Search

An exploration of the personnel and methodologies employed in the production of Gaelic manuscripts and of early printed works in Irish in the 16th and early 17th centuries.

An analysis of the history, composition and collation of an Irish manuscript of the fourteenth century.

A metrical summary prefaced to a seventeenth-century Irish manuscript is shown to have an antecedent in a manuscript two centuries earlier.

Analysis shows Irish scribal tradition in Co. Waterford to have been a late development, and to have peaked 1820-50 as a result of political and social influences. The work of one scribe shows him writing Irish texts in English script for a patron who was unable to read Irish. This discovery may have implications beyond this particular time and context.

An examination of certain elements of Bardic tradition in thirteenth-century Ireland: metrical laws, grammatical thought, and the composition of poetry.

A description, with historical background, of an Irish manuscript discovered in Quebec City and now deposited in the National Library of Ireland. The manuscript was brought to Quebec in the 1820s by an emigrant from Co. Tipperary.

An examination of the phenomenon of the recycled poem, with reference to bardic poetry in the seventeenth century, and to the activities of a late school of poets in the Leitrim-Roscommon-Sligo area centred on the scribe and scholar, Tadhg Ó Rodaighe.

A description and analysis of the Irish manuscript known as The Book of O'Gara (RIA MS 2 (23 F 16)), written in Lille and Brussels, 1655-9, by an Irish Augustinian, Fr Nicolás (Fearghal Dubh) Ó Gadhra. The paper also gives an account of the manuscript's history subsequent to its return to Ireland, particularly the addition to it of an address to the reader, composed, it is suggested, by Seaán Ó Gadhra.

Literary associations and remains of an Irish Dominican associated with counties Clare and Derry, resident at Louvain and Paris in the first half of the eighteenth century

The political significance of two Irish manuscripts (National Library of Ireland MS G 992 (the Nugent Duanaire), and Elizabeth's Primer (Farmleigh)) in the context of moves to use the vernacular as a vehicle for the advance of the Reformation in Ireland

The significance of St Patrick s College Maynooth MS C112(d) for the history of the visit by Tuileagna Ó Maoil Chonaire to the Bodleian Library in 1673, with remarks on aspects of textual history

Description of an eighteenth-century Irish manuscript from Co. Limerick

Edition of two legal texts from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries from manuscripts in John Rylands University Library, Manchester, and the National Library of Ireland

Edition, translation, analysis and glossary of Bernard de Gordon's De Prognosticis, Book II, 9.

In considering Irish scribes who produced handwritten books of prose and poetry during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we know that the contribution of those based in Cork city and county is particularly prominent, not least, of course, because of the evidence provided by Professor Breandán Ó Conchúir in his pioneering study of Irish literary scholarship in the post-classical period, Scríobhaithe Chorcaí. That important book discusses some two hundred scribes who flourished between 1700 and 1850, and of these native men of letters, the contribution by the Ó Longáin scribal family certainly prevails. Their extraordinary dedication has yielded over six hundred extant manuscripts written entirely or in part by them. The scribes in question are as follows: Mícheál mac Peadair (d. 1770) and his son, Mícheál Óg (1766–1837), the latter’s three sons, twins Peadar (1801–c.1860) and Pól (1801–1866), and their younger brother Seosamh (1817–1880), and finally Seosamh’s son, Mícheál (1856– 1877). We have to do here, then, with four generations of Ó Longáin scribes who ensured that literature in the Irish language continued to be transmitted and disseminated by hand in written documents during the eighteenth century and well into the second half of the century thereafter. Even in the second half of the nineteenth century itself, when the tradition of Irish manuscript production was coming to an end, members of this family were still producing beautiful books in clear, neat hands.

The Irish Marco Polo (IMP) is an Early Modern Irish translation and adaptaion of Francesco Pipino’s Latin translation of Marco Polo’s Travels (P) which is found between ff 121-131 of the Book of Lismore (L), or Leabhar Mhic Carthaigh Riabhaigh. This manuscript was probably compiled between 1478 and 1505 in the Franciscan friary of Timoleague in south west Cork for Fínghean Mac Carthaigh Riabhach, ruler of Cairbre, and his wife Caitilín Fitzgerald. This is a unique copy of the only known adaptation of the text in Irish. Since the original title of the text does not survive, for the purposes of this dissertation I will refer to it as ‘The Irish Marco Polo’ (IMP). The general account of Marco Polo’s journey, which was retold in many different versions, adaptations and translations across Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, will be referred to as the Travels. The objective of the present study is to assess IMP both as a contribution to Early Modern Irish literature and as a contribution to the vast and complex tradition of Marco Polo’s Travels. This dissertation attempts (1) to locate IMP in its cultural and linguistic context in late-medieval Ireland and Europe; (2) to gain a perspective of the author of IMP as a learned man operating within the parameters of Irish and European literary tradition; and (3) to establish IMP as a literary work in its own right, the product of a master of Irish literary prose who created a unique text indebted to but also independent of its textual antecedents. Approaching these objectives entailed a combination of methodologies: linguistic, paleographical, text-critical, literary and historical.

Included in text