by Nollaig Ó Muraíle
When in August 1636 the work that we know as the Annals of the Four Masters was completed by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh and his small band of assistants, there seem to have been two complete copies. Each of them was divided into two manuscript volumes (i.e. four volumes in all), written on paper by a number of scribes, most notably Brother Mícheál himself and his cousin Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh. It has been suggested that one of these two-volume sets was a working copy and the other a clean copy. The latter, it has been assumed, was intended to be sent back to Louvain, where it would in due course be published. It may be though, that – as with the saints’ Lives – what was to appear in print was a Latin translation rather than the original Irish text. It has also been suggested that the other copy, the supposed working copy, was to be presented to Fearghal Ó Gadhra, MP for County Sligo, in return for his patronage of Ó Cléirigh and his team; without that patronage, the work would almost certainly not have been compiled in the first place.
Recent research by Bernadette Cunningham has shown, however, that the situation with regard to the various copies may not be quite as simple as had been thought: the supposed ‘Louvain copy’, for example, is not as clean and free of revision and insertions as had been believed, while there is no clear evidence that the other copy ever reached Ó Gadhra’s hands.
