Lebor na huidre (The Book of the Dun Cow) is the earliest extant vernacular Irish manuscript. The fragmentary nature of seventeen of its thirty-seven texts indicates that it has not come down to us in its complete form, its surviving sixty-seven folios representing approximately half the original codex, according to Tomas O Concheanainn. Notwithstanding this, it constitutes a veritable treasure trove of Old and Middle Irish literature, both secular and religious, although the original order in which the texts appeared can no longer be determined. A copy of the longest medieval Irish narrative, Tain Bo Cuailnge ("The Cattle Raid of Cuailnge"), is found among its leaves, together with two of its remscela (fore-tales). That tale’s premier hero, Cu Chulainn, also features in other compositions therein, including those describing his birth and resurrection. The activities of the latter’s Ulaid colleagues are similarly recounted, most notably in Fled Bricrenn ("Bricriu’s Feast") and Mesca Ulad ("The Intoxication of the Ulaid"), as are those of royal personages. Togail Bruidne Da Derga ("The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel") provides a literary biography of the prehistoric king Conaire Mor; other narratives focus on pivotal events in a particular monarch’s reign. Among these is the otherworld journey of fair Connlae, son of King Conn Cetchathach, which forms one of a group of texts that emphasizes the supernatural in all its guises. Its Christian dimension is highlighted in a story relating the prophetic revelation of another of Conn’s sons, Art, which finds thematic resonance in Comthoth Laegaire co cretim ("The Conversion of Laegaire to the Faith"). These are complemented by religious texts including Da Bron Flatha Nime ("The Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven") and the homiletic tracts, Scela Lai Bratha ("The Tidings of Doomsday") and Scela na hEsergi ("The Tidings of the Resurrection"), for which the manuscript constitutes our sole witness.
Scribes
This pair of homilies, along with a handful of other texts, are in the hand of the latest of the trio of scribes connected with the codex whose homiletic interest has earned him the designation "H." A thorough reviser, H inserted his new material either in sections of the manuscript that he had previously erased or on leaves intercalated precisely for that purpose. His work is also to be detected in the many interpolations in texts originally written by Scribe A, who began the manuscript, or by his more prolific successor, M, so named because of his identification with Mael-Muire, the author of the codex’s two probationes pennae. Since this man can be located in time and place as the Mael-Muire mac Celechair who was killed by marauders in Clonmacnoise in 1106, the approximate date and provenance of the compilation were long considered secure. An analysis of the pen trials in question, however, has led O Concheanainn to posit that they were in fact written by H, whose language does not appear to be significantly later than that of the original scribes. Certain linguistic features do indeed suggest that the interpolator could well have been active about the turn of the twelfth century, but the scanty palaeographical evidence is difficult to evaluate, as O Concheanainn admits. In any event, it seems that the principal scribe and prodigious editor, one of whom was Mael-Muire, may even have been contemporaries, the reviser remolding the manuscript considerably, in accordance with both his own scholarly tastes and the various recensions of texts he himself had to hand.
Provenance
In the case of two thematically related tracts, Aided Nath I ("The Death of Nath I") and Senchas na Relec ("Burial Ground Lore"), H in fact provides an indication of their ultimate origin. In Lebor na hUidre’s sole colophon, he attributes their compilation to the eleventh-century scholars, Flann Mainistrech and Eochaid ua Cerfn, who drew on a range of manuscripts both in Armagh and in Flann’s Louth monastery of Monasterboice. Moreover, both H and the manuscript’s main scribe cite Cin Dromma Snechta (The Book of Drumsnat) as a source in the case of four tales; six further tales thought to have been contained in this lost eighth-century manuscript are also preserved in our Book. As far as much of its base material is concerned, therefore, Lebor na hUidre’s associations are not with Mael-Muire’s home monastery of Clonmacnoise but with the southeast Ulster/northeast Leinster area where the scribe’s family originated. Furthermore, a similar geographical focus can be detected in many of the noninterpolated narratives, as O Concheanainn has shown. Accordingly, the likelihood is that the codex first took form at some distance from the monastic community whose patron’s dun cow was later to give it his name. It is tempting to speculate, with O Concheanainn, that it was at Clonmacnoise that H undertook his dramatic alterations, in whose library he would have had access to alternative texts, though it must be admitted that his additional material also displays a northeastern bias in part. Notwithstanding this, our earliest record of the Book places it in Sligo in the mid-fourteenth century, having been acquired by the Uf Chonchobhair as ransom from the Uf Dhomhnaill of Donegal, who repossessed the work a century later. It was still in Ulster more than one hundred and fifty years after that, as Mfcheal O Cleirigh’s transcription of Fis Adamnain ("Adamnan’s Vision") from it in 1628 attests. Nonetheless, its sojourn in Connacht was a significant one, close textual connections between it and manuscripts of western provenance indicating that it was extensively drawn on by a range of scribes. Moreover, its influence can be detected at an earlier period also if the twelfth-century redactors of the Book of Leinster employed H’s texts as exemplars, as O Concheanainn has claimed. In truth, however, the early history of the manuscript is hazy and the textual evidence from which it must be constructed both complex and contested. Nor are we afforded more than brief glimpses of its fate in the later medieval period. It was in the nineteenth century that it finally came to rest in the Royal Irish Academy where it is still housed today.
