As if to emphasise the truth that they were only redacting the Annals of Ireland from the most ancient sources at their command, the Masters wrote in an ancient bardic dialect full at once of such idioms and words as were unintelligible even to the men of their own day unless they had received a bardic training. In fact, they were learned men writing for the learned, and this work was one of the last efforts of the esprit de corps of the school-bred shanachy which always prompted him to keep bardic and historical learning a close monopoly amongst his own class. Keating was Michael O'Clery's contemporary, but he wrote—and I consider him the first Irish historian and trained scholar who did so—for the masses not the classes, and he had his reward in the thousands of copies of his popular History made and read throughout all Ireland, while the copies made of the Annals were quite few in comparison, and after the end of the seventeenth century little read.
The valuable but meagre Annals of Tighearnach, published by the Rev. Charles O'Conor with a rather inaccurate Latin translation, and now in process of publication by Dr. Whitley Stokes, were compiled in the eleventh century. Clonmacnois of which Tighearnach was abbot was founded in 544, and the Annals had probably for their basis, as M. d'Arbois de Jubainville remarks, some book in which from the very foundation of the monastery the monks briefly noted remarkable events from year to year. Tighearnach declares that all Irish history prior to the founding of Emania is uncertain.[8] Tighearnach himself died in 1088.
Another valuable book of Annals is the Chronicon Scotorum, of uncertain origin, edited for the Master of the Rolls in one volume by the late Mr. Hennessy, from a manuscript in the handwriting of the celebrated Duald Mac Firbis. It begins briefly with the legended Fenius Farsa, who is said to have composed the Gaelic language, "out of seventy-two languages." It then jumps to the year 353 A.D., merely remarking "I pass to another time and he who is will bless it, in this year 353 Patrick was born." At the year 432 we meet the curious record, "a morte Concculaind [Cuchulain] herois usque ad hunc annum 431, a morte Concupair [Conor] mic Nessa 412 anni sunt." Columcille's prayer at the battle of Cul Dremhne is given under the year 561, and consists of three poetic ranns. Cennfaeladh is another poet frequently quoted, and as in the "Four Masters," we meet with numerous scraps of poems given as authorities. On the murder of Bran Dubh, king of Leinster, which took place in 605, two verses are quoted curiously attributed to "an old woman of Leinster," "de quo anus Laighen locutus rand."
The Annals of Ulster cover the period from the year 431 to 1540. Three large volumes of these have been published for the Master of the Rolls, the first by Mr. Hennessy, the second and third by Dr. Mac Carthy. Some verses, but not many, are quoted as authorities in these annals also, from the beginning of the sixth century onward.
The Annals of Loch Cé begin at 1014 and end in 1590, though they contain a few later entries. They also are edited for the Master of the Rolls in two volumes by Mr. Hennessy. They contain scarcely more than half a dozen poetic quotations.
The Annals of Boyle contained in a thirteenth-century manuscript, begin with the Creation and are continued down to 1253. The fragmentary Annals of Boyle contain the period from 1224 to 1562.
The Annals of Innisfallen were compiled about the year 1215, but according to O'Curry were commenced at least two centuries before that period.
The Annals of Clonmacnois were a valuable compilation continued down to the year 1408. The original of these annals is lost, but an English translation of them made by one Connla Mac Echagan, or Mageoghegan, of West Meath, for his friend and kinsman Torlough Mac Cochlan, lord of Delvin, in 1627, still exists, and was recently edited by the late Father Denis Murphy, S.J.
These form the principal books of the annals of Ireland, and though of completely different and independent origin they agree marvellously with each other in matters of fact, and contain the materials for a complete, though not an exhaustive, history of Ireland as derived from internal sources.