''Baile Chuind Chétchathaig'' (, "The Vision of
Conn of the Hundred Battles
Conn Cétchathach (), or Conn of the Hundred Battles, son of Fedlimid Rechtmar, was a legendary High King of Ireland who is claimed to be the ancestor of the Connachta, and through his descendant Niall Noígiallach, the Uí Néill dynasties, w ...
") is an
Old Irish
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic (, Ogham, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ; ; or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic languages, Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from 600 to 900. The ...
list of
Kings of Tara
The term Kingship of Tara () was a title of authority in ancient Ireland - the title is closely associated with the archaeological complex at the Hill of Tara. The position was considered to be of eminent authority in medieval Irish literature ...
or
High Kings of Ireland
High King of Ireland ( ) was a royal title in Gaelic Ireland held by those who had, or who are claimed to have had, lordship over all of Ireland. The title was held by historical kings and was later sometimes assigned anachronously or to leg ...
which survives in two 16th-century manuscripts,
23 N 10 and
Egerton 88
Egerton MS 88 is a late sixteenth-century Irish manuscript, now housed in the British Library Egerton Collection, London. It is the work of members of the O'Davorens (Irish: Ó Duibhdábhoireann), a distinguished family of lawyers in Corcomroe, ...
. It is the earliest such king-list known, probably dating from around 700 AD. The later ''
Baile In Scáil'' is closely related.
Date
''Baile Chuind Chétchathaig'' was first edited by
Rudolf Thurneysen
Eduard Rudolf Thurneysen (14 March 1857 – 9 August 1940) was a Swiss linguist and Celticist.
Biography
Born in Basel, Thurneysen studied classical philology in Basel, Leipzig, Berlin and Paris. His teachers included Ernst Windisch and ...
who dated it to about 700 AD and believed it to have been included in the lost ''
Cín Dromma Snechtai
or ("book of Druimm Snechta"; , ) is a now lost early Irish manuscript, thought to have been written in the 8th century AD.
Name
Old Irish ''cín'', derived from the Latin ''quinio'' "five", was a small book made of five folded vellum leaves; ' ...
'' manuscript. Thurneysen later revised this opinion based on the content of the poem, supposing that the poem's "Glúnshalach" represented 10th-century king
Niall Glúndub. Later editors and writers have generally preferred Thurneysen's first estimate, taking the work to have been begun in the lifetime of
Fínsnechta Fledach
Fínsnechta Fledach mac Dúnchada (died 695) was High King of Ireland. Fínsnechta belonged to the southern Síl nÁedo Sláine sept of the Uí Néill and was King of Brega, in modern County Meath, Ireland. He was a grandson of Áed Sláine. H ...
(died 695).
In recent studies
Edel Bhreathnach
Edel Bhreathnach is an Irish historian and academic and former CEO of the Discovery Programme.
Bhreathnach was a Tara Research Fellow for the Discovery Programme from 1992 to 2000. In 2005 she was appointed Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Mícheál � ...
has suggested that the current form of the poem may be somewhat later: while the kings who follow Fínsnechta were previously interpreted as imagined future kings, she suggests that these are in fact historical figures from the first quarter of the eighth century disguised by
kenning
A kenning ( Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech, a figuratively-phrased compound term that is used in place of a simple single-word noun. For instance, the Old English kenning () means , as does ().
A kenning has two parts: a base-word (a ...
s. If this is correct, the poem as a whole dates from around 720 or was revised at about that time.
[Bhreathnach, "Political Context", p. 50; Murray, "Manuscript Tradition", p. 70; Mac Shamhráin & Byrne, "Prosopography", pp. 159 & 204–212.]
Content and context
Analogues
Notes
References
*
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*
*
*
* Gerard Murphy
"On the Dates of Two Sources Used in Thurneysen's Heldensage: I. ''Baile Chuind'' and the date of ''Cín Dromma Snechtai''" in ''Ériu 16'' (1952): 145-51. includes edition and translation.
*
External links
a summary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baile Chuind Chetchathaig
Texts in Irish
Early Irish literature
Early medieval literature
Regnal lists