- s. xvii
British Library MS Harley 913 is an early fourteenth-century trilingual manuscript whose paradoxically devotional and ribald contents display many distinct aspects of the Anglo-Irish socio-political reality of the day. However, several of its texts have, in the past, suffered from repeated scholarly misreadings, in part because scholars have not taken the time to seriously consider the manuscript’s contents as a whole, and in part because fluctuations in the political, social, and religious climate between Ireland and England have prejudiced how some scholars have approached these works.
This book examines these texts, as well as their subsequent misinterpretations, in the order in which they occur in the manuscript and reveals the pattern of politicized discourse surrounding this important medieval Anglo-Irish cultural artefact that has hitherto obscured, rather than elucidated, the very personal interactions of some of the era’s key figures. For the first time, this volume allows readers to visualize the manuscript in its entirety and complexity. Texts touching on the taboos of incest, regicide, and witchcraft, together with the clandestine manoeuvrings of the power-hungry and influential, reveal a surprisingly complicated interlacing of events across medieval Ireland, England, and the Continent.
A part of the ‘Cotton-Corpus legendary’ which covers feast-days for the months of October, November and December. The other parts of the legendary are to be found in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero E i.
- s. xi2
Various transcripts, including one of Vita Ælfredi regis from what was London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho A xii (before the 1731 fire), created for Matthew Parker at a time when Parker had not yet added his interpolations to the exemplar.
- c. 1550 x 1574
A lost manuscript of Asser’s Life of King Alfred. Originally an independent manuscript and later part of what once constituted London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho A xii, it was destroyed by the Ashburnham House fire of 1731. Although the original is irretrievably lost, significant information about its character and contents can be gleaned from transcripts and descriptions written before the fire.
- c.1000
Extracts from London, British Library, MS Egerton 1782.
- 1749
- Aodh Ó Dálaigh
Transcript of the Latin text in the Welsh lawbook of London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian E xi.
- s. xv2
Latin text of Welsh law, which was known to lawyers active in Gwynedd during the 13th century. This text or a related one may have provided the basis for the Latin text in London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian E xi, which refers to matters relating to both Gwynedd and south-west Wales. It has been suggested that the Llyfr y Tŷ Gwyn text became known in Gwynedd through the agency of Cadwgan, bishop of Bangor (1215-1236) and abbot of Whitland before that.
