Page 20 - O Mahony Society Newsletter December 2024_Neat

Unfortunately, the Annals have not survived—the last recorded sighting is by Ware in the
seventeenth century. In his Hiberniae Scriptores Ware says that he had seen the work (original or
copy?) in the possession of Florence MacCarthy in London in 1626. In that year Florence MacCarthy
would have been a house guest in the Tower of London. Could he have bartered it in one of his
many phases of financial difficulty? The deficiency in our knowledge of the South Munster families is
directly attributable to the loss of this work--the only comprehensive Munster Annals comparable to
those of Ulster and Connaught. (For further comment see Addendum.)

Can we continue to hope for the retrieval of these works—or even of one of them?
Fínghin married the daughter of Ó Donnahadha Mór of Loch Léin (Killarney); they had a son
named Dónall and a daughter, who married an O Driscoll.

INTELLECTUAL INTEREST OF FÍNGHIN

The intellectual interests of Fínghin were reflected in the manuscript work he commissioned. One
of the manuscripts constituting the compilation known as the Yellow Book of Lecan was transcribed
by Donnchadh Ó Duinnín at Ros Broin in 1465. A Medical tract was copied in 1478 by Cairbre Ó
Ceannabháin—also working at Ros Broin, under the patronage of Fínghin.

While Fínghin was remembered over the centuries as Prince and Patron, the memory of Fínghin as
scholar and man of letters was slowly being eroded by the absence of concrete scriptoral evidence—
the only force against the passage of time.
In 1724, Christophe-Paul de Robien, (1698-1756, Archaeologist, Chevalier, Baron de Kaen, Vicomte
de Plaintel) was appointed President à Mortier au Parlement de Bretagne. A tireless collector of
books (both print and manuscript), he was later to found the Public Library in his native city of Rennes,
to which he ultimately donated his entire collection of 4,300 printed and 62 manuscript books. In
1753, the Benedictines of the Congregation of St. Maur issues Nouveau Traitè de Diplomatique which
included a listing of an Irish manuscript sent to them by M. De Robien—apparently for the purpose
of having it listed. It would appear that, on completing their inspection, the monks dutifully returned
the MS to M. De Robien.

In 1848, Dr. J.H. Todd reported to the Royal Irish Academy on a description, published in the fourth
volume of Palaeographie Universellè of an Irish MS, then in the Bibliotheque Imperiale in Paris; and
how the writer M. Champolion was clearly convinced that the Paris MSD was one and the same
as that sent to the Benedictines by M. De Robien a century earlier. On the basis of the evidence
available to him, Dr. Todd was equally sure that this was an invalid judgment so that a second
comparably sized MS must exist elsewhere in France. Over the subsequent years, Todd became
convinced that the quest should begin in Rennes.

Twenty years later in 1869, while on holiday in Brittany, he took a day off to visit the Public Library
in Rennes—a visit that put an end to that holiday. His judgment on the existence of the second MS
was confirmed, but nothing could have prepared him for what he found—that a substantial part of
the MS was taken up by a Gaelic translation of the Travels of Sir John Maunderville. He spent several
days transcribing the opening pages and returned to Dublin to consult with his friend W.M. Hennessy.
In his report to the Academy, the full story is told of the discovery of this copy of a translation of
Maunderville executed by Fínghin Ó Mathghamhna at Ros Broin castle in 1475. This is the Cinderella
story behind the work discussed in detail by Meidhbhín Ní Úrdail in her scholarly work in this issue of
this Journal [Vol 17, 1994]. Here we merely quote from Dr. Todd’s original report to the Academy:

I have decyphered and translated from my rough notes the foregoing very curious document, by the able assistance
of my friend Mr. W.M. Hennessy. We learn from it that this book was transcribed at Rossbroin, “in the country of Hy
nEchach Mumhan,” now Ivaugh, the territory of O’Mahony, in the county of Cork. Rossbroin, now Rossbrin, was a castle

20