Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G11
Deborah Hayden
National Library of Ireland MS G11 (15th century), p. 451: The beginning of the Old Irish medico-legal tract Bretha Déin Chécht. Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.
This fifteenth-century codex is one of the largest surviving Irish-language medical manuscripts. Its main scribe was Donnchadh Ó Bolgaidhe, evidently a member of the prominent Leinster-based medical kindred of that name. Donnchadh was active as a scribe between 1466 (the earliest date mentioned in this manuscript) and 1475, and seems to have been working at his home, which may have been located near Athy, Co. Kildare. The manuscript has been described as ‘a representative medical library’ containing texts dealing with most of the known branches of medicine, as well as materia medica, medical glossaries and medico-philosophical tracts. It includes several substantial texts, such as a copy of a Latin herbal translated into Irish by the ‘bachelor of medicine’ Tadhg Ó Cuinn in 1415 that details the curative properties and medical application of many plants. There are also many shorter texts of a practical nature, such as cures for sea-sickness; instructions for how to draw weapons from the body or heal wounds to the head; and charms for staunching blood or for treating gynaecological and obstetrical issues. Of particular note, however, is the inclusion of the sole surviving complete copies of two Old Irish medico-legal tracts that have been dated on linguistic and contextual grounds to the seventh century: namely, a tract on the fees due to a physician for healing various types of injury entitled Bretha Déin Chécht (‘Judgements of [the mythical healer-figure] Dían Cécht’), and a tract on sick-maintenance known as Bretha Crólige (‘Judgements of Blood-Lying’).
The entire manuscript has been digitised by the Irish Script on Screen project and can be viewed here.
Further reading:
Binchy, D. A. (ed. and trans.), ‘Bretha crólige’, Ériu, 12 (1938), 1–77
Binchy, D. A. (ed. and trans.), ‘Bretha Déin Chécht’, Ériu, 20 (1966), 1–66
Ní Shéaghdha, Nessa, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland, Fasciculus I. MSS G1–G14 (Dublin: DIAS, 1967)