Texts

Betha Féchín Fabair

Incoming data

Irish Life of St Féchín of Fore. According to a note in the manuscript (NLI MS G 5), it is based on a Latin work and was translated into Irish by Nicól Óg, abbot of Cong.

Manuscript witnesses

Text

Codex Immaciensis

or Book of Imaidh (Omey) in Connacht. Prose.

Text

Dublin, National Library of Ireland, MS G 5

Followed by an Irish homily on the saint.

ff. 1r–5v

Text

Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1318/1

Fragments of a version unknown to Stokes at the time when he published his edition.

cols 1a*–2b*, 125–128

MS

Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1318/1

The first folio, numbered pp. 1-2, containing the first fragment of the Life of St. Féchín of Fore.

p. 436–p. 437 = col. 1a*–col. 2b*

MS

Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1318/1

The second folio, containing the second fragment of the Life of St. Féchín of Fore.

p. 434–p. 435 = col. 125–col. 128

Sources

Primary sources Text editions and/or modern translations – in whole or in part – along with publications containing additions and corrections, if known. Diplomatic editions, facsimiles and digital image reproductions of the manuscripts are not always listed here but may be found in entries for the relevant manuscripts. For historical purposes, early editions, transcriptions and translations are not excluded, even if their reliability does not meet modern standards.

[ed.] [tr.] Stokes, Whitley [ed. and tr.], “Life of S. Fechín of Fore”, Revue Celtique 12 (1891): 318–353.

CELT – edition with introduction: <link> CELT – translation: <link> Internet Archive: <link>

320–339 (followed by a homily on the saint) Based on NLI G 5. Most of the poems have been omitted.

Secondary sources (select)

Ó Riain, Pádraig, A dictionary of Irish saints, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011.

Scarcely a parish in Ireland is without one or more dedications to saints, in the form of churches in ruins, holy wells or other ecclesiastical monuments. This book is a guide to the (mainly documentary) sources of information on the saints named in these dedications, for those who have an interest in them, scholarly or otherwise. The need for a summary biographical dictionary of Irish saints, containing information on such matters as feastdays, localisations, chronology, and genealogies, although stressed over sixty years ago by the eminent Jesuit and Bollandist scholar, Paul Grosjean, has never before been satisfied. Professor Ó Riain has been working in the field of Irish hagiography for upwards of forty years, and the material for the over 1,000 entries in his Dictionary has come from a variety of sources, including Lives of the saints, martyrologies, genealogies of the saints, shorter tracts on the saints (some of them accessible only in manuscripts), annals, annates, collections of folklore, Ordnance Survey letters, and other documents. Running to almost 700 pages, the body of the Dictionary is preceded by a preface, list of sources and introduction, and is followed by comprehensive indices of parishes, other places (mainly townlands), alternate (mainly anglicised) names, subjects, and feastdays.

309–311 [‘Féichín of Fore’]