Codices Hibernenses Eximii III: Book of Uí Mhaine
Book Details
Published by Royal Irish Academy
April 2023
HardbackNumber of pages: 384
ISBN: 9781911479550
The Book of Uí Mhaine is miscellaneous in content, comprising a wide range of texts in Old, Middle and Early Modern Irish, in prose and poetry, and covering a diverse range of genres from history to poetry, grammar to dindshenchas, glossaries to genealogies. Miscellaneous, however, does not necessarily mean random. Certain thematic clusters can be identified within the manuscript, and the layout and juxtaposition of texts appear to be both deliberate and meaningful. The manuscript contains much that represents senchas—the learned historical discourse of medieval Ireland—but there is also much about it that is more innovative, not least ‘the free mixture and association of contemporary poetry and older poetry in a single book’. Many of the poems in Book of Uí Mhaine are of particular social or political importance, and a significant number of them are uniquely preserved there.
About the authors
Ruairí Ó hUiginn
Ruairí Ó hUiginn MRIA is Senior Professor, School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Professor Ó hUiginn received his doctorate from Queen's University, Belfast. He is the editor of Codices Hibernenses Eximii I: Lebor na hUidre (2015), Codices Hibernenses Eximii II: Book of Ballymote (2018) and Codices Hibernenses Eximii III: Book of Uí Mhaine (2023).
Elizabeth Boyle
Elizabeth Boyle is Lecturer in Early Irish at Maynooth University. Her primary research interest is the intellectual and religious culture of early medieval Ireland. She is the author of History and Salvation in Medieval Ireland (2021); and her essay collection Fierce Appetites, published by Penguin, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards non-fiction book of the year in 2022.
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