Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 445 (24 B 3)
Siobhán Barrett
Royal Irish Academy 445 (24 B 3) (15th/16th century), p. 46: The beginning of a chapter of remedies for ear ailments. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.
Conla Mac an Leagha was the main scribe of this 128-page vellum manuscript. He was a member of the Mac an Leagha medical family and appears to have worked under the patronage of the Mac Diarmada lords from the medieval kingship of Magh Luirg, in the border area of counties Roscommon and Sligo. The date of June 1496 is recorded in a colophon to Conla’s copy of a lapidary (or treatise on the medicinal properties of stones and minerals). The scribe mentions five different places of writing altogether, including his own house, which may have been located at Gréach na gCaorach (Greaghnageeragh) in the barony of Boyle, Co. Roscommon.
The manuscript contains some 15 different medical and philosophical texts in Irish, including a fragment of Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium Medicinae; a fragment of Walter of Agilon’s De Dosibus; a short text called a Cidh pro Quo (‘Quid pro quo’) that lists possible substitutes for ingredients which may be unavailable; and a short treatise on the contents of urine containing some words in ogham script (on which, see further here and here).
By far the longest text in the manuscript, however, is the greater part of a remedy collection, 9 paper leaves of which are now preserved in a separate manuscript in the Royal Irish Academy (23 N 29). This substantial remedy collection contains around 920 cures grouped by body part and ordered a capite ad calcem, ‘from head to heel’. The ingredients are mostly herbal but minerals and animal products are also recommended. While most of the remedies are in prose format, there are also many in verse, along with several charms and prayers. Although Conla Mac an Leagha refers frequently to the usual medical authorities, such as Galen, Dioscorides and Constantine the African, evidence of adaptation to suit an Irish audience is seen in the occasional substitution of these names for those of Irish mythological and historical figures.
Further reading:
Barrett, Siobhán, ‘The king of Dál nAraidi’s salve’, Ériu 69 (2019), 171–8
Hayden, Deborah ‘Old English in the Irish Charms’, Speculum 97(2) (2022), 349–76
Nic Dhonnchadha, Aoibheann, ‘An Irish medical treatise on vellum and paper from the 16th century’, in Paper and the Paper Manuscript: A Context for the Transmission of Gaelic Literature, ed. by Pádraig Ó Macháin (Cork: Cló Torna), pp. 111–25
Walsh, Paul (1947) ‘An Irish medical family ‒ Mac an Leagha’, in Irish Men of Learning. Studies by Paul Walsh, ed. by Colm Ó Lochlainn (Dublin: Three Candles), pp. 206–18