Foras feasa ar Éirinn
UCD-OFM A 14. 17th century. Paper.
Foras feasa ar Éirinn is a prose history of Ireland, written in Co Tipperary at almost exactly the same time as the Four Masters were working on their annals in Donegal. The author was Geoffrey Keating, an Irish-speaking Catholic priest of Anglo-Norman descent. The history became a best-seller and circulated widely in manuscript down to the early twentieth century when it was published by the Irish Texts Society. Keating's autograph manuscript does not survive, and UCD-OFM A 14, partly in Mícheál Ó Cléirigh's hand, is the earliest copy in existence. At least some of it was transcribed at the Franciscan friary in Kildare, probably in 1636.
It seems that as soon as the Four Masters had finished their annals that Ó Cléirigh came to know about Keating's work and copied a version of it. It was brought to Louvain where John Colgan used it for his lives of Irish saints. The manuscript includes marginal notes in Colgan's hand.
