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ANNALS OF ULSTER
from earliest times to the year 1541
Edited by William M. Hennessy and B. MacCarthy.
Introduction by Nollaig O' Muraile
The Annals of Ulster, otherwise Annala Senait. A chronicle of Irish affairs from A.D. 431 to A.D. 1540. With translation, notes, and index. New introduction by Nollaig O'Muraile. Dublin, de Burca, 1998. Four volumes.
Available in full buckram gilt, in slipcase, at €285.00.
The work which since the early 17th century has generally gone under the title of The Annals of Ulster is indisputably the most valuable source for the early history of Ireland - and indeed of Scotland also. Its main value lies in its trustworthiness: it is considered to have preserved, with an astonishing degree of accuracy, copies of contemporary records of events dating from as far back as the late 7th century - together with somewhat less reliable details, based on memory, of matters from some generations previous to that period. This faithful reproduction of the original record has allowed linguistic scholars to plot the evolution of the Irish language through its various phases, from Old to Middle and on to Early Modern Irish.
The work is also of enormous value for the history of Ulster, and especially the late 15th century under the direction of Cathal Og Mac Maghnusa, cleric, chieftain and scholar, who died five centuries ago in 1498. It is therefore appropriate that this, the only complete edition of the Annals to be published to date, should in 1998 be made available once more as a memorial to Cathal Og and the scribes and scholars who laboured under him (particularly Ruairi O Luinn, who penned almost all of the two early manuscript copies).
Hennessy and MacCarthy's edition has been generally unavailable for many years and - while not without blemishes - has been sorely missed. "This reprint, by Eamonn de Burca, will therefore be a great boon to scholars of Irish history, language and literature and will no doubt be as warmly welcomed as his splendid reprint, some years back, of the Annals of the Four Masters" - Nollaig O Muraile, Senior Lecturer in Celtic, School of Modern Languages, Queen's University, Belfast.
The important Annals of Ulster compiled by Cathal Og Mac Maghnusa at Seanaidh Mac Maghnusa, now Belle Isle in Lough Erne, were so named by the noted ecclesiastic, Ussher, on account of their containing many chronicles relating to that province. They contain more detail on ecclesiastical history than the Annals of the Four Masters, and were consulted by Br. Michael O'Clery, Chief of the Four Masters, for his masterpiece.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE COST OF SHIPPING THIS SET OF BOOKS IS: AIRMAIL EUR 80 (Approx. 8 days); ECONOMY EUR 50 (Up to 8 weeks).
Updated: January 19, 2006 © Deburca 2003