Jesuit Archives collaborate on Irish language project
The Irish Jesuit Archives has recently collaborated with the Irish Script on Screen (ISOS), a project of the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies to make available for research some of the Irish language manuscripts housed at Lower Leeson Street.
The first manuscript of nine to be digitised, ‘Foras Feasa: An Leabhar Muimhneach Annála Inis Faithleann’, can now be viewed on the DIAS’s Irish Script on Screen website » [‘Irish Jesuit Archives’ can be found in the ‘Collections’, or ‘Bailiúcháin’ section of the site.] Bound in leather, with the episcopal arms of John O’Brien, bishop of Cloyne and Ross (1748-67), this manuscript consists of a copy of Geoffrey Keating’s ‘Foras Feasa’, and poems, annals and genealogies related to the Uí Briain family, by the scribe Mícheál Ó Longáin.
Damien Burke, Archivist at the Irish Jesuit Archives, explains: “We are delighted to collaborate with the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, to enable access to these 18th century Irish language manuscripts. The ISOS project does all the heavy lifting, as they digitise and provide online access. The archives benefits from an outreach perspective, as this material, often in a fragile state, can be reached”.
More background to the manuscripts can be found on the Irish Script on Screen website and in Clár Lámhscríbhinní Gaeilge, Leabharlanna na Cléire agus Mionchnuasaigh, Fascúl II (1980) by an tAthair Pádraig Ó Fiannachta, the Irish language scholar and Professor of Early Irish in Maynooth who translated the document.
