Historic Irish Manuscript-Lebor na hUidre

Lebor na hUidre

Other Names	The driving-off of cows of Cooley, The Cattle Raid of Cooley
Date Written	1104
Place Written	Monastery of Clonmacnoise, County Offaly
Author	Máel Muire mac Céilechair on commission by Muircheartach Ua Briain - High King of Ireland (1101–1118 AD)
Pages	67 leaves, unknown number of pages lost
Summary	The oldest surviving Irish manuscript to contain native narrative materials. Originally commissioned by High King Muircheartach Ua Briain . Muircheartach Ua Briain ordered the destruction of all remaining non-christian manuscripts from the beginning of his reign in 1101 and the construction of several new “historical” texts. The manuscript contains a number of completely fictional stories which implies no clear history of stable kingship in Ireland and a poor farming centric culture ("The Cattle Raid of Cooley") as well as epic tales of alleged ancestors of the Ua Briain ("The Voyage of Bran").
Context	The Ua Briain clan originate from the Dál gCais a loose group of mercenaries and soldiers of fortune originally from (French) Brittany and (East England) Anglia who came to Ireland as part of the Papal invasion force of Patrick in 431. Around the beginning of the 6th Century they formed a treaty with the Holly Kings of Munster against the dominant Ui Neill. The Ua Briain took the Kingship of Munster by force at the beginning of the 10th Century.

Muircheartach Ua Briain a notorious High King who murdered, bribed and lied his way into the High Kingship of Ireland is one of the great traitors of Irish history on account of his deliberate destruction of priceless Irish pre-christian texts in his quest for immortality and the position of the Ua Briain clann.

Apart from the mixed writing styles evident throughout many of the stories indicating heavy editing of much older writing, a definitie bias can be detected across the book towards making Ireland appear a violent, anarchic backwater interested more in cows and farms than any kind of high history.

Such claims serve to strengthen the position of the Ua Briain and Muircheartach Ua Briain when the most important hero appears to be the claimed kingship of Brian Boru. In contrast to such claims, the fragmentary evidence of a strong pre-existing monastic system, the historic role of Patrick and the evidence of highly sophisticated texts such as the Book of Kells serve to dismiss the manuscript as a work of complete fiction and forgery.

In spite of its dubious reason for creation, the Lebor na hUidre remains one of the most important historic texts of all irish culture, precisely because few other texts concerning native Irish history have survived beyond the reign of the Ua Briains in Ireland.


Home