ANNALS AND CHRONICLESmay also have been influential. When such notes were
subsequently copied without the Easter tables, “K” or
“Kl,” the same abbreviations for “Kalends (first) of
January” used in Easter tables, were also employed in
the chronicles to mark the beginning of each annal.
The reasons for the subsequent maintenance of the
chronicles afterwards are unclear, largely because the
chroniclers themselves rarely give any indication of
their motives. While a general interest in the past,
common to all societies, is likely, the ordering of time
according to Christian principles could also have been
a factor, as Daniel McCarthy has recently shown in his
studies of the Christian dating methods (such as A.D.
dating) in the Irish chronicles. The high number of
deaths recorded in the chronicles perhaps were
designed to emphasize the transience of the earthly
life. Political bias, mainly manifested through the
selective inclusion and exclusion of certain events,
could be another reason. Overall, it is likely that a
combination of motivations were important, depending
on the interests of the individual chronicler.
The Development of the Irish Chronicles
before 1200
Attempts to reconstruct the development of the Irish
chronicles have been complicated both by the tendency
of the chroniclers to combine and rewrite chronicles,
making it difficult to identify constituent sources, and
by the lateness of the surviving manuscripts: They date
from the late eleventh to the seventeenth century, usu-
ally centuries after the events they describe. Modern
scholars have adopted varying methods for the identi-
fication of chronicle sources, using the frequency of
references to particular places, local details, or the
chronology of the chronicles to locate sources, pro-
ducing different results. It is generally accepted that
most of the Irish chronicles share a common source
beforeC.E. 911 known as the “Chronicle of Ireland,”
but there is disagreement about whether events only
recorded in one source were also part of this text or
were derived from chronicles kept before C.E. 911.
It is likely that contemporary records of events found
in the Chronicle of Ireland were kept as early as the
late-sixth century for Scottish and Irish events, although
the record is likely to have been subsequently altered
to promote the powerful Uí Néill dynasty and St.
Patrick. From about 660 to 740, it is clear that a
chronicle was kept at Iona off the west coast of Scotland;
this may have been the source for much of the Irish,
as well as Scottish, chronicle records for this period.
After 740, the Scottish element is greatly reduced,
so it is unlikely that Iona continued to be a major
source.From 740 to 911, constituent chronicles of the
Chronicle of Ireland have been proposed for Armagh,
Clonard in the midlands, and the area to the north
ofthe river Liffey (called “Brega” and “Conaille” at
the time). These views have been based on the inter-
estthe chronicles display in events in Armagh and the
east midlands, although many events further to the west
around the Shannon and Brosna rivers are also
recorded. It is during the period from 731 to 911 that
a number of non-Irish sources, including a “Book of
Pontiffs” (from Rome), the “Chronicle of Marcellinus”
(from sixth-century Constantinople), and early eighth-
century works by the northern English monk Bede,
were used by the Irish chroniclers to add Imperial and
Papal events to the section from C.E. 431 to 720.
AfterC.E. 911, the Chronicle of Ireland was contin-
ued independently at different centers (although the
Irishman Marianus Scottus also finished an unrelated
chronicle in 1076 at a monastery in Mainz in Germany).
The Annals of Ulster, found in a late-fifteenth-century
manuscript, contains a continuation of the Chronicle
of Ireland kept in Brega, Conaille or Armagh, but from
the late tenth century it is clearly an “Armagh Chronicle,”
and from 1189 to the 1220s, this text was continued
at Derry. The section from 1014 to the 1220s is also
found in the Annals of Loch Cé, which survives in a
sixteenth-century manuscript.
The other main continuation of the Chronicle of
Ireland is found in a number of manuscripts called the
“Clonmacnoise group,” the main representatives of
which are the fourteenth-century Annals of Tigernach
(with a text which ends at 1178) and the seventeenth-
centuryChronicum Scotorum(which ends at 1150),
but it is also found in the less-substantial Cottonian
Annals, the Annals of Roscrea, the Annals of Clon-
macnoise, and the Annals of the Four Masters.The
high degree of interest in both the affairs of Clonmac-
noise, and Brega to the east, in the decades immedi-
ately following C.E. 911 could be explained by the
close links between the monasteries of Clonmacnoise
and Clonard. However, the large number of detailed
Clonmacnoise entries indicates that at least by the late
eleventh century, if not before, the text had become a
“Clonmacnoise Chronicle,” with Clonmacnoise events
from as early as perhaps the eighth century added to
the Chronicle of Ireland.
At some point between C.E. 911 and about 1060, the
version of the Chronicle of Ireland in this Clonmacnoise-
group text was radically altered, by the addition of
more material from Bede’s Chronica Maiora, and from
lists of kings of Ireland and Irish provinces. These
sources were also added to a possibly preexisting
section (called the “Irish World Chronicle”) which
covered the period from Creation to the coming of
Palladius in C.E. 431. Combined with events from the
Irish Invasion Myth, this not only made the chronicle