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The Genesis and Evolution of the Irish Annals to AD 1000

Ireland possesses a formidable collection of medieval annals preserved in manuscripts dating from the late eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. Collectively these provide accounts of events extending from Creation to AD 1616, presenting thousands of textual entries over this range. Since for the most part these entries are arranged year by year these compilations have customarily been designated as ‘annals’. Up until the arrival of Christianity in Ireland in the earlier fifth century these entries principally reference Biblical and world history events from around the Mediterranean, with just occasional Irish legendary items. After the arrival of Christianity in Ireland the world history continues but is progressively eclipsed by the increasing number of entries relating Irish ecclesiastical and secular events. These entries may be written in Latin, Irish, or English, with Irish predominating overall. The earliest are in Old Irish, and the latest in early Modern Irish. There are ten major compilations which have been assigned the following titles and sigla by modern scholarship: ‘Annals of Tigernach’ ( AT ), ‘Chronicum Scotorum’ ( CS ), ‘Annals of Roscrea’ ( AR ), ‘Annals of Ulster’ ( AU ), ‘Annals of Inisfallen’ ( AI ), ‘Annals of Boyle’ ( AB ), ‘Annals of Connacht’ ( CT ), ‘Annals of Loch Cé’ ( LC ), ‘Mageoghagan’s Book’ alias ‘Annals of Clonmacnoise’ ( MB ), and the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’ ( FM ). To these may be added about a dozen fragmentary compilations 1. By any reckoning this corpus represents a substantial account of the past transmitted by Ireland’s medieval scholars. However, perhaps on account of Ireland’s peripheral situation in Europe, it came only slowly to the attention of Western scholarship. James Ussher ( † 1656 ) and his younger contemporary, James Ware ( † 1666 ), both collected and cited these Irish Annals in their published articles, and indeed they