Sport in Ireland, 1600-1840 9781846829547, 9781846829574, 1846829542, 9781846829543

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The Kingship and Landscape of Tara

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THE KINGSHIP AND LANDSCAPE OF TARA Edel Bhreathnach EDITOR

Four Courts Press for The Discovery Programme

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Published by Four Courts Press Ltd. Malpas Street, Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] and in North America for Four Courts Press c/o ISBS, N.E. th Avenue, Suite, Portland, OR © the various contributors.  A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. 978-1-84682-954-7 (hardback) 978-1-84682-957-4 (ebook) All rights reserved.

ISBN

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

Special acknowledgment The Discovery Programme gratefully acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Heritage Council for all its research projects. Particular thanks is also due to Meath County Council and the National University of Ireland for special financial contributions for the publication.

Design : Ger Garland Genealogical Charts : Anne Connon Photography : Conor Newman Maps : Robert Legg Printing : MPG Books, Bodmin, Cornwall

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Contents Preface

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Introduction

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Acknowledgments

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Editorial Conventions

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List of Contributors

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List of Illustrations

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Abbreviations

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Part 1: KINGSHIP Kingship in Early Ireland Charles Doherty

3

Tara and the Supernatural John Carey

32

Níell cáich úa Néill nasctar géill : the Political Context of Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig Edel Bhreathnach

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The Manuscript Tradition of Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig and its Relationship with Baile in Scáil Kevin Murray

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Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig : Edition Edel Bhreathnach and Kevin Murray

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The Airgíalla Charter Poem: The Political Context Edel Bhreathnach

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The Airgíalla Charter Poem: The Legal Content Thomas Charles-Edwards

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The Airgíalla Charter Poem: Edition Edel Bhreathnach and Kevin Murray

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PROSOPOGRAPHY I: Kings named in Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig and the Airgíalla Charter Poem Ailbhe Mac Shamhráin and Paul Byrne

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PROSOPOGRAPHY II: A Prosopography of the Early Queens of Tara Anne Connon

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Part 2: LANDSCAPE Re-composing the Archaeological Landscape of Tara Conor Newman

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The Medieval Kingdom of Brega Edel Bhreathnach

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The Significance and Etymology of the Placename Temair Dónall Mac Giolla Easpaig

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Temair/Tara and Other Places of the Name Nollaig Ó Muraíle

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Bibliography

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Index 1: Personal Names

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Index 2: Placenames

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Index 3: Dynasties and Population Groups

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Index 4: Sources

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Index 5: Glossary

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Preface

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Breg, baile na fían ‘Tara of Brega, home of the warriors’ is the opening line of a poem attributed to the eleventh-century court poet Cúán úa Lóthcháin. Cúán was chief poet to the king Máel Sechnaill I (d. 1022) whose ferann ríg ‘royal demesne’ was at Tara and whose close attachment to Tara is palpable from the literature composed during his reign. Máel Sechnaill viewed Tara as a potent symbol of kingship, as his predecessors had done from the seventh century when Irish historical sources become abundant. Such was the sophistication of medieval propagandists that they succeeded in shrouding Tara in an enigmatic mist that has influenced all subsequent attempts to explain its topographical extent, function and kingship. The establishment of the Discovery Programme’s Tara Research Project in 1991 sought to address the complexity of Tara by adopting two new approaches to the subject: the introduction of modern non-invasive archaeological surveying techniques as a pre-requisite to any excavations at Tara and the employment of an inter-disciplinary approach involving anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, literary criticism and onomastics. Such has been the advance in our knowledge of Tara over the past twelve years that coherent and well-founded theories can now be presented about its evolution and its function. These new perspectives have developed in a systematic fashion, beginning with the archaeological survey conducted by Conor Newman (Newman, 1997) and with the ensuing research excavation of Ráith na Ríg undertaken by Helen Roche in 1997 (Roche, 2002). A continuing programme of geophysical surveying by Conor Newman and Joseph Fenwick has revealed more information regarding the monuments on the hill and in its associated landscape. With regard to the inter-disciplinary work, the first step was to assess the main primary and secondary sources relating to Tara and the publication of Tara: a select bibliography by Edel Bhreathnach was the result of that research. The Bibliography brought to light the importance of certain early texts relating to Tara and a series of themes that were likely to explain not only the medieval view of Tara, but also shed light on its function in prehistory. A team of experts was drawn together to examine two texts: the seventh-century list of the kings of Tara Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig and an early eighth-century legal contract between two important northern dynasties, the Uí Néill and the Airgíalla. This examination led to the two editions contained in this volume and also to detailed studies of early Irish kingship; Tara and the supernatural; the contexts of the edited texts; the kings and queens of Tara; the wider landscape as perceived from archaeological evidence and historical sources; the EMAIR

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T h e K i n g s h i p a n d L a n d s c a p e o f Ta r a

meaning of the name Temair and the attestation of other places of the name Temair in Ireland. In sum, this volume tackles in detail most questions that scholars have wondered about Tara over the past two centuries. All societies retain icons of identity: some are lost with the advance of the ages and are replaced by other symbols. Many such icons revolve around particular landscapes or buildings: in Ireland, Tara has survived as one such icon. It is hoped that this volume will add to the significance attached by many people around the world to this outstanding landscape.

Dr Michael Ryan Chairman The Discovery Programme

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or Temair Breg has attracted the attention of scholars and propagandists since the early medieval period. Each generation of scholars of Irish antiquity, archaeology and history since John O’Donovan and George Petrie in the early nineteenth century has attempted to solve the complexities of Tara. They have considered its origin, its function, its kingship and its decline. These scholarly efforts have been hindered by the mythical Tara, created by medieval propagandists and nineteenth-century Romanticists, that engulfs its archaeology and history in an apparently enigmatic shroud. From its inception the researchers associated with the Tara Project, conducted under the aegis of the Discovery Programme since 1991, decided that they would avoid the enigmatic, and attempt to explain this site as one of human endeavour. This volume is another milestone towards understanding Tara and the communities that built its monuments and used it as a necropolis and a ceremonial sanctuary. It draws primarily on early medieval Irish sources and, therefore, examines Tara from late prehistory to the eighth century AD. The Discovery Programme has stressed the value of inter-disciplinary analysis as part of its projects and as a result cooperation in the fields of archaeology, history, language, literature and onomastics has yielded a greater understanding of Tara. This volume is a testimony to such cooperation. The editions of the texts presented here result from a collaborative effort accomplished through a series of seminars and electronic communications since 1996. The volume is divided into two parts and concentrates on two primary themes – kingship and landscape. Many of the contributions overlap in their use of sources and in their discussion of these themes, but a consensus is avoided since divergence of opinion adds to the dynamic nature of the study. Part 1 of the volume examines in detail aspects of the kingship of Tara. The nature of this kingship has been much debated since George Petrie and R.A.S. Macalister considered it in the past two centuries. The core of the debate has focused on the reality of the kingship of Tara as a supreme political office – that is, whether the king of Tara was high-king of Ireland. When assessed anthropologically and from the evidence of Irish sources, it becomes clear that this was an exceptional kingship, and that Tara was regarded as the inauguration site of the ‘king of the world’. If the king of Tara or high-king does not appear regularly in the law tracts as a category of king, that is because the institution was utterly exceptional. Only the most outstanding kings could hold the sacrificial ritual ceremony associated with the recognition of the world king: feis Temro ‘The feast of Tara’ of the kingship of Tara, ARA

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which finds its parallel in the as´vamedha of Indian kingship. While churchmen may have disapproved of a ceremony such as feis Temro, as was the case with many other aspects of pre-Christian kingship, they adapted some of the kingship’s elements into the new ideals of a royal Christian institution. For example, churchmen such as Adomnán, ninth abbot of Iona (d. 704) and one of the great intellectuals of his age, easily moulded existing concepts of benign governance – justice, mercy, protection of the weak, truth – into a Christian form of kingship. The reign of the perfect king ensured a peaceful and well-ordered society. Kingship was the vehicle of government and good kings were those who were ordained by or submitted to churchmen. Powerful, exceptional kings in the early medieval period, aware of the potency of Tara, regarded it as the symbolic political centre of Ireland. Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig (henceforth BCC) is the earliest detailed list of the kings of Tara and dates to the period between c. AD 688 and 720. It is a composite text written on behalf of the Southern Uí Néill dynasty of Síl nÁedo Sláine which ruled much of the medieval kingdom of Brega until the early eighth century. By the time BCC was composed, this dynasty was in decline and unable to hold the kingship of Tara. The text’s final message is clear: Síl nÁedo Sláine would rather the overlord of Munster, Cathal mac Finguine, take this prized kingship rather than the Northern Uí Néill contender, Fergal mac Maíle Dúin of Cenél nÉogain. Apart from the explicit political message of BCC, the text reveals some contemporary, literary ideas about the kingship of Tara: the survival of early beliefs especially concerning the king imbibing the ale or drink of sovereignty to legitimise his kingship; a grudging acknowledgement that kings other than those originating from among the Connachta and Uí Néill once claimed the kingship of Tara; the possible use of the personal name Niall as a royal title equivalent to ‘king’, a custom known from other societies, including the Roman use of Augustus and Caesar; the view that this kingship could be bestowed on a king from any part of Ireland, including Munster, thus conferring on it an all-island status. Of course, this perspective might simply reflect the contemporary discontent of Síl nÁedo Sláine, although evidence from other sources would suggest otherwise. For example, the all-island significance of this kingship – expressed in the title ‘lord of Tailtiu’ – is apparent in the opening stanzas of the second text, the Airgíalla Charter Poem (henceforth ACP). The lord of Tailtiu – Tara is replaced as the pre-eminent centre of kingship – presides over the provincial kings in his fledtech ‘banqueting house’. The poem is a legal contract between the Five Royal Kindreds of the Uí Néill and the main dynasties of the northern federation known as the Airgíalla. It is written from the point of view of the Airgíalla and is likely to reflect an agreement concluded between the Cenél nÉogain king, Áed Allán (d. 743), and the Airgíalla c. 734. It includes an early, if not the earliest, occurrence of the collective name Airgíalla which on three occasions appears in the poem in the form Airgíallnae. The Airgíalla’s primary obligations were military, especially defending Cenél nÉogain interests, a situation confirmed in the annals. The change of focus of the most prestigious kingship

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Introduction

in Ireland from Tara to Tailtiu – the prehistoric complex in Teltown, Co. Meath – by the early eighth century is implied elsewhere: thus Lebor Gabála Érenn claims that a fragment of Fál, presumably the stone known as the Lia Fáil, had sprung from Tara to Tailtiu. This shift was undoubtedly due to two developments: the advance of Christianity, probably present in Brega from the earliest stage of its arrival in Ireland, and the re-alignment of power among the dynasties of the Uí Néill in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. The inclusion of Prosopographies I and II brings to light the value of detailed biographical and gender studies. Both fields need to be exploited to a greater extent in medieval Irish scholarship. Apart from offering a biography of the individuals mentioned, the Prosopographies draw attention to certain themes and common characteristics. The source material is wide-ranging and dates from the seventh to the seventeenth century, and the influence of one source on another becomes apparent from detailed entries of this nature. Equally, the accuracy of sources and their attempts to re-construct the past are evident whether an author is intent on providing facts or on using a king or queen for propaganda purposes, whether an individual belongs in the realms of history or myth. The paramount importance of Adomnán as a witness for the late sixth and seventh centuries is unequivocal. The more ‘historical’ aspects of the Prosopographies underline the fierce rivalry among dynasties for dominance of the midlands, including Brega; the shifting alliances involved, including alliances between kings and prominent saints; how Brega and Mide were theatres of war; and how attaining the title rex Temro was indeed the pinnacle of any king’s ambition. Whereas the rise of the Uí Néill as a monolith has been dated to the fifth century, the Prosopographies suggest that their dynasties were very fragmented and were involved in ferocious feuding until the eighth century, when they succeeded in coalescing into the Five Royal Kindreds of ACP. With that more unified coalition came the re-working of history that has managed to deceive scholars to this day. Prosopography II is deliberately kept separate from Prosopography I, despite a certain amount of overlap between the two studies. A specific assessment of the women associated with kings of Tara is overdue, especially since previous studies tended to concentrate on mythical rather than on the more human women – mothers, wives, daughters, sisters and lovers of kings. While many of the women in Prosopography II have mythical characteristics, they also highlight new aspects relating to the kingship of Tara. It has always been known that women were used as pawns in shifting alliances. This study shows how carefully such alliances were constructed and what a woman could bring to a marriage, apart from wealth: an army and strong political allies in the form of a father, brother or son. There were geo-political considerations also: for example, early Uí Néill kings married into the Connachta, but later married Éoganachta women. Many women are reputed to have come from Britain. This undoubtedly reflects the close relations that existed across the Irish Sea between various dynasties and the awareness that a marriage alliance with a

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‘foreign’ noblewoman could offer important strategic assistance, new blood and new customs. The importance of women in the transmission of ideas and trends has been overlooked in the archaeological and historical canons in Ireland and needs to be appreciated to a greater degree. A familiar theme in Anglo-Saxon and Continental contexts is that of the queen converting to Christianity while the king clings to the old religion. The queen convinces her son to convert and thus she and her son are blessed. This also applies to Irish queens. Powerful women did not confine themselves, however, to pious deeds. The ambition and rivalry between women on behalf of their sons is particularly evident, an issue that should not be surprising given the competitive nature of succession in early Ireland. Part 2 of the volume concentrates on the landscape in which Tara is located and on its toponomy. Tara was situated in the kingdom of Brega which probably extended from the River Dee at Annagassan, Co. Louth south to the River Liffey and westward beyond the Blackwater and Boyne rivers. The physical geography of Brega has determined the composition of the region into a series of discrete landscapes such as the ‘Tara Landscape’ and the ‘Blackwater Landscape’. These geographical regions determined archaeological activity insofar as they offered reference points to societies involved in imposing their imprint on their surroundings. Hence, for example, the hills and ridges (from which Brega appears to have been named), the rivers (Boyne, Blackwater, Delvin, Nanny, Dee, Liffey) and the estuaries define the spatial distribution of monuments at various times. Whereas this model is applicable in any geographical context, the case of Brega is exceptional insofar as the theoretical perspective is fully supported by a large corpus of medieval topographical literature which opens a window on the landscape and which is independent of modern interpretations. With regard to Tara, it seems that its orientation changed at different periods. In later prehistory, for example, the likely construction of overtly defensive monuments suggests that a more militaristic imprint was stamped on the landscape around Tara and on the territory to the east of it towards the coast. The distribution of these defensive monuments indicates that the perceived threat was from the north and north-west, not from the midlands or south as might be expected, and that Tara’s location in the landscape may have moved from an obviously central position to a more liminal one. If it was located on a boundary, it actually assumed greater significance since boundaries in early Irish society were often regarded as focal points: the site of assemblies, of battles, of churches and of interface with the Otherworld. Brega acted as an entry point into the country – as did much of the east coast – and was open to external influences. During the late prehistoric and early historic period, Ireland lay on the frontiers of the Roman Empire and the world of Late Antiquity and was closely connected linguistically, materially and ideologically with Britain. As such, Brega was one of the areas in Ireland which was receptive to the culture of the Late Antique Period transmitted through Britons, Romano-Britons and Anglo-Saxons. Within an Irish context,

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Brega was constantly subject to fierce pressure due to its economic wealth and strategic advantages. In the seventh century it was carved up among dynasties of the Uí Néill to the exclusion of other claimants from among the Laigin in the midlands and east and Ulaid of the north-east. Local, possibly more established dynasties, such as the Mugdorna and Cíannacht Breg lost territory and status and had to re-align themselves in the context of Uí Néill hegemony. Power slipped from one Uí Néill dynasty to another in the eighth century, namely from Síl nÁedo Sláine to the midland dynasty of Clann Cholmáin. Whereas the sub-regions of Brega are normally identified according to the division of territories among dynasties, older names survive which correspond to a remarkable extent with the archaeological and geographical sub-divisions of the kingdom: Cernae, Femen, Níth, Búaigne, Cremthainn. Traditional explanations for the placename Temair survive in the Middle Irish glossary attributed to Cormac mac Cuilennáin, the king-bishop of Munster (d. 908), and in the corpus of place-lore Dinnshenchas Érenn. Two etymologies are offered in these sources: firstly, Temair was named from a woman who was buried there and secondly, the name was a common appellative signifying ‘a height, a place with a view’. While the latter explanation retained echoes of the original function of a place called Temair, the more linguistically acceptable etymology suggests that it derives from an Indo-European *tem-r-is which is a derivative of the root *tem- ‘to cut’. This signifies that Temair was a place that has been cut off, probably demarcated for sacred purposes, in effect ‘a sanctuary’. Temair would be related, therefore, to Greek temenos and to Latin templum both in etymology and in function. Many of the places in Ireland containing the name Temair are hilltop sites where the remains of enclosures survive, the most impressive being Ráith na Ríg at Tara, Co. Meath. It is likely, therefore, that Temair, a placename probably coined in prehistory, referred to hilltop sites on which a sacred space or sanctuary was enclosed. Apart from the hilltop element, these sites share features with British and Continental shrines and cult centres, including their incorporation of or location adjacent to prehistoric barrows, the ever-potent ancestral graves, and their possible location on or near boundaries. Such boundaries were regarded as the interface between this world and the Otherworld. Nevertheless, Tara was not necessarily a cult shrine dedicated to a god or goddess, but was the capital of an exceptional kingship often defended from the aggression of the Otherworld. The role of the gods and goddesses associated in early Irish literature with Tara and its kings was that of legitimising kingship. They were not the titular deities of Tara, with the possible exception of the goddess Medb. She too, however, was inextricably linked with kingship and sovereignty. In sum, it is possible that a place called Temair, a hilltop temenos, was the ceremonial focus of kingship – reflected in the ceremony known as feis Temro ‘The Feast of Tara’ – and that Temair Breg (Tara, Co. Meath) was the most prestigious of these kingships. In theory, the king of Tara was ruler both of the whole island and of the world.

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The Discovery Programme’s Tara Project was established over a decade ago and during that time its consideration of Tara has enabled researchers to re-define some of the important issues about the site, among them: the defination of Tara; the date, function and sequence of the principal monuments of the complex; Tara’s role in its landscape; the definition of Brega; Tara in later prehistory; Tara’s role as a necropolis; the nature of the kingship of Tara; and the decline of Tara. This volume is a contribution towards solving many of these issues on the basis of an inter-disciplinary approach. It is hoped that it will be used to advance debates on the topics discussed in the volume and will also function as a reference book for teachers, students and anyone interested in late prehistoric and early medieval Ireland.

Edel Bhreathnach

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Acknowledgments

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volume is the result of the cooperative effort of a number of dedicated and enthusiastic scholars. I wish to record my sincere appreciation to all who contributed to the volume for their participation in the Project: Paul Byrne, John Carey, Thomas CharlesEdwards, Anne Connon, Charles Doherty, Dónall Mac Giolla Easpaig, Ailbhe Mac Shamhráin, Kevin Murray, Conor Newman and Nollaig Ó Muraíle. I hope that our work as represented here will be regarded as a blue-print for future inter-disciplinary studies. Many other people assisted in the preparation of the volume. Professor Francis John Byrne participated enthusiastically in the seminars on the texts and through the years often offered advice from his unrivalled knowledge of early medieval Ireland. I wish to thank the present and previous Directorates of the Discovery Programme for their support and patience with me in the long evolution of the volume. Dr Brian Lacey, Chief Executive Officer read and commented on various drafts. Kathleen O’Sullivan, Jennifer Cunningham and Aoife Kane were always available to comfort and assist me while working on the Project. I am particularly grateful to Professor Pádraig Ó Riain, University College Cork for his careful and detailed reading of an earlier draft and to the reader appointed by the Discovery Programme as a referee. Colm Croker brought his considerable skill as a copy-editor to bear on the volume which led to many improvements and taught me much concerning the role of an editor. Ger Garland used her extensive expertise to create an elegantly designed volume. I wish to thank Dr Elizabeth O’Brien, and Robert Legg, School of Geography, Trinity College Dublin, for their work in preparing the maps and the trustees and librarians of the British Library, National Library of Ireland and the Royal Irish Academy for permission to reproduce photographs of manuscript materials. Dr Siobhán Ní Laoire and Grace Toland, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, were always available with their generous advice on bibliographical matters. Anthony O’Callaghan and Anthony Corns provided essential technical assistance. Professor John Waddell, Dr Jane Conroy, NUI Galway and Monsieur Michel Dhénin, Conservateur en chef du Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques, Bibliothèque Nationale de France are acknowleged for their assistance in sourcing an elusive Gaulish coin in Paris. The National University of Ireland provided a grant towards the publication of the volume and I wish to thank the Registrar, Attracta Halpin for her advice. The Discovery Programme gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution made by Meath County Council towards the cost of publication and also the Heritage Council’s continued support. HIS

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A volume such as this could not be completed without the assistance of many individuals in one’s academic and personal life. I wish to thank Professor Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha and Professor Nicholas Canny, NUI Galway, and Dr John McCafferty, Director, Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute for the Study of Irish History and Civilisation, University College Dublin, for allowing me to continue to work on Tara while engaged in projects in their respective institutions. To my parents Fionnbharra and Maebh Breathnach, Ciara Uí Cheallaigh, Tim Jarvis, Moya Brennan, Jackie McCarthy and Lynn Plomp: I acknowledge their participation in a vital support system. Finally, to Raghnall, Sorcha and Muiris Ó Floinn: is libh-se an leabhar seo!

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aim of this volume is to make the text and references as accessible as possible to a wide range of readers. Abbreviations are kept to a minimum and abbreviated titles mentioned in references follow the practice used in other Discovery Programme volumes. Acknowledging the fact that this volume is an inter-disciplinary compilation, two referencing systems are used, one which broadly follows the rules for contributors to Irish Historical Studies and the other, the Harvard system which is used in the linguistic notes and in the archaeological contribution by Conor Newman. Since Nollaig Ó Muraíle’s contribution includes many abbreviated references essential to his study, a key to these references is provided at the beginning of his paper. The same applies to the list of terms for royal rights included in Thomas Charles-Edwards’ chapter. There are many references to annalistic data particularly for the difficult period of 431 to 664 when the annalsitic chronology was interrupted by additions.1 Generally, annalistic references to AU are used following the year as given in Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill’s edition of 1983, unless other compilations provide the only available testimony or supply additional information. The dates of annals other than AU, which are uncorrected, are given by sub anno notation. In the case of Ann. Tig., the equivalent year to the AU entry (corrected) is cited and all Ann. Tig. entries occur in Whitley Stokes’s edition in Revue Celtique 16, 17 and 18 (for full citation see abbreviations below). The question of standardisation of the spelling of Irish personal names and placenames is always difficult since no standard orthography for the spelling of these names exists. Names in this volume are normally in their Old Irish form, with the exception of names which are only attested in later sources. In such cases, a possible Old Irish form is not constructed in order to avoid likely errors. Due to their universal recognition as such, a number of personal names retain their full Irish form and do not follow the translated ‘son of’ form. These include well-known figures such as Cormac mac Airt, Diarmait mac Cerbaill, Áed mac Ainmerech and Loingsech mac Óenguso. With regard to placenames, modern identifications are provided where possible; unidentifed placenames are italicised. HE

1

For a discussion on the annal chronology of this period, see McCarthy, ‘The chronology of the Irish annals’.

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List of Contributors Edel Bhreathnach Research Fellow Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute for the Study of Irish History and Civilisation, University College Dublin. Paul Byrne Principal Officer Department of Finance, Dublin. John Carey Senior Lecturer Department of Early and Medieval Irish, University College Cork. Thomas Charles-Edwards Jesus Professor of Celtic University of Oxford. Anne Connon Research Historian Medieval Rural Settlement Project, The Discovery Programme, Dublin. Charles Doherty Senior Lecturer in Early Irish History School of History and Archives, University College Dublin. Donall Mac Giolla Easpaig Chief Placenames Officer The Placenames Branch, Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Dublin. Ailbhe Mac Shamhráin Research Fellow Monasticon Hibernicum Project, National University of Ireland Maynooth. Kevin Murray College Lecturer Department of Early and Medieval Irish, University College Cork. Conor Newman College Lecturer Department of Archaeology, National University of Ireland Galway. Nollaig Ó Muraíle Senior Lecturer School of Irish, National University of Ireland Galway.

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Illustrations MANUSCRIPT PLATES RIA 23N10

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BL Egerton 88

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NLI G7

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GENEALOGICAL TABLES 1. Legendary Connachta

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2. Historical Connachta and Early Uí Néill

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3. Clann Cholmáin

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4. Síl nÁedo Sláine

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5. Cenél nÉogain

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6. Cenél Conaill

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7. Dál Fiatach

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8. Dál nAraidi

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9. Early Éoganachta

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LANDSCAPE VIEWS Plate A-J

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MAPS Figure A

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Figures 1-6

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Abbreviations AFM J. O’Donovan (ed. and trans.) 1851 Annála Rioghachta Éireann. Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters from the earliest period to the year 1616. 7 vols. Dublin. 3rd edition 1990. De Búrca Rare Books. Dublin. AI S. Mac Airt (ed.) 1944 The Annals of Inisfallen. Reprinted 1977. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. Ann. Clon. D. Murphy (ed. and trans.) 1896 The Annals of Clonmacnoise being Annals of Ireland from the earliest period to AD 1408 translated into English AD 1627 by Conell Mageoghagan. Dublin. Reprinted 1993. Llanerch Publishers. Felinfach. Ann.Loch Cé W.M. Hennessy 1871 The Annals of Loch Cé. 2 vols. Reprinted 1939. Irish Manuscripts Commission. Dublin. Ann. Tig. W. Stokes (ed. and trans.) 1895–7 The Annals of Tigernach. Revue Celtique 16, 374–419; 17, 6–33, 119–263, 337–420; 18, 9–59, 150–97, 267–303, 374–90. Reprinted 1993. Llanerch Publishers. Felinfach. AU S. Mac Airt and G. Mac Niocaill (eds and trans.) 1983 The Annals of Ulster (to AD 1131), Part I, Text and translation. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. Book of Ballymote 1887 The Book of Ballymote (facsimile). With introduction by R. Atkinson. Royal Irish Academy. Dublin. Book of Lecan 1937 The Book of Lecan: Leabhar Mhór Mhic Fhir Bhisigh Lecáin (facsimile). With introduction by K. Mulchrone. Irish Manuscripts Commission. Dublin. Chron. Scot. W.M. Hennessy (ed. and trans.) 1866 Chronicum Scotorum. A chronicle of Irish affairs, from the earliest times to AD 1135; with a supplement, containing the events from 1141 to 1150. Rolls series 46. London. CIH D.A. Binchy (ed.) Corpus Iuris Hibernici. 6 vols. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. DIL 1913–75 Dictionary of the Irish language and contributions to a dictionary of the Irish language. Royal Irish Academy. Dublin. Reprinted 1983 (compact edition).

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Abbreviations

Dinneen P.S. Dinneen, 1927 Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla. An Irish-English dictionary being a thesaurus of the words, phrases and idioms of the Modern Irish language. Irish Texts Society. Dublin. Revised edition. FGB N. Ó Dónaill, 1977 Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla. Athchló 1992. An Gúm. Baile Átha Cliath. Frag. Ann. J.N. Radner (ed.) 1978 The Fragmentary Annals of Ireland. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. Fiants The Irish fiants of the Tudor sovereigns during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Philip & Mary, and Elizabeth I with a new introduction by Kenneth Nicholls and preface by Tomás G. Ó Canann. 4 vols. Reprinted 1994. Edmund Burke Publisher. Dublin. LGen N. Ó Muraíle, (ed. and trans.) 2003 Leabhar Mór na nGenealach. The Great Book of Irish Genealogies compiled (1645–66) by Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh. 5 vols. Éamonn de Búrca. Dublin. LL For details regarding the various volumes of the diplomatic edition of the Book of Leinster, see Bibliography, 478 (Best et al.), 487 (O’Sullivan). LU R.I. Best and O. Bergin (eds) 1929 Lebor na Huidre. Book of the Dun Cow. Royal Irish Academy. Dublin. Met. Ban. M. Ní Bhrolcháin 1977 An Banshenchas Filíochta. Unpublished M.A. thesis, University College Galway. OLD P.G.W. Glare, 1982 Oxford Latin Dictionary. Clarendon Press. Oxford. Prose Ban. M. Ní Bhrolcháin 1980 The Prose Bansenchas. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University College Galway. Thes. Pal. W. Stokes and J. Strachan (eds) 1903–05 (with supplement 1910) Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus. A collection of Old-Irish glosses scholia prose and verse. 2 vols. Reprinted 1975. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. VSC A.O. Anderson and M.O. Anderson (ed. and trans.), 1961 Adomnan’s Life of Columba. London. Revised edition 1991. Clarendon Press. Oxford.

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K I N G S H I P

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Kingship in Early Ireland Charles Doherty

T

H E earliest reference to the presence of kings in Ireland is in the geography of the known world compiled by Claudius Ptolemaeus c. AD 150 (generally referred to as Ptolemy’s Map). He derived his information from earlier works – particularly that of Marinus of Tyre (fl. AD 90–110) following the Roman conquest of the north of Britain. Earlier information on the southern areas had been gathered at the time of the Claudian invasion of Britain in AD 43.1 T.F. O’Rahilly provides the starting-point for analysing Ptolemy’s geography of Ireland.2 His identification of Irish placenames has recently been reassessed by Alan Mac an Bhaird and Gregory Toner.3 Of these names, seven identify ‘cities’ in the interior. Two are the Greek transliteration of the Latin regia ‘king’s court’, while it is likely that the recurring reconstruction Dunon ‘represents the proto-Irish for more or less the same thing’.4 Isamnion probably represents Emain Macha, Navan Fort, about one mile west of Armagh city,5 the site of the palace of the Ulster kings as recounted in the Ulster Cycle of tales. Interestingly, there is no mention of Tara in Ptolemy’s Map. In AD 97-8 Tacitus wrote the biography of his father-in-law, Agricola, the governor of Britain in the period AD 78-85. Tacitus claims that Ireland was well known to merchants: aditus portusque per commercia et negotiatores cogniti ‘we are better informed, thanks to the trade of merchants, about the approaches to the island and its harbours’.6 He also tells of the Irish prince, expelled from Ireland as a result of a rebellion, who was given protection by Agricola under the guise of friendship. This would seem to have happened at the beginning of his fifth campaign, which he launched in AD 82 from Ayrshire or Galloway: Agricola expulsum seditione domestica unum ex regulis gentis exceperat ac specie amicitiae in occasionem retinebat ‘Agricola had given shelter to one of the petty chieftains whom faction had

1

2 3 4 5 6

For recent work on Ptolemy’s Map see Jones and Keillar, ‘Marinus, Ptolemy and the turning of Scotland’; Strang, ‘Explaining Ptolemy’s Roman Britain’; Parsons and Sims-Williams, Ptolemy: towards a linguistic atlas. For a review concerning the invasion see Frere and Fulford, ‘The Roman invasion of AD 43’. O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 1–42. Mac an Bhaird, ‘Ptolemy revisited’. For a recent re-assessment of Mac an Bhaird’s identifications, see Toner, ‘Identifying Ptolemy’s Irish places and tribes’. Mac an Bhaird, ‘Ptolemy revisited’, 15. There is not general agreement about this identification. For a summary of the arguments see Mallory, ‘Emain Macha and Navan Fort’, 197–8; Toner, ‘Identifying Ptolemy’s Irish places and tribes’, 77–8. Hutton (Ogilvie revision), Tacitus I: Agricola, Germania, Dialogues, 70–1 (Chap. 24. 2).

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driven from home, and under the cloak of friendship held him in reserve to be used as opportunity offered’.7 The regulus was perhaps a ‘petty king’ or the ‘son of a king’. Tacitus continues that Agricola had often said that Ireland could be reduced and held by a single legion with a fair-sized force of auxiliaries. The story of the Irish regulus may be a standard motif providing the excuse for invasion, since it is similar to the activity recounted by Dio Cassius concerning the prelude to Claudius’ invasion of Britain in AD 43.8 Tincommius of the Atrebates of southern Britain had fled to the protection of Rome and the similar flight of his relative (possibly brother) Verica to Rome in AD 42 was to be used as an excuse for the Claudian invasion.9 Whether the incident of the Irish regulus ever took place or not, it is still a contemporary reference to kingship in Ireland. The next account comes not from external reports but from a resident in Ireland – St Patrick. In speaking of the progress of conversion in Ireland, he says: filii Scottorum et filiae regulorum monachi et uirgines Xpisti esse uidentur ‘The sons and daughters of the petty kings of the Scots are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ’.10 He repeats the phrase again in his ‘Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus’: filii Scottorum et filiae regulorum monachi et uirgines Xpisti.11 He says that he gave rewards to kings: Interim praemia dabam regibus praeter quod dabam mercedem filiis ipsorum qui mecum ambulant ‘Meanwhile I kept giving rewards to kings, besides which I kept giving a fee to their sons, who walk with me’.12 Since he has already written of giving presents to kings and their sons, in the following remark he is most likely speaking of the brehons: 13 Uos autem experti estis quantum ego erogaui illis qui iudicabant per omnes regiones quos ego frequentius uisitabam ‘You furthermore have proved by experience how much I have paid out to those who judged through all the regions which I kept visiting quite often’.14 From St Patrick’s own writings it is clear that there were many kings living in different regiones ‘districts’ or ‘small kingdoms’. It is likely that his reges were of a higher grade than his reguli. But in none of these early accounts is there the slightest hint of a king of all Ireland. As such, this accords well with the evidence of the law-tracts of the seventh and eighth centuries. Patrick’s world was one of petty kingships, with a hint that some were more powerful than others. Of particular interest is an aspect of Patrick’s method of conversion mentioned in the record of his mission. He surrounded himself with the sons of kings to ensure his safe passage as he went about his business. These young men presumably made up his dám ‘company, suite, 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

4

Ibid., 70–1 (Chap. 24. 3). Millet, The romanization of Britain, 41. Todd, Roman Britain, 47. Howlett, Saint Patrick the bishop, 80–1. Ibid., 32–3. Ibid., 86–7. It is possible that Patrick is also referring here to kings. Ibid., 86–7.

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retinue’ 15 and may have constituted part of his bishop’s household. The later Middle Irish text Acallam na Senórach designates fían-members as maic ríg ‘kings’ sons’ with regard to the preponderantly youthful and aristocratic make-up of such bands.’ 16 As McCone has shown, with a great wealth of detail, the Church was an inveterate opponent of this institution in Irish society – not surprisingly since they preyed on the settled community.17 It was an institution that prepared young men as warriors and presumably allowed the natural leaders of the next generation to emerge. Operating on the margins of society in the forests and wilderness, they returned to the settled community on reaching adulthood and on coming into their inheritance. Was Patrick going on a circuit like a lord with his retinue; or was he attempting to create a Christian fían – soldiers of Christ, as opposed to the soldiers of the Devil (as fían members came to be regarded by the Church)? 18 If this was Patrick’s intention, then it was an experiment that did not succeed, as McCone’s analysis makes very clear. Either way, Patrick had access to those who would be the elite of the next generation and some of whom would become kings. It is likely too that they would have received an education from him (some became monks), and some, at least, must have achieved a degree of literacy. Patrick was concerned with a Christian form of government, as we can see from his comments in his ‘Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus’: Unde enim Coroticus cum suis sceleratissimis rebellatores Xpisti ubi se uidebunt. Qui mulierculas baptizatas praemia distribuunt. Ob miserum regnum temporale quod utique in momento transeat. Sicut nubes uel fumus qui utique uento dispergitur ita peccatores fraudulenti a facie Domini peribunt. Iusti autem epulentur in magna constantia cum Xpisto iudicabunt nationes et regibus iniquis dominabunter. In saecula saeculorum. Amen. Whence, then, Coroticus with his most shameful men, rebels against Christ, where will they see themselves, they who distribute baptized little women as prizes because of a pitiable temporal realm which may indeed pass away in a moment? Just as a cloud or smoke, which indeed is dispersed by the wind, so fraudulent sinners will perish from the face of the Lord. But the righteous will feast in great constancy with Christ. They will judge nations, and they will lord it over unjust rulers for ages of ages. Amen.19

15 16 17 18 19

Binchy, Críth Gablach, 82. See also McCone, ‘The etymology of Old Irish déis’. McCone, Pagan past, 206. Ibid., 203–32. See also Charles-Edwards on this matter in Early Christian Ireland, 464. Howlett, Saint Patrick the bishop, 36–7.

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Patrick’s reference to the rex iniquus 20 was a harbinger of the description of that character in documents of the seventh century. We have some idea, therefore, what Patrick taught the sons of kings. The mission of Palladius came to peoples who were likely to have been Christians already, probably living in the area of Leinster and the midlands. We do not know any details of that mission, but if Patrick is representative of the fifth-century clergy, then the message concerning rulers would have been essentially the same. This information is of the utmost importance because it means that from the very start of the spread of the Christian message in Ireland a discourse had begun between the old and new traditions concerning the institution of kingship. It was a discourse that is found textually in documents written in Latin and in Irish. So interwoven is the residue of the old pagan religion with Christianity that Professor McCone has argued ostensibly for the emergence of a virtually new mythology.21 It is a discourse that has its counterpart on the landscape itself. Peter Brown, discussing the Christianisation of Europe, made the following sensitive observation: We also look out on a natural world made passive by being shorn of the power of the gods. It seems to me that the most marked feature of the rise of the Christian church in western Europe was the imposition of human administrative structures and of an ideal potentia linked to invisible human beings and to their visible human representatives, the bishops of the towns, at the expense of traditions that had seemed to belong to the structure of the landscape itself. Saint Martin attacked those points at which the natural and the divine were held to meet: he cut down sacred trees, and he broke up the processions that followed the immemorial lines between the arable and the nonarable. His successors fulminated against trees and fountains, and against forms of divination that gained access to the future through the close observation of the vagaries of animal and vegetable life.22 This is important because in Ireland this conflict does not appear to have taken place, at least not in the same violent way. Sacred trees are found on church sites. Wells were Christianised, and many of the old agricultural customs were mediated through the cult of a saint such as St Brigit. Is Peter Brown right here? How successful was this process in Europe? In Ireland the natural world was not made ‘passive’ (to use his phrase) – on the contrary, its energy was harnessed by Christianity through local cults. 20 21

22

6

The term rex iniquus possibly reflects the vernacular anfhlaith, who is the opposite of the ideal king fírfhlaith. McCone, Pagan past, 218: ‘Preceding chapters have documented at some length the early Irish Church’s success in adapting or reinterpreting appropriate pre-Christian concepts and institutions as necessary, the upshot frequently being an antique shell, sometimes more fake than genuine, capable of housing a new or significantly modified ideology attuned to ecclesiastical requirements.’ Brown, The cult of the saints, 124–5.

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There is a gap in our evidence between the time of St Patrick in the fifth century and the seventh century, when we get sufficient information to begin to see what is happening in Irish society. By this stage he who had been pagan, to use the words of Brown, found himself ‘in a world where his familiar map of the relations between the human and the divine, the dead and the living, had been subtly redrawn’.23 That this process was not complete may be seen in the works of the seventh-century hagiographers. The tenacity of the cult of the well with its healing capacity 24 may be seen in Tírechán’s account of the well of Finnmag called Slán in Co. Mayo. It was a well that Patrick had been told was honoured by the druids who offered gifts to it as to a god. They had given the name ‘king of the waters’ to it. Patrick blessed and then lifted a large stone from the opening of the well to prove that the bones of a man who feared burning by fire did not lie underneath. The well contained only water, and Patrick baptised a man who sat nearby with the water.25 In Muirchú’s Life of Patrick a druid refused to enter into a test of water with Patrick because ‘water is a god of his’. Muirchú rationalises this in an aside: ‘He had heard, no doubt, that Patrick baptized with water.’ 26 In Tírechán’s account of Patrick’s journeys he describes how the saint visited a number of wells. He visits the well of Mucno (Tobar Makee, Drumtemple, Co. Roscommon),27 where he founded a cell; and there was a cross there marking the spot where Secundinus had sat under an elm tree.28 He founded a church at Drummae in the vicinity of Lough Gara, Co. Sligo and dug a well there. No stream flowed either into or out of it.29 He visited the well of Stringell, at Ballintubber, Co. Mayo. The most dramatic occasion was his visit to the well of Clébach to the east of Cruachu (Rathcroghan, tl. Toberrory, par. Elphin, bar./Co. Roscommon). Patrick came with an assembly of bishops to the well. The daughters of Lóegaire mac Néill, king of Tara, came to wash and were amazed at the sight of the assembly. Et quocumque essent aut quacumque forma aut quacumque plebe aut quacumque regione non cognouerunt, sed illos uiros side aut deorum terrenorum aut fantassiam estimauerunt ‘And they did not know whence they were or of what shape or from what people or from what region, but thought they were men of the other world 30 or earth-gods or a phantom’. Patrick, having suggested that they profess the true God, was questioned by one of the girls:

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Ibid., 5. Ibid., 118. ‘They had the voiceless power of nature itself behind them.’ Bieler, Patrician texts, 152–3: 39. Ibid., 94–5: I 20 (8). Ibid., Index, sub Mucno fons, 262. Ibid., 150–1: 34. Ibid., 148–9: 31. Side in Tírechán’s text is taken to be gen. sg. of the OIr síd. Kenneth Jackson suggested to Patrick SimsWilliams that this instance of síd ‘might mean ‘fairies’ in the gen. pl. and be glossed aut deorum terrenorum accordingly’. See Sims-Williams, ‘Some Celtic otherworld terms’, 76 n. 6.

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‘Who is God and where is God and whose God is he and where is his dwellingplace? Has your God sons and daughters, gold and silver? Is he ever-living, is he beautiful, have many fostered his son, are his daughters dear and beautiful in the eyes of the men of the earth? Is he in the sky or in the earth or in the water, in rivers, in mountains, in valleys? Give us an account of him; how shall he be seen, how is he loved, how is he found, is he found in youth, in old age?’ Patrick replied: ‘Our God is the God of all men, the God of heaven and earth, of the sea and the rivers, God of the sun and the moon and all the stars, the God of high mountains and low valleys; God above heaven and in heaven and under heaven, he has his dwelling in heaven and earth and sea and in everything that is in them; he breathes in all things, makes all things live, surpasses all things, supports all things; he illumines the light of the sun, he consolidates the light of the night and the stars, he has made wells in the dry earth and dry islands in the sea and stars for the service of the major lights. He has a son, coeternal with him, similar to him; the Son is not younger than the Father nor is the Father older than the Son, and the Holy Spirit breathes in them; the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not separate.’ 31 The question put into the mouth of the daughter of the king must give us a glimpse of the kind of discourse in which the clergy were engaged in the seventh century. The reply surely reveals the redefinition of the physical world that the seventh-century clergy were trying to bring about.32 Patrick preached to the girls. They were baptised and demanded to see the face of Christ. After receiving the Eucharist they fell asleep in death. Tírechán then tells of their burial beside the well in a round ditch after the manner of a ferta and he adds ‘but we call it relic, that is, the remains of the maidens’. The grave was made over to Patrick, and he built a church there.33 From this evidence it seems that the Christianisation of wells was of major concern to seventh-century churchmen. The reference to the burial above indicates that they had other concerns too. Tírechán has Patrick come upon a huge grave 120 feet long in Co. Mayo.34 His followers could not believe that a man of such size could have existed. Patrick struck a stone of the grave-mound and made the sign of the cross. A huge warrior, the son of the son of Cass son of Glass, arose and asked to walk with Patrick. Because he would frighten people,

31 32 33 34

8

Ibid., 142–3: 26. See the interesting discussion by Mac Mathúna, ‘Irish perceptions of the Cosmos’. Bieler, Patrician texts, 144–5: 26 (20)–(21). Ibid., 154–5: 40.

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Patrick refused. He said that he had been killed one hundred years before. He was baptised, fell silent, and was returned to his grave. On another occasion Patrick removed a cross that had been placed by mistake over a pagan grave and put it on the grave of the Christian for whom it had been intended. Another prehistoric tomb at Murrisk between Clew Bay and Croagh Patrick was said to be the spot where Patrick buried his charioteer, Tóthmáel.35 There was clearly a concern for burial places and burial in a Christian fashion.36 But there may have been more than that. In the same way in which Patrick is brought into contact with the ancestral figures of major dynasties in order to give them a Christian pedigree, his contact with prehistoric graves may have served a similar purpose. One of the concerns of converted people was the question of what would happen to their ancestors? Would they be saved? Patrick awakened the dead in order to baptise them. Or Lóegaire’s daughters were placed in a ring-barrow on being converted to Christianity. Both actions provided a link between ancient tribal burial grounds and Christianity. The tribal or dynastic ancestors could still be saved. The landscape, in particular those places where heaven and earth met, was being Christianised. Patrick erected crosses in a number of places. These, along with wells and graves, provided a visual reminder of particular events and are a counterpoint to the textual discourse. According to Muirchú, on the side of Slemish a cross marked the spot from which Patrick had his first view of the district and from where he saw the flames of Miliuc’s pyre.37 Another story related by Muirchú finds an echo in the landscape. Patrick released a fawn in a glen to the north of Armagh, ‘where, as knowledgeable men tell us, there persist to the present day signs of his miraculous power’.38 Nowhere, perhaps, did the meeting of heaven and earth have greater resonance than in places of the inauguration of kings. Some of the following references in the seventhcentury hagiography may be references to such places. Tírechán says that Patrick stayed iuxta Petram Coithrigi ‘near Coithrige’s Stone’ at Uisnech, in Co. Westmeath.39 When Patrick arrived at Dún Sobairche (Dunseverick, par. Billy, bar. Cary, Co. Antrim) ‘he sat on a rock which is called Patrick’s Rock (petra Patricii) until now’.40 He went to Leinster ‘to Druimm Hurchaille,41 and established there the House of the Martyrs (Domus Martirum) as it is now called, which is situated on the great road in the valley, and there is Patrick’s 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid., 152–3: 38 (2). See the remarks of Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 78; see also the important work of O’Brien, ‘Pagan and Christian burial in Ireland’; O’Brien, Burial practices reviewed, 26–7. Bieler, Patrician texts, 80–1: I 12 (2); Tírechán refers to crosses in Mayo and Sligo. See 156–9: 43 (3), 45 (1). Ibid., 110–13: I 24 (16). Ibid., 136–7: 16 (4). Ibid., 160–1: 48 (3). Dunmurraghill near Donadea, approx. 5 km to the north west of Clane in Co. Kildare.

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Rock (petra Patricii) at the road’.42 On going into Munster, Patrick baptised the sons of Nad Froích on Patrick’s Rock (super Petram Coithrigi) in Cashel.43 Tírechán mentions the footprint of the angel on the Hill of Scirit (Hill of Skerry) in Co. Antrim.44 It is mentioned also by Muirchú, who says that the angel’s footprint may be seen to the present day. It ‘is a place of prayer and there the faithful obtain most happily the things for which they pray’.45 Patrick is brought to these places in order to bind them and the churches and dynasties associated with them more closely to Armagh. Professor Mac Eoin points out that ‘It should be remembered that standing stones and immovable rocks, with or without ogam inscriptions, were accepted as evidence of ownership in early Irish law.’ 46 Mac Eoin is no doubt correct in emphasising this aspect, but I would suggest that some of these rocks were special in that they were inauguration stones. The relatively low hill of Skerry referred to above lies across the valley of the River Braid from Slemish in Co. Antrim. On its southern approach it is of little significance. On the summit is a deserted church that was last used for burials in the early nineteenth century by the Church of Ireland. The church site itself is clearly very ancient. Just outside the church wall to the north the hill ends in a cliff at the bottom of which is a farmhouse. Beyond the farm the land rises in the great mass of the Antrim plateau. It is this that towers above the hill from the south, disguising it. Just outside the gate of the churchyard the rock is exposed and in the surface of the rock is a triangular depression – the footprint of the angel. From this position there is the most dramatic view of Slemish and the surrounding countryside for a considerable distance. This was the territory of Miliuc moccu Bóin, who immolated himself rather than accept Christianity. As a result, Patrick prophesied that none of his sons would be king after him and that his line would be subordinate forever. The rock is likely to have been the inauguration site of the Bóinrige. This is surely a clear indication of the Christianisation of an inauguration site. The single footprint is a reflection of the international motif of kingship – the man of one sandal.47 Since some of these rocks are associated with Coithrige, then, they are likely to have been Christianised at a very early date. There has been much debate about the origin of this name for Patrick. Coithrige would seem to be the earlier oral form of Patrick’s name in Irish. The name Pátraic, based on Patricius, would appear to have supplanted it, perhaps as late as the seventh century and was derived from the written Latin form of the name as it was pronounced in the seventh century. This may have been largely as a result of the literary

42 43 44 45 46 47

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Bieler, Patrician texts, 162–3: 51 (2). Ibid., 162–3: 51 (4). Ibid., 162–3: 51 (1). Skerry, par. Newtown Crommelin, bar. Kilconway. Ibid., 82–3: II 15 (3)–(4). Mac Eoin, ‘The four names of St Patrick’, 309. O’Brien, ‘Short notes’, 351–3; Killeen, ‘Fear an énais’, 202–4; Mac Cana, ‘The topos of the single sandal in Irish tradition’; Ó Catháin, ‘Ón laincis go dtí an leathbhróg’.

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activity of the hagiographers 48 and may reinforce the generally held opinion that the country was at least nominally Christian by the middle of the sixth century. Tírechán’s Petra Coithrige, as Mac Eoin points out is Lecc Pátraic, ‘Patrick’s Rock’, in the Vita Tripartita.49 For example, there is a Leckpatrick in the barony of Lower Strabane in Co. Tyrone.50 It could be suggested that all flags or rocks named after Patrick are likely to have been inauguration sites. Limited though the evidence is, I would suggest that there was a concerted effort on the part of the Church to Christianise the inauguration sites of the local petty kings and that Armagh played a major role in this process. The more powerful kingship of Munster at Cashel may have been Christian from an exceptionally early period. Professor Byrne has pointed out that ‘There are no myths or legends concerning the Rock of Cashel relating to pagan prehistory: we are told that the site (despite its obvious prominence in the Munster landscape) was found accidentally or revealed miraculously, and the story has a strong Christian coloration, even in its most archaic versions.’ 51 The association of the Rock of Cashel with Coithrige would suggest that the prestige of the name of Patrick was already in Munster well before the seventh century. By the seventh century the clergy were not confronting paganism in order to oppose it, for institutional paganism seems to have been overcome a long time before. They were using aspects of the older tradition to further reinforce their own view of society. This is seen most clearly in relation to the institution of kingship. They were particularly interested in the most powerful form of kingship. It is for this reason that we encounter references to Tara in the work of the seventh-century hagiographers. In the literature 52 Tara was the centre of the highkingship of Ireland and in the hagiography it was the centre of paganism and idolatry.53 Unlike the petty kingships, which were local and seem to have existed throughout the country, the kingship of Tara was exceptional and has engendered much scholarly debate over many years.54 The most recent discussion of the kingship of Tara is by Professor Thomas CharlesEdwards.55 He has provided a meticulous and invaluable analysis of the annals and relevant literature to try to establish just what is meant by the term ‘king of Tara’. He has not discussed the mythological associations of Tara and thus has allowed the contemporary evidence to speak. In the earliest sources Tara could be claimed by any king but as time went on (between 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

For a summary of scholarly opinion on this problem and a very important discussion of this name and that of Patricius/Pátraic see Mac Eoin, ‘The four names of St Patrick’. Ibid., 308. Census of Ireland, 639. Byrne, Irish kings, 184. See also Ní Chatháin, ‘Swineherds, seers, and druids’, 203–11. Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography. Bieler, Patrician texts, 84–5: I 15 (1)–(3). For a comprehensive discussion and an extensive bibliography see Jaski, Early Irish kingship. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 469–521.

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the late seventh and the tenth century) it became more and more the monopoly of the Uí Néill dynasty; even when the occupant of the position was relatively weak.56 Edel Bhreathnach, in a very important article, has shown the psychological importance of Tara as the caput Scotorum ‘capital of the Irish’.57 Running through the work of scholars is the difficulty of relating the symbolical associations of Tara with contemporary reality and in particular the relationship between the institution of the high-kingship of Ireland and the site. One fundamental question in relation to the high-kingship is – did it ever exist? Since the high-king is not included as the highest grade of king in the law of status, Professor Binchy was certain that: [The] king of Tara, the Ardrí or ‘High King’ of so many modern textbooks of Irish history is not mentioned in this context at all. He is not even cited as an example of a rí ruirech, much less as the superior of the other provincial kings. Indeed on the only occasion when ‘supremacy over all kings’ is mooted in an early tract it is claimed for the king of Munster, although the statement probably means nothing more than that he was supreme over all other kings, ríg and ruirig alike, in Munster. This shows that the claim of the king of Tara to be ‘King of Ireland’, though it was put forward by Adamnán (who was himself a member of the dynastic kindred) at the beginning of the seventh century, had no more basis in law than it had in fact. In the text of the law-tracts there is not a single reference to any such high office.58 As Liam Breatnach has shown, the term ardrí [ardri] does exist in the law-tracts, although it is outside the law of status.59 For Charles-Edwards, however, ‘The term ardrí, ‘high-king’, is not of central importance, since it could be used of kings other than the king of Tara, but it is worth adding [citing Breatnach] that there is good evidence that the term itself is an old one.’ 60 I would suggest that it is of importance when seen in the context of other terms to be discussed below. Charles-Edwards further shows that the concept of a king of Ireland is to be found in other texts, as in the reference to the tríath found in the eighth-century Míadslechta, ‘a burdensome tríath who penetrates Ireland of peoples from sea to sea’, although he concludes that he ‘is an ambiguous figure and it may be unwise to draw any firm conclusions on his relevance to the kingship of Tara’.61 I will return to this point below. However, Charles-Edwards must be very close to the reality when he states: ‘The absence of a regular rank of king of Ireland from the laws on status may thus recognise, first, the 56 57 58 59 60 61

12

Ibid., 520. Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’ Binchy, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingship, 32–3. Breatnach, ‘Ardri as an old compound’. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 519. Ibid., 519–20.

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variability in the authority of the king of Tara, and, secondly, the consequent necessity of reckoning each king of Tara’s status by his power, so that, in the words of Míadslechta, his due “is measured by his fist”’.62 Another ambiguity about Tara is reflected in Edel Bhreathnach’s statement that ‘[The] change in Tara’s nature from a political and possibly religious centre to a political and (perhaps solely) symbolic centre, effected by the Uí Néill and their protagonists, is crucial to our understanding of Tara as it emerges in the early medieval period.’ 63 This is fundamentally important. In the words of Francis John Byrne, author of the classic book on this subject: ‘But we cannot evade the problems set by myth and legend about the prehistoric past, because it is to that past that we must look for an explanation of Tara and its kingship.’ 64 Indeed, if we are to get some idea of the religious function of Tara in the pagan period, then we must examine this legendary and mythological material. It may be unwise to make too clear a distinction between politics and religion. Everything that we know about kingship throughout the world shows that the creation of a king is a religious act.65 It is his capacity as a mediator between his people and the gods that ensures their safety and good health. Since this institution was of such fundamental importance to the people, its Christianisation must have taxed the early clergy to the limit. As a result of recent excavation, we have been given a unique glimpse of a prehistoric, pagan religious ceremony that took place at Emain Macha, now Navan Fort beside Armagh.66 In 95/94 BC (a precise date obtained from tree-ring analysis of a massive central post) a large ritual mound of tripartite construction was constructed on top of the remains of a Late Bronze Age settlement. It was also fitted deliberately within an earlier enclosure ditch. Dr Chris Lynn, who completed and edited the excavation report, stated that ‘It can be concluded that the evidence of excavation can be interpreted in ways which completely accord with the portrayal of the site as a place of kingship and as a regional sanctuary in the Early Iron Age and that alternative explanations are difficult to develop.’ 67 The excavation revealed five phases of activity. A summary of phases 4 and 5 by Lynn touches on the complexity of the activity that took place.

62 63 64 65

66 67

Ibid., 520. Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 77. Byrne, Irish kings, 53. Hocart, Kingship; La regalità sacra, [no named editor]. The religious nature of kingship was still strong in modern times. The English Reformation had a traumatic impact upon the nature of kingship in England and this trauma was intensified when the English executed kings in the seventeenth century. See McCoy, Alterations of State. For a wider European perspective see Bertelli, Sacred rituals of power. Waterman, Excavations at Navan Fort. Lynn, ‘Comparisons and interpretations’, 229. See also Lynn, Navan Fort. Archaeology and myth.

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Phase 4 A ‘multi-ring timber structure’, 40m in diameter, was built directly on the phase 3 occupation surface and was fitted approximately within the circuit of the old phase 3 (i) ditch, which by this stage can have been visible only as a slight annular hollow ... The structure was formed of five concentric rings of oak posts set in deep sockets, some 280 in total. On the west the circular arrangement of the rings gave way to four rows running from the outer perimeter, probably a timber wall in a slot, towards and around a central post. The post was erected using a 6m-long ramp sloping down into a socket more than 2m deep. The massive axe-felled butt of the post survived in the damp subsoil, offering an opportunity for dendrochronology which demonstrated that it last grew in 95 BC, offering an exact date for phase 4 ... . No evidence for any activity was recovered from this phase, nor were any artifacts. Phase 5 While the timber building was standing it was filled with a large flat-topped cairn of limestone boulders ... . The rotted-out uprights of the multi-ring timber structure left vertical voids in the cairn. The cairn was 2.8m high and its outer edge rested against the inside of the wall of the timber structure. The timber structure was then deliberately burned around and over the cairn. The cairn and the burnt remains of the timber structure were covered immediately by a 2.5m-high mound of layered turves and varied soils, apparently derived from a variety of environments. Apart from a few finds, no evidence survived in the deep topsoil on the mound for any activity after its construction.68 Lynn has made extensive archaeological comparisons with similar sites in Ireland, Britain and Europe. He has also examined native and other literature for evidence that might help us to understand the significance of this unique event. His general conclusion that kingship lies at the core of the interpretation of the site must surely be correct. It was an event that plainly left its mark on the minds of the Irish, even if its religious import was no longer clearly understood by the time traditions about it were committed to writing. If the young regulus did meet Agricola in the 80s of the first century AD, he could have heard about this extraordinary event from his father or grandfather. It may account for the record of this named site (the ‘holy mountain’ from *isa and *mon if Gregory Toner’s etymology is correct) 69 from the interior of the north in Ptolemy’s Map.

68 69

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Lynn, ‘Summary’, xvi. As quoted by Mallory, ‘Emain Macha and Navan Fort’, 199.

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If it is generally accepted that the event has to do with kingship, then what kind of kingship was involved? It did not involve the inauguration of a local king. The suggestions that follow are very tentatively put forward in the same spirit as Lynn’s theories with the intention of simply contributing to the debate.70 Extraordinary care was given to every aspect of the ritual. The filling of the 40m house with limestone boulders was completed in such a way as to create a circular flat-topped cairn that was wedge-shaped when viewed from above. The entire structure took on the appearance of a wheel – a point made by Lynn.71 The wheel was ultimately the representation of the sun and is reflected in the mythical name Mug Ruith.72 It was a symbol used by Muirchú when telling the story of the daughter of a British king whose parents tried to coerce her into marriage: ‘she kept asking her mother and her nurse whether they knew the maker of the wheel (rotae factorem) by which the world is illuminated, and when she received the answer that the maker of the sun was he whose throne was in heaven…’ 73 Patrick, of course, is our primary witness that the Irish worshipped the sun.74 Life on earth is due to the sun. In Indian tradition the king should ‘behave like the sun which protects (pati) and destroys all creatures by its rays’.75 The king’s duty was to further ‘the moral and material welfare of the people’.76 ‘But the person who always protects the good and checks the wicked deserves to become a king and to govern the world.’ 77 The greatest of kings in ancient India was the cakravartin, or emperor, ‘world-king’. The cakravartin is the manifestation of the king in the Buddhist tradition. It is ancient Indian kingship transformed through contact with the new religion. As I will argue below this process provides a useful analogy for the impact of Christianity upon early Irish kingship. The cakra– in this word means ‘wheel’.78 Gonda has suggested that ‘a cakravartin – originally was a king who participated in the conquering efficacy of the ‘wheel’, i.e. of the sun, of the vajra-winning and ‘imperialistic’ chariot, of a power center of universality, of universal dominion?’ 79 Gonda goes on to say: ‘So the term cakravartin – might have come to denote a universal king – a king who according to Buddhist sources rules the earth surrounded by the ocean or the pathavimandala, “the circle of the earth”: “he who is placed in the cakra–” is he who like the sun is the center, lord and sustainer of the world, its eye and life-giver; coinciding 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Lynn, ‘The Iron Age mound in Navan Fort’; ‘Hostels, heroes and tale’, 18–9; Navan Fort. Lynn, ‘Hostels, heroes and tale’, 16; For a detailed description of the construction of the cairn see Lynn, ‘Site B excavation: phase 5’, 50–2. O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 519–22. Bieler, Patrician texts, 98–9: I 27 (3). Howlett, Saint Patrick the bishop, 91–2 line 38; Sed et omnes qui adorant eum in poenam miseri male deuenient, ‘but even all who adore it will come badly to the punishment of the pitiable’. Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 3. Ibid., 3–4. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 124. Ibid., 126.

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with the axis mundi the sovereign could reside only in the middle’ 80; ‘cakravartin possesses on his body divinely characteristic attributes, in casu the thirty-two marks of a great being’.81 ‘In other sources the idea of divine kingship finds expression in the belief that the ruler puts on five different forms according to five different occasions.’ 82 These ideas are of interest in relation to the structure at Navan. The interpretation of the great central post as an axis mundi must be correct. The final covering of the mound was the creation of a king’s seat 83 – a forad, which may be cognate with Welsh gorsedd. 84 The soil that provided the final covering at Navan came from a variety of locations.85 We may have a echo of what happened on the mound in a ceremony creating a cakravartin in India in which bags of salty earth are thrown upon the king.86 The final structure would appear to be equivalent to the Indian prasada– ‘the residence of gods and kings. The true sense of the word is still larger: it can denote a sacred building or monument, a seat of divinity.’ 87 Further, Gonda quotes Kramrisch 88 ‘It denotes a settling down (pra-sad–) and a seat made of that which has settled down and acquired concrete form, the form of a dwelling, a residence, the seat of God.’ In substantiation of her view the learned authoress quotes a passage from the Isanasivagurudevapaddhati. ‘The prasada is made up of the presence of Siva and Sakti, and of the principles and forms of existence (tattva–) from the elementary substance Earth and ending with Sakti; the concrete form of Siva is called house of god (devalaya–).’ 89 Both forad and pra-sad contain the element *sedos ‘seat’ (cf. Latin sedes). It is also the earlier form of síd. 90 Such places are the king’s seat, the home of the gods, the home of peace. We find a parallel for the ‘ambulatory’ in the structure in the Indian festival that was the concern of the king – ‘Indra’s tree or banner, a fertility ceremony par excellence’ 91 in which the king circumambulates the tree. The ramp that guided the central post home may have been more than a technical device, since ‘The process of erecting the tree should be carefully 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

16

Ibid., 126–7. Ibid., 60; see Lynn, ‘Hostels, heroes and tale’, 7–11. Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 31. Lynn, ‘Hostels, heroes and tale’, 12. Rees and Rees, Celtic heritage, 183–4; Sims-Williams, ‘Some Celtic otherworld terms’, 64–7. Lynn, ‘Site B excavation: phase 5’, 58–9. Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 87 n. 546. Ibid., 54–55. Kramrisch, The Hindu temple, I, 135–6. Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 55–6 (with emendations by Gonda). Wagner, Studies in the origins of the Celts, 245 n. 107; Ó Cathasaigh, ‘The semantics of ‘síd’; Doherty, ‘The monastic town in early medieval Ireland’, 51–2; Sims-Williams, ‘Some Celtic otherworld terms’. Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 74.

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watched by the astrologer, for any accident or deviation from the prescribed course of action is significant for the future of the ruler and the realm.’ 92 ‘By celebrating this festival the kingdom becomes, day by day, greater, the king attains to the position of sole ruler of the earth and shall live a full lifetime.’ 93 In making these suggestions it is important to remember the words of Gonda: There can on the other hand be no doubt that the sacred nature of kingship assumed, in India, a much more definite character than may be assumed to have existed in prehistoric Indo-European antiquity. This kingship seems to have been one of those elements of so-called primitive or non-modern culture, which were in the West –mainly under the influence of Greek rationalism – gradually superseded, but in India – which culturally developed on its own lines – not only preserved but even fostered and systematized. It would therefore be wise, not to rely on the argumentum e silentio and to ascribe to the prehistoric Greeks, Romans, and Germans all beliefs and customs found in the ancient Indian documents, but rather to regard both the eastern and the ancient western conceptions of royalty and rulership as, in the first place, representative of a generally human belief, and secondly as a continuation of common Indo-European ideas and practices: and not to attribute to the prehistoric Indo-Europeans those details which we know only from the Indian sources.94 While keeping this in mind, it is in the Irish sources that we find remarkable echoes of what is more clearly described in Indian sources. Only the greatest of kings could perform the As´vamedha, the ‘horse-sacrifice’, the supreme rite in the hierarchy of sacrifices. ‘The As´vamedha therefore really was the most important manifestation of kingship.’ 95 We have a remarkable reference to it in Ireland from the pen of Giraldus Cambrensis in his Topographia: Sunt et quedam, que nisi materie cursus expeteret, pudor reticenda persuaderet. Verumtamen, historie seueritas nec ueritati parcere nouit nec uerecundie. Est igitur in boreali et ulteriori Vltonie parte, scilicet apud Kenelcunil, gens quedam, que barbaro nimis et abhominabili ritu sic sibi regem creare solet. Collecto in unum uniuerso terre illius populo, in medium producitur, iumentum candidum. Ad quod sullimandus ille non in principem sed in beluam, non in regem sed exlegem, coram omnibus bestialiter accedens, se quoque bestiam profitetur. Et statim iumento 92 93 94 95

Ibid., 76. Ibid., 76–7. Ibid., 143. Ibid., 114.

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interfecto, et frustatim in aqua decocto, in eadem aqua balneum ei paratur. Cui insidens, de carnibus illis sibi allatis, circumstante populo suo et conuescente, comedit ipse. De iure quoque quo lauatur, non uase aliquo, non manu, sed ore tantum circumquaque haurit et bibit. Quibus ita rite, non recte completis, regnum illius et dominium est confirmatum.96 There are some things which, if the exigencies of my account did not demand it, shame would discountenance their being described. But the austere discipline of history spares neither truth nor modesty. There is in the northern and farther part of Ulster, namely in Kenelcunil [Tyrconnell], a certain people which is accustomed to consecrate its king with a rite altogether outlandish and abominable. When the whole people of that land has been gathered together in one place, a white mare is brought forward into the middle of the assembly. He who is to be inaugurated, not as a chief, but as a beast, not as a king, but as an outlaw, embraces the animal before all, professing himself to be a beast also. The mare is then killed immediately, cut up in pieces, and boiled in water. A bath is prepared for the man afterwards in the same water. He sits in the bath surrounded by all his people, and all, he and they, eat of the meat of the mare which is brought to them. He quaffs and drinks of the broth in which he is bathed, not in any cup, or using his hand, but just dipping his mouth into it round about him. When this unrighteous rite has been carried out, his kingship and dominion has been conferred.97 Giraldus had come to Ireland in February 1183 in the company of his brother Philip de Barry, one of the early Norman adventurers in Ireland. He stayed for about a year. ‘His second visit lasted from 24th April 1185 to some time between Easter and Pentecost 1186, that is between 13th April and 1st June, and thus slightly over the year.’ 98 He had been to Cork and Waterford on his first visit to Ireland. On his second visit he most likely travelled by sea from Waterford to Dublin. He would appear to have had knowledge of Arklow and Wicklow. He was in Kildare and had visited Meath. He may have seen the Shannon in the vicinity of Athlone and may have seen Lough Ree and Lough Derg. But this would seem to have been the limit of his travels.99 It is interesting that the setting of this ceremony was in a very remote part of the country from Giraldus’s point of view. Since Giraldus was at pains to show how barbarous the Irish were in comparison to his adventurous relatives, one would have to be very sceptical in accepting this as a record of a contemporary event despite the quaint drawing of the activity in a manuscript of his work dating to c. 1200 (National Library of

96 97 98 99

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O’Meara, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hibernie’, 168. The first version of the Topography, 93–4. Scott and Martin, Expugnatio Hibernica, xiv. O’Meara, The first version of the Topography, 4–5.

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Ireland, MS 700) 100. He shows an acquaintance elsewhere in his book with material that comes from the same milieu as Lebor Gabála Érenn, and it is very likely that this ceremony has been taken from a similar source or tale. The description suggests that an As´vamedhalike ceremony was practised in Ireland at some time. It is not just the union with the horse and its subsequent killing that is analogous to Indian sources, but also the bathing of the king and the acclamation of the people.101 Giraldus may not be our only witness. There may be a reflection of the same ceremony in the text Geinemain Moling acus a Betha ‘The Birth and Life of St. Moling’ which in its current form belongs to the Middle Irish period. The saint and his gillie sought refreshment in a house: Ticc fer in tighe ocus ferais failte friu. Ni frı–th biadh doibh iarsin acht cés capuill ro bo– i istigh do chor isin coire doiph. Ro bennach in cle–irech an tegh ocus an coire, ar rofitir gur’bo féoil capuill ro bo– i ann. Intan immorro ro himpadh in lucht [ro bói isin coiri] issedh ro bo– i and, cethraimhthi muilt. Tuccad h i fiadnaissi in chle–righ. Ro raind do– ibh comtar da– ethanaigh. Ro bennach Moling an muintir iersin, conidh u– dhaibh airechus Laighen o– sin alle. In comes the man of the house and bade them welcome. No food was found for them then save that a horse-steak which was in the house should be put for them into the cauldron. The cleric blessed the house and the cauldron, for he knew that what was therein was the flesh of a horse. Now when the charge in the cauldron was turned, what was there was a quarter of mutton! It was brought before the cleric. He divided it to them so that they were satisfied. After that Moling blessed the household, so that from them thenceforward is the lordship of Leinster.102 At a very remote period the As´vamedha sacrifice was a fertility rite in which the priest had to die after his ceremonial intercourse with the queen. Later, according to Bhattacharyya, the horse was substituted for the priest.103 He also suggests that this sacrifice even in ancient times must have been rare.104 In the course of time the As´vamedha, along with several other sacrifices, went out of fashion because their significance could no longer be understood. But Bhattacharyya points out that ‘Even as late as the time of Bhavabhuti (eighth century AD) the As´vamedha was looked upon as the only touch-stone to test the might of kings.’ 105 He

100 101 102 103 104 105

Ibid., 7; Scott and Martin, Expugnatio Hibernica, xxxvii. Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 91. Stokes, The birth and life of St. Moling, 42–3. Bhattacharyya, Ancient Indian rituals, 13. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 1.

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goes on to say that ‘In all probability, the aforesaid kings who performed the horse-sacrifice took it as a chivalrous achievement.’ 106 It was more of a pageant than a sacrifice in which much of the original meaning was lost. ‘We are told that all the kings who were actually consecrated with the Aindra Mahabhiseka (Indra’s great function consisting of five important ceremonies) were entitled to perform the As´vamedha. In other words a paramount king (Sarvabhauma Raja) could perform it.’ 107 He then became a cakravartin ‘world king’.108 Closer to home we find this concept in the personal names of two of the Gaulish kings, Dumno-rix and Bitu-rix.109 I would suggest that the activity at Navan in 95/94 BC was a series of sacrifices that led to the creation of a cakravartin. Tara, with its forad, as is clear from the literature, was the inauguration site par excellence of this type of king. The concept of the ‘world king’ may be found in the earliest poetry associated with Leinster. Dı– o–chtur Alinne | ort trı–unu talman | trebun tre–n tu–athmar | Mess-Telmann Domnon, ‘From the heights of Ailenn [Dún Ailinne, td. Knockaulin, par./bar. Kilcullen, Co. Kildare], the powerful tribune great in dominions – Mess-Telmann of the Dumnonian tribe – slew the mighty of the earth.’ 110 The king, identified with the sun, is to be seen in the next poem: Án gre–n grı–ssach goires breo: Bressual – | bress Elce, aue Luirc, | lathras bith – Be–olïach ‘A brilliant burning sun that heats is the flame: Bressual – fair one of Elg [Ireland], descendant of Lorcc who lays waste the world – Beolïach’.111 Again, in the poem Nidu dír dermait we have the line Reraig Bresal Bregom bith buaibthech 112 ‘Bresal Bregom ruled the boastful world’.113 In Nuadu Necht we find the stanza Nuadu Fuildon forf ı–ch fiansa f o–ensius | faı–braib derggaib dagrı–g domuin do–ensius 114 ‘Núadu son of Fuildiu conquered fiana, he flattened them; with red blades he made the brave kings of the world his subjects’.115 In §15 of the same poem we have Crothais domnu dia iallaib aircnith ‘The destroyer shook worlds with his armies’; §16 Mo–raib frassaib folcais domuin demdad ‘With great showers of blood he cleansed the swarthy world.’ 116 In §4 of Nidu dír dermait Óengus Amlongaid is called Ollam Elgga a–igthide ‘dreaded master of Ireland’.117 He is given the same epithet in Nuadu Necht §33, Ollam a–n Oengus ‘the lordly Óengus Ollam’. Ollam in these cases is probably to be taken in the sense of 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

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Ibid., 1. Ibid., 1. Ibid., 68. See Ellis Evans, Gaulish personal names, 85–6. Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 41–2. Ibid., 42. O’Brien, Corpus, 8: l. 18. Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 42. O’Brien, Corpus, 2: ll. 44–5. See also Meyer, Älteste irische Dichtung, I, 38–50. Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 44. O’Brien, Corpus, 2: ll. 48, 50; Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 44. Meyer, Älteste irische Dichtung, I, 17: §13; O’Brien, Corpus, 8: l. 14; Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 42.

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‘greatest of kings’.118 The reference to the ardrí in §36 of Nuadu Necht may also be understood in this sense glass gle–thach Nuadu, nı–thach ardrı– ‘young and radiant was Núada, the fierce high king’.119 These words with others (such as (BCC §35) is é reithe Muman márlaithe i Temuir ‘he is the overlord of Munster of great princes in Tara’, with reithe here meaning possibly something like ‘courser’ based on rith ‘to run’) are used of those who have reached the highest of their ranks in the various professions. When used in terms of kingship, they refer to the highest rank of king. This poetry would seem to date to the seventh century, but is almost certainly drawing upon earlier traditions. Edel Bhreathnach has pointed out that ‘Nídu dír dermait is not simply a regnal list. It is a combination of an exhortation to the Leinstermen not to forget their heroic ancestors and their claim to the kingship of Tara, and is probably contemporary, thematically at least, with a somewhat similar text Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig, which exhorts Síl nÁedo Sláine to hold onto their claims to Tara.’ 120 We are clearly in the worlds of the gods and those greatest kings who seek to emulate them. This is not ‘normal’ kingship. Nidu dír dermait and Nuadu Necht occur at the beginning of the twelfth-century codex Rawlinson B 502 among poems that form a preface to the genealogies of the Leinstermen. They are panegyrics of their ancestral kings and gods. Nuadu Necht, however, ends with the Biblical ancestors and finally with the Christian God: Though Japhet was fair, a famous lordly battle-warrior; more illustrious than the men of the world was the saintly Noah. It was not a petty fellowship of kindred brothers, (but) a mighty splendid company of fathers and mothers. Sons of the lofty God, angels of cloud-white heaven, Noah, Lamech, bright white Methuselah. Enoch, Jared, Malaleel of worthy race, Cainan, Enos, nobly born (?) Seth. Nobler was Adam, father of mortally descended men; a man shaped by God, a noble unique offspring. Only offspring of the God of the mighty peopled earth, a hero who inhabited the dwelling of the strife-filled world. Triple God, lofty single three, wondrous sole king of Heaven, infant, holy champion.121

118 119 120 121

For further references see Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 99–102. Meyer, Älteste irische Dichtung, I, 41: §36; O’Brien, Corpus, 3: l. 37; Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 45. Bhreathnach, ‘Kings, the kingship of Leinster’, 303. Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 46.

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Even in this most archaic of material the Church has a firm base. This amalgam 122 is no better illustrated than in the poem Móen óen.123 It occurs as the first poem of the Rawlinson B 502 genealogical collection, and it is introduced by the question of how the Leinstermen got their name. It is also in praise of Lóegaire Lorc the ancestor of the Leinstermen. The following text it taken from O’Brien’s Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae: Mo– en o– en o– ba no– ed | nı– bud noos ardr–ılg: ort rı–gu | rout a– n | hu– a Luircc Labraid. La– ithe Gaile– oin | gabsat inna la– maib la– igne; Laigin de sin | slo– g Galiain.

–

Glinnset coicthe | codda ler lergga iath nEremo– in, iar loingis Lo– chet fiann | flaithi Go– edel gabsus. Grı–b indrid | –ıath n-ane– oil | hu– a Luircc Lo– egaire arddiu do– enaib | acht nemrí nimi. Ór ós gre– in gelmair | gabais for do– enib domnaib; – scı–o deeib Dia o– en | as Mo– en mac Aine o– enrı–g.124 The king in the poem is better known as Labraid Loingsech, who, according to O’Rahilly, was the ancestor-deity of the Leinstermen.125 Having been expelled from Ireland, he returned from Gaul and slew his enemies and became king of Ireland. The first stanza has been translated differently by various scholars. Dillon in his Rhys lecture has ‘Móen the only one, since he was a child – not as a high king – slew kings, a splendid throw, Labraid grandson of Lorc.’ 126 In a later publication he ignored nı– bud noos ardrı–g, but this may have been a typographical error. 127 John Carey translated it as ‘Moen, alone since he was an infant – it was not the custom of a high king – smote kings, a splendid spear-cast, Labraid grandson of Lorc.’ 128 The epithets of this personage, Labraid ‘speaker’, Móen ‘dumb’, and Loingsech ‘exile’, Lóchet ‘lightning’, are all played upon in the poem. The word nós is a borrowing of British naws and may have been used to emphasise the motif of the return of the exile, that he came from overseas. Perhaps the first line should be translated more specific to the context as ‘Móen, unique since a child – it was not the nature of a high-king – slew kings, a 122 Carney, ‘Three Old Irish accentual poems’, 72–3 argues that this section of the poem is secondary. See also Ó Corráin, ‘Irish origin legends and genealogy’, 58–60. 123 Meyer, Älteste irische Dichtung, II, 10; Dillon, The archaism of Irish tradition, 18 dates the poem to the sixth century. 124 O’Brien, Corpus, 1: ll. 7–14. 125 O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 101–17. 126 Dillon, The archaism of Irish tradition, 18. 127 Dillon, Celt and Hindu, 11. 128 Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 46.

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fiery circuit, Labraid grandson of Lorc.’ A king should be unblemished, yet his dumbness set him apart until he could speak, hence his name Labraid. One destined to become a great king should bear marks as indicated for the cakravartin above.129 The word án ‘glorious’ has been discussed by O’Rahilly, and here again the association is with the sun, or perhaps with Labraid’s other epithet lóchet ‘lightning’.130 Whatever the proper translation, we are dealing with exceptional beings. Gonda has pointed out that ‘the king is identical with the As´vamedha’.131 It may be noted that the king professes ‘himself to be a beast also’ in the description of Giraldus Cambrensis quoted above.132 The identification of king and horse is found also in the tenth-century tale edited by Kuno Meyer: Faicfe do mnai 7 do horbhai 7 t’atharthir 7 do righi donn lo so, a capaill chluasmhár brenchinn! 133 From this day you shall leave your wife and your inheritance and your land and kingship, you big-eared foul-headed horse! 134 This may account for the story that Labraid Loingsech had horse’s ears. The late Máirtín Ó Briain, who wrote an important article on ‘horse-eared kings’ in literature and folkore, was unable to trace the origin of the tale.135 I believe, however, that an aspect of the kingship ritual may account for the story that Labraid Loingsech had horse’s ears. This was a story that was at least as old as the eleventh century.136 In order to preserve this secret, every barber who cut his hair was put to death.137 A preliminary to the As´vamedha required the king to have his hair cut.138 A further point in the account of Giraldus is the reference to drinking the broth. Professor Kim McCone points out the ‘the oldest attested meaning of the second term of the compound asva-medha is ‘broth’, which may be significant in relation to the rite described by Giraldus.’ 139 The final two stanzas of Móen óen have been translated as ‘A gryphon attacking unknown lands was the grandson of Lóegaire Lorc: exalted above men save for the holy King 129 See Dumézil, The destiny of the warrior, 163. I think that this interpretation is more likely than that proposed by Ó Cathasaigh in his article ‘The oldest story of the Laigin’, 16. 130 O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 286–94. 131 Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 114. 132 O’Meara, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hibernie’, 168; translation O’Meara, The first version of the Topography, 94. 133 Meyer, ‘King Eochaid has horse’s ears’, 47. 134 Ibid., 51. 135 Ó Briain, ‘The horse-eared kings of Irish tradition’. 136 Ó Cuív, ‘Some items from Irish tradition’, 170 where he points out that O’Rahilly ignored this aspect of the tradition. See also Meyer in previous notes. 137 Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 267–9. 138 Bhattacharyya, Ancient Indian rituals, 3. 139 McCone, Pagan past, 118.

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of Heaven. Gold brighter than the great shining sun, he conquered the worlds of men; Moen son of the sole king Áine is one god among the gods.’ 140 There could hardly be a more explicit reference as to who Labraid was. This is the euhemerised god, higher than men but under the Christian God. Churchmen, therefore, had an interest in this most unusual form of kingship. These king-gods were the prehistoric kings of Tara. This is essentially what the kingship of Tara was about. If the king of Tara or the high-king does not appear in the law-tracts as a category of king, that is because the institution was utterly exceptional. Even in ancient India it was a rarity. Only the most exceptional of historical kings – those who could extend their arms, who could conquer – could hold the As´vamedha. Such a king was expected to make adequate space for his peoples to live in.141 The Church clearly disapproved of this ceremony in which the horse played a central and sexual role. The cult of the horse was strong in early Ireland, as Próinséas Ní Chatháin has shown.142 The prohibition on the eating of horse-meat by the Church must relate to the role of the horse in the As´vamedha-like ceremony and in particular to the eating of the flesh of the horse, as related by Giraldus Cambrensis and as reflected in the ‘Birth and Life of Moling’ quoted above. Stuart Piggott has suggested that scholars have not stressed this aspect sufficiently, ‘and though the hieros gamos, the ritual marriage of horse-god to human, may be specifically IndoEuropean, the sacrificial horse-feast may have quite other and even more ancient roots’.143 If the Church disapproved of the ceremony so much, why did seventh-century clergymen develop the idea of Tara as a capital of the Irish and the concept of a high-king or king of Ireland? The answer lies, I think, in what the ‘world king’ stood for. It was exceptional, and, according to Gonda, ‘It must, however, be emphasized that the idea was largely theoretical and perhaps even utopian in character.’ 144 It was in the utopian or theoretical aspects that the clergy found ideas that could be of use. To take the example of the tríath mentioned above from an archaic poem in the laws: Triath .i. rig, amail isber: Triath trom tremaetha | Erind tuath o thuind co tuind; | taircella tomus condi | iar na durn toimdither A chieftain, i.e. a king, as it is said: A mighty chieftain penetrates | Ireland from wave to wave; | he goes around its measurement, | so that by his hand it is measured.145 140 141 142 143 144 145

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Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 46. Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 101. Ní Chatháin, ‘Traces of the cult of the horse in early Irish sources’. Piggott, Wagon, chariot and carriage, 117: Piggott’s ‘Conaile province’ should, of course, be Cenél Conaill. Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 127. Wagner, Studies in the origins of the Celts, 244, n. 105.

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The word dorn ‘hand, fist’ is probably used here figuratively in the sense of ‘seizure’ or ‘possession’ as used in legal formulae.146 Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn called Lugh Lámhfada tríath Teamhra.147 I think there is little doubt that the tríath is another word for the ‘world king’. Tríath can also mean ‘wave’, although the two words must have distinct etymologies.148 In the Life of Brigit by Cogitosus dating to the mid-seventh century it is claimed that her parrochia per totam Hiberniensem terram difussa, a mari usque ad mare extensa est 149 ‘her parochia is spread throughout all Ireland, and it extends from sea to sea’. The phrase a mari usque ad mare is surely a calque on the Irish ó thuind co tuind of the poem and resonates with the implied sovereign jurisdiction of the whole island. Similarly, in the hagiography of St Patrick, the saint is brought to Tara so that his jurisdiction will be coterminous with that of her kings. But there was more. Since the creation of kings was a religious act, it was essential that the religion of kingship be Christianity. What were the priorities of clergymen in the seventh century? Perhaps our best access to this question is through the work of possibly the greatest European churchman of the time – Adomnán, the ninth abbot of Iona. His Life of St Colum Cille provides a window through which we can glimpse matters which were of importance to him. It is a work that operated on many levels – as a model of the life of a great saint, of an abbot, of a monk, and as propaganda on behalf of his community.150 It is also concerned with the relationship between the Church and society and with the nature of government. Adomnán attached great importance to sanctuary and the violation of it. For example, he describes how local people fled within the precincts of Derry to escape raids in the area and how a woman drove her sheep over a grave.151 In another incident the saint requested protection for a man. This was initially accepted but was later ignored and he was killed.152 The concept of the saint himself as a focus of sanctuary is also explored.153 In the latter case a young girl was killed by a man who pierced her through the protecting robes of Colum Cille and his teacher Gemman. There were a number of legal points at issue: there was the violation of the girl; there was the violation of the honour of those who sought to protect her; and since her protectors symbolised the Church, there was an act of sacrilege. The question of the release of slaves receives attention 154 and Adomnán also reflects the saint’s concern for the plight of hostages.155 In one of the longest episodes in the Life, that relating to ‘Libran of 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155

DIL D 360. DIL T 308. Vendryes, Lexique s.vv., especially 7–143. Colgan, Triadis Thaumaturgae, 518. Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry. VSC, I 20. Ibid., II 23. Ibid., II 24–5. Ibid., II 33. Ibid., I 11.

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the Reed Patch’, Adomnán showed anxiety about the abuse of sanctuary. This is very precisely constructed and is full of legal detail.156 In all of this he has shown his solicitude for the vulnerable in society. The episode of the young girl is a forerunner of perhaps the greatest achievement of his career – the Synod of Birr, at which he had the Lex Innocentium promulgated. We can see his concern for captives in his diplomatic mission to have the Irish people captured in a Northumbrian raid on the coast of Brega in June 685. In 687 he led sixty of the captives back to Ireland. It is against this background that we might consider the references to kings in the Life. It was clearly a constant topic of conversation for the monks of Iona.157 The saint prays for kings in battle.158 He displays interest in royal succession.159 In the same episode he prophesises that one of a number of sons will be a great king. But the essential point is that the son ‘whom the Lord has chosen from among them to be king will run at once to my knee’. In other words the king, that submits to the teaching of the Church will have a successful reign. The same idea is expressed in the section where it was said of a king that ‘He himself will never be delivered into the hands of enemies, but will die by a peaceful death, an old man, among friends.’ 160 The name of this king-in-waiting was Óengus, called Bronbachal.161 The epithet may be important. One might speculate that it consists of Latin pronus > bron ‘inclined forward, bent’, and bachall < baculum, ‘staff, crozier’, 162 and the implication must be that this is a king who submitted to the Church. Elsewhere a king who was a friend of the saint dies in his bed.163 Kings that follow the teaching of the Church are preferred. The texts dealing with kingship, such as Audacht Morainn,164 the Cormac mac Airt saga,165 and those texts discussed recently by John Carey 166 and Edel Bhreathnach,167 are not merely political propaganda. They are political theory and are concerned with utopia, the ideal state. At the basis of this ideal was the concept of truth, cosmic truth, fír flathemon ‘the truth of the prince’, ‘the just judgement of the king’.168 This is what lay at the basis 156 157 158 159 160 161

162 163 164 165 166 167 168

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Ibid., II 39. Ibid., I 12. Ibid., I 1, 7–8. Ibid., I 9. Ibid., I 13. This was Óengus mac Áedo Commáin who became king of Cenél Coirpri. He died in 649. The kingdom of Cenél Coirpri Gabra’s royal centre was at Granard, Co. Longford and was under the control of the Southern Uí Néill. DIL B 201. VSC, I 15. Kelly, Audacht Morainn. Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac Mac Airt. Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’. Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’. Wagner, Studies in the origins of the Celts, 1–45; Watkins, ‘Is tre fhír flathemon’.

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of the natural order. The inauguration of a ‘world king’ is what ensured that that natural order remained in balance. One of the forces for stability was the institution of suretyship based on oathtaking (lugae, luige). Wagner has suggested that this word is cognate with the name of the god Lug, the ancestor deity of kings,169 although this suggestion offers but one possibility as to the origin of the term. Much of the ideals of kingship, truth, justice, mercy, protection of the weak, caring for peoples such as are expressed so eloquently in Audacht Morainn could have presented no problems to churchmen. Indeed, on the contrary, they provided the basis for a specifically Christian form of kingship. The act of writing in the early Middle Ages is in the hands of churchmen. The question that has been asked of our texts in the past is: are they pagan or are they Christian? – but perhaps this is not the right question. Since clergymen compiled these documents the question is: why? In stark constrast to the idealised picture of kingship is the reality of incessant warfare which produced, to use a term coined by Max Gluckman for African states, an ‘oscillating equilibrium’.170 Occasionally an exceptional king could rise above his fellows and dominate the island and could then claim to be a ‘world king’. As Derrett has stated,171 ‘A psychologist would probably diagnose a professional paranoia amongst Hindu monarchs, at least if he were confined to their public documents and acts, for when they were too weak to go to war they boasted of their imaginary achievements over far distant foes and dreamed of their toes reflecting the light from the jewels in the crowns of conquered kings.’ 172 In ancient India the duty of a king was to progress. ‘From being a raja he ought, if he can, try to be a maharaja, a samrat, or, finally a cakravarti.’ 173 His duty was to rule the earth. The road to such a pinnacle of power was bloody, since it meant the rigorous elimination of competition. Once there, it led to the As´vamedha. ‘The average Hindu needed his ruler to be a great king, an overlord of kings, or an emperor, not merely that he might feel some vicarious pride, but that he should be able to sleep quietly in his bed.’ 174 Peace, but even greater abhaya ‘freedom from fear’ is the result of strong kingship. The abhaya-dana ‘gift of security’, according to the Vishnu-smrti, is the greatest of all gifts.175 This motif is echoed in the image of the lone woman travelling from Tory Island in the north-west to Cape Clear in the south carrying a ring of gold without being molested during the reign of Brian Bóruma.176

169 Wagner, Studies in the origins of the Celts, 22; On suretyship see the very important book by Stacey, The road to judgement. 170 Balandier, Political anthropology, 189. 171 Derrett, ‘The maintenance of peace in the Hindu world’. 172 Ibid., 153. 173 Ibid., 167. 174 Ibid., 172. 175 Ibid., 174, n. 1. 176 Todd, Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, 138 (lxxx).

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It was in this aspect of the ideal of kingship that the Church saw the key to a perfect, or at least a well-ordered, society in which the weak alongside the rich of this world would enjoy peace and freedom from fear. St Jerome was quoted by the Irish canonists of the seventh century: Tres personae juxta punitionem reorum vocandae sunt: rex, ut reprimat scelus, episcopus, ut temperet iram regis, populus, ut hoc exemplo terreatur 177 ‘Three personae are summoned for the punishment of wrongdoers: the king so that he will punish the criminal, the bishop so that he will temper the anger of the king, the people so that they will be deterred by this example.’ The three personae are also cited in a specifically Irish synod as those who consecrate the boundaries of a holy place: king, bishop and people.178 Kingship was government. The references that Adomnán has to the king of Ireland I would suggest represented an attempt to channel the concept of the ‘world king’ into a Christian mould. He warns Áed Sláine lest ‘by reason of the sin of parricide you lose the prerogative of monarchy over the kingdom of Ireland, predestined for you by God’ (a deo totius Everniae regni praerogativam monarchiae praedestinatam).179 Like the idealised king of pagan times, he had to be close to God. This is probably the reason for the use of the concept of ordination that we find in the work of Adomnán.180 M.J. Enright’s conclusions are important: ‘Adomnán not only employs ordinatio to mean anointing, he actually presents a new theory of clerically mediated kingship based upon the unction created covenant of the Old Testament.’ 181 Of course, such divinely ordained kings, the Lord’s anointed, should not be touched. Adomnán even employs what must be a ritual formula in describing the killer of Diarmait: totius Scotiae regnatorem deo auctore ordinatum ‘ordained by God’s will the ruler of all Ireland’. ‘And Aid, unworthily ordained, will return like a dog to his vomit, and he will again be a bloody killer, and at last, pierced with a spear, will fall from wood into water, and die by drowning. He has deserved such an end sooner, who has slaughtered the king of all Ireland.’ 182 With such a king a law could be enacted, not just in a local túath, but over a vast area. There was no better example of this than the promulgation of the Lex Innocentium and the extraordinary number of kings that attended from such diverse places.183 This legislation was 177 Wasserschleben, Die irische Kanonensammlung, XXVII: 4, 85. 178 Ibid., XLIV: 3, 175. 179 VSC, I 14. Cf. Bertelli, Sacred rituals of power, 10: ‘Hellenistic political thought elaborated the idea that the sovereign was the compassionate manifestation of God to humanity, the shepherd of his flock, father and benefactor, font of law, or better still the very personification of law. Since the sovereign was pater, any regicide was judged a parricide, in fact the greatest parricide.’ 180 For an important discussion of this see Enright, Iona, Tara and Soissons; Enright, ‘Further reflections on royal ordinations in the Vita Columbae’. 181 Enright, ‘Further reflections on royal ordinations in the Vita Columbae’, 35. I am not happy with every aspect of Enright’s theory. 182 VSC, I 36. See Ó Cathasaigh, ‘The threefold death in early Irish sources’. 183 Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The guarantor list of Cáin Adomnáin’; O’Loughlin, Adomnán at Birr AD 697.

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achieved under the auspices of Loingsech mac Óenguso, of the Cenél Conaill, Adomnán’s own kin. Loingsech was killed in battle in Corann (a location somewhere in bars. Corran, Leyney, Co. Sligo and Gallen, Co. Mayo) ‘on Saturday, the fourth of the Ides of July, at the sixth hour’ (AU 704). This must be the most precise record in the early annals. One can almost hear the sigh of disappointment of the Iona clergy on the death of their patron. In the same entry (which must originate in Iona) this king is called rex Hibernie ‘king of Ireland’. He was the Church’s man. Fínnachta Fledach was in the same position. It is significant that he took clerical orders in 688 and recalls Óengus Bronbachal mentioned above. John Carey has suggested that his name, ‘Snechta Fína “Snow of wine” might ‘... be intended to suggest a particularly close association between Fínnechta and the imagery of drinking which dominates the prophecy [BCC] as a whole.’ 184 This must be important, but it may perhaps be viewed also in the light of a statement made by Gonda: ‘Just as Indra nourishes the people on earth with showers of water, so should a king nourish them with largesse.’ 185 It may also be of interest in this context to consider that the next stanza in BCC to flaith ó Níell co Néll may have a resonance with the word nél ‘cloud’.186 In seventh-century Ireland, therefore, there was a discourse concerning kingship. It may be of use at this point to look towards the Indian world for a possible analogy. Ancient Indian kingship was transformed through its contact with Buddhism. There emerged, therefore, two models of kingship – one reflecting the pre-Buddhist model and one that was influenced by the moral and world view of Buddhist teachings. I suggest that this mirrors a pre-Christian model of kingship in Ireland and one that was transformed by contact with Christianity. The Indian development has been carefully revealed by James S. Duncan’s brilliant analysis of the kingdom of Kandy in Sri Lanka. In the Sri Lankan kingdom of Kandy there were two models of kingship: one was the Sakran based on the Hinduised god-king in which the king is seen as a kind of god on earth modelled upon Sakra, also called Indra. Under Buddhism he was ‘transformed from a violent warrior king into a benevolent Buddhist monarch who achieved his military victories and right to rule through righteousness.’ 187 ‘The Asokan model was based on the Mauryan emperor Asoka (third century BC) who was looked upon as an ideal Buddhist king. According to this view a king should be mild-mannered, 184 Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’, 88. 185 Gonda, Ancient Indian kingship, 31; See also Duncan, The city as text, 46 where he points out that the beverage of the immortals flowing from the Ocean of Milk ‘flows through all things in the Universe. According to the hymns of the Rig Veda it is in the waters, it is likened to rain and to milk that flows from clouds or cows.’ 186 It is to be noted that the spelling with double l seems to be Middle Irish. The diphthongisation in Niall shows that the vowels in Ne–ll and nél must always have been pronounced somewhat differently. While aware of this difference, the view of Parkes that the Irish ‘apprehended it [Latin] as much by the eye as by the ear’ may be of importance here. Cf. Parkes, ‘The contribution of Insular scribes’, 2. 187 Duncan, The city as text, 39.

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righteous, and unfailingly protective of Buddhism and responsible for the welfare of his people.’ 188 If we reckon the Sakran model with the pagan in early Ireland, and the Buddhist with the Christian, then we have an almost exact analogy. The good kings submitting to the Church are contrasted with the others who by their lifestyle are the antithesis of righteousness. Professor McCone, quoting The Fragmentary Annals, concerning the two sons of the king of Tara, Fergal mac Maíle Dúin, highlights this discourse. The father tests both sons to see who will succeed. The older engages in a night of debauchery, while the younger spends it in thanksgiving to God and singing praises to the Lord. The father prophesises that his younger son will reign and that his descendants will become famous and royal.189 As in Sri Lanka, the literary discourse left its mark in the landscape. Tara, the síd mounds and other visible signs were still potent in the landscape. But there was now a Christian layer. As Óengus the Céli Dé pointed out the old civitates of the pagans had been replaced by Christian cities.190 Kings patronised them. The church of Kildare was rebuilt by the Uí Dúnlainge, and it became their capital. High-kings built churches and erected highcrosses. When Óengus uses the word borg 191 (first found in Ulfilas’s translation of the Bible into Gothic) to describe Tara where earlier writers had used the word civitas, he was reinforcing the contrast that now existed. Tara was seen as a ‘high fortified place’ frequented by the warriors of the past. It was no longer a home of religion, but a symbol of the political centre of Ireland. Adomnán may have been premature in his use of the term rex Hiberniae, but he saw where kingship should go. In the future kings who had exceptional power had this term carved on the high-crosses they erected. But it was to take centuries before political and social conditions were right for such an institution to become a reality.

EPILOGUE While I have used Duncan’s analysis of events in Sri Lanka by way of analogy in the discussion above, such developments are found quite independently elsewhere. For example the great priest Kukai (779-835) in late eighth-, early ninth-century Japan used the concept of the cakravartin to remould the role of the Japanese emperor so that it would conform to Buddhist ideals. ‘These developments include the institution of an imperial coronation ceremony in which the emperor was ordained as a cakravartin …’ 192 Closer to home David Harry Miller has argued that the eclipse of the Merovingian dynasty was the result of ‘the replacement of a pagan sacral dynasty of war-kings with a new Christian sacral dynasty of

188 Ibid., 38. 189 McCone, Pagan past, 222–3. 190 For Óengus’s use of parallels from the archaic Leinster poems see Schneiders, ‘Pagan past and Christian present’, 168. 191 Schlesinger, ‘Stadt und Burg im Lichte der Wortgeschichte’. 192 Abé, The weaving of mantra, 15, 330–32, 352–3, 359–67.

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war-kings. The essential nature of Frankish kingship remained unchanged; what changed was the religious definition of the sacral character of that kingship.’ 193 It was the successful Carolingians who more ardently supported the Church in their rise to power and who supported the Irish missionaries in their lands.194 In light of this evidence Adamnán was not only ahead of his time but also stands alongside those throughout the world who sought to remould kingship to suit a new ideology. It might be worth considering that those dynasties in Ireland that emerged during the course of the seventh and eighth centuries at the expense of a more ancient polity may have owed their success to patronage of the Church. Finally, it should be noted that Tara, Emain Macha and Cruachu were not simply concerned with the inauguration of ‘world kings’. They were points at which the creation of the world was re-enacted. In their construction they were alloforms of the first-man and firstking.195 As such they were the physical expressions of a sophisticated philosophical reflection on the cosmos. They were the focal points of religion set in religious landscapes.

193 Miller, ‘Sacral kingship, Biblical kingship’, 131. 194 Ibid., 136. 195 See, Lincoln, Myth, cosmos, and society.

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Tara and the Supernatural

1

John Carey

T

A R A , although surely a place of sacral significance since ancient times, was not linked with the world of the síd in the same way as Cruachu, the old royal centre of Connacht,2 nor are the tales concerning its origins as suggestively evocative of older myths as is the dinnshenchas of Emain Macha, in Ulster.3 Nevertheless, the medieval literature associates Tara with the supernatural in important ways, and it will be the aim of the present essay to look at some of these. In endeavouring to manoeuvre through the wealth of potentially relevant material, I propose to follow the thread of a single tale – the prose narrative introducing the regnal prophecy Baile in Scáil.4 We may begin by considering this story in outline. Conn Cétchathach, king of Tara and of Ireland, ascends the ramparts early one morning accompanied by his druids and filid. He steps on a stone which cries out beneath his feet. When he inquires concerning the nature of the stone, and the significance of its cry, his chief druid tells him that its name is Fál and that it has prophesied the number of kings of his lineage who will reign over Ireland. A mist now surrounds them, out of which there emerges a horseman who at first attacks them but then greets them and bids them welcome. They come to a magnificent hall, in which a beautiful woman sits beside a vat of ale. A splendid warrior is enthroned beside her. The author refers to the latter as ‘the phantom’, but he himself informs his

1

2

3

4

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This paper has benefited considerably from the comments of Edel Bhreathnach, Máire Herbert, Kevin Murray, and Pádraig Ó Riain; Dr Murray also generously gave me access to a draft translation of the opening of Baile in Scáil, from his edition of the text (Murray, Baile in Scáil ). I am however solely responsible for the opinions and translations put forward below, together with all errors which they contain. For the tense relationship between the royal court at Cruachu and the adjacent síd see Meyer, ‘The adventures of Nera’. The cave of Cruachu is called ‘the door of hell of Ireland’ (dorus iffirn na Hérend ) in Cath Maige Mucrama (O Daly, 48: §34, l.167). In one tale, the eponymous Macha is evidently a woman of the síd: references to its various versions, together with a paraphrase, are provided in Thurneysen, Heldensage, 360–3. In another it is possible to recognise a variant of the ‘king and goddess’ story type: discussion in Carey, ‘Notes on the Irish wargoddess’, 265–6. By contrast, there is nothing to suggest a divine background for the princesses Tea and Tephi who figure in the dinnshenchas of Tara, notwithstanding the arguments of Macalister, Tara, 82–97. For editions see Meyer, ‘Baile in Scáil’; idem, ‘Das Ende von Baile in Scáil’; idem, ‘Der Anfang von Baile in Scáil’; and Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca– il’. A convenient paraphrase of the narrative section has been provided by Dillon, The cycles of the kings, 12–14. Gerard Murphy argued that Baile in Scáil was originally composed in the ninth century (‘On two sources in Thurneysen’s Heldensage’, 150 n. 1); as Máire Herbert has noted, however, the surviving text shows signs of having been revised in the eleventh century (‘Goddess and king’, 273 n. 4). See also Murray, below, 69–72

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visitors that he is Lug and that the woman is ‘the sovereignty of Ireland’. She serves Conn with preternaturally large pieces of meat and offers him a drink of her ale. Lug then instructs her to offer a drink from her vat to each of Conn’s successors, one after the other, until the Day of Judgement. When all have been named, the Otherworld stronghold vanishes, but Conn retains possession of the vessels in which the ale had been served. Even so sketchy a summary gives clear indications of the links which were thought to connect Tara, and its kings, with the Otherworld and its immortal inhabitants. This initial impression can be enhanced in some respects, and qualified in others, by situating certain of the story’s features within a wider context.

Here is how the tale begins: One day Conn was in Tara, after overthrowing the kings. Early in the morning he went up onto the royal rampart of Tara, before sunrise, together with his three druids Mael and Bloc and Bluicne, and his three filid Ethain and Corb and Cesarn. For that company used to arise every day to keep watch, lest the men of the síd capture Ireland without his noticing.5 The standard list of the prohibitions of the kings of Ireland, dating in its oldest form perhaps to the ninth century, states that it was forbidden for the king of Tara to allow ‘the sun to rise upon him as he lies in the plain of Tara’ (turccbháil gréine fair ina lighi i mMaigh Themruch) – in other words, presumably, he must be up before sunrise.6 This is the only one among these prohibitions to be mentioned elsewhere in the literature, an indication perhaps that it reflects an authentic tradition of some antiquity. In the tale De Shíl Chonairi Móir, usually dated to the eighth century, it is the folk of the síd themselves who instruct the new king Conaire ‘that the sun should not set and rise upon him in Tara’ (na funfed 7 7 na taurcebath grian fairsium i Temair). Baile in Scáil gives us the reason for this taboo: there was a particular danger that the powers of the Otherworld might overwhelm the land if, when the sun rose, the king were not standing on the ramparts.8 5

6 7

8

Meyer, ‘Baile in Scáil’, 458: §1; cf. Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca– il’, 218–19. Meyer’s edition is based on the fragment in London, British Library MS Harleian 5280, Thurneysen’s on the version in Oxford, Bodleian MS Rawlinson B 512. My translations in this article reflect the text of the first of these witnesses. Dillon, ‘Taboos’, 8: §1. Gwynn, ‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’, 135: ll. 61–2. As Edel Bhreathnach has argued, there may be an oblique reflection of such prohibitions in Muirchú’s seventh-century Vita Patricii: ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 72–3. In the immediately preceding pages in the same article, she calls attention to other passages in which Muirchú speaks of ritual observances associated with Tara in the pagan period. Liam de Paor too argued that the purpose of the rampart of Ráith na Ríg at Tara ‘is not military, but magical’. But he understood it to offer supernatural protection in a way radically different from that described in the medieval sources: ‘It is a symbolic or ritual defensive work, protecting the outside world against the powerful mana within the enclosure’: Saint Patrick’s world, 36.

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The same concept is reflected more obliquely elsewhere. It is while he is standing ‘on the ramparts of Tara, looking out over Mag Breg’ that Eochaid Airem encounters the immortal Midir: it is evidently at the start of the day, for the king’s wife is still asleep.9 Similarly, Manannán first comes to Cormac mac Airt when the latter is standing ‘early in the morning, on Cétamon [i.e. Beltaine, the first of May], by himself upon the rampart of Tea in Tara’.10 It is at the boundary between inside and outside, between night and day, and (in Cormac’s case) between one season and another that the supernatural can most easily trespass into the mortal realm.11 And these Otherworldly intrusions can, indeed, be explicitly hostile. In the Middle Irish anecdote known as ‘Cormac and the Geilti Glinni’ two beautiful but diabolical women come to Tara after sunset and tell Cormac that they have been wreaking havoc in Scotland. ‘Why have you come hither?’ said Cormac. ‘Not difficult: to attack Tara and to attack yourself,’ said they ... ‘It is a geis of mine,’ said Cormac, ‘that anyone should enter (?) Tara after sunset.’ ‘That is why we have come,’ said they: ‘to violate the geisi of Tara.’ They then set about mutilating and killing Cormac’s people, and he is only able to get the better of them by invoking the protection of ‘the true God’.12 The prohibition against admitting anyone to Tara after sunset, like that against being asleep at sunrise, was evidently intended to prevent the supernatural from gaining entry there. It was also one of the geisi of Conaire Már that ‘a single woman or a single man should come into the house in which you are after sunset’. When he violated this injunction, it was the deformed witch Cailb, whose many names include those of goddesses of war (Nemain, Badb), who came beneath his roof.13 One of the most celebrated of Tara’s Otherworld enemies is first attested in a relatively late text: the great Fenian tale-collection Acallam na Senórach (c. 1200). There we are told that, in the time of Conn Cétchathach, Aillén mac Midna of the Tuatha Dé Danann used to come from Carn Finnachaid in the north to Tara. It is thus that he came: with a stringed instrument (timpán) of music in his hand. And everyone who heard him would fall asleep, and then he 9 10

11

12 13

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Bergin and Best, ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’, 174. Stokes, ‘The Irish ordeals’, 193: §25. Note, however, that these details are not given in the other Middle Irish version edited by Hull, ‘Echtra Cormaic maic Airt’, 875, nor in the Early Modern version edited by O’Grady ‘Faghail Craoibhe Chormaic mhic Airt’, 213. I am grateful to Pádraig Ó Riain for the suggestion that Lug’s arrival at Tara in Cath Maige Tuired may also have taken place ‘after dark, when the feast had begun and before suantraige was played’. Cf. Gray, Cath Maige Tuired, 38–42. Smith, ‘Cormac and the Geilti Glinni’, 16–17. Knott, Togail Bruidne Da Derga, 6: §16, ll. 179–80, 16–17: §62; and cf. the remarks of Sjoestedt, Gods and heroes, 48–9.

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would produce a pillar (?) of fire from his mouth. He would come to Tara at the feast of Samain every year, and would play upon his instrument, and everyone would fall asleep at the music that he made, and he would send out his breath with the pillar of fire, and would burn Tara. And so he destroyed it in this way every year, for the space of twenty-three years.14 At last the youthful Finn mac Cumaill comes to Tara one Samain, as Conn is celebrating the great royal ritual known as the feis Temro, and wins the king’s favour by slaying the uncanny marauder. Samain, or the first of November, the traditional beginning of winter, was both an occasion associated with the convocation of assemblies (óenaige) and that time in the year when the barriers were lifted which normally separate the human community from the realm of the síd. 15 Why should Tara be such a focus of supernatural threat? One possible answer may be ventured here. To the extent that Tara was, more than any other place, identified with the kingship of Ireland, it would be only natural to see any attack on the stability and order which that kingship existed to protect as being an attack on Tara and its ruler. Or, to express the same concept in more concrete terms, Tara could be taken to represent Ireland as a whole.16 In this connection, it is relevant to recall the doctrine that the immortals themselves once ruled in Tara, only to be dispossessed long ago by the ancestors of the medieval kings. It was at Tara that the sons of Míl first confronted the Tuatha Dé Danann sovereigns Mac Cuill, Mac Cécht and Mac Gréine; and the battle in which the latter were slain, and their people decisively defeated, was fought at the nearby assembly site of Tailtiu (Teltown, pars. Donaghpatrick and Teltown, bar. Upper Kells, Co. Meath).17 Although we read of these events only in the euhemeristic narrative of Lebor Gabála, other accounts of the displacement of the

14

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Stokes, ‘Acallamh na Senórach’, 47–50: ll. 1662–70. For attempts to find counterparts to Aillén in the earlier literature see e.g. O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 110, n. 6; Murphy, Duanaire Finn, III, lxiii–xx; and Ó hÓgáin, Fionn mac Cumhaill, 8–10, 54. A brief allusion to Finn’s slaying at Tara of a figure associated with a timpán and a burning candle occurs in the poem A Rí ríchid réidig dam, by Gilla in Choimded úa Cormaic (Meyer, Fianaigecht, 46). For an impressionistic evocation of Samain’s character see Sjoestedt, Gods and heroes, 62–72, especially her observation that ‘it seems that the whole supernatural force is attracted by the seam thus left at the point where the two years join, and gathers to invade the world of men’ (67). In the medieval literature itself, note for instance the statement that ‘the síde of Ireland were always open at Samain, for on the day of Samain there could never be concealment on the síde’ (Meyer, ‘Macghnimartha Find’, 202: §21); and a similar formulation in one of the MSS of Lebor Gabála (Carey, ‘A Tuath Dé miscellany’, 34–5). For the metonymic use of other midland placenames to designate Ireland in later bardic poetry see Ó Concheanainn, ‘Topographical notes – I’, 94. The idea of Tara as a microcosm is discussed by Rees and Rees, Celtic heritage, 147–56: note especially their observations that ‘Tara and the cosmos of which it is the centre are surrounded by hostile forces ... Potentially, Tara was always in a state of siege’ (155, 156). Macalister, Lebor Gabála Érenn, V. Meeting at Tara: V, 36, 52–4, 78–80. Battle at Tailtiu: ibid., 58–62, 86, 154.

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old gods seem but little removed from the pre-Christian beliefs which they may reasonably be taken to reflect.18 De Shíl Chonairi Móir in fact provides us with a description of Tara’s seizure by the people of the síd. Here, however, they act not on their own behalf but on that of the mortal Conaire, to whose aid they have been rallied by his mother, the witch Mess Buachalla: She came at once, with armies. ‘Arise!’ she said. ‘Here are armies which will not fail you.’ Then he went with the armies, across Mag Breg to Tara; and his mother was in front, before the armies. The hosts that were in Tara saw the armies approaching them, coming across Mag Breg to Tara, surrounding Conaire Már while his mother went on before. She let her tunic (inar) fall as far as her belt. Her black hair was unbound upon her head. She had a great black weapon (trelam) with her; and before her went jesters [or druids?] possessed of poisonous secrets; and a protecting fian and satirists and horn-blowers went before the great armies, and the men were great. The hosts that were in Tara did not await their coming: they abandoned Tara, and its treasures, and the chariot of sovereignty. 19 After Conaire had been confirmed in the kingship, they went from him then. It was not known whence they had come, nor was it known whither they went. But it is likely that it is the people of the síd of Brí Léith who came to his aid ... Conaire, then, is the king whom phantoms (siabrai) set in his kingship.20 Even at their most menacing, then, the forces of the Otherworld may act in support of a human king. But they will remain benevolent only as long as the king himself takes care to perform his duties fittingly and to maintain a correct relationship with the supernatural realm. The tale of Conaire’s reign is also a stark reminder of the doom which awaits the ruler who fails in these respects. Baile in Scáil, while it speaks both of the dark and of the light sides of kingship’s connection with the síd, gives, as we shall see, more emphasis to the latter.

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Particularly suggestive are the testimony of the Old Irish tract De Gabáil in t-Shída (Hull, 55); and the opening of Mesca Ulad (Watson, 1: ll. 9–12). Cf. the observations of Koch, ‘Ériu, Alba, and Letha’, 24. I discuss the Mesca Ulad passage further in ‘Varieties of supernatural contact in the Life of Adamnán’, 57–8. Gwynn, ‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’, 135: ll. 39–48. My translation diverges from Gwynn’s at various points. In particular, I take Mess Buachalla’s inar to be an inner garment, whose ‘letting down’ reveals her breasts. For warriors incapacitated by the sight of female nakedness cf. O’Rahilly, Táin Bó Cúailnge I, ll. 804–14 (where it is specifically the baring of their breasts by the women of the Ulaid which causes Cú Chulainn to hide his face); also Mesca Ulad (Watson, 46–7), and the enigmatic anecdote Ces Ulad (Hull, 309–14). Gwynn, ‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’, 135–6: ll. 63–4, 73–4. Cf. the Cín Dromma Snechtai version of Conaire’s death, in which this event too is attributed to ‘the people of the síd of Brí Léith ... for he is the king whom phantoms (siabrai) banished’ (Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, 244: ll. 8014–19). A similar statement, somewhat less clear in context, appears in Togail Bruidne Da Derga (Knott, 8: l. 250).

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The text continues: It is onto the rampart that he used always to go; and he chanced upon a stone beneath his feet and trod upon it. The stone cried out beneath his feet, so that it was heard throughout all Tara, and throughout Brega. Then Conn asked his druids why the stone had cried out, what was its name, whence it had come and whither it would go, and why it had come to Tara. The druid said to Conn that he would not name it to him until fifty-three days had passed. When that number was complete, Conn asked the druid again. Then the druid said: ‘Fál is the name of the stone. It is the island of Fál from which it was brought. It is in Tara of the land of Fál that it has been placed. It is in the land of Tailtiu that it will remain until the Day of Judgment. And it is in that land that there will be a festive assembly (óenach cluiche) for as long as there is kingship in Tara; and the ruler who does not find it [or leave it?] on the last day of the assembly will be a doomed man (trú) in that year. Fál cried out beneath your feet today,’ said the druid, ‘and prophesied. The number of cries which the stone uttered is the number of kings that there will be of your race until the Day of Judgment. It is not I who will name them to you,’ said the druid. 21 This is perhaps the most extended description of the stone of Fál in the literature. Other sources as well speak of it as an oracle which acclaimed the true king. The early poem Nuadu Necht, ní dámair anflaith includes the following verse in its account of the invasion from overseas led by Labraid Loingsech, legendary ancestor of the Laigin: They spring over Tara, a mighty advent, the tribe of the Gaileóin: the stone of Fál wails (golaid) at the laying low of the host of Faireóin. 22 Here the stone’s cry could be understood as a lament for the defeated, rather than a salute to the victor. Elsewhere, however, it is clearly portrayed as a token of the right to rule. Thus De Shíl Chonairi Móir, speaking of the ordeals to be undergone by a candidate for the Tara kingship, states that Fál was there, the ferp cluche, at the end of the racecourse (for cind oenig in charbait). The Fál would shout against the wheel-rim of the chariot of the one whom the 21 22

Meyer, ‘Baile in Scáil’, 458–9: §§ 2–4; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca– il’, 219. My translation. O’Brien, Corpus, 3: 115b22–3. For the most recent attempt to date the poem see Ó Corráin, ‘Irish origin legends and genealogy’, 61–3. While acknowledging that it is ‘intractable in the matter of dating’, he concludes that there is no reason for assigning it a date ‘earlier than the early seventh century’.

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sovereignty of Tara used to accept (inti arfemath flaith Temrach), so that everyone would hear it ... The one whom the sovereignty of Tara would not accept (inti nad auremeth flaith Temrach), the Fál would not scream against his wheel. Conaire, of course, passes the test successfully, and the assembled onlookers cry out ‘Fál has accepted him!’ (Arræt Fal ). 23 I have differed from the text’s editor, Lucius Gwynn, on various points of translation: some of these, relating to the rendering of the curious phrase ferp cluche, I have discussed elsewhere. 24 For the purposes of the present study, I would call attention to the apparent identification of ‘the sovereignty of Tara’ (flaith Temrach) with the oracular stone: surely flaith is the subject of ar-eim ‘accepts, receives’ on the first two occasions of that verb’s occurrence, just as Fál is when it subsequently appears in the perfect as arræt. 25 Returning to Baile in Scáil, we find much of interest in what Conn’s druids have to tell him about the stone. The ‘island of Fál’ (inis Fáil) from which it was brought is most probably the Isle of Man. The early text Forfess Fer Fálgae, describing Cú Chulainn’s exploits among ‘the men of Fálgae, i.e. the men of Man’, appears to equate these with ‘the men of Fál’ (firu Faal).26 Some elements in Forfess Fer Fálgae’s account assimilate the country of the men of Fálgae to the Otherworld,27 and Man, especially through its association with the god Manannán, is portrayed as an Otherworldly place down into the early modern period.28 Whether the Fál was thought to have been brought from inis Fáil as booty after such a raid as Cú Chulainn’s, or whether it was fetched from overseas by the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves, as Middle Irish sources maintain,29 the stone’s derivation from the island serves to connect it with the people of the síd. 30 The statement that Fál will pass from Tara to Tailtiu, and remain there thereafter, evidently alludes to traditions of the abandonment of Tara in the sixth century. When the 23 24 25

26 27

28

29 30

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Gwynn, ‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’, 134: ll. 25–7, 29–30; 135: ll. 55–7. Carey, ‘Varia I. Ferp cluche’. Contrast Gwynn’s ‘When a man should not have the kingship of Tara .... He who was not to hold Tara’s kingship’. The alternative would be to take the candidate for kingship to be the subject in all three instances, understanding Arræt Fal to mean ‘He has taken Fál’. As Edel Bhreathnach points out to me, such an interpretation could shed light on Baile in Scáil’s statement (discussed below) that a king must ‘find’ Fál at Tailtiu every year. Thurneysen, ‘Zu irischen Handschriften’, 56. Cf. also 53–4. Cú Chulainn is motivated to undertake his expedition when a gryphon fetches an extraordinary flower thence to Emain Macha (Thurneysen, ‘Zu irischen Handschriften’, 56); the king of the island is also called the king of the Fomoiri (Ibid., 57). I am thinking here particularly of the poem ‘Baile suthach síth Emna’ (late twelfth or thirteenth century), Ó Cuív, ‘A poem in praise of Raghnall, King of Man’ (discussion of Man’s Otherworldly associations: 297–8). See further Toner, ‘Emain Macha in the literature’, 33. Macalister, Lebor Gabála, IV, 106, 110, 142–6, 168, 174; Hull, ‘The four jewels of the Tuatha Dé Danann’. Another possible identification is Beggery (Becc Ériu), a small island (now joined to the mainland) in Wexford harbour: it is called Inis Fáil in the Book of Armagh Additamenta (Bieler, Patrician texts, 176: l. 20), and in later Patrician texts. That it should also have been called ‘Little Ireland’ (already in Félire Óenguso, April 23) suggests that it too, like Tara, was thought to stand in some sense for Ireland as a whole.

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feis Temro with its pagan associations lapsed, its place as a royal assembly was presumably taken by the óenach at Tailtiu.31 Another account which links Fál with a shift from Tara to Tailtiu is furnished by Lebor Gabála: It is [the Tuatha Dé Danann] who brought with them the stone which was in Tara ... The one beneath whom that stone used to cry out was king of Ireland, until Cú Chulainn struck it with his sword, for it did not cry out beneath him nor beneath his fosterson, Lugaid son of the Three White Ones of Emain. Then its heart sprang out of it from Tara to Tailtiu: that is why ‘the heart of Fál’ is in Tailtiu.32 De Shíl Chonairi Móir also states that Fál and the other royal ordeals at Tara rejected Lugaid, but it does not mention Cú Chulainn’s involvement. Lugaid is said to have been rendered unworthy of the kingship by his responsibility for the death of Conaire’s father Etarscél.33 A comment added in Lebor Gabála’s first recension, however, suggests that Fál had been silenced not by Lugaid’s guilt but by the passing of the pagan order: As it happens, it is not that which caused it, but it is Christ’s being born which broke the power of the idols.34 The druid goes on to tell Conn that the king who fails to find the stone (if this is the correct interpretation of Harleian nachus faigfi, Rawlinson na faigbi) on the last day of the óenach will be ‘doomed in that year’ (trú isan bliadain-sin). The text is too elliptical at this point for any confident interpretation of these words to be advanced: was Fál – or some fragment or surrogate thereof – annually concealed at Tailtiu? If so, then by whom? – and did this practice survive down to the time of Baile in Scáil ’s composition? 35 It can at least be said, 31

32 33 34

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On the two ceremonies, and feis Temro’s abandonment, see Binchy, ‘The fair of Tailtiu’; also the important qualifications of Binchy’s reading of the evidence in Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 82–6. That the ecclesiastical establishment accepted the Tailtiu assembly from an early date is indicated by Adomnán’s statement that a synod was convened there in the time of Colum Cille (VSC, III 3); and see further Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 76. But Tara did not entirely cease to be a site for ritual activity, even if this was sometimes directed against the reigning king: thus Máire Herbert calls attention to an expedition to Tara undertaken by the familia of Colum Cille in 817 for the purpose of cursing Áed Oirdnide (Iona, Kells, and Derry, 71); AU speak of a congressio senodorum convened there in 780. For recent comments on this event, see Ó Corráin, ‘Congressio senodorum’, 252. I cite the short version of the second recension, which seems to give the most conservative text at this point: Macalister, Lebor Gabála, IV, 142–4. Gwynn, ‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’, 134: ll. 15–18, 30–1. Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 34: ll. 1065–7; cf. Macalister, Lebor Gabála, IV, 112, 144. The first recension also inserts after the account of Lugaid and Cú Chulainn the phrase ‘and thenceforth the stone did not cry out except under Conn’. If Christ’s birth rather than Lugaid’s unsuitability was the cause of the stone’s silence, then it must have been silenced permanently: its utterance in Baile in Scáil could only be an isolated exception. Kevin Murray informs me that he would prefer to follow the Rawlinson reading here, translating ‘the lord whom it will not accept’: understanding fo-gaib in the sense attested of ar-eim elsewhere. This would

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however, that the passages in Baile in Scáil and Lebor Gabála provide strong indications that the Tailtiu óenach, even if acceptable to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, was by no means wholly Christian in its character; further, that its success as a substitute for the pagan rituals once celebrated at Tara depended upon the transfer thither of some of the latter’s cultic appurtenances.

After the druid’s explanation, they saw a great mist around them, so that they did not know whither they were going because of the greatness of the darkness which had come upon them. They heard the noise of a horseman coming towards them. ‘Woe is us,’ said Conn, ‘if he brings us into an unknown land!’ Then the horseman made three (spear-)casts at them, and the last cast came to them more quickly than the first. ‘He is setting out to wound a king,’ said the druid, ‘whoever makes a cast at Conn in Tara!’ Then the horseman ceased his casting, and came up to them, and bade Conn welcome, and invited him to come with him to his home.36 We have already seen the powers of the supernatural both threatening the Tara kingship (in that they are always ready to attack a ruler who fails in vigilance) and upholding it (by acclaiming the rightful king through the stone of Fál).37 Both of these aspects are present in this scene. As the magic mist seems to draw the king and his followers into the Otherworld (and the two statements made by Conn and the druid leave it unclear whether they are still in Tara at this point, or straying elsewhere), an unseen warrior attacks them. When he learns Conn’s identity, however, the stranger suddenly becomes friendly and escorts them to his dwelling. This is a sumptuous palace, as the residences of the immortals generally are. Of greatest interest to the present discussion is the description of its occupants: They saw a young woman in the house, and a crown of gold was on her head. There was a silver vat with hoops of gold around it, full of red ale. There was a dipper of gold on its lip, and a cup of gold before her. They saw the phantom (scál ) himself in the house, before them on his throne. There was never in Tara a man of his size or his beauty, on account of the fairness of his form and the wondrousness of his appearance.38

36 37 38

40

imply that whatever rituals were associated with Fál would now be practiced at Tailtiu, on the final day of the óenach. Meyer, ‘Baile in Scáil’, 459: §5; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca– il’, 219. The obscure statement concerning a king’s becoming a trú ‘doomed man’, however, suggests that Fál too was prepared to turn against a negligent king. Meyer, ‘Baile in Scáil’, 459–60:§6; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca– il’, 219–20.

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He tells them that he is Lug, but denies that he is a phantom or demon (scál, airdrach) and claims descent from Adam.39 ‘It is so that I might be celebrated by you (?) after my death that I have come ... This is why I have come: so that I might relate to you the duration of your own reign, and of every reign that there will be in Tara.’ His companion is ‘the sovereignty of Ireland’ personified.40 While there can be no question here of a comprehensive discussion of the Irish deity Lug, and of his cognates elsewhere in the Celtic world, we may briefly consider those aspects of his persona which connect him most closely with the Tara kingship and, more specifically, with Baile in Scáil. 41 Even as he is here presented as a quasi-ancestral prototype of the Uí Néill kings, Lug appears in a much earlier source in association with the dynastic traditions of the Laigin, the Uí Néill’s predecessors as masters of Tara. A poem of the seventh century or earlier refers to Labraid Loingsech as ‘protective Lug, a white phantom’ (Lug scéith, scál find), anticipating Lug’s designation as a scál in Baile in Scáil. 42 The term scál occurs again, this time as a proper name, in Lebor Gabála’s account of the origins of Tailtiu: here we are told that Scál Balb ‘the Mute Phantom’ was another name for Lug’s father Cian.43 Whether we are entitled to conclude that, in T.F. O’Rahilly’s well-known phrase, Lug and Labraid are ‘ultimately one and the same’ must remain uncertain; but that the poem does portray Labraid as being in some sense Lug’s representative seems evident.44 Lug is described in Cath Maige Tuired as an outsider who gains the kingship of Tara and triumphs over his enemies. Labraid is a typical protagonist of the ‘exile-and-return’ tale type in which the heir to a throne, narrowly escaping death at the hands of a usurper in childhood, grows up overseas and then comes back to claim his heritage. Two figures in Uí Néill dynastic legend are also the heroes of stories of this kind: Conn’s grandfather Tuathal Techtmar, and Tuathal’s grandfather Feradach Finn Fechtnach. Each is linked with someone 39

40 41

42

43

44

More precisely, he claims to be either the grandson (Harleian 5280) or great-grandson (Rawlinson B 512) of the pseudo-historical ruler Tigernmas: according to the standard genealogical scheme, this would place him roughly fifty generations before Conn’s time. Meyer, ‘Baile in Scáil’, 460: §§ 7–8; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca– il’, 220. A useful summary of much of the Irish evidence is provided by MacNeill, The festival of Lughnasa, 3–10; for a more concise collection of references see Gray, Cath Maige Tuired, 126–7. The Irish evidence is compared with that for cognate figures elsewhere in the Celtic world by Tovar, ‘The god Lugus in Spain’. O’Brien, Corpus, 19: 118a22. The view that lug is here a common noun meaning ‘lynx’, put forward by Meyer and adopted by Pokorny, was persuasively rebutted by Chadwick, ‘Lug scéith scál find’. Indeed, the evidence advanced in DIL for a word lug ‘lynx’ is unsatisfactory: it seems more plausible to take all of the instances there cited to be more or less formulaic allusions to Lug himself. Cf. DIL s.vv. balar, núada for analogous usage elsewhere in the lexicon. E.g. Macalister, Lebor Gabála, IV, 116. Cf. Stokes, ‘Rennes Dindshenchas’, [RC] 15, 317. As T.F. O’Rahilly noted, the epithet balb recalls Labraid’s childhood name Moen ‘the Dumb One’ (Early Irish history and mythology, 103 n. 7). See Doherty, above, 22–3. Note that the same poem goes on to call Labraid ‘a man higher than gods’ (airddiu deeib doen). Another composition seems to state that he is ‘one god among the gods’ (deeib dia oen) (O’Brien, Corpus, 1: 115a15).

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named Scál Balb. A poem perhaps composed in the later eighth century names Tuathal’s wife as Báine, daughter of ‘Scál from the síde’; 45 and Gilla Modutu Ua Casaide, writing in 1147, supplies his epithet balb.46 According to two tracts describing the circumstances of Feradach’s return to power, his mother was a daughter of Luath king of the Picts; this Luath’s wife was Báine, daughter of Scál king of the Fomoiri.47 The name Scál Balb also occurs in other contexts, less easy to categorise.48 What is evident, however, is that it designates a supernatural figure closely linked with the kingship of Tara – whether Lug himself, his father, a king identified with the god, or the father of a dynastic ancestress.49 This having been said, it is perhaps worth noting that there is very little evidence which links Lug with Tara directly. 50 His arrival at Tara is a prominent feature in Cath Maige Tuired, but since that text appears, as I have argued elsewhere, to have been composed as an 45

46 47

48

49

50

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Bergin, Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 160: l. 4889. The poem concludes by stating that the king of Tara at the time of its composition was one Donnchad, perhaps Donnchad Midi (d. 797). The poem’s language seems compatible with this identification. The next possibility in the succession of the Tara kings would be Donnchad Donn mac Flainn (d. 944). Dobbs, ‘The Ban-shenchus’, [RC ] 47, 299. In the later prose Banshenchas one MS glosses Scál Balb .i. ri Fomoiri .i. Finnlaindi (ibid., [RC ] 48, 175; cf. 211). Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts, 109, 125–6. It seems likely that Báine grandmother of Feradach is a relatively late doublet of Báine wife of Tuathal, owing her existence to the similarities in the careers of the two kings. There is no trace of her in the introduction to Audacht Morainn (Kelly, 2: §1), on which the accounts cited in this note evidently draw. Also first attested in later Middle Irish is the doctrine that Cairenn, mother of Niall Noígíallach, was a daughter of Scál Balb king of the Saxons (O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, II, 326; cf. Dobbs, ‘The Ban-shenchus’ [RC ] 48, 213). Another Fomorian Báine is, as Pádraig Ó Riain has pointed out to me, the daughter of Frigriu who appears in one version of the dinnshenchas of Ailech (Stokes, ‘Rennes Dindshenchas’, [RC] 16, 41): is it significant that she comes from the land of the Fir Fhálgae, also identified as we have seen with the mysterious island of Fál? It is hard to know what to make of Scál Balb of Inis Cirr (v.l. Scír), said in the Prose Banshenchas to have been father to one of the concubines of Priam of Troy (Dobbs, [RC ] 48, 166, 203). The third-recension text of Lebor Gabála in the Book of Lecan mentions a Scál Balb who was son of Echu Garb, the husband or lover of Lug’s foster-mother Tailtiu (Macalister, Lebor Gabála, IV, 188). An allusive dinnshenchas poem links a Scál Balb with various spots in the vicinity of Croagh Patrick (Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, IV, 280). Máire MacNeill suggests a connection between the last of these figures and the Lugnasad pilgrimage at Croagh Patrick; she also notes another case of the name Scál being associated with the site of Lugnasad celebrations (The festival of Lughnasa, 84, 208–9). In the present discussion I exclude from consideration such legendary rulers of Tara as Lugaid Riab nDerg and Lugaid Mac Con, although they (and others) are often taken to be euhemerised reflexes of Lug (e.g. by O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 202, 284; and Mac Cana, ‘Fianaigecht in the pre-Norman period’, 78–9). Whatever their putative origins, such figures are presented as mortals in our sources; and I am in this essay primarily concerned with describing Tara’s supernatural aspects as these are reflected in the surviving literature. For further suggested identifications see e.g. O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 61, 271, 277–9; Murphy, Duanaire Finn, III, 1xx–xxxv; and Ó Riain’s important article ‘Traces of Lug’. I thank Edel Bhreathnach for pointing out to me that an indirect indication of such a link, potentially of very considerable significance, is the ethnonym of the Luigni or Luaigni of Tara, attested already as MUCOI LUGUNI in an ogam inscription found near Kells (Macalister, Corpus inscriptionum, I, 46–7). While Lug, as already noted, is in at least one early poem linked with the origins of the Laigin, the Luigni appear to have been closely associated with Uí Néill domination of the midlands. They can scarcely be dissociated from the Luigni of Connacht, whose ancestor Luigne Fer Trí figures prominently in

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allegory of the sociopolitical position of the Uí Néill in the mid-ninth century, its testimony must be used with caution.51 It has been claimed that certain remains at or near Tara were associated with Lug, but this too seems doubtful; thus it is not evident how long the site now known as ‘Rath Lugh’ [sic] has been so called.52 Another structure has been postulated on the strength of a passage in Cath Maige Tuired: [Lug] said that the fidchell boards of Tara should be brought to him; and he defeated them, so that it is then that he made the cró Logo (‘enclosure of Lug’).53 Whitley Stokes surmised that the cró Logo was ‘some hut or other enclosure in which Lugh put his winnings’; and he has been followed in this interpretation by Jean Gricourt, Christian-J. Guyonvarc’h and Máire MacNeill.54 I would suggest, however, that in its context the phrase can most easily be taken to designate Lug’s winning gambit in his fidchell games. From what can be reconstructed of fidchell, it seems that an attacking player’s principal aim was that of encircling his opponent; 55 and the use of such terms as cró Bodba ‘enclosure of the war-goddess’ to designate battle formations reflects an analogous metaphoric usage.56 Elsewhere Lug appears associated with other places: with the Boyne tumuli of Newgrange (Brug na Bóinne) and Knowth (Cnogba),57 with the mysterious Síd Rodrubán,58 and with the celebrated assembly site of Tailtiu. His connection with Tailtiu is particularly well documented. The eponymous Tailtiu, Lug’s foster-mother, is said to have died as a result of her exertions in clearing the plain. Lug buried her there and then instituted the annual óenach or assembly in her memory. This took place on Lugnasad (meaning something like

51

52 53 54

55 56 57 58

the birth-tale of Cormac mac Airt (thus Scéla Éogain in so 7 Cormaic, in O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, 68); and the Luaigni Temro themselves are credited with having killed the Laigin dynastic ancestor Cathaír Már (O’Brien, Corpus, 70:124a31). Further references in Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 127–9. Carey, ‘Myth and mythography’. As I endeavoured to stress in that article, however, the work’s topical aims did not prevent it from including (like Baile in Scáil) traditional material of considerable antiquity: the account of Lug’s arrival may well have drawn on such traditions. For the possibility, proposed by Pádraig Ó Riain, that Lug was thought of as a nocturnal supernatural visitant, see note 11 above; he has also pointed out to me that the scene in Cath Maige Tuired stresses Lug’s ability to handle ‘the great flagstone’ (in márlícc) at Tara (Gray, Cath Maige Tuired, 40: §72). Macalister, Tara, 77; Hickey, ‘Miscellanea: Rath Lugh’. Gray, Cath Maige Tuired, 40: §69. Stokes, ‘The second battle of Moytura’, 79 n. 1; Gricourt, ‘L’“enclos” du dieu Lug’; Guyonvarc’h, ‘Le Cró Logo’; MacNeill, ‘Trespass and building’. It should be noted that, while agreeing with Stokes that the cró Logo was a structure of some kind, Gricourt and Guyonvarc’h differ sharply from one another regarding that enclosure’s nature. MacWhite, ‘Early Irish board games’. That Lug was held to have invented fidchell, as will be noted below, makes this interpretation all the more plausible. Thus the army of Leth Cuinn throws a cró bodba around a herd of plundered cattle in the Bóruma (Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, V, 1313: l. 39179). Newgrange: Compert Con Culainn (Van Hamel, Compert Con Culainn, 5: §5). Knowth: Discussion of the sources in Ó Cathasaigh, ‘The eponym of Cnogba’. Hull, ‘De Gabáil in t-Shída’, 55.

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‘the festival of Lug’), or the first of August.59 The doctrine that Lug invented not only fidchell, but also ball games and horse-racing, appears to be another reflection of his role as patron of the óenach. 60 According to Tochmarc Emire, it was at Tailtiu rather than at Tara that Lug celebrated his banais rígi ‘wedding of kingship’ upon assuming the rule of Ireland after the battle of Mag Tuired.61 Tailtiu was, of course, closely bound up with the kingship of Tara. As I have indicated, its óenach appears to have taken the place of the feis Temro, and various sources indicate that the oracle of Fál, or some portion or essence thereof, passed from Tara to Tailtiu with the coming of Christianity. Nevertheless, Lug’s connection with Tailtiu does not ipso facto constitute a link with Tara. Baile in Scáil and Cath Maige Tuired, the two texts in which such a link appears most clearly, are approximately contemporary works of propaganda which may have more to tell us about the concerns of the Uí Néill than about the early character of Lug. It seems safest to say simply that Lug was a god associated with the ideal of kingship – an ideal which has always included the claim to Tara – rather than that he was specifically associated with the site of Tara itself.

Lug’s companion in the Otherworld hall is a lovely young woman, who serves ale from precious vessels to Conn and to all those who will succeed him. Lug identifies her as flaith Érenn ‘the sovereignty of Ireland’. The idea that kingship was represented and/or bestowed by a beautiful female figure dispensing drink can be paralleled in many Irish sources, and seems also to have figured in the traditions of other Celtic peoples.62 In most cases, this figure also becomes the lover or wife of the successful aspirant to kingship: in Baile in Scáil, where the cup is offered in turn to all of the kings of Ireland, the role of consort is reserved for the divine exemplar Lug.63 There can be little doubt that the ‘woman of sovereignty’ in stories of this type was 59 60

61 62

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Macalister, Lebor Gabála, IV, 114–16, 148, 176–8; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, III, 48–50, IV, 146–50; MacNeill, The festival of Lughnasa, 320–1. Carey, ‘A Tuath Dé miscellany’, 28: §10; cf. 37. It is interesting that another Lug, a son of Caicher with the epithet laebach ‘deformed (?)’, figures in the legend regarding the institution of the óenach at Carman (Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, III, 6: l. 50): I am grateful to Edel Bhreathnach for this reference. Van Hamel, Compert Con Culainn, 41: §47. This subject has attracted a copious literature. The collection of examples assembled by O’Rahilly, ‘On the origin of the names Érainn and Ériu’, 14–21, is still useful; cf. now McCone, ‘Fírinne agus torthúlacht’; and Herbert, ‘Goddess and king’. Greek and Latin versions of Continental Celtic tales exhibiting similar features are translated in Koch, The Celtic heroic age, 32–6. Máire Herbert has pointed out that Baile in Scáil is peculiar in that it does not portray the goddess choosing the recipient of the drink, as she does elsewhere, but rather obeying the instructions of Lug: she argues that ‘the female role is, in fact, relegated from that of subject to that of object’ (‘Goddess and king’, 269–70).

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originally a goddess, the personification of the land over which rule was exercised.64 So far as I know, Baile in Scáil is the earliest work in which we find a woman identified simply as ‘the sovereignty of Ireland’; the abstract label may be an innovation, reflecting political developments in the period when the text was written.65 Lug is assigned various wives in other texts: of these Buí, associated with the tumulus of Knowth and with the Beara peninsula in Co. Cork, functions as a symbol of kingship without however being explicitly linked with Tara.66 Can a ‘goddess of Tara’ be found elsewhere? A supernatural figure with clear connections to the kingship of Tara is Étaín, heroine of the remarkable tale Tochmarc Étaíne. A woman of the síd reborn as a mortal, she marries Eochaid Airem and by becoming his wife makes it possible for him to assert his sovereignty by celebrating the feis Temro.67 Later in the tale we learn that the pouring of drink is her ‘special skill’ (sain-dán);68 and there are strong hints that, like sovereignty figures in other stories, she assumes the disguise of an ugly old woman.69 Complicated and evidently garbled traditions concerning two indistinguishable Étaíns, mother and daughter, may reflect the doctrine that the goddess slept with generation after generation of kings.70 At two points in the narrative the landscape is radically reshaped by Étaín’s supernatural suitors, further suggesting that her original identity is that of a territorial goddess.71 After it is clear that he has lost Étaín, Eochaid becomes ‘weary in spirit’ (ba scith leis a menma); his residence (not Tara at this point) is then burnt by an attacker from the síd, and he perishes.72 Illuminating as all of these elements in her legend are, Étaín’s connection with Tara is sharply limited: Eochaid is the only one among its kings whom she marries, and she leaves him to dwell in the síd of Brí Léith. Throughout most of the twentieth century scholars inclined to the view that the goddess of the Tara kingship is presented by the literature in euhemerised form, as one or

64

65 66 67

68 69 70 71 72

This is sometimes made explicit. Thus one (admittedly late) account of the origin of Emain Macha states that the eponymous Macha was a daughter of Midir, lord of the síd of Brí Léith (Stokes, ‘Rennes Dindshenchas’, [RC ] 16, 44–6: §94); and Macha is also well attested as the name of a war-goddess (e.g. Macalister, Lebor Gabála, IV, 122, 130, 154, 160, 182, 188, 216; also Stokes, ‘O’Mulconry’s glossary’, 271: §813). Cf. Carey, ‘Myth and mythography’, 55; and Herbert, ‘Goddess and king’. Ó Cathasaigh, ‘The eponym of Cnogba’. Bergin and Best, ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’, 162–4: §2. Before his marriage, the men of Ireland tell Eochaid that ‘they would not bring the feis Temro together for a king who had no queen’. For a general discussion of the background of the tale, dealing with many of the points touched upon in this paragraph, see Le Roux, ‘La Courtise d’Étain’. Bergin and Best, ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’, 182: §13. Ibid. , 186: §§ 17–18. Ibid. , 186–8: §§ 19–20; cf. Knott, Togail Bruidne Da Derga, 2–3. Best and Bergin, ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’, 150: §§ 13–14, 176–8: §§ 5–8. Ibid,. 188: §21; Eochaid’s fate is strikingly similar to that of Conaire Már after the violation of his geisi. Cf. further the account of the burning of Tara by Aillén in Acallam na Senórach, discussed above, 34–5.

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another human queen. Two women in particular have been seen as reflections of the older goddess: Eithne Thóebfhota and Medb Lethderg. Eithne, wife of Cormac mac Airt, figures most prominently in the tales Esnada Tige Buchet and ‘Cormac’s Dream’. In the former, Cormac before he has gained control of Tara comes upon Eithne, daughter of the king of the Laigin; she is in the guise of a humble milkmaid, pouring water and milk into various vessels. He abducts and rapes her and begets his heir upon her; later he makes her his queen. 73 In the second story, Cormac has a dream in which he sees Eithne sleeping with a rival king: he is told that ‘your wife sleeping with him means that your kingship (ríghe) will sleep with him; and he will only be in the kingship of Tara (i flaithius Temra) for one year’. In both cases, there can be no doubt that Eithne stands for the kingship of Tara.74 In Esnada Tige Buchet, Cormac’s seizure of the daughter of the king of Leinster evidently symbolises Dál Cuinn’s seizure of that kingship from the Laigin.75 That Eithne appears elsewhere as a divine name makes the hypothesis that Eithne Thóebfhota was originally a goddess all the more attractive.76 Nevertheless, it should be stressed that the texts depict Eithne simply as a mortal woman enacting an emblematic role. In dreams, of course, anyone can be given an archetypal part to play, while in Esnada Tige Buchet Eithne’s attributes and adventures only loosely conform to the standard story pattern. Nor is she – Cormac’s fantasies aside – ever said to have been the mate of another man. The same cannot be claimed for Medb Lethderg, of whom we are told that ‘she used not to allow any king in Tara unless she herself were his wife’. Like Eithne, she is said to be ‘of the Laigin’: first she was the wife of Cú Chorbb, ancestor of ‘the four chief kindreds of Leinster’, then of Fedelmid Rechtmar, the father of Conn Cétchathach.77 Esnada Tige Buchet states that Medb ruled Tara after the death of Conn’s son Art, whose consort she had been,78 and a Middle Irish poem contains the couplet ‘until Medb slept with the youth / Cormac was not king of Ireland’.79 All of these doctrines are brought together in a genealogical miscellany in the Book of Lecan:

73 74 75 76

77 78 79

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Greene, Fingal Rónáin, 27–44. Carney, ‘Nia son of Lugna Fer Trí’, 192: §§ 5–6. See on these points the discussion by Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, 72–80. On the many instances of the name see Dagger, ‘Eithne – the sources’. That Eithne represents an earlier deity linked with kingship is rendered especially likely by the circumstance that both Medb of Cruachu and Medb Lethderg are also paired with women named Eithne: in the former case, a sister (e.g. Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, II, 461: l. 14395); in the latter, Eithne Sithbacc, who like Medb Lethderg is married to Cú Chorbb, bears him sons, and ordains the division of peoples (O’Brien, Corpus, 25–7, 95; cf. Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, [RC ] 48, 176–7). These statements are drawn from a Middle Irish tract preserved in the fourteenth-century leaves attached to the Book of Leinster, cf. Ó Máille, ‘Medb Chruachna’, 137. Greene, Fingal Rónáin, 31: ll. 556–8. Power, ‘Cnucha cnoc os cionn Life’, 43: §30.

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It is Medb who slept with Feidlimid Rechtmar after he had slain Cú Chorbb in battle ... and she was also the wife of Art son of Conn; and of Cormac son of Art son of Conn after that, when Mac Con was banished from Tara ... And that woman, Medb Lethderg, slept with nine kings of the kings of Ireland.80 Apparently, therefore, Medb was thought to have mated with the kings of Tara over a span of at least four generations.81 The symbolism of drink is also an element in her persona: the name Medb seems to mean ‘the intoxicating one’,82 and she is described as weakening and dividing a people by offering their ruler a poisoned drink.83 Of her native region of Cualu (a district approximating to south Co. Dublin/north Co. Wicklow) it was said that ‘he will not be king over Ireland / whom the ale of Cualu does not reach’,84 and drinking the ale of Cualu is included in the list of things fortunate for the king of Leinster.85 A ‘royal enclosure’ (rígráith) named Ráith Medba, on the eastern slope of Tara, testified in medieval times to her close association with the site.86 The consensus that Medb Lethderg is a euhemerised goddess embodying the Tara kingship is accordingly supported by an impressive range of evidence.87 It is worth stressing, though, that no figure named Medb is accorded supernatural traits or associations anywhere in medieval Irish literature.88 There seems, indeed, to have been a marked tendency not to 80 81

82 83 84 85 86

87

88

Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts, 147–8: §49. My translation differs from Ó Raithbheartaigh’s in some respects. But caution is required here, as her first husband Cú Chorbb is sometimes said to have been a contemporary of Art’s: thus O’Brien, Corpus, 27, 94. The time-span covered by her partners in Middle Irish sources may, therefore, go back to a confusion based on conflicting chronologies. See Vendryes et al., Lexique, s.v. ‘mid’. Ó Máille, ‘Medb Chruachna’, loc. cit. Binchy, Scéla Cano, 17: ll. 450–3. Dillon, ‘Taboos’, 12: §2. Ó Máille, ‘Medb Chruachna, loc. cit.’; Power, ‘Cnucha cnoc os cionn Life’, 42: §28; Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts I, loc. cit.; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, RC 48, 177, 213. That the medieval sources speak of Ráith Medba as lying to the east of Tara indicates that it is not to be identified with the site now known as Rath Maeve, located 1 km to the south (tl. Belpere, par. Killeen, bar. Skreen, Co. Meath) (Macalister, Tara, 77). This view is further strengthened, of course, by the analogous figure of Medb of Cruachu: also connected with Tara, also the wife or mistress of a series of kings, and apparently conferring the kingship of Connacht upon the men whom she chooses as her partners (references in Ó Máille, ‘Medb Chruachna’). Georges Dumézil has in a fascinating study argued that this constellation of traits may be of Indo-European antiquity: he cites the Indic heroine Ma–dhavı–, whose name is closely cognate to that of Medb, and who has a succession of royal husbands (The destiny of a king, 70–107). It may be noted that Dumézil (ibid, 115) did not conclude from his analysis that Medb and Ma–dhavı– are the reflexes of a goddess: ‘Significantly, we are really dealing on both sides with human epic ... in which the gods (even those in the Indian account) do not play the leading role. Comparative study thus allows us to work back not to a theological or mythological schema but to an Indo-European literary theme’. Thurneysen perceived such associations in the Táin’s statement that ‘every place in Cuib in which Medb planted her horsewhip is called Bile Medba’ (O’Rahilly, Táin Bó Cúailnge I: ll. 1534–5), a bile being a tree with cultic associations: ‘daß die alten, heiligen Bäume (bile) nach einer feindlichen Königin,

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depict the kings of Tara as being married to supernatural women, however auspicious erotic encounters with them may have been. This aspect of the tradition deserves more attention than it has yet received.89 It may be appropriate to reiterate a few points by way of conclusion. Tara appears in our sources not as a sanctuary of the old gods but rather as a bastion of human kingship, to be defended against the aggression of the supernatural realm – and this despite the fact that it was from that realm that such kingship derived its legitimacy. Tara was thought to have been, deep in the pre-Christian past, the site of the oracular stone named Fál, itself identified on some level with the sovereignty (flaith). Whatever remained of Fál had, however, long since been transferred to Tailtiu, and it was with Tailtiu that the god Lug, forebear and prototype of the Tara kings, was most closely associated. The legendary queen Medb Lethderg, the consort of many rulers and the distributor of the ale of Cualu, was very possibly the goddess of the land and sovereignty of Tara – and yet, in a literature rich in accounts of the communion of mortals with immortals, her divinity is never acknowledged.90

89

90

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die einst das Gebiet verwüstete, benannt sein sollen, ist gegen alle Wahrscheinlichkeit’ (Thurneysen ‘Allerlei keltisches: 7. Göttin Medb?’, 108). Perhaps, but I am aware of no other name beginning with Bile in which the second element appears to be a theonym. Exceptions are Báine and Étaín, discussed above. The doctrine that all of the leaders of the Gaelic settlement found wives among the people of the síd is mentioned in a poem attributed to the ninthcentury rígfhili Mael Muru Othna (Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, III, 520: ll. 16097–8), but seems to have lost favour thereafter. It reappears however in a poem by the eleventh-century scholar Eochaid Eólach úa Céirín, who states that the six sons of Míl were united with three daughters of Midir and three daughters of Goibniu, and that Éber’s wife was a daughter of the Dagda and the Morrígain (Thurneysen, ‘Das Gedicht der vierzig Fragen von Eochaid ua Cérín’, 132–3: §§ 12, 15). From the tenth century onward we encounter stories in which a supernatural lover is a threat to the Tara kingship: thus in Tochmarc Becfhola, Diarmait mac Áedo Sláine denounces the vanishing Becfhola as an urchód ‘demon, spectre’ (Bhreathnach, ‘Tochmarc Becfhola’, 76: §11). Cf. further the well-known examples in the tales Aided Muirchertaig Meic Erca and Eachtra Airt; and the recent analysis by Herbert, ‘The death of Muirchertach mac Erca’. While the silence of the surviving sources is undeniably significant, it should not of course be taken for granted that such negative evidence tells the whole story. It is instructive in this connection to consider the case of Mongfhinn, daughter of Fidach: she too is presented in the literature simply as a human queen, apart from the isolated statements in a single text that she was a ‘woman of the síd’ (banshídaige), and that ‘Samain is called the feast of Mongfhinn by the rabble, for she was powerful, and was a witch, for as long as she was in the body; and that is why women, and the rabble, utter prayers to her on the night of Samain’ (O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 332). Were it not for this uncharacteristic allusion to the beliefs of women and the lower classes, we would have no inkling that Mongfhinn had ever been a supernatural figure, let alone that she was still accorded quasi-divine status in the medieval period.

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Níell cáich úa Néill nasctar géill : The Political Context of Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig Edel Bhreathnach

B

A I L E Chuinn Chétchathaig (BCC ) is the earliest surviving list of the kings of Tara. A shorter king-list forms part of the contemporary or near-contemporary Leinster ‘genealogical’ poem Nidu dír dermait,1 but the kings mentioned in that text are either prehistoric or proto-historic kings of Tara of Leinster origin, none of whom feature in BCC. Middle Irish lists of the kings of Ireland and of Tara, most notably that of Baile in Scáil, although similar, do not include exactly the same kings or follow the sequence of the BCC list.2 When measured against the evidence of other contemporary sources, BCC’s accuracy as a comprehensive register of claimants to the kingship of Tara in the seventh and early eighth centuries cannot be fully sustained.3 Rather than mirror the complexities of the period, the text is a list that primarily reflects the interests of the dynasties of Síl nÁedo Sláine, especially those of Fínnachta Fledach (d. 695) and Niall son of Cernach Sotal (d. 701). BCC’s date has been considered occasionally since Thurneysen concluded that the reference to Glúnshalach (i: 32, 32a)4 was to Niall Glúndub (d. 919) and, therefore, that the text had to be assigned to the tenth century.5 Gerard Murphy pointed out, however, in the preface to his edition of BCC that this late date contradicted Thurneysen’s eighth-century date for the lost manuscript Cín Dromma Snechtai, in which a copy of BCC was reputedly preserved.6 Murphy concluded that the latter was a seventh-century document:

Every king in it is clearly identified down to Fínnachta, who reigned from 675 to 695, whereas, from Fínnachta on, the kings are referred to by vague kennings. Indeed, it may be said that the vagueness begins with Fínnachta himself. He is called Snechta fína, not Fíns[h]nechta or Fínnachta. One is tempted to conclude that

1

2 3 4 5 6

Meyer, Älteste irische Dichtung, I, 14–25; O’Brien, Corpus, 8–9; Koch and Carey, The Celtic heroic age, 42–3. For comments on the date of the Leinster poems see Byrne, Irish kings, 134–6; Ó Corráin, ‘Irish origin legends’, 51–96; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 453–8. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 481–507. Charles-Edwards’ conclusion (Early Christian Ireland, 507) provides a concise summary of the relative values of the king-lists. All references to kings correspond to their entry number in Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, ‘Prosopography I’. Thurneysen, Zu irischen Handschriften, 49; ‘Baile in Sca– il’, 217–8. Thurneysen, Heldensage, 15–18; Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 149–50.

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he was not yet king, merely ríg-damna, when the Baile was composed, perhaps when his cousins Sechnasach (†671) and Cend Fáelad (†675) were his rivals for the throne. 7 Francis John Byrne, cited by Tomás Ó Cathasaigh in a study of the theme of threefold death,8 placed BCC late in Fínnachta’s reign and suggested that the lines flaith ó Níell co Néll / Níell cáich úa Néill nasctar géill referred to Niall son of Cernach Sotal (d. 701), who tried to oust Fínnachta around 688–9. John Carey, in his consideration of, among other themes, the midland group of texts derived from Cín Dromma Snechtai, agrees with Byrne and suggests that BCC and Echtra Chonlai could conceivably date from the years 688–9, which would make them contemporary with Fínnachta Fledach’s apparent abdication from the kingship of Tara in 688, Niall son of Cernach Sotal’s victory at the battle of Imlech Pích (tl. Emlagh, bar. Lower Kells, Co. Meath) in 688, and Fínnachta’s return to kingship in 689. 9 An early Old Irish date for Echtra Chonlai is questioned by Kim McCone in his edition of the text. He argues for ‘a mainstream Old Irish date of the eighth or a good deal less probably the ninth century AD’, while not fully discounting the possibility ‘that the archetype [of Echtra Chonlai] restored on stemmatic grounds was itself a largely modernised copy of a still older version belonging to the Early Old Irish period’.10 In a survey dealing with the early textual references to Tara, I suggested that the kennings which describe the kings of Tara after Fínnachta’s reign in BCC could be unravelled and that their use reflected a contemporary Síl nÁedo Sláine view of the kingship of Tara, which in the late seventh and early eighth centuries was informed both by internecine struggles and the increasing dominance of northern claimants, with some influence from the south.11 The analysis presented here reveals that BCC is a highly coded and composite text, in which we encounter the earliest extant kinglist of Tara, ranging from prehistory to the early eighth century. As with the construction of many such king-lists, the task of arranging the entries in the list became more difficult as its authors tried to schematise contemporary or near-contemporary events. Their difficulty is most graphically reflected in the change after the entry on Fínnachta Fledach’s reign, where kings are referred to by kennings. The kings listed in BCC comprise three broad categories :12 prehistoric and pseudohistorical kings (i: 1–10); proto-historical kings who might have reigned within historical memory (i: 11–16); and historical kings (i: 17–33). The kings of Tara from Conn Cétchathach to Óengarb [Tuathal Máelgarb] listed in 7 8 9 10 11 12

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Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 149–50. Ó Cathasaigh, ‘The threefold death, 69’. Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’, 88–9. McCone, Echtrae Chonnlai, 41, 45, 104, 118–19. Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 78–82. These categories correspond with those denoted in Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, ‘Prosopography I’.

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BCC belong to prehistory or at least to a period of shadowy figures of indeterminate status and date (to borrow a definition used to describe the eponymous ancestors of the –ingas names of the Middle Saxons).13 The composition of this part of BCC is instructive. The list is obviously dominated by those who were regarded as the ancestors of the Connachta and Uí Néill. All the important prehistoric kings are included: Conn Cétchathach, Art mac Cuinn, Cormac mac Airt, Niall Noígíallach. Of the reputed sons of Niall Noígíallach, only Lóegaire and Coirpre are mentioned, while the next two generations are confined to Lugaid son of Lóegaire, Mac Ercéni – who either represents Muirchertach Mac Ercae of Cenél nÉogain or more likely Mac Ercae son of Ailill Molt – and Óengarb, otherwise known as Tuathal Máelgarb, who was the grandson of Coirpre son of Niall. The choice of Lóegaire and Coirpre as sons of Niall may have been deliberate for a number of reasons. Geographically, any estimation of the territories of their descendants, be they all descendants of the one Lóegaire or Coirpre or not, would cover a vast expanse of the Irish midlands – from north of the mouth of the Erne southwards towards Leinster – representing a total Uí Néill dominance of the midlands. Coirpre, at least, may have been a king whose Uí Néill credentials were genuine, although Fiachu son of Niall, another possibly genuine son of Niall,14 is omitted from BCC. Considering that BCC is biased towards Síl nÁedo Sláine, it may be significant that Cenél Coirpri and Cenél Lóegairi were related through marriage alliances to Síl nÁedo Sláine in the early seventh century. 15 Conall son of Niall, ancestor of Cenél Conaill, and perhaps of Clann Cholmáin,16 is notably absent from BCC’s king-list. Conall is also excluded from Baile in Scáil ’s list of the kings of Tara, despite being recognised by Tírechán as Conall filium Neill.17 The omission of Conall and the under-representation of Cenél nÉogain suggest Síl nÁedo Sláine bias, insofar as Conall’s omission undermines Cenél Conaill (and possibly by extension Clann Cholmáin) claims to the kingship of Tara – despite their preeminence in the seventh century. Similarly, vagueness about the antiquity of Cenél nÉogain’s claim undermines their late seventh-century claim to the kingship of Tara. Those ancestors not belonging to Dál Cuinn in the first section of BCC are few. Mac Con is associated with Corcu Loígde 18 and Crimthann mac Fidaig with the Éoganachta.19 Although Coirpre Lifechair is regarded as Cormac mac Airt’s son, his connections with Leinster are suggestive of an origin among the Laigin.20 However, this may not be BCC’s view 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Bailey, ‘The Middle Saxons’, 114–15. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 441–68. e.g. Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, ‘Prosopography I’, i: 18, i: 26. Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’. Bieler, Patrician texts, 132–3: 10 (1), 162–3: 50 (2). O’Brien, Corpus, 256: 155a5, 262: 155b11; O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, 9–10; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 168–9. O’Brien, Corpus, 195: 148a16; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 217–8. Smyth, Celtic Leinster, 17.

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of him, since the apparent exclusion of prehistoric or proto-historical kings of Tara of Laigin 21 and Ulaid origin was designed to undermine their claims to the kingship. Fortunately, however, their own respective traditions preserve the Laigin and Ulaid doctrines that Tara and Brega belonged rightfully to them. The Leinster genealogical poem Nidu dír dermait, ascribed to Laidcenn mac Baircedo of Dál nAraidi, was probably composed at approximately the same time as and perhaps even in response to BCC, 22 as its defensive tone about Tara indicates: Nidu dı–r dermait reimsi rı–g Temra

da– la cach rı–g ro– mdae, tuatha for slicht slo– gdae.23

It is not fitting to me to forget the encounters of every famous king, The reigns of the kings of Tara, mustered kingdoms on the warpath. Of Bressal Bélach, one of the heroic kings of the Laigin, the poem boldly states bruïs sra–bu Sı–l Cuind 24 ‘he broke the hosts of Conn [Cétchathach]’s descendants’, referring to at least some elements of the Uí Néill. Laidcenn mac Baircedo is also credited with a very similar poem preserved in the genealogical tract Senchas Síl Ír, which lauds the rightful claims of the Ulaid and the triumphs of Báetán son of Cairell (d. 581).25 The inclusion and omission of the ancestors of certain dynasties represents the judgement of BCC’s author concerning the rightful claimants to the kingship of Tara, an opinion that becomes more obvious in the section dealing with proto-historical and historical kings of Tara. The kings listed from the two Áeds (i: 18, 18a–b, 19, 19a–b) to Snechta Fína (i: 27) in BCC cover the late sixth and seventh centuries during which the dominant Uí Néill dynasties of the early medieval period were shaped. It was a period of intense rivalry between competing dynasties vying to be identified as Uí Néill, and of contention between the Ulaid and Uí Néill for the kingship of Tara. Having constructed a prehistory for the kingship of Tara in the early paragraphs of the text which, with few exceptions, allowed for a restricted number of Connachta or Uí Néill claimants, this section of BCC attempted to simplify the complex activities of a myriad of dynasties – both those who were affiliated to the Uí Néill and those who clearly were not. Depending on the identification of the kings in the list, at worst only those regarded as Uí Néill are included, at best the occasional challenge from a king of the Cruithni or the Ulaid is acknowledged. F.J. Byrne regarded the gaps in 21 22 23 24 25

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Dáire Drechlethan may be identified with Dáire Barrach, which is uncertain, see Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, ‘Prosopography I’, i: 7, 7a, 7b. Carey ‘Narrative setting of Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig’, has noted the grammatical and metrical similarities between BCC and the Leinster genealogical poems. O’Brien, Corpus, 8: 116c8–9. Ibid., 9: 116c41. Dobbs, ‘Senchas Síl hIr’, 328.

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BCC as ‘many periods of interregnum’ which came about because the kingship of Tara was ‘a prize which could be achieved only by the most outstanding’.26 However, these lacunae in BCC indicate a highly edited list that offers but a mere glimpse of the struggle for dominance in seventh-century Ireland, and in particular of the northern half of the island, as expressed in the title rex Temro. For example, there is no inkling in the text of the capacity, so evident elsewhere,27 of the Uí Néill, Cruithni, Laigin or Ulaid to control both Brega and its obviously powerful population groups such as Cíannacht Breg and Mugdorna during this period. Nor is there any sense reflected in BCC of the formation of the Uí Néill from what seem to have been disparate origins. A more detailed assessment of the careers of kings mentioned in this section of the text, Diarmait mac Cerbaill (i: 20), Áed Sláine (i: 18), Féchno (i: 21, 21a–b), Óengus (i: 23) and Snechta Fína (i: 27), illustrates the complexity of the period. Diarmait mac Cerbaill (i: 20) is misplaced in the text,28 which places him after his two possible successors named Áed (i: 18, 18a–b, 19, 19a–b). In the synchronised history produced by the eighth century, Diarmait acts as a nodal point. He was the progenitor of the main Southern Uí Néill dynasties, Clann Cholmáin and Síl nÁedo Sláine.29 He was reputedly the last king to celebrate feis Temro in 558/60. While renowned for his confrontation with Ruadán of Lorrha,30 Diarmait was a benefactor of Ciarán of Clonmacnoise 31 and, most significantly, was singled out by Adomnán as totius Scotiae regnatorem deo auctore ordinatum ‘the ruler of all Ireland ordained by God’s will’.32 Yet, as noted by Byrne and by Mac Shamhráin,33 there is something suspicious about this use of Diarmait as a focus, given his rather inauspicious career and apparently obscure origins. Firstly, his purported descent from Niall Noígíallach begs questions. Despite an alleged descent from Fergus Cerrbél son of Conall Cremthainne son of Niall, he is rarely known as other than Diarmait mac Cerbaill. Fergus Cerrbél is merely noted as Diarmait’s father in the genealogies, and little else is known of him. Mac Shamhráin has explained this genealogical fudge in highly significant terms, arguing that the gap in the Uí Néill genealogical schema (which is a generation short) is filled if Fergus Cerrbél is taken to represent a fusion of two generations. Thus Diarmait is a son of Cerball, who is in turn a son of Fergus son of Conall Cremthainne. He points out that Sétnae and Fedelmid, the fathers of Ainmere (d. 569) and Columba (d. 597) respectively, were themselves sons of Fergus son of Conall Gulban and deduces, on the basis of a reductio 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Byrne, ‘Seventh century documents’, 168. Byrnes, ‘The Árd Ciannachta in Adomnán’s Vita Columbae’. This incorrect order is not due to scribal error as the text’s alliterative pattern dictates that Diarmait was originally placed after the two Áeds. O’Brien, Corpus, 137: 140b17. O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 72–82 and II, 76–88; Plummer, Vitae, II, 245–9; Plummer, Bethada, I, 88–90; Heist, Vitae, 163–5. O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 72–4; Ann. Clon., 79–83 [s.a. 547]. VSC, I 36. Byrne, Irish kings, 94; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 92.

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in the genealogical schema, that Diarmait mac Cerbaill was a first cousin of Ainmere and Columba.34 Mac Shamhráin’s deduction would suggest, therefore, that Diarmait and his sons’ dynasties, Clann Cholmáin and Síl nÁedo Sláine, were midland extensions of Cenél Conaill, which in turn might to some extent explain Adomnán’s choice of Diarmait as ‘king of all Ireland’, considering that Diarmait may have been Columba’s cousin. Thomas CharlesEdwards has argued that Adomnán’s words addressed to Áed Sláine, that his rule would be confined to his own gens, namely the Connachta, ‘imply that Díarmait mac Cerbaill ruled over the whole gens of the Connachta, including the Uí Néill, as well as other dynasties’.35 It is significant that Adomnán never mentions Tara or its kingship and refers to the Uí Néill only once as such, in the context of the battle of Dún Ceithirn (perhaps tl. Lisachrin, par. Desertoghill, bar. Coleraine, Co. Derry)36 fought between Nellis nepotes and Cruithini populi. 37 He does not describe either Diarmait mac Cerbaill or Áed Sláine as of the Uí Néill.38 Alternatively, as a son of Cerball, Diarmait could have been a member of an active dynasty in its own right. Maine son of Cerball was slain in the battle of Clóenloch (near Gort, Co. Galway or Sliab Fúait, north of Newtownhamilton, Co. Armagh) in 538. A number of annals 39 – in what might be later additions – claim that this battle took place in Connacht as Maine was contesting gélsine Hua Maine Condacht ‘the hostages of Uí Maine of Connacht’. The victor was Goibniu son of Conall, king of Uí Fhiachrach Aidni. The annalistic entries have led scholars to identify Clóenloch as a place in the vicinity of Gort, Co. Galway,40 an identification which would fit with the view that Diarmait’s gens was among the Connachta. It is noteworthy, however, that AU only records bellum Cloenlocha. While a location in Connacht would not be out of keeping with other events of the period, north-eastern connections of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (discussed below) indicate that Clóenloch in Sliab Fúait, Co. Armagh, cannot be ignored as a possible location for the battle.41 Maine son of Cerball is included in the Book of Leinster list of the kings of Uisnech as Diarmait’s predecessor,42 although this twelfth-century compilation may not be reliable as an indicator of the complexities of the sixth century. The family of Illann son of Cerball also appears in the annals during the sixth and seventh centuries. Librén son of Illann son of Cerball is recorded as having 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

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Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 95. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 510. Ó Murchadha, Annals of Tigernach index, 137. VSC, I 49. Ibid., I 14 Profetia beati viri de filio Dermiti regis qui Aidus Slane lingua nominatus est scotica; I 36 Qui et Diormitium filium Cerbulis totius Scotiae regnatorem deo auctore ordinatum interficerat. Ann. Clon. s.a. 539; Ann. Tig. (= AU 538); Chron. Scot. s.a. 538; AFM s.a. 531. Kelleher, ‘Uí Maine in the annals’, 64–5. Hogan, Onomasticon, 252–3. Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 196: l. 5909. For other similar late references to Maine, see Jaski, ‘Additional notes to the Annals of Ulster’, 108.

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been slain with Colmán Bec son of Diarmait by Áed mac Ainmerech at the battle of Belach Dathí (perhaps in par. Killucan, bar. Farbill, Co. Westmeath) 43 in 587. This defeat may have been in revenge for the killing of Báetán son of Ninnid of Cenél Conaill in 586 by Cummíne son of Colmán Bec and Cummíne son of Librén at the instigation of Colmán Bec son of Diarmait.44 The family of Illann son of Cerball features in the battle of Cenn Delgthen (tl./par. Kildalkey, bar. Lune, Co. Meath) in 622, in which Cummíne son of Librén’s two brothers (unnamed) were killed by Conall Guthbinn son of Suibne of Clann Cholmáin in alliance with Domnall mac Áedo of Cenél Conaill.45 The existence of contemporaries of Diarmait who were also meic Cerbaill suggests that these dynasties participated in the polity of the sixth and early seventh centuries and caused discomfort to Cenél Conaill and Clann Cholmáin, but whose importance declined and who were deliberately eclipsed in later revisions of the sources. Apart from Diarmait mac Cerbaill’s association with the midlands and the west, and with the kingships of Uisnech and Tara, he was particularly active in the north-east and was inextricably linked for good or ill with Dál nAraidi. BCC claims that Diarmait fought against Irthine, understood to be a placename which may represent the northern kingdoms. The name Irthine is repeated in §34 comburbech Irthine, seemingly with reference to Fergal mac Maíle Dúin of Cenél nÉogain. The genealogical tract Senchas Síl Ír states that Diarmait’s mother, Corbach daughter of Maine of the Laigin, was also the mother of Bishop Cathbad and of Praedae, sons of Fergus son of Énnae of the Ulaid.46 Diarmait’s enmity with Dál nAraidi is the central theme of his Middle Irish aided in which he is slain by Áed Dub son of Suibne of Dál nAraidi. This event is mentioned by Adomnán, who portrays Áed Dub as an apostate and bloody killer deserving of his threefold death.47 Indeed, Adomnán’s overall portrayal of Dál nAraidi, despite Columba’s friendship with Comgall of Bangor, is not flattering. He pointedly refers to their defeat twice at the hands of his kinsmen, Cenél Conaill: at the battle of Móin Daire Lothair in 563 – from which, as he notes, Eochaid Laib, king of the Cruithni, escaped ignaminiously sitting in a chariot 48 – and at the battle of Dún Ceithirn in 629.49 Diarmait mac Cerbaill is linked to Mongán son of Fiachnae Lurgan son of Báetán of Dál nAraidi (d. 626) in Tucait Baile Mongáin.50 In this tale, which is chronologically contrived, Mongán begins his baile ‘vision’ at Uisnech in the reign of 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Ó Murchadha, Annals of Tigernach index, 105. AU, Ann. Tig., Ann. Clon., Chron. Scot., AFM. AU, Ann; Tig;, Ann. Clon;, Chron. Scot;, AFM. Dobbs, ‘Senchas Síl hIr’, 354. The same tract (352) links Rúad daughter of Conall mac Áedo Sláine with the Ulaid. VSC, I 36: Cruithinicum gente. Ibid., I 7. Ibid., I 49. Meyer and Nutt, The voyage of Bran son of Febal, I, 56–8.

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Diarmait and awakens in his own residence at Ráith Bec Maige Line (tl. Rathbeg, par. Donegore, bar. Upper Antrim, Co. Antrim) in Dál nAraidi territory. When Diarmait was killed by Áed Dub son of Suibne, his body was reputedly buried in Coinnere (Connor, bar. Antrim Lower, Co. Antrim), while his head was buried at Cluain moccu Nóis (Clonmacnoise, bar. Garrycastle, Co. Offaly).51 Both churches had north-eastern associations, Coinnere being the primary church of Dál nAraidi and Ciarán of Clonmacnoise belonging to Latharna Molt, a branch of Dál nAraidi.52 Similarly, Áed Sláine, Diarmait’s son whose fame rests on his kin-slaying of Suibne son of Colmán which deprived him of his father’s kingdom,53 granted Lann Elo (tl. Lynally Glebe, par. Lynally, bar. Ballycowan, Co. Offaly) to Colmán Elo, who was of Dál Sailni, another branch of Dál nAraidi.54 Dál Sailni’s network of churches included Coinnere, Lann Elo and Láthrach Briúin (Laraghbryan, bar. Salt North, Co. Kildare).55 As with Dál nAraidi, Adomnán is unsympathetic towards Áed Sláine and his dynasty. Michael Byrnes has argued that his sympathy towards Cíannacht Breg was related to Columban concern for the church of Rechru (Lambay Island, par. Portraine, bar. Nethercross, Co. Dublin). This was located in the territory south of the Boyne and was ceded by Cíannacht Breg to Síl nÁedo Sláine in the seventh century. Hence Adomnán was wary of Síl nÁedo Sláine and their connection with the Patrician church.56 Síl nÁedo Sláine’s possible connections with Dál nAraidi and the Ulaid, rivals to Adomnán’s kinsmen, Cenél Conaill, may have also influenced his attitude towards them, with the notable exception of Diarmait mac Cerbaill. Diarmait, in his capacity as enemy of Dál nAraidi, is regarded as an early Uí Néill king who confronted the might of the north-east in the midlands, which was considerable in the seventh century. 57 Such was the strength of Cruithni and Ulaid kings during the reigns of Báetán son of Cairell (d. 581), Fiachnae Lurgan son of Báetán (d. 626) and Congal Cáech son of Scandlán (d. 637) that any Uí Néill king would have found it difficult to claim the kingship of Tara with authority during that period. The opposite would also have been true insofar as the northern kings’ claims were substantially weakened by increasingly confident Uí Néill opponents. Congal Cáech’s claim to the kingship of Tara was probably more viable owing to internal dissension within all branches of the Uí Néill at the time.58 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58

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Ann. Tig.: Diarmuit mac Cerbaill occisus est ir-Raith Bic a Muig Line, la hAedh nDub mac Suibne Araidhe, rí Ulad, 7 [tucad] a chend co Cluain, 7 ro adnacht a colond a Connere. This situation would seem to indicate that Clonmacnoise took precedence over Connor. See Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 63, n. 193. Kehnel, Clonmacnois – the church and lands of St. Ciarán, 246–7. VSC, I 14. Doherty, ‘The cult of St Patrick’, 89; Heist, Vitae, 214: §14. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 61–4. Byrnes, ‘The Árd Ciannachta in Adomnán’s Vita Columbae’. Byrne, ‘The Ireland of St Columba’. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 494–501.

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The inclusion of Féchno (i: 21, 21a–b) probably indicates a grudging recognition by the author of BCC of Dál nAraidi claimants to the kingship of Tara, although he uses the less than generous phrase Ailt fuiri Féchno. Ferr Suibne ‘A blade over her, Féchno. Better Suibne’ – referring to Suibne Menn son of Fiachnae. While BCC may be alluding in an uncomplimentary manner to Suibne’s father, Fiachnae son of Feradach of Cenél nÉogain, the more likely candidates are Fiachnae Lurgan son of Báetán (Dál nAraidi) or his contemporary and rival Fiachnae son of Demmán (Dál Fiatach). An alternative approach to Diarmait mac Cerbaill and his descendants, which is somewhat difficult to substantiate owing to the absence of direct evidence, is that they originally belonged to a north-eastern or north-midlands people and that they were involved in a realigment which caused them to emerge ultimately as part of the Uí Néill. The genealogies do not support this hypothesis, since Diarmait and his sons are unwaveringly regarded as Uí Néill. One possibility is that branches of population groups such as the Mugdorna, who were settled throughout the east and north midlands, attached themselves to Síl nÁedo Sláine in their own best interests. The Laud genealogies attest to north-eastern interests in the north midlands. For example, De causis torchi Corco Ché states that two branches of Corcu Ché moved from Lough Neagh to settle in Modornd and in Fernmag.59 Despite being classified as Airgíalla in the genealogies, if the genealogical tract relating to them has any value, the Mugdorna may have been Cruithni or Ulaid in origin. It states that Conlae Menn, reputed ancestor of the Mugdorna, was fostered by Mennit Chruithnech and Mugdorn Dub of the Ulaid.60 An early poem which precedes the TCD MS H 3 18 recension of the tale Echtra Fergusa maic Léti, and which is the kernel of the prose tale, hints at the kind of relationship which may have existed between Dál Cuinn, the Ulaid and possibly the Mugdorna: Tír boíe (?) Chuind Chétchoraig asa-ngabtha ilbenna bertai Fergus ferglethech i ndígail a thromgreise di guin Echach bélbuidi. Brethae Dorn i n-ansoíri, do-cer inna fírinni seiches i ngnúis Fergusa. Ferais Fergus ferfechtas finech i lloch Rudraige 59 60

Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 307–9. It may be significant that Ann. Tig. in recording the death of Eochaid Iarlaithe (= AU 666), king of Dál nAraidi, also describes him as rí Cruithni Midi. O’Brien, Corpus, 152: 142b31–42; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 515–18.

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dia-marbad i márchinta. Taisic a tír immurgu fo selba Cuind comorbae. Land which belonged to Conn of the hundred treaties [=?Conn Chétchathach], out of which many horned beasts (lit. ‘horns’) were [afterwards] seized, Fergus [Fergus mac Léti of the Ulaid] the manly warrior (?) took it as atonement for the grievous outrage done to him by the slaying of Eochu of the yellow lips. Dorn [daughter of Buide mac Ainmerech] was brought [by him] into captivity; she perished on account of the truth which she uttered in Fergus’s face. Fergus made a manly incursion into the tribal (?) loch of Rudraige, as a result of which he was killed for [his] grave wrongdoing. The land, however, reverted to the estates of Conn’s heirs.61 The land in question, according to the prose version,62 was called Níth ‘on account of the numerous contests (nítha) and dissentions that arose about it subsequently’. The land of Níth, comprising the River Dee valley or north Brega from the Boyne to the kingdom of Conaille Muirthemne,63 must have been a region subject to considerable pressure from many quarters. The genealogies note, for example, that Collann at Druimne Breg (Collon, bar. Ferrard, Co. Meath and Mount Oriel, Co. Louth) was the place at which the sons of Muiredach Muinderg of Dál Fiatach divided their inheritance.64 However, the genealogies locate Loch Dé Mundech (perhaps Moynagh Lough crannog, par. Castletown, bar. Morgallion, Co. Meath, on the River Dee) hi tírib Mugdorne. 65 The Mugdorna’s churches included Cell Fhoibrig (Kilbrew, par. Kilmoon, bar. Skreen, Co. Meath), Domnach Mór Maige Laithbe (perhaps tl./par. Donoghmore, Co. Meath), Domnach Maigen (Donaghmoyne, par. Clogher, bar. Farney, Co. Monaghan) and Sláine (Slane, Co. Meath). Byrne notes that the Mugdorna remained closely allied with Síl nÁedo Sláine, even though they were legally regarded as Airgíalla and did not fall under the control of Cenél nÉogain as did the rest of the Airgíalla after 827. 66 Óengus son of Colmán (i: 23) is accorded the title rex nepotum Neill in his obit in AU 621, a title used occasionally in much the same way as ACP uses the title rí Ua Néill to reflect the reality that Óengus was prevented from claiming the kingship of Tara by internal opposition and the power of Fiachnae Lurgan son of Báetán. It is also noteworthy that 61 62 63 64 65 66

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Binchy, ‘The saga of Fergus mac Léti’, 46. Ibid., 40: §3. Ibid., 40 n. 3. O’Brien, Corpus, 408: 330c15–19. Ibid., 396: 327h45; Bhreathnach, ‘Topographical note: Moynagh Lough’. Byrne and Francis, ‘Two lives of Saint Patrick’, 14, 100. It is interesting to note that Áed Sláine and Cormac Sláine, the eighth-century progenitor of the ecclesiastical family which ruled Louth, Duleek, Slane and Péronne shared the same topographical sobriquet, Sláine ‘of Slane’.

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Óengus’s father, Colmán Bec, is omitted from BCC, as is his possible alter ego Colmán Már. Perhaps these were not perceived – at least by a propagandist partial to Síl nÁedo Sláine – as having ever attained the kingship of Tara. Óengus’s career, as far as one can judge, was marred by the constant rivalry between the descendants of Colmán (Bec and Már) and of Áed Sláine. Events between 612 and 622 herald the emergence of dynasties which by the end of the seventh century had evolved into the entity known to historians as ‘the Southern Uí Néill’. According to the annals, Óengus defeated Conall Lóeg Breg son of Áed Sláine at Odba (identified variously as Navan, Co. Meath, or Mullahow, par. Garristown, bar. Balrothery West, Co. Dublin)67 in 612. Colcu son of Suibne, Fergus son of Colmán and Fiachrae son of Conall, all belonging to Clann Cholmáin, were killed in 618. Óengus son of Colmán was killed in 621, and in the following year Conall son of Suibne defeated the two sons of Librén son of Illann son of Cerball at Cenn Delgthen. This intense internecine warfare between dynasties, distinguished by the genealogists as descendants of Áed Sláine, Colmán Már and Colmán Bec, survives as a theme elsewhere. Adomnán alludes to it,68 and the Middle Irish tale Geinemain Áeda Sláine – admittedly a late text – implies that this rivalry was so fierce that it existed even before Áed Sláine’s birth, between Áed Sláine’s mother, Mugain daughter of Conchraid of Munster, and the mothers of Colmán Már and Colmán Bec, Eithne daughter of Brénainn of Conmaicne Cúile Tolad and Brea daughter of Colmán son of Nemán of Dún Súaine.69 The late seventh century was dominated by Fínnachta Fledach (i: 27).70 In a manner similar to Diarmait mac Cerbaill, Fínnachta Fledach was a highly influential outsider, the son of Dúnchad son of Áed Sláine and the only member of his family to attain recognition as king of Tara. BCC compares his reign to that of the prehistoric figure Éilimm, flaith échtach Élimm, dá chét mbliadnae mboíe. The reference to Éilimm echoes a passage in the second recension of Lebor Gabála Érenn which says of the Ulaid that ‘six of their seed took the kingship of Ireland without anyone between them; they were in that kingship two hundred and nine years’.71 One of these Ulaid kings was Fínnachta, who was also known as Snechta Fína ‘Wine-Snow’: snechta fína baí inna flaith ‘there was a snow of wine in his reign’.72 Éilimm may be an allusion to Éilimm son of Connrach, leader of the aithechthúath uprising and reputed king of Dál nAraidi and possibly identical with Fínnachta of the Ulaid. Éilimm marched on Tara, killed its king Fiachu Finnfholaid and replaced him as king of

67 68 69 70 71 72

Morris, ‘Some places in the metrical Dindsenchus’, 186–9; Ó Murchadha, ‘Odhbha and Navan’. VSC, I 14. O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 82–4. Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 87. Macalister, Lebor Gabála Érenn, V, 294–5. I am grateful to John Carey for the references to kings in Lebor Gabála Érenn. Ibid., 234–5.

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Tara. Tuathal Techtmar, Fiachu’s son, avenged his father’s death by killing Éilimm at Achall (Hill of Skreen, par./bar. Skreen, Co. Meath).73 The significance of comparing Fínnachta Fledach with Éilimm son of Connrach can only be surmised. The seventh-century Fínnachta might have been flattered by the comparison between his name and reign and that of a heroic king of the Dál nAraidi or Ulaid and leader of the aithechthúatha, given that he himself did not belong to the main dynasties of Síl nÁedo Sláine. As king of a minor dynasty among Síl nÁedo Sláine, Fínnachta Fledach had to counter the claims of the more established Síl nÁedo Sláine dynasties. In 675 he slew Cenn Fáelad son of Blathmac son of Áed Sláine at Tech Maine (probably in par. Dulane, bar. Upper Kells, Co. Meath).74 This was followed by the destruction of Ailech Frigrenn, a noteworthy feat by any standards, if it refers to Ailech,75 the main residence of Cenél nÉogain. During this period Máel Dúin son of Máel Fithrig (d. 681) of Cenél nÉogain initiated the expansionist policy of his dynasty that was completed by his son, Fergal (d. 722). Máel Dúin is credited with the death in 677 of Dúnchad son of Ultán of the Uí Meic Cáirthinn branch of Uí Moccu Uais in his ancestral fort, Dún Forgo (perhaps Dungorkin, par. Cumber Upper, bar. Tirkeeran, Co. Derry).76 He burnt Dúngal Eilne of Dál nAraidi and Cenn Fáelad son of Suibne of Cíannacht Glinne Geimin at Dún Ceithirn in 681 and was killed himself in the same year at the battle of Blaí Sléibe (perhaps tl. Blagh, par./bar. Coleraine, Co. Derry).77 If Fínnachta Fledach destroyed Ailech, the centre of Cenél nÉogain power, then he seems to have involved himself spectacularly in countering Máel Dúin’s rise. Fínnachta also dealt with aggression from the Laigin, defeating them in 677 in loco proximo Locho Gabar (in the vicinity of Lagore, par./bar. Ratoath, Co. Meath) and instigating the killing of Fiannamail son of Máel Tuile, king of Leinster, in 680. He defeated Bécc Bairche of Dál Fiatach at Tailtiu in 679. Yet despite the apparent enmity between Fínnachta and the Laigin and Ulaid, his wives belonged to both of these people. His first wife, Derb Forgaill, was a daughter either of Conaing son of Ailill or of Cellach Cualann of Laigin, while his second wife, Conchenn, 73

74 75 76

77

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O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 154–61. Éilimm’s genealogical affiliations vary. Although always of the north, he is represented in the Laud genealogies as of Dál nAraidi dáig is íat sin na fír Ulaid íar fír (Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 326) or to Dál Connrach of the Ulaid (O’Brien, Corpus, 279: 157, 30). Murphy in his edition BCC (149) follows Knott in tentatively identifying Éilimm as Éilimm Ollfínshnechta of Munster tradition. Little is known of this Éilimm apart from his one-year reign as king of Ireland and that his sobriquet originated from the showers of snow-wine that fell during his reign. He appears in the early Munster genealogical poems ascribed to Luccreth moccu Chíara simply as Éilimm (O’Brien, Corpus, 200: 148b42)). John Carey has suggested to me that Éilimm mac Connrach and the ancient Fínnachta possibly reflect a single figure from whom the Munster Éilimm borrowed his epithet in Middle Irish sources. Ó Murchadha, Annals of Tigernach index, 183. Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, ‘Prosopography I’, i: 27. AFM s.a. 675. Forgo is named as Dúnchad’s great grandfather in the genealogies (O’Brien, Corpus, 143: 141b19). Lacey, ‘County Derry in the early historic period’, 125 suggests that Dún Forgo might be identified as Dungorkin, Co. Derry. On the identity of Blaí Sléibe see Ó Ceallaigh, Gleanings from Ulster history, 42.

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who also married Bécc Bairche, king of the Ulaid, was a daughter of Congal Cennfhota of the Ulaid. Fínnachta presumably instigated the murder in 681 of rivals from among Clann Cholmáin and Síl nÁedo Sláine, Sechnasach son of Airmedach and Conaing son of Congal.78 Conaing’s son avenged his father’s death in 695 by killing Fínnachta Fledach and his son Bressal. In 688 Fínnachta clericatum suscepit ‘entered religion’. This move might have been influenced by Niall son of Cernach Sotal’s victory at Imlech Pích over Congalach son of Conaing of the Uí Chonaing of north Brega and his allies, the kings of Cíannacht Breg and Conaille Muirthemne.79 However, AFM s.a. 685 states Fínnachta went on pilgrimage (do dhul dia oilithre), and while this could be dismissed as a late interpretation of what happened, it is interesting that Ann. Clon. s.a. 684 notes that ‘King Fynsneaghty Returned into Ireland from his pilgrimage’. If either entry can be trusted, it may be that Fínnachta went to Iona in recognition of Adomnán’s return to Ireland in 687 of the captives taken by the AngloSaxons following their raid on Brega in 685. Fínnachta’s recourse to the church could also be viewed as an early instance of a practice adopted by later kings of ‘opting out’ by going on a pilgrimage or even retiring permanently into religion.80 Fínnachta only ‘opted out’ briefly, as he regained his kingship in 689. During the rest of his life other kings were in the ascendant, most notably Áed son of Dlúthach, king of Fir Chúl Breg, and Congalach son of Conaing of the emerging Knowth/north Brega dynasty. The kings from i: 28 to i: 33 mark a change in the text. BCC is no longer a straightforward, if contrived, king-list, but a series of kennings. This type of ending is also a feature of the prophetic texts Baile in Scáil and Baile Bricín. 81 Murphy ascribed the complete vagueness of these references to ignorance.82 However, the kennings are not metaphors for unknown future kings, but are a highly partial commentary on contemporary events. BCC can be viewed either as a text of two parts, one part composed during the reign of Fínnachta Fledach (675–95), the second part added to in the second decade of the eighth century, or else as a text produced as a whole c. 720. The first possibility is the more likely. The kennings may refer to Niall son of Cernach Sotal (d. 701), Írgalach son of Conaing (d. 702: bebas muir may refer to his death on Inis Meic Nessáin), Flann son of Áed son of Dlúthach (d. 714: identified by the territorial metaphor Flann Asail), Murchad 78

79 80 81 82

Although all published regnal lists suggest the existence of one Conaing mac Congaile, killed at the battle of Ogoman in 662, the reference in AU 681 indicates that there may have been two individuals of the same name. On the Uí Chonaing’s power in Brega see Swift, ‘Óenach Tailten’, 109–20 and for the significance of this battle for Cíannacht Breg, see Byrnes, ‘The Árd Ciannachta in Adomnán’s Vita Columbae’, 130. Stancliffe, ‘Kings who opted out’; Bhreathnach, ‘Abbesses, minor dynasties and kings in clericatu’. For recent comments on the relationship between Baile in Scáil and Baile Bricín, see Murray, ‘Baile in Scáil and Baile Bricín’. Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 150.

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Midi (d. 715: possibly identified as Furbaide), who murdered Flann son of Áed at Bile Tened (perhaps tl. Billistown, par. Castletowndelvin, bar. Delvin, Co. Westmeath).83 The kennings Cailech and Glúnshalach allude to Fergal mac Maíle Dúin (d. 722) and aue Coircc probably refers to Cathal mac Finguine, king of Munster (d. 742). Kennings, rather than genuine names, are likely to have been used for various reasons. Firstly, the compilation of a king-list often became more difficult when it dealt with contemporary kings. A pattern similar to BCC can be detected in the Book of Leinster version of Gilla na Náem úa Duinn’s twelfth-century poem on the Christian kings of Leinster, Cúiced Lagen na lecht ríg.84 The ‘official’ list of the kings of Tara had yet to be completed, and, therefore, the list of contenders, who obviously were numerous, had yet to be finally agreed as part of the official synchronisation which emerged in the eighth century.85 Secondly, this part of BCC conveys a stark assessment of the state of Síl nÁedo Sláine in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. In line with realpolitik, the author acknowledges that they have lost their control of the kingship of Tara as a result of considerable fragmentation and that the best way of limiting their loss is to declare whom they might favour as king of Tara, and effectively as their overlord. The final section alludes to the oppressive rule of one king in the kingdoms of Brega, Ross and Mugain 86 or Mumu. He is northern, although, interestingly, the associatons of the placename Irthine that earlier could have represented the kingdom of Cruithni would appear to have shifted westwards to Cenél nÉogain. The likeliest candidate for this censure is Fergal mac Maíle Dúin, and the reithe Muman mentioned in the last line is probably Cathal mac Finguine, king of Munster. The context is similar to that of the Middle Irish tale Cath Almaine,87 although BCC’s perspective is that of a demoralised Síl nÁedo Sláine, who are declaring for Munster rather than for the Northern Uí Néill king of Cenél nÉogain.

BCC and Cín Dromma Snechtai If BCC is the work of a Síl nÁedo Sláine propagandist composed either in two stages: during the reign of Fínnachta Fledach (c. 675–95) and c. 720; or all at once, c. 720 – this has implications for the assumption that it derived from the lost manuscript Cín Dromma Snechtai (CDS) as well as for the date and provenance of CDS itself.88 John Carey has argued in favour of linking four texts reputed to have been preserved in CDS: Baile Chuinn 83 84 85 86 87 88

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Ó Murchadha, Annals of Tigernach index, 106. Bhreathnach, ‘Kings, the kingship of Leinster’, 306–7. Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 97. Mugain, which is the lectio difficilior, may refer to Leinster (cf. Belach Mugna, Eó Mugna in Leinster). Ó Riain, Cath Almaine, xii–xix. On recent scholarly observations regarding the contents, date and provenance of CDS to date see Mac Cana, ‘Mongán mac Fiachna and Immram Brain’, 103–6; Mac Mathúna, Immram Brain, 421–69; Ó Concheanainn, ‘A Connacht medieval literary heritage’; West, ‘Togail Bruidne Da Derga and Orgain Brudne Uí Derga’, 91–8; Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’; McCone, Echtrae Chonnlai, 67, 119.

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Chétchathaig, Echtrae Chonlai, Audacht Morainn and Togail Bruidne Uí Dergae. They share common linguistic features, the theme of kingship, and in the case of all except Audacht Morainn, have a midland focus, although the latter text, of course, deals with the kingship of Tara if its traditional narrative context is accepted.89 BCC differs from the other texts in its treatment of kingship. While these deal with the profound nature of kingship in Ireland in the seventh century – themes such as the relationship between pre-Christian and Christian kingship, the source of earthly power and good practice among kings – BCC is a political manifesto couched in a highly ornate, coded king-list that does not appear to contain the deep allegorical nuances of a text such as Echtra Chonlai. In attempting to identify the possible influences which may have inspired a compiler working in the church of Druim Snechtai (provided CDS was compiled there and that the above texts were genuinely included in the compilation), it is worth examining that church’s saints and their affiliations. As noted elsewhere,90 the ubiquitous St Molua (alias Lugaid) was the reputed founder of Druim Snechtai (tl. Drumsna, par. Annaduff, bar. Leitrim, Co. Leitrim). The Dublin (Plummer’s M) version of the Life of Molua tells how Comgall of Bangor sent Molua to his patrimony among the Uí Fhidgenti of Munster and how, Molua reached Druim Snechtai and remained there for some time performing miracles.91 According to the Codex Salmanticensis version of the Life, having rivalled Comgall with his miraculous powers, Molua left Bangor and came to Druim Snechtai with his patron’s full blessing.92 Druim Snechtai was in Fernmag and located beside a marsh or pool (stagnum).93 While the Life of Molua, albeit a late source, suggests a link between Druim Snechtai and Bangor, an indication of a wider midlands/north-eastern association is traceable through St Cummíne, alias Mochumma. The annals record the death in 696 of Cummíne Mugdorna,94 who may be the same as Cummíne son of Cuanu, abbot of Druim Snechtai, whose feast-day is commemorated on 4 September in the Martyrology of Tallaght 95 – although this connection is not acknowledged in the martyrology. The twelfth-century scholia attached to Félire Óenguso commemorate a cluster of saints under the feast-day of Mac Nise (13 June), third abbot of Clonmacnoise, who was reputedly of the Ulaid.96 These saints are listed as Mochumma (alias Cummíne), Crumtherán of Cluain Tiprait (Clontibret, par. Clones, bar. Dartree, Co. Monaghan), Cairell of Tír Rois (Cos. Cavan/Monaghan) and Damnat of Tech Damnatan and Sliab Betha (Tedavnet and Slieve Beagh, on the borders of Cos. 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’, 86–9. Mac Cana, ‘Mongán mac Fiachna and Immram Brain’, 103–6. Plummer, Vitae, II, 213 (xxiv). Heist, Vitae, 136: §25. Ibid., 384: §11. Ann.Tig., AFM, AU. Best and Lawlor, The martyrology of Tallaght, 68 (Sept. 4). Kehnel, Clonmacnois – the church and lands of St. Ciarán, 247: A3.

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Fermanagh, Monaghan and Tyrone).97 They form part of a greater network listed in the pedigrees of Irish saints as the progeny of Brónach daughter of Milchú, Patrick’s master: Mochóe of Nendrum (Mahee Island, Strangford Lough, Co. Down), Colmán Comraire of Uisnech (Conry, bar. Rathconrath, Co. Westmeath), Colmán Muilinn of Daire Cóecháin in Dál Ríata (tl./par. Derrykeighan, bar. Dunluce Lower, Co. Antrim), Bishop Mac Ercae of Domnach Mór Maige Coba (Donaghmore, bar. Upper Iveagh, Co. Down), Manchán of Liath Mancháin (Lemanaghan, bar. Garrycastle, Co. Westmeath) and Fursu of Péronne.98 Mochumma of Druim Snechtai is also listed in this pedigree.99 Within this catalogue lies a familia of saints which, when linked, allows one to speculate on the backgound to the compilation of CDS. Druim Snechtai is located in a region in which a number of churches with strong north-eastern affiliations were founded, and in Druim Snechtai’s own case it would seem that its mother church was Bangor. This might account for the inclusion of Ulster Cycle texts, of the Mongán cycle and of Immram Brain in CDS. McCone has drawn attention to the fact that Druim Snechtai is but twenty miles north-east of Tuaim Drecain (Tomregan, bars. Lower Loughtee and Tullyhaw, Co. Cavan), where the seventh-century Cenn Fáelad is reputed to have gained an incomparable memory for law and learning. ‘One can hardly help wondering whether this locality and it monasteries might have been the cradle of continuous prose and prosimetrum writing in Old Irish.’ 100 Two possible sources for the texts with a midland focus reputed to have been preserved in CDS warrant more detailed investigation: the Clonmacnoise connection and the Mugdorna connection. With regard to Clonmacnoise, one should be mindful of Ciarán’s own northeastern affiliation and of the northern affiliation of two early abbots, Mac Nise (d. 585) and Colmán moccu Bairddéne (d. 628). Manchán of Liath Mancháin, a foundation for which the land was said to have been granted by Diarmait son of Áed Sláine to Clonmacnoise, also belonged to this network of north-eastern saints.101 The interests of Bangor and Clonmacnoise coincided, apparently quite amicably, in relation to the church of Daig son of Cairell of Inis Chaín Dega (perhaps tl./par. Inishkeen Glebe, bar. Farney, Co. Monaghan). According to his Life, Comgall was ordained a deacon at Clonmacnoise by a Bishop Lugidus, who might well be Molua of Druim Snechtai.102 Diarmait mac Cerbaill’s close relationship with Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, the inclusion of Colmán Comraire of Uisnech, with Colmán son of Luachán and Colmán Elo, the three Colmáin of Mide, in the catalogue of north-eastern saints, and Áed Sláine’s grant of Lann Elo to the north-eastern Colmán Elo, all suggest a

97 98 99 100 101 102

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Stokes, Félire Óengusso, 148. Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 179: 92. Ibid., 149: 707.653. McCone, Echtrae Chonnlai, 119. Kehnel, Clonmacnois – the church and lands of St. Ciarán, 84–5. Heist, Vitae, 391: §7; Plummer, Vitae, II, 6: §11.

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connection between a northern ecclesiastical network and midland dynasties, although it has to be admitted that much of the evidence is extracted from late sagas and lives of saints. The Mugdorna connection also deserves consideration, especially in view of the apparent alliance of this population group with Síl nÁedo Sláine and its own extensive ecclesiastical network. If Cummíne of Druim Snechtai was the same as Cummíne Mugdorna, then Druim Snechtai may have had connections with other churches in the Síl nÁedo Sláine/Mugdorna sphere of influence, possibly including Slane, Donaghmoyne, and even Louth and Armagh.103 It may be no coincidence that Fursu of Péronne is also listed in the north-eastern catalogue of saints, given that he is associated with the monastery of Louth,104 and that abbots of Slane, descendants of Cormac Sláine who may have been of Mugdorna origin, were also abbots of Péronne.105 Any one of these midland and eastern affiliations could have been the channel through which BCC reached the compiler of CDS. Finally, the corpus of saints’ pedigrees records the martra ‘burial-place, tomb, relics’ of Mac Tinne at Senbrug Dromma Snechtai, which might not be remarkable except for the fact that the rare name Tinne was the name of Adomnán’s grandfather and that Adomnán’s own relics were stolen from Donaghmoyne by the Vikings in 832. Although much of this is highly speculative and the proposed connections tenuous, if pursued it might suggest the milieu in which BCC was composed, reworked and preserved.

Niall: An Irish Namenstitel 106 The author of the Life of St Flannán explains the dominance of the Uí Briain in eleventh and twelfth-century Ireland in the following terms: A quo primo rege, id est Brian, ceteri reges, sive hii qui totam vel qui dimidiam possederant Hyberniam, sicut Romani imperatores cesares, Greci basilides, Babilonii ammira[bi]les, Brianei omnes dicti sunt.107 Descended from the first king [the Uí Briain kings], that is Brian, whether they took possession of the whole or half of Ireland, as the emperors of the Romans [were named] Caesars, of the Greeks Basilides [from Basileus] and of the Babylonians Admirabiles [Emirs], all were called after Brian. While this concept of the personal name Brian as a title may be a late literary topos for descent, it nonetheless encapsulates the philosophy embedded in the declaration in BCC: Níell cáich 103 104 105 106 107

Doherty, ‘The cult of St Patrick’, 53. Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 27: 157.1. Picard, ‘The Irish exile of King Dagobert II’, 43–4. This term is borrowed from Wolfram, Intitulatio, I, 25. Heist, Vitae, 289–90: §17. I wish to thank Dr Anthony Harvey for this reference.

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úa Néill nasctar géill ‘The Níell of each [is the] descendant of Níell whose hostages are bound’. F.J. Byrne has suggested to me that this line referred specifically to Niall son of Cernach Sotal (d. 701), who probably caused Fínnachta Fledach to enter religion briefly in 688–9 and who contended for the kingship of Tara on Fínnachta’s death in 695.108 The use of the personal name Niall in this line in BCC is complex. It refers to two individuals, Niall Noígíallach and Niall son of Cernach Sotal. It is significant that the personal name Niall seems to have been used rarely in the intervening generations between Niall Noígíallach and Niall son of Cernach Sotal, with the exception of the diminutive form, Néillíne son of Muirchertach Meic Ercai. The author of this part of BCC may be highlighting this fact in the phrase flaith ó Néill co Néll ‘sovereignty from Níell [Noígiallach] to Níell [son of Cernach Sotal]’. Niall was probably understood as a laudatory common noun ‘a champion’, despite its uncertain derivation.109 The personal name Niall was also probably transformed into a Namenstitel as defined by Herwig Wolfram, a definition similar to that provided in the Life of Flannán: Wenn eine Sippe ihren Aufsteig zur Herrschaft und ihre Rangerhöhung den Taten und „Tugenden” eines großen Ahnherrn verdankt, dann kann aus dieser „origo” eine politische Theorie entstehen, die dessen Namen zum Titel werden läßt … Imperator, Caesar, Augustus und Flavius sind die vier Beispiele für lateinische Namenstitel, während Caesar, Konstantin und Karl im byzantinisch-slawischen Osten eine ähnliche Bedeutung gewinnen.110 The line quoted from BCC is a declaration of the existence of the Uí Néill – from a Síl nÁedo Sláine perspective – and of their right to supremacy and to the binding or submission of hostages. Niall son of Cernach Sotal’s claim is strengthened by his holding the royal Namenstitel Niall, the Irish equivalent of Caesar. Similar expressions of identity and superiority appear elsewhere in broadly contemporary Irish texts. The lines in the Old Irish text ‘Conall Corc and the Corcu Loígde’, which relate to the descendants of Óengus mac Nad Froích, suggests a similar declaration made on behalf of Éoganacht Chaisil: Bid cathir Nad Fraích, bid Nad Fraích tír cháich; intí bessa haí Cassel is hé are-labrathar Mumain n-uili. 108 His family’s importance is evident from the inclusion of Niall himself and his sons, Maine, Fogartach and Conall Grant in the guarantor list of Cáin Adomnáin, see Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The guarantor list of Cáin Adomnáin’, 180–1: 55, 70, 82, 86. 109 O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 232–3; see Doherty, above, 29 n. 186. 110 Wolfram, Intitulatio, I, 25.

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It will be Nad Froích’s city [Cashel]; everyone’s land will be Nad Froích’s. He to whom Cashel belongs, it is he who speaks for all Munster.111 The most striking parallel to the line in BCC appears in the Middle Irish text Aided Dhiarmada. The prophet Becc mac Dé foretells Diarmait’s death at Ráith Bec Maige Line in Dál nAraidi, to which the king responds: Olc bith aromthá . daere fir . saere mná . mess fás . fidh cáin . olcc bláth . ili gáith . samh fliuch . ith nglass . immat buar . terc ass . midh-buidh tromm in gach tír . caeil tuircc . uilcc ríg . fíor nolcc . guin gnáth . bith críon . líon ráth . atiat flaithi dodufiucfat . ó Niall co Niall . ó bruidhi co bruidhi . Niall i muir . Niall i nguin . Niall i tein . Niall dia . Niall fuba in cach naidhigh . iar coscradh Ailigh.112 An evil wounding awaits me. Slavery of men. Liberty of women. Barren harvest. ?Wood tax. Evil. Many winds. Wet summer. Green corn. Excess cattle. Scarcity of milk. Burdensome dependants in every land. Thin boars. Evil kings. Evil justice. Constant wounding. Decayed world. Numerous sureties. These are the sovereignties that will come to you. From Niall to Niall. From Bruide to Bruide.113 Niall in the sea. Niall in wounding. Niall in fire. Niall by day. Niall attacking every night. After the destruction of Ailech. The gloomy sentiments of the final section of BCC are rehearsed in this text, and it is possible that the reference to the destruction of Ailech may allude to Fínnachta Fledach’s reputed deed in 676. As with the line in BCC, flaith ó Níell co Néll / Níell cáich úa Néill nasctar géill, the personal name Niall is used not simply as a common name, but also as a title which in this instance is accorded to Diarmait mac Cerbaill. The phrases Niall i muir. Niall i nguin. Niall i tein. refers to Diarmait’s threefold death by drowning, wounding and burning. Similarly, the inclusion of Bruide in the text, which on the evidence of Pictish king-lists was also used as a personal name and as a title,114 suggests that Niall was an Irish equivalent. The use of the personal name Niall is not unlike contemporary practices elsewhere which suggests that early medieval Irish dynasties, and more importantly their advocates, were closer to their medieval counterparts in their perceptions of royal office than is often portrayed. 111 Byrne, ‘Dercu: the feminine of Mocu’, 47. 112 O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 80. Although this is a text in need of re-editing, I have followed O’Grady’s presentation of the passage in question. 113 O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, II, 85 interprets this word as bruig ‘land’ rather than the personal name of Pictish kings. 114 Chadwick, Early Scotland, 1, 4–5; Anderson, Kings and kingship in early Scotland, 81–2.

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If Irish clerics were influential in Britain and on the Continent in the late sixth and seventh centuries, there is no reason why continental customs relating to kingship should not have been transmitted to Ireland through similar channels. Parallels include the Germanic royal titles and the personal names deriving from personal names thiod-cyning and thiuda-reiks (directly cognate with Irish rí túaithe), whence one of the commonest of all Germanic royal names, Theodoric.115 The apparent conflation of the Anglo-Saxon title cyning ‘king’ with the Irish personal name Conn to give the name Conaing, which became popular among the Southern Uí Néill during the seventh century, may represent a conscious attempt by Irish kings to imitate such practices. The use of Niall as a title could have conferred a legitimacy based in antiquity on Uí Néill kings of Tara. The first section of BCC, which is contradicted by the Leinster poem Nidu dír dermait, establishes the antique nature of the kingship of Tara, although the latter is likely to have been a seventh-century construct. If Niall Noígíallach held this kingship so many generations ago, to be ‘a Niall’ could strengthen your claim by rooting it firmly in the past. The use of the venerated Roman Namenstitel Flavius by Constantine the Great to mask his father’s lowly origins, and by Theoderic the Great and his Amal dynasty, conferred a much-needed pedigree on both, but did not indicate that they were biologically descended from Vespasian, Titus or Domitian.116 The Irish parallel could have been the use of Niall as a title. It is to be understood in the context of other titles accorded to Irish kings of the period, including rex, rex nepotum Néill, rex Hiberniae and rex Temro. Where Adomnán remained silent on the use of the title rex Temro, and possibly coined the title rex Hiberniae as a more potent parallel, BCC’s author revealed his ability to recall past traditions and encourage contemporary kings by using Niall as a Namenstitel, while simultaneously according Cathal mac Finguine the more traditional title of reithe Muman ‘overlord of Munster’. Echoes of the kingship of Tara survived from the past, especially among the learned classes, but events in the seventh century ensured that the office was as much conceptual as it was legal and did not always entail any link with the site itself which remained the most important ‘grand old site’ of the medieval kingdom of Brega.

115 James, ‘The origins of barbarian kingdoms’, 43. 116 Wolfram, ‘Origo et religio’, 33–4.

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The Manuscript Tradition of Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig and its Relationship with Baile in Scáil Kevin Murray

T

H E R E are two sixteenth-century manuscript copies of BCC extant, one in RIA 23 N 10 (p. 73), a manuscript compiled in 1575 in Seán Ó Maolchonaire’s house at Ballycummin, Co. Roscommon, and a second copy in BL Egerton 88 (f. 12b), an important sixteenth-century legal manuscript from the O’Davoren law-school in the Burren, Co. Clare, which also contains a corpus of early narrative literature.1 The story has been edited twice previously, by Rudolf Thurneysen, who printed the two diplomatic texts side by side in Zu irischen Handschriften und Litteraturdenkmälern,2 and by Gerard Murphy, who printed an edited version of the text and a translation (based on RIA 23 N 10 with variants from Egerton 88) in Ériu 16. 3 Part of the importance of BCC rests upon its inclusion by Thurneysen in his list of texts from Cín Dromma Snechtai. 4 This list has since been considered by Séamus Mac Mathúna 5 and John Carey 6 among others.7 The consensus opinion would favour a date in the eighth century for Cín Dromma Snechtai.8 Gerard Murphy dated the composition of BCC to the end of the seventh century, an opinion supported by Francis John Byrne.9 From the most recently undertaken studies of BCC, John Carey has agreed with the dating proposed

1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9

For more information about these manuscripts (the main sources for the contents of CDS), see Mulchrone, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, Fasc. XXII, 2769–80 [23 N 10]; O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Library, I, 85–141, especially 89–95 [Egerton 88]. Thurneysen, Zu irischen Handschriften, 48–52. Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 145–51. Thurneysen, Zu irischen Handschriften, 23–30. Mac Mathúna, Immram Brain, Appendix 1 (‘Cín Dromma Snechtai: a reappraisal’), 421–69. Carey ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’; Carey, ‘Narrative setting of Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig’, 193–4. See also Thurneysen, Heldensage, 15–18; Hull, ‘The conception of Conchobar’, 6–7; Mac Cana, ‘On the ‘prehistory’ of Immram Brain’, 37–8; McCone, Echtrae Chonnlai, 67, 119. Mac Mathúna would disagree with this dating and argues (Immram Brain, 468) that it ‘cannot be earlier than the tenth century’. This was also the opinion of Thurneysen (‘Baile in Sca– il’, 217) who changed his mind from an earlier expressed opinion (Heldensage, 15–18) that the MS should be assigned to the eighth century. Murphy (‘On the dates of two sources’, 145) has convincingly refuted Thurneysen’s later position and argues for the correctness of his original viewpoint. Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 149–51; Byrne, ‘Seventh century documents’, 168–9.

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by Murphy, but Edel Bhreathnach has argued for a slightly later date.10 In this volume it is suggested that BCC is either (i) a text of two parts, one part composed during the reign of Fínnachta Fledach (675–95), the second part added to in the second decade of the eighth century, or (ii) a text produced c. 720.11 If BCC is to be fully understood, however, it must be studied in conjunction with the later prophetic king-list text known as Baile in Scáil (BS) ‘The Phantom’s Frenzy’.12 The version of BS that has survived appears to be a copy of an eleventh-century redaction,13 but it has long been recognised that the core of the narrative dates to the middle of the ninth century.14 BS represents an expansion, reworking and reuse of BCC in an effort to reassert the rights of the Uí Néill to the kingship of Tara. The close relationship between these baili is well established. As Gerard Murphy has pointed out: It is clear that the first hearers of Baile Chuind knew of the tradition indicated in the introductory portion of Baile in Scáil according to which wedding a goddess, by drinking intoxicating liquor poured by her, marked the inauguration of a reign.15 This is only one of several links between the texts. In the Irish medieval tale-lists (dated to c. 1000) that purport to enumerate the repertoire of the fili, the title Fís Chuinn is regularly glossed .i. Baile in Scáil. 16 In both prophecies Conn Cétchathach is the central character. In BCC Conn seems to relate the vision himself, though this is not explicitly stated. The relationship between these two stories and Tucait Baile Mongáin has been analysed by John Carey, who concludes: Tucait Baile Mongáin was, like Baile in Scáil, based on the lost narrative introduction to Baile Chuinn. In some respects it may indeed resemble this source more closely than Baile in Scáil does: Baile Chuinn is evidently recited by Conn, even as Mongán recites the baile in Tucait Baile Mongáin; while in Baile in Scáil it is Lug who utters the prophecy as the mortal king stands by.17

10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17

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Carey, ‘Narrative setting of Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig’, 189–201; Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 78–82. Bhreathnach, above, 61–2. Edited in Meyer, ‘Baile in Scáil’; idem, ‘Das Ende von Baile in Scáil’; idem, ‘Der Anfang von Baile in Scáil’; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca– il’. See also the translation of the opening section of the tale by O’Curry, Manuscript materials, 385–90 and the convenient summaries in Dillon, The cycles of the kings, 11–14; idem, Early Irish literature, 107–9 and Carey, ‘Narrative setting of Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig’, 190–1. Herbert, ‘Goddess and king’, 273 n. 4. Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 150 n.; Moody, Martin and Byrne, A new history of Ireland, IX, 190. Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 152 n. Mac Cana, The learned tales of medieval Ireland, 48, 58. Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’, 76.

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The adducing of new comparanda to analyse and understand BCC is a step towards the contextualisation of the prophecy and helps to stress its lasting importance within the native narrative and historiographical tradition. Gerard Murphy argued for an even closer textual relationship between BCC and BS, noting that the ‘last two glosses [in BCC] are based on the last two kings prophesied in Baile in Scáil ’.18 It seems, however, that the two kings in question are the first and last kings mentioned in the concluding part of BS that is not present in MS Harley 5280 (i.e. §41 and §65). Thus the sovereignty of the second-last king listed in BCC (i: 32) is referred to as Flaith Chailig while in §41 of BS Fergal mac Máile Dúin is referred to as in cailech. In the copy of BCC in RIA 23 N 10 this king’s reign is glossed .i. Fergal, which could refer to Fergal mac Máile Dúin or to the unknown Fergal prophesied as the second-last king (§64) in BS. The presence of the word cailech ‘cock’ surely clinches it in favour of the former. This was noted by Thurneysen, who from this argued that ‘vielleicht hat der Glossator den Text Baile in Scáil gekannt’,19 a conclusion which seems warranted. The identification by Murphy of the last king in BCC with the last king in BS, Flann Cinach, is more tentative and mainly depends on this king being glossed .i. Fland in RIA 23 N 10. BCC and BS are based on one central idea – the revelation of the future kings of Tara to Conn Cétchathach. However, there are important differences between the texts. Firstly, the list of kings in each text is different. This may reflect the fact that BS is an Uí Néill propaganda document revised in the eleventh century to focus on the concerns of the Cenél nÉogain, while BCC is more concerned with the fortunes of the Síl nÁedo Sláine. Secondly, BCC seems to admit the claim of the Ulaid to a share in the early kingship of Tara,20 which may reflect the fact that it was written in a period when their claims were still prevalent. Although it alludes to important kings of the Ulaid, BS does not acknowledge their claim to the kingship of Tara. Thirdly, BCC reveals a much greater awareness of Munster. It admits the claim of Munster’s Crimthann mac Fidaig to the kingship 21 and ends with a cryptic statement about Munster which is likely to be an allusion to Cathal mac Finguine, king of Munster. BS practically ignores Munster, and especially the claim to kingship of Brian Bóruma, which is added almost as an afterthought and which may be an earlier gloss now incorporated into the text. Despite the obvious differences between the prophecies, BCC and BS are unquestionably interrelated texts whose dissimilarity may be explained both by the chronological gap between their respective dates of composition and by the fact that the core ninth-century part of BS was later reworked to meet Cenél nÉogain concerns. Thus BS reflects later political 18 19 20 21

Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 149 n. Thurneysen, Zu irischen Handschriften, 49. See Dobbs, ‘Senchas Síl Ir’, 326. O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 209–11.

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interests when the Uí Néill right to pre-eminent kingship in Ireland was facing a serious threat for the first time at the end of the tenth and the beginning of eleventh century. 22 The reworking of BS, in essence a reinvoking of the centrality of BCC to Irish tradition, was the ideal literary and intellectual response to such a crisis.

22

72

For more on this issue, see Herbert, ‘Goddess and king’, 270.

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Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig : Edition Edel Bhreathnach and Kevin Murray 1 LANGUAGE AND SYNTAX As noted by Murphy and others, 2 BCC contains linguistic and syntactical features characteristic of texts normally dated to c. AD 700 and possibly earlier. 3 This date corresponds with the context of the text suggested by Bhreathnach, above, 61–2.

Orthography Certain orthographic characteristics often regarded as indicative of early Old Irish 4 appear in both manuscripts. It should be noted, however, that these indicators are not completely reliable as they could be due to archaising orthographic inclinations of manuscripts of the sixteenth century. 5 The main indicators of archaic spellings in BCC are: 1. Preverbs to-, di-: §§8, 20, 25, 32 dis-ngig; §9 tus-nena; §34 tus-nesfa. 2. Archaic infixed pronouns in Classes B and C:6 3 sg. f. §§ 4, 13 coten-íbau; §7 conden-dáilfa. 3. Non-diphthongisation of é: §6 cén; §8 étho; §13 féal; §21 Féchno; §27 Néll. 4. Archaic -ie-: §§ 1, 30 ier; §20 possibly Diermata, Diermait. 5. Archaic form aue (§35). MS E gives the later form hua.

Syntax Archaic features occur which are similar to those in early texts, including Audacht Morainn and the Leinster genealogical poems: 1. Prophetic con- and tmesis: The preverb con- occurs throughout the text to denote a prophetic future and in some instances leads to the construction known as tmesis 7 : §1 conbeba; §3 con-bebat; §§ 4, 13 coten-íbau; §33 con-fíastar; §3 con- fri Crinne -cichuir; §7 conden- Dáire drechlethan -dáilfa; §11 con- Níell -nóïfither; §12 con- Loígaire lond -lénfethar; 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

We wish to thank John Carey for his invaluable comments offered during the preparation of this edition. We also wish to thank Francis John Byrne and Thomas Charles-Edwards for their advice at various stages of editing. We are responsible for any errors and for the final decisions taken with regard to the edition and translation. For discussion of manuscripts and previous editions, see Murray, above, 69–72. Kelly, Audacht Morainn, xxix–xl. Ibid., xx–xxii; Corthals, ‘Immathchor nAilella 7 Airt’, 99. For a recent and more sceptical view of the possibility that RIA 23 N 10 and BM Egerton 88 preserve archaic spellings, see McCone, Echtrae Chonnlai, 37. Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’, 87, has noted this feature in his ‘midland’ group of texts. Kelly, Audacht Morainn, xxxiv–vi.

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§20 con- fri Irthine -n-acht. Tmesis also appears at §35 Immus- aue Coircc -ebla. 2. No infixed pronouns present, only suffixed pronouns: §§ 1, 5, 14, 27, 35 íbthus; §§ 17–18 gébthus; §4 foilcfithus; §6 áilfithus. 3. The independent dative: §1 Muccruimi; §§ 3, 33 Breig; §4 scoilicc; §7 doirb mís; §9 nadmuim; §29 muir; §31 nertaib. 4. The absence of the conjunction ocus (7 ), a feature regarded by Binchy as an indication of the archaic stratum of the Laws.8 5. The paucity of the definitive article (§§ 12, 25), whose absence was regarded by Binchy as an archaic feature. 9 6. Latin loan-words are notably absent (note the exceptions §8 cís, §15 airm) to the extent that common words such as eccailsi and bachla are used in glosses to explain taige tarsnae and crann chromma in §12.10 These terms, of course, may suggest a stylistic tendency to accentuate the ‘coded’ nature of the text.

The Verbal System Active Present 3 sg.: (in Bergin’s Law position) §30 soe. Future 3 sg.:

3 pl.:

8 9 10

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Abs.:§4, §30 bebaid; §34 gébaid; §34 riris. With suffixed pronoun: §§ 1, 5, 14, 27, 35 íbthus; §2 sephus; §4 foilcfithus; §6 áilfithus; §§ 17, 18 gébthus. Relative: §19 bias; §25 eblas; §27 fírfes; §29 bebas. Tmesis: §3 con- fri Crinne -cichuir. Deut.: §1 con-beba; §29 do-tetha. With infixed pronoun: §§ 4, 13 coten-íbau; §7 conden- Dáire drechlethan -dáilfa (with tmesis); §§ 8, 20, 25, 32 dis-ngig; §9 tus-nena; §30 frita-iorr; §31 arus-nena; §34 tus-nesfa; §35 dos-n-icfa; §35 immus- aue Coircc -ebla (with tmesis). Proto. (rel.): §33 fora mbia. Abs.: §6 cichsot. Deut.: §3 con-bebat.

Binchy, Bretha Déin Chécht, 4: §2; Kelly, Audacht Morainn, xxxiii. Binchy, ‘*IE *q ue in Irish’, 77; Kelly, Audacht Morainn, xxxiii. Bieler, Four Latin lives of Patrick, 137: 31: Tunc Patricius in illo loco edificauit aecclesiam transuersam, quae usque hodie dicitur Sabul Patric. The choice of tech tarsna may reflect the Latin term ecclesia transversa used of Patrick’s church at Saball in the Vita Tertia Patricii.

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Passive sg.:

Deut.: §11 con- Níell -nóïfither (tmesis); §12 con- Loígaire lond- lénfethar; §33 con-fíastar. Conj. (rel.): §15 -síastar (in Bergin’s Law position); §20 rirsetar; §33 dia mbebthar. Proto.: §8 asa mesatar.

pl.:

Imperfect subjunctive 3 pl.: §12 béirtis. Preterite 3 sg.: §20 con- fri Irthine -n-acht.

The Copula Present Indicative 3 sg.: §25 is. Future 3 sg.:

§§ 4, 20, 31, 34 bid (fuiri).

STRUCTURE Johan Corthals in his discussion of early Irish retoiric includes BCC, along with Conchobar’s death-song in Aided Chonchobair and Immathchor nAilella 7 Airt, among the earliest instances of the verbal art known as retoiric and describes them as ‘self-contained pieces written in a very artistic but entirely comprehensible style’.11 BCC resembles Immathchor nAilella 7 Airt, especially in its use of short clauses connected by alliteration, and could be regarded as another example of the elevated ‘genus grande’ style in antique rhetorical theory. 12 Although it is difficult to illustrate all of the relevant features simultaneously, the following is an attempt to indicate the different elements of this style as apparent in BCC:

Key Bold = alliteration Italics = repetition of preverbs, words, phrases for ornamental purposes CAPITALS = repetition of final endings _ _ = similar verbal elements

11 12

Corthals, ‘Early Irish Retoirics’, 20. Corthals, ‘Immathchor nAilella 7 Airt’, 104–6.

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Incipit Baile Chuind Chétchathaig

76

1

ÍbthUS Art ier cethorchait aidche comnart caur con-beba Muccruimi

2

Mac Con macc aui LugDE LoígDE lá sechtmain sephUS fri

3

FergUS nDubdétach. Con-bebat Breig Dét catho Con- fri Crinne -cichuir

4

Corbmac coten-íbau ól sen sáim nía Bebaid scoilicc Bid án fer fuiri Foilc_fith_US

5

ÍbthUS Corpre comlond co f latho fír.

6

Áil_fith_US Fiechri Fill mórúa Midi Cichsot cén ó muir

7

Conden- Dáire drechlethan -dáilfa doirb mís

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8

Dis-ngig Fécho fer étho ainb asa mesatar cís

9

MuiredACH TírECH tríchtACH tus-nena nadmuim

10

Án Crimthand lethan lond fúatha fo chois

11

Con- Níell -nóï_fith_er neirp catho crích

12

Con- Loígaire lond -lén_feth_ar inda táilcend techt Taige tarsnae crann chromma béirtis blátha doa dind

13

Caín caur Corpre coten-íbau Art án féal fuiri

14

Féal Ailill íbthUS

15

Lond Lugaid ro-óla soír síastar fír n-airm

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78

16

Án fer for Mac Ercéni

17

Óengarb GébthUS gnóe gaí gairb

18

GébthUS Áed án ánruth

19

Áed Allán bias bíth

20

Bid fuiri fír nDiermata Dis-ngig Diermait día rirsetar lis Lond daig án con- fri Irthine -n-acht

21

Ailt f uiri Féchno

22

Ferr Suibne

23

Sóer Óengus

24

Án Domnall

25

Dis-ngig Blathmac Diermait auæ alaili Is é eblas in n-aigi

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26

Flaith blaí flaith chinad flaith échtach Élimm dá chét mbliadnae mboíe

27

ÍbthUS Snechta Fína fírfes flaith ó NÍELL co NÉLL

28

Níell cáich úa NÉILL nasctar gÉILL

29

Do-tetha tein rúad garg raithnech LES bES trES Mí for bliadnai bebas muir Már domain dínib dúabais díth

30

Flaith shesctach ier slógaib soe Bebaid fuil frita-iorr cath chrúaid Díth bath

31

Bid fuiri Flann Asail án orb Arus-nena nertAIB dorn do gíallAIB

32

Dis-ngig Furbaide ferr cách fer fuiri Flaith maic mess maith lí

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80

33

Anflaith fora mbia bith trom tuiledach dia mbebthar Breig Flaith Chailig comnart con-fíastar fuiri

34

Bid fuiri Glúnshalach f ine forderg a tóeb Tus-nesfa gíallaib Gébaid Ros Riris Mugnai maidm níth chétnu comburbech Irthine anflaith for Temair

35

Dos-n-icfa fer f ingalACH esmbrethACH ÍbthUS co deirc ndomuin Saxain imchil Immus- aue Coircc -ebla Is é reithe Muman márlaithe i Temuir

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GLOSSES The inclusion of glosses in the manuscripts may offer some clue to the transmission of the text. It may be noted that glosses identifying kings are in N13 only, while both N and E14 gloss the section – or possible interpolation – at §12. The glosses are: §12. inda táilcend glossed Pátruicc NE; taige tarsnae glossed eacailsi / eclasa NE; crann glossed bachla N. §16. Mac Ercéni glossed Muirchertach N. §17. Óengarb glossed Tuathal N. §18. Áed glossed mac Ainmerech N. §25. Diermait glossed Diarmaid mac Aodha Slani N. §32. Furbaide glossed Brian N. §33. Anflaith etc. glossed Fergal N; aue Coircc glossed Fland N.

METHOD OF EDITING Two texts have been provided in this edition, a normalised text and a diplomatic text placed beneath for ease of reference. The text survives in two sixteenth-century manuscripts, which differ occasionally, and which may be relatively true to the original. As a general rule, the editors have relied more on N, however, as its text seems to have suffered less from later scribal interference. The primary aims in normalising the text were to reduce the effect of later orthographic interference and to provide the clearest interpretations possible. Where a choice had to be made between the two versions, or where a considerable deviation from the MSS occurs, the justification for such a decision is discussed in the Notes. The numbers in square brackets in the translation cross-refer to those in Prosopography I.

13 14

N = 23N10. E = Egerton 88.

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TEXT Incipit Baile Chuind Chétchathaig 1. Íbthus Art ier cethorchait aidche, comnart caur, con-beba Muccruimi. 2. Mac Con macc aui Lugde Loígde lá sechtmain sephus fri 3. Fergus nDubdétach. Con-bebat Breig. Dét catho. Con- fri Crinne -cichuir. 4. Corbmac coten-íbau, ól sen, sáim nía. Bebaid scoilicc. Bid án fer fuiri. Foilcfithus. 5. Íbthus Corpre comlond co flatho fír. 6. Áilfithus Fiechri. Fill mórúa Midi. Cichsot cén ó muir. 7. Conden- Dáire drechlethan -dáilfa doirb mís. 8. Dis-ngig Fécho, fer étho ainb asa mesatar cís. 9. Muiredach Tírech tríchtach tus-nena nadmuim. 10. Án Crimthand, lethan lond, fúatha fo chois. 11. Con- Níell -nóïfither, neirp catho crích. 12. Con- Loígaire lond -lénfethar inda táilcend techt. Taige tarsnae, crann chromma, béirtis blátha doa dind. 13. Caín caur, Corpre coten-íbau. Art án féal fuiri. 14. Féal Ailill íbthus. 15. Lond Lugaid ro-óla soír síastar, fír n-airm.

N Incipit baili chuind. c. raigh [ ]thuss art ier cetharchait aidchi comhnart caur conbeba muccruime Mac con maicc aui lugde loigde lasechtmain sephus friferguss dub detach con bebat breig det chatho confri crinne cichuir Corbmac coten ibau ol sen saím nía bephaid scoilicc bid anfear fuir- foilc fithus IPthuss corpre comlond coflatha fir Ailfithuss fiechri fillmora mide cichsot cenmuir Conden daire drechlethan dailfa. Darbmís disngig fecho fer hætho ainb asamesatar ciss Muiredach tírech trichtach tusnena nadmuim An chrimthand lethan lonn fuath fochois Conniell noifit- neirp catha crich CuLoigaire lonn lenfetar indatail cend (.i. Pat-) techt Taige tarrsnae (.i. eacailsi) crainn (.i. bachl-) chromai beirtis blatha tuadind Cain cur corpcotenibha hart hanfeal fuirri Feal ailill hiphtus lund lugid rohole saoer siasstar fir nairm

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TRANSLATION The Frenzy of Conn of the Hundred Battles [i: 1] begins. 1. Art [i: 2] will drink it after forty nights, a mighty hero. He will die at Muccruime. 2. Mac Con [i: 3] son of Lugaid Loígde’s descendant who will strike for a week of days against 3. Fergus Dubdétach. They will die in Breg. A tooth of battle. He will wage towards Crinne. 4. Corbmac [i: 4] will drink it, a drink of elders, a peaceful warrior. He will perish from a morsel of food. He will be a glorious man upon her. He will wash her. 5. Corpre [i: 5] of combats will drink it with the truth of sovereignty. 6. Fiechri [i: 6] will demand it. The treacheries of the great descendants of Mide. They will advance far from the sea. 7. Dáire Drechlethan [i: 7, 7a, 7b] will dispense it in a difficult month. 8. Fécho [i: 8] will request it, unwitting man of territory whose tribute they will adjudge. 9. Muiredach Tírech [i: 9] for thirty years shall bind it with a bond. 10. Glorious Crimthand [i: 10], broad and fierce, phantoms under foot. 11. Níell [i: 11] will be celebrated, boar(?) of battle of boundaries. 12. Fierce Loígaire [i: 12] will be grieved by the coming of the adze-heads. Transverse houses, crooked staves, they would bear flowers to his fort. 13. A fine hero, Corpre [i: 13] will drink it. A glorious, noble bear upon her. 14. Noble Ailill [i: 14] will drink it. 15. Fierce Lugaid [i: 15] of great noble drinking shall be approached, truth of weaponry.

E Boil- qinn .100.kIBthus Art ier cetharcaitt aidhci comnart caur conbeb- mucc ruime Mac con maicc aui lugde loigde la sechtmain sephhus fri fergus dub detach con bebat breigh det catho con fri cirinne cichuir Corbmac cote nibau ol sen saim nía bephaidh scoilicc bid an fer fuirr foilc fithus IPthus coirpre comlond co flatha fir. ailfithus fiechr- fill morua midhe cichsot cen ó muir conadé dairé drechleathan dailfius. dairb mes discc nigh fiechæ fer atha aainiph asa mes tor cis Muirethech trichduch dusnena nadhmunn han Crimthainn leathan lonn fuata fo chois. Co Niall nofither co Laogaire lond lenfethar int to tailcenn techtt (.i.patraicc). taighi tarsnai (.i. eclasa). croinn croma bertus blath- do dhinn. caoin cuar coirpri cotaniphtha art an feal fuirr- fial oiloll IPthus lonn lugha rohola saoir siasstar fir nairm

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16. Án fer for Mac Ercéni 17. Óengarb. Gébthus, gnóe gaí gairb. 18. Gébthus Áed, án ánruth. 19. Áed Allán bias bíth. 20. Bid fuiri fír nDiermata. Dis-ngig Diermait día rirsetar lis. Lond daig án con- fri Irthine -n-acht. 21. Ailt fuiri Féchno. 22. Ferr Suibne. 23. Sóer Óengus. 24. Án Domnall. 25. Dis-ngig Blathmac, Diermait, auæ alaili. Is é eblas in n-aigi. 26. Flaith blaí, flaith chinad, flaith échtach Élimm, dá chét mbliadnae mboíe. 27. Íbthus Snechta Fína fírfes flaith ó Níell co Néll. 28. Níell cáich úa Néill nasctar géill. 29. Do-tetha tein rúad garg raithnech. Les bes tres. Mí for bliadnai bebas muir. Már domain dínib, dúabais, díth. 30. Flaith shesctach ier slógaib soe. Bebaid fuil. Frita-iorr cath chrúaid. Díth, bath. 31. Bid fuiri Flann Asail, án orb. Arus-nena nertaib dorn do gíallaib. 32. Dis-ngig Furbaide, ferr cách fer fuiri. Flaith maic, mess maith, lí.

N ánfear for mac Ercéni (.i. muircertach) Oengarb (.i. tuat-) gebthus gnoe gai ga..b Gebthus aid an anruth (.i. mac ainmerech) Ead o…in biass bith Biad fuirri fir ndiarmoda Disngig diermait dia rirsetar liss lundug han confri irthine nacht Ailt fuir feachno fearr suibne soer oengus han domnall Discig blathmac Diarmaid auæ aleili (.i. diarmaid mac aodha slani) ise eblas in aige Flaith blai. flaith chinid. flaith echtach. helimm da .c. mbliadne mboie Ibthius snechta fina fhirfess. Flaith honiell co nell. Niell caich ua neill nasicther geill dothetha tein Ruadgarg raithnech less bess tress. mi forbliadni beb[…] muir mardomain dinib duabais díth. Flaith sessgach (.i[….]) ierslogoaib sæ. Bebaid fuil fritha heirr cath …th dith b[…] Bie […] fuirri flann asail anoirb arus nene nertaib d[…]scich furbaide (.i. brian) ferr cach fer fuirri Flaith ma[..] mess m[…]th li

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16. A glorious man after Mac Ercéni [i: 16, 16a] will be 17. Óengarb [i: 17]. He will take it, beauty of a harsh spear. 18. Áed [i: 18, 18a, 18b] will seize it, glorious lord. 19. Áed Allán [i: 19, 19a, 19b] who will strike a blow. 20. Diermait’s [i: 20] truth will be upon her. Diermait, by whom courts will be ruled, will request it. Glorious savage flame, he drove towards Irthine. 21. A blade over her, Féchno [i: 21, 21a, 21b]. 22. Better Suibne [i: 22]. 23. Noble Óengus [i: 23]. 24. Glorious Domnall [i: 24]. 25. Blathmac [i: 25], Diermait [i: 26], grandson of the other, will request it. It is he who will celebrate the assembly. 26. Sovereignty of immunities, sovereignty of liabilities, vengeance-wreaking sovereignty of Élimm, which was for two hundred years. 27. ‘Snow of Wine’ [i: 27], who will pour out sovereignty from Níell to Níell, will drink it. 28. The Níell [i: 28] of each [is the] descendant of Níell whose hostages are bound. 29. A red, harsh fire of bracken will dwindle. A benefit which will be a struggle. A month and a year [for the one] who will die in the sea [i: 29]. To the generations of the great world, gloom, loss. 30. Sovereignty of sixty years pursues hosts. He will die of a wound. He will injure them in a fierce battle. Loss, extinction. 31. Flann Asail [i: 30] will be upon her, glorious heir. He will betroth her by force of fists to hostages. 32. Furbaide [i: 31] will request it, better than everyone [the] man who is over her. A youth’s sovereignty, good judgement, splendour.

E an fer for mac ercceine oen gairbh gebtus gnaoe gai gairbh Gebus aidh an anroth Aodh allain biass bith. Biadh fuirr- firndiermada Disccing dermad dia rirsedhur lios lonna han conafri hirthin enach ailt fuirr- feaichnao ferr Suibn- saor aongus han Dom- dosccnigblath mac Diarmait uæ alaile isee ebles inaighi. Fl- bl- fl- cin- fl- eachtach heilimm da .100. bl-. ambaoi hiphus snechta fiona firfes Fl- oniell coniell. Niell caich uæ niell naiscer geill dotheath- tin ruadh garg raith neachlais bes treas mi for bl- beabus Mardomain dim dimmes dith fl- seasgdach iar slog- sæ bebaid fuil frita herr cath cruaid dith bath bith fuirr- fl- aisil an oirb arus nena nertaib dorn do giellaiph Disgich fuirr-fear cair fer fuirree fl- mic meas maith alí

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33. Anflaith fora mbia bíth trom, tuiledach dia mbebthar Breig. Flaith Chailig comnart con-fíastar fuiri. 34. Bid fuiri Glúnshalach, fine forderg a tóeb. Tus-nesfa gíallaib. Gébaid Ros. Riris Mugnai, maidm níth chétnu, comburbech Irthine, anflaith for Temair. 35. Dos-n-icfa fer fingalach esmbrethach. Íbthus co deirc ndomuin. Saxain imchil. Immus- aue Coircc -ebla. Is é reithe Muman márlaithe i Temuir.

N Ánflaith forimbiabith ...uilldech diamebtar breig (.i.fergal) Flaith cailig comnart confiastar fuiri. Biad fuirre glunsalach fine forderga atoeb tussness giallaib gebaid ross riris mumain maith nith cetni comburbech hirthinea han flaith for temair Dossnicfa fer fingalach esmbrethach hipthuss co derc domain Saxain imchil immus au chorcc eblai (.i. fland) ise ræthe mumain marlaithe hitemuir. Finit.

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33. An unking who will strike a heavy blow, a bastard by whom there will be death in Breg. The mighty sovereignty of ‘the Cock’ [i: 32] will prevail over her. 34. ‘The Dirty-kneed One’ [i: 32, 32a] will be upon her, a kindred whose flank is very red. He will spurn her with hostages. He will seize Ros. He will rule Mugain, victory in the same battle, the breaker of assemblies of Irthine, an unking over Tara. 35. A kin-slaying man of unjust judgements will come to it. He will drink it to the very bottom. Very wicked Saxons. The descendant of Corcc [i: 33] will pursue them. He is the overlord of Munster of great princes in Tara.

E Anforambiadh bith trom tuidhl- diam beabth- am bregh fl- coil- comnart confiast- fuirthe biadh fuirr- gl- salach fine forderecc- athaoibhph tos neas argiallaiph gepharos urus mugh ain maidm níth cetne comburbech hirthine an flaith forthemair tusnicf- fer fingalach esmbreach hiphus codeirc domhain Saxain amicil immais hua Corc hebl- ise raithe Mummarlaith- atemair.

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NOTES §1 ier cethorchait aidche The form ier is retained as perhaps representing an early spelling. It is possible that the forty nights of the text may in some way mirror the Biblical fortyday fasts of Moses, Elijah and Christ, imitated by Patrick (Bieler 1979, 152: 38). con-beba The use of the element con-, compounded with verbs, is prevalent in this text. It is not, as Murphy interpreted it, a conjunction. Con-beba, along with the other examples in the text (con-cichuir, con-íbau, con-dáilfa, con-nóïfither), are taken as compound verbs, only attested in the future tense in the context of a prophecy (O’Rahilly 1966). Muccruimi This prepositionless dative is taken to be an ia– -stem, f. (cf. bóraime). Thus, the MS readings are emended to the classical Old Irish dat. sg. form. §2 macc aui The MS form maicc aui has been emended to macc aui as Mac Con is a name and not a patronymic. Insofar as macc aui suggests a remoter descent, BCC adds to the diversity of doctrine regarding Mac Con’s genealogy. O Daly (1975, 9) noted that in Cath Maige Mucrama Mac Con is usually referred to as Lugaid, while in other texts, such as Scéla Moshauluim, he is called Mac Con mac Luigde (ibid., 74, §1). The genealogies imply that he was Lugaid Loígde’s son (Gwynn 1924, 143; O’Brien 1962, 190:147b17; 256:155a5; 262: 155 b11). lá sechtmain This phrase, interpreted as meaning ‘for a week of days’, supposes that lá is a preposed genitive. sephus This is taken to be the 3 sg. fut. rel. of seinnid ‘strikes’. The 3 sg. fut. (non-rel.) sifis is attested in Verba Scáthaige (Henry 1990, 200, l.15). This phrase is an instance of the common word order in this text where the subject preceeds the verb. §3 Con-bebat Breig This phrase is translated ‘they will die in Breg’, presumably referring to the three sons (including Fergus Dubdétach) of Imchad son of Fínnachta, king of the Ulaid, defeated by Cormac mac Airt. This is another example of con- used to indicate a prophetic future. Breig appears to be a prepositionless dat. sg. of an a-stem *Breg, contrasting with normal Brega, plural of brí ‘hill’. The form recurs at §25 below; cf. in Verba Scáthaige the phrase fearbu do Breig mbraitfider (Thurneysen 1913, 487; cf. Henry 1990, 200 l.10). The collocation with Crinne recurs in Ann. Tig. (Cath Crínda Bregh: Stokes 1896, 16). Dét catho Murphy interpreted this as do ét chatho ‘through seeking a battle’, taking ét as the verbal noun of ad-cota. It is taken here to be a word-play on the word dét ‘a tooth’ (cf. Dubdétach).

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con- fri Crinne -cichuir Following Murphy, con-cichuir is taken to be the 3 sg. fut. of con-ceird ‘arrays, wages’ (recte con-cicherr, cf. fo-cicherr Ml. 87d6). This verb is also attested in the poem Beir mo scíath, scëo fri úath (O Daly 1966, 194 §15). Although the form concicher is also found in the LL version of Táin Bó Cuailnge, this represents the replacing of other preverbs by the preverb con-, as described by C. O’Rahilly (1966, 104). Cf. DIL s.v. concuirethar. §4 coten-íbau Another example of prophetic con- used with ibid ‘drinks’ and with an archaic form of the infixed pronoun (Carey 1995, 87–8). Although perhaps secondary, the form -íbau, rather than standard -íba, is retained on the grounds that it is in both MSS. ól sen, sáim nía The translation ‘a drink of elders, a peaceful warrior’ is taken to refer chiastically to the infix ‘it’ or ‘her’ – namely, the drink of sovereignty, the sovereignty of Ireland or Ireland itself (Carey 1996, 189–90) and to Cormac himself. Cormac was a king most famed for wisdom, not warfare, and in his case the draught of sovereignty was a drink for sages, not an intoxicating liquor. Cormac was a paradox, a warrior of peace. He is spoken of in similar terms in Baile in Scáil (Thurneysen 1936, 223 §13): Síth n-oll co rían ina re. bebaid scoilicc Scoilicc is interpreted as the rare word scallac, sceillec ‘piece, fragment (of food)’ (cf. DIL s.v.) and is taken to refer to Cormac’s death in the ráith of Spelán, the hospitaller, when a salmon-bone stuck in his throat (Ó Cathasaigh 1977, 68–72). Alternatively, Scoilicc might be a placename (Hogan 1910, 592; Ó Corráin, 1999). §6 Fill mórúa Midi Fill is taken to be the nom. pl. of fell ‘deceit, treachery’, although its inflexion is uncertain (cf. Welsh gwall (m.)). The form már might be expected here (cf. §29 márdomain). Cichsot cén ó muir This verb is understood to be the 3 pl. s-fut. cingid ‘steps forward, marches, proceeds’ (for classical Old Irish cichsit). The form cichsot may, as in the case of -íbau, be a late archaising spelling. Cén is taken to be an undiphthongised form of cían ‘far’. Note the phrase céin-os-mair ‘fortunate’ in the poem Fo réir Choluimb (Kelly 1973, 13 §8c). §7 conden- Dáire drechlethan -dáilfa doirb mís Although associated with drinking of ale, the use of the verb dáilid ‘distributes, dispenses’ is problematic here since kings do not normally dispense the drink of sovereignty, despite being expected to be generous with ale. E’s dairb mes reading suggests doirb mes ‘a difficult judgement’. This latter suggestion could allude to Dáire, the father of the variously numbered Lugaids, of whom Cóir

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Anmann (Stokes 1897, 316–23) says that he named all of his sons Lugaid because it had been prophesied that a son of this name would rule Ireland. This could conceivably be described as a ‘difficult judgement’; potentially involving the dispensing (division?) of kingship. The interpretation followed here may refer to the possibility that Dáire, a lesser known king of Tara, only ruled for a short, difficult month. §8 fer étho ainb Murphy translates fer hætho ainb (N) as ‘unwitting man of fire’ and comments that this is a reference to the second element of the name Fiachu Sraiptine ‘Fiachu of Sulphur-Fire’; hætho is understood by Murphy to be the gen. sg. of áed ‘fire’, while the adj. ainb ‘ignorant, unwitting’ would appear to refer to fer (on the flexion of ainb see Breatnach, 1990, 140–1). However, a similar phrase (feareta ainb) used in relation to Eochu Gunnat in the garbled fragment of BCC contained in Senchas Síl Ír (Dobbs 1921, 326) would suggest that the word in BCC might not be áedo, but étho, the gen. sg. of íath ‘territory’ (with another undiphthongised ‘e’). It is possible, however, that feareta in Senchas Síl Ír has been understood by the compiler as ‘a man of jealousy’, as ét (regularly o, m) is also inflected as a u-stem in the gen. sg. in the Old Irish period. asa mesatar cís This is N’s reading. E reads asa mes tor cis, similar to the phrase in Lecan. (Senchas Síl Ír) lasa nensaither cís (Dobbs 1921, 326). Murphy suggested ‘from whom they shall be assessed in regard to tax’ and noted (148, n. 6) two possible emendations offered by Binchy, asa (for ata) messatar císa ‘whose taxes shall be assessed’ or lasa messatar císa ‘by whom taxes shall be assessed’. This appears to be a reference to Fiachu Sraiptine’s demise, which according to Leinster tradition and Baile in Scáil took place at the battle of Cnámros when he attempted to exact the bóruma tribute from the Laigin. Asa seems to be the lectio difficilior, while mesatar is preferable to nensaither, which in any case should be nensitir as the pass. sg. pres. (cf. Baile in Scáil (Thurneysen 1936, 224 §18): nensitir géill). §9 The translation follows the division of phrases as indicated in the MSS, rather than Murphy’s interpretation which associates the verb tus-nena with Crimthann. §11 neirp This word is not otherwise attested. Neirp could perhaps be emended to ner, a poetic and very rare word for ‘boar’. Alternatively, it may be an example of deliberate obscurantism in which an unusual compound is formed such as torpéist ‘boar’ deriving from torc and píast (Thurneysen 1933, 209). A synonomous nerpéist could have been abbreviated nerp-, and the suspension mark then lost in the course of the text’s subsequent transmission.

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§12 Con- Loígaire lond -lénfethar Co is emended to Con- by analogy with other examples in the text. Taige tarsnae, crann chromma, béirtis blátha doa dind For a parallel to the metaphor taige tarsnae, see Vita Tertia Patricii (Bieler 1971, 137: 31) description of Saball as an ecclesia transversa. For a similar prophecy regarding the coming of Patrick and Christianity, see the poem in Muirchú’s Life of Patrick (Bieler 1979, 76: I 10(6)) and Bethu Phátraic (Mulchrone 1939, 22). Béirtis is taken as the 3 pl. sec. fut. of beirid without no. Doa dind (tuadind N, do dhinn E) is taken as the prep. do and the 3 sg. m. poss. pron. (cf. the sentence in the Old Irish text ‘Conall Corc and the Corcu Loígde’ (Meyer 1910, 58: ll. 8–9) Fúite ind-Alpain corrig Cruthentuathe doa bas). An alternative interpretation would be to take N’s tuadind as a compound of túa ‘fortification’ (cf. dóe) and dind ‘an eminent place’ in a prepositionless dat.: ‘they would bear flowers to an eminent fortification’ (‘to a ramparted height’). §13 Art The occurrence of the word art with the meaning ‘bear’ is relatively rare (cf. Maier 1999). féal Following DIL s.v. fíal, this is taken as an archaic form of fíal, presumably intermediate between archaic -e–- and Old Irish -ı–a-. §20 Dis-ngig Diermait día rirsetar lis The verb rirsetar is taken as the 3 sg. fut. pass. rel. of rigid ‘rules’. For the precise meaning of les ‘farmyard, courtyard’, see F. Kelly, (1997) 363–4. In this instance, les is interpreted as ‘court, royal residence’. Lond daig án con- fri Irthine -n-acht In this phrase the prophetic con- is used with the pret. acht and not with a fut. form, as might be expected. While it is the only example of the use of the pret. (or possibly pret. pass. form ‘he was driven towards Irthine’) in this construction in the text, it is accepted as no alternative can be posited. fri Irthine. Cf §34 comburbech Irthine. §21 Ailt Although the word ailt ‘height, eminence’ (and perhaps, therefore, by extension ‘lord’) is a possible translation, it has been decided to translate it as the word ‘edge, blade’ as it seems that the text regards Féchno as a malevolent figure in opposition to the ‘better’ Suibne. §25 Dis-ngig Murphy emended the MS forms to dos-cich, thus taking the verb to be do-cing ‘approaches, steps forward’. The verb is interpreted here as do-guid (as used in §§ 20,

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32). Here it probably refers both to Blathmac and to Diarmait. There is a similar use of a sg. vb. with dual subject in the Leinster genealogical poem (Meyer 1914, 18) conbuig dorar ndian da– macc bu–adaig Bresuail. For a discussion of the phenomenon, see Thurneysen, Grammar, §539. auæ alaili ‘grandson of another’ means ‘grandson of another Diarmait’, namely, of Diarmait mac Cerbaill. Is é eblas in n-aigi A figura etymologica based on aigid and possibly a reference to óenach Tailten. Diarmait son of Áed celebrated óenach Tailten, whereas his grandfather celebrated the last feis Temro. Note the use of aige as opposed to feis, echoing Tírechán’s description of óenach Tailten as an agon regale (Bieler 1979, 132: 9(1)), perhaps suggesting a difference of perception between the ceremonies held at óenach Tailten and feis Temro. §26 This section seems to provide a partial parallel to the classification of kingship described in Audacht Morainn (Kelly 1976, 18–19): fírfhlaith (‘the true ruler’), cíallfhlaith (‘the wily ruler’), flaith congbále co slógaib (‘the ruler of occupation with hosts’), tarbfhlaith (‘the bull ruler’). It is also noteworthy that it seems structurally intrusive since it breaks the linking alliteration between aigi and íbthus. §28 Níell cáich úa Néill nasctar géill MS readings are emended to the pres. ind. pass. pl. nasctar. The line seems to mean that whichever descendant of Niall Noígíallach in each generation can emulate his ancestor by taking hostages will be recognised as his successor and representative. For arguments that the name Niall may in fact function as a royal title here, see Bhreathnach, above, 65–8. §29 Do-tetha tein Thurneysen’s A III category verbs in a– have a reduplicated future and an spret. combined with reduplication (cf. ba– -, pret. and fut. beb-; Thurneysen, Grammar, §§ 648, 680). Similarly ta– - has pret. and fut. teth-. Do-tetha is taken as the 3 sg. fut. of an otherwise unattested compound verb *do-ta– ‘dwindles’. §30 Flaith shesctach ier slógaib soe The word sesctach is otherwise unattested but seems to mean ‘lasting sixty years’ or if flaith is interpreted as ‘lord’, then ‘sixty-year-old’ (cf. §9 Muiredach Tírech tríchtach). Perhaps this phrase refers to the fact that the kingship of Tara is taken from Síl nÁedo Sláine on the death of Flann Asail and that the sixty years is reckoned back somehow to the death of the last non-Síl nÁedo Sláine king, Domnall mac Áedo (d. 642). Since soïd ria means ‘flees from, is defeated by’, soïd iar might mean ‘pursues,

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defeats’. Use of the digraph to indicate a diphthong is late, although it is in both MSS. It appears that the verb is in the present tense rather than the future as might be expected. The present is retained, although the MSS could be emended to sia ‘will advance’. Frita-iorr cath chrúaid Frita-iorr is taken as the 3 sg. fut. of fris-oirg and a 3 pl. infix. pron. (referring to slóig). Fuil and cath are further examples of independent datives. §33 fora mbia bíth This seems to be a figura etymologica with the 3 sg. fut. of for-ben ‘strikes’ and bíth, the old verbal noun of benaid. A similar figura etymologica is found in §19 (bias bíth). tuiledach This rare word ‘bastard, illegitimate child’ is derived from tuilide (*do-lí) and examples cited in DIL are considerably later than this text. Alternatively, this word may be interpreted as tuilldech, an adj. derived from tuilled which may be translated as ‘additional, supplementary’. dia mbebthar MS forms diamebtar / diam beabth point towards a fut. pass. sg. reading dia mbebthar. This passive use is paralleled in Amra Choluim Chille (Clancy and Márkus 1995, 112: §VIII, 24) día mbaathar ‘from which he dies’. The reading from N could possibly be a future form of maidid, although passive forms are not well-attested for this verb. There is a suggestion in DIL that dia mbebthar may be the 3 pl. pret. of baïd. con-fíastar fuiri Another example of prophetic con- and the fut. sg. pass. of fichid for ‘prevails over, oppresses’. §34 Tus-nesfa Murphy suggested that the MS readings may represent a corruption of tus-nena ‘he shall bind them’. An alternative, which is adopted here, is to emend the readings tus-nes to tus-nesfa, the 3 sg. fut. of do-nessa ‘spurns, despises’. This is similar to a phrase in Baile in Scáil: dáil de for Niall Cailli dodanesfa .i. Temair (cf. DIL do-nessa and Meyer 1918, 234 §49). Mugnai Mumain seems the more obvious choice in view of the reference to Mumu in the last line. E’s reading, however, is the lectio difficilior. Mugain may refer either to the goddess of sovereignty of Munster (Mac Cana 1955–6, 91–112) or possibly to a placename (cf. Éo Mugna, Belach Mugna, Mag Mugna). If E’s reading is accepted, it makes more sense with reference to Fergal mac Maíle Dúin whose career is being commented upon here: he will rule Ros and Mugain, perhaps an allusion to Fergal’s ambitions to rule the Airgíalla and Leinster. comburbech Irthine Comburbech is taken as an otherwise unattested compound, consisting of commar and bach ‘breaker of assemblies’ (cf. fótbach, murbach). However, one would

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expect this compound to be written as *comburbach. Alternatively, it may be an adj. derived from burbae ‘ignorance, boorishness, fierceness’. §35 co deirc ndomuin The intended sense here is presumably ‘to the very bottom’, literally ‘to the deep hollow’. Saxain imchil This phrase is normally interpreted to refer to the raid on Brega in 685, but may reflect fear of a foreign raid as an indicator of a king’s mis-rule. Imchil is taken to be the gen. pl. of cil ‘fault’ with the intensive prefix im, the phrase thus meaning ‘Saxons of great faults’, namely ‘wicked Saxons’. Murphy translates the phrase as ‘encircling Saxons’. Immus- aue Coircc -ebla The verb imm-aig with the 3 pl. infix referring to Cenél nÉogain. Aue Coircc (cf. §2 Mac Con maicc aui Lugde Loígde) may refer to Cathal mac Finguine, regarded as being acceptable by the ailing Síl nÁedo Sláine. reithe Muman See Murphy’s notes in which he makes the equation between the term reithe ‘a ram’ and its association elsewhere with the overkingship of Munster (1952, 149 n. 14). This is explicit in the sentence Dau Iarlathe ba rethe Muman uili, ‘Dau Iarlaithe was the ram (i.e. overking) of Munster’ (Meyer 1910, 61 l. 1) included in the text ‘Conall Corc and the Corcu Loígde’.

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The Airgíalla Charter Poem : The Political Context Edel Bhreathnach

T

H E Airgíalla Charter Poem (ACP) refers on two occasions to the group of dynasties which adopted the name Airgíalla, often explained as meaning ‘hostage-givers’. MacNeill in his study of early Irish population groups suggested that the name (gen. pl. Airgíall, nom. pl. in Middle Irish texts Airgíalla) was ‘of comparatively late formation, and cannot be classed with the old order of plural people-names’.1 Meyer compared Irish Airgíalla with the Welsh personal and placename Arwystli and concluded:

So ist also Airgíalla wie Arwystli wohl Ehrenname, den sich Gruppen von Stämmen beilegten, indem sie sich als “Bürgen” für ihr Land bezeichneten.2 O’Rahilly proposed that Airgíalla probably stood for *Airgiallnai ‘as O.Ir. giallae, f., “dicio, deditio”... stands for giallnae’. 3 Notably, there are two occurences of the form Airgíallnae in ACP (§§ 1b, 27b). It is possible, given that this is the earliest attestation of the name, that Airgíallnae was in origin *Airgíallne, where the -ne found in ethnonyms,4 became confused with the abstract suffix –(ai)ne, 5 and was assumed to be a derivative of gíall(n)ae ‘service, base clientship’. In this context, Airgíall(n)ae was understood to mean ‘additional clientship’. The secular genealogies claim that the dynasties of the Airgíalla were descended from the three Collas:, Colla Óss, Colla Fochríth and Colla Menn,6 all of whom are mentioned at the end of ACP (§48b). Eochaid Doimlén son of Coirpre Lifechair and father of the three Collas is also named as ancestor of the Airgíalla in the poem (§§ 27a (an interpolation), 48a). The origin legend of the Airgíalla and their genealogies place them in a schema that links them to the Connachta and Uí Néill. However, the genealogies of individual dynasties of the Airgíalla such as the Mugdorna contradict this official version and suggest that these dynasties had diverse origins and that their official history was concocted in the eighth century.7 Many 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

MacNeill, ‘Early Irish population-groups’, 63. Meyer, ‘Altir. Airgíalla’, 381. O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 224. MacNeill, ‘Early Irish population-groups’, 69–70. Thurneysen, Grammar, 168 §262. O’Brien, ‘The oldest account of the raid of the Collas’; idem, Corpus, 139: 140b 38–44, 147–52. Ó Corráin, ‘Historical need and literary narrative’, 151–2; Lacey, ‘Co. Derry in the early historic period’, 134; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 512–8; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 64–76.

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dynasties were regarded as Airgíalla and designated as descendants of the three Collas; but, in a manner similar to the Uí Néill, the hegemony of the federation was gradually confined to a select group of dynasties,8 among them the Uí Thuirtri, Uí Meic Cáirthinn, Uí Fhiachrach Arda Sratha, Uí Moccu Uais (descendants of Colla Óss),9 Uí Chremthainn, Uí Méith, Ind Airthir (descendants of Colla Fochríth) and the Mugdorna (reputed descendants of Colla Menn, who may also have had Cruithni origins).10 As the Uí Néill are confined in the poem to the Five Kindreds defined as Cenél nÉogain, Cenél Conaill, Síl nÁedo Sláine, Clann Cholmáin Máir, Clann Cholmáin Bic,11 the Airgíalla bound by legal contract are similarly restricted to a small number of prominent dynasties. Although the dynasties of the Airgíalla are not as clearly defined as those of the Five Kindreds of the Uí Néill, it is assumed from the guarantor list at the end of the poem that they include Ind Airthir, Uí Thuirtri, Uí Chremthainn and Mugdorna. The sentiments expressed in §8 suggest that the descendants of Colla Óss are to be accorded a primary position among the Airgíalla dynasties, and this is confirmed by the dominance of these dynasties in the list of guarantors at the end of the poem. The political context of ACP may be construed as reflecting two possible events: one, the creation of the Airgíalla; the other, the formal definition of an existing relationship between the dynasties collectively known as Airgíalla and Uí Néill. The approximate date of this agreement may be deduced from three possible perspectives: (i) the relationship between the dynasties known to have formed the Airgíalla; (ii) references to the Airgíalla as an entity in the sources; (iii) their relationship with the Uí Néill. The earliest instances of the designation of kings of the Airgíalla occur in Ann.Tig. s.a. 677 and AU 697, although the accuracy of both is problematic and they could be regarded as retrospective insertions. Ann. Tig.’s reference is to the death of Dúnchad son of Ultán rí Oirgiall at the hands of the Cenél nÉogain king, Máel Dúin son of Máel Fithrig. Dúnchad belonged to the Uí Meic Cáirthinn, a branch of Uí Moccu Uais. Whereas Dúnchad’s claim to the title ‘king of the Airgíalla’ is uncertain,12 that of Máel Fothartaig son of Máel Dub, described in AU 697 as rex na nAirgialla, may be genuine. Máel Fothartaig is listed, as is his son Eochu Lemnae (d. 704) 13, as one of the guarantors of Cáin Adomnáin.14 Máel Fothartaig belonged to Síl nDaimíni, a branch of the Uí Chremthainn. The guarantor list also includes Fergus Forcraid (d. 704)15 of Uí Thuirtri and Flann Febla, bishop of Armagh (d. 715), who heads the list and who belonged to the 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

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On dynasties that became obscure see Ó Fiaich, ‘Ui Cruinn, a lost Louth sept’; Lacey, ‘The Ui Meic Cairthinn of Lough Foyle’. Walsh, ‘Uí Maccu Uais’. O’Brien, Corpus, 152; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 516–18. Charles-Edwards, below, 106–7. Lacey, ‘The Ui Meic Cairthinn of Lough Foyle’, 5–6. Frag. Ann. §158. Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The guarantor list of Cáin Adomnáin’, 206: §68, 212: §84. Frag. Ann. §158.

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ruling dynasty of the Uí Méith.16 If the Airgíalla were already formed in a federation by 697, when Cáin Adomnáin was promulgated, it was clearly a powerful ecclesiastical and secular grouping. Hints of the genesis of this federation and of its relationship with the Uí Néill occur in other late seventh-century sources. Muirchú, for example, in his Life of Patrick, tells of an alliance between the Uí Néill and Ind Airthir against the Ulaid in the contention for Patrick’s body.17 The rivalry between the Airgíalla and the Ulaid is also alluded to in ACP (§§ 5, 8), where there is an assumption that the Ulaid have been supplanted by the Airgíalla in the position of honour in the north. Muirchú’s allusion to the alliance between the Uí Néill and Ind Airthir suggests that there may have been a seventh-century (or earlier?) agreement between them that was focused on undermining the power of the Ulaid.18 The pre-eminence of Ind Airthir, and the absence of a permanent agreement among those dynasties who were to emerge in the eighth century definitely as Airgíalla, seems to explain the incident related by Adomnán in VSC in which Colmán Cú (Canis) son of Ailéne of the Mugdorna and Rónán son of Áed son of Colcu of Ind Airthir killed each other.19 Adomnán comments twice on the territory involved as in parte Maugdornum and prope fines illorum locorum illud monasterium cernitur quod dicitur Cell-roiss 20 (possibly to be identified as Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan). It may be noteworthy that Adomnán and Muirchú use two different terms to translate Ind Airthir into Latin, de Anteriorum genere and Orientales respectively. This may reflect two different geographical perspectives, one from Iona, the other from Armagh. The division of Airgíalla territories between Ind Airthir and Mugdorna, for example, might explain the AU entry in 520 on the battle of Détna (perhaps tl. Deenes, par. Duleek, bar. Lower Duleek, Co. Meath),21 in which Colcu Moo Cluethi, king of Ind Airthir (Uí Chruinn) and Muirchertach Mac Ercae reputedly slew Ardgal son of Conall son of Niall Noígíallach. As noted elsewhere in this volume,22 this region was renowned as a battleground, and the personal name Colcu Moo Cluethi may be an allusion to the River Glyde, the northernmost border of Brega, also called Cassán Linne (tl. Annagassan, par. Drumcar, bar. Ardee, Co. Louth). Colcu’s authority may have extended as far as and even south of the River Glyde.23 The interpolation from Máel Muru Othna’s poem Can a mbunadas na nGáedel in ACP (§27) is an indication of the extent of the Airgíalla’s territory as its most extensive – from Búaigne 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The guarantor list of Cáin Adomnáin’, 185-6: §1, 211: §81. Bieler, Patrician texts, 120–1. For further discussion on the alliances between the different dynasties of the Airgíalla and the Uí Néill see Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 55–74. VSC, I 43. Ibid. Ó Murchadha, Annals of Tigernach index, 134. Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, below, 180; Bhreathnach, below, 416. For indications as to the extent of Uí Chruinn territory see Ó Fiaich, ‘Uí Cruinn, a lost Louth sept’, 112.

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(the district around Dunboyne, Co. Meath) to Loch Febail (Lough Foyle), thus incorporating southern Brega, where the Mugdorna Breg held lands. While Muirchú and Adomnán offer insights into both the genesis and fragmentation of the Airgíalla in the seventh century, early eighth-century annalistic entries indicate the existence of a more coherent entity. The list of dead at the battle of Corann, fought in 704 between the Cenél Conaill king, Loingsech mac Óenguso, who was also rex Hiberniae ‘king of Ireland’, and the king of Connacht, Cellach son of Rogallach, in which the former was slain, include Eochu Lemnae and Fergus Forcraid of Uí Chremthainn and Uí Thuirtri. These groups appear to have been in military service assisting the dominant king of the Uí Néill of the period. This alliance was probably rooted in an earlier alliance between Cenél Conaill and various Airgíalla dynasties, often used at the expense of the Ulaid and against Cenél nÉogain. When Cenél nÉogain were in the ascendant in the early eighth century, led by their king Fergal mac Maíle Dúin, he brought elements of the Airgíalla to heel. Fergal defeated an alliance of the Uí Méith and Síl nÁedo Sláine at the battle of Slíab Fúait in 711. At a later stage he seems to have transferred their military services from Cenél Conaill to his own dynasty. Éicnech son of Colcu, king of Ind Airthir, and Fergal grandson of Aithechdae of Síl nDaimíni were killed alongside Fergal mac Maíle Dúin at the battle of Almu (Hill of Allen, Co. Kildare) in 722. The Airgíalla may not have confined offering these military services to dynasties in Ireland. The possibly earliest recorded appearance of the Airgíalla in the annals as a distinct alliance seems to involve internal feuds among the Dál Ríata in Scotland. AU 719 records the battle of Ard Nesbi between Cenél nGabráin and Cenél Loairn in quo quidam comites conruerunt, a phrase translated by the editors as ‘and a number of nobles fell therein’.24 However, the word comites may be a translation of Airgíalla since AU 727 uses a similar phrase, ubi quidam ceciderunt dendibh Airgiallaib ‘in which some of the Airgíalla fell’ (in the battle of Irrus Foichnae between the same two branches of Dál Ríata).25 These entries may testify to the existence of the Airgíalla as a military entity at least – the first reliable reference to them as such. Confirmation of the role of the Airgíalla as a military federation is found in the list of the dead at the battle of Seredmag (perhaps in the vicinity of Kells, Co. Meath) in 743, in which Domnall Midi, son of Murchad of Clann Cholmáin defeated and slew Áed Allán of Cenél nÉogain in a contest for the kingship of the northern half of Ireland. Kings of all the main Airgíalla dynasties (Ind Airthir, Uí Chremthainn and Uí Thuirtri) are listed among the dead. Given this apparent alliance between Cenél nÉogain and the Airgíalla, and given the reference to Áed Allán in ACP (§11a), the legal contract underlying the poem probably embodies an agreement between the Airgíalla and the Uí Néill during Áed Allán’s reign, possibly reaffirming an earlier agreement between these two federations during the 24 25

98

MacAirt and Mac Niocaill, Annals of Ulster, 175. I wish to thank Professor Francis John Byrne for bringing my attention to the link between these two entries.

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reign of Fergal mac Maíle Dúin of Cenél nÉogain. This would suggest a date of sometime between 722 (the battle of Almu) and 743 (the battle of Seredmag) for the composition of the poem.26

26

See Charles-Edwards, below, 122–3.

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T

H E Airgíalla Charter Poem is a mixture of law and history, constructed in order to define the relationship of the Airgíalla to the Uí Néill. The claims made both in the more historical and in the more legal sections suggest that this particular definition of the relationship was made to the advantage of the Airgíalla. Indeed, the Airgíalla may be intended by the first-person verbs in §11. The text itself, for the very reason that it may well be a partisan statement, cannot reveal how far the claims made were accepted by the Uí Néill. To some extent they probably were, for two reasons: first, the claims were intimately related to the assertion made in the poem that the Airgíalla were close kin to the Uí Néill, an assertion that appears to have been widely accepted;1 secondly, it appears that the Airgíalla became indispensable military clients of the Uí Néill, especially of their northern branches, and this military role underpinned the claims made in ACP, many of which themselves are of a military nature.

THE SHAPE OF THE TEXT It is helpful to divide ACP into four sections for the purpose of analysis. First comes an historical prologue, §§ 1–12. This includes legal ideas, but they give shape to the history rather than being a separate element. The central part of the text consists of two balanced and partially interwoven sections, legal in both terminology and content. In the first, various rights of Five Kindreds of the Uí Néill are listed. To this the counterpart is a statement of the obligations of ‘the king of the Uí Néill’. This is coupled with further stanzas limiting both the obligations of the Airgíalla as clients and the rights of the Uí Néill and their king as overlords; there are also stanzas setting out the rights of the Airgíalla as against the king of the Uí Néill. The central section of the poem purports, therefore, to be a balanced account of the rights and duties of the two parties to the bargain. Yet although it opens with 1

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O’Brien, Corpus, 122: 136 b 17, goes so far as to include Colla Óss in the list of pre-Christian kings of Ireland, contrary to the implications of the tale of ‘The Three Collas’, Corpus, 149; Scéla Éogain 7 Cormaic, (Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, 121–2; O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, 68–70: §§ 14–16) may have an earlier story, whereby the special link with the Uí Néill was prefigured by Fiachnae (Fiachrae) Cassán being Cormac mac Airt’s foster-father. Fiachnae Cassán was ancestor of Ind Airthir alone, Corpus, 139: 141 a 1, although the name Ind Airthir ‘the Easterners’, suggests that they may have been an offshoot of the Uí Chremthainn. The message of Scéla Éogain ocus Cormaic accords with Muirchú for whom Armagh was associated with Ind Airthir alone, excluding the Uí Chremthainn, Bieler, Patrician texts, 120–1: II 13); if Armagh subsequently adopted the legend of the Three Collas, as seems to be implied by the history of the texts, there was a strong reason why the claims would have been widely disseminated.

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the rights of the Uí Néill, it spends more time on the Airgíalla’s claims, whether in terms of their rights or in terms of limitations on the rights of the Uí Néill. Finally, in the fourth section we revert to history, not now to the distant, pre-Patrician history of the genealogical and political origins of the Airgíalla, but to the sixth century, a period in which the power of the Uí Néill was largely established. The sixth century was the period to which the poem ascribed the making of the formal contract between the Airgíalla and the Uí Néill. The shape of the text may, therefore, be set out schematically as follows: I.

Historical prologue: §§ 1–12 1. The first ordering of the seating plan of Tailtiu (conceived as occurring before the genealogical separation of the Airgíalla and the Uí Néill, although the Connachta are already a separate political entity with its base in the west): §§ 1–4. 2. The land settlement between the Uí Néill and the Airgíalla, made by their common ancestor, Coirpre Lifechair: §§ 5–7. 3. The implications of the settlement: §§ 8–12.

II. The rights of the Five Kindreds of the Uí Néill: §§ 13–20 The rights of the Uí Néill apparently over all their subjects, including, but not confined to, the Airgíalla. III. The Airgíalla’s side of the bargain: §§ 21–39. 1. The obligations of the king of the Uí Néill: §§ 21–2. 2. The limited military obligations of the Airgíalla, §§ 23–5, balanced by rights arising out of military service, §§ 26, 28–9. 3. The four offences that the king of the Uí Néill can judge on his own (implying that others are judged by him together with the king of whichever branch of the Airgíalla is affected): §§ 30–3. 4. Rights irrevocably conceded to the Airgíalla: §§ 34–9. IV. The contract made in the sixth century: §§ 40–8. 1. Between the Airgíalla and the Uí Néill: §§ 40–44. 2. Between the branches of the Airgíalla to uphold their rights against the Uí Néill: §§ 45–8. V.

Conclusion: The seating of the Airgíalla, very probably at Tailtiu (although the reference to Tailtiu is likely to be a gloss): §49.

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I: THE HISTORICAL PROLOGUE As the conclusion shows, the two historical sections, the beginning and the end of the poem, were cleverly tied together. Even though Tailte in the MS version of §49 appears to be a gloss, it is almost certainly a correct one. The last two words, suidigud sír form a dúnad referring back to the opening line and thus to the ceremonial seating of the provincial kings of Ireland by ‘the lord of Tailtiu’. The position of the Airgíalla at Tailtiu, left hanging in the air by the Prologue, was made into the triumphant conclusion, a conclusion both of the agreement made with the Uí Néill in the sixth century and also of the ancient military prowess of the Airgíalla themselves: they were to be placed in the position of honour for láim ríg ‘beside a king’. Their military effectiveness was the primary guarantee of the contract, but it was first demonstrated in the conquests against ‘the king of the north’ in the distant pre-Patrician period. As argued elsewhere, the history told in the Prologue is fictitious.2 This does not mean that the legal implications of these historical fictions were themselves fictitious. An entirely genuine agreement might well have attracted to itself an edifice of justification and explanation in the customary language of genealogy and origin legend. The same applies, rather differently, to the final section. Whether or not any such contract was made in the sixth century, it may have been accepted in the eighth century that it had been made and that the legal consequences were in force. The text, therefore, mixes history and law; but for the modern historian, the truth of the history and the truth of the law are separable issues.

The Prologue and the laws: §§ 1–12 The Prologue employs two ideas found in the laws in order to shape its account of the original division between the Airgíalla and the Uí Néill. Of these, the first is that of the seating plan set out by ‘the lord of Tailtiu’ and thus presumably at Tailtiu, the great annual assembly held by the king of Tara and attended by at least a large number of his subjects in Leth Cuinn. This theme of the seating at Tailtiu frames, as we have seen, the entire text. For historians, this poem is the most eloquent of all our sources on the island-wide scope of that assembly; yet its concern is limited to this one issue – who sat where. There is no mention of edicts promulgated, great cases settled, or even of horse-races. That seating was a central issue for the poet is not, in general terms, surprising. It has plausibly been suggested that the reason why Henry I of England abandoned the thriceyearly courts at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun was that the archbishops of Canterbury and York – currently in dispute about the primacy – would not agree on questions of precedence.3 In the Welsh laws the seating at court was, in part, regulated, and the place next to the king, claimed in ACP by the Airgíalla, might be granted ‘to him whom the 2 3

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Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 512–18. Green, The government of England under Henry I, 20–1.

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king wishes to honour’.4 The same assumptions lay behind Welsh literary texts: in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, Pwyll inferred the status of a leading member of Arawn’s court from where he sat.5 In Ireland, Críth Gablach regulated the seating arrangements of the king’s house at very much the same date as ACP. 6 Seating arrangements are also attested for the airecht, an open-air court; 7 and one of the known functions of the assembly at Tailtiu was to provide a setting for the holding of courts, ecclesiastical and probably also lay.8 It would not be in the least surprising, then, if there were, as our text implies, rules for the seating of the great men at an óenach. That this claim is correct is suggested by the use of the term forad in the annals. 9 Yet the seating plan in question in the Prologue is one of the remote past, before the supposed emergence of the Airgíalla from the parent Dál Cuinn. In this primitive óenach Tailten the kings of Leinster, Munster and Connacht each have their place corresponding to the situation of their provinces within Ireland as a whole. The exception is the absence of Ulster: no place is assigned to the Ulaid. The primitive óenach Tailten appears to be framed from the Ireland represented in the Ulster Cycle, namely from an Ireland as it was thought by the Irish of the eighth century to have existed at the dawn of the Christian era.10 On one side were ‘the men of Ireland’; on the other the Ulaid. The ‘king of the north’ referred in §8 as the enemy of the Airgíalla can be inferred from the poem itself to be the king of the Ulaid. The title ‘king of the north’ does not, therefore, have the same significance as it possessed in the Chronicle of Ireland in the second half of the eighth century; there it refers to a king of Cenél Conaill or Cenél nÉogain (as overlord of ‘the north’). To explain the poem’s attitude to the Ulaid, we do not need to appeal to the extant origin legend of the Airgíalla, which, perhaps unlike the poem, may have been framed within the territory of the Uí Chremthainn.11 The honourable seat assigned to the Airgíalla at the end of the poem may, in part, have been seen as the reward for their wars against the Ulaid. If we were to take the absence of the king of the Ulaid from the seating arrangement at Tailtiu literally, we might suppose that he and his people alone were excluded from the óenach in the eighth century. This, however, would not only be to fail to acknowledge the historical 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11

Emanuel, The Latin texts of the Welsh laws, 111; for a different line see Jenkins, The law of Hywel Dda, 7. Williams, Pedeir keinc y Mabinogi, 4. 16–19 (on the iarll ). Binchy, Críth Gablach, 23: §46. Kelly, ‘An Old-Irish text on court procedure’. VSC, III 3; Connolly, Vita Prima S. Brigitae, c. 39. Doherty, ‘The monastic town’, 51–2. The interest of some among the Airgíalla in the Ulster Cycle is shown by the name Conchobar Machae in AU 698.1 (with extra words in Ann.Tig. in italics): ‘A battle at Telach Garraist in Fernmag in which fell Conchobar Machae son of Máel Dúin, king of the Airthir.’ Conchobor was in alliance with a king of Dál nAraidi. In the ‘Three Collas’, the central action takes place in the kingdom of Fernmag, roughly from Clones to Monaghan Town, one of the two kingdoms of the Uí Chremthainn; but in the poem Colla Óss, the ancestor of the Uí Moccu Uais, is more important.

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nature of the first stanzas, but it would also be most unlikely in itself. For one thing, kings of the Ulaid are now, and were in the eighth century, known to have held the kingship of Tara and can therefore be presumed to have presided at óenach Tailten.12 More indirectly, there is evidence for some Leinster involvement in the assembly at Tailtiu;13 and in the eighth century the Laigin and Ulaid seem to have been in similar relationships to the Uí Néill and the kingship of Tara, as indicated by the absence of any annalistic references to cánai from those provinces.14 For both Munster and the Connachta, however, several cánai are attested. The absence of the Ulaid from Tailtiu in the Prologue is to be explained, therefore, on the grounds that conflict between ‘the men of Ireland’ and the Ulaid was, in the poet’s mind, the background to the northern conquests of the Airgíalla to which he alludes in §8. The other area of the law which helped to give shape to the Prologue was part of the law of kinship and neighbourhood, the account of the origin of a group of neighbours who had settled legal arrangements governing their relationships with each other. The origin of neighbourhood is set out near the beginning of Bretha Comaithchesa ‘Judgements of Neighbourhood’.15 The doctrine there enunciated was that neighbourhood arose from partible inheritance between kinsmen. As we know from this and other legal texts, there were standard procedures by which a group of co-heirs (normally brothers) divided the inheritance, and then went on to recognise the boundaries between their holdings and to mark them by fences or walls.16 The following is a translation of §§ 1–2 and 4 of Bretha Comaithchesa (main text only): 17 §1 Judgements on neighbourhood here. Why is neighbourhood so called? There is equal custom in it, for the custom by which each man exacts fines and penalties from his fellow is equally good; alternatively, it is neighbourhood because a noble receives them (sc. fines and penalties) in the same way as a commoner, and an ecclesiastical superior as a (mere) cleric.

12 13

14 15 16 17

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Byrne, Irish kings, 109–14; Charles-Edwards and Kelly, Bechbretha, 126–31 (n. on §33); CharlesEdwards, Early Christian Ireland, 494–501. Tallaght and Áed Oirdnide, AU 811.2; Brigit at óenach Tailten, Vita Primae S. Brigitae, (Connolly, c. 39). Leinster kings appear to have attended the óenach Colmáin Elo, AU 827. 6, if, on the basis of The triads of Ireland (Meyer, no. 35), the óenach Colmáin of the annals was that of Colmán Elo and was held at Lynally (in Tír Cell in Mide). Against that, O’Brien, Corpus, 230: 152 a 10 refers to a Circium Colmáin hi lLiphu. Charles-Edwards, The early mediaeval Gaelic lawyer, 52–4, 58; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 566, 569. CIH 64. Kelly, Early Irish farming, 372–8. The original text is found in CIH 64–5.

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§2 A question: from what does neighbourhood grow? From plurality of heirs. How is that? They first divide their shares and their holdings, and each of them fences against the other, and each of them grants a precinct to the other. §4 A question: how is neighbourhood instituted? A light fence (aile) is shared out on the third day. A light fence is begun around it on the fifth day. A light fence is finished on the tenth day. Full hedging (ógimbe) is completed in a month. §§ 6 and 7 of ACP cover part of the same ground, but with an important difference. In Bretha Comaithchesa the claim is that status is irrelevant to the workings of neighbourhood and that the relationship arises from sharing of land within the kindred. Insofar as the latter claim was true, one would expect that the former would have been unnecessary – that kinsmen whose relationship was close enough for them to share land would not be markedly different in rank. Yet this is not necessarily true.18 Possibly the theory that neighbourhood arose from kin-sharing was, even in Bretha Comaithchesa, as much a theory about the past as a generalisation about the present. The notion might be that the first neighbours to establish the practice of comaithches ‘neighbourhood’ were kinsmen.19 The institution as such was a by-product of kinship, even if by the eighth century not all neighbours who regulated their relationships according to the rules of this law tract were kinsmen. This is probably not the full explanation, but it may well be part of it; and, to the extent that it is true, it helps to explain what ACP is itself arguing, for it too is making a claim about the past. There is another important element in §§ 6 and 7: the division was not carried out by the standard procedure enshrined in the maxim ‘The youngest makes the division, the eldest chooses’, so that the co-heirs choose in order of age, thus ensuring that the youngest son gets the least eligible portion and so has the liveliest incentive to make a fair and equal division.20 Instead Coirpre Lifechair was responsible for marking out the division; and, according to the standard genealogical doctrine, he was the father of Fiachu Sraiptine and Eochaid Doimlén, ancestors respectively of the Uí Néill (and Connachta) and the Airgíalla. According to the normal practice of kin-sharing, the elder (sinser) was precisely not the one who made the division, since the whole scheme made the divider get the least eligible share. Because the eldest chose first, he did not make the division. In the poem, however, the sinser is the father rather than the eldest brother. 18 19 20

Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh kinship, 362–3. See such other historical prologues as Di Chetharslicht Athgabála (CIH 352–4) or Gúbretha Caratniad, §1 (Thurneysen, ‘Aus dem irischen Recht III’ [RCIS] 306 (= CIH 2192)). CIH 1289: 11; Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh kinship, 62.

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First, the situation is not quite the same: Coirpre Lifechair ‘marked out’ the division; in the normal procedure, the youngest son partitions (rannaid) the land. The former is best attested in hagiography and is somewhat reminiscent of Old Testament cases such as the division of the land of Israel between the twelve sons of Jacob.21 It may well have been the custom for royal kindreds to give the right of marking out the lands to the current king, treated as the sinser of the kindred. In that case, the practice of partible inheritance for royal kindreds would appear to have been directed towards enhancing the power of the current ruler vis-à-vis his kinsmen, rather than making the division as fair as possible (depending on whether the person who did the marking out also influenced the division).22 The standard legal rules about kin-sharing were directed at normal kindreds, not at royal lineages. Similarly, while normal sharing was intended, with some few exceptions, to equalise shares, the sharing attributed to Coirpre Lifechair was íar n-airechas ‘according to nobility’. Quite how far ACP followed the procedures set out at the beginning of Bretha Comaithchesa is uncertain: it depends on the interpretation of the difficult §7. If the manuscript’s indaile is for in n-aili ‘the light fencing’, the correspondence would be quite close; but if it is for indili ‘livestock’, the connection would be much more remote. Similarly, the manuscript’s sondradh might be not a late form of sainred ‘characteristic’, but a collective from sond / sonn ‘stake, palisade’, and this would again bring the stanza close to the concerns of Bretha Comaithchesa.23 In any event, these stanzas have a clear general message: the Uí Néill and the Airgíalla (as well as the Connachta) are kinsmen. If the Uí Néill had a superior share of land, that was solely because of their royal status, because they were, as §10 puts it, ‘the kindreds of kings who preserve justice through many years’. Otherwise there was ‘equality of lineage’ between the Uí Néill and the Airgíalla (§10a). For the Uí Néill to trample upon the rights of the Airgíalla would be to violate the rules of kinship and of neighbourhood.

II: THE RIGHTS OF THE KING OF THE UÍ NÉILL The second and third parts of ACP set out a view of the rights of the Five Kindreds of the Uí Néill over their client peoples and the corresponding rights of the Airgíalla as an especially privileged group of these peoples. These sections form the heart of the text, the content of the agreement supposed to have been made in the sixth century. The formal structure of the second part of the text is marked by the verbs. From §13 to §15, and again from §18 to §20, the verb is ar-dlegat. The crucial verb is, then, in the plural; and from §13 we can see that the subject is ‘the five clanda’ of the Uí Néill. The rights 21 22 23

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Bieler, Patrician texts, 176: 14; see the Testament of Catháir Már, (Dillon, Lebor na Cert, 148–69). See Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland, 60–4. O Daly took sonnradh as the late Middle Irish or early Modern Irish form of sainred ‘particular characteristic’, and translated it by ‘delimitation’. DIL gives no example of such a meaning.

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and privileges of Part II were not enjoyed only by ‘the lord of Tailtiu’ or ‘the king of the Uí Néill’, but by five out of the eleven or so named branches of the Uí Néill. I shall refer to these five as the ‘Five Kindreds’. §§ 13–20 thus set out the elevated rank of the Five Kindreds, including Clann Cholmáin Bic, which supplied no generally acknowledged king of Tara. On the other hand, it did supply, according to the annals, at least one ‘king of the Uí Néill’, perhaps in the sense of an overlord of the Southern Uí Néill in a period when the king of Tara was from the Northern Uí Néill. 24 In any case, during the seventh and eighth centuries the annals use three terms exclusively for rulers deriving from the Five Kindreds: rex Temro / rí Temro; rex / rí Úa Néill; rex Aquilonis / rí ind Fhochlai. All enjoyed, at one time or another, an authority over other branches of the Uí Néill than their own. From §21, however, there is a change of syntax and of reference. Instead of an active and plural verb, ar-dlegat, we have a passive-impersonal dlegair. The issue is thus not one of rights but of obligations. Initially the verb is used for the obligation of a single person, ‘the king of the Uí Néill’ (§21), but from §23 the Airgíalla have the obligations. The break between Part II and Part III is thus best put at §21, where the verb changes and where it ceases to be about the Five Kindreds. In order to see what the import of Part II may be, it is helpful to have, as a standard of comparison, a broader picture of the rights of kings. To this end I give, first, an alphabetical list of terms for royal rights and privileges, with a selection of references principally drawn from sources of the eighth and ninth centuries but including some of later date, notably from the genealogical tract on the Loígsi and from the Kells charters. Many of the terms listed are used for the rights of overkings, of lesser kings, and also of non-royal lords. This is inevitable because of the explicit analogies between the clientship of kings and ordinary clientship, and also because of the conception of a great class of flaithi embracing both ordinary lords and kings. After the alphabetical list of terms there follows a classified list, with an asterisk before any item mentioned in ACP. From this list it is possible to compare rights admitted by ACP with those over which it passed in silence and, perhaps, implicitly rejected.

Alphabetical list of terms for royal rights The following is a key to references frequently cited in this list: Audacht Morainn Bethu Phátraic

24

F. Kelly 1976 Audacht Morainn. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. K. Mulchrone 1939 Bethu Phátraic. The Tripartite Life of Patrick. Royal Irish Academy. Dublin and London.

AU 621. 2, on the assumption that the father’s name is incorrectly given as Colmanus Magnus (instead of Colmanus Paruus); Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 492, n. 100.

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Bretha Déin Chécht Cáin Aicillne

Cáin Shóerraith

Cath Maige Tuired CIH Cogitosus

Conall Corc

Corpus Críth Gablach

Dál Caladbuig

DIL

Díre Tract

Frithfholad Muman Guide to early Irish law

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D.A. Binchy 1966 Bretha Déin Chécht. Ériu 20, 1–66. R. Thurneysen 1923–7 Aus dem irischen Recht I. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 14, 334–94; 15, 238–9, 259–60, 370–76; 16, 205–10. R. Thurneysen 1925–7 Aus dem irischen Recht II. Das FreiLehen (Cáin Shóerraith). Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 15, 238–60, 370–6; 16, 211–13. E.G. Gray 1982 Cath Maige Tuired. The second battle of Mag Tuired. Irish Texts Society 52. London. D.A. Binchy (ed.) Corpus Iuris Hibernici. 6 vols. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. S. Connolly and J.M. Picard 1987 Cogitosus: Life of Saint Brigit. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 117, 11–27. V. Hull 1947 Conall Corc and the Corco Luigde. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America 62, 887–909. K. Meyer 1910 Conall Corc and the Corco Luigde. In O.J. Bergin, R.I. Best, K. Meyer and J.G. O’Keeffe. (eds), Anecdota from Irish manuscripts, 3, 57–63. Halle. M.A. O’Brien 1962 Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae. Vol. 1. Reprinted 1976. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. D.A. Binchy 1941 Críth Gablach. Mediaeval and Modern Irish Series XI. Reprinted 1970. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. J.G. O’Keeffe 1931 Dál Caladbuig and reciprocal services between the kings of Cashel and various Munster states. In J. Fraser, P. Grosjean and J.G. O’Keeffe, Irish Texts. Fasciculus I, 19–21. Sheed and Ward. London. The section referred to is §§ 1–7. See Frithfholad Muman. 1913–75 Dictionary of the Irish language and Contributions to a Dictionary of the Irish language. Royal Irish Academy. Dublin. Reprinted 1983 (compact edition). R. Thurneysen 1931 (Díre tract) Irisches Recht I. Abhandlungen der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 2. Phil.- Hist. Klasse. Berlin. This text refers to O’Keeffe, Dál Caladbuig, §§ 8–18. F. Kelly 1988 A guide to early Irish law. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin.

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Hibernensis Honour of Denbeigh Laud genealogies Metrical Dindshenchas

Miscellanea Notitiae O’Davoren

Regesta Regum Scottorum

Road to judgement

Scéla Cano

TBC I

H. Wasserschleben 1885, Die irische Kanonensammlung. Leipzig. Reprinted 1966. Scientia-Verlag. Aalen. P. Vinogradoff and F. Morgan 1914 Survey of the honour of Denbigh, 1334. H. Milford. London. K. Meyer 1912 The Laud genealogies and tribal histories. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 8, 291–338. E. Gwynn, E. 1903–35 The Metrical Dindshenchas. 5 vols. Todd Lectures Series VIII–XII. Royal Irish Academy. Dublin. Reprinted 1991. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. T.F. O’Rahilly 1950 Miscellanea: coinneamh, coinne. Celtica 1, 370–5, 408. G. Mac Niocaill 1961 Notitiæ as Leabhar Cheanannais 1033 –1161. Cló Morainn. Baile Átha Cliath. W. Stokes 1862 Three Irish glossaries…O’Davoren’s Glossary (from a manuscript in the Library of the British Museum) etc.. Williams and Norgate. London and Edinburgh. G.W. S. Barrow 1960 Regesta Regum Scottorum, I: The Acts of Malcom IV, King of the Scots, 1153–1165. The University Press. Edinburgh. R. Chapman Stacey 1994 The road to judgement. From custom to court in medieval Ireland and Wales. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia. D.A. Binchy, 1963 Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin. Mediaeval and Modern Irish Series XVIII. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin. C. O’Rahilly, 1976 Táin Bó Cúailnge. Recension I. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Dublin.

aige slige ‘road calves’. Corpus, 94: 127 b 20 (the tract on the Loígsi). This is a variant of the bó slógaid, exacted when an army was on the move, and thus a form of compulsory purveyance, errech. airmitiu ‘reverence’. ACP §13. Perhaps not another name for éirge (airéirge), since both appear in the same stanza. bés/bésad ‘custom’. Corpus, 93–4: 127 b 14, 127 b 44. In the context of the Loígsi tract, this term is probably for the bés tige ‘house custom’, the annual food-render of base clientship. For this see Dál Caladbuig, §4.

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blaí ‘immunity’. Audacht Morainn, §28; Bethu Phátraic, l. 767. A blaí, in this context, is a prohibition on violence attached to an occasion or place rather than to a person. It is permanent rather than temporary. bó etc. bó cís flatha nó ecalsa ‘cow forming tribute paid to a lord or a church’. CIH 38.1; 888.31–6 (bó cach aicme); Meyer, Conall Corc, 57.25–6. A cow was the standard render of a bóaire, who was a base client. bóraime ‘cattle reckoning’. Meyer, Conall Corc, 57.24–6; Frithfholad Muman, §16; AU 721.8; 798.2. The last reference (AU 798.2) demonstrates that this term was not merely used of the tribute paid by the Laigin to an Uí Néill king of Tara. bó slógaid ‘hosting cow’. CIH 372.6–9 (= 888.31–6); Corpus, 94: 127 b 24. This is presumably the commonest form of purveyance used to supply an army. cáin ‘penal authority, tribute, edict’. CIH 219.5; Críth Gablach, §24.340; 79 Legal Glossary (79); Laud genealogies, 316.20; Corpus, 92: 127 a 43; 93: 127 b 13, 94: 127 b 43–4 (cf. Scottish can). For good evidence on ecclesiastical cáin see Bethu Phátraic, LL 2490–05. There is reason to think that this many-sided term was applied to the relationship between an overking and an aithechthúath: cf. Road to judgment, 103–11. It is often coupled with cobach. cartad slige 25 ‘road clearance’. CIH 381.30; 580.7–9; cf. 1549.36–8; Cogitosus, §30. The episode in Cogitosus shows that it might take the form of an obligation imposed by the king of a province which ensured that each population group under his control was responsible for a section of road. cathróe Corpus, 92: 127 a 43. In this context it appears to be a word for a military obligation. cin fine (immunity from) ‘a kinsman’s offence’. ACP §17 (cf. Hibernensis XLII. 29). cís flatha/census regis ‘royal tribute’. CIH 38.21; 54.32; 219.5; 381.14; 401.12; Cath Maige Tuired, §§ 25, 45, 50; AU 853.2 (paid by the Goídil to a Viking leader); Notitiae, no. 1. cobach ‘joint-debt’. CIH 888.38–40 (cf. 888.36–7); Notitiae, no. 1; Corpus, 93: 127 b 13 –14; 94: 127 b 43–4; LU, 14.377; LL 37082–3; Metrical Dindshenchas, III, 162.26 The first reference suggests that cobach sometimes referred to a situation involving three parties: A owes tribute to B, but fails to pay; C then pays on his behalf, and A is then obliged not just to compensate C but to pay him something further to recompense him for his pains. In such a situation, C may well be A’s lord; the whole procedure is reminiscent of the aitire and the ráth.

25 26

110

Also dénum slige / raitte / óenaig. The sense of cobach in Berrad Airechta §§ 44, 51b, 79, is probably irrelevant here: it is glossed (§44) by feichem, and it concerns a relationship between two parties.

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coindem/coindmed ‘billeting’. CIH 850.8, 10; 1544.36; TBC I, l. 7; AU 1063.4 (cf. LU, 13.346;13.360); Notitiae, nos 1, 12; Miscellanea and Scottish conveth < coindmed: Regesta Regum Scottorum, I, 55. congbá(i)l literally ‘joint taking’. CIH 381.22; 580.7; 890.1 5; 909.22. This word is often used of an ecclesiastical foundation, as in ind Núachongbál, ‘the New Foundation’. In the context of kings, however, the term may refer to some form of tribute (hence related to gabál as in salanngabál etc.) or to the ability to acquire part-ownership of the lands of a subject, thus explaining its association with cís (land being sub censu, fo chís). congelt ‘joint grazing’. CIH 223.25; Críth Gablach, §9.83. cúairt maccóem ‘a circuit of young boys’. LL 5934; cf. the Welsh counterpart in Honour of Denbigh, 149, 155, 209, 269. dám ríg (cf. fossugud) ‘royal company’. ACP §19; cf. Welsh dofreth. dénum dúne ‘constructing a fort’. Críth Gablach, §45. dénum tige ‘constructing a house’. Dál Caladbuig, §2; both this and the previous obligation pertain to base clientship. dliged ‘entitlement’. Meyer, Conall Corc, 60.9. Although this is a very general term, it is contrasted in Scéla Cano, 335–40, with cobair ‘aid’: Illann’s subjects promise to help him with extra food-renders and declare that this ‘aid’ will not be at the expense of his dliged. dúnad ‘encampment’. ACP §§ 28, 32, 35; CIH 372.14; Laud genealogies, 316.25–7; AU 730.8; Audacht Morainn, §28; Corpus, 92: 127 a 43. éirge ‘rising’. ACP §13; cf. airéirge, Cáin Shóerraith, §2. errech ‘compulsory purveyance’. Críth Gablach, §44, ibid, Legal Glossary (87). fecht ‘military service’. Notitiae, no. 1; Corpus, 93: 127 b 13. fíadnaise/forgell ‘witness’. ACP §14. forbanda ‘extra exactions’. ACP §18; O’Davoren, 887. forbech (forbach) ‘extra imposition’. Laud genealogies, 316.11, Díre tract §36; CIH 761.35; Cáin Adomnáin, §43.27 fossugud ‘hospitality’. ACP §§ 13, 19. In Críth Gablach used for feeding owed to a noble and his company (e.g. fossugud ochtair, §27.394). Not mentioned in Críth Gablach’s section on the king. fubae (cf. rubae) ‘local police duties, hunting down pirates, horse-thieves, wolves’. CIH 381.30; 580.6; 890.6 8; Guide to early Irish law, 31. gabál ‘taking’. ACP §36; cf. ródgabál etc. below. íarar ‘pursuit’? ACP §14. There is a more general sense of the word, ‘claim’, as in Bretha Déin Chécht, §37.

27

Thurneysen, ‘Aus dem irischen Recht V’, 394.

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lepaid (immunity from) ‘a bed’. ACP §16 (cf. Hibernensis, XLII. 29). The meaning is that the master of the house in which someone stays for one or more nights (hence ‘bed’) is not liable for the offence of his resident. rechtge ‘edict’. See Críth Gablach, ibid, Legal Glossary (104). ríar ‘will’, ‘decision’. ACP §15; cf. Cáin Aicillne, §§ 28, 50, 53, 55, 58; CIH 434.16, 28–32; 435.12–35. The CIH references are from Di Dligiud Rath 7 Somoíne, where a number of particular ríara are listed. ródgabál ‘tax of madder’? Hull, Conall Corc, 900; plant cultivated for a red dye: see DIL under 2 róid; Meyer, Conall Corc, 60.24. rubae (cf. fubae) ‘local defence’. CIH 382.1; 890.9; Guide to early Irish law, 31. salanngabál ‘salt tax’. Meyer, Conall Corc, 60.24. slógad ‘hosting’. CIH 381.8; 889.34–40; ACP §23; Corpus, 93: 127 b 13; 94: 127 b 24–6; Laud genealogies, 316.28; Frithfholad Muman, §17; Notitiae, no. 1. taurthugud ‘protection’. ACP §20; Guide to early Irish law, 140, 184; Críth Gablach, 106–7 (on snádud). tomalt ‘consumption’. Críth Gablach §36; Scéla Cano, 38–9. tortgabál ‘loaf tax’. Corpus, 415: 33c20 (LL), 139: 141a8 (Rawl), pace DIL. trian tobaig ‘enforcement third’. This concept occurs in ACP §24; Guide to early Irish law, 126.

Classified list those in ACP are preceded by an asterisk 1. Renders, taxes, including purveyance (a) General cís flatha congelt (?share-cropping arrangement) (b) Specific commodities aige slige bó cach aicme bó cís flatha nó ecalsa bóraime bó slógaid ródgabál salanngabál tortgabál (c) purveyance errech

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2. Hospitality or billeting dues coindem, coindmed congbál cúairt maccóem *dám ríg *fossugud (cf. taurthugud mís as consideration) 3. Labour dues cartad slige dénum óenaig dénum dúne / ráitte / tige dénum slige 4. Military service *dúnad fecht *forbanda (in the sense of additional exactions after élud ‘desertion’) fubae ocus rubae *slógad 5. Legal powers, immunities and privileges *cin fine *fíadnaise forbech forgell, forgall (cf. fíadnaise) *íarar *lepaid rechtge *trian tobaig 6. Acknowledgement of rank or authority *airmitiu *éirge, airéirge 7. Very general terms capable of aquiring a specific meaning in a given context *dliged *ríar It is apparent that ACP contains neither a full list nor a random selection of royal rights. Its selectivity is evidence enough that its silences are as significant as its statements. In the first place, it never mentions any form of tribute, either general (cís) or particular (such as the various forms of gabál). There is no reference to purveyance (errech), which Críth Gablach shows was a source of resentment.28 Similarly, there are no references to labour dues. This

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is hardly surprising since these seem to have been attached to base-client status, such as the construction of the overking’s house or dún;29 yet it is also true even of the kinds that were probably generally exacted. Work on roads seems, to judge by Cogitosus’s story about the oppression of the Fothairt by other, stronger, peoples, to have been exacted from the peoples of a province, free and base, powerful and weak.30 All the other categories are represented, but still there is a clear preference for the more honourable dues and an avoidance of the less honourable. When it comes to the obligation to provide hospitality, not only was there a limit on the size of the overking’s company, but also the reference was to direct entertainment of the king. There was no mention of billeting, although some presumably took place, given the size of the king’s company even when limited. The explanation may be that direct hospitality given by the client king to his lord was more honourable than billeting. Such at least is the implication of the saga Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin: when Cano and his companions were billeted on the Connachta, that was enough to induce them to leave the province.31 The lavish hospitality they then received at the hands of Illann son of Scandlán, king of Corcu Loígde, was contrasted with that given them by Gúaire Aidne in Connacht, not merely in its profusion but also because it was all received in Illann’s hall.32 ACP was not asserting that no resources passed from the Airgíalla to the Uí Néill, only that what did pass was limited and honourable. Sometimes there was a corollary, that the dues not paid to the king of a province were paid instead to a local overking. The Middle Irish genealogical tract on the Loígsi is quite explicit on this issue. What is not due to the king of Leinster is due to the king of Loíches Réta, the overlord of all the Loígsi.33 This makes it appear as if there were a single, unvarying, set of dues, and that the only question was how far up the political ladder they would go. If the local kingdom was of a ‘free people’, sóerthúath, more would stay with the local king than if it were an aithechthúath, a people of base-client status. Provided that the Loígsi were able to sustain their claim to relative freedom under the king of Leinster, more of their resources would end up in the hands of their own overlord, the king of Loíches Réta and less would pass to the king of Leinster. ACP was pursuing a similar though not identical argument. It was not part of its case that there was a single overking of the Airgíalla, a king of the Airgíalla as a whole. There was thus no single local overlord who could claim the lion’s share of the resources being transferred upwards as royal dues, so leaving only a modest slice for the king of the Uí Néill.

28 29 30 31 32 33

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Binchy, Críth Gablach, 12: §21: ll. 453–4; 22: §44. O’Keeffe, Dál Caladbuig, §2; Binchy, Críth Gablach, 22–3: §45. Connolly and Picard, ‘Cogitosus’, 23–4: §30. Binchy, Scéla Cano, ll. 286–91. Ibid., ll. 328–34. O’Brien, Corpus, 94: 127 b 17 ff..

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Instead an essential element in the legend of the Three Collas was that the Airgíallan dynasties all stemmed from three brothers; and the brothers had participated on an equal footing in making swordland out of former Ulaid territory.34 The approach of ACP was more oblique than that pursued by the tract on the Loígsi. Instead of denying explicitly that renders characteristic of base clientship, and thus of aithechthúatha, should be paid by the Airgíalla, it simply omitted to mention such a possibility. What it did allow was entertainment of the Five Kindreds. So far as the Airgíalla were concerned, such entertainment was probably given primarily by individual kings of the various Airgíallan peoples. As we have seen from Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin, it was more honourable for a king to entertain his guest than to have him and his companions billeted on his subjects. The implication is that such figures as ‘kings of the north’ and ‘kings of the Uí Néill’, as well as ‘the lord of Tailtiu’, must often have been on the road: ‘Arriving on roads they are entitled to maintenance’ (§19). Most of Part II was concerned with the legal and political privileges of the Five Kindreds. One that is intermediate between tribute and legal right is stated in §18: ‘They are entitled to their extra exactions . . . unless hostages are given to them (acht ma ar-da-gíallatar) on the field of battle’. A helpful, though partial, parallel is an entry in AU 822: A hosting by Murchad mac Máele Dúin with the men of the North as far as Ard Brecán. The men of Brega transferred their allegiance to him, that is Diarmait mac Néill 35 with Síl nÁeda Sláne, and they gave hostages to Murchad at Druim Fergusso. The men of Brega were overrun (indred) by Conchobor mac Donnchada and he established himself at Gúalu. Southern Brega was overrun subsequently by him on the First of November and a vast number of the men of Southern Brega fell at his hands, and the Uí Chernaig gave hostages under compulsion. This was a direct challenge by the current king of Cenél nÉogain to the authority of Conchobor as king of Tara. The destination of Murchad’s expedition, Ardbraccan, south-east of Kells and thus in the heart of Brega, suggests that he had already arranged with Diarmait that the men of Brega would go over to him. The annalist, however, saw things more from Conchobor’s standpoint: the action of Síl nÁedo Sláne was élúd ‘desertion’, ‘absconding’, in this instance the rejection of lawful overlordship. Such élúd was also the concern of Críth Gablach; 36 and the language used by the lawyer was very close to that employed by the annalist. The first type of errech, compulsory purveyance, mentioned by Críth Gablach, was one imposed by a king on a people in the course of invading them when they have rejected 34 35 36

O’Brien, Corpus, 147–52, especially 152: 142 b 28 ff.. Perhaps son of Niall mac Conaill Graint, who was described in his obit (AU 778.7) as king of South Brega. Binchy, Críth Gablach, 20, 22: §§ 37, 44.

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his overlordship (errech ar thúaith asidluí oca n-indriud).37 The type of campaign is one mentioned earlier in Críth Gablach as ‘a hosting across a boundary against a túath which rejects his overlordship’ (slógad tar crích fri túaith asidluí ).38 What is not in Críth Gablach but is in the annal entry is a reference to what the client people might do when they have discovered that their rebellion has failed: ‘and the Uí Chernaig gave hostages under compulsion’.39 This is close to ACP’s ‘unless hostages are given to them on the field of battle’. All this makes it likely that forbanda ‘extra exactions’ were not the same as errech ‘forced purveyance’: errech supplied an army as it invaded the rebel people; but the forbanda might be avoided by a submission, even one after a defeat at the hands of the outraged overking. Forbanda may be a term for the extra exactions which would not be imposed on a loyal túath, especially not on a loyal sóerthúath ‘free people’. This, presumably, had been the position enjoyed by the Uí Chernaig of South Brega before their imprudent rebellion; they were, after all, a branch of one of the Five Kindreds. Indeed, to judge by the associations of gíall and gíallnae, as well as by the evidence of Frithfholad Muman, the Uí Chernaig would not normally have given hostages at all. Hence what happened to the Uí Chernaig as a result of their rebellion and their defeat was perhaps that they were forced to give hostages like a mere aithechthúath. A corollary may be that they then became obliged, at least for a time, to give the renders characteristic of an aithechthúath; these might form all or part of the forbanda.40 During the period of punishment the political standing of the proud Uí Chernaig would have been brought lower than that enjoyed by the Airgíalla. The remaining rights ascribed by the poem to the Five Kindreds begin in §13 with a general entitlement to acknowledgement of high status. What is required is airmitiu ‘reverence’ and dagéirge ‘good rising up’. The latter is presumably the same as the airéirge required of any inferior in status, including the free client before his lord.41 It is consonant with the free client status apparently being claimed by the Airgíalla. Airmitiu is more difficult: it is used in Togail Bruidne Da Derga at the inauguration of Conaire Már as king of Tara (in a word-play between airmit and airmitiu), but here we are dealing with the rights of the Five Kindreds, not with those of the lord of Tailtiu. Perhaps it is no more than a term for the general attitude of reverence of which éirge ‘rising up’ is the particular ceremonial expression. The point cannot be that the Five Kindreds had any peculiar or exclusive right to such honour, since ‘rising up’ was due from any inferior to his superior. The significance of this stanza must simply be to assert the superiority in status enjoyed by the Five Kindreds as against all others

37 38 39 40 41

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Ibid., 22: §44 ll. 559–60. Ibid., 20: §37 ll. 512–14. coru giallsat Hui Chernaig ar eicin. The forbanda cannot be the same as the meth, fuilniud and fuillem of base clientship since they presumed that aicillne was the previous relationship. Thurneysen, Cáin Shóerraith, §2; Binchy, Críth Gablach, 20: §36 ll. 504–6.

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in Leth Cuinn – not just the Airgíalla and their equivalents (such as the Cíannachta), but also the ‘excluded Uí Néill’, Cenél Coirpri, Cenél Fiachach and the rest. The other rights are likewise far from being restricted to the Five Kindreds. The value of testimony was governed by the rank of the witness, as illustrated by the rank known as aire forgaill ‘noble of superior testimony’; §14b could therefore have been said of others. The interpretation of §14a is rendered more difficult by uncertainty over the meaning of íarar (perhaps ‘legal pursuit’, such as pursuit of thieves, especially cattle-rustlers),42 but the following phrase co neuch ar-da-gíalla must mean ‘together with anyone who gives hostages to them’. Hence §14a reads ‘They are entitled to demands together with anyone who gives hostages to them’. If this is the right interpretation, the legal right denoted by íarar was enjoyed not just by the Five Kindreds but also by their clients. The same must be true of §15 insofar as all freemen were entitled to compensation for insult. The use of ríar may suggest that the Five Kindreds were entitled to judge the value of their compensations, since ríar is used in Cáin Aicillne for the lord’s right to judge a dispute between himself and his base client.43 Yet, even so, the right acknowledged in §15 is not likely to be in any way exceptional. Slightly more unusual are the privileges covered by §§ 16 and 17. In both cases the Five Kindreds are being declared to have an immunity from vicarious liability for the offences of others. In §16 the vicarious liability arises from the offender’s residence in someone else’s house – in this instance a member of one of the Five Kindreds. If lepaid operated normally, the householder could be pursued for the offence of the person resident in his house. The principle behind this was that men should not harbour offenders. Yet one can see that the principle could cause extreme difficulty for very great men – men whose houses were the resort of many. For them, exemption from the liability arising out of lepaid was thus a valuable privilege. Yet there is no reason to think that this privilege was denied to royal dynasties other than the Five Kindreds. Similarly, §17 covers liability for the offences of a kinsman.44 The value of such exemptions is shown by the Collectio Canonum Hibernensis, which claimed that they were enjoyed by churches in good legal standing (but not a church that was ‘a den of thieves’).45 This may explain the significance of the phrase in §17, ná tercaigther ‘which is not diminished’. This stanza is a little difficult to interpret in that a first reading might lead one to conclude that a ‘kindred which is not diminished’ is one which does not have liability for the offences of its members. In the context of the privileges of the Five Kindreds, however, it is more likely that the Five Kindreds were themselves instances of ‘kindreds which are not

42 43 44 45

See the early Frankish Pactus pro Tenore Pacis (Eckhardt, Pactus Legis Salicae, 251–2); the Dunsæte Agreement, §§ 1–2.2 (Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 374–6). Thurneysen, Cáin Aicillne, §50. Kelly, A guide to Early Irish Law, 13. Collectio Canonum Hibernensis, XLII: 29–31 (Wasserschleben, Die irische Kanonensammlung, 170–1); for churches as ‘dens of thieves’, see, e.g., CIH 1. 27.

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diminished’. In that case such kindreds would enjoy an immunity from being pursued for the offences of a member. The final privilege of immunity – the taurrthugud of §20 – is on a different footing. This is an immunity which members of the Five Kindreds granted to someone who gave them hospitality. It was analogous to the lepaid of §16 in that it arose from residence rather than from kinship, but it was different in that it was granted to the householder by his guest rather than being a privilege of the householder from the start. In this case, moreover, the threat was not a vicarious liability for the offences of another, but rather a liability for one’s own offences. The immunity granted by taurrthugud was only temporary – for a month – and this seems also to have been true of the immunity from lepaid in §16. In §17, however, the corresponding qualification on the immunity from the offences of a kinsman is different: although the Five Kindreds might not be liable for a kinsman, they were expected to bring about a fair settlement of a dispute. The upshot of Part II, the section on the privileges of the Five Kindreds, is that, although they were especially exalted in status, they were not set apart from other dynasties. The key, perhaps, is given by §10 in Part I: the Airgíalla enjoyed comshaíre cenéuil ‘equality of lineage’ with the Uí Néill. If that were conceded, a display of the privileges of the Uí Néill might also be a demonstration of the high rank of the Airgíalla. The underlying message of Part II is that the Five Kindreds, and thus the Airgíalla, enjoyed the same kinds of privileges claimed by others, but they enjoyed them to a higher degree.

III: THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE AIRGÍALLA The change from Part II to Part III is marked by a shift from a list of rights to one of obligations. No longer is the verb ar-dlegat but rather dlegair. Yet the corresponding shift from the Five Kindreds to the Airgíalla proceeds less abruptly. First we have a statement of the obligations of ‘the king of the Uí Néill’ (§§ 21–2), couched in the familiar terms of the just ruler, the fírfhlaith. Since these two stanzas immediately follow those on the Five Kindreds, there may be an implication that their privileges were one side of the bargain while their king’s obligations were the other: if the king of the Uí Néill were not a fírfhlaith, the privileges of the Five Kindreds as well as the authority of their king would be brought into question. Once we move from §22 to §23, from the obligations of the king of the Uí Néill to those of the Airgíalla, the tone changes. Instead of high political theory, we have specific detail. It can be divided into three subsections: (a) slógad ‘hosting’: the military obligations of the Airgíalla; their privileges when on a campaign led by the king of the Uí Néill; their rights when an Uí Néill army caused damage within their territories; (b) ‘the four offences’ which the king of the Uí Néill could punish directly and on his own authority without involving a king of (say) the Airgíalla in the judgement;

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(c) the rights of the Airgíalla as against the king of the Uí Néill. As before, rights and obligations were balanced: the obligation to send contingents to serve in the armies of the Uí Néill was matched by the rights of the Airgíalla when there was a slógad. The ability of the king of the Uí Néill to judge some offences on his own was balanced by the claim that some matters were to be judged by the king of the Uí Néill and whichever king of the Airgíalla was involved sitting jointly (§29).

(a) slógad The underlying assumption behind the stanzas on military matters was that war was as much subject to law as was any other department of life. This assumption was not just found in texts, such as ACP that argued for the rights of those who provided the contingents that fought for the great kings. It was also the assumption of ordinary legal tracts such as Críth Gablach. 46 For the poem, war had its own particular legal regime with its own guarantors – to that extent, war, for those who waged it, was like a peace treaty, a cairde, which also had its special guarantors and procedures. This resemblance, though surprising at first sight, is explicable, since the regime operated for each side in the war separately. It governed relations between allies rather than between enemies. The guarantors, aitiri, and the paying sureties, rátha (§24b and §29b respectively), were intended to secure good relations between the different contingents in an Uí Néill army. The slógad in question was not, therefore, the hosting of a single túath but the army of a great alliance; and between the different contingents there is likely to have been a cairde. The poem makes it evident that, for an expedition to succeed, there was as great a need for diplomacy as in a United Nations army of our own day. 47 Such diplomacy was not left to chance: there were rules in operation before a single soldier stepped outside his house. The preoccupation with the allies of the Uí Néill is understandable, as the Airgíalla formed a major part of the armies of the Uí Néill, especially of Cenél nÉogain. The intention, therefore, was that an army crossing Airgíallan territory should go by the right roads to accepted encampments – ‘unless a knowledgeable person should conduct them to their proper encampments’ (§28b). Losses to local livestock should be penalised as if for theft, and, moreover, at a notably high rate. If not, then at least the case should be judged by the king of the Airgíallan territory along with the king of the Uí Néill. This section is, perhaps, the most partisan of the entire poem: whereas, as we have just seen, penalties for taking livestock from the Airgíalla could be exceptionally severe, those for losses to the Uí Néill were not. Instead of the sevenfold rate of restitution to the Airgíalla

46 47

Binchy, Críth Gablach, 20, 22: §§ 37 and 44; CIH 381: 8; 386: 22. The situation was perhaps only mildly exaggerated in Cath Almaine (Ó Riain, §2): is ed at-beired cach fer do Leith Chuinn cosa roiched in fuacra .i. “dia tí Donn Bó arin sluagad, ragat-sa”.

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(§29a), the Uí Néill were only entitled to straight compensation (§30). Similarly, the limits on the amount of military service are remarkable. A restriction to three fortnights (forty-two days) is not surprising and can readily be paralleled; what is unexpected is that it should be due only once in three years (§23). The claim that the Airgíalla were not obliged to join a hosting in spring and autumn, namely at periods of heavy agricultural work, is understandable; but the annals make it unlikely that such a claim could be upheld in practice. The battle of Seredmag of 743, apparently fought in the vicinity of Kells, resulted in the death of Áed Allán, king of Tara, and of some of the kings of the Airgíalla; it was fought on 14 of September, in the middle of the harvest season.

(b) The four offences These are rights of summary jurisdiction which appear to have been widely acknowledged. They are paralleled in Audacht Morainn; 48 for the first, mesc n-óenaig, there are several attestations in the annals.49 The corresponding blaí ‘immunity from violence’ is also well attested in the Vita Tripartita, with circumstantial detail probably deriving from the early ninth century, since it refers back to the reign of Donnchad Midi son of Domnall (d. 797).50 For the third of the four offences, mesc ndúnaid, there is an important parallel in AU 730: Commixtio dunaid for Domnall mac Murchadho i Culaibh A disturbance of an encampment directed against Domnall mac Murchado in the Cúla. Domnall would be king of Tara, but not until 743. The Cúla, ‘recesses’, in question are probably the Cúla Breg, the area north of Tailtiu, Ráith Airthir (tl. Oristown, par. Teltown, bar. Upper Kells, Co. Meath) and Cenannas (Kells, bar. Upper Kells, Co. Meath). Since Domnall was operating in Brega rather than in Mide, and since also the offence is given as commixtio dúnaid (namely the mesc a dúnaid of the poem), Domnall may have been recognised by Flaithbertach son of Loingsech as ‘king of the Uí Néill’. Domnall’s father Murchad Midi was entitled king of the Uí Néill at his death in 715; the king of Tara then, as in 730, was of the Northern Uí Néill. The title ‘king of the Uí Néill’ may thus have signified that its holder held an authority over the Southern Uí Néill in alliance with, and subordinate to, a Northern Uí Néill king of Tara. The last-mentioned offence is damage to his grassland within his faithche ‘infield’.51 The nature of this offence sets it apart from those recorded in the annals (commixtio agonis and commixtio dúnaid), since the latter were much more public occasions. Admittedly, the

48 49 50 51

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Kelly, Audacht Morainn, 8–11: §28. AU 717.6; 774.7; 777.6; 827.5, 6; 831.5; disturbance on the occasion of an óenach, 789.18. Mulchrone, Bethu Phátraic, 47: ll. 767–72. Kelly, Early Irish farming, 168, 369–70.

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faithche of a king of the Uí Néill was itself a very public place, but there was no public occasion involved. Moreover, this was an offence which could be committed against any ordinary holder of land. Bretha Comaithchesa declares that, at the outset of a pact of comaithches, ‘each of them grants a precinct to the other’.52 The word in Bretha Comaithchesa translated ‘precinct’, díguin (literally ‘undamage’) is the very term used in the poem for a prohibition on damage (or theft) within the area around the house known as the faithche.53 Damaging grassland in someone’s faithche was probably far from being a rare event. What made it serious enough to be included among the four offences subject to summary jurisdiction was that it constituted a challenge to the honour of the owner of the faithche; 54 and in this instance the honour challenged was that of the king of the Uí Néill.

(c) The rights of the Airgíalla The last subsection of Part III is taken up with a general list of the rights of the Airgíalla. Some of these might have been taken for granted: the claim that the land of the Airgíalla was their indefeasible entitlement (§38) is only remarkable in that it needed stating. At the date of this text the large-scale annexations of Airgíallan territory that would create the later Tír Eóghain were still in the future. Yet the overall impression of §§ 34–8 is of the already evident threat posed to the Airgíalla’s internal arrangements by the power of their Uí Néill overlords. For example, the right to enforce claims against their neighbours by the threat of war has to be asserted (§38b) in terms recalling a passage of Críth Gablach.55 Similarly, §37 uses the verb ad-fíri employed in Cáin Domnaig for information given by a third party leading to a prosecution for an offence.56 The poem is anxious to avoid others being drawn into a case through íartach, a form of liability, as the context shows, which falls on someone other than the offender. 57 Only ‘the oath of the one who is accused’ (an oath denying guilt) should be demanded. This close judicial intervention within the affairs of the Airgíalla is suggestive of the cánai ‘edicts’, and especially of the way those laws co-opted local authority and local informers in an exercise of social control directed by a major king. Just such a cáin (Cáin Phátraic) was promulgated by Áed Allán in the years 734–7, at a date perhaps close to that of the poem.

52 53 54 55 56 57

See above, 104–6. See also no. 46, the Díguin tract, in Breatnach, ‘On the original extent of the Senchas Már’, 37. Greene, Fingal Rónáin, ll. 233–6; Charles-Edwards and Kelly, Bechbretha, n. to §50. Binchy, Crith Gablach, §37: ll. 511–12. Hull, Cáin Domnaig, §§ 2–4, 5. DIL has íartach ‘restitution’, ‘immediate liability’, the latter being as opposed to tánaise: all examples are from commentary. The best for our purposes, among those given in DIL, is CIH 1384: 9 ff. There is also the problem of whether íartach is related to íartaige, íardaige, Cáin Aicillne, §§ 33, 34 (and also 239), Cáin Lánamna, §25 n., Bretha Crólige, §42 n., translated ‘after-payment, subsequent liability’ by Binchy.

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IV: THE SIXTH-CENTURY CONTRACTS The final part of the poem invokes the authority of two agreements said to have been made in the sixth century. I shall postpone the question of whether there is any historical reality behind this assertion and, instead, consider the nature of the two agreements as stated in the poem. The content of this agreement is summarised in the term comshaíre used in §44; similarly, in §42 we are told that the agreement is not an adbar ndoíre, not a cause of lack of freedom. No further detail need be given, since the earlier sections of the poem have set out a view of what was agreed. Most space is given to the various sureties. Not only are we told what type of surety was used, but they are also named. In the case of the first contract, that between the Airgíalla and the Uí Néill, the sureties included the natural elements: the sun, moon, earth, and so on.58 This is not true for the contract between the Airgíalla themselves, so that the contract with the Uí Néill has the more mythical aspect. The named guarantors for the first contract are described as witnesses (fíadain) who bound (naiscid) the contract. This very probably means that they were seen as nadmann ‘binding sureties’, since one of the central functions of the naidm was to witness to the contract.59 Those who can be identified seem to belong, for the most part, to the first half of the sixth century.60 The second contract has both rátha ‘paying sureties’ and aitiri ‘hostage sureties’, but only the aitiri were named. The latter were the characteristic guarantors of major public agreements between two or more túatha, such as the cairde.61 Since that is just what the agreement among the Airgíalla was, there is nothing surprising about the presence of the aitiri and also their high status. The first represented Uí Moccu Uais, the second Uí Chremthainn, the third Ind Airthir, and the fourth the Mugdorna. They cannot all have been contemporaries and must have been selected at a later period on the grounds that they were distinguished persons in the history of their respective dynasties. V. CONCLUSION So what should we make of this partisan poem? It is, admittedly, an adroit compound of law and history. The historical element depends upon a conception of the Airgíalla as a single group of kindred dynasties, united by cairde in the double sense of a treaty dated to the sixth century and of a common ancestor placed in the pre-Christian period. The poem makes specific reference in §8 to one of the three brothers, all called Colla (Conlae), the warriors who conquered their lands from the Ulaid. Yet there is every reason to think that 58 59 60 61

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For these see Binchy, ‘Celtic suretyship, a fossilized Indo-European institution?’, 357 (reprint, 362). Stacey, The road to judgment, 34–8. See below, 219–224. Stacey, The road to judgment, 90–4. There appears to have been a tract on the subject of the cairde, Bretha Cairdi, Breatnach, ‘On the original extent of the Senchas Már’, no. 31, 31–2.

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this story and the genealogical doctrine behind it are fictitious. The question, therefore, is whether, in this poem compounded of law and history, the law was just as fictitious as the history. Even the sureties, paraded by name, cannot have been contemporaries. The legal guarantors were thus part of the fiction. Elsewhere I have argued that the poem presents one side’s view of a real agreement, made in the 730s, between the Airgíalla and Áed Allán.62 It was part of Áed Allán’s demolition of the power of Cenél Conaill in the north. The problem was that, while it was easy to see why Áed Allán (evidently a formidable military leader) might have defeated Flaithbertach son of Loingsech, it was much less easy to explain why his achievements endured after his death in 743. The problem was not the victories of Áed Allán but the very permanence of the shift of power from Cenél Conaill to Cenél nÉogain. Yet, if, by conceding a set of privileges in a new cairde, Áed Allán had rallied the Airgíalla behind Cenél nÉogain, just as he put the power of Cenél nÉogain behind Armagh, all might be explained. Yet for the Airgíalla there would have been one severe problem: the agreement had to be made to endure even when the Southern Uí Néill were dominant. This, I suggest, was the purpose behind the poem and behind the legend of the Three Collas. The kinship and the cairde had to be with the Uí Néill as a whole. The claims made in the poem had, therefore, to stay tolerably close to the agreement actually made with Áed Allán c. 734, but it also needed to be projected back into the past so as to be acceptable to the Five Kindreds as a whole. If this historical scenario is accepted, the poem does contain real law, but it belongs to the 730s, not to the sixth century.

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The Airgíalla Charter Poem : Edition Edel Bhreathnach and Kevin Murray 1 MANUSCRIPTS AND EDITIONS The legal poem Ar-síasair coimdiu Tailten which is referred to as the ‘Airgíalla Charter Poem’ (ACP) in this volume, defines the relationship between the Airgíalla and the Uí Néill. The text was edited, with some marginal notes, by Máirín O Daly under the title ‘A poem on the Airgialla’ in Ériu 16 (1952), 179–88. The earliest copy of the poem is found in the sixteenthcentury manuscript National Library of Ireland G7, originally part of the Phillipps Collection. An eighteenth-century copy, a transcription of G7, survives in RIA 23 L 14 (42m). Scribal notes and comments suggest that G7 was associated with the Ó Cionga and Ó Ceanndubháin families of Galway and Westmeath.2 O Daly, who edited a series of texts from G7, 3 commented on the two primary characteristics of the manuscript, namely, that it contained very old material and that the orthography was peculiar. She noted, for example, the occurrence of p for b and ss for s. She suggested that while the scribe copied faithfully from his exemplar, he did not always understand what he had copied.4 Ní Shéaghdha noted the similarity between the contents of G7, RIA MS 23 N 10 and BL MS Egerton 88, also observing that the orthography in some of the texts in Egerton 88 showed eccentricities similiar to those in G7.5 G7 contains a sizeable collection of material thought by scholars to have formed part of the early codex Cín Dromma Snechtai, including Scéla Mongáin, Tucait Baile Mongáin, Compert Conchobuir, Togail Bruidne Da Derga (short version), Compert Con Culainn and Imacallam in Drúad Brain 7 na Banfhátha Febuil. 6 Other early texts in G7 include the dinnshenchas of Mag Febuil and Temair, [A]ithbi damsa bess mara (Lament of the Old Woman of Beare) and Lánellach Tigi Rích 7 Ruirech. LANGUAGE AND SYNTAX Insofar as its language and metre allow for any inferences regarding dating, ACP would seem to belong to the Classical Old Irish period with regard, for example, to the use of infixed pronouns, the presence of deponent verbs and the preservation of the neuter gender. Unlike 1

2 3 4 5 6

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We wish to thank John Carey for his invaluable comments offered during the preparation of this edition. We also thank Francis John Byrne and Thomas Charles-Edwards for their advice at various stages of editing. We are responsible for any errors and for the final decisions taken with regard to the edition and translation. Ní Shéaghdha, Catalogue of NLI manuscripts, Fasc. I, 37. O Daly, ‘On the origin of Tara’; ‘A chóicid choín Chairpri cruaid’; ‘Lánellach tigi rích 7 ruirech’. O Daly, ‘On the origin of Tara’, 186. Ní Shéaghdha, Catalogue of NLI manuscripts, Fasc. I, 37. Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’.

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texts such as Audacht Morainn or BCC, however, it contains few archaic or early features. In the following analysis the reading of the restored text is provided.

Orthography G7’s orthography presents certain difficulties in the preparation of an edition due to its peculiar features. The following orthographic features are attested in the MS: – final -th: §1b frithchétfith, 2a ar-gníth, 3b sosath, 13b fossuguth, 20a taurrthugeth, 25a sonath, 25b torshuth, 36a saigith – -ie- rather than -ia-: 5a ier, 6b ier, 12b Diermata, 24a die mbet, 26a frie, 27b Airgíellnae; – other forms such as unstressed -e-: 3a Mumen. Although the above might be construed as linguistically early forms, because similar forms also occur in Middle Irish texts preserved in the same MS, they may also be interpreted as orthographic practices of the scribe.

Syntax A notable feature in §§ 1, 2, 5 is the apparently haphazard word-order which makes precise interpretation difficult. Early forms occur in the poem, although they are not numerous. The conjunction sceo occurs in §§ 1 and 2, in both instances in phrases which may be early glosses. Sceo continued to be used into the Middle Irish period and is not necessarily indicative of an early text. 7 Absence of the copulative conjunction ocus (7) was regarded by Binchy and accepted by Kelly as a feature of the archaic stratum of the law-tracts and other early texts. 8 Ocus occurs in this poem at §§ 21b, 22, 40b, 41b. The independent dative is attested in §7 (mínib / ainmínib), §21 (neurt / recht) and §25 (erruch / fogamur), although the latter form occurs with a preposition in the MS. One possible example of tmesis occurs at §8b caín- sreith -síasatar. Examples of Bergin’s rule – whereby simple and compound verbs may be placed at the end of their clauses, in conjunct flexions or prototonic forms respectively – occur in §1 (coimdemmar; soimlemmar) and in §5 (lámnatar; cachnatar), §17 (tercaigther, certaigther) although the examples in §1 are restored forms, not attested in the MS.

Other possible dating features Although the orthography and the syntax point to the possibility of the preservation of early or archaic features, there is very little evidence in the text to support such a conclusion. Már is preserved once (§46a) in the MS in a rhyming position (although mór is written twice (§§ 3, 12)); to-ssaiget (§16a) may be an early form, but this is not certain (MS tossaig); moccu is present (§42b), preserved by the MS as mac ua; and, the old gen. sg. ending in –o (§47a 7 8

DIL s.v., for example, quotes the phrase mna sceo ingena from the Middle Irish text Cath Maige Roth. Binchy, ‘Bretha Déin Chécht’, 4 para 2; Kelly, Audacht Morainn, xxxiii.

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rátho) is also attested. Nonetheless, a number of possible later forms are also attested, such as MS giallsatur (§8), MS not biatho (with loss of Class C infixed pronoun, §20a), MS andénait (§24b) and MS femdenn (§47a). These forms are discussed in the Notes. From a historical perspective, the date most appropriate to the composition of the poem would be in the second quarter of the eighth century (see Charles-Edwards, 122–3). The linguistic evidence, however, cannot support a date much earlier than 800 AD.

Metre The metre is not consistent throughout the poem. The only constant feature is that each stanza consists of two lines of twelve syllables interrupted at certain points at which the legal subject matter seems to change. It is most common for lines to include five stresses and, with few exceptions, to have only two stresses in the last five syllables of each line. These twelvesyllable lines have the caesura at different points (i.e. 7+5, 6+6, 8+4), although 7+5 is the dominant pattern. However, there are many sections in which it is difficult to decide where the caesura should be, or whether they may be regarded as twelve-syllable lines without break. Carney observed that large parts of ACP and the dinnshenchas poem entitled ‘On the origin of Tara’ (also edited by O Daly) had ‘close metrical affinity’ with the metre of the Old Irish poem ‘The Irish Gospel of Thomas’, particularly in its use of the 7+5 metrical pattern. He dated this poem to c. AD 700.9 The metrical structure of ACP appears to coincide with the scheme suggested by Charles-Edwards for the legal subject-matter: 10 I. §§ 1–12 seem to be a form of draignech. The syllable count is 12 3. Alliteration peaks in this section and incorporates: – standard alliteration: §1b Airgíallnae fris frithchétfith soíri soimlemmar; – connective alliteration (fidrad freccomail) in §§ 1–4; – one tentative example of ‘leap-frog alliteration’: §1a Ar-síasair coimdiu Tailten suidi coimdemmar. Repetition of certain words occurs sporadically: ar-síasair (§§ 1, 2, 3), fri (§4), ba (§6), fria (§9), Áed (§11) and clann (§12). II. §§ 13–20. 13b, which is hypersyllabic, introduces Part II, the ‘ar-dlegat section’, which enumerates the rights and privileges of the Five Kindreds of the Uí Néill. The dominant syllable count is 12 2. While it is possible that this is a continuation of the syllable count of draignech, an element of dechnad cummaisc may have been introduced in this section,11 9 10 11

126

Carney, Poems of Blathmac, xxxiv n. 80. Charles-Edwards, above, 101. Murphy, Early Irish metrics, 12, 84.

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with no natural break obvious after four, six or eight syllables in many lines. Alliteration is sporadic. Anaphora occurs in relation to the verb ar-dlegat (§§ 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20). III. §§ 21–39. As with §13b, §20b is hypersyllabic and introduces the ‘dlegair section’, which relates the obligations due from the king of the Uí Néill (§21) and from the Airgíalla (§23). The introduction at §34 to the rights of the Airgíalla is not marked as prominently as the changes at §13b and §20b, although the phrase díles do occurs repeatedly in §§ 34–8. The final syllable count varies between 12 1 and 12 2. The appearance of 12 1 may introduce dechnad mbrechtfelesach,12 also with no natural breaks in the lines. Instances of alliteration occur and certain words are repeated: dlegair (§§ 21, 22, 23), mesc (§32a), aurnaidm (§34a), co (§38b). Examples of internal rime occur: §31a dlegair do ríg Uë Néill a mbreth ina réir. IV. §§ 40–49. The syllable count is predominantly 12 1. Alliteration occurs sporadically. Technically the poem lacks a dúnad ‘closure’, although it might be argued that it is concluded by a comindsma or weak dúnad (§2a suidigud: §49b suidigud sír). The rhyme allows for the restoration of the following final unstressed syllables. Final unstressed –a: §9 aidbdena : coibdena; §14 ar-da-gíalla : fíadna. Final unstressed –(a)e: §23 gíallnae : mbliadnae; §26 indnae : ingrae. Final unstressed –(a)i: §10 Airgíallnai : ilblíadnai. Final unstressed –e: §7 indaili : immairi; §13 airéigme : daigéirge; §42 doíre : Maíle. Final unstressed –i: §3 fledtaige : sertshuide; §16 airlisi : airnisi. Final unstressed –iu: §2 cathaigiu : airidiu. Final unstressed –o > –a: final unstressed –o is indicated by –a in the MS, but is restored in the edition as follows: §12 íarmarto : Díarmato; §§ 18 fhlatho : chatho; §20 bíatha : íatha. The following rhymes are imperfect and no solution of the problems present themselves: §40 esbai : éscae; §43 Mac Erce : airdercai.

METHOD OF EDITING Two texts have been provided in this edition, a normalized text and a diplomatic text placed beneath for ease of reference. Since the poem survives in a sixteenth-century manuscript with peculiar orthographical characteristics, the primary aims in normalising the text were to reduce the effect of later orthographic interference and to provide the clearest interpretations possible. Where a considerable deviation from the MS occurs, the justification for such a decision is discussed in the Notes. The numbers in square brackets in the translation cross-refer to those in Prosopography I.

12

Ibid., 14.

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TEXT 1. Ar-síasair coimdiu Tailten suidi coimdemmar Airgíallnae fris frithchétfith soíri soimlemmar. 2. Suidigud fír for Érenn ar-gníth cathaigiu ar-síasair airimda esrada airidiu. 3. Ar-síasair rí Mumen mórdescert fledtaige rí Laigen fris co lleth cham sosath srethshuide. 4. Sirt rí Connacht ar cúl rígraid nad frithchomart fri senchus crích fri fásach fír fri fiscomarc. 5. Clanda íar sin Coirpri Lifechair lámnatar fochlu roë ilach fri clasa cachnatar. 6. Do-rind a rainn donaib bráithrib íar n-airechus ol ba é ba sinser íar fir íar fénechus. 7. Rannais doïb mínib ainmínib indaili co fitir cách sonnraid airdirc a immairi. 8. Clanda Colla Óiss coraib catha gíallatar fri ríg tuaiscirt cétgretha caín- sreith -síasatar.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

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[ ]rsiasar coimdhí temrae scéo tailten suidhi coimhdemhair. airgialna fris frithcétfith. soíre soimlemair Suidiugudh fir for erenn aurgníth cathigi arsiasir airimdha esradha sceo airidhíu Arsiasiur ri mumhen mordescert fledtáighi ri loigen friss colleth cam sosath sertsúidhi Sirtt righ connacht ar cul rigrad nad frithcomartat fri seanchus crich fri fasach fir fri fischomarc Clanda iersin Choirpre Lifechair. lamhnathar fochla roe ilach fri clasa cachnathor Dorrainda raind dona braitriph iar noirichus. ol ba he ba sindser fir ier fenechass Raindis doiph miniph ainmínoph indaile. co fider cach sondradh oirderc aimaire Clanda iersin colla ós scoraibh catha giallsatur. fri righ tuaiscirt .c. gretha. caoin sretha siasatur.

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TRANSLATION 1.

Let us estimate the seats over which the lord of Tailtiu presided, let us measure the privileges of the Airgíallnae in comparison to him.

2.

A just seating arrangement was made for the warriors of Ireland, he presided over couches, strewn rushes, front-seats.

3.

The king of Munster presided over the great south of the banqueting-hall, the king of Leinster facing him, with a slanting flank, a terrace of well-arranged seats.

4.

The king of Connacht spread out in the back a line of kings that has not been offended, for the lore of boundaries, for just precedent, for learned inquiry.

5.

Then the kindreds of Coirpre Lifechair [ii: 1] are born, they chanted a shout of victory against choirs in the battlefield in the north.

6.

He marked out their share for the brothers according to nobility, for it was he who was senior according to justice and customary law.

7.

He divided [property] among them both in smooth and rough [lands] and livestock, so that each one knew the conspicuous boundary of his ridge.

8.

The kindreds of Colla Óss [ii: 2], in contracts of battles which are entered into in clientship, well did they array a battalion of great strength against the king of the north.

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9. Ro suidiged suidigud fír fria n-aidbdena fria slúagada fria cúangala fria coibdena. 10. Comshaíre cenéuil do Uíb Néill fri Airgíallnai acht clanda ríg con-oatar fír tria ilblíadnai. 11. Áed Allán Áed mac Ainmerech at-n-amrammar Áed Sláine síthe ata soírem samlammar. 12. Cland in sin Conaill Chremthainne caín íarmarto cland Cholmáin Bic clann Cholmáin Móir maic Díarmato. 13. Na cóic clanda manus-lia éilned airéigme ar-dlegat a fossuguth ar-dlegat a n-airmitin ar-dlegat a ndaigéirge. 14. Ar-dlegat íarara co neuch ar-da-gíalla ar-dlegat fiadnaise it clethe for fíadna. 15. Ar-dlegat ríara dïa rúadruccib ránib ó chot-n-oathar cech óen úadib dia ngrádib. 16. Nís-len lepaid na-í to-ssaiget airlisi acht ní lécet co íarmís bata a n-airnisi.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

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Ruhsudhigsed sudhiugud fir fria naidpheana.fria sluagh adha fri cuanghala fria chaipdeana Comshaíre ceneuil do uipneill fri oirgialda. acht clanda righ conoatar fir tria ilbliadna Aod Aldan Aod mac Aínmerech molt- adnadhrumur Aod Sláine sithe soimlemur adasoiremh samhlamhor Clann insin conuill cremtoine caoin iarmorta cland colmáin pic cland colmain moir meic diermata. Na cóic clanna sin manus liadh elnedh aireighmhe ardlegaid a fosaiguth ardlegaid anairmitin ardleghaid a ndaigherghe Ardleghaid a níarara co neoch ardogialla. ardlegaid a fiadnuse or id clethe for fhiadna Ardlegaid a riara. dia ruaidgrisib ruicib ránib o chotnoathar cech aen uadib díangradib Niss len lebaid nihi tossaig inaurlise acht ni lecet coiarmis bad a nairnisi

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9.

A true seating arrangement has been established for their representatives, their followers, their valorous bands, their troops.

10. Equality of lineage for the Uí Néill and Airgíallnae except for the kindreds of kings who preserve justice through many years. 11. Áed Allán, Áed mac Ainmerech let us marvel at him, Áed Sláine [ii: 3] of peace who are the noblest whom we compare. 12. Then the descendants of Conall Cremthainne [ii: 4], fair the posterity, the descendants of Colmán Bec [ii: 5], the descendants of Colmán Mór mac Diarmato [ii: 5a]. 13. The five kindreds unless the defilement of complaint were to follow them, they are entitled to their entertainment, to their reverence, to their good rising [before them]. 14. They are entitled to demands together with anyone who gives hostages to them, they are entitled to testimony, they are chiefs over witnesses. 15. They are entitled to claims [for compensation] for their red noble blushing, since each one of them protects himself according to their rank. 16. Those who make for an enclosure, protection does not adhere to them, provided they do not neglect to the end of the following month what may be bound upon them.

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17. Nís-lenat cinaid na fine ná tercaigther acht cert cáich fora chomthrom cuibrend certaigther. 18. Ar-dlegat a forbanda a suidiu fhlatho acht ma ar-da-gíallatar i rroï chatho. 19. Ar-dlegat fossugud ic ascnam i ssétaib acht dám ríg nád fulangar cinges co cétaib. 20. Ar-dlegat taurrthugeth mís neoch noda-bíatha sech ní acartar ní tacartar it sáera a n-íatha. 21. Dlegair do ríg Uë Néill rád cobsaidi cert oc dígdi Deë na n-anolc neurt ocus recht. 22. Dlegair dó bretha la fír ocus síd saigthech dlegair dó ith ocus mlicht ocus mess maigthech. 23. Dlegair donaib Airgíallaib córus a ngíallnae slóged trí cóicthiges dïa teóra blíadnae. 24. In tres cóicthiges doïb dia mbet for slúaged ní tét fora n-aitiri a ndo-gnïat d’úabar.

17. Nis lenat cinaidh fine na tercighther acht cert cáic fora corrum fora cuibrend certaither 18. Ardleghaid a forbanda a suithe flatha acht ma argiallathar i rroe catha 19. Ardleghaid i ffossugudh ic ascnam i sseta acht damh rig nat fulangur cinces co ceta 20. Ardleghaid taurrthugeth mis do neoch not biatho sech ni acrathar ni tacrathar it saora i niatha 21. Dleghar do rig hue néill rad cobsaid cert oc digde e na nolc nert 7 rect 22. Dleghar do bretha la fir 7 sid saigthech dleghar hith is blicht 7 mess maigthech 23. Dleghar dona hairghiallaib a corus a ggialla sloged cecha [gloss: no tri] coicithiss dia teora bliadna 24. In tres cuicicithis die mbeth for sluoged ni thet fora n aitire cech a ndénait duabar

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17. The offences of the kindred which is not diminished do not adhere to them, provided that the right of everyone to his share is settled. 18. They are entitled to their extra exactions from the seat of a ruler unless hostages are given to them on the field of battle. 19. Arriving on roads they are entitled to maintenance, except for a king’s retinue, which advances with hundreds, which is not supported. 20. They are entitled [to give] a month’s protection to anyone who feeds them, they are neither sued nor argued against [in a judicial case], their lands are free. 21. There is due from the king of the Uí Néill a strong statement of rights, asking pardon of God of the great good with strength and authority. 22. There is due from him judgements with truth and a truce for claimants, there is due from him corn and milk and abundant mast. 23. There is due from the Airgíalla the proper arrangement of their hostageship, a hosting of three fortnights every three years. 24. Their third fortnight, if they may be on hosting, that which they do from arrogance does not go surety.

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25. Ní dlegar slóged díb ind erruch sáer sonath ní biattar fogamur i tecmalar torshuth. 26. Trïan cach thuillme doïb segar fria n-indnae áit i mbí cned do ríg nó élúd nó ingrae. 27. Rígrath clainde Echach Doimlén tuir do thelaib ind Airgíallnae ótá Búaigni co Loch Febail. 28. Cumal cacha forbaise fessar co slógib acht manis túissed eolach dia ndúnaib córib. 29. Sechtae do cach chethir ro malartad úaidib nó ríar a rríg dib línaib nó ráth a sslúaigid. 30. Ní dlegat Uï Néill fuilled dïa ndíthaib acht folta cutrumma ara cend dia críchaib. 31. Acht mad cethir cinid con-ammadair in chléir dlegair do ríg Uë Néill a mbreth ina réir. 32. Mesc n-óenaig fair mesc cuirmthige mesc a dúnaid díguin im fhér a fhaithche is damnae mbúraig.

25. Ni dleghar sluoghed dibh in derriuch seaor sona ni biathtar [gloss: nó ní dlegar] hi foghamair hi teclamar torsuth 26. Trian cacha toillmi doib segair frie n idna ait a mbi cned do rich no heuloud no hingra 27. Rigraith clainni heuchach doimleun tuir do telaib [gloss: no do tebaib] ind airgiellnae óta búaighni co loch febhail 28. Cumal cacha forbasi fess air forib co sloúgib acht manus túissed eolach dia ndunadaib corib 29. Sechda do cach ceithir romalortadh huaidib no riar airrig dib linuib no rath a sluogidh 30. Ni dleghid hu néll fuilledh dia ndithaib acht folta cudruma ara cend dia crichaibh 31. Acht cethir cinid cunamhadir in cléir dlegair do rig hue neill a mbreth ina réir 32. Messc naenaich fair mesc cuirmthige messc dunaid a diguin im fer a faithchi is damna mburaigh

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25. A hosting is not due from them in springtime, noble statement, they are not provided for in autumn in which produce is gathered. 26. A third of all revenue for them is claimed for their battalion wherever there is a wound to a king or desertion or disloyalty. 27. The Airgíallnae from Búaigne to Loch Febail are the kings of the descendants of Eochu Doimlén [ii: 6], troops from heights. 28. A cumal for every camp which spends the night with hosts, unless a knowledgeable person should conduct them to their proper encampments. 29. Seven-fold [compensation] for every domestic animal of theirs that has been destroyed or the judgement of both their kings or the surety of their hosting. 30. The Uí Néill are not entitled to extra payment for their losses, but the equivalent means [brought] to them to their territories. 31. But though it be four crimes which the learned have adjudged, the king of the Uí Néill is entitled to judge them on his [own] authority. 32. The disruption of an assembly upon him, the disruption of a drinking-hall, the disruption of his encampment, violation of the grass of his faithche, it is an occasion of offence.

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33. Ní brisiud glinde ná géill do ríg Uë Néill ci do-fé na cinta sin cach ndíriuch dia réir. 34. Díles donaib Airgíallaib ó ríg Lethe Cuind aurnaidm Fiacha meic Noë aurnaidm nDego Duirn. 35. Díles doïb a coibche a crecha i ndúnad díles doïb a rratha airet ro múnad. 36. Saigith co leith i ngabáil ó ríg cibé tucht it sainmáim con-midetar i n-athbach i n-ucht. 37. Ní dlegar íartach foraib do chin ad-fírther acht lugae ind-í fors’ lither nó cin do-gníther. 38. Díles doïb a feraind ó ríg cen nach mrath díles dóib a saigith co fír co síd co cath 39. Nó déitiu i comgíallnai is cían ó boí bés la tomailt a n-airdligid fhlatho rígdae in grés. 40. Rátha ina commus so ní adbar n-esbai muir ocus talam la nem, gréin ocus éscae.

33. Ni brissiud glinde na géill do rig hua néill cidufe na cinta sin cach ndiriuch dia réir 34. Diliss dinaib hairgíallaib o ricc lethe cuind aurnaidm fiacha mec noe aurnaidm degha duirn 35. Diless doib a coibche a crechai i ndunad dilius doib arrath arut ro munatth 36. Saigither co leith in gapail o rig cibe tucht it sain maim conmidither i nathbach i nucht 37. Ni dlegor iardach foraib do chin adírther acht lugha indi forslither no cin dognither 38. Diless doib a ferainn o rig cin nach mbráth diless doib a saigich co fir co sid no co cath 39. No déiti i comgialla is cian o bi béss la tomoilt in airddligid flathai rigdho in gréss 40. Ratha ina chomuso ni hadbor nessba muir 7 talam lia nem grian 7 esscae

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33. It is no breaking of a pledge or guarantee for the king of the Uí Néill though he punish those crimes immediately on his authority. 34. The binding of Fiacha mac Noë [ii: 7, 7a] and the binding of Daig Duirn [ii: 8] belong by right to the Airgíalla from the king of Leth Cuind. 35. Their bride-price and their spoils in an encampment belong to them by right, their payments belong to them by right, to the amount that it has been taught. 36. A claim up to half in booty from a king, whatever the manner, they are different amounts which are prescribed in the second and in the first [waves]. 37. Compensation is not due from them for a crime that may be substantiated [against them] except for the oath of the one who is accused or a crime that is committed. 38. They are entitled to their lands from a king, without any treachery, they are immune from a claim, in truth, in peace, in battle. 39. Or recognition in a mutually beneficial alliance, long has it been the custom, by exerting their prerogative of sovereignty, royal the practice. 40. These are sureties in authority, it is not the cause of folly, sea and land with the sky, sun and moon.

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41. Drúcht ocus daithen la sin apstil Dé do nim reraig fáithi úasalaithir is aingil gil 42. Nasctae fiadna ind nadma ní adbar ndoíre Epscop Echu Epscop Áed Senach moccu Maíle. 43. Sétnae Nindid mac Duäch ocus Mac Erce Cuanu Colmán na nAirther batar airdercai. 44. It rátha a rrígclanda feib rond-fhitir cách clechtaït a comshaíre ó indiu co tí in bráth. 45. Do-cuitig in combráithre ind ocus i céin im shaigid doïb a fír for ríg Uë Néill. 46. It sruithi a n-aitiri do-chuitchetar már Bécc mac Cuanach Dam Arcait Éogan ó Loch Cál. 47. Ocus rí Rátho Combair ní foímid nach mbáig Máel Bresail mac Maíle Dúin uä angbaid Áil. 48. Do chlaind mac nEchach Doimléin in slóg sochla sóer Colla Fo Chrí Colla Óss Colla Mend nád móeth. 49. Suide doïb for láim ríg céin con-ngaibther tír ó rígraid cen chairigud is suidigud sír. Ar-síasair.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Drucht 7 daithen la sein apstail de do neim reraig faithe uasalaithre 7 aingil gil Nasscaidhe fiadhan ind admha ni hadhbhar doire espoc echa espoc aed senach mac ua máili Setno nindid mac duach 7 mac erca. cuana colman na nairther batar airdercai At ratha a rrigchlanno feb ronfitir cach ara clechtat a comsaisi ondiu coti an brath Do choidich in combraithri ind ocus i cein im saigid doib a fir for rig ua neill At sruith i naitire dochuitchetar már bec mac cuanach dam aircith eogan o loch cál Ocus ri ratho comhbhair ni femdenn nach baig mael bressail mac mail duin .h. angbaid áil 48. Do clainn mac nechach doimlen in slog sochla soer colla fo chri colla óss colla mend nat math 49. Suidi doib for laim rig cein congapther tailte tir o rigraid cin cairiugud is saigiugudh sir Airsiasar

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41. Dew and light with that, God’s apostles from heaven, aged men, prophets, patriarchs and bright angels 42. Who bind the witnesses of the contract, it is not a cause of subjection, Bishop Echu [ii: 9], Bishop Áed [ii: 10], Senach moccu Maíle [ii: 11]. 43. Sétnae [ii: 12], Nindid mac Duach [ii: 13] and Mac Erce [ii: 14, 14a], Cuanu [ii: 15], Colmán of the Airthir [ii: 16, 16a], they were famous. 44. Their royal descendants are paying sureties, as all know it, in order that they exercise their equal nobility, from today until Doomsday. 45. The group of kinsmen has sworn near and far concerning the pursuit of their rights from the king of the Uí Néill. 46. Their hostage sureties are venerable men who have sworn mightily, Bécc mac Cuanach [ii: 17], Dam Arcait [ii: 18], Éogan from Loch Cál [ii: 19]. 47. And the king of Ráith Combair, he does not shirk any contest, Máel Bresail mac Maíle Dúin fierce grandson of Ál [ii: 20]. 48. From the descendants of the sons of Eochu Doimlén, the renowned, noble host, Colla Fo Chríth, Colla Óss, Colla Mend who is not feeble. 49. A seat for them beside a king as long as the land is held, from a line of kings without reproach, it is a lasting arrangement. He presided.

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NOTES §1 The opening stanza testifies to the fact that this poem deals with the contractual obligations between the Uí Néill and Airgíalla, and exemplifies the use of legal terminology that is a conspicuous feature throughout the text. For commentary on the legal aspects of this text see Gerriets (1987), Stacey (1994, 92–3, 98–100, 107, 202, 265 n. 95) and Charles-Edwards in this volume 101–23. 1a Ar-síasair The capital is missing from the MS which reads [ ]rsiasar. We follow O Daly who took it as the 3 sg. pret. of vb. *air-said- ‘presides’. [MS temrae scéo] This could be an early insertion if sceo is regarded as an archaic feature. The use of sceo in Audacht Morainn is regarded as an indication of the early date for the text (Kelly 1976, xxxiii). Ó hAodha in his edition of Bethu Brigte noted the absence of ‘certain archaisms’ including sceo (1978, xxvi; 87 n. 64). As observed previously (above, 125), however, sceo continued to be used into the Middle Irish period. The choice of Tailtiu over Temair by the author, alongside the ‘correction’ by a glossator, underlines the symbiotic relationship between these two sites as focal centres of superior kingship in Ireland. coimdemmar O Daly’s interpretation of MS coimhdemhair as the 1 pl. ipv. con-midethar ‘judges’ is followed here. 1b Airgíallnae The use of the form Airgíallnae, a collective f. ia– –stem noun, may be the earliest attestation of the name (see above, 95). The form may have been analoguous in origin with other –ne population group names (e.g. Cruithni, Luigni, Temne) and may have been re-interpreted to incorporate the term gíallnae on the basis of the group’s relationship with the Uí Néill. Gíallnae (a derivative of gíall) and aicillne (< ad-gíalla) are the oldest terms for base clientship (Binchy 1941, 96–8); in the context of relationships between kings, this terminology means that those defined as subject kings gave hostages to guarantee their obedience (Charles-Edwards 1993, 554). DIL s.v. airgíallnae suggests the tentative translations ‘additional hostageship’ or ‘additional service’. Hence, despite declarations of equality between the Uí Néill and Airgíalla in the poem, the form Airgíallnae suggests that the latter, though privileged, were subject to the Uí Néill lord of Tailtiu. fris frithchétfith This is an example of the eclectic word-order present in some stanzas. In this instance we find a preposed prepositional pronoun followed by a prepositionless dative. Regular word-order would take the form i frithchétfaid fris ‘in opposition /comparison to him’, namely, the lord of Tailtiu.

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§2 This stanza introduces the theme of the seating arrangement of the men of Ireland, or more precisely the kings of Ireland sitting at the ‘court’ of the lord of Tailtiu. This arrangement follows the familiar pattern of the tech midchúarta which is described as the fledtech in the poem (§3a). Geographically, Ireland is viewed as if Tailtiu were the centre of the island. It is also noteworthy that the lord of Tailtiu is regarded as presiding over the warriors of Ireland, thus granting him national status. 2a ar-gníth (MS aurgníth) is taken as the pret. pass. sg. of ar-gní ‘makes’, of which there is only one other attestation in DIL. 2b airimda An otherwise unattested compound of air- and imdae ‘couch, bench’ in which the first element may be a further example of the use of a(i)r- in the opening section of the poem to emphasise the formation Air-gíalla. [sceo] Interpreted as an insertion and omitted, despite the consideration that sceo can be an early feature (cf. §1a). §3 The positions of the kings of Munster and Leinster are best understood by viewing them from the central position held by the lord of Tailtiu in the banqueting hall and also in the context of a political commentary on the positions of all the kings present. The king of Ulaid is replaced by the king of the Airgíalla. The kings of Munster and Connacht are looked upon benignly, while the king of Leinster is seen in a somewhat unfavourable light. 3a Mumen The MS reading is retained as a possible early form; cf. AU 793: ordinatio Artroigh m. Cathail in regnum Mumen. fledtaige This form may be contrasted with the older close compound fletech. The rime with 3b sertshuide suggests that it is a later formation or an ‘etymological’ spelling of the older form. 3b rí Laigen fris co lleth cham sosath srethshuide The king of Leinster sits obliquely to the south-east, perhaps barely in the view of the lord of Tailtiu. Srethshuide is taken as a compound comprising sreth and suide, literally ‘well-arranged seats’. §4 The king of Connacht’s position in the court is in line with his function as expressed elsewhere. As in the later text, Do Shuidigud Tellaich Themra (Best 1910, 146–7 §24), the poet is alluding to Connacht’s role as the seat of senchas. In an Old-Irish text on court procedure, the seating arrangements of the court allow for two sections, the cúlairecht ‘back court’ and the táebairecht ‘side court’ (Kelly 1986, 85). Those sitting in the back court were the righ 7 espoc 7 sai gacha berlai ollomand, identified by the editor as the rí ruirech ‘king of

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overkings’, bishop and ollam filed ‘chief poet’ (ibid., 89–90). The role of these dignitaries appears to have been to promulgate or approve the judgement arrived at in court. The side court was attended by among others senchaid 7 ruirig ‘custodians of tradition and overkings’ and its purpose was clear: fo bith is fri senchus na senchad 7 is fri rellad na sencad dobeir int airecht taeb ‘because it is on the lore of the custodians of tradition and the clarification of the custodians of tradition that the court relies’ (ibid., 85). The role of the king of Connacht in the poem may therefore be best understood as being analogous to the role of those attending the táebairecht. 4a Sirt rí Connacht ar cúl rígraid nad frithchomart Sirt is interpreted as the 3 sg. pret. of sernaid (cf. Thurneysen, Grammar, §684) with rígrad (a– -stem) as its object. The MS reads frithcomartat, apparently with dittography. The form seems to be the 3 sg. pret. pass. of the verb fris-oirg ‘offends, injures’, with perfective -com- (DIL s.v.). 4b fri senchus crích On the importance of knowledge of boundaries, see the commentary in TCD MS H 3 18 on a section of the law-tract on property Bretha Comaithchesa (CIH 581.11ff ) which, in dealing with trespass and neighbourhood, classifies different boundary-markers using the term blá (Kelly 1997, 409; Swift 2000, 114–16). fri fiscomarc Fiscomarc was the term given to the curriculum of the eighth year of a fili’s training, and can be rendered ‘learned inquiry’ or possibly ‘catechism’ (Carey 1997, 52). §5 Coirpre Lifechair son of Cormac mac Airt had two sons Eochaid Doimlén and Fiachu Sraiptine. Coirpre is a nodal point in the schematised structure of the secular genealogies since his sons are the ancestors of the Connachta, Uí Néill and Airgíalla (O’Brien 1962, 137: 140b8–9). The Airgíalla are second to the Connachta in their relationship to Uí Néill in this scheme (ibid., 147:142b15), a ranking not necessarily alluded to in the poem. 5a lámnatar this is the pres. ind. pass. pl. conjunct of lámnaid ‘gives birth, is born’. 5b fochlu roë ilach fri clasa cachnatar The reference to fochla ‘the north’ suggests that the Airgíalla came into existence at the expense of the Ulaid (cf. §8b fri righ tuaiscirt). O Daly took clasa to mean ‘choirs’ (DIL s.v. borrowed from Latin classis). Alternatively she thought that it might be a corruption of clúasa ‘ears’. Clasa ‘choirs’ in the Christian sense could be in contrast to ilach, a cry which usually denoted victory, had demonic connotations, and was associated with warfare and bloodshed. An ilach, unlike clasa, would have been regarded as un-Christian (Carey 1992, 28, 36). This line is another example of aberrant word-order. §6 Division of an inheritance among heirs or kinsmen is normally made by the youngest, not the eldest, as implied by this stanza.

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6a do-rind a rainn O Daly’s interpretation of this verb (MS dorrainda) as the 3 sg. pret. of do-foirndea in the sense of ‘marking out (a share)’ causes difficulties since the form dororaind would be expected. It is interpreted here as the vb. do-rinda, pret. do-rind, attested once in the Additamenta (Dulluid iar suidiu Patricc cu Fíacc 7 durind a locc les (Bieler 1979, 176: 14 (3)), followed by a 3 pl. poss. pron. donaib bráithrib MS reading dona braitriph could be an example of a final unstressed syllable (-ib) assimilated into the following initial (Thurneysen, Grammar, §159), although it is a rare occurence (ibid., §468). Nevertheless, the standard form is adopted (cf. also §§ 23a, 34a). §6b This is one syllable short. O Daly remedies this defect by inserting a before sinser. However, on the basis of a pattern found elsewhere in the poem in which there is repetition of a prep. (e.g. §4b fri, §9b fria), íar is added. §7 The metaphor of division of land among kinsmen by the delimitation of ridges or arable land also appears in the text De Maccaib Chonairi (Gwynn 1912, 149) in which an alliance between the Múscraige and Éoganachta of Munster is similarly expressed (Charles-Edwards 1993, 418–19; Murray 2000, 254). 7a mínib ainmínib indaili All heirs get their fair share of good and bad lands. There are problems with the MS form indaile which have not been resolved here. To facilitate translation it has been interpreted as the dat. sg. of indile ‘moveable property, livestock’. Although the form indaile with a broad d is not attested, it has been retained to allow for rime with immairi. 7b sonnraid O Daly interprets MS sondradh as the adj. sainred ‘delimitation’ used substantively or adverbially. It is interpreted here as the acc. sg. of an otherwise unattested form sonnrad, a collective derived from sonn ‘stake, palisade’, possibly meaning ‘boundary’. §8 Colla Óss was one of the three sons of Eochaid Doimlén who reputedly slew their uncle Fiachu Sraiptine, ancestor of the Connachta and the Uí Néill, at the battle of Dub Commair, thereby forfeiting their right to the kingship of Tara (Byrne 1973, 72–4). Though mentioned in the official king-lists as the king of Ireland after Fiachu Sraiptine (O’Brien 1962, 124: 137a3), Colla Óss is omitted from BCC, unlike his reputed uncle Fiachu Sraiptine and cousin Muiredach Tírech. Nevertheless, he is included in Baile in Scáil (§19). The genealogies place Colla Óss in a pre-eminent position among the three Collas (Meyer 1912, 319.16–17; O’Brien 1962, 130–1: 138a5ff.). The Uí Moccu Uais consisted of Uí Thuirtri, Uí Fhiachrach Arda Sratha, Uí Meic Cáirthinn Locha Febail and Fir Lí (O’Brien 1962, 415: 333c15; Lacey 1999, 121–42; Mac Shamhráin 2000, 64–79). Considering that three of the primary

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guarantors of the contract between Uí Néill and the Airgíalla mentioned at the end of the poem probably belonged to these families, and were represented as pre-eminent, it is fitting that the Airgíalla should be represented primarily as the descendants of Colla Óss. §8a In order to reduce the syllable count of §8a to the required twelve syllables, O Daly suggested the elision of ie of the MS iersin and the omission of ós. An alternative is to omit ier sin, despite §5a íar sin and §12a in sin and to emend the MS reading Colla ós scoraibh catha giallsatur to Colla Óiss coraib catha gíallatar. The MS giallsatur appears to be a Middle Irish form. It is possible that the original read gíallatar, the pres. pass. pl. rel. of gíallaid and, although the verb gíallaid usually implies submission, this may be a reference to the type of contracts involved whereby the Airgíalla offer a military service to the Uí Néill. §8b fri ríg tuaiscirt This appears to be a predictably unsympathetic reference to the king of Ulaid (cf. note to §5b). cétgretha A similar metaphor is used in Baile in Scáil: fer chétgretha ‘a man of great power’ (Thurneysen 1936, 221 §11). caín- sreith -síasatar O Daly suggests emending MS reading sretha to sreth (emended in this edition to sreith) to correct the syllable count. The phrase caín- sreith -síasatar is interpreted as an example of tmesis (Kelly 1976, xxxiv–v), in which caín- acts as a preverb (cf. caín-rognatha ‘well have they been done’ Ml. 39a24; see Thureneysen, Grammar, §384) and the verb -síasatar (3 pl. pret. saidid (McCone 1997, 79)) is used to convey the idea of arranging or drawing up rather than sitting. §9 This stanza provides some insight into the types of military battalions in early Ireland, despite some doubt as to the precise meaning of individual terms. §9a suidiged suidigud This is a figura etymologica. fria n-aidbdena O Daly suggested emending to lia n-aidpheana ‘with their aidbdena’, although this would run contrary to the pattern of §9b fria … fria … fria. The combination of suidigidir with fri is understood as ‘establishes, institutes’ and, therefore, in the context of this poem may have had the legal connotation that these battalions were agreed upon according to the contract between Uí Néill and the Airgíalla. Aidbden is one of several terms describing both a function and the person discharging that function, in this case ‘leading’ someone ‘to’ a superior king or overking. It is in the same area of meaning as aitire, ‘betweenship’, namely, ‘a guarantor intermediary between two parties’, generally in the political sphere. In older texts the aidbden seems to be a representative of his kindred (Binchy 1941, 35 n. 412; CIH 922.10–11) §9b cúangala A term not otherwise attested, although it is clearly a compound of cúan ‘pack

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(of dogs, wolves), band, company’ and gal ‘warlike ardour, valour’ and is translated as ‘valorous bands’. §10 The opening phrase Comshaíre cenéuil do Uíb Néill fri Airgíallnai is a precursor of what follows. The Airgíalla are equally noble to Uí Néill, but the Five Royal Kindreds listed in §§ 11–12, all of whom are considered to be Uí Néill, are superior because of their royal status. However, the Uí Néill dynasties are only superior to their kinsmen as long as they maintain fír ‘justice’: hence they must maintain the agreement with the Airgíalla. §10a Airgíallnai This form is restored on the basis of the rime with ilblíadnai. §11 On the Five Royal Kindreds of Uí Néill referred to here and in the following stanzas and on the particular kings mentioned in these stanzas, see Charles-Edwards, above, 106–7 and Prosopography I, 214–7. §11a and b are hypersyllabic and cause considerable difficulties. O Daly suggested the omission of molt-, regarding it as a gloss on adnadhrumur. She seemed to tentatively treat adnadhrumar as the 1 pl. pres. ind. ad-noí ‘entrusts, commends to’, which is hardly correct in view of the form and context. If adhnadhrumar is to rhyme with samlammar (1 pl. ipv. or 1 pl. pres. ind. rel. of samlaigid ‘compares, notes’), a similar ipv. form might be expected. In an effort to offer an interpretation, a form at-n-amrammar ‘let us marvel at him’ is suggested, understood as the 1 pl. ipv. of an unattested verb ad-amrathar, a doublet of ad-amraigedar ‘wonders at, marvels at’. The occurrence of the Old Irish verb samlaithir, for samlaid, saimligid in §11b could provide an analogy. §11b requires the omission of soimlemur. §12 §12a O Daly suggested omitting in sin and reading caini for caoin on the basis that the line was hypersyllabic, which it is not. This is not followed here. The MS iarmorta is interpreted as the gen. sg. of íarmairt ‘issue, posterity’ in a phrase in which the gen. is used as the complement of the adj. caín (Thurneysen, Grammar, §250.2). The rime supports restoration of Old Irish íarmarto / Díarmato. §13 The choice of Five Royal Kindreds of Uí Néill is notable in view of the division of Ireland into cóiceda and of the implication in some legal texts of a fivefold division of particular kin-groups and kin-lands (Charles-Edwards 1993, Appendix C, 515 §4; 516 (ii), 518 (xi)).

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§13a is hypersyllabic. Sin is taken as being superfluous and therefore omitted to a give correct syllable count. §13b has a variant syllable count. This line introduces a new section in the poem. A similar change seems to occur in §20b for the same reason. To restore the standard 123 syllable count, O Daly offered as options (i) to read the simplex dlegait instead of ar-dlegat, (ii) to omit the poss. pron., while regarding ardlegaid a n-airmitin as a gloss. However, emending ar-dlegat to the simplex dlegait runs contrary to the pattern in the following stanzas (cf. §§ 14–15, 18–20). Alternatives to O Daly’s suggestions are to divide §13b into the three clauses which follow the pattern, ar-dlegat X, each with the same syllable count (7 3) and ending in a trisyllable or to maintain the metre by omitting all but the first example of ar-dlegat. The first option, which treats 13b as a deliberate break in the metrical pattern, is the preferred one here. fossuguth In the laws this term refers to ‘entertainment, sustenance, hospitality’, (cf. Binchy 1941, 160–4). The honour-price of the bóaire is calculated on the basis of five essential functions undertaken by him in society, among them, sét a fosaigtheo ‘the value of his hospitality or sustenance’. daigéirge It may be noted that, according to Cáin Shóerraith, the most burdensome duties of a free client are airéirge ‘rising up as a mark of homage’ and manchuine ‘rents and services due to a lord from his client’ (cf. Kelly 1988, 32–3). Note in Dál Caladbuig the relationship of the king of Cashel with the kings of Uí Fhidgenti, Iarlúachair and Raithlenn before whom he raised a knee (togaibseom a glún remibseo: O’Keeffe 1931, 20 para. 9). §14 There follows a list of the legal entitlements of the Five Royal Kindreds of the Uí Néill. §14a is hypersyllabic. O Daly suggested reading dlegait a n-íarara co neoch ata-gíalla. The argument against emending ar-dlegat to dlegait applies here as in the previous stanza. Since the poss. pron. has been omitted in §13b to improve the syllable count, this pattern is continued in §14 and the MS reading acc. pl. a-stem íarara ‘demands’ is retained. The verb ar-gíalla, which is not particularly well-attested (DIL s.v.), may echo the intensive prefix of Airgíalla (cf. §2b airimda). §14b MS or is omitted to correct the syllable count. §15 The legal concepts of enechrucce (technically, worth a seventh of one’s honour price) and enechgrís (worth ½1 of one’s honour-price) are implied here. In this particular context, it is more likely that these concepts which literally mean ‘face-reddening, causing to blush’ are

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used in the sense of ‘dishonour, insult’ (Binchy 1941, 7.185, 14.360, 85 (n.); Breatnach 1987, 32–3: 19 ff. n). §15a is hypersyllabic. O Daly read dlegait a ríara diä ngrúad-ruicib ránib commenting that she regarded -grísib as a gloss (perhaps enechgrísib), incorporated in the text. The syllable count is correct if the poss. pron. a is omitted before ríara and MS grisib is interpreted as a gloss. §15b O Daly suggested adding fír and translating ‘since each one of them preserves (truth) for his (lit. their) equals in rank’. The metre does not require fír and the sense follows on the situation referred to in §15a. Each Uí Néill kindred, when insulted, initiates its own legal procedure of reparation and demands a payment according to its place in the Uí Néill hierarchy. The shift from the sg. cech óen to the pl. a n- is explained by the intervening pl. prep. pron. úadib. §16 This stanza deals with the legal procedure concerning protection and its violation and specifically the liability of the Five Royal Kindreds of the Uí Néill in such instances. O Daly compared this stanza to the passage in Críth Gablach (Binchy 1941, 14.358–60) concerning the aire échta and to Binchy’s commentary (ibid., 70–2) on the function of the aire échta in ‘liquidating’ the prosecution of a blood feud in the context of two territories which have just concluded a treaty (cairde). §16a na-í to-ssaiget O Daly emended MS nihi to indí. However, the pl. infix of nís-len seems to require na-í, and a consequent emendation of the verb to the pl. tossaiget. The verb do-saig is transitive and does not require the prep. i n-. For a discussion of the definition of the airlise, cf. Kelly 1997, 368–9. §16b bata O Daly read the 3 pl. rel. pres. subj. copula beta for the MS bad a. However, the sg. conjunct bad also has the rel. form bata (Thurneysen, Grammar, §802). a n-airnisi DIL s.v. interprets airnisi as the part. of ar-naisc ‘binds, guarantees’ (cf. legal phrase raith airnisi). §17 This stanza seems to suggest that as a royal prerogative Uí Néill royal kindreds are not liable to make reparation for crimes committed by kinsmen for which there has been no atonement. §17a O Daly emends to ind fine. While supplying an article is a plausible means of rescuing the metre (we have followed her suggestion), the f. gen. sg. fine requires na. tercaigther This is the pres. ind. sg. pass. rel. of tercaigid ‘diminishes, decreases’, presumably from an original tercaigidir.

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§17b is hypersyllabic. O Daly suggested the reading acht cert cáich cutrum fora cuibrend certaigther translated as ‘but the fair debt of each is settled according to his share’. In this edition, the second fora is omitted and the MS corrum is interpreted as comthrom ‘of the same weight, equal, even’. §18 On the concept of forbanda ‘extra exactions’ and royal prerogatives and hostage-taking in battle, see Charles-Edwards, above, 116. §18b ar-da-gíallatar To emend the syllable count, O Daly suggested ad-ro-gíallathar for the MS argiallathar and taking rroë as disyllabic. As in §14a the vb. is interpreted as the rarely attested ar-gíalla, -giallatar with an added pl. infixed pron. (to rectify the syllable count) and inferring another pun on Airgíalla. §19 This stanza touches on the question of a king’s retinue (dám), a subject which is given much attention in the laws. The size of a retinue was defined according to the rank of the individual on circuit and the purpose of the circuit. The detailed composition of a king’s dám was defined, as evidenced in Bretha Nemed Toísech, by the complement of poets on circuit with a king (Breatnach 1987, 34–5). Críth Gablach distinguishes between the larger dám permitted when a king is engaged on public affairs (inna thúaith or do lessaib túaithe) and on private matters (Binchy 1941, 18.454; 23.598; 82n.). Clearly there was a concern that this institution was open to abuse, as suggested by this stanza. §19a is hypersyllabic, which is likely to have resulted from an addition of i before fossugud possibly by analogy with a aníarara, a forbanda (§§ 14, 18). O Daly suggested omitting i s- of isseta. However, the alternative is to omit i before fossugud and to emend the MS isseta to i ssétaib to rime with emended 19b co cétaib. Sét here could also be taken to refer to the unit of value of the same name, qualifying fossugud (cf. sét a fhosaigtheo (Binchy 1941, 7.164)). If this interpretation were to be followed, the line would translate as ‘they are entitled to maintenance in séts upon arrival’. §20 The correlation between protection and sustenance is reflected elsewhere in the laws. For example, Uraicecht Becc includes the provision Deich seoit do cli 7 biathad ochtair 7 turtugud deachmaide ‘ten séts for a clí and refection for eight men, and ten days’ protection’. As noted by the editor, this statement gives the name of the grade, the honour-price, the number of people for whom refection is provided, and the period of protection which can be conferred (Breatnach 1987, 2–5). The month’s protection which Uí Néill can offer harks back to §16b (co íarmís).

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§20a noda-bíatha the MS not biatho is emended to noda-bíatha since a Class C infixed pron. is required here. To rectify the ensuing syllable count problem, neoch is treated as a prepositionless dative. §20b This line is hypersyllabic, and as at §13b the extra syllables mark a new section in the text. This is more likely since all elements of the line are essential to the sentence, with the possible exception of it. The MS readings ni acrathar, ni tacrathar are likely to represent metathesised examples of the pres. ind. pass. pl. forms -acartar and -tacartar. §21 This stanza, which begins the section dealing with the privileges enjoyed by the Airgíalla and the obligations due to them from Uí Néill, is similar to the pattern of the Munster texts on reciprocal arrangements (frithfholad). §21b is a couple of syllables short. O Daly suggested occa dígde im na olc, nert ocus recht ‘with power and authority when he is being besought about any evil’. An alternative reading offered here is oc dígdi Deë na n-anolc neurt ocus recht ‘asking pardon of God of the great good (i.e. non-evils) with strength and authority’, thus suggesting that the MS reading of §21b may reflect two haplographs. Nert (leg. neurt) ocus recht are taken as independent datives, although they might also be nominatives parallel to rád. The import of the line seems to be that the king of Uí Néill declares that he is willing to give the Airgíalla some leeway in their action beyond normal requirements. §22 The sentiments concerning the dues from the king of Uí Néill, and implicitly the type of just and prosperous rule expected under such a king, closely reflect the ideals expressed in the early eighth-century text Audacht Morainn (Kelly, 1976, xvii). §22b presents problems. The MS reading is two syllables short. The pattern of §21a and §22a would appear to require repetition of the phrase dlegair dó, while the alliteration in mess maigthech can be extended if blicht is emended to mlicht. O Daly suggests emending to dleghar hith is blicht 7 mess ocus íasc maigrech ‘corn is due and milk and mast and salmon’. The word maigthech is not otherwise attested. It may be an adj. derived from moga(ig)id ‘increases’ (cf. mogda / mogthae ‘big, great, immense, increased’ DIL s.vv.). Audacht Morainn may offer a parallel phrase: Ad-mestar asa moguth mlicht ‘Let him estimate milkyield by its increase (?)’ Kelly comments that he has taken moguth as the dat. sg. of moguth ‘increase’ and also offers an alternative of the dat. pl. moigthib (Kelly 1976, 45 n. 90).

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§23 This stanza continues the frithfholad ‘reciprocal arrangements’ theme and deals with what appears to have been the primary function of the Airgíalla in their relationship with Uí Néill, the provision of military assistance. §23a is hypersyllabic. O Daly emended to i córus gíallna ‘according to the terms of their clientship’ to correct the syllabic count and to clarify the meaning. We have chosen to omit a before córus. §23b MS sloged is retained here as a possible early form. This line is difficult to interpret. The option suggested here omits cecha and uses the gloss tri to retain the sense and to agree with the sentiments of §24. Alternatives which might be also considered are (i) slóged cecha cóicthigse día teóra blíadnae ‘a hosting every fortnight every three years’ (treating cóicthiges as f., although early attestations are uncertain); (ii) slóged cach cóicthigis dïa teóra blíadnae, with similar translation except treating cóicthiges as m. §24 This stanza is to be regarded as explained in the context of the Airgíalla’s military service as outlined in §23. §24a We follow O Daly’s suggestion to add doïb after cóicthiges to ensure the correct syllable count and to regard the MS cuicicithis as garbled dittography. §24b MS cech is omitted to correct the syllable count and the reading a ndenait is standardized to Old Irish a ndo-gnïat. §25 The notion of varying provisions pertaining to different times of the year is also implied in Dál Caladbuig (O’Keeffe 1931, 19 para. 6). See also Kelly, 1997, 318–9. §25a The MS sona is emended to sonath (: torshuth), the vn. of sonaid ‘sounds, names, mentions’ and hence in this context with the extended meaning ‘statement’. §25b Ní biattar O Daly chooses the interlinear gloss ní dlegar rather than ní biathtar of the main text, understood as the pl. pass. pres. of biathaid ‘feeds, provides refection for’. i tecmalar torshuth The verb is the sg. pass. pres. of do-ecmalla ‘gathers’. MS teclamar (with metathesis) is restored to tecmalar. MS torsuth is taken as a compound based on tor ‘multitude’; cf. DIL s.v. suth and O’Mulc. 470 where suth is equated with torad (on toreth, cf. Bergin 1938, 215). The rime sonath : torshuth is imperfect.

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§26 This stanza deals with the well-known legal customs of desertion and neglect. It appears to imply that the Airgíalla, when fulfilling their obligations in battle, are due a third of the spoils where their king is wounded or killed or where they are abandoned or neglected. §26a cach thuillme The MS cacha is read as cach since tuillem is m. Thus trïan is treated as disyllabic along with doïb. Cf. Cáin Domnaig (O’Keeffe, 1905, 2.210 §33): trían cech thuillme … na cána so do Dia. segar The MS segair is emended to segar following O Daly. The usual prep. used with saigid ‘sues, claims’ is for, not fri. fria n-indnae The MS idna is emended to the earlier form to provide a better rime with ingrae. §26b cned do ríg (MS cned do rich). O Daly suggested cned doilig ‘a grievous wound’. It is emended here to cned do ríg, which, as noted above, would make sound legal sense. Note the use of ch for g elsewhere in the poem (e.g. §32a MS naenaich; §45a MS do choidich). Cf. also §34a ricc for ríg. ingrae This is taken to be a derivative of ingor, thus meaning ‘disloyalty’, implying that the Uí Néill must act responsibly towards the Airgíalla on military campaigns. A similar interpretation was adopted by O Daly (1975, 56 §60): Is é mo thimna cenon / at-biur ingra do Mac Con ‘This is my just bequest / I pronounce disloyalty on Mac Con’ in preference to the more common ingra ‘misery, sorrow’ (from ingar). §27 This stanza also occurs in the poem Can a mbunadas na nGáedel (Best and O’Brien 1957, 521) ascribed to Máel Muru Othna (d. 887) which includes the Airgíalla among the people descended from Éremón and describes the boundaries of their territory at its most extensive. It is noteworthy that this version in ACP preserves the older form of the name Airgíallnae and the older form of the nom. pl. def. art. (ind) which is not preserved in Máel Muru’s poem. §27a tuir do thelaib O Daly read co for do. However, all MSS of the poem Can a mbunadas na nGáedel read do. Tel (cf. DIL s.v. tul) is interpreted as ‘projection, swelling’, possibly ‘height’. §27b ind Airgíallnae This form of the name preserves the ending -nae already encountered in §1b. §28 This stanza deals with the Airgíalla’s entitlements when conducting a forbais, a term which in its general sense meant ‘siege’, but in its original and specific sense seems to have meant ‘keeping a watch by night, keeping a hostile watch, spending the night in camp (against

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an enemy)’; cf. DIL s.v. and Mac Cana 1980, 76. The stanza implies that the Airgíalla were entitled to some comforts, including being led to an official encampment (CharlesEdwards 2000, 528) and not left at night-time under the hostile eye of the enemy. §28a is hypersyllabic. Following O Daly, MS forib has been omitted. The verbal form fessar is interpreted as the pass. sg. rel. pres. ind. of fessid ‘spends the night’. It might also be interpreted as the fut. pass. sg. rel. of feidid ‘leads, conducts’. §28b is also hypersyllabic. Following O Daly, ndúnadaib is emended to ndúnaib. §29 The alternatives to giving the Airgíalla seven ceithir for every one lost by them seem to involve political or legal agreements. This balance included the right of the king of the Airgíalla to sit jointly in judgement with the king of the Uí Néill on some matters. §30 This stanza turns to the rights of Uí Néill and their king. The arrangement described here contrasts with that for the Airgíalla insofar as Uí Néill are only entitled to the same number of livestock as they lost and not to a ratio of seven to one, as allowed for the Airgíalla. §30a Following O Daly, the MS ni dleghid is emended to ní dlegat. fuilled MS fuill- could represent either fuilled or fuillem, which are regularly confused. §§ 31–32 The text ends at §32a in the main part of the MS and is completed on a smaller folio in minute script and possibly a different hand. For a discussion of the four offences subject to summary jurisdiction, see Charles-Edwards, above, 120–1. Búrach is used in the same context as in Audacht Morainn (Kelly 1976, 8 §28) and fér a fhaithche seems to be the equivalent to maigen dígona (Kelly 1997, 567–9). §31a is one syllable short, which is emended by the addition of mad. §32a is one syllable short. O Daly suggested adding no before messc ndúnaid. The alternative, adopted here, is to read mesc a dúnaid, omitting a before díguin in §32b. §33 This stanza continues the theme whereby an Uí Néill king can act alone without recourse to lengthy legal procedures or the advice of lawyers – hence acting instantly – without putting an existing alliance or legal guarantee in jeopardy. §§ 34–35 The alliance between Fiacha mac Noë and Daig Duirn, and presumably the relationship between the Airgíalla and Uí Néill (represented by rí Lethe Cuind) is defined here in terms

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of betrothal (§34b aurnaidm) and bride-price (§35a coibche). Daig Duirn was the reputed grandson of Colla Fochríth, ancestor of Uí Chremthainn (O’Brien 1962, 139: 140b40–50). The element dorn ‘fist’ also appears in the name Mugdorna, who were Airgíalla (CharlesEdwards 2000, 516–7). The reconstructed genealogies of the Uí Néill, Connachta and Airgíalla imply that Daig Duirn may have been a contemporary of Niall Noígíallach. On the otherwise unattested Fiacha mac Noë, see Prosopography I, ii: 7, 7a. The use of the term díles (cf. Binchy 1941, 83–4), according to its advantageous meaning ‘indefeasibly entitled’ and in conjunction with aurnaidm, supports the idea that this poem is defining a binding contract between the Airgíalla and Uí Néill whereby the former are accorded particular privileges by the latter in return for services rendered (not unlike a marriage of unequal partners). §34a Read with O Daly donaib for MS dinaib. §35b is one syllable short. Following O Daly, a rrath is emended to a rratha. MS arut ro munatth has been read as airet ro múnad. §36 §36a Saigith O Daly’s interpretation as the vn. ‘a claim’ is accepted, although saigith might also be interpreted as the 3 sg. pres. ind. of saigid. Alternatively, MS saigither could be emended to saigthir and taken as the pres. ind. pass. sg. ‘it is claimed’. §36b O Daly emended MS sain maim to sain-maíni. An alternative, which is adopted in this edition, is to take máim as the nom. pl. of mám ‘handful, measure, amount’. The difficulty with this interpretation is that mám (o-stem) does not have early attestations, while mám (u-stem) ‘a yoke, an obligation’ (with nom. pl. máma) does not seem appropriate to the sense. con-midetar MS conmidither is emended to the pres. ind. pl. pass. of con-midither with reference to the pl. máim. i n-athbach i n-ucht Both terms have a wide and uncertain range of meanings. O Daly interpreted the phrase as ‘the second time (athbach) and at the beginning (ucht)’. The phrase may have some military connotations, whereby the division of spoils due to the Airgíalla depended on the type of military intervention involved, be it in the second wave or counter-attack (athbach) or in the first wave or frontal attack (ucht). Note also the use of athbach as the gen. of a personal name in Baile in Scáil §56: Domnall dalta Athbach (.i. túath Athbach ro n-alth .i. Uí Ertuile) ‘Domnall foster-son of Athba (i.e. the people of Athba reared him, i.e. the Uí Ertuile).’

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§37 This stanza provides further evidence of the privileged status of the Airgíalla with regard to the normal process of law. In this instance, as in §24, they are not made fully accountable for their misdemeanours, or at least the full rigours of the law are not applied. §37a ad-fírther MS adírther is taken as representing the pass. subj. sg. rel. of ad-fíri ‘substantiates’. §37b O Daly suggested emending the line to read acht lugha indi forslither nach cin dognither ‘but (merely) the oath of him who is accused of any crime that is committed’. MS forslither is interpreted as fors’ lither (< forsa lither) where the verb is liïd (for) ‘to charge, to accuse’; cf. fer fora llither forcraid netraid ‘a man who is accused of excess of lust’ (Binchy 1934–8, 24, para. 29). §38 The message of this stanza is enunciated in §38b (on the basis that the MS reading saigich is interpreted as saigith in the sense of ‘claim, claimant’ (cf. §36a and §45b)). Either the Airgíalla cannot be denied their claims that are legally set out in peacetime and during battles, or they are immune from claimants at any time. Among the privileges due to them from the king of Uí Néill is ferann ‘land’. The reference in this poem to the Airgíalla being granted land by a king for services rendered is an early example of another favoured group sharing in royal land, or more likely being given the rights over some lesser group’s land by an Uí Néill king. §38a cen nach mrath (MS cinnachmbráth) O Daly emended to cinna mbrath. §38b a saigith co fír co síd co cath There is one syllable too many in this line. One could delete MS nó or co fír or else to accept §38b as another hypersyllabic line (cf. §13b). On the evidence of patterns elsewhere in the poem (e.g. §9b the repetition of fria), nó is omitted and dóib is regarded as a monosyllable. §39 The notion of the Airgíalla and Uí Néill being i comgíallnai ‘in joint hostageship’ or more precisely ‘in a mutually beneficial alliance’ echoes other terms used in the poem including comshaíre (§§ 10, 44) and combráithre (§45). §39a is short one syllable, if the i of MS déiti is elided. As for MS no déiti, O Daly read a ndéiti or in ndéiti ‘their / the acknowledgement, recognition’, thus interpreting déiti as déitiu, vn. of daimid. While accepting O Daly’s interpretation of déiti, MS nó is retained. Whereas the use of nó ‘or’ as a continuation from §38b might not be expected, ocus is used in a similar manner in §47a. §39b contains the correct syllable count when allowance is made for elision between MS rígdho and in. Application of elision seems to be irregular (and not automatic) in this

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poem. It is required in this line, but if applied in §39a would leave the line a syllable short. §§ 40–1 These stanzas are a familiar mixture of Christian and non-Christian concepts of the power of oaths in which the magical powers of the elements (sea, land, sky, sun and moon, dew and rain) are combined with the hierarchy of Heaven (the apostles, prophets, fathers [of church] and angels) (Mac Eoin 1962). Note the similarity with the hierarchy of Heaven described in Félire Óenguso (Stokes 1905, 275: reraig, fáithe, uasalathraig, apstal). §40a–b There is a difficulty with the rime esbai : éscae which we cannot resolve. §41a For the interpretation of daithen, see O Daly, 187 n. 6. It appears to be a derivative of dath and is glossed elsewhere as soilse. §42 This is the first of the series of stanzas naming the witnesses to this contract. On the identity of the witnesses, see Prosopography I, ii: 9–11. §42a The problem of the legal interpretation of this line – that the witnesses are also sureties – is best overcome by taking 42a to be directly linked to §§ 40–1 (as §§ 38–9 are linked by the conjunction nó). The elements of nature and the inhabitants of heaven are the guarantors or sureties of the contract (cf. rogab rátha gréne 7 ésca 7 mara 7 drúcht 7 daithin 7 rátha na nuile dúl, FDG 5). MS Nasscaidhe is emended to the 3 pl. pres. ind. rel. Nasctae and MS fiadhan is emended to the acc. pl. fiadna. §43 For the identity of the witnesses, see Prosopography I, ii: 12–16a. §43a–b The rime Erce : airdercai is highly problematical since (i) it is the only instance of deibide rime in the poem, (ii) rhyming of unstressed -e and -i appears not to be attested until the tenth century (Murphy 1961, 31 n. 3; Carney 1982–3, 19.197) and (iii) the Old Irish nom. pl. of airderc is normally airdirc. This metrical anomaly can be accepted, as in §40a–b (esbai : éscae); or else one could suggest an (entirely tentative) emendation to a phrase such as airderce, a compound of aird and derce ‘noble acorns’. While n. s-stem derc ‘acorn’ is not attested elsewhere with reference to persons, daurgráinne ‘oak-seed’ is so used in an early poem praising Labraid Loingsech (O’Brien 1962, 19), as is mess ‘mast’ with regard to Colum Cille (ibid., 56) and frequently as is cnó in later poetry.

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§44 Use of the terms rígcland and comshaíre echoes similar usage in §10 in which Uí Néill and the Airgíalla are regarded as equal with the exception of the Five Royal Kindreds of Uí Néill who are implicity acknowledged as being of a higher status. §44b is hypersyllabic. In order to deal with the extra syllable, ara is omitted and the MS clemended and expanded to clechtait. MS comsaisi is emended to comshaíre. §45 Although the terms combráthair, combráithre(s) are not well attested (DIL s.vv.), the usage here follows on the concept of comshaíre in §44 and appears to refer to the ‘brotherhood’ of the Airgíalla co-operating to ensure that they are granted their due rights by the king of Uí Néill. §46 For the identity of the guarantors, see Prosopography I, ii: 17–19. §46a Adverbial use of már alone is quite rare in Old Irish. §47 For the identity of the guarantors, see Prosopography I, ii: 20. §47a ní foímid The MS form ní femdenn has the appearance of a 3 sg. pres. ind. Middle Irish form of fo-émid. The restoration of the expected Old Irish form is tentatively made. §48 Compare this definition of the Airgíalla, as descendants of Eochaid Doimlén and the three Collas, with earlier definitions in §§ 5, 8, 27 and 34. §48b MS math is emended to móeth on metrical grounds. §49 The final verse provides a dúnad (suidigud sír; ar-sias(a)ir) referring back to the opening line and thus to the ceremonial seating of the provincial kings of Ireland by ‘the lord of Tailtiu’. The position of the Airgíalla at Tailtiu, left hanging in the air by the Prologue, is made into the triumphant conclusion as they are seated in a preferred position beside the lord of Tailtiu. §49a is hypersyllabic. It is possible to regularise the syllable count by treating MS Tailte as a gloss referring to tír, similar to the gloss in §1a Temrae scéo. §49b The term rígrad in this context refers to the branch of a dynasty which holds the kingship.

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Appendix This Middle Irish poem seems to be a later revision of ACP. The revision of earlier texts and the incorporation of contemporary material or at least a contemporary perspective on the subject under consideration was commonplace in the Middle Irish period (see Murray, above, 71–2). The following is a diplomatic edition from MS RIA B iv 2, 148–50. Some of the readings are doubtful and are marked as (?)

A eolcha in domhoin duanaig A eolcha in domhoin duanaigh. eirenn gus na hiolbuadha cindus suidhit is fir som. Fir eirenn uile attemhroigh Fir muman don leith andess. cen an fíor gan an oirceas agus loighin lor do brigh. aighidh daghar rie nairdrigh Conactaig ar cul an rig. re sencus ro as cac fir airich ar oidhe malle. in airimda airidhe Egor airgiall airmid sin. na diclid na dermoidigh i leabraib filid a fus. an dlighid an dlechtonus Lamh des righ themrach treine. cen ainfior cen ainfeile ra airghiallaib sonna sin. cen fuigell cen imrisin Do leith macuibhrenn cen cain. cona cuit lenna lomlain do leith doibh na leabair láin. agus do leith man gabhail Trian cana trian coboig cert. trian cruidh trian coibchi commert trien agur trian toboigh tren. agus trian na borumha Slúaigedh tri coictighes cain. dlegor dona hairgiallaibh agus ni dlegar an dul. an errach na a foghamor In edh beid for a sluaghadh. cen anbfior is cen uabhor ingetor da crodh angoidh. ah secht cudruma dlegoitt(?) Chomh áirimh cend is folad. cen forbann cen imscaradh uadib do righ temrach tair. is do rígh oiligh adhbair? Ní cairighter for giall. airdrigh airmitneach airgiall cid mor dulc do gneth amuigh. isin coictighis ndeidhenaigh Dlegait cach deirge rempo. i fairsing na fir tennta ni dlegoit eirge re neach. in sluagh dímor dibricthech Nidat fiadoin fir oile. for sluagh emna ardghloine siadsan is fiadoin for chách. sluagh na serrach slemain (?) blat Cia beroid diubarta caich. in cath álainn aigh gus bhláith ni beror on chath ceallach. athchoemhclodh no athcendach Cid mor liter do cradh cain. For cech nech do oirgialloibh

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ni thoing an crodh gin cesda. acht oeinfer na haintesda Forbais gabor for a tír. la flaith nerenn nuigedh mín cumhal cech oidhchi aíni. do rígh emhna eachbáine Tuirtugad miso monartric. la righ airgiall ec ard glic comairci bliadna gan bron. lasin righ nard noinech(?) mor Diles doibh a ferand fein. do chloinn echdhach dil doimlein gin cáin gen coinnmedh gin cacht gan forrán gan eigen fri mis? Cia fath ara mbeirthi giall. o oirghiallaibh na naird srian uair nach sóeiri slúagh duine. in dá sluagh fionn foltbuidhe Is airi no beirthi giall. o cloinn tri ccolla ccoimhdían degla millte a tighe oil. no mesctha oenaigh ardmoir Na millti a sluagad immi. im rígh fodla flot finne no saraighthe ina tirthe(?). ma fher nairmidnech noidche Giall uathaib siumh i llaimh riogh. fria anaindlighedh(?) fria nain fíor giall riogh na laimh siumh i fos. fria andlighedh fria andlechtanus Ni geibhtis tuarustal tenn. o righ do rioghaibh erenn uair nocha dlegar tré cert. biathadh diob na comaithech Is airi goirther in gairm. do clannaib eachach each combailbh? saoir ghialla fo góeini ngle. ar sáoiri na géillsine Is e tucc an saoiri sáimh. do clannaibh eachach iomláin muiredhach tend tirech te. mac fionn fiacha sraibtine Is e tucc ina deaghaidh gan toirrsi gan tromdeabhaidh saoiri na ccolla da cloind. diarmoid mac condo cerboill Is e tucc saoiri … nocha dlutugad re dimbrigh domhnall daoile na ttri ccrech. mac óedha maic Ainmireach Do rad muiredhach menmnach. airdrí triathach na temrach ratha friu na nuile dul. gan atimpudh gan atciudh Na rátha tucc diarmoid dur. da comalladh da comludh Espag Eachach, Espucc oedh. Senach fír alainn fior noemh Colman mac duach in tsaoi tsen. 7 mac erca ri taillten colman na nairter nemhdha. in tsaoi firén flaithemhdha Diermaith ruanoid maith a gne. criomtann fiacha braisine accsin na rata do ratt. diarmait daghdána in dag mac Do ratt domnall mac óedha. mac ainmirech ard aobhdha trícha ratha rioghda soin. do cloinn conoill is Eogain Tarrustar sin co brath mbras. sochar oirgiall ardamhnus cein bhes talamh fo nimh neol. mor bfer atá na ainéol. A. eolchæ.

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PROSOPOGRAPHY I Kings named in Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig and The Airgíalla Charter Poem Ailbhe Mac Shamhráin and Paul Byrne

T

names of the individuals mentioned in the two texts are dealt with here in the order in which they occur within the respective texts. The king-list enshrined in BCC comprises three categories of individual: HE

(a) a ‘pseudo-historical’ group, whose historicity is extremely doubtful. Some of these perhaps originated as mythological figures but had come, by the time BCC was compiled, to embody genealogical and historical doctrines which underpinned claims of dynastic affiliation and the right to rule – especially on the part of ‘Uí Néill’ lineages. (b) a list of those who may be classed as ‘proto-historical’, spanning the divide between prehistory and the historical period proper. Although these individuals quite likely existed, they have been surrounded with a great deal of legend. They are, for the most part, ancestor figures of midland dynasties which were prominent before the rise in the sixth and seventh centuries of the lineages of Éogan and Conall. (c) a group consisting of those who are clearly historical figures, whose lives are documented in contemporary or near-contemporary sources. While these classifications are by no means irrefutable, it can generally be taken that the individuals numbered from 1 to 10 fall into category (a), 11 to 16 into (b) and 17 to 33 into (c). From the mid-sixth century the dignity associated with the kingship of Tara was becoming the prerogative of ‘Uí Néill’ dynasties, especially those claiming descent from Éogan and Conall sons of Niall Noígíallach. Indeed, there are grounds for considering that the midland-based Síl nÁedo Sláine and Clann Cholmáin represented branches of Cenél Conaill 1 – woven, perhaps, into the fabric of local ruling lineages. However, Uí Néill claims to ascendancy notwithstanding, it is clear that memories of an earlier kingship of Tara persisted in historical tradition and are reflected in the pseudo-historical personages included in BCC. 1

Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 91, 95.

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The early part of the list includes putative kings of Tara whose alleged pedigrees possibly associate them with the Laigin or perhaps with the Érainn, an early population group which corresponds to the Iverni of the second-century map of Ireland by the Classical geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria. Perhaps more surprising, however, are apparent allusions in the historical section of BCC’s list to claims on Tara by the Ulaid – the ruling dynasties of (eastern) Ulster – and even possible claims from Munster (below, i: 3, 10, 33). The last mentioned is an oblique reference, ending a sequence of kennings some of which are more obscure than others. Together these suggest an uncertain or disputed succession – a result of intra-dynastic strife within Uí Néill, and particularly within Síl nÁedo Sláine – which probably facilitated the reassertion of ancient claims by other dynasties long excluded from what was undoubtedly seen as a special royal dignity. This situation did not stabilise until the eighth century when strong new kings emerged from Cenél nÉogain, and more particularly from Clann Cholmáin. The latter dynasty consolidated its position in the midlands, furthering a trend commenced a generation or so earlier by Síl nÁedo Sláine and promoting a division between Northern Uí Néill and Southern Uí Néill dynastic groups. This growing division affected ecclesiastical as well as secular politics. It had major implications for the Columban community and for the subsequent development of Uí Néill historical and genealogical tradition. Perhaps, in the more immediate term, such a realignment of power within the Uí Néill called for a recasting of political structures which governed relationships between the overkingship and its dependencies – including the Cruithni kingships of mid-Ulster, known collectively to the Uí Néill as Airgíalla, or ‘hostagegivers’. Certainly the second text considered here, ACP, resembles a charter for the Airgíalla. Furthermore, it appears to date from the mid-eighth century and if so, it may postdate the battle of Seredmag when the Cenél nÉogain king of Tara, Áed Allán, was defeated and slain by Domnall Midi of Clann Cholmáin, who replaced him as king of Tara.2 Referring to the glorious days when the ancestors of the Airgíalla had supposedly conquered mid-Ulster as subjects of the Connachta, the text sets out the rights and duties under the lordship of the Uí Néill. A number of ‘great men from the past’ are called to witness – both lay and ecclesiastical figures from Uí Néill and from Cruithni dynasties. Some could be described as pseudohistorical, but most belong somewhere in the continuum between proto-historical and historical. Significantly, all of the more likely identifications for Uí Néill figures point to kings of Cenél nÉogain or Cenél Conaill/Clann Cholmáin origin. For ease of reference, a standard format has been applied throughout the prosopography in its treatment of the biographical entries from both texts. In each case the headline supplies 2

160

For other observations on the date of the poem, see Charles-Edwards, above, 122–3 and Bhreathnach, above, 98–9.

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Prosopography

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(in bold type) the name of the individual as it occurs in the edited text – often in a nonstandard form. There follows a standardised form of the name along with attested sobriquets to help identification, notice of dynastic affiliation and date of death (if known). Modern placename equivalents are supplied where there is a positive (or even a possible) identification; otherwise unidentified Old Irish placenames are italicised. Along with a class number in bold roman type, whereby (i) = BCC and (ii) = ACP, each individual is assigned an entry bold number in arabic type. This facilitates cross-referencing within Prosopography I and Prosopography II. The individual entries follow a similar pattern, whereby dynastic and family data in most cases precede any discussion of career (historical or legendary), and concluding remarks generally relate to death and succession (where relevant). Abbreviated primary-source references (a selection drawn from published or otherwise accessible sources) are placed at the top of each entry and secondary references at the bottom arranged in chronological order.

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(I) Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig (i: 1) [Conn] (Conn Cétchathach) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL AU AM 4118, 4120, 4135, 4137; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 260, 262, 264, 266; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 176, 212; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 218–9; Jackson, Cath Maighe Léna, 4–8; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 92; O’Brien, Corpus, 70, 79, 121, 130, 137, 358; Dillon, Lebor na Cert, 168; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1370; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 33–5 (§§ 1–9).

Conn, acclaimed as eponymous ancestor of the dynasties which emerged as the Connachta (including the Uí Néill) and Airgíalla, the ancestor of many of the noble families of Leth Cuinn (the northern half of Ireland), features as ‘king of Ireland’ in historical literature from the Old Irish period onwards. Although considered by some to have been a late Iron Age deity, it is possible that Conn was in fact a political creation of the early historical period. His name may have derived from Connacht ‘headship’, the term having been adopted by a group of dynasties as a kindred name, the gens of Conn. The sources, however, treat him as an historical character. His parents are named as Fedelmid Rechtmar son of Tuathal Techtmar, and Una Ollchruthach, supposed daughter of a king of Lochlainn, which in Middle Irish literature means ‘Scandinavia’ but is highly anachronistic in this context. He is assigned six brothers (or half-brothers), the most notable of whom is Eochaid Finn. In historical literature his (principal) wife is Eithne Thóebfhota (more usually regarded as wife of Cormac mac Airt below, i: 4), but, according to the Banshenchas, Aífe daughter of Ailpín, a king of Britain, was mother of his sons Conlae Ruad and Art Óenfher (below, i: 2) and of his daughter Sadb. Significantly, two Leinster women also feature as wives of Conn: Lendabair daughter of Cathaír Már – an important royal ancestor of the Laigin and Conn’s reputed predecessor as king of Tara – and a daughter of Crimthann Cas, namely Lann, who is said to have borne him four children including a son, Crinna, and a daughter Sárait. Conn’s daughter Sadb is represented as the wife of Ailill Aulomm son of Mug Nuadat, an ancestor figure of the Munstermen, and mother of his nine sons including Éogan Már – from whom the dynasties of the Éoganachta claimed descent. She is also said to have been the mother of Lugaid mac Con (below, i: 3). His daughter, Sárait, supposedly married Conaire Már son of Mug Láma, an ancestor of various Érainn peoples, and presented him with three sons, each named Coirpre. BCC implies, but does not expressly state, that Conn held the kingship of Tara. Baile in Scáil and other Middle Irish king-lists explicitly accord him that dignity, with claims regarding the length of his reign ranging from twenty to fifty-three years. Medieval historical tradition

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has him await his ‘call’ to Tara at Cenannas. According to the Leinster text, Timna Cathaír Máir ‘The Testament of Cathaír Már’, he gained the kingship at the expense of his erstwhile father-in-law, whom he defeated and slew at Mag nÁga (in the vicinity of Tailtiu). His reign was depicted as a time of peace and unrivalled prosperity, despite his having to share sovereignty with Éogan Már (his grandson according to some accounts and, as noted above, eponymous ancestor of the Munster Éoganachta), giving rise to the partitioning the island of Ireland along a line from Galway to Dublin so as to form Leth Cuinn (Conn’s half) and Leth Moga (Mug’s half ). One tradition, reflected in Middle Irish literature, claims that Conn defeated Éogan Már at the battle of Mag Léna (Moylen, bar. Fercall, Co. Offaly) to become sole ‘king of Ireland’. Another tale recounts his expulsion from Tara by a Leinster rival, Eochaid son of Erc, and his seven-year exile until he eventually overcame the latter. Conn’s demise, it is said, was precipitated by the treachery of his brother Eochaid Finn, who connived with an Ulster king, named Tipraite, to assassinate him. Some Middle Irish lists have him succeeded by his son-in-law, Conaire (not featured in BCC or in Baile in Scáil), and the latter, in turn, by Art Óenfher (i:2). Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 11–14; O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 184–92, 281–5; Byrne, Irish kings, 52–4, 200–2, 231–2; Sproule, ‘Origins of the Éoganachta’, 31–2; McCone, Pagan past, 79–80, 112, 133, 152–3, 159, 239; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 116–19; Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh kinship, 159–64; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 5, 50–1 (§11), 53 (§18), 90–1 (§§ 130–3); Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 67–8, 208, 218; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 36, 465, 517.

(i: 2) Art (Art mac Cuinn; Art Óenfher) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL AU AM 4138, 4167; Best, ‘The adventures of Art son of Conn’; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 268, 270, 280, 282; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 176, 177, 212-3; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 221; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 93; O’Brien, Corpus, 121, 133, 147; O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, passim; McCone, Echtrae Chonnlai, 198-9; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 36 (§11).

Art, son of Conn (above, i: 1) according to genealogical convention, is represented as king of Tara in literature, in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish king-lists, which accord him a reign of thirty years. He is sometimes accorded the sobriquet óenfher, perhaps because he was left as an only son by the deaths of his brothers (Conlae Ruad and Crinna), or to convey the sense of a ‘singular man’. The Banshenchas names his mother as Aífe daughter of Ailpín king of Britain, and his queen as Medb Lethderg.3 She is described as the daughter of a Leinster 3

See Carey, above, 46.

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king named Conan Cualann. However, tradition claims that the mother of his son, Cormac (below, i: 4), was Achtán daughter of the druid Olc Aiche, with whom, as he lacked a male heir, he had a tryst while on the way to what proved to be his final battle. Art is featured in several historical tales dating from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, notably Eachtra Airt and Cath Maige Mucrama, and is portrayed as the ideal king who, although associated with the pre-Christian era, was guarded by angels in recognition of ‘the truth of his rule’. He is a prominent ancestor figure not only of the Connachta and Uí Néill, but of most of the noble families of Leth Cuinn, including the dynasties of the Airgíalla. The pseudo-historical annals date Art’s reign from AD 186 to AD 218, when he was allegedly slain in battle at Mag Mucrama (the plain south-west of Athenry, Co. Galway). His allies, the sons of Ailill Aulomm (supposedly his nephews – sons of his sister Sadb), including Éogan Már (ancestor of the Éoganachta of Munster), are listed as casualties in the same battle. It is claimed that the victor, Lugaid mac Con (below, i: 3) of the Érainn, succeeded Art to the kingship of Tara. Byrne, Irish kings, 66–7, 280; McCone, Pagan past, 133–4, 191, 253–5; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 41–2; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 91–2 (§§ 134–5), 93 (§139); Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 75-6; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 580–3.

(i: 3) Mac Con macc aui Lugde Loígde (Lugaid mac Con) ÉRAINN – CORCU LOÍGDE AU AM 4167; Stokes, Cóir Anmann, 316–23; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 282, 284, 286; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 176, 212; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 222; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 93; O’Brien, Corpus, 121, 403; Bieler, Patrician texts, 154–5: 40 (7); O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, passim; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1433; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 36 (§12).

Mac Con is substituted in BCC for Lugaid mac Con (son of Cú ‘hound’, ‘wolf ’, or ‘warrior’), and, although his persona is considerably blurred in genealogical doctrine, it seems clear that he is included to represent the Érainn. Lugaid mac Con features as king of Tara in literature, in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish king-lists. According to genealogical convention, Mac Con was ancestor of the Conmaicne, an early population group widely scattered throughout Ireland. He is perhaps an alter ego of Lug – a divinity well known throughout the Celtic world – seemingly the eponym of the Luigni and other tribes, who in turn may be identical to Lugaid mac Con Roí, the slayer of Cú Chulainn. In BCC he is expressly called Mac Con macc aui Lugde Loígde – linking him with the Corcu Loígde (and Dáiríne) dynasty of the Érainn, which allegedly shared overkingship of Munster with the Éoganachta in prehistory. One tradition, reflected in the Banshenchas, names his mother as Sadb, daughter of Conn Cétchathach (above, i: 1), thus making him uterine brother of Éogan Már. He is accorded a reign of thirty years in Middle Irish lists, having attained the kingship, as explained in the

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tale Cath Maige Mucrama, by slaying Art mac Cuinn (above, i: 2) and Éogan Már in battle. His reign was ended by an unjust judgement on his part, and he abdicated in favour of Art’s son Cormac (below, i: 4). He was subsequently assassinated by Ferches son of Commán. Despite his villainous role in Middle Irish literature, he is treated sympathetically in BCC, suggesting that he was originally a hero-figure who, although pushed aside, was retained by Connachta propagandists as they sought to explain how their patrons, the alleged descendants of Conn, achieved supremacy. Notwithstanding suggestions that Mac Con, whose roots lay in Munster, was associated with Tara merely because of the Mag Mucrama saga, cognisance must be taken of the northmidland connections of the Érainn, whose ancestor Lugaid Loígde (a likely alter ego of Mac Con), in Cóir Anmann, was promised the sovereignty of Ireland. It may also be noted that Cú Roí, the father of Cú Chulainn’s slayer, belongs to the northern midlands, while an anecdote concerning the warrior band of Mac Con, told by Tírechán in the Collectanea, is situated in Connacht. Another king listed in BCC, Dáire Drechlethan, possibly belonged to the Corcu Loígde, while Crimthann mac Fidaig can be placed with more assurance among the Éoganachta (below, i: 7a, 10). MacNeill, Celtic Ireland, 50, 62; Dobbs, ‘Who was Lugaid mac Con?’, 165–87; Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 15–29; Byrne, Irish kings, 66–8, 197; Ó Riain, ‘Traces of Lug’, 138–56; McCone, Pagan past, 130, 191, 214–15, 253–4; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 277–8; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 3, 4, 5, 93 (§§ 139–42); Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 75, 77, 168–9; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 481–2, 580–3.

(i: 4) Corbmac (Cormac mac Airt) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL AU AM 4177, 4181, 4189, 4201, 4208, 4209, 4211; Meyer, ‘The expulsion of the Déssi’; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 288, 300, 302, 304, 306; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 177, 214; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 222; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 93; O’Brien, Corpus, 121, 130; Greene, Fingal Rónáin, 27–44; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1433; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 37–8 (§13).

Cormac, son of Art (above, i: 2), is represented in literature as the archetypal king of Tara. He features in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish king-lists, where he is accorded a reign of forty years, after he had supposedly instigated the assassination of his predecessor Mac Con (above, i: 3) and had slain a rival, Fergus Dubdétach. Sometimes dubbed Cormac Ulfhota (‘longbeard’), he was (at least by the time the genealogies were compiled in the eighth century) integrated into the Connachta schema, as son of Art Óenfher and grandson of Conn (above, i: 1). Accordingly, he was claimed as an ancestor by the later Uí Néill rulers. While the historicity of Cormac is disputed, some claiming that memories of an early historical ruler

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(possibly a dynast of the Laigin or of the Érainn) may lie at the core of his legend, the figure of nineteenth-century historiography is essentially a literary creation, whose alleged role in the development of the Tara kingship is charted in the Cycles of the Kings. There are strong arguments in favour of linking Cormac to an earlier tradition of Tara. The tale Esnada Tige Buchet, in which he begets his son Coirpre (below, i: 5) upon Eithne daughter of Cathaír Már, might be interpreted as a union with an alter ego of the Leinster goddess Medb, and so reflect a transfer of the Tara kingship from the Laigin to the Uí Néill dynasties, although the tale may also be regarded as a reflex of tenth- or eleventh-century relations between these individuals. He is assigned three other sons, namely Dáire (below, i: 7) Cellach and Muiredach. Like his father Art, Cormac is portrayed as an ideal king, one who secured many victories over the Ulaid and the Laigin, and who levied the bóruma or cattle-tribute upon Leinster. The tale Cath Crinna relates how he defeated the Ulaid with the support of Tadc son of Cían, supposedly a nephew of the Munster ancestor-figure Éogan Már, and granted him territory in Brega, thus accounting for the presence of a branch of the Cíannachta in the midlands. Cormac’s fortyyear reign is said to have ended in abdication, when loss of an eye spoiled his physical perfection requiring him to withdraw to a fort at Achall (Hill of Skreen, Co. Meath). The possible allusion to a scallac ‘fragment’ in BCC may refer to Cormac’s death in the ráith of Spelán when a salmon-bone in a loaf of bread choked him. Other stories endow him with exceptional wisdom and justice, representing him, as Binchy so aptly put it, as the ‘Numa Pompilius’ of Irish law. Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 15–29; O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 137–40, 490–2; O’Rahilly, ‘Notes’, 387–402; Binchy, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingship, 16; Byrne, Irish kings, 52–9, 62–9; Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, passim; Smyth, Celtic Leinster, 9, 17; Ó Corráin, ‘Historical need and literary narrative’, 144–56; McCone, Pagan past, 54–5, 101, 155–7, 214–7, 253–4; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 120–7; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 3–5, 92–7 (§§ 136–52), 109 (§185); Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, 76, 125; Byrne, ‘Ciannachta Breg’, 121–2; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 83, 161; CharlesEdwards, Early Christian Ireland, 481–2, 580–3.

(i: 5) Corpre (Coirpre Lifechair) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL AU AM 4217, 4223, 4264; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 300, 304, 344, 354; Meyer, Tecosca Cormaic; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 177, 178, 214–15; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 223; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 93; O’Brien, Corpus, 121, 124, 130, 133, 137, 139, 280; Greene, Fingal Rónáin, 27–31; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1503–15; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 38 (§14).

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Coirpre, son of Cormac (above, i: 4) according to the genealogists, is featured as king of Tara in literature, in Baile in Scáil, and in Middle Irish king-lists, where he is accorded a reign of seventeen, twenty-six or twenty-seven years. The Banshenchas preserves a tradition that his mother belonged to a Leinster dynasty. Eithne Thóebfhota daughter of Cathaír Már, or Eithne Ollamna daughter of Dúnlaing son of Énnae Nia (progenitor of the Laigin dynasty of Uí Dúnlainge), are given as alternatives. In the tale Esnada Tige Buchet, his begetting by Cormac on Eithne hints at a transfer of the Tara kingship from the Laigin to the Uí Néill. In this connection, Coirpre’s sobriquet Lifechair, meaning ‘lover of the Liffey Plain’, may be significant. It is possible that both he and Cormac were absorbed by the emerging Uí Néill dynasties from Leinster, or from another pre-Uí Néill tradition. The importance assigned to Coirpre, as the doctrine of Tara kingship took shape, is illustrated by the dialogue Tecosca Cormaic, in which he is advised by his father on the qualifications of kingship. Later tradition assigns him three brothers, Cellach, Dáire (below, i: 7) and Muiredach, and ten sisters. A marriage (or at least a union) between Coirpre and Áine, daughter of Finn mac Cumaill, is implied by the claim that she was the mother of Eochaid Doimlén (below, ii: 6), elsewhere named as Coirpre’s son. It is not clear whether or not she was the mother of his other son, Fiachu Sraiptine (below, i: 8). Coirpre is said to have succeeded to the kingship of Tara on the abdication of his father. He is credited with having won seven battles, several of which were supposedly gained over the Laigin. Like his father, he became associated with the bóruma tribute which, according to tradition, was levied on Leinster. However, he came into conflict with Finn mac Cumaill and the fíanna, who defeated him and forced him to remit the bóruma. Ultimately he was slain in the battle of Gabair (perhaps in bar. Idrone, Co. Carlow) 4 by a grandson of Finn in alliance with a ruler of the Fothairt. O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 139–40; Byrne, Irish kings, 145, 280; Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, 74–80; Smyth, Celtic Leinster, 17; McCone, Pagan past, 120, 122, 239; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 70–1; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 6, 94–5 (§§ 143–4); Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 83, 116.

(i: 6) Fiechri (Fiachrae Cassán?) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – IND AIRTHIR O’Brien, Corpus, 139, 181, 414; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1456.

Fiachrae is probably to be identified with Fiachrae Cassán who, according to genealogical tradition, was the son of Colla Fochríth. The latter’s inclusion, however, poses difficulties in that he is not admitted as a king of Tara by either Baile in Scáil or the Middle Irish king-lists, while the genealogies represent him as an ancestral figure of the Cruithni. He is assigned three 4

Ó Murchadha, Annals of Tigernach index, 147.

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brothers, Imchad, Finnchad and Rochaid, and is said to have had a son named Fedelmid. His brothers feature as ancestors of several Cruithni dynasties including Uí Méith and Uí Chremthainn, which later produced mesne kings of Airgíalla, claiming descent from Rochaid through Coirpre Dam Arcait (below, ii: 18). Fiachrae himself is ancestor of the kings of Ind Airthir, who by the eighth century appear marginal in political terms. The dynasty left its name on the baronies of (Upper and Lower) Orior, Co. Armagh. It is possible, however, that it played a more central role at an earlier date. According to a non-contemporary stratum of AU, an Uí Néill dynast Ardgal son of Conall (below, ii: 4) was defeated in AD 520 at Détna in Brega by a ruler of Ind Airthir named Colcu Moo Cluethi, whose sobriquet seems to associate him with a territory beyond (i.e. south of?) the River Glyde, Co. Louth, if not a reference to Cluaid (River Clyde in Scotland). Byrne, Irish kings, 66; Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, 74–80; Ó Corráin, ‘Historical need and literary narrative’, 151; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 581–2.

(i: 7) Dáire Drechlethan (Dáire mac Cormaic) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 306; Dobbs, ‘From the Book of Fermoy’, 174, 177; O’Brien, Corpus, 130, 133.

Dáire son of Cormac (above, i: 4) according to genealogical convention, is perhaps intended, given the emphasis here on the Uí Néill and the centrality of Cormac in their dynastic pedigrees. However, Dáire does not feature in either Baile in Scáil or the Middle Irish kinglists. A tract in the Book of Fermoy suggests that his mother was the Pictish princess Ciarnait, although the Banshenchas assigns his father, Cormac, marriage connections with the Laigin, naming his wives as Eithne Thóebfhota, daughter of Cathaír Már, and Eithne Ollamna, daughter of Dúnlaing. It is said that Dáire had three brothers (or half-brothers), namely Coirpre (above, i: 5), Cellach and Muiredach. He was allegedly slain at Dubros (in the vicinity of Rossnaree, par. Knockcommon, bar. Upper Duleek, Co. Meath) above the Boyne.

or (i: 7a) Dáire Drechlethan (Dáire Doimtech) ÉRAINN – CORCU LOÍGDE Stokes, Cóir Anmann, 316–23; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 148, 150; O’Brien, Corpus, 256, 428; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1447, 1475.

Dáire Doimtech, or Sírchréchtach, represented as a son of Sidebolg in the genealogies, is an alternative identification. He is not included in Middle Irish king-lists, but is given

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prominence in the genealogies of the Érainn dynasties, notably the Corcu Loígde, which also claimed Mac Con (above, i: 3) as an ancestor. Dáire’s relationship to the eponymous Lugaid Loígde appears uncertain. In different versions of the dynastic pedigree he is represented as the latter’s grandson or father. Keating in Foras feasa ar Éirinn clearly had difficulty reconciling the conflicting traditions. If viewed as the father of Lugaid, he is much out of place here on grounds of sequence. However, Dáire was probably a deity, or ‘mythic personage’. Another tradition assigns him five (or six) sons named Lugaid, making him ancestor of several minor ruling lineages including those of Corcu Orcthi, Calraige and Coscraige. Even less plausible, but doubtless significant, are attempts to represent him as an ancestor of the Loígsi and of Dál Messin Corbb, a Laigin dynasty which was dominant in the midlands at the dawn of the historical period. The genealogists assign him a son named Eochaid Étgudach. O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 81 n. 2; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 147; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 168, 217.

or (i: 7b) Dáire Drechlethan (Dáire Barrach) LAIGIN – UÍ BAIRRCHE Meyer, Älteste irische Dichtung, I, 18; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 260, 262; Dillon, Lebor na Cert, Appendix A, 152–3, 170–1, 176; O’Brien, Corpus, 11, 46, 99, 328; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1339–40.

Dáire Barrach, son of Cathaír Már according to genealogical tradition, is also a possible candidate, although he is not included in Middle Irish king-lists. The genealogies represent him as eponymous ancestor of the Uí Bairrche dynasty. He is assigned three sons, Fiacc, Eochu Guinech and Muiredach Sníthe. Some accounts add a fourth son – Breccán – from whom the Manaich of Ulster claimed descent. The text Timna Cathaír Máir claims that Dáire was bequeathed his father’s weapons, which probably reflects the position of his alleged descendants as defenders of the marches of Leinster. According to the Leinster regnal poem Nidu dír dermait, his son Muiredach Sníthe and grandson Móenach claimed the kingship of Tara, although not in BCC. O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 32, 37–8; Byrne, Irish kings, 139–40, 155, 288; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 147; Mac Shamhráin, Church and polity in preNorman Ireland, 11, 75.

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(i: 8) Fécho (Fiachu Sraiptine) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL AU AM 4266, 4267, 4276, 4317; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 356, 358, 360; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 223; Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 148 n. 5; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 93; O’Brien, Corpus, 72, 122, 124, 133, 147, 159; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1354; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 38 (§15).

Fiachu, son of Coirpre Lifechair (above, i: 5), is featured in Baile in Scáil and in the Middle Irish king-lists as king of Tara and is accorded a reign of twenty-seven years. His mother is not identified, but he supposedly had two brothers or half-brothers – Eochaid Doimlén (below, ii: 6; ancestor of the Airgíalla dynasties) and a second Eochaid. Fiachu himself is accorded two sons, Muiredach Tírech (below, i: 9) and Domnall, from whom the Uí Néill and Airgíalla dynasties, respectively, claimed descent. He is credited with a series of victories over the Laigin, including a battle fought at Dublinn (Dublin), and, according to a late tradition, was said to have been slain by the brothers Colla (below, ii: 2) at the battle of Dub Commair (possibly the confluence between the Rivers Boyne and Blackwater). An alternative early tradition claims that he fell at Cnámros, along with his brothers Eochaid Doimlén and Eochaid at the hands of the Leinster king Bressal Bélach. MacNeill, Phases of Irish history, 124–5; O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 221, 225, 228; McCone, Pagan past, 248–9.

(i: 9) Muiredach Tírech (Muiredach mac Fiachach) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL AU AM 4330, 4386; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 358, 360, 362, 364; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 178; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 223; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 93; O’Brien, Corpus, 122, 130, 131, 148–52; 159; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 38 (§16).

Muiredach Tírech, son of Fiachu (above, i: 8), is included in Baile in Scáil and in the Middle Irish king-lists, where he is accorded a reign of thirty years. His father allegedly reigned at Tara. His mother is named as Aífe, daughter of a king of the Gaill Gáedil, a term which usually describes the Gaelic-Norse realms of the Hebrides and seems to be very anachronistic here. He is said to have had a brother named Domnall. Acccording to the Banshenchas, he married Muirenn, daughter of a certain Fiachrae, king of Cenél nÉogain (another anachronism, as the eponymous Éogan is placed three generations later than Muiredach). Muirenn is represented as the mother of his son Eochaid Mugmedón. Muiredach is portrayed as his father’s battle champion and, it is claimed, subdued Munster on his behalf. Later, as king

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of Tara, he supposedly received back from exile the three brothers Colla, his father’s slayers, and allowed them to make swordland of mid-Ulster, because the men of that province were ‘undutiful’ towards him. Medieval historical tradition maintains that he was slain at Daball (River Blackwater, Cos. Tyrone, Armagh and Monaghan) by an Ulaid ruler, Cóelbad son of Crunn ba Druí, which is probably a reflection of the historical conflict between Uí Néill and the Ulaid over the kingship of Tara in the sixth and seventh centuries. His successors, according to various accounts, included his son Eochaid Mugmedón (featured in Middle Irish lists) who, it is implied, married Mongfhinn, daughter of Fidach of the Éoganachta, and his grandson Niall Noígíallach (below, i: 11). MacNeill, Phases of Irish history, 124–5; O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 225–227, 395–6; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 14; Byrne, Irish kings, 72–3; McCone, Pagan past, 248–9.

(i: 10) Crimthand (Crimthann mac Fidaig) ÉOGANACHTA AU AM 4431; Stokes, ‘Crimthann son of Fidach’; Meyer, Sanas Cormaic, 75, §883; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 368, 370, 382; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 179; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 93; O’Brien, Corpus, 122, 132, 205, 250, 362.

Crimthann mac Fidaig, the king most likely intended here, is claimed by Middle Irish king-lists to have reigned thirteen (or sixteen) years as ‘king of Ireland’, as successor to Eochaid Mugmedón, and is even credited with conquests in Britain. The prehistoric section of AU assigns him a reign of five years at Emain Macha. He is a Munster ancestral figure, whose presence among the early generations of the Éoganachta seems to represent an early genealogical tradition. His placement much further back in prehistoric levels of Dál Cais genealogy presumably reflects a later conflation of different ancestral doctrines. Crimthann’s father Fidach is represented as a son of Ailill Flann Bec, in turn a grandson of the eponymous Éogan Már, who fell in the battle of Mag Mucrama alongside Art mac Cuinn at the hands of Lugaid mac Con (above, i: 2, 3). Fidach is reputed to have had three brothers, one of whom, Maine Munchaín, was supposedly the father of Fiachu Fidgenid, from whom the Uí Fhidgenti claimed descent. Whether or not there is any significance in the repetition of the nameelement fid (wood) and the fact that éo (yew) is the first element of the dynastic group name Éoganachta is uncertain. According to the Banshenchas, Crimthann was married to Fidsheng, daughter of a king of Connacht, and they had an unnamed son about whom nothing further seems to be known. Crimthann’s role in the origin tale of the Éoganachta is as cousin and foster-father of Conall Corc. In the light of his Cashel connections, his inclusion in BCC might

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at first seem strange, but the proto-Éoganachta appear to have been closely associated with the Érainn (their exact relationship is unclear), whose alleged ancestor Mac Con, and perhaps also Dáire Doimtech, is listed among the kings of Tara (above, i: 3, 7a). The death-tale Aided Chrimthainn is also intriguing. His supposed sister, Mongfhinn, conveniently the widow of his predecessor Eochaid Mugmedón and mother of the latter’s sons Brion, Fiachrae and Ailill, gives him a poisoned drink (the inverse of the sovereignty goddess motif, in which the cup of kingship is proffered) and he dies while travelling home to Munster. It is claimed, however, that the kingship of Tara passed at this point to Mongfhinn’s stepson, Niall Noígíallach (below, i: 11). Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 30–7; O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 209–11, 496; Byrne, Irish kings, 75–6, 183–5; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 97–8 (§§ 154–6); Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 217–18.

(i: 11) Níell (Niall Noígíallach mac Echdach Mugmedóin) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL AU AM 4471; Meyer, ‘How King Niall of the Nine Hostages was slain’; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 366, 372–4, 384, 400–6, 410–12, 296–9; Joynt, ‘Echtra mac Echdach Mugmedóin’; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 179, 215–16; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 224; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 93; O’Brien, Corpus, 131–3, 147, 159, 162, 278, 425; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1454, 1466, 1467, 1485; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 39 (§18).

Niall son of Eochaid Mugmedón, according to genealogical tradition, is included in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish king-lists and features prominently in literature as king of Tara. His father Eochaid Mugmedón, who is claimed by Middle Irish sources to have reigned at Tara, (although not admitted in BCC), belongs to the Connachta. His mother Cairenn was supposedly of British origin, and is alternately represented as a princess or as a slave. Niall is said to have had four half-brothers. Mongfhinn, sister of Crimthann (above, i: 10), is represented as mother of three of his siblings – Brion, Fiachrae and Ailill – respectively the eponymous ancestors of Uí Briúin, Uí Fhiachrach and Uí Ailello. Of these dynasties, Uí Briúin was the most powerful, providing numerous overkings of Connacht throughout the medieval period. The others were of local and/or regional importance in early historical times. The fourth brother is named as Fergus Cáechán, whose progeny achieved no great prominence. Niall is assigned several wives, including Indiu daughter of Lugaid and Rígnach daughter of Meda both of Dál Fiatach. He is credited with fourteen sons, of whom eight are accorded significance in the extant records, featuring as eponyms of the group of dynasties that became known collectively as the Uí Néill. The eponymous ancestors in question included Conall Cremthainne (possibly a duplicate of Conall Gulban, below, ii: 4), Fiachu (below, ii:

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7a), Lóegaire and Coirpre (below, i: 12, 13) – with the last two counted as kings of Tara. The tradition identifying these four individuals as Uí Néill goes back at least to the seventh century and may (in some, if not in all, cases) be genuine.5 However, it seems likely that the presentation of them as brothers represents a simplification of their relationship devised, perhaps, during the ascendancy of Síl nÁedo Sláine. The schema no doubt resulted, in part at least, from the desire to bring them into contact with St Patrick, so that their respective hierarchy could be established. The tale of how Niall attained sovereignty seeks to justify the achievement by the youngest of Eochaid’s sons of a royal dignity higher than that of his brothers, in gaining the kingship of Tara. It is related how he salvaged the anvil and smith’s tools from a burning forge, while his brothers settled for items of lesser value. His ‘chosen’ status is further illustrated in the Middle Irish tale Echtra mac nEchdach Mugmedóin, in which Niall mates with an ugly hag whom his brothers could scarcely bring themselves to kiss, whereupon she is transformed into a beautiful maiden, the personification of sovereignty. His alleged achievements as king formed the subject of other tales, episodes of which are reflected in the genealogies and in Middle Irish poetry. His sobriquet Noígíallach (‘subjugator of nine hostages’) is linked to his supposed acquisition of hostages from the Cruithni of mid-Ulster, nine kingships of which were grouped, by the historical period, to form the mesne kingdom of Airgíalla (‘hostage-givers’), subject to the Uí Néill. The view that Niall initiated and his sons consolidated the conquest of the north-west and the midlands has been accepted by many historians to the present day. Traditions of his exploits abroad, raiding Roman Britain and meeting his end in Muir nIcht (the English Channel), were embroidered in the tenth/eleventh-century poetry of Cináed úa hArtacáin. Efforts to fit Niall into a chronological framework serve only to highlight the difficulties confronting pseudo-historians of the Middle Irish period. Placement of his death at 404 was doubtless prompted by the prior decision to synchronise some of his alleged sons with St Patrick, although early sixth-century obits assigned to other ‘sons’ would suggest a mid-fifth century floruit for Niall. His supposed testament, Timna Néill, bequeaths his sovereignty and his primacy to his sons Conall and Crimthann, probably to be identified with the above-mentioned duplicates, Conall Gulban and Conall Cremthainne. According to Middle Irish king-lists, Niall was succeeded as king of Tara by his nephew, Nath Í son of Fiachrae, but this king is not included in BCC. MacNeill, Phases of Irish history, 129–30, 157; Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 38–41; O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 209–34; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 9, 12, 16; Byrne, The rise of the Uí Néill; Byrne, Irish kings, 70–86, 94; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; Ó Corráin, ‘Historical need and literary narrative’, 144–52; McCone, Pagan past, 109,

5

Maine is not included among the sons of Niall in seventh-century sources, but is called filius Neill in AU at 440.

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182, 236, 249; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 322–4; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 97 (§153); Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 162–9; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 441; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, introduction; Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Níall Noígíallach’s death-tale’.

(i: 12) Loígaire (d. 462?) (Lóegaire [mac Néill?]) UÍ NÉILL? – CENÉL LOÉGAIRI AU 453, 454, 458, 461, 462; AFM s.a. 458; Ann. Clon. s.a. 458; LU 278–87; Book of Ballymote 86a 1–88d 40; Plummer, ‘The conversion of Loegaire’; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 369 (xxviii); Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 372, 384; III, 14–16, 28–34, 38, 40; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 179, 180; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 225; Mulchrone, Bethu Phátraic, 26–37; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 94, 117, 121; O’Brien, Corpus, 124, 131–2, 133, 153, 165–7; Bieler, Patrician texts, 74–7; Carey, ‘Pseudo-historical prologue to the Senchas Már’; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 39 (§21).

Lóegaire, son of Niall (above, i: 11) according to the genealogies, is apparently intended. He is the progenitor of Cenél Lóegairi, a dynasty of considerable prominence before the rise to power of Síl nÁedo Sláine and Clann Cholmáin in the midlands. Much of the material concerning Lóegaire is unreliable and some of it is clearly legendary. Lóegaire was accepted in Baile in Scáil and in the Middle Irish king-lists as having been king of Tara. Ráith Lóegaire at Tara reputedly preserves his name, possibly regarded, according to the tale Comthoth Lóegairi, as his burial-place. Representation of Lóegaire as a son of Niall makes him, in spite of clear chronological difficulties, a brother of the other Uí Néill ancestor figures including Coirpre (below, i: 13), Conall, Fiachu (below, ii: 4, 7a), and Éogan. The Banshenchas names his mother as Rígnach and his wife as Angas, daughter of Tassach, of the Uí Liatháin of Munster. He is credited with as many as fifteen sons, the most prominent of whom were Lugaid (below, i: 15) and Énnae, from whom many of the later kings of Cenél Lóegairi claimed descent. According to Patrician hagiography, he also had two daughters whose names are given as Eithne and Fedelm. Lóegaire was reputedly a law-giver. The introduction to the Senchas Már claims that he established a committee of nine to revise the traditional laws of Ireland in a Christian spirit. However, his prominence rests even more on the stories of his hostile encounter with St Patrick at Ferta Fir Féicc and at Tara. The earliest version of this meeting is given by the Patrician hagiographer, Muirchú, at the end of the seventh century. Muirchú’s Lóegaire was eventually persuaded to accept the Christian faith. On account of his initial opposition to Patrick, and the reluctance with which he accepted the faith, Muirchú has Patrick predict that none of Lóegaire’s offspring would ever be king. However, Tírechán, a near-contemporary of Muirchú’s, in his Patrician dossier, represents Lóegaire as refusing to accept Christianity

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because his father, Niall, had forbidden him to do so. Niall had further ordered that Lóegaire be buried standing up, armed with his weapons, in the ramparts of Tara facing his traditional – albeit anachronistic – enemies, the sons of Dúnlaing, kings of the Laigin, in their graves at Maistiu (Mullaghmast, par. Narraghmore, bar. Kilkea and Moone, Co. Kildare). In order to distance Lóegaire from the traditions concerning his opposition to Patrick, the later genealogists adopted the fiction that it was a son of his, also called Lóegaire, who had opposed the saint. In 452 Lóegaire is said to have achieved a major victory over the Laigin, although this gain was reversed in 458 at the battle of Áth Dara. 6 In the course of the latter battle Lóegaire was captured and secured his release by making oaths upon the sun and the wind that he would not pursue his campaign against the Laigin. According to later sources, Lóegaire’s capture arose from his attempts to impose the bóruma tribute on the Laigin. Lóegaire is said to have died in 461. Later tradition attributed his death to his breach of the oaths which he had made while a captive of the Laigin (AFM; Ann. Clon.). There is considerable confusion in the sources concerning the length of his reign, with accounts varying from seven to thirtyeight years. There are some indications that Lóegaire’s floruit may have been in the fourth, rather than the fifth century. The fifth-century floruit may, possibly, arise from attempts by Patrick’s reputed early seventh-century hagiographer, Ultán of Ardbraccan, who lived among the Cenél Lóegairi, to have the saint encounter the founder of the local dynasty. Genealogical tradition relates that branches of Cenél Lóegairi occupied various territories from Lough Erne to the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Mac Eoin, ‘The mysterious death of Lóegaire mac Néill’, 21–48; Byrne, Irish kings, 50, 53, 64–5, 80–3, 90–1, 93–4, 97, 103, 145, 151, 192, 194, 208, 232, 254–5; Smyth, ‘Húi Néill and the Leinstermen’, 122–3; Byrne, ‘A note on Trim and Sletty’; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 269; Swift, ‘Tírechán’s motives’, 69–70, 71–3, 76, 78; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 62, 134, 215–16; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 12, 19, 458–60, 471–3, 519; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 161–93, 278–300 (genealogies).

(i: 13) Corpre (fl. 485–500) (Coirpre mac Néill) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL COIRPRI AU 494, 499, 501; AI 485; Dinneen, Foras feasa II, 372, III, 46, 50; Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 179; O’Brien, Corpus, 131, 133, 166; Bieler, Patrician texts, 132–3: 9; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1467; Connolly, ‘Vita Prima S. Brigitae’, 31.

Coirpre son of Niall (above, i: 11) according to the genealogies, is conspicuously absent – notwithstanding his apparent inclusion in BCC – from Middle Irish king-lists, prompting 6

Ó Riain, Ó Murchadha and Murray, Historical dictionary of Gaelic placenames, 128, suggest on River Barrow, perhaps tls. Ballyellin and Tomdarragh, bar. Idrone, Co. Carlow.

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suggestions that he was deliberately expunged. Despite the difficulties posed (as explained above) by representing Coirpre and other alleged sons of Niall as siblings, the Banshenchas claims that his mother was Rígnach, making him a full brother of Éogan, Lóegaire (above, i: 12) and Conall (below, ii: 4), but a half brother of Fiachu (below, ii: 7a). Coirpre is called a son of Niall by Tírechán who, in the Collectanea, places him at Tailtiu while Lóegaire held Tara. He is otherwise identified as eponymous ancestor of the dynasty of Cenél Coirpri at the expense of which Diarmait mac Cerbaill (below, i: 20), perhaps the earliest Uí Néill king of Tara about whom reliable historical data survives, came to power. Certainly Cenél Coirpri had lost political favour by the second half of the seventh century, at which stage Síl nÁedo Sláine was dominant. According to Tírechán, Coirpre was cursed by St Patrick for his defiant paganism, while the saint predicted that his line would produce no future kings (but see Tuathal, below, i: 17). Moreover, the eighth-century Vita Prima of St Brigit represents Coirpre as the mortal enemy of his brother Conall, ancestor of the Uí Néill dynasties which emerged supreme in the midlands. The brothers are reconciled only because, through a miracle of the saint, they fail to recognise each other. Timna Néill reflects the geographically marginal location of Cenél Coirpri by having Niall bequeath to their ancestor the borders of his realm. Coirpre’s inclusion in BCC probably reflects the prominent position which his dynasty (presumably of Connacht origin) enjoyed until the seventh century. The non-contemporary annal-stratum, which charts a series of wars with the Laigin, known from other sources to have claimed the kingship of Tara, records Coirpre as the victor in several battles: AI names him as victor over the Laigin overking Finnchad in the first battle of Granairet (Granard, Co. Longford) at 485, while AU associates him with engagements at Tailtiu, Slemain (tls. Slanebeg and Slanemore, par. Dysart, bar. Moyashel and Magheradernon, Co. Westmeath) and Cenn Ailbe (perhaps in par. Hollywood, bar. Balrothery West, Co. Dublin) 7, assigned to the years 494, 499 and 501 respectively. Eochu, credited with a defeat of Fróech son of Finnchad at a second battle of Granairet in 495, may have been a son of this Coirpre. Coirpre’s putative descendant Tuathal Máelgarb (below, i: 17) is included among the kings of Tara. Byrne, ‘Historical note on Cnogba’, 396; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 12, 17; Byrne, Irish kings, 81, 90–1, 94; Smyth, ‘Húi Néill and the Leinstermen’, 128–9, 134; Byrne, ‘Genaleogical tables’, 127; McCone, Pagan past, 250–1; Swift, ‘Tírechán’s motives’, 67–72, 80–2; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 20, 446–68; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 210–40.

7

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(i: 14) Ailill (d. c. 482) (Ailill Molt) CONNACHTA – UÍ FHIACHRACH AU 467, 468, 475, 482; AFM s.a. 478; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 42, 44; Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 179, 180; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 224–5; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 94; O’Brien, Corpus, 124; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 39 (§20).

Ailill, son of Nath Í, is also included among the kings of Tara in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish king-lists, where he is accorded a reign of twenty years, and is claimed in the noncontemporary stratum of AU to have celebrated feis Temro. His sobriquet molt appears to mean ‘the wether’ – perhaps an allusion to his physical strength. In the line of his father, Nath Í, who is included among the kings of Tara in Middle Irish king-lists, but not in BCC, he belongs to the Uí Fhiachrach of Connacht. This dynasty descended from Fiachrae, allegedly a brother of Niall Noígíallach (above, i: 11). Ailill seems to represent a connection between Tara and Cruachu, when Connacht-based dynasties, including Uí Fhiachrach and Cenél Coirpri, were asserting their claims over the significant kingship of Tara. According to the Banshenchas, Ailill’s mother was Eithne, daughter of Conrí Cas, and his wife Uchdelb, daughter of Óengus mac Nad Fróich, an ancestor of the Éoganacht Chaisil. His sons are named as Cellach and [Mac] Erc[ae] (below, i: 16; ii: 14). Aside from his celebration of feis Temro (assigned to 467), AU, citing the ‘Book of Cuanu’, relates that Ailill fought against the Laigin at the battle of Duma Aichir 8 in 468 and at Brí Éle (perhaps in the vicinity of tls. Croghanhill, par. Ballyburly and Croghan, bar. Lower Philipstown, Co. Offaly) in 475. He is said to have been killed in 482 at the battle of Ocha (Faughan Hill, par. Ardbraccan, bar. Lower Navan, Co. Meath), which a gloss credits to Lugaid (below, i: 15) son of Lóegaire (above, i: 12) and Muirchertach Mac Ercae, which may reflect some confusion with Ailill’s son Mac Ercae. Later annalistic accounts claim that the victors at Ocha had the support of the Laigin and the Ulaid which, if true, would indicate that a very broad-based coalition opposed Ailill. This alliance may reflect the range of dynastic interests that in the fifth and sixth centuries still pursued claims to the Tara kingship. According to the tale Echtra mac nEchdach Mugmedóin, Uí Fhiachrach would ‘pay but a fleeting visit to Tara’. This presumably alludes to the reign of Ailill and possibly to that of his father Nath Í and/or his son Mac Ercae. Walsh, ‘Christian kings of Connacht’, 128–9; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 16–17, 21; Byrne, Irish kings, 75, 85, 231–2; Smyth ‘Húi Néill and the Leinstermen’, 125–6; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127, 138; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 61–2 (§43); CharlesEdwards, Early Christian Ireland, 460–4.

8

Ibid., 136, suggests perhaps the tomb in tl. Haroldstown, bar. Rathvilly, Co. Carlow.

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(i: 15) Lugaid (d. c. 507) (Lugaid mac Lóegairi) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL LÓEGAIRI AU 482, 484, 507, 508, 512; Ann. Tig. (= AU 507); Book of Lecan, 305b; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 40, 46, 48; ‘Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 225; Mulchrone, Bethu Phátraic, 36–7; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 94; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 40 (§23).

Lugaid, son of Lóegaire (above, i: 12) is seemingly intended. Lugaid was accepted by later sources, including Baile in Scáil and the Middle Irish king-lists, as having been king of Tara, despite the prophecy concerning Lóegaire’s descendants attributed to Patrick by the hagiographer Muirchú. The later Life of Patrick, Bethu Phátraic, seeks to reconcile this discordance by claiming that Patrick excepted Lugaid from the effect of the prophecy. However, Lugaid’s exemption from the judgement would only last for so long as he did not oppose Patrick. A text in the Book of Lecan actually places the arrival of Patrick in Ireland during the reign of Lugaid and states that his opposition to Patrick and the subsequent curse occurred during the saint’s lifetime. According to the non-contemporary stratum in AU, Lugaid, in alliance with Muirchertach Mac Ercae (which appears anachronistic; see below, i: 16a) defeated Ailill Molt (above, i: 14) at the battle of Ocha in 482. In 484, he is said to have assumed the kingship of Tara. His death is assigned to 507. Bethu Phátraic and Ann. Tig. relate that he was killed by a thunderbolt at Achad Fhorchai ‘the field of the thunderbolt’ (perhaps tl. Agheragh, par. Moybolgue, bar. Lower Kells, Co. Meath), following his rejection of Patrick. However, the annalistic account of Lugaid’s death says that he died at the battle of Ard Corann (tls. Curran and Drumliss, par. Larne, bar. Upper Glenarm, Co. Antrim). This version seems to be borne out by BCC. MacNeill, Phases of Irish history, 192–3; MacEoin, ‘The mysterious death of Lóegaire mac Néill’, 21–48; Byrne, Irish kings, 81, 85, 90, 103; Smyth, ‘Húi Néill and the Leinstermen’, 126–7, 136–7.

(i: 16) Mac Ercéni (d. c. 543) (Mac Ercae) CONNACHTA – UÍ FHIACHRACH AU 543, 548; AI 500, 502, 530; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 180.

Mac Ercae is the son of Ailill Molt (above, i: 14), and so an early representative of Uí Fhiachrach, if the Connachta dynast of that name is intended in BCC ’s list. He is not explicitly named in the Middle Irish king-lists. However, it is possible that here, as in the noncontemporary stratum of annals, his persona is merged with that of Muirchertach Mac Ercae (below, i: 16a) of Cenél nÉogain. According to the Banshenchas, his mother was

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Uchdelb, daughter of Óengus mac Nad Froích (ancestor of Éoganacht Chaisil), and he had a brother Cellach who was the father of Éogan Bél. Owing to confusion with his Cenél nÉogain namesake, it is difficult to trace Mac Ercae’s career in the annals. Entries which may relate to him seem to suggest an active career of more than four decades before his death, which is placed at 543 or 548. If it is accepted that his father was slain in 482, Mac Ercae would have been quite advanced in years when slain in battle, although there are problems with the chronology of this non-contemporary annalstratum. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to associate him with the battle of Segais (a district between the River Boyle and Curlew Mountains, Co. Roscommon)9 dated to 502. While AU attributes this encounter to the Cenél nÉogain dynast, AI names the victor as Mac Ercae. On balance, an Uí Fhiachrach king is perhaps more likely to have engaged in conflict with the Uí Briúin dynasty of Connacht at this early date, if the annalistic record can be trusted. Likewise, AI names Mac Ercae as the victor of two battles against the Laigin whose kings, as is clear from other sources, were still actively contesting the kingship of Tara in the sixth century. Included here is an engagement at Inne Mór (dated to 500), the location of which is uncertain,10 and another at Cenn Eich11 (dated 530), perhaps to be identified with a site of that name in Mide, although it is possible that the encounter took place in north Leinster. Interestingly, under the same year Muirchertach Mac Ercae is associated with a battle in Brega. The death of Mac Ercae at the battle of Tortu (near Ardbraccan, bar. Lower Navan, Co. Meath)12 in 543 is attributed to the Laigin. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 18; Byrne, Irish kings, 102, 298; Smyth, ‘Húi Néill and the Leinstermen’, 133–4, 137; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 58.

or (i: 16a) Mac Ercéni (d. c. 534) (Muirchertach Mac Ercae) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN AU 520, 528, 533, 534, 536; AI 530; Meyer, ‘The Laud genealogies’, 297; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 48, 50; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 180; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 225; ‘On the dates of two sources’, 146 note (d); Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 94; O’Brien, Corpus,124, 134; Nic Dhonnchadha, Aided Muirchertaig Meic Erca; VSC I, 7; Sharpe, Life of St Columba, 119; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 40 (§24).

Muirchertach Mac Ercae, son of Muiredach, an early dynast of Cenél nÉogain, is an alternative identification which could be made here. It happens that a gloss in one text of BCC 9 10 11 12

Ibid., 179. Ó Murchadha (156) suggests that Inne Mór may have been in Crích Ua nGabla, an area in north Kildare. Ibid., 117, suggests tl. Kineagh, par./bar. Kilcullen. Co. Kildare. Ibid., 186.

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equates Mac Ercéni with ‘Muirchertach’. He is included in Baile in Scáil and in the Middle Irish king-lists as king of Tara under the name ‘Muirchertach Mac Ercae’. However, an attempt in Baile in Scáil, repeated in the Banshenchas, to explain the second element of his name by claiming that his mother was Erc daughter of Loarn (a king of the Scots) shows clearly that, even in early medieval times, there was confusion regarding his identity. The name Mac Ercae is manifestly neither a matronymic, as the compilers of Baile in Scáil believed, nor a patronymic – but a personal name in its own right. On that account Muirchertach Mac Ercae, as pointed out by Francis John Byrne, is almost certainly a compound character, two personal names having become linked. It seems clear that there was an early Uí Néill dynast named Mac Ercae. Adomnán, in the VSC , alludes to two of his sons, Domnall Ilchelgach and Fergus. By the time the genealogies were being compiled (probably a century later) reference was being made to Muirchertach Mac Ercae as one of the four sons of Muiredach, and he was attached to Cenél nÉogain. Perhaps two brothers were confounded. It also appears from the noncontemporary annal-stratum that there was further confusion between this compound figure and Mac Ercae (above, i: 16) son of Aillill Molt. Muirchertach Mac Ercae is said to have had five sons; four are named as Fergus (d. 566), Domnall Ilchelgach (d. 566), Báetán (d. 572) and Néillíne, the first three of whom are claimed in Middle Irish king-lists to have reigned as kings of Tara. His own career is difficult to isolate in the non-contemporary stratum of annals. Efforts by the compilers of AU to associate him with the late fifth-century battles of Ocha and Granairet – aside from the chronological and geographical difficulties posed – suggest uncertainty. The alternative attribution of the latter victory to Coirpre (above, i: 13) is far more convincing, if it is accepted that Cenél Coirpri extended its military activities into the midlands during this period. On the other hand, the association of Muirchertach Mac Ercae with a series of sixth-century encounters, the locations of which appear to cluster in Brega, seems authentic. These include the battle of Détna, dated to 520, fought in association with Ind Airthir against a faction of Cenél Conaill. There is also a number of engagements with the Laigin: Áth Sige (perhaps tl./par. Assey (near Tara), bar. Lower Deece, Co. Meath) dated to 528 or 530 (which AI expressly separates from the battle of Cenn Eich, ascribed to Mac Ercae of Connacht), and several other encounters including those at Éibliu 13 in Mag nAilbe (Moynalvy, bar. Deece, Cos. Kildare and Meath or bar. of Kilkea and Moone, Co. Kildare) and Almu, – a line from east Meath to north Kildare –, grouped together in AU at 533. However, regarding his identification with Mac Ercéni in BCC, or indeed his inclusion among the kings of Tara, it must be noted that the emergence of Cenél nÉogain to a dominant position within the Uí Néill is shrouded in obscurity. Moreover, evidence for Cenél nÉogain associations with Uí Néill is relatively late. The earliest members of the dynasty identifiable 13

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with any confidence as kings of Tara are Áed Allán and Suibne Menn (below, i: 19, 22), both dateable to the early seventh century. An alleged descendant of Muirchertach, Fergal mac Maíle Dúin (below, i: 32), strongly contested supremacy with Síl nÁedo Sláine in the early eighth century. Successes achieved by Fergal, and indeed later Cenél nÉogain kings, perhaps explain why later tradition associates Muirchertach with the kingship of Tara, and makes him the subject of the elaborate and widely discussed death-tale Aided Muirchertaig Meic Erca. In this doom-laden narrative, a woman of the síd leads the king to an untimely end, in which he perishes through a ‘threefold death’. His demise is dated to 534. MacNeill, Phases of Irish history, 190–3; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 17, 18; Byrne, Irish kings, 90, 100–3; Smyth, ‘Húi Néill and the Leinstermen’, 134, 137; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; McCone, Pagan past, 146–8; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 99 (§159); Sharpe, Life of St Columba, 268 n. 80; Herbert, ‘The death of Muirchertach Mac Erca’; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 447, 490.

(i: 17) Óengarb (d. c. 544) (Tuathal Máelgarb) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL COIRPRI AU 537, 539, 544, 549; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 50, 52, 54; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 180; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 225; Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 146, 148 n.(e); Bergin, Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 94; O’Brien, Corpus, 124; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 39–40 (§22).

Tuathal Máelgarb son of Cormac Cáech is the king most likely intended by the kenning Óengarb (‘uniquely rough’) as a gloss in the 23 N 10 version of BCC suggests. He is included among the kings of Tara in Baile in Scáil, where he is accorded a reign of twenty years, and in Middle Irish king-lists, where this is shortened to eleven years. It is implied in AU that he held the kingship of Tara. Diarmait (below, i: 20) is said to have succeeded him in 544, while Tuathal himself is styled rí Teamrach in an additional hand in AU at 549. Tuathal’s mother is named as Cumman Maine daughter of Dallbrónach. His father, who is otherwise obscure, is attached to Cenél Coirpri, although there are doubts about the authenticity of this tradition. Besides, the fact that Tírechán has Patrick predict that no descendant of Coirpre (above, i: 13) would hold the kingship of Tara raises certain difficulties. The eponymous Coirpre was reputedly a son of Niall Noígíallach (above, i: 11, 13), thus connecting Tuathal genealogically to the Uí Néill. Certainly, his line was closely connected with other dynasties of the Uí Néill in the later sixth and early seventh centuries. His accession to the kingship is placed at 534. In 535, he inflicted a defeat on Cíannacht Breg at Lúachair (Mór) (perhaps tls. Upper and Lower Lougher, par. Duleek, bar. Lower Duleek or somewhere between the Rivers Delvin and Nanny, Co. Meath), possibly a victory of considerable magnitude given the Cíannachta’s power in the region at the time. Little is

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known of his subsequent reign, although tradition claims that he drove his rival, Diarmait mac Cerbaill, into exile. This may explain why Tuathal is cast in a negative light in later Clonmacnoise sources, where he figures prominently. The assassination of Tuathal at Grellach Eilte (perhaps west of Crossakeel, par. Loughcrew, bar. Fore, Co. Meath) 14 by a certain Máel Mórdai (or Máel Mór) son of Airgetán is dated to 544. According to later tradition, Máel Mórdai was an uterine brother (or a foster-brother) of the exiled Diarmait, who seems to have gained the kingship of Tara as a result of Tuathal’s death. His dynasty remained powerful in north Connacht for several generations, but was in decline by the late seventh century. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 18–19; Byrne, Irish kings, 90–2; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; McCone, Pagan past, 145; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 93; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 34, 450–2; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 210–40.

(i: 18) Áed (d. 604) (Áed Sláine mac Diarmato) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE AU 600, 604; Windisch, Genemain Áeda Sláine; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 74–5, 85–7; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 110, 14, 116; Plummer, Vitae, I, 39 (xiv), 259 (iii), 268 (xxiv); Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 180, 181, 217, 219; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 226; Thurneysen, ‘Colmán mac Lénéni und Senchán Torpéist’, 201; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 95; 196; VSC I, 14; Anderson, Sources of Scottish history, I, 34; O’Brien, Corpus, 124, 160–1; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1466–7; Sharpe, Life of St Columba, 122, 263 n. 70, 276 n. 95; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 41 (§30).

Áed Sláine son of Diarmait (below, i: 20), whose sobriquet (used in a lament by Colmán mac Lénéni) may reflect an association with the ecclesiastical site of Slane and who features in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish king-lists as king of Tara, is perhaps to be identified with Áed in BCC. He is accorded a reign of seven years. The later lists claim, as does his obit in AU, that he shared the kingship of Tara with Colmán Rímid of Cenél nÉogain, who does not feature in either BCC or Baile in Scáil. On the other hand, if Áed son of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565) is intended here, he seems to be placed too early in the list, suggesting a problem with the sequence of kings as presented in BCC. Áed Sláine’s mother was Mugain daughter of Concraid son of Duí of Uí Duach Argatrois. A story preserved in the Latin Life of Áed mac Bricc (below, ii: 10), the theme of which is developed further in the Middle Irish birth-tale Geinemain Áeda Sláine, has the saintly abbot cure Mugain of sterility: she is said to have given birth firstly to a lamb, secondly to a silver fish, and thirdly to Áed Sláine. According to the genealogists, Áed had two brothers, or half-brothers, Colmán Bec and 14

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Ibid., 152.

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Colmán Már (below, ii: 5, 5a), possibly the same individual duplicated. For his own part, Áed seems to have contracted more than one marriage. According to the Banshenchas, a certain Lann was the mother of his son Blathmac (below, i: 25), while Eithne daughter of Brénainn of the Connachta is named as mother of a number of his sons, including Diarmait (below, i: 26), Congal (d. 634), Ailill (d. 634), Dúnchad (d. 659), Máel Odor and Máel Bressail. Other sons assigned to Áed were Conall Lóeg Breg (sl. 612) and Tigernán, besides a daughter Nonnat who married Colmán son of Áed of Cenél Lóegairi. Apparently, Áed Sláine emerged in the closing years of the sixth century as the dominant figure in the midlands, opposing the sons of his elder brother(s), Colmán Már/Bec’s sons. According to a gloss in AU, he began to reign jointly with Colmán Rímid of Cenél nÉogain in 598. In 600 he slew his nephew, Suibne son of Colmán. It seems reasonable that he took this course of action so that he could be freer to contest the kingship of Tara, increasingly viewed as the prerogative of Uí Néill overkings, with his Cenél nÉogain opponent Colmán Rímid. Áed’s slaying of Suibne earned him the condemnation of the Iona establishment, probably because Suibne’s family (Clann Cholmáin) was more closely connected with St Columba’s dynasty of Cenél Conaill than later genealogists realised (or cared to admit), and because Colmán in any case had close involvement with Iona circles. Adomnán in VSC has the saint prophesy that this fingal ‘kin-slaying’ would lead to a divided kingship. Columba warns Áed: ‘My son, you must take heed lest through parricidali ... peccato (‘the sin of family murder’) you lose the prerogative of monarchy over the kingdom of all Ireland, predestined for you by God (tibi a deo totius Everniae regni praerogativam monarchiae praedestinatam).’ With the benefit of hindsight, Adomnán’s predecessors had already seen how the overkingship built by Diarmait and Colmán, against the counter-claims of Cenél nÉogain, became fragmented due to inter-dynastic conflict. Other hagiographical traditions, however, presented Áed Sláine in a positive light. He is said to have donated the site of Lann Elo to Colmán Elo and, later, to have released a prisoner at the holy man’s request. Áed was assassinated in 604 at Loch Seimdide (Lough Sewdy or Sunderlin, par. Ballymore, bar. Rathconrath, Co. Westmeath) on the orders of his grandnephew, Conall Guthbinn (d. 635). A gloss in Ann. Tig attributes the actual killing to Áed Gustán, a foster-brother of Conall. The death of Áed Sláine facilitated the rival Cenél nÉogain dynasty in asserting its claims to supremacy of the Uí Néill. It appears that cousins of Colmán Rímid, Áed Uaridnach and Suibne Menn (below, i: 19, 22) both reigned as kings of Tara. Áed Sláine’s sons Congal and Ailill were dominant in Brega until 634. His sons Blathmac and Diarmait later attained the kingship of Tara. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 46, 82; Byrne, Irish kings, 90, 96–8, 154, 168, 255; Smyth, ‘Húi Failgi relations with the Húi Néill’; Smyth, Warlords and holy men, 89, 96, 98–9; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; McCone, Pagan past, 242, 251–2; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 38; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 6, 491, 520;

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Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 91, 95; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 59–60; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 25–7.

or (i: 18a) Áed (d. 588) (Áed Dub mac Suibni Araidi) CRUITHNI – DÁL NARAIDI AU 565, 588; AI 564; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 72–82; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 72; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 193, 195; VSC I, 36; Sharpe, Life of St Columba, 138–9, 297–8 n. 158.

Áed Dub son of Suibne Araide is another possibility here, although he is not normally included among the kings of Tara. Middle Irish king-lists accord him a reign of five years as overking of the Ulaid. While his genealogy is not preserved, his father’s sobriquet suggests a link with the Cruithni dynasty of Dál nAraidi. Its kings, such as Fiachnae Lurgan (below, i: 21), remained powerful into the seventh century, at times asserting their lordship as far as the Boyne. It is probable that Áed Dub emerged as ruler of Dál nAraidi after the battle of Móin Daire Lothair in 563. He is credited with the slaying of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (below, i: 20) in 565, thereby earning him the wrath of later Uí Néill commentators, including Adomnán of Iona who condemns him as an apostate priest. He features prominently in Diarmait’s legendary death-tale Aided Dhiarmada, wounding the latter with a spear as he fled a burning house. The role imputed to him in slaying a reigning king of Tara suggests that he may have been a challenger for that dignity. However, the regnal lists imply that he attained overkingship of Ulaid only after the death of his Dál Fiatach rival Báetán son of Cairell, which is dated to 581. Áed Dub was slain by Fiachnae Lurgan son of Báetán. It is claimed that he was speared while aboard a ship, toppled overboard and was drowned. As with his alleged victim, Diarmait mac Cerbaill, the account of Áed’s killing seems to echo the tradition of ‘threefold death’ – with his being wounded and falling from wood into water. His death is entered at 588. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 71–2, 75, 88; Byrne, Irish kings, 96–100, 109; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 133; Ross, ‘Lindow Man’, 163; Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Threefold death’, 56–8; Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, 65; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Colmáin’, 94; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 63, 295, 527.

or

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(i: 18b) Áed (d. 589) (Áed mac Brénainn) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL MAINI AU 562, 589; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 56; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 183; O’Brien, Corpus, 162; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1467.

Áed son of Brénainn, another possible identification, belonged to Cenél Maini (traced to Maine, another alleged son of Niall Noígíallach (above, i: 11)) and is styled rex Tethba (Tethbae: a kingdom in the midlands) in the annals. His wife is named as Eithne, and she is identified as the mother of three of his sons, Corc, Cathasach and Blathmac. He had another son, Óengus, from whom a line of later rulers of Tethbae descended. Áed defeated Diarmait mac Cerbaill (below, i: 20) at Cúl Uinsenn (perhaps Cornafunshin, par. Killoe, bar. Longford, Co. Longford or tl. Coolnahinch, par. Templemichael, bar. Ardagh, Co. Longford) 15 in Tethbae, in 562. Diarmait fled the battlefield. Áed may, on that account, have been a contender for the kingship of Tara. He died in 589. According to later annalistic sources, Áed granted the site of the church of Darmag (Durrow Demesne, par. Durrow, bar. Ballycowan, Co. Offaly) to Colum Cille. While Durrow does not appear to have been within the confines of Tethbae, the assertion that it fell within the ambit of Cenél Maini is consistent with the genealogical tracts which speak of Cenél Maini settlement as far south as Urmuma (a territory in east Munster, north Co. Tipperary). Byrne, Irish kings, 91–2, 95; Herbert, Iona, Kells, and Derry, 32, 197; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 191, 193.

(i: 19) Áed Allán (d. 612) (Áed Uaridnach mac Domnaill) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN AU 605, 612; Ann. Tig. (= AU 605); Frag. Ann. §§ 7–9; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 116; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 182, 221; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 226; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 95; Anderson, Sources of Scottish history, I, 262; O’Brien, Corpus, 124, 126, 134, 175; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1485; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 40–41 (§29).

Áed son of Domnall Ilchelgach son of Muirchertach Mac Ercae is also reckoned among the kings of Tara in Baile in Scáil and in the Middle Irish king-lists, which accord him a reign of eight years. He is also styled rex Temro in AU. The Middle Irish king-lists also admit his father Domnall Ilchelgach (d. 566; not mentioned in BCC) as a previous joint king of Tara. Áed was a grandson of the early Cenél nÉogain ruler Muirchertach Mac Ercae, who seems to have 15

Ibid., 130 suggests the second identification.

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become confused with an Uí Fhiachrach king Mac Ercae (Mac Ercéni; above, i: 16a). Here accorded the epithet Allán, Áed was dubbed Uaridnach (‘shivering’) by Middle Irish writers to distinguish him from a later namesake of the same dynasty, Áed Allán son of Fergal (below, i: 32). Genealogical tradition names his brothers as Eochaid (d. 572) and Colcu (d. 580), and identifies his mother as Bríg, daughter of a certain Forgg son of Caírthenn. According to the Banshenchas, his wife was Damnat daughter of Murchad ‘a Luirg’, the mother of his son Máel Fithrig (d. 630); and he had at least one other son, Dáire (d. 624). From the former descended the lineage of Síl Maíle Fithrig, which provided most of the later kings of Cenél nÉogain. A (probably late) hagiographical tale associates Áed with the saintly Muru Othna of Fahan, Co. Donegal, whose foundation had close Cenél nÉogain links. A gloss in AU and a verse in Ann. Tig. credit Áed with the defeat of the Leinster king Brandub mac Echach at the battle of Slabar in 605. His death, according to later sources at the battle of Áth Dá Fherta in Mag Chonaille (perhaps on River Fane, at Knockbridge, tl. Loughantarve, par. Louth, bar. Upper Dundalk, Co. Louth)16, is recorded at 612. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 84, 90; Byrne, Irish kings, 104, 115–16; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 61, 72.

or (i: 19a) Áed Allán (d. 598) (Áed mac Ainmerech) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL AU 569, 575, 580, 587, 592, 593, 598; Ann. Tig. (= AU 569, 580, 587, 598); AFM s.a. 593, 594; Plummer, Vitae, II, 149–50; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 76, 78, 80, 82,84, 96, 98; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 181, 182, 218, 221; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 226; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 95; VSC I, 49–50; Anderson, Sources of Scottish history, I, 79–85; O’Brien, Corpus, 124, 163–4, 435; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1485; Sharpe, Life of St Columba, 62, 151, 256 n. 54, 312 n. 204; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 41 (§31).

Áed mac Ainmerech, an identification made by the glossator of the 23 N 10 version of BCC, is admitted as king of Tara in Baile in Scáil and in the Middle Irish king-lists, which also admit his father Ainmere (d. 569). In the latter source, he is accorded a reign of twenty-eight years. Curiously, he is not styled ‘king of Tara’ in the main hand of AU. Nor is he elsewhere accorded the sobriquet Allán, although the BCC glossator was apparently influenced by a conviction that Áed Uaridnach and Áed Allán were different individuals – as reflected in Baile in Scáil, where they are listed separately as the twenty-ninth and thirty-first kings respectively – and so suggests identification with this closely contemporary Áed. In his father’s 16

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Ó Riain, Ó Murchadha and Murray, Historical dictionary of Gaelic placenames, 126.

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line, Áed is fourth in descent from Conall (below, ii: 4) eponym of the Cenél Conaill dynasty. According to the Banshenchas, his mother was Brigit, daughter of Cobthach from Ard Ladrann (possibly Ardamine, Co. Wexford), and his wife was Lann daughter of Áed Guaire, a king of the Uí Meic Cáirthinn. His sons include Máel Cobo (d. 615) and Domnall (below, i: 24), Crunnmáel, Cummascach (d. 597) and Conall Cú (d. 604). He was first cousin once-removed to St Columba, and it is possible that he gave assistance to his kinsman in founding his church at Durrow.17 He may also, as claimed by a gloss in the Bodleian manuscript of Amra Choluim Chille, have commissioned the poet Dallán Forgaill to compose his famous elegy on the saint’s death. Áed’s rise to prominence is evident in the annals. In 570 he slew a Cenél nÉogain rival, Fergus son of Néillíne, who had killed his father Ainmere in the previous year. The prestigious kingship of Tara was, apparently, not within his grasp at this stage. While it seems that he assisted his cousin, Báetán son of Ninnid, who strove to establish himself as overking from 572 to 586, there is little concrete evidence to support suggestions that the latter ruled under Áed’s protection. Certainly Áed played a key role in defending the rights of Cenél Conaill against Cenél nÉogain. In 580/1 he defeated the rival dynasty at the battle of Druim Meic Erce (tl. Drumahirk, par./bar. Clogher, Co.Tyrone). Six years later he avenged Báetán’s death when the instigator of his assassination, their kinsman Colmán son of Diarmait (below, i: 20), was defeated and slain at the battle of Belach Dathí. Áed may have attained the kingship of Tara about this time. Whether or not his most important involvement in ecclesiastical affairs preceded any such advance in status is unclear. According to Adomnán’s VSC, Áed presided at the Convention of Druim Cett (perhaps Mullagh (Daisy Hill), south of Limavady, Co. Derry), an event which different annals place at 575 or c. 590. There are difficulties inherent in the earlier date, not least of which is the lack of evidence that Áed would have had the political weight at this early stage to convene such a significant assembly. Besides, the reported presence at Druim Cett of his son Domnall, who lived until 642, seems to support a date c. 590 for the convention. As to the purpose of Druim Cett, claims that it was concerned with banishing the poets of Ireland may be dismissed. Its probable purpose was the formation of an alliance between Áed and Áedán son of Gabrán, king of Dál Ríata, against their mutual enemy the overking of Ulaid. It seems that the allegiance of Dál Ríata’s Irish-based forces and fleet was transferred from the Ulaid overking to the king of Tara, and the independence of its territories in the Western Isles recognised. Such an agreement would have shifted the balance of power in the north in favour of Áed. His authority may have extended to the south of Ireland, as Adomnán’s reference to Scandlán, later to be king of Osraige, being detained in chains in Áed’s household during the assembly, suggests that Scandlán’s dynasty may have been subordinate to the northern king. Áed’s reign 17

Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry, 32.

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is also remembered in historical tradition for conflict with the overkings of the Laigin who, up to this time, still aspired to control southern Mide. The tale Bóruma Laigen, strands of which are woven into AFM, purports to relate the circumstances of the final battle in this war. Áed supposedly sought vengeance when his son Cummascach was killed by the Leinster overking, Brandub mac Echach, and spurned the peacemaking efforts of Bishop Áedán, whom the story associates with Glendalough. In a climactic battle at Dún Bolg18 in 598, Áed was defeated and slain, the Leinster victory being celebrated in the Latin Life of St Máedóc. After Áed’s death, his sons Máel Cobo and Domnall emerged in turn to dominate Cenél Conaill, the former featuring in Middle Irish regnal-lists of Tara and the latter (as noted above) included in BCC. Meanwhile claimants to an Uí Néill overkingship included Áed Sláine and the Cenél nÉogain dynast, Áed Uaridnach (above, i: 18, 19). Byrne, ‘Ireland of St Columba’, 45–6; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 72, 77–82; Byrne, Irish kings, 106, 110–11, 142, 145; Bannerman, Studies in history of Dalriada, 157–70; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ lives, 355–60; Smyth, ‘Kings, saints and sagas’, 66–70, 73; Jaski, ‘Druim Cett revisited’; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 91–2; Ní Chon Uladh, ‘Kilranelagh and the Uí Máil’, 17, 19; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 289–90, 487–91, 555; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 59, 61, 69.

or (i: 19b) Áed Allán (d. 577) (Áed Abrat mac Echach Tirmcharna) CONNACHTA – UÍ FHIACHRACH? AU 561, 577; AI 578; Plummer, Bethada, I, 33–4; Anderson, Sources of Scottish history, I, 24–5; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 191; O’Brien, Corpus, 163, 172; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1489.

Áed Abrat son of Eochu Tirmcharna neither features among the kings of Tara in the Middle Irish king-lists, in which he is overking of the Connachta and is accorded a reign of twentytwo years, nor is he dubbed Allán in the surviving sources. Nonetheless, the possibility that he is the Áed listed in BCC still needs to be considered in view of his probable origins among Uí Fhiachrach, a dynasty which seemingly provided at least one king of Tara, Ailill Molt (above, i: 14), and perhaps also Mac Ercéni (above, i: 16). According to the pre-Norman genealogies, Áed Abrat and his father are part of the Uí Briúin Aí schema, and so are represented as ancestors of the later Uí Chonchobair kings of Connacht. Their pedigree, however, shows signs of contrivance, with borrowed elements suggesting that they originally belonged to Uí Fhiachrach. There is no record of a wife of Áed, but apparently he had at least 18

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two sons, Uatu, who succeeded him as overking of the Connachta, and Curnán. It seems that Áed emerged as provincial king when the Uí Néill killed his predecessor, Ailill Inbanda, at Cúl Conaire (perhaps tls. Cloonconragh East/West, par. Ballyhean, bar. Carra, Co. Mayo)19, in 550. He may have been a client of the king of Tara at this stage. Later tradition maintains that Diarmait mac Cerbaill (below, i: 20) slew Áed’s son Curnán, thus prompting him to seek vengeance. AU mentions Áed as an ally of the Uí Néill kings Ainmere son of Sétna and Ninnid son of Duí (below, ii: 12, 13), who defeated Diarmait at Cúl Dreimne (perhaps tls. Cooldrumman Upper/Lower, par. Drumcliff, bar. Carbury, Co. Sligo) 20 in 561. According to AI, Áed granted Enach Dúin (tl./par. Annaghdown, bar. Clare, Co. Galway) to St Brendan. He also features in the late hagiography of Berach of Cluain Coirpthe (Kilbarry, par. Termonbarry, bar. Ballintober, Co. Roscommon), whose Irish Life has the saint in conflict with a magus of the king. His death (ascribed to the Uí Briúin) in the battle of Bág (perhaps in tls. Ballaghabaw Beg and More, pars. Baslick and Ogulla, bars. Castlereagh and Roscommon, Co. Roscommon) 21 is recorded at 577. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 70–1, 87; Byrne, Irish kings, 95, 245–6; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 138; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 510.

(i: 20) Diermait (d. 565) (Diarmait mac Cerbaill) UÍ NÉILL AU 544, 558, 560, 561, 562, 565; Ann. Tig. (= AU 549, 560); O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 72–82; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 52–6, 60–8, 72, 86–8; Plummer, Vitae, I, 39, 146; II, 138, 245–9; Plummer, Bethada, I, 88–90; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 180–1, 217–8; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 226; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 94, 196; O’Brien, Corpus, 124, 137, 159, 222, 358, 425; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1370, 1466; VSC I, 36; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 40 (§27).

Diarmait son of Cerball is presumably intended here, although he is clearly out of place. Included among the kings of Tara in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish king-lists, he celebrated feis Temro, according to the annals, in 558/60. Adomnán in the VSC has him grandiosely styled totius Scotiae regnator (‘king of all Ireland’), a dignity to which, it is claimed, he was ordained by God. His treatment in VSC indicates that he had a special significance for the Uí Néill of the later seventh century, and may have been regarded as the ‘true’ founder of the dynasty’s fortunes. It seems clear that Diarmait’s pedigree became confused. Early sources, including VSC, name his father as Cerball who can be identified as a son of Fergus son of Conall. This testimony, especially as elsewhere his line seems to be a generation short, suggests 19 20 21

Ibid., 130. Ibid., 130. Ibid., 105.

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that later genealogies are erroneous in making him a son of Fergus Cerrbél – almost certainly a compound figure combining Diarmait’s father and grandfather. Diarmait, therefore, belongs to the same generation as Columba. Further, it appears that the two shared a common greatgrandfather, Conall Gulban, who was possibly identical with Conall Cremthainne (below, ii: 4). King and saint might have belonged, therefore, to Cenél Conaill and have been first cousins – (significantly, Diarmait had a son named Colmán, a diminutive form of Colum or its Latin equivalent Columba) – a relationship in the context of which Diarmait’s reign should probably be viewed. It is perhaps also noteworthy, in the light of his acquisition of a midland-based kingship, that his mother, Corbach, is said to have been the daughter of a certain Maine of Leinster. He apparently had at least two brothers (or half-brothers), Illann and Maine (d. 538). Close dynastic connections with Connacht are reflected in the marriages claimed for him in the Banshenchas, despite obvious confusion of the tradition concerning his wives. Brea daughter of Colmán son of Nemán, and either Eithne daughter of Brénainn Dall or Lasair daughter of Nechtain, are respectively claimed as mothers of his sons Colmán Bec and Colmán Már (below, ii: 5, 5a). These consorts collectively illustrate a Connacht link particularly through their association with the Conmaicne Cúile Tolad (in bar. Kilmaine, Co. Mayo). Another of his wives, Mugain daughter of Conchraid son of Duí of Uí Duach Argatrois, was the mother of his son Áed Sláine (above, i: 18). It seems likely that Diarmait had already achieved pre-eminence among the Uí Néill by the 540s. Whatever the truth of the claim that his uterine (or foster-) brother Máel Mórdai son of Airgetán slew the king of Tara, Tuathal Máelgarb (above, i: 17) in 544, Diarmait probably did profit from the latter’s demise. There are indications that his reign coincided with an expansion – or at least a consolidation – of Connachta/Uí Néill lordship into the midlands, perhaps paralleled by an erosion of his dynasty’s power in the west which in turn facilitated the emergence of an Uí Briúin overkingship there. Meanwhile he engaged in a protracted struggle for supremacy in the midlands, against competing claims from other dynastic interests including the Laigin and the Dál nAraidi overkings of Ulaid. On that account, his celebration of feis Temro in 558/60, clearly some years into his kingship (fourteen, if the twenty-one year reign of the regnal lists is taken at face value), marks not his initiation as king, but a change in the character of his kingship. The annal entry concerning the killing, around this time, of his alleged son Colmán Már is unlikely to represent an authentic record, given that the latter is probably a duplicate of Colmán Bec, whose death is not recorded until 587. Nonetheless, assignment of the deed to a king of Dál nAraidi may represent a genuine memory of conflict with neighbours immediately to the north-east, who were still staking claims to the kingship of Tara in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. The latter part of Diarmait’s reign was not entirely auspicious. Presumably his ambition had provoked hostile reaction within the Uí Néill. In 561 he suffered a defeat at Cúl Dreimne from a faction of Cenél Conaill headed by Áed mac Ainmerech (above, i: 19a) and Báetán son of Ninnid,

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in coalition with Cenél nÉogain under Fergus and Domnall sons of Muirchertach Mac Ercae (above, i: 16a) and the Uí Briúin king, Áed Abrat (above, i: 19b). The context of this battle has been obscured in Columban hagiography, perhaps deliberately so as to conceal whatever role the saint may have actually played in the events which led to his ecclesiastical trial and self-exile. There may be truth in the claim that Diarmait slew a son of the Uí Briúin king while he was under Columba’s protection. There seems little reason, in any case, to accept the version of events put forward in Ó Domhnaill’s Life of Colum Cille that, as a result of copying a book without permission, Diarmait pronounced an unjust judgement against the saint and so provoked the battle. In any event, Cúl Dreimne probably weakened Diarmait’s hold on the midlands. In the following year he was defeated at Cúl Uinsenn by one of his own vassals, Áed son of Brénainn, king of Tethbae (above, i: 18b), who was apparently making his own bid for power. The killing of Diarmait, dated to 565, is attributed to a king of Dál nAraidi, Áed Dub (above, i: 18a) son of Suibne, who thereby earns himself the opprobrium of Columba’s hagiographer, Adomnán. It is perfectly credible that an Uí Néill king of this period should be slain by a rival from Dál nAraidi, given that the dynasty in question maintained an interest beyond the Boyne into the seventh century and was in contention for the kingship of Tara up to that time. From the seventh century onwards Diarmait featured prominently in literary composition. His apparently ambivalent attitude towards Christianity – despite close Columban links, he celebrated feis Temro with its clearly pagan ritual – no doubt made him an attractive subject. It has been argued that his death-tale, Aided Dhiarmada, may reflect memories of a sacral quality which once invested the kingship of Tara. In any event, the classic story of his last encounter features what has been called the motif of the ‘three-fold death’ – in which the king, an anti-heroic figure, perishes in accordance with bizarre prophecies of doom. He also features prominently in hagiography outside of Columban circles, portrayed in either a positive or a negative light in accordance, most likely, with the relationship between his successors and the foundation of the saint concerned. Hence he is said to have been a personal friend of Ciarán of Clonmacnoise and to have helped him in founding his monastery. Subsequently, when Diarmait celebrated óenach Tailten, Ciarán attended and worked a miracle there. On the other hand, he supposedly offended Ruadán of Lothra by slaying a Connacht dynast within his sanctuary, so that the saint solemnly cursed Tara, whereby it became a desolate site. This tradition doubtless reflects the abandonment in Christian times of a site with such marked pagan associations. It appears that there was prolonged contention in relation to the Uí Néill overkingship after Diarmait’s death, which perhaps explains why he is misplaced in this list in the first instance. While Middle Irish king-lists also highlight claims to the kingship of Tara, from the later seventh century, by Cenél nÉogain and by Cenél Conaill, BCC focuses solely on the descendants of Diarmait as strong contenders for that dignity during that period. His son Áed

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Sláine ultimately secured dominance in the closing years of the seventh century, ousting temporarily the family of his brother Colmán. The two dynastic lines, descended from these sons (Síl nÁedo Sláine and Clann Cholmáin) regarded Diarmait as a particularly significant ancestor. Binchy, ‘The fair of Tailtiu’, 137–8; Byrne, ‘Ireland of St Columba’, 44–5; Byrne, The rise of the Uí Néill, 17–18; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 19, 26, 70–1, 75, 84; Byrne, Irish kings, 90–1, 93–100, 111, 159, 244, 255; Binchy, ‘A pre-Christian survival’; Herbert, Iona, Kells, and Derry, 27, 52, 280n; McCone, Pagan past, 145–7, 242; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 158–61; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 23–5, 65–6 (§§ 58–60), 67 (§63), 125 (§250); Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 74–5, 83–5; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 62–3, 215; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 294–5, 510, 520; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 91–5; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 58–9, 63.

(i: 21) Féchno (d. 626) (Fiachnae Lurgan mac Báetáin) CRUITHNI – DÁL NARAIDI AU 574, 594, 597, 602, 623, 626; Meyer and Nutt, Voyage of Bran, 42–58; Plummer, Vitae, II, 19; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 74, 110, 112; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 183, 222; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 193, 195; O’Brien, Corpus, 155, 323; Byrne, ‘Clann Ollaman Uaisle Emna’, 64 (18), 77 (18), 83–4; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1449.

Fiachnae Lurgan son of Báetán, who belonged to the Uí Choíldub lineage of the Dál nAraidi dynasty, is probably the strongest candidate for identification with this Féchno, although he is not included among the kings of Tara in Middle Irish king-lists. In these accounts, which are more explicitly pro-Uí Néill and which exclude ‘outsider’ claims, Fiachnae Lurgan features only as overking of Ulaid, while the list of the kings of Tara for the late sixth to early seventh century includes Cenél nÉogain and Cenél Conaill rulers who do not feature in BCC. Fiachnae’s father, Báetán, seems not to have been particularly distinguished, although his grandfather, Eochaid, was overking of Ulaid. His mother is not named, but he had two brothers Fiachrae Cáech (d. 608) and Máel Umai (d. 610), and a sister, Cumne Fhinn. According to the Banshenchas, Fiachnae’s wife, the mother of his son Mongán, was Caintigern, daughter of a Scottish king named Conndach. It is alleged in the Latin Life of St Comgall of Bangor that she was cured of an illness by the saint. Through this son Mongán, Fiachnae found a place in legendary tales, some of which entered folk tradition. He had at least two other sons, Eochaid Iarlaithe and Scandal Sciathlethan. The starting-point of Fiachnae’s career is difficult to ascertain. According to a glossator in AU, he fought in the midland

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battle of Toil, near Fortoil, (perhaps tl. Fortel, par. Birr, bar. Ballybrit, Co. Offaly) 22 against the Osraige in 574. Given that the record of his career extends into the 620s, he must have been rather young at this time. He is credited with slaying the reigning overking of Ulaid, Áed Dub (above, i: 18a) in 588. His reign is dated from the following year. His achievement of dominance within the north was, in part, due to the relative weakness of the Dál Fiatach about this time. The only member of this rival dynasty to mount a serious challenge was Fiachnae son of Demmán (below, i: 21a), whom he defeated at Cúl Caíl (tl./par. Kilkeel, bar. Mourne, Co. Down) in 602. An agreement reached after this battle may well provide the context for the marriage between Fiachnae’s sister Cumne Fhinn and his Dál Fiatach namesake, for whom she bore two sons, Suibne and Máel Cobo (d. 647). Peace between the rival dynasties was maintained for some twenty years. Fiachnae extended his influence over the Irish and Scottish realms of Dál Ríata, securing a marriage alliance with that dynasty. His son Scandal married a sister of Connad Cerr, king of Dál Ríata. Annals and literature alike testify to his involvement in Scotland. The story Compert Mongáin ‘The Conception of Mongán’ has Fiachnae crossing the sea to support Áedán mac Gabráin. An addition to the Ann. Tig. entry for 603 documents that his brother Máel Umai fought for Áedán against the Saxons. A lost saga, telling of an expedition by Fiachnae to Dún Guaire ‘i Saxanaib’ (perhaps Bamburgh, Northumbria, England), possibly ties in with an otherwise puzzling entry in AU at 623 (expugnatio Ratho Guali). Fiachnae’s son Mongán, who died in 625, is claimed by some accounts (Ann. Tig., AFM) to have been slain by the Britons of Strathclyde. However, dominance of the north and of Dál Ríata aside, Fiachnae appears to have been active in the midlands and even further south, possibly contending for the kingship of Tara as acknowledged by his inclusion in BCC. His possible engagement in battle with the Osraige as early as 574 and with the Munstermen at Sliab Cua (the Knockmealdown Mountains on the Tipperary/Waterford border) in 597 suggests that, following his predecessor Áed mac Ainmerech’s ambitions, he pursued a strategy of domination in the south as well as the midlands and north. He is reported to have defeated Cíannacht Breg at Eudann Mór in 594. He met his end, however, closer to home, slain by his Dál Fiatach rival Fiachnae son of Demmán in the battle of Leithet Midinn (perhaps Knocklayd, Co. Antrim or tl. Leode, par. Clonduff, bar. Upper Iveagh, Co. Down) 23 in 626. He must by then have been relatively advanced in years. His death was avenged by his grandson Congal Clóen son of Scandlán, with the help of his Dál Ríata allies. Congal succeeded to the overkingship of Ulaid. Fiachnae’s son, Eochaid Iarlaithe, held the dynastic kingship. Eochaid’s obit at 666 in Ann. Tig. styles him king of the Cruithni of Mide, suggesting that the dynasty maintained some influence in the midlands. 22 23

Ibid., 146. Ibid., 159 suggests the second identification.

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O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 345–6; Byrne, ‘Ireland of St Columba’, 47; Byrne, ‘Seventh century documents’, 168; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 88–9; Byrne, Irish kings, 106, 111–12, 259; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 133; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 201–2; Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, 51; Mac Shamhráin, Church and polity in pre-Norman Ireland, 66, 67; Byrne, ‘Ciannachta Breg’, 124; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 490, 499–500, 504.

or (i: 21a) Féchno (d. 627) (Fiachnae mac Demmáin) DÁL FIATACH AU 602, 626, 627; Ann. Tig. (= AU 627); Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 78, 110, 112; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 183, 221; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 193; O’Brien, Corpus, 327, 409; Byrne, ‘Clann Ollaman Uaisle Emna’, 64 (19), 77 (19), 84; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1442.

Fiachnae son of Demmán (Demmán: d. 572) and nephew of the powerful Báetán (d. 581) son of Cairell, both of whom reigned as overkings of Ulaid, belonged to the dynasty of Dál Fiatach. In Middle Irish king-lists he is not featured as king of Tara, but as overking of Ulaid, holding that dignity for only two years. He is an outside candidate, it seems, for identification with the Féchno of the BCC list. His mother was Garb, daughter of Néillíne of Cenél nÉogain, hence a granddaughter of Muirchertach Mac Ercae, perhaps to be identified with Mac Ercéni (above, i: 16a). He had four half-brothers, Fíngin, Glassán, Guaire and Colmán. Fiachnae, it seems, was married twice. Both wives have the same personal name, being distinguished as Cumne Dub and Cumne Fhinn. While not impossible, this may be indicative of confusion. One was a daughter of Furidrán son of Bécc (below, ii: 17) of the Uí Thuirtri, the other a sister of his Dál nAraidi rival Fiachnae Lurgan (above, i: 21). From these two marriages, he had four sons – Dúnchad (d. c. 644), Máel Dúin, Suibne Menn and Máel Cobo (d. 647) – and a daughter, Dub Lacha, who married Mongán, son of his Dál nAraidi rival. In 602 he challenged Fiachnae Lurgan for the overkingship of Ulaid, but was defeated at Cúl Caíl. In all probability, the marriage links with Dál nAraidi were part of a stratagem to join the two dynasties in a peace agreement. Ultimately he revolted against his overlord, whom he slew at the battle of Leithet Midinn in 626, and seized the provincial kingship for himself. In the following year he was defeated and slain at Ard Corann by Fiachnae Lurgan’s grandson, Congal Clóen, and his Dál Ríata allies led by Connad Cerr. His sons and many descendants later held the overkingship of Ulaid, but none attained the kingship of Tara. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 88–9; Byrne, Irish kings, 111, 122–3; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 132; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 63, 69.

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(i: 21b) Féchno (Fiachnae mac Feradaig) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 149 n. 9; O’Brien, Corpus, 180.

Fiachnae son of Feradach, who belonged to the first generation of the Cenél Feradaig lineage of Cenél nÉogain, is suggested by Murphy in preference to either of the above Ulaid kings. According to the genealogies, he was a nephew of Muirchertach Mac Ercae (above, i: 16a) and was the father of Suibne (below, i: 22). He is not included in the Middle Irish king-lists relating to any of the major kingships, and may merely have been a local ruler. He should probably be seen as a rather outside candidate for identification with the Féchno of BCC. Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127.

(i: 22) Suibne (d. 628) (Suibne Menn mac Fiachnai) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN AU 615, 628; Ann. Tig. (= AU 615); Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 116, 118; Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 184; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 227; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 95; O’Brien, Corpus, 125, 180; Sharpe, Life of St Columba, 315 n. 206; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 41 (§33).

Suibne son of Fiachnae also features as king of Tara in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish kinglists, where he is accorded a reign of sixteen years. Suibne’s sobriquet menn ‘stammering’ may simply point to a speech impediment or, at a more complex level, may be an attribute of kingship, since physical blemishes (from a modern perspective) are often used as a sobriquet of kings. He belonged to Cenél Feradaig, a lineage of Cenél nÉogain. It is not clear that his father reigned as king. It is possible that his father might be identified with Féchno (above, i: 21b) of this list, but this is by no means certain. Regarding Suibne’s antecedents, the kingship of Tara is claimed in Middle Irish king-lists for Muirchertach Mac Ercae (above, i: 16a). Inclusion in the same sources of later sixth-century Cenél nÉogain dynasts is less than convincing. The earliest of Suibne’s relatives clearly featured in BCC would seem to be Áed, or Áed Allán (above, i: 19), a second cousin. Given the apparent obscurity of his father Fiachnae, the rise to power of Suibne, and subsequently of his brother Ernáine, was explained in later tradition in terms of latent ambition on the part of his father or pressure from his own wife. According to the Banshenchas, he married a woman of the Uí Thuirtri, Rónait daughter of Dúngalach, although it is not clear that she was the mother of his only recorded sons, Crunnmáel (fl. 656) and Cenn Fáelad. The indications are that Suibne came to prominence within Cenél nÉogain on the death of Áed Allán in 612 and then moved against his

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powerful Cenél Conaill neighbour, Máel Cobo son of Áed mac Ainmerech. It seems that he had support from the Luigni (Ann. Tig.), and perhaps also from some of the Cruithni dynasties through his marriage to Rónait. Although he defeated and slew his rival at the battle of Sliab Truim (perhaps Bessy Bell Mountain, bar. Strabane, Co. Tyrone) in 615, and laid claim to the kingship of Tara, he continued to face opposition from Cenél Conaill. In 628 he succeeded in defeating the leading representative of that dynasty, Domnall mac Áedo (below, i: 24) at Both (perhaps near Tráig Bréine, tl. Ballintogher, par. Saul, bar. Lecale Lower, Co. Down),24 but was shortly afterwards slain at Tráig Bréine by the Dál nAraidi overking of Ulaid, Congal Clóen, whose dynasty was also challenging for the kingship of Tara. In the decades following Suibne’s death several members of his lineage dominated Cenél nÉogain, including his brother Ernáine (d. 636) and his son Crunnmáel (fl. 656). From 700, however, a year in which three members of Cenél Feradaig died – Flann son of Cenn Fáelad, Ánrothán son of Crunnmáel, and Flann Finn son of Máel Tuile – the dynasty declined in importance. Mac Niocaill, Ireland since the Vikings, 90, 95–6; Byrne, Irish kings, 112; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 396; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 61, 64, 69, 83 n. 37.

(i: 23) Óengus (d. 621) (Óengus mac Colmáin) UÍ NÉILL – CLANN CHOLMÁIN AU 612, 621; Book of Ballymote, 80ac; MacCarthy, Codex Palatino-Vaticanus, 95, no. 830; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 116; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 196.

Óengus son of Colmán is the most probable identification. Although his obit identifies his father as Colmán Már, the latter is probably in fact a duplicate of Colmán Bec as discussed below (ii: 5). He is styled rex nepotum Néill in the annals. Middle Irish king-lists represent Óengus (anachronistically, in all probability) as king of Uisnech, with a reign of seven years. The eleventh-century list of Marianus Scottus includes him among the kings of Leth Cuinn and attributes a reign of nine years to him. Óengus’s mother is not named, but he was seemingly a brother (or half-brother) of Cuimmíne (fl. 586), Suibne Menn (d. 600) and Fergus (d. 618), sons of Colmán. He himself had at least one son, Máel Umai (d. 635), ancestor of the later local rulers of Caílle Follomain (in the vicinity of Killallon, bar. Fore, Co. Meath). Óengus defeated Conall Lóeg Breg son of Áed Sláine (above, i: 18) at Odba in 612, which perhaps made him a contender for the kingship of Tara. He was killed in 621. While the annals do not identify his assailant, the Book of Leinster list names his killer as Domnall Midi son of Murchad Midi. Later kings of Clann Cholmáin, descended from his brother Suibne, included Murchad Midi (below, i: 31). 24

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Mac Niocaill, Ireland since the Vikings, 90–1; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; CharlesEdwards, Early Christian Ireland, 480–1, 492–3; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 89, 91, 96 (Table 1).

(i: 24) Domnall (d. 642) (Domnall mac Áedo) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL AU 628, 629, 637, 641, 642; O’Donovan, Banquet of Dun na n-Gedh; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 90, 92, 118, 124; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 182, 184, 221, 222; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 226; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 96; VSC I, 10; I, 49; III, 5; O’Brien, Corpus, 125, 163–4, 435; Lehmann, Fled Dúin na nGéd; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1485; Sharpe, Life of St Columba, 27, 36, 61–2, 271–2 n. 86, 315–16 n. 206, 359 n. 362; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 41 (§32).

Domnall mac Áedo is represented as king of Tara in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish kinglists. He features in the same role in literature, the tales Cath Maige Rotha and Fled Dúin na nGéd having him celebrate feis Temro. He belonged to the dynasty of Cenél Conaill, being a son of Áed mac Ainmerech (above, i: 19a). His mother was Lann daughter of Áed Guaire, a king of the Uí Meic Cáirthinn. He had four brothers or half-brothers: Máel Cobo, Crunnmáel, Cummascach and Conall Cú. Domnall was distantly related both to St Columba (first cousin twice removed) and to Adomnán (second cousin twice removed), according to whom he was present as a child at the Synod of Druim Cett where he was blessed by the founder of Iona. Domnall married Duinsech (d. 639), whose origins are obscure. It is not clear whether or not she was the mother of his five sons, namely Conall (d. 663), Colcu (d. 663), Óengus (d. 650), Fergus Fanat and Ailill. For three years following the death of Áed Allán (above, i: 19) in 612, Domnall’s brother Máel Cobo maintained an overkingship of the Uí Néill. He features in Middle Irish lists as king of Tara, but is not so styled in AU. He was slain in 615 by Suibne Menn (above, i: 22) of the rival lineage of Cenél nÉogain, who attained the kingship of Tara. Domnall emerged to challenge Suibne Menn in the 620s. While pseudo-historical literature focuses upon his reputation as a heroic warrior and as ‘king of Ireland’, his achievement in historical terms is still impressive. In the early stages of his career he struggled against Suibne Menn and, in 628, barely escaped alive from a battle at Both. As it happens, Suibne was slain in the same year by Congal Clóen, overking of Ulaid. However convenient this may have been for Domnall, there is no necessity to infer an alliance between these two. From this point onwards Domnall enjoyed paramount kingship of the Uí Néill, having suppressed opposition from Cenél nÉogain and from the grandsons of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (above, i: 20). He was ready to assert claims of lordship over the Laigin and the Ulaid. The kings of the Laigin, preoccupied with their own inter-dynastic conflicts, could offer little by

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way of organised opposition, but the Ulaid under Congal Clóen were a more formidable force. In 629, with the support of at least some of the mid-Ulster Cruithni, Domnall defeated Congal at Dún Ceithirn. He was now supreme in the north and had strong support from his nephew Conall Cóel son of Máel Cobo. When, in 637, Congal Clóen secured an alliance with Cenél nÉogain and Dál Ríata, Domnall directed a concerted campaign against his adversaries. His nephew Conall Cóel defeated their combined naval forces at Sailtír (perhaps near Kintyre in Scotland) and shattered their land forces at Mag Roth (Moira, bar. Lower Iveagh, Co. Down). This battle, enshrined in literature, was important not only because it signalled the effective end of Ulaid dominance in Leth Cuinn, but because it marked a seachange in the political alignment of the mid-Ulster Cruithni. From this point onwards there emerges, within the Uí Néill sphere of influence, a federation of nine kingships – forming a mesne kingdom known to its overlords as Airgíalla (‘hostage-givers’). This may be viewed as Domnall’s real achievement. He died peaceably in 642, and it is significant that he is styled rex Hiberniae in his obit – the earliest to be so described. Leadership of Cenél Conaill was assumed by his nephews Conall Cóel (d. 654) and Cellach (d. 658), who were certainly powerful in the north-west, although they failed to retain the extensive dominance of their uncle. They find a place in Middle Irish king-lists of Tara, as do Domnall’s grandsons Loingsech mac Óenguso (also styled rex Hiberniae: d. 704) and Congal Cennmagar (d. 710), both of whom are notably excluded from BCC. The text maintains that political dominance passed to the grandsons of Diarmait mac Cerbaill, early members of Síl nÁedo Sláine. Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 56–74; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 95–7; Byrne, Irish kings, 112–14, 151, 256–8; Smyth, Warlords and holy men, 96, 117; Herbert, ‘Fled Dúin na nGéd: a reappraisal’; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 163–5; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 100–01 (§§ 163–5); Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 65, 83; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 484–5, 494, 503–4.

(i: 25) Blathmac (d. 665) (Blathmac mac Áedo Sláine) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE AU 643, 651, 662, 665; Ann. Tig. (= AU 662); Chron. Scot. s.a. 662; Plummer, Vitae, I, 190–3; II, 112–13; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 120, 136; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 181, 184; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 227; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 96; O’Brien, Corpus, 125; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 41 (§34).

Blathmac son of Áed Sláine, whose inclusion among the kings of Tara finds ample support from Baile in Scáil and from Middle Irish king-lists, annals and hagiography, is the individual intended. Given that Áed Sláine (above, i: 18) was slain as early as 604, it seems reasonable that his sons were young at the time of his death, including Blathmac and his brother Diarmait (below, i: 26), both of whom lived until 665. According to the genealogies, there

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were seven other brothers; Conall Lóeg Breg (sl. 612), Ailill and Congal (both slain in 634), Máel Odor, Dúnchad (d. 659), Máel Bressail and Tigernán, and a sister Nonnat who (noted above, i: 18) married Colmán son of Áed of Cenél Lóegairi. On chronological grounds, it is difficult to accept as historical the Banshenchas claim that Blathmac (d. 665) sinfully married his father’s second wife, Eithne daughter of Brénainn, mother of his half-brothers. Nonetheless, the belief persisted that Blathmac had ‘begotten a son through excess’, and a verse in AU (651) represents the premature death of two of his sons as divine retribution for such a crime. In any event, Blathmac had at least five sons: Sechnasach (d. 671), Cenn Fáelad (d. 675), Dúnchad (d. 651), Conall (d. 651) and Eochaid (d. 660). There are indications that Blathmac rose to power from 634 onwards, following the death in battle of his brothers Congal and Ailill who had been a major political force in the midlands. Although the annals focus on the military role of his brother Diarmait, hagiographical tradition portrays Blathmac as the secular power behind the expulsion of Mochutu from Rahan (bar. Ballycowan, Co. Offaly) in 636. However, the insistence of the Life of Carthach that Blathmac was already king of Tara suggests that either the date assigned to the saint’s expulsion is incorrect, or that the internal chronology of the Life is confused. While Blathmac perhaps achieved some prominence within the Uí Néill after the slaying in 635 of his Clann Cholmáin rival, Conall Guthbinn, overkingship of the Uí Néill belonged at this stage to the Cenél Conaill ruler Domnall mac Áedo (above, i: 24). The latter’s death in 642 introduced a period of instability within the Uí Néill dynasties. The AU record is markedly uncertain about the Tara kingship at this point, and later claims that Domnall’s nephews Conall Cóel and Cellach reigned until 658 find no support in the earliest sources. It certainly seems that Blathmac and his family exploited the relative weakness of their northern-based kinsmen during this period to consolidate the position of their dynasty in the midlands. In all probability, his sons Dúnchad and Conall, slain in the lakelands of Westmeath in 651, died in pursuit of such expansionist claims. Curiously, Middle Irish kinglists date his reign as king of Tara from about this time (assigning him fifteen years, jointly with his brother Diarmait). Another of his sons, Eochaid, was slain in 660. Some annals, later king-lists, and the rather late Life of St Gerald, present Blathmac and his brother Diarmait as joint rulers. Leaving aside the question as to whether such alleged joint reigns in fact represented amicable agreements, it appears significant that the earlier Life of Carthach has Blathmac as the reigning king responsible for the saint’s expulsion, and Diarmait as the brother to whom succession is promised on account of his more sympathetic attitude. From the annalistic record, it appears that an internal conflict erupted within Síl nÁedo Sláine, culminating in the battle of Ogoman, in 662. Blathmac was defeated and lost a number of clients, including his nephew Conaing son of Congal. It is noteworthy that several sources (including Ann. Tig. and Chron. Scot.) describe the victors as allies of Diarmait, and it is claimed that Blathmac was replaced in the kingship by his brother. In the event, neither of

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them survived for long. The annals record their deaths in the great ‘Buide Conaill’ plague of 665. Two sons of Blathmac, Sechnasach (d. 671) and Cenn Fáelad (d. 675), subsequently reigned in turn. Although the former is styled rex Temoirie in AU, and both feature in Middle Irish king-lists, neither is admitted by BCC. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 97–9, 107; Byrne, Irish kings, 105, 281; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; Swift, ‘Tírechán’s motives’, 79; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 87–9; Byrne, ‘Ciannachta Breg’, 124; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 38–42.

(i: 26) Diermait (d. 665) (Diarmait mac Áedo Sláine) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE AU 635, 643, 649, 662, 665; AI 649; Ann. Tig. (= AU 662); Chron. Scot. s.a. 662; Plummer, Vitae, I, 190–3; II, 80–1, 112–13; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 120, 122, 134, 136; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 181, 185, 219, 222; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 227; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 196–7; O’Brien, Corpus, 125, 161; Bhreathnach, ‘A new edition of Tochmarc Becfhola’; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1467; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 41 (§35).

Diarmait son of Áed Sláine also features as king of Tara in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish king-lists, where he is accorded a reign of fifteen years (jointly with his brother Blathmac; above, i: 25). The genealogists claim that Diarmait (sometimes called Diarmait Ruanaid ‘the heroic’) was a son of Áed Sláine’s marriage to Eithne, daughter of Brénainn. He is assigned eight brothers (or half-brothers) including Blathmac. His kindred, which eventually settled around Lagore, forged alliances with the Airgíalla, and in particular, it seems, with the Mugdorna of the north Meath/Monaghan border. Tradition claims that Diarmait was fostered by the Mugdorna king Lommanach, who is referred to in the Book of Leinster as aite Diarmata. According to the Banshenchas, he married Muirenn, daughter of Máel Dúin of Cenél Coirpri, who was also (previously?) married to Rogallach, the Uí Briúin overking of Connacht. However, another wife, the mother of his only recorded son Cernach Sotal, was Temair daughter of Áed Bolg, king of the Déssi, who belonged to the lineage of Uí Rossa.25 It may be coincidental that this wife’s name appears to have connotations of sovereignty. Pursuing the theme of sovereignty, the Middle Irish tale Tochmarc Becfhola associates Diarmait with a mythical woman named Becfhola, who betrays him. His military achievement is charted in the annals (above, i: 25). He supported his brother, Blathmac, in the kingship while striving to secure their dynasty’s position within the Uí Néill. It was Diarmait who

25

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avenged the slaying of their brothers, Congal and Ailill, by Clann Cholmáin. In 635, he slew the Clann Cholmáin dynast Conall Guthbinn and subsequently defeated his clients at Cúl Cóeláin (perhaps near tl. Kilkeelan, par. Athboy, bar. Lune, Co. Meath) 26. The threat posed by this rival dynasty was further reduced when, two years later, his foster-father Lommanach slew Conall Guthbinn’s son in the battle of Mag Roth. Having already built a secure powerbase in the midlands, Diarmait’s family sought the prestigious kingship of Tara when its holder, Domnall mac Áedo of Cenél Conaill (above, i: 24), died in 642. However, the confusion which prevailed among the Uí Néill for the rest of the decade delayed the achievement of this goal. Meanwhile Diarmait spearheaded what may be viewed as westward expansion. His above-mentioned marriage to Muirenn may be a factor here. He may have taken advantage of the slaying of Rogallach in 649 to intervene in a conflict for succession. He defeated Guaire Aidni at Carn Conaill (perhaps tl. Ballyconnell, par. Kilbeacanty, bar. Kiltartan, Co. Galway) 27 that year, stalling the latter’s accession to overkingship of Connacht until c. 655. It appears, however, that it was not this battle (as claimed in AI), but a subsequent encounter in the Westmeath lakelands, which cost the lives of two of his nephews, Dúnchad and Conall sons of Blathmac. However, the paramount kingship of the Uí Néill, when eventually secured, was probably not shared amicably between Diarmait and Blathmac, contrary to certain Middle Irish accounts. Aside from the claims in the Life of Carthach that Diarmait, portrayed as brother of the reigning king, was promised the kingship (and gained the sobriquet Ruanaid) because of his reluctance to expel the saint from Rahan, there is the testimony of Ann. Tig. that he benefited politically from the defeat of his brother at Ogoman in 662. It is ironic, therefore, that both should have perished in the great plague of 665. Although his immediate successors in the kingship were his brother’s sons, Diarmait became ancestor through his son Cernach Sotal of Uí Chernaig, a dynasty based at Lagore which produced some distinguished rulers, notably Fogartach (below, i: 32a) son of Niall. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 97–9, 107; Byrne, Irish kings, 105, 281; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 157–8; Swift, ‘Tírechán’s motives’, 79; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 99–100 (§161); Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 87–9.

(i: 27) Snechta Fína (d. 695) (Fínnachta Fledach mac Dúnchado) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE AU 675, 676, 677, 679, 688, 689, 695; Chron. Scot. s.a. 680; Frag. Ann., §67; Stokes, ‘The Boroma’, 99–117; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 381–8; Walsh, Genealogiae, 55; Plummer,

26 27

Ó Murchadha, Annals of Tigernach index, 130. Ibid., 112.

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Vitae, II, 197–9; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 138, 140; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 185, 223; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 227; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 197; V, 1300–13; O’Brien, Corpus, 77, 125, 161; Herbert and Ó Riain, Betha Adamnáin, 51; Sharpe, Life of St Columba, 47, 351 n. 349; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 42 (§36).

Fínnachta (Fínshnechta) Fledach son of Dúnchad, who features in Baile in Scáil and in Middle Irish king-lists of Tara and who is styled rex Temro in his obit in AU, is referred to in BCC by the kenning Snechta Fína (‘Snow of Wine’). His sobriquet Fledach means ‘festive, bountiful’. His father Dúnchad, who died in 659 (AU), did not reign as king, but his grandfather Áed Sláine and his uncles Diarmait and Blathmac claimed the kingship of Tara (above, i: 18, 25, 26). There is no mention of his mother. In contrast, the Banshenchas record of Fínnachta’s wives reflects his own higher political achievement. He married Conchenn daughter of Congal Cennfhota, Dál Fiatach overking of Ulaid, and Derb Forgaill, possibly a daughter of Cellach Cualann, Uí Máil overking of Leinster. He had at least three sons: Bressal (d. 695), Ailill (d. 718) and Cathal, although his progeny achieved no great political distinction. Fínnachta is represented as ‘king of Ireland’ in historical tradition. One story represents him as taking power from his first cousin, Cenn Fáelad son of Blathmac, with support and encouragement from a local king of Fir Rois. Perhaps this reflects some actual relationship with the Cruithni of Brega. From the annals, it is clear that Fínnachta did overthrow his cousin Cenn Fáelad, whom he slew at the battle of Aircheltair (perhaps in par. Dulane, bar. Upper Kells, Co. Meath) 28 in 675. His destruction in the following year of Ailech Frigrenn, if the site intended was Ailech in Co. Donegal, appears as a bold move against Cenél nÉogain; perhaps Fínnachta’s target was actually Ailech Muirinne (possibly in the midlands 29 ) associated with the family of Diarmait (above, i: 26), rivals within Síl nÁedo Sláine. The later 670s witnessed incursions from Leinster and from east Ulster, but Fínnachta dealt with these effectively. He repulsed Fiannamail son of Máel Tuile, Uí Máil overking of Leinster, at Lagore in 677, and defeated Bécc Bairche, Dál Fiatach overking of Ulaid, at Tailtiu two years later. This latter attack may have represented an attempt to oust him as king of Tara as he exercised his prerogative to preside over óenach Tailten. It also seems reasonable to view both conflicts in the political context of his above-mentioned marriages. One wife, Conchenn, was married at some point to Bécc Bairche, while her father had been among Bécc’s predecessors in the kingship of Ulaid. Moreover, his other wife, Derb Forgaill, was a daughter of Fiannamail’s eventual successor, Cellach Cualann. According to Chron. Scot., Fínnachta was responsible for the assassination of Fiannamail in 680. It is also alleged that he instigated the murder in 689 of a Clann Cholmáin rival, Diarmait Dian son of Airmedach. Much as he strove to maintain his hold on the kingship of Tara, however, later 28 29

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developments indicate that he faced opposition from within the Uí Néill. On the one hand, it appears that his status was acknowledged by other dynasties including Cenél Conaill. When the Anglo-Saxons took prisoners from the coast of Brega in 685, Fínnachta could count on the services of the illustrious abbot of Iona, Adomnán, as emissary. Yet it is abundantly clear that dissensions emerged within his own dynasty. In 688 he withdrew to clerical life, a decision which may have been prompted by mounting political pressures, including a threat from Niall son of Cernach Sotal (below, i: 28) following his victory at the battle of Imlech Pích. This clerical role possibly explains why he is included in (at least some later recensions of ) the genealogies of the saints. He resumed his kingship the following year and reasserted his authority over two rival groups of cousins led by Niall and by Congalach son of Conaing. His resumption of power was not destined to last. In 695 he was defeated and slain, with his son Bressal at Grellach Dollaith (perhaps tl./par. Grallagh, bar. Balrothery West, Co. Dublin) by Congalach in alliance with another cousin, Áed son of Dlúthach, whose son Flann (below, i: 30) later made a bid for power in his own right. A poem, ascribed to St Moling, which accompanies Fínnachta’s obit prays that the king may be among the men of Heaven in recognition of his remission of the bóruma. He was the subject of a variety of later legends and poems, many, but not all, of which related to his involvement in the bóruma story. One tale, woven into the twelfth-century epic concerning the legendary tribute, related how Fínnachta was tricked by Moling into remitting permanently the traditional obligation owed by the Laigin, and so had a difficult task to earn the forgiveness of Adomnán. This remission, or his alleged attempts to levy taxes on Colum Cille’s territories, was supposed to explain why none of his descendants held the kingship of Tara. Certainly Clann Fhínnachtai proved to be weak, even within Síl nÁedo Sláine. The dynasty was headed for a year by Congalach, who was then succeeded by his brother Írgalach (below, i: 29). Other sources, including the annals, show that the overkingship of the Uí Néill passed at Fínnachta’s death to Cenél Conaill and was held successively by Loingsech mac Óenguso (d. 704) and by his cousin Congal Cennmagar (d. 710). Neither of these, however, is included in BCC. Byrne, ‘Seventh century documents’, 168; Mac Eoin, ‘The mysterious death of Loegaire mac Néill’, 29; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 101, 107–10, 115; Byrne, Irish kings, 91, 104, 146; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 104, 146; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 223; Smyth, ‘Kings, saints and sagas’, 92, 94; Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, 75–6; Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’, 88–9; Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 75, 78–9, 84; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 492, 500–1, 510–11; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 42–7.

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(i: 28) Níell (d. 701) (?Niall mac Cernaig Sotail) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE AU 688, 701; Frag. Ann., §§ 150, 153; O’Brien, Corpus, 160, 161; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The guarantor list of Cáin Adomnáin’, 180, 202 (55).

Niall son of Cernach Sotal represents a tentative identification. A grandson of Diarmait (above, i: 26), he belonged to Síl nÁedo Sláine. There is no record of his siblings or of his marriage(s), but five of his sons can be identified with certainty, Maine (d. 712), Conall Grant (d. 718), Áed Laigen (d. 722), Cathal Corc (d. 729) and Fogartach (below, i: 32a). When the reigning king of Tara, Fínnachta Fledach (above, i: 27) temporarily entered religious retirement in 688, Niall led a faction of Síl nÁedo Sláine and made a bid for power, on account of which he was perhaps viewed as a contender for overkingship of the Uí Néill. He achieved a major success when he defeated his cousin Congalach son of Conaing at Imlech Pích. Among those slain in the battle were the kings of Ard Cíannachta and of Conaille. In 697 Niall and his sons were amongst the dynasts who subscribed to Cáin Adomnáin. His name appears in the guarantor list, where he is described as rí Breghmuighi. This title was almost certainly added at a later stage. Niall was slain in 701 by Írgalach (below, i: 29), presumably in revenge for his having killed the latter’s brother Congalach thirteen years earlier. According to Columban propaganda, reflected in Frag. Ann., Adomnán foresaw the death of Niall, at the hands of his cousin, in spite of the saint’s protection. The descendants of Niall, the Lagore-based Uí Chernaig, were kings of southern Brega. Byrne, ‘Historical note on Cnogba’, 96 (Tables 1 and 2); Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Threefold death’, 69; Carey, ‘Some Cín Dromma Snechtai texts’, 88–9; Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 79–81; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 307 (Table 6); Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 64–5.

(i: 29) (?Írgalach mac Conaing) (d. 702) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE AU 701, 702; Frag. Ann. §§ 150, 153, 156; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 224; Herbert and Ó Riain, Betha Adamnáin, 50–1; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The guarantor list of Cáin Adomnáin’, 181, 213 (90).

Írgalach, son of Conaing, may be inferred as next in BCC’s list if the phrase bebais muir alludes to his death (by drowning?) in an attack on Inis Meic Nessáin (Ireland’s Eye, par. Howth, bar. Coolock, Co. Dublin). Írgalach is not, however, acknowledged as king of Tara either in the Middle Irish king-lists or in the annals. His father, Conaing son of Congal, was a prominent king of his line and was slain at Ogoman in 662, fighting in support of Blathmac son of Áed (above, i: 25). Írgalach had at least two brothers, Dúngalach and

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Congalach, on whose death in 696 he apparently became head of his line. He secured an important marriage connection in Muirenn, daughter of the powerful Leinster overking Cellach Cualann, mother of his son Cináed Cáech (d. 728). According to some versions of the Banshenchas, she was previously married to the Cenél Conaill ruler Loingsech mac Óenguso, who became king of Tara; however, in her obit at 748 (AU) she is styled regina Írgalaig. Other recorded marriages suggest that Cellach Cualann strove to build connections with Síl nÁedo Sláine, but it is unclear whether or not the marriage of Írgalach and Muirenn was part of his plan. Nor is it certain that the couple were married as early as 697, although in that year Írgalach was among the secular subscribers to Cáin Adomnáin, as was Cellach Cualann. Coincidentally, both men fell foul of the Columban community and so appear in a negative light in the tenth-century text Betha Adamnáin. In 701 Írgalach slew his second cousin Niall (above, i: 28) son of Cernach Sotal, an action which, according to the Columban hagiographers, violated the sanctuary of Adomnán, prompting the saint to predict Írgalach’s own violent death. A similar version of events is related in Frag. Ann. (§§§ 150, 153, 156). In the following year Írgalach was himself slain on Inis Meic Nessáin by a company of Britons. It is possible that they were acting in the interests of Niall’s lineage, although British contingents (probably from the north British kingdom of Rheged) are known to have been in the service of Cellach Cualann. Írgalach’s immediate successor was his nephew, Amalgaid son of Congalach, although in 724 his son Cináed Cáech displaced Fogartach (below, i: 32a) son of Niall as king of Tara. Byrne, ‘Historical note on Cnogba’, 398; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 110–13; Binchy ‘A pre-Christian survival’, 178; Smyth, ‘Kings, saints and sagas’ 94, 96–7; Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 79; Swift, ‘Óenach Tailten’; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 307 (Table 6); Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 53.

(i: 30) Flann Asail (d. 714) (Flann mac Áedo meic Dlúthaig) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE AU 712, 714.

Flann son of Áed is a likely identification. The records do not associate him with the kingship of Tara, but his fleeting prominence, and the endeavours of his family in dynastic politics, may have led some to view him as a contender for that dignity. His father was Áed son of Dlúthach, who had slain Diarmait Dian of Clann Cholmáin in 689 and the reigning king of Tara, Fínnachta Fledach (above, i: 27) in 695. He had at least four brothers: Cú Roí, who was slain in 711 when party to an intra-dynastic conflict in Uí Méith; Gormgal and Cathal, who fell in 718 and 737 respectively, in battles between rival factions of Síl nÁedo Sláine; and Anlúan. Flann defeated and slew Maine son of Niall (above, i: 28) in 712. It is possible that

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he secured an alliance with the Leinster dynasty of Uí Fhailge, which was still striving to maintain its interests in the Westmeath lakelands. He was killed in 714 at the battle of Bile Tened in Mag nAsal (Moyashel, in the vicinity of Lough Owel, Co. Westmeath), which may explain the kenning applied to him in BCC. At (or around) the same time the Uí Fhailge were defeated in a nearby engagement. Victory was secured by Clann Cholmáin, represented by Murchad Midi (below, i: 31) and his brothers, at the expense of Flann’s family. His line subsequently provided local rulers of Fir Chúl Breg, north of the Blackwater river, Co. Meath. Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’ (Table 1); Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 119–20; Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 80; Swift, ‘Óenach Tailten’, 112; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 307 (Table 6); Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 571–2; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 134, 268.

(i: 31) Furbaide (d. 715) (?Murchad Midi mac Diarmato) UÍ NÉILL – CLANN CHOLMÁIN AU 715; Ann. Tig. (= AU 715); A.FM s.a. 712; Plummer, Vitae, I, 203–4; Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 186, 224; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 197; O’Brien, Corpus, 59, 159, 425; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1446; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The guarantor list of Cáin Adomnáin’, 181, 206 (66).

Murchad Midi (i.e. ‘of Meath’) son of Diarmait is a very tentative suggestion here, based solely on the grounds of sequence. Furbaide (Mod. Ir. forbaidhe, forbuighthe) seems to indicate ‘the excised one’. In the Life of Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, a king named Furbaide caused the saint to be held captive in his household. Although this king’s territory is not mentioned explicitly, it is implied that he was a king in Connacht. Nonetheless, Furbaide is not recorded in other sources, apart from a genealogical reference to Furbaide of Síl Ír, and a reference to Murchad might well be expected if the poem was revised c. 720, when his son Domnall Midi (d. 763) was in the ascendant. Not normally viewed among the kings of Tara, Murchad is included (perhaps anachronistically) among the kings of Uisnech in Middle Irish king-lists. He belonged to Clann Cholmáin and was associated with its consolidation in the midlands. His father Diarmait Dian, who perhaps founded the fortunes of the dynasty, was slain in 689 at the instance of Fínnachta Fledach (above, i: 27). His killer was Áed son of Dlúthach, whose son Flann (above, i: 30) was apparently in contention for supremacy within Uí Néill. Murchad had at least three half-brothers: Bodbchad Midi (d. 704), Áed (d. 714) and Colcu (d. 714). It is possible that Murchad assumed his father’s role at the head of Clann Cholmáin in 689 or shortly thereafter. If that is so, he came to prominence only with the death of Fínnachta Fledach in 695, when pre-eminence among Uí Néill passed to Loingsech mac Óenguso of Cenél Conaill. The twenty-year reign as king of Uisnech assigned to him by later sources

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would seem to be reckoned from this year. According to the Banshenchas, he married Ailpín, daughter of Comgall king of Delbna. She was the mother of his son Domnall Midi. Along with many contemporaries, Murchad and his brother Bodbchad subscribed to Cáin Adomnáin in 697. Later, his family became closely associated with the Columban familia. It seems reasonable to credit Murchad and his family with an extension of Clann Cholmáin control into the Westmeath lakelands, which were hitherto within the Leinster ambit and were being contested with the dynasty of Uí Fhailge in the second half of the seventh century. This presumably explains the family sobriquet Midi ‘of Mide’. Their success alarmed not only the Leinster kings, erstwhile rulers of this region, but also Síl nÁedo Sláine, especially the cadet lineages of Uí Chernaig and Fir Chúl Breg. They sought alliances with those dynasties which posed the most immediate threat. Bodbchad Midi joined with the Uí Chernaig dynast Fogartach (below, i: 32a) son of Niall to invade Leinster in 704, but fell in battle at Clóenáth (Clane, Co. Kildare). For his part, Murchad secured a marriage-bond with Uí Fhailge. His daughter Érennach became the wife of Flann dá Chongal, whose line was then striving for kingship. Perhaps he also reached an agreement with Fergal mac Maíle Dúin (below, i: 32), the rising star of Cenél nÉogain. It is possible, however, that the latter was, as yet, unable to dominate the midlands. By 714 Murchad was in a position to deal with his midland rivals of Síl nÁedo Sláine and Uí Fhailge. In the battles of Bile Tened and Garbshalach (perhaps Garrysallagh, par. Stonehall, bar. Corkaree, Co. Westmeath) 30, fought seemingly on the same day, his forces defeated and slew Flann son of Áed and Forbassach of Uí Fhailge. The campaign was nonetheless costly, with the loss of two of his brothers, Áed and Colcu. If these victories secured dominance for Murchad, it was not destined to last. The following year he was slain by Conall Grant of Uí Chernaig, a brother of Fogartach. In his obit he is styled rex nepotum Neill. His son Domnall Midi later emerged as king of Tara. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 120; Smyth, ‘Húi Failgi relations with the Húi Néill’, 513, 514; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 85–7; CharlesEdwards, Early Christian Ireland, 479–80, 571–2.

(i: 32) Cailech/Glúnshalach (d. 722) (Fergal mac Maíle Dúin) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN AU 707, 718, 721, 722; AI 719; Chron. Scot. s.a. 707; Frag. Ann. §177; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 142, 144; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 185–6; Meyer, ‘Das Ende von Baile in Scáil’, 232 §41; Murphy, ‘On the dates of two sources’, 147 n. (j); Best,

30

Ibid., 150-1.

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Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 96; O’Brien, Corpus, 125, 134; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1485; Ó Riain, Cath Almaine; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 42 (§41).

Fergal mac Maíle Dúin is almost certainly the king referred to by this kenning. He is described as In Cailech (‘the cock’) in Baile in Scáil and the identification is followed by a gloss in the RIA 23 N 10 version of BCC. He is included in Middle Irish king-lists as king of Tara, where he is accorded a reign of ten years. He also features as such in literature, notably in the tale Cath Almaine. His father Máel Dúin, ruler of Cenél nÉogain, died in 681. His mother was Cacht daughter of Cellach son of Máel Cobo of Cenél Conaill. Fergal’s choice of wives seems to illustrate his keenness to maintain alliances with near neighbours. He married the daughter of one Ernán of Cenél Conaill. She was mother of his son Áed Allán (d. 743), while Aithechdae daughter of Cían was mother of Niall Frossach (d. 778). He had another two sons, Conchobar and Colcu. Fergal came to prominence before 707. Chron. Scot. implies that he controlled Cenél nÉogain by this time. In that year, with support from Cenél Coirpri, he slew Indrechtach, overking of Connacht. Three years later in 710 the death of Congal Cennmagar king of Tara, who belonged to the rival dynasty of Cenél Conaill, left Fergal as the most powerful Uí Néill figure in the north. Furthering the eastward expansion of his dynasty, he defeated the Airgíalla at Slíab Fúait (in the Fews bar. Newtownhamilton, Co. Armagh) in 711. It is possible that he promoted the cause of Clann Cholmáin dynast Murchad Midi (above, i: 31) against a common rival, Fogartach (below, i: 32a) son of Niall of Síl nÁedo Sláine, who was then in contention for the kingship of Tara. The latter was expelled in 714. The disturbance of the óenach Tailten in 717 should probably be viewed in the context of a struggle between Fergal and the returned Fogartach. Certainly, in the following year, Fergal slew his rival’s brother Conall Grant. He also pursued an aggressive line against the Laigin. At the battle of Finnabar (tl./par. Fennor, bar. Lower Duleek, Co. Meath) in 719 he defeated the Laigin under Murchad son of Bran and slew Áed son of Cellach Cualann. Two years later he laid waste the plain of Leinster. His ambition to dominate the south-east eventually led to his undoing. In 721 the Laigin joined with the powerful Munster overking, Cathal (below, i: 33) son of Finguine, to devastate Mide. Fergal responded by reasserting his authority over the Laigin and taking hostages. Then, in 722, perhaps because no tribute was forthcoming, he invaded Leinster in force, but was defeated and slain in the disastrous battle of Almu, as related in the tale Cath Almaine. His son Áed Allán succeeded him as ruler of Cenél nÉogain. He later gained the kingship of Tara, as did his brother Niall Frossach, but seemingly too late to be included in BCC. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 54, 118–22, 124; Byrne, Irish kings, 144, 146, 207–8, 248; Ó Riain, Cath Almaine, xii–xix; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 128; McCone, Pagan past, 10, 222; Charles-Edwards, ‘Irish warfare’, 30–1; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 219, 238 n. 33; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 511, 575, 578–9; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 49–50.

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or (i: 32a) Glúnshalach (d. 724) (Fogartach mac Néill) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE AU, 704, 714, 716, 717, 724; Frag. Ann., §§§ 163, 168, 180; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 144; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 227; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 96; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The guarantor list of Cáin Adomnáin’, 181, 211 (82); Murray, Baile in Scáil, 42 (§40).

Fogartach son of Niall (above, i: 28) is a possible identification here. He is reckoned as king of Tara in Baile in Scáil and in the Middle Irish king-lists, where he is accorded a reign of one year. He belonged to the Uí Chernaig line of Síl nÁedo Sláine and, as noted above, had four brothers. He also had four sons: Cernach (d. 738), Flann Foirbthe (d. 748), Fergal (d. 751) and Coirpre (exiled 769), along with a daughter, Dúnfhlaith (d. 774). In 704 he joined with Bodbchad Midi, brother of Murchad Midi (above, i: 31) in an attempted invasion of Leinster, but suffered defeat at Clane. He spent the following six years building a powerbase, possibly centred at Clonard. Fogartach apparently claimed kingship of the Uí Néill after Congal Cennmagar of Cenél Conaill died in 710. In 714 he was expelled from the kingship, probably by Murchad Midi, and was exiled to Britain. In spite of suggestions that his brother Conall Grant was behind this expulsion, the latter appears to have been a supporter of his claims. When Murchad was killed in 715, the way was left open for Fogartach to return to Ireland in the following year. In 717 óenach Tailten was in contention between Fogartach and, it seems, Fergal (above, i: 32) son of Máel Dúin, or at least his collaborators among the northern branch of Síl nÁedo Sláine, the Uí Chonaing. In the course of their struggles, Fogartach apparently lost the kingship of Uí Néill to Fergal, who in 722 led the army of Leth Cuinn, including Síl nÁedo Sláine, at the battle of Almu against the Laigin. Fogartach may have capitulated when his brother and principal supporter, Conall Grant, was killed at the battle of Kells in 718. Whether or not he resumed the kingship following the death of Fergal in 722 is a moot point. According to Frag. Ann., he did and suffered a defeat by the Laigin at Tailtiu. While the king-lists, including Baile in Scáil, indicate that Fogartach was king at the time of his death, the contemporary annals do not accord him any such title in his obit. He was killed in 724 by Cináed Cáech son of Írgalach at the battle of Cenn Delgthen. A poem preserved in Frag. Ann. implicates a certain Domnall drechderg (‘red countenance’) in the killing. The latter is probably to be identified with Domnall Midi son of Murchad, who was apparently responsible for having expelled Fogartach from the kingship in 714. We may infer that Domnall supported Cináed in 724. Fogartach was buried in Clonard. Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 398 (Table 2); Ó Riain, Cath Almaine, xii–xix; Smyth, ‘Kings, saints and sagas’, 94–5; Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 79–80, 81; Charles-

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Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 558; Swift, ‘Óenach Tailten’, 112; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 47–52.

(i: 33) aue Coircc (d. 742) (Cathal mac Finguine) ÉOGANACHT GLENDAMNACH Meyer, ‘Conall Corc and the Corco Luigde’; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 185, 223; Dillon, ‘The story of the finding of Cashel’; O’Brien, Corpus, 197, 360, 363; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1376, 1379; Ó Riain, Cath Almaine; Jackson, Aislinge meic Con Glinne, 19 ll. 598–600.

Cathal son of Finguine is probably intended here, given the likely attribution reithe Muman. Although not acknowledged as king of Tara in the Middle Irish king-lists, it is significant that a poem in the Book of Leinster (Teist Chathail meic Fhinguine) styles him ardrí Temrach, while the law-tract Bretha Nemed Toísech – almost certainly a Munster product of the period 721–42 – refers to feis Temro. Moreover, the annalistic record makes it clear that he posed a serious threat to the political order which the Uí Néill were striving to establish. Cathal was a member of the Éoganacht Glendamnach dynasty, his father Finguine (d. 695/6) being in turn a son of Cú cen máthair (d. 665). Middle Irish king-lists include Cathal as overking of Munster and accord him a reign of twenty-nine years, which, by implication, dates his accession to 713, following the death of Cormac son of Ailill of Éoganacht Chaisil. Curiously, he is the last of the ‘future’ kings of Cashel listed in its (probably eighth-century) foundation story, while it may be significant that later tradition – as reflected in the tale Aislinge meic Con Glinne and in his obit in AI – represents him as ‘high-king of Leth Moga’, ‘chief defender of Ireland against the descendants of Conn Cétchathach’ and ‘king of Ireland’. With regard to the identity of his wife, some Middle Irish literary sources associate him with the Munster goddess Mór. However, the Banshenchas claim that he married Caillech (d. 731) daughter of Dúnchad Ard of Uí Meicc Brócc, a southern dynasty associated with Uí Liatháin. His immediate descendants are not well documented, but he is said to have had a son (or, more likely, a grandson) named Artrí and a daughter Tualaith. If his kingship of Munster is dated from 713, it may be inferred from the annalistic record that he had some difficulty in establishing effective political control of the province at this time. In 715 Murchad son of Bran, Uí Dúnlainge overking of Leinster, was able to march on Cashel. It seems that Cathal enjoyed only local and at most regional power in these early years, attaining a meaningful overkingship of Munster only in 721, following the death of Etarscél son of Máel Umai of Éoganacht Áine. From this time onwards, however, the indications are that he pursued an active policy aimed at restricting the Uí Néill sphere of influence to Leth Cuinn. Having joined forces with the Leinster overking, Murchad son of Bran, he laid waste to Brega and effected an incursion into Mide in 721. The (probably

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partisan) assertion of AI that Fergal mac Maíle Dúin (above, i: 32) submitted to Cathal following these actions should perhaps be viewed in the context of above-mentioned claims that he enjoyed a ‘kingship of Ireland’. Certainly for a time he dominated Leth Moga. Following a judicious marriage alliance with the Uí Dúnlainge dynasty, he hoped to become kingmaker of Leinster. His daughter Tualaith became the wife of Dúnchad, son of his ally Murchad. However, following the latter’s death in 727, an internecine conflict upset his plans. Although Cathal and the king of Osraige supported Dúnchad, he was defeated and slain the following year by the latter’s brother Fáelán, who assumed overkingship of Leinster and married Tualaith. He continued to concentrate on southern Leinster, but his offensive against the Uí Chennselaig dynasty met with a reverse in 732. Three years later he attacked again and engaged the Laigin at Belach Fhéile (perhaps near the River Burren, east of Carlow Town).31 AI claims that he was victorious, but other sources maintain that his ally the king of Osraige was slain and that he himself escaped only by flight. One view of a notice recording battles at Tailtiu and Tlachtga in 733 (AU) involving a certain Cathal is that the dynast in question was Cathal son of Áed of Síl nÁedo Sláine. However, it seems more likely that the aggressor in this campaign was Cathal mac Finguine: the individual mentioned in the notice is not accorded a patronymic, as is almost invariably the case with less well-known kings. Cathal mac Finguine had earlier struck at Brega: there were claims (mentioned above) that he ruled Tara and subdued the Uí Néill; and the oblique reference to him in this text seems to suggest that the Uí Néill viewed him with animosity. Reference to the extension of Lex Patricii (Law of Patrick) ‘throughout Ireland’ in 734 implies his co-operation. Furthermore, the rígdál (royal meeting) in 737 at Tír Dá Glas (Terryglass, Co. Tipperary) between Cathal and Áed Allán son of Fergal suggests that the latter perceived a need for ‘clarification’ of spheres of influence. It seems that a non-aggression pact was reached. In the following year Áed Allán invaded Leinster and inflicted a crushing defeat on both the Uí Chennselaig and Uí Dúnlainge dynasties without any response from the overking of Munster. Towards the end of 738, however, following the death of Fáelán son of Murchad, Cathal crossed into Leinster and took the hostages of the province. Cathal died in 742 and, according to a verse included in AI, was buried in Imlech Iubair (Emly, bar. Clanwilliam, Co. Tipperary), although his dynasty, as suggested by the text ‘Conall Corc and the Corcu Loígde’, had close links with Cluain Uama (Cloyne, bars. Barrymore and Imokilly, Co. Cork). If later claims of his having held the ‘kingship of Ireland’ appear overstated, it seems clear that his reign was viewed as a milestone by later generations. In the immediate term, his successors in the overkingship of Munster were ephemeral kings from other Éoganacht dynasties. Later, in 796, Cathal’s son (or grandson) Artrí succeeded in regaining provincial overkingship, and from him descended the later kings of Éoganacht Glendamnach. 31

Ibid., 105.

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Hughes, Early Christian Ireland, 135–6, 181; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 121–30; Ó Corráin, Ireland before the Normans, 3, 23, 97, 101; Byrne, Irish kings, 150, 188–9, 203, 205, 207–11; Ó Riain, Cath Almaine, xiii–v; Breatnach, ‘Canon and secular law’, 439–59; McCone, Pagan past, 242; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 75–6; Byrne, ‘Dercu’, 48, 57; Charles-Edwards, ‘Irish warfare’, 30, 37–8; Etchingham, ‘Early medieval Irish history’, 132–3; Bhreathnach, ‘Temoria: caput Scotorum?’, 81; Ní Chon Uladh, ‘The rígdál at Terryglass’, 190, 193–5, 196 n. 20; Swift, ‘Óenach Tailten’, 41; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 54, 219–20; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 280, 477–9; Herbert, ‘The Vita Columbae’, 37 n. 49.

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(II) The ‘Airgíalla Charter Poem’ (ii: 1) Coirpre Lifechair (§5) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgialla’, 181.

See Coirpre, above, i: 5. He is included here because, as the putative father of Fiachu Sraiptine, (above, i: 8) and Eochaid Doimlén, (below, ii: 6), he is the common ancestor of Uí Néill and Cruithni dynasties which became known as Airgíalla. McCone, Pagan past, 239; Jaski, Early Irish kingship, 116; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 39 (§19).

(ii: 2) Colla Óss (§§ 8, 48) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ MOCCU UAIS AU AM 4325; Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 319; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 360, 364, 382; Thurneysen, ‘Baile in Sca–il’, 224; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 93; O’Brien, Corpus, 139, 140–2, 415–16; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1488; Murray, Baile in Scáil, 39 (§19).

Colla Óss, son of Eochaid Doimlén (below, ii: 6) according to genealogical convention, is one of a trio of brothers – the others being named as Colla Fochríth and Colla Menn. This may well be a case of triplication, a by-product of constructing a common genealogical framework for a group of dynasties which were not in fact related. The brothers Colla are identified as ancestors of the Cruithni dynasties reconstituted in this poem as Airgíalla. The brothers were supposedly great-grandsons of Cormac mac Airt, nephews of Fiachu Sraiptine and cousins of Muiredach Tírech (above, i: 4, 8, 9). According to the origin-tale of the Airgíalla, the brothers slew their uncle, Fiachu, and were for a time exiled in Scotland for the crime of fingal ‘kin-slaying’. Having returned to Ireland, they were permitted by Muiredach to make swordland of mid-Ulster, bringing it under the sway of the kings of the Uí Néill, but they and their descendants were disqualified from overkingship because of their kin-slaying. Essentially the story is a device to explain how Uí Néill rulers subjugated the Cruithni kings of mid-Ulster, presumably from the seventh century onwards, thereby preventing the development of a Cruithni regional overkingship. It is perhaps significant that Colla Óss, although not admitted in BCC, is included among the kings of Tara in later sources. Alone of the three Collas, he features in Baile in Scáil and is accorded a reign of four years, a claim echoed in the prehistoric section of AU and in Middle Irish king-lists. The list of ‘kings of Ireland’ in the Book of Leinster states that he was deposed

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by Muiredach Tírech. Colla Óss was allegedly ancestor of Uí Moccu Uais which produced powerful regional kings such as Cuanu and his son Bécc (below, ii: 15, 17). The dynasties of Uí Thuirtri, Uí Meic Cáirthinn and Uí Fhiachrach of Ard Sratha claimed descent from Colla Óss, the kings of Uí Chremthainn, Uí Méith and Ind Airthir from Colla Fochríth, and the rulers of Mugdorna from Colla Menn. Walsh, ‘Uí Maccu Uais’; O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 225–32; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 13–14; Byrne, Irish kings, 72–4; Ó Corráin, ‘Historical need and literary narrative’, 151–2; McCone, Pagan past, 248–9; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 92; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 514–5; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain, 56–7, 64, 67 (Table 4).

(ii: 3) Áed Allán (d. 612) (§11) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN

(ii: 3a) Áed mac Ainmerech (d. 598) (§11) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL

(ii: 3b) Áed Sláine (d. 604) (§11) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE

See Áed, above, i: 18, 19, 19a. Their inclusion here may be explained by the fact that they represent retrospectively the three Uí Néill dynasties which enjoyed supremacy before the ascendancy of the powerful Domnall Midi of Clann Cholmáin, which had emerged as a separate dynasty. The last representatives of the dynasties in question to hold the overkingship of the Uí Néill before ACP was composed were Áed Allán (d. 743; Cenél nÉogain), Flaithbertach (dep. 734; Cenél Conaill) son of Loingsech, and Cináed Cáech (d. 728; Síl nÁedo Sláine) son of Írgalach. (ii: 4) Conall Cremthainne (d. 480) (§12) UÍ NÉILL – CLANN CHOLMÁIN & SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE AU 480; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 44; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 179, 216; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 196; O’Brien, Corpus, 131, 159, 165; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1466; Bieler, Patrician texts, 132–3: 10; Connolly, ‘Vita Prima S. Brigitae’, 31, 32.

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Conall Cremthainne, included among the sons of Niall Noígíallach (above, i: 11) and hence a brother of Lóegaire, Coirpre, Fiachu (above, i: 12, 13; below, ii: 7) and Éogan (from whom the Cenél nÉogain claimed descent), is probably a duplicate of Conall Gulban. Conall’s mother is named as Rígnach daughter of Meda, which suggests a link with the Ulster dynasty of Dál Fiatach. The pre-Norman genealogies distinguish between the brothers in question as Conall Cremthainne (also called Conall Err Breg) and Conall Gulban. The so-called Timna Néill ‘Testimony of Niall’ refers to Conall and to Crimthann, to whom the patriarch bequeaths respectively his ‘sovereignty’ and his ‘primacy’. Conall Cremthainne is the common ancestor claimed by the royal lineages of Clann Cholmáin and Síl nÁedo Sláine (while Conall Gulban is represented as eponymous ancestor of Cenél Conaill).While the author of the tract Cóir Anmann links his sobriquet with the Airgíalla dynasty of Uí Chremthainn, it is more likely that it derives from the territory of Cremthainn, probably located between Slane and Knowth, which had come under Uí Néill sway at an early date. Early hagiographical sources seem to recognise only one Conall. In Tírechán’s Collectanea Conall is credited with having granted a church site to Patrick, on which account it was prophesied that his descendants would be kings – in contrast to his brother Coirpre who supposedly defied the saint, so that his posterity is excluded from kingship. The possibly eighth-century Vita Prima of St Brigit, also mentions only one Conall who is likewise treated favourably. Through intercession of the saint, he is miraculously spared from the murderous intent of Coirpre and is subsequently obliged to make peace with the Cruithni. It seems reasonable that the divided persona of Conall resulted from dynastic shift, as the lines of Áed Sláine and Colmán, which emerged supreme in the midlands, increasingly sought to distance themselves from their Cenél Conaill cousins. Conall Cremthainne is accorded an obit at 480 in a proto-historic stratum of AU. It may be significant that there is no obit for Conall Gulban. According to genealogical orthodoxy, Diarmait mac Cerbaill (above, i: 20) was Conall Cremthainne’s grandson or great-grandson. Byrne, Irish kings, 90, 94; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; McCone, Pagan past, 250–1; Swift, ‘Tírechán’s motives’, 69, 70; Swift, ‘Óenach Tailten’, 110–11; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 95, 96 (Table 1).

(ii: 5) Colmán Bec mac Diarmato (d. 587) (§12) UÍ NÉILL – CAÍLLE FOLLOMAIN & CLANN CHOLMÁIN AU 568, 573, 586, 587; AI 568; AFM s.a. 572; Book of Ballymote, 80ac; Plummer, Vitae, I, 162–4; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 74, 76, 78; Anderson, Sources of Scottish history, I, 72 [568]; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 181, 217; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 196.

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Colmán Bec son of Diarmait (above, i: 20), included in the Middle Irish king-lists (perhaps anachronistically) among the kings of Uisnech, is represented as a brother of Áed Sláine (above, i: 18) and of Colmán Már. It seems reasonable to infer that the brothers Colmán are duplicates. They are accorded the same personal name, a curiously early adaption for secular usage of the Latin religious name Columbanus, which raises the possibility that Diarmait borrowed the appellation from his eminent cousin Columba. Besides, there may be confusion regarding the identity of their mother(s). In the Banshenchas the brothers Colmán are both assigned mothers from a lineage of the Conmaicne. Colmán Bec, in contrast to his namesake, features in hagiographical tradition, even if he is not accorded a prominent role. The Latin Life of Cainnech of Achad Bó (tl./par. Aghaboe, bar. Clarmallagh, Co. Laois) tells of his having abducted a nun from a church, for which Cainnech demanded repentence. His compliance ensured that the saint prayed for his salvation. More significantly, Colmán’s career is traceable in the annals. It seems that he emerged as a prominent figure in the years immediately following his father’s death, making an expedition to the Western Isles in 567 and fighting a battle at Ard Tommáin or Iardoman (apparently the islands of Seil and Islay, Inner Hebrides, Scotland) alongside the king of Dál Ríata, Conall son of Comgall. This alliance is clearly significant. Not only had the Dál Ríata king previously granted Iona to Columba, but his dynasty stood apart from the ruling dynasties of Dál nAraidi and Dál Fiatach – both of which posed a threat to Uí Néill interests in relation to Tara and to Britain. After his return to Ireland, Colmán contested the Uí Néill kingship with his second cousin, Áed mac Ainmerech (above, i: 19a), and with his second cousin once removed, Báetán son of Ninnid. An encounter with the latter at Femen (south of the Boyne between Duleek and Navan, Co. Meath) in 573 went against Colmán, who was fortunate, the annalist implies, to escape with his life. More than a decade elapsed before he could obtain revenge but, in 586, his son Cuimmíne slew Báetán at Léim ind Eich (perhaps tls. Lemnagh Beg and Lemnagh More, par. Ballintoy, bar. Cary, Co. Antrim).32 However, in the following year Colmán was killed at Belach Dathí by Áed mac Ainmerech. Cuimmíne is named as Colmán’s son in the annals. Another son, according to the Book of Ballymote, was Óengus (above, i: 23) who eventually emerged to claim overkingship of the Uí Néill. In view of the likelihood that the brothers Colmán were in fact identical, Suibne (d. 600) and Fergus (d. 618) were probably also his sons. However, the family of Suibne and that of Óengus experienced very different political fortunes. The latter’s descendants slid into obscurity. They became rulers of the petty kingdom of Caílle Follomain, a name deriving either from Folloman son of Cú Chongalt, king of Mide (d. 766) – the last of the line to achieve prominence – or from a placename, perhaps surviving in Killallon, bar. Fore, Co. Meath. Theirs was a petty kingdom 32

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straddling Mide and Brega, while supremacy passed to the parallel line of Suibne, which called itself Clann Cholmáin and claimed descent from Colmán Már. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 70, 76, 80; Byrne, Irish kings, 90–1, 111, 259; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 89–91, 96 (Table 1); Herbert, ‘The Vita Columbae’, 37.

(ii: 5a) Colmán Már mac Diarmato (d. 555/8) (§12) UÍ NÉILL – CLANN CHOLMÁIN AU 555, 558, 563; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 181, 217; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 196; O’Brien, Corpus, 159, 425; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1466.

Colmán Már, who according to the genealogies was a son of Diarmait (above, i: 20), is probably a duplicate of Colmán Bec. Aside from the double coincidence of his personal name and mother’s dynastic affiliation, nothing is known of his career (in contrast with Colmán Bec), and even his obit seems to be spurious. The circumstances assigned to his death (entered three times in the annals) are not, as outlined in the discussion on Diarmait, inherently improbable for an early Uí Néill dynast. He was slain by one Dubshloit of Dál nAraidi, an event which may reflect a genuine memory of conflict with this neighbouring dynasty. The early date, however, fits badly with his being a son of Diarmait, a brother of Áed Sláine (above, i: 18) and father of Suibne and Fergus – both of whom died in the early seventh century. All things considered, it seems reasonable to assume that he is an invention – a product of genealogical recasting occasioned by the success of Suibne’s descendants (Clann Cholmáin), who excluded those of Óengus (rulers of Caílle Follomain) from the kingship of Mide in the eighth century. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 70–1, 90; Byrne, Irish kings, 87–91; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 89–91; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, chap. 6.

(ii: 6) Eochu Doimlén (Eochaid Doimlén) (§§ 27, 48) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 356–60; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 178, 215; O’Brien, Corpus, 72, 130, 139, 436, 437; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1354, 1486, 1489.

Eochaid Doimlén was, the genealogists maintain, closely related to the main body of kings of Tara, his father being Coirpre Lifechair (above, i: 5, ii: 1) and his mother Áine, a daughter of Finn mac Cumaill. He is assigned as brothers, or half-brothers, Fiachu Sraiptine (above,

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i: 8) and Eochaid. His wife is named as Ailech, daughter of Udaire, a British king. She is said to have been the mother of his three sons, the brothers Colla (above, ii: 2). All the dynasties of Airgíalla, therefore, claiming sway from Búaigne (the district around Dunboyne, Co. Meath) to Loch Febail (Lough Foyle), traced their ancestry to him. According to one tradition, he was slain at the battle of Cnámros, along with his brothers Fiachu Sraiptine and Eochaid, by the Leinster king Bressal Bélach. (ii: 7) Fiacha mac Noë (§34) (?Fiachu Tuirtri mac Colla Óiss) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ MOCCU UAIS Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 112 (670.12).

On the otherwise unattested Fiacha mac Noë, the pedigrees of saints note a certain Corpach ingen Fhiachnai meic Nui i Cill Corpaigi (Kilcorby, par. Drumlane, bar. Lower Loughtee, Co. Cavan) who was a devotee of the cult of St Brigit. The individual intended here might be an unidentified ancestor figure of the Cruithni/Airgíalla or an oblique reference to Fiachu Tuirtri (Tort) son of Colla Óss (above, ii: 2).

or (ii: 7a) Fiacha mac Noë (§34) (?Fiachu mac Néill) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL FIACHACH AU 510, 516; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 372; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 183; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 196; O’Brien, Corpus, 131; Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 4 (9).

Though rather unlikely, Fiacha mac Noë might be an oblique reference to Fiachu, an alleged son of Niall Noígíallach (above, i: 11), hence a brother of Lóegaire, Coirpre, Conall (above, i: 12, 13; ii: 4) and Éogan (a quo Cenél nÉogain). The Banshenchas assigns him a different mother to his siblings, Indiu daughter of Lugaid, which may be intended to distance him, or his alleged descendants, from them. Among the sons of Fiachu acknowledged in the genealogies are Eochaid Finn (ancestor of the later medieval Uí Maíl Muaid, lords of Fir Chell), Tuathal in Tuaiscirt (from whom the Mac Eochagáin rulers of Cenél Fiachach claimed descent), and Crimthann, ancestor of Bishop Áed mac Bricc (below, ii: 10). One of his daughters bore the symbolic name of Temair and is said to have married a Leinster king. Fiachu is mentioned in the so-called Timna Néill, in which the patriarch bequeathes to him his ‘nimbleness’ and ‘mettlesome disposition’. He is claimed in the proto-historic stratum of AU to have engaged in battles with the Laigin whereby he secured Mide, and he is counted (almost certainly anachronistically) among the kings of Uisnech. In any event, the lineage

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claiming descent from him controlled a territory around Uisnech (which, at one stage, perhaps included the Columban site of Durrow), which was so important to Clann Cholmáin as they consolidated their control of Mide and strove for overall supremacy of Uí Néill and its vassals. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 18; Byrne, Irish kings, 81, 93–4, 280; Smyth, ‘Húi Néill and the Leinstermen’, 137, 138; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 441–68; Byrne, ‘Certain Southern Uí Néill kingdoms’, 242–56.

(ii: 8) Daig Duirn (§34) CRUITHNI – UÍ CHREMTHAINN & FIR MANACH O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgíalla’, 187 n. 2; O’Brien, Corpus, 139, 140, 182, 184, 414, 436; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1486.

Daig Duirn was, according to genealogical convention, the only son of Rochaid son of Colla Fochríth (above, ii: 2). His father is represented as one of four brothers, the most distinguished of whom, Fiachrae Cassán, is probably to be identified with Fiechri (above, i: 6), one of the kings of Tara listed in BCC. Daig is credited with one son, Fiacc, in turn the father of Crimthann (duplicated as Crimthann Lethan and Crimthann Oach), Brion and Labraid – although an alternative tradition represents the latter two as sons of Daig. His descendants are said to have included the Uí Chremthainn and the later rulers of Fernmag and Fir Manach. (ii: 9) Epscop Echu (d. 598) (§42) (Eochu mac Diarmato) AU 598; AFM s.a. 597; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 199.

Eochu, described as abbot of Armagh in his obit in AU, but styled bishop in the Book of Leinster version of the coarbs of Patrick, is possibly intended as a witness to this agreement. It is related that he was the son of a certain Diarmait, and came from Domnach Rígdruing, apparently in Ulster. He followed Carláen (d. 588) as coarb of St Patrick and died in 598, to be succeeded by Senach Garb. Lawlor and Best, ‘Coarbs of Patrick’, 320; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 238.

(ii: 10) Epscop Áed (d. 589) (§42) (?Áed mac Bricc) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL FIACHACH AU 589 or 595; Best and Lawlor, Martyrology of Tallaght, 19, 39, 59; Stokes, Félire Óengusso, 240; Plummer, Vitae, I, 34–45; O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgialla’, 188 n. 1.; Heist, Vitae,

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167–81; Ó hAodha, Bethu Brigte, 9 (26), 10 (29); O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1528; Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 4 (9), 174 (46).

Áed mac Bricc (son of Brecc) is probably intended here. His father, Brecc son of Cormac, is linked to Cenél Fiachach, a dynasty traced to Fiachu (above, ii: 7b), son of Niall Noígíallach. His mother is said to have been a Munster woman, perhaps to be identified with a certain Eithne included in the tract on mothers of saints. Áed is associated particularly with Cell Áir (Killare, bar. Rathconrath, Co. Westmeath), Ráith Áeda (Rahugh, bar. Moycashel, Co. Westmeath), and Sliab Liac (Slieveleague, Co. Donegal). His Latin Life has him encounter Diarmait mac Cerbaill (above, i: 20), whose barren wife Mugain he blesses so that she miraculously conceives Áed Sláine (above, i: 18). Other contemporaries with whom he is brought into contact include a king named Baithenus – perhaps Báetán son of Ninnid (below, ii: 13) of Cenél Conaill – and Columba who, by a miracle, is said to have witnessed his death without leaving Iona. More anachronistic are claims that he was visited by St Brigit (as her Irish Life relates), or was invoked by her, in order to cure a headache. The purpose of the episode was probably to represent him as a prototype ‘master leech’. He died in 588 presumably on 10 November, under which date he is commemorated in the martyrologies. McCone, Pagan past, 165–6, 190; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 150, 445–6, 555.

(ii: 11) Senach moccu Maíle (d. 588) (§42) ?UÍ MÁIL AU 588, 615; Stokes, Lismore Lives, 226, 228; Stokes, Félire Huí Gormáin, 160; O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgíalla’, 188 n. 2; Heist, Vitae, 101 (19), 103 (24); O’Brien, Corpus, 76; Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 157 (709.76).

Senach, bishop of Clonard, is probably intended here. He died on 21 August 588. Senach is not given the title abb in the annals. However, we may infer that he held this office from the facts that (i) he is referred to as coarb of St Finnian in the Félire Uí Gormáin and (ii) the next individual to hold the abbacy, Diarmait, who died in 615, is described as tertius abbas Cluana Iraird. The martyrology states that Senach was from Cluain Foda Fhíne i Feraib Tulach .i. Cluain Foda Libren (Clonfad, to the west of Clonard, bar. Fartullagh, Co. Westmeath). The kindred affiliation assigned to him in this poem suggests a possible link with the family of saints listed in the section in the saints’ pedigrees entitled Macrad Nóeb Érenn known as Meicc Máele. This group might be identified with Uí Máele, a lineage of Uí Máil. Byrne, ‘The community of Clonard’, 160.

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(ii: 12) Sétnae (?fl. c. 530) (§43) (Sétnae mac Fergusa Cennfhota) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgíalla’ 188 n. 3; O’Brien, Corpus, 163, 435; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1485, 1486.

Sétnae is probably to be identified with the early Cenél Conaill dynast of that name, the father of Ainmire. His father Fergus Cennfhota was a son of the eponymous Conall. Sétnae is assigned seven brothers, one of whom was Fedelmid, the father of Columba. Cerball, the father of Diarmait (above, i: 20), may have been another. Sétnae in turn is credited with six sons, the most distinguished of whom, Ainmere, fought alongside his cousin Ninnid (below, ii: 13), in support of the Cenél nÉogain dynasts Fergus and Domnall Ilchelgach. Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The emergence of Clann Cholmáin’, 94–6 (Table 1).

(ii: 13) Nindid mac Duäch (fl. 561) (§43) (Ninnid mac Duach) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL AU 543, 561; Ann. Tig. (= AU 547, 561); O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgialla’, 188 nn. 4, 5; O’Brien, Corpus, 163, 164.

Ninnid son of Duí was, according to the genealogists, one of five brothers, grandsons of the eponymous Conall. He seems to have ruled Cenél Conaill. According to the annals, along with his cousin Ainmere son of Sétnae (above, ii: 12), he supported Fergus and Domnall Ilchelgach (sons of Muirchertach Mac Ercae; above, i: 16a) of Cenél nÉogain at the battle of Slicech (the river at Sligo) in 543/7, where the Connacht overking Éogan Bél was defeated and slain. Later, in 561, at the prompting of his cousin Columba, he is said to have supported the same coalition, assisted this time by Áed Abrat (above, i: 19b), against Diarmait mac Cerbaill (above, i: 20) in the important battle of Cúl Dreimne. Ninnid’s death is not recorded, but his son Báetán – an overking of Uí Néill reckoned among the kings of Tara in Middle Irish king-lists – died in 586. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 71; Byrne, Irish kings, 81, 95, 102; Byrne, ‘Genealogical tables’, 127.

(ii: 14) Mac Erce (d. c. 534) (§43) (?Muirchertach Mac Ercae) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN AU 543, 548; Book of Lecan, 71ra 4; Pender, ‘O’Clery genealogies’, §§ 1541–2; O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgialla’ 188 n. 6.

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It is most likely that Muirchertach Mac Ercae (above, i: 16a) is intended in ACP, as his dynasty Cenél nÉogain (alternating with Cenél Conaill) had held the kingship of Tara in the first half of the eighth century. Mac Ercae son of Ailill Molt was suggested by O Daly as a possible identification, but he seems, in the political context of the poem, a less likely candidate.

or (ii: 14a) Mac Erce (§43) (Mac Eircc mac Meic Cáirthinn) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – IND AIRTHIR O’Brien, Corpus, 139.

Mac Eircc son of Mac Cáirthinn son of Fiachrae Cassán (see Fiechri, above, i: 6), who is assigned two brothers, namely Forgg and Amalgaid, is another possible identification here. However, a difficulty is presented by the fact that the dynasty to which he belongs, Ind Airthir, is represented in the same verse by Colmán (below, ii: 16). (ii: 15) Cuanu (§43) (Cuanu mac Dáiri) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ THUIRTRI Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 321; O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgialla’, 188 n. 7; O’Brien, Corpus, 141, 417, 436; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1458, 1488.

Cuanu son of Dáire, an early dynast of Uí Thuirtri, being fourth in descent from the eponymous Fiachu Tuirtri (Tort) son of Colla Óss (above, ii: 2), is almost certainly intended here. He is said to have had four sons: Báetán, Diarmait, Lúrech and Bécc (below, ii: 17), who became king of Uí Moccu Uais. Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 67 (Table 4).

(ii: 16) Colmán na nAirther (§43) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – IND AIRTHIR Book of Lecan, 77 vb; O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgialla’, 188 n. 8.

Colmán is probably to be identified with the descendant of Fiachrae Cassán (above, i: 6) from whom the Clann Cholmáin lineage of Ind Airthir descended. This seems to accord with his sobriquet.

or

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(ii: 16a) Colmán na nAirther (§43)(Colmán mac Éogain) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ MEIC CÁIRTHINN O’Brien, Corpus, 141.

Colmán might otherwise be identified with the son of Éogan, who heads one pedigree of his dynasty – third in descent from the eponymous Mac Cáirthinn and fifth from Colla Óss (above, ii: 2). Other possibilities within the same lineage include a contemporary Colmán son of Totán (apparently a second cousin) and Colmán Muccaid son of Áed Guaire, a generation later. (ii: 17) Bécc mac Cuanach (d. 598) (§46) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ MOCCU UAIS & UÍ THUIRTRI AU 598; Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 321; O’Brien, Corpus, 141, 417, 436; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1458, 1488.

Bécc son of Cuanu (above, ii: 15) was king of Uí Moccu Uais, a federation within the Cruithni which included the kingships of Uí Thuirtri, Uí Meic Cáirthinn and Uí Fhiachrach of Ard Sratha. While his three brothers were ancestors of lesser lineages, the line descended from him, known as Cenél mBécce, was prominent and provided several kings of Uí Moccu Uais and later rulers of Uí Thuirtri. He was among the allies of Áed mac Ainmerech (above, i: 19a) of Cenél Conaill, who laid claim to the kingship of Tara, and he fell in battle against the Laigin at Dún Bolg in 598. His sons included Óengus, Rónán, Suibne and Furudrán – who died as king of Uí Moccu Uais in 645. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 82, 90; Byrne, Irish kings, 116; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 65, 69.

(ii: 18) Dam Arcait (d. 514) (§46) (Coirpre Dam Arcait) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ CHREMTHAINN AU 514; O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgialla’, 188 n. 10; O’Brien, Corpus, 139, 140, 153, 182, 184, 414, 421, 436; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1456, 1461, 1486, 1488.

Coirpre Dam Arcait son of Eochu son of the eponymous Crimthann Lethan (whose dynasty is traced to Colla Fochríth – above, ii: 2), was an early king of the mid-Ulster Cruithni. Allegedly one of seven sons, he in turn is said to have had seven sons. The most important of these was Nad Slúaig, ancestor of Uí Nad Slúaig and of the dynasty ruling Fernmag (a territory including bar. Farney, Co. Monaghan), the principal line of which adopted the

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surname Ua Cearbhaill in the medieval period. Also traced to Dam Arcait were the less prominent dynasties of Síl nDaimíni and Clann Lugáin of Fir Manach, through his grandsons Daimíne and Fergus respectively. His death is assigned to the year 514. Byrne, Irish kings, 116; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 65, 68 (Table 5).

(ii: 19) Éogan (§46) (Éogan mac Nialláin) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – IND AIRTHIR O’Brien, Corpus, 183, 419; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1459.

Éogan son of the eponymous Niallán of Uí Nialláin, a descendant of Fiachrae Cassán (above, i: 6), was an early seventh-century king of Ind Airthir. He was ancestor through his son Muiredach of later kings of the Uí Nialláin and Clann Chernaig dynasties. The seat of his dynasty was at Loch Cál (Loughgall, bar. Oneilland West, Co. Armagh). Byrne, Irish kings, 116; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 72.

(ii: 20) Máel Bressail mac Maíle Dúin (d. 665) (§47) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – MUGDORNA AU 665; O Daly, ‘A poem on the Airgialla’, 188 nn. 12, 13; O’Brien, Corpus, 152, 437; O’Sullivan, Book of Leinster, VI, 1489.

Máel Bressail son of Máel Dúin úa Áil (d. 611), king of Mugdorna, belonged to the lineage of Dál Mennet, traced to Mennit Chruithnech, supposedly a brother of Mugdorn Dub, eponymous ancestor of the Mugdorna, who in turn is said to have descended from Colla Menn (above, ii: 2). His dynasty was based at Ráith Commair (perhaps near Tailtiu). Máel Bressail, ancestor through his son Máel Áil of later local rulers, died in 665 of the ‘buide Chonaill’ – as did Blathmac and Diarmait (above, i: 25, 26). Byrne, Irish kings, 116; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 72.

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PROSOPOGRAPHY II A Prosopography of the Early Queens of Tara Anne Connon

T

following is a prosopography of the queens associated with the kings of Tara listed in BCC and with a small number of dynasts mentioned in ACP not common to both texts. As a companion piece to Ailbhe Mac Shamhráin and Paul Byrne’s prosopography of the kings themselves, it follows that work in its basic structure. For every dynast whom Mac Shamhráin and Byrne reckon to be possible candidates for the rulers alluded to by BCC, this prosopography provides entries for the mother and wives of that particular king. The same broad classifications used by Mac Shamhráin and Byrne to describe the kings – historical, proto-historical, and pseudo-historical – also apply to their womenfolk. Generally speaking, the first third of the prosopography is devoted to legendary women whom one can safely categorise as unhistorical figures.1 The second third deals mostly with women who are historical in the sense that they are usually identified as the daughters of actual dynasts; however, the historicity of their marriages is often more questionable, at times reflecting later political concerns or perceptions rather than contemporary truth. The final third is predominantly concerned with women whose identities and marriages are firmly grounded in historical reality, even if the women occasionally feature as characters in less than historical stories. While there are many exceptions, a very rough guide to these categories is that women connected to kings from Conn Cétchathach to Crimthann mac Fidaig (1–10) usually fall into the first category; women connected to kings from Niall Noígíallach to Diarmait mac Cerbaill (11–20) into the second; and women connected to kings from Fiachnae Lurgan to Cathal mac Finguine (21–33) into the third. When the assorted prosopographical entries are taken as a whole, a number of distinct themes emerge. A particularly striking one is that a large proportion of the Connachta and early Uí Néill kings of Tara were said to be the husbands and sons of women from overseas.2 Such an international flavour to their antecedents may be a literary reflection of the fact that HE

1 2

For recent general comments on early Irish queens, particularly as portrayed in literature, see Edel, ‘Early Irish queens and royal power’. See Una Ollchruthach (wife of i: 1); Ciarnait (lover of i: 4); Aífe (wife of i: 8); Mongfhinn (mother of i: 10); Cairenn Chasdub (mother of i: 11); Muirecht (wife of i: 12); Erc (mother of i: 16a); daughter of king of Franks (wife of i: 16a); Bé Binn (wife of i: 20); Caintigern (wife of i: 21); Ailech (mother of ii: 2).

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the Uí Néill are believed to have risen to power through their exploits across the Irish Sea.3 Cairenn Chasdub, the mother of the Uí Néill’s eponymous founder Niall Noígíallach (below, mother of i: 11), was plausibly said to have been from Britain; the string of foreign women associated with Niall’s ancestors might be seen as replications and back-projections of this relationship. A desire to increase Uí Néill prestige by retroactively stocking their pedigree with foreign royalty may also have contributed to the phenomenon. After Niall the international unions of the Tara kings are still present but become less pronounced. Instead the dominant pattern switches to the portrayal of marriages between the two spheres of influence in the land: Leth Cuinn, the northern half of the country dominated by the Uí Néill, and Leth Moga, the southern half of the country dominated by the Éoganacht dynasties of Munster. 4 While it is unlikely that all of these north/south marriages were historical, the general trend may reflect the possibility that Éoganacht dominance in Munster was achieved in the sixth century with Uí Néill assistance.5 After the early sixth century the marriage partners of the Tara kings become more varied and less prone to en bloc regional categorisation. The increased individuality of these women is in all likelihood a factor of their increased historicity. A further recurring pattern seen with respect to marriage alliances is that when there is a change of the dynasty in power, the king from the new dynasty is sometimes represented as marrying a woman from the old, often the daughter of his predecessor.6 There are also several instances of kings marrying their predecessor’s widows.7 This last observation may be linked to another notable paradigm evident in the prosopopography: the portrayal of certain queens as sovereignty goddesses, female personifications of the kingdom whose sexual union with the rightful king represented the creation of his bond to the land. Often these encounters included the element of a drink offered by the goddess to the king. Since such sovereignty figures would be theoretically required to validate the reign of each successor to the throne, the queens cast in this role are depicted as partners to a whole series of kings, often from successive generations of the same family.8 3 4

5 6 7 8

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Byrne, Irish kings, 71. See Sadb (mother of i: 3); Der Draigen (wife of i: 4); Muirenn (wife of i: 9); Mongfhinn (sister of i: 10); Aíbinn (?wife of i: 11); Angas (wife of i: 12); Uchdelb (wife of i: 14); Ailinn (wife of i: 15); Mugain (mother of i: 18); Temair (wife of i: 26); Lígach (lover of i: 33); Eithne (mother of ii: 10). Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 489. See Lendabair (wife of i: 1); Lann (wife of i: 1); Eithne Thóebfhota (wife of i: 4); Der Draigen (wife of i: 4); Muirenn Máel (wife of i: 20); daughter of Ernán (wife of i: 32); Lígach (lover of i: 33). Medb Lethderg (wife of i: 2); wife of Gnáthal son of Conruth (wife of i: 2); Eithne (wife of i: 18); Cumne Dub (wife of i: 21a). For the sovereignty goddess concept see Ó Máille, ‘Medb Chruachna’; O’Rahilly, ‘On origin of names Érainn and Ériu’; Breatnach, ‘ The lady and the king’; Mac Cana, ‘Aspects of the theme of king and goddess’; Bhreathnach, ‘Tochmarc Becfhola’; Trindade, ‘Irish Gormflaith as sovereignty figure’; McCone, Pagan past, 138–60; Herbert, ‘Goddess and king’; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘On Gormfhlaith daughter of Flann Sinna’, 225–337; Herbert, ‘Society and myth’, 250–72.

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In addition to the role of mate, the queen as sovereignty goddess could sometimes take on the role of mother, and several of the legendary women in this survey feature strongly as ancestral figures.9 The idea of queen as mother also plays into a more Christian model of reginal behaviour.10 Many of the royal wives in this chapter are brought into contact with saints, often having their sterility cured through the intercession of the holy man or woman. There are also hagiographical episodes unconnected to conception, where the queens are almost invariably presented as pious adherents to the faith, often in contrast with their impious spouses. While there are exceptions, such women are usually portrayed either as the believing wife who strives to save her unbelieving husband, or as the woman who realises that her partner is doomed but begs the saint condemning him to spare her child. This pattern is not unique to Ireland, but is common to the profile of queens throughout the Christian West.11 While a prosopography is not the place for a full exploration of such themes, the individual entries will attempt to indicate briefly how their subjects illustrate these topoi.12 Every entry begins with a list of primary sources in which the woman in question may be found, and ends with a list of the secondary texts that discuss her.13 The body of the entry proper provides an overview of the traditions associated with that woman, analysing the historical and literary significance of the marriages she is said to have contracted and the children she is said to have borne. Within this context, all the woman’s marriages and children, and not simply those connected directly to the Tara kings, will be discussed. These collateral relationships are often important for proper comprehension of a king’s career, especially when the queen is involved in marriages of questionable historicity. The invention of blood relationships such as uterine kinship is often significant, since the bonds they create between dynastic ancestors can sometimes be seen as an expression of the political order in place at the time of the tradition’s creation. Alternative traditions frequently present discrepancies or uncertainties about the woman’s lineage. In these cases the entry will endeavour to suggest what seems to be the most credible of the possibilities, or at least what seems to have been the original tradition. Sometimes, however, lack of evidence makes such a suggestion impossible, and the entry is only able to lay out the various alternatives without favouring one possibility over the other. 9 10 11 12 13

See Sadb (wife of i: 3); Cairenn Chasdub (mother of i: 11); Mugain (mother of i: 18); Eithne (wife of i: 18). See Angas (wife of i: 12); Ailinn (wife of i: 15); Duisech (wife of i: 16a); Cumman Maine (mother of i: 17); Mugain (mother of i: 18); Corbach (mother of i: 20); Muirenn (wife of i: 29); Aithechdae (wife of i: 32). Huneycutt, ‘Intercession and the high-medieval queen’; Parsons, ‘The queen’s intercession in thirteenthcentury England’. I intend developing on the topoi which have emerged from constructing this prosopography in a further series of forthcoming articles. Owing to the provision of these lists, there will be no separate footnotes for primary sources mentioned within the entry, unless the relevant source is not directly connected to the queen but only to a related matter under discussion. The great debt this prosopography owes in general to the work of previous scholars is indicated by citations in the commentary and the large secondary source sections attached to some entries.

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Since more than half of the women to be discussed have at least some fictional elements associated with them, the prosopography often places considerable emphasis on the individual sources for the traditions concerned. When a figure is invented, these texts are very often responsible for the invention. The main sources which the prosopography draws upon are saga literature, hagiography, genealogies, the annals, and the Middle Irish corpus known as the Banshenchas ‘The Lore of Women’. Most useful among the sagas are those belonging to the group of tales known as the ‘Cycle of the Kings’. These stories belong to the so-called ‘historical cycle’, but, while their heroes tend to be actual Irish kings, the historicity of the tales often ends there. The same can often be said about Irish hagiography. The historical value of the saints’ lives for ascertaining the identity of Irish queens is further limited by the tendency to leave the royal women with whom their saints interact unnamed. More helpful in terms of specificity are the genealogies, particularly in regard to the prosopography’s more legendary figures. While the pre-Norman genealogies contain several passages specifically referring to groups of historical women, as well as some scattered references to individual royal women in the historical period, a large proportion of the females in the genealogies belong to the sections dealing with prehistory and the origin tales of various peoples. As the genealogies decrease in importance for the more historical sections of the prosopography, the annals at least partially step into the breach. The first contemporary entries for royal Irish women occur in the mid-seventh century, and by the mid-eighth the annals are consistently recording obits for queens of Tara. Finally, in terms of a work that spans all sections of the prosopography, the Banshenchas ‘The Lore of Women’ is probably the most important source for information about pre-Norman Irish queens. Surviving in both metrical and prose versions, this is a catalogue of famous women that starts with Eve herself and continues on to enumerate Irish women from prehistory through to the late twelfth-century date of the Banshenchas’s composition. The prosopography will most often refer to the Prose Banshenchas, of which there are eight versions, divided into two main recensions. The first recension, represented by the version found in the Book of Uí Maine, seems to be earlier than the second, represented by four different versions including the one found in the Book of Lecan. In the prosopographical entries, collective reference to these four versions is denoted by the term ‘Lecan recension texts’. Occasionally reference will be made to the Book of Lecan version itself which specifically designates the copy found in that one manuscript as opposed to the Lecan recension texts as a group. Fitting into neither recension, but apparently sharing characteristics of both, is the version that has been designated the Edinburgh copy.14 While, for clarity’s sake, detailed reference to specific manuscripts will be avoided as much as possible within the body of the entries, the two recensions can differ quite dramatically, and sometimes the sense of the argument requires that they be named. 14

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Ní Bhrolcháin, ‘Manuscript tradition of Banshenchas’.

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(I) Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig (i: 1) Conn (Conn Cétchathach) CONNACHTA–UÍ NÉILL

Una Ollchruthach daughter of Derg LOCHLAINN (SCANDINAVIA) Prose Ban. §207; Met. Ban. §99 AU 1364; O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lx, 313; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 262–3; Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 176, 211; Ní C. Dobs, ‘From the Book of Fermoy’, 170 ; McKenna, Aithdioghluim dána, 45, 87; McKenna, Book of Magauran, 337; Jackson, Cath Maige Léna, 63, 78; Murphy, Duanaire Finn, I, 200 no. 25.

Mother of Conn Cétchathach, eponym of the Connachta. Although Una Ollchruthach (ollchruthach ‘many-shaped’) does not appear in the extant saga literature as a character in her own right, Conn is frequently referred to by the metronymic ‘son of Una’ in the later poetic tradition. The Banshenchas names Una as one of two women married to Conn’s father, Fedelmid Rechtmar, listing Conn as the sole offspring of their union. Cnucha Chennfhinn daughter of Conna of Luimnech is named as Fedelmid’s other wife, although elsewhere she is found simply as Conn’s foster-mother. According to the Banshenchas, Cnucha bore Fedelmid several sons considered to be the ancestors of certain of the fortúatha ‘subject peoples’ of the Connachta, including Eochu Finn Fuath nAirt, ancestor of the Fothairt, and Fiachu Suigde, ancestor of the Déssi. In this way Conn’s pedigree manages to establish a firm link between the Connachta and their subject peoples through the agnatic line, while at the same time setting them the necessary distance apart through the distaff.15 Una’s identity as daughter of the king of Lochlainn (Viking Scotland or Scandinavia) is typical of the international background attributed to the legendary kings in the Connachta direct line of descent.16 Possibly her fictitious union with Conn reflects the political reality of the ninth to the eleventh centuries when there was frequent intermarriage between the Vikings and the royal lines of the Uí Néill kings of Tara. Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 101–2, 111.17

15 16 17

For a discussion of this dynamic, see Sproule, ‘Politics and pure narrative’, 18. See Ó Corráin, ‘The Vikings in Scotland and Ireland in the ninth century’ for a discussion of the location of ‘Lochlainn’. I am greatly indebted to Dr Muirenn Ní Bhrolcháin for access to her invaluable editions of both the metrical and prose versions of the Banshenchas. All references in the prosopography to her editions cite her unpublished theses for M.A. (Met. Ban.) and Ph.D. (Prose Ban.). The numbering system cited here is the same as that in Ní Bhrolcháin’s theses and editions (i.e. in the primary source section (§) denotes the numbered entry in the edition; references in the secondary sources refer to the page numbers of Ní Bhrolcháin’s commentary on the text). The entries in the planned published edition will follow the same numerical order.

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Aífe daughter of Ailpín king of Alba ALBA (BRITAIN/SCOTLAND) Prose Ban. §209; Met. Ban. §101 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lx, 315; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 176, 212.

A wife of Conn Cétchathach, and mother of his sons Art Óenfher and Conlae Ruad and his daughter Sadb (below, mother of i: 3). According to the Banshenchas, Aífe was also the mother of Luigne Fer Trí, ancestor of the Luigni of Connacht and fosterer of Cormac mac Airt. This tradition, which would make Art and Luigne uterine brothers and thus help explain Luigne’s fosterage of Cormac, is mentioned in none of the saga texts relating to Cormac’s birth. Possibly the tradition of Aífe’s marriage to Luigne’s father, Óengus son of Eochaid Finn, is simply a doublet of the tradition that Luigne Fer Trí himself married Cormac’s mother, Achtán (below, mother of i: 4) following the death of Art. As with Una Ollchruthach (above), Aífe, the wife of Conn with an overseas background, is also the wife whose child is destined to continue the Connachta line. Most of the sources simply refer to Aífe’s father as the king of Alba, a geographic area which originally referred to all of Britain but had become restricted in meaning to Scotland by the time most of these sources were written. The Metrical Banshenchas, however, specifically calls Aífe’s father Ailpín. This choice of his name, if not merely derived from Alba, may reflect the fact that Máel Muire, daughter of the Scottish king Cináed son of Ailpín, was married to two successive Uí Néill kings of Tara, Áed Finnliath (d. 879) of Cenél nÉogain and Flann Sinna (d. 916) of Clann Cholmáin.18 Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 102, 111.

Lendabair daughter of Cathaír Már LAIGIN Prose Ban. §208; Met. Ban. §100 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lx, 315; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 176, 212; O’Brien, Corpus, 121.

A wife of Conn Cétchathach. Although the Banshenchas is the only medieval source to mention Conn’s marriage to Lendabair, he does appear as the husband of one of Cathaír Már’s daughters in the Early Modern Irish tale Eachtra Airt. In the Eachtra, though, that daughter is named not as Lendabair but as Eithne Thóebfhota (below, mother of i: 4), a figure more usually represented as the wife of Conn’s grandson, Cormac mac Airt. The Old Irish tale, Esnada Tige Buchet, which relates the story of Cormac and Eithne’s courtship, implies that Cormac succeeded his father-in-law Cathaír Már in the kingship of Tara. In the Middle Irish 18

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Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 311, 355; [RC ] 48, 186, 187, 225.

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regnal lists, however, it is Conn rather than his grandson Cormac who is listed as Cathaír Már’s successor. Perhaps, then, the notion of a marriage between Conn and one of Cathaír’s daughters was a medieval invention intended to synchronise the succession order decreed by the official regnal lists with an earlier tradition in which Cathair Már was succeeded by his Connachta son-in-law. These varying traditions may reflect relations between the Laigin and Uí Néill in the eleventh century, when the Leinster king Diarmait mac Máel na mBó contended for the high-kingship of Ireland (below, Eithne Thóebfhota daughter of Cathaír Már, wife of i: 4). Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 102, 111.

Lann daughter of Crimthann Cas son of Cathaír Már LAIGIN Prose Ban. §210; Met. Ban. §102 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lx, 315; Power, ‘Cnucha cnos os cionn Life’; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 300–1, 325–6; [RC ] 48, 176–7, 212.

A wife of Conn Cétchathach, and mother of his sons Crinna and Eochaid and his daughters Móen and Sárait. As with Lendabair above, the Banshenchas is the only medieval source to identify Lann as a wife of Conn’s. Although a generation younger than her aunt Lendabair, Lann’s marriage to Conn reflects a similar tradition of marriage between the Laigin and the Connachta dynasty which supplanted them. An obscure passage in the poem Cnucha cnoc os cionn Life says that after Lann’s father Crimthann Cas ‘arose’ (éirig), the Laigin restored Cormac to the kingship of Tara from which they had earlier expelled him. If one understands this reference to mean that Crimthann Cas helped Cormac to regain the kingship (and it is by no means certain that one can), then it is understandable that their friendship would be reflected in the fabrication of a marriage alliance. Neither of Lann’s sons were said to have left any descendants, but both her daughters were portrayed as the mothers of important figures. Tradition records Móen as the wife of Imchad son of Finnchad of Dál Fiatach and mother of three sons named Fergus. One of the trio, Fergus Dubdétach, was said to have briefly reigned as king of Tara until his death in the battle of Crinna at the hands of his first cousin Cormac mac Airt; this Fergus was an ancestor of the Dál Fiatach royal line. Sárait, meanwhile, is usually depicted as the wife of Conaire Már son of Mug Láma of the Érainn and mother of his three sons: Coirpre Rígfhota, Coirpre Músc and Coirpre Baschaín, purported ancestors of the Dál Ríata, Múscraige, and Corcu Baiscinn respectively. Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 102, 111.

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Aífe daughter of Fedelmid Rechtmar CONNACHTA Prose Ban. §211; Met. Ban. §102 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lx, 315; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 176, 212; Ní Dobs, ‘From the Book of Fermoy’, 162, 163, 165, 170; O’Brien, Corpus, 121.

A wife of Conn Cétchathach. Aífe’s identification as daughter of Fedelmid makes her the wife of her own brother according to the dominant genealogical conception of Conn as Fedelmid Rechtmar’s son. While incestuous couplings are far from rare in early Irish genealogical and literary tradition, the description of Aífe as Conn’s actual wife and not simply as his sexual partner is much more unusual. Such incestuous marriages are mostly found only in tales where the true identity of the woman is unknown to one or both of the spouses (as below, Muirenn daughter of Máel Dúin, wife of i: 26). It might be that such a saga once existed about Conn and Aífe but has since been lost. Although incestuous unions are particularly common in early Irish tradition in connection with the births of pivotal ancestral figures, no children are ascribed to Conn’s union with Aífe daughter of Fedelmid. It is worth noting in this respect, though, that the mother of Conn’s son Art Óenfher was also called Aífe (Aífe daughter of Ailpín of Scotland, above). Another possible explanation for Aífe’s identification as Fedelmid’s daughter may be linked to the fact that the list of kings of Ireland in the pre-Norman Irish genealogies includes a variant tradition that Conn was the son of the son of Fedelmid Rechtmar.19 By such a reckoning, Aífe would be Conn’s aunt rather than his sister, and, while such a marriage would still be incestuous, it would be so to a lesser degree. Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 102, 111.

Béchuma (Delbcháem) daughter of Morgan THE

SÍD Best, ‘The adventures of Art son of Conn’.

A wife of Conn Cétchathach. The fairy woman Béchuma makes her sole appearance in Eachtra Airt meic Cuinn ocus tochmarc Delbchaíme ingine Morgain, a text now extant only in an Early Modern Irish version, although its title appears in tale-lists dating from the tenth century. At the beginning of the saga Conn’s will to rule has been sapped by his grief over the recent death of his wife, Eithne Thóebfhota (below, wife of i: 4). As he sits lamenting her at Benn Étair (Howth Head), he meets the fairy woman Béchuma, who unbeknown to him, has been expelled from the Síd for adultery. Béchuma falsely introduces herself to Conn as Delbcháem daughter of Morgan and tells him that she has come to Ireland to meet his son 19

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O’Brien, Corpus, 121.

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Art. In her guise as Delbcháem, Béchuma says that she has fallen in love with Art despite having not yet seen him in person; however, when Conn offers her the choice of either himself or Art as a husband, she chooses the elderly Conn. As part of their marriage contract, Béchuma insists that Art be banished to Scotland. After a year he is recalled when the fertility of the land withers away and Conn’s druids attribute the problem to Béchuma’s sin and lack of faith. Conn repeatedly refuses to put Béchuma aside, despite knowing that this is the only way to fully restore abundance to the land. Eventually Béchuma sends Art on a dangerous quest to find the real Delbcháem and bring her back to Tara. Art succeeds in his mission, and when he and his new bride arrive at Benn Étair, Delbcháem sends word that it would be best for all concerned were Béchuma gone by the time they return. Béchuma is, however, still in residence on their arrival and only reluctantly leaves upon Art’s orders. This tale has been interpreted by McCone as a discourse on the proper duration of kingship wherein the correct time for the elderly Conn to step aside in favour of his son, Art, should have been following the death of Eithne, his queen and personal sovereignty figure. Béchuma’s masquerade as Delbcháem and subsequent marriage to Conn allowed the old king artificially to extend his rule through marriage to a false sovereignty figure. Without its proper ruler, however, the land became infertile and was only restored to prosperity when Béchuma sent Art in pursuit of the ‘true’ version of herself, Delbcháem, the sovereignty figure intended for Art from the beginning. O Hehir, ‘Christian revision of Eachtra Airt’; O’Leary, ‘The honour of women in early Irish literature’, 36; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 41–2; McCone, Pagan past, 133–4, 152–3; Bitel, Land of women, 49, 214.

(i: 2) Art (Art mac Cuinn; Art Óenfher) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL

Achtán (Echtach/Etán) daughter of Olc Aiche CONNACHTA Prose Ban. §223; Met Ban. §109; RIA MS 24 P 25, fol. 46v O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxix, 333; MacNeill, ‘Three poems in Middle-Irish, relating to the battle of Mucrama’; Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 309–10; Meyer, ‘Mitteilungen aus irischen Handschriften: Egerton 1782’, 177; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, I, 36; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, III, 483; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 298–301; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 301, 326; [RC ] 48, 177, 213; Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts, 94–5 (138); Carney, ‘Nia son of Lugna Fer Trí’, 190, 194; Hull, ‘Geneamuin Chormaic’, 82–3; O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, 52, 64–73; Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, 119–22; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Gormlaith and her sisters’, 182.

Lover of Art Óenfher and mother of Cormac mac Airt (i: 4). Keating’s version of Cormac’s birth describes Achtán, variously referred to as Etán and Echtach, as Art’s official queen. Most

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redactions of the story, however, agree with the ninth-century Cath Maige Mucrama in relating that the two did not meet until the eve of Art’s death at the battle of Mag Mucrama. The story of Achtán and Art’s relationship is one of a last-minute coupling between a king and an available commoner, undertaken to ensure the continuation of the doomed king’s line. An identical story is told of Art’s Munster ally in the battle, Éogan Már son of Ailill, who fathered Fiachu Muillethan that same night upon Moncha daughter of the druid Díl. In both cases, prompting by the fathers of the girls instigated the relationships. Although Keating’s version of Cormac’s birth omits the story of the eleventh hour conceptions, it reflects a similar concern with the theme of dynastic propagation. In Keating’s account, possibly drawn from an older version of the tale, the pregnant Achtán has a vision in which her head is removed from her body and a great tree grows from her neck. Fitting into a wider literary tradition of prophetic dreams attributed to Irish queens,20 Achtán’s vision is interpreted by Art as a prediction that she would give birth to a great king who would rule all Ireland. According to one early strand of the tradition, subsequent to Art’s death Achtán married Cormac’s fosterer, Luigne Fer Trí of the Corcu Fer Trí in Connacht. She bore him three sons, including Nia Már who was imposed as sub-king over Connacht by his half-brother and co-fosterling, Cormac. Byrne, Irish kings, 66; O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, 13–4; Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, 26–38, 41–3, 52, 91; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 104; Ó Corráin, ‘Historical need and literary narrative’, 147–52; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 122, 125.

Medb Lethderg daughter of Conan of Cualu LAIGIN Prose Ban. §§ 219, 225, 234; Met. Ban. §115 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxiv, 321; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 268–9, 298–9; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, I, 48; III, 368; Stokes, ‘The songs of Buchet’s house’, 265; Hayden, ‘The songs of Buchet’s house’, 264–5; Power, ‘Cnucha cnoc os cionn Life’, 42–3, 48; Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 177, 214; Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts, 147–8; Ní Dobs, ‘From the Book of Fermoy’, 173; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 213–4; Greene, Fingal Rónáin, 31; LGen., II, §493.2.

Wife of Art Óenfher and mother of his sons Airtgen, Boindia and Bondraide. Different sources record a great variety of different marriages for Medb Lethderg. When pieced together, the composite catalogue of her many husbands lists several other kings in Art’s line, including his son Cormac, his grandfather Fedelmid Rechtmar, and his uncle Eochaid Finn Fuath nAirt. 20

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See entries below for Eithne Thóebfhota daughter of Dunlaing (wife of i: 4) and Mugain daughter of Conchraid (mother of i: 18). Further examples are found at O’Brien, Corpus, 196, 423 and Plummer, Bethada, II, 177. See Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Gormlaith and her sisters’, 181 for discussion of this topos.

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Tradition further records Medb as the wife of the Leinster king Cú Chorbb son of Mug Corbb. That said, no one text names Medb Lethderg as wife of all five men,21 though a tract in the Book of Lecan says that she slept with nine (unnamed) kings of Ireland. Medb Lethderg is commonly perceived as a sovereignty goddess figure, a reading that is based not only on these multiple marriages to several generations of kings, but also upon an explicit statement in the Book of Leinster that she would tolerate no king at Tara who did not take her as a wife. 22 The poem Cnucha cnoc os cionn Life similarly remarks that Cormac could not become king until he slept with Medb. Interpreted in the light of her sovereignty connotations, Medb’s marriages to kings from the ruling line of both the Laigin and the Connachta seem to represent the passing of the Tara kingship from the Laigin to the Uí Néill. In the Middle Irish poem Macc Moga Corbb celas clú in the Book of Leinster,23 Medb is portrayed first as the wife of the Leinster king of Tara, Cú Chorbb, and then, as the wife of Cú Chorbb’s successor and slayer, the Connachta king Fedelmid Rechtmar. According to the Early Modern tract appended to the Book of Leinster, Medb left Cú Chorbb for Fedelmid before he killed Cú Chorbb in battle and assumed the kingship of Tara for himself. As Ó Cathasaigh remarks, a more peaceful analogue of this transfer is found in the marriage of Cormac mac Art to Eithne Thóebfhota daughter of Cathaír Már (below, wife of i: 4). Scholars have pointed out that Medb’s name is a feminine derivative of the word for ‘mead’, an etymology that has been connected to the drink-giving aspect of the sovereignty goddess. 24 Although Medb’s pedigree is uncommonly vague – she is referred to simply as daughter of the otherwise unknown Conan of Cualu – the sources firmly associate her with a Leinster origin. Indeed most scholars believe her to be a Leinster reflex of the Connacht queen, Medb Chruachna, daughter of Eochaid Feidlech and instigator of the Táin Bó Cuailgne.25 Aside from their similarly long list of husbands, one of the most striking parallels between the two women is that Medb Lethderg was said to have split the Loígsi and the Fothairt into seven divisions spread throughout Leinster in order that they might not become too strong. 26 Similarly, Medb Chruachna was said to have divided the Gaileóin at the mustering of the Táin 21

22 23 24 25 26

Medb appears as the wife of Art alone in the Old Irish tale Esnada Tige Buchet and in a verse associated with Athlone in the Metrical Dinnshenchas; as the wife of Art and Cormac in Cnucha cnoc os cionn Life, the Metrical Banshenchas, and the seventeenth-century work of Keating; as the wife of Eochaid Finn Fuath nAirt in both an Early Modern tract in the Book of Fermoy and in the Edinburgh version of the Prose Banshenchas; as the wife of Fedelmid Rechtmar and Cú Corbb in the Middle Irish poem Macc Moga Corbb celas clú (Book of Leinster, I, 213–4: ll. 6383–6415); as the wife of Cú Chorbb and Art son of Conn in most versions of the Prose Banshenchas; and as the wife of Fedelmid Rechtmar, Cú Chorbb, Art, and Cormac in the Lecan miscellany edited in Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts. Note John Carey’s observations on Medb Lethderg, above, 46. Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 213–14 (LL 44b6383–6415). Stokes, ‘The eulogy of Cu-Roí’, 12; Pedersen, Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen, 62; O’Rahilly, ‘On origin of names Érainn and Ériu’, 15; McCone, Pagan past, 109. Ó Máille, ‘Medb Chruachna’, 136, 143; however, see Carney, ‘Introduction’, 14–15 for an alternative view. Ó Máille, ‘Medb Chruachna’, 137–8.

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lest they outdo the rest of her forces. Like Medb Chruachna, Medb Lethderg is described not only as consort to a succession of kings, but also as ruler in her own right. In the Old Irish tale Esnada Tige Buchet, she assumes the kingship of the greater part of Ireland following Art’s death and temporarily prevents his son Cormac from taking possession of Tara. Likewise, in Cnucha cnoc os cionn Life she holds the kingship of Tara for the brief period between the expulsion of Cormac mac Airt by the Laigin and his reinstatement fourteen months later. During that time, legend has it, she had Ráith Medba built in Tara. By her Connachta spouses, the later genealogies claim that Medb was the mother of Mug Ruith son of Cormac, and of Airtgen, Boindia and Bondraide, the sons of Art Óenfher, while an Early Modern tract in the Book of Fermoy asserts that she was the mother of four (unnamed) sons of Eochaid Finn Fuath nAirt. According to the genealogies, the three sons of Art Óenfher were the respective ancestors of the Artraige of Brega, the Boandraige of the Déssi of Brega, and the Bonandraige of the Airgíalla. The pre-Norman genealogies do not mention Medb as the mother of any children by her Connachta husbands, though a very early genealogical fragment describes Airtgen and Boindia as two sons of Art whom he fathered upon his own daughter in his drunkenness. 27 The common thread of incest running through the conception tale of Art’s sons and the tradition that Medb was married to both Art and Cormac might account for the later description of Airtgen and Boindia as sons of Medb. The children which the pre-Norman sources do ascribe to Medb are Nia Corbb and Cormac, the sons of her Leinster husband Cú Chorbb. Elsewhere, however, Nia Corbb and Cormac occasionally appear as the sons of another wife of Cú Corbb, Eithne Sithbacc daughter of Oéngus Músc of the Muscraige of Munster.28 A similar confusion between Medb and Eithne is found in the Early Modern text ‘On the settlement of the Fotharta and the Laígsi’ which identifies Eithne rather than Medb as the woman who counselled the division of those peoples. 29 Dobbs, ‘On the settlement of the Fotharta and the Laigsi’, 404, n. 23; Ó Máille, ‘Medb Chruachna’, 136–46; Dobbs, ‘Who was Lugaid mac Con?’, 179–80; Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 26; O’Rahilly, ‘On origin of names Érainn and Ériu’, 15; O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 134–5 n. 4, 176; Carney, ‘Introduction’, Knott and Murphy, Early Irish literature, 14–15; Binchy, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingship, 11; Dumézil, Mythe et épopée, II, 329–53; Byrne, Irish kings, 51, 62, 139n; Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, 77–8; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 104; O Hehir, ‘Christian revision of Eachtra Airt’, 171–3, 179; Doan, ‘Sovereignty aspects in the roles of women’, 88; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 42, 122, 293–5; McCone, Pagan past, 109, 159; Herbert, ‘Goddess and king’, 266–7;

27 28 29

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Dobbs, ‘Miscellany from H.2.7.’, 311–2. See discussion in Ó Corráin, ‘Irish origin legends and genealogy’, 73. Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 212. Dobbs, ‘On the settlement of the Fotharta and the Laígsi’, 137.

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Wong ‘Water births: murder, mystery and Medb Lethderg’; Ó Riain, The making of a saint, 72; Edel, ‘Myth vs. reality’, 174; idem, ‘Early Irish queens’, 11,16.

Áenmaiche daughter of Áed son of Aiche CONNACHTA Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, IV, 288; Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 115.

Wife of Art Óenfher. The Metrical Dinnshenchas entry for Loch Seimdide is the only source for the tradition that Art was married to Áenmaiche daughter of Áed son of Aiche of Connacht. In this tale Becloinges son of Eiris of Spain had challenged Art to either fight him in single combat or give up Áenmaiche, his wife. Art’s champion, Semtell son of Saibche battled with Becloinges instead of Art, and consequently drowned in the lake that was to bear his name. The similarity of the name of Áenmaiche’s father, Áed son of Aiche, to that of Olc Aiche, father of another of Art’s partners, Achtán (above), suggests that the two women may be one and the same. Further credence is lent to this suggestion by the fact that rather than representing an independent tradition, Áenmaiche’s name looks suspiciously like simply a reformation from her father’s name. Wife of Gnáthal son of Conruth Gwynn, ‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’, 136–41; LGen., §387.2.

Lover of Art Óenfher? The unnamed wife of Gnáthal appears to be mentioned in only one pre-Norman text, a possibly eighth-century tract on the descendants of Conaire Már. According to the tract, Gnáthal son of Conruth, ancestor of the Múscraige Mitténe, was king of Ireland before Art’s reign. No king by that name is found in the regnal lists, but Gnáthal is possibly to be identified with the Múscraige king Conaire Már son of Mug Láma whom the lists name as Art’s predecessor in the kingship of Ireland. The tract related how, having fallen in love with Art, Gnáthal’s unnamed wife plotted against her husband, hoping to install Art in his place. The details of the plot are obscure, apparently involving an exchange of the kingship for tribute and some verses. The plan seems to have been successful, though, since the deposed Gnáthal is later depicted as having to beg for land from the Éoganachta. The queen’s subsequent fate is not touched upon; however, the idea of her manipulating the kingship and having, or at least hoping to have, a sexual relationship with the incumbent may be an echo of the topos whereby no man, Art included, could become king of Tara without first sleeping with Medb Lethderg (above, wife of i: 2). Dobbs, ‘Who was Lugaid mac Con?’, 177.

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(i: 3) Mac Con (Lugaid Mac Con) ÉRAINN – CORCU LOÍGDE

Fuinche daughter of Dáire ÉRAINN O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, 88–9. LGen., II, §679.34; III, §§ 1361.3, 1362.5, 6.

Mother of Lugaid Mac Con. According to the ninth-century tale Cath Cinn Abrat, Lugaid Mac Con and his ally Finn mac Cumaill were the sons of two sisters. The saga goes on to name Lugaid’s mother as Fuinche daughter of Dáire, which would imply that Finn’s mother was also a daughter of Dáire. This identification is problematic, however, since Dáire was the father of neither of the two women alternatively recorded in the fíanaigecht as Finn’s mother. One version held that Finn’s mother was Mairne daughter of the Leinster druid Tadc son of Nuadu, while the other stated that she was Tarbga daughter of Eochamon of the Érainn of Dún Cermna (perhaps Old Head of Kinsale, Co. Cork). Given that Lugaid’s wife was also called Fuinche (below, this section), it seems likely that Cath Cinn Abrat’s identification of his mother arose out of some confusion of the original tradition. Since Dáire was the ancestor of the Érainn, it is possible that Fuinche’s patronymic could simply reflect her membership of that people. In that case, Cath Cinn Abrat’s account of Finn’s mother may refer to the Érainn princess, Tarbga. As Finn is sometimes portrayed as the son of Dáire son of Dedad, it is also possible that the saga has confused Finn’s maternal and paternal ancestry. Sadb daughter of Conn Cétchathach CONNACHTA Prose Ban. §§ 213; 229; Met. Ban. §§ 103, 104, 105 AFM s.a. 195; Ann.Clon., 58; O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lx, 314–5; c.lxv, 326; c.lxvii, 328; O’Curry, Cath Mhuighe Léana, 7–8, 25, 60, 74–7; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 119, 140, 310, 318–20; II, 129, 154, 346, 359–61; Stokes, Acallamh na Senórach, 32–3, 59–60; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 270–3, 282–3, 312–3; Meyer, Finnaigecht, 46; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, I, 48; Plummer, Vitae, II, 34; Gwynn, ‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’, 137–41; Meyer, ‘Mitteilungen aus irischen Handschriften: Senchán Torpéist’, 378; Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 300, 325, 326; [RC] 48, 176, 178, 212; Ní Dobs, ‘From the Book of Fermoy’, 170; McKenna, Book of Magauran, 125/337, 207/369; Jackson, Cath Maighe Léna, 12–3, 118–9, 142–9; Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 105–6; III, 583, 594; O’Brien, Corpus,192–3, 246; O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, 38–9, 60–61, 73–84; de Paor, St. Patrick’s world, 246; Dooley and Roe, Tales of the elders of Ireland, 36, 65; Ó Corráin, ‘Early Medieval Law’, 35–6; LGen., II, §§ 387.5, 392.6, 603.3, 660.2, 7; III, §§ 1051.2, 1306.7.

Either mother or foster-mother of Lugaid Mac Con and wife of Ailill Aulomm of the Éoganachta. By the time Sadb and Lugaid Mac Con first appear linked in the extant record, there is already confusion over their exact relationship to one another. The ninth-century Scéla

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Moshauluim states that Sadb accepted Lugaid Mac Con as a foster-son from the Dáiríne; however, it also acknowledges that certain genealogies name her as Lugaid Mac Con’s birth mother, saying that Sadb was pregnant with him when she married Ailill Aulomm after the death of Lugaid Mac Con’s father (named by Scéla Moshauluim as Lugaid son of Mac Niad). Possibly the notion of Sadb as Lugaid Mac Con’s foster-mother arose as a way of reconciling his link to Sadb with the tradition that his birth mother was Fuinche daughter of Dáire (above). A rather different relationship between Sadb and Lugaid Mac Con is introduced by the Early Modern tale Cath Maighe Léna which names Sadb as the wife rather than the mother of Lugaid Mac Con (there referred to by his alternate name Mac Nia). According to that saga, Sadb was promised by her father to Lugaid Mac Con/Mac Nia in return for his help in battling Éogan Már son of Ailill, king of Munster. Elsewhere, Éogan Már is usually depicted as Sadb’s son, but that relationship is completely ignored by Cath Maighe Léna. In most of the other sources associated with Sadb, however, her role as Éogan Már’s mother is central to her portrayal. The number of children whom Sadb was said to have borne to Éogan Már’s father, Ailill, varies depending on the source. The earliest text to make reference to their progeny – the eighth-century legal text Immathchor nAilella 7 Airt – names only Éogan Már and his elsewhere unattested twin sister Inderb as their offspring. The Immathchor deals with Ailill’s attempt to gain custody of the children following his repudiation of Sadb for her alleged adultery. Most texts, however, depict the couple as growing old together and attribute to them anywhere from three to nine children. While the size of their family thus ranges greatly, these later texts universally agree that Sadb was the mother of the only three sons of Ailill to leave behind descendants: Éogan Már, ancestor of the Éoganachta; Cían, ancestor of the Cíannachta, Luigni and Gailenga; and Cormac Cas, putative ancestor of the Dál Cais. Accordingly, the seventeenth-century Ann. Clon. comment that the various descendants of Sadb’s sons – the MacCarthys, O’Briens, O’Carrolls and O’Mahons – were often collectively referred to in poetry as the ‘Sile Sawa, the issue of Saw’, while O’Flaherty’s Ogygia refers to them as the ‘Sabin’. These late attestations of Sadb’s importance as an ancestral figure show how legendary Irish queens could function as sovereignty goddesses not only in the role of a king’s sexual partner but also in that of his mother, the dynastic founder. The complex interweave of Sadb’s blood and affine connections is exploited to fine dramatic effect in the ninth-century saga Cath Maige Mucrama. This text, which revolves to a large extent around tensions arising from conflicting ties of kinship and fosterage, makes Lugaid Mac Con responsible for the death of all of Sadb and Ailill’s sons, as well as of Sadb’s brother, Art mac Cuinn. Nevertheless, Sadb still warns Lugaid of Ailill’s murderous intentions towards him after he is expelled from Tara, and laments his death at the hands of her husband when her warning goes unheeded. Nor is she the only member of her family to be so forgiving; the Dál Cais genealogies record that Cormac Cas gave land to ‘his mother’s son’, Lugaid Mac Con, to settle upon after the latter was expelled from Tara. Overlooking the detail that he was

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supposed to have already killed Cormac Cas at Mag Mucrama along with the rest of Éogan’s sons, this legend was presumably meant to explain the Corcu Loígde’s possession of land in Dál Cais territory. This device of kinship to Sadb as an explanation for possession of lands reappears in Keating’s version of ‘The Expulsion of the Déssi’. There the Déssi go to Ailill Aulomm after their expulsion from Tara, and, on account of their kinship to Sadb’s uncle, Fiachu Suigde, they are given lands in Munster. As Ailill was the ancestor of the chief dynasties of Leth Moga – the southern half of the country – his marriage to Sadb, daughter of the ancestor of the chief dynasties of Leth Cuinn – the northern half – seems to reflect an attempt to portray a working relationship between the two regions. The bond between the two ruling dynasties is further emphasised by Sadb’s portrayal as the only full sibling of Art mac Cuinn from whom the Connachta descended. This notion of symbolic wedlock between the two spheres of hegemony finds further expression in the cluster of marriages said to have taken place between several early Uí Néill kings of Tara and women of the Éoganachta. When the Uí Briain take over as the dominant power in Munster from the late tenth century, they too partake of this paradigm and create the tradition of a marriage between Coirpthe, sister of Niall Noígíallach, and one of their early ancestors, Conall Echluath son of Lugaid Menn.30 Although the vast majority of sources agree in presenting Ailill as Sadb’s last husband, she appears as wife of Finn mac Cumaill, and mother of his son Uilenn, in one of the fianaigecht poems A rí ríchid réidid dam as well as in the Lecan version of the Banshenchas. Elsewhere Uilenn is usually described as Finn’s son by his wife Ailbe daughter of Cormac mac Airt. The tradition that Finn was married to a woman called Sadb also appears in the thirteenth-century Acallam na Senórach, but this Sadb is named as the daughter of Bodb Derg. The idea of Conn’s daughter as Finn’s wife may have arisen through confusion of Bodb Derg’s daughter with her more famous namesake. Alternatively the identification could have arisen as part of an attempt to integrate the characters of the Finn mac Cumaill cycle with those of the cycle of Cormac mac Airt (below, Áine, wife of i: 5). Although not appearing as Finn’s wife, Sadb daughter of Conn still features very favourably in the Acallam, receiving the accolade of being one of the four best women that man ever lay with. The Acallam also refers to a Sadb as being one of the six best women in the world after Mary, the mother of God. It does not specify, however, whose daughter this Sadb was, and this time the honour could be referring to Sadb, daughter of Bodb. Dobbs, ‘Who was Lugaid mac Con?’, 166, 170, 174–6, 180, 183; Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 15, 16; Byrne, Irish kings, 202; O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, 7; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 96, 102; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 20, 279; Edel, ‘Early Irish queens’, 12. 30

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Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 303, 328; [RC ] 48, 179, 215. Since Coirpthe and Conall were said to have had a son named Cas (alternatively known as Táel) their relationship structurally mirrors the marriage between Sadb and Conn that was said to have produced Cormac Cas.

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Fuinche daughter of Nár son of Airmor ARAID CLÍACH

or daughter of Béinne Brit ALBA Prose Ban. §§ 201, 204 O’Donovan, ‘Genealogy of the Corca Laidhe’, 58; Stokes, ‘Rennes Dindshenchas’, 443; Stokes, Cóir Anmann, 376–8; Gwynn, ‘De Shíl Chonairi Móir’, 136–41; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, IV, 328; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 302, 327; [RC] 48, 176, 211; Meyer, Fiannaigecht, 5; Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, IV, 838–9; O’Brien, Corpus, 264; LGen., II, §679.34; III, §§ 1361.3, 1362.5, 6.

A wife of Lugaid Mac Con and mother of three sons named Fothad. Although Fuinche daughter of Nár does not appear as a character in any part of the saga material associated with Lugaid Mac Con, several different sources name her as the mother of his sons Fothad Airgtech, Fothad Canann (Coirptech) and Fothad Dolus. Fuinche was also said to be the mother of their sister Téite daughter of Mac Nia (alternative name for Lugaid Mac Con), of Currech son of Cathaír Már of Leinster, and of Uidéne son of Garb of the Érainn. Fuinche’s absence from the saga tradition associated with Lugaid Mac Con may be explained by the fact that although she is usually named as the mother of the three Fothaid, Lugaid Mac Con is not always named as their father. Instead, in some of the genealogical material the three Fothaid alternately appear attached to two different branches of the early Laigin, to the Uí Echach Cobo branch of the Cruithni of Ulster, and to the Uí Ibtaig branch of the Dál Fiatach of Ulster. Further confusion is created by the alternative tradition that Fuinche was the daughter of Béinne Brit, king of the Britons, rather than of Nár son of Airmor of the Araid Clíach. Either way, both versions of Fuinche’s paternity would appear to make her marriage to Lugaid Mac Con reflect a strategic alliance. Not only was the son of Béinne Brit one of Lugaid Mac Con’s allies in the battle of Mag Mucrama, but, according to the possibly eighth-century text De Shíl Chonairi Móir, a certain Mac Airmora of the Araid Clíach died fighting alongside Lugaid Mac Con in the battle of Cenn Abrat (Seefin Mountain, Ballyhoura, Co. Limerick). Indeed, the union of Fuinche and Lugaid Mac Con does not seem to have been the only marriage alliance between the Corcu Loígde and the Araid Clíach. Mac Airmora, like another of Lugaid Mac Con’s allies, Lugaid Lága son of Mug Nuadat, is said to have been Lugaid Mac Con’s sister’s son. Dobbs, ‘Who was Lugaid mac Con?’, 175; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 100.

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Dárine daughter of Dedad son of Sin ÉRAINN – SÍL CHONAIRE O Daly, Cath Maige Mucrama, 82–3.

A wife of Lugaid Mac Con. According to the ninth-century Scéla Moshauluim, Dárine was Mac Con’s wife at the time of his departure from Tara and subsequent ill-fated visit to Ailill Aulomm. Strictly in terms of the internal timeline of the Lugaid Mac Con saga cycle, this would make her the queen whose woad garden was the subject of the false judgement leading to Lugaid Mac Con’s abdication in the ninth-century tales Cath Maige Mucrama and Scéla Éogain 7 Cormaic. The episode involved Lugaid Mac Con’s declaring the sheep of a peasant woman to be forfeit to the queen because they had eaten her woad, with Cormac mac Airt more correctly declaring the sheep’s fleece to be a fitter compensation. Like the wool, the woad would grow back. The woad incident, however, is not mentioned in Scéla Moshauluim, and those tracts which do make reference to it leave Lugaid Mac Con’s queen unnamed. As Dobbs suggests, rather than specifiying a distinct individual, the name ‘Dárine daughter of Dedad mac Sin’ is likely to be just a generic identification, indicating that Lugaid Mac Con’s wife, like Lugaid Mac Con himself, was of the Dáiríne branch of the Érainn.31 Dobbs, ‘Who was Lugaid mac Con?’, 175.

(i: 4) Corbmac (Cormac mac Airt) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL

Achtán (Echtach/Etán) daughter of Olc Aiche CONNACHTA

Mother of Cormac mac Airt. See above, lover of Art Óenfher i: 2. Eithne Thóebfhota (Ollomna) daughter of Cathaír Már

or daughter of Dúnlaing son of Énnae Nia LAIGIN Prose Ban. §§ 235–6; Met. Ban. §§ 109, 111 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxix, 338; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 300–3; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 140, 161, 203, 212; II, 154, 179, 230, 239–40; Stokes, Cóir Anmann, 336; Stokes, ‘The Irish ordeals’, 194; Stokes, Acallamh na Senórach, 60, 85, 145, 165; MacNeill, Duanaire Finn, I, 45, 149 no. 18; Best, ‘The adventures of Art son of Conn’, 150; Stokes, ‘The songs of Buchet’s house’, 20–33; Hayden, ‘The songs of Buchet’s house’, 262–73; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 300–5; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 301, 326; [RC] 48, 177, 214; Dobbs, ‘Miscellany from H.2.7’, 314; Carney, ‘Nia son of Lugna Fer Trí’, 192; Greene, 31

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Fingal Rónáin, 28–42; Ó Cuív, ‘Comram na Cloenfherta’, 171–3; Dooley and Roe, Tales of the elders of Ireland, 65, 92, 148, 169; LGen., III, §§ 782.17, 1024.9.

Wife of Cormac mac Airt, and mother of Coirpre Lifechair. As daughter of the last legendary king of Tara to hail from Leinster, Eithne’s relationship with Cormac – initial abduction and rape followed by consensual and officially sanctioned marriage – may represent the passing of the Tara kingship from the Laigin to the Connachta.32 Certainly, like Medb Lethderg, albeit in a more benevolent incarnation, she is explicitly identified with the kingship in the possibly pre-eighth century tale ‘Cormac’s Dream’ (a subtext of ‘Nia son of Lugna Fer Trí ’). Here Cormac has a dream in which Eithne repeatedly sleeps with the Ulster king Eochu Gunnat before once again returning to her rightful husband; his druids interpret this to mean that Cormac would suffer temporary banishment from Tara and Eochu Gunnat would seize the kingship, but that Cormac would eventually regain his throne. That Eithne and Eochu’s liaison occurs in a dream sequence only is in accordance with the emphasis laid upon her sexual integrity and fidelity in the Early Modern text Eachtra Chormaic. Indeed, the presentation of her character in the sources is very much that of the paradigmatically good wife and daughter – so much so that, as with Sadb daughter of Conn Cétchathach, the thirteenthcentury Acallam na Senórach calls her one of the four best women with whom man ever lay. In the Acallam Eithne’s wisdom is brought into prominence by its portrayal of her, alongside her husband, as one of the judges deciding compensation for the death of Niam daughter of Óengus Tírech. Here the good judgement traditionally associated with Cormac seems to have accrued to his wife as well. The frequent involvement of sovereignty figures in serial marriages to several generations of the same royal line could explain why Eithne appears as the wife of Cormac’s grandfather, Conn Cétchathach, in the Eachtra Airt. Discrepancies in the sources, however, over whether Eithne’s father Cathaír Már was succeeded by Cormac or by Conn could also account for why she is presented as the wife of both men (above, Lendabair, wife of i: 1). Keating, followed by O’Flaherty, suggested that similar generational discrepancies were responsible for the variant tradition found in some versions of the Banshenchas that Eithne’s father was the Leinster king Dúnlaing son of Énnae Nia. Since, according to the Middle Irish genealogies, a daughter of Cathaír Már would have been an old woman before Cormac was even born, O’Flaherty suggested that the medieval literati may have attempted to rationalise the generation gap by making Eithne the daughter of Dúnlaing, Cormac’s contemporary. According to the traditional genealogical schema, however, Dúnlaing was not in fact Cormac’s contemporary, but that of his great-great-great grandson Niall Noígíallach. Rather than an attempt at generational logic, Eithne’s reclassification as the daughter of Dúnlaing was more likely due to the desire of Dúnlaing’s descendants – the powerful Uí Dúnlainge dynasty who 32

Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, 77; see also Carey, above, 42–8.

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dominated Leinster from the seventh to the eleventh centuries – to co-opt such a powerful symbol of the province as one of their own. A further, albeit much earlier, variant tradition is found in the possibly eighth-century miscellany attached to the H.2.7 genealogies which refers to Cathaír’s daughter as Mugain (Maugain) rather than as Eithne. A similar confusion between women of those two names occurs with regard to the wives of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (below, Mugain, mother of i:18 and Eithne, mother of i:18).33 Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 25–7; O’Rahilly, Early Irish history and mythology, 139, 163–4 n. 3, 283–4; O’Rahilly, ‘Buchet the herdsman’, 13, 19; Mac Cana, ‘Aspects of the theme of king and goddess’, Études Celtiques 7, 86–8; [ÉC] 8, 76–114, 357–413; Ó Cathasaigh, Cormac mac Airt, 30–3, 72–85, 91; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 104; O Hehir, ‘Christian revision of Eachtra Airt’, 160, 163, 170–73, 177–8; Dagger, ‘Eithne ban-dia agus bannaomh’; O’Leary, ‘The honour of women’, 36; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 123; McCone, Pagan past, 54–5, 109, 112, 120, 128, 133–6, 150–51, 156–7, 174, 183, 253; Bitel, Land of women, 55–6, 225; Jaski, ‘Cú Chulainn, gormac and dalta of the Ulstermen’, 6–7; Carey, above, 42–8.

Ciarnait PICTISH OR LAIGIN Prose Ban. §236; Met. Ban. §111. Meyer, ‘Stories and songs from Irish manuscripts’, 75–6; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, I, 22; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 301, 326; [ÉC] 48, 178; Dobbs, ‘From the Book of Fermoy’, 174, 177; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 334–7; Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 120 (LL 30a3791–3).

Lover of Cormac mac Airt and alternative mother of Coirpre Lifechair. Ciarnait’s place in the tradition associated with Cormac is as the central character of an aetiological tale explaining how the first mill came to be in Ireland. In this story she is the kidnapped daughter of a Pictish king who becomes a slave at Cormac’s court and subsequently the king’s lover. Under the control of Cormac’s jealous queen, Eithne daughter of Cathaír Már, Ciarnait is made to grind nine bushels of corn each day using a hand-mill (bró). After the slave girl becomes pregnant by Cormac, however, she finds her labours impossible. Gallantly coming to her aid, the king sends across the Irish Sea for a millwright and has him build the first mill (muilenn) in Ireland for his mistress. The similarities between the form of Ciarnait’s name and cweorn or cwe˛irn, the Old English for ‘a small hand-mill’ (our modern day ‘quern’), leads one to wonder if the story might originally been an etymological tale as well as an aetiological one.34 Any potential 33 34

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Proinsias Mac Cana has identified both Eithne and Mugain as goddess names. If, however, the name Ciarnait did arise from cweorn or cwe˛irn it was unlikely to be a straightforward borrowing from Old English. Rather than ciarn–, one might expect Old English cweorn to be borrowed into Irish as cern. It may well be that Ciarnait’s name was not in fact etymological in origin at all, but simply derived from cíar ‘black’ combined with the feminine diminutive suffix ‘-na(i)t’. I am very grateful to Dr

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etymological connection, however, is never made explicit in the text which refers to the mill only by the Irish words bró and muilenn. Since muilenn has the primary meaning ‘water-mill’, then if the story was indeed etymological in origin it is possible that its intention had been to explain how the water-mill came to supersede the quern or hand-mill.35 While all the extant versions of this story use Ciarnait’s pregnancy as a central plot, none of them say to which child of Cormac’s she gave birth. In her entry in the Banshenchas, however, Ciarnait appears as an alternative possibility for the mother of Coirpre Lifechair. This version should probably be understood within the context of Coirpre being Cormac’s most famous son and thus the most obvious candidate for the child within Ciarnait’s womb. The tale’s similarities to the conception story of Niall Noígíallach may have also played a part in the attribution (below, Cairenn Chasdub mother of i: 11). Both stories feature overseas princesses who are captured into slavery in Ireland, become lovers of Connachta kings of Tara, become pregnant by the king, and are cruelly treated by their lovers’ jealous queens. Given the overt parallels, it is not difficult to understand how the similarities already present may have led to the creation of one final correspondence. Just as Niall was the ancestor of the Uí Néill, so would Ciarnait’s child be identified with Coirpre, the son of Cormac positioned in the direct line of Uí Néill ancestry. The difficulty with such motherhood by analogy, of course, was the well-established tradition that Coirpre’s mother was a Leinster princess named Eithne (above, this section). Most versions of the Banshenchas attempt to reconcile the conflicting identifications by asserting that Ciarnait was simply another name for Eithne daughter of Dúnlaing son of Énnae Nia. These texts justify Eithne’s servile status by claiming that she was captured as a slave during the levying of the bóruma tribute from Leinster. Other versions continue to regard Coirpre’s mother as a Leinster bondswoman, but state that the woman in question was named Feidil rather than Ciarnait. The Banshenchas is the only text to claim Ciarnait’s motherhood of Coirpre, but she turns up as the mother of another two sons of Cormac – Cellach and Dáire – in an Early Modern tract in the Book of Fermoy. Vendryes, ‘Les moulins en Irlande et l’aventure de Ciarnat’; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 105; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 123.

Der Draigen ÉRAINN – CORCU BARDDÉINE Prose Ban., §152 Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 332; Müller-Lisowski, ‘Texte zur Mog Ruith Sage’, 159, 162; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 172, 208; O’Brien, Corpus, 280; LGen., II, §535.3; III, §1254.2.

35

Jürgen Uhlich for elucidating the linguistic issues involved in this question. I owe the suggestion about the water-mill replacing the hand-mill to Professor Ann Dooley.

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An alternative mother for Coirpre Lifechair son of Cormac. Der Draigen is named as the mother of Coirpre Lifechair by the Edinburgh version of the Prose Banshenchas and by a poem on Tlachtga, daughter of the druid Mug Ruith. Both texts also identify her as the mother of Mug Ruith’s two sons, Fer Corp and Buan; Fer Corp was said to be the ancestor of the Munster people Fir Maige Féne. 36 The other versions of the Banshenchas, however, name Der Draigen as the mother of Mug Ruith’s sons only. The latter identification is in line with a claim found in early (possibly eighth-century) genealogies that while Der Draigen was the mother of Mug Ruith’s sons, it was her unnamed sister who was the mother of Coirpre Lifechair. 37 Later genealogies state that the name of Der Draigen’s sister was ‘Lifean’. The early genealogies state that both sisters were of Corcu Barddéine of Dún Cermna. Since Corcu Barddéine were a branch of the Érainn, the tradition of a relationship between Cormac mac Airt and Der Draigen would represent a union between the Connachta and the people of Cormac’s predecessor (according to Cath Maige Mucrama) in the Tara kingship, Lugaid Mac Con. Of all the traditions associated with Coirpre’s maternal parentage, Der Draigen’s seems to be the earliest. The connection between Cormac and Mug Ruith witnessed by the texts associated with Der Draigen may explain the later genealogies’ use of the name Mug Ruith for the son of Cormac and Medb Lethderg (above, Medb Lethderg, wife of i:2). Müller-Lisowski, ‘La légende de St Jean dans la tradition irlandaise’, 49–53; Ó Corráin, ‘Creating the past’, 194–6.

(i: 5) Corpre (Coirpre Lifechair) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL

Eithne Thóebfhota daughter of Cathaír Már/Dúnlaing son of Énnae Nia LAIGIN

Mother of Coirpre Lifechair; see above, wife of Cormac mac Airt i: 4. Ciarnait PICTISH OR LAIGIN

Alternative mother for Coirpre Lifechair; see above, lover of Cormac mac Airt i: 4. Der Draigen ÉRAINN – CORCU BARDDÉINE

Alternative mother for Coirpre Lifechair; see above, wife of Cormac mac Airt i: 4. 36 37

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As Mug Ruith was commonly acknowledged to be of Ulster descent, Fir Maige Féne’s possession of Munster territory (of the Mairtine) is explained as being the result of a grant from Der Draigen’s people. A variant genealogical tradition names Drón daughter of Láréne of the Érainn as the mother of Buan and Fer Corbb (Ó Corráin, ‘Creating the past’, 194–5).

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Áine daughter of Finn mac Cumaill LAIGIN Prose Ban. §258 Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 299, 302, 325, 327; [RC] 48,175, 178, 211, 215.

Partner of Coirpre Lifechair and mother of his son Eochaid Doimlén. While Coirpre and Áine are not portrayed as husband and wife in any part of the extant fíanaigecht cycle, the record in the Banshenchas of their union is consistent with the high degree of intermarriage and blood ties which the cycle depicts between the families of Finn mac Cumaill and Cormac mac Airt. Most famously, Finn himself was married to two of Cormac’s daughters, Gráinne and Ailbe. Furthermore, Finn’s father Cumall and Cormac’s great-grandfather Fedelmid Rechtmar were both said by the Banshenchas to be sons of Báine daughter of Scál Balb, king of Finland. In the construction and evolution of the fíanaigecht cycle, such interrelations must have been a useful device to help wed the likely originally separate fíanaigecht and Connachta traditions together. Dillon, ‘Laud Misc. 610’, 73; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 97.

(i: 6) Fiechri (Fiachrae Cassán?) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – IND AIRTHIR

No mother or wife given for Fiachrae Cassán. (i: 7) Dáire Drechlethan (Dáire mac Cormaic) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL

Ciarnait Mother of Dáire son of Cormac; see above, lover of Cormac mac Airt i: 4. No wife given for Dáire son of Cormac. (i: 7a) Dáire Doimtech ÉRAINN – CORCU LOÍGDE

No mother or wife given for Dáire Doimtech. (i: 7b) Dáire Barrach LAIGIN – UÍ BAIRRCHE

Medb Lethderg daughter of Conan Cualann LAIGIN

Mother of Dáire Barrach; see above, wife of Art mac Cuinn i: 2. No wife given for Dáire Barrach.

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(i: 8) Fécho (Fiachu Sraiptine) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL

No mother given for Fiachu Sraiptine. Aífe daughter of the king of the Gaill Gáedil Prose Ban. §259; Met. Ban. §123 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxv, 360; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 356–7; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 178.

Wife of Fiachu Sraiptine and mother of Muiredach Tírech. Aífe appears to be a late addition to the genealogical tradition of the Connachta. She is found in none of the extant saga tales, and turns up only in certain versions of the Banshenchas; one of the apparently earlier versions of that text explicitly states that the mother of Muiredach Tírech was unknown. While highly anachronistic, her pedigree as daughter of the king of the Gaill Gáedil (the HibernoNorse) – further specified by the Lecan version of the Metrical Banshenchas to be the king of the Isle of Man – accords well with the international flavour of the maternal ancestry of the Connachta. The idea of a marriage alliance between Fiachu and Aífe may not have been farfetched for the redactor of the Book of Lecan version in the context of the marriage in AD 1177 between Godred, king of Man, and Fionnghuala, daughter of the Cenél nÉogain king Niall Mac Lochlainn. (i: 9) Muiredach Tírech CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL

Muirenn daughter of Fiachrae UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN (recte ÉOGANACHTA?) Prose Ban. §260; Met. Ban. §124 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxxi, 380; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 360–1; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 178.

Wife of Muiredach Tírech, mother of Eochaid Mugmedón. Like her mother-in-law Aífe (above, mother of i: 8), Muirenn is a shadowy figure. The earlier versions of the Prose Banshenchas specifically state that Eochaid’s mother was unknown, while even those texts that identify Muirenn as Eochaid’s mother exhibit confusion about her family background. Several versions of the Prose Banshenchas state that Muirenn’s father Fiachrae was king of Cenél nÉogain; however, the Éogan who lends his name to that dynasty was not supposed to have been born until several generations later and was in fact portrayed as Eochaid Mugmedón’s grandson. Although anachronism is no stranger to early Irish literature, a claim found in the Metrical Banshenchas that Fiachrae was from the plain of Munster may indicate that Muirenn’s dynastic affiliation was actually intended to be with the Éoganachta of Munster rather than

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with the Cenél nÉogain of the Northern Uí Néill. If so, the tradition of her union with Muiredach may have been influenced by the general pattern underlying the marriages of the late Connachta and early Uí Néill kings of Tara whereby the Leth Cuinn kings took brides from Leth Moga. Eochaid himself was said to have married a Munster woman, Mongfhinn daughter of Fidach of the Éoganachta (below, sister of i: 10), while several of the immediate successors of Niall Noígíallach were also held to have married Éoganachta women. (i: 10) Crimthand (Crimthann mac Fidaig) ÉOGANACHTA

Cobor Mongfhinn ALBA (BRITAIN/SCOTLAND) O’Brien, Corpus, 224; LGen., II, §628.10; III, §1332.3.

Mother of Crimthann mac Fidaig and his brother Fiachu. The genealogies are the only source to identify Cobor Mongfhinn as the mother of Crimthann mac Fidaig. Unusually, the preNorman genealogies list no patronymic alongside her name, describing her only by the epithet banchóem Alban ‘beautiful British (or Scottish) woman’. In contrast, the seventeenth-century genealogies of Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh assert that Cobor Mongfhinn was the daughter of Dallán son of Dub Luascad, king of Dál Ríata. No individual by Dallán’s name, however, is found in the extant Dál Ríata king-lists or genealogies. Mac Fhirbhisigh’s genealogies further claim that Cobor Mongfhinn was a female satirist with whom Fidach fell in love when she came to Ireland to learn poetry. Her association with an overseas background in both Mac Fhirbhisigh’s work and the pre-Norman genealogies is possibly linked to a notion in the saga literature that Crimthann was king not only of Ireland but also of Britain. Like the Uí Néill genealogies, the legendary section of the proto-Éoganachta pedigree is marked by a series of international marriage alliances that may reflect the part which overseas raiding and British colonies played in that dynasty’s rise to power. Cobor Mongfhinn’s name may have beeen suggested by that of her more famous namesake: Mongfhinn daughter of Fidach, sister of Crimthann mac Fidaig and queen of Eochaid Mugmedón (below, sister of i:10). Alternatively, the borrowing could have been in the other direction. According to one tradition enshrined in Mac Fhirbhisigh’s genealogies, Cobor Mongfhinn and Mongfhinn daughter of Fidach were mother and daughter. An alternative tradition within the same genealogies, however, reflects the claims of the preNorman genealogies which leave the mother of Mongfhinn daughter of Fidach unnamed and list Cobor Mongfhinn’s children as Crimthann and Fiachu only. Some versions of the pre-Norman genealogies equate this Fiachu with Fiachu Muillethan, son of Éogan son of Ailill and ancestor of most of the main lines of Munster, including the Éoganachta; however, Fiachu Muillethan (who, according to saga tradition, had a mother named Moncha,

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daughter of the druid Díl), was supposed to have been Fidach’s grandfather. The tradition associating Fiachu Muillethan with Cobor Mongfhinn thus reflects either the erroneous gloss of a later genealogist, or a variant tradition which attached Crimthann mac Fidaig to the Éoganacht line several generations earlier than he is normally placed. Another woman with a suspiciously similar profile to Cobor Mongfhinn is Mongfhinn, daughter of the Pictish king Feradach Finn Fechtnach. This Mongfhinn appears in the story of the finding of Cashel as the first wife of Fidach’s cousin Conall Corc. Possibly, she, Cobor Mongfhinn and Mongfhinn daughter of Fidach are all different representations of the same figure. In fact, David Sproule suspects that in the original version of the finding of Cashel, it was Mongfhinn daughter of Fidach who was portrayed as the wife of Conall Corc. A further link between Cobor Mongfhinn and Conall Corc is that, according to some versions of the Banshenchas, Conall Corc’s mother was Bolc or Bolco Bretnach, a female satirist from across the Irish sea. 38 The tradition that Cobor Mongfhinn was herself a female satirist from Dál Ríata is found only in the later genealogies and is very likely borrowed directly from the traditions associated with Bolc Ban Bretnach. O’Brien, ‘Etymologies and notes’, 181; Sproule, ‘Politics and pure narrative’, 16–8.

Fidsheng daughter of the king of Connacht CONNACHTA Prose Ban. §265; Met. Ban. §129 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxxi, 380; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 368–9; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 179.

Wife of Crimthann mac Fidaig and mother of his unnamed son. As with the wives of several of Crimthann’s immediate predecessors, Fidsheng is unattested in the early sources. Her name is found only in certain versions of the Banshenchas, with the earlier recension of that text firmly stating that it knew of no wife of Crimthann. The vagueness of Fidsheng’s patronymic (daughter of the king of Connacht) in the versions of the Banshenchas where she does appear strongly suggests that her identity was fabricated to hide a gap in the compiler’s knowledge. In the story of the founding of Cashel, Crimthann has a wife who attempted to seduce his foster-son, Conall Corc. When Conall rejected her advances, the woman told her husband that the boy had tried to seduce her, thereby setting Conall’s exile to Scotland in motion. This wife of Crimthann, however, goes unnamed in the tale.

38

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Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 304, 329; [RC ] 48, 180, 214, 217.

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Mongfhinn daughter of Fidach ÉOGANACHTA Prose Ban. §261; Met. Ban. §125 Ann. Clon, 64; O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxix, 374; c.lxxx, 381, 385–6; Hennessy, Book of Fenagh, 8; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 326–36; II, 368–78; Stokes, ‘The death of Crimthann son of Fidach’; Joynt, ‘Echtra mac Echdach Mugmedóin’, 96, 98, 109; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 366–7, 370–71; Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 3, 4; Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 302, 303, 327; [RC] 48, 179, 215; Hull, ‘Conall Corc and the kingdom of Cashel, 421–2; Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts, 133; Macalister, Lebor Gabála Érenn, V, 347; Best, and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 114; III, 508, 637; O’Brien, Corpus, 122, 132, 195; Ó Cuív, ‘A poem composed for Cathal Croibhdhearg’, 157–74, 162; LGen., I, §§ 64.2, 108.3; III, §1332.3.

Sister of Crimthann mac Fidaig, wife of Eochaid Mugmedón, and mother of four of Eochaid’s sons, Brion, Fiachrae, Ailill and Fergus Cáechán. As daughter of the Munster dynast Fidach son of Ailill Flann Bec, Mongfhinn’s marriage to Eochaid is illustrative of the same Leth Cuinn/Leth Moga dynamic seen in the marriage of Sadb daughter of Conn (above, mother of i: 3) to Ailill Aulomm and in the marriages of several early Uí Néill kings to daughters of Munster kings. Through his descent from Ailill Flann Bec, the sources generally consider Fidach to be a member of the Éoganachta, though the Prose Banshenchas states that he belonged to the Érainn. Mongfhinn’s connection to Munster is further illustrated by the fact that even though the dominant geographical associations of her children are with Connacht, the later genealogies claim that she was the eponym of Cenél Mongfhinne in Uí Duach Argatrois. The portrayal of Mongfhinn in the saga literature is that of the archetypal scheming royal mother, hungry for the success of her sons at the expense of those of her rivals. When, despite her machinations, it seems likely that her husband’s successor would be Niall, his son by Cairenn Chasdub (below, mother of i: 11), Mongfhinn magically manipulates the men of Ireland to chose her brother Crimthann as king. Her intent was to allow her eldest son Brion the opportunity of building up his military strength in the interim; however, when this strategy backfires, owing to the unexpected tenacity of her brother’s hold on the kingship, Mongfhinn invites Crimthann to a royal banquet and poisons him. As the venom was contained within a drinking vessel, Byrne has seen her actions as an inversion of the motif whereupon a draught from the cup of sovereignty bestows kingship. The extent of Mongfhinn’s ambition for her sons is revealed by the willing sacrifice she makes in drinking the poison herself in order to convince her brother to do likewise. The timing of this poisoning at Samain (Hallowe’en) emphasises the queen’s supernatural powers, and the saga tradition relates that the common people celebrated her as a witch every year at that time. Joynt, ‘Echtra mac Echdach Mugmedóin’, 91; Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 30–1, 38–41;

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Dobbs and Mac Airt, ‘Conall of Tír Chonaill’, 28; Byrne, Irish kings, 74–5; Ó Corráin, ‘Legend as critic’, 31–4; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 322–3; Sproule, ‘Politics and pure narrative’, 17–9.

(i: 11) Níell (Niall Noígíallach) CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL

Cairenn Chasdub daughter of Saxall or Scál Balb king of the Saxons Prose Ban. §§ 262–3; Met. Ban. §125 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxix, 374, 376, 393; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 326–7, 330; II, 368–9, 373; Meyer, ‘How King Niall was slain’; Stokes, ‘The death of Crimthann son of Fidach’, 190, 192; Joynt, ‘Echtra mac Echdach Mugmedóin’, 92, 94, 98; Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 3; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 366–7, 372–3; Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 302, 327; [RC ] 48, 179, 213, 215; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, II, 40; IV, 118; Hull, ‘Conall Corc and the kingdom of Cashel’, 421–2; Pender, ‘The O Clery Book of Genealogies’, 111; Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 104; III, 637; O’Brien, Corpus, 132; LGen., I, §§ 108.2–4, 109.1, 3; 109.2.

Mother of Niall Noígíallach son of Eochaid Mugmedón. The narrative sources vary in their presentation of Cairenn as either an actual slave-girl or simply a woman treated as such by Mongfhinn, her lover’s official queen (above, sister of 1:10). Fiercely jealous because Cairenn was pregnant with Eochaid’s child, Mongfhinn compels her to draw the full complement of Tara’s water requirements in the hope that she will miscarry. Fearful of Mongfhinn’s magic, Cairenn resumes her task of drawing water moments after Niall’s birth, leaving the child to be rescued from the exposed wellside by the poet Torna. Years later, when Niall returns to Tara after his fosterage with Torna, Cairenn is freed from her labours and wrapped in the royal purple. Most texts portray Niall as Cairenn’s only child by Eochaid, thus setting his Uí Néill descendants apart from the Connachta dynasties said to have sprung from Eochaid’s sons by Mongfhinn. The genealogies in Rawlinson B 502, however, state that Eochaid’s son Fergus Cáechán, normally included among Mongfhinn’s offspring, was Cairenn’s son as well. Other figures to whom Cairenn is genealogically linked are the similarly named Cairell and Cairbec, whom the Banshenchas alleges to be her sisters. These two women are named respectively as the mothers of Lugaid Cal, ancestor of the Calraige, and Timíne, ancestor of the Uí Thimíne of the Laigin. Both Lugaid and Timíne, however, are at least four generations earlier than Niall in the genealogical scheme as it has come down to us. The anachronistic depiction of Lugaid and Niall as first cousins is likely to be part of the same effort to associate the Calraige Mór with the Uí Néill that led to the portrayal in Middle Irish saga of Muiredach Menn of the Calraige as the foster-father of Niall’s son Conall Gulban. 39 39

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Lehmacher, ‘Eachtra Conaill Gulban’, 219.

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The sources unanimously agree that Cairenn was originally from Britain, although variations exist in their presentation of her social status. In the eleventh-century metrical version of Echtra mac nEchdach Mugmedóin she is depicted as a slave-girl of unspecified parentage, captured by Eochaid in a raid on Alba. By grace of God’s ‘compassion on her captivity’, Cairenn subsequently becomes Niall’s lover. The twelfth-century prose version of the Echtra and most of the genealogies, on the other hand, grant Niall a doubly regal pedigree by also attributing royal ancestry to Cairenn. Variously referring to her as the daughter of either the king of England (the Saxons) or the king of the Picts, some texts further specify that her father was called Scál Balb. This name is identical to that of the father of Báine, wife of Tuathal Techtmar and grandmother of the ancestor of the Connachta, Conn Cétchathach. Scál Balb, father of Báine, is called ‘the king of the Fomoiri, i.e. the king of Finland’ by the Book of Lecan version of the Prose Banshenchas; 40 both his name and overseas provenance may well have been borrowed from the traditions surrounding Cairenn. More intriguingly, Scál Balb is also one of the names attributed to the father of the god Lug in the eleventh-century Lebor Gabála Érenn tradition. In Baile in Scáil the scál is actually identified as Lug himself. In that text a strong connection exists between Lug, the divine paradigm of the good Tara king, and the Uí Néill.41 On Lug’s orders, his consort the lady of sovereignty offers a draught of red ale to each descendant of Conn, who, as Lug prophecies, will succeed to the Tara kingship. This action has been interpreted as a symbolic marriage between the future rulers and Lug’s wife in which the men become Lug’s surrogate as king of Tara through their surrogacy of his role as sovereignty’s mate. 42 If, however, naming Cairenn’s father as Scál Balb was really intended as a deliberate evocation of Lug, then the role of the woman linking Lug and the Uí Néill in the Echtra is that of mother rather than wife. The Uí Néill kings of Tara would thus be descendants of Lug rather than simply his surrogates. In a text so deeply concerned with dynastic continuity as the Echtra, such a pedigree is rather appropriate. Perhaps, then, one can see Cairenn as a representation of the maternal aspect of the sovereignty goddess, and her drawing of water for all of Tara as an echo of the goddess’s drink-serving function. That said, it must be noted that Cairenn’s father is firmly euhemerised as a king of Britain in the sources, and the only unequivocally divine figure in the Echtra is the water-serving sovereignty goddess who sleeps with Niall in the woods. In light of the theory that the origins of Uí Néill power lay in wealth obtained from their raids on Late Roman-Britain, historians have thought it plausible that Niall’s mother actually could have been from Britain. Cairenn’s name, a possible gaelicization of the Latin Carina, has been taken as further confirmation of the authenticity of this tradition. While the idea that

40 41 42

Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 175. See Carey, above, 41–4. Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Cath Maige Tuired ’, 12.

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Niall’s mother was a slave may thus reflect genuine circumstances, the literary motif of unfree women as the mothers of great figures is not uncommon in early Irish tradition. St Brigit and, according to one version, Coirpre Lifechair (above, Ciarnait, mother of i: 5) were both the children of slave-girls whose pregnancies earned them the jealousy of their partners’ lawful wives. Another possible factor influencing the portrayal of Niall’s wife as a slave-girl may have been the political circumstances in place at the time in which the metrical Echtra was written. The metrical version of the Echtra is attributed to Cúán úa Lóthcháin (d. 1024), court poet of the Southern Uí Néill king of Ireland Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill,43 and it has been suggested that one of its functions was dynastic propaganda for the Uí Néill cause. At that time the Uí Néill’s stranglehold on the kingship had been badly shaken by the succession of Brian Bóruma of the Dál Cais. Máel Sechnaill, who had been king of Ireland immediately before Brian, managed to retake the kingship after the latter’s death, and the Echtra may have been composed to emphasise that his successor should likewise be of the Uí Néill dynasty. In the absence of any strong contender from the southern branches of the dynasty, the most likely Uí Néill candidate for the succession would probably have been Flaithbertach Ua Néill, the Cenél nÉogain overking of Northern Uí Néill. Intriguingly, according to some versions of the Banshenchas, Flaithbertach’s mother, Cres of the Uí Maine, was a slave-girl herself. 44 The similarity may be simply a coincidence; however, since Flaithbertach and Niall were the only Uí Néill kings, apart from Coirpre Lifechair, said to be the sons of slave-girls, it is possible that Cairenn’s lowly status in the Echtra may have been intended to parallel and perhaps even legitimise Flaithbertach’s own antecedents. Joynt, ‘Echtra mac Echdach Mugmedóin’, 91; Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 31, 38; Dobbs and Mac Airt, ‘Conall of Tír Chonaill’, 28; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 9; Byrne, Irish kings, 71, 74; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 105; Ó Corráin, ‘Legend as critic’, 31–4; Sproule, ‘Politics and pure narrative’, 18–9; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 322; Herbert, ‘Goddess and king’; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 97; Bitel, Land of women, 152; CharlesEdwards, Early Christian Ireland, 25; Jaski, Irish kingship, 162–9.

Indiu daughter of Lugaid son of Óengus Finn DÁL FIATACH Prose Ban. §266; Met. Ban. §132 AFM s.a. 465; O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxxv, 402; Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 331; Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 10; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 372–3; Dobbs, ‘Senchas Síl hIr’, 56; Lehmacher, ‘Eachtra Conaill Gulban’, 213–14; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’,

43 44

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It should be noted, however, that this attribution is doubted by Donncha Ó Corráin (Ó Corráin, ‘Historical need and literary narrative’, 145). Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 189.

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Revue Celtique 47, 302–3, 327–8; [RC] 48, 179, 216; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, IV, 118; O’Brien, Corpus, 278; LGen., II, §502.2.

Wife of Niall Noígíallach and mother of a number of the children attributed to him as eponyms of the various Uí Néill dynasties. While the traditions concerning the maternal ancestry of Niall’s children chiefly revolve around only two women, they nevertheless present a myriad of conflicting possibilities concerning which woman was the mother of which combination of sons. The wives in question are Indiu, daughter of the Ulster king Lugaid son of Óengus Finn, and Rígnach, daughter of Meda son of Ros (below). That both women are from the Dál Fiatach of Ulster, albeit from different branches, underlines the northern focus of the Uí Néill’s first area of expansion and stresses their links with the dominant Ulster dynasty. The Middle Irish saga Eachtra Chonaill Gulban names a third woman, Aíbinn daughter of Lugaid, as the mother of one of Niall’s children, but this may be a misattribution (see below). Of the three women, Indiu appears most often as the ancestress of the dominant branches of the Uí Néill. In the earliest extant version of the Ulster genealogies, contained in Laud MS 610, she is said to be the mother of Niall’s sons Éogan and Conall. Éogan was the eponym of Cenél nÉogain, one of two dominant branches of the Northern Uí Néill, while Conall was the name of two allegedly different sons of Niall. The first was Conall Gulban, eponym of the other dominant branch of the Northern Uí Néill – Cenél Conaill – and the second was Conall Cremthainne, purported ancestor of the two main branches of the Southern Uí Néill – Síl nÁedo Sláine and Clann Cholmáin. It has been suggested, however, that Conall Gulban and Conall Cremthainne were actually two different names for the same person (see Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, above, 189–90). If so, the genealogies’ claim that Indiu was the mother of Éogan and Conall may have been meant to indicate that she was ancestress of all four dominant branches of the Uí Néill. Certainly this is the situation envisioned by the main tradition presented by the Banshenchas, which claims that Indiu gave birth to Conall Cremthainne in addition to Éogan and Conall Gulban. By this schema, the genealogists were possibly attempting to set the four chief dynasties of the Uí Néill apart by portraying their ancestors as full brothers. It should be noted, though, that an alternate tradition preserved in the Banshenchas also includes Fiachu amongst Indiu’s sons. Yet another tradition in that text presents Indiu as the mother of Fiachu alone, identifying Rígnach as the mother of Conall Gulban, Conall Cremthainne and Éogan. If, on the other hand, Conall Gulban and Conall Cremthainne really were originally viewed as separate individuals, then the Ulster genealogies probably intended Conall Gulban when they designated Indiu as the mother of Conall and Eógan. In this case the genealogists’ claim was probably intended to stress the common ancestry of the two most important dynasties of Northern Uí Néill. Later tradition literally twinned the two northern dynasties,

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claiming that Indiu carried Conall and Eógan together in the womb.45 According to Eachtra Chonaill Gulban, the multiple birth also included Luchra, an unotherwise unattested daughter of Niall. Emphasising Dál Fiatach ties to Cenél nEógain and Cenél Conaill, the Eachtra relates that the triplets were born at the home of the king of Ulster when Indiu went to stay with her father while Niall was campaigning in Leinster. 46 The Eachtra further asserts that Indiu was the mother of the triplets’ older brother, Coirpre son of Niall, ancestor of Cenél Coirpri. Cenél Coirpri appear to have been considered a northern dynasty by later tradition, 47 and it is possibly this association which led to the later depiction of Coirpre as a son of Indiu. In addition to Dál Fiatach, Niall’s marriage to Indiu links him to the Dál nAraidi kings of Ulster through his sister-in-law, Indecht daughter of Lugaid. Indecht was said to have been the mother of Cóelbad son of Crunn ba Druí, ancestor of the main royal line of the Dál nAraidi dynasty of the Cruithni, and of his triplet brothers Nannid and Eochu, ancestor of the Uí Echach Cobo of Ulaid. 48 Another of Indiu’s sisters, Sciath, was described as the wife of Tadc son of Cían, and mother of his sons Cormac – ancestor of the Cíannachta, Luigni, and Gailenga – and Muiredach. None of the three sisters’ marriages, however, are in chronological synchronisation with one another. Tadc son of Cían is traditionally portrayed as the contemporary of Niall’s great-great-grandfather, Cormac mac Airt, while Crunn ba Druí is portrayed as the killer of Niall’s grandfather Muiredach Tírech. Furthermore, Indiu herself falls two generations earlier in the genealogical schema than her supposed husband Niall. Rather than reflecting a biological relationship, then, the portrayal of the three women as sisters was probably meant to indicate political ties between the Uí Néill and the tribes and dynasties said to have descended from their ‘maternal cousins’.49 Dobbs and Mac Airt, ‘Conall of Tír Chonaill’, 28; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 105–6.

Rígnach daughter of Meda son of Ros DÁL FIATACH – UÍ ECHACH ARDA Prose Ban. §266; Met. Ban. §130 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxxv, 402; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 372–3; III, 15; Lehmacher, ‘Eachtra Conaill Gulban’, 213; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 303, 328; [RC] 48, 179, 216. 45 46 47 48 49

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Lehmacher, ‘Eachtra Conaill Gulban’, 214; AFM s.a. 465. The Echtra identifies Indiu’s father’s home as Drum Lighean (modern-day Drumleene, Co. Donegal), a location which would traditionally be considered within Cenél Conaill, rather than Dál Fiatach, territory. Hennessy, Book of Fenagh, 316–7. See Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh kinship, 113–5 for discussion of Indecht’s marriage to Crunn ba Druí. Since Indecht and Crunn ba Druí are the closest match to one another generationally speaking, it is possible that their marriage represented the original tradition and that the unions of Sciath and Indiu were later additions.

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Wife of Niall Noígíallach and mother of a number of his children. While the main tradition in the Banshenchas identifies Indiu daughter of Lugaid as the mother of Niall’s sons Éogan, Conall Gulban and Conall Cremthainne the text also includes an alternative tradition that their mother was Rígnach, daughter of Meda son of Ros. Like Indiu, Rígnach was of the Dál Fiatach of Ulster; unlike Indiu, she was not of the main line of that dynasty but rather the less important branch of Uí Echach Arda. No attempt is made by this alternative tradition in the Banshenchas to set the ancestors of the main branches of the Uí Néill apart from those of the lesser ones by giving them different mothers; thus, in addition to Conall Gulban, Conall Cremthainne and Éogan, the alternative tradition includes Énnae, Lóegaire, Coirpre and Maine as the offspring of Rígnach and Niall. Fiachu is the only son of Niall’s whom the alternative tradition explicitly associates with Indiu rather than Rígnach. Conversely, the Middle Irish saga Eachtra Chonaill Gulban, in which Rígnach is portrayed as Niall’s first wife, depicts her as mother of the Southern Uí Néill ancestors – Lóegaire, Maine, Fiachu and Conall Cremthainne – only, naming Indiu as mother of the northern ones. Dobbs and Mac Airt, ‘Conall of Tír Chonaill’, 28; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 111.

Aíbinn daughter of Lugaid son of Ailill Flann Bec ÉOGANACHTA Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 8; Lehmacher, ‘Eachtra Conaill Gulban’, 242.

Possible wife of Niall Noígíallach? In the Middle Irish saga Eachtra Chonaill Gulban Aíbinn is named as the mother of Bóguine son of Niall Noígíallach. The Early Modern Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, which appears to have drawn upon the Eachtra for its information, makes the same identification. All other sources, however, omit any mention either of Aíbinn as Niall’s wife, or indeed of Bóguine as Niall’s son. There is, however, a figure by the name of Énnae Bóguine, eponym of the Donegal dynasty Cenél mBóguine, who was commonly held by the genealogists to be the son of Conall Gulban and thus Niall’s grandson. Although accorded their own separate kingship, Cenél mBóguine were subject to the main line of Cenél Conaill for most of their history. For a brief period, at the end of the eleventh century/ beginning of the twelfth, however, the Cenél mBoguine dynast Ua Murchada became king of Cenél Conaill. 50 It is possible that the tradition identifying Bóguine as the son of Niall rather than of Conall arose out of a desire on the part of the newly powerful dynasty to claim equal status with their Cenél Conaill overlords. Alternatively, the Eachtra’s ‘promotion’ of Énnae Bóguine from grandson to son of Niall may have arisen through confusion of the Cenél Conaill figure with Niall’s more usually attested son by the name of Énnae: the Énnae son of Niall alleged to be ancestor of the Uí Néill dynasty of Cenél nÉnnai. 50

AI 1105.

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Given Énnae Bóguine’s usual identification as the son of Conall Gulban, one wonders if Aíbinn was originally identified as the wife of Conall rather than of his father, Niall. Were this the case, then the tradition of their marriage may have arisen through confusion with (or analogy to) another fifth-century couple named Conall and Aíbinn: Conall Corc, the legendary founder of Cashel, and Aíbinn (Óebfhinn) daughter of the Corcu Loígde king, Óengus Bolg.51 That some sort of connection existed in the minds of the genealogists between Conall Corc and Aíbinn wife of Niall or Conall Gulban is suggested by the identification of both Conall Corc and Aíbinn as the children of the proto-Éoganachta dynast, Lugaid son of Ailill Flann Bec. With such a Munster pedigree, Aíbinn’s marriage to either Niall or Conall would be another alliance between the two halves of the country, Leth Cuinn and Leth Moga. Dobbs and Mac Airt, ‘Conall of Tír Chonaill’, 28.

(i: 12) Loígaire (Lóegaire mac Néill) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL LÓEGAIRI

Angas daughter of Ailill Tassach son of Eochu Liatháin UÍ LIATHÁIN

or daughter of Bressal Brecc LAIGIN Prose Ban. §276; Met. Ban. §147 Stokes, Tripartite Life of Patrick, 46, 60, 464, 556; Pokorny, ‘St. Patrick und Laegaire’s sohn Lugaid’, 43; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 38–43, 46–7; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 304, 329; [RC ] 48, 179, 217; Mulchrone, Bethu Phátraic, 30 ll. 503–7.

Wife of Lóegaire mac Néill (d. 462) and mother of his sons Énnae and Lugaid (d. 507). Angas is the first woman to be named in the Christian section of the metrical versions of the Banshenchas, owing her pride of place to the depiction in the Patrician Lives of Lóegaire’s wife as the first Irish queen to be converted. Following her own conversion, the queen urges her very reluctant spouse to do likewise. In doing so, she is the first of several royal Irish women to fit the Europe-wide reginal paradigm of the believing wife who shall sanctify the unbelieving husband. Angas also plays the role of pious queen in a Middle Irish anecdote revolving around the consequences of a fast Patrick undertakes against Lóegaire. Despite Angas’s pleas, neither the king nor their son – Énnae in the earlier version, Lugaid in the later – will respect the saint by likewise abstaining from food. When the son subsequently chokes to death on a piece of mutton, Angas begs Patrick to restore him to life, promising that both he and his seed will

51

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O’Brien, Corpus, 195.

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serve the saint forever. In response to her pleas, Patrick revives the boy, but refuses Angas’s request that he also bless her other son Lugaid. The above anecdote, and its variants, are the only texts to name Angas as Lugaid’s and Énnae’s mother. All the other sources that mention Angas do so only in the context of her being Lóegaire’s wife. That there is not a particularly strong tradition of Angas as the mother of Lóegaire’s sons is consistent with the fact that neither is there a particularly strong tradition of Angas as Lóegaire’s wife. In the early Latin Lives of Patrick, Lóegaire’s wife remains nameless, and it is not until the later Vita Tripartita that she is called Angas daughter of Ailill Tassach son of Eochu Liatháin. While most versions of the Banshenchas agree with this identification, the Book of Uí Maine prose version names Angas as the daughter of a certain Bressal Brecc from Brega. Unfortunately there is not enough evidence to judge which of the two identifications is most likely to represent the original tradition. The historical candidate most plausibly fitting Uí Maine’s identification of Angas’s father is the Leinster king Bressal Bélach son of Fiachu. Bressal, who died in 436 according to the non-contemporary stratum of the annals, was ancestor of the Uí Dúnlainge and Uí Chennselaig dynasties, and a king of Tara according to the early Leinster regnal poems. Throughout the fifth century the Uí Néill and the Laigin were engaged in constant warfare for control over the plain of Brega. A marriage alliance between Lóegaire and a Leinster princess may thus have been envisioned as a more historical analogue of the legendary union between Cormac mac Airt and Eithne Thóebfhota daughter of Cathaír Már (above, wife of i: 4) that marked the passing of the Tara kingship from the Laigin to the Connachta. The Vita Tripartita’s claim that Lóegaire’s daughter was the wife of the Uí Garrchon king Dricriu indicates a further tradition of intermarriage between Lóegaire’s family and the Laigin.52 Angas’s more usual identification as the daughter of Ailill Tassach of the Munster Uí Liatháin makes her a princess of the Éoganachta, and her marriage to Lóegaire an alliance between the leading dynasties of Leth Cuinn and Leth Moga. In this respect, their union is part of the general pattern of marital alliances between Munster women and kings of Tara that marked the reigns of the early Uí Néill kings and their immediate Connachta predecessors. 53 If Angas’s identity as a Munster princess was a later fabrication intended to portray cooperation between the early dynasties of Tara and Cashel, the choice of an Uí Liatháin origin is an odd one. One would expect her pedigree to be linked to Conall Corc, as were the main families of the Éoganachta, rather than to his less important cousin Eochu Liatháin. One explanation for Angas’s unexpected association with the Uí Liatháin, of course, is that the marriage might actually be genuine, or at least represent a very early tradition. It has been

52 53

Mulchrone, Bethu Phátraic, 113. The later O’Clery genealogies claim that Lóegaire’s own daughter Cuirche was married to Crónán son of Conall Corc of the Éoganachta (Pender, ‘The O Clery Book of Genealogies’, 58: §769).

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suggested that the Uí Liatháin were originally an Érainn dynasty, who were later grafted onto the stem of the Éoganachta.54 During the fifth century when Lóegaire was in power the Érainn would not yet have been entirely superseded by the Éoganachta as the dominant power in Munster. 55 A marriage alliance between them and the Uí Néill would thus have been quite plausible. The tradition that Angas’s brother Bressal had been king of Munster – found in one version of the early text Frithfholad Muman but not in the regnal lists 56 – fits well with such a proposition. While the apparent lateness of the tradition concerning Angas might tell against the probability of its being genuine, it is also true that there is a tendency in Irish hagiography to leave unnamed any queen with whom the saintly hero comes into contact. This occurs even when the queen’s identity is otherwise fairly well attested in the historical record. The omission of Angas from the early Patrician Lives is therefore not necessarily indicative of her name and provenance being a much later invention. If, on the other hand, the tradition of Angas and Lóegaire’s union was indeed a later fabrication, a possible explanation for her ancestry is suggested by the unusual prominence in the historical record of the eighth-century Uí Liatháin princess, Caillech daughter of Dúnchad son of Rónán. Caillech, (below, wife of i: 33) who was married to Cathal mac Finguine, the king of Munster claimed by some sources to have taken the kingship of Ireland, received what was unparalleled attention for a Munster queen in AU at her death in 742. It is within the realm of possiblity that Angas’s Uí Liatháin pedigree entered the Patrician tradition as a reflection of the honour bestowed on the later Munster queen. In this regard, however, it should be noted that while the Vita Tripartita accords special recognition to the ninth-century Munster king Fedelmid son of Crimthann, it makes no reference to Cathal. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 6; Mac Eoin, ‘The mysterious death of Loegaire mac Néill’, 37, 39, 41–3; Byrne, Irish kings, 177–8; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 111.

Muirecht daughter of Eochu Muinremar DÁL RÍATA O’Brien, Corpus, 165; Bieler, Patrician texts, 168–9: 1 (4).

Wife of Lóegaire mac Néill and mother of his son Eochaid Albanach. Of the twelve sons of Lóegaire, Eochaid Albanach is the only one whose mother is named in the genealogies. Lóegaire apparently had two sons called Eochaid, an economy of nomenclature not uncommon in the earlier sections of the Irish genealogies. The need to explain the sobriquet of Albanach which distinguished Muirecht’s son from his similarily named brother is the probable reason for Muirecht’s inclusion in the text. The explanation given is that Muirecht 54 55 56

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Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 6; but see Byrne, Irish kings, 178. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 6. Byrne, Irish kings, 177–8.

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was the daughter of Eochu Muinremar, king of Alba. Some versions of the genealogies go on to say that Eochaid later became king of Alba himself, ruling that land at the same time as his father ruled in Ireland. There is no evidence, however, to support the historicity of either Eochu or Eochaid’s reign. Eochaid Albanach’s rule seems entirely fictitious, while Eochu Muinremar’s is an anachronistic projection of the reign of his descendants as kings of the Dál Ríata kingdom in Scotland. Traditionally, Eochu’s grandson, Fergus Már son of Erc, is considered to be the first king of the Dál Ríata in Scotland. While there is scant evidence for Muirecht’s relatives being kings of Scotland, the tradition that a mother of Lóegaire’s children was from Alba is supported in other sources. In the later middle ages the term Alba came to denote Scotland alone, but before the ninth century it designated Britain as a whole. The possibility that Eochaid Albanach’s mother was British, rather than specifically Scottish, ties in with an early tradition found in the possibly eighth-century Additamenta in the Book of Armagh. There it is related that the mother of Fedelmid son of Lóegaire was ‘a daughter of the king of the Britons, Scoth Noe’. (It is unclear from the syntax whether Scoth Noe was the name of Fedelmid’s wife or that of his father-inlaw.) Fedelmid, in turn, also had a British wife who bore him the child that would grow up to be St Fortchern. Other saintly descendants of Lóegaire associated with lands across the Irish Sea were St Nannid and St Berchán, although their associations were with Dál Ríata rather than Britain. Nannid, who was the son of Lóegaire’s grandsdon Eochu son of Áed, is depicted by his late Latin Life as being from the region of Mull.57 Berchán was said to be the son of Lóegaire’s great-great-grand-daughter Fiamain daughter of Diarmait by her husband Muiredach son of Daig of the Cenél Loairn dynasty of Dál Ríata.58 The explicit identification of one of Lóegaire’s wives as the daughter of Eochu Muinremar may thus be fictitious, but the tradition that she was from Alba may be a very early one. Interpreting Alba to mean Scotland, later genealogists may have concocted the figure of Muirecht, giving her a pedigree that both connected her to the royal line of the Scottish Dál Ríata and placed her in the appropriate generation for a wife of Lóegaire. ‘Muirecht’ does not seem to occur elsewhere as a feminine name, but ‘Murechat’ turns up as a variant spelling for the name of Eochu Muinremar’s grandson, Muiredach son of Erc.59 (i: 13) Corpre (Coirpre mac Néill) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL COIRPRI

Rígnach daughter of Meda son of Ros DÁL FIATACH – UÍ ECHACH ARDA

Mother of Coirpre; see above, wife of Niall Noígíallach i: 11. No wife given for Coirpre. 57 58 59

Colgan, Acta sanctorum Hiberniae, 112 Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 34 (201), 95 (662.136), 176 (63). Anderson, Kings and kingship, 68.

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(i: 14) Ailill (Ailill Molt) CONNACHTA – UÍ FHIACHRACH

Eithne daughter of Conrí Cas FIR DOMNANN? Prose Ban. §274; Met. Ban. §133 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxxvii, 415; O’Donovan, The genealogies, tribes and customs of the Hy-Fiacrach, 97; Stokes, Cóir Anmann, 352–4; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 412–3; III, 42; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 303, 328; [RC ] 48, 179, 216.

Mother of Ailill Molt (d. 482) son of Nath Í. Eithne daughter of Conrí Cas is one of three wives whom tradition ascribes to Ailill’s father, Nath Í son of Fiachrae. Confusion exists over whether Eithne or another of Nath Í’s wives, Ruad daughter of Airtech Uchtlethan (below), was the mother of Ailill Molt; however, Eithne seems to be the choice of the earlier sources. One of these sources, the late Middle Irish Cóir Anmann, explains Ailill’s unusual epithet, molt, by relating that when Eithne was pregnant with Ailill, she had a great craving for the meat of a wether (a castrated ram). When the child was born, the nickname molt, meaning wether, was subsequently attached to him. It is very difficult to identify Eithne’s native dynasty with any certainty, since neither patronymic nor geographical tag accompany her father’s name in the existing record. It is worth noting, though, that a certain Conrí Cas, of the Fir Domnann of Connacht, was said by the thirteenth-century text Cath Boinde to be the father of Tinne, king of Connacht, one of the suitors of Medb Chruachna daughter of Eochu Feidlech.60 If Eithne’s patronymic was deliberately intended to evoke associations with the Fir Domnann, the identification may have been intended to provide Ailill Molt with an ancestry that connected him to both the ancient peoples of Connacht as well as to their Connachta overlords. A king by the name of Conrí also appears in one version of the Uí Fhiachrach genealogies as a son of Fiachrae son of Eochaid.61 Were Eithne to be the daughter of this Conrí, then by marrying Nath Í she would have been marrying her father’s brother. The nearness of their relationship need not rule out the possibility that Eithne’s uncle was the Conrí intended by the Banshenchas. Unions within such close degrees of kinship proliferate in the early segments of the genealogies, and may have been meant to indicate the pureness of Ailill Molt’s line of descent. A final possible identification for Eithne’s father is Conrí son of Fiachrae of the Uí Thuirtri branch of the Airgíalla. This Conrí would belong to the same generation as Nath Í’s father, and the epithet Cas is used of one of his descendants, Cuanu son of Dáire. An

60 61

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O’Neill, Cath Boinde, 176–7. TCD MS no. 1298 (H 2 7) 48a1. I am very grateful to Professor Donnchadh Ó Corráin for making his transcription of these genealogies available to me.

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Airgíalla ancestry would also coincide with the Metrical Banshenchas’s identification of Ailill Molt’s mother as ‘Eithne of Emain’, although it is usually Ind Airthir rather than the Uí Thuirtri branch of the Airgíalla that is associated with Emain Macha. The existence of three possible candidates obscures any definite resolution of the question of Conrí Cas’s identity. On balance, however, the most likely of the trio is probably Conrí Cas of the Fir Domnann. As discussed in the entry below, Conrí’s link to the ancient people of Connacht is echoed by the tribal associations of Airtech Uchlethan, the father of the woman proposed as the alternative mother of Ailill Molt. While certainly not conclusive, the parallel suggests that the Fir Domnann Conrí Cas is most likely to be the man whom tradition considered to be Ailill Molt’s maternal grandfather. Ruad daughter of Airtech Uchtlethan Prose Ban. §275; Met. Ban. §257 O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxxvii, 415; O’Donovan, Tribes and customs of the Hy-Fiacrach, 96–8; Stokes, ‘Rennes Dindshenchas’, 142–3; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 412–3; III, 42; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchaus’, Revue Celtique 48, 179; Gwynn, Metrical dindshenchas, III, 422–5, 555–6; LGen., I, §261.1, 3.

Alternative mother of Ailill Molt (d. 482) son of Nath Í. While the Banshenchas records Eithne daughter of Conrí Cas (above) as the mother of Ailill Molt, the Book of Lecan genealogies name Ruad daughter of Airtech Uchtlethan as his mother. All sources agree, however, that Ruad bore Ailill Molt’s brother, Fiachra Elgach son of Nath Í. This Fiachra was ancestor of Uí Fhiachrach Muaide, the most powerful line within Uí Fhiachrach from the eighth century onwards. The tradition that Ruad was Ailill Molt’s mother possibly arose, then, as a way of associating the dominant line with the member of Uí Fhiachrach said to have attained the kingship of Tara. Ruad also appears as the mother of Amalgaid ‘son of Nath Í’ in the Book of Lecan version of the Dinnshenchas Érenn, but this Amalgaid is more usually depicted as Nath Í’s brother. Tomás Ó Concheannainn has suggested that Ruad’s identification here was an attempt to give credence to the claim that Amalgaid was Nath Í’s son by naming him as the offspring of a woman already accepted as Nath Í’s wife. Ruad further appears in the dinnshenchas as the source of the names of two different hills in Tír Fhiachrach (a territory in bar. Tireragh, Co. Sligo).62 One story relates that Ruad died giving birth to Fiachra Elgach and was buried at Mullach Ruada (Mullaroe, par. Skreen, bar. Tireragh, Co. Sligo). The other, transferring the story of pregnancy inspired cravings for wether flesh to her from Eithne (above), claims that all the wethers brought to satisfy Ruad’s pangs were taken to a certain hill, Tulach na Maíle, which afterwards was renamed Tulach na Molt. 62

Ó Murchadha, Annals of Tigernach index, 186.

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While none of the sources explicitly identify Ruad’s dynastic or regional affiliations, the name which they ascribe to her father – Airtech Uchtlethan son of Fer Coga – is a clear reference to a much earlier figure in Connacht tradition: Airtech Uchtlethan son of Tommintín son of Fer Coga, eponym of the ancient kingdom of Airtech.63 Ruled in the early medieval period by a branch of the Ciarraige, Airtech lay in the north west corner of present-day Co. Roscommon in an area roughly equivalent to the barony of Frenchpark. That Uí Fhiachrach had an interest in this region of Connacht is suggested by an early ninth-century record of their battle with Uí Briúin Aí in the territory of Grecraige to the immediate north of Airtech.64 One understanding of Ruad’s patronymic may thus be that it represents an attempt to associate Uí Fhiachrach with the Airtech region. Airtech Uchlethan’s position in the Connachta genealogies, however, extends much further back into their pedigree than merely his role as father-in-law of Nath Í. Like Conrí Cas, the alternative candidate proposed as Ailill Molt’s maternal grandfather (above, Eithne), Airtech Uchtlethan is usually associated with the reign of the legendary king of Tara Eochu Feidlech. Fifteen generations earlier than Nath Í, Eochu Feidlech is the earliest member of the proto-Connachta to figure in Irish tradition as anything more than simply a name in the genealogies. According to the Banshenchas, several of Airtech Uchtlethan’s daughters were Eochu Feidlech’s brides. One of Airtech’s daughters, Onga, was said to be the mother of Eochu’s daughters Éile and Mumain Aitenchaethrach. Airtech’s other daughter, Crofhinn or Clofhinn, was named as the mother of Eochu’s quadruplets – a daughter Clothra and three sons known as ‘na trí finn Emna’.65 The main line of the proto-Connachta was incestuously propagated through these quadruplets, with Lugaid Riab nDerg, Clothra’s child by her brothers, being the great-great-grandfather of Conn Cétchathach, eponym of the Connachta. Crofhinn is also named in one version of the Banshenchas as the mother of Eochu Feidlech’s daughter Medb Cruachna, the woman traditionally held to be the first member of her dynasty to directly rule Connacht. The identification of Ruad as Airtech Uchtlethan’s daughter may, therefore, have been intended to invoke parallels between Uí Fhiacrach and their protoConnachta forbears, emphasizing Uí Fhiachrach’s ancestral rights to kingship of the province. Ó Concheannainn, ‘Aided Nath Í and Uí Fhiachrach genealogies’, 12–3.

Uchdelb daughter of Óengus son of Nad Froích ÉOGANACHT CHAISIL Prose Ban. §284; Met. Ban. §149 Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 43; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 180.

63 64 65

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Best, ‘The Battle of Airtech’, 176/182; Ann. Loch Cé, 1405, 1553. AU 816.8 Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’ Revue Celtique 48, 171, 208.

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Wife of Ailill Molt (d. 482) and mother of his sons Cellach and Mac Ercae (d. 543). As daughter of the Munster king Óengus son of Nad Froích, Uchdelb’s marriage to Ailill Molt represents yet another alliance between the two halves of Ireland, Leth Moga and Leth Cuinn. Uchdelb only appears in certain versions of the Banshenchas, with the Uí Maine version of the text asserting that it has no knowledge of Ailill’s wife. If her marriage to Ailill was a later fabrication, the overall pattern of Leth Cuinn/Leth Moga intermarriages may have been a general influence on the tradition’s creation, and the marriage alliances of Uchdelb’s female relatives a more specific one. Her aunt, Tres daughter of Nad Froích, was said to have been married to Ailill’s uncle, Amalgaid son of Fiachrae, while her sister Ailinn appears in the Book of Lecan as the wife of Ailill’s successor, Lugaid son of Lóegaire (below, i: 15). Several kings of Connacht were said to have descended from Uchdelb’s son Cellach, while there is a strong possibility that her other son Mac Ercae is the Tara king described as Mac Ercéni in BCC (see Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, above, 178–9). The Book of Lecan version of the Prose Banshenchas follows this tradition, claiming that Uchdelb’s son took the kingship of Ireland. (i: 15) Lugaid (Lugaid mac Lóegairi) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL LÓEGAIRI

Niam daughter of the king of Ulaid Prose Ban. §285 Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 180.

Wife of Lugaid son of Lóegaire (d. 507) and mother of two of his unnamed sons. Although the earlier versions of the Banshenchas explicitly state that they do not know whom Lugaid married, the versions based on the Lecan recension of the text name Niam, daughter of the king of Ulaid, as his wife. The apparent lateness of this entry, combined with the vagueness of a patronymic that identifies her father only as the king of Ulaid, undermines its claims to historical veracity. According to an entry added by a later hand in AU under 483, the son of the king of Dál nAraidi helped Lugaid defeat Ailill Molt at the battle of Ocha. The record of this alliance possibly influenced the tradition of Lugaid and Niam’s marriage. Ailinn daughter of Óengus son of Nad Froích ÉOGANACHT CHAISIL Macalister, Lebor Gabála Érenn, V, 361.

Wife of Lugaid son of Lóegaire (d. 507). The sole record of Ailinn daughter of Óengus (d. 490) as wife of Lugaid occurs in the Book of Lecan version of Lebor Gabála Érenn, where she appears as the unfortunate victim of the cursing of her husband by Patrick. In return for converting to Christianity, Patrick offers Lugaid wheat without ploughing, continual milk in

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his cows, heaven at the end of his life, and good fortune with his dogs, horses and queens. When the king does not accept this generous offer, Patrick curses him and his queen, and from that day forward ‘Tara has been unfortunate in its queens and not yet been fortunate in its dogs’.66 In Patrician tradition, Lugaid’s father Lóegaire is the more usual object of the saint’s curse. Given that on the occasions when Lóegaire’s wife is named, she is normally portrayed as an Éoganachta princess, Lugaid’s substitution for Lóegaire in this story may account for the depiction of Ailinn as a Munster princess. Such an identification would be also be very much in accordance with the spate of marriage alliances between early Uí Néill kings of Tara and women of the Éoganachta. Mac Eoin, ‘The mysterious death of Loegaire mac Néill’, 39.

(i: 16) Mac Ercéni (Mac Ercae) CONNACHTA – UÍ FHIACHRACH

Uchdelb daughter of Óengus son of Nad Froích ÉOGANACHT CHAISIL

Mother of Mac Ercae; see above, wife of Ailill Molt i: 14. No wife given for Mac Ercae. (i: 16a) Muirchertach Mac Ercae UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN

Erc daughter of Loarn DÁL RÍATA Prose Ban. §287; Met. Ban. §151; Book of Lecan 305 rb35 Colgan, Acta sanctorum Hiberniae, 782, c.iv, 1.5; O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.xcii, 430, 431, 471; Hennessy, Book of Fenagh, 36, 330–38; Todd, Leabhar Breathnach, ci–cxi; Skene, Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, 52; Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 297; MacNeill, ‘Poems by Flann Mainistrech’, 70–5; Meyer, ‘Mitteilungen aus Irischen Handschriften: Die Söhne des Fergus macConaill’, 42; O’Kelleher and Schoepperle, Betha Colaim Chille, 10; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 48–9; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 305, 330; [RC] 48, 180, 217; Macalister, Lebor Gabála Érenn, V, 362; Mac Cionnaith, Díoghluim Dána, nos. 64–5, 71; Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 12, 78, 115–19, 196, 203, 238; Van Hamel, Lebor Bretnach, 40–41; Pender, ‘The O Clery Book of Genealogies’, 27; Bannerman, ‘Senchus Fer nAlban’, 92; Williams, The Poems of Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe, 128–35, no. xii; Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 28, 173; LGen., I, §§ 113.1, 121.1–5, 154.5.

Mother of Muirchertach Mac Ercae (d. 534). Erc daughter of Loarn of the Scottish Dál Ríata was celebrated in early and medieval Irish tradition as the wife of Muiredach son of Éogan of Cenél nÉogain and mother of four of his sons: Muirchertach, Móen, Tigernach and Feradach. The mother of a fifth son of Muiredach, St Ruanach (sometimes described as the son of Móen 66

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MacEoin’s translation, ‘The mysterious death of Loegaire mac Néill’, 39.

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son of Muiredach), does not appear in the genealogical record. Several twelfth-century sources further state that a daughter of Loarn named either Erc or Pompa (Babona) was the mother of a certain Máel Umai son of Báetán. Defying generational logic, the saints’ genealogies equate this figure with Máel Umai son of Báetán of Cenél nÉogain (d. 610), Muirchertach Mac Ercae’s grandson. A further tradition claims that Erc also married the Cenél Conaill king Fergus Cennfhota son of Conall Gulban, and bore him four sons: Loarn, Fedelmid, Sétnae and Brénainn. It is highly probable that Erc was not an historical person but a fictitious character who owes her creation to a misunderstanding over the nature of Muirchertach Mac Ercae’s name. Muirchertach Mac Ercae appears to be a composite figure, representing the merging of an early Uí Néill dynasty by the name of Mac Ercae with a – possibly historical – son of Muiredach by the name of Muirchertach (see Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, above, 179–81). ‘Mac Ercae’ here is a proper name, perhaps originally referring to a god or goddess by the name of Erc. Misinterpreting the ‘Mac Ercae’ element of Muirchertach’s composite name as a patronymic, yet understanding his father to be Muiredach son of Éogan, genealogical tradition seems to have circumvented the discrepancy by interpreting ‘Mac Ercae’ as a metronymic instead; thus Erc mother of Muirchertach Mac Ercae was born.67 Understanding why Erc was born in Scotland is a little more complex. The earliest reference to Erc, found within a section of the Laud genealogies possibly dating to the eighth century, accords her no patronymic. Her first appearance as ‘daughter of Loarn’ is in the title of the story of her elopement with Muiredach, Aithed Eirce ingine Loairn re Muiredach mac Eogain. Inclusion of this title in both recensions of the medieval Irish tale-lists indicates that the story of their courtship was current by the tenth century. Unfortunately the saga itself is no longer extant, although an eleventh-century poem by Flann Mainistrech relating the couple’s courtship may provide a guide to its contents. According to the poem, Muiredach was captured in Ireland as a youth and taken to Scotland, where he was enslaved for seven years. After eventually killing his captor, he wooed Erc and eloped with his Scottish bride back across the Irish Sea. If the lost Aithed bore any resemblance to Flann Mainistrech’s poem, then the identification of Loarn and Erc with Scotland was quite likely already in place by the tenth century. The couple’s story is developed further in a possibly twelfth-century addition to Lebor Bretnach, the Irish version of the Historia Britonum. There Erc is described as having been first betrothed to Sarran, king of the Britons. When Muiredach wins Erc away, Sarran settles for her sister, Babona (also known as Pompa), who bears him four sons. These first cousins of Muirchertach Mac Ercae included Sarran’s successor Luirech, and Cairnech, a British saint closely linked with Muirchertach in both saga and hagiographical tradition. 67

Byrne, Irish kings, 102; Herbert, ‘The death of Muirchertach Mac Ercae’, 32 n. 15–16.

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In the Lebor Bretnach version Erc’s father, simply called Loarn by Flann Mainistrech, is named as Loarn son of Erc son of Eochu Muinremar. According to Senchas Fer nAlban, Loarn son of Erc was eponym of Cenél Loairn, one of four important royal lines of the early Dál Ríata in Scotland. The other three lines were likewise said to be descended from sons of Erc son of Eochu Muinremar: Cenél nGabráin and Cenél Comgaill from Fergus Már son of Erc, and Cenél nÓenguso from Óengus son of Erc. For most of the history of the Dál Ríata in Scotland, Cenél nGabráin were the dominant line. Cenél Loairn were occasionally supreme, but the era in which they claimed the kingship was limited to the end of the seventh century and first part of the eighth, with the possible addition of several decades near the end of the ninth.68 Later, about 1100, they once again contested the kingship of Scotland with Cenél nGabráin. Herbert points out that it is at this point that Loarn son of Erc first appears in sources as king as Scotland. While Lebor Bretnach and the Banshenchas explicitly equate Loarn, father of Erc, with this Loarn, king of Scotland, it is unknown if the connection had always been in place. Owing to the shared ancestry of the Dál Ríata royal lineages, the name Erc would have been strongly associated with Scotland in the minds of the Irish learned classes. This association may be one reason why the character of Erc, mother of Muirchertach, came to be portrayed as a member of the Dál Ríata. The tradition whereby the early kings of the Connachta and Uí Néill were often depicted as the sons of overseas women may have been a further influence on her Scottish profile. As Herbert points out, another possible explanation is that Erc’s ancestry was a piece of political propaganda fabricated in order to connect the Irish and Scottish kingships in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. If so, given Erc’s specific portrayal as a daughter of Loarn, one might expect the invention to date to a time when Cenél Loairn actually held, or were keenly competing for, power in Scotland.69 The other possible reason for Erc’s identification as a daughter of Loarn is that her legend may have been drawing upon a genuine tradition of intermarriage between the early Cenél nÉogain and Cenél Loairn. The main evidence for this argument is the assertion made by two different twelfth-century sources that a daughter of Loarn was the mother of Muirchertach’s grandson, Máel Umai son of Báetán.70 While there are difficulties with this claim,71 a record in Ann. Tig. (= AU 600) stating that Máel Umai fought alongside the 68 69 70

71

268

Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, 55–8. Herbert, ‘Sea-divided Gaels?’, 92–3. The tract on the mothers of Irish saints states that Erc was Máel Umai’s mother (§§ 163, 722.28), while the Book of Uí Maine version of the Prose Banshenchas claims that his mother was Erc’s sister, Pompa (Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 224; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., §380). The Uí Maine Prose Banshenchas alternately suggests that Máel Umai’s mother may have been a woman called Nindead, though admits that Nindead was possibly the mother of Máel Umai’s son, Cellach, instead. In addition to the problems caused by the lateness of the tradition and the confusion over which of Loarn’s daughters was Máel Umai’s mother, there is a significant chronological discrepancy between Máel Umai’s

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Dál Ríata king Áedán son of Gabrán at the decisive battle of Degsastan in 603 against the Northumbrians makes it clear that the Cenél nÉogain dynast had close ties of some sort with Dál Ríata. In light of the claims made about Máel Umai’s pedigree, possibly these were ties of kinship to Cenél Loairn. If so, then the tradition of Máel Umai’s maternal lineage may have been transferred to his more famous paternal grandfather, Muirchertach Mac Ercae. In the pre-Norman Irish sources there are several instances where Máel Umai and Muirchertach Mac Ercae are confused with one another. 72 Perhaps their shared kinship with Cenél Loairn was yet another example of the merging of their identities. Further evidence of intermarriage between the two dynasties is provided by the record in the Senchas Fer nAlban of a marriage between Éogan Garb son of Fergus Salach son of Loarn of Dál Ríata and Cródu daughter of Dallán son of Éogan of the Cenél Dalláin branch of Cenél nÉogain.73 In the same way that a sixth-century marriage alliance between Cenél nÉogain and Dál Ríata may have prompted the original tradition of Erc’s ancestry, so ninth- and tenthcentury marriage alliances between the two dynasties may have prompted the creation of her elopement tale. We cannot know what elements of the later Erc tradition were already present in the lost Aithed Eirce; however, it is possible that, like the version contained in the Lebor Bretnach, the Aithed Eirce claimed that Erc’s sister Babona married the British king Sarran. There are very interesting echoes between Erc’s and Babona’s marriages and the unions contracted by another pair of sisters from Dál Ríata, the daughters of the ninthcentury Scottish king Cináed son of Ailpín. Just as Erc married the Cenél nÉogain dynast Muiredach, so also did Cináed’s daughter Máel Muire (d. 913) marry the Cenél nÉogain king of Tara, Áed Finnliath son of Niall Caille (d. 879).74 Máel Muire’s son by Áed Finnliath, Niall Glúndub, later became king of Tara himself, succeeding Máel Muire’s second husband, the Clann Cholmáin king of Tara, Flann Sinna son of Máel Sechnaill (d. 916). Similarly, just as Babona married the British king Sarran, so did Máel Muire’s sister marry the British ruler Rhun ap Artgal, king of Strathclyde.75 According to some, though not all, Scottish sources, the son of the latter couple, Eochaid ap Rhun, briefly succeeded his maternal uncle Áed son of Cináed as king of Scotland in 879. Intriguingly, the blood relationship between Áed son of Cináed and Eochaid ap Rhun

72

73 74 75

early seventh-century obit and Loarn’s supposedly early fifth-century floruit. It is possible, however, that the identification of Máel Umai’s maternal grandfather was not meant to be taken literally but rather to be understood as an indication of his membership of Cenél Loairn. The confusion occurs in the Cenél nÉogain genealogies contained in TCD MS no. 1298 (H 2 7) and in a poem by Flann Mainistrech. There Scandal son of Muirchertach is identified as the son of Máel Umai at poem III, §13. Furthermore, the same deed attributed to Máel Umai by a gloss on poem III, §14 is attributed to Muirchertach in poem V, §11 (MacNeill, ‘Poems by Flann Mainistrech’, 75 n. 11). Bannerman, Studies in the history of the Dalriada, 43, 128. Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’ Revue Celtique 47, 311, 335; [RC ] 48, 186, 187, 225. Anderson, Early sources of Scottish history, I, 363; Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, 55.

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which presumably enabled this succession was identical to that between Áed son of Cináed and Niall Glúndub. It is tempting to hypothesise that, cognisant of the correspondence, the author of the Aithed wrote a tale stressing the kinship between the royal lines of Cenél nÉogain and Scotland. Before embracing this hypothesis, however, one should note a major parallel lacking in the tale: Cináed son of Ailpín was from Cenél nGabráin and not Cenél Loairn. That said, if the notion of Muirchertach Mac Ercae as Loarn’s grandson predated the tale’s composition, then the author may have had to work within the limitations presented by pre-existing tradition, contenting himself with having at least the broad lines of the dynastic comparison in place. Niall Glúndub’s own marriage alliances present further similarities to the Erc legend. The Book of Lecan version of the Prose Banshenchas claims that one of Niall’s wives was Lann daughter of Eochu of Dál Ríata, and it has been suggested that this Eochu and Eochaid ap Rhun were one and the same. 76 The Book of Lecan Prose Banshenchas further claims that Lann was mother of Niall’s son Muirchertach of the Leather Cloaks. Muirchertach was an extremely powerful king of Ailech who became king of Tara in all but name before his premature death in 943. If the claim is accurate, then the similarities between the two situations are striking, both featuring Scottish princesses whose husbands were Irish kings and whose sons by the name of Muirchertach grew up to become the most mighty men in the land. All other versions of the Banshenchas, however, claim that Muirchertach of the Leather Cloaks’ mother was Ailinn, daughter of the Dál Fiatach king of Ulster, Ainbíth son of Áed.77 Perhaps, then, the cultural force of the Erc story was so strong that it prompted the Lecan redactor to model history after legend, falsely identifying Muirchertach of the Leather Cloaks as the son of Niall’s Scottish wife. The final developments in the Erc legend revolve around the tradition that after her husband Muiredach’s death Erc married the Cenél Conaill dynast Fergus Cennfhota son of Conall Gulban and bore him four sons: Loarn, Fedelmid, Sétnae and Brénainn. Since Sétnae was the ancestor of most of the kings of Cenél Conaill, Erc thus become ancestress of the royal lines of both Cenél nÉogain and Cenél Conaill. This relationship bound the Northern Uí Néill together more exclusively than did the more diffuse kinship through Niall Noígíallach which supposedly linked all septs of the Uí Néill.78 As Fedelmid was the father of Colum Cille, Erc also became the saint’s grandmother by this tradition. Such a connection would have provided Colum Cille with a Dál Ríata ancestry and thus a pre-established connection to the country of his exile. No doubt this association is why Mághnus Ó Domhnaill describes Erc as Colum Cille’s grandmother in the limited genealogical information he records about 76 77 78

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Hudson, Kings of Celtic Scotland, 56. Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 312, 336; [RC ] 48, 187, 226. See Indiu above, (wife of i: 11) for a similar stress on the shared ancestry of the two Northern Uí Néill dynasties.

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the saint at the beginning of his sixteenth-century Life of the saint. St Cairnech is the other saint whose familial connections are extended by the tradition of Erc’s second marriage, with several of the sources making much of the saint’s relationship through his aunt to both Cenél Conaill and Cenél nÉogain. It is difficult to say with any certainty at what point the notion of a marriage between Erc and Fergus Cennfhota entered into the traditions surrounding the Dál Ríata princess. The story of Erc’s marriage to both Fergus and Muiredach receives fullest elaboration in a poem published in the Book of Fenagh and attributed elsewhere to Flann Mainistrech (d. 1065). Some doubts about the attribution might be occasioned by the fact that the previously mentioned Flann Mainistrech poem relating Erc’s courtship with Muiredach makes no reference to her relationship with the Cenél Conaill king; however, in terms of the actual language, there is nothing in the Book of Fenagh poem that could be characterized as inconsistent with Flann’s authorship.79 If the Flann Mainistrech attribution is correct, then the tradition of Erc’s marriage to Fergus Cennfhota would have been in place by the mideleventh century. Given that throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries there are intermittent annalistic references to a joint-kingship of Cenél Conaill and Cenél nÉogain, then perhaps one can look to the politics of the day for the origins of the tradition stressing the joint ancestry of the two dynasties throught Erc.80 Dobbs, ‘References to Erc daughter of Loarn in Irish mss’, 50–7; Nic Dhonnchadha, Aided Muirchertaig Meic Erca, xi–xiv; Anderson, Sources of Scottish history, I, 2–4, 24, 29; Byrne, Irish kings, 102; Bannerman, Studies in the history of the Dalriada, 127–8; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 106; Mac Cana, Learned tales of medieval Ireland, 46, 57; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 310; Ó Floinn, ‘Sandhills, silver and shrines’, 128–31; Herbert, ‘Sea-divided Gaels?’, 92; Herbert, ‘The death of Muirchertach Mac Erca’, 32 n. 30.

Duisech daughter of Duí Tenga Umai UÍ BRIÚIN Prose Ban. §296; Met. Ban. §161 Ann. Tig. (= AU 502); Chron. Scot. s.a. 497; AFM s.a. 499; Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 17; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 72–3; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 306, 330; [RC] 48, 181, 218; Nic Dhonnchadha, Aided Muirchertaig Meic Erca, 1–4, 6, 29; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Gormlaith and her sisters’, 213–8.

Wife of Muirchertach Mac Ercae (d. 534) and mother of a number of his sons. According to the Banshenchas, Duisech was responsible for causing the battle of Segais between her husband,

79 80

I am extremely grateful to Dr Dóra Püdór for comparing the language of the Book of Fenagh poem to that of the poems attributed to Flann Mainistrech in the Book of Leinster. AI 1003.7, 1033.15, 1062.2, 1113.7; AU 1113.5, 1197. It should be noted that the eleventh-century claims for a joint-kingship are made only in AI.

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Muirchertach Mac Ercae, and her father, the Uí Briúin king of Connacht, Duí Tenga Umai. A similar story is told by a verse attached to the entry for the battle in several of the annals, although neither the verse nor the Banshenchas go into any detail. The story receives fuller elaboration in AFM and Keating’s Foras feasa ar Éireann which relate that Muirchertach Mac Ercae had acted as guarantor for the safety of his wife’s foster-father and uncle, Eochu Tirmcharna, brother of Duí Tenga Umai. When Duí killed his brother Eochu, Duisech urged her husband to avenge his death, thus causing the battle in which her father died.81 In the genealogies, the brothers mark the point where the line of Uí Briúin Seóla, descended from Duí, was said to diverge from the line of Uí Briúin Aí, descended from Eochu. In the second half of the eleventh century, Uí Briúin Aí and Uí Briúin Seóla were locked in a bitter rivalry and it is possible that it was during this period that the story of the fratricide entered into the traditions concerning the battle of Segais. With regard to the main adversaries in the battle, it has been suggested that the Uí Fhiachrach king Mac Ercae son of Ailill Molt was Duí Tenga Umai’s original opponent in this battle and that his deeds were later transferred to Muirchertach Mac Ercae (see Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, above, 179–81). If so, it is possible that the identity of his wife may have been similarly transferred, and that Duisech was originally portrayed as the wife of the Connacht Mac Ercae. In that case, their union would have marked an alliance, albeit an unsuccessful one, between Uí Briúin and Uí Fhiachrach, the two main powers in Connacht at the time. By the time of the twelfth-century tale Aided Muirchertaig Meic Erca, however, Duisech’s association is firmly with the Cenél nÉogain king of the story’s title. Her role in the tale is that of the established wife displaced by the advent of a new and beguiling consort for the king. When Duisech, her children and the Uí Néill themselves are ordered out of the court at the behest of the seductress Sín (below), they seek refuge with the queen’s confessor, St Cairnech of Tuilén. As Herbert suggests, the story’s portrayal of Cairnech’s outrage on behalf of the ousted Duisech possibly reflects clerical concern at the uncanonical marriages of Irish royalty during a period when marital practices were very much on the reformers’ agenda. Despite her treatment at the hands of her unfaithful husband, Duisech laments Muirchertach when he dies as a result of Sín’s enchantment, and follows him to the grave through grief at her loss. Although Duisech’s children by Muirchertach are not explicitly identified in the saga, elsewhere they are generally reckoned to include Domnall ancestor of the main royal line of Cenél nÉogain and king of Tara according to the Middle Irish regnal lists. While the sources agree on Domnall, they present no consensus concerning the identity of Duisech’s remaining 81

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children. Some versions of the Banshenchas include Fergus and Báetán, the other two sons of Muirchertach portrayed as kings of Tara by the Middle Irish regnal lists, while others name only Eochu Finn. According to the genealogies, however, this Eochu Finn was the grandson, rather than the son, of Muirchertach. The fact that the Middle Irish regnal lists depict Eochu Finn as joint king of Tara with Báetán son of Muirchertach could possibly account for the confusion. Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban.,106; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 310–11; McCone, Pagan past, 147–8; Bitel, Land of women, 217–18; Herbert, ‘The death of Muirchertach Mac Erca’, 29–31.

Sín daughter of Síge son of Dian DÉSSI TEMRO Ann. Tig. (= AU 533); Chron. Scot. s.a. 531; Ann. Clon. s.a. 539; AFM s.a. 527; Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 15; Nic Dhonnchadha, Aided Muirchertaig Meic Erca, 1–4, 6, 29; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Gormlaith and her sisters’, 213–8.

Lover of Muirchertach Mac Ercae (d. 534). In many ways the character of Sín in the deathtale of Muirchertach Mac Ercae is that of the consummate femme fatale, first leading the king away from his wife and family and then leading him to his death. Her portrayal in the text is nonetheless a rather complicated and ambiguous one, resisting easy classification on several fronts. Chief among her contradictions is her human status. There is much about Sín’s depiction to suggest Otherwordly origins, and Máire Bhreathnach has suggested that she represents the death-dealing aspect of the sovereignty goddess figure. In addition to the enchantments she conjures to amaze and eventually kill Muirchertach, her fairy identity is suggested by the dynamics of her first meeting with the king, and by her desire for anonymity, veiled by a catalogue of unsettling names like ‘winter’s night’ and ‘storm’ which she gives when Muirchertach asks her who she is. Even Muirchertach himself says that she seems like a goddess of great power. At the same time, however, there is an undeniably human side to Sín. In the very verses where she boasts of her ability to work wonders, she unequivocally states that she is the daughter of a man and a woman, from the race of Adam and Eve. When she eventually tells St Cairnech her true identity following Muirchertach’s death, this claim is substantiated by the revelation that she is the daughter of Síge son of Dian son of Trén of the sentúatha of Tara. Her father, mother and sister were killed by Muirchertach in the battle of Cerb, and she avenged them by setting in motion Muirchertach’s death. Síge does not appear in the genealogies, nor is there an historical record of the battle of Cerb. However, according to Sín, Cerb was the older name for Áth Sige on the River Boyne, which is clearly the source for Sín’s patronymic, and which appears in the annals as the location of a conflict between Muirchertach Mac Ercae and the Laigin in 528/533. Sín’s father also makes an appearance in

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the verses attached to Muirchertach’s death notice in several annals, which identify him as the sub-king or airech of Niall, the Southern Uí Néill being presumably intended. Further contradictions in Sín’s character include her mixed reactions to both the church and Muirchertach. Despite her vehement opposition to all clerics in general, and to St Cairnech in particular, she seeks confession from the saint at the end of the story and is given a Christian burial following her death. As this death is said to be caused by her grief for Muirchertach, the ambivalence of her feelings for the king are thus effectively demonstrated. By dying of sorrow at his death, Sín follows the course set by Duisech, her lover’s rightful queen (above). As McCone remarks, in a story which strongly emphasises the conflict between the pagan and Christian ethos, the two women might be seen as representing opposing paradigms of queenship: the sovereignty goddess on the one hand, and the pious wife, aligned firmly with the church, on the other. Nic Dhonnchadha, Aided Muirchertaig Meic Erca, xvi–xii; Rees and Rees, Celtic heritage, 338–41; Bhreathnach, ‘The sovereignty goddess as goddess of death?’, 243–60; O Hehir, ‘The Christian revision of Eachtra Airt, 168; Radner, ‘The significance of the threefold death’, 195–8; McCone, Pagan past, 147–8; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 310–11; Bitel, Land of women, 217–18; Herbert, ‘The death of Muirchertach Mac Erca’, 28–31, 35; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Gormlaith and her sisters’, 213.

Daughter of the king of the Franks Todd, Historia Britonum, 186–7; Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 14; Van Hamel, Lebor Bretnach, 41; LGen., I, §113.5.

Mother of four sons of Muirchertach Mac Ercae. According to a possibly twelfth-century addition to Lebor Bretnach, Muirchertach’s overseas career before becoming king of Tara included a relationship with the wife of his cousin, Luirech son of Sarran, king of the Britons. In response to a plea for help from Luirech’s brother, St Cairnech, Muirchertach killed the British king for infringing upon the saint’s property rights. He then assumed the sovereignty of Wales, England, Caithness, and Orkney, and assumed Luirech’s wife as well. In Lebor Bretnach this woman is identified as daughter of the king of the Franks, while the author of Early Modern Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe calls her daughter of the Emperor. Presumably the switch in her father’s title is explained by a back-projection to Merovingian times of the later designation of the Frankish realm as the Holy Roman Empire. Luirech’s wife was said to have borne Muirchertach four sons, two of whom – Néillíne and Scandal – became ancestors of septs of Cenél nÉogain in Ireland. Neither sept, however, was to be as successful as those descended from the children of Muirchertach attributed to Erc. The other two sons – Constantine and Gáedel Fichet (named Arsidinus in Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe) – were said to be the ancestors of the kings of Wales and Cornwall respectively (Wales and England in Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe). In his edition of the Historia Britonum Todd identifies

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this Constantine with the Cornish king St Constantine ap Cador, and Gáedel Fichet with Gwyddyl Fichti, the name for the Northern Picts of Britain. The tradition of Muirchertach’s relationship with Luirech’s wife seems quite late, appearing in none of the pre-Norman genealogies or the Banshenchas, and may reflect the strong ties between Ireland and the Continent in the twelfth century. While her continental ancestry marks Luirech’s wife as unusual in the pedigree of the Uí Néill, the Banshenchas records one other Frankish princess: Cessair Cruthach, wife of Ugaine Már, whose sons Lóegaire Lorc and Cobthach Cóel Breg were said to mark the point where the Laigin’s line of descent cleaved from the main line of what was to become the Connachta.82 (i: 17) Óengarb (Tuathal Máelgarb) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL COIRPRI

Cumman Maine daughter of Dallbrónach DÉSSI OF BREGA – DÁL CONCHOBAIR Prose Ban. §288; Met. Ban. §152 AFM s.a. 664; Colgan, Acta sanctorum Hiberniae, 337, 339 n. 17; Stokes, Cóir Anmann, 402; Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 334 n; Best and Lawlor, Martyrology of Tallaght, 26–7; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 50–53; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 305, 330; [RC ] 48, 180, 217; Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts, 180; Fraser and Grosjean, ‘Genealogies of saints’, Irish Texts, III, 104; Mulchrone, Bethu Phátraic, 53; Dillon, ‘Laud Misc. 610’, 198–9; Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 169–70; LGen., II, §695.3.

Mother of Tuathal Máelgarb (d. 544) son of Cormac Cáech of Cenél Coirpri. The unnamed mother of Tuathal Máelgarb features in an explanation of his epithet in the late Middle Irish Cóir Anmann that appears to be a variation on the motif of the artificially delayed birth (see below, Eithne, mother of ii: 10). Here, while waiting for a propitious hour in which to perform a ceremony for her newly-born son, his mother rests (or, in some versions, jams) Tuathal’s head against a rough stone. Uneven indentations in which no hair would grow ensue, thus inspiring the soubriquet máelgarb ‘bald-rough’. While Tuathal’s mother is unidentified in the various versions of this anecdote, other sources name her as Cumman Maine daughter of Dallbrónach of the Dál Conchobair sept of Déssi Breg. In these sources Tuathal is only one of a vast list of progeny ascribed to Cumman. A verse in the Metrical Banshenchas relates that Cumman was the mother of seventy-seven children, all of them saints and virgins with the sole exception of Tuathal. The Banshenchas fails to list this great brood, but the tract on the mothers of Irish saints names forty-two of her sons and daughters by twenty-seven different fathers. Once again, almost all are identified as saints with the exception of Tuathal and his half-brother Ailill son of

82

Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 294, 320; [RC ] 48, 170, 206.

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Mochta. A similar list of Cumman’s saintly offspring occurs in both the Irish and Latin Lives of St Farannán.83 The tract on the mothers of Irish saints attributes this prolific output to St Patrick’s blessing Cumman’s womb with his crozier. At the time Cumman was said to have been pregnant with Bishop Maine of Tír nAilello, a tradition that could possibly explain the ‘Maine’ element of her name.84 Alternatively, Maine may refer to Maine son of Niall Noígíallach, ancestor of Cenél Maini. In Bethu Phátraic Maine asks Patrick to bless both his (unnamed) concubine and the child whom she is carrying in her womb. Patrick begins the benediction, presumably believing the child to be Maine’s, and continues, albeit reluctantly, once he realises that the unborn babe is in fact Tuathal Máelgarb, grandson of the accursed Coirpre son of Niall.85 Clearly, the purported brother–sister relationship between Cumman’s brood is meant metaphorically rather than biologically. The logistics of bearing forty-two children to twentyseven fathers quite aside, chronological discrepancies, and the fact that, even within the tract on saints’ mothers, alternative mothers are given for some of Cumman’s children, indicate that their uterine kinship was not meant to be taken literally.86 The key to understanding the true nature of the bond which the kinship through Cumman was meant to convey must lie in the passage immediately following the final enumeration of Cumman’s children in the tract on the mothers of Irish saints. This section explains that the troop of fraternal saints met at Carn Tráchta Eothaile (near Ballysadare, bars. Leyney and Tirerril, Co. Sligo), where they made some sort of pact meant to last till judgement day. Unfortunately, while the punishments for breaking the agreement are listed, its terms are not. It is thus impossible to reconstruct the true nature of the alliance with any certainty. However, it undoubtedly has some connection with the fact that, excepting two figures from Ulster – St Monenna and her secular brother Ailill son of Mochta – most of the offspring ascribed to Cumman are associated with churches in Connacht (particularly the northern part of the province), the midlands and north Munster. Given this geographical distribution, a very tenative explanation for the alliance is that it 83

84 85 86

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The Irish version of Farannán’s life expunges Tuathal from the list and instead names Áed mac Ainmerech, probably for chronological reasons (see Africa, Politics of kin, 137–8). I am grateful to Dorothy Africa for granting me permission to use her doctoral thesis for this entry. ‘Maine’ could also be a geographical reference, given the links which some of Cumman’s children had to lands near Uí Maine and Cenél Maini territories. Mulchrone, Bethu Phátraic, 53; Africa, Politics of kin, 132; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 33–4. The acknowledged existence of an alternative tradition for the mother of one of Cumman Maine’s children, St Senán, led to some interesting onomastic gymnastics on the part of the post-Norman genealogists. Accomodating the tradition that Cumman was Senán’s mother with the alternative tradition that his mother was Fionmaith daughter of Báetán, king of Corco Duibne, the genealogies state that Fionmaith was simply another name for Cumman (like Cumman, Fionmaith was said to be the mother of many different saints by many different fathers). They then go on to explain that Cumman’s patronymic, which identifies her as the daughter of Dallbrónach rather than Báetán, was the result of Dallbrónach being her foster-father (Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts, 180).

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could have been a pact against Clonmacnoise, the one major church whose position might have led it to have interests in these areas. Tírechán’s Collectanea asserts that in the years following the devastation wrought by the plague, Clonmacnoise was forcibly claiming jurisdiction over churches with Patrician associations. 87 It is worth noting that Senchell Dumiche the church Tírechán specifically names as a victim of Clonmacnoise aggression, is located in Shankill, north Co. Roscommon, close to the densest concentration of churches associated with Cumman’s children. In the light of Clonmacnoise’s notorious hostility to Tuathal as reflected in its foundation story, the possibility that the saints’ pact represents a seventh-century coalition of churches against Clonmacnoise may also go some way towards explaining the king’s association with the saintly collective. Another possibility is that Cenél Coirpi – the kingdom containing the greatest number of churches involved in the meeting at Trácht Eothaile – may have given secular backing to the pact. If so, Tuathal could have been chosen to symbolise that support both because of his sixth-century floruit and his reputation as that dynasty’s most powerful king. The possession of a large number of pious siblings appears to have been an hereditary trait in Cumman’s family. According to the tract on the mothers of Irish saints, Cumman was one of seven daughters of Dallbrónach who were all either mothers of saints or saints themselves. The most famous of the sisters was Broicsech, whom the tract identifies as the mother of St Brigit. Brigit’s subsequent kinship to Tuathal is emphasised in the Metrical Banshenchas which explicitly, if incorrectly, identifies Cumman as the Kildare saint’s sister (As daughter of Dallbrónach, Brigit would be Cumman’s niece and thus Tuathal’s cousin). No such relationship, however, is found in any of the Brigidine Lives, which depict their heroine as the contemporary of Tuathal’s grandfather, Coirpre son of Niall. It has been suggested that the original intent behind the genealogical schema of Dallbrónach’s family was to strengthen Kildare’s ties with the midland churches associated with his daughters.88 While this seems to be a valid proposition, the complete absence of any reference to the Kildare saint within the list of Cumman’s children suggests that the story of the Trácht Eothaile pact may only have been pressed into service as Brigidine propaganda at a later stage of its development. Possibly Tuathal is the link explaining how Cumman’s offspring came to be connected with the family of Dallbrónach. In addition to strengthening ties with ecclesiastical institutions in the midlands, there may also have been a desire on Kildare’s part to strengthen links with secular midland powers (below, Brea, wife of i: 20). This desire may have led to Tuathal’s inclusion as a descendant of Dallbrónach. Tuathal’s – possibly prior – association with the Carn Tráchta Eothaile saints may then have resulted in 87 88

Bieler, Patrician texts, 142–3. Africa, Politics of kin, 121.

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their subsequent attachment to the family of Dallbrónach. Since another of Dallbrónach’s daughters was said to have been Fedelm, mother of St Íte of Cluain Credail, a further consequence of the attachment of Cumman’s offspring to the family of Dallbrónach was that the three pre-eminent female saints of Ireland – Íte, Brigit, and Monenna – were linked to one another as first cousins through the female line. Again, this relationship is not recorded in any Lives of the relevant saints. Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 91–2; Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 221; Africa, Politics of kin, 118–49; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 33–4.

No wife given for Tuathal Máelgarb. (i: 18) Áed (Áed Sláine) UÍ NÉILL

Mugain daughter of Conchraid son of Duí UÍ DUACH ARGATROIS Prose Ban. §292; Met. Ban. §157 Windisch, Geinemain Áeda Sláine, 194, 201–6; Stokes, Cóir Anmann, 342–4; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 74, 81–4; II, 78–9, 86–9; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 114–15; Plummer, Vitae, I, 39; Plummer, Bethada, I, 189–90; II, 86–7; Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, 133–6; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 305, 330; [RC] 48, 180, 217; Dobbs, ‘Miscellany from H.2.7’, 311; Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, III, 590–1; Heist, Vitae, 173; O’Brien, Corpus, 222; LGen., III, §780.5.

Mother of Áed Sláine (d. 604) son of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565). Mugain daughter of Conchraid son of Duí is traditionally portrayed as the queen of Diarmait mac Cerbaill who bore his son Áed Sláine. While some strands of the tradition also name Mugain as the mother of Diarmait’s son Colmán Már, the latter’s mother is more usually depicted as Eithne daughter of Brénainn of Connacht. Since Eithne herself appears in some variant traditions as the mother of Áed Sláine, confusion clearly existed as regards the identities and roles of the two women. A similar uncertainty surrounds Mugain’s dynastic affiliation. Her father, Conchraid son of Duí, belonged to the Uí Duach of Munster, a dynasty that appears to have been originally regarded as Corcu Loígde, but later were designated as Éoganachta. 89 As such, Mugain’s marriage to Diarmait is another in the series of marital alliances between Munster dynasties and the early Uí Néill/Connachta kings of Tara. Some sections of the genealogies graft the Uí Duach onto the Éoganachta stem at an early stage, preceding the differentiation of that dynasty into its various branches. Others graft them at a point several generations down the line, attaching them to the pedigree of Éoganacht Locha Léin. Such variety, it has been 89

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suggested, accounts for why Mugain is described in the genealogies as a princess of Éoganacht Locha Léin and by the twelfth-century Life of St Brendan as a princess of Éoganacht Chaisil. 90 Skirting the issue, the Middle Irish prose tale Geinemain Áeda Sláine take refuge in a vague categorisation of Conchraid as being from Fir Muman ‘the men of Munster’. A completely different twist is added by the Middle Irish poem narrating the birth of Áed Sláine that locates Mugain’s origins in south Munster in its first verse, and in Connacht in its last verse. It is this Connacht version of Mugain’s ancestry that is followed by the Banshenchas. It has been plausibly proposed that the contradictiory claims concerning Mugain’s origin are due to the confusion arising over whether Áed Sláine’s mother was Mugain of Munster or the Connacht woman, Eithne daughter of Brénainn.91 Regardless of Uí Duach origins, in terms of the strategic importance of Mugain’s marriage to Diarmait it is noteworthy that Conchraid son of Duí was the first of seven successive kings of his dynasty said to have taken over the kingship of Osraige. As Diarmait began the process of carving out a midlands kingdom for himself and his descendants, a friendly power positioned on the western flank of Leinster would have been a useful ally. Mugain plays a significant role in the saga and hagiographical traditions surrounding Diarmait mac Cerbaill. In the probably twelfth-century Irish Life of St Brendan, she plays the part of a pious Christian queen, vainly urging her husband to give in to the demands of the saints blockading Tara with their curses. It is only when Mugain has a prophetic dream in which a tree symbolising Tara is hacked down by an axe representing Brendan that Diarmait gives into the saints’ demands. Mugain’s advice also goes unheeded in Diarmait’s death-tale. Remembering a prophecy made years earlier when she was pregnant with Áed Sláine, Mugain refuses to accompany her husband to the house of Banbán the hospitaller. Ignoring his wife’s pleas that he too should stay at home, Diarmait accepts the hospitaller’s invitation, thereby setting in motion the bizarre train of circumstances leading to his death. Mugain’s most featured part in the lore surrounding Diarmait is in the legends associated with the birth of Áed Sláine. In the earliest account of this story, narrated within the possibly eighth-century Life of Áed mac Bricc,92 the sterile Mugain asks the saint to pray that she might conceive a child. Áed blesses her, and she gives birth first to a lamb, which, according to the saint, was to consecrate her womb; second to a silver fish which Mugain distributes to churches and to the poor; and third, and finally, to Áed Sláine who – the saint prophesies – was destined to be mighty. The Middle Irish prose tale Geinemain Áeda Sláine elaborates greatly upon this episode, explaining Mugain’s desire to have a child as the consequence of her fear that Diarmait would put her aside if she did not conceive. In this version Mugain is just one of several wives 90 91 92

Ibid., 99. Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 100. Áed’s life is part of the ‘O’Donoghue’ group of lives from the Codex Salamanticensis dated by Richard Sharpe to the mid-eighth to mid-ninth century (Sharpe, Medieval Irish saints’ lives, 329).

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of Diarmait living concurrently at the court, some of whom already had children. Polygamy was a legally sanctioned institution in early Irish society, and while the tale’s implication that several of the king’s partners had reginal equal status seems unlikely, the tensions the Geinemain depicts between royal wives, especially with regard to their children, corresponds to what we know of multiple royal marriages in early medieval England and Francia.93 Although Áed mac Bricc is present in the Geinemain, it is St Finnian of Moville who miraculously brings about Mugain’s first two pregnancies by having her drink water he had blessed. The third birth, that of a human boy, is accomplished by first blessing her and then having her both drink and wash herself with holy water. One commentator has pointed out that Diarmait seems to have precious little to do with his wife’s pregnancies here, comparing the reproduction dynamic to the sexless procreation found in the conception tales of Cú Chulainn and Conaire Már, albeit under Christian supervision. 94 Professor Mac Cana, who proposed that Mugain, Mór Muman and the Éoganacht Locha Léin princess Mugain daughter of Fiachnae are different localisations of the same Érainn goddess,95 interprets the queen’s ancestral role here as the embodiment of the sovereignty goddess in her maternal aspect. Stressing the importance of the mother as ancestor is particularly apt in the case of Síl nÁedo Sláine. In the mid-tenth century their ruler Congalach Cnogba (d. 956) briefly restored the dynasty to pre-eminence after two centuries of being shut out of the Tara kingship. Congalach’s ability to succeed as the first non-Cenél nÉogain or Clann Cholmáin king in a couple of centuries may have been linked to the fact that his mother, Lígach, was daughter of the Clann Cholmáin king of Tara, Flann Sinna, and sister of Congalach’s predecessor in the kingship, Donnchad Donn.96 According to the Lecan version of the Prose Banshenchas only, Mugain was also the wife of her grandson Diarmait Ruanaid son of Áed Sláine. That version similarly depicts Eithne daughter of Brénainn as the wife of successive generations of Síl nÁedo Sláine kings (below). Rather than an indication that Mugain was understood to embody the uxorial as well as maternal aspect of the sovereignty goddess, however, Lecan’s record of Mugain’s marriage to the younger Diarmait appears to have arisen out of a simple misreading of ‘ben Diarmata mathair Aeda Slaine’ for ‘ben Diarmata meic Aeda Slaine’. Finally, making no reference to Mugain as the mother of any son of Diarmait mac Cerbaill, the possibly eighth-century miscellany attached to the H.2.7 genealogies instead names her as the mother of Diarmait’s daughter Fall. Fall, who is known as ‘Lann’ in the Banshenchas, is recorded as the wife of the Eóganacht Locha Léin king of Munster Dauí 93 94 95 96

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Stafford, ‘Sons and mothers’, 79–100. Bitel, Land of women, 79. Mac Cana, ‘Aspects of the theme of king and goddess’, Études Celtiques 7, 96–103. I owe this suggestion to Professor Francis John Byrne. For Lígach see: Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 312, 336; [RC ] 48, 187, 226; AU 923; Chron. Scot. s.a. 922; Ann. Clon. s.a. 919; AFM s.a. 921.

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Iarlaithe son of Maithne, their union forming yet another of the Leth Cuinn/Leth Moga set of marriage alliances.97 Mac Cana, ‘Aspects of the theme of king and goddess’, 7, 94–6, 98–114; MacNeill, The festival of Lughnasa, 326–7; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 84; Byrne, Irish kings, 98, 168–9; Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 98–100; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 107; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 38, 47; McCone, Pagan past, 146; Bitel, ‘Conceived in sin, born in delights’, 197–8; Bitel, Land of women, 79, 120–21, 136, 152.

Eithne (Erc) daughter of Brénainn Dall CONMAICNE CÚILE TOLAD Prose Ban. §§ 294, 304, 352; Met. Ban. §158, 166, 185 Windisch, Genemain Áeda Sláine, 326; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 114–15; Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, 134; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 305, 306, 331; [RC] 48, 181, 184, 219.

Wife of Áed Sláine (d. 604) and mother of a number of his sons. The maternal and marital career of Eithne daughter of Brénainn Dall is rivalled in complexity only by that of Medb Lethderg (above, wife of i: 2), a figure with whom she has much in common. Eithne’s relationships are recorded in most detail by the Banshenchas, with different versions of that text giving widely differing accounts of her marriages. The core relationship which all versions of the Banshenchas agree upon, however, is that she was the wife of Áed Sláine and mother of anywhere from five to seven of his sons. While there is a consensus that Áed’s sons Diarmait, Dúnchad, Máel Bressail, Máel Odor and Congal were Eithne’s children and that Blathmac son of Áed was not, there is some discrepancy between versions over whether Eithne was also the mother of Áed’s sons Ailill and Conall Lóeg Breg (below, Lann, mother of i: 25). In addition to the marriage with Áed Sláine, there is a further tradition that a daughter of Brénainn Dall by the name of either Eithne or Erc was the wife of Áed’s father Diarmait mac Cerbaill and mother of Áed’s half-brother Colmán Már. The stance taken on whether this wife of Diarmait was identical to the wife of Áed Sláine differs dramatically in the various versions of the Banshenchas. The prose version in the Book of Uí Maine and most of the metrical versions make a distinction between the two women by referring to Diarmait’s wife as Erc and to Áed’s wife as Eithne. The Book of Lecan version of the metrical text, meanwhile, refers to both women as Eithne daughter of Brénainn, but explicitly comments that the Eithne married to Áed was a different woman altogether from the Eithne married to Diarmait. Conversely, several texts representing the Book of Lecan recension of the Prose Banshenchas indicate that the two women were one and the same, claiming that Áed’s wife Eithne was in fact also his mother.98 Not content with their depiction of Eithne’s marriage to merely one 97 98

Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 181, 218. This claim contradicts earlier assertions by these texts that Áed’s mother was Mugain daughter of

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father/son combination, these texts later add that after Áed Sláine’s death Eithne married his son Blathmac (d. 665). The Book of Lecan Banshenchas’s portrayal of Eithne reads as a deliberate attempt to pattern her as a sovereignty goddess of Síl nÁedo Sláine. Her marriages to kings of Tara from three successive generations of the one family echo the unions of the legendary Medb Lethderg and Eithne’s own namesake, the daughter of Cathaír Már (above, wives of i: 2 and i: 3), setting up marked parallels between the earliest generations of Síl nÁedo Sláine and their Connachta forefathers. The difference, though, between Eithne’s profile as a sovereignty figure and that of her predecessors is that her maternal aspect as ancestress of Síl nÁedo Sláine kings is stressed as much as her uxorial role. While the earlier Connachta sovereignty figures bore children to their husbands, they did not then proceed to marry those same children.99 The depiction of Eithne in the Book of Lecan recension, on the other hand, is so concerned with emphasising the incest involved in her relationships that it makes the biologically inventive claim that she was the mother of Brénainn Dall, her own father.100 Brénainn’s origins on his father’s side are a further source of complexity. The Banshenchas is very general in its description of Brénainn, simply stating that he was from Connacht. In contrast, the Middle Irish prose version of Geinemain Áeda Sláine, which portrays Eithne as the mother of Colmán Már only, specifically describes Brénainn as being from the Conmaicne Cúile Tolad of Connacht. The Conmaicne genealogies have no listing for a Brénainn Dall, though it is worth pointing out that the end-name of one their pedigrees is a certain Máel Brénainn Dall son of Échtgal. In view of Eithne’s role as an ancestress figure, it is interesting to note that this particular Conmaicne sept is called Cenél nEithne, although their eponym, Eithne the son of Carith, is male.101 A Brénainn Dall son of Coirpre also turns up in the genealogies of the Uí Maine of Connacht.102 This Brénainn died in 601 as king of Uí Maine, and was said to have given his name to Ráith Brénainn in Mag nAí (tl. Rathbrennan, par. Roscommon, bar. Ballintober South, Co. Roscommon). In hagiographical tradition, it was the death of his brother Áed Guaire at the hands of Diarmait that led to the cursing of Tara by a coalition of saints.103 Possibly it was to reconcile the differing traditions about 99

100 101 102

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Conchraid (below, wife of i: 20). This is not to say that incest played no part in the ancestry of the Connachta. Crimthann Nia Nár, grandfather of Conn Cétchathach, was the offspring of a doubly incestuous relationship. His mother Clothra, daughter of Eochaid Feidlech, had conceived him by sleeping with her son Lugaid Riab nDerg, and Lugaid Riab nDerg was himself the result of the union between Clothra and her brothers, the three Finn Emna (Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 296, 299, 325; [RC ] 48, 171, 207, 208). One has to wonder if this assertion that Eithne was the mother of her own father was meant to be satirical. O’Brien, Corpus, 318; Dagger, ‘Eithne – the sources’, 111. Kelleher, ‘The Uí Maine in the annals’, 65; Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 99. This Brénainn Dall was the grandfather of Marcán son of Tommán of Uí Maine, a central figure in the Irish version of the tale of Tristan and Iseult. Plummer, Bethada, I, 322; II, 313; O’Donovan, Tribes and customs of Hy-Many, 15.

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Brénainn Dall’s origins that the Banshenchas resorts to generalities in its description of Brénainn, transferring his more specific Conmaicne Cúile Tolad associations to several of Diarmait’s other wives (below, i: 20). In terms of discerning what, if any, elements of truth lay behind the presentation of Eithne’s multiple marriages, it should first be recognised that Eithne (Erc) wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill and Eithne wife of Áed Sláine were almost certainly distinct individuals. The huge chronological gulf separating the obits of Eithne’s supposed children – Colmán Már son of Diarmait (d. 563) at one extreme and Dúnchad son of Áed Sláine (d. 659) at the other – is a key consideration here.104 As for the claim that Eithne married Áed’s son Blathmac after Áed’s death, the universal assertion that Eithne was not Blathmac’s mother makes it more inherently plausible than the father/son triangle involving Áed Sláine and Diarmait mac Cerbaill. It was not uncommon, either in Ireland or in the rest of the medieval west, for a new claimant to the throne to marry his predecessor’s widow. 105 While such men were usually from a different dynasty, or at least from a different branch of the same dynasty than their predecessor, this was not always the case. Irish kings were known to have married the queens of their brothers 106 and uncles (below, Cumne Dub, wife of i: 21a), and as late as the eleventh century a king of Connacht appears to have married the widow of his father. 107 Not long after the date normally ascribed to Áed Sláine’s death, such a union occurred in England when Eadbald of Kent married the queen of his father Aethelbert.108 One can imagine a similar scenario in which Blathmac might 104 If the theory that Colmán Bec and Colmán Már were one and the same is correct, and Colmán Már was a fictional character with a fictional death-date (Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, above, 215–7), this argument remains substantially the same. If Eithne was actually the mother of Colmán Bec rather than Colmán Már, then his obit at 587/593 after a lengthy career is still incompatible with his having a uterine brother who died in 669. If Eithne was simply a character invented to provide a mother for the freshly fabricated Colmán Már, then her lack of historicity would render irrelevant any further debate over whether Colmán’s mother was the same woman as the wife of Áed Sláine. 105 Many factors, both pragmatic and metaphorical, were involved in such an action. In practical terms, marrying the former queen gave the new claimant the opportunity to establish an alliance with her powerful family; created the potential for increased influence over any children – potentially nursing claims of their own – whom she might have had by the former king; and made the new king’s access to any wealth the queen might control, or influence she might wield, more likely. In symbolic terms, marriage to the former queen would have emphasised her new husband’s own royal status, especially in a country where kingship ideology was heavily imbued with notions of the sovereignty goddess. Particularly in cases where the new king had been involved in the death of the old, marriage to his victim’s widow would stress that he had seized control of his predecessor’s position. For an excellent discussion of the advantages which marrying royal widows held for claimants to the throne in England and the Continent see Stafford, Queens, concubines, and dowagers, 49–54, 137–8, 168–70. 106 Frag. Ann. §207. 107 According to the Ban-shenchus, the eleventh-century king of Connacht Ruaidrí na Saide Buide Ua Conchobair (blinded 1092) married Étain daughter of Ua Egra, the widow of his father Áed in Gaí Bernaig (d. 1067), see Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 191. 108 Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, II, cap. v: 90. Stafford discusses this example and others in ‘Sons and mothers’, 85; Edel, ‘Early Irish queens’, 12–13.

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have married his father’s widow in order to gain an advantage over both his Clann Cholmáin cousins and his brothers – most of whom were Eithne’s sons. Given, however, that Áed Sláine is said to have died in 604 and that Blathmac’s name does not even enter the historical record until 643, such a scenario seems unlikely. Instead Blathmac was probably one of the younger members of Áed’s family, and not one of the brothers contending for power after their father’s death. In all likelihood, then, the claim made by the Book of Lecan recension that Eithne was married to both Áed Sláine and his son is false, whereas that of the Uí Maine version, ‘We do not know the wife of Blathmac son of Áed Sláine’, is true. Mac Cana, ‘Aspects of the theme of king and goddess’, 95; Byrne, Irish kings, 168; Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 99–100; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 107–8; Dagger, ‘Eithne – the sources’, 111.

(i: 18a) Áed Dub mac Suibni Araidi CRUITHNI – DÁL NARAIDI

No wife or mother given for Áed Dub son of Suibne. (i: 18b) Áed mac Brénainn UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL MAINI

No mother given for Áed son of Brénainn. Eithne Prose Ban. §340; Met. Ban. §185 Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 183.

Wife of Áed son of Brénainn (d. 589), king of Tethbae, and mother of his sons Corc, Cathasach and Blathmac (d. 665). Little is known about Eithne beyond the names of her husband and sons. In common with most of the wives listed in the Tethbae section of the Banshenchas, she is given no patronymic, dynastic affiliation or place of origin. The verse pertaining to Eithne in the Book of Lecan version of the Metrical Banshenchas, however, makes the intriguing claim that she ‘possessed Tara three times’ (do glac si Temair fo tri). This remark strongly suggests that the text has confused Eithne, wife of Áed son of Brénainn, with Eithne daughter of Brénainn, the wife of Áed Sláine (above, i: 18). As the latter Eithne was portrayed as the wife of three different kings of Tara, she seems a more suitable candidate for triple possession of Tara than the wife of a Tethbae king. Given that both women were married to a man named Áed, that they had sons named Blathmac who died in the same year as one another, and that they had, in one case, a father named Brénainn and, in the other, a father-in-law by that name, such confusion was almost inevitable.

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(i: 19) Áed Allán (Áed Uaridnach mac Domnaill) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN

Bríg daughter of Forgg son of Mac Cáirthinn AIRGÍALLA – UÍ MEIC CÁIRTHINN Prose Ban. §327; Met. Ban. §174 Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 18; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 116–7, 146–7; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 307, 332; [RC ] 48, 183.

Wife of Domnall Ilchelgach son of Muirchertach (d. 566) and mother of Áed Allán (Uaridnach) (d. 612). Bríg’s father, named Forgg son of Mac Cáirthinn in the Banshenchas, is probably to be identified with Forgg son of Énnae son of Mac Cáirthinn, a dynast of the Uí Meic Cáirthinn branch of the Airgíalla. Uí Meic Cáirthinn were located in what was to become the heart of Cenél nÉogain’s home territory on the southern shores of Lough Foyle. The need for such close neighbours to maintain steady relations would be justification enough for a marriage alliance between the two dynasties. The fact that the mid-sixth century witnesses the beginnings of Cenél nÉogain expansion would make an alliance that secured the Cenél nÉogain’s own heartland as they pushed further afield all the more important. Lacey, ‘County Derry in the early historic period’, 124–6; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 61, 62 (Table).

Damnat daughter of Murchad ‘a Luirg’ Prose Ban. §328; Met. Ban. §175 Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 307, 332; [RC] 48, 182.

Wife of Áed Uaridnach (d. 612) and mother of Máel Fithrig (d. 630). Damnat is one of several late sixth- and early seventh-century queens of Tara about whose background one can only speculate. Identifying her father simply as Murchad Aluirg, her vague entry in the Banshenchas provides no additional information about her dynastic origins. One possibility is that Damnat, like Áed Uaridnach’s mother (Bríg daughter of Forgg, above), may have belonged to the local Uí Meic Cáirthinn dynasty of Airgíalla. In some genealogies Murchad is the alternative name given to the Uí Meic Cáirthinn king Colmán Muccaid son of Áed Guaire, a contemporary of Áed Uaridnach’s. Colmán Muccaid, who was founder of the monastery of Ardboe, Co. Tyrone, and was venerated as a saint in later tradition, belonged to a rival branch of Uí Meic Cáirthinn to Áed Uaridnach’s maternal grandfather Forgg son of Énnae.109 Marriage to Colmán Muccaid’s daughter would thus have consolidated Áed Uaridnach’s support from his maternal kindred’s dynasty, increasing the likelihood that his 109 I owe the suggestion that Colmán Muccaid may have been Damnat’s father to Dr Brian Lacey. For references to Colmán Muccaid see Lacy, (Lacey), ‘The Ui Meic Cairthinn of Lough Foyle’, 7, 20 (Table IV); Lacey, ‘County Derry in the early historic period’, 126 (Table 5.3).

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allies would not be confined to that branch of the family to which he was related. Such an alliance would have been particularly important given that Colmán Muccaid’s sister, Lann daughter of Áed Guaire (below, wife of i: 19a), had married into the Cenél Conaill family of Áed Uaridnach’s chief rivals. A different origin for Damnat might be postulated if her father’s epithet referred to a placename Lurg, although this presents grammatical difficulties.110 According to Hogan’s Onomasticon Gœdelicum, Lurg (Lorg) designated two different locations. The first is the area around Mag Luirg (Moylurg) in the plain of Boyle, Co. Roscommon, which lent its name to the Calraige Luirg. During the sixth century the dominant dynasty in this region were the Uí Ailello. The second location is the Ulster kingdom of Fir Luirg in modern Co. Fermanagh.111 Both locations are plausible places of origin for a Cenél nÉogain queen of this period. In the light of the campaigns into the territory of Cenél Coirpri (surviving in the placename bar. Carbury, north Co. Sligo) which Áed Uaridnach’s father conducted against the Uí Fhiachrach, a north Connacht woman would have been a reasonable choice of bride for his son. Strategically, the case for a wife from Fir Luirg would be stronger. Located immediately to the east of Lower Lough Erne, the kingdom of Fir Luirg was in close proximity to the southeastern flank of Cenél Conaill territory. However, the possibility that Lurg is a placename need not necessarily rule out an Uí Meic Cáirthinn origin for Damnat. Placenames in the area under Uí Meic Cáirthinn influence which seem to incorporate the element lurg include the townland of Lurganagoose (par. Termoneeny, bar. Loughinsholin, Co. Derry), possibly in origin Lurgan Uí Meic Uais. Máel Fithrig is the only son of Damnat’s to be named by the Banshenchas, and it is unknown if she was the mother of any other of Áed Uaridnach’s children. The obit for Áed’s son Dór (Dáire) in Ann. Tig. (= AU 624) attributes two lines of its accompanying lament to Dáire (Dór)’s mother, but the mourning queen is unnamed. (i: 19a) Áed mac Ainmerech UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL

Brigit daughter of Cobthach son of Ailill LAIGIN – UÍ CHENNSELAIG Prose Ban. §298; Met. Ban. §163 Colgan, Acta sanctorum Hiberniae, 304, 306, b, n. 17; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 372; II, 410; Stokes, ‘The Boroma’, 76–8; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 76–7; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 306, 331; [RC] 48, 181, 218; Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 58, 176; LGen., III, §724.10. 110 The Banshenchas phrase a Luirg, if translated ‘out of Lurg’, suggests a f. noun. However, the placename Lorg/Lurg is a m./n. noun. 111 Hogan, Onomasticon, 424, 525.

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Mother of Áed (d. 598) mac Ainmerech (d. 569). Brigit’s father was the eponymous ancestor of Cenél Cobthaig, a branch of the Uí Chennselaig later to be found holding land on the north-east coast of Wexford at Ard Ladrann. There is some disagreement in the sources about Cobthach’s exact line of descent. According to the Banshenchas, his father was Ailill son of Nath Í son of Crimthann, who was son of the first Uí Chennselaig king of Leinster, Énnae Cennselach. The tract on the mothers of Irish saints, on the other hand, skips several generations, by naming Cobthach as Énnae Cennselach’s grandson. Given the generations involved, the Banshenchas’s version is the more likely of the two; a grandson of Énnae Cennselach would very probably be too early to be the father-in-law of Ainmere. The union of Brigit and Ainmere is one of several marriage alliances recorded between Cenél Conaill kings and women from the south Leinster region in the sixth and seventh centuries. Despite his maternal background, the relations between Áed mac Ainmerech and Leinster were notoriously bad. Both annals and sagas record a series of disputes between him and the Uí Chennselaig king of Leinster, Brandub son of Eochu, which ultimately led to Áed’s death. In this regard, though, it should be noted that Brandub was not from the same branch of the Uí Chennselaig as were Áed’s maternal relations (who traced their descent from Crimthann son of Énnae Cennselach), but from the line known as the Uí Fhelmeda (who traced their descent from Énnae Cennselach’s son Fedelmid). While Áed is the only child of Ainmere’s attributed to Brigit, she was said to be the mother of several other sons by different fathers. Two of these sons – Bishop Etchén (d. 578) and Bishop Áedán – appear to have been born to a Leinster man, Maine son of Fergus Láebderc of the Uí Náir line of Dál Messin Corbb. Etchén was associated with the church of Cluain Fota Báetáin Aba (tl. Clonfad, par. Killucan, bar. Farbill, Co. Westmeath), while the eleventh-century Bóruma-saga names Áedán as the bishop of Glendalough. Much is made of the uterine kinship between Áedán and Áed in the Bóruma-saga, where Áedán uses his genealogical position to act as an intermediary between his half-brother and the king of his native province. Áedán’s loyalties lie, however, with Brandub and Leinster, to the extent that his advice to Brandub ultimately led to the defeat of the northern king. A third uterine brother of Áed’s was an abbot by the name of Ségéne. Ségéne’s patrimony is not specified by the prose entries relating to him in the saints’ genealogies; however, the verses associated with these entries, the Banshenchas and the Life of Etchén all equate him with Ségéne son of Fiachnae of Cenél Conaill, abbot of Iona, who died in 652. During Ségéne’s abbacy there appears to have been a mutual show of support between Iona and the Uí Néill, particularly the Uí Néill overlord Domnall mac Áedo.112 While this relationship could be sufficiently explained by the monastery’s traditional associations with Cenél Conaill and the abbot’s membership of that dynasty on his father’s side, the possibility that Ségéne was 112 See Herbert, Iona, Kells, and Derry, 41–3.

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the uterine brother of Domnall’s father makes their alliance of interests even more understandable. That said, the fifty-four-year difference between Ségéne son of Fiachnae’s obit and that of Áed mac Ainmerech – who does not seem to have died particularly young – casts some doubt on the tradition that the two were uterine brothers. The other possibility is that Ségéne may have been the son of another Leinsterman, and is to be identified with the Uí Chennselaig cleric Ségéne Gabul son of Senach son of Nath Í son of Cormac.113 Ségéne, who was linked to Ráith Bile (Rathvilly, Co. Carlow), would have been the great-grandson of Crimthann son of Énnae Cennselach, and thus second cousin once removed of Brigit. Finally, the Book of Uí Maine version of the Banshenchas names Brigit as the mother of yet another Uí Chennselaig dynast, Fiannamail son of Brandub son of Eochu. If true, the uterine kinships involved in the Áed and Brandub segment of the Bóruma-saga would become even more complex. Fiannamail seems to owe his creation, however, to a textual corruption resulting from the joining together of Brigit’s entry in the Banshenchas with the one immediately following it for Brigit daughter of Fiannamail, who is named as an alternative mother for Brandub. Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 108.

Lann daughter of Áed Guaire AIRGÍALLA – UÍ MEIC CÁIRTHINN Prose Ban. §330; Met. Ban. §177 Ann.Tig. s.a. 597; Stokes, ‘The Bodleian Amra Choluimb Chille’, 40–41; Marstrander, ‘A new version of the battle of Mag Rath’, 236–7; Herbert, Iona, Kells, and Derry, 266–7; Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 298; O’Kelleher and Schoepperle, Betha Colaim Chille, 348; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 308, 332; [RC] 48, 182, 221; Lacey, The Life of Colum Cille, 177; LGen., I, §146.3.

Wife of Áed mac Ainmerech (d. 598) and mother of his sons Domnall (d. 643), Máel Cobo (d. 615), and possibly Conall Cú (d. 604). By his union with Lann, Áed mac Ainmerech became the second or possibly third consecutive overking of the Uí Néill to marry into the Uí Meic Cáirthinn branch of Airgíalla. Domnall son of Muirchertach, the Cenél nÉogain king whom the Middle Irish regnal lists name as Áed’s predecessor in the Tara kingship, was said to have been the husband of Lann’s Uí Meic Cáirthinn kinswoman, Bríg daughter of Forgg (above, mother of i: 19), while Áed Uaridnach of Cenél nÉogain may have been married to another Uí Meic Cáirthinn kinswoman, Damnat daughter of Murchad (?alias Colmán Muccaid) (above, wife of i: 19). Such popularity of Uí Meic Cáirthinn women with the kings of the Northern Uí Néill may be connected to the aftermath of the battle of 113 Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 264.

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Móin Daire Lothair in 563 between the Uí Néill and the Cruithni. According to AU, in return for their help in what seems to have been an internal dispute among the Cruithni, Cenél Conaill and Cenél nÉogain jointly received the lands of the Lee and Ard Eolarg (Macgilligan Point, Co. Derry) immediately to the east of Uí Meic Cáirthinn territory. At the time of the battle, relations between Cenél Conaill and Cenél nÉogain were fairly harmonious, but Áed mac Ainmerech’s reign six years later saw the beginning of a series of conflicts between the two principal Northern Uí Néill dynasties. As tensions sharpened, and competition for control of territory increased, it is not surprising that Cenél Conaill would have sought an alliance with Uí Meic Cáirthinn, both for its own merits and in order to keep pace with their rivals. In addition to her children by Áed mac Ainmerech, the genealogies note that Lann was the mother of Conall Clocach, the rígoínmit ‘royal fool’, of the Cenél Ferguso sept of Cenél nÉogain. Ó Coileáin has suggested, however, that the frequent confusion between Conall Clocach and Áed’s son Conall Cú is likely to have been responsible for this identification. The confusion of the two also contributed to the Middle Irish Life of Colum Cille’s explanation that Conall Clocach’s imbecility was caused by the saint’s curse. According to that story, Conall was the son of Áed mac Ainmerech, but had a different mother than his brother Domnall. When Colum Cille arrived at Áed’s court, Conall incited the people to hurl stones and sods at the saint, thus meriting the malediction that he be deprived of sense and memory save for the space of time it took for him to use the toilet. Domnall, conversely, was blessed by Colum Cille, and when the queen – furious that her son had been cursed and her stepson blessed – forbade Áed to have good relations with the saint, she was turned into a crane (corr). Her punishment here involves a pun, turning on the double meaning of the root corr ‘twisted’ used in the queen’s insults to the saint. The source of the episode is the eleventh-century preface to Amra Choluim Chille which similarly identifies the queen as Domnall’s stepmother and Conall’s birth mother, but only has the saint curse the queen and not her favoured child. Neither version names the queen, and it is unsure whether the tradition that Domnall and Conall were half-brothers is genuine or a mere plot device. Regardless of this, the story reflects the very real tensions that would have arisen at court as queens and concubines of the king strove to strengthen their children’s position, and by extension their own, at the expense of the king’s children by other women. The Book of Lecan version of the Prose Banshenchas adds a further son to the list of Lann’s offspring, claiming that she was the mother of a certain Fáelchú grandson of Dimmán son of Airmedach, king of Mide. While there was a king of Mide by the name of Diarmait son of Airmedach, his death in 689 makes him rather late to be the father of Domnall’s uterine brother. Instead the intended reference must be to the Clann Cholmáin dynast (though not king) Fáelchú son of Airmedach. Ann. Tig. record this Fáelchú’s death in 637 at the battle of Mag Roth, fighting alongside Domnall mac Áedo. In the shorter saga version of

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the battle, possibly dating to the tenth century, Fáelchú is identified as Domnall’s uterine brother, although their mother is not named. 114 There is, though, some reason to doubt the veracity of Lann’s relationship to Fáelchú. Not only is uterine kinship an artificial, if frequent, device used within sagas to explain the close association of kings hitherto biologically unrelated, 115 but the name Fáelchú first occurs in the same passage of the Cenél Ferguso genealogies that identifies Lann as the mother of Conall Clocach. Here, the tract describes Conall Clocach as belonging to the race of Fáelchú son of Trempán of the Cenél Ferguso, further identifying Fáelchú as the builder of the currach which brought Colum Cille to Iona. Possibly this passage marks the point of entry of the name Fáelchú into the traditions concerning Lann’s children. Ó Cuív, ‘Some items from Irish tradition’, 186–7; Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 95; Ó Coileáin, ‘The making of Tromdám Guaire’, 51–2; Lacy (Lacey), ‘The Ui Meic Cairthinn of Lough Foyle’, 20 (Table IV); Lacey, ‘County Derry in the early historic period’, 126 (Table 5.3); Nagy, Conversing with angels and ancients, 178–97.

(i: 19b) Áed Abrat mac Echach Tirmcharna CONNACHTA – UÍ FHIACHRACH?

No mother or wife given for Áed Abrat. (i: 20) Diermait (Diarmait mac Cerbaill) UÍ NÉILL

Corbach (Corpach) daughter of Maine LAIGIN Prose Ban. §289; Met. Ban. §153 Chron. Scot. s.a. 544; Ann. Tig. (= AU 548); Colgan, Acta sanctorum Hiberniae, 127; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 55; Dobbs, ‘Senchas Síl hIr’, 354; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 305, 330; [RC] 48, 180, 217; Macalister, Lebor Gabála Érenn, V, 362.

Mother of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565). The earliest source to mention Diarmait’s mother is the possibly seventh-century Vita Prima of St Brigit which does not accord her a specific identity, but depicts her as the stock-in-trade infertile queen of hagiographical tradition. She is allocated the rather more definite identity of Corbach daughter of Maine 114 An interesting comment which the saga does make, however, is that Domnall’s mother held lands in Mag nGlas, a site which Hogan locates near Assaroe on the River Erne. This territory would lie just within the southernmost limits of Cenél Conaill territory in the tenth century, and may represent mensal lands specially allocated to the queens of Cenél Conaill. According to the twelfth-century Life of Colmán mac Lúacháin, the Uí Máel Sechlainn queens of Meath were also allocated a certain territory to be held as their special property, in their case at Dún na Cairrge in the kingdom of Fer Tulach in Westmeath (Meyer, Betha Colmáin maic Lúacháin, 52–3; Byrne, Irish kings, 173). 115 Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 91.

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in some of the later sources, though nowhere is her father given a patronymic. Instead he is called simply Maine from Leinster, possibly to be identified with Maine son of Fiachrae of Uí Bairrche. According to the evidence of the earliest Leinster regnal poems, Uí Bairrche contended for the overlordship of Leinster during the sixth century. Within the context of Uí Néill expansion into the midlands, the notion of a marriage alliance between Uí Bairrche and Diarmait’s father is thus a plausible one. While Diarmait is the only son of Corbach’s listed in the Banshenchas, the Book of Lecan version of Lebor Gabála Érenn and two sets of annals – the closely related Chron. Scot. and Ann. Tig. – claim that Máel Mórdai son of Airgetán of the Conaille Muirthemne was Diarmait’s uterine brother. According to these sources, (none of which mention Corbach by name), Máel Mórdai assasinated Tuathal Máelgarb, Diarmait’s predecessor in the Tara kingship, and was killed instantly thereafter himself. Tuathal’s killer is nowhere mentioned in AU’s record of the death, and it is possible that the texts mentioning Máel Mórdai were drawing upon a saga version of events. Certainly, the episode is part of a fully elaborated story in the seventeenth-century Ann. Clon. that relates the part played by Diarmait in the founding of Clonmacnoise.116 Here, Máel Mórdai is named as Diarmait’s foster-brother, rather than his uterine brother, and the story makes it clear that Máel Mórdai killed Tuathal in order to aid Diarmait. It has been suggested that the portrayal of Máel Mórdai’s ancestry in the version of the Clonmacnoise origin-tale drawn upon by the annals for this episode may have been influenced by the Conaille Muirthemne antecedents of an ecclesiastical dynasty flourishing in Clonmacnoise at that time. During the tenth and eleventh centuries two abbots and two fer léigend (lectors) of the monastery hailed from this Conaille Muirthemne family, and the depiction of Diarmait’s uterine brother as one of their kinsman may have been designed to promote links between Clonmacnoise and its secular patrons, the descendants of Diarmait. 117 The truth of the Máel Mórdai story is thus open to considerable doubt, though it cannot be ruled out entirely. Máel Mórdai is not the only uterine brother of Diarmait’s alleged to have been from Ulster. Some versions of the Senchas Síl Ír segment of the Ulster genealogies assert that, in addition to Diarmait, Corbach was the mother of Praedae and Bishop Cathbad, two sons of Fergus son of Énnae of Uí Echach of the Ulaid. Cathbad is probably to be identified with Cathub son of Fergus, bishop of Achad Cinn (probably the church site in tl. Craigs, par. Aghogill, bar. Kilconway, Co. Antrim), 118 whose death is recorded under the year 555. The genealogies further add that among Praedae’s sons were bishops by the names of Báetán and 116 All three sets of annals are based upon texts ultimately deriving from a common exemplar most probably compiled at Clonmacnoise. 117 Kehnel, Clonmacnois – the church and lands of St. Ciarán, 116. 118 Ó Murchadha, Annals of Tigernach index, 79. An alternative identification is Achonry, Co. Sligo (Hogan, Onomasticon, 7).

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Cathar, while Corbach’s sister, Tuilelaith daughter of Maine, was the mother of Mac Cuilinn, bishop and founder of Lusk in northern Brega.119 The latter’s obit is entered in the noncontemporary stratum of annals under the year 496. Generationally speaking, these claims are in marked disagreement with the genealogical schema as it has come down to us, a state of affairs that is probably due to the considerable disarray evident in the Uí Echach section of Senchas Síl Ír. 120 That section, which begins by delineating members of the Uí Echach Arda branch of the Dál Fiatach of Ulster, switches somewhere midway to delineating members of the Uí Echach Cobo branch of the Cruithni of Ulster. As it is unclear at exactly what point in the pedigree the confusion of the similarlynamed peoples has taken place, one cannot be completely certain to which group Corbach’s sons were meant to belong. Most likely, though, the genealogists intended them to be identified as members of Uí Echach Cobo. While it is possible that Senchas Síl Ír’s claims with respect to Diarmait’s half-brothers are true, the stress on the ecclesiastical descendants of Corbach and her sister may indicate that the tradition of uterine kinship was originally meant to symbolise some sort of link between Diarmait’s descendants and the churches associated with his mother’s children, grandchildren and nephew. 121 Although the assertions about all three of Diarmait’s uterine brothers are thus questionable, in light of the argument that Diarmait belonged to Cenél Conaill (see Mac Shamhráin and Byrne, above, 189–93), it is nonetheless interesting that tradition ascribes a north-eastern provenance to them all.122 Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 111.

Mugain daughter of Conchraid son of Duí UÍ DUACH ARGATROIS

Wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill. See above, mother of Áed Sláine i: 18.

119 The tract on the mothers of Irish saints traces Mac Cuilinn’s descent to the Cíannachta, contradicting the Senchas Síl Ír by claiming that his mother was a woman by the name of Fedelm (Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 175). 120 The Ulster genealogies identify Fergus son of Énnae as the great-grandson of Eochu Gunnat, a contemporary of Cormac mac Airt. Counting down the generations in the Connachta pedigree, one would thus expect Fergus to be roughly contemporary with Muiredach Tírech, and Fergus’s sons with Eochaid Mugmedón. Since Eochaid Mugmedón is traditionally depicted as the father of Niall Noígíallach and thus the greatgreat-grandfather of Diarmait mac Cerbaill, something is clearly awry. 121 See the entry above for Cumman Maine (mother of i: 17) for a similar situation. 122 For another perspective on the north-eastern aspects of Diarmait mac Cerbaill’s career, see Bhreathnach, above, 57–8.

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Muirenn Máel daughter of Máel Dúin PARTRAIGE CONNACHTA Prose Ban. §290; Met. Ban. §154 Windisch, Genemain Áeda Sláine, 194–5; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 89; II, 83; Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, 133; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 180.

Wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565). Muirenn’s people the Partraige, based between Lough Corrib and Lough Mask, were located very close to another of the tribes to which Diarmait was linked by marriage, the Conmaicne Cúile Tolad (above, Eithne daughter of Brénainn, wife of i: 18). The proximity of both tribes to Uí Briúin Aí, the powerful Connacht dynasty which helped defeat Diarmait in the battle of Cúl Dreimne, may explain the Tara king’s marital alliances with them. Another branch of the Uí Néill, apparently eager to maintain links with this part of the country, was Cenél Coirpri. According to some versions of the Banshenchas, Garbán son of Tuathal Máelgarb of that dynasty was Muirenn’s first husband. Since Garbán’s father was Diarmait’s predecessor in the Tara kingship, Diarmait’s subsequent marriage to Muirenn might be seen as a variation on the theme of the new king marrying the widow of the old. While Muirenn is the only wife of Diarmait’s not to be named as a mother of any of his children, she plays an important role in the story framing the conception-tale of Áed Sláine. The Middle Irish prose tale, Geinemain Áeda Sláine, does not accord Muirenn any patronymic, but simply calls her Muirenn Máel. Here máel refers to the tale’s depiction of Muirenn as bald. Jealous of Muirenn and hoping to shame her in front of the assembled masses at the fair of Tailtiu, Mugain, another wife of Diarmait (above, mother of i: 18), bribed a female satirist to pull off the head-dress hiding Muirenn’s smooth pate. As the head-dress tumbled off, Muirenn called for help to God and St Ciarán (the text has a Clonmacnoise provenance), and instantly long, golden tresses fell to her shoulders. Muirenn prayed that Mugain should be shamed in front of the men of Ireland as Mugain had tried to shame her, and the text implies that it was from this curse that Mugain became sterile. The Banshenchas, meanwhile, identifies Muirenn’s father as a certain Máel Dúin. It is possible, however, that this identification may be the result of confusion between Muirenn Máel and her great-great-granddaughter, Muirenn daughter of Máel Dúin son of Suibne of Cenél Coirpri, the wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill’s grandson and namesake, Diarmait son of Áed Sláine (below, wife of i: 26). MacNeill, Festival of Lughnasa, 326–7; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 106; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 38, 89; Bitel, Land of women, 136.

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Lasair daughter of Nechtan son of Brénainn CONMAICNE CÚILE TOLAD OF CONNACHT OR UÍ FHIDGENTI? Prose Ban. §295 (D version only; all others call her mother of Congalach mac Maíle Dúin); Met. Ban. §160. Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 306, 330; [RC ] 48, 181, 218.

Wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565) and alternative mother of Colmán Már (d. 555/8). Rather than representing genuine tradition, Lasair’s inclusion among the wives of Diarmait mac Cerbaill seems to depend upon a garbled reading of her original entry in the Banshenchas exemplar. Geinemain Áeda Sláine does not include Lasair in its list of Diarmait’s wives, nor does she appear as such in either the Metrical Banshenchas or in most of the prose versions of the text. Instead all but one version of the Banshenchas depict her as the daughter of Nechtan and mother of a certain Congal or Congalach son of Máel Dúin. In the Book of Uí Maine version of the Prose Banshenchas, however, her entry describes her as the mother of Diarmait’s son Colmán Már and states that she is the daughter of Nechtan son of Máel Dúin of the Conmaicne Cúile Tolad. What appears to have happened is that the Uí Maine version ran together Lasair’s entry with the one immediately following it – that for Eithne daughter of Brénainn, the woman more usually acknowledged as Colmán Már’s mother (above, i: 18) – rearranging the original elements of Lasair’s entry in the subsequent distortion. Her father Nechtan became the son, rather than the father-in-law, of Máel Dúin, and Congal seems to have disappeared altogether, though the first element in his name may be linked to the affiliation of Nechtan with the Conmaicne. As for Lasair’s real son, he is most likely Congal son of Máel Dúin son of Áed Bennán of Éoganacht Locha Léin, who died in 690 as king of West Munster. Lasair herself is probably the daughter of Nechtan son of Brénainn of Uí Fhidgenti of Munster.123 Brea daughter of Colmán son of Nemán CONMAICNE CÚILE TOLAD Prose Ban. §293; Met. Ban. §159 Windisch, Genemain Áeda Sláine, 195; Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, 134; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 305, 330; [RC ] 48, 181, 217.

Wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565) and mother of Colmán Bec (d. 587). All the sources that name Brea as the mother of Colmán Bec universally ascribe her origins to the otherwise unattested site of Dún Súaine. While most of these sources give no hint as to where Dún Suaine might be, the Book of Uí Maine version of the Banshenchas adds that Brea was from 123 If Nechtan son of Brénainn was the father of Lasair and his patronymic were included in the original Banshenchas entry, this is another possible point of confusion for the entries between Lasair and Eithne daughter of Brénainn Dall.

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the Conmaicne Cúile Tolad of Connacht. Colmán son of Nemán, Brea’s father, is not recorded in the rather sparse Conmaicne Cúile Tolad genealogies, but an early sixth-century king of that name appears several times in the corpus of saints’ genealogies and in the tract on the mothers of Irish saints. This Colmán is portrayed as the son of Fuinche daughter of Dallbrónach of Déssi Breg, and thus as one of the many purported cousins of Dallbrónach’s granddaughter, Brigit of Kildare. Unfortunately the saints genealogies remain mute on the subject of Colmán’s paternal ancestry. Based upon an episode relating his interaction with St Ibar (another of Brigit’s cousins), however, they appear to link Colmán not with Connacht but with Brega and Leinster, associating him with Ráith Chennaig (Rathkenny, bar. Upper Slane, Co. Meath).124 When considering whether this Colmán son of Nemán could be Brea’s father, one should note the likelihood that Brea’s connection with the Conmaicne did not reflect historical reality so much as it did the traditions surrounding Eithne daughter of Brénainn. In Geinemain Áeda Sláine, Eithne’s tribal affiliation is given as Conmaicne Cúile Tolad, and the same is true of her entry in the Metrical Banshenchas. The Prose Banshenchas limits itself to a more general description of Eithne as being from Connacht, but the redactor of the Uí Maine Prose Banshenchas seems to have been at some pains to propagate the notion that, if not Eithne, then several other of Diarmait’s wives hailed from Conmaicne Cúile Tolad. Not only is the Uí Maine Banshenchas the only version of the text to associate Brea with this Connacht tribe, but it also makes the same claims about Lasair daughter of Nechtan, a woman whom it alone depicts as wife of Diarmait (above). Any link established between Dún Súaine and the Conmaicne Cúile Tolad should be understood in that context, and thus does not necessarily eliminate the possibility that Dún Súaine was in Leinster. Further, the location of the Súaine (River Cushina, Co. Offaly) supports a Leinster provenance for the site.125 If the Colmán son of Nemán found in the saints’ genealogies genuinely is the man whom tradition held to be the father of Brea, a bond of kinship would thus be created between Colmán Bec and Brigit. The claim that Cumman Maine daughter of Dallbrónach (above, mother of i: 17) was the mother of Tuathal Máelgarb established a similar, though slightly closer, link between Tuathal and the saint. It could be that these ties reflect an attempt on the part of Kildare to gather secular support from dynasties in the midlands in the same way that Uí Néill relations with the Columban federation were strengthened by their blood-ties to Columba. The episode in the early Latin Life of Brigit where the saint (albeit reluctantly) blesses the womb of the hitherto infertile mother of Diarmait mac Cerbaill may be part of the same effort (above, Corbach, mother of Diarmait mac Cerbaill i: 20).

124 Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 168, 185. 125 I am very grateful to Dr Kevin Murray and the Locus project at UCC for this information.

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Bé Binn daughter of Alasc son of Óengus SCOTLAND Stokes, Acallamh na Senórach, 273; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 232; II, 263.

Wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565). Bé Binn daughter of Alasc appears as the wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill only in the thirteenth-century text Acallam na Senórach. When Caílte and Oisín came to Diarmait’s court, Diarmait asked Bé Binn to remain in Tara so that she might look after the elders while he went on a royal circuit. The two warriors, however, asked that they be put into the hands of the royal steward and his wife so that Bé Binn might accompany her husband on tour. That the Acallam is the sole witness to this marriage is not surprising. Despite its repeated stressing of the importance of recording lore and history, the text frequently, and indeed almost perversely, makes identifications which are at odds with even very well-known tradition. The identification of Bé Binn’s father Alasc son of Óengus as king of Scotland seems to have been similarly made up by the Acallam’s author. While the notion of his daughter’s marriage to Diarmait is not inconsistent with the frequent intermarriages of the early Uí Néill kings to royalty from across the Irish Sea, Alasc appears in none of the Scottish king-lists. Bé Binn’s own name, meanwhile, is a extremely common one in the Acallam, where it is bestowed upon no less than six different royal women. It is almost as if the name, which means simply ‘sweet woman’, is used semi-generically by the text as an appellation for female royalty.126 Dooley and Roe, Tales of the elders of Ireland, 222.

(i: 21) Féchno (Fiachnae Lurgan mac Báetáin) CRUITHNI – DÁL NARAIDI

No mother given for Fiachnae Lurgan. Caintigern daughter of Conndach king of Alba Prose Ban. §333; Met. Ban. §180 Meyer and Nutt, Voyage of Bran, I, 24–5, 44–5, 60–61, 72–3; Plummer, Vitae, II, 19; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 309, 333; [RC] 48, 185, 223; Mac Mathúna, Immram Brain, 42–3, 103.

Wife of Fiachnae Lurgan son of Báetán of Dál nAraidi (d. 626) and mother of his son Mongán (d. 625). The majority of the sources that mention Caintigern accord her neither patronymic nor place of origin but refer to her simply by first name. In the Book of Uí Maine version of the Prose Banshenchas, however, she is called the daughter of Conndach, ‘king of Alba’. The 126 Bé Binn seems to have been popularised as a name for Uí Briain women from the eleventh century onwards owing to its being the name of Brian Bóruma’s mother.

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twelfth-century date of that text’s composition indicates that Alba here denotes Scotland. While there is no king in the Scottish king list who corresponds exactly to this name, it is possible that the Dál Ríata dynast Connad Cerr (d. 629) is intended. Connad’s brief threemonth reign as king of Dál Ríata post-dated Fiachnae’s death by over two years, but his family – alternatively identified by scholars as either Cenél Comgaill or Cenél nGabráin – would have been an important force in Dál Ríata politics throughout Fiachnae’s lifetime.127 From the midfifth century until the end of the seventh, Cenél Comgaill and Cenél nGabráin were the two major powers within the kingdom of Dál Ríata. In the light of Fiachnae Lurgan’s close connections with Dál Ríata as depicted by the annals and saga tradition, a marriage alliance between the Dál nAraidi king and either dynasty seems plausible. 128 Indeed, saga tradition already attests to such an alliance in the form of Fiachnae’s son Scannal’s union with the daughter of the Cenél nGabráin dynast Eochaid Buide. 129 It may be telling, though, that despite emphasising Fiachnae’s links with Scotland, the late eighth-century tale Compert Mongáin does not identify Caintigern by name or patronymic, but refers to her only as Fiachnae’s queen. Had its author known of a tradition linking her to Dál Ríata, one would expect that information to be included in the text. The earliest reference to Fiachnae’s queen bearing the name Caintigern is contained in the possibly ninth-century tale Immram Brain. Here, Mongán’s birth is prophesised in a poem spoken by the sea-deity Manannán mac Lir. According to the Immram, Mongán would be born of a union between Caintigern and Manannán, although he would be acknowledged by Fiachnae as his own son. 130 The circumstances of that union are explored in more detail by Compert Mongáin. In this tale Manannán propositions Fiachnae’s unnamed queen while her husband is overseas, fighting with the Dál Ríata against the Saxons. Although determined to remain faithful to Fiachnae, she is persuaded to sleep with Manannán when he tells her that he can save her husband from death at the hands of the Saxons. Mongán is conceived as a result of her submission. In the rather more humorous Early Modern telling of Compert Mongáin in the Book of Fermoy, Manannán makes an offer directly to Fiachnae rather than to his wife, left unnamed here also. Trapped by a hostile Scottish army and a vicious herd of

127 A.O. Anderson believes that Connad Cerr was a member of Cenél Comgaill (Kings and Kingship in Early Scotland, 150 n. 138), while John Bannerman, following the Senchus Fir nAlban genealogies, identified him as a member of Cenél nGabráin (Studies in the history of Dál Riada, 96–9). I am grateful to Mr. Immo Warantjes for alerting me to the difference of scholarly opinion on this issue. 128 It may be significant that a year after Fiachnae Lurgan’s death, his slayer, Fiachnae son of Báetán of Dál Fiatach, was killed in turn by Connad. Connad’s motives in killing the Dál Fiatach Báetán, though, may owe more to a power struggle in the wake of Fiachnae Lurgan’s demise than to any desire to avenge his father-in-law. Certainly, gratitude to Connad for avenging his grandfather’s death did not stop Fiachnae Lurgan’s grandson Máel Cáech son of Scannal from slaying Connad at the battle of Fid Éoin in 629. 129 Lehmann, Fled Dúin na nGéd, 14. 130 Dobbs, ‘Senchas Síl hÍr’, 355.

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venemous sheep, Fiachnae agrees, but Manannán promises to appear to the queen in her husband’s likeness so that she would not lose face. This theme of trading or bargaining for one’s wife is one of the recurrent motifs in the cycle of stories that came to be associated with Mongán. Mongán’s profile as an apparently historical king around whom a considerable body of legendary material accrued echoes the mixed human/divine nature of his ancestry. Opinion varies on the sources upon which the tradition of that ancestry may have drawn. Since the Immram’s account of Mongán’s parentage directly follows a verse foretelling the coming of Christ, some commentators have seen the circumstances of his conception as a deliberate evocation of the Incarnation of Christ. Others have argued that the episode may have more mythological origins. Ó Broin points out the parallels between Caintigern and Alcmene, the mother of Hercules impregnated by Zeus while her husband was on a military campaign. Ó hÓgáin, meanwhile, suggests that the tale may have been influenced by the origin legend of the Merovingians in which a barren queen was impregnated by a sea-spirit. In a strictly Irish context, an extremely similar tale is told of another Ulster king, Rónán son of Domangart of Uí Echach Cobo, whom some versions of the Cruithni genealogies claim was the son of Manannán and Fintan daughter of Finntanán son of Faithge of the Uí Chrónáin branch of Conaille Muirthemne. 131 Perhaps in acknowledgement of Caintigern’s inherent faithfulness to her husband, the Manannán incident not withstanding, the Life of St Comgall of Bangor calls her a ‘faithful and modest’ woman. In the Life, which Kenney dates either to the tenth century or subsequent to the restoration of the monastery in 1125, Caintigern is poisoned by an unknown assailant and the saint’s blessing both heals her and reveals the poisoner to be one of her slave-girls. Merciful and fair, the queen refuses to allow the girl to be handed over for torture until she is judged by Comgall, who then liberates the slave from both death and servitude. Meyer and Nutt, Voyage of Bran, II, 3, 31; Ó Broin, ‘Classical sources for the conception of Mongán’, 262–71; Mac Cana, ‘Mongán mac Fiachna and Immram Brain’, 125–9; Carney, Studies in Irish literature, 286, 288–9; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 109; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 301–3.

131 It may be of note that in the story cycle associated with Mongán, one of his wives is called ‘Fintigern’, a name that looks like a cross between Fintann and Caintigern. Possibly there was confusion between the various women. (Meyer and Nutt, Voyage of Bran, I, 56–7. Fintigern is alternatively referred to as Breóthigernd in another of the stories, ibid. 46, 49.)

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(i: 21a) Fiachnae mac Demmáin DÁL FIATACH

Garb daughter of Néilline son of Muirchertach UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN Prose Ban. §331; Met. Ban. §178 Dobbs ‘Senchas Síl hIr’, 338; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 307, 332; [RC] 48, 183, 221; O’Brien, Corpus, 409; LGen., II, §495.2.

Wife of Demmán son of Cairell of Dál Fiatach (d. 572), and mother of his son Fiachnae (d. 627). Although the Metrical Banshenchas describes Garb’s father as belonging to the Éoganachta of Munster, the prose version’s association of him with Cenél nÉogain is undoubtedly the correct reading and the metrical identification a mere corruption. Néilline’s descendants were not destined for long-term dynastic greatness, but for a brief time in the mid-sixth century one of them became a leading figure of Cenél nÉogain. In the Ailech king-lists the successors to Muirchertach’s sons Fergus and Domnall are recorded as Báetán son of Muirchertach and Eochu son of Domnall. According to the evidence of the annals, however, Báetán and Eochu seem to have been historical nonentities, with the real action being taken by Garb’s brother, Fergus son of Néilline. During Fergus’s brief career he put an end to the easy relations which Cenél nÉogain had enjoyed with Cenél Conaill during Fergus’s and Domnall’s reign as overlords of the north, killing the Cenél Conaill king Ainmere son of Sétnae in 569. Ainmere had succeeded Fergus and Domnall as overlord of the Uí Néill, and Fergus’s actions might be construed as an attempt to contest the leadership. Any personal ambitions he might have had, however, were terminated by his own death in the following year at the avenging hands of Ainmere’s son Áed. No more is heard of Cenél Néillini in the annalistic record, but it is understandable that before their eclipse an alliance with them would have been attractive to Dál Fiatach. Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 109; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 63.

Cumne Dub daughter of Furudrán son of Bécc AIRGÍALLA – UÍ THUIRTRI Prose Ban. §323; Met. Ban. §179 Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 329; Dobbs, ‘Senchas Síl hIr’, 340; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 307, 332; [RC] 48, 183, 221; O’Brien, Corpus, 409.

Wife of Fiachnae son of Demmán of Dál Fiatach (d. 627) and mother of his sons Máel Dúin and Dúnchad (d. 644) and his daughter Dub Lacha. As king of the Uí Moccu Uais federation, Furudrán son of Bécc (d. 645) was overlord of several Airgíalla tribes including Uí Meic Cáirthinn, Uí Fhiachrach Arda Sratha and his native dynasty of Uí Thuirtri. Furudrán’s control of these kingdoms in north-central Ulster is likely to have contributed

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heavily to the appeal his daughter held for the two Dál Fiatach kings who married her. Cumne Dub’s first husband was the powerful Ulster overking, Báetán son of Cairell, to whom she bore several sons. Her second husband, Fiachnae son of Demmán, was the nephew of her first husband. Marriage to his uncle’s widow was probably part of Fiachnae’s strategy to seize the Dál Fiatach kingship following Báetán’s death in 581. Cumne, whose epithet Dub ‘black’ distinguished her from Fiachnae’s second wife Cumne Fhinn ‘white’ (below), bore her new husband two sons and a daughter. As tradition has it, their daughter Dub Lacha grew up to marry Mongán (d. 625) son of the Cruithni king Fiachnae Lurgan and figures prominently in the saga tradition associated with Mongán. Cumne Dub’s and Fiachnae’s sons Dúnchad and Máel Dúin, meanwhile, are mentioned in the section of the Senchas Síl Ír dealing with the intense seventh-century conflict amongst the royal line of Dál Fiatach. In 606 Dúnchad killed his uterine brothers, Cumne Dub’s sons by her first marriage to Báetán son of Cairell. Showing no preference for full siblings over half ones, Dúnchad also killed his full brother Máel Dúin son of Fiachnae.132 Dúnchad’s ruthless pursuit of a family feud in order to achieve power presaged his own downfall, for the fratricide continued in 644 with his own death at the hands of his paternal half-brother Máel Cobo, son of Fiachnae and Cumne Fhinn (below). In early Irish dynastic circles uterine brothers were perceived as allies rather than enemies, as men who shared close kinship bonds, but, since they usually belonged to different agnatic lines, were not in direct competition with one another for dynastic control. In this case, however, Cumne Dub was married to two men from the same agnatic line. Her children thus shared all the normal tensions present between cousins vying for the dynastic kingship, compounded by the problem of being in direct competition with one another for support from their maternal kindred. The genealogies in the Book of Lecan further identify Cumne daughter of Furudrán with the Cumne who was mother of two sons of the Munster king Coirpre Cromm son of Crimthann Sreim.133 Other pre-Norman genealogies simply identify Coirpre’s wife as Cumne, according her no patronymic. It is impossible to be certain about the accuracy of the Book of Lecan’s claim. Since the dates of the figures concerned do not absolutely rule out such a marriage alliance, and since Coirpre son of Crimthann admittedly had more interaction with the northern half of the island than most Munster kings, the claim cannot be dismissed unequivocally. On balance, though, the identification seems more likely to be an inaccurate gloss by a genealogist familiar with the Senchas Síl Ír and overly anxious to make existing vague identifications as specific as possible.

132 Some versions of the Senchas Síl Ír (those in the Laud genealogies and Book of Leinster) state that the killer of Báetán’s sons was not Dúnchad but an otherwise unspecified figure called Murchad. In terms of context, however, the versions identifying Dúnchad make much more sense. 133 O’Brien, Corpus, 197.

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Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 89; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 109; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 69.

Cumne Fhinn daughter of Báetán son of Eochu DÁL NARAIDI Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 329; Dobbs, ‘Senchas Síl hIr’, 340; O’Brien, Corpus, 409.

Another wife of Fiachnae son of Demmán of Dál Fiatach (d. 627) and mother of his two sons Suibne Menn and Máel Cobo (d. 647). Fiachnae son of Demmán’s marriage to Cumne Fhinn, the sister of his Dál nAraidi rival Fiachnae Lurgan, was part of a double marriage alliance between the two dynasties that probably marked a modus vivendi between the competitors for the kingship of the Ulaid. The other marriage was between Fiachnae Lurgan’s son Mongán and Dub Lacha, the daughter of Fiachnae son of Demmán by his previous wife Cumne Dub (above). The unions possibly took place following the battle between the two kings in 602, where Fiachnae Lurgan was victorious and Fiachnae son of Demmán fled. For over twenty years there was no further recorded conflict between Dál nAraidi and Dál Fiatach, until Fiachnae son of Demmán killed Fiachnae Lurgan and briefly assumed his father-in-law’s kingship for himself. While nothing is known about Cumne Fhinn and Fiachnae’s son Suibne beyond the simple fact of his birth, their other son Máel Cobo was king of Ulster from approximately 644 until his death in 647. He achieved this position by killing the previous holder of the office, his older half-brother Dúnchad, son of Fiachnae and Cumne Dub. That fratricide signalled the onset of over thirty years of conflict and kin-slaying between the descendants of the two half-brothers. In 647, Dúnchad’s son Congal Cennfhota avenged his father’s death by killing Máel Cobo, while Congal was himself slain years later by Máel Cobo’s grandson Bécc Bairche son of Blathmac (below, Conchenn wife of i: 27). The virulence of their rivalry underlines how multiple marriages and the subsequent prevalence of half-siblings could exacerbate the already considerable tension inevitable in the system of succession to Irish kingship. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 88.

(i: 21b) Fiachnae mac Feradaig UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN

No mother given for Fiachnae son of Feradach. For wife, see next entry.

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(i: 22) Suibne (Suibne Menn mac Fiachnai) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN

Unnamed mother of Suibne Menn son of Fiachnae Frag. Ann. §17; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Gormlaith and her sisters’, 180.

Mother of Suibne Menn son of Fiachnae son of Feradach (d. 628). Suibne Menn’s unnamed mother features in one of the chronicle-style narrative sequences concerning her son in the Frag. Ann. Suibne’s line, Cenél Feradaig, had never been kings of Cenél nÉogain, let alone kings of Tara, before his reign, and the tale seeks to explain his precipitate rise to power. The basic gist of the story is that Fiachnae, a simple farmer, was suddenly seized one day by greedy and arrogant aspirations to succeed to the kingship of Ireland. Against the advice of his wife, who told him he was far too old to be starting to fight for a kingdom, he decided to hold a great feast to impress potential followers with his hospitality. Before putting his plan into effect, however, he and his wife slept together. In so doing, Fiachnae managed to transfer all his kingship aspirations from himself to his wife, who in turn transferred them to Suibne Menn, the child conceived during their coupling. This humorous little sequence could possibly have been intended as a satirical reversal of the sovereignty goddess ideology, whereby sex did not bestow kingship on the man but temporarily transferred all his yearnings for sovereignty to the woman. Afterwards Fiachnae’s wife asks him if he wanted her to keep planning the feast, but, realising the ridiculousness of his plan, he tells her not to bother. At this point the story skips ahead to a point where Suibne is an adult and his latent kingship aspirations are revived at the instigation of yet another woman (below, Rónait). Rónait daughter of Dúngalach AIRGÍALLA – UÍ THUIRTRI Prose Ban. §356 Frag. Ann. §17; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 118–9; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 184; Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Gormlaith and her sisters’, 180.

Wife of Suibne Menn son of Fiachnae son of Feradach (d. 628). While the Book of Uí Maine version of the prose Banshenchas asserts that the wife of Suibne Menn was unknown, the Book of Lecan version of the text is unique in claiming that she was Rónait daughter of Dúngalach from the Uí Thuirtri of Airgíalla. There is no mention of Dúngalach in the Airgíalla genealogies or the annals, but his affiliation with the Uí Thuirtri is in line with earlier marriage alliances between overlords of the Northern Uí Néill and the dynasties of the Uí Moccu Uais federation of Airgíalla (above, Bríg, mother of i: 19 and Lann, wife of i: 19a). When Suibne Menn came to power in 615, it was by challenging and defeating the previous overlord of the Northern Uí Néill, Máel Cobo son of Áed of Cenél Conaill. Suibne had support from the Luigni in this endeavour, and Mac Niocaill has suggested that his

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Airgíalla in-laws may possibly have helped him as well. His wife’s influence in helping him attain power is portrayed in a much more personally direct manner in the Frag. Ann. In this version the highly sarcastic urgings by Suibne’s unnamed spouse for him to seek the kingship are taken literally, prompting Suibne to begin his campaign for power. Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 90; Mac Shamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain’, 61, 62 (Table).

(i: 23) Óengus (Óengus mac Colmáin Bic) UÍ NÉILL – CLANN CHOLMÁIN

No mother or wife given for Óengus son of Colmán. (i: 24) Domnall (Domnall mac Áedo) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL

Lann daughter of Áed Guaire AIRGÍALLA – UÍ MEIC CÁIRTHINN

Mother of Domnall mac Áedo; see above, wife of Áed mac Ainmerech i: 19a. Dúinsech Prose Ban. §354; Met. Ban. §191 AU 638; Chron.Scot. s.a. 638; Ann.Tig. s.a. 638; Ann.Clon. s.a. 635; AFM s.a. 635; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 307, 332; [RC] 48, 184, 222; Lehmann, Fled Dúin na nGéd, 2.

Wife of Domnall mac Áedo (d. 642). Dúinsech is the first wife of a king of Tara, and indeed the first royal Irish woman of any description, to be recorded in the contemporary strata of the Irish annals.134 This is perhaps not surprising given that her entry, like the majority of contemporary records contained in the annals before AD 740, probably came from a source compiled in Iona. That the monks of the monastery were interested in the activities of Domnall mac Áedo is clearly witnessed by the Vita Sancti Columbae.135 Dúinsech’s entry takes the form of a very simple obituary notice under the year 639 which does not refer to her as queen but simply as uxor Domnaill ‘Domnall’s wife’. The entry accords her no patronymic, nor is she given one by the Banshenchas, which almost certainly took her obit in the annals as its source. In the notes to his edition of the probably late eleventh- to mid134 Eithne, daughter of Crimthann son of Énnae Cennselach of Leinster, and Mór Muman, daughter of Áed Benánn of Munster, have obits recorded in the Clonmacnoise group of annals and AFM at dates prior to Dúinsech’s death. The absence of entries for Eithne and Mór written in the main hand of AU, however, indicates that they were probably not included in the ‘Chronicle of Ireland’ exemplar of the annals, but were later additions possibly extrapolated from saga sources. 135 VSC, I 10, 49; III 5.

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twelfth-century saga Fled Dúin na nGéd 136 O’Donovan equated Dúinsech with the daughter of the king of Osraige referred to by the saga as Domnall’s queen. He points out that Domnall’s brother Máel Cobo was said to have married Cróinsech, daughter of the Osraige king Áed Finn 137 and suggests that Dúinsech was probably Cróinsech’s sister. Even if the late saga is correct, however, in claiming that Domnall’s queen was from Osraige, it is probable that Domnall had several wives within his marital career. There is no certainty that Dúinsech and the Osraige queen were one and the same. Furthermore, it should be noted that the tradition of one of Domnall’s queens being from Osraige may not be independent of the tradition that Osraige was the home of Domnall’s brother’s queen. While it is possible that the two brothers each married a daughter of Áed Finn, it is also possible that the tradition of a marriage alliance between Cenél Conaill and Osraige was transferred in the saga from Máel Cobo to his more famous brother. Fled Dúin na nGéd does not identify Domnall’s queen beyond her being the daughter of the king of Osraige, so it seems unlikely that its author was drawing upon detailed historical sources for his information. O’Donovan, The banquet of Dun na n-Ged, 8.

(i: 25) Blathmac (Blathmac mac Áedo sláine) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE

Lann (Flann) Prose Ban. §§ 303, 304, 351 Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 181, 184.

Mother of Blathmac (d. 665) son of Áed Sláine (d. 604). Blathmac, who is named as the child of a certain Lann (or Flann) by the Book of Lecan recension of the Prose Banshenchas, is the only son of Áed Sláine universally acknowledged not to be also the son of Eithne (Erc) daughter of Brénainn (above, wife of i: 18). Lann is further recorded as the mother of Blathmac’s brother Ailill in the Book of Lecan version of the Metrical Banshenchas, though elsewhere Ailill appears as Eithne’s son. Neither patronymic nor any regional or dynastic affiliations are attached to Lann’s name in these entries; indeed, Lann’s inclusion in the Prose Banshenchas seems to be motivated less by who she was than by who she was not. From their positioning in the text, it would seem that the chief aim behind Lann’s entries was to stress that the wife of Áed Sláine who gave birth to Blathmac was not the same wife of Áed Sláine whom Blathmac later married. Seen in this light, a more complete identification is immaterial to the texts’ needs, since all they required was a genealogical marker to make it clear that Blathmac did not wed his own mother.138 136 This date is suggested by Herbert, ‘Fled Dúin na nGéd: a reappraisal’, 75. 137 Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 184. 138 Interestingly, the versions of the Banshenchas thus stressing that Blathmac did not marry his mother are the

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Even a genealogical marker, however, needs a name. The choice of Lann (Flann) may have been suggested by a tradition found in the Edinburgh version of the Prose Banshenchas that Áed Sláine was associated with a woman of that name. While the Edinburgh text does not claim that Lann was the mother of Blathmac, it does state that a woman called Lann was the mother of Áed’s son Conall. Entered under the year 612, Conall’s obit as a lóeg Breg ‘warrior of Brega’, is considerably earlier than the death dates of Áed Sláine’s other sons. Accordingly, Edinburgh’s claim that Conall had a different mother from most of his brothers seems quite plausible, perhaps more so than Conall’s inclusion amongst Eithne’s sons in the Book of Uí Maine version of the Prose Banshenchas. The chronological difficulties presented by Blathmac’s dying fifty-three years later than Conall, however, suggest that Lann, mother of Conall, only provided the inspiration for the name of Blathmac’s mother rather than being Blathmac’s mother herself. As Conall’s epithet would seem to indicate that he was at least a somewhat seasoned warrior at the time of his death, it is unlikely that the large gap between his and his brothers’ death dates can be explained by his dying at a very young age. Eithne (Erc) daughter of Brénainn Dall CONMAICNE CÚILE TOLAD?

Wife of Blathmac. See above, wife of Áed Sláine i: 18. (i: 26) Diermait (Diarmait mac Áedo Sláine) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE

Temair daughter of Áed Bolg son of Fíngin DÉSSI MUMAN – UÍ ROSSA Prose Ban. §358; Met. Ban. §192; Stokes ‘Life of S. Féchín of Fore’, 342–4. Plummer, Vitae, II, 80–81; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 308, 333; [RC] 48, 185, 222.

Wife of Diarmait son of Áed Sláine (d. 665) and mother of his son Cernach Sotal (d. 664). As daughter of Áed Bolg of the Uí Rossa branch of Déssi Muman, Temair belongs to the pattern of complexly interwoven blood relationships that links the cycle of stories about the Munster princess Mór Muman to that about the Connacht king Guaire Aidni. 139 It is in this context that the tradition of Temair’s marriage to Diarmait is probably best understood. In the saga account of the battle of Carn Conaill, the conflict is between Guaire Aidni and Diarmait, with St Cummíne Fota of Clonfert playing an intermediary role. All three men are connected to Temair. In addition to being Diarmait’s wife, Temair is linked to Guaire and same versions which indicate that Eithne was both Áed Sláine’s mother and his wife. 139 The following discussion of Temair’s relationships relies heavily upon Seán Ó Coileáin’s excellent treatment of the material (Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’).

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Cummíne through her sister-in-law, Mugain daughter of Fiachnae of Éoganacht Locha Léin. Both Guaire and Cummíne were said to be Mugain’s sons, although Temair’s brother Máel Ochtraig was the father of neither. Máel Ochtraig was the father, however, of a third son of Mugain’s, the holy fool Comgán Mac Da Cherda. Comgán is often confused with his uterine brother Cummíne Fota, and Seán Ó Coileáin has seen a parallel between Mac Da Cherda’s relationship to Temair, wife of Diarmait son of Áed, and Cummíne Fota’s relationship to his Éoganacht Locha Léin kinswoman, Mugain daughter of Conchraid, wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill and mother of Áed Sláine (above, wife of i: 18). Just as the Munster-born Mugain daughter of Conchraid was ancestress of all Síl nÁedo Sláine, so was the Munster-born Temair ancestress of the powerful Uí Chernaig line of that dynasty. Descended from Temair’s and Diarmait’s son Cernach Sotal, Uí Chernaig controlled southern Brega from their base at Lagore.140 They were the main Síl nÁedo Sláine competition for their Uí Chonaing cousins of northern Brega, with whom they struggled for control of Brega throughout the early medieval period, and for control of the Tara kingship during the first half of the eighth century. It has been suggested that Temair’s name, an unusual one for Irish women in the early and medieval period, may have connotations of sovereignty. 141 If so, the political struggles of the northern and southern branches of Síl nÁedo Sláine provide a plausible context for such an emphasis on Uí Chernaig’s ancestral right to Tara (Temair). While not identified specifically as Temair, the unnamed wife of Diarmait son of Áed Sláine in the late medieval Latin Life of St Féchín of Fabair (Fore, Co. Westmeath) proves herself willing to go beyond mere nomenclature in helping to ensure her descendants’ ancestral rights. On condition that her heirs will inherit in perpetuity, she promises Féchín that she will fulfill the request of a leper who has come to the saint for help. Even when this request involves taking the leper’s nose in her mouth and sucking the mucus from his nostrils, she does not falter. Instead, on the command of the leper (later revealed to be Christ) Diarmait’s queen saves the mucus in a linen cloth for Féchín. Upon opening it, the holy man discovers the cloth to be filled with gold with which he embellishes his crozier and pays for new land for his church. Further enhancing Féchín’s holdings, the queen is then said by the Latin Life to have donated to him ‘the island from which she had come’. Although the Latin Life does not identify the island, its author probably intended the island on Loch Léibhinn (Loch Lene, barony of Fore, Co. Westmeath) which the Irish Life identifies as Diarmait’s residence at the time of the incident. Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 105–6; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 111; Bhreathnach, ‘Tochmarc Becfhola’, 61; Bitel, ‘Women’s donations’, 16; Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 100 (§§ 161–2). 140 Cernach Sotal is named as Temair’s son only in the versions of the Banshenchas belonging to the Book of Lecan prose recension. The other versions of the text identify Temair simply as Diarmait’s wife. 141 Bhreathnach, Tara bibliography, 100.

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Muirenn daughter of Máel Dúin son of Suibne UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL COIRPRI Prose Ban. §291; Met. Ban. §155 Ann.Tig. s.a. 648; AFM s.a. 645; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 394–6; II, 429–31; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 132–5; Meyer, Älteste irische Dichtung, II, 25; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 180; Murphy, Early Irish lyrics, xiii–iv.

Wife of Diarmait son of Áed Sláine (d. 665). The claims to historical accuracy of the marriage between Muirenn daughter of Máel Dúin and Diarmait son of Áed Sláine are far from certain. In saga tradition, Muirenn is principally known as the wife of the Uí Briúin Aí king of Connacht, Rogallach son of Uatu (d. 649). After Rogallach unknowingly takes his and Muirenn’s daughter, who had been abandoned at birth, as his concubine, Muirenn leaves her husband and flees to Diarmait’s court by swimming across the Shannon. The saints of Ireland try to force Rogallach to give the girl up, but when he refuses they predict that he will fall by wicked people in a squalid spot. This comes to pass when he is attacked by slaves following a dispute over a wounded deer and battered to death with the slaves’ oars. Muirenn, meanwhile, dies of jealousy of her own daughter according to the version of the tale found in Keating’s Foras feasa ar Éirinn. While associating Muirenn with Diarmait, the saga account does not specify that she married him following her flight. In fact it says that Diarmait was Muirenn’s foster-son. Unless there is a deliberate attempt here to mirror Diarmait’s incestuous relationship with his daughter, the inclusion of this detail probably means to suggest that Muirenn went to Diarmait seeking simple refuge rather than another husband. The Book of Lecan recension of the Banshenchas, however, claims that Muirenn was the wife of both Diarmait and Rogallach, bearing three sons – Fergus (d. 654), Cathal (d. 680) and Cellach (d. 705) – to the latter. If this is true, Diarmait’s marriage to Muirenn could be understood within the political context of Diarmait’s attempts to push his influence further west into Connacht. More than likely, however, the Banshenchas’s tradition of Muirenn’s marriage to Diarmait was derived from an incorrect interpretation of her flight to him. It is possible that this interpretation was influenced by the tradition surrounding Muirenn Máel of the Partraige (above, wife of i: 20). The latter was ancestress of the Cenél Coirpri queen by virtue of being the mother of Áed son of Garbán son of Tuathal Máelgarb, the great-great-grandfather of Muirenn daughter of Máel Dúin. More significantly, the Partraige Muirenn was also one of the wives of Diarmait mac Cerbaill. There is frequent confusion in the sources between Diarmait mac Cerbaill and his grandson Diarmait son of Áed Sláine, and it could be that the tradition of Diarmait son of Áed Sláine’s marriage to Muirenn was the consequence of similar uncertainty. Given the existence of a known, if platonic, association between Rogallach’s wife and the king of Tara, it is easy to see how the tradition of a marriage between the younger Diarmait and Muirenn daughter of Máel Dúin might have arisen out of the tradition of a

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marriage between the older Diarmait and Muirenn Máel. Byrne, Irish kings, 246, 248; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 106–7; Bhreathnach, ‘Tochmarc Becfhola’, 61; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 371.

Becfhola Stokes, Silva Gadelica I, 85–7; II, 91–3; Dillon, Cycles of the kings, 75–8; Bhreathnach, ‘Tochmarc Becfhola’, 59–91.

Wife of Diarmat son of Áed Sláine (d. 665). Becfhola is a fictitious creation, featured only in the early Middle Irish saga Tochmarc Becfhola and not in the historical record. Her name, which translates as ‘small wealth’ or ‘little value’, is explained in one version of the saga as being derived from the brooch she accepted from Diarmait as her sole bride-price. In another version the name is derived from a comment made about her worth by Diarmait’s druids when the king, ignorant of his new wife’s identity, will not say who she is. The latter version underlines the crucial importance which being from the right family had for the contracting of a worthwhile marriage alliance. Becfhola’s attachment to her new husband seems to be worth about as much as her bride-price. She quickly falls in love with Crimthann son of Áed of Leinster, described as either Diarmait’s foster-brother or fosterling, though her attempts to arrange a tryst with him end in disaster when Crimthann does not show up but ravenous wolves do. Escaping from the wild animals, she meets another young warrior to whom she offers herself. A year later he arrives at court to accept her proposal, and the two leave together, with Diarmait wisely letting them go. It has been suggested that the original story pattern in this tale was the encounter between the king and a maiden of mysterious origins. In the sagas associated with the kings of Tara, Becfhola would be the last in a series of such women that also included Béchuma (Delbcháem), wife of Conn Cétchathach (above, i: 1), and Sín, lover of Muirchertach Mac Ercae (above, i: 16a). Owing to the presence of the youthful foster-son Crimthann, however, the pattern switched to the paradigm of the younger wife attempting to seduce the stepson of an older husband that is so central to tales like Fingal Rónáin and ‘Conall Corc and the Corcu Loígde’.142 Given the frequent disparity in ages between partners that must have been occasioned by royal marriages being both strategic and multiple, such tales would probably have had their real-life parallels. The entry in Chron. Scot. under the year 940, which tells of how the Clann Cholmáin king of Tara Donnchad Donn had his wife Órlaith, sister of Brian Bóruma, executed for intriguing with his son Óengus is a case in point. In Tochmarc Becfhola, however, the consequences of the love triangle are almost pointedly minimal.

142 Bhreathnach, ‘Tochmarc Becfhola’, 64.

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Bhreathnach, ‘Tochmarc Becfhola’, 61–2, 64–8; Ó hÓgáin, Myth, legend and romance, 157–8; Bitel, Land of women, 46–8.

(i: 27) Snechta Fína (Fínnachta Fledach) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE

Derb Forgaill daughter of Cellach Cualann LAIGIN – UÍ MÁIL

or daughter of Conaing son of Ailill LAIGIN Prose Ban. §369; Met. Ban. §199 AU 684; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 309, 332–3; [RC] 48, 185, 223.

Wife of Fínnachta Fledach son of Dúnchad of Síl nÁedo Sláine (d. 695). Derb Forgaill is one of two known wives of Fínnachta Fledach, the other being Conchenn daughter of Congal Cennfhota of Dál Fiatach (below). While it is impossible to be certain, there is a strong likelihood that she is the Derb Forgaill whose obit is entered, without a patronymic, in AU under the year 684. Fínnachta had at least three sons, but since there is no record of their maternal ancestry, it is not known which, if any, of them were also Derb Forgaill’s children. The issue of whose child Derb Forgaill herself was provides further uncertainty. Most versions of the Prose Banshenchas state that she was the daughter of a certain Conaing son of Ailill of Leinster; however, the Book of Uí Maine version says that she was the daughter of the Uí Máil king of Leinster, Cellach Cualann (d. 715). On balance, the identification of Cellach as Derb Forgaill’s father seems most likely. There is no mention of a Conaing son of Ailill from Leinster, or indeed from anywhere else, in the annals or the genealogies. Moreover, the identification fits extremely well with what is known about the marriage alliances contracted by Cellach Cualann. Relative to other royal women of this period, an abundant amount of information exists about the wives and daughters of Cellach Cualann. They are found in the Banshenchas, the Leinster genealogies and, particularly unusually, the annals. No less than five death notices, six if one counts the uncertain obit for Derb Forgaill, are entered for Cellach’s womenfolk in AU. 143 These records reveal that in addition to kings from Leinster and possibly Dál Ríata,144 Cellach’s family intermarried to a marked extent with various branches of Síl nÁedo Sláine. One of Cellach’s own wives, Caintigern daughter of Conaing, may have been 143 Their prevalence in AU is probably connected to the fact that Cellach’s brother Fiannamail son of Gerthide was abbot of Clonard between 732 and 736. It has been surmised that a record from Clonard was one of the strands contributing to the ‘Chronicle of Ireland’, the common exemplar underlying the various collections of Irish annals until approximately AD 911 (Smyth, ‘The earliest Irish annals’, 26). 144 Mac Shamhráin, Church and polity in pre-Norman Ireland, 68.

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the daughter of Conaing Cuirre, king of Brega and eponym of the Uí Chonaing branch of Síl nÁedo Sláine. Another of Cellach’s wives was Bé Fáil daughter of Sechnasach son of Blathmac, Fínnachta’s predecessor as overlord of Uí Néill, and king of Tara according to the Middle Irish regnal lists. In turn, Cellach was most likely the father of Sechnasach’s wife Finnelb.145 Furthermore, Cellach’s daughter Muirenn was the queen of Írgalach son of Conaing (below, wife of i: 29), and the mother of his son Cináed, yet another Síl nÁedo Sláine king of Tara. The marriage of one of Cellach’s daughters to Fínnachta Fledach would thus be very much in keeping with the pattern of his alliances. The ale of the horns of Cualu was considered a prerogative of the overkings of Leinster according to one medieval source. 146 The marriages of Cellach’s daughters would seem to indicate that a Cualu cupbearer for that ale was very much in demand as well. Practical, rather than symbolic, factors, however, were probably the reasons behind Cellach’s daughters being so eligible. The women all married into different branches of the incessantly fractious dynasty, and it is probable that once one Síl nÁedo Sláine branch formed a marital alliance with the powerful Leinster king, the other branches did not want to be left at a disadvantage. Such an arrangement also let Cellach take advantage of the many factions in the volatile situation in the midlands. Through marriage, Cellach was allied to each of the various lines of Síl nÁedo Sláine that dominated Brega and beyond from 662 until 718. It could be that Cellach’s alliance with Síl nÁedo Sláine may actually have helped him achieve power in the first place. In 677, several years after Fínnachta became king of Tara, the then king of Leinster, Fiannamail son of Máel Tuile of Uí Máil, opted for a pre-emptive strike against him. He was defeated, and in 680 Fínnachta had the Leinster king killed by one of Fiannamail’s own people. Fiannamail was succeeded as king of Uí Máil by Cellach Cualann, his cousin. Considering Fiannamail’s betrayal from within and Fínnachta’s probable marriage to a daughter of Cellach, it is possible that Fínnachta was complicit in Cellach’s succession. The one major branch of the Síl nÁedo Sláine notably absent from Cellach’s list of inlaws was Uí Chernaig. Based at Lagore in southern Brega, Uí Chernaig did not become the dominant branch in Síl nÁedo Sláine until after Cellach’s death. This timing may account for the lack of an alliance between the Leinster king and the southern branch of the dynasty, though it is also possible that the absence was more pointed. Their southern Brega provenance meant that Uí Chernaig were more likely to come into direct conflict with Leinster than were their northern cousins. Certainly this was the case in 704 when Cellach fought and defeated Fogartach grandson of Cernach Sotal at Clane, Co. Kildare.

145 The Book of Lecan Prose Banshenchas is the only version to provide a name for any wife of Sechnasach, but it fails to identify her with any more precision than Finnelb daughter of Cellach. 146 Byrne, Irish kings, 153.

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Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 110; Smyth, Celtic Leinster, 81; Mac Shamhráin, Church and polity, 67.

Conchenn daughter of Congal Cennfhota DÁL FIATACH Prose Ban. §369; Met. Ban. §§ 199, 200 Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 330; Dobbs, ‘Senchus Síl hIr’, 344; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 309, 333; [RC] 48, 185, 223; O’Brien, Corpus, 411; LGen., §496.5.

Wife of Fínnachta Fledach son of Dúnchad of Síl nÁedo Sláine (d. 695). Conchenn was the daughter of Congal Cennfhota son of Dúnchad, Dál Fiatach king of Ulster between 670 and 674. In addition to Fínnachta, she was said to have been married to her second cousin, Bécc Bairche son of Blathmac of Dál Fiatach, who reigned over Ulster from 692 until his abdication in 707. He died in 718. While marriage to a near relation on the distaff side was not uncommon in early medieval Ireland, marriage to someone within the same agnatic line was much more rare. The different branches of Dál Fiatach to which Conchenn and Bécc belonged, however, were opponents in a thirty-year rivalry for dynastic control that had resulted in the killing of three of their kings. One of these kings was Conchenn’s own father, whose slayer was none other than Bécc Bairche. Undoubtedly Conchenn’s and Bécc’s unusual union was an attempt to heal the rift that had temporarily cost their common dynasty the kingship of the Ulaid. The political importance of Conchenn’s marriage to Bécc was such that she was clearly his cétmuinter ‘chief wife’. Naming Conchenn as the mother of seven of Bécc’s twelve sons, the genealogies refer to her children as secht meic Congaine na rígna ‘the seven sons of Conchenn the queen’, thus setting her above and apart from the other two women whom it names, without titles, as mothers of Bécc’s children.147 Attempting to unravel when and in what sequence Conchenn’s marriages to Fínnachta and Bécc occurred is a far from straightforward task. The only clear aspect of their intertwined relationships is that Conchenn would have had to divorce one of the kings in order to marry the other. She could not have wed Fínnachta after Bécc’s death, since Bécc outlived Fínnachta by twenty-three years. Nor could she have wed Bécc after Fínnachta’s death, for Fínnachta was not killed until 695; yet Conchenn’s and Bécc’s son Áed Róin was old enough in 707 to succeed to the Ulaid kingship upon Bécc’s abdication. The most likely order of events is that Conchenn first married Fínnachta Fledach at some point between 670 and 674 while her

147 These women were Cacht daughter of Máel Fuataig – probably Máel Fuataig son of Ernáine son of Fiachnae of Cenél nÉogain – and a woman called Lethann of unknown origins (O’Brien, Corpus, 411). The Book of Lecan version of the Prose Banshenchas says that the Ulster king was also married to Bé Bairche, daughter of Cináed son of Cathal, adding the intriguing detail that she almost killed him out of jealousy (Dobbs, ‘Banshenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 184). Mac Fhirbhisigh’s genealogies claim Bé Bairche’s father was Cináed son of Eochaid from Crích Bairche (LGen, §496.4).

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father was still king of Ulaid. After his murder the provincial kingship fell into the hands of the Cruithni, and, with its most powerful member dead, Congal’s line decreased in importance, never to take the kingship again. Judging the alliance Conchenn represented to be no longer of political value, Fínnachta may have divorced his Ulaid wife and instead married the Leinster princess, Derb Forgaill (above), whose connections would have been more immediately useful. It was probably at this point that Bécc, deciding it was time to end the kin-slaying, married the newly available Conchenn, the latter then fathering a future king upon her that would have the blood of both sides of the family in his veins. A less likely, but still possible, ordering of Conchenn’s husbands is that she could have married Bécc while her father was still alive. After a spate of kin-slaying in the 640s, relative peace had existed between the two factions of Dál Fiatach during the reign of Bécc Bairche’s father, Blathmac. A marriage between Bécc and Conchenn may have been intended to guarantee the continuation of the peace. Under this scenario, her father’s murder would have meant an end to the marriage, rather than being its precursor. Given that in 679 Bécc raided into the midlands until he was checked at Tailtiu by Fínnachta, it is not impossible that the king of Tara may have married Conchenn as part of an alliance with her branch of Dál Fiatach against her troublesome former husband. The chief weakness in this scenario is that the motive does not seem to be a strong enough incentive to prompt the king of Tara to marry the daughter of a dispossessed line. Bécc Bairche was not even the king of the Ulaid at this point, and had Fínnachta wanted to strengthen Bécc’s enemies, supporting the Cruithni might have been a more fruitful avenue of approach. Ultimately, then, it is most probable that Conchenn married Bécc after she was divorced by Fínnachta.148 Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 56, 108, 115.

(i: 28) Níell (Niall mac Cernaig Sotail) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE

No mother or wife given for Niall son of Cernach Sotal.

148 Ties between Conchenn’s and Fínnachta’s lines may not have been entirely severed. An entry in Ann. Tig under the year 718 noting the deaths of Conchenn’s brother Cú Roí and Fínnachta’s son Ailill could be interpreted as the two having being killed alongside one another. Possibly Ailill was Fínnachta’s son by Conchenn, and thus sister’s son to Cú Roí.

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(i: 29) Írgalach mac Conaing UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE

Muirenn daughter of Cellach Cualann LAIGIN – UÍ MÁIL Prose Ban. §376; Met. Ban. §203 AU 748; Ann.Tig. s.a. 747; AFM s.a. 743; Frag. Ann. §150; O’Grady, Silva Gadelica, I, 407; II, 442; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 309, 333; [RC ] 48, 186, 224.

Wife of Írgalach son of Conaing of Síl nÁedo Sláine (d. 702) and mother of his son Cináed Cáech (d. 728). Muirenn, wife of the king of Brega, Írgalach son of Conaing, was daughter of the Uí Máil king of Leinster Cellach Cualann (d. 715). Írgalach’s line was one of several branches of Síl nÁedo Sláine with whom Cellach Cualann’s daughters intermarried (above, Derb Forgaill, wife of i: 27). This marriage between the Uí Máil and Uí Chonaing probably represented both an alliance against their mutual enemy, the Uí Chernaig, and the opportunity for the Uí Chonaing to keep apace with the marriage alliances contracted by Cellach with other branches of their internally fraught dynasty. According to some versions of the Prose Banshenchas, Muirenn was also the mother of the Cenél Conaill dynast Flaithbertach son of Loingsech, overlord of the Uí Néill and king of Tara according to the Middle Irish regnal lists. If true, this would make Muirenn the mother of two kings of Tara from two different dynasties; the claim appears to be erroneous, however, resulting from a scribal error.149 Although not identified specifically as Muirenn, the unnamed mother of Írgalach’s son, Cináed Cáech, appears in a story found in the Frag. Ann. and in the closely related Mionannala concerning the conflict between her husband and Adomnán of Iona over Írgalach’s murder of the Uí Chernaig king Niall son of Cernach Sotal. After using trickery to fast successfully against Írgalach, Adomnán curses the king, telling him that he will shortly lose his sovereignty and go to hell. In a variation on the theme of the queen as the believing wife, Cináed’s humble and pious mother begs the saint not to curse the child within her womb. Adomnán agrees, telling her that her unborn son would become king, but the curse on his father would cause him to be half-blind. Muirenn went on to outlive her husband by forty-six years and her son by twenty. When she died in 748, the annals accorded her the epithet regina Írgalaig ‘queen of Írgalach’. In the mid-eighth century the annals were just beginning to use the title ‘queen’ in their obits for royal women, and the most common formulation of the epithet was regina regis or rigan ríg ‘the queen of a king’. The formulation used either the king’s name, as illustrated by Muirenn’s example ‘queen of Írgalach’, or simply the king’s title, as in ‘queen of the king of Tara’. Much less frequent was the unqualified use of the title ‘queen’ without reference to a husband. 149 The scribe of the Book of Lecan recension’s exemplar ran Muirenn’s entry together with the line immediately following it which stated that the mother of Flaithbertach was unknown.

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Dobbs, ‘Women of the Uí Dúnlainge of Leinster’, 196–206; Mac Niocaill, Ireland before the Vikings, 110; Smyth, Celtic Leinster, 81; Mac Shamhráin, Church and polity, 67.

(i: 30) Flann Asail (Flann mac Áedo meic Dlúthaig) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE

No mother or wife given for Flann son of Áed Dlúthach. (i: 31) Furbaide (Murchad Midi mac Diarmato Déin?) UÍ NÉILL – CLANN CHOLMÁIN

Ailpín daughter of Comgall son of Sárán DELBNA MÓR Prose Ban. §379; Met. Ban. §206 Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 148–9; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 309, 334; [RC ] 48, 186, 224.

Wife of Murchad Midi (d. 715) and mother of Domnall Midi son of Murchad (d. 763). Ailpín daughter of Comgall of Delbna Mór, the mother of the first Clann Cholmáin king of Tara, is not coincidentally the first Clann Cholmáin wife to be recorded in the Banshenchas. Her marriage to Murchad should be understood within the context of Delbna Mór’s close proximity to the lands of Clann Cholmáin. Located on the eastern borders of Clann Cholmáin territory, Delbna Mór formed a buffer between it and the lands of the Fir Chúl Breg branch of Síl nÁedo Sláine. From the end of the seventh century through to the opening years of the eighth, there was a series of killings and counter-killings perpetrated by Clann Cholmáin and Fir Chúl Breg against one another. Having Delbna Mór as an ally would thus have been very important to Murchad as his dynasty steadily rose in power to become the dominant group within the Southern Uí Néill. The marriages of Murchad Midi’s children – his son Domnall Midi to Ailbine daughter of Ailill, king of Cíannacht Breg; his daughter Érennach to Flann Dá Chongal, king of Uí Fhailge; and a possible daughter Faílenn to yet another north Leinster dynast, Cathal son of Gerthide of Uí Briúin Chualann 150 – reflect a similar attempt to encircle Brega with alliances favourable to Mide. Byrne, ‘Ciannachta Breg’, 125–6; Connon, ‘The Banshenchas and the Uí Néill queens of Tara’, 103.

150 For the marriage of Domnall see Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 186, 221; for Érennach, see O’Brien, Corpus, 59; for Faílenn see O’Brien, Corpus, 342. The genealogies only identify Faílenn as daughter of Murchad, so it is not certain if Murchad Midi is intended.

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(i: 32) Cailech (Fergal mac Maíle Dúin) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN

Cacht daughter of Cellach son of Máel Cobo UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL Prose Ban. §374; Met. Ban. §202 Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 19; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 142–3; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 309, 333; [RC] 48, 185, 224.

Wife of Máel Dúin son of Máel Fithrig of Cenél nÉogain (d. 681) and mother of his son Fergal (d. 722). Cacht was the daughter of Cellach son of Máel Cobo of Cenél Conaill, a figure who was overlord of the Uí Néill from 643 until his death in 657 and reckoned to be king of Tara by the Middle Irish regnal lists. Her son Fergal mac Maíle Dúin was the first Cenél nÉogain overlord of the Uí Néill in almost a hundred years and the first unequivocally Cenél nÉogain dynast to be acknowledged king of Tara by BCC. Having a mother who was the daughter of a powerful Cenél Conaill king may have been a factor in Fergal’s acquisition of this position, helping him achieve dominance first among the branches of the Northern Uí Néill and then among the Uí Néill as a whole. Certainly there is no record of any conflict between Cenél Conaill and Cenél nÉogain during his reign, hostility to him within the Uí Néill confederation being limited to Uí Chernaig. Cacht’s marriage to the Cenél nÉogain king Máel Dúin was the first in a series of marital alliances between Cenél nÉogain and Cenél Conaill spanning three consecutive generations. Fergal himself had some sort of a relationship with a Cenél Conaill princess who was the mother of his son Áed Allán (below, daughter of Ernán/Congal Cennmagar), while Fergal’s son Niall Frossach married the daughter of the Cenél Conaill overlord of the Uí Néill, Flaithbertach son of Loingsech. It is extremely likely that these intermarriages were directly linked to the fact that from the start of Fergal’s reign in 710, until the death of his grandson Máel Dúin son of Áed Allán in 788, the overlordship of the Northern Uí Néill alternated regularly between Cenél nÉogain and Cenél Conaill. In this way the situation parallels the later 250-year-long alternation of the Tara kingship between Cenél nÉogain and Clann Cholmáin, which was similarly supported by consistent intermarriage between the principal dynasties.

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Daughter of Ernán of Cenél Conaill

or daughter of Congal Cennmagar UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL Prose Ban. §378; Met. Ban. §205 Frag. Ann. §177; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 309, 333; [RC] 48, 224, 186.

Wife of Fergal mac Maíle Dúin of Cenél nÉogain (d. 722) and mother of his son Áed Allán (d. 743). Although some discrepancy exists about the precise identity of Áed Allán’s mother, there is a consensus that she was from Cenél Conaill. The Banshenchas claims that she was the daughter of a certain Ernán of Cenél Conaill who is otherwise absent from the historical record. Frag. Ann., meanwhile, record a tradition that she was the daughter of the Cenél Conaill king Congal Cennmagar (d. 710). Congal was Fergal’s predecessor both as overlord of the Uí Néill and, according to the Middle Irish regnal lists, as king of Tara. Neither source accords Áed’s mother a first name. The Frag. Ann. identification occurs as part of a bawdy recounting of the conception of Áed Allán. One of the themes of the narrative sequences within the Frag. Ann. seems to be the way in which the circumstances of conception affected the child’s eventual character (above, mother of i: 22); the point of this story appears to be an explanation of Áed’s aggressive nature. As the story tells it, Congal’s daughter was supposed to have been a nun and had been given much gold, silver and cattle by her father for protecting her chastity. Sadly tempted by the devil, however, she began an affair with Fergal. News of the romance was brought to her father’s attention by their go-between, who notified Congal of the couple’s next tryst. Successfully averting disaster when her father unexpectedly walked in, the girl hid Fergal under the bedclothes, whereupon a cat came and bit large chunks out of his legs until Fergal throttled it. Seeing no one but his daughter in the room, Congal had the hapless messenger drowned, begged his daughter’s forgiveness and departed; immediately afterwards Áed was conceived. When the child was born, he was turned over to two servant women – one from Cenél nÉogain and one from Cenél Conaill – to be drowned so that Congal might not discover the truth. Feeling great love for the child, the Cenél nÉogain woman wanted to keep it alive and successfully fought her Cenél Conaill associate over the issue, forcing her into jointly caring for the infant. Eventually the truth was revealed to Congal’s daughter, and she spirited Áed, now aged four, away to Fergal. In addition to explaining his character, this story may also metaphorically reflect the relations between Cenél nÉogain and Cenél Conaill during Áed’s reign. Despite Cenél Conaill being his maternal kindred, Áed fought repeatedly with them throughout his career. Like the Cenél nÉogain servant woman, he eventually won

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out, forcing the abdication of the Cenél Conaill king Flaithbertach son of Loingsech as overlord of the Uí Néill and assuming that position himself. Connon, ‘The Banshenchas and the Uí Néill queens of Tara’, 103; Frag. Ann. §§ 177 n. 193.

Aithechdae daughter of Cían CÍANNACHTA Prose Ban. §382; Met. Ban. §207 Frag. Ann., §177; Dinneen, Foras feasa, III, 150–1; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 310, 334; [RC ] 48, 186, 224; Ó Donnchadha, Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe, 21.

Wife of Fergal mac Maíle Dúin of Cenél nÉogain (d. 722) and mother of his mother Niall Frossach (abdicated 770; died 778). While a precise identity cannot be established for the mother of Niall Frossach, there is a strong tradition that she was of the Cíannachta. Her vague identification in the Banshenchas simply states that she was Aithechdae daughter of Cían. The possibility, however, that ‘Cían’ should be taken as an indication of tribal affiliation rather than a patronymic is suggested by the Frag. Ann.’s claim that Niall’s mother was the daughter of the king of Cíannachta. The story of Niall’s birth in the Frag. Ann. stresses the legitimacy of his parents’ union, and the appropriateness of his mother as Fergal’s queen. Standing in pointed contrast to their account of the tumultuous circumstances surrounding the conception of Áed Allán (above, daughter of Ernán/Congal Cennmagar), the Frag. Ann. create a parallel between Niall’s serene conception and his gentle and pious nature as an adult. According to their story, Niall was conceived in wedlock, once the intercessory prayers of the holy nun Luaithrinn put an end to years of barreness for the queen, the most beautiful woman in Ireland of her time. Throughout this story, the Frag. Ann. leave Niall’s mother unnamed, simply calling her the daughter of the king of Cíannachta. Up to to the mid-eighth century, however, the annals use the term ‘king of Cíannachta’ in reference to the rulers of three different peoples: Cíannacht Glinne Geimin of north Ulster; their distant cousins, Cíannacht Breg; and finally the Uí Chonaing branch of Síl nÁedo Sláine, who appropriated the title rex Ciannachte after occupying Cíannacht Breg’s lands on the southern banks of the lower Boyne.151 It is unclear to which of these peoples Niall’s mother belonged, although later sources apparently believed her to be a member of Cíannacht Glinne Geimin. Both Keating and the Early Modern Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe identify Niall’s mother as the ‘daughter of Cían Ua Conchobair, 151 AU uses the title ‘king of Cíannachta’ in reference to the Cíannacht Glinne Geimin at 662, 681 and possibly 674, and to the Cíannacht Breg at 572 (the gloss ‘Ghlenna Geimin’ is a later error), 594 and 702. After Uí Chonaing occupied their lands south of the lower Boyne, the Cíannacht Breg continued to rule their territory on the river’s northern banks where their rulers became known as the ‘kings of Ard Cíannacht’ (beginning in 688). The first use of the title ‘king of Cíannacht’ in reference to an Uí Chonaing dynast is 742, after which point the title refers to them exclusively.

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king of the Cíannachta’, referring to the Ua Conchobair dynasty who ruled Cíannacht Glinne Geimin in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. While this identification could be correct – Cíannacht Glinne Geimin was one of the kingdoms on Cenél nEógain’s eastern border, and an alliance between the two neighbours is quite plausible – the anachronistic nature of the Ua Conchobair reference does not inspire confidence in the identification having been based upon genuine early records. Given the events of Fergal’s career, a more probable identification is that Niall’s mother belonged to either the Cíannacht Breg or Uí Chonaing. Members of both dynasties fought alongside Fergal against the Laigin in the battle of Almu. Moreover, in terms of their geographic location, both kingdoms would have been useful allies in the political rivalry that existed between Fergal and the Uí Chernaig over the Uí Néill overlordship. The latter is especially true of Uí Chonaing whose chief enemies were their Uí Chernaig cousins. Of the three possibilities, an Uí Chonaing background for Niall’s mother would also be the closest match to Fergal’s own background in terms of royal status, although it is certainly possible that Fergal might have married into a dynasty less powerful than his own. Furthermore Aithechdae is known to have been a Síl nÁedo Sláine name: one branch of that dynasty were known as the Uí Aithechdai after their ancestor, Aithechdae son of Conall son of Áed Sláine.152 The uncertainty over Aithechdae’s native dynasty adds to the difficulties in identifying her father already presented by the question of whether ‘Cían’ referred to his name or to his people. If ‘Cían’ was indeed supposed to denote a personal name, it is conceivable that it represents a scribal corruption of a name like ‘Cináed’. The name Cían was not at all common in early Ireland, and there is no one by that name in the historical record remotely eligible to be Aithechdae’s father. There is, however, a quite suitable candidate by the name of Cináed: the Uí Chonaing dynast Cináed Cáech son of Írgalach (d. 728). Cináed, the last Síl nÁedo Sláine king of Tara, probably became leader of Uí Chonaing in 718, the year of Niall Frossach’s birth according to the annals. Amalgaid son of Congalach, Cináed’s cousin and predecessor, had been killed that year by Conall Grant of the Uí Chernaig, who, two months later, was in turn killed by Fergal.153 It is quite plausible that Fergal would have tried to cement a relationship with Amalgaid’s successor by means of a marriage alliance. If, however, ‘Cían’ was intended simply to denote ‘Cíannachta’, it is worth noting that Aithechdae occurs elsewhere as a male name only. Given this restriction, it could be that her Banshenchas entry represents a distortion of a record originally identifying Niall’s mother as the daughter of a certain Aithechdae from the Cíannachta. In support of such a proposition

152 Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 302. 153 AU 718.

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is the fact that the identification for Fergal’s other wife, the mother of Áed Allán, follows a similar formula, calling her ‘the daughter of Ernán from the Cenél Conaill’ (see above). Connon, ‘The Banshenchas and the Uí Néill kings of Tara’, 103; Frag. Ann. §§ 177n, 193.

(i: 32a) Glúnshalach (Fogartach mac Néill) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE

No mother or wife given for Fogartach son of Niall. (i: 33) aue Coircc (Cathal mac Finguine) ÉOGANACHT GLENDAMNACH

Gormgel daughter of Fínán of Rahan UÍ LIATHÁIN Prose Ban. §364 Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 48, 223.

Mother of Cathal (d. 742) son of Finguine (d. 695/6). The Book of Uí Maine version of the Prose Banshenchas is the sole source to make reference to Cathal’s mother, and it may be possible that the entry is a textual corruption.154 As it stands, the reference states that Gormgel, daughter of a certain Fínán of Rahan, was mother of Cathal mac Finguine. There are a number of places throughout Ireland called Rahan – including the famous one in Loígsi associated with St Mochutu – but the most likely site in this context is Rahan near Fermoy in Munster. Given this location, it is possible that Fínán is identical with the Fínán son of Díbchíne found in the Uí Liatháin genealogies.155 The Uí Liatháin were based to the immediate south of the lower Blackwater, a location that fits well both with a southern identification for Rahan and with a marriage alliance to Cathal’s dynasty, Éoganacht Glendamnach. That particular branch of the Éoganachta was based to the immediate north of the upper Blackwater, and thus located in close proximity to Uí Liatháin territory. Since Cathal’s own wife was from Uí Liatháin (below, Caillech), albeit from a different branch than Fínán, this identification would indicate the great importance which Éoganacht Glendamnach placed on good relations with their southern neighbours. It should be noted, though, that the genealogies place Fínán two generations later than Cathal’s Uí Liatháin father-in-law, Dúnchad Ard son of Rónán; as Fínán was supposed to be Cathal’s grandfather, the generational discrepancy may indicate that the identification is incorrect. Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 446. 154 Prose Ban., 446. In Dobbs’s edition, the line ‘Mor bean Cathail meic Finguine 7 Goirmgel ingen Finain Rathain mathair Cathail meic Finguine’ is transcribed as ‘Mor bean Cathail meic Finguine 7 go himgel íngen Fínaín Rathaín mathair Cathail mic Findguine’ (italics mine). 155 O’Brien, Corpus, 227.

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Caillech daughter of Dúnchad Ard son of Rónán UÍ LIATHÁIN Prose Ban. §365; Met. Ban. §365 AU 732; Ann. Tig. (= AU 731); Ann. Clon. s.a. 729; AFM s.a. 726; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 309, 333; [RC ] 48, 185, 223.

Wife of Cathal son of Finguine (d. 742). As a woman of the Uí Liatháin, Caillech’s marriage to Cathal of Éoganacht Glendamnach represents an alliance between two very close Munster neighbours. Cathal’s mother may also have been of the Uí Liatháin (above, Gormgel), which, if true, indicates how vital it was to Éoganacht Glendamnach interests to secure the central part of southern Munster. Caillech daughter of Dúnchad is the only historical royal Munster woman to be mentioned in AU before the eleventh century. She is also the first king’s wife to whom they accord the title ‘queen’, conferring on her the epithet regina optima 7 benigna ‘most excellent and benevolent queen’. Coming from the usually laconic annals, this is lavish praise indeed. Caillech’s unusual treatment by the annals may be linked to her husband’s unusual status as a Munster king. Although not acknowledged as such by the Middle Irish regnal lists, several sources indicate that Cathal may have been considered to be king of Tara. On Cathal’s death AU simply calls him ‘king of Cashel’, but Caillech’s death ten years earlier occurred near the height of Cathal’s power. Her obit could thus be an implicit acknowledgement of her status as queen of Tara, or at least as the most powerful queen in Ireland at the time. The great respect accorded to Caillech may even have warranted the attachment of the Uí Liatháin pedigree to the first Christian queen of Tara, Angas wife of Lóegaire (above, i: 12), though this possibility is far from certain. While Cathal appears to have had at least one son, the sources do not indicate whether or not Caillech was his mother. She is, however, the only verifiable wife of Cathal’s attested by the historical record. Although the Banshenchas, following saga tradition, also names the semi-legendary Mór Muman daughter of Áed Bennán of Éoganacht Locha Léin as his bride, Mór would have predated Cathal by almost a hundred years. The tradition of their marriage appears to be the result of confusing Cathal mac Finguine with his similarly named greatgrandfather, the Éoganacht Glendamnach king of Munster, Cathal son of Áed Flann Cathrach (d. 628).156 Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 112; Ó Corráin, ‘Women in early Irish society’, 10; Ní Bhrolcháin, Prose Ban., 111; Doan, ‘Sovereignty aspects in the roles of women,’ 89.

156 Mac Cana, ‘Aspects of the theme of king and goddess’, Études Celtiques 7, 81–3; Ó Coileáin, ‘Structure of a literary cycle’, 112.

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Lígach daughter of Máel Dúin son of Máel Fithrig UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN Jackson, Aislinge meic Con Glinne, 1–2.

Supposed lover of Cathal mac Finguine (d. 742). Lígach daughter of Máel Dúin, the sister of Fergal mac Maíle Dúin, appears as Cathal’s lover in the Middle Irish tale, Aislinge meic Con Glinne. Having fallen in love in with one another without actually meeting, Lígach sends the Munster king apples and other delicacies as tokens of her affection. Hearing of the relationship between his sister and his rival for the kingship of Tara, Fergal bribes a scholar to enchant one of the apples so that a tapeworm grows in Cathal’s belly. It is the attempt to lure out and destroy this tapeworm that forms the framework for the rest of the story. After providing a suitable opening pretext for the tale, the couple’s relationship is never heard of again. In itself, a marriage alliance between the king of Munster and the king of Tara’s sister is not inherently unlikely. According to the AI, Fergal and Cathal made peace following Cathal’s invasion of Brega in 721. A marriage alliance between Leth Cuinn and Leth Moga at this juncture is quite plausible. Had such a union taken place, however, it would likely have been between Cathal and a younger woman belonging to Fergal’s dynasty. Since Máel Dúin died in 681, Lígach would have been at the very least forty by the time of the peace treaty. Not even Aislinge meic Con Glinne claims that the two lovers ever married – indeed, it never even depicts them as setting eyes upon one another – and it is most probable that the relationship was concocted for storytelling purposes only. Mac Cana, ‘Aspects of the theme of king and goddess’, Études Celtiques 7, 92 n. 1.

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(II) The ‘Airgíalla Charter Poem’ With the exception of Colla Óss and Áed mac Bricc, there are no full entries for the mothers and wives of the figures named in ACP. These women either have been previously discussed in connection with the kings named in BCC, in which case their entries will refer the reader to earlier comments, or simply do not figure in the historical record. (ii: 1) Coirpre Lifechair (ii:1). CONNACHTA – UÍ NÉILL

See above, Coirpre Lifechair i: 5. (ii: 2) Colla Óss (§§ 8, 48) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ MOCCU UAIS

Ailech daughter of Udaire ALBA Prose Ban. §257; Met. Ban. §121. O’Flaherty, Ogygia, c.lxxv, 359; Stokes, Cóir Anmann, 350; Meyer, ‘Laud genealogies’, 319; Dinneen, Foras feasa, II, 358–61; Dobbs, ‘Ban-shenchus’, Revue Celtique 47, 302, 327; [RC] 48, 178, 215; Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, IV, 96–98, 104, 114–16; O’Brien, Corpus, 139; LGen., II, §303.5–7.

Lover of Eochaid Doimlén and mother of Colla Fochríth. Ailech, who appears as the mother of all three Collas in some sources and only of Colla Fochríth in others, figures in two different etymological stories. The function of the first is to explain how her son Colla Fochríth received his name. Although some variants of this tale give up to five alternative explanations for his epithet, all versions revolve around Ailech’s cuckolding her husband, Crinna the Craftsman, with Eochaid Doimlén. Colla Fochríth is the child born from this adulterous union, and derivations of his name are variously given as being: from the deception Ailech plays on her husband (fo Crinnen); from the excess (forcraid) on Eochaid’s part through having the affair; from the clay (fo cré) with which Ailech covers Colla’s skin to disguise his paternity from the presumably swarthy craftsman; from the payment (crither) that Eochaid later gives to Crinna in order to legally ‘buy’ his paternity rights from the man who raised his son; and from the place, Ochrae, where Colla grew up. None of the early versions of this story mention Ailech’s parentage at all. It is only the redaction in the late Middle Irish Cóir Anmann that states she was the daughter of the king of Alba. Her identity as a British princess, however, is a central feature of the second story, whose etymological focus has shifted away from Colla Fochríth and now serves to explain the naming of the Cenél nÉogain capital of Ailech Frigrenn. There the love story revolves around

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Ailech, daughter of Udaire king of Alba, and an Irish craftsman, known, in this version, as Frigriu son of Rudi. The two elope, with Udaire in hot pursuit, and Eochaid Doimlén or, in some versions, Fiachu Sraiptine, steps in to protect them until they reach Tír Éogain. Once there, the jewel-encrusted house which Frigriu builds around his wife as a safeguard is named after its occupants. It is there that, as a seemingly secondary plot, Eochaid seduces Ailech and Colla Fochríth is conceived. The story explaining Colla Fochríth’s name, which first appears in a possibly eighthcentury section of the Laud genealogies, is probably the earlier of the two. Possibly the strong foreign element in the early part of the Connachta pedigree influenced the subsequent identification of Ailech as a British princess when the tale was co-opted into the dinnshenchas of Ailech. (ii: 3)

Áed Allán (§11)

UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN

Áed mac Ainmerech? ( §11) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL

Áed Sláine (§11) UÍ NÉILL – SÍL NÁEDO SLÁINE

See Áed, above, i: 18, 19, 19a. (ii: 4) Conall Cremthainne (§12) UÍ NÉILL

Indiu daughter of Lugaid son of Óengus Finn DÁL FIATACH

Mother of Conall Cremthainne; see above, wife of Niall Noígíallach i: 11. Rígnach daughter of Meda son of Ros DÁL FIATACH – UÍ ECHACH ARDA

Mother of Conall Cremthainne; see above, wife of Niall Noígíallach i: 11. Corbach daughter of Maine LAIGIN

Wife of Conall Cremthainne; see above, mother of Diarmait mac Cerbaill i: 20.

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(ii: 5) Colmán Bec (§12) UÍ NÉILL – CLANN CHOLMÁIN

Brea daughter of Colmán son of Nemán CONMAICNE CÚILE TOLAD?

Mother of Colmán Bec; see above, wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill i: 20. (ii: 5a) Colmán Már (§12) UÍ NÉILL – CLANN CHOLMÁIN

Eithne (Erc) daughter of Brénainn Dall CONMAICNE CÚILE TOLAD?

Mother of Colmán Már; see above, wife of Áed Sláine i: 18. (ii: 6) Eochaid Doimlén (§§ 27, 48) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI)

Áine daughter of Finn mac Cumaill LAIGIN

Mother of Eochaid Doimlén; see above, wife of Coirpre Lifechair i: 5. Ailech daughter of Udaire ALBA

Alternative mother of Eochaid Doimlén; see above, wife of Coirpre Lifechair i: 5. (ii: 7) Fiacha mac Noë (§34) (Fiachu mac Néill Noígiallaig) UÍ NÉILL

Rígnach daughter of Meda son of Ros DÁL FIATACH – UÍ ECHACH ARDA

Mother of Fiachu son of Niall; see above, wife of Niall Noígíallach i: 11. No wife given for Fiachu son of Niall. (ii: 7a) Fiacha mac Noë (§34) (Fiachu Tuirtri) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI)

No mother or wife given for Fiachu Tuirtri. (ii: 8) Daig Duirn (§34) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ CHREMTHAINN

No mother or wife given for Daig Duirn.

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(ii: 9) Epscop Echu (§42) (Eochu mac Diarmato) No mother given for Echu. (ii: 10) Epscop Áed (§42) (?Áed mac Bricc) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL FIACHACH

Eithne MÚSCRAIGE TÍRE Plummer, Vitae, I, 34–45; Heist, Vitae, 167; Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 5, 174.

Mother of St Áed mac Bricc. In its account of Áed’s birth, a Latin Life of the saint, possibly dating to the eighth century, patterns the depiction of his mother after a motif more commonly associated with the mothers of kings. This is the topos whereby a woman about to give birth is told that the child she is carrying will be a man of great renown if born on the morrow, but less so if he is born that same day. Swearing that the only way the child will be born that day is if he comes out her side, the woman straddles a rock to prevent her baby from emerging through the birth canal until the appointed time. Ultimately she is successful in delaying the birth, but the future king is left with either a flattening or an indentation of his skull as a result.157 Such a prophecy is made to the pregnant mother of Áed mac Bricc, who takes up the appropriate position on a rock in order to prevent her child’s birth at an impropitious hour. In a twist that may have been intended to show the saint’s superiority over secular heroes, however, in this case it is the infant Áed’s head that leaves the indentation in the rock, and not the other way around. While Áed’s mother is not named in his Lives, the saints’ genealogies claim that she was called Eithne. The genealogies specify neither her father’s name nor her people, but the Lives assert that she was from the north-west Munster kingdom of Múscraige Tíre. These maternal Munster connections are made much of by the Lives, which portray Áed as growing up with his mother’s people despite belonging to the Uí Néill dynasty of Cenél Fiachach on his father’s side. The saint’s mixed Leth Cuinn/Leth Moga origin is most strongly emphasised by the episode in which the overlord of the Uí Néill requests that Áed intercede on his behalf with the bellicose king of Munster, asking him to make peace between the ‘peoples of his mother and his father’. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 446 n. 16.

157 This motif is found in the birth stories of Conchobar mac Nessa (Meyer, ‘Compert Conchobuir’, 175) and Fiachu Muillethan (Stokes, ‘A note about Fiacha Muillethan’, 40). Variants are found in the birth tales of Tuathal Máelgarb (Stokes, Cóir Anmann, 42) and Furbaide son of Conchobar mac Nessa (Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, IV, 32). See Wong, ‘Water births’, 233–41 for a discussion of this topos.

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T h e K i n g s h i p a n d L a n d s c a p e o f Ta r a

(ii: 11) Senach moccu Maíle (§42) ?UÍ MÁIL

No mother or wife given for Senach. (ii: 12) Sétnae (§43) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL

Erc daughter of Loarn DÁL RÍATA

Mother of Sétnae; see above, mother of Muirchertach Mac Ercae i: 16a. No wife given for Sétnae. (ii: 13) Nindid (§43) (Ninnid mac Duach) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL CONAILL

No mother or wife given for Ninnid. (ii: 14) Mac Erce (§43) UÍ NÉILL – CENÉL NÉOGAIN

See above, Mac Ercae son of Ailill Molt i: 16 and Muirchertach Mac Ercae 1: 16a. (ii: 14a) Mac Erce (§43) (Mac Eircc) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – IND AIRTHIR

No mother or wife given for Mac Eircc son of Mac Cáirthinn. (ii: 15) Cuanu (§43) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ THUIRTRI

No mother or wife given for Cuanu son of Dáire. (ii: 16) Colmán na nAirther (§43) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – IND AIRTHIR

No mother or wife given for Colmán of Ind Airthir. (ii: 16a) Colmán na nAirther (§43) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ MEIC CÁIRTHINN

No mother or wife given for Colmán of Uí Meic Cáirthinn.

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Prosopography

II

(ii: 17) Bécc mac Cuanach (§46) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ MOCCU UAIS AND UÍ THUIRTRI

No mother or wife given for Bécc son of Cuanu. (ii: 18) Dam Arcait (§46) (COIRPRE DAM ARCAIT) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – UÍ CHREMTHAINN

No mother or wife given for Coipre Dam Arcait. (ii: 19) Éogan (§46) (Éogan mac Nialláin) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – IND AIRTHIR

No mother or wife given for Éogan. (ii: 20) Máel Bressail mac Maíle Dúin (§47) AIRGÍALLA (CRUITHNI) – MUGDORNA

No mother or wife given for Máel Bresail son of Máel Dúin.

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The Manuscripts Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig pages 330-1

A manuscript compiled in 1575 in Seán Ó Maolchonaire’s house at Ballycummin, Co. Roscommon, (between guide lines). RIA 23 N 10 pp. 73-4. page 332

An important sixteenth-century manuscript from the O’Davoren law-school in the Burren, Co. Clare, (between guide lines). BL Egerton 88 f. 12b.

The Airgíalla Charter Poem pages 333-5

A sixteenth-century manuscript associated with the Ó Cionga and Ó Ceanndubháin families of Galway and Westmeath, (between guide lines). NLI G7 ff. 21-23, 24a.

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The Genealogical Tables 1. Legendary Connachta 2. Historical Connachta and Early Uí Néill 3. Clann Cholmáin 4. Síl nÁedo Sláine 5. Cenél nÉogain 6. Cenél Conaill 7. Dál Fiatach 8. Dál nAraidi 9. Early Éoganachta

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Explanation of Symbols and Abbreviations used in Genealogical Tables SYMBOLS

*

indicates individual has an entry in one of the prosopographies. indicates a union between two individuals, usually marriage (although one cannot always be certain to what degree union was formalized). indicates a sexual or romantic union explicitly classified by sources not to have been a marriage. indicates descent through male line of dynasty constituting the subject of the table. indicates descent through male line of dynasty other than the subject of the table. indicates descent through female line. indicates uncertain descent.

Italics

indicate name of dynasty to which partner belonged.

Bold

indicates that figure named belongs to dynasty constituting the subject of the table.

When a dynast’s partner is listed, all that dynast’s offspring should be considered to be his or her children by that partner unless otherwise indicated.

•

indicates mother unknown. indicates identity which children born of which mother (or, in cases where descent followed through female line, which children born of which father). indicates uncertain parentage (origin of arrow indicates source of uncertainty).

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The Genealogy Charts

ABBREVIATIONS Airg. d. dau. K KA KB KC KL KM KT KU KUF KUs KMd

Airgíalla died daughter King King of Ailech according to the Middle Irish regnal lists King of Brega King of Connacht King of Laigin (Leinster) King of Mumu (Munster) King of Tara according to the Middle Irish regnal lists King of Ulaid (Ulster) King of Uí Fhailge King of Uisnech according to the Middle Irish regnal lists King of Meath according to the annals

The following nine genealogical tables represent an attempt to situate the figures named in Prosopographies I and II within their appropriate dynastic context and to indicate the marital relationships ascribed to them. As such, the intention of the charts is not to comprehensively delineate the genealogies of the relevant dynasties, but instead to focus chiefly on the men and women discussed within the various prosopographical entries. Six of the charts deal with the Connachta and Uí Néill, two with the Ulster dynasties of Dál Fiatach and Dál nAraidi, and one with the Éoganachta of Munster. In temporal terms the charts mainly cover the period spanning the legendary era until the mid- to late eighth century. It should be noted that the charts, particularly the earlier sections, do not always depict strictly accurate biological relationships but rather genealogical doctrines formulated by the learned classes, possibly in the eighth century. In their attempts to weave the various pedigrees into a genealogical schema reflective of the power structures in place at the time, these formulations sometimes leave us with traditions that are difficult to reconcile with the picture that may be reconstructed from other sources. For example, as discussed in the prosopography of the kings, there are problems with the claim that the ancestors of many branches of Uí Néill were brothers. Nonetheless Table Two still depicts all the individuals in question as sons of Niall Noígiallach, not only because their actual relationship to one another is unknown but also because laying out the relationships as asserted in genealogical doctrine provides a valuable key to understanding the political hierarchy which the doctrine attempted to encapsulate.

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TABLE 1

Fedelmid Rechtmar*

The Legendary Connachta

AÍFE*

SÁRAIT

Conaire Már son of Mug Láma Múscraige Nemed son of Sraibcenn

MÓEN

Imchad son of Ogomon Dál Fiatach

EOCHAID

CRINNA

Conn Cétchathach*

Art Óenfher*

Na Trí Fergusa Dál Fiatach See Table 7

Na Trí Coirpri (i) Coirpre Músc a quo Múscraige (ii) Coirpre Bascháin a quo Corcu Baiscinn (iii) Coirpre Rígfhota a quo Dál Ríata

Cormac*

1 Achtán was also said to have been the wife of Luigne Fer Trí of the Corcu Fer Trí in Connacht to whom she bore three sons including Nia Már, sub-king of Connacht. 2 Medb Lethderg was further said to have been the partner of Fedelmid Rechtmar, Cormac mac Airt, and Eochaid Finn Fuath nAirt, all of whom belonged to the Connachta or protoConnachta. She was also said to have been the wife of the Leinster king Cú Chorbb son of Mug Corbb. See entry for full list of her children. 3 Der Draigen also said to be the mother of Fer Corp, ancestor of the Fir Maige Féne of Munster, and of Buan.

Coirpre Lifechair*

Colla Fochríth

Eochaid•

Eochu Doimlén* a quo Airgíalla

Colla Menn

Colla Óss* Fiachrae Cassán*

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CNUCHA CHENNFHINN dau. Conna Luimnech UNA OLLCHRUTHACH* dau. Derg Lochlainn Crinna BÉCHUMA/DELBCHÁEM* dau. Morgan The Síd LANN* dau. Crimthann Cas, son of Cathaír Már Laigin LENDABAIR* dau. Crimthann Cas, dau. Cathaír Már Laigin AÍFE* dau. of Ailpín Alba ÁENMAICHE* dau. Áed son of Aiche Connacht ?WIFE* OF GNÁTHAL son of Conruth ACHTÁN 1* dau. Olc Aiche Connacht MEDB LETHDERG 2* dau. Conan of Cualu Laigin 2

Conlae

Fiachu Suigde Cóel a quo Déssi & Corcu Roíde

SADB*

Cruisíne

Lugaid* son of Mac Niad Corcu Loígde Ailill Aulomm Proto-Éoganachta

Lugaid Mac Con* Éogan Már Corcu Loígde a quo Éoganachta

EITHNE THÓEBFHOTA* dau. Cathaír Már/Dúnlaing son of Énnae Nia Laigin DER DRAIGEN/LIFEN 3* Corcu Barddéine CIARNAIT* Pictish or Laigin

Eochu Finn Fuath nAirt a quo Fothairt

Cían Cormac Cas a quo a quo Gailenga Cíannachta, Éile & Luigne Dál Cais

Airtgen a quo Artraige

ÁINE* dau. Finn mac Cumaill Laigin

Dáire Drechtlethan*

AILECH* dau. Udaire Alba

Fiachu Sraiptine*•

Muiredach Tírech*

Boindia a quo Boandraige

Cellach

Bondraide a quo Bonandraige

Muiredach•

AÍFE* dau. king of Gaill Gáedil MUIRENN* dau. Fiachrae Cenél nÉogain or Éoganachta

Domnall• a quo Uí Maine

Eochaid Mugmedón* a quo Uí Néill & Connachta See Table 2

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TABLE 2

Historical Connachta and Early Uí Néill

Niall* a quo Uí Néill (d. 453?)

Fergus

RIGNACH* dau. Meda Uí Echach Arda INDIU* dau. Lugaid son of Óengus Dál Fiatach ÓEBFHINN* dau. Lugaid son of Ailill Éoganachta

Coirpre 1* a quo Cenél Coirpri (KT)

Énnae 1 a quo Cenél nÉnnai

Maine 1 a quo Cenél Maine (d. 440)

Cormac Cáech

CUMMAN MAINE* dau. Dallbrónnach Déssi of Brega

Lóegaire 1* a quo Cenél Lóegairi (KT, d. 461/3)

Fiachu Brion/Breccan

MONGFHINN

Brénainn (K. Tethbae, d. 576)

Tuathal Máelgarb* (KT, d. 544)

Áed* (K. Tethbae, d. 589)

ANGAS* Éogan 2 dau. Tassach a quo Uí Liatháin Cenél nÉogain or of Bresal See Table 5 Laigin MUIRECHT* dau. Eochu Muinremar Dál Ríata (DAUGHTER OF ?) Scoth Noe British

EITHNE*

Óengus • Corc Cathasach Blathmac Garbán

MUIRENN MÁEL* dau. Máel Dúin Partraige Connachta

Diarmait* mac Cerbaill (KT, d. 565)

Áed

See Table 4

Suibne

Áed Sláine* (KT, d. 604)

Máel Dúin (d. 666?) MUIRENN*

Fergus (d. 654)

342

MUGAIN dau. Concraid Uí Duach Argatrois

Énnae

Lugaid* (KT, d. c. 507)

Dallíne Liber

2 sons

Áed ?Diarmait Ruanaid* RÓNAIT (d. 665) Rogallach Síl nÁedo Sláine son of Uatu Uí Briúin See Table 4 (KC, d. 649) Cathal (d. 680)

Cellach (KC, d. 705)

Colmán Máel Dúin (d. 641)

Ailill (d. 642)

NIAM* dau. king of Ulster AILINN* dau. Óengus Éoganachta (KM, d. 490/2)

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Eochaid Mugmedón*

Ailill a quo Ui Ailello

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CAIRENN CHASDUB* dau. Scál Balb British or Pictish MONGFHINN* dau. Fidach Éoganachta

Brion a quo Uí Briúin

Conall Cremthainne 2* alias ?Conall Gulban 2 a quo a quo Síl nÁedo Sláine Cenél Conaill & Clann Cholmáin See Table 6

Fiachrae a quo Uí Fhiachrach

Énnae Bóguine 3 a quo Cenél mBóguine See Table 6

Fiachu 4* a quo Cenél Fiachach (KUs)

See Table 3

Amalgaid 5

Nath Í (KT, d. 445)

FIAL dau. Eochu EITHNE* dau. Conrí Cas RUAD* dau. Airtech

Fiachrae Elgach a quo Uí Fhiachrach Muaide

Ailill Molt* (KT, d. 482)

UCHDELB* dau. Óengus Éoganachta (d. 490/2)

FINDABAIR TRES dau. Nad Fróech Éoganachta See Table 9

Eochaid Bric a quo Uí Fhiachrach Aidne

Cellach

Mac Ercae* (d. c. 542)

Fedelmid

Crónán BRITISH WIFE Eochaid Albanach EITHNE• FEDELM• CUIRCHE• Áed• DAUGHTER• a quo son of Corc Cuircni of Mide Éoganachta

St Fortchern

Fergus• a quo heads of church at Trim

Báeth

Eochu

Diarmait

St Nannid

FIAMUIN

1 2 3 4 5

Niall’s sons attributed to Rígnach only. Niall’s sons attributed to both Indiu and Rígnach. Niall’s son attributed to Óebfhinn. Niall’s son attributed to Indiu only. Amalgaid was also said to have been married to Mercc Neton or Erc, daughter of Eochaid of the Laigin, and to Muirenn daughter of Dubthach of Uí Maine.

Dricriu Uí Garrchon

Muiredach son of Daig Cenél Loairn

St Berchán

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TABLE 3

Niall*

Clann Cholmáin

INDIU* dau. Lugaid Dál Fiatach RÍGNACH* dau. Meda Uí Echach Arda

Conall Cremthainne alias ?Conall Gulban

Cenél Conaill See Table 6

Fedelmid

Loarn

Sétnae

Brénainn

Illann•

Áed Sláine* (KT, d. 604) See Table 4

EITHNE dau. Brénainn Dall Conmaicne Cúile Tolad

Fiachrae

Conall

Maine• (KUs, d. 538)

[Fergus] 1

Ardgal (KM)

(Fergus) Cerrbél

CORBACH* dau. Maine Laigin

Diarmait mac Cerbaill* (KT, d. 565)

LANN/FALL

Duí Iarlaithe son of Maithne Éoganacht Locha Léin

Colmán Már a quo Clann Cholmáin (KUs d. 555/8)

alias

CRÓINSECH dau. Dauí

Eochu son of Mac Táil Corcu Loígde

Suibne (KUs, d. 600)

Óengus* (KUs, d. 621)

Eochaid

Óengus

Fergus (KUs, d. 618)

Conall Guthbinn (KUs, d. 635)

Colcu (d. 618)

Máel Dóid (KUs, d. 654)

Airmedach Cáech (d. 637) Sechnasach• (KUs, d. 681) Bodbchad (d. 704) Érennach•

Mugrón (d. 782)

344

Flann Dá Chongal Uí Fhailge (KUF, d. 751) Cináed Cummuscach (d. 770)

Faílenn•

Flaithbertach

Áed (d. 714)

Colcu (d. 714)

Cathal son of Gerthide Uí Briúin Cualann Eithne (d. 795)

Bran Ardchenn Uí Dúnlainge (KL, d. 795)

Diarmait Dian• (KUs, d. 689)

Fáelchú (KMd, d. 637)

Murchad Midi* (KUs; K. of Uí Néill, d. 715)

Ai da

Domnall Midi (KT, d. 763)

Ai da (d

Donnchad Midi (KT, d. 797)

Fu da Bé (d. da

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an

Airgetán Conaille Muirthemne Fergus son of Énnae Uí Echach Ulaid

n

MUGAIN* dau. Conchraid Uí Duach Argatrois EITHNE/ERC* dau. Brénainn Dall Conmaicne Cúile Tolad MUIRENN MÁEL* dau. Máel Dúin Partraige Connachta ?LASAIR* ?dau. Nechtan s. Brénainn Conmaicne Cúile Tolad BÉ BINN* dau. Alasc s. Óengus Scotland BREA* ?dau. Colmán, son of Nemán Conmaicne Cúile Tolad

Praedae son of Fergus

Bishop Cathbad son of Fergus (d. 555)

Máel Mórdai son of Airgetán (d. 544/9)

?Colmán Bec a quo Caílle Follamain (KUs, d. 587) 1 Fergus Cerrbél, father of Diarmait, likely represents the merging of two originally distinct generations: Fergus and his son Cerball. If the theory that Conall Cremthainne was identical with Conall Gulban is correct, then Fergus son of Conall may represent the point at which Cenél Conaill branched off from Clann Cholmáin and Síl nÁedo Sláine.

Cummíne (fl. 586)

?LANN* dau. Áed Guaire Uí Meic Cáirthinn of Airgíalla

Áed* Ainmerech Cenél Conaill (KT, d. 598)

Conall Cú (d. 602) Ailpín* dau. Comgall son of Sárán Delbna Mór

Máel Cobo (KT, d. 615)

Domnall* Cenél Conaill (KT, d. 644) See Table 7

Ailbine dau. Ailill son of Cenn Fáelad Ard Cíannachta (d. 702) Fuirsech dau. Congal Dál nAraidi Bé Fáil (d. 801) dau. Muiredach Dál Fiatach

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TABLE 4

Diarmait mac Cerbaill* (KT, d. 565)

Síl nÁedo Sláine

RÓNAIT•

Máel Dúin (d. 64I) Cenél Lóegairi

LANN/FALL

Duí Iarlaithe Éoganacht Locha Léin

CRÓINSECH

Eochu son of Mac Tail Corcu Loígde

Colmán son of Áed Cenél Lóegairi Ailill (d. 642) Cenél Lóegairi

Congal 1 (KB, d. 634)

MUGAIN* dau. Concraid Uí Duach Argatrois EITHNE/ERC* dau. Brénainn Dall Conmaicne Cúile Tolad MUIRENN MÁEL* dau. Máel Dúin Partraige ?LASAIR* dau. Nechtan ?Conmaicne Cúile Tolad BÉ BINN* dau. Alasc Scotland BREA* dau. Colmán son of Nemán ?Conmaicne Cúile Tolad

Áed Sláine* (KT, d. 602) a quo Síl nÁedo Sláine

Máel Bressail 1

Diarmait Ruanaid1* (KT, d. 665)

MUIRENN* dau. Máel Dúin Cenél Coirpri (d. 666?) BECFHOLA* Síd TEMAIR* dau. Áed Bolg Déssi

Conaing Cuirre (KB, d. 662) a quo Uí Chonaing Cernach Sotal (d. 664/7) a quo Úi Chernaig

EITHNE* dau. Brénainn Dall Conmaicne Cúile Tolad FLANN (LANN)

DAUGHTER•

Máel Odar 1

Cano son of Gartnán Skye (d. 688)

Niall* (d. 701)

Cummuscach

Congalach a quo kings of Cíannachta (d. 696) Fergal (d. 718)

Írgalach* (d. 702) Cináed* (KT, d. 728)

CAINTIGERN MUIRENN* dau. Cellach Cualann Uí Máil (KL, d. 715)

Amalgaid (d. 718) EITHNE (d. 778?)

346

Fogartach* (KT, d. 724)

AITHECHDAE

Fergal* son of Máel Dúin Cenél nÉogain (d. 722)

Maine (d. 712)

Conall Grant (d. 718)

Áed Laigen (d. 722)

Cellach Cualann

Dúnchad• (d. 651)

AÍFE•

Cú Chongelt son of Éogan Bél Uí Fhiachrach

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1 Áed’s sons by Eithne. 2 Áed’s sons by Flann. 3 Conchenn also married to Bécc Bairche son of Blathmac (d. 718) of Dál Fiatach. 4 Unnamed, though likely two successive rulers; possibly her fellow Síl nÁedo dynasts Fogartach (d. 724) son of Niall and Cináed (d. 728) son of Íragalach.

d

emán d

Colmán Bec* alias (KUs, d. 587) a quo Caílle Follamain

?Colmán Már* (KUs, d. 555/8) a quo Clann Cholmáin See Table 3

Ailill 1 a quo Fir Chúl Breg (d. 634)

Dúnchad 1 (KB, d. 659)

Conall 2 (d. 612) Ruad

Blathmac2* (KT, d. 665)

EITHNE* dau. Brénainn Dall Conmaicne Cúile Tolad

Uí Echach Coba dynast ?Cathbad son of Brión

Dlúthach Áed (d. 701)

Fínnachta Fledach* (KT, d. 695)

Flann Asail* (d. 714)

Cathal Corc (d. 729)

Cathal• Ailill• (d. 718)

CONCHENN3* dau. Congal Cennfhota Dál Fiatach (d. 674) DERB FORGAILL* (d. 684?) dau. Conaing son of Ailill or dau. Cellach Cualann Uí Máil (KL, d. 715) Bressal• (d. 695) Eithne (d. 768)

Conall• Eochaid• Ailill• Cenn Fáelad• (d. 651) (d. 660) (d. 660) (KT, d. 675)

Kings of Tara 4

ÓRLAITH dau. Dúnlaing Unknown Dynasty

Colcu• Congal• Sechnasach• (d. 683)

BÉ FÁIL•

FINNELB ?dau. Cellach Cualann Uí Máil (KL, d. 715) Cellach Cualann Uí Máil (KL, d. 715)

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TABLE 5

Eochaid Mugmedón*

Cenél nÉogain

Niall Noígiallach* (KT, d. 453?)

Éogan (KA) a quo Cenél nÉogain Dallán• a quo Cenél nDalláin CRÓDU

Fergus• a quo Cenél Ferguso

Óengus• a quo Cenél nÓenguso

Eochu Binnech• a quo Cenél mBinnich

CAIRENN CHASDUB* British INDIU* dau. Lugaid Dál Fiatach RÍGNACH* dau. Meda Uí Echach Arda

MARB/INDERB dau. King of the Saxons

Fedelmid• Muiredach a quo (KA) Na Bretcha

Éogan Garb Cenél Loairn

Feradach a quo Cenél Feradaig

Tigernach a quo Cenél Tigernaig

Móen a quo Cenél Móen

St Rúanach•

Muirchertach Mac Ercae* (KT, d. c. 534)

Fiachnae*

Ernáine (KA, d. 636)

Suibne Menn* (KT, d. 628)

Máel Fuataig (d. 662)

Crunnmáel (fl. 656)

CACHT

Cú Roí Dál Fiatach

Bécc Bairche (KU, abd. 707; d. 718) Dál Fiatach

RÓNAIT* dau. Dúngalach Uí Thuirtri

Eochu• (KT, d. 572)

Domnall* (KT, d. 566) Colcu• (KA, d. 580)

Áed Uaridnach* (KT, d. 612)

Dáire• (d. 624)

Máel Fithrich (KA, d. 630) Máel Dúin (KA, d. 681)

See Table 7

Cathal* LÍGACH*• (KM, d. 742) son of Finguine Éoganacht Glendamnach

Áed Allán* (KT, d. 743)

348

Fergal* (KT, d. 722)

BRÍG* dau. Forgg Uí Meic Cáirthinn DAMNAT* dau. Murchad ‘a Luirg’ ?Uí Meic Cáirthinn CACHT dau. Muiredach Dál Fiatach CACHT dau. Cellach son of Máel Cobo (KT, d. 658) Cenél Conaill DAUGHTER OF ERNÁINE Cenél Conaill DAUGHTER OF CONGAL CENNMAGAR Cenél Conaill (KT, d. 710) AITHECHDAE* dau. Cían [= ?Cináed son of Írgalach Síl nÁedo Sláine (KT, d. 728)]

Niall Frossach DÚNFHLAITH (KT, abd. 770; d. 778) dau. Flaithbertach Cenél Conaill (KT, d. 702)

D SÍ d D D d U (K

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Eochu Muinremur Erc

Lóegaire* son of Niall Uí Néill (KT, d. 461/3)

MUIRECHT*

Dál Ríata

See Table 2

Loarn a quo Cenél Loairn

ERC*

Óengus Fergus Már a quo a quo Cenel nÓenguso Cenél nGabráin & Cenél Comgaill

Eochaid Albanach

POMPA/BABONA 1

Fergus Cennfhota son of Conall Gulban Cenél Conaill

Sarran king of Britons

Fergus Salach Éogan Garb

See Table 6

CRÓDU dau. Dallán Cenél nÉogain

Sétnae* Brénainn Fedelmid Loarn Cenél Conaill Cenél Conaill Cenél Conaill Cenél Conaill DAUGHTER* OF THE EMPEROR/KING OF FRANKS SÍN* dau. Síge Déssi Temro DUISECH* dau. Duí Tenga Uma Uí Briúin Seólai (KC, d. 502) Fergus (KT, d. 566)

Báetán (KT, d. 572)

Máel Umai• (d. 610)

Colmán Rímid• (KT, d. 604)

Three Sons

FÍNA•

POMPA? dau. of Loarn Dál Ríata

Luirech British

Scandal

St Cairnech British

Néillíne

Constantine a quo kings of Wales

GARB*

Demmán son of Eochu Dál Fiatach (KU, d. 572)

CORBACH dau. king of Ulaid

Oswiu King of Northumbria (d. 670)

Breccán British

Rónán British

Gáedel Fichet/Arsidinius a quo kings of England & Cornwall

Fergus (d. 570)

Fiachnae* Dál Fiatach (KU, d. 627) See Table 7

Flann Fína (Aldfrith) King of Northumbria (d. 705)

MAGAR

1 Pompa also said to have been married to Báetán son of Muirchertach (d. 572) of Cenél nEógain (see below).

349

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TABLE 6 Niall Noígiallach*

Cenél Conaill

INDIU* dau. Lugaid son of Óengus Finn Dál Fiatach RÍGNACH* dau. Meda son of Ros Uí Echach Arda ÓEBFHINN* dau. Lugaid son of Ailill Éoganachta

Conall Gulban* alias ?Conall Cremthainne Nath Í

Duí a quo Clann Duach

Tigernach

Rumann

Fergus Cennfhota

ERC1* dau. Loarn Cenél Loairn of Dál Riata See Table 5

?Cerball• ?a quo Síl nÁedo Sláine & Clann Cholmáin

Ninnid*

Sétnae*

Brénainn

Loarn

See Table 3

Feradach

Baíthíne Abbot of Iona (d. 600)

Báetán CACHT (KT, d. 586) dau. king of Finn Gall

Laisrén Abbot of Iona (d. 605)

Fiachrae

Ségéne Abbot of Iona (d. 652)

?BRIGIT* dau Cobthach son of Ailill Uí Cheinnselaig ONBA Conaille Suildi

Conall Cú (d. 604)

Ainmere* (KT, d. 569) LANN5* dau. Áed Guaire Uí Meic Cáirthinn

Áed* (KT, d. 598)

Domnall* (KT, d. 642)

Óengus• (d. 650)

DÚINSECH* (d. 638) OSRAIGE PRINCESS Conall• (d. 663)

Colcu• (d. 663)

Crunnmáel•

Ailill• (d. 666)

Loingsech (KT, d. 704)

Flaithbertach (KT, dep. 734; d. 765)

DÚNFHLAITH •

350

ÁED OIRDNIDE Cenél nÉogain (KT, d. 819)

?MUIRENN dau. Cellach Cualann Uí Máil (KL, d. 715)

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1 Erc also said to be mother of Muirchertach, Tigernach, Móen, and Feradach, the sons of Muiredach son of Éogan of Cenél nÉogain. 2 Bóguine the son of either Niall Noígiallach or of Conall Gulban son of Niall. 3 Eithne was also said to be known as Derbfhinn Dualfhota. 4 Neman also known as Énan. 5 Lann also said to be mother of Fáelchú son of Airmedach of Clann Cholmáin and of Conall Clocach of Cenél Fergusa.

Óengus Gunnat a quo Clann Óenguso

Fedelmid

Énnae mBóguine 2 a quo Cenél Bóguine

EITHNE 3 dau. Dimma son of Nóe Corpraige Fanat CUMMAN•

St Colum Cille (d. 597)

St Moernóc

Coirpre Liath

Cormac•

Fiachnae•

Déicell

SINECH•

St Caiscíne

St Cían

Lugaid a quo Cenél Lugdach

Dara

Coichenn

St Colmán

Coirpre Bec

Duí

MINCHLOTH•

St Colmán

Neman 4

St Gobrán

Colum Áed Tinne

Máel Cobo (KT, d. 615)

Fergus Fanat• (d. 654?)

Cellach DATHNAT (KT, d. 658) CACHT

Congal Cennmagar (KT, d. 710) DAUGHTER*

CRÓINSECH dau. Áed Finn Osraige

Cummascach• (d. 597)

Conall Cóel (KT, d. 654)

Rónán

RÓNAIT dau. Ségéne Cenél nÉnnai

Adomnán Abbot of Iona (d. 704)

Máel Dúin son of Máel Fithrig Cenél nÉogain (KA, d. 681)

Fergal mac Máile Dúin* Cenél nÉogain (KT, d. 722)

DAUGHTER* OF ERNÁINE Cenél Conaill AITHECHDAE* DAU. CÍAN Síl nÁedo Sláine?

ÁED ALLÁN (KT, d. 743) Niall Frossach Cenél nÉogain (KT, abd. 770; d. 778)

351

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TABLE 7

Dál Fiatach 1 Lugaid’s descent disputed. 2 Samuel Cennísel and Canton both named as fathers of St Matóc and Bishop Santán. 3 Derinnell also said to be the mother of saints Aillén, Áedán and Mochumma of Druim Bó. 4 Marriage is anachronistic: Áedán son of Gabrán was a contemporary of Cairell’s grandson Báetán. 5 Cumne Dub also said to be married to Coirpre son of Crimthann Srem, king of Munster, and mother of his two sons both named Áed.

SCIATH

Tadg son of Cían a quo Ciannachta, Gaileng, Luigni, Éile

INDECHT

Cóelbad a quo Uí Choíldub

DEICHTER

St Matóc

Samuel Cennísel 2 Canton 2 king of Britons Bishop Santán

Eochaid (KU)

DERINNELL 3 Cethirchíchech

St Domangart

Ninnid

Colgu

Crunn ba Druí Dál nAraidi See Table 8

Eochu a quo Uí Echach

Crimthann

Feradach son of Rónán Cenél nÉogain St Muru St Molaisse

Máel Dúin•

Óengus• a quo Cenél nÓenguso of Leth Cathail

Etarscél

352

Conchobar

Suibne

Áed Róin•

Brandub

DAUGHTER

Máel Cáech son of Scandal Dál nAraidi

Dub dá Braine

Dubthach (KU, d. 712)

Óengus (KU, d. 730)

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MÓEN dau. Conn Cétchathach Connachta

Fergus Dubdétach

Fergus Casfhiaclach

Fergus Foltlebor

Fiacc•

Óengus Finn Lugaid Miannach Imchad Ross Lugaid 1 INDIU*

Dallán Forgg

Cairell (KU)

See Table 2

WOMAN FROM HEBRIDES

Muiredach Muinderg• (KU)

Niall Noígiallach* Connachta/Uí Néill (KT, d. 453?)

Óengus Ibdach

Éogan

Conall Gulban Conall Cremthainne

Fergnae (KU, d. 557)

MAITHGEMM dau. Áedán son of Gabrán4 Dál Ríata (d. 606)

Demmán• (KU, d. 572)

GARB* dau. Néillíne Cenél nÉogain

Fiachnae* (KU, d. 627)

CUMNE DUB5* dau. Furudrán son of Bécc Uí Thuirtri (K. Uí Meic Uais, d. 645) CUMNE FHINN dau. Báetán son of Eochaid Dál nAraidi

Báetán• (KU, d. 581) Sons (d. 606)

Máel Cobo (KU, d. 647)

DAUGHTER OF DUB DIBRAMMA Dynasty unknown

Dúnchad (KU, d. 644)

DUB LACHA

Blathmac• (KU, d. 670)

LAIDIR dau. Ninnid Éices Dál nAraidi (fl. 622?)

Congal Cennfhota (KU, d. 674)

Conall Dál nAraidi

CONCHENN* CACHT ?dau. Máel Fuataig Cenél nÉogain BÉ BAIRRCHE ?dau. Cathal Ulaid LETHANN

Bécc Bairche (KU, abd. 707; d. 718)

Áed Róin (KU, d. 735)

Fiachu

Cú Rí

Cernach

Mongán son of Fiachnae Lurgan Dál nAraidi (d. 625) Colgu Dál nAraidi Fínnachta Fledach* Síl nÁedo Sláine (KT, d. 695)

Rímid

353

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TABLE 8

Crunn ba Druí

INDE dau. Dál FIND dau. Cían COIR Corc

Áedán Bec

Cóelbad

CAIN dau. Uí L CAIN Alps?

Leimne

Connlae

Dál nAraidi

Eochu a quo Uí Echach Coba

Crimthann

Colgu

Áedán Glendoch

Ninnid

Conall Nia Sluaig Fothad

Cairell a quo Conaille Muirthemne

Eochaid (KU, d. 533)

Maine

Báetán

Mongán Áedán

ROINSECH

Fergus (KU, d. 692)

MÁEL TEGLAIG dau. Máelodar Airthir

Bresal • (d. 685)

OIRIU dau. Fergus

Conchobar

Fiachrae Cáech (d. 608)

Máelodar Cáech son of Feradach Airthir (d. 641)

Ailill son of Cenn Fáelad Ard Cíannachta (d. 702)

AILBINE dau. Ailill

Domnall Midi (KT, d. 763) Clann Cholmáin

EITHNE (d. 795)

Bran Ardchenn (KL, d. 795) Uí Dúnlainge

CORBACH• dau. King of Ulaid

Eochaid Iarlaithe• (KU, d. 666) Lethlobar (d. 709) Indrechtach (d. 741)

Donnchad Midi (KT, d. 797)

Clann Cholmáin See Table 3

354

Colmán Rímid Cenél nÉogain (KT, d. 604)

Fiachnae Lurgan* (KU, d. 626)

Tomaltach (KU, d. 790)

CAIN dau. Alba [?Co Dal (d. 6

n*

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INDECHT 1 dau. Lugaid son of Óengus Dál Fiatach FINDCHÁEM dau. Findchad Ulach Cíannacht Glinne Gaimen COIRPTHE MÁR Corcu Ségéne of Munster CAINNE dau. Cennfhinnán Uí Labrada of Leinster CAINNE FHINN Alps? Mac Cainne

Óengus

Cainnech Liath

CAINTIGERN dau. Conndach Alba [?Connad Cerr son of Eochaid Dal Ríata (d. 629)]

Scandal Sciathlethan•

Éogan

Lóegaire

Sétnae

Fróechar Furtre a quo Uí Derca Chéin

ÓCHAE•

Cainnech Dub

CUMNE FINN

Fiachnae son of Demmán Dál Fiatach (KU, d. 627)

Máel Cobo Suibne Dál Fiatach Dál Fiatach (KU, d. 647)

DAUGHTER OF EOCHAID BUIDE Dál Ríata

Máel Cáech•

Erc

Fergus Foga a quo Corcu Óche

Mongán (d. 625)

Cellach Máel Umai Uncertain no. of generations

DUB LACHA 2

Ninnid Éices (fl. 622?)

See Table 7

LAIDIR Congal Clóen (KU, d. 637)

Fiachu

DAUGHTER OF ÁED RÓIN son of Máel Cobo Dál Fiatach

Colcu

Conall

Blathmac son of Máel Cobo Dal Fiatach (d. 670)

Bécc Bairche Dál Fiatach (KU, abd. 707; d. 718) See Table 7

1 In addition to her usual identification as a daughter of Lugaid, Indecht is alternatively described as a daughter both of Lugaid’s grandson, Forgg son of Dallán, and of Lugaid’s son Miannach (or Mac Nia). 2 Dub Lacha’s mother was Cumne Dub daughter of Furudrán of Uí Thuirtri.

355

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TABLE 9

Early Éoganachta 1 An Uí Duach Argatrois woman - Mugain* daughter of Conchraid - said to have been wife of Diarmait mac Cerbaill* of Uí Néill. 2 An Uí Liatháin woman - Angas* daughter of Tassach of Uí Liatháin - said to have been wife of Loégaire* son of Niall of Uí Néill. A second Uí Liatháin woman - Caillech* daughter of Dúnchad (d. 732) was the queen of Cathal* son of Finguine. 3 There are conflicting traditions about the identity of Fergus' mother. See Table 2. 4 Cathal mac Finguine* descended from Éoganacht Glendamnach.

Lugaid

ÓEBFHINN•

Niall Noígiallach Connachta

Bóguine ?a quo Cenél mBóguine of Cenél Conaill

Coirpre Luachra a quo Éoganacht Locha Léin

Crónán a quo Cuircni of Mide

CUIRCHE dau. Lóegaire Uí Néill (d. 461/3)

Lugaid a quo Uí Luidgech Éile

Cathbad a quo Uí Cathbad Chuille

Coirpre Cruithnechán a quo Éoganacht Maige Gerginn (Alba)

Maine Lemna a quo Lemnaig (Alba)

DÁEL dau. Fiachrae king of Éile BOLCO BAN BRETNACH Alba

Conall Corc

Nad Froích (KM)

ANGAS dau. Coirpre Dam Argait Uí Crimthann of Airgíalla FÁECHÁN dau. king of Man

Óengus (KM, d. 490/2)

EITHNE (d. 490/2) dau. Crimthann son of Énnae Cennselach Laigin (KL)

Maine Duí Iarlaithe (KM)

CRÓINSECH

LANN/FALL dau. Diarmait mac Cerbaill* Uí Néill (d. 565) Eochu son of Mac Tail Corcu Loígde

Eochaid• a quo Éoganacht Airthir Cliach & Glendamnach 4

356

Áed Cáech

Senach

MONGFHINN dau. Feradach Finn Pictish ÓEBFHINN dau. Óengus Bolg Corcu Loígde

Bressal a quo Éoganacht Chaisil

Fedelmid• a quo Éoganacht Chaisil

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BÉRA dau. Emir Spain

Ailill Aulomm

SADB dau. Conn Cétchathach Connachta

Éogan Már

MONCHA dau. Dil/Treth Grecraige

Cormac Cas a quo Dál Cais

Cían a quo Ciannachta, Éile, Gailenga, Luigni

Fiachu Muillethan Ailill Flann Bec

Maine Munchaín alias Dáire Cerbba a quo Uí Fidgenti, Uí Duach Argatrois, 1 Uí Liatháin 2

Crimthann Már*

Láre Fidach

COBOR MONGFHINN* Alba

MONGFHINN*

FIDSHENG* dau. king of Connacht

Eochaid Mugmedón Connachta (KT) See Table 2

Son

Mac Iair a quo Uí Maic Iair

Fiachu

Mac Brócc a quo Uí Maic Broc

Fiachrae a quo Uí Fhiachrach

Mac Cass a quo Éoganacht Rathlinn

Ailill• a quo Éoganacht Áine

TRES•

Amalgaid

Brión a quo Uí Briúin

Ailill a quo Uí Ailello

Fergus 3

Nath Í (KT, d. 445)

Seven Sons a quo Cenél Tresse

AILINN*•

Lugaid* son of Lóeguire Uí Néill (KT, d. 507)

UCHDELB*•

Ailill Molt* (KT, d. 482) See Table 2

Cellach

Mac Ercae* (d. c. 542)

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L A N D S C A P E

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Re-composing the Archaeological Landscape of Tara Conor Newman

T

primary unit in landscape survey is the Study Area, and its definition at the start of the Discovery Programme’s Tara Survey was informed by managerial rather than archaeological or historical considerations (see Newman 1997, 7). The preliminary analysis of the designated Study Area around Tara proved, nevertheless, to be quite fruitful (ibid., 181 –223) and has engaged the writer in a more systematic, if somewhat episodic, examination of the greater Meath area over a number of years. A major component of this undertaking is a descriptive account of the physical geography of south Meath and north Co. Dublin as it is today. This is the principal subject of this paper. It is asserted that here, as elsewhere, physical geography has predicated, to some degree, the composition of the area into a series of discrete landscapes (e.g. the Tara Landscape, the Blackwater Landscape), the nomination and configuration of which are attested to in the location of monuments relative to both general and specific topographical and geographical features, and to each other. These are landmark monuments in the sense that while archaeological landscape is palaeohabitat perceived, archaeological landscapes are composed – composed in the eyes and minds of a long succession of beholders, each imposing or inheriting such compositions and marking them out by erecting monuments at key locations, as well as by nominating natural features as boundaries. The methodology applied in the preparation of this paper is quite straightforward. Drawing on personal familiarity with the area, extensive fieldwalking and cartographic analysis, a detailed description of the lie of the land has been compiled, with particular emphasis placed on the identification of noteworthy topographical formations that are likely to recommend themselves as defining elements in landscape compositions. It is an entirely contemporary perspective, and so one of the objectives of this paper is to test the applicability of modern, and primarily topographically-founded, landscape compositions to the past. According to strictly visual-topographical criteria, it is possible to postulate the former existence of five such landscapes in the greater Meath area. Landscapes thus contrived boast a completeness, an integrated foreground, middleground and background, as it were, that stimulates the observer into considering them as discrete places of particular topographical HE

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or environmental character.1 One way to test for concordance or otherwise between modern and ancient landscape compositions is to refer to the distribution of archaeological sites and monuments, for these were not randomly placed but rather reveal aspects of spaciality. According to the distribution maps for this area, for example, there is a high degree of concordance between defining or significant topographical features and archaeological monuments. Moreover, in many cases these same land formations are referred to in historical documents, or have suggestive placename etymologies and even mythological or legendary significance. Readers of Irish archaeology and history will doubtless be agreeably exercised by the many familiar and evocative placenames mentioned in this paper, for this area boasts some of the best-known archaeological and historical sites in Ireland. This paper is arranged into three parts. The first part comprises a brief statement of the archaeological and theoretical principles underpinning the methodology outlined above.2 The second part comprises an overview of the geography and topography of Meath pursuant to the identification of discrete landscapes. The third and perhaps most speculative part of the paper deals with the configuration and development of the ‘Tara Landscape’ from early prehistory to about the middle of the first millennium AD.

1: LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY AND ITS APPLICATION In this paper I am taking land to be, as Ingold (1993, 153) posits, ‘a kind of lowest common denominator of the phenomenal world’. However, I am not prepared to abandon the idea that terra really is firma, even if it must always be cognita; composed the world may be, but formless it is not.3 Palaeoanthropology has taught us to acknowledge the biological context of the human species. Much of what shapes our behaviour is inherited from our biological evolution, and, in so far as we are still bound to at least some of the laws of nature, the physical make-up of the landscape makes a genuine contribution to how it stimulates perception and how it can be exploited as a human habitat. Rivers, mountains, forests, bogs and lakes, for example, once presented serious obstacles to the movement of people, and were deified, animated and woven into myth, folklore and tradition. Natural boundaries all, many became socio-political boundaries as the landscape evolved into owned space or, home. In this way nature has silently suggested the size and shape of some of our habitats and sometimes even preordained their fates, for the fertility of the land is also a critical contributor – it determines carrying capacity. Thus physical geography and ecology are, in a sense, primordial

1

2 3

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In this paper the identification of such landscapes is on a local and familiar scale: quite different perspectives would be generated by their being further dissected into neighbourhoods or alternatively painted over with the broad brushstrokes of later political history. A more detailed account of the writer’s position on landscape theory will appear elsewhere. Most current commentators apply a phenomenological definition of landscape as habitat perceived and composed.

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matrices of human activity, which is why I have deliberately chosen to use the term habitat. Though clearly not the only factors, they pre-configure the stage of human action. Palaeohabitats are, however, difficult to reconstruct and involve co-ordinating evidence from a wide range of different specialisms. Landscapes can change substantially, bogs can develop (e.g. the Céide Fields, Co. Mayo), soil cover can disappear (e.g. the Burren, Co. Clare), rivers and lakes can dry up, be diverted or drained, and coastlines can emerge or submerge. Views too, which are central to the perception of the landscape, can alter radically. Today’s bald hilltops offering great, panoramic vistas may once have been covered in trees; and with horizons thus foreshortened, what is intervisible now may once have been isolated and possibly unconnected. Palaeogeography, on the other hand, is a rather more tangible entity, and, as we shall see in this paper, there are numerous clues to changes in the physical geography of this part of Co. Meath. Floodplains are readily apparent in the case of all the rivers, and changes in the courses of rivers have left imprints in the landscape. A dried-up river bed, for example, appears as a crop-mark to the south-west of Kilmessan, and beside it lies a small circular enclosure, possibly a house. Although many are now gravel quarries, fluvio-glacial features such as eskers have changed little over time. They will always retard soil development and, in turn, plant cover. Soil surveys by An Foras Talúntais (Finch et al. 1983) give a good indication of soil types and possible anthropogenic interference in Meath, but clearly lack a chronological dimension. Having described, as far as possible, the palaeohabitat, the next step is to populate it, to convert habitat, or ecosystem, into landscape. Taking all of the above caveats as given, I find myself sharing some of Tolin-Smith’s optimism about ‘defining landscapes in terms of the perception of past communities’ (1997, 2–3). I believe that it is reasonable to suggest that known territorial divisions of prehistoric and medieval Ireland are not entirely alien or incomprehensible today. For example, the configuration of the fields at Céide is not hugely different from that of rural Irish farmscapes of the last three hundred years, particularly in parts of the west of Ireland. Moreover, it is believed by some (Caulfield 1983) that they were laid out according to a preconceived plan which reveals a spatial dimension to the perception, namely a discrete, arable sweep of hillside. The lie of the land has determined the main axis of orientation of this field system and, at least in one direction, its extent. The configuration of the fields at Céide, like that of medieval field systems, is determined by farming strategy and more nebulous pressures of ownership. At a different scale, many Irish townland and barony boundaries are geographically sensitive too: they correspond with prominent physical features and are, therefore, attuned to geographical determinants, and can sometimes be meaningfully connected with the distribution of early historic and prehistoric monuments (McErlean 1983; Duffy 2001), giving them potentially considerable antiquity. Linear earthworks such as the Black Pig’s Dyke and another which lies to the west of Tara (Newman 1997, 191–6) tell us something about collective ownership, its concept and manifestation.

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Employing a careful approach, therefore, it is possible to reconstruct some territorial divisions without wholly compromising their cultural or historical integrity. By integrating them with physical geography, we can move towards defining integral territorial and sub-territorial spaces, and in so far as these represent primary acts of composition, organisation and ownership, they are landscapes of the past.

Ritual landscapes If the monumental evidence is a faithful barometer of the concerns of past societies, mortuary monuments were of paramount importance and accounted for some of the most ambitious undertakings in Irish prehistory. Sizeable areas of land were given over to religious practice and, therefore, to monuments, including tombs, and ceremonial and ritual assembly arenas. Tara is an excellent example of this. In recognition of this phenomenon, the term ‘ritual landscape’ has been coined (see Gosden and Head 1994). For the purposes of this paper, I employ the term ‘ritual landscape’ (though the term ‘religious landscape’ might be more apposite) to describe two interrelated phenomena. On the one hand, it refers to the material reality of places where religious monuments dominate and subsistence activity appears, in general, to have been rather minimal or of restricted duration. Used in this sense, the term provides a practical, but limiting, analytical tool for fieldwork. On the other hand, the term also applies to the ritualisation of the landscape which is manifest in the construction of both myths and monuments. Ritualisation, therefore, is another primary act in the composition of the landscape. Published European case studies, however, often pertain to landscapes that are rather mute, that lack a mythological and early historical dimension. In contrast, the enormous corpus of early Irish literature places Irish researchers in a uniquely favourable position to re-compose past landscapes with a toponymic dimension. Many natural and man-made features are explained with reference to myth and legend. Two round-topped mountains near Killarney, Co. Kerry, for example, are known as the Paps of Anu, the breasts of Anu, mother goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann. MacNeill (1962, 185) has made a similar suggestion in respect of Keshcorran Mountain, Co. Sligo, which is named after the enchanted sow Cáelchéis who was killed there by the men of Connacht. The word céis, however, can mean either ‘harp’ or ‘young sow’, and MacNeill suggests the possibility that both elements of the tale may have their origins in the sillhouette of the hill which is pig-shaped. Beneath Keshcorran is Ráith Ghráinne, one of the reputed resting places of the legendary lovers Diarmaid and Gráinne. The same name is given to one of the ring barrows on the Hill of Tara. Nearby are the Clóenfherta ‘Sloping Trenches’, the collapsed appearance of which is explained in terms of disasters befalling the kings of Tara and their retinues. Other places in the Meath area are connected, through the institution of kingship, with Tara. Newgrange (Brug na Bóinne), for example, is said to have been built by the Dagda, also of the Tuatha

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Dé Danann, and is the traditional burial place of the pagan kings of Tara. Teltown (associated with the toponymic goddess Tailtiu) is where, at the height of his reign, the king of Tara hosted a great assembly, óenach Tailten, and the Hill of Ward (Tlachtga) is associated with the celebration of Samain. Taboos ( geisi ) associated with the kingship of Tara reveal an interesting practical dimension to this act of ritualisation or mythologising the landscape. According to the ninth-century text Togail Bruidne Da Derga, the king could not, among other things, pass Tara on his right hand and Brega on his left, stay away from Tara for longer than nine days or stay the night in a house in which firelight was visible from the outside after dark and into which a person could see (Knott 1936, 6: ll.170–81). A second text lists seven prohibitions (Dillon 1951–2, 8–9). Among this list of taboos was one which states that the sun should not rise on the king while he is in bed on the plain of Tara; others record that he should not break a journey on Wednesday in Mag Breg or travel over to Mag Cuillinn after sunset. Taboos which mention the days of the week reveal a Christian influence and, therefore, raise a question concerning the antiquity of the tradition. Some elements are prehistoric, but other aspects are clearly of medieval origin. Indeed, the question of date and applicability is undoubtedly the most intractable problem involved in the mergence of history, mythology and archaeology. As the best-documented ‘landscape’ of any site in Ireland, Tara is an excellent platform from which to explore such issues. Our approach to the study of Tara (Newman 1993; 1997) has been in the context of Tara as a ritual landscape, one firmly rooted, that is, in a geographical matrix. In so doing we have followed the lead of the successful broad-brush approaches adopted in the study of two companion ‘royal’ landscapes, Navan and Rathcroghan, in present-day Counties Armagh and Roscommon respectively (e.g. Waddell 1988; Warner 1994). Even though there are core monuments in each place (Navan Fort, or ‘The Navan’ as it is known locally, and Rathcroghan Mound), monuments that may well have been significant inauguration and assembly points in later prehistory and into the historic period, there is in addition a host of associated monuments that were marshalled, so to speak, as props for a grandiose and constantly evolving theatre. Dating them allows us to chronicle the development of the complex and to speculate on the changing positions of centre-stage through time.

2: THE LIE OF THE LAND: East Central Meath and North-East Dublin Tara is more or less centrally placed in a distinctive geographic zone comprising east central Co. Meath and north-east Co. Dublin (Figure 1). Bounded to the north, north-west and south by drumlin uplands and mountainous and occasionally rugged terrain, this area of fine agricultural land is best visualised as a plain whose soils and gentle relief are inherited from the last period of glaciation (Meehan and Warren 1999). It is a landscape of subtleties, where

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changes are gradual and natural impediments to the movements of people are rivers, bogs and the occasional steep incline. Isolated hills, including Tara at its western extreme, concentrate mostly around the Meath-Dublin border and are little more than ice-worn, rounded vantagepoints. They are subtle landmarks invariably topped with prehistoric monuments, and they nudge, rather than force, the traveller into the intervening valleys. In so doing they disclose the least strenuous routeways between the coast and the interior and present a host of manageable, arable valleys. The county boundary, which meanders through one such valley around the village of Naul (between Knockbrack and Fourknocks), adheres to the courses of various rivers and streams, following the River Delvin inland to the foot of Garristown Hill, about 11km from the coast. Generous in its provision of flat sandy beaches, tidal estuaries, protected coves and inlets, this part of the east coast is eminently suitable for maritime trade and has been exploited as such from early times, giving the archaeology of this area a truly international aspect. The latidudinal limits of the eastern side of this area lie a little to the south and north of the Liffey and Boyne estuaries respectively. North of the Boyne lie the foothills of Mount Oriel, and beyond this to the north-north-west a drumlin belt that characterises northeast Co. Meath and Co. Cavan. These foothills define the northern fringe of the lowland zone but give way, about 28km inland, to the Blackwater Valley, a north-easterly projection of fertile land running from Navan to Kells and delimited on the north-west by Slieve na Calliagh. To the far west of Navan and Trim lie the lakes and drumlins of Westmeath, and to the south-west the area opens onto the central plain of north Kildare and Offaly. Here the southern limit is fixed by boglands, including the immense Bog of Allen, and for the present must remain vaguely defined. This describes the general character and geographical configuration of the region. A more in-depth examination is required in order to reveal the natural order of central Meath as local habitat and landscape associated with, Tara. The first observation is that the rivers of central Meath impose the primary order on this landscape. The Rivers Boyne and Blackwater form a giant freshwater claw, reaching deep into the heart of Meath, partitioning it into a number of basins whose geometery and modest scale present them as coherent and manageable spaces. Their physical configuration has rendered them distinct and thus amenable to spontaneous composition as landscapes in the modern mind. It will be argued, largely on the basis of site distribution, that they were similarly regarded in the past. Five such landscapes can be distinguished, with varying degrees of confidence, and some of them are named after the principal monuments in each, which, unsurprisingly, command the best views over the landscape and may have been, at one one time or another, among their focal points. A recurring theme in what follows is the huge potential significance of the BoyneBlackwater confluence at Navan. It is becoming increasingly difficult to erase from the mind’s eye the developing modern town, roads and housing estates that obscure the topography of

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this turbulent riverine junction, which occurs in a deep and steep-sided ravine and must have been quite dramatic, and indeed treacherous, in the past. It is the meeting-point of some of these landscapes and must surely have had a developed toponymic dimension (Plate C).

The Tlachtga Landscape (Figure 2) As the Boyne snakes its way north-eastwards from Trim to Navan, its broad and very fertile floodplain skirts against the abrupt western flanks of the limestone hills of Tara and Belpere and twists into a loop at Balsoon, just down-river from Bective Abbey. To the distant west of this stretch of river the ground rises steadily towards the Hill of Ward, on the far side of which is the town of Athboy. Situated on the banks of the Athboy (or Tremblestown) River which joins with the Boyne before passing through Trim, Athboy is, however, not visible from Tlachgta, the principal monument of the area, which is located slightly east and down-slope of the summit of the Hill of Ward. Indeed, the visual orientation of Tlachtga is easterly as it affords a fine view over its hinterland (‘the Tlachtga Landscape’), where the ground falls away towards the Boyne and towards one of the few natural fording places in this area not yet defined. This orientation suggests that at least at the time when Tlachtga was a focal point, it may have marked, in a practical sense, the western side of this landscape, including, the western flank of the hill to the Athboy River. Tlachtga is a large, quadrivallate earthwork possibly incorporating a small burial mound to the south of its centre and beside which lies a recumbant monolith (Plate A). The southern and south-eastern limits of this landscape possibly followed the course of Athboy River and the Boyne which meet west of Trim, after which the Boyne loops through Trim and turns northwards. The northern end of the Tlachtga Landscape is defined by extensive bog, roughly between Rathmore and Bohermeen. Sometimes referred to as Bohermeen Bog, a crannóg was accidentally uncovered here in 1848 (see Wood-Martin 1886, 82) and, in unrelated circumstances, a fine Roman patera was also found (Ó Ríordáin 1945– 7, 61). No one driving along the N51 between Athboy and Navan can fail to notice the bumpy ride, and an extensive tract of this raised bog still exists on the north side of the road. To the south of the N51 the bog has been reclaimed as farmland and forestation. A previously unrecorded monolith close to the south of the forestation stands at the foot of the Hill of Ward. It is at the interface between good and bad land (Plate A) and is near the townland of Drissogue where a Dowris-Phase hoard of jewellery was found (Eogan 1957). Overlooking Bohermeen Bog from the north is Faughan Hill, a drumlin that commands a very prominent position in the immediate landscape. This is Ocha where, according to tradition, Niall Noígíallach was buried. Emerging, as it does, from Bohermeen Bog, it is an

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excellent vantage-point from which to reconnoitre the Tlachtga Landscape to the south, while at the same time introducing us to the Blackwater Landscape, to the north, which is the next discrete landscape (Plate B).

The Blackwater Landscape (Figure 3) As one of a string of undulating hills that run between Navan and Kells, Faughan Hill marks the southern boundary of the Blackwater Valley. The south-western flanks of these hills drain into the headwaters of the Athboy River around which there is a small parcel of good land centering on Fordstown shared equally as a hinterland by Athboy and Kells. Again, significantly, it is along this hilly spine rather than on the flatter land that archaeological monuments, all medieval, are found. On purely topographical grounds, the Fordstown area falls outside the Blackwater Landscape. Its proximity and accessibility to Kells, whose natural hinterland is the Blackwater Valley, however, suggests that it also formed part of the monastic landscape. The Blackwater Landscape is topographically, the best configured, and indeed historically (Swift 2000), of those under review, since it comprises the valley of the River Blackwater which runs from Kells to its confluence with the Boyne at Navan. Broad and U-shaped, the valley is closed in on three sides by higher ground and drumlins, and along the south by hills. The north-western end of the valley is bifurcated by the upper river valleys of the Blackwater and Moynalty Rivers. The Blackwater issues from Lough Ramor, Co. Cavan, into a short, narrow valley between Fartagh on the north and Kingsmountain at the north-eastern extremity of Loughcrew. This valley opens out behind the Hill of Lloyd (Mullach Aite) at Carnaross and Castlekeeran, both located near rather angular bends in the River Blackwater’s course. The river then skirts around the northern flank of the Hill of Lloyd before turning south-eastwards past Kells on its way towards Navan. The Hill of Lloyd, with its triple-ramparted hillfort and folly, dominates the skyline and is markedly higher than Kells. A shallow saddle separates the two hills. Just outside Kells the Blackwater widens to incorporate an island, now in Headfort Demesne, and though it takes numerous minor turns, the only major meander occurs, perhaps significantly, at Teltown (Tailtiu), about midway between Navan and Kells. Throughout its course the Blackwater is fed by numerous streams, the largest tributary being the Moynalty (or Owenroe) River which joins it from the north-east, just above Teltown. The source of the Moynalty River is Mullagh Lough, Co. Cavan, an area rich in archaeological sites. The narrow pass between Mullagh Lough and Mullagh Hill, which is the most prominent landmark in the vicinity, is known as the ‘Gates of Mullagh’ (Plate G). It is guarded by a promontary fort on the lake’s edge, and from a different angle by a church dedicated to St Killian 300m away on the northern shore of the lake. Mullagh is to the north of Fartagh. The site of a possible early church is located on Rantavan Hill which overlooks both Mullagh and Fartagh.

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According to tradition, the hill was the original location of an ogam stone, since removed to Mullagh graveyard. A short distance downstream, at Mullagh Bridge, the Moynalty River is joined by the far larger Barora River (An Ruarach), below which confluence the river valley opens out into the rich farmlands between Donore, Moynalty and Rathinree Upper. The Moynalty River is fed, about midway along its course, by a stream issuing from the quite extensive Emlagh/Fletcherstown Bog that lies between Emlagh, Red Island and St Johns Rath to the north-west of Wilkinstown and is, apart from the various rivers, the only substantial natural impediment to the free movement of people across this part of the valley floor. Teltown is obviously a major archaeological focal point in this landscape from at least later prehistoric times, and it occupies the middle of the valley where there is a patchwork of both well-drained and quite marginal land prone to flooding. Donaghpatrick is, of course, also an intrinsic component of Teltown (Plate D). Though conceding the highest ground at this particular place to Ráith Airthir, a hugely important and quite spectacular multivallate enclosure surrounding a tall mound, Donaghpatrick’s perch on the edge of a river-cut bluff overlooking the Blackwater ensured an impressive situation for this early church site. By today’s reckoning, the church is perceived to be situated towards the south-eastern end of the Teltown complex. However, sites excavated by Kelly (1973) at Simonstown and Randalstown less than 3km away, one of which produced a Romano-British fibula, and the nearby Cnoc Blá (translated as Flower Hill; but see Swift 1998 who discusses the use of the word blá ‘boundary’), a terrace overlooking the Boyne-Blackwater confluence at Navan town, suggests the existence either of a dispersed group of monuments south-east of the core of the Teltown complex or else an immediately adjacent complex focused on the confluence of the Boyne and Blackwater. The upland fringes of the Blackwater Valley are visually apparent from the valley floor at Teltown or, more obviously, on Emlagh/Fletcherstown Bog. They are close and raise the horizon upwards. They are, however, given even greater significance because so many of the most prominent points are topped with monuments. It is difficult to conceive of these as being anything other than boundary markers, encircling the valley clockwise from Faughan Hill to Kells and the Hill of Lloyd, past Rantavan ogam stone and the enigmatic earthworks on Teevurcher Hill and Screebog, Walterstown, Rathmannow, on which is located a hillfort, past Rahood, southwards to Raffin Fort and the standing stone and a newly identified barrow cemetery on the hill of Balsaw just south of Wilkinstown which offers, without question, the best view of the Blackwater Landscape. Balsaw is one of half a dozen ostensibly isolated hills fringing Mullagha Hill which marks the south-western extremity of the Collon upland, the main body of which comprises the northern backdrop of the Boyne Valley Landscape. All but one of these small hills is topped by a monument: a standing stone on Dunderk Hill, an enclosure at Corballis, and a henge on the unnamed hill overlooking Causestown. South of this fringe of hills the land drops gently but steadily towards Navan,

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while also extending in a north-easterly curve alongside the middle reaches of the Boyne, past Donaghmore and Stackallan, and on towards Slane. In a broad sense, therefore, the Blackwater Landscape can be reasonably configured to include some land along the north side of the Boyne east of Navan. Retracing our steps to Balsaw, we see that the line of the east side of the Blackwater Valley, defined so well by Raffin and Balsaw, is continued as far south as Navan, not by neat hills but rather by a break-in-slope, all the while offering surprisingly elevated propects over the river. From Balsaw southwards the land drops in two terraces towards the confluence of the Blackwater and Boyne Rivers at Navan town. The first such terrace begins at Kilberry Cross, just south of Balsaw. Here Moore (1989) has identified an Iron Age burial mound. The south end of the Kilberry terrace ascends gradually into a prominent shoulder at Proudstown, now occupied by Navan racecourse. From the racecourse the ground drops away steeply southwards to the second terrace between Batterstown and Flower Hill, westwards down into the Blackwater Valley at Simonstown/Randalstown and south-eastwards to the church of Donaghmore. It is clear, therefore, that in this small area alone the combination of microtopography and monuments conjures up an intriguing scenario, worthy of closer examination.

The Boyne Valley Landscape (Figure 4) Any assessment of the catchment area of the Boyne Valley has to take into account in some measure the sources suggested for the material composition of the celebrated complex of passage tombs, such as granites from the Mourne Mountains in Co. Down and quartz from Co. Wickow, as well as the size and geographical spread of the labour force needed in the construction of the largest tombs. Cooney (1991) suggests a 20km radius as a hinterland. In contrast, the modern, administrative and archaeological compositions of the Boyne Valley as a heritage amenity orient the visitor almost exclusively towards the north bank of the Boyne. As a geographical feature, however, the valley comprises both sides of the river and, depending on how, or for what period, it is re-composed, so also might the archaeological landscape. Indeed, the existence of fording points along this stretch of the river demands such a perspective. The south bank of the Boyne from Roughgrange, immediately across from Newgrange, to roughly opposite Dowth henge rises quite abruptly towards the ridge of Redmountain. Redmountain is little more than a hill whose west-south-west long axis parallels the Boyne at this point. From the immediate perspective of the north, or Newgrange, side of the Boyne the nature of this stretch of the south bank suggests a foreshortened horizon, a visual boundary whose steepish gradient and north-facing aspect compromise its usefulness as agricultural land. The western flank of Redmountain, however, gives way to a broad, gentle and roughly triangular sweep of land between Lougher, Gilltown and Rossnaree. The ready

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accessibility of this area from the north side of the river is attested by the tradition that it was at this point that the Slige Midlúachra crossed the Boyne and by the fact that during the thirteenth century this land belonged to the manor of Mellifont (Stout 1997, 306, fig. 15). Both accessibility and territorial division are at once suggested, albeit indirectly, by the positioning here of Rossnaree, royal outpost of the kings of Tara (Plate E Left & Right). This sweep of land continues corridor-like westwards towards Navan, but is fringed around the north-west by a string of four small but noteworthy hills: from north to south an unnamed hill beside the village of Cullen; Painestown Hill, overlooking Seneschalstown; the threesummit ridge of Kingstown and Carn Hill near Navan; and, dog-legging to the south-east, Realtoge Hill. The latter three hills are, significantly, distinguished by the presence of mounds or cairns on their summits. South of Lougher the land rises steadily to the flat plateau between Painestown and Kentstown and into the Nanny valley and the Duleek-Ballyboughal Landscape, which will be described presently. The upland backdrop to the north bank of the Boyne comprises the peaks and foothills of Slieve Breagh, Mount Oriel and Mullaghash to the north and north-west, and, across the Mattock/White river valley to the east, Fieldstown Hill, all distinguished by standing stones, cairns and barrows on their summits. The upper reaches of the Devlin and Mattock Rivers stretch back into these uplands to the extent that the valley of the River Mattock is adorsed with that of the White River, forming a natural corridor which opens to the north at Dunleer. In archaeological literature, the eastern end of the Boyne Valley has been drawn at the point at which the Boyne is joined by the River Mattock, which to this day defines the county boundary with Louth. The meeting of the two rivers at the eastern end of the Bend of the Boyne near Townleyhall (Plate F) and the constriction of the river valley by the imposing southern flank of Louth Hill creates a natural terminus or closure in the landscape between Drogheda and Slane. King William’s Glen, a little further east, has a notable north-south delineation. Moreover, the land here is quite undulating and the overall gradient relatively steep, with the result that the north bank of the Boyne is corridor-like along this stretch. Beyond these natural obstacles, however, lies the broad undulating coastal plain north of the Boyne estuary, to Clogher Head, Dunany Point and opening at Annagassan into the huge arc of Dundalk Bay, all of which may have been connected, in a catchment sense, with the Boyne Valley in prehistory. Similarly, the westerly limits of the Boyne Valley Landscape are often drawn where the Hill of Slane encroaches on the Boyne around the present village of Slane, resulting in a constriction. Beyond this the landscape once again opens out into gentle south-facing slopes merging, as already mentioned, into the Blackwater Landscape. Along this stretch, particularly around Ardmulchan, the river has carved a surprisingly steep, narrow valley, re-imposing its role as a landmark/boundary feature and thus imposing an unambiguous geographical divide between north and south.

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The Duleek-Ballyboughal Landscape (Figure 5) The area between Duleek and Ballyboughal is the most topographically complex area under consideration and will require substantially more analysis before real sense can be made of it. The landscape is dotted with round-topped hills, with gently inclined eastern slopes and rather more abrupt western ones. Between these are narrow, round-bottomed, irregularly shaped, stream or river valleys. Generally oriented east-west and issuing into the Irish Sea, all of these valleys are amenable to being composed as discrete landscapes and possible territorial units, but it is also fair to say that the character of the area so defined and manifestly visible from any of these hills suggests that the whole area might also be considered as a landscape of unified topographical character, perhaps explaining the name Brega ‘[place] of the low hills’. The hills, such as Bellewstown, Fourknocks, and Knockbrack, begin to rise about 5km to 6km inland from the coast, leaving a long, narrow and very fertile plain, stretching all the way from Dundalk Bay to the mouth of the Liffey, interrupted only by estuaries. The coastal portion of the Duleek-Ballyboughal Landscape lies between the estuary of the Boyne and Rogerstown estuary at Rush, although a case can be made for extending the area at least as far as the Meadowbrook River which enters the sea at Swords, if not as far south as the Liffey itself. From this multitude of hills a triangular core of four areas of upland can be distinguished, namely Bellewstown, Fourknocks, Garristown and Knockbrack, centered on Fourknocks. Bellewstown, to the north, is a long, L-shaped hill with four discrete summits. The mound and famous racecourse, both of unknown antiquity, are located on the broad, flat middle summit overlooking Laytown and Bettystown beaches to the east. The westernmost summit, which is topped by a barrow and other enigmatic earthworks and has a mound at the foot of its northern flank, overlooks the medieval town of Duleek and the valley of the River Nanny. Here the underlying limestone bedrock is exposed as a series of craggy limestone fingers reaching westwards towards Keenoge (Mount 1997) and Abbeyland on the outskirts of the town, where an Early Bronze Age cemetery mound and barrow are located respectively (Plate H). On the most northerly of the crags are two (now recumbent and previously unrecorded) standing stones which are aligned on both Keenoge and the Hill of Tara, 16km to the southwest. The eastern end of Bellewstown Hill ends in the summit of Mullaghteelin, which is also occupied by a barrow. The Nanny valley, as previously suggested, is amenable to being regarded as a distince landscape opening eastwards onto Laytown and Bettystown beaches. The land climbs gently westwards towards the Painestown/Seneschalstown/Kentstown plateau. Between Bellewstown and Fourknocks lies a short and somewhat narrower valley through which runs a small river connecting the middle reaches of the Nanny with the Delvin River

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near Stamullin. The south side of this valley is peppered with mounds which are likely to be connected with the dense complex of early prehistoric monuments on Fourknocks rather than with Bellewstown, since, in contrast to the south flank of Bellewstown which descends steeply into the valley, the northern flank of Fourknocks has a long, gentle sweep of good arable land. Like Bellewstown, Fourknocks rises to no fewer than six distinct summits in a quasi-cruciform arrangement. Not all of these have monuments on them, and the distribution of mounds follows a decidedly east-west orientation. To the southwest and south-east respectively are Garristown Hill and Knockbrack. Between these three hills lies the valley of the Delvin River, which rises in the area of Primatestown and Cushinstown, only to curve around the northern side of Garristown Hill. Garristown Hill, distinguishable today by the stump of a windmill, rises into four summits. The highest of these, Garristown Hill proper, overlooks the village of Garristown and is crowned by a very large circular, univallate enclosure (about 80m in diameter) that commands views over the whole of Dublin city and the Liffey estuary. To the south-east and south-west are mounds. Cushinstown, which also has an informal race-track, is located between two small hills: Windmill Hill, on which are two henges, and Hilltown which has a mound upon its summit and two more to its immediate north-west. From here the ground rises steadily northwestwards towards Rathfeigh. Located on the Hurley River, a major tributary of the Nanny and one of the few north-south flowing rivers in this area, Rathfeigh boasts a motte, a church and, nearby, a promontory fort. Thus, like the coastal plain, the Hurley river valley runs perpendicular to the Delvin and Nanny valleys, and this, has the effect of bringing this rather undulating landscape together in lattice style. Finally, to the east of Garristown is Knockbrack, on the summit of which is a group of mounds enclosed within an enormous, apparently internally ditched, enclosure or hillfort. At Damastown on the southern side of Knockbrack a copper ingot of Romano-British form was found (Raftery 1994, 208). From here, as at Garristown, the ground drops steadily past Ballyboughal to the Liffey estuary. Knockbrack is doubly significant because it completely dominates the coastal plain from Balbriggan to Rush, a stretch that includes an impressive number of archaeologically and historically important places, including Balrothery, Lusk and Drumanagh (ibid., 207–8). A short distance off the coast to the immediate south-east lies Lambay Island (Plate J). The east side of the Hurley river valley is bounded by the Tara-Skreen ridges. Orientated north-north-west/south-south-east, this ridge stretches from near Dunshaughlin to Jordanstown and forms the western backdrop to the northern half of the Duleek/ Ballyboughal Landscape. Analysis of the distribution of known archaeological sites and monuments suggests that, rather than comprising a distinct and separate area, in later prehistory the Tara-Skreen ridges may have been very much part of the Duleek-Ballyboughal Landscape, indeed perhaps even being the major focal point for monuments in this larger area

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between the middle reaches of the Boyne and the Irish Sea. In earlier prehistory, however, the Tara Landscape may have been rather more modest in size.

The Tara Landscape (Figure 5, as above) The Tara Landscape differs, to a degree, from those already described because the upland component occupies the centre, rather than the periphery, of the area. So, while the others may focus inwardly on riverscape, the Tara Landscape focuses inwardly and upwardly on the two highest points of the ridge, Tara and Skreen, with the result that the Tara Landscape spreads outwards and is a little more difficult to define. In broad terms the western and northern boundaries of this landscape are best defined by the River Boyne. To the east, as we have seen, lies the Duleek-Ballyboughal Landscape. It is a moot point whether or not Tara should be treated as the western side of this landscape or as a separate entity: while the congregation of passage tombs in specific and separate places may suggest an element of nucleation within this region in early prehistory, the monumental story of the early historic period is one of amalgamation. The Tara-Skreen upland rises to about 155m above sea level and is divided north-south by a relatively wide but short U-shaped glacial valley (which for the purposes of this paper I have termed the ‘Tara-Skreen Valley’) into two ridges of carboniferous limestone, distinct at the northern end but merging into one another towards the south as the valley gradually disappears. These two ridges are very similar in character, with relatively gentle eastern flanks and markedly steeper western ones. They are effectively the same height, the only point of distinction between Tara and Skreen being the fact that, Tara as the westernmost of the two, enjoys unimpeded panoramic views to the west. This confers on the observer from Tara a greater sense of elevation and is likely to have contributed to its being developed as a focal place. The River Gowra (Gabhra) flows generally north-westwards through the Tara-Skreen Valley, before joining with the River Skane at Dowdstown Bridge, which marks the northern foot of the Hill of Tara, and thence into the Boyne. At its northern end the valley opens out around Lismullin House, an alluvial fan dotted with eskers and overlooked from the east by Rath Lugh, a massive, C-shaped bivallate fort built against the edge of a very steep slope. The sense of ingression conveyed by the topography of this end of the valley is affirmed in a lineation of four mounds passing across this part of the valley floor towards and away from Tara. Thus this part of the landscape may have seen considerable activity which is attested to by both monuments and, indeed, stray finds which include a hoard of Iron Age horsebits from an unidentified place referred to by Wilde (1861, 605) as an ancient battlefield. The southern end of the valley, on the other hand, gradually merges into boggy ground around Gaulstown just to the north of Dunshaughlin, which, like Knockbrack and

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Garristown, marks the junction between the north Dublin plain and the south Meath uplands. Analysis of the topographical location of Dunshaughlin shows that it occupies a potentially important natural junction between these two subtly different geographic zones. The old village is squeezed into a east-west valley between Rath Hill, now barely discernable on the south, and the tail end of the Tara-Skreen upland to the north. The Skane and the Broad Meadow Rivers rise in this valley, back to back, on either side of the town, just below the church at Dunshaughlin. The Broad Meadow flows eastwards past Lagore and on towards Ratoath and Ashbourne. The Skane, on the other hand, flows westwards as far as Drumree and nearby Knockmark mound and church site, whereupon it diverts northwestwards past Killeen on its way towards Dunsany and Kilmessan, at which stage it is running parallel to the western flank of the Hill of Tara. Between Drumree and Dunsany the Skane passes down the middle of a short valley defined on the south-western side by a narrow four-peaked ridge centring on Mooretown (128m above sea level) which, significantly, is topped by a mound. The old Dunshaughlin-Tara road, however, runs along the eastern side of the Skane valley, veering eastwards at Killeen – the site of a holy well, a medieval church and a wayside cross –, in order to gain straight and steady ascent to Tara past Rath Maeve henge at Belpere. Thus Tara overlooks to the west the broad, flat catchment area of the middle reaches of the Skane and the Boyne, a veritable capillitium of streams and rivulets that feeds both rivers. Between this and Tara, at a distance of about 1km, is a skirt of three little foothills, Riverstown, Ringlestown and Tullykane, from north to south respectively. Riverstown is distinguished by a henge enclosure and Ringlestown, the higher of the two, by a massive bivallate hillfort. One can readily appreciate by looking from the Hill of Ward how Ringlestown Rath dominates this approach to Tara, and this is emphasised by the fact that from this vantage-point Tara itself is quite indistinct. There is, moreover, a hidden, short but sharply V-shaped glen between Riverstown and Tara through which flows an unnamed stream. Along the break-in-slope of the eastern side of this valley a bivallate linear earthwork has been constructed which can be traced running parallel to Tara for a distance of around 1.5km, from just north of Ringlestown Rath to within about 400m of Castletown Tara castle at the northern foot of the Hill of Tara. This is an exceedingly important earthwork in terms of the composition of the Tara Landscape in later prehistory because it is a boundary monument. My suspicion, however, is that it is not located along the limit of the Tara Landscape, which I would draw at the Boyne, but rather on the most westerly topographical feature in this area to offer stategic potential: it defines the core area of the Tara Landscape. At its north end, all the while following the break-in-slope, the linear earthwork begins to turn slightly eastwards towards Rathmiles before all trace of it peters out. This point marks the north-north-eastern extremity of the Hill of Tara as a topographical entity. Continuing clockwise from here around the northern extremity of the Hill of Tara, we

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find ourselves once again in the boggy ground around Dowdstown Bridge where the Skane meets the Gowra. Uphill to the north is Dowdstown House, while immediately to the south is a short, steep climb to the 100m contour, whereupon the ground flattens out into a crescentshaped platform of land at Jordanstown. Here, built on the break-in-slope, is Rathmiles, situated to take full advantage of the natural bluff created by the stepped contours of the northern slope of the Hill of Tara. The land between Dalgan Park and Navan does not offer any other clear defensible position – so this is the only feature available as such to the militaryminded. Behind Rathmiles the land inclines steadily southwards to the 500m contour at the northern end of the Tech Midchúarta and thence to the crest of the Hill of Tara itself. East of Rathmiles, and once again curving southwards with the contour, is the Tara-Skreen Valley. This completes a clockwise tour around the Hill of Tara. Between Dowdstown, Gerardstown (at the head of the Nanny Valley), and Kilcarn Bridge (on the outskirts of Navan) there is a plateau-like area of excellent farmland bounded on the west and the north by the Boyne, which turns sharply eastwards at Navan. The high points of this plateau, Realtoge Hill and the Carn Hill-Kingstown ridge, have already been mentioned in the context of the Boyne Landscape and therefore assume considerable potential importance, straddling, as it were, two possibly distinct aspects of the same plateau, a natural boundary between two landscapes, one of which is a fortuitous extension from the north side of the Boyne. From Kilcarn Bridge onwards the Boyne cuts a short, deep valley as it musters towards its turbulent confluence with the Blackwater. From Navan eastwards the Boyne has carved out a surprisingly deep, narrow valley of ravine-like proportions past Ardmulchan Castle at least as far as Broadboyne Bridge, whereupon the gradient of the south side of the valley forms into a more gentle sweep.

3: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TARA LANDSCAPE The concordance between topographical landmarks and archaeological monuments evident throughout the foregoing description of the Meath landscapes is a resounding endorsement of Duffy’s recent observation that ‘it seems to be a universal fact about landscape morphology that once boundaries with important societal significance (such as political or landholding or other property associations) are established they endure, and subsequent changes in the landscape and its inhabitants tend to take place within this established framework’ (2001, 121–2). Moreover, it suggests that the origins of some landscapes can be traced back to earlier prehistory. The question of how and what parts of the landscape were utilised in prehistory and the proto-historical period, however, is a matter for archaeology, history and palaeoecology. The principle underlying the discussion that follows is that adopted by Roymans and Theuws (1999, 14–5) in their recent examination of the prehistoric landscape of the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region of the south Netherlands, in which they take their cue from research that illustrates the key role that ancestors play in social and cosmological order

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in non-Western cultures. They maintain that where ancestors are the real owners of the land, landownership is ‘often rooted in myths and presented as part of a sacred order created by the ancestors. As collective ancestral property, the land is so closely connected with the identity and constitution of the local community that it may be regarded as one of the most fundamental inalienable possessions’ (ibid., 14). They go on to argue that access to the embedded ownership of land is gained through spatial analysis of mortuary ritual because the ‘burial system is ... the ideal ritual context for linking the social world with the cosmological and ancestral world’. In their spatial distribution, therefore, mortuary monuments, like deeds of ownership, tell us what parts of the landscape were owned and inhabited in the past and provide an orientation for our analyses of ancient landscapes. An examination of the distribution patterns of monuments around Tara reveals the general extent and axis of former settlement areas and suggests that by the beginning of the first millennium AD the position of Tara relative to its domain had changed from being more or less central to being decidedly westerly, if not north-westerly. Its early, central position can be ascertained by examining the associated mounds and henge monuments, which are likely to date from the earlier prehistoric period. The four mounds near Tara are distributed in a line running north-south from Cabragh on the eastern flank of Tara through Tara-Skreen Valley to a mound in Alexander Reid townland, at the foot of Carn Hill. The denuded mound at Cabragh is very much in the shadow of the Mound of the Hostages and overlooks the aforementioned small ravine. Like the others, however, it was probably once as big as the Mound of the Hostages, leading one to suppose that all of these mounds may date from the Neolithic Period. If so, this lineation can be extended as far as the south bank of the Boyne at Ardmulchan Bridge on account of the discovery there of two stones decorated with megalithic art, east of a putative mound (Eogan 1974; Shee 1981, 225; Moore 1986, 13). Equally, two further mounds extend the lineation some distance to the south of Tara: a specimen in Belpere is located on the southern extremity of the Tara upland and overlooks Dunsany demense from the north, and another, as previously mentioned, occurs at Mooretown, outside Dunshaughlin, where it overlooks the River Skane. This latter is the southermost of the mounds, suggesting that it is around here that one might draw the southern limits of the early prehistoric landscape of Tara. On the evidence of these monuments, we can be reasonably confident of the utilisation of this north-south corridor of land. Its lateral extent, however, is far less easily defined. It would seem reasonable to include land to the west, as far as the Boyne. However, if visibility from settlement areas was desirable, the fact that the Mound of the Hostages dominates the skyline of Tara when viewed from the east, but is not readily visible from the west, may be of some relevance. It would seem to suggest that the Tara-Skreen Valley was a prime settlement area in earlier prehistory, as has already been implied by the occurence there of other mounds. However, the best land, at least by today’s reckoning, is between Tara and the

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Boyne, across the river from Ardmulchan, and here one might expect to have found the most intense settlement activity. Although it contains the richest grave assemblages of any passage tomb, the modest size of the Mound of the Hostages and the large quantity of human bone found there suggests that it may have functioned more as a cemetery in the conventional sense, servicing the collective burial needs of a rather more local community than did the huge temple-tombs of the Boyne Valley. In contrast, the next major phase in the development of the complex was truly monumental. A defining moment in the history of Tara, the later third to earlier second millenium BC copperfastened for good the centrality of the Hill of Tara with the construction of huge monuments not just on top of the hill but, perhaps even more importantly, around it. On the crown of the hill a great oval ditch, 210m by 175m, was constructed on either side of which were regularly spaced posts, about 300 in all. This is clearly centred on a place now occupied by Rath of the Synods, but, significantly, it includes in its ambit the Mound of the Hostages, which may also have been deliberate (Fenwick and Newman 2002). Immediately north of this oval ditch Tech Midchúarta, a huge, slightly arcuate rectilinear enclosure or avenue was built. Further analysis on the juxtaposition of these two monuments has raised the possibility that Tech Midchúarta is a late (possibly later Iron Age or early medieval) addition to Tara (pace Newman 1997, 150-3). On the next rise to the south the gigantic henge of Rath Maeve was constructed; and, at about the same distance to the west, in Riverstown, another, about half the size (120m), was also built. The Riverstown henge is of importance because it provides the first proof of human activity in this area in earlier prehistory (There are two mounds near Bective, but they are too small to be diagnostic). The shape and size of the Tara Landscape appears to have remained much the same during most of the second and possibly early first millenium BC, a time when collective energies seem to have been invested in building multitudes of small, mostly burial monuments rather than in the construction of a few very large ones. The two Bronze Age burials to the south of Dunsany, like the aforementioned mounds, extend the domain of Tara southwards to its earlier limits on the fringe of the north Dublin plain. What is important is that distribution analysis suggests that the position of Tara was maintained just south of centre of this area. In later prehistory the situation seems to have changed and the demarcation of the landscape takes an altogether more militaristic aspect with the appearance of overtly defensive monuments and the start of the unification of the Tara and Duleek-Ballyboughal Landscapes. The concentration of purpose-built defence positions around Tara is unequivocal (Figure 5), particularly when viewed against the small numbers of such monuments in adjacent areas to the north and west, which cannot be accounted for by claiming a shortage of suitable locations. In the immediate vicinity of Tara are Ringlestown Rath, Rathmiles, Ráith Lóegaire and the Riverstown linear earthwork, as well as promontory forts at Rath Lugh and

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Edoxtown, near Rathfeigh. Further afield there are promontory forts at Drumanagh (near Loughshinny, par. Lusk, bar. Balrothery East, Co. Dublin), Platin (between Donore and Drogheda), Carrickdexter (par. Slane, bar. Upper Slane, Co. Meath), Carrickspringan (near Mullagh, par. Moynalty, bar. Lower Kells, Co. Meath) and Knowth. With five of the seven promontory forts occurring in the Duleek-Ballyboughal and Tara Landscapes, and the two remaining examples closely adjacent across the Boyne at Knowth and Carrickdexter, they are clearly the dominant defensive type, and are therefore likely to be contemporary. I have argued elsewhere that the close-set vallation of promontory forts connects them with comparatively low-lying and small hillforts in the region such as Ringlestown Rath and Ráith Lóegaire, as well as with a group of elite multivallate ceremonial enclosures such as Rath of the Synods and Tlachtga, among which I would now consider including Ráith Airthir (and for this reason believe it justifiable to consider all of these earthworks together). The chronology of these three forms is problematical to say the least.4 However, the relative dating of Rath of the Synods to some time, fairly soon after the construction of Ráith na Ríg around the birth of Christ, and the recovery from it of Romano-British material, concords sufficiently well with the reported mixture of Irish and Romano-British objects from Drumanagh to allow for contemporaneity in the first half of the first millennium AD – although my conjecture would be that these sites date from the second-half of this range (see Ó Floinn 2000). The relatively large number of defensive earthworks around Tara is as one might have expected and reminds us of the continued importance of Tara into the first few centuries AD and, more significantly, of the desire to protect it. On a regional level, the nexus at Tara serves only to highlight the more dispersed arrangement of the other sites and suggests that these might be viewed as strategic outliers and, therefore, that Tara had by now assumed regional significance, subsuming the Duleek-Ballyboughal Landscape. According to this hypothesis, the promontory fort at Platin may have fulfilled the role of controlling the area between the lower Nanny and the Boyne, while that at Drumanagh was, among other things, an extremely important entrepôt with the Romano-British world. Assuming for the present that the enclosures at Knockbrack and Garristown are part of this group, a very clear lineation of significant earthworks, including defensive postions, can be discerned, which strongly suggests a series of monumental signposts, indicating a routeway from the coast at Drumanagh to Tara, passing through Damastown, Garristown, Edoxtown and Skreen (Plate 1). Indeed, it should be noted at this point that there is a significant distributional overlap between the area covered

4

It is possible that the closely spaced multivallation, which is confined, as we have seen, to a limited range of monument types in Ireland, is a chronologically specific departure in defensive architecture the appearance of which may be connected to its deployment in British hillforts and, perhaps more significantly in the present context, in Roman military earthworks. Ringforts comprise by far the largest corpus of this defensive technique in Ireland and their date ought to have some bearing on this issue. For further discussion see Newman (1997), 200–6.

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by these monuments and Romano-British material, an observation worthy of research in its own right. The distribution of these defensive monuments indicates that the perceived threat was from the north and north-west, not the midlands or south, and that this was all the more acute since Tara may now have been nearer to the edge than the middle of its landscape. They indicate generally where the border was and which part of it required the most protection, ostentatious or otherwise. This leaves the two promontory forts on the north side of the Boyne at Knowth and Carrickdexter. The obvious conclusion is that these, along with the Boyne, defended or dermarcated the southern limits of the neighbouring landscape. However, in so far as they both overlook the river and are heavily defended on the landward or north side, their axis is ambiguous. This makes one think about the equally ambiguous position of Brug na Bóinne from a landscape perspective. Commandeered as the ancestral burial ground of the pagan kings of Tara, it would ordinarily have been outside the Tara Landscape were it not for the fact that, as we have seen, it is located in the one area readily accessible from south of the Boyne. In their desire to advance their political and territorial ambitions, early kings of Tara would have grasped any opportunity of claiming the huge Neolithic mound with its long history of utilisation, up to and including the votive deposition there of Roman objects. While they might have attempted to secure it from the south side of the river by establishing a royal residence at Rossnaree, the possibility that the forts at Knowth and Carrickdexter were also controlled from the south side of the river should not be ruled out completely. Accordingly, the formalisation of territorial claims on these landscapes, and in particular that of the expanding kingdom centred on Tara, appears to have been achieved symbolically through the creation of special, ceremonial enclosures in three of them. These territories were secured by the construction of a network of defensive earthworks concentrated around the most coveted, or perhaps cosseted, of them, Tara. Such ambitions may also have been articulated through the strategic erection of ogam stones. The famous Painestown ogam stone, bearing the inscription MAQI CAIRATINI AVI INEQAGLAS commemorating Mac Cáirthinn (Ó Corráin 1971; 1985, 59; McManus 1997, 53; CharlesEdwards 2000, 453–8), one of the reputed early kings of Tara belonging to the Laigin, was located among a group of small hills identified here on purely topographical grounds, as a landscape junction; the south-western boundary of this area was susceptible to being accessible, and therefore controlled, from the north side of the Boyne. Again, this suggests that in this immediate area the Boyne did not always define the boundary. Occasionally it was set some distance to the south of the river, which I think is proven by the Painestown stone. This stone is doubly important because it is tangible evidence of interest in Brega by kings of the Laigin. At this time Tara would have been located at the very north-western edge of Laigin territory and therefore vulnerable to the ambitions of the Connachta to conquer the midlands and east. There is a distinct possibility that the defensive earthworks around Tara were built

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to counteract this threat. While kings of the Laigin were staking out their claim on this land, the first wave of Connachta to arrive in north Meath, perhaps including the Luigni and the Gailenga, appear to have employed the same strategy of erecting ogam stones on significant boundary points around the Blackwater Valley, where no fewer than six ogam stones are recorded. Though unreadable, the diminutive ogam stone from a radiocarbon-dated fourthcentury context at Raffin Fort is tremendously important because it was found on what can best be described as a communal assembly site. The inscription itself has been described as possibly the work of an apprentice, someone learning or practising the cipher (McManus pers. comm. 1993). It is undoubtedly connected with the three ogam stones redeployed as roofstones in Ballynee souterrain, 1.75km to the north of Raffin (Moore 1990). Unlikely to have been carried from very far, I would maintain that these too once stood on the boundary that comprises the low hills in this immediate area. They have yielded up partial readings: roofstone 2, R...CTEVI; roofstone 4, MAQI...BIQ; roofstone 3, MUCOE MAQI S.... Moore has postulated that the missing letter from the inscription on roofstone 2 is either an I or an E, and that the name itself, RICTEVI, may be derived from Latin. The inscription on the ogam stone from Rantavan in the north-west end of the Blackwater Landscape reads OSBBAR (Moore 1995, 36 (no. 182)). And finally, the inscription COVAGNI MAQUI MUCCOI LUGUNI on the ogam stone at Castlekeeran (bar. Upper Kells, Co. Meath), at the mouth of the upper Blackwater valley, commemorates a member of the Luigni, who occupied territories to the north-west of this region with the Gailenga in the early medieval period (see Bhreathnach 1995, 127–9).5 The spatial coincidence between these ogam stones and topographically defined boundaries is nowhere more apparent than in the Blackwater Landscape and is obviously an endorsement of the theory that, in accordance with a primary, qua Roman, canon, they served the dual purposes of commemorating the dead and of marking apparent boundaries associated with them (Charles-Edwards 1976, 83–7). In fact it is the first time that this function has been demonstrated across a clearly defined, integrated, geo-political landscape. This exclusive relationship between monument and topographical boundary, as well as the small number of surviving inscribed stones, stands in marked contrast to the proliferation of ogam stones in the Dingle peninsula, where their deployment as personal memorials has clearly superseded the original rubric. Along with these spatial considerations, the coincidence in distribution of ogam stones and Roman and Hiberno-Roman material culture in the Meath area (Figure 6) in turn challenges the view that the alphabet can only have been 5

Fionnbarr Moore has recently published a newly recorded ogam stone from Slieve Gamp, Co. Mayo. He postulates that in the barony name Gallen preserved the tribal name Gailenga who, like the Luigni, occupied this area prior to their conquest of Meath (Moore 1995), precursive in some way to the Uí Néill incursions (see also Charles-Edwards (2000), 466). The tribal name is also preserved in the barony of Morgallion, immediately adjacent to the east of the Blackwater valley.

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invented among romanised Irish diaspora in Wales (e.g. Charles-Edwards 2000, 175). Two primary preconditions are postulated for the invention of the ogam alphabet: being Irish, and having knowledge of Latin grammar, which was only achievable through direct contact with the Roman world. Charles-Edwards, among others, has argued that the most likely place for such a union was in the Irish colonies in south Wales – rather than in Ireland, where Roman material, and hence demonstrable Roman influence, does not overlap with the distribution of ogam (Charles-Edwards 2000, 175). Another factor in the adoption of ogam pertains to the phenomenon of emulation which in this period refers to the so-called ‘romanisation’ of the institutions and livery of kingship in Ireland (Warner 1995), including the erection of ogam stones in imitation of late Roman memorial stones, commemorating important people and marking out their lands. Again, the implication here is that ascendant Irish warlords such as Votecorigas of Dyfed reflect this cultural development, appropriating, as it were, the trappings and title of Roman provincial dignitaries (Charles-Edwards 2000, 167–8). But such people also existed in Ireland, and indeed some of the most powerful kings lived in, or colonised, what was to become Brega, and, bilingual inscriptions apart, the archaeological and historical evidence for the formation of new kingdoms, for the emergence of new kings and for this type of emulation is far stronger in Ireland than, for example, in Wales (de Paor 1993, 23–37). Consequently, Brega in the fourth and fifth-centuries AD suggests itself as a thoroughly suitable environment for the invention of ogam. The erection of ogam stones on ancient boundaries carries forward the geo-political realities of these landscapes, which were by this stage embryonic medieval kingdoms, into the fifth and sixth centuries. The story does not end here. On the contrary, these centuries are merely the foundation of a hugely important period in Irish history, one that also left its mark on the landscapes of Meath. Further research will be required to determine how the topographical boundaries identified in this paper were regarded in the medieval period, whether they were preserved or ignored during the formation of the kingdom of Brega and its sub-kingdoms and later by Norman lordships. Advancements in agricultural equipment introduced through the economic practices associated with the advent of Christianity brought new land under the plough. It would be foolish to underestimate the effect that these changes would have had on landscape perspectives since they are forged solely by the boundaries of what is humanly possible.6

6

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This essay is dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Hickey, whose love of these landscapes and their antiquities lives on in those of us who had the privilege of walking the lands with her. Thanks are due also to Edel Bhreathnach for her sound advice, as always; to Joe Fenwick for climbing all the hills of Brega with me; to Seitske O’Connor for explaining the Dutch usage of the word landschap; to John Waddell for reading some early drafts; and to Eamonn O’Donoghue and Philip Jones for their assistance.

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Re-composing the Archaeological Landscape of Tara

The Plates

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Plate A Below: Standing stone in Drissoge Townland at the eastern foot of the Hill of Ward. This monument is on the boundary between farmland and bog and is in the shadow of Tlachtga where there is a recumbent standing stone. Opposite: Nearby is the find-spot of a later Bronze Age hoard. The Hill of Tara at centre of horizon.

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Plate B Faughan Hill, the traditional burial-place of Niall Noígíallach, marks the south-eastern boundary of the Blackwater Landscape. Immediately to the south is Bohermeen Bog. There are no known monuments on the summit of this hill, but to the north is an earthwork, known locally as the ‘Big O’, that may be a henge. Faughan Hill commands excellent views in all directions and is a good vantage-point from which to appreciate the landscape setting of the Donaghpatrick nexus of the Teltown complex.

Plate C Opposite : Aerial view of the confluence of the Rivers Blackwater and Boyne at Navan. Flower Hill is at bottom left.

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Plate D Opposite : Donaghpatrick, Co. Meath. The present churchyard is on the site of the Patrician foundation and is situated on a bluff overlooking the River Blackwater. Hidden from view among the trees behind the church is the spectacular multivallate Ráith Airthir. The seventh-century bishop Tírechán recorded that Ráith Airthir was designated by St Patrick as the royal residence of Conall son of Niall Noígíallach (also known as Conall Cremthainne).

Plate E Above left: The royal outpost of Tara at Rossnaree is located on a steep bluff overlooking the south bank of the River Boyne, directly opposite Knowth with its equally prominent location. Above right: Looking across the River Boyne from Rossnaree towards Knowth. Another river-bluff promontory fort lies between the Knowth tomb complex and the river, although this is obscured from view by vegetation.

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Plate F The abrupt beginning of the so-called Bend of the Boyne is overlooked by the great mound at Knowth. An impressive promontory fort is located high above the river on the slopes below the passage tomb. This earthwork on its south side abuts a short but very steep-sided gorge. On the other side of the gorge, also overlooking the river, is a curious, square enclosure that has been compared with Roman marching camps in Britain.

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Plate G The ‘Gates of Mullagh’ refer to the narrow pass between Mullagh Hill (right) and the eastern shore of Mullagh Lough. Inset above : The small peninsula projecting into the lake is a figure-of-eight-shaped monument, the landward side of which has been transformed into a promontory fort. A crannog lies to the south (foreground) of the promontory fort and in the lower right-hand corner are remains of Teampall Cheallaigh, a church associated with St Killian of Würtzburg (d. 689).

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Plate H A pair of now recumbent standing stones on a rocky outcrop at the west end of Bellewstown Hill, overlooking Keenoge and the upper reaches of the River Nanny. Reckoning of the original aspect of each stone, it seems that they are aligned on, among other features, the Hill of Tara to the left of the tree on the near horizon.

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Plate I Edoxtown promontory fort looking across the steep-sided valley of the River Hurley from Rathfeigh church and motte. The fort is hidden by the trees in the centre of the photograph and, unfortunately, the embankments were ploughed out since 2002. This is a typical location for inland promontory forts in Co. Meath.

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Plate J Looking east over the narrow coastal plain from the Knockbrack enclosure and barrow cemetery. The surviving ramparts of this huge enclosure comprise a bank with a wide internal ditch which compares well with Ráith na Ríg at Tara. On the horizon to the left is Lambay Island, and to the right is Howth Head and Ireland’s Eye. Between these two is the enclosed estuary of the Broad Meadow River at Malahide. The Broad Meadow rises at Dunshaughlin.

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Re-composing the Archaeological Landscape of Tara

The Maps

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Figure A Tara and surrounding areas. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

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Boyne Landscape (core) Boyne Landscape (outer) Tara Landscape (outer) Tara Landscape (core) Blackwater Landscape Tlachtga Landscape Duleek Landscape

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Figure 1 Hill-shaded model of County Meath and its immediate environs adapted from the Ordnance Survey of Ireland’s Discovery Series maps 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

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Tara Naul Knockbrack Fourknocks Garristown Hill River Liffey estuary River Boyne estuary Mount Oriel Navan Kells Slieve na Calliagh Trim Bog of Allen

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Figure 2 The Tlachtga Landscape The five landscapes discussed in this paper are defined by aspects of the landscape that have remained largely unchanged: geomorphology, drainage and general topographical characteristics. The character of the land part-predicates its composition as a ‘landscape’ and noteworthy geographical features have the potential of demarcating boundary zones. The northern boundary of the Tlachtga Landscape goes through Bohermeen Bog (stippled), which is sandwiched between Faughan Hill (on the south side of the Blackwater Landscape) and the Hill of Ward. Bogs are shared resources or hazards that are often the meeting-points of townlands. The southern limits of this landscape are drawn to correspond with the Athboy/Tremblestown River as it flows towards Trim and a confluence with the Boyne. The River Boyne is a natural boundary, although there is no change in the gently undulating fluvio-glacial character of the landscape which continues towards the Kildare border. However, in following the Athboy/Tremblestown River, the border corresponds with the Pale ditch at this point and, therefore, commands at least some geo-political pedigree. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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Trim Navan Tara Belpere Balsoon Bective Abbey Hill of Ward Athboy Tlachtga Tremblestown / Boyne confluence Rathmore Bohermeen Drissoge Faughan Hill

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Figure 3 The Blackwater Landscape This landscape corresponds almost exactly with the Blackwater drainage system, including its major tributaries the Moynalty and Borora Rivers. Its northern limit is drawn at the ‘Gates of Mullagh’, a narrow pass between Mullagh Hill and Mullagh Lough. Its southern limit is at the Boyne/Blackwater confluence at Navan. Fletcherstown/Emlagh Bog and Teltown (Tailtiu) lie close to the middle of the landscape. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

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Navan Kells Faughan Hill Fordstown Athboy Lough Ramor Fartagh Kingsmountain Loughcrew East Hill of Lloyd (Mullach Aite) Carnaross Castlekeeran Headfort Demesne island Teltown (Tailtiu) Moynalty/Blackwater confluence Mullagh Lough Mullagh Hill Mullagh Rantavan Mullagh Bridge Donore Moynalty Rathinree Upper

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Fletcherstown/Emlagh Bog Red Island St John’s Rath Wilkinstown Donaghpartick Ráith Airthir Simonstown Randalstown Flower Hill (Cnoc Blá) Castletown Teevurcher Hill Raffin Fort Balsaw Hill Mullagha Hill Dunderk Hill Corballis Causestown Henge Donaghmore Stackallan Slane Kilberry Cross Proudstown Batterstown

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Figure 4 The Boyne Valley Landscape Although the Boyne Valley Landscape is somewhat hemmed in by an arc of undulating upland, it is susceptible to expansion to the east and west, as marked on the map. Parts of the south side of the River Boyne, opposite the archaeological complex at Knowth, may also have been included in the Boyne Valley Landscape at certain periods. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

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Roughgrange Newgrange Dowth Henge Redmountain Lougher Gilltown Rossnaree Cullen Hill Painestown Hill Senechalstown Kingstown and Carn Hill Realtoge Hill Painestown Kentstown Slieve Breagh (Druimne Breg) Mount Oriel (Druimne Breg) Mullaghash Fieldstown Hill Dunleer Boyne/Mattock confluence Louth Hill Drogheda Slane King William’s Glen Clogher Head Dunany Point Annagassan (Cassán Linne) Ardmulchan

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Figure 5 The Tara and Duleek – Ballyboughal Landscapes East and central Co. Meath, stretching from the Hill of Tara eastwards to the coast, has a markedly undulating landscape in contrast with the narrow corridor of high-quality, flat land along the coast. Although it comprises a topographically coherent space, the rather nucleated distribution of earlier prehistoric monuments suggests at least two distinct landscapes. By the later Iron Age, such sub-divisions appear to have been superseded and, as the distribution of promontory forts in particular suggests, the landscape was probably united into a whole and extending as far south as the River Liffey. However, the Hill of Tara is defended by a cordon of fortifications from Ringlestown Rath in the west to the promontory fort at Edoxtown, near Rathfeigh in the east. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

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Tara Skreen Lismullen Dowdstown Bridge Rath Lugh Gerardstown Dunshaughlin Rath Hill Carn Hill/Kingstown Ratoath Ashbourne Drumree Knockmark Killeen Dunsany Kilmessan Mooretown Rath Meave Riverstown Ringlestown Tullykane Hill of Ward Castletown Tara Castle

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Jordanstown Rathmiles Dalgan Park Navan Tech Midchúarta Dowdstown Gerardstown Kilcarn Bridge Realtoge Hill Carn Hill/Kingstown Ardmulchan Broadboyne Duleek Ballyboughal Bellewstown Fourknocks Knockbrack River Boyne estuary Rogerstown estuary Swords Garristown Laytown Betaghstown

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

Bellewstown West Keenoge Abbeyland Mullaghteelin Painestown Senechalstown Kentstown Stamullin Garristown Hill Primatestown Cushinstown Windmill Hill Hilltown Rathfeigh Damastown Balbriggan Rush Balrothery Lusk Drumanagh Lambay Island

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Figure 6 Roman material and ogam stones in Brega

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The Medieval Kingdom of Brega Edel Bhreathnach

B

Chuinn Chétchathaigh and other seventh-century texts allude to a region variously described in a singular or plural form as Breg or Brega. While scholars have attempted to trace the origin and meaning of the placename, little consideration has been given to the extent of this territory, to the geographical determinants that influence its subdivisions, and to the manner in which pre-existing territories influenced dynastic landholdings. The placename Brega occurs rarely as Breg – a form which could indicate either the genitive singular or plural – and commonly in the plural form Brega.1 It is normally regarded as the plural of the feminine guttural noun brí ‘hill’ from Celtic *brig-, cognate with Germanic berg and Welsh bre.2 It occurs in many Irish placenames and also as an element in such English placenames as Breedon Hill. Brega’s economic and strategic importance in prehistoric and early medieval Ireland is clear from archaeological, historical and literary evidence. That certain placenames which represent Ireland as a whole, Banba, Cermna, Fál, also have a local significance in Brega 3 signifies this region’s central position on the island and the use of a landscape as a microcosm of the whole island. There are particular regions in Ireland where either economic viability or strategic situation ensured that ambitious kings needed to claim authority over them in order to realise their ambitions: in Leinster, the plain of Kildare; in Munster, the good land around Cashel or east Limerick; in Connacht, the Roscommon Plain (Mag nAí) in which Cruachu is located. A common feature of these regions is that they were also at the heart of profoundly symbolic kingships. Of all such regions in Ireland, Brega was especially attractive because of its fertile land, its accessibility and navigability, and its position as a nodal cross-route between various parts of the country. The idea that the main roads of Ireland converged at Tara itself may not be entirely accurate, but they did meet within Brega. Brega and its ceremonial centres, of which there are many, were bound to be attractive to any highly ambitious king wherever he may have come from, and this is borne out by the sources. AILE

1 2 3

410

See note to edition BCC §3 on forms of the placename. Thurneysen, Grammar, §319; McCone, ‘An tSean-Ghaeilge agus a réamhstair’, 67. Ó Concheanainn, ‘Topographical notes – I’, 87–96; see Carey, above, 38 on Inis Fáil.

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THE EXTENT AND IMPORTANT PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES OF BREGA The definition of a natural or logical boundary for the territory historically known as Brega, based on geography and not on dynastic claims or landholdings, is the first step towards understanding the region.4 The sea defined the eastern limits of Brega. A recurring theme in the early sources is that this coast was a well-known point of entry into Ireland, particularly at the Boyne estuary, Inber Colpdai. Muirchú, in his seventh-century Life of Patrick, commented that the saint landed at Inber Colpdai and went by foot in praedictum maximum campum ‘to that aforesaid great plain’,5 presumably referring to Mag mBreg, the low-lying plain situated approximately between the Boyne and the Liffey. Adomnán, in the Vita Sancti Columbae, describes how an old monk sent from Tiree in Scotland to Ireland left the boat on the coast of Brega and crossed the plain to the monastery of Durrow,6 suggesting the existence of a routeway from the coast to the midlands. One of the signs of the auspicious reign of Conaire Már, the heroic king, in its early days before he was doomed by fatal transgressions, included seven ships landing annually in June at Inber Colpdai.7 The River Boyne was apparently navigable as far as Trim. In the notes relating to Patrick in the ninth-century Book of Armagh (the Additamenta), Lommán, a British disciple of Patrick’s, was left to guard the saint’s boat at the Boyne estuary and ‘then, in accordance with his master’s command, he sailed in his boat up the river, and under the Lord’s guidance, came to Áth Truim (Trim, bars. Lower Moyfenrath and Upper Navan, Co. Meath)’.8 Inber Colpdai was not the only landing-place on the coast. Others included Inber nAilbine (the estuary of the River Delvin), Inber nAinge (the estuary of the River Nanny) and Inber nDomnann (Malahide Bay). This coastline was one of the major points of entry into Ireland and was, therefore, subject to a greater influence from outside, especially within the Irish Sea province, and this undoubtedly explains the occurrence of a higher than average incidence of Romano-British material in the eastern coastal region.9 Linguists from Thurneysen onwards have occasionally mooted the idea of a bilingual British- and Irish-speaking community thriving in this part of Ireland.10 This possible ethnic diversity might have allowed for a gradual – and relatively effortless – introduction of Christianity to Brega once it had reached western Britain.11 The arrival of new customs such as different burial rites is suggested by archaeological evidence. These hints include the possible use of British or Anglo-Saxon burial rites at an unenclosed cemetery at 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

See Newman, above, 365–7. Bieler, Patrician texts, 84: 14 (2). VSC, II 39. Knott, Togail Bruidne Da Derga, 6: ll. 183–4. Bieler, Patrician texts, 166–7: 1 (1). Bateson, ‘Roman material from Ireland’, 32–5 (Maps 1–4); Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 156. Thurneysen, ‘Allerlei Keltisches: 2. Tailtiu’; Kelly, ‘The earliest words for ‘horse’’, 49–50. Ó Floinn, ‘Patrons and politics’, 1-8.

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Betaghstown, Co. Meath, and at a cemetery at Colp (bar. Lower Duleek, Co. Meath), situated on a slope above the south bank near Inber Colpdai.12 While trade is often regarded as the primary vehicle of change in a society, it is clear from archaeological, historical and linguistic evidence that Brega was open to influences from many quarters: geographical proximity, blood relationships, ecclesiastical connections, marriage and political alliances. Connections with the rest of the early medieval world, primarily through Britain, account for the presence in Brega of such diverse evidence as the glass flasks of Merovingian type found in the crannóg at Moynagh Lough, near Nobber,13 the apparent use among kings of Brega of the personal name Conaing, a name possibly influenced by the Anglo-Saxon title cyning,14 or the intervention by Britons in an internal feud among branches of Síl nÁedo Sláine at the beginning of the eighth century.15 There is sufficient accumulated evidence to suggest that Brega was an outward-looking region rather than one primarily influenced by events happening in the Irish midlands, as often portrayed. A key to the definition of the borders of Brega and its natural subdivisions were its rivers and ridges. The southern border of Brega was marked by the Rivers Liffey and Rye, which divided it from the northern parts of Leinster, variously known in the sources as Cualu, Life and Foither. 16 The northern border was probably defined by the Rivers Dee and Glyde. Cassán Linne (tl. Annagasssan, par. Drumcar, bar. Ardee, Co. Louth) was used both as a local and as a provincial border in the early medieval period: locally between Cíannacht Breg and Conaille Muirthemne, provincially between the Uí Néill and the Ulaid. However, it is a phenomenon of early Ireland – and of prehistoric Ireland – that whereas a river such as the River Dee marked a geographical break in the landscape and was regarded as a visible border or as an obstacle, territories ruled by population groups or dominated by dynasties were not necessarily restricted by physical boundaries. They could expand or contract depending on their circumstances. The Ulaid, for example, were influential south of the Boyne until the seventh century, from which period the lands which they ruled gradually contracted to the north-east, where they remained confined throughout the early medieval period.17 Similarly, dynasties belonging to Brega may have claimed lands beyond its northern and southern reaches, as the sobriquet of the Uí Chernaig king, Flann Foirbthe son of Fogartach (d. 748) 12 13 14 15 16

17

18

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O’Brien, Burial practices reviewed, 179–84. Bradley, ‘Archaeological excavations at Moynagh Lough’, 60. Byrne, Irish kings, 111–12, 281; O’Brien, Burial practices reviewed, 48. AU 701–2. Note the alternation between these names in the secular genealogies, cf. O’Brien, Corpus, 75: 124b48. The Rawlinson B 502 version reads Fergus mac Dúnlaing a quo Húi Fergusa eter Liphi 7 finiu Cualann, while the Book of Lecan reads ... eter Fhoithrib 7 Fine Cualann. The law-tract Bretha Nemed Dédenach (Gwynn, ‘Privileges and responsibilities of poets’, 20: ll. 4–5; Watkins, ‘Indo-European metrics’, 226; Charles-Edwards and Kelly, Bechbretha, 133–4) records a threat mairg Ulltu mad ol Boinn bet ‘woe to the Ulaid if they are beyond the Boyne’. Knott, Togail Bruidne Da Derga, 15: l. 478; 16: l. 523; 19: ll. 620–1.

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might suggest. Foirbthe relates to the placename Trácht Fuirbthen,18 which seems to survive in the modern names Merrion Strand and Mount Merrion south of the River Liffey. Characteristically, the northern and southern borders of Brega were noted battlegrounds.19 In 770, for example, Cíannacht Breg defeated the Uí Théig of Leinster at Áth Cliath, although this may have been a pyrrhic victory, as a number of the victors were drowned in the full tide (presumably of the River Liffey) as they turned northwards.20 Muirchertach Ua Néill was slain by Gairbíth Ua Cathasaig, king of Saithne, at Cassán Linne in 1045 while raiding Brega. AU comment on this event in a manner similar to the earlier incident in 770, stating: 7 an muir lan ara chinn co torchair Muirchertach ann 7 alii multi ‘and the sea was full against him, and Muirchertach and many others fell there’.21 The Vikings established permanent settlements at the northern and southern extremities of Brega during the earliest period of their activity in Ireland – one encampment at Linn Dúachaill (somewhere in the vicinity of Annagassan, Co. Louth) and another at Dublin.22 The strategic importance of these encampments to the early Vikings in Ireland is epitomised in the entry in the annals which refers to the fierce internecine warfare among them in 851: Tetact Dubgennti du Ath Cliath co ralsat ár mór du Fhinngallaibh 7 coro [sh]latsat in longport eitir doine 7 moine. Slat do Dubhgenntib oc Lind Duachail 7 ar mor diib ‘The dark heathens came to Áth Cliath, and made a great slaughter of the fair-haired foreigners, and plundered the longphort, both people and property. A slaughter by the dark heathens at Linn Dúachaill and many of them were killed.’ 23 Despite the lack of definite corroborative evidence, it may be surmised that the Vikings deliberately set out to dominate the medieval kingdom of Brega as a foothold in Ireland. Once established in Dublin, they certainly sought to annex Brega as part of their kingdom from the late ninth to the late tenth century, until their ambitions were checked at the battle of Tara in 980. The western border of Brega is not as easily defined as its other limits. Western Brega bordered on the midland territory of Mide. The southern half of this western border seems to have been defined by the River Boyne as it flows northwards from its source at Síd Nechtain (close to the Iron Age cemetery at Carbury Hill, Co. Kildare). However, the Boyne may not have been a permanent border. For example, Dún Cuair (tl./par. Rathcore, bar. Lower Moyfenrath, Co. Meath), the location of a meeting of leading churchmen and kings held in

19

20 21 22 23

Ó Riain, ‘Boundary association in early Irish society’. Note also the sites of battles between the Laigin and Uí Néill from the fifth to the seventh century, Mac Shamhráin, Church and polity in pre-Norman Ireland, 60, 62. AU. AU. For the possible significance of these locations, see Ó Floinn, ‘The archaeology of the early Viking Age in Ireland’, 162–3. AU.

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804 to sort out difficulties among the Uí Néill dynasties, is described as being i coicrích Midi 24 7 Laigen ‘on the borders of Mide and Leinster’. Trim is described in the Additamenta relating to Patrick’s mission as being in finibus Loiguiri Breg 25 ‘in the territories [or on the borders] of Cenél Lóegairi of Brega’, as opposed to Imgae (tls. of Umma Beg and Umma More, par. Ballymore, bar. Rathconrath, Co. Westmeath),26 which lay in the lands of Lóegaire Midi. Tlachtga (Hill of Ward, near Athboy, Co. Meath) was deemed to be in Mide.27 Further north, Cell Scíre (Kilskeer, par. Kilskeer, bar. Upper Kells, Co. Meath) and Caílle Follomain were also in Mide.28 The north-western limits of Brega seem to have incorporated Slieve na Calliagh at Loughcrew, and Mag Locha (Moylagh, bar. Fore, Co. Meath) as far west as Loch Sílenn (Lough Sheelin, bar. Clanmahon, Co. Cavan).29 If this extent is correct, it would explain the existence of the territory of Cúl Breg, as this was literally the cúl ‘nook, corner’ of Brega held by the Uí Néill dynasty known as Fir Chúl Breg. The identity of Sliab Monduirn is crucial to defining the northern extent of Brega. A difficulty lies in the possibility that the sources refer to more than one height, since they variously mention Sliab Moduirn or Sliab Monduirn.30 The dinnshenchas of Sliab Fúait lists the mountains of the north-east, including sliab Moduirn im-Mugdornaib ‘Sliab Moduirn in the lands of the Mugdorna’.31 Táin Bó Cúailnge relates how Cú Chulainn travelled from Sliab Fúait past Loch Echtra to Sliab Monduirn, on the summit of which was a cairn known as Finncharn na Foraire (perhaps Fincairn Hill, par. Donagmoyne, bar. Farney, Co. Monaghan). From this vantage-point Cú Chulainn viewed Mag mBreg and its chief fortresses between Tara and Kells.32 Cú Chulainn’s route would suggest that his vantage-point was a height between south Armagh and Kells. One possibility might be Mullagh Hill, Co. Cavan. The name Finncharn na Foraire may survive, however, in the placename Fincairn Hill (Co. Monaghan), which lies between Lough Egish and Lough Muckno. F.J. Byrne has suggested that Sliab Monduirn is to be identified with Slieve na Calliagh above Loughcrew, Co. Meath. The evidence for this suggestion comes from a genealogical tract which tells of the dispersal of a vassal people known as Corcu Óche. One branch of Corcu Óche settled in the land of the Uí Chremthainn in Fernmag (the relatively low-lying land between Monaghan town and Clones), while the second branch, known as 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

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Hogan, Onomasticon, 381. Bieler, Patrician texts, 168–70. Hogan, Onomasticon, 456. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 477. Stokes, Félire Óengusso, 100: Scire .i. Cill Scire im-Mide; 206: Coemain Bricc .i. Caeman Brecc o Rus ech i Caille Follamin im-Mide. Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 83: 662.32 mentions Cuanna mac Miodhairn ammuich, co ngaibh Muigh Lacha i mBrecchaibh. Hogan, Onomasticon, 610. Modorn or Mondorn appears as the name of a district and of a river in the north (Onomasticon, 540). It is also constantly confused with the population group name Mugdorn. Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, IV, 164: 14. Strachan and O’Keeffe, Táin Bó Cúailnge, 24. Byrne and Francis, ‘Two lives of St. Patrick’, 100.

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Corcu Óche Slébe Mondoirn, settled in Mondorn and in Cúl Breg,33 the latter being the north-eastern part of Brega stretching towards Loch Sílenn. In sum, the northern limits of Brega either followed the Rivers Dee or Glyde from Annagassan westwards past Mullagh Hill (or past a more northerly point such as Fincairn Hill) and incorporated Slieve na Calliagh and Lough Sheelin.

THE INTERNAL DIVISIONS OF BREGA Internal geo-physical characteristics within Brega determined territorial divisions among various population groups and dynasties. Throughout the early medieval period, and especially from the eighth century onwards, the titles ‘king of North Brega’ or ‘king of South Brega’ were held, the two coalescing at times into the more prestigious title ‘king of Brega’.34 The northern king dominated the lands from the south of the bank of the Boyne northwards, while the caput of the king of south Brega was variously in the vicinity of Lagore, Dunshaughlin or Duleek, depending on the period involved. Natural subdivisions were determined by the Rivers Liffey, Delvin, Nanny, Boyne, Blackwater and Dee and by ridges, some of which ran in an east to west direction (e.g. Bellewstown, Fourknocks, Knockbrack, Garristown and Slieve na Calliagh), others in a north-south direction (e.g. Tara and Skreen) and a third group in a north to east direction (e.g. Mount Oriel and Slieve Breagh). It is not surprising that many of these ridges, which offer clear panoramas of the whole or parts of Brega, are the sites of prehistoric complexes.35 The undulating nature of the region is recognised in medieval literature as exemplified by the dinnshenchas of Tara, which speaks of Mag mBreg co n-ilar drummann ‘Mag mBreg with many ridges’. 36 Scholars tend to be influenced by their sources, and because medieval texts are dominated by the activities of kings, their dynasties and other population groups, these tend to be used as labels for the territory. Maps of south Brega, for example, normally designate it as the territory of Síl nÁedo Sláine or of Cíannacht Breg rather than as a group of geo-physical territories with their own distinct names. These latter names exist often as designations of clear physical divisions of land, and since these divisions probably determined the shape of estates or landholdings, they offer a clearer insight into how the land was regarded by its inhabitants in the early medieval period. Moreover, in recent decades the identities of some of these geo-physical territories have been recognised by scholars, most notably by Tomás Ó Concheanainn,37 Donnchadh Ó Corráin 38 and Catherine Swift.39 34 35 36 37 38 39

Byrne, ‘Historical note on Cnogba’; Bhreathnach, ‘Tara and its hinterland’. See Newman, above, 365–7. Gwynn, Metrical Dindshenchas, I, 38: l. 10. Ó Concheanainn, ‘Topographical notes – I’. Ó Corráin, ‘Topographical notes – II’, 97–9. Swift, ‘Óenach Tailten’, 111.

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Níth The northern limits of Brega seem to have been defined by the Rivers Dee (Níth) and Glyde. The Old Irish text ‘The Saga of Fergus mac Léti’, dated by its editor to the eighth century or earlier, 40 tells how Fergus son of Léte, king of Ulaid, was compensated for the killing of his ally, Eochu Bélbuide son of Tuathal Techtmar: dobreth iarum a riar do 7 roictha fris .iii. .uii. cumal .i. cumal do or 7 argat 7 tir .uii. cumal tir cuinn cétcoraig – Nith a ainm in tiri ara lin do nithaib 7 debthaib robui imbi iar tain ‘his own terms were given to him [Fergus], and there were paid to him thrice seven cumals, the land of Conn Cétchorach – Níth was the name of this land on account of the numerous contests (nítha) and dissensions that arose about it subsequently.’ 41 Binchy noted that Conn Cétchorach is obviously identical with Conn Cétchathach and suggested that the etymological explanation for Níth, located by him in Mag Muirthemne, was a later addition.42 Apart from being the name of the River Dee, Níth may also have referred to that part of Brega which forms the Dee basin. A poem in Lebor Gabála Érenn claims that the prehistoric king Sláine held Ireland from Níth to Commor Trí nUisce (the confluence of the Rivers Nore, Suir and Barrow).43 The text could be interpreted either as referring specifically to the River Dee (Níth némannach ‘the white-pebbled Níth’) or possibly to the land around the river. The etymological addition describing Níth as the location of numerous contests and dissensions is corroborated by literary and historical sources. Cú Chulainn slew the warrior Lethan, who seems to have belonged to the Conaille and who was peeved by what Cú Chulainn had already done in the area around Irard Cuilenn (perhaps Crossakeel, par. Kilskeer, bar. Upper Kells, Co. Meath). The contest was fought fora áth for Níth la Conailliu, hence, we are told, the placename Áth Lethan, a ford on the River Níth (Dee).44 The latter phrase suggests that Níth was in proximity to Conaille territory, or at least that it formed the southern boundary of the kingdom. Muirchú, for example, clearly distinguished between Brega and the territories of the Conaille and Ulaid: Tum deinde Brega Conalneosque fines nec non et fines Ulathorum in leuo dimittens … ‘Then, leaving Brega and the territory of the Conalnei and that of the Ulaid on his [Patrick’s] left side ...’ 45 Byrne has commented that the interests of the Uí Néill, Ulaid and Conaille may have converged at Druimne Breg, the ridges known today as Mount Oriel and Slieve Breagh,46 which are the sites of 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

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Binchy, ‘The saga of Fergus mac Léti’. Ibid., 37, 40: §3. Ibid., 39: §1 n. 2; 40: §3 n. 3. Bergin, Best and O’Brien, Book of Leinster, I, 31: ll. 962–5. Strachan and Stokes, Táin Bó Cúailnge, 32: ll. 836–45. Bieler, Patrician texts, 78–9: I 11 (3). I owe this reference to Professor Thomas Charles-Edwards. Byrne, ‘The Ireland of St. Columba’, 49–50. See Newman, above, 371.

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extensive prehistoric complexes.47

Cremthainn A genealogical tract on the aithechthúatha ‘vassal peoples’ of Ireland, preserved in the Book of Ballymote, includes a section which details the lands of Tuath Connraig 48 i Sléib Breg ocus i Mughornaib ocus i n-Uib Segain ocus i Feraib Rois ocus i Arda ocus i Feraib Luirg ocus isna da Cremthainne.49 While the dative dual ending is not evident in the text, there may be a suggestion of the existence of two territories known as Cremthainn. One of the sons of Niall Noígíallach was Conall Cremthainne. The title rí Cremthainne or tigerna Cremthainne occurs in the Additamenta of the ninth-century Book of Armagh and in annals until as late as the eleventh century. 50 The Life of St Ibar refers to the placename atrium Cemani in terri Crimtani, the residence of the king, Colmán son of Nemán.51 While a Dún or Ráith Cemáin is not attested, the same incident is mentioned in the pedigrees of saints, but is located around Ráith Chennaig,52 a site clearly located in Cremthainn. Later medieval sources mention a barony named ‘Crevin’ or ‘Crevon’ close to the barony of Slane.53 A fiant of Elizabeth I, dated to 1569, records that Thomas Fleminge of Syddan, Co. Meath, was commissioned to execute martial law in the baronies of Slane, Kells, Margalyn and Crevon.54 The location of a second Cremthainn is not well attested, but it is possible that the pre-Norman secular genealogies refer to it in their listing of the various branches of the Mugdorna: Pápa a quo Pápraige la Cremthainne … Sord a quo Sordraigi la Cremthaine de quibus epscop Ibair for Fobrech.55 From this it might be assumed that the Pápraige and Sordraige lived among (la) the Airgíalla dynasties of Uí Chremthainn. However, Cremthainne would not be the correct form of the accusative of Cremthann/Crimthann, and, therefore, it is more likely that they lived close to the territory of Cremthainn. The reference to the Sordraige and to Bishop Ibar of Fobrech (Kilbrew, bar. Ratoath, Co. Meath) would indicate an area in south Brega. A circuitous corroboration of this location relates to the identification of a certain Ailillén son of Éladach as a son of Éladach son of

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

The Book of Lecan and TCD MS H 3 17 read Tuath Glas. Ó Raithbheartaigh, Genealogical tracts, 116: §16; 118: §6; 122: §8. Bieler, Patrician texts, 174–5: I 11 (4); AFM s.a. 867, 1029, 1030, 1036. Grosjean, ‘Notes d’hagiographie celtique’. I wish to thank Dr Kevin Murray for bringing this reference to my attention. Ó Riain, Corpus genealogiarum, 168: §721.6. Grosjean, ‘Notes d’hagiographie celtique’ (375) suggests that in fact atrium Cemani is a scribal error for atrium Cennani, a latinized form of Ráith Chennaig. Swift, ‘Óenach Tailten’, 111. Fiants, no. 1412. O’Brien, Corpus, 152: 142b38–40.

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Máel Odra, who is described in the Additamenta as tigerna Cremthainne. If F.J. Byrne’s surmise that Éladach was a son of Áed Odba rather than of Máel Odra is correct, this would explain why he was accorded the title tigerna Cremthainne. Odba, probably Mullahow east of Garristown, Co. Meath 56 could have been a central point in the second Cremthainn of Brega.57

Cerna In his topographical note on the apparent confusion in literary sources between the placenames Cermna, Cerna and Cera, Tomás Ó Concheanainn concludes: The association of the two placenames Cera and Cermna as suggested by the verse [in the dinnshenchas poem on Cnogba] fodess co Cerainn Cermna may be expressed as ‘Cera in Cermna’ or ‘Cera of Cermna’. The townlands of Carnes (