BARDIC SCHOOLS, LEARNED FAMILIES
process of sgagad (sifting), by which the best students
were picked out and certified as fully-qualified poets.
Schools of History, or “Senchas”
The fourteenth century also saw a revival of the study
of traditional Irish historical lore and genealogies,
which involved transcribing Old Irish saga texts,
historical tracts, and genealogies from twelfth-century
manuscripts of the pre-reform church schools. This
activity was led above all by Seaán Mór Ua Dubagáin
(O’Dugan, d. 1372), court poet and historian to the
chief William Ua Cellaig (O’Kelly) of Uí Maine in
east County Galway. The Ua Dubagáin family reput-
edly functioned as archivists to the church settlement
of Clonmacnoise. Seaán Ó Dubagáin was a scribe of
early portions of the Book of Uí Maine, and teacher
to Adam Ua Cianáin (O’Keenan, d. 1373), scribe of
the “Ó Cianáin Miscellany.” Both these manuscript
compilations not only reproduce the genealogies of the
main royal dynasties of early Ireland, but link the ped-
igrees of fourteenth-century Irish chiefs to their remote
royal ancestors, or in some cases, alleged ancestors.
Another major manuscript of the late fourteenth
century, the Book of Ballymote, is associated with the
Ua Duibgennáin (O’Duignan) school of traditional his-
torians or seanchaide. Coming from the area of County
Leitrim, a member of this family, Fergal Muimnech,
“the Munsterman,” Ua Duibgennáin (d. 1357), crossed
the Shannon to erect a church at the holy well of
St. Lasair, of Kilronan, County Roscommon, in 1339,
where he and his descendants remained as erenaghs
(stewards) of the church lands there, and professional
historians to the Mac Diarmada (Mac Dermot) chiefs
of north Roscommon. This family also produced the
now lost Annals of Kilronan, a year-by-year chronicle
of Connacht affairs from which the sixteenth-century
scribe Philip Ua Duibgennáin drew most of his entries
for the still-extant Annals of Loch Cé, compiled for
his patron Brian Mac Diarmada, chief of Moylurg. The
sixteenth-century Annals of Connacht are largely
drawn from closely related historical material compiled
by the neighboring school of the Ua Mael Chonaire
(O’Mulconry, Conroy) family of south Roscommon,
recorded as poets and historians to the Ua Conchobair
(O’Conor) kings of Connacht from at least the begin-
ning of the thirteenth century.
Early Irish Texts Preserved by the Schools
As well as recording political events of their own day,
genealogies of later medieval Gaelic rulers, and court
poetry addressed to prominent aristocrats and ecclesi-
astical figures, the later medieval schools of bardic
learning have preserved for us countless early Irish
literary, historical, and legal texts, originally composed
between about 700 and 1150, which would otherwise
have been lost. The Mac Firbisig school of Lecan
(County Sligo) could claim a continuous tradition
since the early twelfth century, and accumulated an
extensive family library. The chief source for other
schools of historians concentrated around the Shannon
basin may have been the dispersed library of eleventh-
and twelfth-century manuscripts from the pre-reform
school of Clonmacnoise. The best-known extant exam-
ple of these is Lebor na hUidre, the Book of the Dun
Cow, a collection of Old Irish sagas transcribed about
1100 C.E. This ancient manuscript was handed over to
the Ua Conchobair chief of Sligo in 1359 as ransom
for the son of Ua Sgingin, a member of a Connacht
ecclesiastical family serving as court historian to the
Ua Domnaill (O’Donnell) chief of Tír Conaill (County
Donegal). The faded writing was restored and re-inked
at Ua Conchobair’s expense, but the manuscript was
returned over a century later, as spoils of war to a
victorious Ua Domnaill chieftain. When the Ua Sgingin
historians in Tír Conaill died out in the fifteenth cen-
tury, they were replaced by the Ua Cléirig (O’Clery)
family of churchmen, poets and historians to the Ua
Domnaill chiefs. The Uí Chléirig originally came from
Ua Cellaig’s territory of Uí Maine, where many of the
old churchlands of Clonmacnoise lay.Ulster Poets
From the same geographical area, soon after 1400, the
Mac an Baird (Ward) family of Uí Maine, whose sur-
name indicates that they were descended from “bards,”
the oral court poets of early Ireland, also entered the
service of Ua Domnaill of Tír Conaill. By the sixteenth
century they formed a major poetic school in Tír Conaill,
and another branch had spread to County Monaghan,
serving the Mac Mathgamna (MacMahon) chiefs
there. Their best-known author was Fearghal Óg Mac
an Bhaird of the Tír Conaill branch, whose work com-
ments on the Nine Years War (1594–1603), the Flight
of the Earls (1607), the Ulster plantation, and Counter-
Reformation clerics in the Irish College at Louvain.
Other famous northern poetic families were the Mac
Con Mide (MacNamee) poets from Castlederg
(County Tyrone), the Ua hUiginn school on the north-
ern borders of Sligo, who addressed poems to the
chieftains of Ulster and Connacht generally, the Ua
hEodhusa (O’Hussey) poets of Fermanagh and the Ua
Gním (Agnew) family of eastern Ulster. These latter
were alleged to be descended from Scottish immi-
grants originally called Agnew. Fer Flatha Ua Gním’s
poems reflect the impact of the Ulster plantation on
the old Gaelic families who had been his patrons.