó Coirnín – all names
associated with the Ó Rodaighe circle – O’Conor was thoroughly conversant with
the older genealogies and with bardic literature. His traditional education in
Roscommon took place in the milieu of bardic learning that was still current
during his formative years. His further education in Dublin brought him into
contact with the newly established circle of learning with which Newby and Mac
Cruitín, mentioned above, were associated. Another influence was that of
Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin, who belongs chiefly to the amhrán tradition, but
whose compositions are an indication of the diffuse variety of Gaelic and
Ascendancy patronage available in north Connacht and beyond in the early
eighteenth century. Charles also numbered among his acquaintances Aodh Ó
Domhnaill of Larkfield, and the poet and harper Cathaoir Mac Cába, one of
whose poems was included in Aodh’s manuscript, G17. Such influences laid
the basis for much of the activity of O’Conor’s adult life. In particular, it
informed his collection of important Irish manuscripts, which he read and
annotated throughout his lifetime in much the same way that Tadhg Ó Rodaighe
had done a generation or two before him.5
Bardic poetry continued to be composed in the eighteenth century, albeit
sporadically, in attenuated forms, and divorced from any sense of a bardic class-
1957–8), ii, p. 19. 43 RIA, MS 75 (2P25), p. 1b3–9; see also Leabhar Chlainne
Suibhne: an account of the Mac Sweeney families in Ireland, with pedigrees, ed. Paul Walsh
(Dublin, 192), p. lxiii. 44 Tomás Ó Cléirigh, ‘A poem by Cathaoir Mac Cába’ in John Ryan
(ed.), Féil-sgríbhinn Eóin Mhic Néill … Essays and studies presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill
(Dublin, 19), pp 89–92; Donal O’Sullivan, Carolan: the life times and music of an Irish harper
(2 vols, London, 1958), i, pp 59–72. 45 Nollaig Ó Muraíle, ‘The role of Charles O’Conor of
Belanagare in the Irish manuscript tradition’ in Ó Macháin (ed.), Book of the O’Conor Don,
55 Pádraig Ó Macháin
system. The recycling of poems is likewise to be found occasionally during that

time: for instance, in the case of the fragment of a lament for one Piaras de Léis,
which is thought to be a recycled elegy for a member of the same family, Seaán
de Léis. A poem in loose deibhidhe metre, beginning Dlighthior d’fhile ann gach
tráith, was composed by Aindrias Mac Cruitín for Domhnall Ó Súilleabháin of
Co. Kerry and later recycled by Mac Cruitín for an Ó Briain of Corbally, Co.
Clare.7 Another example presents in the case of Cathal Ó Luinín, alias Charles
Lynegar, where recycling, together with borrowing from a third poem, is evident
in two short eulogies of John Hall (c.179) and George St George (c.1727–35)
respectively.8 Simms refers to this case as Ó Luinín’s ‘scissors-and-paste
method’, while citing David Greene’s observation that ‘Lynegar felt that his
patrons’ taste in Irish verse was unlikely to be discriminating’.9 Greene’s
judgment may be somewhat harsh, as Ó Luinín’s pieces appear harmless and
light compared with the Mac an Bhaird poems mentioned earlier. As strict bardic
verse became more and more a thing of the past, however, perhaps discri-
mination and taste – on all sides – were indeed casualties of the disappearing art.
It is possible that an insight into the phenomenon of recycling can be
provided by an unlikely source from the end of a much later tradition. In 1912,
the musicologist and collector of folksongs, Charlotte Milligan Fox, on a field
trip to Co. Waterford, sought out the poet Robert Weldon of Kilrossanty.
Commonly regarded as the last of the traditional poets of the area, Weldon was
taken by surprise, but promised to have material ready for recording if she
returned a few days hence. On her return, she was rewarded with some
traditional songs, which the poet performed for her in front of his assembled
neighbours. Milligan Fox, in her record of this meeting, adds the following:
Finally the old man said, smiling, ‘I’ve got something for you that you’ll
never find anywhere else, travel where you may, and that’s a “Welcome” for
you, composed by myself ’. He then asked to have a fresh roll put on the
phonograph, and recited a charming welcome, in which he greeted me as
‘the lady of the bright face’; and after other compliments, bade me
welcome to his house. Needless to say, this met with great applause from
the other listeners and expressions of gratitude from me.5
pp 22–. 46 Brian Ó Cuív, ‘A recycled elegy?’, Celtica, 18 (198), 117–23. 47 Ó Súilleabháin

poem in RIA, MS 29 (23N13), pp 13–3 (and elsewhere); recycled copy in author’s hand in NLI
Inchiquin Estate Record Book (accession 5819), pp 27–8. 48 Cosslett Quin, ‘A manuscript
written in 179 by Charles Lynegar for John Hall, vice-provost of Trinity College Dublin’,
Hermathena, 53 (1939), 127–37; David Greene, ‘A dedication and poem by Charles Lynegar’,
Éigse, 5 (195–7), –7. 49 Katharine Simms, ‘Charles Lynegar, the Ó Luinín family and the
study of Seanchas’ in Toby Barnard, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and Katharine Simms (eds), ‘A miracle of
learning’: studies in manuscripts and Irish learning. Essays in honour of William O’Sullivan (Aldershot
etc., 1998), pp 2–83 at p. 27. 50 Charlotte Milligan Fox, ‘Folk song collecting in Co.
Waterford’, Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, 12 (1912), 9–3 at 11.
Tadhg Ó Rodaighe and his school 551
It is a moot point whether Milligan Fox’s gratitude would have been any the less
had she known that to make her poem of welcome the poet had remodelled
another poem that had been composed by him six years earlier in honour of Fr
Patrick Dinneen, with only the minimum alterations to take account of the
change in gender.51 It may not be too far-fetched to surmise that, more than two
hundred years earlier, the gratitude of Ruaidhrí Ó hEadhra would have been just
as readily extended to Pádraig Óg Mac an Bhaird, and perhaps with equally
blissful ignorance.
51 Pádraig Ó Macháin, Riobard Bheldon: amhráin agus dánta (Dublin, 1995), pp 29–31.
Dán áráis, 15
Dá I B H í Ó C RÓ I N í N
The poem here printed and translated1 is offered as a token of esteem for the
exemplary manner in which our honorand has, over the years, demonstrated how
the often unpromising material preserved in the myriad of Irish-language poems
dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be made to yield up
nuggets of interest for linguists and historians alike. Her approach has given the
lie to the pessimistic verdict passed on such poetry sixty-six years ago by no less
an authority than Gerard Murphy:
Thirty years ago [writing in 195] it was hoped that publication of our
extant bardic poetry would open up a rich source of factual knowledge
concerning Irish history. During the last thirty years, however, a
representative portion of that poetry has been published, and it has
become clear that, for the facts of Irish history, English state papers and
native annals must always remain the main sources. For bardic panegyric
is vague, often telling more about the semi-legendary heroes to whom the
bards’ patrons are compared than about those patrons themselves.2
Though the author is unidentified, our poem can be situated precisely in place
and date, as it deals with the siege and battle that took place at the French town
of Arras in August 15, and with the Irish losses suffered there. Chief among
these was Piers Butler, apparently a member of a cadet branch of the Butler
family whose senior branch, the earls of Ormond, resided in Kilkenny, but whose
junior branches were to be found also in Cahir (Co. Tipperary) and at Dunboyne
(Co. Tipperary). A part has survived of a duanaire or poem-book3 (a single
quaternio of what was presumably a larger manuscript) associated with the Cahir
Castle family, though our poem is not among those in that (fragmentary)
collection.5 That said, there are certain stylistic similarities with some of the
Cahir Castle poems that may suggest a common authorship.
1 The poem was first printed (but without translation) eighty years ago by Monsignor Eric
Mac Fhinn, An Síoladóir, 2:2 [] (Fóghmhar 1921), 7–8. 2 In a review of James Carney
(ed.), Poems on the Butlers of Ormond, Cahir and Dunboyne (AD1400–1650) [Dublin, 195],
Irish Independent, 25 June 195. 3 For an excellent description of the genre, see Brian Ó
Cuív, The Irish bardic ‘duanaire’ or poem-book (Dublin, 1973). 4 RIA, MS 23F21 [998]; see
Elizabeth Fitzpatrick and Kathleen Mulchrone, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the Royal
Irish Academy 23 (Dublin, 1938), 287–8; see also Carney (ed.), Butler poems, p. xiii ff. 5 See
above, n. 2. 6 Compare, for example, nos VIII, Ix and xIV in the Butler collection (all in
552
Dán Áráis, 1654 553
The Dán Áráis (the title given it on the otherwise blank verso of p. 11 in the
sole Killiney manuscript copy) was clearly composed in the aftermath of the
siege and battle of Arras, an episode in the French aristocratic revolt (known as
the Fronde), which was subsumed into the larger and long-running conflict
between Bourbon France and Hapsburg Spain.7 The latter years of this conflict
(concluded by the Peace of the Pyrenees in 159) were fought out on the borders
of France and the Spanish Netherlands. On 9 June 15, the French army of
Louis xIV besieged Stenay (dép. Meuse); present at the siege were two Irish
regiments, that of Richard Grace and that of Cormac Mac Carthy, son of the earl
of Muskerry, who had followed James, duke of York, and the English court into
exile. Archduke Leopold, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, ‘thought to raise
this siege by attacking another place’, and invested Arras (dép. Pas-de-Calais) on
3 July 15.8 By 15 August, the Spanish forces had captured all the outworks of
Arras, including the formidable hornwork of Guiche, and having dug fortified
lines facing outwards (to deter a relieving army), they confidently expected the
town to surrender, for ‘all the power of France, notwithstanding their king [this
was the young Louis’ first campaign] is come near the siege, with Cardinal
Mazarin, and the whole court’.9
The English Commonwealth authorities had, in 152–3, encouraged defeated
Irish royalist troops to take ship and enlist in the Spanish service.1 A prominent
example of the type was Ulick Burke, fifth earl and first marquess of Clanrickard.
He fought against the Old Irish in the war of 11, and became deputy on
Ormond’s retirement in December 15. On 28 June 152, he submitted to Sir
Charles Coote, president of Connacht, as a result of which he was granted leave
to depart Ireland with three thousand troops for foreign service.11 Getting such
experienced troops out of Ireland to a country at peace with the Commonwealth
was central to English counter-insurgency strategy. Several tercios of Irishmen
were to be found subsequently serving in the Spanish Netherlands.12 Some of
these found themselves engaged in the battle at Arras. The commander of one of
deibhidhe metre). 7 For historical background, for details of the Arras siege, for other
information (on the individuals mentioned in particular) and for locating the contemporary
map of Arras for me, I am indebted to my Galway friend and colleague, Pádraig Lenihan.
8 Philip Lynch (ed.), The earl of Castlehaven’s memoirs (Dublin, 1815), p. 19. 9 A letter of
intelligence from Brussels, 15 Aug. 15 [N.S.], from ‘State papers, 15: Aug. (2 of 5)’, A
collection of the state papers of John Thurloe, 2:15 (172), 519–33. URL: http://www.british-
history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=55337, accessed 18 Apr. 211. 10 For the Irish and
Continental background, see R.A. Strading, The Spanish monarchy and Irish mercenaries,
1618–68 (Dublin, 199). There is an interesting account of Irish involvement in the
continental wars of the seventeenth century in John Hennig, ‘Irish soldiers in the Thirty Years
War’, JRSAI, 82 (1952), 28–3, repr. in Gisela Holfter and Hermann Rasche (eds), Exil in
Irland. John Hennigs Schriften zur deutsch-irische Beziehungen (Trier, 22), 383–9. 11 Paul
Walsh, Gleanings from Irish manuscripts (Dublin, 1918; rev. ed. 1933), 8. An Irish poem on
Clanrickard is published ibid., pp 8–7. 12 Richard O’Ferrall and Robert O’Connell (eds),
Commentarius Rinuccinianus de sedis apostolicae legatione ad foederatos Hiberniae catholicos per
annos 1645–49, compiled by Fr Barnabas O’Ferrall and Fr Daniel O’Connell and edited from the
55 Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
the Irish tercios besieging the town, James Touchet, earl of Castlehaven, was
pessimistic about their chances: ‘We were in a manner now besieged’, he
admitted, by a much larger French army numbering thirty-five thousand men.
The besiegers had not enough soldiers to guard such extensive lines and
trenches, and, on 25 August, the French attacked the Spanish lines ‘in many
places’ simultaneously, and overwhelmed them.13 The prince of Condé’s quarters
can be seen in the top left of the accompanying contemporary map, and it is
evident that he survived the initial assault.1 However, a spirited rearguard-action
fought by Condé’s troops allowed the bulk of the Spanish forces to escape,
though not without heavy losses, which included ‘divers Irish officers and
soldiers’ serving under him.15 Three of these are named in the poem.
The man described as Éumonn dána Ó Duibhidhir, the ‘Lion of Dundrum’
(Kilnemanagh, Co. Tipperary, §§7, 8), was the Colonel Edmund O’Dwyer who
had commanded royalist irregulars brigaded in Cos Tipperary and Waterford in
the latter phase of the Cromwellian war. He was the second Irish commander –
after John Fitzpatrick in Laois–Offaly – to make an individual capitulation to the
authorities, in the spring of 152. As a reward, he was licensed to recruit and ship
some 3,5 demobbed Irish troops to Flanders, and to return to Ireland the
following year on a further recruiting mission. O’Dwyer went on to command
one of the three Irish tercios under Condé at Arras,1 and was cut down in the
action.17
The second named Irishman, Piers Butler (Piarus Builtéar … mac Risdeird,
§§11,12), described as having been of Port Ród, is harder to identify, not least
because Piers or Pierce was – along with Richard – the commonest Christian
name among the Butlers. If the place named as Port Ród in the poem is identical
with the ‘Portrinaud’ (parish of Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick) noted in William
Petty’s Hiberniae delineatio (185), it would not match the ‘normal’ distribution
of Butlers: in Tipperary and Kilkenny, rather than in Limerick.18 That said,
mention in the poem of the fact that he was mourned at Ráith Cúla (§12) means
that he is almost certainly to be identified with Piers Butler, of Rathcoole (Co.
Tipperary), mentioned in the Depositions as ‘Peirc Butler’ of ‘Rathconll’,
manuscript by Fr Joannes Kavanagh [Fr Stanislaus] ( vols, Dublin, 1932–9), v, p. 172. 13 ‘A

letter of intelligence: French camp before Arras’, 15 Aug. 15 [N.S.], from: ‘State papers,
15: Aug. (2 of 5)’; A collection (as in n. 9 above). 14 Charles Sevin, Marquis de Quincy,
Histoire militaire du regne de Louis le Grand, roy de France (7 vols, Paris, 172), i, p. 18. The
map is reproduced from Charles Sévin Quincy, Histoire militaire 1 (Paris, c.172); I am
grateful to Pádraig Lenihan for supplying the image. 15 Thomas Birch (ed.), A collection of
the state papers of John Thurloe (London, 172), ii, p. 99. The raising of the siege is noted in
despatches in W. Dunn Macray (ed.), Calendar of the Clarendon state papers preserved in the
Bodleian Library, 2 (Oxford, 189), 391. 16 Robert Dunlop, Ireland under the Commonwealth
(2 vols, Manchester, 1913), ii, pp 373, 37; Commentarius Rinuccinianus, v, pp 172–3.
17 Dermot F. Gleeson, The last lords of Ormond (Dublin, 1938), p. 3. 18 Yves-Marie Goblet,
Topographical index (Dublin, 1932), p. 33.
further identified as son of Richard Butler.19 The Piers Butler in question is

likely to have been in O’Dwyer’s tercio.
The third Irish casualty named, James Fitzgerald (Séumas mac Gearailt, §1),
is even more problematical. He was perhaps a scion of the Mountgarrett branch
of the Butlers, but I have otherwise failed to identify him. He was probably an
officer in a tercio other than O’Dwyer’s; a Colonel Fitzgerald is recorded as
having commanded one such unit in the Spanish Netherlands in 15.
33.1 Plan of the disposition of the rival French and Spanish forces at the siege of Arras,
15. The map is reproduced from Charles Sévin Quincy, Histoire militaire 1
(Paris, c.172); I am grateful to Pádraig Lenihan for supplying the image.
19 Deposition of Robert Hamilton, TCD MS 821 (Co. Tipperary), fo. 18r; TCD, 1641
Depositions Project (online transcript): http://11.tcd.ie/deposition.php?depID<php echo
821r22?>, accessed 2 Apr. 211.
55 Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
33.2 UCD-OFM Collection, UCD Archives, MS A33, p. 115.

15
1. As baile mar [a] ainm árás,

baile nimhneach nuadhphálás;
baile fán gáinneam[h]uil ga;
baile gráineamhuil gallda.
2. Baile na n-olc ’s na n-iolach,
baile cogthach cinnsiolach.
baile brosgurtha na ccath;
baile cosgartha curach.
3. árás, d’éis cráidhte na cclann,
go smior a bhfódaibh fineamhann.
crádhfhás anall do iomchair,
ár fhás ann ar Éirionnchaibh.
. Do-thuit ’na thimchioll – mo-nuar! –
a mbith-bhuan bheith go diombuan.
Adhbhadh fuinidh dhá cheannach,
n-uimhir adhbhal Éireannach.
5. Ar a raibh ríoghradh thoghtha,
cinn chosnaimh is cabhortha.
As dursan a ndul don bhás,
a mbhun-ursan ag árás.
. Nír bhfiú árás triúr dom tréud,
re n-ucht do-chuaidh ó choimhéud.
Fir bheódhha go bhfraoch bhfeadhma,
teóra laoch chum láinfheadhma.
7. Do-thuit leóghan Dúin Droma
isin iorghail eatorra;
fear a ngoil bhunata baill
mar Choin ccurata cCulainn.
8. Éucht agus creach a chinidh:
Éumonn dána Ó Duibhidhir;
dréuchta comhthruim – coraghním –
A cconchluinn chon an chleitín.
9. Do réir gach garma dhár’ ghlac –
dámadh saoghlach an seabhac!
Dob’ oirdhearc a chlú ’s a cháil,
dú na n-oirbheart an anáir.
558 Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
1. Ó dho chaill Coill na Manach,

biaidh go buan a ndaoranach;
a mheanma mhear – sníomh a smacht –
a ghean ’s a dhíon ’s a dhaonnacht.
11. Do-thuit ann, idir an bhféinn,
Piarus Mhac Risdeird roiréidh,
nár bhaoth ’s nárbh ónda, gérbh óg;
laoch ba chródha ná ciotóg.
12. Piarus Builtéur – branán slógh –
budh cian ag cách fá dhobrón;
beithir bhuadha ar ar ghnáith gean,
a Ráith Cuala dhá chaoineadh.
13. Coiléun do chuaine na mál;
as cian do chosnaim drongán;
sídhealmha shaora ná fir
craobha fíneamhna Feimhin.
1. Sliocht Méig Phiaruis Phuirt na Ród,
ba háirmheach éuchta a-nallód;
le cosg gach caisde a mbaoghal,
posd gaisge na nGall-Ghaodhal.
15. Do-thuit ann gréugach gníomhach,
ionnsaightheach nárbh imshníomhach;
d’éis a láin gábhadh is gal,
A ndáil áladh is iorghal.
1. Séumas Mhac Gearailt na nghlonn,
onchú bá fras a bhforlonn;
míleadh nár mhoirtill bálta,
fírfhear foirtill farránta.
17. Ar fhás ar an ár os fás,
’s an t-ár – fo-raoir! – ar rofhás.
Giodh gairm dhon bhaile go bás,
As baile mar [a] ainm árás.
1. Arras is a town like its name, a poisonous town, a new palace; a town of
javelins and spears; a horrible, foreign town.
2. A town of evils and victory-shouts; a warlike, overbearing town; a town
of camp followers from battles; a slaughterous town of champions.
3. Arras, after the torment of the families to the marrow of the soil’s roots
(?), brought back a tortuous growth that grew out of the slaughter of
Irishmen.
. Round about it there fell – alas! – a horrendous number of Irishmen; its
permanent fate is to be sorrowful; a house of tragedy being purchased for
the men of the west.
5. What there was of choice regal stock, heads of defence and of assistance,
it is sad their main defenders going to their death at Arras.
. Arras was not worth [the loss of] three of the tribe: a hereditary group
that lost its possession; lively men with burning ability; three warriors of
full capacity in battle.
7. The Lion of Dundrum fell in the battle among them, an established
man, in the manner of Cú Chulainn.
8. The glory and slaughter of his people – bold Edmund O’Dwyer – stirring
were the tales of his deeds in the battle of Cú an Chleitín (the Plumes?).
9. According to every task that he accepted – if only the hawk still lived! –
famous were his fame and reputation; a place where honour was sacrificed.
1. Since Coill na Manach has lost him – it will forever be in servitude – its
lowly spirit is exhausted, its affection and its protection and its humanity.
11. There fell there among the warriors Piarus son of Richard, the very
smooth; who was neither foolish nor fearful, though he was young; a
warrior braver than a[ny] left-handed man.
12. Piarus Butler – a raven of hosts – lengthy was the sorrow of everyone
[at his death]; a victorious bear who was well liked, he is being keened in
Rathcoole.
13. A pup of the warrior-pack, he was a long time fighting hosts; best of the
sept, nobler than other men, the vine-bearing branches of [Mag] Feimhin.
1. The family of the son of Piarus of Port na Ród, innumerable were their
great deeds long ago; in defence of every friend in danger, they were the
pillar of warrior deeds amongs the Gall-Ghaodhal.
15. A full complement of powerful attacking Greeks fell that was not
troubled, following their complement of dangers and fighting in the place
of wounds and battle.
1. James Fitzgerald of the slaughters, a hero who was exuberant in dealing
out violence; a warrior who was no sickly stripling; he was a true man, a
redoubtable, powerful figure.
5 Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
17. That which grew up from the slaughter was desolate, and the slaughter
– alas! – on which it grew; since the call of the town was to death, Arras is
a town that deserves its name.
Source: Formerly Killiney, Franciscan House of Studies, MS A33, pp 115–1. Now part of
the UCD–OFM Partnership housed in the Archives of University College Dublin. The
manuscript is a collection of miscellaneous paper fragments bound together; most (including
our section) appear to date from the seventeenth century, but one (later) is probably eighteenth
century, and two others are probably nineteenth century in date. Three at least appear to be in
the hand of Brother Míchéal Ó Cléirigh. Our fragment measures 1.5 by 1.5cm and bears
the stamp of the Franciscan college of St Isidore’s in Rome (p. 11). For a description of the
MS, see Myles Dillon, Canice Money & Pádraig de Brún (eds), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts
in the Franciscan Library Killiney (Dublin, 199), pp 7–3. The poem was printed from this
manuscript (while it was still in the Franciscan house in Rome) by Monsignor Eric Mac
Fhinn, An Síoladóir, 2:2 [] (Fóghmhar 1921), 7–8, but seems not to have been referred to
by any scholar since (to my knowledge), despite its historical interest. The page from the
Franciscan MS is reproduced by kind permission of the UCD–OFM Partnership; my thanks
to Dr Seamus Helferty, UCD Archives, for providing the image.
NO T ES
1b nuadhphálás This is obscure to me. Perhaps a reference to Pallis (near Dunloe, Co. Kerry),
the chief residence of the Mac Carthy Mór family?
8c A cconchluinn chon an chleitín Perhaps a place-name (Cú an Chleitín?), after which some
battle was named?
Biblio_Layout 1 19/02/2013 13:36 Page 561
A bibliography of the published writings of Katharine

Simms (to 202)
974
‘The archbishops of Armagh and the O’Neills, 347–4’, Irish Historical

Studies, 9 (974), 38–.
Review of Kathleen Hughes, Early Christian Ireland: introduction to the sources
(London, 972), in Irish Historical Studies, 9 (974), 98–9.
Review of Michael Dolley, Anglo-Norman Ireland (Dublin, 972) and John Watt,
The church in medieval Ireland (Dublin, 972), in Irish Historical Studies, 9
(974), 03–.
97
‘Warfare in the medieval Gaelic lordships’, Irish Sword, 2 (97), 98–08.

‘The legal position of Irishwomen in the later Middle Ages’, Irish Jurist, 0
(97), 9–.
[with C.A. Empey] ‘The ordinances of the White Earl and the problem of coign
in the later Middle Ages’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 7C
(97), –87.
977
‘The medieval kingdom of Lough Erne’, Clogher Record, 9 (977), 2–4.

‘Niall Garbh II O’Donnell, king of Tír Conaill 422–39’, Donegal Annual, 2
(977), 7–2.
‘The concordat between Primate John Mey and Henry O’Neill, 4’, Archivium
Hibernicum, 34 (977), 7–82.
978
‘Guesting and feasting in Gaelic Ireland’, JRSAI, 08 (978), 7–00.

‘Women in Norman Ireland’ in Margaret Mac Curtain and Donnchadh Ó
Corráin (eds), Women in Irish society: the historical dimension (Dublin, 978),
pp 4–2.
‘The O’Hanlons, the O’Neills and the Anglo-Normans in thirteenth-century
Armagh’, Seanchas Ardmhacha, 9 (978), 70–94.

2 Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
979
‘The Battle of Dysert O’Dea and the Gaelic resurgence in Thomond’, Dál gCais,
 (979), 9–.
‘The O’Reillys and the kingdom of East Breifne’, Breifne,  (979), 30–9.
980
‘Gabh umad a Fheidhlimidh – a fifteenth-century inauguration ode?’, Ériu, 3

(980), 32–4.
‘The origins of the diocese of Clogher’, Clogher Record, 0 (980), 80–98.
98
‘“The king’s friend”: O’Neill, the crown and the earldom of Ulster’ in James
Lydon (ed.), England and Ireland in the later Middle Ages (Dublin, 98), pp
24–3.
982
Review of N.J.A. Williams (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis (Dublin, 980), in

Éigse, 9 (982), 74–.
983
‘Propaganda use of the Táin in the later Middle Ages’, Celtica,  (983), 42–9.
98
‘Irish literature: bardic poetry’ in J.R. Strayer (ed.), Dictionary of the Middle
Ages,  (New York, 98), pp 34–9.
98
‘Nomadry in medieval Ireland: the origins of the creaght or caoraigheacht’,

Peritia,  (98), 379–9.
A bibliography of the published writings of Katharine Simms (to 2012) 3
987
From kings to warlords: the changing political structure of Gaelic Ireland in the later
Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 987), ix + 9pp [pbk reprint 2000].
‘Bardic poetry as a historical source’ in Tom Dunne (ed.), The writer as witness
(Cork, 987), pp 8–7.
Review of David Dumville (ed.), The Historia Britonum 3: the ‘Vatican Recension’
(Cambridge, 98) and Neil Wright (ed.), The Historia Regum of Geoffrey of
Monmouth (Cambridge, 984), in Celtica, 9 (987), 99–20.
988
Review of K.W. Nicholls (ed.), The O Doyne (Ó Duinn) manuscript: documents

relating to the family of O Doyne (Ó Duinn) from Archbishop Marsh’s Library
Dublin MS Z4.2.19, with appendices (Dublin, 983) and Anne O’Sullivan,
assisted by Pádraig Ó Riain (eds), Poems on marcher lords from a sixteenth-
century Tipperary manuscript (London, 987), in Peritia –7 (988), 3–2.
989
‘Bards and barons: the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and the native culture’ in Robert
Bartlett and Angus MacKay (eds), Medieval frontier societies (Oxford, 989),
pp 77–97.
‘The Norman invasion and the Gaelic recovery’ in R.F. Foster (ed.), The Oxford
illustrated history of Ireland (Oxford, 989), ch. 2.
‘The poet as chieftain’s widow: bardic elegies’ in Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Liam
Breatnach and Kim McCone (eds), Sages, saints and storytellers: Celtic studies
in honour of Professor James Carney (Maynooth, 989), pp 400–.
Review of R.R. Davies (ed.), The British Isles, 1100–1500: comparisons, contrasts
and connections (Edinburgh, 988), in Albion, 2 (989), 9–2.
990
‘Images of warfare in bardic poetry’, Celtica, 2 (990), 08–9.

‘The brehons of later medieval Ireland’ in Daire Hogan and W.N. Osborough
(eds), Brehons, serjeants and attorneys: studies in the history of the Irish legal
profession (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 990), pp –7.
4 Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
99
‘Women in Gaelic society during the age of transition’ in Margaret MacCurtain

and Mary O’Dowd (eds), Women in early modern Ireland (Edinburgh, 99),
pp 32–42.
994
‘An eaglais agus filí na scol’ in Pádraig Ó Fiannachta (ed.), An dán díreach,
Léachtaí Cholm Cille xxiv (Maynooth, 994), pp 2–3.
99
[with T.B. Barry and Robin Frame (eds)] Colony and frontier in medieval Ireland:
essays presented to J.F. Lydon (London and Rio Grande, 99), xxvi + 22pp.
‘Frontiers in the Irish Church: regional and cultural’ in ibid., pp 77–200.
‘Late medieval Donegal’ in William Nolan, Liam Ronayne and Máiréad
Dunleavy (eds), Donegal: history and society (Dublin, 99), pp 83–202.
Review of Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, , bks I–II, ed. D.E.R. Watt, John
MacQueen and Winifred MacQueen (Edinburgh, 993), in Irish Historical
Studies, 29 (99), 387.
99
‘Gaelic warfare in the Middle Ages’ in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds),
A military history of Ireland (Cambridge, 99), pp 99–.
[with Kim McCone (eds)] Progress in medieval Irish studies (Maynooth, 99),
27pp.
‘Literary sources for the history of Gaelic Ireland in the post-Norman period’
in ibid., pp 207–.
[with C.E. Meek (eds)] The fragility of her sex?: medieval Irishwomen in their
European context (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 99), 208pp.
[with C.E. Meek] ‘Introduction’ in ibid., pp 7–.
997
‘Relations with the Irish’ in James Lydon (ed.), Law and disorder in thirteenth-
century Ireland: the Dublin parliament of 1297 (Dublin, 997), pp –8.
A bibliography of the published writings of Katharine Simms (to 2012) 
998
[with T.C. Barnard and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (eds)] ‘A miracle of learning’. Studies in
manuscripts and Irish learning: essays in honour of William O’Sullivan
(Aldershot, 998), xiv + 303pp.
‘Charles Lynegar, the Ó Luinín family and the study of seanchas’ in ibid., pp
2–83.
‘The contents of the later commentaries on the brehon law tracts’, Ériu, 49
(998), 23–40.
‘Literacy and the Irish bards’ in Huw Pryce (ed.), Literacy in medieval Celtic
societies (Cambridge, 998), pp 238–8.
Review of Nerys Patterson, Cattle lords and clansmen: the social structure of early
Ireland (Notre Dame, IN, and London, 994) in Irish Historical Studies, 3
(998), 2–7.
999
‘Tír Eoghain “North of the Mountain”’ in Gerard O’Brien (ed.), Derry and
Londonderry: history and society (Dublin, 999), pp 49–73.
2000
‘Late medieval Tír Eoghain: the kingdom of the Great O’Neill’ in Charles Dillon
and H.A. Jefferies (eds), Tyrone: history and society (Dublin, 2000), pp 27–
2.
‘The dating of two poems on Ulster chieftains’ in A.P. Smyth (ed.), Seanchas:
studies in early and medieval Irish archaeology, history and literature in honour
of Francis John Byrne (Dublin, 2000), pp 38–.
Review of Brendan Smith, Colonisation and conquest in medieval Ireland: the
English in Louth, 1170–1330 (Cambridge, 999) in American Historical
Review, 0 (2000), 24–.
200
‘A lost tribe – the Clan Murtagh O’Conors’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological
and Historical Society, 3 (200), –23.
‘Medieval Armagh: the kingdom of Oirthir (Orior) and its rulers the Uí
Annluain (O’Hanlons)’ in A.J. Hughes and William Nolan (eds), Armagh:
history and society (Dublin, 200), pp 87–2.
 Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
‘Native sources for Gaelic settlement: the house poems’ in P.J. Duffy, David
Edwards and Elizabeth FitzPatrick (eds), Gaelic Ireland: land, lordship and
settlement, c.1250–c.1650 (Dublin, 200), pp 24–7.
2004
‘Medieval Fermanagh’ in E.M. Murphy and W.J. Roulston (eds), Fermanagh:

history and society (Dublin, 2004), pp 77–04.
‘References to landscape and economy in Irish bardic poetry’ in H.B. Clarke,
Jacinta Prunty and Mark Hennessy (eds), Surveying Ireland’s past:
multidisciplinary essays in honour of Anngret Simms (Dublin, 2004), pp 4–8.
‘The MacMahon pedigree: a medieval forgery’ in David Edwards (ed.), Regions
and rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650: essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin, 2004),
pp 27–3.
‘Gaelic military history and the later brehon law commentaries’ in C.G. Ó
Háinle and D.E. Meek (eds), Unity in diversity: studies in Irish and Scottish
Gaelic language, literature and history (Dublin, 2004), pp –8.
200
‘Bardic schools/learned families’; ‘Duarairé’; ‘Gaelic revival’; ‘Gaelicization’;

‘Ua Néill’; ‘Women’ in Séan Duffy (ed.), Medieval Ireland: an encyclopedia
(New York and London, 200), pp 3–7, 34–, 89–92, 477–80, 20–2.
200
‘Muireadhach Albanach Ó Dálaigh and the classical revolution’ in Ian Brown,

Thomas Owen Clancy, Susan Manning and Murray Pittock (eds), The
Edinburgh history of Scottish literature (3 vols, Edinburgh, 200), i, pp 83–90.
[with Laoise T. Moore, Brian McEvoy, Eleanor Cape and Daniel G. Bradley] ‘A
Y-chromosome signature of hegemony in Gaelic Ireland’, American Journal
of Human Genetics, 78 (200), 334–8.
2007
‘The poetic brehon lawyers of early sixteenth-century Ireland’, Ériu, 7 (2007),

2–32.
‘Images of the galloglass in poems to the MacSweeneys’ in Seán Duffy (ed.), The
world of the galloglass: kings, warlords and warriors in Ireland and Scotland,
1200–1600 (Dublin, 2007), pp 0–23.
A bibliography of the published writings of Katharine Simms (to 2012) 7
2008
‘The Donegal poems in the Book of Fenagh’, Ériu, 8 (2008), 37–3.

‘Changing patterns of regnal succession in later medieval Ireland’ in Frédérique
Lachaud and Michael Penman (eds), Making and breaking the rules:
succession in medieval Europe, c.1000–c.1600/Établir et abolir les normes: la
succession dans l’Europe médiévale vers 1000–vers 1600 (Turnhout, 2008), pp
–72.
2009
‘Early Christian and medieval (AD00–00): historical outline’ in Ken Neill

(ed.), An archaeological survey of County Armagh (Belfast, 2009), pp 2–29.
Medieval Gaelic sources (Dublin, 2009), 3pp.
‘The Ulster revolt of 404: an anti-Lancastrian dimension?’ in Brendan Smith
(ed.), Ireland and the English world in the late Middle Ages: essays in honour of
Robin Frame (Basingstoke and New York, 2009), pp 4–0.
200
‘Bardic poems of consolation to bereaved Irish ladies’ in Conor Kostick (ed.),

Medieval Italy, medieval and early modern women: essays in honour of
Christine Meek (Dublin, 200), pp 220–30.
‘The transition from medieval to modern in the poems of Tadhg Dall Ó
hUiginn’ in Pádraigín Riggs (ed.), Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn: his historical and
literary context (London, 200), pp 9–34.
‘The selection of poems for inclusion in the Book of the O’Conor Don’ in
Pádraig Ó Macháin (ed.), The Book of the O’Conor Don (Dublin, 200), pp
32–0.
‘A poem to a 3th-century Irish lady: Cailleach Dé’ in Folke Josephson (ed.),
Celtic language, law and letters: proceedings of the 10th symposium of Societas
Celtologica Nordica in Gothenburg 2008 (Gothenburg, 200), pp 9–200.
20
‘The barefoot kings: literary image and reality in later medieval Ireland’,
Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 30: 2010, ed. Erin Boon, A.J.
McMullen and Natasha Sumner (Cambridge MA, 20), pp –2.
568 Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
2012
‘Bardic poems of apology and reconciliation’ in Liam Mac Amhlaigh and Brian
Ó Corcráin (eds), Ilteangach, Ilseiftiúil: Féilsgríbhinn in ómós do Nicholas
Williams: a Festschrift in honour of Nicholas Williams (Dublin, 2012), pp
175–91.
Index_Layout 1 19/02/2013 13:40 Page 569
Index
(compiled by Áine Foley)
St Abbán 317, 31, 334–7 Ailill, brother of Niall Noígiallach 21

Abbeygormacan, Co. Galway 2 Áine [Knockainy, Co. Limerick] 1
Aberdeen 4n Ainmire (d. 8) 7n
Abingdon, England 334 Airgialla 10, 42, 70, 3
Abraham 223–7, 230, 23–8 Aithrighe sunn duid a Dhé, poem 32
absenteeism 83–4 Alan of Galloway n, 134, 13
Acallam na Senórach 2, 38 Alan, son of Thomas of Galloway 13
A Choimdiu, nom-choimét, poem 18 Alavivus, Thervingian, kg of the Goths
Achonry, diocese of 20, 302, 303, 32 217
‘Act of Banishment’ (18) 371 Albigensians 340
Adamstown [Mag Arnaide], Co. Wexford Albrecht II, dk of Carinthia 201
30, 33 Alcuin of York (d. 804) 234
Adare, Co. Limerick 1, 20 Alexander I, kg of Scots (1107–24) 1n,
Adelard of Bath 118 , 0n
Adeliza of Louvain, wife of Henry I, kg Alexander II, kg of Scots (1214–4) 12
of England 287 Alexander III, kg of Scots (124–8) 124,
A Dhé Athar, t’fhaire rum, poem 33 12–, 13, 137, 38
St Adomnán, abbot of Iona (d. 704) 221, Alexander IV, pope (124–1) 341–2
244, 24, 248–0, 2–, 27, 00 Althus Prostator, hymn 48
Áed, brother of Colmán (d. 22), of Uí St Alto 247, 24
Fiachrach Aidni n St Ambrose 48
Áed Allán, high-kg (d. 743) 43 Amlaíb Ua Fergail 77n
Áed Finn, son of Brión Fergna, brother Amra Choluimb Chille, poem 387, 484,
of Eochaid Tirmcharna (d. ) 8n 44
Áed mac Ainmerech, high-kg (d. 8) 27, Anaxagoras, philosopher 230–1
28, 34, 43, 333, 387, 388 Angulo, Gilbert de 70
St Áed mac Bricc 40–1, 44 Miles de n
Áed Sláine (d. 04), son of Diarmait mac Philip de 71–2
Cerbaill (d. ) 32, 3, 43, 387–8 Angus, Tayside, Scotland 3
Æthelred, kg of Mercia (7–704) 383 Anhalt, dukes of 203
Agha [Achad Firglais], Co. Carlow 33 A-niu céaduchtach chlann nÁdhaimh, poem
Aghaboe [Achad Bó], Co. Laois 41, 317, 0–8
31 Annaghdown, Co. Galway 287–1, 28–,
Aghadoe, Co. Kerry 37 302, 303, 32
Aghagower, Co. Mayo 2 Annals of Boyle 24
Aghmacart, Co. Laois 4, 47 Annals of Clonmacnoise 81, 82, 30, 310,
Agincourt, battle of 13n 44, 4
Ahakista, Co. Cork 474 Annals of Connacht 30, 3, 482, 40–1,
St Aidan of Lindisfarne 247, 22–4, 334 43, 47
St Ailbe of Emly 318, 33, 337 Annals of the Four Masters 313–14, 44,
Ailerán 23–40 484, 42

70 Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
Annals of Inisfallen 1, 22 Athanaric, overking of the Thervingian

Annals of Loch Cé 24, 3, 3 Goths 21–17
Annals of Tigernach 30, 313, 32 Áth an Termainn, Co. Mayo 28, 2n
Annals of Ulster 248, 444–, 41, 02 Athboy, Co. Meath 310n
Anselm, abp of Canterbury (d. 110) 283 Áth Carpait, Co. Mayo 28n
Antrim, county 7n Athlone, Co. Westmeath 21, 24, 302,
Castle 0 33
Aoidhe meise ag máthair Dé, poem 32 Castle 300
Apor Crosan [Applecross], Scotland 248 Athleague [Lanesborough, Co.
Aquinas, Thomas 33n Longford/Ballyleague, Co.
Araid Tíre, Co. Tipperary 318 Roscommon] 77n
Arbroath, Scotland 1 Atholl, Scotland 4
Ard, Co. Fermanagh 32 Athy Castle, Co. Kildare 17, 183
Ardagh [Ardcarn], Co. Longford 288–, Arquilla, Lucian de 104n
28 Aughrim, Co. Galway 2
Ardeberhan [Ardbegan], Co. Derry 100 Aughris, Co. Sligo 2
Archduke Leopold of Austria (d. 12) 3 Augsburg, Germany 20
Archer, Katherine 3 St Augustine of Canterbury 23
Archer, William, sovereign of Kilkenny St Augustine of Hippo (34–430) 231–4,
3 238, 243, 48
architecture and sculpture 2, 300 Augustinian order 87, 3n, 8n, n, 10,
and early medieval buildings 378–82, 112, 118, 121, 172, 204, 2, 274,
38 27, 281, 28, 28–, 33
and Gothic 28, 2 Augustinus Hibernicus 23
and Romanesque 20, 2–, 28, Aura, William de , 100
300, 37 Ave Maris Stella, hymn 0, 11
and School of the West 28–301
Ardee, Co. Louth 10n, 18, 187, 14, 370 Bachall Ísu [Baculus Iesu] 38
Ardfinnan, Co. Tipperary 1 Báetán, of Cenél Conaill 34, 37
Ardmayle, Co. Tipperary n St Bairre 2
Ard na nGlas [Ardnaglass], Co. Sligo 12 Baile Binnbérlach mac Buain 38
Ard na Riadh [Ardnaree], Co. Mayo Baile Uí Choitil [Cottlestown], Co. Sligo
Ardnurcher [Horseleap], Co. Offaly 8 12
Ardpatrick, Co. Limerick 28 Bale, John, bp of Ossory (12–3) 3
Ardrahan, Co. Galway 131, 177n Baliabolgoira [in parish of Kilreekill], Co.
Ards, Co. Down 3n Galway 10
Argyll, Scotland –7, 13–7 Ballingarry, Co. Limerick 172n
Ar iasocht fhuaras Aonghus, poem 3–7 Ballintober, Co. Roscommon 2, 301
Arioald, kg of Langobardia 20 Balliol, John, kg of Scots (122–) 12,
Arkeen [Ardkeen], Co. Down 102 134–7
Arkona, Germany 277 Ballyboghil, Co. Dublin 322
Armagh, archbishopric of 87, 3, 7, 100, Ballybrophy, Co. Laois 317
221, 28, 22, 27, 322n Ballycowan, Co. Offaly 310
Armagh, church and city 10, 22, 2, Ballymacasey, Co. Kerry 371
2, 28, 27, 27, 277, 32–3 Ballymacegan, Co. Tipperary 4
Arnanus of Cahors 247, 2n Ballymagarvey, Co. Meath 7
Arras, battle of 2–8 Ballymethegan [Ballymaghan], Co. Down
Askeaton, Co. Limerick 172n 100
Index 71
Ballymote Castle, Co. Sligo 4 St Bernard 281, 28, 2–7, 307, 48, 4
Ballyorely, Co. Wexford 47, 478 Bernhard of Spanheim 203
Ballysadare, Co. Sligo 2 Berthold of Regensburg (d. 1272) 20–
Ballyroon, Co. Cork 43, 44, 4, 47 Bible, the 224–8, 231, 233–, 238–
Balregan, Co. Louth 14 Bigod, Hugh II, e. of Norfolk n
Balscham, Adam de, prior of Holy Trinity Isabella, daughter of Hugh II Bigod, e.
344 of Norfolk n
Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow 311, 31, 320, Birr, synod of (1174) 281
333 Bishop’s Seat, Kilteasheen, Co.
Balyleghegan [?Ballylagan or Logantown, Roscommon 34–, 38
Co. Derry] 103 Bisset, family 87, 134
Bann, river 100 Hugh 101
Bardic Database 03, 0 Nicholas 100
Baroun, Henry 103 Black Book of Molaga 01
Barr orchra aicme Rossa, poem 4 Blackcastle, Co. Meath 1n
Barrow, Geoffrey 48 Black Death, the 10
Bavaria, Germany 24 Blackwater, Co. Meath 22
Beag nach táinig mo théarma, poem 31 Blondeville, Ranulf de, th e. of Chester
Beatha Choluim Cille 34, 3, 48, 487, and 1st e. of Lincoln (d. 1232) 72
48–0, 42, 4, 01 Blund, Henry le , 7
Beatha Aodha Ruaidh Uí Dhomhnaill 43 Robert le, custodian of Belturbet
Beauchamp, Joan, wife of James Butler, Castle, Co. Cavan 71
4th e. of Ormond 18 Thomas le , 74
Beaufou, Richard de n Boazio, Baptista 43
Henry de n Bobbio, monastery of 20
Beaumont, Roger de, bp of St Andrews Boden, Jean 207
(118–1202) 1 St Boniface 247
Bécán mac Luigdech 22, 20 book collections, libraries 31–4, 404
St Bede 227, 238, 23, 2, 288, 382, 384 Book of the Angel 48
Begerith [?Biggera (Beg and Mór), Co. Book of Armagh 48
Galway) 10 Book of Ballymote 27, 3, 483, 484, 40–
Béla IV, kg of Hungary 114, 11, 120, 122 1, 4–
Belanagare, Co. Roscommon 4 Book of the Dean of Lismore 48
‘The Bell’, poem 17 Book of Deer 0, 2n, 4n, 8–, 1
Bellew, John, sheriff of Louth 187 Book of Durrow 48
Belturbet, Co. Cavan 70 Book of Fenagh 7, 78, 487, 42
Benede [Banada], Co. Sligo 2n, 12 Book of Kells 48
Benedeit 287 Book of Lecan 13–8, 24
St Benedict of Nursia 2 Book of Leinster 3, 38, 400
Benedict XII, pope (1334–42) 34 Book of Monasterboice 3
Benedictine order 7n, 121, 28, 317 Book of O’Gara 47
St Benignus, St Patrick’s disciple 223, Bordeaux, France 137
237–8, 240 Bowery, David 30, 31
Beowulf 37, 382, 38 Boyle abbey, Co. Roscommon 2, 300,
Berkeway, Elias de, kg’s clerk, chancellor 301, 32, 34, 37, 3, 30, 3,
and treasurer of Ulster 4– 37, 373
Bermingham, John, e. of Louth (d. 132) Brademire, Robert la 
1 Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm von 111
Braon re ndubhadh diomhdha Dé, poem 3 see also Burkes of Clanwilliam
Braose, William de (d. 1211) , n Edmund, brother of Richard, e. of
Bray, Stephen, chief justice, 187 Ulster 0, , , 7, 100, 103
Bray, William de 82n Edmund, son of Richard, e. of Ulster
Braydock, Philip 343–, 348, 31 (d. 1338) 1
Brea, mother of Colmán Bec 43–4 Egidia, sister of Richard, e. of Ulster
Brechin, Scotland 2 88
Brega 2, 32, 38 Elizabeth, countess of Ulster (d. 133)
Bréifne 4, , 7, 70, 72, 73, 74–, 77, 8, 104, 10
78, 81, 83, 288–, 2, 3, 41, 483 Hubert, justiciar of England , 7,
St Brendan of Clonfert (d. c.77) 244–, 307
247, 248, 2–, 20, 287–8, 20, John (d. 1313), son of Richard, e. of
2, 303, 387, 487 Ulster 88, n, 7
Bret, Adam le 80 John, constable of Antrim Castle 0
Milo le 80 Philippa, wife of Edmund Mortimer,
Thomas le 80n 3rd e. of March 8
William le (d. 1233) 7–80 Richard, lord of Connacht (d. 1243)
Brian Boru (d. 1014) [Brian Bóruma mac , 7–, 301, 307
Cinnétig] 1, 1, 2, 284, 21, 47– Richard, e. of Ulster and lord of
, 02 Connacht (d. 132) 8–, 87,
St Brigit 337, 48 88–, 0, 1–10, 12–7, 130,
‘Brigit bé bithnaith’, hymn 48 131, 132, 133n, 134, 13–7, 1
Brí mac Taidg, synod of (118) 282 Richard, of Camlin [Crumlin, Co.
Brión, brother of Niall Noígiallach 8, 21, Antrim] 0, 
28 Walter, e. of Ulster (d. 1271) 8, 87,
Briskett, Ludovic 33 0, 1, 3, 4, 100, 101, 132
Bristol, England 172, 11 Walter (d. 1332) 8
Britford [in Wiltshire], England 78, 83 William (d. 120/) 21n, 301
Browery, David 30 William Liath (d. 1324) 8, 3n, 7
Bruce, family 133– William, e. of Ulster (d. 1333) 8, 8,
Edward, ‘king of Ireland’ (d. 1318) 88, 101, 102n, 10
138 Burkes of Clanwilliam, family 1, 170
Richard, son of Robert, th lord of Ulick, th e. and 1st marquess of
Annandale 12–7, 137 Clanrickard 3
Robert, th lord of Annandale (d. Walter 1, 174, 182–3
12) 12, 127, 133 Butler, family, table 11; 1–78
Robert, e. of Carrick (d. 1304) 12–7, Anne, daughter of James, 4th e. of
133, 13, 137 Ormond 178
Brune, Geoffrey 10 Edmund 38
William  Edmund, son of Richard 177n
Brunrath [Uí Briúin Rátha], Co. Galway James, 3rd e. of Ormond (d. 140)
10 1n, 18, 1–70
Buittle, Scotland 12, 13 James, 4th e. of Ormond (d. 142)
Bunbrusna, Co. Westmeath 41 1–0, 12, 171, 174–, 1
Bunnina, Co. Sligo 300 Matilda, granddaughter of Hugh de
Bunratty Castle, Co. Clare 34, 30, 31 Lacy 102
Burchart of Cologne 20, 20 Pernel, daughter of James, 1st e. of
Burgh, de, family 8–10, 128–38 Ormond (d. 1338) 13
Index 73
Piers, son of Richard, of Rathcoole, Cashel, Co. Tipperary 1, 302, 323, 48
Co. Tipperary 2, 4– synod of (1101) 283, 288, 301
Thomas, prior of Kilmainham 13, Cassian, John 223, 23–
1–7, 173–, 182–3 Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny 31
Castleconnell, Co. Limerick 7n
Cabhail Tighe Breac, Co. Clare 477–8 Cathach, manuscript 48, 40, 00–1
Cacatius, duke of Carinthia 20 Cathaír Már, kg of Leinster 38
Cáel Uisce Castle, Co. Clare 130 Cathán, son of Drugán, son of
Cahermacnaghten, Co. Clare 477 Conchobar, son of Fergal (d. 722) 11
Cahir, Co. Tipperary 1, 412, 2 Cathars 340, 341n
St Caillín 44 Cavan, county 47
St Caiman’s Church, Inishcaltra 37n Ceara, Co. Mayo 483
cáin 4–2 Céli Dé 22
St Cainnech of Aghaboe 40–2, 44, 247, Cell Abbáin, Mide 33
248, 24n, 317 Cellach, abp of Armagh 22, 2
Cairpre, son of Feidlimid, son of Aengus Cellach, son of Flannacán of Brega (d.
33 8) 2
Calixtus II, pope (111–24) 22 Cell Ailbe, Mide 33
Calixtus III, pope (14–8) 112 Cellanus of Péronne 247, 22
Calry [Calrie], Co. Sligo 2n, 131 Cell tSesin in Uachtar Tíre 3
Camaros [Cam ros], Co. Wexford 33 Cenél Conaill 7, 37, 132, 1, 24n, 387,
Camlin, Co. Antrim  484, 43
Campbell, family , 2, 28 see also Ua Domnaill
Campion, Edmund 47 Cenél nEógain 7, 10, 21, 2, 101, 132, 31
Cannon [Ua Canannáin], family 7n, 2, see also Ua Néill
28, 30 Fergal of the Cenél nEógain 2
Cantemus in omni die, hymn 04 Cenél Fiachach meic Néill, 8, 22, 310
Canterbury, archbishopric of 22 Cenél Luachain [Carrigallen, Co.
Cappoge, Co. Louth 18 Leitrim] 71n
Cara mná an tighe ag an teinidh, poem 34 Cenél Maine of Tethba [Southern Uí
Carbury, Co. Sligo 130 Néill] 10, 22
Carbery West, Co. Cork 41 Cennach 33
Carew, family 42–3 Cenn Caille 317
George 42, 43 Cenn Fáelad, kg of Tara (d. 7) 3, 3
Maurice 42 Chaldea 22, 22
Thomas 38, 40 Charlemagne 234
Carinthia, inauguration rites 1–207 charters 4–1, 0, 8–10, 270
Carlingford, Co. Louth , 88, 0n, 7n, Chastelsmythan [probably in parish of
102–4, 10, 187, 18, 11 Camus or Macosquin, Co. Derry]
Carmelite order 30 100
Carneglace [Carnglass], Co. Antrim 101 Chedworth, Thomas de, dean of St
Carneglace, John the clerk of 101 Patrick’s, Dublin 343–
Carnfree, Co. Roscommon 28 Cheitmar, dk of Carinthia 20
Carnmoney, Co. Antrim 0 Chester, England 72, 78, 8
Carrick, Scotland  Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin 320,
Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim 8, 0, 4, 3
7n, 100, 277 see also Holy Trinity, priory of, Dublin
Carrickslavan, Co. Leitrim 40, 4 Chronicon Scotorum 280, 30
church, the, Clare, Isabella de, wife of William I

and asceticism 241–3, 24, 20, 27, Marshall, e. of Pembroke 122
2 Clare, Richard de (‘Strongbow’) (d. 117)
and competition for primatial status 108, 120, 310, 311–14, 31
221 Clare, Thomas de, lord of Thomond and
and concubinage 320 Inchiquin (d. 1287) 12–31, 137
and the Dissolution 3, 370, 373 Clarendon, England 78
and early Ireland 221–4, 231, 237–40 Clement of Alexandria 230
and heresy 33–1 Clement V, pope (130–14) 344
and reform 27–30, 340 Clifford, Walter de n
and saints’ Lives 221, 244–, 248–0, Clinton, John, of Cappoge, sheriff of
2, 2, 2, 333–8 Louth 18, 18–7
and tithes 30 Cloghbolie, Co. Donegal 478
Church Island, Lough Gill, Co. Sligo Clogher, Co. Tipperary 80, 42, 48
33, 3 Clonard, Co. Meath 284, 41, 474
church lands in Scotland 1–, –0 Cloncurry, Co. Kildare 1n
St Ciarán of Clonmacnoise 280, 284, 44 Clone [Cluain], Co. Wexford 334
Ciarraige [people of north Kerry] 1–20 Clonenagh, Co. Laois 33
Cineál Fearadaigh 483 Clonfert [Cluyn], Co. Galway 10, 287–
Cineál Mongáin, Co. Tyrone 483 0, 24, 28, 301, 302, 387
Cistercian order 201, 2–300, 311, Clonfert, synod of (117) 20n
31–17, 320, 321, 323–4, 32, 332, Clonfertmulloe [Cluain Ferta of St Mo
347, 3 Lua], Co. Laois 317, 33
The city of God 234 Clongeen [Cluain Chaín], Co. Wexford
Clackmannan, Scotland 3 334
Clairvaux abbey, France 2 Clonkeen, Co. Dublin 37
Clandonagh, Co. Laois 317 Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly 80, 23, 280–,
Clane, Co. Kildare 17 28–301, 30–
Clann Cholmáin 21, 2, 2, 32, 38–, 41– Clontarf, Co. Dublin 14, 172n
2, 4, 378–, 38 Clontuskert, Co. Galway 2
Clann Domnaill of Islay 132–3, 13, 138 Cloonaheen, Co. Offaly 371
Clann Fermaige 3 Cloonoghil, Co. Sligo 2
Clann Fhir Bhisigh 13 Cloontuskert, Co. Roscommon 28
Clann Goisdealbh, Co. Mayo 483 Cloyne, diocese of 30, 387
Clann Lugair of the Araid 318 Cluain Mór, in Uí Felmeda, Co. Carlow
Clann Máelugra [Clanmaliere] 313 333
Clann Maolruanaidh 3 Cluain Mór Dícholla Gairb, Co. Wexford
Clare, county 41, 42 333
Clare [Claregalway], Co. Galway 10 Clú gach fheadhma ar fhuil Chéin, poem
Clare, Elizabeth de, (d. 130) 88, n, 7, 42–4
104 Clú gach f[h]eadhma ar fhuil Dálaigh,
Clare, Gilbert de, e. of Gloucester poem 42–4
(d. 1230) 127 Clyn, John, friar and chronicler 128–,
Clare, Gilbert de, e. of Gloucester 343, 34
(d. 12) n, 127 Codex Salmanticensis 01
Clare, Isabel de (d. c.124), wife of Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib 47–
Robert Bruce, th lord of Annandale Cogan, Miles de 27
127 Cogitosus 221, 22
Index 7
coign 12n Cong, Co. Mayo 28–0, 24–, 28, 301,

Coílle Fallomuin 32, 40–1, 4 303
Coillte Conchobhair 483 Cross of 27, 22–4, 2, 301
coinnmed 4–0 Conmaicne, Bréifne 71, 288–, 483
Coirpre, son of Crimthann, kg of Connacht, diocese of 282, 24, 27, 301
Munster (d. 7) 33, 387 lordship of 7–7, 8–, 8–0, 7, 104,
Coirpre, son of Niall Noígiallach 22, 384 10, 10, 130, 132, 17, 301
Coleraine, Co. Derry 87, , 7n province of , 20, 70, 77, 1, 27–80,
colg oc mo chailg-se, poem 388 283–7, 2, 301–2, 30, 308,
Colla fo Chríth 10 40, 47–8
Collooney, Co. Sligo 21 Conn Cétchathach, kg of Tara , 37
St Colm of Terryglass 48 Connor, diocese of 3, 
Colmán (d. 22) of Uí Fiachrach Aidni Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum
n 204
Colmán Bec, son of Diarmait mac Coolavin [Cúil Ó bhFinn], Co. Sligo 483
Cerbaill (d. ) 32–7, 3–4 Coolbanagher, Co. Laois 317
Colmán mac Lénéni, poet (d. 04) 387–8 Coole, Co. Antrim 0, , 
Colmán Már, son of Diarmait mac Cooley Peninsula, Co. Louth 18, 12
Cerbaill (d. ) 32–3, 3, 37, 3–40, Coolnalong, Co. Cork 44, 4
43– Coote, Charles, president of Connacht
Colmon, Geoffrey de 100 3
Cologne, Germany 110 Corc, ancestor of the Eóganachta 1
Colum, abbot and coarb of Terryglass 400 Corco Duibne 1
St Colum Cille [Columba], abbot of Iona Crinin mac Faílbe, kg of Corco Duibne
(d. 7) 22, 41, 221, 241–2, 244, 24, 1
247, 248–0, 2, 27, 337, 387, 34, Corco Loígde 1, 387, 388, 41
3, 37, 48–, 488–, 43, 4, Corcomroe, Co. Clare 47
4–02, 24, 43 Cork, city 2
St Columbanus of Bobbio (40–1) 231, county 177, community of 182, 41
234, 241–2, 244, 24–, 247, 24, kingdom of 322, 42–3
20–4, 2–7, 33, 341 Cormac’s Chapel, Cashel 2
St Comgall of Bangor 247, 248, 24n Cornwall, England 172
commorth 48 Corpus Christi, feast of 37
Comosicus, kg of the Goths 217 Corry, Richard 8
Compostela, Spain 28 Coryllus, kg of the Goths 217
Comyn, family 13 Courcy, John de, lord of Ulster 7, 8,
John of Badenoch 13 133, 2, 27, 277, 28
Conall of Brega 38 Coursey, Edmund de, bp of Ross (144–
‘Conall Corc and the Corcu Luígde’ 387, 117) 33
388 Craddock, Roger, bp of Waterford (130–
Conall Cremthainne, son of Niall 7) 34–0
Noígiallach 22, 2, 43 Cranley, Thomas, abp of Dublin 14
Conall Gulban, son of Niall Noígiallach Crann do chuir amach Naoi nár, poem 2
2, 28 Crann seóil na cruinne an chroch naomh,
Conall mac Comgaill, kg of the Ulaid 33, poem 0
3 Crích Cairbre [Carbury, Co. Sligo] 71n,
Confessio [St Patrick’s Confession] 211, 2n
218–1 Crith Gablach 380, 381, 38
7 Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
Croagh Patrick, Co. Mayo 28–, 2 Deacair foghnamh do thoil dá thighearna,
Croghan, Co. Offaly 17 poem 3
Cró-inis, Co. Westmeath 378– Déanadh go subhach síol Ádhaimh, poem
Cromwell, Oliver 38 11
Crooks, Peter 8n, 347n, 30n Derbáil, neice of Máel Mithig 2
Crossfield, Co. Leitrim 4 Derbáil, wife of Flannacán of Brega (d.
Cruachain [Rathcroghan], Co. 8) 2
Roscommon 28 Derbforgaill of Galloway, wife of John
Cruise O’Brien, Máire 21n, 307n Balliol, kg of Scots 134, 13
Crumbe, Philip 103 Derby, Robert 
crusades, the 22–3, 30–8 Derrane, Co. Roscommon 28–
Fifth Crusade 30–7 Derry, diocese of 8, 8, 100, 48
Third Crusade 20 church and city of , 22, 2, 27–
Cú-Cen-Máthair, poem 38 8, 27, 277
Cú Chuimne, poet (d. 747) 04 Desmond, lordship of 1
Cuil, Co. Fermanagh 42 Dia do bheatha, a Mháthair Dé, poem
Cúl Dreimne, battle of 00–1 0n, 11
Cú Mara, grandson of Menma (d. 1014) Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. ) 32, 40, 43,
of the Uí Chaisséne 1 3, 00
Cumin, John, abp of Dublin (d. 1212) Dictionary of the Irish language [DIL]
320, 321, 323, 32–8, 331 38–0
Cumméne (d. 28), son of Colmán 34, 37 Dicineus, kg of the Goths 217
Cumméne, son of Librén, son of Illand, Dícuil 247, 23n, 2, 2
son of Cerball 34 Dindshenchas Érenn 37
Cummian of Bobbio 247 Dingle, Co. Kerry
Curnán (d. ), son of Áed (d. 7), son Díon cloinne i n-éag a n-athar, poem 33
of Eochaid Tirmcharna (d. ) 10n Dlighthior d’fhile ann gach tráith, poem
Cusack, family 18 0
Docwra, Henry 28
Dagán, bishop 22n ‘Domesday book’ 23, 3
Daig, son of Cairell 34 St Dominic 340n
Dál Buinne 3n Dominican order 88, 10, 118, 121, 340,
Dál Cais of Thomond 1, 28, 284, 323, 342–3
330, 332, 47 Domnall mac Áeda, kg of Tara (d. 42)
Dál Chormaic 318, 334 7n, 388
Dál Cuirb, Co. Down 7 Domnall Ua hÉnna, bp of Killaloe 330,
Dál Fiatach, Co. Down 2 332
Dallán Forgaill, poet 387, 3 Domnall Midi, kg of Clann Cholmáin (d.
Dál Ríata, Co. Antrim 3, 3n, 4, 24n 73) 32, 41, 43
Dán Áráis, poem 2–8 Donaghdea, Co. Kildare 1n
Daniel, bp of Ross 322 Donaghmore, Co. Meath 1n
Dante [Alighieri], poet 287 Donathy [Dunaghy], Co. Antrim 100
Dartas, Janico 11 Donatus Ua Fidabra, abp of Armagh 3
Dartry 3 Donegal, county 30, 130, 131, 487, 42
David, bp of Waterford (d. 120) 322n friary of 37
David, e. of Huntington (d. 121) 2n St Donnán of Eigg 247, 248
David I, kg of Scots (1124–3) , 8 Donnchad, son of Domnall, kg of Mide
Davies, Rees 83 41, 42n
Index 77
Donnchad of Arbuthnott 3 Duhallow, Co. Cork 43

Donnchad mac Gille Brigde, e. of Carrick Duiske, Co. Kilkenny 32
133–4 Dumfries, Scotland 12
Doon 2 Dunamase [Dún Masc], rock of 317
Dowdall, John, sheriff of Louth 18–8, Dunath, Peter de, bp of Connor 3, 100
10–1, 13– Dunba [unidentified] 
John, son of John, sheriff of Louth Dunbar, Patrick III, 7th e. of (d. 128)
1 12
John, of Dundalk, sheriff of Louth Dunbell Big, Co. Kilkenny 20
18, 14 Dunblane, Scotland 2
Down, county 7n Dunboyne, Co. Tipperary 2
Downpatrick, Co. Down 22, 24, 28, Dunbrody, Co. Wexford 320, 347, 32, 3
2, 27, 277 Dunbrody pax 32–, 373
Dowth [Doueth], Co. Meath 10 Dún dá Lethglas, Co. Down 2
Drogheda, Co. Meath 7, n, 78, 13, see also Downpatrick
18n, 187, 10, 13 Dundalk, Co. Louth 10, 12, 14
Dromana Castle, Co. Waterford 371 Dundooan, Co. Derry 
Dromnea, Co. Cork 43–71, 473–4, 477, Dundrum, Co. Down , 277
47 Dundrennan, Scotland 13
Dromore, diocese of 102 Dunfermline, Scotland 3n, 8
Drought [Drocturgi], Co. Galway 10 St Dúngal of Bobbio 247, 2
Druim Ceat, Convention of 44 Dungarvan, church of, Co. Waterford 172
Druim Chaín Cellaig, Co. Wexford 33 Castle, Co. Waterford 1
Drumadarragh, Co. Antrim  Dunkeld, Scotland 2
Drumahaire [Muinter Cinaith], Co. Dunleer, Co. Louth 18
Leitrim 71n Dunlo, Co. Galway 21
Drumalban, Scotland  Dunmochurne [in parish of
Drumalgagh, Co. Roscommon 2 Kilmainebeg], Co. Mayo 2
Drumaliss, Co. Antrim 4, 10 Dunmore, Co. Galway 2, 27
Drumcar, Co. Louth 3n Dún na Sciath, Co. Westmeath 378–
Drumcliff [Cairbre Droma Cliabh], Co. Dunneill [Dún Néill], Co. Sligo 13
Sligo 483 Dunover [Donoure], Co. Down 104
Drumconaid, Co. Roscommon 300 Durrow, Co. Laois 42, 310
Drumdarath, Co. Antrim , 7 Durrus, Co. Cork 44, 4
Dryburgh, Paul 18n
dúanaire of Mac Lonáin 400 Ebendorfer, Thomas 20
Dub Doithre (d. 743) 8n Edward I, kg of England (1272–1307) 8,
Dubgall Caimbéal 28 87, 1, 127, 130, 13, 137
Dublin, archbishopric of 323, 330, 344 Edward II, kg of England (1307–27) 8,
as centre of government 8 87, 104
Castle 347 Edward III, kg of England (1327–77) 104,
city 10, 13, 187, 22, 2, 31, 34 10n, 34
High Street 1 Edward VI, kg of England (137–3) 370
Hoggen Green [College Green] St Egbert of Ripon (d. 72) 24
34 Éile, Co. Tipperary 33
Tholsel 347 Eimíne, holy man 33
Dufferin, Co. Down 3n Eiscir Abhann/Inis Screabhainn
Duffy, Seán 82 [Inishcrone], Co. Sligo 13
Eithne, daughter of Fergal of the Cenél feudalism 4

nEógain and wife of Congalach mac Fiachra, brother of Conn Cétchathach 
Maíle Mithig (d. ) 2 Fiachra, brother of Niall Noígiallach n,
Elphin, diocese of 20, 24, 2, 301, 21, 28
32–, 3–0 Fiachra, brother of Suibne Menn (d. 28)
Empey, Adrian 344n 7n
St Enda 2 St Fiachra of Breuil 247
Engleysgrange [Englishgrange], Co. Fiachra Ealgach, son of Nath Í n
Louth 104 Fiachra [?] Ua Floinn 8
Énna Cennselach 318 Fiachu, son of Niall Noígiallach 22, 310,
Ennis, Co. Clare 30, 33 384
Eochaid Mugmedón, father of Niall Fiachu Sraibtine, grandfather of Niall
Noígiallach 21, 28 Noígiallach 10
Eóganacht 1, 318n Fibonacci, Leonardo, 117
Eógan mac Néill 28 Fife, Scotland 3, 7
Epistola ad milites Corotici [St Patrick’s Findchan 248
Letter to Coroticus] 211, 21, 221 St Findchua of Brí Gobann 3
Eriu oll oilen aingeal, poem 7 Find Mag, Co. Wexford 33
Ernest, dk of Austria (d. 1424) 207 Finglas, Co. Dublin 22
Escotot, Hawisia de 80n Finnavara, Co. Clare 47
Escotot, Walter de 80n St Finnén of Drum Finn 3, 00
Espurgatoire Seint Patriz 287 Fínsnechta Fledach, kg of Brega (7–
Estlone [Esclon or Carrigogunnell], Co. ) 38–
Limerick 7n St Fintan 33
Etymologiae 38 Fir Chell, Co. Offaly 310, 31, 31n, 324,
Eusebius, historian 22 332, 33
Evesham, battle of (12) 87 Fitz Alan, 12th e. of Arundel (d. 141)
17–8
factionalism 1–0, 12–78, 188–, 13 Fitz Geoffrey, John 8
Fada a ccairt Ó Chloinne Dalaigh, poem Fitzgerald, James (d. 14) 4, 8
47 Fitz Henry, Meiler, justiciar of Ire. 7, 324
Fanad, Co. Donegal 132 Fitz John, Adam 100
Farney, lordship of, Co. Monaghan 14 Henry 100
Farranamanagh, Co. Cork 43–, 473 Richard 1n
Fearr beagán cloinne ná clan, poem 12 Fitz Lucian, Thomas 104
Félire Óengusso 1 Fitz Maurice, James 174
Felix, bp of Lismore 322 Fitzpatrick, John 4, 7
Femen, battle of 3, 37 Fitz Stephen, Robert 43
Fenagh, Co. Leitrim 7, 3, 44, 3 Fitz Warin, William, seneschal of Ulster
Fergus, brother of Niall Noígiallach 21 101n
Fergus (d. 18), son of Colmán Már 33, 3 Fitz William, David, baron of Naas n
Ferings, Richard, abp of Dublin (12– Fland Féorna 20
130) 344 Flannacán of Brega (d. 8) 2
Fermanagh [Fir Manach], county 2n, Fland Mainistrech, scholar 32, 404
7n, 130,131, 448, 47, 483, 487 Fland Sinna, kg of Clann Cholmáin,
Ferns, Co. Wexford 314, 31, 320, 330–1, high-kg (d. 1) 2
333, 334, 33 Flavius Julius Valens Augustus, emperor
diocese of 30, 317, 337 of the east (34–378) 217
Index 7
Fleming, Christopher 13 St Gall 27

Fleming, Thomas, baron of Slane 13 Galloway, Scotland –7, n, 134–7
Fóir mh’amhghar, a Dhé bhí, poem 3 Galtrim, Co. Meath 8n
Folloman, son of Cú Chongalt, kg of Galway, county 0, 131, 28
Mide (d. 7) 41–3 town 20–1, 2
Foras feasa ar Éirinn 3 Garbh éirghidh iodhna an Bhrátha, poem
Fore, Co. Westmeath 32, 40, 372 3
Forth, Scotland 2, 4, , 7 Gascony, France 8
Fothrif, Scotland 3 Gaul 22n, 27
Fo réir Choluimb, poem 22 Geese, John, bp of Lismore-Waterford
Frame, Robin 18n 177n
France, Maria de 287 genealogies 7–8, 12–1, 18–2, 31, 32n,
St Francis 308 37, 3, 43–4, 13–8
Franciscan order 10, 114, 118, 11, 203, genetics 3–17, 23–31
20, 340, 343, 371, 33, 488, 40 IMH [Irish Modal Haplotype] n,
Franconia, Germany 24 7–10, 12, 1, 24–30, 33
Frazer, James George 1 Genghis Khan , 8
Fressingfield, John of 10 ‘Gentle Mary’, poem 20
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor Gerald of Wales [Gerald de Barri,
(1220–0) 340 Giraldus Cambrensis] (d.
Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor 1220x1223) 1–8, 207, 320
(142–3) 201, 207 Geraldines [FitzGerald], family, table
Freshford, Co. Kilkenny 37 12, 11; 128–31, 18, 371
Friedrich the Beautiful of Austria 201 Amabilia fitz Gerald 130–1
Frisia 24 Avelina, wife of Cornelius O’Connor
Fritigern, Thervingian Gothic kg 217 371
frontiers 70 Gerald fitz Maurice, 4th baron of
Fuigheall beannacht brú Mhuire, poem 31 Offaly
Fursa of Péronne 247, 20–4, 287–8 Gerald fitz Maurice, 3rd e. of
Desmond (d. 138) 1
Gabh m’éagnach a Eoin Baisde, poem 32 Gerald fitz Maurice, th e. of Kildare
Gach oige mar a hadhbhar, poem 34 17
Gaelic Irish James fitz Gerald, th e. of Desmond
and artistic patronage 10, 11, (d. 143)13, 171–8
3–40 John fitz Gerald, 4th e. of Desmond
and attacks on the English 320–1, 347 (d. 13) 1–70
and bardic schools 48–80 John fitz Thomas, th baron of Offaly
and early Irish law 38 and (131) 1st e. of Kildare
and ecclesiastical sites 21–78 (d. 131) 8, 2, 128–31
and expeditions against 10 Juliana fitz Gerald (d. 1300), wife of
and kingship 211, 21–20 Thomas de Clare 128–
and legal status 10 Maurice fitz Gerald, 3rd baron of
and poets 10 Offaly (d. 128) 128
and praise poems 12, 377, 38 Maurice fitz Gerald (d. 1401), son of
and royal inauguration practices Gerald, 3rd e. of Desmond
17–200 1–70
and royal military households 382– Maurice ‘Maol’ fitz Maurice (d. 128)
and surnames 4– 128–31
Geraldines [FitzGerald], family (contd.) Guines, Margaret de, wife of Richard de

Maurice fitz Thomas, 1st e. of Burgh, e. of Ulster (d. 132) 1
Desmond (d. 13) 177 St Guthlac (73–714) 383–4
Shane fitz Thomas 18
Thomas, 7th e. of Desmond (d. 148) H. of Saltrey 28
178, 38 Hadsor, Reginald 14
Thomas fitz Gerald, th e. of Haicéad, Pádraigín, poet 438
Desmond (d. 1420) 13, 1–77, Hall, John 0
180 hall houses 38
Thomas fitz Maurice (d. 1271) 12n Haubrige [Hebreg], Thomas, sheriff of
William fitz Gerald, seneschal of the Connacht 10
liberty of Kerry 171n Haubryk, Robert 14
Gernon, Stephen, constable of Hebrides, Scotland 248–
Greencastle, Carlingford and Cooley Henry I, kg of England (1100–3) 287,
188, 11–3, 1n 21–2
Thomas, of Killincoole 14 Henry II, kg of England (114–8) 303,
St Gildas (c.00–70) 231 311, 312, 32, 332, 43
Gillabaithín, goldsmith 3 Henry III, kg of England (121–72) ,
Gill abbey, Cork 2, 28 78, 87, 8, 1, 4n, 301, 303, 307,
Gilla Fiadnatán, son of Mac Áeda, lord of 30, 330, 331–2
Muinter Tlamáin (d. 11) 10n Henry IV, kg of England (13–1413)
Glenarm, Co. Antrim 133 124n, 174, 17, 10–1, 13
Glenconkeen [Glen Okenekahel], Co. Henry V, kg of England (1413–22) 12,
Derry 101 13, 1, 172, 174, 17, 188
Glendalough, Co. Wicklow 23, 311, 321, Herlewin, bp of Leighlin 324n
323, 32–, 34 Hethe, John, merchant 1
Glendamain, Munster 1 St Hewald the Black 247, 24n
Glyn Dŵr, Owain 188 St Hewald the Fair 247, 24n
Godfrey of Bouillon 113 Hibernicus exul 247, 2
Gospel of Nicodemus 40–11 Historia Britonum 37
Gowran, Co. Kilkenny 170 Historia ecclesiastica 382
Gowrie, Scotland 3 Hoigge, John, of Cornwall 172
Grace, Richard 3 Holland, Thomas. th e. of Kent and dk
Grallagh, Co. Tipperary 7n of Surrey (d. 1400) 10–1, 1
Granard, Co. Longford 80 Hollywood, Co. Wicklow 327
Gratian, 33n Holy Trinity, priory of, Dublin 344–, 38
Great Book of Irish Genealogies 27, priory of, Kilkenny 10, 121
13–8 priory of, Lough Key, Co.
Greencastle, Co. Down 102, 10, 11, 12 Roscommon 301, 32, 34, 31
Gregóir, bp of Dunkeld, 2 priory of, Tuam 301
Gregorius, bp of Dublin 21–2 St Honoratus of Lérins 2
Gregory I, pope (0–04) 22n, 230, Honorius III, pope (121–27) 304, 307,
233, 23, 238– 331, 332
Gregory VII, pope (1073–8) 283, 2 Hoppere, Thomas 100
Gregory IX, pope (1227–41) 340 Hose, Hugh 8n
Grellachdinach [unidentified] 300 Hynes [Ua hEidhin], family , 2, 28
Grey, Leonard, Lord Deputy 370 Gilla na Náem, of Uí Fiachrach Aidni, kg
Gui, Bernard, Dominican 341 of Síl Muiredaig 288n
Index 81
St Íbar, uncle of St Abbán 334 Jocelin of Furness 28

‘I am repentant’, poem 20 Johan I, dk of Cleves 112
In Calad [bar. Rathcline, Co. Longford] Johannes, bp of Leighlin (d. c.1201) 324n
71, 74 John, bp of Connor (123–c. 131) 3
Inchiquin, manor, Co. Clare 130, 13, 177 John, dk of Bedford (d. 143) 174, 180,
Inch St Lawrence [Tristellauragh], Co. 182
Limerick 7n John, kg of England (11–121) 8, 70n,
Inghean tSearluis nach claon cuing, poem 78n, 8, 133, 134, 21n, 300, 307,
43 323–7, 330–2
Inisdaville [possibly in Cluain Dabhail], second expedition to Ireland 324
co. Armagh 100 John of Bohemia 200
Inishmaine, Co. Mayo 2, 301 John, Cistercian abbot of Viktring 201–3
Inishowen, Co. Donegal 8, 7, 02 John of St John, bp of Ferns 331
Inisloughnaght [Inis Lounaght], Co. John of Salerno, papal legate 302, 322
Tipperary 333, 370 John Scottus Eriugena 232, 23–7, 247,
I n-ithir ghrás do ghein Dia, poem 0, 2
12–13 John XXII, pope (131–34) 34
Innocent III, pope (118–121) 27, 302, Jolif, Robert 
30–7, 322, 324, 327, 330, 340, 33 Jonas of Susa 24, 24
Innocent IV, pope (1243–4) 340 Julianus Pomerius 22–7
Innse Gall 133
See also Hebrides Kalkar, Germany 110–12, 11–23
Inver, Co. Antrim 4, 10 Karliolo, Piers de 
Iona, Scotland 248, 24n, 2n, 270 William de 
Iorwerth, Llywelyn ab, of Gwynedd 72, 78 Karnburg, Austria 20
Ireland, English invasion of (12th cent.) Keating, Geoffrey 31, 3, 400, 4,
3, 108, 2 00, 4
Ireland, English of Keenaght [Ciannachta], barony, Co. Derry
attitudes to Gaelic Irish 12 8, 134
intermarriage with Gaelic population Kells, Co. Kilkenny 33
4– Kells, Co. Meath 187, 22, 24, 2, 2,
Irish Historic Towns Atlas (IHTA) 21–2, 270, 27, 27, 277
24–, 277 synod of (112) 27, 281, 20, 21,
Isidore of Seville 38, 387 30, 31, 32, 32
Iveragh, Co. Kerry 1 Kerry, county, liberty of 1n, 171
Keynsham, abbey of, England 172
James, dk of York 3 Kilabban, Co. Laois 31, 334–
James III, kg of Scots (140–88) 0 Kilbarron, Co. Donegal 4, 474, 47,
St Jarlath [Iarlaith], abbot of Tuam 27, 478–
20n, 2– Kilbixy, Co. Westmeath 71
Jaski, Bart 7n Kilbrack, Co. Clare 47, 477
St Jerome 243 Kilcooly abbey, Co. Tipperary 370
Jerpoint, Co. Kilkenny 31, 333 Kilconnell, Co. Galway 33
Jerusalem 28–, 22–3 Kilcrea, Co. Cork 372, 33
‘Jesus and St Íte’, poem 20 Kilcreevanty abbey, Tuam, Co. Galway
Jews, Judaism 112, 114, 224, 228–30, 20 283, 28
Joan of Acre, daughter of Edward I n Kilcrohane, Co. Cork 44, 4, 473, 474,
Jobson, Francis 43 47
Kilculliheen, nunnery of, Co. Waterford Lackeen Castle, Co. Tipperary 372
370 Lacy, family 3–84
Kildare, county 31 Alice, daughter of Hugh I n
city 22, 23, 24, 2, 270–1, 27, Egidia, daughter of Walter n, 7
277 Elayne, daughter of Hugh I n
earls of 32, 4 Gilbert, son of Walter n, 7, 78n
Kilian of Aubigny 2n Gwenllian, wife of William Gorm de
St Kilian of Würzburg (d. c.8) 247, Lacy 7, 72, 78
24 Hugh I, lord of Meath (d. 118) 3–,
Kilkeel, Co. Down 87, 8 8, 70, 78n, 80n, 270, 274, 277
Kilkenny Castle 272–4 Hugh II, e. of Ulster (d. 1242) 3–4,
city 108– 10, 11–23, 1n, 22, 2, –, 72–7, 83, 8, 8, 1, 3, 4,
272–4, 27, 277, 34– 102
Hightown 108–, 273 Juliania, daughter of Walter n
Irishtown 108–, 272 Katharine, daughter of Walter n
county 20, 1, 182, 2 Matilda, daughter of Hugh II n, 88
Kilkenny West, Co. Westmeath 371 Nicholas 82n
Killala, Co. Mayo 28–0, 302, 303, 32 Robert, uncle of Hugh I 7, 80n
Killaloe, Co. Clare 283, 284, 330–2, 30 Robert, son of Hugh I 8n
Killare, church of 41 Rose, sister of Hugh I n
Killeentrava 2 Rose, daughter of Hugh I n
Killickabawn [Cell moccu Birn], Co. Simon (d. 1233) 7–80, 80n
Wicklow 327 Walter, lord of Meath (d. 1241) 3, ,
Killincoole, Co. Louth 14 7–, 70, 71, 72n, 73–8, 83, 274,
Killursa, Co. Galway 288 277
Kilmacduagh, Co. Galway 20, 2, 303, William Gorm (d. 1233), son of Hugh
322 I 3–84
Kilmore [Cell Mór Dithruimhe], Co. Ladislas IV, kg of Hungary 11, 122
Roscommon 70, 7, 7, 2 Lambert, Oliver, governor of Connacht
Kilronan, Co. Roscommon 47 37
Kilsarkan, Co. Kerry 47 Lanark, Scotland 
Kilskeer [Cell Scíre], Co. Meath 22 Lanfranc, abp of Canterbury (d. 108) 283
Kilskeery, Co. Tyrone 42 Langeford, James de 8
Kilteasheen, Co. Roscommon 32, Languedoc, France 8, 74
3–1 Laois, county 20
Kinsale, Co. Cork 4 Larne, Co. Antrim 0n, 133
Kintore, Scotland 3 Lasair [or Mugain, Erc, Eithne], mother
Kintyre, Scotland , 131 of Colmán Már 43–4
Kirkam, John 181, 183 Lassenhale, Co. Dublin 180
Kleve, Dietrich von, count, 110, 120 Lateran Council, 1st (1123) 22, 24
Knapdale, Scotland 131 Lateran Council, 3rd (117) 302
Knappoge Castle 370 Lateran Council, 4th (121) 302, 307n,
Knockboolteenagh, Co. Cork 44 308, 324, 327, 330, 340, 30
Knockdinnin, Co. Louth 18n Laud Misc 10 38
Knockfinn, Co. Clare 4 Lea, Co. Laois 12n
Knockmoy, Co. Galway 300 Leabhar breac, An 40, 11
Knockvicar, Co. Roscommon 32 Leabhar Caillín 47
Kyteler, Alice 33, 34–, 31 Leabhar na Carraige 38
Index 83
Leabhar Chlainne Suibhne 487, 01 Lissardowlan, Co. Longford 74–

Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe 47 Lissylisheen, Co. Clare 477
Leabhar gearr Tuilen 3, 484 Loch Carrigán 21
Leaffony [Liathmhuine], Co. Sligo 13 Loch Cenn [Loch Sílenn] 33–4, 3
Lebor Gabála 4, 4 Loch Laodacháin [probably Lough
Lebor gerr 32–3, 3 Creggan, Co. Westmeath] 73, 83
Lebor na hUidre 30, 32, 3, 38, 484, Lough Lean [Loch Léin], Co. Kerry 1
48, 40, 43, 44, 4, 4 Loch Lene [near Fore, Co. Westmeath] 40
Leckin, Co. Westmeath 41 Loch Linnhe, Scotland 248
Ledrede, Richard, bp of Ossory (1317– Loch Monann, Co. Tyrone 483
1) 34– Lóeguire, son of Niall Noígiallach 22
Lees, David son of Odo de, sheriff of Logan, Co. Antrim 100
Limerick 173 Loíges Cúile Réta, kingdom of 317, 33
Leinster, lordship of 0, 7, 10, 310, London, England 20, 330
31, 330–2 Tower of 18, 21, 24
province of 2, 312, 314, 318 London, Henry of, abp of Dublin,
Léis, Piaras de 0 justiciar 304, 307–8, 324–, 327–8,
Leitrim, county 47, 48 331–2
Lejre, Denmark 37 William de 88
Lemanaghan Bog, Co. Offaly 30 Longes mac nUislenn 1
Lemardcale, Co. Kerry 173 Longford Demesne [An Longphort], Co.
Leopold of Vienna 204 Sligo 13
Leth Cam, battle of (827) 2 Lorrha, Co. Tipperary 372, 3
Leth Cuinn  Lorsch, abbots of 247
Letter of Prester John 420–1, 43 Lothian, Scotland 2
Liber Cuanach 44, 47 Lough Allen, Co. Leitrim 3
Liber Dub dá Lethe 44, 47 Lough Carra, Co. Mayo 284
Liber Flavus Fergusiorum 11 Lough Ennell, Co. Westmeath 378–
Liber hymnorum 48, 1 Lough Erne, Co. Fermanagh 71n, 131
Liber de miraculis 327 Lough Foyle, Co. Derry 88, 8
Libourne, France 137 Loughglynn, Co. Roscommon 4
Librén, son of Illand 34 Lough Mask, Co. Mayo 2, 131, 284
Libur gerr I Buadhachain 3 Lough Oughter [‘the lake of Tír Bríuin’],
‘Librum Monachorum’ 448, 47 Co. Cavan 70, 83
Life of Brendan 488 Loughsewdy, Co. Westmeath 10n
Life of Colum Cille 487–8, 4–00 Louis IX, kg of France (122–70) 340
Life of St Munnu 488 Louis XIV, kg of France (143–171) 3
Limavady, Co. Derry 88 Loundres [London], Alexander de 4
Limerick, county, community of 177, 182 Richard de 4
lordship , n, 0 William de, grandson of Matilda
city 370 Butler 102–3, 10
Lincoln, England 324 Louth, barony 14
Lindisfarne, England 22 county 18–
Lionel of Antwerp, e. of Ulster and dk of town 187
Clarence (d. 138) 104, 18 Louvain, Belgium 31, 48n, 2
Lislaughtin Friary, Co. Kerry 371 Luccreth moccu Chíara, poet 38–7
Lismore, Co. Waterford 372 Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius
crozier 372 230–1
Lugaid, brother of Ainmire (d. 8) 7n Mac Cuinn, family 8

Lugaid of Lismore 247, 248 maccu Machthéni, Muirchú 221–, 227–
Luigne, Connacht 284, 483 8, 230, 231, 23–7, 23–40
Luin oc elaib, poem 388 mac Cuilennáin, Cormac, kg of Munster
Lyn, William, vicar of Any 30, 31 (d. 08) 37
Lynally, Co. Offaly 310 Mac Dáir[e Mac Bruaideadha(?)], Tadhg,
Lynch, John 1, 1–200, 202, 204, 207 poet 0
Lyuett, John de 237n Mac Dhuibh Eamhna, Dompnald, lord of
Robert de 237n Clannenliga [Cenél nAmhalaidh]
102
Mac Áeda, family 10n Mac Diarmata, family 12–14, 30, 32,
Mac Áedacáin, family 10, 2, 28, 310 40
Mac Aodhagáin, family of Ballymacegan ancestry of 12–13
4, 4, 47, 47 Brian 3
Mac Airechtaig, family 14 mac Diarmata, Cormac, kg of Leinster 33
Mac Amalgaid, family 73n Mac Domnaill, Áengus, of Islay 12,
Mac an Bhaird, family 488, 0 132–3
Conchubhar Ruadh 41 Alexander, of Islay 12
Diarmaid mac Laoisigh 40, 41, 4, mac Domnaill, Máel Sechnaill 38
47 Mac Donnchadha 483, 4
Fearghal Óg, poet 28–, 3 Mac Donnocáin, Florentius, bp of
Gofraidh, son of Brian, poet 33, 3, Dromore (130–?) 102
4 Mac Dubgaill, family 13
Pádraig Óg 40, 41, 42, 4, 1 Alexander, of Argyll 13, 13
Mac Badlaigh, Philip 3 Eógan 13
Mac Cába, Cathaoir 4 Mac Dubhghaill, family of Mantua 4
Mac Cairteáin, Uilliam 412 Mac Duinn Sléibe, Ruaidrí, kg of Ulster
Mac Carrgamna, family 8 (1172–1201) n
Gilla Croichefraich 307n mac Echach, Brandub, kg of the Uí
Mac Cárthaig, family 48 Cheinnselaig 333, 33
Cormac, kg of Munster (d. 1138) 2– Mac Eochagáin, Conall 48
, 40 mac Ercae, Domnall, kg of Tara 388
Cormac, son of the e. of Muskerry 3 mac Ercae, Muirchertach, kg of Tara (d.
Diarmait, kg of Desmond 42 c. 3) 7n
Mac Cathmaíl, family 7, , 2, 28 Mac Fáeláin, dynasty 311, 31, 328, 32
Mac Cochláin, Toirdhealbhach 48 Conn, bp of Kildare 324, 328
Mac Con Mara, family 1, 34, 31, 370 Mac Fhir Bhisigh, Dubhaltach 27, 13
Mac Con Midhe, family 73n Mac Fhir Bhisigh castle, Lecan, Co. Sligo
Giolla Brighde, poet 43, 2–31 34
MacCotter, Paul 173n family 30
Mac Craith, Ruaidhrí 41, 43–4, 4–7, genealogies 171n, 3
4 Mac Fhlannchadha, family 4
mac Cridain, Cairpre, kg of Munster 3 An Cosnamhach 412
mac Crimthainn, Áed, abbot and coarb of Mac Gilla Mo-Cholmóc 321
Terryglass 400 Mac Gilla Phádraig of Osraige 17–,
Mac Cruitín, Aindrias 0 318, 33
Mac Cruitín, Aodh Buidhe 4, 48, 4 Domnall, son of Donnchad (d. 118)
Mac Cuidithi 47 31
Index 8
Donnchad, son of Domnall (sl. 1170) Donnchad (d. 110) 40

317 Muirchertach, kg of Uí Cheinnselaig
Mac Gilla Sechnaill 8 (d. 113) 311, 312, 314–1, 31,
Mac Gilla Suilig, Muirchertach 3 321, 328
Mac Gilla Uidir, Echdonn, abp of Murchad, brother of Diarmait, kg of
Armagh 322n, 324 Leinster 311–12
Mchoulyn [MacQuillin], Estevene 10 Macosquin, Co. Derry 3
Mac in Chrossáin, Énrí, bp of Raphoe mac Rithbertaigh, Cíthruadh 448
(c.130–1)  Macrobius, bp of Glendalough 32, 32–8
Mac Ionaigh, Brian 413 mac Róich, Fergus 20, 44
McKee [MacHugh, Hughson, Mac Samradáin, family 8, 2, 28
Hews(t)on, Hudson, McCoy, Magee Mac Suibne, family 131–2
etc.], family 10, 2, 28 Máire 47
Mackman, Jonathan, 18n Maolmuire 132n
Mac Lochlainn, Gofraid, bp of Derry Murchad 132
(127–c.131) 8 Mac Suibne Fánad, family 48
Muirchertach, kg of Cenél nEógain, St M’Áedóc 333–4, 337
high-kg of Ire. 31 Máel Cobo (d. 13), grandson of Ainmire
Mac Máel Chiaráin, Eugenius, bp of (d. 8) 7n
Meath (ante 1177–111) 7 Máel Finnia, son of Flannacán of Brega
Mac Máel Coluim, Máel Ísu, of Armagh (d. 8) 2
37, 24 Máel Mithig, father of Congalach
Mac Máel Ísu, Nicol, abp of Armagh (d. ) 2
(1272–1303) 8 Máel Mórda, grandson of Dub Doithre
Mac Magnusa, family 10, 2 (d. 743) 8n
Cathal (d. 148) 448, 44, 41–4, 4– Máel Ruba 248
mac Maíle Mithig, Congalach (d. ), of Mag Aí, Co. Roscommon 288–, 483
Síl nÁedo Sláine, high-kg. 2 Mag Aibne, Co. Laois 317
Mac Mailin, Clarus, archdeacon of Mag Feimin, Co. Tipperary 33, 33
Elphin 301 Magh Bréngair [unidentified] 28
Mac Mathghamhna, family 41, 4 Mag Nise 3
Brian 1 Mag Nissi, Co. Leitrim 71n
Brian mac Briain 41 Mag Uidhir, family 10, 42, 44, 48
Eochaidh 14– Áed, son of Pilib (d. 1341/4), son of
Mac Menman, family , 2, 28 Amlaíb (d. 130), son of Donn
Mac Murchada, family 311–14, 337 Óc Mag Uidhir [Maguire] (d.
Conchobar, son of Diarmait (d. 1170) 1302), kg of Fir Manach 10
318n Aodh, poet (d. 100) 38, 41
Diarmait, kg of Leinster (112–71) Cú Chonnacht 4
311, 313, 31, 317–1, 328 Magnus, son of Art, son of Pilib (d.
Diarmait Muimnech, son of 1341/4), son of Amlaíb (d. 130),
Muirchertach 314 son of Donn Óc Mag Uidhir
Domnall Cáemánach, kg of Leinster [Maguire] (d. 1302), kg of Fir
(1171–) 311–1 Manach 10
Domnall Óc, son of Domnall Pilib 448
Cáemánach, 313, 31, 321 Séamus 42, 4–7
Domnall Remor, son of Muirchertach Maine, son of Niall Noígiallach 22, 28
314 Mairg iarras iomlaoid cháinte, poem 34
8 Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
Mairg nach taithigh go teach ríogh, poem Martyrology of Donegal 48n

34 Martyrology of Óengus 487
Maith agus maithfidhir duid, poem 3 Mary I, Queen of England (11–8) 370
Maith an sgéalaidhe an sgriobtúir, poem 30 Massunton [Masontown], Co. Down 100
Malachias, bp of Lismore 322 Matilda of Scotland, wife of Henry I, kg
St Malachy, abp of Armagh and papal of England 287, 22n
legate 27, 281, 23, 2–7, 2 Ma Tulchain, Munda 488
Malcolm [Máel Coluim mac Cináeda] II, Maumatyn, John 100
kg of Scots (100–34) 8 Thomas 100n
Malcolm [Máel Coluim] III, kg of Scots Maynooth, Co. Kildare 12n, 370
(108–3) 7 Mayo, county 131, 283–
Malchus [Máel Ísu Ua Cerbaill], bp of diocese of 28–0, 301, 302–3
Clogher–Louth (1178–c.118/7) 327 Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal (d. 11) 3
Man, Isle of 13–7, 218 Meath, lordship of 7, 8, 70, 78n, 7,
rebellion in 13 10, 332
Manby, Robert  See also Mide
Mandeville, family 87, 134 Mé Éba, poem 18–1
Henry de 2, 101n Meelick, Co. Galway 301
Martin de 7 Megiser, Hieronimus 207
William 101 Meinhard II, dk of Görz Tirol 201–4, 20
Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim 4 Mella, mother of St Abbán 334
manuscripts 38–40, 40–11, 412–43, Mellifont abbey, Co. Louth 300, 31, 3,
444–, 481–02 3, 371, 372, 373
Mar, Scotland 4,  Conspiracy of 333
Marbán 44 Melrose, Scotland 
Maredudd ap Rhobert, of Cedewain n Merbury, Laurence, chancellor of Ire. 14
Margaret, the ‘Maid of Norway’ 124, 12 merchants 111, 118
Margaret, Queen of Scotland (1070–3) 7 Mercia, kingdom of 383–4
Maria Saal, Austria 20 Merewalh 384
Marian devotion 03–13 Mhaighin, An/Mainistir na Maighne
Marisco, Geoffrey de , 8, n, 77, 323, [Moyne], Co. Mayo 13
331–2 Mhuireadhaigh, meil do sgín, A, poem 30
William de, 77 Middleton, Marmaduke, bp of Waterford
Marjorie, countess of Carrick, wife of and Lismore (17–82) 3
Robert Bruce, e. of Carrick 133 Mide, province of 21, 2, 32, 41–2, ,
marriage alliances 4– 70, 280–1, 284, 22, 2, 310, 312,
Marshal, Isabella, wife of William I 32 31, 33
John, constable of Athy Castle, Co. See also Meath
Kildare 17, 183–4 Midia, Petronilla de 34, 30
Richard, e. of Pembroke (d. 1234) 10, Milan, Italy 340n
121 Mitchell, David 370
William I, e. of Pembroke (d. 121) Moan, son of Muiredach, son of Eógan 7n
72n, 83, 108, 10, 120, 122, 271, Moers, Dietrich von, abp of Cologne 112
273–4, 277, 307, 30, 327, 32– Móin Chranncháin [Cranaghan, Co.
32, 33–7 Cavan] 7
William II, e. of Pembroke (d. 1231) St Molaise 3
74–, 121 St Moling (d. 7) 24
St Martin of Tours 240, 48 St Mo Lua 317
Index 87
Molymartel, Co. Meath 4 Naas, Co. Kildare 1n, 182

Monaghan, county 47 Napoleon, Bonaparte 111
Monaincha, Co. Tipperary 37 Navigatio S. Brendani 244–, 287,
Monasterboice, Co. Louth 32, 3 488
Monesan 222–4, 227, 230, 231, 237–8 Nendrum Monastery, Co. Down
Mongfind, wife of Eochaid Mugmedón, 32
father of Niall Noígiallach 21 Netreville, Luke de 10
Monte Gargano, Italy 30 Newby, Maurice 3, 4
Montfort, Simon de (d. 12) 87 New Forest, England 78
Monydof [Moneyduff], Co. Antrim 100 New Ross, Co. Wexford 32–30, 33
Mooney, Donatus, 37, 370 Newtownards [Novella ville de Blathwic],
Morett [Mag Réta], Co. Laois 317 Co. Down 8, 10
Morey, Scotland 3 Newtownstewart [Sean-Chaisleáin],
Mortel, Edmond 4 Co. Tyrone 487
Mortimer, family 8, 11–2 Newry, Co. Down 12
Edmund, 3rd e. of March (d. 1381) 8, Newtown, near Termonfeckin, Co. Louth
104, 18 14
Edmund, th e. of March (d. 142) Niall, e. of Carrick 133
188, 10–2 Niall Glúndub (d. 1) n, 2
Roger, 1st e. of March (d. 1330) 18 Niall Noígiallach , 8, 8n, 10, 1, 21, 23,
Roger, 4th e. of March (d. 138) 10– 2, 28–, 310
Moses, son of Amram, poet 412–43 Nicholas, George 470
Mothel, Co. Waterford 371 Nijmegen, the Netherlands 110
Mount Carmel, Israel 28 Níníne 24
Mounth, Scotland 2 Nohavaldaly, Co. Cork 43
Mount of Temptation 28 Noli Pater, hymn 48
Mount Sinai, Egypt 28 Nordrhein, Germany 110
Movilla, Co. Down 8, 10 Normandy, France 1, 174, 20
Moycashel, Co. Westmeath 310 Northburgh/Greencastle, Co. Donegal
Moyglare, Co. Meath 80 8, 8
Moylurg [Mag Luirg] 13, 34, 483 Northumbria, England 4
Moynagh Lough crannog [Loch Dé Novelle ville de Coly [The ‘new town of
Mundech] 380, 381 Cooley], Co. Louth 103
Muckamore, Co. Antrim 87, 3 Nugent, Gilbert de n
Mucklagh, Co. Cork 44
Muinter Bháire 40–, 47–8 Ó Briain of Corbally, Co. Clare 0
Muinter Eolais [bar. Mohill, Co. Leitrim] Ó Bruadair, Dáibhidh 48
71n, 483 Ó Buadhacháin 3
Muinter Gillagáin 28 Ó Caiside, Éamonn 40
Muintir Máelfináin, 284 Ó Caiside, Ruaidhrí, vicar of Kilskeery
Muintir Tadhgáin of Tethba 3 and archdeacon of Clogher (d. 141)
Mullingar, Co. Westmeath 22 444–
Multyfarnham Friary, Co. Westmeath 373 Ó Carraic, Éinrí 47
Munster, lordship of 0, 18, 173–, 182, Ó Ceallaigh [O’Kelly], Ralph, abp of
10 Cashel (134–1) 30
Munster, province of 1, 33, 3, 2–, Ó Cearbhaill, Tadhg, of Éile 1
34, 41, 43 Ó Cearbhalláin, Toirdhealbhach 4
Múscraige Breogain, Co. Tipperary 33 Ó Clabaigh, Colmán 32n
Ó Cléirigh, Cú Choigcríche, son of Ó Gadhra, Seaán 47

Diarmait, son of Tadhg Cam 42, ogam inscriptions 18–21, 23, 30
47 Ogenty, cantred [Tír húa nGeintich], Co.
Giolla Riabhach 484, 488 Kilkenny 20
Gofraidh 3 O’Grady, Standish 413
Mícheál 372, 31, 403, 44–, 487, Ó hIfearnáin, Mathghamhain 48
48n, 8 Ó hÓgáin [O’Hogan], Tomás, bp of
O’Clery Book of Genealogies 27, 171n, Killaloe (d. 134) 30
3, 41 Oireacht Uí Chatháin, Co. Derry 483
Ó Cobhthaigh, Diarmuid, poet 33–4 Ó Luinín (d. 128) 444–
Tadhg, poet 0 Cathal [Charles Lynegar] 0
Ó Cobhthsigh, Tadhg Mór, poet 47 Matha 4
Ó Coirnín, family 4 Ó Maoil Mhuaidh, family, of
An tAthair Pádraig 40 Hughestown 4
Pádraig Dubh 4 Ó Maolchonaire, family 487–, 42, 4,
Ó Conchobhair Sligigh 38 4
O’Connor, Cornelius [Conchobhar Ua Muirgheas 487, 488
Conchobhair] 371 Peadar 40, 4, 47
O’Connor, John [Seaan Ua Conchobhair] Seaán 48
371 Siodraidh 487
O’Conor [Uí Chonchobhair] of O’Mahony [O Mahown] 42, 48
Aghmacart 4, 47–, 478 Ó Mathghamhna, Risteard, priest 473
Donnchadh 47 Ó Mathghamhna Castle, Ros Broin
Risteard 47, 478 [Rosbrien], Co. Cork 34
Ó’Conor [Ó Conchobhair] of Ballintober Ó Murchúghadh, Séamus 413
4 Ó Raghallaigh, Aodh 4
O’Conor, Charles, of Belanagare 4 Oran, Co. Roscommon 301
Ó Cuirnín 33, 3 Order of St John of Jerusalem [Knights
Ó Dála, Seán 413 Hospitallers] 114, 118
Odense, Denmark 277 Order of the Temple [Knights Templars]
Ó Donnabháin, Domhnall, chief of Clann 287, 307, 342–
Chathail (d. 10) 43 Origen of Alexandria 232–3
Ó Duibhgeannáin, family 47, 4 Orkney Islands, Scotland 218
Cú Choigcríche 40 Ormond, dukes of 38
Fearghal Muimhneach 40 earls of 2
Seaán Ballach 3, 40 Ó Rodaighe, Tadhg 38–1
Ó Duinnín, Seaán 40 Ó Ruoghann, Peadar 413
O’Dwyer, Edmund, colonel 4, 7 Ó Siadhail, Eóghan Carrach 48, 488
Ó hEadhra, Ruaidhrí (mac Cormaic) Osraige [Ossory] 20, 317, 31–20, 33, 337
41–4, 4, 1 Ossory, diocese of 10, 274, 34
Brighid, wife of Ruaidhrí 43 Ó Suilleabháin, Diarmuid, priest 473
Ó hÉidigheáin, Risdéard, abp of Cashel Domhnall of Co. Kerry 0
177n O’Sullevane, Thomas 474–
óenach 24– Oswine, kg of the Deiri (c.42–1) 382
Óengus (d. 21), son of Colmán Már 33, Oswald, kg of Northumbria (d. 42) 22
3, 38– Otto, dk of Carinthia 201
Óengus Osrithe 20 Otto II, dk of Liechtenstein 201
Ó hEoghusa, Eochaidh 47, 34–, 41 Ottokar, kg of Bohemia 203
Index 8
Ottokar of Gaul 201–4 Poer, Arnold le 33, 341

Oughterard, Co. Kildare 1n, 17 Poetry
Ó hUiginn, Fearghal Ruadh 472 and bardic poetry 03–13, 4
Maol Mhuire 43, 4 and religious poetry 14–23
Mathghamhan, poet 3 Poitou, France 77
Philip Bocht, poet 24, 27n, Port na Cranne [Fuarchosach], Co.
30– Leitrim 3
Ruaidhrí 47 Portrush, Co. Antrim 8
Tadhg Óg, poet 12, 472, 27–8, 30– ‘Prayer for tears’, poem 20
2, 37 Prendergast, Philip 331
Owles, Co. Mayo 132 Preston, Christopher 17
Owney and Arra, Co. Tipperary 318 St Prosper Tiro 228–30
Psalter of Cashel 48–
Pallewaut, Patrick 101 Pullis, Co. Monaghan 413
Paparo, John, cardinal 32, 32
Paris, France 137 Quer [Cargan], Co. Antrim 
Paris, Matthew, chronicler 30, 331 Quin Friary, Co. Clare 370
Park, Co. Galway 47
parliaments and great councils, in Ireland Ragnailt (dau. of Ua Fergail), wife of Áed
14, 1, 18 Ua Conchobair 77n
St Patrick 30, 211–20, 221–4, 227, 23–8, Ráith Beccáin, Co. Tipperary 33
240, 2, 270, 28–, 27, 2, 337, Ráith Bressail, synod of (1111) 2, 27,
388, 3, 44 280, 283–4, 288–, 21, 301
patronage 173, 18–1, 13, 233 Ransiven [Island Magee], Co. Antrim 4,
Peace of the Pyrenees 3 , 10
Peada, kg of the Middle Angles 384 Raphoe, diocese of 8, , 341–2, 31
Pedlow [Pel de Lu], family 87 Raskeagh, Co. Louth 14
Edmund 4, 10 Rathangan, Co. Laois 12n
Ralph 4n Rathbrennan, Co. Roscommon 24
William 4 Rathgormack, Co. Waterford 371
Pembridge, John de, Dominican Rathlind, Co. Tipperary 1
chronicler 343, 347 Rathlong [Raloo], Co. Antrim 100
Penda, kg of Mercia (d. c.) 384 Rathmore, Co. Roscommon 4
Penwalh, father of St Guthlac 384 Rathmullan, friary, Co. Donegal
peregrinatio, peregrini 242–, 248–2, 24, 47
2–, 28 Rathnew, Co. Wicklow 37
Philippa of Clarence, wife of Edmund Rathwire, Co. Westmeath 80
Mortimer, 3rd e. of March 18 Ratoath, Co. Meath 7
Pierpoint, Stephen , 7 Rawlinson B02 (manuscript, possibly the
Thurstan n Book of Glendalough) 38–40
Piers the Fair (d. 1233) 7–80 Rede, Richard, chief baron of the Dublin
pilgrimage 241–0, 28–, 2, 30 exchequer 13
Pipard, Roger (d. 122) n, 7 Regensburg, Germany 24
Piro, William, bp of Glendalough 324, Register of Clogher 42
32, 327 ‘Remonstrance of the Irish Princes’
Pius II [Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini], pope (1317) 341
(148–4) 200–1, 207 Repgow, Eike von 203
Philo Judaeus, philosopher 22, 22, 230 Reynolds, Susan 4
0 Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
Reve, Thomas, bp of Lismore (138–3), Rossmore, Co. Cork 44, 4

bp of Waterford and Lismore (133– Rossnacaheragh, Co. Cork 44
4) 30 Rothari, kg of Langobardia 20
Walter 30 Rous, Hugh de, bp of Ossory 10, 324n
Rhuddlan, North Wales 2n St Rúadán of Lorrha, Co. Tipperary
Richard I, kg of England (118–) 20, 372
21n, 323 Ruaidhrí mac Taidhg mic Ruaidhrí Óig
Richard II, kg of England (1377–) 1, 3
10, 11, 13–4 Rudolf I of Hapsburg 203
Irish expedition of 13 188n Rule of St Benedict 240
Ridelesford, Emeline (d. 127), wife of
Hugh II de Lacy, e. of Ulster 2 Saggart, Co. Dublin 347
Walter de n St Andrews, Scotland 0–3, , 7–
Ríghis, Stiabhna 412 St Canice’s cathedral, Kilkenny 108, 10,
Rinndown, Co. Roscommon 301 121, 272, 3, 3
Robert, bp of St Andrews (1127–) St Columb’s House, Kells 270
1–2, 7 St Colum Cille’s church, Kells 270
Robert, bp of Waterford 322 St Francis’ abbey, Kilkenny 10, 121
Robert II, bp of Waterford 322n St George, 0
Robert I, kg of Scots (130–2) 12, 134, St John’s abbey, Kilkenny 10, 121, 373n
13 St John the Apostle and Evangelist’s
Robert of Bedford, bp of Lismore church, Cork 2
(1218–23) 323n St John the Baptist, hospital of, Kilkenny
Roche, Co. Louth 14 10, 121
Roche, Roland, of Cornwall 172 hospital of, Rinndown 300–1
Rochelle, Richard de la, justiciar of Ire. hospital of, Tuam 28
(121–) 1 hospital of, Kilkenny 10, 121
Rochfort, Simon, bp of Meath (d. anti St John the Evangelist’s priory,
1224) 23 Downpatrick 2
Rockfield, Co. Limerick 1 St Leger, Anthony 38
Roffrelik [Roselick], Co. Derry  St Mary’s abbey, Dublin 321, 32, 3
Rokeby, Thomas, justiciar 34–0 abbey, Trim 274, 28
Rome, Romans 10, 113, 11, 118, 120, cathedral, Tuam 27
207, 21–17, 21, 230, 243, 23, 2, church, Kilkenny 10, 121
28, 24, 308, 32, 330, 341, 34, convent, Clonard 283
33, 48, 47 convent, Clonmacnoise 283
Roo [near Limavady], Co. Derry 134 St Mary du Grace, chapel of 370
Rosbercon [Ros Ua mBercháin], Co. St Mary Magdalen’s hospital, leper
Kilkenny 31, 33, 33 hospital, 121
Roscommon, county 130, 22, 28–, St Mary de Portu Patrum’s Church,
41, 47, 48, 4 Annaghdown 28
town 34, 3 St Mullin’s [church of St Mo-Ling, Tech
Castle 17 Mo-Ling], Co. Carlow 33
diocese of 20, 301 St Patrick’s cathedral, Down 7
Rose of Monmouth, wife of Hugh de Dublin 343–4
Lacy I  church, Kilkenny 272
Ross, diocese of 322, 32, 473 Purgatory, Lough Derg, Co. Donegal
Rossmanagher, Co. Clare 4 28–7
Index 1
St Peter’s priory, Newtown Trim, Co. monastic 21–8, 270–1, 274–8

Meath 3 and urbanization 2, 2, 27–8, 21
SS Peter and Paul’s abbey, Armagh 28 Sgéal doiligh ar Mhuire mhóir, poem 0n
priory, Athlone 300 Shaftesbury, England 172
St Saviour’s friary, Limerick 38 ‘Shame on my thoughts’, poem 18
priory, Dublin 370 Sheephouse, Co. Meath 371
St Thomas’s abbey, Dublin 320 sheriff, office of 14n
Saint’s Island, Lough Ree, Co. Longford Shrine of the Stowe Missal 372
01 Shrule, Co. Mayo 28
Salisbury, England 324 Siegburg, Germany 20
Saltair Chormaic/Chaisil 37–8 Síl mBrain [Shelburne, Co. Wexford],
Saltair na rann 38, 18, 20 dynasty 318, 31
Saltair na Temrach 37–8 Síl nÁedo Sláine, 32, 38
St Sanctan 24 Síl Daimíni 20
Sandal [Kendale], family 87 Síl Máelruanaid, Co. Roscommon
Elias de 104 Síl Muiredaig 280, 284, 288n, 28, 2,
Thomas 88, 3, , 7, 8, , 100 30, 3
William 88, 3, , 7, 8, , 100 Simms, Anngret 21, 23
Sarazin, family 87 Simms, Katharine 3, 7n, 3, 107, 1, 21,
Alexander 102 23, 343n, 31, 31, 444
Saul abbey, Co. Down 87,  Skreen, Co. Meath 13
Savage, family 87 Slane, Co. Meath 22, 13
Henry 4 Sletty, Co. Laois 221
Robert 4 Slieve Carbury, Co. Longford 71n
Scargill, Patrick 18n Slievemargy, Co. Laois 31
Thomas 18 Sligo, county 131, 41, 47
Scallan, John, merchant 370 Castle, Co. Sligo 130, 02
Scanlan, 3 friary of 373
Scot, John le, e. of Huntingdon and 7th e. Smarmore church, Co. Louth 47
of Chester (d. 1237) 72n, 78 Socrates, philosopher 234
Scotland 4–2, 124–7, 130–8, 248, 00 ‘Song of Dermot and the earl’ 312
Scrope, Stephen le, chief governor 1, Sopron, Hungary 112–23
171, 18, 11 Speed, John 43
William, sheriff of Louth 10–1, 13, Speneville, Robert 
1 William n
Sechnussach (d. 71), kg of Tara, brother Stanley, John, lieutenant of Ire. (d. 1414)
of Cenn Fáelad 3 10, 1n, 13
Sedulius Scottus 230–1, 247, 2 St Stephen 237–8
Seefin, Co. Cork 44 Stephen V, kg of Hungary 123
Sellachán, grandson of Dub Doithre (d. Stewart, family 138
743) 8n Alexander, son of Walter Ballach
‘Sell not heaven for sin’, poem 17, 1– 132
20, 23 James, Steward of Scotland (d. 130)
Senchán, poet 44 88, 12–, 134, 13
settlement John, of Jedburgh 12–
and the establishment of parishes 30 John, son of Walter Ballach 132
Gaelic 21, 28, 271–4, 278 Walter Ballach, e. of Menteith (d.
manorial 327 c.123–4) 12–, 131
Stokes, Joan, wife of John Dowdall, Theodosius I, Roman emperor (37–)

sheriff of Louth 1n 340
Stradbally, Co. Laois 317 Thomas of Lancaster, 1st dk of Clarence
Strathearn, Scotland 4 (d. 1421), son of Henry IV 18–,
St Sturm (d. 77) 24n 11, 14
Suibne (d. 00), son of Colmán Már Thomond, lordship of 130, 47
33 Thuringia, Germany 24
Suibne Menn (d. 28) son of Fiachna, Tibberaghny [‘Tiberaght’], Co. Kilkenny
son of Feradach, son of Muiredach, 7n
son of Eógan 7n Tigernach Ua Máel Eoin, abbot of
Sulpicius Severus 240 Clonmacnoise (d. 1172) 282
Sultan al-Kamil 308 Timoleague abbey, Co. Cork 372, 33
St Swithbert 247, 24n Tintern abbey, Co. Wexford 320n, 32
Symond de Balway [unidentified]  Tipper, Richard 412
Tipperary, county 0, 182, 4
Tadc of the Household 30 Tír nAmalgado [Tirawley], Co. Mayo
Táin Bó Cúailgne 20, 43–4, 4, 1 28, 483
Talbot, Gilbert, 3rd lord Talbot (d. 1387) Tír Conaill, Co. Donegal 24, 2, n, 71,
13 8, 2n, 7n, 130–1, 1–8, 1, 20,
John, e. of Shrewsbury (d. 143) 1– 482
0, 13–8, 174–84 Tírechán, bishop 22, 28
Thomas, brother of John, e. of Tír nEógain, Co. Derry and Tyrone 7n
Shrewsbury, deputy lieutenant of Tír Fhiachrach Muaidhe [Tireragh], Cos
Ire. 17 Sligo and Mayo 13–40, 483
Thomas, cousin of John, e. of Tír Oilealla, Co. Roscommon 483
Shrewsbury 17 Tír Tuathail, Co. Roscommon 483
Tallaght, Co. Dublin 22, 347 Titus Flavius Josephus (37–c.100) 22
Tara, Co. Meath 34, 37, 43, 38 Tiughraind Bhécáin, poem 22
Tearc oidhre díleas ag Dia, poem 3 Tóchar Phádraig, 28
Tellach Dunchada [Tullyhunco], Co. Togbham croich I ndeaghaidh De, poem
Cavan 71n 30
Teltown, Co. Meath 22 Topographia Hibernie 1–7
Tempall Mór, Derry 27 Touchet, James, e. of Castlehaven 4
Templehouse, Co. Sligo 4 Toulouse, synod of (122) 340
Templenascreen, Tuam 27, 278 tower houses 4, 4–7, 477
Templeshanbo [Senboth Sine], Co. towns 107–23, 21–78
Wexford 330, 331, 334 trade 111, 11, 118–1
Termann dá bheócc/Dabeocc [Termon Tráigh Baile, near Dundalk, Co. Louth
Magrath], Saints Island, Lough 38
Derg, Co. Donegal 28, 43 Tralee, Co. Kerry 171n
Termonbarry, Co. Roscommon 28n Travels of Sir John Mandeville 41, 420–1,
Termonfeckin, Co. Louth 14 423, 43
Termonkeelin, Co. Roscommon 28n, Travers, Robert, nephew of Geoffrey de
2, 301 Marisco 332
Terryglass [Tirynglasse/Tír dá Glas], Co. Tregoil [unidentified] 10
Tipperary 7n, 318, 400 Trim, Co. Meath 22, 7, 187, 188n, 13,
Tethba, kingdom of, Co. Westmeath 10, 22, 2, 274, 27, 277, 282, 3, 373
22, 3, 41 Castle 274
Index 3
Trom an suan–so ar síol Adhaimh, poem 28 Ua Caíndelbáin, family 8

Tromdhámh Ghuaire 43–4, 3 Ua Caoimh of Duhallow, family 43
Tuam, archdiocese of 27, 281n, 282, Ua Catháin, family 7, 2, 28
28, 20, 2, 302–3, 330 Diarmait, kg of Fir na Craíbe (Co.
town, Co. Galway 22, 2, 274–, Derry) 101
278, 28–1, 28, 301 Ua Catharnaigh, Niall an tSinnigh
Castle 27 (d. 1233) 7
Tugas grádh éagmhaise d’Eoin, poem 32 Ua Ceinnéidigh, family 372
Tuile gan tráigh daonnacht Dé, poem 3 Philip, of Ormond 372
Tuit, Richard de, the elder 80n Ua Céirín, Eochaid Eolach 32, 404
Richard de, the younger (d. 1233) Ua Cellacháin, family 1
7–80 Donnchad (d. 102) 1n
Turnberry Band 124–38 Ua Cellaig, family 10, 30
Tutbury Castle, England 188 Ua Cianáin of Fermanagh 448–, 47
Twescard [An Tuaiscert], Ulster 2 Ua Cíanáin, Finn, bp of Kildare 400
Tyrel, Richard 21n Ua Ciarda 8
Ua Cillín, Cormac, chief vice-abbot of Síl
Ua hAídith [Ohadde], Salamon, kg of Muiredaig 280
Oueath [Iveagh] (Co. Down) 102 Ua Cléirchén, Máel Calainn, bp of
Ua hAnluain, Domnall Ruad, kg of Glendalough 32
Airthir (Co. Armagh) 101, 10 Ua Cléirigh, family, of Kilbarron 4,
Ua Baígill, family 7, 2, 27, 30 474, 47, 477, 478–, 484–, 41–2
Ua Birn, family 14 Ua Cnaill, Cathusach, bp of Connacht
Ua Briain, family 130, 34 (d. 1117) 284
Conchobar, 2 Ua Conchenainn, family 14, 30
Domnall, kg of Thomond (d. 114) Uada 24n
304, 31 Ua Conchobair of Ciarraige Luachra,
Donnchad Cairbrech, kg of Thomond family 1
307 Ua Conchobair of Connacht, family 8,
Mór, daughter of Domnall, kg of 10, 14, 2, 80, 288, 2, 30–, 32,
Thomond 304 43, 02
Mór, daughter of Toirdelbach, kg of Áed (d. 1274) 274, 3
Munster 283 Áed, son of Toirdelbach Mór, 24n
Muirchertach, kg of Munster and Áed, kg of Connacht (d. 1228) n,
high-kg of Ire. ‘with opposition’ 71–2, 73–, 7–7, 81, 301, 304,
(d. 111) 27, 283–4, 288, 21, 307–8, 3
23, 47 Áed, grandnephew of Cathal
Murchad, son of Brian Bóruma 47 Crobderg 30
Tadc, 27 Ben Mide, granddaughter of Ruaidrí,
Toirdelbach, kg of Munster (d. 108) high-kg of Ire. 132
283, 21 Carlus [Karolus], son of Cathal Gall
Turlough 477 (d. 1233) 8, 7
Ua Bróigte of Cenn Caille 317, 337 Cathal Carrach, kg of Connacht
Ua Brolcháin, family 7, 2, 28 (d. 1202) 7
Ua Cáellaide, family, kgs of Osraige 318, Cathal Crobderg, kg of Connacht
31, 33–7 (d. 1224) 7, 71–2, 73–4, 81, 283,
Áed, bp of Clogher (d. 1178) 318 28, 28, 300, 302–8, 324, 33,
Dúngal, bp of Leighlin 318–1 484
Ua Conchobair of Connacht, family (contd.) Ua Dálaigh, Aodh 413

Cathal, son of Áed 3 Aonghus Fionn 3
Conchobar, kg of Uí Maine (d. 1144) Donnchadh Mór, poet 27, 32, 3–
282 Giolla Brighide Albanach, poet 30,
Conchobar Máenmaige, kg of 307–8
Connacht (d. 118) 24 Gofraidh Fionn, poet 38
Domnall, kg of Connacht (1102–0) Muireadhach Albanach 30
288n Ua Dálaigh of Corcomroe, Co. Clare 47
Donnchad mac Fingein, bp of Elphin Ua Dálaigh of Muinter Bháire
33 [Sheepshead Peninsula], Co. Cork
Fedelmid, son of Cathal Crobderg 40–80
30, 3 Aonghus Caoch 43, 4, 47, 47
Máel Ísu, coarb of Roscommon 304 Conchobhar Cam 43
Magnus (d. 1181) 10 Cúchonnacht (d. 113) 41
Magnus, kg of Connacht (d. 123) 130 Donnchadh (d. 1244) 47
Muiredach, coarb of Roscommon 33 Gilla na Trinóite, ollamh of Desmond
Ruaidrí, kg of Connacht, high k of Ire. (d. 11) 41
(d. 118) 70, 81, 27, 278, 24–, Ragnall, ollamh of Desmond (d. 11)
27–8, 302, 303, 304, 30, 311, 41–2
31, 33, 484 Tadhg 42, 43
daughter of, marries de Lacy 3–, Tadhg, son of Donnchadh (d. 114)
70 47
Ruaidrí, brother of Fedelmid 304n Ua Dálaigh Fionn of Nohavaldaly 43
Ruaidrí na Saide Buide, kg of Ua Deóradháin of Ballyorely 47, 47,
Connacht (d. 1118) 280, 283, 478
28n Ua Díumassaig 313
Tadc, kg of Connacht (d. 107) 288n, Ua Dochartaig, family 7, 2, 27, 30, 484
28n Cahir 28
Toirdelbach, kg of Connacht, (122, Ua Doibilín, family , 2, 28
1228–30) 77, 132, 301 Ua Domnaill, family 7, n, 24–, 2, 28,
Toirdelbach Mór, kg of Connacht, 30, 70, 47, 481–02, 48
high-kg of Ire. (d. 11) 10, 27, Áed, kg of Tír Conaill 131, 132
27–7, 281, 283–4, 28, 288–, Aodh 43
21–8, 300–1, 304, 30, 33, 40 Aodh, of Larkfield, Co. Leitrim 42,
Tomaltach mac Áeda, bp of Elphin 44–, 4
and abp of Armagh (d. 1201) Aodh Dubh, son of Aodh Ruadh, lord
322n, 33 of Tír Conaill (d. 137) 482–4,
Tomaltach mac Toirdelbaig, bp of 40–1, 4, 47
Elphin and abp of Tuam (d. 127) Aodh Ruadh, son of Niall Garbh, lord
33, 3 of Tír Conaill (d. 10) 3, 482–
Ua Conchobair Failge, family 31 4, 48, 41, 43
An Calbhach 17– Bronchiolar, son of Aodh 484
Ua Congalaig 8 Conall 42–3
Ua Connairche, Gilla Críst, papal legate Domnall, son of Aodh Dubh 42
282 Domnall Mór, kg of Tír Conaill
Ua Cuinn, family , 2, 28 (1207–41) 71, 41, 02
Tomás, OFM 33 Éigneachán, father of Domnall Mór
Ua Daimhin, Goffraigh 448 41
Index 
Eleanor Fitzgerald, wife of Maghnus Conchobhar, nephew of Domhnall

4 Ballach, kg of Uí Fhiachrach 140,
Fionnghuala, wife of Aodh Ruadh 47 141, 142, 10, 12
Gráinne, wife of Aodh of Larkfield Domhnall Ballach, son of Maol
43 Ruanaidh, kg of Uí Fhiachrach
Joan dau. of Ó Raghailligh, wife of (d. 144?) 140, 141, 14, 147, 12,
Maghnus 02 14
Maghnus, son of Aodh Dubh (d. 13) Domhnall Cléireach, son of Brian, kg
34, 3, 48–, 42, 44, 4, of Uí Fhiachrach (d. 1380) 140,
47–01 141, 142–3, 13, 14
Rose, daughter of Aodh Dubh 487–8 Domhnall Fionn, kg of Uí Fhiachrach
Toirdelbach, brother of Áed, kg of Tír (d. 112) 13, 1
Conaill (d. 1303) 132, 133n Domhnall Óg, son of Ruaidhrí, kg of
Tomás mac Carmaic, bp of Raphoe Uí Fhiachrach 140, 141, 12, 13
(131–37)  Donnchadh, kg of Uí Fhiachrach
Toirdhealbhach, kg of Tír Conaill (d. 1213) 13, 1
(d. 1423) 24, 2 Donnchadh Mór, kg of Uí Fhiachrach
Ua Dongaile, family , 2, 28 (d. 1337) 13, 17–8
Ua Dubhda, family, kgs of Uí Fhiachrach Donnchadh Ultach, son of Tadhg
, 13–8, 30 Riabhach, kg of Uí Fhiachrach
Anabla, mother of Eoghan Caoch 148 (d. 148) 140, 14, 13
An Cosnamhaigh, kg of Uí Éamonn, son of Sein-Bhrian, kg of Uí
Fhiachrach (d. 112) 13, 1 Fhiachrach 140, 14–7, 14
An Cosnamhaigh, kg of Uí Eoghan, son of Conchobhar, kg of Uí
Fhiachrach (d. 1181) 13, 1 Fhiachrach (d. 13) 140, 141,
An Cosnamhaigh, kg of Uí 142, 10–1, 12
Fhiachrach 13, 14 Eoghan Caoch, son of Ruaidhrí, kg of
Aodh, kg of Uí Fhiachrach (d. 83) Uí Fhiachrach (d. 14) 140–1,
13, 1 148, 12, 14
Aodh, kg of Uí Fhiachrach (d. 1143) Féilim, son of Tadhg Buidhe, kg of Uí
13, 1 Fhiachrach 140, 141, 10, 12, 14
Brian, son of Taighleach Muaidhe, Fionnghuala, mother of Domhnall
alias Sein-Bhrian, kg of Uí Ballach 14
Fhiachrach 13, 142, 12, 13, Maghnus, son of Tadhg Buidhe, kg of
14 Uí Fhiachrach 140, 10, 12
Brian Cam, son of Sein-Bhrian, kg of Mairghréag, mother of Tadhg Buidhe
Uí Fhiachrach (d. 14) 140, 141, and Seaán Glas 14, 148
147, 14 Maol Ruanaidh, kg of Uí Fhiachrach
Brian Dearg, kg of Uí Fhiachrach (d. (d. 100) 13, 1
1242) 13, 1 Maol Ruanaidh, kg of Uí Fhiachrach
Brian Óg, grandnephew of Eoghan (d. 1447) 13, 140, 141, 142, 14,
Caoch, kg of Uí Fhiachrach (d. 14
14) 140, 14 Muircheartach, kg of Uí Fhiachrach
Cathal Dubh, son of Conchobhar, kg (d. 10) 13, 1
of Uí Fhiachrach (d. 182) 140, Ruaidhrí, son of Domhnall Cléireach,
141, 11, 12 kg of Uí Fhiachrach (d. 1417)
Conchobhar Conallach, kg of Uí 140, 141, 142, 143–4, 12, 13,
Fhiachrach (d. 121) 13, 17 14
 Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland
Ua Dubhda, family (contd.) Uilliam, bp of Clonmacnoise

Ruaidhrí Mear, kg of Uí Fhiachrach (c.120–7) 303
13, 1 William, abbot of Cong 304
Seaán Glas, son of Tadhg Riabhach, Ua Duib of Uí Chremthannáin
kg of Uí Fhiachrach 140, 14, [Múscraige Tíre, Co. Tipperary] 317
12, 14 Ua Duibhdábhoireann, family 47, 477
Tadhg Buidhe, son of Tadhg Domnall 47
Riabhach, kg of Uí Fhiachrach Ua Duib Shláine, abbot of Ferns 317, 337
(d. 14) 140, 141, 14–, 12, Felix, abbot of Jerpoint and bp of
13, 14 Osraige (d. 1202) 31, 320, 324n
Tadhg Riabhach, son of Domhnall Ua Dúnáin, Máel Muire, bp of Clonard
Cléireach, kg of Uí Fhiachrach (d. 1117) 283–4
(d. 1432) 140, 141, 144, 12, 13, Ua hEadra of Co. Sligo 47
14 Ua hEad(h)ra of the Route, Co. Antrim
Taithleach Muaidhe, kg of Uí 47
Fhiachrach (d. 134) 141 Ua hÉnna, Conchobar, bp of Killaloe 330
Taithleach, kg of Uí Fhiachrach Muirghes, abp of Cashel 323
(d. 1180) 13, 1 Ua Fidabra, Máel Mochta (d. 1173) 282
Taithleach, kg of Uí Fhiachrach Ua Fínnachta 14
(d. 1282) 13, 17 Ua Flainn of Síl Maílruain 10n
Uilliam, kg of Uí Fhiachrach (d. 130) Ua Flaithbertaig, family 10n, 288
13, 18 Flaithbertach, kg of Connacht (d.
Uilliam, grandnephew of Eoghan 108) 280, 288n, 28n
Caoch, kg of Uí Fhiachrach Murchad, bp of Annaghdown 301
(d. 14) 140, 148– Ua Flannacáin 14
Uilliam Óg, son of Domhnall Ballach Eochaid, poet 32–3
12, 14 Ua Flainn, Florence, abp of Tuam (d.
Úna, mother of Domhnall Cléireach 124) 308
143 Ua Floinn, M. 101
Ua Dubthaig, family 303–4 Ua Fortcheirn 314
Cadla, abp of Tuam 2, 302, Ua Gairmlegaig, family 7, n, 2
303 Ua Gallchobair, family 7, 2, 27, 30, 42
Céle, bp of Mayo (d. 1210) 303 Ua Gébennaig 10
Domnall, bp of Elphin (d. 113) Ua Lachtnáin, family 8
302–3n, 32 Máel Muire, abp of Tuam 308
Domnall mac Flannacáin, bp of Ua Lóegaire of Corco Loígde, family 1
Connacht (d. 113) 284, 287–8, ua Liatháin, Cormac 24, 2
22–4 ua Líathaiti, Daniél, abbot of Lismore (d.
Dubthach, abbot of Cong 304 83) 17
Flannacán Ruad, abbot of Ua Lochlainn of Corco Modruad, family
Roscommon and lector of Tuam 1
(d. 107) 23, 304n Ua Longargáin, Donnchad, abp of
Flannacán, bp of Elphin (d. 118) 2, Cashel 323, 332
32 Ua Lorcáin 8
Muiredach, abp of Connacht (d. 110) ua Macáin, Áed 300
22, 24–8, 307 Ua Máel Áeda 8
Muirgius 300 Ua Máel Brénainn, family 14
Tadg, 304 Ua Máel Chonaire 30
Index 7
Ua Máel Chonaire of Rossmanagher 4 Niall (d. 137) 14–

Ua Máel Eoin, Áed, bp of Clonmacnoise Niall Cúlánach (d. 121) 132
307n Niall Óg, son of Art 487–8
Gilla Críst, abbot of Clonmacnoise Ua Néill of Clann Aodha Buidhe
280, 23n [Clannaboy], family 11–12
Ua Máel Fogmair (bishops of ancestry of 11–12
Annaghdown) 303n Ua Nioc, Muirghius 2n
Ua Máel Muaid of Cenél Fiachach meic Ua hOissínee, Áed, abp of Tuam (d. 111)
Néill 8 282, 20n, 2–
Ua Máel Muaid, family 8, 2, 28, 310, Uí Ragallaig, of Bréifne, family 8, 2, 28,
311, 31 71, 74, 7, 3, 47
Ailbe, bp of Ferns (d. 1223) 30 314–38 Cathal, kg of east Bréifne (1220–)
Murchad, kg of Fir Chell (d. 121) 74–, 7, 78
31–1 Cú Chonnacht, brother of Cathal 78–
Ua Máel Uidir 8 , 83
Muirchertach, bp of Clonmacnoise Aodh 4
281n, 282n Ua Ruadáin (bishops of Achonry) 303n
Ua Maigín, Gilla Áeda, bp of Cork Ua Ruaidín, Mac Gilla Cellaig, bp of
(d. 1172) 2–7 Kilmacduagh 322, 32
Ua Máel Sechnaill, family 8 2, 28, , Ua Ruairc, of Bréifne, family 8, 2, 28,
70, 1, 31–1, 332 , 71, 7, 288, 3, 47
Cormac, son of Art 31, 324 Áed, kg of Bréifne (d. 1087) 280
Derbforgaill, daughter of Murchad, Áed, kg of Bréifne (1184–7) 70, 7
kg of Mide and wife of Tigernán Domnall (d. 1102), kg of Connacht
Ua Ruairc , 283 284, 288
Diarmait, kg of Mide 282 Eoghan, of Leitrim 47
Diarmait Bernach (d. 1233) 7 Tigernán, kg of Bréifne (d. 1172) , 70
Murchad, kg of Mide , 280–1, Uallgarg, kg of Bréifne (ante 11–
283–4, 27 1231) 71
Ua Maíl Doraid, Flaithbertach, kg of Tír Ua Ruanada, Felix, abp of Tuam 302,
Conaill n 304, 322–, 328–
Ua Matadain 10, 3n Uasal céad–obair an Choimhdheadh, poem
Ua Mellaig (bishops of Annaghdown) 303n 3
Conn, bp of Annaghdown (d. 1202) 20 Ua Scannail, family
Thomas, bp of Annaghdown 303n Gilla Pátraic, bp of Raphoe and abp of
Ua Mórda, kgs of Loíges, 317, 31 Armagh 3n, 341–2, 31
Peter, bp of Clonfert 300 Ua Scingín, family 47
Ua Mugróin 14 Ua Sechnussaig, family 
Ua Muirecáin 8 Ua Seagda of Corco Duibne, family 1
Ua Néill, family, –14, 21, 24–, 28–30, Ua Taidg 14
32, 33, 37n, 38, 41–2, 10, 1, 24, Ua Tuathail [O’Toole], family 311, 34–8,
2, 270, 483, 02 31
Áed Buide (d. 1283) 101 Ádhamh Dubh [Adam Duff] (d. 1328)
Conn Bacach (d. 1) 483 34–7, 30, 31
Cormac (d. 170) 41, 47 David (d. 132) 34
Domnall, son of Brian (d. 132) 132, Lorcán [St Laurence], abp of Dublin
133n and papal legate 302, 31, 321,
Henry/Énri (d. 1347) 101 327–8, 33
Ua Tuathail [O’Toole], family (contd.) Ulster, earldom of , , 72–3, 7–, 8–
Macrad 328 10, 132, 188–0, 13, 28
Tadc, abbot of Glendalough 32n liberty of 12
Thomas, abbot of Glendalough 321, province of 21, 2, 33, 1, 31
327–8 seneschal of 8, 87, 101n, 12
Walter Dubh, father of Ádhamh 34–7 Ulster Cycle 383
Ua hUallacháin 10 Umail, Owles, Co. Mayo 483
Uí Amhalghaidh, Tirawley, Co. Mayo 140 Uraicecht Becc 38
Uí Bairrche, dynasty 404 Urbal, Jakob 20
Uí Bercháin, Co. Kilkenny 31 Urban II, pope (1088–) 22
Uí Briúin of Connacht 8 Urban IV, pope (121–4) 37
Uí Briúin Aí 8, 288 Urlan, Co. Clare 4
Uí Briúin Bréifne 8, 71, 74, 288 Ussher, James, abp of Armagh (d. 1)
Uí Briúin Seóla 10n, 288 403
Uí Buide [Oboy], Co. Kilkenny 31, 33,
337 Vadum/Le Ford manor, Co. Antrim 0,
Uí Chaisséne 1 
Uí Cheinnselaig, kingdom of 10n, 30, Vale, Geoffrey de 3n
310–1, 317–1, 333, 33–, 404 James de 2
Uí Chléirigh annals 42 Richard de 2
Uí Chrimthannáin 318 Richard de, son of Gilbert 3n
Uí Chuilinn 317 Verdon, family 12
Uí Chuirre 20 Bartholomew 181, 18, 188, 10–3, 1
Uí Déga, a branch of the Uí Cheinnselaig Bertram de n
317, 377 James, cousin of Bartholomew 10n
Ióseph Ua hÁeda, bp of Ferns 317, Nicholas 18
318, 320 Richard 13
Paitín Ua hÁeda 317 Robert 18
Uí Dúnlainge 318 Verdon rebellion 18, 18, 1
Uí Enechglaiss 21 Viborg, Denmark 277
Mac Cairthinn, kg of the Uí Vikings 10, 2n, 22, 28
Enechglaiss 21 Viking towns 21
Uí Fáilge 313, 31 Virgil of Salzburg 247
Uí Fhiachrach , 21 Virgil the Grammarian 231
Amalgaid, kg of the Uí Fhiachrach Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae 30, 337
21 Vita S. Abbani 334, 337
Uí Fhiachrach Aidni , 284 Vita C. Albei 337
Uí Fhiachrach Muaide  Vita Prima Sancti Brendani 387
Uí Gentig 20 Vita sancti Patricii episcopi 28, 48
Uí Gobbáin 20 Vita Tripartita 3
Uí Máil 311 Vulgate Bible 48–0
Uí Maine of Connacht 10, 284
Uí Muiredaig 31, 321, 328 Wales 48–, 72, 74, 78, 2n, 188, 313
Uí Nialláin 313 Walsingham, Francis 3
Uí Riaccáin 313 Ware, James (d. 1) 403, 447, 44
Uisnech, Co. Westmeath 310, 37 Waterford, city of 10, 13, 1, 1, 174,
synod of 284 2; mayor of 183, 3
Uí Thuirtre of Airgialla 10, 2 county 18, 4
Index 
Waterford and Lismore, dioceses of 174, Wictbert 247, 24n

183, 322, 32, 30 Wigtown, Scotland 12
Waverley, abbey of 323, 324 Wight, Isle of 218
Wellesley, Richard, constable of Athy St Wilfrid 23n
Castle 184n William, bp of Emly (133–140) 30
Westmeath, county 2 William I, kg of England (10–87) 21,
Westminster, England 187, 20 3
Abbey 323 St Willibald 247, 24n
Wetheney/Owney [Estermoy/ St Willibrord 247, 24n
Castleconnell], Co. Limerick 2 Winchester, England 314, 323, 32, 331
Wexford, liberty of 10n Windsor, England 303
town 10, 2, 314 Wogan, John, justiciar 344
White, family 10 Worcester, Philip of 324
Christopher 188, 14
Geoffrey, constable of Greencastle, Yeavering, England 37
Co. Down 10, 12, 14 Yolande, queen of Scots (128–) 124–
James, sheriff of Louth 188, 10– Yogayn [unidentified] 10
Patrick 14 Yorke, Peter, of Shaftesbury 172
Thomas 18 Youghal, Co. Cork 130, 13, 177
White Abbey, Co. Antrim 372, 373 Friary 371, 31
prelates pic section_Layout 1 21/02/2013 09:19 Page 1
1 Kilkenny, 1:2,500, 1842, IHTA, 10 (Dublin, 2000).
2 Armagh, 1602, by Richard Bartlett. From J.H. Andrews, The queen’s last map-maker
(Dublin, 2008), p. 106.
3 Urban growth and public buildings of Sopron from the middle of the thirteenth to the
beginning of the sixteenth century, compiled by Katalin Szende, Hungarian atlas of historic
towns, 1 (Sopron, 2010), pl. A.3.
4 Kalkar, 1:2,500, 1831, Rheinischer Städteatlas, XIV:76 (Köln, Weimar and Wien, 2001).
5 Principal sites of medieval Kalkar, compiled by Margret Wensky, Handbuch der

Historischen Stätten Nordrhein-Westfalens (Stuttgart, 2006), p. 524. Partial translation of
German key: 1 St Cäcilie, Small Beguine house; 2 St Ursula, Big Beguine house;
3 Dominican priory; 4 Guesthouse (hospital); 5 Storehouse; 6 Round tower; 7 Fortifications.
6 Sopron, 1:2,500, 1856, Hungarian Atlas of Historic Towns, 1 (Sopron, 2010).

7 Diocese of Elphin with churches.

8 Decorated stonework excavated at Kilteasheen.
9 Resistivity image of platform area at Kilteasheen.

10 GoogleEarth image with revised resistivity image (A: cemetery platform; B: proposed
location of church; C: hall house).
11 Reconstruction of church using 3D computer modelling.

12 Fragmentary bronze pax.

Dunbrody Abbey, Co. Wexford
(to scale; image courtesy of the
British Museum).
13 Bronze pax. Petrie Collection,

National Museum of Ireland (to scale;
image courtesy of the National
Museum of Ireland).
14 Bronze pax. National

Museum of Ireland
(to scale; image courtesy
of the National Museum
of Ireland).
15 Gilt silver vessel fragment. Boyle Abbey, Co. Roscommon

(image courtesy of the National Museum of Ireland).
16 Gilt bronze stand. Mellifont Abbey, Co. Louth

(image courtesy of the National Museum of Ireland).
17 Gilt bronze stand.

Mellifont Abbey, Co. Louth.
Drawing of base (after J.J.
Buckley, Some Irish altar
plate (Dublin, 1943), p. 209
and pl. LXIV, fig. 2).
18 Key places in the cultural landscape of the Uí Dhálaigh of Muinter Bháire, Sheepshead Peninsula
(drawing by Cormac Bruton).
19 Extract from ‘The provence of Munster’ by Francis Jobson, 1589 (TCD MS 1209, no. 36). Sheepshead
Peninsula is designated ‘Rymers’, indicating that it was the landholding of the Uí Dhálaigh of Muinter Bháire.
20 View looking south to Dromnea from the old Sheepshead route to Ahakista (photograph by the author).
21 View looking west over Farranamanagh Lough to Seefin (Suidhe Finn) with the Uí Dhálaigh tower house
(bottom right) clad in vegetation near the shoreline (photograph by the author).
22 John Beirne’s sketch of the stone row in Dromnea townland, 1845

(Ordnance Survey Memorandums for Co. Cork, 1845, vol. 2).
23 Plan and elevation of Farranamanagh tower house (drawing by Cormac Bruton).

24 Plan and profile of the farm buildings in the valley at Dromnea, showing the remaining
fabric of the north wall of the bardic school. The domestic well and field walls shown on the
plan are likely to be contemporary with the school building (drawing by Cormac Bruton).
25 John Beirne’s sketch of the north wall of the ‘Old College’ or bardic school, in the
context of the nineteenth-century Nicholas farm settlement at Dromnea
(Ordnance Survey Memorandums for Co. Cork, 1845, vol. 2).
26 Dromnea viewed from the quay at Kilcrohane church, with Rosskerrig Mountain left of picture
(photograph by the author).
27 Plan of the church and graveyard at Kilcrohane, with the Ó Dálaigh ledger indicated
(drawing by Cormac Bruton).

Princes, Prelates and Poets in Medieval Ireland - Unknown

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Princes, Prelates and Poets in Medieval Ireland - Unknown

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Prelims_Layout 1 19/02/2013 12:42 Page i

Katharine simms Ba, phd (dubl.), mria, Ftcd (emerita)

typeset in 10.5 pt on 12.5 pt ehrhardtmt pro by

© the contributors and Four courts press 2013

a catalogue record for this title is available

ISBN 978-1-84682-280-3 (hardback)

all rights reserved.

ForeWord by Dr Patrick Prendergast, Provost of Trinity College Dublin ix

notes on contriButors xxiii

medieval irish genealogies and genetics 3

interlaced scholarship: genealogies and genetics in twenty-ﬁrst-century

the two colmáns 32

re-examining cáin in scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 46

William Gorm de lacy: ‘chiefest champion in these parts of europe’ 63

a register of lost deeds relating to the earldom of ulster, c.1230–1376 85

unity in diversity: a comparative analysis of thirteenth-century

the turnberry Band 124

vi Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland

two lists of Ó dubhda chieftains of uí Fhiachrach 139

James the usurper of desmond and the origins of the

the murder of John dowdall, sheriff of louth, 1402 185

irish kings and carinthian dukes: John lynch revisited 196

st patrick and the kings 211

the authority of the contemplative in muirchú’s life of patrick 221

‘irish pilgrimage’: a romantic misconception 241

Quo vadis? mapping the irish ‘monastic town’ 261

church reform in connacht 279

ailbe ua máel muaid, uí chennselaig and the Vitae Sanctorum

heresy in ireland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 339

the court poet in early ireland 377

the world of medieval irish learning 389

some observations on an unpublished version of the Gospel of Nicodemus 406

a cosmological poem attributed to moses 412

ruaidhrí Ó caiside’s contribution to the annals of ulster 444

the landscape and settlements of the uí dhálaigh poets of muinter

the uí dhomhnaill and their books in early sixteenth-century ireland 481

the portrayal of women in medieval irish religious poetry 514

‘once i heard a story … from scripture does it come’: biblical allusions

tadhg Ó rodaighe and his school: aspects of patronage and poetic

dán Áráis, 1654 552

a bibliography of the published writings of Katharine simms (to 2012) 561

Foreword by dr patrick prendergast,

xii Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland

Editor’s preface xiii

ABM A bardic miscellany: ﬁve hundred bardic poems from

Ware, in the year 1666’, ed. J. o’donovan in Miscellany of

xvi Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland

CGH Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae, i, ed. m.a. o’Brien

dugdale, William dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. caley et al.,

xviii Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland

mmis mediaeval and modern irish series (vol. 1–, dublin,

xx Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland

pro public record oﬃce, london [now included within tna]

Rot. obl. et ﬁn. Rotuli de Oblatis et ﬁnibus in Turri Londinensi asservati,

xxii Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland

Studies Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review (1912–)

edel Bhreathnach is deputy director of the mícheál Ó cléirigh institute at

xxiv Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland

daniel m c carthy is emeritus fellow of trinity college dublin, where he was

Medieval Irish genealogies and genetics

accordingly. Mutations can occur at various loci on the Y-chromosome. a

Medieval Irish genealogies and genetics 5

common.6 this haplotype, which to a smaller degree is also present in the