Laidcenn mac Bairchid, or Laidcenn mac Bairceda, is said to have been an early

Irish language Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

, whose

floruit ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...

, if he existed, may have fallen in the middle of the 5th century. According to later glosses, he belonged to the

Cruthin The Cruthin (; mga, Cruithnig or ; ga, label=Modern Irish, Cruithne ) were a people of early medieval Ireland. Their heartland was in Ulster and included parts of the present-day counties of Antrim, Down and Londonderry. They are also said ...

Dál nAraidi Dál nAraidi (; "Araide's part") or Dál Araide, sometimes Latinised as Dalaradia or Anglicised as Dalaray,Boyd, Hugh AlexanderIrish Dalriada ''The Glynns: Journal of The Glens of Antrim Historical Society''. Volume 76 (1978). was a Cruthin kin ...

Ulster Ulster (; ga, Ulaidh or ''Cúige Uladh'' ; sco, label= Ulster Scots, Ulstèr or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional Irish provinces. It is made up of nine counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United King ...

, a claim which may well be incorrect. A poem on the

Kings of Leinster Kings or King's may refer to: *Monarchs: The sovereign heads of states and/or nations, with the male being kings *One of several works known as the "Book of Kings": **The Books of Kings part of the Bible, divided into two parts **The ''Shahnameh'' ...

included in the ''Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae'' is attributed to him, but

Kuno Meyer Kuno Meyer (20 December 1858 – 11 October 1919) was a German scholar, distinguished in the field of Celtic philology and literature. His pro-German stance at the start of World War I in the United States was a source of controversy. His brother ...

considered the attribution to be certainly false and the poem is dated to the 7th century. Laidcenn's poem, if indeed it is his, provides a very different list of kings to that contained in the ''

Book of Leinster The Book of Leinster ( mga, Lebor Laignech , LL) is a medieval Irish manuscript compiled c. 1160 and now kept in Trinity College, Dublin, under the shelfmark MS H 2.18 (cat. 1339). It was formerly known as the ''Lebor na Nuachongbála'' "Book ...

'', probably intended to support the claims of the

Uí Bairrche Uí Bairrche (Modern Irish: ''Uí Bhairrche'', IPA: �iːˈwaːɾʲɾʲçə was an Irish kin-based group that originally held lands in the south of the ancient province of Leinster (or ''Cóiced Laigen'' "the Fifth of the Laigin"). Another south L ...

to the primacy in Leinster.

References

Further reading