Leinster, The Book of

▪ ancient Irish literature

Irish  Leabhar Laighneach 

      compilation of Irish verse and prose from older manuscripts and oral tradition and from 12th- and 13th-century religious and secular sources. It was tentatively identified in 1907 and finally in 1954 as the Lebar na Núachongbála (“The Book of Noughval”), which was thought lost; thus it is not the book formerly known as The Book of Leinster or The Book of Glendalough and by various Irish titles. Ascribed to Áed Hún Crimthaind, the abbot of Tír-dá-glas (Terryglass, Tipperary), the work is notable for its calligraphy.

      The Book of Leinster was written about 1160, completed sometime between 1201 and 1224, and is one of the most important extant Middle Irish (Celtic languages) collections, especially for the period before the Normans came to Ireland in the second half of the 12th century. It contains historical and genealogical poems, mainly on Leinster kings and heroes, mythological and historical accounts of invasions and battles, descriptive prose and verse topographical lists giving the history and etymology of nearly 200 place-names, treatises on bardic and Greek metres, Latin hymns, a version of the hero tale The Cattle Raid of Cooley, and the oldest version of The Tragic Death of the Sons of Usnech (the legend of Deirdre).

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