| Book of Lismore | |
|---|---|
_frontispiece_(cropped).jpg) | |
| Also known as | The Book of Mac Carthaigh Riabhach |
| Date | c. 1480 |
| Place of origin | Kilbrittain, County Cork, Ireland |
| Language(s) | Early Modern Irish |
| Patron | Fínghean Mac Carthaigh Riabhach |
| Material | Vellum |
| Size | 37cm x 25cm |
| Condition | Incomplete (missing at least 46 folios) |
| Script | Irish minuscule |
The Book of Lismore, also known as the Book of Mac Carthaigh Riabhach, is a late fifteenth-century Gaelic manuscript that was created at Kilbrittain in County Cork, Ireland, for Fínghean Mac Carthaigh, Lord of Carbery (1478–1505).[2] Defective at beginning and end, 198 leaves survive today, containing a miscellany of religious and secular texts written entirely in Irish.
The main scribe of the manuscript did not sign his name. A second scribe, who wrote eleven leaves, signed himself Aonghus Ó Callanáin,[3] and was probably a member of a well-known family of medical scholars from West Cork. Other relief scribes contribute short stints throughout the book.
The book also contains a reference (f. 158v) to a second manuscript, a duanaire or anthology of poetry dedicated to Mac Carthaigh, but this manuscript is now lost.
- ^ Stokes, Whitley (1890). Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Frontispiece.
- ^ Ó Corráin, Clavis, 1101: 'The likely origin is the Mac Carthaigh house at Kilbrittain, Co. Cork'.
- ^ Book of Lismore, f. 134rb; Palandri, 'An Marco Polo Gaeilge', 194.