Peter Costello
Echos of the past from the Archives
In 1971 a proposal was made by the manager of Muckross House in Killarney that an effort should be made to ensure the return to its place of creation of the manuscript of the Annals of Inisfallen.
The book had been created around 1092, with entries from 433 to down to that date by the initial scribe, and further ones by other hands down to 1450. This was on the island of Inisfallen in Lough Leane at Killarney.
A deputation was planned to come to Dublin, to speak with the Minister, who consulted his expert advisers.
The National Library director Patrick Henchy, however told the government that little was in fact known about the history of the manuscript, which was in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (as Rawlinson B53). There were, in fact, some 30 manuscript copies across Europe in various other libraries, three in the National Library alone.
There has been a facsimile edition issued by the Royal Irish Academy in 1933, and a full translation by the Institute of Advanced Studies in 1951. (Though he did not allude to it, there had been an earlier translation made by one Theophilus Flanagan in 1822.)
‘Guffaw’
Henchy felt that any request by the Irish government to the directors of the Bodleian would not only be refused but would be met with the English equivalent of “the loud guffaw”.
As the Bodleian had recently lent the volume for a show in Ireland it might also be thought ungracious.
The minster made clear to the local TD, Patrick O’Leary, the sense of the National Library’s view. He was unable to meet with a local group.
A copy of the facsimile and some large photographs of high quality would, it was thought, meet the needs of the people in Killarney, rather than the “supposed original”.
But the matter did not die. It came up again in 1983 and letters were exchanged with Dublin between June and September. Mr Cahill, then in charge of Muckross House had not given up.
Again the National Library was called upon – the price would be exorbitant, if even it were on offer. And it would be ungracious after the government to pursue the return of the originals.
The matter was even raised in the Dáil, but again the department reiterated the earlier facts already supplied.
The Bodleian would not sell it and the Muckross venture did not in any case have the facilities for conserving such a manuscript. Dr Lucas, the director of the National Museum and Dr Henchy repeated the earlier views yet again.
The return of St Conall’s Bell was another matter of a similar kind. This relic of the 6th Century was held locally until the pilgrimage to the saint’s shrine on the island of Iniskeel was suppressed by the local Catholic clergy – part of the Romanisation of Catholicism in Ireland in the early 19th Century.
Bell
The bell passed through private hands into the British Museum. In 2015 it returned to Donegal on loan and can now be seen in the County Museum.
So all might not be lost for the Annals of Inisfallen either.
All of this recalls the frequently expressed the desire of the people in Kells for the Book of Kells in Trinity College Library, Dublin, to be returned to its ancient home. This despite the fact that it was not created there, but only came to the place after the dissolution of Iona under the threat of Viking raiders.
Though called the Book of Kells it was in fact created in Iona under the influence of Scottish and Northern book illumination.
In 2001, Brian O’Leary, a Fianna Fáil councillor in Killarney, was still asking for the Annals to be returned to the town.
A call by Jimmy Deenihan (in reply to a question by Fianna Fáil TD Seán Ó Fearghaíl) for their return, supported by an editorial in a national newspaper, drew a stern and scholarly reproof that the suggestion was “nothing but an ill-informed gimmick”.