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Letter from Find bishop of Kildare to Áed Úa Crimthainn
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Find Úa Gormáin [bishop of Kildare]Find Úa Gormáin ... bishop of Kildare
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The text recognised by R. I. Best as “the earliest epistolary composition ... in the Irish language” is a scribal note to the text of Cath Maige Mucrama in the 12th-century Book of Leinster, where it occupies the bottom margin of the first page containing that tale. The correspondence is between two of its scribes or compilers: it is written or dictated by Find, bishop of Kildare, and addressed to Áed Úa Crimthainn, abbot and coarb of Terryglass. The letter adheres to the formal requirements of ars dictaminis (the rhetorical art of letter-writing), including such elements as an address, salutation, petition and valediction. Find asks for the writing of the tale (scél) to be completed and also requests the ‘poem-book (dúanaire) of Mac Lonáin’, probably referring to the poet Flann mac Lónáin (d. 891x918), “so that we may study the meanings (cíalla) of the poems that are in it”. William O'Sullivan has concluded that the hand continuing the tale of Cath Maige Mucrama on the next page of the manuscript (p. 289 = f. 207r) is a different one from that of p. 288 and so that one of Áed’s scribes must have taken over as requested.
Middle Irishletters (correspondence)scribal additions
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