The Gaelic Account of the Bruce Invasion "Cath Fhochairte Brighite': Medieval Romance or Modern Forgery?

Cumann Seanchais Ard Mhacha/Armagh Diocesan Historical Society

The Gaelic Account of the Bruce Invasion "Cath Fhochairte Brighite': Medieval Romance orModern Forgery?Author(s): Seán DuffySource: Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society, Vol. 13, No.1 (1988), pp. 59-121Published by: Cumann Seanchais Ard Mhacha/Armagh Diocesan Historical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29745299 .

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The Gaelic Account of the Bruce Invasion Cath Fhochairte

Brighite: Medieval Romance or Modern Forgery?

By

Sean Duffy

In 1905 the Gaelic scholar Henry Morris printed, in the first volume of the Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, a bilingual tract on the Scots' Invasion of Ireland, 1315-18, entitled (Cath

Fhochairte Brighite: the Battle of Fochart of St Bridget'.1 Mr Morris, who was also the first editor of the Journal, was a prolific scholar, anxious to ensure the survival of Gaelic literary remnants and their

availability to a wider audience, so that he sometimes published pieces from manuscripts of the provenance of which he was far from certain.

Cath Fhochairte Brighite (CFB) is a case in point. Although, and he

freely admitted as much2, he knew little about the manuscript account that he printed, even so, in his preface to the completed first volume of the Journal, he remarks:?

Of the three Irish papers given [in volume one], the most

important by far is the account of the Bruce's invasion and the battle of Faughart. It ... is a document of national interest and

importance. It is printed here from a modern MS. and it awaits some scholar to discover the original from which the modern copy

was made. When this is done, and the antiquity and authenticity of the document is indubitably proved, it must greatly modify the accounts of Bruce, and particularly of the battle of Faughart, that are found in all our present day histories.3

In fact, however, in the eighty or more years since the publication of

CFB, there has been little serious examination of the tract, with a view to deciding on its authenticity or otherwise. Many historians, who have used it as a source for the Bruce invasion, have been content to rely on

1 Enr? Ua Muirgheasa, 'An Irish account o? Brace's invasion', Louth Arch[aelogical]

Soc/iety] Journ[al], 1 no. 2 (July 1905) pp. 77-91. 2

In his introductory remarks, he comments: "This is the first time, so far as I know, that

this Irish account of the battle [of Fochart] has been published, and I will content myself here with pointing out the chief points in which it differs from the received versions,

hoping that someone with the necessary leisure will investigate these points of difference,

and see whether other records refute or confirm me Irish account given here'; Ibid., p. 77. 3

Ibid., v.v.

59



60 Seanchas Ard M hacha

the introductory remarks of Henry Morris, though made after only a

cursory examination of the text, which proceed as follows:? In the following pages, we give an account of Bruce's Invasion of Ireland taken from an Irish manuscript, which once belonged to John O'Daly, but now in the possession of the Very Rev

Monsignor O'Laverty P.P., Holywood, Co. Down . . .

The date of the transcript is 1845, and the scribe was one Bryan Geraghty,

as appears from an entry on the title page . . .

The tract is written in a beautiful style, being one of the finest

pieces of Irish calligraphy I have ever seen. Unfortunately, Geraghty does not state from what original he has copied the tract. That he copied it from an older MS. is certain, and this older MS.

may be in existence in the Royal Irish Academy or somewhere else. The style of spelling and inflections proves beyond doubt that the tract is not modern: it is probable even that it may have been

written soon after the great events with which it deals. A search for the original MS. from which Geraghty copied, would, if successful, throw much light on this . . .

The tract is couched in that poetic or bardic style in which so

many of our prose romances are written. That does not necessarily throw any slight on its historical value: the dashing deeds and victories of Bruce and his sudden and tragic downfall appealed to the author as a subject eminently fitted for being treated in the

heroic or Eachtra style . . .4

Several scholars since Henry Morris have left us a record of their assessment of the text, the earliest being Goddard Henry Orpen in volume four of his Ireland under the Normans, published in 1920. Orpen was greatly hampered by his ignorance of Gaelic source material and he

fully accepted, therefore, Morris's appraisal of CFB, saying it comes . . . evidently from a much older original. It is composed in full

sympathy with Edward Bruce's attempt to become king of Ireland, and it gives an independent but fairly correct view, so far as it

goes, of his movements. It preserves some Irish tradition not otherwise known.5

Of this 'tradition' he rejects the episode dealing with the death of Bruce, but concludes:?

Apart, however, from this Irish tradition of the precise way in which Edward Bruce met his fate, there seems no reason to doubt the substantial correctness of this account of the tactics of the battle [of Fochart] and of the part played in it by the Irish.6

And this has largely been the view that has prevailed, with little or no

divergence, and, in over eighty years, little further investigation. Olive

Armstrong, in her book on the Bruces in Ireland, listed CFB among the

4 Ibid., p. 77.

5 G. H. Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, iv (Oxford 1920) p 202 note 2

bIbid., p. 204



Cath Fhochairte Brighite 61

twelve most reliable chronicle sources for the invasion.7 Edmund Curtis commented that CFB 'represents a modernised form of an old Gaelic account of the invasion'.8 Eleanor Hull called it 'an old account'.9 In his Sir John Rhys Memorial Lecture delivered in 1963, Professor Brian ? Cu?v referred to CFB as an

. . . imaginative text . . . not without interest, for, as well as

differing from the better known accounts in certain details and

containing information not available elsewhere, it is remarkable for its sympathetic attitude towards Bruce, which is in contrast to

the Irish annals which are almost unanimous in condemning him. Once more the problem is to determine how far this and similar texts from the later period, and the annals themselves, may be relied upon.

Professor ? Cu?v, unlike most other commentators, was aware of the existence of another manuscript copy of the text,10 but we hear nothing of an attempt to compare them. The English historian G. O. Say les, on

the other hand, rather too brusquely dismissed the tract simply because of the obvious suspicion that surrounds its final episode, the romantic device employed to explain away the death of its hero. In his Thomas Davis lecture on the battle of Fochart, broadcast in 1955, he says of this and the fourteenth century Scottish account by Archdeacon Barbour that 'where they are not utterly incredible they are open to serious

doubt'. He continues:?

. . . [CFB], which alone purports to describe the tactics employed,

spoils the effect by letting Bruce win the field but be slain as he sauntered round the battlefield, by one of his enemies who

disguised himself as a juggler, put Bruce off his guard by one of his

antics, and hit him on the head with a ball of iron attached to a

chain. All this is part and parcel of the chansons de gestes, the romances that served to while away the tedium of a winter night.11

No doubt is expressed here about the age of the tract, merely its value as

'history' as

opposed to 'literature'.

Robin Frame, in his well-known article on the Bruce invasion, makes the following observation:?

There is no modern critical edition of this tract, which survives

only in a late recension. But although the details of the battle of

Faughart itself probably owe much to imagination, the account of

7 Olive Armstrong, Edward Bruce's Invasion of Ireland (London 1923), pp. 74-5 note 2.

8 Edmund Curtis, A History of Medieval Ireland, from 1110 to 1513 (Dublin 1923), p. 232

note 1. 9 Eleanor Hull, A History of Ireland, i (London 1926), p. 213.

10 Brian ? Cu?v, 'Literary creation and Irish historical tradition', British Academy

Proceedings, xlix (1963), p. 255 and note 2. 11 G. O. Sayles, The battle of Faughart', in G. A. Hayes-McCov (ed.) The Irish at War

(Cork 1964), pp. 32-3.




the earlier stages of the invasion seems accurate where it can be

tested; where it cannot, its details are at least plausible.12 And, in an article on the Gaelic resurgence in Thomond, Dr Katharine

Simms, referring to the 'Remonstrance' of Domhnall ? N?ill, describes CFB and his letter to Finghin Mac Carthaigh13 as 'two related texts also of Irish provenance'.14

Now, many other historians, while not leaving us a record of their evaluation of the tract, have, albeit usually somewhat guardedly, proceeded to use CFB (along with most of the writers above) as a source for both the detail of events surrounding the Bruce invasion and the sentiments of alleged participants. Its influence has been insidiously pervading and the list of works which draw on it, both directly and

indirectly, is extensive. In the majority of cases, CFB provides the source for what may appear to be only lesser elements of detail: for

example, the sending of an embassy from Ulster to Robert I of

Scotland,15 the feeling that only such a foreign leader could unite the

quarrelling Irish lords,16 the appeal to a common Celtic inheritance,17 Robert's refusal to come to Ireland at that point and his suggestion that his brother Edward go instead,18 Edward Bruce's conjunction upon his arrival with certain named Ulster Gaelic lords,19 and the refusal of others to do likewise,20 the siteing of Edward's inauguration at or near

12 Robin Frame, The Bruces in Ireland, 1315-18', IfrishJ H(istorical] Sftudiesf xix no. 73

(March 1974) p. 4 note 6. 13

H. Wood, 'Letter from Domnal O'Neill to Fineen MacCarthy, 1317', Royal Irish

Academy Proceedings, xxxvii (1924-7) c no. 7, pp. 141-8; but cf. Diarmuid ? Murchadha, 'is the O Neill-MacCarthy letter of 1317 a forgery9' IHS xxiii, no.89 (May 1982), pp. 61-7,

and also A.A.M. Duncan, The Scots' invasion of Ireland, 1315' in R.R. Davies (ed.) The

British Isles 1101-1500. Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections (Edinburgh 1988), pp. 100-17.

14 K. Simms, The battle of Dysert O'Dea; Dal gCais no. 5 (1979), p. 59; cf. her Ph D

thesis, Gaelic Lordships in Ulster in the Later Middle Ages (University of Dublin 1976), ii

pp. 682-3. 15

See, for example, Eoin MacNeill, Phases of Irish History (Dublin 1919) pp. 333-4 and

337; Hull, History of Ireland i p. 213; J. F. Lydon, The Lordship of Ireland in the Middle

Ages (Dublin 1972) p. 143; Frame, 'Bruces in Ireland', p. 4; Katharine Simms, The O

Hanlons, the O Neills and the Anglo-Normans in the thirteenth century', Seanchas

Ardmhacha, ix no. 1 (1978), p. 89. 16

Hull, History of Ireland, i p. 213; Frame, 'Bruces in Ireland', p. 4. 17

Curtis, History of Medieval Ireland pp. 228-9; Hull, History of Ireland, i, p. 213; Wood, 'Letter from Domnal O'Neill,' p. 144.

18 MacNeill, Phases of Irish History, pp. 333, 337; Wood, 'Letter from Domnal O'Neill',

p. 144; Frame 'Bruces in Ireland', p. 4. 19

Armstrong, Bruce's Invasion, p. 75 note 6; Curtis, Medieval Ireland, p. 232; Hull,

History of Ireland, p. 215; A. J. Otway- Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland (London

1968), p. 226; D. Mac Iomhair, 'Bruce's invasion of Ireland and first campaign in County Louth', The Irish Sword, x (Summer 1972), no. 40, p. 196; Ruth Dudley-Edwards, An

Atlas of Irish History (London 1973), p. 54; J. Lydon, The impact of the Bruce invasion, 1315-27' in Art Cosgrave (ed.), A New History of Ireland, ii (Oxford 1987), p. 285.

20 Armstrong, Bruce's invasion, pp. 75-6; Hull, History of Ireland, i, p. 215;

Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, p. 226; Frame, 'Bruces in Ireland', p. 4; Simms, The

battle of Dal gCais,' p. 61.




the location of his eventual death,21 the defection to his banner of the

Flemings of Meath,22 the tactical detail of the battle of Fochart,23 Bruce's assassination by an idiot,24 and his burial at Fochart in the

Roddy family burial plot.25 Effectively, however, CFB has been used as a source in roughly three

ways. Firstly, to fill in some of the many gaps in our knowledge of the minor detail of the Scottish invasion ? the names of participants,

locations, and so forth. -Secondly, and more significantly, to provide evidence of a growing resurgence in Gaelic Ireland, of which the Bruce intervention itself is taken to be an indication.26 And thirdly, and in some ways conversely, to show the localized nature of the support received by the Scots.27 More generally, it has conveniently fitted in

with a pattern of other remarkable documents thought to emanate from the same period

? two of which, the 'Remonstrance' and the 'letter' to

Finghin Mac Carthaigh, I have already mentioned ? and the combination has proved a powerful cocktail; under its influence, historians have found themselves to make very inebriate assumptions about early fourteenth century Ireland, even the most abstemious

allowing themselves to lapse into generalisations about the Gaelic rally of the period, comfortable in the knowledge that a whole corpus of

disparate sources was there to back them up. It came as quite a shock, therefore, when recently suggested28 that

one of these sources ? the 'letter' to Finghin Mac Carthaigh ? would

21 Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, iv, pp. 178-9; P. L. MacArdle, The coronation of

Edward Bruce,' Louth Arch. Soc. Journ., iv, no. 4 (Dec 1920), pp. 367-9; Armstrong, Bruce's Invasion, p. 94; Curtis, Medieval Ireland, p. 233; Idem, A History of Ireland

(London 1936), p. 95; J. C. Beckett, A Short History of Ireland (6th ed. London 1979), p. 24; M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 1307-1399, Oxford History of England, vol. 5

(Oxford 1959), p. 43; J. F. Lydon, The Bruce Invasion of Ireland'., Historical Studies, iv, (Dublin 1963) p. 113; idem, 'Impact of the Bruce Invasion,' p. 286; Otway-Ruthven,

Medieval Ireland, p. 230; D. Mac ?omhair, "Righeadh Eadbhuird Br?s: an data, an

gniomh, an t-ionad', Louth Arch. Soc. Journ., xvii, no. 1 (1969) p. 8; M. Dolley, Anglo-Norman Ireland, c. 1100-1318 (Dublin 1972), p. 181; Ranald Nicholson, Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh 1974), p. 93.

22 Hull, History of Ireland, i, p. 217.

23 Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, iv, pp. 200-05; Armstrong, Bruce's Invasion, pp.

116-7; D. Mac fomhair, The battle of Fochart 1318', The Irish Sword, viii (1967-8), pp. 192-209.

24 P. Mac Donnell, 'How was Edward Bruce killed?' Louth Arch. Soc. Journ., ii, no. 4

(Nov. 1911), pp. 415-6; Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, iv, pp. 203-4; Mac ?omhair, 'Battle of Fochart,' pp. 205-6.

25 H. Morris, 'Louthiana: ancient and modern', Louth Arch. Soc. Journ., i, no. 2 (July

1905), p. 20; D. Mac ?omhair, Townland survey of County Louth: townland of Faughart Upper,' Louth Arch. Soc. Journ., xvi, no. 2 (1986), pp. 116, 119; idem, 'Battle of

Fochart', p. 209. 26

This is the case with the work of, for example, Eoin MacNeill, Phases of Irish History, pp. 333-4, 337 and Edmund Curtis, Medieval Ireland, pp. 228 et seq. 27

As is the case with Professor Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, p. 226, and Robin

Frame, 'Bruces in Ireland', p. 17. 28

See note 13 above.



64 S canchas Ard M hacha

crumble at the touch if exposed to serious investigation. Could others follow? Certainly, Henry Morris's original request that 'someone with the necessary leisure' investigate CFB has hitherto remained unheeded

eighty years on, and, in the absence of such an examination, historians have continued to make use of the tract. The necessary leisure having been amply supplied, I propose to present here the result of a study of

CFB, with a view to determining its reliability (or otherwise) as a source

for the reconstruction of events and attitudes in early fourteenth century Ireland.

Provenance of the Manuscripts

In April 1906 the death took place of Monsignor James O Laverty, best known for his authorship of the History of The Diocese of Down and Connor.29 Mgr O Laverty had during his lifetime secured possession of several volumes of Gaelic manuscripts, which he bequeathed to the

library of Saint Malachy's College, Belfast, where, in large part, they remain today.30 Bound up among one of these volumes is our bilingual tract which, shortly before his death, he loaned to Henry Morris. When the latter decided to print the document in the newly-founded Louth

Archaeological Society Journal, the full extent of his information about it was derived from a note on its title page, which reads:?

Written by the late Bryan Geraghty, of No. 8 Anglesea Street, Dublin 1845. John O'Daly, 9 Anglesea Street, 1877

To the note Henry Morris was unable to add, and so it is from this

position that investigation of the tract must begin. This cover note is indeed in the hand of John O Daly, the well-known

bookseller and publisher, as we can tell from the many other examples of his penmanship which survive,31 and the manuscript was in his

possession in 1877, and offered for sale at the auction of his books and

manuscripts following his death in February 1878,32 at which stage it

presumably passed into the hands of Mgr O Laverty. However, since, in

1877, John O Daly was seventy-seven years of age, enjoying very poor

29 James O'Laverty, An Historical Account of the Diocese of Down and Connor, 5 vols

(Dublin 1878-95); see his obituary notice in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, ser. 2, xii, no. 1

(June 1906), p. 129. 30

E. MacNeill The O'Laverty manuscripts', The Gaelic Journal, xvi (1906), pp. 177-9, 193-6, 209-12; P?draig de Br?n, 'Cnuasaigh de l?mhscr?bhinn? Gaeilge: treoirliosta',

Studia Hibernica, no. 7 (1967) pp. 149, 156. 31

See, for example, RIA MSS. 24/E/13; 23/E/5; 24/L/9. 32

Catalogue of The books and manuscripts, etc. . . collected by the late Mr John O'Daly, Bookseller, no. 9 Anglesea St. . . to be sold by auction . . . 18th August 1878 ... p. 21, lot no. 694; the Catalogue is appended to the end of Bibliotheca Hibernica, John O'Daly's Catalogues of Old Books 1-46, in the National Library of Ireland.




health (and was dead by the following year),33 one wonders how safe we are in trusting his note, especially since it refers to the transcription of a

manuscript over thirty years earlier. Is he right about the date and is he

right about the scribe? There seems little likelihood that O Daly is incorrect about the

identification34 since he and the scribe Bryan Geraghty were well

acquainted. They were both friends and patrons of the unfortunate James Clarence Mangan35

? O Daly credited Mangan with translation of the contents of his Poets and Poetry of Munster36 and, according to John O Donovan, Geraghty's edition of the Annals of the Four Masters

was 'put into readable English' by Mangan.37 When the Irish Celtic

Society was set up in 1845, its provisional committee consisted, along with such others as Thomas Davis and Gavan Duffy, of both O Daly and

Geraghty.38 The two could, in any case, hardly but have known each other: Geraghty in this period had his bookshop at 8 Anglesea Street in Dublin39 ? as O Daly correctly stated in his cover note ? and when, in the summer of 1845,40 O Daly moved from Kilkenny to Dublin and set

up shop in competition to him, it was directly across the street at number 25.41 Not only were they neighbours and competitors but they

managed to keep on good terms: on the flyleaf of an early eighteenth century copy of the Teoruigheacht Shaidhbhe preserved in the RIA is the note 'Presented to J. B. Geraghty by his friend John O'Daly'.42

We may take it, therefore, that O Daly was correct when he identified

Geraghty's handwriting on the copy of CFB printed in the Louth

Archaeological Journal and one presumes too that we can accept his

dating of the transcript. 1845 was a very important year for him, the year

33 He gives his date of birth as 5 February 1800 in a letter he wrote in 1876 (J. Buckley,

'John O'Daly ? a bit of autobiography', Waterford Archaeological Society Journal, xv

(1912), p. 179; but cf. ibid, xvi (1913), p. 196); for his health in the period 1876-8 see ibid., xv (1912) p. 179 and 'Colm', 'John O'Daly: Irish scholar and bookseller', The Irish Book Lover, xxvi, no. 6 (Sept 1939), p. 135; for his death see The late John O'Daly, Celtic scholar', The Irish Builder, xx, no. 447 (1 Aug. 1878) p. 225.

34 He identifies another piece by Geraghty in Torna ms. lvii in UCC (see P?draig de Br?n,

Cl?r L?mhscr?bhinn? Gaeilge Chol?iste Ollscoile Chorca?: Cnuasach Thorna (Dublin 1967), i, pp. 149, 173-4), though the manuscript has been mislaid and I have not found any

other samples of his hand. 35 D. J. O'Donoghue, The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan (Dublin 1897),

pp. 166-7, 168, 206, 215-6. 36

See 2nd ed. (Dublin 1850); biographical sketch of Mangan by O Daly, pp. xii-xviii. 37

Quoted by O'Donoghue, James Clarence Mangan, p. 167. 38

There is a copy of its Prospectus bound into RIA MS. 23/E/12, between pp. 270-1. 39

See, for example, Thorn's [Irish Almanac and Official] Directory [for the year] 1845

(Dublin 1845), p. 765. 40

He gave his address as Kilkenny in a piece written on 15 May 1845 and as Dublin on

July 17 (RIA MS. 12/E/24, pp.111, 215). 41 Thorn's Directory 1846, p. 765; it was only about 1850 that O Daly took up what

remained his permanent occupation of no. 9. 42

MS. 23/1/41; not Thos. Geraghty' as erroneously stated in the Catfalogue of] Ir[ish] MSS. [in the] RIA p. 1139 (Geraghty's full forename initials were J. B.: see the Prospectus of the Celtic Society in RIA MS 23/E/12, pp. 270-1).




in which he moved from Kilkenny, set up his very successful business in

Dublin, and saw his idea43 for a Celtic society get off the ground, with the backing of some very prominent public figures. It may also have involved his first meeting with Geraghty. At any rate, we can assume

that the events of this year held some significance for him, and that it was not without reason he ascribed to this precise period the

transcription of CFB.

Certainly, we may deduce that the manuscript was copied by Geraghty while he was still in the business of buying, copying, and

reselling manuscripts, that is, prior to his bankruptcy, while misfortune befell him upon his publication in 1845-6 of Owen Connellan's translation of the Annals of the Four Masters,44 a work very quickly superseded by O Donovan's still standard edition. In February 1848, an

auction of his large collection of Irish books and manuscripts was held,

though its catalogue contains no specific reference to CFB.45 It was

probably at, or even before, this enforced sale that Geraghty sold his

transcript of CFB. However and whenever he acquired it, Geraghty's copy of CFB (for convenience I shall call it BG) did pass into the

possession of John O Daly and we have him to thank for the information

regarding it, albeit miniscule, which he has left us. Our great regret is that he did not supply any further detail in his cover-note; as it is, if we

were dependent on O Daly's information alone we might never know more of the origins of the tract. Fortunately, we are not.

As Henry Morris suspected when he printed BG, another copy of CFB survives in the RIA; the survival of this transcript adds greatly to our knowledge of the tract's provenance. Though unsigned, it is in the hand of the Louth scribe Nicholas Kearney and it (I shall call it NK) has the advantage over BG, the published copy, in that the manuscript is intact in its entirety.46 I have compared both manuscripts and concluded that BG is a copy of NK.47

BG seems, in fact, to be a careless transcript and though the style is

quite attractive it shows all the signs of having been produced, either in

43 See his letters in The Nation advocating its foundation, reprinted in Irish Book Lover,

xxix, no. 1 (May 1943), pp. 12-14. 44

The Annals of Ireland, translated from the Original Irish of the Four Masters by Owen

Connellan Esq. . . with annotations by Philip McDermott Esq. M.D. and the Translator

(Dublin 1846). 45

In the matter of Bryan Geraghty, bookseller, a bankrupt . . .

Catalogue of a very valuable and important collection of Irish manuscripts, etc. etc. beautifully transcribed, which are to be sold by auction . . . on Tuesday, 29th day of February, 1848 (Dublin 1848), in the National Library of Ireland.

46 2 of BG's 13 folios have been lost, though the narrative does not suffer unduly since the

English and Irish versions are on opposite pages, and we have the Irish where the English is lost and vice versa; in the printed edition, where the English text of the original is

missing, Henry Morris has supplied a translation. 47

My thanks are due to Professor Breand?n ? Buachalla of University College Dublin

for confirming this statement.




considerable haste, or by a man who was quite simply a bad scribe.48

Rarely are we supplied with length accents or lenition marks, whereas NK is generally free of omission on either count. There is quite a

considerable number of orthographic inaccuracies in BG which one does not find reproduced in NK. For instance, 'ro luidhseat' ('they swore') in NK becomes 'ro luidhseact' in BG; 'ro innsidheadar' ('they told') becomes 'ro innsidhear' in BG; 'an t-iarla Randal' ('Earl

Randolph') becomes 'an 77arla Randal';49 'do chum ceannas

Chonnachta do ghabhail' ('in order to obtain the sovereignty of

Connacht') becomes 'do chuin ceannas . . .';50 'earraidh' ('merchan?

dise') becomes 'earraibh'; 'ma brisfear orrtha a nis' ('if they be broken down now') becomes 'ma b?sfead or[rtha]'; 'ruagad leo iad' ('they were

forced back by them') becomes Vwgad leo iad'; 'air imeagla reompa (in terror of them') becomes 'air imealga reompa'; 'gur de mheud baothais'

('that it was because of madness') becomes 'gur do mhoid baotais'; and

'rugsat corp an righ lea' ('they took the King's body') becomes 'ngsat corp an righ'. But perhaps the most revealing example of this kind is the

phrase 'an t-amadan iaraind' ('the iron fool'): the scribe of NK arrived at the phrase at the end of a line, so that 'iaraind' was hyphenated, the 'iar-' remaining, the 'aind' being carried over to the next; in BG, the

phrase is arrived at in mid-line, but the scribe retains the hyphen nonetheless

? 'an t-amadan iar-aind'.51

In all the above cases the inaccuracy in BG is not repeated in NK. On the other hand, where there are obvious inaccuracies in NK they are

repeated without correction in BG. Where the Irish text of NK lacks a

word or letter, so too in every case does BG. For example, 'ro luidhseat . . . agus f?s [ro] mhoidseat' ('they swore . . . and they also vowed') in

NK is repeated in BG, as is 'and [ar] c-cr?ochaibh f?in' ('within our own

territories'), 'as gach aird de[n] g-coige' ('from every part of the

province'), and 'go [raibh] crioch air ghabhaltas Gall ind Eirind' ('that the tenure of the Galls in Ireland was at an end'). The only instance I have noted of an inaccuracy in NK not recurring in BG is, interestingly, in the English text where 'After the battle of Kells the Galls did trouble them much' in NK, correctly becomes '. . . did not trouble them much' in BG, Geraghty's greater facility with English being no doubt the

telling factor, though even here we find 'routed [them] with great loss into the plain' repeated without correction in BG. And in several other cases words are omitted even in BG's English translation which are

present in NK: it has, for example, 'There was not then any [one] King or Lord in Ireland sufficiently powerful'; 'Great indeed were [the]

4h The former seems more likely as Owen Connellan (admittedly not an unbiased source

since Geraghty employed him to translate the Four Masters) once described him as 'the

best Irish scribe of the present century' (RIA MS. 12/M/ll, p. 738). 49

Not 'an Tiarla Randal' as rendered by Morris, p. 82. 50 Morris corrects the error in his edition, ibid. 51 Morris disregards the hyphen in his edition, ibid.




honours conferred on them'; and 'his fair, dignified [, manly] countenance changed colour'.

NK having only the inaccuracies and peculiarities common to both

manuscripts, one may conclude that BG is the transcript, although in this single act of transcription (there seems no reason to suspect an

intermediary copy) the latter has become quite corrupt. NK, on the other hand, is remarkably free of scribal error, the sort of error that

creeps into any text with repeated copying, so that one is tempted to conclude that it represents, not merely the older of the two surviving

manuscripts, but the exemplar of the tract in its present form. This brings us to the question of dating NK. Assuming the accuracy of

O Daly's statement that BG was copied from it in 1845, it seems most

likely that NK was lent or sold to Geraghty shortly after its scribe Nicholas Kearney made Dublin his place of residence. Having lived all his previous life in the Dundalk area ? and he was still living there in

July 184352 ? Kearney moved to Dublin about the summer of 1844. His

first surviving letter sent from Dublin was addressed to John O Daly, then based in Kilkenny, on 26 July 1844: it is essentially a letter of

introduction, as if, in moving to Dublin Kearney was embarking on a new phase of his career and intent on making the acquaintance of those involved in Irish antiquarian studies. For a postscript he adds:?

As I am likely to remain in town [in Dublin] some time if you would have the goodness to drop me a line, it may be directed to me care of the Very Revd. Mr Goodman, Denmark St., Chapel House, or left for me No. 2 Chapell (sic) Lane, Denmark St.53

? implying that his move to Dublin, which he hoped to make

permanent, was made in the very recent past. We may take it therefore that Kearney only moved to Dublin about the summer of 1844.

Similarly, it can be shown that O Daly made a like move about a year later54 and if O Daly knew that BG was transcribed in 1845, then it seems probable that it was done in the latter half of the year, after he came to Dublin, was in regular contact with Geraghty, and in a position to know. If NK was written after Kearney moved to Dublin, and BG

was copied from it in the second half of 1845, then NK itself may have been written at about that time. In other words, some time in 1845,

perhaps by about the latter half of the year.

Nicholas Kearney and CFB

When Nicholas Kearney moved to Dublin in 1844 he 'eked out' a

livelihood 'by teaching some half dozen boys at a school attached to

Denmark St. Chapel'.55 From surviving correspondence, however, it is

52 See The Nation for 27 July 1843 (vol i no. 41, p. 651).

53 National] L[ibrary of] I[reland] MS. G389, pp. 255-8.

54 See note 40 above.

55 Letter of William Hackett probably to John Windele (undated) in RIA MS. 12/M/ll, p. 160.



Cath Fhochairte Brig hite 69

clear that he did not intend to remain long in such a position. As early as November 1844, when he could only have been there for some months, his friend Bernard Tumalti of Drogheda wrote to the prominent Belfast

antiquarian Robert S. Mac Adam, saying:? . . . There is a subject which I particularly wish to call your

attention to and it is this. Mr. Nicholas Carney who was Secretary to the Drogheda Celtic Society is at present in a situation in

Dublin. The last time I was speaking to him he informed me that he proposed giving up said situation as the close confinement which these duties required was beginning to affect his health. I at that time thought of you. He is really the very man which you

required . . . He would suit you in a two-fold capacity. He is a

first-rate writer, accountant and book-keeper and could serve in this capacity in your engineering establishment . . . He is also one of the most eminent Irish scholars in the kingdom ... He could

prepare your mss. for the press. I have reason to believe that you might engage his services on

very moderate terms, as it is in this respect he would love to exercise his talents . . ,56

We may take it from this that Kearney's prospects at the time were

bleak. As Tumalti stated, his health was suffering; two months prior to this letter he himself refers to his 'severe illness' in a letter to John O

Daly.57 He was also living in a very precarious financial situation and his circumstances were such that he was seriously considering emigrating.58

He did not, but, in such a situation, it is not surprising that he should look all the more to his undoubted literary talents as a means of rescuing

himself from disaster. He became acquainted soon after his move to Dublin with the very

generous scholarly patron William Elliot Hudson; the latter bought many manuscripts from Kearney, including, incidentally, NK, and

Kearney was engaged to transcribe a considerable volume of manuscript material for his collection.59 After the Kilkenny Archaeological Society was established in 1849 he read several papers before it, which were

subsequently published in the society's Transactions. 60 In 1852 the Rev.

56 NLI MS. G702, no. 6.

57 NLI MS. G389, p. 259 (letter dated 19 September 1844). 58 In three letters to O Daly in 1845 he makes mention of the subject: on February 13,

May 16, and July 17 (two are printed in B. ? Buachalla, 'Peadar ? Doirn?n agus lucht scrite a bheatha\ Studia Hibernica, v, (1965) p. 144; the third is in NLI MS. G389, pp. 274-5; he refers to the subject again in the surviving portion of a letter, probably to

William Hackett, undated but probably written c. 1849, in RIA MS. 24/E/20, pp. 179-80. 59

For example, there is material by Kearney in all of the following manuscripts in the Hudson collection in the RIA: 23/B/19, 23/A/37, 23/B/ll, 23/B/6, 23/A/31, 24/G/8, 24/E/21, 23/E/5, 23/E/4, 23/G/45, 23/E/12, 23/H/34, 12/0/17, 23/E/3, 23/E/ll, 23/N/33 and

24/E/20; for an appreciation of Hudson see Transactions of the Ossianic Society, i, (1853) p. 7.

M Kilkenny Archaeological Society Transactions, 1st. ser., vol i, pt. 2 (1850), pp. 145-8;

Ibid., pt. 3 (1851) pp. 373-82; and Ibid., ii, pt. 1 (1852), pp. 32-9.




William Hamilton Drummond published his Ancient Irish Ministrelsy and Kearney helped in producing the annotations and possibly also by

making rough translations from the originals which Rev. Drummond set

to metre.61 In the following year, the Ossianic Society was founded and

Kearney was elected to its council; its first annual report tells us that the

'editing of the first volume on the council's list was entrusted to a

gentleman well qualified for the task', that is, Kearney himself, whose

edition of the tale 'Cath Gabhra' was published in 1854.62 He also edited

the society's second publication, 'Feis Tighe Chon?in Chinn-Shl?ibhe', which appeared the following year.63 In 1855 also he had printed in the Cambrian Journal a translation of a romantic tale called 'The Story of

Conn-Eda',64 and this was followed, in January 1856, by the work for which he is best remembered, The Prophecies of Columbkille.65

Just when it must have seemed to him that his career was finally

prospering, everything now went wrong for Kearney. After years of

cultivating the acquaintance of men like Thomas Davis and Gavan

Duffy,66 W. E. Hudson and John O Daly, after having been a founding member of Gaelic societies in Dundalk and Drogheda and the Celtic

and Ossianic societies in Dublin,67 and after having seen his publishing career finally take off, it was all brought abruptly to an end for him. For

it was quickly alleged that the premonitory verse in The Prophecies was, in part, of Kearney's own composition.68 The reaction to the work was

swift and vituperative. The Prophecies appeared in January and, within

weeks, a major literary controversy had exploded about him; a full

decade later the philanthropist and historian R. R. Madden published a

work devoted entirely to it, entitled Exposure of Literary Frauds and

Forgeries concocted in Ireland, in which he assembled some of the

61 W. H. Drummond, Ancient Irish Minstrelsy (Dublin 1852); see Kearney's notes at pp.

59, 64, 88 and 174, and also O Daly's letter to John Windele on the subject in RIA MS.

12/0/7, p. 38. 62

Nicholas O'Kearney, The Battle of Gabhra, Garristown in the County of Dublin,

fought A.D. 283, for the first time edited, from the original Irish manuscript, with

introduction, literal translation and notes', Transactions of the Ossianic Society 1853, i,

(Dublin, J. O'Daly, 1854); cf. p. 3 and p. 6 for membership of the council and the report. 63 Idem, 'Feis Tighe Chon?in Chinn-Shl?ibhe; or the Festivities at the House of Conan of

Ceann-Sleibhe, in the County of Clare', Ibid., 1854, ii, (printed J. O'Daly Dublin 1855). 64 Idem, 'The story of Conn-Eda; or, the golden apples of Lough Erne', Cambrian

Journal, ii, (1855), pp. 101-5. 65

Idem, The Prophecies of SS. Columbkille, Maeltamhlacht, Ultan, Seadhna, Coireall,

Bearcan, etc. together with the prophetic Collectanea, or the Gleanings of Several Writers

who have preserved portions of the now lost prophecies of our saints, with literal translation

and notes (Dublin J. O'Daly, 1856). 66

See, for example, his letter to Davis (undated) in RIA MS. 23/0/47, pp. 103-5 and his

letter to Duffy (postmarked 17 May 1843) in RIA MS. 23/H/34, p. 161. 67 I hope to deal with these and other aspects of Kearney's career elsewhere; see my M.

Litt, thesis, The Date and Authorship of Cath Fhochairte Brighite (University of Dublin

1987) Chapter ii. 68 For some of the more obvious indications of this, see Tom?s ? Fiaich, 'The Ulster

poetic tradition in the nineteenth century', L?achta? Cholmcille, iii (1972), pp. 26-7.




considerable body of public correspondence which The Prophecies engendered, and which left little unsaid in its criticism of Kearney's integrity and ability. The book speaks for itself, so it will suffice to quote from one letter contained therein, addressed to Madden by John O

Donovan, the leading Irish scholar of the day, written on February 2, within days of its appearance:?

Although I have no wish to injure the sale of the work, I have no

hesitation in giving you my opinion, that the poem printed in that work from p. 76-93, is a forgery of our own times. It is not to be found in this shape in any of the collections of the poems attributed to St. Columbkille, preserved in the Dublin libraries, in

England, or in Trinity College Dublin, all of which I have read. I have no hesitation in giving you my opinion that all these poems are silly and bungling forgeries. But of all the silly prophecies attributed to St. Columbkille, that now published by O'Kearney is out and out the most absurd and most barefacedly silly and

impertinent! It is, in fact, a most daring fabrication in very bad Irish, by some

very silly man, who has attempted to imitate ancient Irish poetical composition, without having sufficient skill to hide modern

spelling and local idioms. The fabricator of the poem is either

O'Kearney himself, or some very silly and ignorant person who has imposed upon him . . .

I am astonished that such a stupid fabrication as O'Kearney's has imposed on any intelligent person. Where is the original to be found? In the handwriting of O'Kearney only.

I consider the poem predicting O'Connell and Fr. Mathew as

having been forged either by O'Kearney himself (quod absit) or some cunningly silly and ignorant peasant who imposed it upon him . . .

The five passages to which you direct my attention are fairly enough translated, but the English is the original, and the Irish is the silly bungling post original!! Like MacPherson's Ossian. The

original, if if turns up, will probably be in O'Kearney's own hand! It is very true that the prophecies (falsely) attributed to St.

Columbkille are exceedingly absurd and disgraceful to the forgers of them; but the poem in question is the most audacious fabrication hitherto attempted to be palmed on the public.69

Detailing the public controversy which surrounded the work, Madden

goes on to show how Bernard Mac Cabe, editor of the Dublin

Telegraph, joined the debate, publicly repudiating the authenticity of The Prophecies, and calling on Kearney to produce the original

manuscripts. Poor Kearney responded with, variously, fabulous tales

69 R. R. Madden, Exposure of Literary Frauds and Forgeries concocted in Ireland:

Spurious Predictions designated Prophecies of St. Columbkille, etc., etc (Dublin 1866), pp. 10-11.




about his discovery and loss of the manuscripts, threats of libel action, and offers to substantiate his claims on oath if necessary. His vacillating and preposterous response only succeeded in bringing his name into further disrepute, with the leading scholars of the day declaring their

'repugnance to a newspaper controversy with a person of O'Kearney's status and character'.70 In July, in a lecture delivered at the newly formed Catholic University, later published in his Manuscript Materials

of Ancient Irish History, the other leading Gaelic scholar of the age,

Eugene O Curry, also publicly criticised 'the dishonest exertions of recent parties of late years in attempting by various publications, to fasten these disgraceful forgeries on the credulity of honest and sincere Catholics as the undoubtedly inspired revelations of the ancient Saints of Erinn',71 and the then archbishop of Dublin, Paul Cullen, went so far as to ask his clergy, in a pastoral letter, to warn their flocks against 'so-called Prophecies which have been foolishly attributed to the illustrious St. Columbkille, though they are the invention of late years and evidently spurious and unworthy of credit'.72

To give the final word to O Donovan, he voiced the common verdict

when, in March 1856, in a private letter, he wrote:? I think Mr. O'Kearney is a very injudicious editor. His prophecies of Columkille have condemned him to eternal disgrace or

incapacity. I hope against hope, it may be the latter, but the sober, the serious, the rigidly severe lovers of true antiquarian investigation must condemn him to eternal PERDITION!! as St. Jerome condemned Pelagius and his heretical followers!!!73

And his hopes were fulfilled, for Kearney's career was indeed ruined by the episode.

So it is largely because of The Prophecies that a question mark has attached to anything connected with Kearney. Those who looked

beyond The Prophecies at the poetry preserved in many of his

manuscripts were not unjustified in advising caution74: for it is an undoubted fact that Kearney's manuscripts are full of poems of which he himself was the author, but which he accredited to other better-known modern bards. Much has been written of the most obviously barefaced

example, the 'Collectanea Grahamea' or 'Bardic Remains of Louth', which contains the best part of fifty poems ascribed to ? Doirn?n, no

70 Ibid., p. 16.

71 Eugene O'Curry, Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History

delivered at the Catholic University of Ireland (Dublin 1861) pp. 408-10. 72

Madden, Exposure of Literary Frauds, p. 67. 73

Henry Dixon, 'Some letters from John O'Donovan to J. W. Hanna 1846-1857', An

Leabharlann, ii, no. 2 (1907), p. 177. 74

See, for instance, the comments penned in 1884 by John Fleming on the inside cover of

RIA MS. 23/E/12, or those of Seosamh Laoide, Dunanaire na Midhe (Dublin 1914) p. 121, or Henry Morris, 'The death of Patrick Fleming', Louth Arch. Soc. Journ. iv, no. 4 (Dec.

1920), p. 359.




more than ten of which, it is estimated, did the latter compose;75 some, if not all, of the others are Kearney's own product. He has surely credited others besides ? Doirn?n with other poems of his own, and

when he chose not to do so, he often pretended not to know who the author was.

Though many instances could be given, I will select just one example ? taken virtually at random ? which I think has not previously been

highlighted. Several of his manuscripts have copies of the poem 'Cuilin Fionn'. In one of these, he says of it that

... it was composed by a young maid, at or about the time the

English endeavoured to assimilate the dresses of the English and Irish.

In another, he seems not so certain:? The foregoing song is very old, and I cannot tell who composed it. Some venture to say that it was composed by a young woman with a view to encourage her sweetheart to fly with her to the woods and maintain his fair locks, and consequently his honour, on the occasion of the English laws to force the Irish to conform in dress and fashion to themselves being carried into effect . . . The song

was taken down from the recitation of a very old person, and may be worth preserving to show the spirit of an Irish girl in bygone days ... I never heard it from another save the old man I mention.

But in a third he alters his story again, saying:? The song is very old and was transcribed by the writer [Kearney] from an old m.s. nearly moldered away, into the m.s. collection of the 'Bardic Remains of Louth' and never saw it in any other m.s. . . . The following, independent of the circumstances under which it

has been found, is certainly a very old song, of which the language in one or two of the stanzas bear's ample testimony.76

However, the song is not very old, it is a modern ballad, and there can

be no doubt that Kearney is lying about its origin; claiming that he transcribed it from an old mouldering manuscript, or, heard it recited by a very old man ? he apparently cannot decide which sounds the more

plausible ? is Kearney's attempt to add a false sense of antiquity to a

work he very likely composed himself. And as this case shows, not only does Kearney lie about the authorship of a great many songs, but he

compiles fictional background notes to accompany the work. Similarly, Professor ? Buachalla has shown that significant details from the

biographical 'Memoir' of Peadar ? Doirn?n, versions of which survive in four of his manuscripts, were more than likely concocted by Kearney.77

75 ? Buachalla, 'Peadar ? Doirn?n agus lucht scr?te a bheatha', loe. cit, p. 152 note 52a;

Breand?n Mac Cn?imhs?, 'Niocl?s ? Cearnaigh', Louth Arch. Soc. Journ., xvi, no. 4

(1968), p. 236; ? Fiaich, 'Ulster poetic tradition', loe, cit. p. 28. 76

UCD MS. Morris 17, p. 371-4; RIA MSS., 23/H/34, p. 161, 23/E/12, p. 325. 77

RIA MSS. 12/E/24, 24/L/25, 23/E/ll and UCD MS. Morris 17; ? Buachalla, 'Peadar ?

Doirn?n agus lucht scr?te a bheatha', pp. 146-54.




Thus, in the analysis of any work associated with Kearney it is

important to remain aware of this susceptibility to invention. While a

great deal of his work is genuine and reliable ? even the much maligned Prophecies has matter which, if obviously not the work of Saint

Colmcille, is certainly older than Kearney's day ? nevertheless his

tendency to falsify undermines or even completely negates the value of his output on those occasions when it might otherwise have merited serious consideration. In other words, it is simply unsafe to

unquestioningly trust anything of Kearney's because, while it may be

genuine, on the other hand, it may very possibly have been concocted

by Kearney himself, to serve whatever purpose he had in mind for it. And this brings us back to CFB, for if it is the case that one must treat

with considerable caution any work with which is almost solely associated the name of Nicholas Kearney, then, unfortunately, into such a category falls CFB. As we have seen, it survives only in two

transcripts, both apparently made about 1845, one copied from the

other, the earlier in Kearney's hand. Unfortunately ? and unusually for

Kearney ? it is not annotated and is without any explanatory (even if

fictitious) introduction as to its origin. But we are safe in assuming that he is very closely associated with it.78 In surviving correspondence he refers at least once to the tract, in a letter to the Midleton antiquarian

William Hackett, written about four years after the two surviving copies of CFB were made, on 21 August 1849. Among the topics covered in the letter are what Kearney calls 'the wandering Professors of Art' in

medieval Ireland, and in citing evidence for their former existence he makes the following allusion:?

In the M.S. battle of Fochart of St. Bridget, we find the demented man clad in beart shugawn (suit of straw) who was suspected to be Sir John Bermingham the English commander, and who killed Bruce at Fochart with a stroke of his iron ball, announced himself as afleasgach ealadhna in the Irish and Scotch ranks.79

This is important: firstly, Kearney in 1849, is still very familiar with the contents of CFB, which suggests quite an intimate connection with the

tract; secondly, he seems to be assuming that so too is Hackett or, more

likely, is mentioning it in the hope that the latter ? a not very discriminating patron of Kearney's product

? will insist on obtaining a

copy; thirdly, and more significantly, he is citing CFB as evidence for the existence of these 'wandering Professors' in Ireland in the dim and distant past. In other words, he is claiming it to be a genuine historical source. Whenever and by whomever CFB was composed, Kearney either thought it was a reliable source of historical detail or wanted

Hackett to think so. Needless to say, of course, we know from

experience that even if Kearney knew that CFB was not reliable

evidence, it would not prevent him from trying to convince Hackett of

7* Though it may never be possible to prove that he wrote it.

79 RIA MS. 24/E/20, p. 303.




the reverse. The important point is, though, that even if we cannot say at this stage when or by whom CFB was written, it can at least be said that one is quite correct in thinking that Kearney is closely linked with

it, not simply by having transcribed the earlier surviving copy of it, but

by his attempt ?

unique, as far as I am aware, prior to its publication by Henry Morris ? to prove historical points using it as a source.

But there was another occasion ?

even later again than this ?

when

he sought to make use of the tract. Kearney had a friend by the name of 'Doctor' Brian O Roddy, and it is a remarkable coincidence that,

according to CFB, Edward Bruce was buried in the Roddy family burial-plot at Fochart; and in the letter to Hackett just cited he refers to the traditional 'grave' of Bruce at Fochart, saying:?

... it is under this stone Bruce the last crowned king of Ireland who was killed by Sir Jno Bermingham himself dressed in the garb of an idiotic Flesgach Ealadhina, is buried. The Roimh or burial

ground belonged, and still belongs to the family of O'Roddy, chieftains of Fochart, and Doctor O'Roddy, who well knows the ceremonies there, tells me that this Ciar Saingil [the stone] was the

greatest object of devotional exercise. Several years later, on 6 October 1856, a letter appeared in the Belfast

Morning News calling for the placing of a monument on the so-called

'grave' at Fochart, adding:? There could be no difficulty in getting permission from the

O'Roddy family to erect something over the grave of the great hero, Bruce. I understand they are a liberal kind of people, who would throw no obstacle in the way . . .

and this letter goes on to cite CFB, specifically its reference to the

Roddys:? ... it was the O'Roddy of Bruce's day that waked and interred

him. A manuscript writing,-stating this, is now in the possession of Mr. O'Kearney (the well-known Irish linguist) of Dublin.80

The letter is signed 'A True Scot', but one has a sneaking suspicion that, if not in fact written by Kearney himself, it was written by somebody close to him, because it was quickly followed by a letter from Brian ?

Roddy 'who at once expressed his willingness to facilitate the object of the writer' and, being a builder by trade, offered to provide his

professional services to execute the monument.81 So again, this time over a decade after CFB's transcription, we find Kearney linked with

CFB, at the very least in letting it be known that he possesses a copy of the tract, and using it to make further dubious claims. More significant still, the Kearney connection is reinforced by his claim to still own a

copy of CFB in 1856: NK, the surviving copy in his hand, was by that

80 The letter is reprinted in John D'alton and J.R. O'Flanagan, The History of Dundalk

and its environs (Dublin 1864), p. 280. 81

Ibid., p. 281.




time in the library of the RIA,82 so it seems a third copy of the tract at one stage existed, also presumably in Kearney's hand.

The obvious conclusion, of course, is that Kearney himself or one of his cohorts concocted the account, though this is an assertion rather

more easy to make than to prove, certainly at this stage of the

investigation. It may help, therefore, to look instead at the content of the tract to see what it can tell us of the account's origin. Since it goes

without saying that if CFB is an authentic account of the Bruce invasion it should stand up to close comparison with what we know to be genuine records of the period, such a comparison may be revealing.

The Historicity of the Narrative

As historians who have looked at CFB in the past have rightly concluded, the bulk of the content of the tract can be substantiated by sources which emanate from the later middle ages

? to some extent by the fairly meagre contemporaneous government records but more often than not by the more plentiful chronicle and annalistic accounts

surviving from Gaelic Ireland, Anglo-Ireland, England, and Scotland. What has not yet been examined is the nature of CFB's relationship to

these various sources: where else, in other words, do we find a similar version of events to that found in CFB? One would have thought that

being a Gaelic account it would reflect the picture of the Scottish invasion preserved in the Gaelic annals, but is this the case? And what

of the details in which it differs from all the other evidence ? is any of its content openly contradicted by more reliable testimony?

The Irish Embassy to Scotland

Let us begin by looking at one of the more remarkable episodes in

CFB, the assertion that, because of the failure of the Irish to unite under

any one leader, four ambassadors were sent to the court of Robert I by the king of Cen?l Eoghain, Domhnall ? N?ill, with the approval of most of the other Ulster kings, inviting the former to become king of Ireland. There are obvious grounds for believing that some Irish colluded with the Scots before their arrival, and that these may have included ? N?ill: the latter probably already had Scots mercenaries in his army83 and may have sought a heightened Scottish intervention in order to free himself from the encroachments of the Earl of Ulster and the latter's allies the

Clann Aodha Buidhe. He certainly sided with them upon their arrival:

82 RIA Cat. Ir. M SS., p. 2663

83 K. W. Nicholls (ed.), The register of Clogher,' Clogher Record, vii, no. 3 (1971-2), pp.

418-9; cf. the late tradition in 'An Leabhar Eoghanach', Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe

ed. Tadhg ? Donnchadha (Dublin, Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1931), p. 31.




he was with them at Inniskeen in Airghialla in the summer of 131584 and at the battle of Connor in early September85

? others who did likewise are castigated in one account for having done so 'in imitation of the

Eoghanachs';86 he joined with Edward Bruce in issuing letters patent

granting immunity from taxation to the lands of the Archbishop of

Armagh,87 and he claimed in his famous Remonstrance to John XXII in 1317 that 'we are calling' Edward Bruce 'to our help and assistance'.88

But that is a long way off saying he was the originator of the scheme. It was suggested during the course of the invasion that some of the de

Lacys of Meath had invited the Scots,89 and one English chronicle has it that Bruce was invited by a magnate of Ireland with whom he had been educated in his youth,90 a connection, if true, which ? N?ill seems

unlikely to have had. The Anglo-Irish magnate John fitz Thomas stated, in September 1315, that the Scots had been willingly received by 'the Irish of Ulster who most closely border on Scotland',91 implying an area further north-east than Tir Eoghain.

In the autumn of 1315, another magnate, Maurice fitz Thomas, stated that the Scots invaded merely 'by assent of certain chieftains of the

Irish,92 which reminds one of the claim, in John Barbour's late fourteenth century biography of Robert Bruce, that his brother

. . . send and had treting With the Erishry of Irland, That is thar lawte tuk on hand Of Ireland for to mak hym king.93

Is it more likely, therefore, that the impetus for the invasion came from the Scottish end? Both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish sources agree that

Robert Bruce himself was in Ireland in 1313, two years before the start of the campaign there, and one presumes that some of the groundwork

84 [The] A[nnals of] Clonfmacnoise] ed. Denis Murphy (Dublin 1896); [Ann?la

Connacht: The] A[nnals of] Cfonnacht] ed. A. M. Freeman (Dublin, DIAS, 1944; reprint, 1970); Afnnals of] Lfoch] Cf?] ed. W. M. Hennessy, i, (London, 1871), s.a. 1315.

85 J. R. S. Phillips, 'Documents on the early stages of the Bruce invasion 1315-16', RIA

Procfeedings], lxxix (1979), p. 263. 86

Tribes and Customs of Hy-M any ed. John O'Donovan (Dublin, Irish Archaeological Society, 1843), p. 136.

87 H. J. Lawlor, 'A calendar of the register of Archbishop Fleming', RIA Proc, xxx

(1912), no. 170, pp. 142-3; cf. Katharine Simms 'The Archbishops of Armagh and the

O'Neills 1347-1471,' IHS, xix, (1974-5), p. 43 note 14. 88 E. Curtis and R. B. Mc Dowell (ed.), Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922 (Ireland

1943), p. 45. 89

J. T. Gilbert (ed.) Chartfularies of] St. Mary's [Abbey], Dublin, ii (R.S. London 1884), p. 298.

90 Printed by J. R. S. Phillips as an appendix to his 'Documents on the early stages of the

Bruce invasion', loc. cit., pp. 269-70. 91

Ibid,, p. 259. 92

Ibid., p. 261. 93

John Barbour, The Bruce, or the Book of, . . Robert de Broyss, King of Scots ed. W.

W. Skeat, ii, (Edinburgh, Scottish Texts Society, 1894) book xiv, lines 8-11.




was being laid on the occasion.94 It may have been at this point or not

long afterwards that he addressed his 'Littera directa ad Yberniam', not to O N?ill, but 'to all the kings of Ireland, to the prelates and clergy, and to the inhabitants of the whole of Ireland, our friends', and far from

being a response to an Irish offer, Bruce himself is sending 'the bearers of this letter, to negotiate with you in our name', so that, by means of an

alliance, the special friendship between Scots and Irish might be

permanently strengthened and Ireland recover her ancient liberty, saying 'whatever our envoys or one of them may on our behalf conclude

with you in this matter we shall ratify and uphold in the future', the whole thing couched in such emotive language as one would expect an

appellant rather than a respondant to adopt.95 Add to this the evidence of Scottish contact with Ireland in the period leading up to the invasion, including the presence in imprisonment in Dublin castle early in 1315 of one 'Henry, messenger of Robert le Bruys',96 and the impression we get is that the latter is actively preparing the ground in Ireland for an

invasion, that the initiative is at his end, as part of his long term strategy, and not a response to an Irish request.

Which brings us to the Irish 'ambassadors' named in the tract. The first of these is the bishop of Derry, named as Aodh ? N?ill, but the latter (who died in 1319) only succeeded to the position in 1316, during the course of the invasion.97 The second is the lord of Airthir, named as

Maghnus ? hAnluain, but when Edward II sent letters to the 'dux Hibernicarum de Erthera' in March 1314 and March 1315, they were addressed to Niall ? hAnluain;98 it is only in 1321 (when Niall blinded

him) that Maghnus is described as 'ri Orthar' in the annals ? though not

by the Annals of Ulster ? but the very next entry applies the same title

94 ALC; AC; AClon; Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 342; Professor Duncan ('The Scots'

Invasion of Ireland' loc. cit. p. 102) argues very plausibly that the date of the landing (May 31 according to the Dublin annals) links it with Robert's siege of Rushen Castle on Man

(May 18-June 15), though a caveat may be necessary with regard to the Dublin annalist's

dating for this vital period: events of the de Verd?n rebellion can be shown to have occurred not in the middle of July 1312 but prior to mid-April (Chart. St. Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 341) refuted by Calendar of the Justiciary Rolls . . .

of Ireland, I to VII Years of Edward II, ed. M. C. Griffith (Dublin [1956], pp. 237-9) and the battle of Connor took

place, not on 10 September 1315 as the Dublin chronicle has it, but on September 1 (J. R. S. Phillips 'The mission of John de Hothum to Ireland, 1315-1316' in James Lydon (ed.) England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, (Dublin 1981) p. 72). 95 Ranald Nicholson, 'A sequel to Edward Bruce's invasion of Ireland', Scottish Historical

Review, xiii (1963), pp. 38-9. 96 J. T. Gilbert, Historic and Municipal Documents, Ireland, from the Archives of the City

of Dublin, etc., 1172-1320 (London, Rolls Series, 1870), p. 388; cf. J. F. Lydon, 'The Bruce Invasion of Ireland', Historical Studies, iv (1963), pp. 113-5.

97 James Ware, History of the Writers of Ireland, ed. Walter Harris, I, (Dublin 1764), p.

289. 98

Thomas Rymer, Foedera, conventiones literae et cujuscunque generis acta publica . . .

(London, Record Commission, 1816-69), ii, pt. 1 p. 245; Calendar of] Close Rolls, 1313-18, p. 218.




to Niall." And the final named ambassador is Domhnall ? N?ill's own son Brian, probably selected because, when he died in 1319, he is styled in the Annals of the Four Masters as 't?naiste'; presumably, though, the author of CFB was unaware that at the beginning of the invasion that

position was held by Brian's older brother Sean,100 though the annals

neglect to mention this when the latter was killed in 1318. It appears rather an unhappy coincidence that all three of the ambassadors should

meet their fate within two years of each other, and within three years of the end of the invasion they are said to have initiated. It is remarkable that the annals for this particular period contain very few mentions of

Ulster leaders and prelates whom one would expect to be favourable to

? N?ill, so that one becomes rather suspicious when most of what few we have show up as envoys to Bruce!

Scottish Leaders of the Invasion

CFB lists ten Scottish leaders, other than Edward Bruce, who came to Ireland in 1315; and this list, despite a number of difficulties ? caused

by ambiguous misspellings in the manuscripts, irregularities of

punctuation, and a peculiarly unhelpful translation of the names in the

English text ? nevertheless proves an important clue in establishing CFB's affinity with other sources, because we can be fairly certain about the origin of most of the names in the list. Two, for example, are

repeated in the Gaelic annals: 'Mac Ruaidri, ri innsi Gall' appears in CFB as 'Mac Rughraidhe uadh innsi Gall' and 'Mac Domnaill, ri Oirir Gaideal' is presumably represented by 'an Tiarna Domhnall' in CFB.101

Significantly, though, these two names are recorded only in the Gaelic annals.

The remaining names on the list appear only in non-Gaelic sources. CFB's 'an tiarna Sablios' looks like Walter de Suies who was present at Fochart according to the Dublin annalist, or perhaps the Sir John de Soulis supplied by a number of non-Irish sources ?

by Barbour, by the chronicle of Henry Knighton and by the 'Gesta Edwardi de Caernarvon'.102 All but the last of these have Lord Philip de Mowbrey who ends up in CFB as 'an tiarna Mothbra' / 'Lord Mothbray'. Then there is the veteran Earl of Moray, Sir Thomas Randolph, whose

presence in Ireland during the invasion is widely attested in the

99 AClon; ALC; AC; John O'Donovan [Ann?la Rioghachta ?ireann.] A]nnals of the

Kingdom of Ireland, by the] F[our] M [asters . . .] 7 vols (Dublin 1856); W. M. Hennessy and B. Macarthy [Ann?la Uladh.] A[nnals of] U[lster. . .], 4 vols (Dublin 1887-1901), s.a.

1321. 100

Lawlor, 'Cal. Reg. Fleming', loc. cit., no. 170. 101

AC; AU; AFM: s.a. 1318 (At has only Mac Domhnaill to whom it gives the

forename Alexander). 102 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 359; The Bruce, xiv, line 27; Chron[icon] Hen[rici]

Knighton ed. J. R. Lumby (London, R. S., 1889-95), p. 411; Chron[icles of the Reigns of]

Edwfard] I and [Edward] II ed. W. Stubbs (London, R.S., 1882), ii, p. 56.




sources103 and makes his appearance in CFB slightly disguised as 'an t-iarla Randal'. Both Barbour and the Dublin annalist include Fergus of

Ardrossan in Ireland104 and we may fairly safely equate him with the 'Mac Feargus' of CFB, while the latter's 'an tiarna Stioburt' may be the

Sir John Stewart found in Barbour, Henry Knighton and the Dublin annalist (or the Lord Alan Stewart or any one of his four brothers

present at Fochart, according to the latter). There are a further three names on CFB's list, though one may doubt

whether any of them was a leader of the invasion. The first of these is 'Mac Dubglaise'105 who is almost certainly intended to be Sir James

Douglas and the second is 'an maor mor' / 'the Great Steward' who is Walter Stewart, King Robert's son-in-law. According to Barbour, both were appointed wardens of Scotland by Robert for the duration of his own campaign in Ireland, from about Christmas 1316 to May of the

following year.106 There is ample chronicle evidence to show that

Douglas did not enter Ireland in the period, and indeed, that if, as some

contemporaries thought, the invasion was the start of a bifurcate assault on Edward II's dominions, then Douglas was intended to be to England what Edward Bruce and Sir Thomas Randolph were to Ireland.107 As to the Stewart, not being able to match Douglas's newsworthy military exploits, the chronicle sources are very unhelpful: we have only a slight hint from Barbour that it may have been he who was at the head of some

belated reinforcements on the march from Carrickfergus at the time of the battle of Fochart,108 though we must balance this against the

(perhaps equally unreliable) inclusion of Walter's name as a witness to at least nine legal documents drawn up in various locations in Scotland

throughout the course of the invasion.109 And the final alleged leader of the Scots is Sir John Sandal who, it is true, was in Ireland in the period, but it is equally true that he was not a Scottish leader: the Dublin annalist records that on 5 December 1316, the Scot Alan Stewart was

103 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 282; The Bruce, xiv, line 24; Chronicle of Lanercost,

1276-1346, trans. Sir Herbert Maxwell (Glasgow 1913), p. 212; Henry Marleburgh 'Chronicle of Ireland' in James Ware, Ancient Irish Histories (Dublin 1809), ii, p. 6.

104 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 359; The Bruce, xiv, line 31. 105 This name is followed in the manuscripts of CFB by the name 'Torgamhna' which

may be a separate person, though if so I have failed to identify him, or perhaps, since it

looks like a genitive, an obscure adjective to describe Douglas, known variously in sources

as 'the Good' and 'the Black'. 106 The Bruce, xvi, lines 30-3. 107 See G. W. S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland

(London 1965 edition), pp. 336-42; Flores Historiarum ed. H. R. Luard (London, R.S.,

1890), iii, pp. 168-9; Chronicle of Lanercost, p. 215; Scalacronica: a Chronicle of England and Scotland, 1066-1362, trans. Sir Herbert Maxwell (Glasgow 1907), pp. 57-8; The Bruce,

xv, lines 431-546, xvi, 331-497. 108

Ibid., xviii, lines 33-4, 188-9; I am grateful to Professor Archie Duncan for drawing

my attention to this possibility. 109 A. A. M. Duncan, 'The acta of Robert F, Scottish Historical Review, xxxii, no. 113

(April 1953), Appendix II.




captured in Ulster, and brought to Dublin by John Logan and John

Sandal, not, of course, Scots but two of the loyal Anglo-Irish of the earldom.110

Thus, to summarize, of the ten named leaders of the invasion in CFB, seven are recorded as such in other sources, a further two apparently are

not, though they were prominent lieutenants of Robert Bruce in the

period, while the final name is that of an Anglo-Irishman mentioned in connection with the Scots in one of our main sources. As to the nature of these sources, perhaps the greatest surprise is that only two of the names appear in the Gaelic annals, the others being paralleled in a

variety of non-Gaelic accounts, particularly by Barbour and the Dublin annalist.

The Irish Response

Arguably the most significant contribution of CFB to the

historiography of the Bruce invasion has been its portrayal of a more

sympathetic response to the Scots on the part of Gaelic Ireland than that which we find in the other Gaelic sources. Its statement that not only did the Ulster lords almost unanimously respond by joining their forces to

Bruce's 'and pledged their fealty to him' but they had previously 'levied and assembled a great army from all parts of the province, in order to be in readiness to join the Scottish forces on their landing' stands in contradiction to the annalists' very vehement condemnation of Edward Bruce upon his death and their implication that the Irish only joined Bruce when 'he began by harrying the choicest parts of Ulster'.111 The annalists probably had good reason to play down the extent of the Irish commitment to the invasion and so it is in non-Gaelic sources that we find most comment on Irish collaboration with the invaders: in the rather excited letters sent by some Anglo-Irish magnates to Edward II in the autumn of 1316,112 in the Anglo-Irish chronicles written in the southern half of the country and tending to fear the worst,113 and in the

110 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 298; for the Sandals, tenants of the de Burgh earls,

see T. E. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster (Edinburgh 1980), p. 82. 111 The recension preserved in ALC; AC; AClon: s.a. 1315. 112 John fitz Thomas and Richard de Clare (September 8) state that they were willingly

greeted on their arrival by 'les ireys Dulvistre qe procheinement marchant la terre

Descoce'; another lord (October 18) has Bruce being sustained since arriving by 'les ires

ke sont en la marche Dulvestre et de Uriel': Maurice fitz Thomas (undated) exaggeratedly

reports that 'tuz les irreys cheventeins en Irlande sunt embandes par encheson de lur [the

Scots'] venue': Phillips 'Documents on early stages of the Bruce invasion', loc. cit., pp. 259-61.

113 Clyn is most vociferous in saying that 'quasi omnes Hibernici terre' adhered to the

Scots throughout the invasion: The Annals of Ireland by . . . Friar John Clyn

. . . and

Thady Dowling, ed. Richard Butler (Dublin, Irish Archaeological Society, 1849), p. 12; but cf. Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 347, and the 14th century tract called 'De rebus

gestis in Hibernia 1315-18' printed by Gear?id Mac Niocaill 'C?ip?isi ?n gceathr? c?ad

d?ag', Galvia v (1958), pp. 33-5.




not terribly well informed remarks of some English chroniclers;114 but

perhaps the version that smacks most of CFB's is that of Barbour that:?

Thair come till hym and maid fewte Sum of the kyngis of the countre

Weill ten or tuelf, as I herd say.115 We find these 'kyngis' in CFB, six of them at any rate, though it is

difficult not to be sceptical about the inclusion of one or two of them in CFB's list of the Scots' main allies. One would not, of course, quibble with the mention of ? N?ill or even O Cahan.116 For Mac Cartan we

have Barbour's fairly dubious testimony that he did originally join the Scots but soon deserted117 and it can at least be said of O Hanlon that if he did not actually join the Scots he took full advantage of their

presence to try to settle old scores with the Anglo-Irish of Dundalk.118 But we have no evidence for the involvement of either Mac Gilmore or

O Hagan. This is not very surprising since neither was of great significance, but it can at least be said of Mac Gilmore that he had some

military muscle and some pretensions towards independent status: he was important enough to be called by Henry III to serve on his planned hosting to Scotland in 1244 and we know from the inquisitions held after the death of the Brown Earl in 1333 that he owed service by military 'satellites' to the Earls of Ulster.119 However, the O Hagans fall into a

different category. Traditionally, their role was honorary (as seneschals of the Cen?l Eoghain inauguration site at Tulach Og) and administrative

(as collectors of some ? N?ill revenues) and, being occupiers of ? N?ill mensal lands, if they served militarily it would have been as part of the

latter's household retinue.120 They did certainly grow more powerful over the centuries and by the sixteenth were playing a crucial role in the

political and administrative organisation of Gaelic Ulster,121 but it

114 The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell (London, Camden

Society, 1957), p. 397; the 'Vita Edwardi Secundi' in Chrons. Edw. I and II, p. 211, trans.

N. Denholm-Young (London, Camden Society, 1957), p. 61; cf. Chronicle ofLanercostp. 212 which has Bruce only 'receiving some slight aid from the Irish'.

115 The Bruce, xiv, lines 101-3. 116 ? N?ill's involvement is well accounted for, we know no more of O Cahan's beyond

his provisioning of the Scots forces before the battle of Connor: Al, s.a. 1315:1. 117 The Bruce, xiv, line 106. 118 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, pp. 297, 350; cf. Cal. Close Rolls, 1313-18 p. 368 for O

Hanlon's wife, in prison in Drogheda in 1316, having been captured in war by Nicholas de

Verd?n; and 42nd Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records of Ireland (Dublin

1911) p. 26 for a claim for compensation by the prior of St Leonard's, Dundalk for loss of

two horses parleying with O Hanlon, by order of the King, during the invasion. 119 Cal. Close Rolls, 1242-7, pp. 254-5; ibid., 1333-7, p. 250. 120 See K. Simms, From Kings to Warlords: The Changing Political Structure of Gaelic

Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk 1987), p. 32; G. A. Hayes-McCoy 'The making of an O'Neill' Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3rd series, xxxiii (1970), pp.

91-2; 'Ceart U? N?ill' ed. M. Dillon, Studia C?ltica, i (1966), p. 13. 121 Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1509-73 (London I860-), p. 231; 1592-96 pp. 99,

252, 541; 1596-97 p. 72; 1599-1600 p. 144.




would be quite erroneous to reflect this role back to the period of the Bruce invasion, because within the prevailing power structure of the

early fourteenth century the O Hagans were of negligible military significance, and frankly look quite odd in a list of the Scots' main Irish allies.

The Battle of Connor

CFB begins its account of the battle of Connor with the Scots being

pursued by the Earl of Ulster along with the King of Connacht, Feidlim

O Conor. This is all closely paralleled in the Gaelic annals, but they contradict CFB's claim that Feidlim joined the Earl 'because the Galls

promised to assist him gain the sovereignty of Connaught for himself

after the destruction of the Scottish forces would be completed'. It is

clear that Feidlim, since 1310, had held the kingship of Connacht fairly

securely (certainly more securely than his immediate predecessors),

probably with the Earl's support, and his decision to join him was in an

effort to secure his continued goodwill. If anyone was offering anything it was Bruce, an offer conditional, of course, not on the destruction of

the Scots but on their success. In fact, the very quote I have just given,

though making quite the reverse point, looks remarkably like the

statement of the annals that 'when Edward heard how good a man was

Feidlim ? Conchobair, king of Connacht, he sent men to seek him out

covertly and to offer him the possession of Connacht without partition, if he would desert the Earl'.122

The battle proper is preceded by a description of the burning of

Coleraine and surrounding area, and only the Gaelic annals corroborate

this123 but, on the other hand, there are several sources to refute CFB's

assertion that the Anglo-Irish army started the fight, including the

eyewitness account of John le Poer of Dunoyl who has it that it was the

Scots who 'suddenly attacked' at Connor.124 As to casualties, CFB

speaks of 300 of the Earl's army not leaving the field, including seven

Anglo-Irish knights and barons and two foster-brothers of O Conor, as

against only 70 of the Scots, figures that are surpassed only by the poetic excess of Barbour. The Dublin chronicler does, however, say that many

were killed on both sides, including John Staunton and Roger

Holy wood,125 but other Anglo-Irish accounts and the Gaelic annals

refer only to what they obviously consider the most remarkable

outcome ? the capture of William de Burgh, the Earl's cousin.126 And

122 AC, s.a. 1315:5; Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, iv, pp. 106-26.

123 AC; ALC; s.a. 1315; there is an abridged version of these events in AU and AFM;

Al has, of course, a different account, though they do closely coincide at this point. 124 For example, AC, s.a. 1315:9; Al 1315:1; Phillips 'Documents on the early stages of

the Bruce invasion', loc. cit., p. 263. 125 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, pp. 345-6. 126

AC, s.a. 1315:9; Mac Niocaill, 'C?ip?is? ?n 14? c?ad', p. 33; Ware, Ancient Irish

Histories, p. 5.




while CFB mentions the deaths of two foster-brothers of O Conor, the annals explain that Feidlim had deserted the Earl's ranks to return to

Connacht before the battle began; but they do mention, not the deaths, but the capture of 'the two sons of Mac in Miled' (a gaelicisation of the name Staunton) and one wonders whether this has any link with CFB's

remark, if, that is, its author (misreading their capture for their death) assumed that two gaelicised Stauntons were possibly the foster-brothers of Feidlim. If so, he was wrong: Feidlim's foster-brothers were in fact the sons of Maelruanaid Mac Diarmata.127

The 'Enkinging' of Edward Bruce

Perhaps the most widely quoted detail from CFB is its statement of the location of the supposed inauguration of Edward Bruce as King of Ireland.128 Most modern historians accept that Bruce was made king shortly after 1 May 1316 at Dundalk, possibly even near Fochart, the site of his eventual death. Let us look first at the question of the date.

The source, as for so much to do with the invasion, is the Dublin

annalist, who says, without mentioning the year, that Edward was made

king 'very soon after [the feast of] Philip and James [i.e. May 1]' and this has been assumed to imply 1316 since the Scots only came to Ireland towards the end of May in the previous year. But there are good grounds for doubting both date and year. To begin with, it is not widely appreciated that the compiler of the Dublin chronicle has interpolated, before his account of the Bruce invasion proper, another much briefer version of events taken from some other source: the date comes from this resume which is contradicted at several points by the fuller version that follows.129 Second, the Dublin annalist can be shown to be more

than a little bit off the mark with his dating for this crucial period: he is

very wrong in dating at least one incident that took place in 1313 and is over a week out in placing the battle of Connor at 10 September 1315.13?

Third, every other source ? from a number of viewpoints ? that even

hints at a date tends to place the event in 1315. The Gaelic annals, with the exception of Innisfalien, fall little short of stating that the enkinging occurred after Bruce's successful assault on County Louth in June 1315, and have Bruce shortly afterwards offering 'the possession of Connacht

without partition' to Feidlim O Conor 'if he would desert the Earl and maintain his right to that province', while Innisf alien itself has it that Ruaidri O Conor, Feidlim's rival, 'did homage to Edward Bruce' at some stage during the summer of 1315, the inference being that both had already recognised him as king.131 Friar Clyn's account of the battle

127 See, for example, AC 1309:3; 1310:7; 1315:8, 12, 13; 1316:3.

128 See note 21 above. 129 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, pp. 344-5; cf. Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, iv, p.

173, note 1. 130 See note 94 above. 131

AC; ALC; AClon; Al, s.a. 1315.




of Skerries of January 1316 implies that Bruce was already king at that

point and Fordun likewise places the event along with those of 1315.132

Leaving aside the commonsense argument that there was no reason for Bruce to postpone the deed until 1316 since he had his Irish backers from the very beginning, it is still, on the evidence, highly likely that the event took place in the previous year. After his retreat north in

February 1316, Bruce was spectacularly inactive for the remainder of the year: if he were made king at this point one would expect to find him

busy trying to enforce acceptance of his rule ? doing precisely the sort

of thing he did from June 1315 onwards. Professor Duncan has recently made the interesting suggestion that our problems with dating would be solved if we substituted the Dublin annalist's 'very soon after Philip and James' (May 1) with 'very soon after Philip' (a little known feast falling on June 6). This would probably necessitate a location within the earldom fairly soon after Bruce's arrival.133 On the other hand, the

Gaelic annals imply that it took place after Bruce's assault on County Louth at the end of June. After he burned Dundalk, he attacked Ardee, and either on the way to or from the latter the royal manor of Louth was

likewise burned. Then Bruce vanishes, but a full three weeks later, on June 22, when the royal army reached Ardee, he turns up only a few

miles away at the Archbishop of Armagh's manor at Inniskeen. What was he doing here for so long? Can we accept literally the annalist's statement that he 'then burned Ardee and took the hostages and

lordship of the whole Province without opposition, and the Ulstermen consented to his being proclaimed King of Ireland, and all the Gaels of Ireland agreed to grant him lordship and they called him King of Ireland'?134 This would demand a date about the start of July

? late

enough to allow for a gathering of as many as possible of Bruce's

supporters ? and a location in the north-west marches of County Louth

? convenient enough to attract the presence of supporters from outside Ulster.

A few things we can say with reasonable certainty. There is no

medieval source for the claim that Bruce was made King at Dundalk: the evidence suggests that he merely burned the town before moving rapidly onwards, and that it was quickly restored to royal control.135

Neither is there corroboration for CFB's claim that the event took place at or near Fochart: it is almost unthinkable that Bruce would stop here

within sight of Dundalk on his march from Ulster, and after storming

132 Butler, Annals of Ireland, p. 12; Chronica Gentis Scotorum, ed. W. F. Skene

(Edinburgh 1871-72), i, p. 347. 133

Duncan, 'The Scots' Invasion of Ireland', loc. cit., p. 109. 134

AC, s.a. 1315.2; Diarmuid Mac ?omhair 'Primate Mac Maoiliosa and County Louth', Seanchas Ardmhacha, vi, no. 1, (1971) pp. 85-6; Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 345.

135 Lydon, 'Impact of the Bruce Invasion' in New History of Ireland ii, p. 286, though

Barbour (book xiv line 240) claims that they stayed at least three days in the town.




the town he did not, as CFB implies, withdraw north to Fochart but

pushed further south to Ardee ? this appears as little more than the romantic conceit of ascribing to the same location the scene of Edward

Bruce's greatest triumph (his inauguration as King of Ireland) and that of his ultimate defeat and death.

Anglo-Irish Supporters of Bruce

CFB tells us that, after his inauguration, Bruce received the support of two of the Anglo-Irish of Meath, de Lacy and Fleming. The Gaelic accounts have nothing of this but most Anglo-Irish chronicles refer to the involvement of the de Lacy s.136 On the other hand, no sources

whatever mention the complicity of the small-fry Flemings, not even the

long list of about 70 adherents of the de Lacys (in their collusion with the Scots) which survives in the records of the inquisition before which the latter were forced to appear.137

The Battles of Kells and Skerries

There follow brief accounts of the two other known battles in which the Scots triumphed over their enemies, and they serve to further establish CFB's affinity with the version of events preserved in our

surviving Anglo-Irish sources. There occurred at Kells, County Meath,

apparently in December 1315, a brief skirmish in which the forces of

Roger Mortimer, the lord of Trim, were quickly put to flight by the Scots and the town burned. Our only source for this event is

Anglo-Irish, in which we are told that Mortimer was at the head of

15,000 men, many of whom were killed or captured.138 Turning to CFB we find, rather remarkably, that 16,000 of the English were slain under

'Earl Mortimer' (an anachronism since he only assumed comital rank in

1328).139 Several other Anglo-Irish commanders are also listed but it is obvious that the author has misplaced these since our other accounts have four of the five linked with Skerries (Ardscull), another encounter unknown to Gaelic record. CFB's 'De Gras' and 'Le Poer' are obviously

Hamon le Gras and Arnald le Poer (or John le Poer of Dunoyl) whose

presence is recorded in several non-Gaelic records, as is that of CFB's 'Earl of Kildare' alias John fitz Thomas and 'Earl of Carrick' alias

Edmund le Botiller (although again the comital status is odd ? fitz Thomas only obtained his earldom in the following May while le'

136 Butler, Annals of Ireland, p. 13; Ware, Ancient Irish Histories p. 6; Mac Niocaill,

'C?ip?is? ?n 14? C?ad\ p. 34; Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, pp. 298-9, 348-9, 359. 137

Ibid., pp. 408-9. 138

Ibid., p. 348; Ware, Ancient Irish Histories, p. 5; Mac Niocaill 'C?ip?is? ?n 14?

c?ad', p. 33: all may emanate from a common root. 139 G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage (revised by V. Gibbs, London 1910-59), viii,

p. 439.




Botiller's, though theoretically granted in September 1315, appears to have immediately lapsed and is ignored elsewhere).140 One can

disregard the very exaggerated fatality figures we find in CFB ? these are to be expected in a tract which seeks to magnify the Scots' victories

? but its description of events within the lordship (ignored by the

largely northern based Gaelic chroniclers) is interesting: it strikingly corresponds to that found in Anglo-Irish annals.

Robert I In Ireland

The Gaelic annals likewise make short shrift of Robert Bruce's own

campaign in Ireland, leaving us little against which to compare CFB's account. Inevitably, therefore, one turns to Anglo-Irish sources to find comparisons, and there are cerainly some similarities. The highlights of

Robert's less than inspiring campaign were surely the spectacular events

surrounding his march on the capital of the lordship, his attempted siege, and the Dubliners' spirited response. According to the Dublin annalist, the citizens took steps to defend the city and attempted to block Robert's entry and frighten off the Scots by burning Thomas Street, though the fire unfortunately took hold of St John's Church and

Magdalen Chapel, spreading eventually to all the suburbs; on seeing the measures taken to fortify the city, Robert decided against a siege.141 According to CFB, the citizens 'set fire to the greater part of the city to prevent him finding shelter there. They burned on the occasion fortresses, churches and even the meanest huts, and shut themselves,

with their goods, herds and flocks within the walls of the city'. The

collapse of the siege is explained away (thereby avoiding mention of the rest of Robert's humbling southern campaign) by the claim that couriers from Scotland reached the King at this precise point 'informing him that the English were plundering and burning the borders, and that it was

apprehended they would ravage the country from sea to sea unless he returned instantly to defend it'. This convenient distraction is, of course, not mentioned elsewhere and is more than likely unhistorical142 but it neatly allows the author to offer a version of events very close to that of the Anglo-Irish accounts yet minus the embarrassing bits.

140 Phillips, 'Documents on the early stages of the Bruce invasion', pp. 251-3 (for de

Hothum's report); Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 281 (Annals of St Mary's) and p. 345

(Dublin annals); Butler, Annals of Ireland p. 12 (Clyn); Mac Niocaill, 'C?ip?is? ?n 14?

c?ad', p. 34 (De rebus gestis in Hibernia); Ware, Ancient Irish Histories p. 5

(Marleburgh); R. Flower, 'Manuscripts of Irish interest in the British Museum', Analecta

Hibernica, ii, (1931) p. 335 (the so-called 'Kilkenny Chronicle'); Cal. Close Rolls, 1313-18, p. 288; Complete Peerage, iii, p. 60 and x, Appendix B and C.

141 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, pp. 352-3; cf. ibid., pp. 282, 297, 299; Barbour, The

Bruce, xvi, lines 261-3; Flower, 'Mss of Irish Interest', p. 335; Cal. Patent Rolls, 1317-21, p. 192.

142 Barrow, Robert Bruce, p. 340; J. R. S. Phillips Ay mer de Valence, Earl of

Pembroke, 1307-1324 (Oxford 1972), pp. 121-9.




The Battle Of Fochart

The culmination of CFB's account comes in its ebullient description of the battle of Fochart, to which almost half its wordage is devoted.

Naturally enough, in so far as this deals with now unrecoverable battle-tactics or apocryphal demagoguery put into the mouths of the commanders on either side, we have no way of checking it against the

more meagre mentions the battle gets elsewhere. Yet this encounter was

regarded by contemporaries as of great significance and some at least of its details, if only the barest, are recorded in a wide range of sources:

when we scrape off the romantic accretions from the surface of CFB we can get a glimpse of the bare matter beneath.

To begin with, CFB has nothing of the condemnatory flavour of the Gaelic annals but I have mentioned earlier that the latter record the deaths at Fochart of two West Highland lords and these appear early on

in CFB as leaders of the invasion army. Beyond this I can see little in common between them. On the other hand, Anglo-Irish accounts go some of the way to explain CFB's claim that "Sir John Bermingham, Sir

Walter De Verd?n, Gernon the Fair, together with many more of the Galls of Meath and Macaire Conaill, and a great body of horse headed

by the Primate of Armagh' made up the opposing force. Many non-Gaelic accounts list Sir John de Bermingham as leader of the

Anglo-Irish forces, but few supply the names of many more. There was at least one de Verd?n there, though not 'Sir Walter'.143 Two sources

likewise tell us that the Primate was there though, unlike CFB, neither names him.144 And two Gernons were later rewarded for their part in the

battle,145 though I have not found any chronicler that records their contribution. As for the rest of their force, CFB is quite correct in

having them made up of Anglo-Irishmen of Louth and Meath.146 As to the tactical detail, we can certainly refute CFB's assertion that

Bruce was on the march north to Ulster when confronted at Fochart and forced to fight, since there is no evidence to suggest that Edward was

anywhere but in Ulster prior to the march towards Dundalk. When they did form for battle we are told that, rather tidily, the Scots formed one

battallion (the southern), the Irish another (the northern), and their

Anglo-Irish allies made up the middle: one account comes reasonably close to this, the north of England Lanercost Chronicle, which blames Bruce's defeat on the wide distance separating the three columns of his

army. The latter also agrees with CFB's statement that the Scots 'were

joined by another body of forces from the north' during the battle,

143 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 359; Butler, Annals of Ireland p. 14; Mac Niocaill,

'C?ip?is? ?n 14? c?ad' p. 35; Chron. Henrici Knighton, p. 411; cf. Cal. Patent Rolls, 1317-21, p. 343.

144 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 360; Historia Anglicana, i, p. 154. 145 Cal. Patent Rolls, 1317-21, p. 318. 146

Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, iv, pp. 198-9.




whereas other accounts claim that reinforcements from Scotland had not yet arrived.147 But prior to this in CFB, Bruce turns to address his

men, calling on them to make one final effort to secure ultimate victory, and, as might be expected, the only place we find another such speech is

Barbour, though both comments and context differ: the latter has Edward's lieutenants advising against such a precarious conflict, while he stubbornly insists on making a stand.148 To counterbalance this, CFB has the Archbishop of Armagh making an impassioned plea 'on horseback driving from battalion to battalion of his people, animating them to adopt the resolution of dealing utter destruction on the Gaels and Scots'. Such a significant role for the Primate is not evident from the

Dublin annalist's terse remark that he gave absolution to the English forces before the fight, though the rather less reliable account in

Walsingham's Historia Anglicana puts the Archbishop in the role of

'captain' of the royal forces at Fochart.149 Where CFB comes into its own, of course, is in the conclusion of the

battle and in its aftermath, because, unlike any other account, it has Bruce victorious after the first phase of the contest, but then

treacherously assassinated while resting: the deed was done, we are

told, by a 'shameless idiot' dressed in a bundle of straw ropes who struck Bruce on the head with an iron ball which was attached to a chain about his waist. Needless to say, this romantic yarn is not known in

contemporary records which are unanimous in having Bruce killed fairly and squarely

? some say in single combat ? by John Maupas, a

member of the Drogheda contingent; even the Gaelic annals

acknowledge that Edward was killed 'tria nert cathaighti 7 crodacht'.150 But just to show what a hotchpotch of truth and fiction CFB is, this is followed by an incident to the effect that the English 'cut off the King's head, which Bermingham himself fetched with him and carried it afterwards to England, and, presenting it to the King, was well rewarded for his trouble by the Galls and created Earl of Louth': this is

reproduced virtually word for word by the Dublin annalist.151 But,

picking and choosing again, the author of CFB, having accepted this element of Bruce's decapitation, proceeds to contradict the remainder of the incident: he allows his hero's decollated remnant pass

mysteriously back to his followers for burial in the family plot of a local noble named O Roddy, whereas other accounts relate the ignominious

147 Chronicle of Lanercost, p. 225. 148 The Bruce, xviii, lines 49-56. 149 See note 144 above and K. Simms, 'The Archbishops of Armagh and the O'Neills,

1347-1471' IHS, xix, no. 73 (March 1974) p. 43 for the archbishops' role as ex officio

keepers of the peace in County Louth in the 14th and 15th centuries. 150

AC, s.a. 1318:8; Mac Niocaill, 'C?ip?is? ?n 14? c?ad', p. 35; The Bruce, xviii, lines

99-109; Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 360. 151

Ibid; cf. Cal. Patent Rolls, 1317-21, pp. 334-5.




quartering of the body and the dispatch of the parts to various locations

throughout the lordship.152

What conclusions can one draw from all the above? To begin with, it is clear that much of the content of CFB has a sound basis in the

contemporary record of events connected with the Bruce invasion.

However, it is significant that, of the medieval sources, it more closely resembles the non-Gaelic than Gaelic authorities, and presents an

amalgam of information appearing in several sources, its nearest

parallel being perhaps the Dublin annals. It does share a number of

significant details with the Gaelic annals. The obvious ones are the account of the run-up to the battle of Connor, the first march south into

Louth, Bruce's inauguration by the Irish, and the names of the two

Highland lords killed at Fochart, but one might note too its references to the famine and to the war in Connacht which preoccupy the annalists, and even its reference to the size of the Scottish fleet which is not found elsewhere (even if they differ widely

? CFB's 70 ships as against the annalists' 300). Contrary to the Gaelic annals, however, CFB is strongly sympathetic to the Scots throughout. On the other hand, it has a great deal more in common, in detail if not in sentiment, with the non-Gaelic

accounts, principally, as mentioned, the Dublin annalist but also with Barbour's metrical biography. Its list of Scottish leaders is very close to both of these (who incidentally have an invading force of 6,000 as

against CFB's 'five thousand armed men together with their

attendants'). Its reference to the collusion of certain Anglo-Irish, de

Lacy's and others, appears only in the Anglo-Irish accounts, as do the details of the battles of Skerries and Kells. The description of Robert's

march on Dublin, the burning of the suburbs by the citizens, and

consequent abandoning of the siege is again closely paralleled in

Anglo-Irish records, while the very core of the manuscript itself ? the detail of the battle of Fochart ?

is, where it can be substantiated by documentary evidence, of non-Gaelic affinity, including its list of

Anglo-Irish participants, the role of the Archbishop of Armagh, and the

subsequent grant of an earldom to John de Bermingham. But there is much in CFB that is unique to it, that seems to have no

medieval authority, and about which one remains sceptical. One might instance the whole notion of an Irish embassy to Scotland and the

identity of the alleged envoys, the presence in Ireland of Sir James

Douglas and Walter the Steward, the inclusion of O Hagan among the allies of Bruce, the placing of the initiative for the battle of Connor on the side of the English, both the site and date given for Bruce's

inauguration, the alleged complicity of the Flemings, the anachronistic use of comital titles, the statement that it was an English assault on

152 Chart. St Mary's, Dublin, ii, p. 360; Chronicle of Lanercost, p. 225.




Scotland which forced Robert Bruce to return home from Ireland, or even that his brother was on the march north to Ulster when the battle of Fochart took place, and finally the strange notion of Bruce's assassination by an idiot and his burial at Fochart. This and other detail

? unfortunately, in most cases, the information for which CFB has

obtained its notoriety ? does not stand up to critical comparison with

the evidence. But over and above this, there is a not inconsiderable share of the content of CFB which, I believe, can be shown to owe its

origin to, and to survive only in, works of a later date than the medieval

period. It is the recurrence of this information in CFB which, above all

else, gives the clearest indication of the tract's origin. The debt CFB owes to works of the modern era will be discussed in the next section.

Modern Influences

We have already seen that the year 1845 represents CFB's terminus ad

quern: John O Daly's note on the title-page of the Geraghty manuscript shows that the tract could not have been composed later than this point.

Our task now must be to establish with more precision the tract's terminus a quo. Since CFB contains elements which are historically unsustainable, by isolating the origin of such misconstructions and the

process of their transmission to CFB we gain a better picture of the tract's own origins: ultimately, the latest date of accretion represents the earliest possible date of CFB's composition.

The Ulster 'Embassy'

There are no very good grounds for accepting the idea of an Ulster

embassy to Robert Bruce offering him the kingship of Ireland. It

appears to be an extrapolation from the words 'vocamus in auxilium nostrum et juvamen' in Domhnall ? N?ill's Remonstrance to John

XXII, sent during the course of the invasion, which survives only in a Scottish source.153 The origin of this rather colourful reading of the document lies, it appears, with the Scottish historian John Major in his

History of Greater Britain printed in Paris in 1521: he is the first writer to state that

Roberti Brusei & fratris magnanimitatem Hibernici considerantes, legatos in Scotiam una magna Hibernicorum factio mittit.154

He tells us that he penned his work in 1518,155 the year in which he returned to Scotland after 25 years' exile in Paris,156 and it seems

153 Johannis de Fordun Scotichronicon, ed. Thomas Hearne (Oxford 1722), ii, pp. 908-26.

154 John Major, Historia Majoris Britanniae (Jodocus Badius Paris 1521), lib. v, fo. LXXXVII.

155 William Nicolson, The Scottish Historical Library (London 1702), p. 103. 156 A. J. Mackay, 'Life of the author', in John Major History of Greater Britain, ed. and

trans. A. Constable, Scottish Historical Society (Edinburgh 1892), x, p. lxvi.




obvious, particularly when he refers to 'una magna Hibernicorum

factio', which can refer to none other than Domhnall ? N?ill's party, that he is drawing on the text of the Remonstrance as preserved in one of the many copies of Bower's Scotichronicon then extant in Scottish libraries and monasteries.157 Five years after Major's work was

published, the same Paris printer published the History of Scotland of Hector Boece (or Boethius), another Scot, who again talks of the Irish

sending envoys to Scotland, but this time parallels even the sentiments of the Remonstrance by introducing for the first time the motif of the Irish oppressed by the long and insufferable tyranny of the English:?

Hiberni longa Anglorum tyrannide oppressi, occasionem recuper ande libertatis devictis eis a Scotis, rati, simul admirantes virtutem

modestiamque Roberti Brush ac fratris eius Edwardi Brush, hunc

per legatos ad liberandam pariter Hiberniam, ac regnum accipiendum accersunt.158

Later writers on Scottish affairs adopt this model, including John

Lesley, whose De Origine, Moribus, et Rebus Gestis Scotorum,

published at Rome in 1578, has it that Robert in Hyberniam cum exercitu traijcit, et suppetias fratri suo

ferendas, quern Hiberni, aegre Anglorum dominationem ferentes, regem sibi asciuerunt,159

Raphael Holinshed, whose 'Description and History of Scotland' is no more than a translation of Boece,160 and, most influentially, George Buchanan in his Rerum Scoticarum Historia, published in Edinburgh in

1582, Fraser 's translation of which, published in London in 1690, renders thus:?

The fame of Robert's noble exploits, both at home and abroad, excited the Irish to send Ambassadors to him, and to put themselves, and their Kingdom, under his Protection. And, if his

Domestick Affairs should not suffer him to accept of the

Kingdom, himself; yet, that he would permit his brother Edward to do it, so that a Nation, allied to him, might no longer suffer

under the cruel, insulting, and intolerable Domination and Servitude of the English. The Irish wrote also to the Pope, to the same Purpose

. . .161

It is Buchanan's work which brings the notion of an embassy to a wider audience. To this point, the motif is limited to the confines of Scottish

historiography and for nearly two centuries after Major and Boece reached their conclusion the 'embassy' is essentially a purely Scottish

157 Nicolson, Scottish Historical Library, pp. 83-97.

158 Hector Boethius, Scotorum Historiae a prima gentis origine . . .

(Jodocus Badius

Paris 1526), lib. xiii, fo. CCCXVI. 159

p. 247. 160

Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles (London, 1586 edition), ii, p. 66. 161

George Buchanan, The History of Scotland, trans. J. Fraser (London 1690), pp. 269-70.




phenomenon. Non-Scottish historians who comment in this period on

the Bruce invasion never refer to the episode,102 with, so far as I know, the unique Irish exception of Roderick O Flaherty, author of the

Ogygia:163 this work, dealing essentially with early Irish history, has an

appendix entitled 'Seotiae Regum Catalogus Chronologo genealogicus',164 extending as far as the seventeenth century, and here

we are told that Edward Bruce 'a Domnaldo O Neill in Ultoniam adversuus Anglos Anno 1315 accitus' (though he makes no mention of a

formal embassy to the Scots). Like his Scottish counterparts, though, O

Flaherty is drawing on the Remonstrance, which by this time had

obviously come to the attention of O Flaherty's scholarly circle: there was a copy of the Scotichronicon in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, by this time and a full twenty years before the publication of the

Ogygia, O Flaherty's close acquaintance, the Jesuit scholar John Lynch, refers to the Remonstrance in a letter to an historian at the University of

Paris.165

The next purely non-Scottish source I have found to include in its account of the invasion, if not the embassy, at least some mention of an

invitation to the Scots is Isaac de Larrey's Histoire d'Angleterre,

162 Including Polydore Vergil, Anglicae Historiae (Basel 1534), p. 343; the 16th century

English chroniclers Robert Crowley, An Epitome of Cronicles (London 1559), fos. 233-4, and John Stow A Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles (London 1565; continued and

augmented by Edmund Howes London 1615), p. 219; commentators on the state of

Ireland such as Sir John Davies, A Discoverie of the State of Ireland (London 1613), p. 85;

Fynes Moryson An Itinerary containing his ten yeeres travell. . . (London 1617), booke I,

chap I, p. 2; Edmund Campion, who penned his 'Two Bokes of the Histories of Ireland' in

1571 (ed. Sir James Ware, Two Histories of Ireland, Dublin 1633, pp. 34ff); the Historiae

Catholicae Iberniae Compendium of Don Philip O Sullevan Bear (Lisbon 1621, ed. M.

Kelly Dublin 1850, pp. 69-70); the Co. Tipperary-born cleric Thomas Carve (or Carew),

Lyra (Salzburg 1666), pp. 66, 198-209; Edmond Borlase, The Reduction of Ireland to the

Crown of England (London 1675), pp. 39-40; Sir Richard Cox Hibernia Anglicana

(London 1689), p. 93; Richard Burton [alias Nathanial Crouch], The History of the

Kingdom of Ireland (London 1693), p. 12; and also the Co. Clare Franciscan, Anthony Bruodine (or Brodinum) whose Descriptio regni Hiberniae sanctorum insulae was printed at Rome in 1721; writers on England's Scottish wars, such as Edward Ayscu, A Historie

contayning the warres . . . betweene England and Scotland (London 1607), pp. 148-9; Andre Du Chesne, Histoire General d'Angleterre, d'Ecosse, et d'Irlande (Paris 1614), pp.

728-32; and James Howell Bella Scot-Anglica (London] 1648), p. 6; and, finally, 17th

century historians of England, including Samuel Daniel, The Collection of the History of

England (London 1621), p. 178; John Speed The History of Great Britaine (2nd ed.

London 1627), pp. 570-1; and, perhaps the best known, Sir Richard Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of England (London 1665), p. 108.

163 Roderick O'Flaherty, Ogygia: seu, rerum Hibernicarum chronologia (London

1685), p. 497. 164

p. 463 et seq. 165 TCD MS. 498 dates from the second half of the 15th century and originally bore an

Ussher shelf-mark (the Ussher collection was purchased for the college in 1657: B.

Meehan 'The manuscript collection of James Ussher' Treasures of the Library, Trinity

College Dublin (Dublin 1986), p. 107; for Lynch, see remarks by J. T. Gilbert in DNB

(1908-9 ed.), xiv, pp. 903-4; for the letter, see Charles O'Connor The Ogygia Vindicated (a

posthumous work) by Roderick O'Flaherty (Dublin 1775), p. 295.




d'Ecosse, et d'Irlande, published at Rotterdam in 1697, which has Robert sending his brother with an army into Ireland 'pour se joindre a ceux du pais qui l'avoient apelle'.166 Soon afterwards, the English historian James Drake also refers to the supposed event in a little-known work published in London in 1703 entitled Historia

Anglo-Scotica which, obviously making use (as, no doubt, so too is de

Larrey) of the lately published translation of Buchanan, tells us that .... at the invitation and request of the Lords of Ireland, who

then thought themselves oppress'd with the tyranny of the English, Robert Bruce, being now absolute King of Scots sendeth his

brother, Edward, with a great power into Ireland.167 The lead, however, was not taken up by subsequent English historians in referring to the Bruce Invasion.168 In fact, the episode only reaches common usage in English histories with the publication by Paul de

Rapin-Thoyras of his Histoire d'Angleterre in 1723-27, a work quickly translated into English and published in London, 1726-31, receiving

many subsequent reprints and new editions,169 becoming the standard work until Hume. He again appears to base his reference to the Irish

embassy on Buchanan: the ultimate source, the Remonstrance, was

printed with the rest of the Scotichronicon at Oxford in 1722,17? but as de

Rapin was living at Wesel in Germany at that time, began publishing his multi-volume work in 1723 and was dead by 1725, it is unlikely that he had the opportunity to consult it.171 This is what de Rapin has of the

embassy:? The King of Scotland, not satisfied with this advantage [i.e. Bannockburn], projected the Conquest of Ireland upon the crown of Scotland. This Island had long been governed by English officers who were more careful to enrich themselves, than to

promote the Publick Good. Their arbitrary proceedings had bred

among the Irish so great and universal Discontent, that they wanted only a favourable opportunity to revolt. The defeat of the

English army before Stirling giving them reason to believe the

present Juncture was very proper to execute their Design, they

166 vol. i, p. 643. 167

p. 81. 168

Including James Tyrrell, General History of England, iii, (London 1704) p. 267; White Kennet, Complete History of England, i, (London 1706) p. 206 (which simply

repeats Samuel Daniel's version from nearly a century previous); Laurence Echard,

History of England (London 1707), p. 329; Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke, Memorials of English

Affairs (London 1709), p. 101; Thomas Salmon, Review of the History of England

(London 1722), p. 53; Idem, The Chronological Historian (London 1733), p. 26; Thomas

Lediard, The Naval History of England, i, (London 1735), p. 43. 169 See W. T. Lownes, The Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature, pt. vii,

(London 1861), pp. 2047-50. 170 See note 153 above. 171

DNB, vol xvi, pp. 740-43; for criticism of de Rapin on this very point of his lack of

access to sources, see John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, ii

(London 1812), pp. 478, 485-7.




sent word to the King of Scotland, that they were ready to cast off the English Yoke, provided he would give them assistance. Robert took care not to lose so fair an Opportunity to become Master of the Island, or at least to make there a Powerful Diversion. He sent thither some Troops under the Command of his Brother Edward172

and for a time from this point onwards the embassy is a not infrequent feature of more general British historiograpy.173 However, de Rapin's

work went into decline with the appearance in 1762 of the relevant volume of David Hume's History of England which failed to mention the alleged embassy, and consequently the event is rarely if ever referred to by subsequent historians writing on England, whose works

were modelled on, when not partly plagiarised from, Hume. The important point, however, is that within the narrow confines of

Irish historiography up to this point, the notion of sending a formal team of ambassadors to Scotland is unknown: O Flaherty, as we have seen, had ?

sticking close to the wording of the Remonstrance ? talked of Edward Bruce being 'called' to Ireland, but the full-bl?wn 'embassy' is a

Scottish, and for a brief period, an English phenomenon. When it does enter into the Irish picture, the source is not the bare text of the

Remonstrance but Hector Boece's colourful extrapolation from it, as more widely disseminated by Buchanan. This happens with the

publication in Paris in 1758-63 of Abb? Mac Geoghegan's Histoire

d'Irlande, who provides in a footnote an extensive acknowledged quotation from his source, Buchanan, which his own textual account does little more than paraphrase:?

Les Irlandois m?contens voyant les succ?s du Roi d'Ecosse contre les Anglois, lui envoy?rent des d?put?s pour solliciter son aliance,

& lui demander du secours pour les d?livrer de la servitude

insupportable o? ils se trouvoient sous la fiere & cruelle domination des Anglois. Le Roi d'Ecosse regardoit cet ambassade comme une occasion favorable, tant pour causer une diversion en

Angleterre, que pour faire Edouard Bruce son fr?re Roi d'Irlande.174

Thus, it is 1758 before there is mention in any history of Ireland of an

embassade to Scotland. Abb? Mac Geoghegan's work, however, never

172 The History of England, written in French by Mr. Rapin de Thoyras, trans. N.

Tindal, i, (2nd ed. London 1732), p. 394. 173 For example, Thomas Carte, A General History of England, ii, (London 1750), p.

337; William Guthrie, A General History of England, ii (London 11 Al), p. 31; [anon.] A New and Full. . . History of Scotland (London 1749), p. 6; Tobias Smollett, A Complete History of England, i, (London 1757) p. 648; William Maitland The History and

Antiquities of Scotland, ii, (London 1757) p. 488; William Guthrie, A General History of Scotland, ii, (London 1767) p. 237; George Ridpath, The Border History of England and Scotland (London 1776), p. 249; Sir David Dalrymple, The Annals of Scotland, ii,

(Edinburgh 1779), p. 60; Sir Walter Scott 'Scotland' in The Cabinet Cyclopaedia, i

(London 1830) p. 125; P. F. Tytler, Lives of Scottish Worthies, ii (London 1832), p. 59. 174 James Mac Geoghegan, Histoire d'Irlande, ancienne et moderne (3 vols, Paris,

1758-63); see ii, pp. 90-91.




became very influential, perhaps because it was strongly sympathetic in tone to the Catholic Irish, or because it was published in Paris, in

French, and only translated into English in 1831.175 For whatever reason, it was not until the publication in 1773 of

Thomas Leland's seminal History of Ireland116 that the episode assumes in Irish historiography the full cloak of authenticity, for it is from

Leland's work that most nineteenth century historians draw when they recount the event. Now, Leland had undoubtedly read the

Remonstrance and he acknowledges Fordun as a source,177 but it seems certain that he is drawing on Buchanan, whose language he closely imitates:?

The successful progress of this young warrior [Robert Bruce], and his victorious acquisition of the crown of Scotland were events by no means unnoticed in Ireland. They were heard with wonder and

delight by those natives, who considered themselves allied in

consanguinity to the ALBANIAN SCOTS, as they were styled; and of consequence peculiarly interested in their fortunes . . . The chieftains of Ulster in particular, grew impatient to take advantage of the present state of Britain; and as their situation made it easier to hold a correspondence with Scotland, they addressed themselves to Robert Bruce . . . They pathetically represented the distresses of their country; enlarged on the injuries they had

sustained; painted the insolence and oppression of their invaders in the most offensive colours; entreating his assistance for an

unhappy people, brethren and kinsmen to the Scots, who wanted but such a leader to execute their vengeance upon the common

enemy; and who, rather than languish under their present miseries, were ready to receive a sovereign from Scotland, and pay due allegiance to a prince who had valour to rescue them from

slavery and equity to receive and treat them as his subjects . . .

The chieftains of Ulster were assured that this lord [Edward Bruce] should speedily be sent to their deliverance with a considerable force.178

Leland's work was greatly plagiarised by subsequent writers, even to the extant of reproducing word for word much of what he wrote,179 and this

episode of the embassy appears in most general histories of the period which were published up to 1845, including those by Crawford (1783), the editors of the 'Universal History' (1784), the sketch by 4W\ in

Anthologia Hibemica (1794), Plowden (1803), Gordon (1805), Taaffe

175 ed. and trans. Patrick O'Kelly (3 vols, Dublin 1831-32). 176 Thomas Leland, The History of Ireland from the invasion of Henry II to the treaty of

Limerick (3 vols Dublin and London 1773). 177 See vol i, pp. vii, 264-5, 275-6. 178

Ibid., pp. 264-5. 179 Donald Mac Cartney, 'The writing of history in Ireland, 1800-30' 1HS, x, no. 40

(Sept. 1957), pp. 347-8.




(1809), Mac Dermott (1810), Lawless (1814), Barlow (1814), Berwick

(1815), Burdy (1817), McGregor (1829), (O Kelly's translation (1831) of Mac Geoghegan has, of course, the latter's original account), Moore

(1840), and Smiles (1844).180 In fact, however, Leland is not only the seminal Irish historical work

with regard to the embassy, but is also the first work of any provenance to state that the embassy is not an Irish, but rather an Ulster one, as, of

course, CFB reiterates. After Leland the link between the embassy and the northern Gaelic lords is repeated by Crawford (1783), the 'Universal

History' (1784), 'W.' (1794), Gordon (1805), Taaffe (1809), Mac Dermott (1810), Barlow (1814), McGregor (1829), and Taylor (1831).181 Furthermore, the very terminology of Leland passes into the history books after him. To quote at length some examples, where Leland has:?

. . . considering themselves allied in consanguinity to the ALBANIAN SCOTS ... The chieftains of Ulster . . . addressed themselves to Robert Bruce . . . rather than languish under their

present miseries, [they] were ready to receive a sovereign from

Scotland, and pay due allegiance to a prince who had the valour to rescue them from slavery

. . .

Crawford (1783) has:? ... a number of chieftains in the North, threw themselves for aid

upon the King of Scotland . . . with whose subjects they were connected by the ties of consanguinity . . . ,

<W.' (1794) has:? . . . the O'Niais . . . from their alliance and consanguinity to the

Albanian Scots . . . with the other chieftains of Ulster, entered into a correspondence with Bruce, intreating his assistance against the

English in favour of an unhappy people, brethren to the Scots . . .

who wanted only such a leader to execute their vengeance upon the common enemy

. . . ,

Taaffe (1809) has:?

180 William Crawford, The History of Ireland (Strabane 1783), pp. 176-83;

'Supplement: the history of Ireland' in The Modern Part of an Universal History, by the

authors of the Ancient Part, vol xiii (London 1784), pp. 48-54; 'W.' 'Sketch of the history of the county of Antrim' Anthologia Hibernica, iii, (May 1794), pp. 245-46; Francis

Plowden, Historical Review of the State of Ireland, i, (London 1803) p. 31; James Gordon

History of Ireland (Dublin 1805), p. 162; Denis Taaffe, An impartial History of Ireland, i,

(Dublin 1811) pp. 118-68; Martin Mac Dermott, New and Impartial History of Ireland, iii

(London 1810), pp. 312-1; John Lawless, A Compendium of the History of Ireland (Dublin

1814), pp. 82-94; Stephen Barlow, The History of Ireland, i, (London 1814), pp. 69-73;

George Berwick, History of Ireland (Belfast 1815), pp. 33-4; Samuel Burdy, History of Ireland (Edinburgh 1817), pp. 68ff; J. J. Mc Gregor, True Stories from the History of Ireland (Dublin 1829), series i, pp. 251-69; Thomas Moore, History of Ireland, iii,

(London 1840) pp. 52-77; Samuel Smiles, History of Ireland and the Irish People (London

1844), pp. 31-3. 181 W. C. Taylor, History of the Civil Wars of Ireland, i, (Edinburgh 1831), pp. 102-8.




. . . the Northern chieftains . . . sent ambassadors to Robert Bruce

. . . painted in glowing colours the unparalleled calamities inflicted on their country by insolent oppressive invaders . . . wanted but such a leader to rescue their whole nation from present distress and impending ruin . . . did not consider it a foreign yoke to

receive a sovereign from the Scots, descended from the same stock as themselves . . . ,

McGregor (1829) tells us:? . . . [the chieftains] ... of Ulster opened a correspondence with

the Scottish King . . . entreated his assistance for an unhappy people, the kinsmen and brethren of the Scots, from whom they

expressed their willingness to receive a sovereign whose valour

might rescue them from the slavery they endured . . .

and Moore (1840) has:? . . . Bruce was waited upon by deputies from the Irish . . . nor

suffer, as they said, a kindred nation to pine in bondage, beneath

the proud and inexorable tyranny of the English . . .

A glance at the language of CFB, for example, the following:? . . . O'Neill . . . with the approbation of the greater number of the

Princes of Ulster, came to the resolution of sending ambassadors .

. . to Robert Bruce, King of the Albanian Gaels . . . offering him the sovereignty of the country ... if the Gael must necessarily be

tributary to any one King not born and bred among ourselves, it is to you, my liege, that claim is due both by right of ancestral

pre-eminence and of consanguinity . . .

indicates how close in style the tract is to these other accounts, and, if it

is too early yet to conclude that CFB's description of an Ulster embassy

points to a date of composition subsequent to the publication of Leland in 1773, it is at least arguable that they reflect the same historiographical stream.

One might mention other aspects, for example, the fact that the

concept of Domhnall ? N?ill's embassy reflects the influence of the Remonstrance which only really began to achieve wide circulation in the nineteenth century. Editions were provided by Hearne in 1722 and Goodall in 1759,182 whereupon Mac Geoghegan (1758) provided a French translation,183 Leland (1773) and Crawford (1783) both merely refer to it,184 but O Conor (1796) prints most of the text;185 nineteenth

century historians, including Plowden (1803), O Conor (1812), Barlow

(1814), Stewart (1819), Thierry (1825) and Phelan (1827) give in translation an extract from the text, as does The Nation newspaper for 4.

182 Johannis de Fordun Scotichronicon, ed. Thomas Hearne, ii, (Oxford 1722), pp.

908-26; ed. Walter Goodall, ii, (Edinburgh 1759), pp. 256-68. 183 Histoire d'Irlande, ii, pp. 106-15. 184

Leland, History of Ireland, i, p. 275; Crawford, History of Ireland, p. 181. 185 Charles O'Conor, Memories of the Life and Writings of the Late Charles O'Conor of

Belanagare (Dublin [1796]), pp. 59-77.




November 1843, while the complete text is translated in Taaffe (1809), Lawless (1814), Moore (1840), and McCormick (1843-4), and Carew

(1835) prints apparently all the text in the original Latin.186 Thus, Taaffe

(1809), for example, reads this into the bare text of the Remonstrance :?

On assurances given that the monarchy would be supported by their lives and fortunes and O'Neill, the only Irish prince entitled to the throne, setting the example, the Scottish king accepted the

proposals . . .

and there is more than an echo of this in CFB's

They also swore ... to support him [Robert Bruce] with men well

appointed in arms and clothing and threw all their strength into the

struggle to carry out their wishes ... I [Bruce] am quite sensible that the King of Cineal Owen is a loving and faithful brother and . . . though the opportunity of going to Ireland at present is denied

me, I have a worthy brother who . . . may proceed to assist you as soon as he possibly

can . . .

Taaffe's being a well-read work, our knowledge that the scribe of the

exemplar copy of CFB, Nicholas Kearney, was familiar with it is

probably not significant,187 but the latter was also familiar, no doubt, with the long poem entitled The Bruce's Invasion' published by an

acquaintance of his,188 the Rev. William Hamilton Drummond, the introduction to which has:?

The Chiefs, mortified and disappointed by the rejection of their reasonable entreaties, had recourse to their last and only alternative, the sword. But the spirit of discord was among them, and that redemption of their country which their zealous

co-operation might have accomplished, was frustrated by their disunion. At length, to end the mutual jealousies and rival claims of contending competitors for supremacy, some of the principal potentates agreed to elect a foreign prince to be their sovereign.189

which is quite close to the rather moralising comment of the nationalistic author of CFB that

[O Neill was unable] to defend the Gael, or even unite them so as

186 Charles O'Conor, An Historical Address on the Calamities occassioned by Foreign

Influence. In the Nomination of Bishops to Irish Sees (Buckingham 1810-12), pp. 137-8; James Stewart, Historical Memoirs of the City of Armagh (Newry 1819), pp. 632-3, cf. pp.

178-83; Augustin Thierry, Histoire de la Conqu?te de lAngleterre par les Normans, iv, (4th ed. Brussels 1835), pp. 14-19 (first English translation published London, 1825); William

Phelan, History of the Policy of the Church of Rome in Ireland 1st ed. London 1827 (3rd ed. London 1854), pp. 129-30; The Nation vol. ii, no. 56, pp. 56-7; James McCormick

(ed.), The Black History of Ireland (Dublin 1843-44), no. 5, pp. 34-6; P. J. Carew, An

Ecclesiastical History of Ireland (Dublin 1835), Appendix B p. 393 et seq. 187 R?amonn ? Muir?, 'L?mhscr?bhinn ? Cho. L?' Seanchas Ardmhacha, v no. 1

(1969), p. 131. 188 w j-[ T>x\xmmon?,Bruce's Invasion: a Poem (Dublin 1826); Idem, Ancient Irish

Minstrelsy (Dublin 1852), pp. 59-60, 65, 88 and 174. 189 Bruce's Invasion, p. 2.



100 Seanchas Ard Mhacha

to withstand the power of their enemies, the foreigners, because of the enmity they cherished, one against another, and which was

notoriously acted upon in every district throughout the Provinces of Ireland to a greater extent than had been at any other time . . .

all his learning and policy did not enable him to cement the Gael in a bond of union among themselves. For it appeared that

misfortune was in store for them in consequence of their discord: and habits of brutality and utter ignorance of their own condition

grew upon them. The consequence was that the Gall were enabled to heap heavy oppression upon them.

Finally, one might mention the way in which CFB rounds off the

embassy episode, because it strikes one as very close to what Leland has on the subject: compare Leland's

The chieftains of Ulster were assured that this Lord [Edward Bruce] should speedily be sent to their deliverance with a

considerable force. The intelligence was spread through the

province, everywhere received with joy, and the way prepared for a dangerous and extensive insurrection

with CFB's

The ambassadors returned to Ireland in great joy and high spirits, and gave a detailed account of their mission to the King and the

Gaels. They all felt great joy on account of the success that attended their embassy; for they felt certain that the Galls should be broken down by their own power united to that of their allies.

They levied and assembled a great army from all parts of the

province, in order to be in readiness to join the Scottish forces on

their landing and it will be seen that one reflects the other, CFB differing only by the infusion of a more sympathetic tone.

However, it is not for its similarity to other accounts that CFB has claimed some measure of importance as a source, but rather the extent to which it differs from other accounts, and has been supposed to add to our knowledge of the events of the Bruces' Invasion of Ireland. And one of the ways in which it differs from all other accounts is in supplying, not

simply the mention of an embassy to Scotland, but the names of three

alleged ambassadors. Where lies the origin of these names? I have

already mentioned that all three can be found in the Gaelic annals. In

1845-6, a translation of the Annals of the Four Masters (AFM) was

published in Dublin by Bryan Geraghty, scribe of the transcript copy of CFB. This work has a footnote account of the Bruce invasion on pages 111-12 which very closely resembles CFB in a number of crucial points.

Pages 112-13 of this work contain AFM's only references to the three

reputed ambassadors,*and I think it is possible to show that all three names appear in CFB via this edition of AFM.

The first is Aodh ? N?ill, bishop of Derry. We know the bishop died in 1319 because the annals say so, but we only know his name thanks to




Sir James Ware.190 The author of CFB did not, therefore, get the name from the manuscript annals but neither did he directly use Ware, since the latter makes it plain that Aodh was only elected inl316, after the

'embassy' would have done its job. On the other hand, if the author of CFB were using Geraghty's AFM, he would have found the missing name supplied by a footnote to the obit on page 112, and, not knowing how long he had held the office, would have assumed that Aodh had been the bishop at the time of the supposed embassy.

The second 'ambassador' is Domhnall ? N?ill's son, Brian. Assuming that the embassy is an invention, what made the author of CFB choose him? If one were picking the team today, one would be more likely to

opt for Brian's older and more powerful brother, Sean, because we now know that he was t?naiste of Tir Eoghain at this point. But if CFB's author was relying on AFM he would have been more impressed by Brian's credentials: Sean's obit at 1318 has merely 'John, son of Donal O'Neill' while his younger brother's obit in the next year merits 'Bryan, son of Donal O'Neill, tanist of Tyrone'. Finally, the third envoy is

Maghnus ? hAnluain whose mention may betray a similar origin: if the author of CFB were using a manuscript copy of the annals he would have seen him styled tigirna Oirthir and might be expected to have followed suit, but if he had before him only Geraghty's AFM ? which has only an English translation ? this might explain the decision to call him triath Oireir in CFB.

To put it bluntly, therefore, one might be forgiven for suspecting that the only part of the so-called embassy episode in CFB which is not

simply paraphrased from recently published works ? that is, its

composition ? is clumsily, almost randomly selected from the pages of

Geraghty's AFM.

Scottish Leaders Of The Invasion

Partly because of Leland's neglect to do so, surprisingly few works

published up to 1845 list the invading Bruces' lieutenants. Those modern writers who bothered to look elsewhere ?

only Drummond

(1826), McGregor (1829), and Moore (1840) ? all came up, not

coincident ally, with the same five names out of CFB's ten: 'Earl

Randal', 'Lord Mothbray', 'Mac Feargus', 'Lord Stewart' and 'Lord Sablis'.191 Only one of these works has more than five names: Moore has a sixth, 'Sir John Sandal'. It is of more than passing interest, therefore, to find all ten names from CFB in Geraghty's AFM (1845-6;.

190 Sir James Ware, The History of the Writers of Ireland, i, (Dublin 1764) p. 289 (AFM relies elsewhere on M. J. Brenan, An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, 2 vols, (Dublin 1840) for the uncovery of episcopal encumbancies, but the latter fails to record the

occupants of the see of Derry at this time). 191 The same five names are to be found also in the 16th century 'Annals of Grace'

which is little more than a late, and sometimes corrupt, copy of the Dublin annals: Jacobi

Grace, Kilkennensis, Annales Hiberniae (Irish Archaeological Society, Dublin, 1842).




Thus, the footnote summary of the Bruce invasion in Geraghty's work is the only account other than CFB which I have noted that has Sir James Douglas in Ireland during the invasion. Where did they come across this reference? Moore (1840) is given as one of the sources for this footnote. In volume three, pages 60-61, of the latter occurs the

following:? Such was the confusion, indeed, then reigning in the councils of

England, where the King and his barons were all but at war on the

Subject of the Ordinances, that Bruce had little to apprehend from that quarter during his absence. Intrusting the government, therefore, to his son-in-law, the Steward and Sir James Douglas, he passed over to the aid of the new king of Ireland, with a considerable body of troops.

This passage is unique to Irish histories up to 1845 in quoting Barbour's

description of the appointment of the Steward and Douglas as wardens in King Robert's absence.192 Thus, its very uniqueness points to a link between it and the recurrence of the same names five years later in the

AFM and CFB. Since Scotland is not mentioned in the passage from

Moore, it is possible that a careless reading could suggest that the two were in Ireland, and the probability is that Geraghty's account is drawn from Moore which it even acknowledges as a source.

Two other names from CFB's list ? 'an Tiarna Domhnall'/ 'Lord Domhnall' and 'Mac Rughraidhe uadh innsi Gall'/'Mac Rudhraidh from the Hebrides' ?

provide further clues. Although they are not

mentioned in the summary footnote in Geraghty's AFM, they do, of

course, appear in the text under 1318. Are there any indications that

they may have come to CFB from this source? The untranslated text of the Annals of the Four Masters has 'Mac Ruaidhri tigirna innsi gall'

which Owen Connellan accurately translated in Geraghty's edition as

'Mac Rory, lord of the Hebrides' and both are very close, as we can see, to what turns up in CFB. On the other hand, the original of the other in the annals,' 'Mac Domhnaill tigearna airir Gaoidel', is oddly given in

Connellan's translation as 'Mac Donnell, lord of the Eastern Scots (of Antrim)'.193 He confuses, of course, 'airir' ('the coastland'194) with

'oirthear' ('the eastern part') ? he should naturally have translated it as

Argyll. The author of CFB seems to have been aware of the inaccuracy, or at least unsure of how to revert Connellan's 'lord of the Eastern Scots

(of Antrim)' back into its original Irish, because he chooses to call him

simply 'Lord Domhnall'. Now, if he were making use of a manuscript copy of the annals, he would undoubtedly have given Mac Domhnaill

192 Moore himself is quoting P. F. Tytler, The History of Scotland, i, (Edinburgh 1828),

p. 330. 193 Connellan mistranslates 'Airer Gaoidel' again at p. 65 (s.a. 1247) when he renders it

'lord of the Eastern Irish'. 194 W. F. Watson, The History of the Celtic Placenames of Scotland (Shannon 1973),

pp. 120-21; cf. John O'Donovan's remarks AFM, p. 322 note 9.




his proper style as he did in the case of Mac Rughraidhe. The coincidence of the correct rendition of only one of the two names in both Connellan and CFB cannot but be significant, and indicates not

alone a connection between the two, but the dependence of CFB upon the former.

Of course, indications are not quite proof. Since all of these mere names in the pages of CFB represent real historical personages recorded in these roles by the medieval chroniclers, it is not easy to demonstrate

conclusively just when they transferred from their original source to

CFB. That the latter is, however, a modern work can be shown by the

presence of one of the names on the list ? Sir John Sandal. As I mentioned above, the Dublin annalist makes it clear that John Sandal was not a Scot but a loyal Anglo-Irishman who captured a Scot, Alan

Stewart, in December 1316 and brought him to Dublin. In 1689, Sir Richard Cox published his Hibernia Anglicana, a hurried work replete with historical errors,195 and it is not surprising to find therein that Sandal has mysteriously switched sides:?

John Logan and Hugh Bisset routed the Scots in Ulster . . . and sent prisoners Sir Alan Stewart, Sir John Sandale, and other Scotsmen.196

Mac Geoghegan (1759) and Moore (1840) appear to be the only two works published up to 1845 which repeat Cox's error, and then

Geraghty's AFM ? copying Moore ? does likewise. When 'Sir Sean

Sanndal' turns up in CFB's list of Scottish leaders, there can be little doubt about the source.

BRUCE'S 'INAUGURATION'

This is one of the more damning features of CFB. Its author has it

that, immediately after taking Dundalk, the Scots . . . considered that the sovereignty of Ireland was already won,

and that they ought to proclaim their chief commander monarch as was the custom in the olden times. They accordingly proclaimed Edward Bruce, brother of the King of Scotland, supreme King of Ireland on the hill of Maeldan [air chnoc na Maeldan], where the

Gaels and Scots were then encamped. There are two things worth looking at in this ? the general siting of the

'inauguration' near Dundalk and the precise location of the Scots' camp for the ceremony at 'Knocknemelan'. To begin with, as I have already

mentioned, there is no medieval evidence for the location of the so-called inauguration at Dundalk. It appears to be another of Sir

Richard Cox's errors. When he tells us in his Hibernia Anglicana (1689) that 'Edward Bruce took fresh supplies with him from Scotland, and

195 Sir Richard Cox, Hibernia Anglicana (London 1689); see the criticisms of William

Nicolson, The Irish Historical Library (Dublin 1724) p. 52, and of Walter Harris in his edition of Ware, op. cit., i, pp. 209, 251.

196 Cox, p. 96.




crowned himself King of Ireland at Dundalk in May',197 he is, we know from marginal references, using Camden's edition of the Dublin annals198 as a source, but to Cox alone goes the credit for the site at

Dundalk. No earlier work refers to it and, unless it represents a tradition which had become current by then, one can only assume that

Cox picked the name out of thin air. So much for Dundalk: what of 'Knocknemelan'? Cox's error is first

repeated by John Lodge, who produced an account of the Bruce invasion as part of a biographical sketch of John de Bermingham (the

Anglo-Irish commander at Fochart) in his Peerage of Ireland (1754).199 But along with using Cox, Lodge's account makes use of copies of some extracts made by Sir James Ware out of an obscure late sixteenth

century tract called the 'Register of the Mayors of Drogheda' (RMD). The extracts have garbled annalistic entries of supposed events connected with the Bruce invasion,200 among them the following:?

1317 Edw. Bruise (24 Aprilis) after he got of his brother a new

army to win Drogheda landed at Olderfleet & m[ar]ched therewith till he came within half a mile of Dundalk to a certain place called

Knocknemelan. But the Lo[rd] Brimingham . . . camped at a place called the Mares, less than a mile from the enemyes.

Roger de Malpas . . . killed Edw. de Bruis with a plome of liad . . .

Brimingham having notice hereof in good order of battle entered

upon the Scotts & put them to flight . . .

This account from RMD is reproduced virtually in its entirety by Lodge, with one crucial exception: he omits the mention of 'Knocknemelan' because it has no great significance since, according to RMD, it is

merely the site of Bruce's camp before the battle of Fochart: it is not connected with Bruce's inauguration. When Lodge, therefore, wanted to refer to the latter event he copied Cox and placed it at Dundalk.

How, then, did Knocknemelan become linked with Bruce's

inauguration? In 1789, a revised edition of Lodge's Peerage was

published. It was produced by a man called Mervyn Archdall, more famous for his Monasticon Hibernicum.201 Though the result of forty years' labour, the latter has been called 'a weak and feeble pruduction', 82 mistakes in which are corrected in Dr Lanigan's Ecclesiastical

History.202 His edition of Lodge's Peerage, on the other hand, was the

product of only four years' work, which yet resulted in an increase in

197 Ibid., p. 95.

198 Britannia: sive, regnorum Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, et insularum adjacentium,

descriptio (London 1586). 199 vol. iv, pp. 3-4. 200 printed by an tAth. Mac ?omhair in Louth Arch. Soc. Journ., xv, no. 1 (1961), pp.

88-93. 201 Monasticon Hibernicum; or an History of the Abbies, Priories, and other Religious

Houses in Ireland, 4 vols, (Dublin 1786). 202 See DNB, i, 539.




size from four to seven volumes.203 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that he should be the perpetrator therein of some gross errors.

One of these gifts to posterity concerns the obscure 'Knocknemelan'. Archdall obviously had the use of the copy of Ware's extracts from RMD that was in Lodge's collection. He used this to revise the

biography of de Bermingham provided in Lodge, by the addition of some of those minor details from RMD that Lodge had seen fit to leave out. Even in this inconsequential task, however, he erred. Archdall looked at Lodge's borrowing from Cox to the effect that Bruce 'so far

prevailed with the Irish that they crowned him King of Ireland at Dundalk' and he compared this with the extracts from RMD to the effect that Bruce 'came within half a mile of Dundalk to a certain place called Knocknemelan'. Seeing mention of Dundalk in both, he

carelessly assumed that it was being used in the same context. Of

course, it was not ? Lodge (? la Cox) had Bruce crowned there, RMD

had him camped half a mile from the town two years later before the battle of Fochart. But, in the interests of what he considered

thoroughness, Archdall amended Lodge's version by fusing the two references together to read that Bruce 'so far prevailed with the Irish that they crowned him King of Ireland at Knocknemelan, within half a

mile of Dundalk.' The mention in any work of Knocknemelan as the scene of Edward

Bruce's inauguration is nothing other than a repetition of Mervyn Archdall's blunder, which first saw the light of day in 1789.204 It was

repeated by various subsequent writers (and, of course, is still repeated today) including Richard Ryan (1821),205 W.H. Drummond (1826) who

simply quotes the entire passage from Archdall, Thomas Moore (1840) and, either from the latter or directly from Archdall, in the footnote sketch of the Bruce invasion in Geraghty's AFM (1845-6). When we read in CFB that, after taking Dundalk, the Irish 'proclaimed Edward

Bruce . . . supreme King of Ireland on the hill of Maeldan [the Irish

version, because of the presence of the definite article, is closer to

'Knocknemelan', i.e. 'cnoc na Maeldan'], where the Gaels and Scots were then encamped' there can be no doubt about the origin of the remark. Again, not only does the mention of Knocknemelan indicate a date of composition of CFB subsequent to the publication of Archdall in

1789, but it reinforces the connection between CFB and Geraghty's AFM.

The Battles Of Kells And Skerries

Factually, there may be little of discernably modern impact in this

203 Mervyn Archdall, The Peerage of Ireland . . .

by John Lodge . . . revised, enlarged

and continued to the present time ... 7 vols, (Dublin 1789). 204 vol. iii, p. 33. 205 Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: A Biographical Dictionary of the Worthies of

Ireland, i (London 18?1), p. 100.




eposode of CFB, but there are significant similarities, I believe, between the language of CFB at this point and the footnote account in

Geraghty's AFM. One might list the following examples:? AFM: 'Bruce, proceeding onwards through Meath and Westmeath,

ravaged all the towns of the English Pale' CFB: 'They afterwards marched into Meath, and ravaged great

numbers of the enemy's strongholds' AFM:

' ... in a great battle near Kells in which fifteen thousand of the English . . . were routed and great numbers slain'

CFB: 'the great battle of Kells was fought on the occasion in which sixteen thousand of them (Galls) were cut down . . .'

AFM: 'Proceeding the next year onwards to Kildare, his progress was opposed by the English barons, who collected a great force . . .'

CFB: 'They marched further south the following year; and the Butlers and other powerful Galls of the South collected a

great army . . .'

It is worth mentioning also that the AFM account is the first work that attaches any significance to the battle at Kells: earlier works merely

mention a battle there, then the AFM speaks of 'a great battle near Kells' and CFB has, in an understandable development, 'the great battle

of Kells'.

Similarly, when Leland (1773) failed entirely to record the battle of

Skerries, most of his successors for the next three quarters of a century followed suit. When W.H. Drummond (1826) unearthed the event for his metrical history he opted to locate it at 'Ascul' (nowadays Ardscull) instead of the earlier siting at 'Sketheris' or 'Skerries' but he does

provide the same list of Anglo-Irish participants.206 Drummond's account provided the source for the description of the battle in Thomas

Moore's History of Ireland (1840). Thus, he tells us that it took place in the neighbourhood of 'the Moate of Ascul' and he lists the following

Anglo-Irishmen: 'Lord Justice Butler', 'the lord John FitzThomas', 'the lord Arnold Poer', 'Sir William Prendergast Knight' and 'Hamon le

Gras'. More importantly, he later notes the belting as earls of Butler

('Earl of Carrick') and fitz Thomas ('Earl of Kildare').207 The footnote sketch in Geraghty's AFM is virtually identical to Moore at this point: the battle is placed 'at the moat of Ascull near Athy', Butler becomes 'Edmund Butler, earl of Carrick' and fitz Thomas is 'John FitzThomas

Fitzgerald, earl of Kildare'. Then, by an evolutionary process, CFB talks of the 'battle of Rath Ascoill, near Athy' (the 'near Athy' designation comes from the AFM as does the double T in 'Ascoill', while the 'Rath' represents the 'moat' ? motte would be more accurate

206 Drummond, Bruce's Invasion, pp. 22-3.

207 Moore, History of Ireland, iii, pp. 57-9.




? of Moore and the AFM.2m And, by a similar process, where earlier accounts supply just fitz Thomas's and Butler's name, Moore supplies the names and, later on, their rank, then the AFM quotes name and rank together, and finally CFB gives just the latter ? 'the Earl of

Kildare' and, odder still, 'the great earl of Carrick'.

The Battle Of Fochart

This, the core of the manuscript, has further evidence of CFB's lateness. It begins with Robert Bruce's departure:?

. . . couriers with despatches to the King of Scotland arrived,

informing him that the English were plundering and burning the

borders, and that it was apprehended they would ravage the

country from sea to sea unless he returned instantly to defend it. The only previous work to refer to this unhistorical occurrence is

Geraghty's AFM, which has It appears that Robert Bruce was after a short time obliged to return to Scotland to defend his own kingdom against the English.

We can show also that CFB is wrong in its claim that the battle of Fochart took place while Edward Bruce was retreating north because of the famine, when, 'in consequence of this state of things, they (the

Gaels and Scots) came to the resolution of retiring into Ulster', but it need not surprise us that the only modern work to repeat the claim,

using very similar language, is the AFM footnote, which has:? The Scots and Irish were at length compelled by a dreadful famine to retire to Ulster . . . The English having collected a great force . . . both armies marched to Louth . . .

CFB assigns a crucial role in the battle to the Archbishop of Armagh, but this appears to be another modern accretion. The original source for his presence, the Dublin annalist, tells us that he simply gave absolution to all prior to the commencement. This account is then embroidered by

Edmund Campion (1571) thus:? . . . the Primate of Ardmach personally accompayning our

soldiors, blessing their enterprice and assoyling them all or ever

they began to encounter . . .209

Raphael Holinshed used Campion as the source for his comments on the

matter, informing us that:?

The Primate of Ardmagh, personally accompanying the English Power, and blessing their Enterprise gave them such comfortable

208 'Ardscuir is thought to come from Ard na Scol (R. ? Foghludha, A Dictionary of Irish Placenames (Wexford 1933) p. 3; but the form used in CFB can be found at p. 315 of

Geraghty's AFM, where we find that 'according to Rawson in his Survey of Kildare they [the Mac Kellys] had their chief residence and castle at Rath-ascul, or the moat of Ascul,

near Athy'. 209 Edmunde Campion, Two Bokes of the Histories of Ireland, ed. A. F. Vossen (Assen

1963), p. [94].




Exhortation as he thought served the time ere they began to encounter.210

Hence, the archbishop's role has developed from simply absolving the

Anglo-Irish forces to exhorting them, and so we find in Cox (1689) that he 'came purposely to absolve, bless and encourage the Royalists', and

culminating in the glowing description of Leland (1773):? . . . the prelate of Armagh, a zealous partizan of English interests

went through the ranks, exhorting them to behave with due valour

against the enemies of their nation and the merciless ravagers of their possessions, distributing his benefactions and pronouncing absolution on all those who should fall in a cause so just and honourable.211

This is reiterated by subsequent writers, including Gordon (1805), Stewart (1819), Drummond (1826), McGregor (1829), and Taylor (1831). Unlike all of these, however, Geraghty's AFM refers to the

Primate by name as 'Roland de Jorse, Archbishop of Armagh, who incited the English to attack the Scots, and attended to perform the last

offices of religion for the dying'. CFB's comments must, therefore, be seen against this background, that is, as closely paralleling the

hyperbolized language of Leland, and the product of post-Leland historiography, having in common with the AFM the mention of the

archbishop's name:?

Reginald De Sorse, primate of Armagh, was on horseback driving from battalion to battalion of his people, animating them to adopt the resolution of dealing utter destruction on the Gaels and Scots, and telling them that the supreme government of Ireland belonged to themselves by right because the Supreme Head of the Church had long ago granted them the island together with her herds, and her fruits, and her people on certain conditions; and since they had

faithfully fulfilled these conditions, it was incumbent on them to use their best exertions to recover their just rights; and that the

present was the only proper time to accomplish that end. "For", said he, "your enemy is now crippled by famine and disease, and therefore is he vulnerable. But if he taste of the new fruits of the earth once again, it will not be in the power of England to subdue him. He can, however, be now suppressed, if ye yourselves be not cowards. Be then valiant, rush upon him, and I promise you victory and power once more."

Next, CFB describes an unusual fate that allegedly befell Edward Bruce ? he was assassinated by 'a shameless idiot, enveloped in a bundle of straw ropes' who 'held in hand an iron ball to which a long chain was attached, one end of which was tied around his waist; and there displayed many frantic tricks . . . until finding an opportunity of the King, he gave him a stroke of the ball on the head, by which he

210 See Dr Vossen's comments in Ibid., p. 107; Holinshed, Chronicles, p. 68. 211

Cox, Hibernia Anglicana, p. 99; Leland, History of Ireland, i, p. 277.




scattered his brains around'. Not surprisingly, as we have seen, there seems to be no truth to this romantic yarn. It is a notion which appears to have become current by the late sixteenth century. Thady Dowling's

Latin annals from the period have a brief and curious interpolation in

English at this juncture, which reads:? Suddane clyming sudane falling, an high flood a low ebb. Mappas a jugler knocked him with ij bullets in a bagg and killed him.212

But the late sixteenth century 'Register of the Mayors of Drogheda' (RMD) which, as we have seen, plays a crucial role in the transmission of matter to CFB, has a similar account:?

Roger de Malpas a Burges of Dundalk in a fooles coat killed Edw.

de Bruis w[i]th a plome of liad w[i]th w[hi]ch he shook out his

braynes.213

Now, Dowling's annals were not published until 1849, but the RMD

account became the basis of the description of the battle provided in

Lodge's Peerage (1754). CFB acquired its reference to 'Knocknemelan'

ultimately from Archall's edition (1789) of this latter work. Therefore, since Archdall has the motif of Bruce's assassination by an idiot virtually

word for word out of RMD, it would be stretching credulity too far to

suggest that CFB acquired the notion anywhere else.

Finally, in contradiction of the medieval evidence that Bruce's body was quartered after death and quickly despatched elsewhere, CFB

claims that the body was taken to the house of a gentleman of the family of O'Roddy who resided

on the hill of Fochart, where a wake and funeral was held over it

and it was interred with great honours by O'Roddy and his people in his own family burial-ground in the cemetery of Fochart of Saint

Bridget. Whatever about the origin of this myth, something of it was certainly

accepted by the early nineteenth century. W. H. Drummond (who was

tutor near Fochart at Ravensdale, County Louth in 1798)214 records in

his Bruce's Invasion (1826):? Bruce, of course, was buried cadavere toto. A pillar in Faughard

burying ground marks his grave. This pillar is said to have stood, within the memory of men, seven feet above the ground; but at

present, the adjacent soil has been so elevated by the deposit of

dead bodies, that it does not rise more than four feet, perhaps not

so much. Every peasant in the neighbourhood can point out the

resting place of King Bruce, as he is universally styled.215

Similarly, in one of the Ordnance Survey letters from County Louth, collected by O Donovan in the mid-1830s, we are told:?

212 The Annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn . . . and Thady Dowling . . ., ed. Richard

Butler (Irish Archaeological Society, Dublin, 1849), p. 19. 213 Louth Arch. Soc. Journ., xv, no. 1 (1961) p. 90. 214

DNB, vi, p. 52. 215

Drummond, Bruce's Invasion, p. 108.




In the graveyard of Faugherd about 4 yards from the west corner

of the church lies the grave of Edward Bruce; about 2 ft. x 1 ft. of his tombstone is to be seen in the west end of the grave, the remainder being concealed in the ground lying nearby horizontal. It is said to be covered with notches.216

Thus, a nineteenth century writer, familiar with the tradition of Bruce's burial at Fochart, would certainly be inclined to incorporate it into his account.

But what of the mention of the Roddy family in CFB? The following appears the most reasonable explanation. Nicholas Kearney is the scribe of the exemplar copy of CFB. He was born and reared no more than four miles from Fochart. He was, of course, familiar with local tradition and he undoubtedly visited the site of the supposed grave. If he did so

so, he would have seen, as they are still to be seen today, within a few feet of Bruce's 'grave', several headstones with the name Roddy on

them, the earliest dated 1745, with at least two others from the early nineteenth century.217 The statement in CFB that Bruce was waked and buried by O Roddy is almost certainly a fanciful attempt to link these

graves with that of Bruce. The family may even have begun to believe the tradition themselves. As I explained earlier, Nicholas Kearney had a

close friend by the name of [Dr] Brian O Roddy and a manuscript book of Gaelic verse that Kearney presented to him bears this inscription:?

Leabhar Dhoct?ir Bhriain Ui Rodaigh Oighre agus triath fior Fhochart-Brighide I gcr?och Chu?ilgne, de ngoirthear a niu

Condae Lugha, do r?ir dlighe ?rsa Eirionn.

This book belongs to [Dr.] Brian O'Roddy Heir and true Prince of Faughart in the Division of

Cooley and County of Louth, according to the old Brehon laws of Ireland.218

When referring to the stone over the 'grave' ? the Ciar Saingil as he

called it ? in a letter he wrote in 1849, Kearney said that 'the burial

ground belonged, and still belongs to the family of O'Roddy, Chieftains of Fochart, and Doctor O'Roddy, who well knows the ceremonies

there, tells me that this Ciar Saingil was the greatest object of devotional

216 Quoted in D. Mac ?omhair, Townland survey of County Louth', Louth Arch. Soc.

Journ., xvi, no. 2 (1966), p. 113; cf. Stanley Howard, 'Faughart, County Louth and its

surroundings', Royal Society of Antiquities of Ireland Journal, xxxvi (1906), p. 71; [Mrs.

O'Kelly and] H. Morris, 'Louthiana: ancient and modern' Louth Arch. Soc. Journ., i, no.

2 (July 1905), p. 20. 217 Diarmuid Mac ?omhair, Tombstone Inscriptions in Fochart Graveyard, County

Louth (Louth Archaeological Society, Dundalk, s.d.), p. 18. 218 RIA MS. 12/BV5.




exercise'.219 And seven years later, when someone connected with

Kearney proposed erecting a monument over the 'grave', pending the owners' approval, CFB's statement was cited as evidence of the Roddy connection, and, sure enough, Brian enthusiastically responded to the idea.220 On the face of it, there seems little reason to doubt that

Nicholas Kearney's intimacy with Fochart, specifically his association with Brian O Roddy, is responsible for the occurrence of this motif in CFB.

Conclusion

A great deal of the content of CFB may ultimately owe its origin to the medieval chronicles, but not directly so. It has made its way to CFB

through the medium of certain widely available modern published texts, and the tone and idiomatic style of CFB are reflective of the contribution of particular modern historians. Much of the remaining detail is not of medieval origin and is unique to CFB but, to some extent at least, it is based on fact, and there are good grounds for thinking that the bulk of it too was copied from the pages of modern works. Finally, there are non-medieval traces in CFB which are not unique to it, which

are, in fact, historical blunders traceable to historians of the modern era: their recurrence in CFB is the single most decisive indication that the tract is itself of recent provenance. The cumulative effect of a

comparison of its detail with genuine medieval accounts, and of a study of its relationship to certain modern works, is to suggest a date of

composition of CFB some time in the mid-nineteenth century. Nevertheless, several problems remain.

When Was CFB Composed?

It is possible to tighten the chronological noose about the tract, to establish a terminus a quo, by detecting the origin of some of its more

spurious content. For example, a date of composition subsequent to 1577 is suggested by the inflated role at the battle of Fochart given to the

Archbishop of Armagh, for which we must blame Raphael Holinshed; a date after 1689 is necessitated by the repetition of Cox's inclusion of Sir John Sandal among the ranks of the Scots; 1773 becomes the next earliest date because of the incorporation of Leland's theory of an

Ulster embassy; then the repetition of Archdall's blunder over 'Knocknemelan' brings us to 1789, and beyond. In fact, an examination

of works published after this point takes us to Owen Connellan's translation of the AFM (1845-6), in particular to the footnote account of the Bruce invasion on pages 111-12. What the latter and CFB have in

219 RIA MS. 24/E/20 p. 299. 220 J. D'alton and J. R. O'Flanagan, The History of Dundalk and its Environs (Dublin

1864), p. 281.




common, in terms of verifiable matter (the bulk of both accounts, let it be said), spurious matter found elsewhere ('Knocknemelan' being the

prime example) and matter that is exclusive to them both, not

previously found elsewhere, makes a persuasive argument for their interrelation. But which of the two came first?

At first glance one might reasonably assume that the footnote is

drawing on CFB, that a Gaelic manuscript should provide the basis for a

footnote account in a published work, rather than the reverse. The fact that the transcript copy of CFB is in the hand of Bryan Geraghty, the

publisher of the AFM, lends further weight, since it would be reasonable to expect him to seek a copy of it to help in the job of editing the AFM. There is also the fact that CFB was transcribed in 1845

whereas Geraghty's AFM bears a publication date of 1846. This, however, it not a telling factor: the AFM was published in a series of at least twenty-mour fortnightly numbers that began appearing on 1

January 1845, and may even have been completed before the year was

out.221 The question of the date of the manuscripts should not, therefore, preclude the possibility that CFB is based on the AFM, in other words, was written at some stage in 1845, after the appearance of the relevant number of AFM.

But what of the potentially more convincing argument based on their

peculiar relationship with Archdall (1789)? Does the pattern of their

borrowings from the latter work indicate that CFB came first, having a

primary dependence on Archdall, with A FM obtaining his indirectly by way of CFB? There are three details from Archdall that are repeated in either work or in both. The first is the inauguration site at 'Knocknemelan': although this appears in both, AFM obviously draws

directly on Archdall where the name is give in that form, rather than on CFB where it has slightly transmuted to 'the hill of Maeldan'. The second interesting item ? and one that I have not mentioned before ?

is the incorrect date for the battle of Fochart: 28 May 1318 is given in the

'Register of the Mayors of Drogheda', is repeated by Archdall, and turns up in the footnote sketch in AFM; it does not recur in CFB (where implicitly the battle is set where it belongs, in October). Here again

AFM is drawing directly on Archdall. At this stage one might begin to

suspect that it was the author of CFB who never saw Archdall.

Unfortunately, however, it is not that simple. The third motif from Archdall is Bruce's assassination by an idiot; this is not in the footnote and appears only in CFB. In other words, both authors draw directly on

Archdall but, except for 'Knocknemelan', not for the same details. The attempt to unravel the interrelationship inevitably leads into the

realm of speculation. CFB looks for all the world like it is based

exclusively on Connellan's edition of the AFM and Archdall's edition of

Lodge's Peerage. With a single exception, everything in it that is not the direct invention of its author is consistant with the thesis of its extraction

221 See the advertisement in The Nation for 28 December 1844.




from these two works. That one exception not repeated in CFB is the incorrect date of the battle at Fochart which the author of the footnote

obtained from Archdall. I think this may be significant. The AFM, as I have said, appeared in fortnightly numbers. As such, it was inordinately sensitive to criticism, since its critics were supplied with further ammunition with each issue. And whereas, in normal circumstances, the

publisher of an unfavourably received work would hope to have

recouped his losses before the adverse criticism had affected sales, in the case of AFM the publisher was doomed if, having started the

circulation, the early numbers provoked a bad reaction. And this is what

happened to it. Since O Donovan was working on his own edition, he was one of its loudest critics:222 in spite of his best efforts, Geraghty was

bankrupted by the venture. I suspect that one of the things Geraghty did was to try to fight fire

with fire. If anything in one of the prolixly annotated numbers was

faulted, he sought to justify it. The footnote account of the Bruce invasion was obviously subjected to criticism and an item from it, the

battle-date, was later corrected. In the list of errata on page 724 we find this:?

At A.D. 1318, p. 112, note 3, instead of "battle of Foghard, near

Dundalk, was fought on the 28th of May, A.D. 1318", read "was

fought on St. Calixtus' Day, namely, Saturday, the 14th of

October, A.D. 1318". But in an earlier number, at age 559, the source of the error is admitted:?

The battle of Faughart and death of Bruce took place on St. Calixtus's day, namely Saturday the 14th of October A.D. 1318, not on the 28th of May, as erroneously stated in Lodge's Peerage, and quoted at p. Ill in these annals, which mistake the reader will

please to correct.

It is possible that doubt may have been cast on other material in the

footnote, particularly other matter from Archdall (i.e. 'Knocknemelan') and Geraghty, or the author of the footnote, may have felt the need to

go on the defensive by presenting to his detractors an 'authentic' Gaelic account of the Bruce invasion which (since there were too many trustworthy authorities pointing to the contrary) admitted that

Archdall's battle-date was wrong, but which sought to corroborate the rest of Archdall's version and the footnote.

This, however, remains speculation. It is an attempt to explain the curious coincidence of the footnote's and CFB's reliance on Archdall: the fact that the publisher of AFM was forced to publish a correction of the error from Archdall in his account, and, in the same year transcribed a tract which serves as a veritable exoneration of everything else in the account and of Archdall in particular. It is not necessary to accept that

222 D. J. O'Donoghue, The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan (Dublin 1897), p. 167.




this is the case; what does seem certain, though, is that the author of

CFB, apart from obtaining the assassination motif directly from

Archdall, used nothing to compile his tract but the relevant number of

Geraghty's AFM. The AFM footnote is the only modern account of the Bruce invasion,

published in or before 1845, to name Domhnall ? N?ill as instigator of the invasion, as CFB has. The selection of members of Domhnall's

embassy to Scotland in CFB appears to have been dictated by their

ready availability in AFM, either in the text of it or (as in the case of the

bishop of Derry) in the footnotes thereto. Most accounts have only the names of a couple of the Scots who allegedly came to Ireland with the

Bruces, some have five, one even had six, but the AFM has all ten names given in CFB, and it gives them in the same format ? in a long list near the start of its account. Sir James Douglas appears in only these two lists. A FM mistranslates the name of the territory ruled over by Mac

Domhnaill, the Highland lord killed at Fochart, but gets correct that of his companion-at-arms Mac Rughraidhe: it is no coincidence that CFB

gives the latter but omits the former, a clear indication of its dependence on Connellan's translation. It is possible to trace a certain degree of verbal development from the AFM to CFB: for example, what in works

published up to 1845 was described as 'a battle near Kells' became in AFM 'a great battle near Kells' and in CFB 'the great battle of Kells'; the list of Anglo-Irish leaders at Skerries shows all the signs of having come from AFM, involving the same sort of verbal progression

?

before AFM the two would-be earls present were recorded simply by their

patronymic, AFM supplies both patronymic and comital style, CFB

supplies just the latter. Both opt for placing the event at 'Ascull' and are

unique in telling us it is 'near Athy'. Uniquely too, AFM and CFB have it that Robert Bruce had to return hurriedly to Scotland to defend it from attack by the English, though one may see a verbal twist in the far

more trenchant way it is put by the time it reaches CFB. And finally, both stand apart in telling us that Edward Bruce was on the retreat north to Ulster when the battle of Fochart took place: this is explicitly put in CFB but can only be implied from AFM, where, one concludes, it too originated.

One would be hard-pressed to prove that anything in the footnote

necessarily came from CFB. All the evidence suggests that the author of

the former selected his information, albeit rather carelessly in parts, from the named works he cites at the outset (Holinshed, Campion, Cox,

Leland, Moore, and Archdall). It repeats none of the more obvious

untruths in CFB ? those details for which it has become well-known ?

and where they are otherwise jointly and uniquely erroneous, I think it can be demonstrated that the errors came to CFB from the AFM. Put

simply, with the exception of the crucial blunder over the incorrect

battle-date (which it later corrected), all of the historical errors in AFM are repeated in CFB, but the latter has a great deal of inaccurate




material which, if the author of the footnote were using it as a source, one would have expected him to adopt, but which he has not. The conclusion must be that CFB was put together some time in 1845, no doubt not long after the appearance of the particular number of

Geraghty's AFM that dealt with the Bruce invasion.

Why Was CFB Written?

I think there is little doubt that the tract is a forgery, in the sense that it was written with the deliberate intention of deceiving, of being passed

off as something which it was not. Now, at no stage does its author state that CFB is what it has generally been accepted as ? a somewhat

modernised recension of a near-contemporaneous Gaelic account of the Bruce invasion. But the intention to deceive seems obvious. Although the tract must have been written about 1845, by a man who had

obviously read several fairly accurate modern sketches of the invasion, it is full of untruths and of distortions of the truth223 and lacks some facts available elsewhere which are, for whatever reason, withheld ? all

done, partly it seems, to make the tract appear more authentic, and

partly, in the process, to bend the facts in order to make political statements.224 Also, we have seen that Nicholas Kearney

? a man

intimately connected with CFB ? twice makes use of the tract to prove alleged historical points: first, to show that there were 'wandering professors of art' in medieval Ireland and, second, to illustrate the

Roddy family's ancestral link with Bruce's burial, both on the say-so of CFB. In other words, as far as Kearney is concerned it is no mere innocuous paraphrasing of other accounts. He is claiming that the tract is a reliable historical source. Either he did so knowing that it was only a few years old at the time of writing or, if he was unaware of the deceit involved in its production, had obviously been led to believe that it was

genuine. Someone compiled the tract in 1845 and attempted to pass it off as a genuinely traditional account of the events it portrays.

But why? In part there may have been a political motive: the author

223 For example, the author seems to have chosen the names of the envoys to Scotland

randomly from the pages of AFM, he provides a fake list of the Irish who rose to join the

Scots, and incorrectly includes the Flemings of Meath as allies of Bruce, has two

foster-brothers of Feidlim O Conor killed at Connor, invents much of the course of the

battle of Fochart, the Scots' initial triumph, and Bruce's wake in the house of the Roddy

family. He knew the figures given elsewhere for the Scottish invading force and fleet, the

casualties in various battles, and the number of battles the Scots allegedly fought in

Ireland, but tampers with all of them. 224 Instead of specific dates and locations we find vague phrases such as 'a dtosach

samhraidh' and 'an bhliadhain iar sea' and 'a n-Dalriada', in order, presumably, not to

follow too closely the standard textbook account, and to appear more Gaelic. He takes the

opportunity to criticise the tyranny of the English and the collusion of Anglo-Irishmen and

of his Gaelic fellow-countrymen who remain loyal to England; he praises those with the

courage to take up arms against the oppressor, deploring continued dissension among their ranks, urging to the cause those as yet concerned only with their own material state.




obviously had a strongly nationalistic disposition, and his tract tends to

justify the Irish nationalist disposition of its struggle with England and to ennoble physical resistance in that struggle. But this does little more than explain its colourful texture, it hardly reveals the circumstantial incentive. CFB stands out as an oddly singular piece of work: it recounts not by any means the most significant battle in Irish history, it does not

appear to be part of any more elaborate collection of, let us say,

post-Norman battle-tales, it must be admitted that it is a rather slight and hurried production, and Kearney (its 'discoverer' if we were to

accept its authenticity) did not bother about recording its source or

annotating it as was his wont. Therefore, if one were to ask oneself why this particular battle, picked apparently at random, deserved such a

unique treatment, one would have to conclude that the tract was

composed as a specific response to a given demand: someone wanted a

Gaelic account of the battle of Fochart in particular, and someone else saw the advantage in forging such a tract. In other words, because CFB is so singular and, one might say, so trivial, there must have been some

quite simple reason for sitting down and doing it, and that reason may have had something to do with the availability of a likely buyer.

The key to discovering why it was composed must lie, not simply in the fact that it is a forged Gaelic manuscript which earned for its author some much-needed money

? because as such alone it was hardly worth the bother, a more elaborate fabrication would have brought more reward ? but in the fact that it is a forged account of the Bruce invasion in particular. It may have earned its author some money, but its raison

d'?tre lies, I would suggest, in someone's need for an 'authentic' Gaelic

description of the Bruce invasion and I have given above one possible explanation of that need. To summarise the case, everything in CFB

(apart from some apparent spur-of-the-moment interpolations not found elsewhere) originated in either Archdall's edition of Lodge's

Peerage or in Geraghty's edition of AFM (both its text and annotations). The reliance of the latter upon Archdall was queried, presumably early in 1845, and the disputed detail was amended in a later number. CFB can only have been written simultaneously with or subsequent to the

appearance of the error in AFM, but, crucially, it is, if anything, even more reliant on Archdall, as if in an effort to vindicate the published account whose merit was being negated by its reliance on Archdall: the intention would have presumably been to show that the latter's version

could, after all, be trusted, since it was to be found also in Gaelic tradition.

By Whom Was It Written?

It is impossible to state with certainty who composed CFB: all forgers attempt to remove their fingerprints from the scene of the crime. Thus, even under linguistic analysis the tract betrays only the slightest




evidence for the lateness of its composition225 and presents no clues as to the dialect of its author. Nicholas Kearney is the man who appears

most closely connected with it, yet if he composed it he has managed not to reveal anything of his quite distinctive prose style. One is forced back to circumstantial considerations in the effort to uncover the perpetrator,

which, however, do tend to point in Kearney's direction. As far as we

know, there have only ever existed three copies of CFB, two of which still survive: the earlier of the surviving transcripts is in his hand (it was

deposited in the RIA in 1854) while in 1856 he claimed to possess another. It obviously enjoyed a limited currency and, even if one knew little else about Nicholas Kearney, one would be tempted to conclude that he concocted it. As it is, though, we know a great deal more with

which to strengthen the view.

First, his character: we have seen that he was responsible for the

production of a considerable body of forged work during his career,

including a great number of his own poems which, in his anxiety to have them accepted, he claimed to be th? work of earlier and more famous hands than his own. He caused considerable controversy by forging part of the Prophesies of St. Columbkille; when questioned about their

authorship he claimed he could produce 'authentic' manuscripts by which to verify their antiquity. He probably also forged an account of the life of Peadar ? Doirn?n, and when a detail of it was queried he

claimed, at almost exactly the same time CFB appeared, that he could

produce an 'authentic' manuscript account of the poet's life with which to vindicate his statement.2261 have argued that CFB falls into the same

category: it is little more than an 'authentic' vindication of a footnoted statement in Geraghty's AFM. The notes for the latter were provided by the translator, Owen Connellan, by Philip Mac Dermott, and 'by several eminent Irish antiquaries'.227 Since he had recently become

acquainted with both Geraghty and Connellan,228 Kearney may have been among these. He had just come to Dublin and was actively seeking a living from literary and antiquarian pursuits. There can be no doubt that he was anxious to ingratiate himself into the ranks of more

prominent Gaelic scholars in Dublin, and to win respect, gainful employment, and financial reward. To do this he was prepared to cut a few corners. In practice, this probably involved maintaining a

reputation for delivering on demand: in his attempt to appear such an

authoritative source of historical lore and base materials, he could not

225 My thanks are due to Professor Breand?n ? Buachalla for examining the tract on

my behalf. 226 See his letters to John O Daly on the matter in ? Buachalla 'Peadar ? Doirn?n agus

lucht scrite a bheatha', pp. 139-46. 227 See the introduction to AFM. 228

Geraghty and Kearney were both members of the provisional committee of the Irish

Celtic Society (RIA MS. 23/E/12, between pages 270-71); for Kearney and Connellan, see

RIA MS. 12/M/ll, p. 751 and Denis O'Leary 'The first professor of Irish in QCC, Owen

Connellan' Cork University Record, no. 9, (Easter 1947), p. 43.



118 Cath Fhochairte Brighite

afford to disappoint any of those to whom he looked for advocacy and

patronage. And if this meant fabricating evidence, then it had to be done. To Kearney, aware of his own scholarly abilities, looked down

upon by many who had either obtained a more formal education than he or who, like O Donovan and Curry, had been more fortunate, and resentful of others whom he considered less qualified than himself, the end ?

rising to the heights of Gaelic scholarship and bringing to such endeavour both his own skills and an attitude more sympathetic than

many ?

justified the means. It is possible, therefore, that the footnote was Kearney's own composition and CFB an attempt to cover up such a fatal blunder at so early a stage in his career. Alternatively, he may have offered the tract to the author of the footnote, in order to win a friend

by getting the latter off a hook.

Kearney certainly possessed both the skills and attitude necessary to

compose such a piece. He was a staunch nationalist229 which would help to account for the tone of CFB. On the other hand, he was a gifted scholar who would find no difficulty in producing an account of the

Bruce invasion and was capable of imitating fairly standardized classical

Irish, as CFB does. His manuscripts are full of extensive historical

pieces which he wrote himself, some of which he published. To take one

example, he compiled a rather fictionalised account of the sacking of Dunmahon Castle in County Louth in the mid-seventeeth century which was published the year before the appearance of CFB: it is not unlike the latter in many ways, presenting a similarly romanticised picture of Ireland's woes, a distinct anti-English bias and a proclivity towards colourful direct speech, so that like CFB, he has the lead player, in this case Oliver Cromwell, deliver himself of some highly apocryphal oratory.230 If anything, though, CFB seeks to imitate the language and

style of the medieval battle-tales, with which Kearney had an easy

familiarity, and copies of several of which survive in his manuscripts (including The Battle of Gabhra', an edition of which he later

published).231 When William Elliot Hudson began to act as patron to

him, in the mid-1840s, Kearney copied out at least a half dozen of the better-known tales, which he sold to him, complete with an elegant English translation on recto to compliment the Irish text opposite: not

surprisingly, CFB, in this precise form, also ended up in Hudson's collection.

Finally, as to the evidence of Kearney's intimacy with the piece, he was born not far from Fochart, which explains not alone his interest in the subject, but his knowledge of the existence of the Roddy headstones

229 See, for example, his remarks in RIA MSS. 23/E/4, p. viii; 12/BV5, inside cover;

23/E/5, p. 209; 23/E/12, pp. 10, 258, 271-2; and his three highly charged political tracts in

English in 23/E/ll, pp. 1-20. 230

McCormick, Black History of Ireland, no. 13, pp. 101-3; no. 14, pp. 109-10. 231 RIA MSS. 23/E/3, 23/E/4; Transactions of the Ossianic Society, (Dublin 1854).




close to the traditional grave of Bruce. He was even a friend of the man

whose family owned the burial plot in question. He twice sought to

publicise the tract, the only person to have done so prior to its

publication: in 1849, when he attempted to palm it off on another of has

patrons, William Hackett, who was seeking (and willing to pay for) information on aspects of the social history of medieval Ireland, and in 1856 when, through a letter in the Belfast Morning News, he sought to use the evidence of CFB to facilitate the proposed erection of a

monument on Bruce's 'grave'. All in all, it seems too much of an

imposition on credulity for one to have to accept as genuine a so-called

contemporaneous account of the Bruce invasion which concludes with the interment of its hero in the family plot of an intimate friend of

Nicholas Kearney!

Summary

There is overwhelming evidence to call into question the belief that the date of composition of the tract Cath Fhochairte Brighite approximates to the date of the events it portrays. Only an understandable excess of hope over scepticism has prevented scholars from looking at the tract with quite the critical eye it deserves.

Unfortunately, though, for those of us who regret the loss of what was

hoped to be another of our all too few distinctive literary relics from the late medieval period, the origins of the piece appear to be, not in the

mists of the Gaelic past, but in the antiquarian intrigues of the nineteenth century.

There is the fact of the sole record of the account in two mid-nineteenth century manuscripts (not in itself, of course, necessarily suspicious), but both closely associated with a small group of

antiquarian scholars, the central figure being Nicholas Kearney, a man with a richly deserved reputation for scholarly dishonesty.

There is the fact that a comparison of its detail with the contemporary record of the Bruce invasion preserved elsewhere indicates that it is far from being a consistent and independent testimony of events: it takes its

material from a mish-mash of several often conflicting sources, both from within and, more especially, without Gaelic Ireland, and was

obviously composed at quite a late date when these very diverse records had become widely available. Unfortunately for its author, though, it was compiled without access to much of the official record evidence available today, so that we can catch him out in several places where he has attempted to re-write the story.

Perhaps most importantly, there is the fact that, in copying the correct detail of other accounts, the author also repeats some unfortunate blunders made by modern historians: Sir Richard Cox (1689) was the first historian to claim that Edward Bruce was crowned at or near

Dundalk and is responsible too for the oft-recurring error of listing Sir




John Sandal among the Scots who came to Ireland; Mervyn Archdall

(1789) was heavily dependant on a late sixteenth century source called 'The Register of the Mayors of Drogheda', from which he obtained the

spurious claims that Edward Bruce was crowned King at 'Knock? nemelan' and was later killed by an idiot. All of these slips recur in CFB.

At a more general level, its choice of language and expression reflects the contribution to Irish historiography of men such as Thomas Leland

(1773) and Tom Moore (1840), and, too, the political sympathies of its modern nationalist author. These are not merely later extraneous items

grafted onto a piece of traditional Gaelic prose narrative of some level of antiquity

? take away from CFB everything it can be shown to have obtained elsewhere and there is very little of a necessarily Gaelic origin remaining, all of which appears to have been extracted from the Gaelic sources at a late date. One is left with a tract which is indeed written in

Gaelic, in the classical style of the medieval romances, which closely imitates the form and tone of the epic battle-tales, but which is based on

materials almost exclusively of non-Gaelic origin. It is this veneer of Gaelicness which has confused scholars, doubtful

that any modern writer would be either gifted enough or perhaps silly enough to concoct such a fabrication. I think, however, that in Nicholas

Kearney both essentials combined. He was a very talented scholar with,

though, an eccentric (some might say perverse) attitude to the truth. He was acquainted with Bryan Geraghty, the bookseller and scribe, who, in

1845, copied CFB from a text in Kearney's hand. In the same year, Geraghty published a translation of the Annals of the Four Masters, and a study of this less than perfect translation suggests that CFB is largely drawn from it, specifically, its entries relating to the Bruce invasion and

subjoined footnotes. The evidence, therefore, points to a date of

composition of CFB itself in the year 1845. It is no mere innocuous account of the events of which it treats since a considerable part of it,

despite the availability of reliable narratives of the invasion, is pure invention. The motive for its compilation may have been financial (the revelation of a traditional Gaelic account, casting 'new light' on the invasion would be sure to earn some reward for its 'discoverer') or it

may have been simply intended by some nineteenth century romantic nationalist to make political capital for his cause. A third hypothesis

may, however, help to solve the problem of the interdependence of both CFB and Geraghty's AFM on Archdall (1789): since spurious details from the latter embarrassingly found their way into Geraghty's work, a correction to one of which details had later to be printed, CFB may have been concocted in order to give added validity to the remainder.

As to the authorship, I strongly suspect that CFB was composed by Nicholas Kearney, the man in whose hand the earlier surviving copy was

written (and who claimed eleven years later to have another copy in his

possession). He is the only man that we know of who attempted to pass it off as genuine. And he grew up not far from Fochart, being a friend of




the family who, according to CFB, had waked Edward Bruce and buried him in their family plot at Fochart over five hundred years earlier.

The Convicts Friend

Fr John Joseph Therry. Pioneer Priest of Australia

At the back of the old gaol in George Street, which was the scene of

many a terrible tragedy, the condemned man stood upon the scaffold

awaiting his doom. Father Therry was convinced of the man's

innocence, and extorted from the Sheriff a promise that the execution would be delayed a quarter of an hour, while he strove with the Governor for a reprieve. As fast as his feet could carry him he ran to Sir Thomas Brisbane. Meanwhile the time was expiring, and the gloomy group around the scaffold awaited in silent suspense the issue of the errand of mercy. The Sheriff had good faith in Father Therry's power to obtain a reprieve,but the time was fast speeding on. At last, when the law was about to take its course, Father Therry was seen issuing from the gates of Government House, waving his hat and holding up the

reprieve. The Governor thanked him; and so,too, will history, for

having saved one innocent life.

From 'Centennial Magazine', Vol. I (1888-9), p. 112.

