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This article provides an edition of a poem beginning A Éamainn, an agad féin! which is preserved today in National Library of Scotland MS Adv. 72.1.42. The focus of its anonymous author is twofold, namely (i) to praise Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill (ob. 1649), nephew of Aodh Ó Néill, second Earl of Tyrone, for his extraordinary martial abilities, particularly throughout the 1640s following his return to Ireland from Spanish Flanders in July 1642; (ii) to upbraid the audacity of ‘Éamann’ for his criticism of Piaras Feiritéar, poet and military leader from the Dingle Peninsula, Co. Kerry, who himself composed a poem in support of Ó Néill’s auspicious military credentials.

This is the seventh in a series of editions of the poems of Gofraidh Óg (son of Gofraidh son of Brian) Mac an Bhaird, who flourished in the 1640s and 1650s. It is in praise of An Calbhach Ruadh (son of Maghnas son of Conn Óg son of Conn) Ó Domhnaill and, in supplementary quatrains, of his wife, Eibhilín daughter of Báitéar Mac Suibhne. A quatrain in praise of Donnchadh (son of Niall son of Donnchadh) Mac Suibhne is also appended. An apologue likens An Calbhach’s struggle to that of Conn Céadchathach, forced at first to concede territory to hostile forces but ultimately triumphing and winning all. The poem was previously edited by Owen McKernan in Éigse in the 1940s. It is edited anew here from Stonyhurst College MS A II 20, with readings from National Library of Ireland MSS G 167 and G 299, Trinity College Dublin MS H 6. 7 (1411) and British Library MS Egerton 112, and with a full discussion of these and other extant witnesses.

In 1919 Lambert McKenna published a poem beginning Mairg nach molann máthair Dé in a collection entitled Dánta do chum Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh. The poem edited here, which survives in TCD 1340 (H. 3. 19), begins with the same first line and as a result has been overlooked up to now. Unlike the poem published by McKenna, in which the author emphasises the difficulty in finding original praise for the Virgin Mary, our poem is straightforward in its direct and immediate praise of her.

This paper is divided into two sections. In the first, attention is drawn to three categories of rhetorical device described in the commentary to the Amrae Coluimb Chille, all of which involve some form of repetition. This is the starting point for a discussion of the artful use of repetition in Early and Classical Modern Irish literature. Examples of such repetition and parallel phrasing are provided for both periods. In the Classical period this inevitably involves some discussion of breacadh, a metrical and stylistic ornament involving repetition. In the second section, the focus moves to parallel phrases based on antithesis (such as English ‘the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away’) or contrast. The antonymy may be conveyed lexically (as in the example just quoted, ‘give’ vs ‘take’) or antithesis may be created morphologically (through a contrast of tense and voice, for instance, gonas géntair ‘he who kills will be killed’). The make-up of these antonymous parallel phrases will be described, the types of antithesis encountered discussed and questions of their interpretation addressed. A collection of Early Irish and Classical Modern Irish examples concludes the paper.

This article investigates three allusions to Irish characters in the Middle Welsh ‘Stanzas of the graves’, a poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen (c. 1250).

This article is not so much concerned with how the historical present is used in Classical Modern Irish (and to a lesser extent also in Early Irish) as with how it is not used. The historical present is introduced here with examples from Early and Classical Modern Irish before the Bardic terminology used to discuss it is explained. Attention is drawn to information in the Bardic grammatical tracts concerning general restrictions on the use of the historical present and to references to specific verbs which may not be used in the historical present. It is shown that the historical present does not occur in negative and relative clauses and that it is usually avoided after conjunctions, and it is argued that atelic verbs cannot (normally) be used in the historical present.

This article examines the various accentual environments in which clusters of nasal plus voiced stop were assimilated to an unlenited nasal, focusing principally on nd > nn. It is argued that the chronological differentiation offered in GOI between (a) Early Old Irish nd > nn in proclitics and (b) Classical Old Irish nd > nn in stressed words is not sufficient. Instead, the accentual status of each syllable surrounding the cluster needs to be considered separately, and the chronological sequence needs to be enlarged to three stages: (a) Early Old Irish nd > nn between two pretonic syllables, (b) Classical Old Irish nd > nn between a stressed and a post-tonic or between two post-tonic syllables, and (c) Middle Irish nd > nn between a pretonic and a stressed syllable, occurring specifically in the article form ind and nasalised nd-. Some apparent exceptions to (c), suggesting pre-Middle Irish assimilation in this environment, are redefined as properly belonging to environment (a), and the appendix presents a complete sample, with statistical analysis, of relevant spellings (mainly of the article) from four texts of different dates of composition as preserved in the late Middle Irish manuscript Lebor na hUidre.

This varium is intended as a contribution to the identification of citations in IGT and BST, a series begun by Professor Damian McManus in Ériu 48 (1997).

This paper seeks to explain the future tense forms of the verb fágbhaidh found in Classical Modern Irish. In the process, an explanation is proposed for the verb’s shift from an e-future to an f-future in Middle Irish and for a peculiar verbal form found in the Milan Glosses.

This is the sixth in a series of editions of the poems of Gofraidh Óg (son of Gofraidh son of Brian) Mac an Bhaird, who flourished in the 1640s and 1650s. It is in praise of Maol Muire son of Toirdhealbhach Mac Suibhne and, in supplementary quatrains, of his wife, Gráinne daughter of Báitéar Mac Suibhne. The poet extols Maol Muire’s military prowess by asking rhetorically who trained him, but also lauds him for his performance in peacetime and for his resilience. The poem is edited here from Stonyhurst College MS A II 20, with readings from Trinity College Dublin MS H 6. 7 (1411) and a full discussion of these and other extant MS witnesses.

The focus of scholarly comment on Irish manuscript illumination has been largely on letters. This paper examines the design and development of the text run-over symbol, a scribal device which has received relatively little analysis to date. It will be seen that the convention of using images to mark text run-overs, while not peculiar to Irish manuscripts (Brown 1996, 19, 192), persisted for a remarkably long time in the scribal tradition. Aspects of the wider manuscript context and function of marginal art, the use of reader’s aids and the relationship between text and image are also considered.

This article examines the glosses in the Commentary to the Félire Óengusso on the rather obscure saint Céile Críst from Kilteel, County Kildare, whose feastday is marked in a number of medieval Irish martyrologies on the third of March. An edition and translation of two previously unedited glosses, one from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B512 (R2) and one from Dublin, UCD-OFM A7 (F), are provided.

Liam Breatnach’s Quiggin Lecture, The Early Irish law text Senchas Már and the question of its date, proposed that the Senchas Már was written in a single effort mounted by the church of Armagh within the date range c. 660 × c. 680. This revised and expanded version of a lecture given in 2017 accepts that there was a link between Armagh and the Senchas Már, sets the latter in the context of the written laws of Western Europe, 400–800, and investigates how the Senchas Már might have fitted into the sequence of seventh-century texts pertaining to Patrick. It also tackles two related issues: the relationship between evolving ideas of Irish nationality, the Patrician legend and the Senchas Már, and how one might bridge the gap between the Patrick of the saint’s own writings and conceptions of Patrick current in the seventh century.

DIL s.v. forrind ‘point (of a weapon), barb’ provides three examples. One of these is taken from a quatrain preserved in the late Middle Irish prosimetric tale Aided Guill meic Carbada 7 Aided Gairb Glinne Rige (hereafter AG), edited by Stokes (1893). The word in question is found in the final line of the second couplet: ni ḟail díb ar talmain tend / crecht arna fagbaim fairrend, ‘Of them on the firm earth there is none for which I do not leave a spearpoint’, LL 12881 (trans. Stokes 1893, 423). Stokes’s translation of fairrend as ‘spearpoint’ suggests he understood it as a word consisting of for- + rind ‘a point, tip, apex’ (DIL 1 rind), an i-stem. The editors of the Dictionary suggested emending tend … fairrend to tind … fairrind, presumably on the basis that a palatalised final -nd would be expected for an acc. sg. i-stem and therefore emendation to tind would also be needed to fulfil the requirement for deibide rhyme. In this note I revisit this proposed emendation in the Dictionary and provide a new analysis and interpretation of the second couplet in AG, suggesting that fairrend has a more nuanced meaning than forrind ‘barb, spearpoint’ and that perhaps no emendation is needed.

This is the fifth in a series of editions of the poems of Gofraidh Óg (son of Gofraidh son of Brian) Mac an Bhaird, who flourished in the 1640s and 1650s. It is in praise of Doimnic (son of Aodh Buidhe son of Conn) Ó Domhnaill and of his wife, Brighid, daughter of Éamann son of Eóghan Ó Máille. An apologue on the recognition of Cormac mac Airt through his just judgements supports the poet's argument that Doimnic too is recognised as one worthy to rule. The poem is edited here from Stonyhurst College MS A II 20, with readings from Trinity College Dublin MS H 6. 7 (1411), British Library MS Egerton 112 and Royal Irish Academy MS 23 O 73 (1382), and with a full discussion of these and other extant MS witnesses.

Tugtar ann ainm agus sloinne Dhoimnic (féach, mar shampla, Doimnic Ō Dom[h]naill, líne 23a), ainm a athar (féach mac áirmheach Aodha Buidhe, 22b) agus an t-eolas go bhfuil sé síolraithe ó cheannaire chlann Dálaigh (féach ua Ī Dhomhnaill, 54b). Seans maith gurb é a sheanathair an Conn in Ua … Cuin[n] chaoin ŌC[h]ruachān Lighean (21ab).

Seaan <agus Doimnic dha> m<h>ac Aodha Buidhe m. Cuinn m. an Calbhaigh (Ó Muraíle 2003, iml. 1, §154.3).

Merugud Uilix remains an unsolved puzzle. It clearly reflects considerable Classical learning, but its stylistic character and narrative techniques are such that many readers have associated it with oral tradition and folklore. It is here proposed that the opening of the tale is an expanded translation of the section on Ulysses in the anonymous Excidium Troie, an early medieval school-text on Trojan War mythology that served as an aid to the study of Vergil's Aeneid. The author of the Merugud began from this source and extended it with other materials, taken both from Vergil-based study and from the wider resources of Irish-language narrative tradition.

Explanations of the three rare words sennin, sincreth and nemceissi in a tale to which the title Úath Beinne Étair has been assigned are proposed. It is also argued that there is little justification for assigning this title to the tale.

This paper seeks to explain how Mac (gen. sg./nom. pl. Meic) became Mág (gen. sg./nom. pl. Méig) in some surnames. It is argued that the form Mág/Méig was already in existence in the Middle Irish period, though this is obscured by contemporary orthographical practice.

That the Middle Irish poet Gilla Cóemáin was active in the year 1072 has been generally accepted on the strength of a poem attributed to him, in which this is given as the date of composition. The poet does not name himself, however, and the attribution to Gilla Cóemáin appears to depend on a heading in a single medieval copy. This article will examine the evidence afresh, comparing the poem that contains the date with other poems associated with Gilla Cóemáin in terms of metre and of historical doctrine, and attempting to determine whether there are any further indications that speak for or against his authorship.

This article presents an edition of Neart Banbha 'ga barúnaibh, a praise poem on a certain Patrick Fitzmaurice, Baron of Lixnaw. Although it is unclear when it was composed, since neither the poet nor the honorand can be identified with certainty, a fifteenth-century date is suggested. It is one of a small number of extant poems in casbhairdne, brúilingeacht, and is of interest for the light it sheds on aspects of that rare metrical form. It also contains some linguistic features that are not otherwise attested. A creative expression of the enduring trope that nature acts in sympathy with the rightful ruler (fír flaithemon), the poem bears witness both to the acculturation of the Anglo-Normans and to their pride in their own distinct identity. It is edited here for the first time, from Stonyhurst College MS A II 20, II b.

Dán adhmholta é Neart Banbha 'ga barúnaibh ar Phádraigín Mac Muiris (3e; 15f; 18a), duine de bharúin Leic Snámha i mbarúntacht Chlann Mhuiris in iarthuaisceart Chiarraí. Tá comhthéacs an dáin doiléir—ní fios cé go díreach a chum, cathain a cumadh é, ná cé acu Pádraigín Mac Muiris atá á mholadh ann. Déantar iarracht na ceisteanna sin a fhuascailt anseo. Sampla gléineach é an dán den fhorbairt a rinne na filí clasaiceacha ar théama seanbhunaithe na fíréantachta le ceiliúradh a dhéanamh ar athchultúrú agus ar fhéiniúlacht shainiúil na nAngla-Normannach.

This paper analyses binomial phrases in their various collocations in Early-Early Modern Irish and investigates the form and meaning of the most intimate collocations of antonyms, the dvandva compounds. The discussion is book-ended with a survey of the house in which Cú Chulainn was born, the house cen bratt cen biad, ‘with neither food nor shelter’.

This paper offers a commentary on the Moses-narrative in Saltair na Rann. Among the reasons for undertaking such a commentary are that notes on the substance of the text as it relates to the story of Moses might assist with or stimulate the production of a new edition and translation of the entire text, or that it might support the literary and cultural evaluation of the Saltair na Rann text as a whole. The basis for the commentary is the unpublished edition and translation of Saltair na Rann left by David Greene.

The grammarian-prosodists who compiled the Irish Grammatical Tracts and the Bardic Syntactical Tracts do not usually provide us with any details about the authors whose work they examine. Identifying the poems from which the citations in IGT and BST were excerpted is therefore vitally important to our understanding of the tracts. This paper is intended to be a supplement to the series begun by Damian McManus in the 1997 issue of Ériu.

This elegy on Seaán (son of Aodh Buidhe son of Conn) Ó Domhnaill is the fourth in a series of editions of the poems of Gofraidh Óg (son of Gofraidh son of Brian) Mac an Bhaird. The year of Seaán's death (perhaps 1655) is made uncertain by a textual difficulty, and neither the manner nor place of his demise is made clear. An apologue likens the loss felt by the Ó Domhnaill dynasty at Seaán's death to that felt by Oilill Ólom at the death of his son Eóghan. The poem is edited here from Stonyhurst College MS A II 20, with readings from Trinity College Dublin MS H 6. 7 (1411), British Library MS Egerton 112 and Royal Irish Academy MS 23 O 73 (1382), and with a full discussion of these and other extant MS witnesses.

The Irish adaptation of Marco Polo's Travels is found in a fifteenth-century manuscript from south-west Cork, written for Fínghean Mac Carthaigh Riabhach and his wife Caitilín Fitzgerald, known as the Book of Lismore (L), or Leabhar Mhéig Carthaigh Riabhaigh. It is an adaptation of the Latin translation of Marco Polo's Travels written between 1310 and 1324 by an Italian Dominican friar from Bologna called Francesco Pipino. This article will present research showing that the Irish Marco Polo (IMP) derives from a specific version of Pipino's translation (P) that was in circulation in England during the fourteenth and fifteenth century. The paper will map the route of Marco Polo's Travels from Italy to Ireland, by navigating the various stemmata of the Polian tradition, from the original, and now lost, Italo-French version of the Travels, written in 1298, to the late-fifteenth century Irish adaptation of the text found in L. It will conclude with a reflection on the cultural and historical context behind the Irish adaptation of Marco Polo's Travels.

This paper investigates the nature of the hunt in Medieval Ireland. It confirms from the evidence of Fianaigecht material backed up by contemporary Classical Irish poetry that the hunt was in the nature of a drive and ambush rather than a chase; that two types of hound were used in the hunt, the gadhair to drive the quarry from its covert and the coin to hem it in by securing the corridor to the ambush site, where the latter were slipped on the quarry; that this practice was common in Scotland as well as in continental Europe at the time; and that the deployment of the hunt was an important part of the training of a young nobleman in Ireland. Crossover material reflecting parallels between hound and hero celebration is also investigated.

The Old Irish word muirchrech (also murchrech and muirchreth) is found in law texts where it refers to the distance out to sea at which certain offenders are to be placed in a boat and left to the dictates of wind and tide. Uses of the word in literary texts either reflect this legal scenario or imply a convention of diplomatic protection within a muirchrech of a ruler's territorial lands. Although this general use of the term is clear, there has not yet been any agreement as to the literal meaning of muirchrech, or the actual distance referred to. This article sets out to explore possible literal meanings of muirchrech.

The words etar and ceta have a first syllable with a variable vowel: either e (e-variant) or i (i-variant). This paper investigates the diachronic distribution of these two variants. The innovation of the i-variants occurred by the eighth century at the latest in ‘pretonic complexes’: preverbal and prenominal proclitic strings consisting of more than one element (for instance: preverb + relative mutation/pronoun, for example a n-itir·n-ūara ‘when it cools’ Ml. 71b5, or preposition + article, for instance hitar na doinmecha ‘among the adverse things’ Ml. 38a12). A statistical analysis of the Würzburg, Milan, St Gall, and certain minor ninth-century sets of glosses shows that the i-variant of ceta became more common than the e-variant in the late eighth century. Afterwards, in the ninth century, the i-variant of etar became statistically more common than the e-variant. A textual dating criterion is proposed on the basis of these results and comparison with other pretonic raising processes (do > du, ro > ru, tremi > trimi, etc.) is suggested.

This elegy on the death of Maghnas (son of Niall Garbh son of Conn) Ó Domhnaill is the third in a series of editions of the poems of Gofraidh Óg (son of Gofraidh son of Brian) Mac an Bhaird. Its centrepiece, an account of Maghnas’s martial career from the early days of the 1641 war until his death in the Battle of Benburb in 1646, complements and counterbalances contemporary English-language sources. An edition from Stonyhurst College manuscript A II 20 is accompanied by an English translation and by an introduction and notes in Irish.

The death of Boand is found in both prose and verse in the Dindṡenchas. Three poems, labelled Boand I, II and III by E.J. Gwynn, have survived in various sources. In the first section of this paper, I provide an analysis of the relationship of these poems to one another. This section also includes an edition and translation of a short poem, here called ‘Boand A’, from Oxford Bodl. MS Laud 610, which has a close connection to Boand I. In the second section, I discuss changes which occur between variants of the prose article on Boand. The outcome of the present enquiry demonstrates how studying individual Dindṡenchas articles broadens our knowledge of the dynamics and growth of the entire corpus. The results of this investigation also have an impact on our understanding of the recensions of the Dindṡenchas.

This paper offers new readings and translations of the Old Irish glosses on the fragment of Bede's De Temporum Ratione found in the Austrian National Library Codex 15298 (olim Suppl. 2698) in Vienna. In addition to the updated readings, a newly found gloss is discussed at the end of the paper.

Triúr ríogh táinig do thigh Dhé is a religious poem about the Nativity that has been identified as one of the poems quoted in the Grammatical Tracts. An edition of the poem is accompanied by an introduction, a translation and notes on the text. It is followed by a discussion of the transmission of the poem, of which at least seventeen copies survive.

This edition of the poem Slán dona saoithibh sealga ‘Farewell to the masters of the hunt’ begins by addressing the question of whether this is the elegy for a Mág Carthaigh hound referred to by Fearghal Óg Mac an Bhaird in his poem, Teasda eascara an fhiadhaigh ‘Dead is the wild game's foe’. The contents of the poem are then summarised and an edition complete with translation and critical apparatus is presented.

This is the first in a series of editions of the poems of Gofraidh Óg (son of Gofraidh son of Brian) Mac an Bhaird, who flourished around the time of the 1641 war. It is in praise of An Calbhach Ruadh son of Maghnas son of Conn Óg son of Conn Ó Domhnaill and his wife, Eibhilín, daughter of Uaitéar Mac Suibhne. An edition from National Library of Ireland manuscript G167 is accompanied by an English translation and by an introduction and notes in Irish.

Three poems, of each of which an apologue based on an account of the Roman Civil War (49–45 b.c.) forms a part, have recently been published in ABM. This paper offers an edition of the three apologues, with translation and notes, and a discussion of them in the context of the poems in which they occur and with reference to seven other apologues based on the same war which have been listed by Liam P. Ó Caithnia (1984, 125–7).

[Introduction:] The 2nd sg. imperative of fo-ceird, -cuirethar ‘puts, throws’ has two forms in Old Irish: the expected cuirthe and an apparently irregular form cuire. The form cuire has attracted very little attention, and (as we shall see) its traditional explanation does not stand up to scrutiny. [...]

The Early Modern Irish (EModIr) fianaigheacht text known as Tóraigheacht Taise Taoibhghile (henceforth TTT) has not hitherto been the subject of any lengthy critical comment. The present paper will argue that TTT is an exemplary tale concerned with the relationships of vassals to their overlords and to one another. In addition, attention will be drawn to the text’s treatment of poets and poetry, in particular with regard to the privileged position of men of art in aristocratic military society and the proper use of praise and satire.

This paper is one in a series investigating women in Classical Irish poetry. The subject on this occasion is the patron’s wife. The paper examines how a married woman is addressed and/or referred to in the poetry and surveys the qualities most frequently praised in the iargcomhairc or complimentary verses addressed to the patron’s wife. The interest shown by women in the poets’ work is assessed, as is the question of whether there is a separate discourse for the praise of women. The paper concludes with a brief survey of a small number of poems addressed to married couples.