Leabhar Breac (The Speckled Book) is in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin (Cat. No. 1230). The vellum manuscript has always been associated with the learned family of Mac Aodhagain. It was also known as Leabhar Mor Duna Doighre, as it was in the possession of a branch of that family who lived in Duniry near Portumna in the sixteenth century. The manuscript was compiled in the early fifteenth century, before 1411, from sources in the midlands bordering the river Shannon. Lorrha, in Co. Tipperary, Clonsost, in County Offaly, and Clonmacnoise are named by the scribe as places where he copied texts. This beautifully written, well preserved book is almost certainly the work of Murchadh O Cuindlis, a professional scribe who also worked for the Mac Firbhisigh family and whose hand has been identified in the Yellow Book of Lecan and the Book of Lecan.
The Leabhar Breac consists almost entirely of religious texts except for "Cormac’s Glossary" (compiled by or for Cormac mac Cuilennain) and the "Histories of Philip of Macedon and His Son Alexander the Great." One section is comprised of stories paraphrased from the Bible, combined with legends and poems such as the "Lament of the Mothers of Bethlehem" and a version of the "Legend of the True Cross." Another large portion has accounts of the sufferings of Christ, the apostles, and the martyrs. There are lives of St. Patrick, St. Brigit, St. Colum Cille, and St. Martin in the form of homilies and a version of the "Marty-rology of Oengus." One of the most important texts is the witty "Vision of Mac Conglinne," a comical satire of monastic life and scholarship; the only complete copy of it survives in Leabhar Breac. The manuscript is written almost entirely in Irish with occasional passages in Latin.
The manuscript is one of the largest in terms of its page size (40.5 cm x 28 cm) to survive from the period and is also unusual in that it was written throughout by one scribe. Among the marginal jottings are notes that give useful information about the length of time it took to write certain sections. It has been calculated by Tomas O Concheannain that O Cuindlis wrote the thirty-five pages (pp. 141-175) in about six weeks, hence roughly one double column page per day. A note mentions that he only managed to copy a single column another day, but this was a complicated transcription of a fifty-two-line poem with interlinear glosses. The scribe mentions incidental details of daily life, such as the wonderful singing of a robin and the straying of the cat; in another part, the author describes warfare in the area as Lorrha is plundered by local magnate Murchad Ua Madagain. But in common with scribes in every age it is the weather, particularly the cold, that is noted most frequently. On page 17, he mentions a snowfall on the first of March; later he remarks on the coincidence of his writing a homily on St. Patrick on the eve of his feast day (March 17), while the cold weather was again a problem some days later: "twenty nights from today till Easter Monday, and I am cold and weary without fire or covering" (O Longain 33).
The decoration in the Leabhar Breac is confined to a series of colored capitals introducing various sections. In style these closely resemble the ribbon and wire type initials found in twelfth century Irish manuscripts and which the scribe collected most probably from different exemplars on his travels. In addition there is an unusual and large drawing of the Menorah candelabrium illustrating the "Story of the Children of Israel" and a drawing of the crucifixion, which, stylistically, is contemporary with the manuscript.
According to marginal jottings, the Mac Aodhagain family of Duniry, County Galway, had the manuscript in their collection in the second half of the sixteenth century until 1595 at least. In 1629, it was in the nearby Franciscan friary of Kinalehin when Br Micheal O Cleirigh copied a saint’s life from it, and the book remained in the area until the end of the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century it was in the possession of the family of Conchur O Dalaigh (O’Daly) near Mitchelstown, County Cork, who loaned it to Bishop John O’Brien of Cloyne for use in the compilation of his Irish Dictionary. In 1789, the O’Dalys sold the manuscript to the Royal Irish Academy for £3. 13s 8d. In 1876, the Academy published a lithographic facsimile of Leabhar Breac based on the transcript of Joseph O’Longan. The manuscript was restored and rebound in 1973, and from 2003 a digitized copy may be viewed online.
