THE CELTIC SCRIBE
Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh
and the Annals of Ireland
By RAY CAVANAGH
Having settled in Galway, Dubhaltach put forth the Book of Genealogies, then entitled Leabhar na nGenealach. This Herculean effort featured genealogies of Ireland’s principal families extending from the pre-Christian era to its author’s current year of 1649.
In August of that year, as Dubhaltach completed his history of Ireland’s kings, a Spanish ship brought bubonic plague to Galway.
The next several months saw the atrocious mortal agony of 4,000 townspeople. It is assumed that Dubhaltach, along with most Galway survivors, fled to surrounding countryside.
The following year, Dubhaltach laboured on the index to his Irish Kings endeavour. This index, rather anomalous for a Gaelic manuscript, consisted of a staggering 3,000 entries. The monolithic task saw completion on December 28, 1650, as Cromwellian forces crossed the River Shannon en route to Galway.
Amidst the ensuing chaos, Dubhaltach packed up his manuscripts, and promptly vanished. Seven years later, the scribe emerged from an abandoned Dominican abbey in Sligo, bearing his compilation on Gaelic authors.
As his Irish-Catholic presence was in defiance of the area’s Cromwellian law, Dubhaltach stored his new work at an undisclosed location, then vanished once again.
By 1665, Dubhaltach had resurfaced in Dublin, translating Gaelic tracts for Sir James Ware, who wished to publish a history of Irish bishops.
It appears that other projects were undertaken, but any such manuscripts have been lost. When Sir James died in December 1666, Dubhaltach soon left Dublin. He travelled the land, seeking patronage. Some say he eventually headed to Antrim and sold several manuscripts to a local poet.
There is nothing more on record until 1671, when Dubhaltach was “stabbed to death by local man, Thomas Crofton, at a shebeen near the village of Skreen, County Sligo.”
In 2004, Dubhaltach’s most enduring work, Leabhar na nGenealach was republished as The Great Book of Irish Genealogies. In this recent title’s introduction, Nollaig Ó Muraíle comments on the irony of Dubhaltach having “furnished us with so much information about others,” yet “leaving us very few details about his own life.”
Though Dubhaltach illuminated numerous familial lines dating back millennia, he revealed nothing as to whether or not he, himself, ever married.
Even his own mother’s name goes unmentioned. Furthermore, he discloses nothing about his era and its severe woes – plague, invasion, chaos, carnage, starvation – as if the man had absolutely no other objective than to transcribe the past.
However, this preoccupying objective was done well indeed. Under frequent peril and tumult, Dubhaltach applied countless, meticulous hours to the proper collection, research, and transcription of Ireland’s history.
Many of the ancient texts he consulted have since disappeared, a loss which myriad times increases the value of the old scribe’s contribution.
Of Dubhaltach’s slayer, little is known. Also unclear is the reason for the attack. Conjectures have ranged from dispute over a maiden, to monetary conflict, to the possibility of historical debate gone awry. As with so much of Dubhaltach’s life, the circumstances leading to his death have remained cryptic.
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