384
AN GAOḊAL
And it is a week from this day Easter Saturday,
and a week from yesterday to the Friday of the
Crucifixion; and [there will be] two Golden Fri¬
days on that Friday, that is, the Friday of the fes¬
tival of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Friday
of the Crucifixion, and this is greatly wondered at
by some learned persons."
The following is the translation of the second
entry, — same page and column.
"A prayer here for Aedh Ruadh [Hugh the Red
Haired], the son of Niall Garbh O'Donnell, who
forcibly recovered this book from the people of
Connacht, and the Leabhar Gearr [or Short-Book]
along with it, after they had been away from us
from the time of Cathal Og O'Conor to the time
of Rory son of Brian (O'Conor); and ten lords ru¬
led over Carbury [or Sligo] between them. And it
was in the time of Conor, the son of Hugh O'Don¬
nell, that they were taken to the west, and this is
the way in which they were so taken. The Short
Book, in ransom for O'Doherty, and Leabhar na
h-Uidhre (that is, the present book] in ransom of
the son of O'Donnell's chief family historian, who
was captured by Cathal, and carried away as a
pledge; and thus they (the books were away from
the Cenel Conaill (or O'Donnells) from the time
of Conor (O'Donnell) to the (present) time of
Hugh."
There is some mistake in this last memorandum.
Conor, the son of Hugh O'Donnell, in whose time
they are stated here to have been carried into Con¬
nacht, was slain by his brother Niall in the year
1342, according the Annals of the Four Masters;
and the capture of John O'Doherty by Cathal Og
O'Conor, at the battle of Ballyshannon, took
place in the year 1359. The proper reading would
therefore seem to be, that Leabhar na h-Uidhre
passed into Connacht first, before Conor O'Don¬
nell's death in 1342, and that the Leabhar Gearr,
or Short Book, was given in ransom for O'Doher¬
ty in 1359; Conor O'Donnell's reign covering both
periods, as the writer does not seem to recognize
the reign of the fratricide Niall.
The following passage from the Annals of the
Four Masters will make this last entry more intel¬
ligible, and show that it was made in Donegall in
the year 1470. —
A.D. 1470. The Castle of Sligo was taken, af¬
ter a long siege, by O'Donnell, that is, Hugh the
Red-haired, from Donnell, the son of Eoghan O'
Conor. On this occasion he obtained all that he
demanded by way of reparatoin, besides receiving
tokens of submission and tribute from Lower
Connacht. It was on this occasion too that he re¬
covered the book called Leabhar Gearr (or the
Short Book), and another, Leabhar na h-Uidhre,
as well as the chairs of Donnell og (O'Donnell),
which had been carried thither in the time of
John, the son of Conor, son of Hugh, son of Don¬
nall og O'Donnell.
In reference to the first entry, it must have been
made while the book was in Connacht, and by Si¬
graidh O'Cuirnin, who was, according to the An¬
nals of the Four Masters, a learned poet of Brief¬
ney, and died in the year 1347, and he must have
made the entry in the year 1345, as that was the
only year at this particular period in which Good
Friday happened to fall on the festival of the An¬
nunciation, or the 25th of March. This fact is fur¬
ther borne out by an entry in the Annals of the
Four Masters, which records that Conor O'Donnell
chief of Tirconnell, died in the year 1342, after a
reign of nine years and we have seen from the
entry, that it was in his time that this book must
have been carried into Connacht. According to
same Annals, Donnell, the son of Murtagh O'
Connor, died in the year 1437, by whose direction
O'Cuirnin renewed the name of the original wri¬
ter, — which, even at this early period, seems to
have disappeared, several leaves of the book, and
amongst others that which contained this entry,
having even then been lost.
Of the original compiler and writer of Leabhar
na h-Uidhre. I have been able to learn nothing
more than the following brief and melancholy no¬
tice of his death in the Annals of the Four Mas¬
ters, at the year 1106.
"Maelmuiri, son of the son of Conn na m-bocht,
was killed in the middle of the great stone church
of Cluainmacnois, by a party of robbers."
A memorandum, in the original hand, at the top
of folio 45, clearly identifies the writer of the book
with the person whose death is recorded in the
passage just quoted from the Annals; it is partly
in Latin and partly in Gaedhlic, as follows. —
"This is a trial of his pen here by Maelmuiri
son of the son of Conn."
This Conn na m-Bocht, or “Conn of the Poor,"
as he was called from devotion to their relief and
care, was a lay religious of Clonmacnois, and the
father and founder of a distinguished family of
scholars, lay and ecclesiastical, He appears to have
been the founder and superior of a community of
poor lay monks, of the Ceile De (or "Culdee,")
order, in connection with that great establishment;
and he died in the year 1059.
The contents of the MS., as they now stand, are
are of a mixed character, historical and romantic,
and relate to the ante-Christian, as well as to the
Christian period. The book begins with a frag¬
ment of the Book of Genesis, part of which was
always prefixed to the Book of Invasions (or an¬
cient Colonizations) of Erinn, for genealogical
purposes; (and there is good reason to believe,
that a full tract on this subject was contained in
the book so late as the year 1631, as Father Mi¬
chael O'Clery quotes in his new compilation of
the Book of Invasions made in that year for Brian
MacGuire).
(To be continued.)
