LECAN, BOOK OFÓ Concheanainn has claimed. In truth, however, the early
history of the manuscript is hazy and the textual evidence
from which it must be constructed both complex and
contested. Nor are we afforded more than brief
glimpses of its fate in the later medieval period. It was
in the nineteenth century that it finally came to rest in
the Royal Irish Academy where it is still housed today.
MÁIRE NÍ MHAONAIGH
References and Further Reading
Best, R. I. “Notes on the Script of Lebor na hUidre.” Ériu 6
(1912): 161–74.
Best, R. I. and Osborn Bergin, eds. Lebor na hUidre: Book of
the Dun Cow. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1929.
Ó Concheanainn, Tomás. “The Reviser of Leabhar na hUidhre.”
Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies 15 (1973–1974): 277–288.
Ó Concheanainn, Tomás. “LL and the Date of the Reviser of
LU.” Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies20 (1984): 212–225.
Ó Concheanainn, Tomás. “Textual and Historical Associations
of Leabhar na hUidhre.” Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies
29 (1996): 65–120.
Ó Concheanainn, Tomás. “Leabhar na hUidhre: Further Textual
Associations.” Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies30 (1997):
27–91.
Oskamp, H.P.A. “Notes on the History of Lebor na hUidre.”
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 65 C (1966–1967):
117–137.
See alsoGlendalough, Book of; Leinster, Book of;
Manuscript Illumination; Scriptoria
LECAN, BOOK OF
One of the great codices of late medieval Irish learning
produced by the learned family of Mac Fhir Bhisigh in
north Connacht, its full title is theGreat Book of Mac
Fhir Bhisigh of Leacán. It was compiled by Giolla Íosa
(son of Donnchadh Mór) Mac Fhir Bhisigh, who was
also the principal scribe—almost 260 of the manu-
script’s surviving 311 folios are in his hand. (A small
number of the book’s original vellum folios—perhaps
a dozen or so—have been lost over the centuries.)
Giolla Íosa informs us that he was writing the book
“for himself and for his son after him,” while three
colophons pinpoint the time of writing—two refer to
“the autumn Mac Donnchaid was killed” and a third to
“the winter after Mac Donnchaid[’s death].” Scholars
have interpreted this information differently. Eugene
O’Curry thought it indicated the year 1417, while Paul
Walsh suggested that it reflected the death in 1416 of
“Mac Donnchaid.. .chief of Tirerrill, in the present
county Sligo.” But, as Tomás Ó Concheanainn has
pointed out, the only death of a MacDonagh chieftain
that suits the context is that of Tomaltach mac Taidhg,
king of Corann and Tír Oilealla since 1383, who was
slain in a dispute in north Connacht in mid-August
(early autumn in the medieval Irish view), 1397. (It was
in this Tomaltach’s house in Ballymote that part of the
codex known as the Book of Ballymote was written
circa 1391; Tomaltach, incidentally, was a second
cousin of Giolla Íosa’s wife, Caithirfhíona.) The sug-
gestion that the manuscript was being written by 1397
is corroborated by some of the terminal dates in the
valuable corpus of genealogies preserved in the Book
of Lecan; these indicate that work was in progress dur-
ing the period from 1397 to 1403.
Giolla Íosa’s earliest assistant in writing the manu-
script was Murchadh Ó Cuinnlis, apparently a native
of east Galway. Evidently a pupil or apprentice of
Giolla Íosa’s—he refers to him as his aidi(master or
teacher)—he appears to have left the Clann Fhir Bhisigh
school at Lackan, County Sligo (whence the name of
the book), by 1398, for from 1398 to 1399 he was in
present-day County Tipperary, penning “an excellent
manuscript” (Ó Concheanainn’s description) that is
now part of the composite volume, the Yellow Book of
Lecan.A decade later—as Ó Concheanainn has
shown—he was at work on “the largest Irish vellum
manuscript by one scribe,” the compendium of medi-
eval Irish ecclesiastical material known as the Leabhar
Breac.
In 1418, a later scribal assistant, Ádhamh Ó Cuirnín,
penned some 23 folios of the manuscript for Giolla
Íosa. (This same scribe has been recognized in recent
times as having also written, circa 1425, a manuscript
in the National Library of Scotland—known as the
“Broad Book” of John Beaton, from its owner in
1700.) A third scribal assistant is unnamed, but he
has been convincingly identified—on the basis of
strong circumstantial evidence—as Giolla Íosa’s
(only?) son, Tomás Cam. Among the items he penned
is the lengthy poem (of some 900 lines)—replete with
genealogical and topographical detail—that his father
composed as an inauguration ode for the local chief-
tain Tadhg Riabhach Ó Dubhda, who succeeded his
brother, Domhnall, early in 1417. The poem contains
a great deal of genealogical and topographical detail
that mirrors that found in the fascinating prose survey
of much of Counties Mayo and Sligo, which is pre-
served in the Book of Lecan, and is very probably also
the work of Giolla Íosa. It may be noted that the author
himself makes a number of textual interventions—in
what seems a somewhat infirm hand—throughout the
poem.
Unlike the other great Clann Fhir Bhisigh manu-
script, the principal component (which I have dubbed
Leabhar Giolla Íosa) of the so-called Yellow Book of
Lecan, whose contents are almost wholly literary, most
of the contents of the Book of Lecanhave a historical