[t]he Irish doctor really takes his bow in the fourteenth century, and for the first time holds the stage. Unfortunately the metaphor […] is too near to reality, for we only see him, dressed in borrowed apparel, and speaking words which are not his own. From now on in a very rich and copious manuscript collection we make the acquaintance of the new doctor, but though he writes in Irish, the learning which he cultivates, the treatment which he suggests, the cures and the diet which he prescribes are all borrowed.1
This characterisation of the learning preserved in the extant corpus of Irish-language medical manuscripts—estimated to comprise approximately one-fifth of the total number of surviving manuscripts written in that vernacular from the period c.1200–c.1650—contains a great deal of truth.2 Medical teaching in Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland during the later Middle Ages was deeply intertwined with texts and ideas that underpinned the curricula of the emerging continental universities of the period, as is amply evidenced by the publication of numerous vernacular medical texts that are transparent
From the interrelated perspectives of multilingualism, textual transfer, and the historical sociology of knowledge, however, it remains the case that many of the nuances of the relationship between medical writing in the Irish language and the wider scope of European scientific learning in the Middle Ages
1 The Languages of Medicine in Medieval Europe
As the institutionalised lingua franca of academic discourse, Latin maintained a prestigious position in the early medical faculties of the continental universities, many of which included Irish scholars among their ranks of teachers and students.10 While the learning cultivated in such institutions provided the basis for medical knowledge and practice in society at large, formal teaching of this kind ultimately only catered to a small medical élite that was not representative of the full range of medical practitioners active during the medieval period.11 The process of “vernacularisation,” defined by William Crossgrove as “the transposition of texts from a high-status language, usually Latin, into a
Medical writing in the vernacular is attested from a relatively early stage in the Insular world, where some 300 medical or scientific items in Old English—including astrological and computistical treatises, herbals and remedy books—survive in manuscripts produced between the ninth and twelfth centuries.16 The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the appearance
Although some Irish medical texts may draw in part on material from earlier, now-lost textual exemplars, the majority of the extant medical manuscripts in this language were written between the mid-fourteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries and their contents point squarely to the participation of Irish and
2 Irish-Language Remedy Collections
These compendia sometimes contain elements of zodiacal computation of prognosis; they often contain uroscopy texts for diagnosis, but they are made up mostly of treatments for ailments—or, more accurately, for symptoms—by minor surgical procedures, non-theoretical phlebotomy, cupping, dietary, prayers, charms, ritual action, and, of course, “prescriptions.” These recipes may be simples or compounded from a variety of ingredients—animal, lapidary, or, most often, vegetable. The remedies are frequently organized from head to foot, or, in the case of herbal simples, by the plant. A large group derives from Macer’s De virtutibus herbarum; others may derive from such works as the Salernitan Antidotarium Nicolai. The variable nature of this sort of text cannot be too strongly emphasized.26
In keeping with this last observation, Faith Wallis subsequently noted that medical compilations concerned with pharmacology, materia medica, and recipe literature tend to present the “most disturbed textual traditions” among
The complexities of textual transfer that obtained both within the Irish medical manuscript corpus and across different linguistic traditions will be illustrated here by way of three examples drawn from an early-sixteenth-century prosimetrical remedy book compiled and written mainly by the North Connacht physician Conla Mac an Leagha, a member of a hereditary medical family active in that region during the late-medieval period.28 Although all
2.1. A Cure for Epilepsy
[Ar cut[h]ach]: incind gabair boinind do cur trē fhāinde óir ⁊ a tabairt do naīdin īarna breith sul blaises biad ⁊ ni gēba cuthach ē.
[For cuthach]: put the brain of a female goat through a gold ring and give it to an infant after it has been born before it tastes food, and cuthach will not seize it.30
That epilepsy was probably the affliction for which this remedy was deemed efficacious can be inferred from its context in the remedy book, where it is found at the end of a chapter that otherwise primarily consists of remedies for galar toitmech (“falling sickness”).31 The latter phrase is a literal translation of Latin morbus caducus, a term which was itself a close translation from Greek and is well attested as a reference to epilepsy in numerous therapeutic manuals of the late-medieval period. In such sources, epileptic seizures were typically perceived as periodic occurrences associated with lunar phases and
Cerebrum caprae Magi per anulum aureum traiectum prius quam lac detur infantibus instillant contra comitiales ceterosque infantium morbos.
The brain of a she-goat, passed through a golden ring, is given drop by drop by the Magi to babies, before they are fed with milk, to guard them from epilepsy and other diseases of babies.34
Quidam autem dicunt ut si capre cerebrum per anulum aureum tractum et infanti datum antequam lac sugat tranglutiri datum nec caducus fieri nec phantasticus potest.
Some say that, if a goat’s brain be drawn through a gold ring and given to swallow by an infant before it sucks milk, the infant cannot become epileptic (caducus) or deluded (phantasticus).38
It may be significant that, in contrast to Pliny’s Naturalis Historia where this advice occurs within a discussion of various types of ailments affecting infants (including teething, sore gums, ulcerated mouth, and diarrhea), Constantine includes the remedy in a location that is contextually comparable to that of Conla Mac an Leagha’s remedy book, namely, at the end of a chapter entitled De epilepsia et eius cura (“Concerning epilepsy and its cure”). One might wonder whether Constantine’s modification of the original remedy in the Naturalis Historia to specify that the cure was efficacious for babies affected by “delusions” of some kind—as suggested by the term phantasticus, which replaces Pliny’s ceterosque infantium morbos (“and other diseases of babies”)—might underlie the use of the word cuthach (“madness, frenzy”) in the heading of the vernacular version.
When considered in isolation from its wider European context, therefore, the anonymous Irish remedy for cuthach identified here from a sixteenth-century North Connacht remedy book might be thought to belong to a kind of strange, folkloric medicine peculiar to the vernacular medical tradition of medieval Ireland. Upon closer inspection, however, it can be firmly identified as a product of a culture steeped in Latin learning from an early period and well-versed in wider currents of continental medical pedagogy.
2.2 A Cure for an Ulcer or Fistula
Words drawn from other vernaculars can in some cases provide valuable clues regarding the immediate sources and broader cross-linguistic transmission of passages in Irish remedy collections. Medical texts contain a relatively high proportion of specialist, technical terminology, such as names of ingredients or tools, that could naturally present difficulties for translators. Various approaches might be adopted in dealing with such terms, such as replacing a word in the source-text with a more colloquial native term, coining an entirely
Leigis a n-aghaidh dā cinēl na lindidan .i. īasc re n-aburtur rōitsi, loiscter ē a crocān nua crīad ⁊ in lūaith do cur a cneid na lindigan re 7 lā ⁊ īccaid.
A cure for two types of linnida (“dry fistula, ulcer”), i.e. a fish that is called a róitse is burnt in a new earthen pot, and put the ashes in the wound of the ulcer for 7 days, and it heals.43
Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha identified the term róitse in this example as one of a handful of “neologisms” that are found in the remedy collection a whole, stating that the term in question was “evidently from Anglo-Norman.”44 The form róitse does indeed appear to derive from the Anglo-Norman word roche, which is attested with various meanings including “rock, stone, boulder” and “a roach (fish from the carp family),” although only the former meaning has been noted in lexicographical sources for the Irish language.45 The earliest
London, British Library MS Harley 978, fol. 34ra (c.1240–50):
A la gute festre, esprové mecine: Pernez uns peissuns que sunt apelez roches, si ardez en un noef pot, si en fetes poudre. E pernez le jus de avence, si versez al pertus e emplez del pudre e fetes ço desque les pertuz
seient ensechiz e les plaies sanez. E endementers que vus frez cest, fetes lui beivre le jus de avence.49
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 388 (c.1320–30):
Item a gutefestre bone medicine e prové: Pernez pessounus que sunt appelez roches, si lez ardés en un nuvele pot de tere dekez a puder e pernez le jous de avense, si versés eins a la pertuse de pot e mellez ov le puder e quissez dekez il seit secche e dumenteres donez loy a beyre le jous de avense. Gara.50
Item ad guttam festinandam: Pernez pessoun que est appellé roche, si ardez ben tut vives en une nuvele pot tut a puder. E pernez le jous de avence, si versés eins le pertuse de[ke] il seyt ben moyste. E puz met[e]z se enplaystre a le gute e festez ly beyre jus de avence.51
Tak a fysche þat men calles a roche & bryn it in a newe pott & make dely powdir þer-of. þan tak þe jus of auaunce & helle it in þe thirlles & fill þe thirlles with þe poudir & do so ilk day to þe thirlles be dryed & þe wonde hale. & gare þe seke ilk a daye drynk þe jews of auaunce.52
For þe gowte-festre. Take a fiche þat is callyd a roche, and branne hym to poudyr in a scherde, and take auaunce and sawge, and iuce hem, and do þe juce in-to þe holis of þe festre, and aftyr fyl þe holys with þe poudyr, and vs þis medcyn, tyl þe holys be drye, and tyl þe sore hele, and all þat tyme let hym drynke anaunce, tyl he be hole.53
While it is impossible to determine the immediate source of the Irish remedy for linnida on the basis of the above evidence alone, the juxtaposition of these examples demonstrates that loanwords cited in isolation do not always provide unambiguous grounds for attributing material to one particular linguistic tradition.54 On a broader level, these comparanda from Anglo-Norman and English sources also point to the participation of Irish medical scribes in the processes of vernacularisation of scientific learning that impacted other linguistic traditions across the Insular world. The possibility that the remedy as a whole—and not only the loanword contained in it—may have made its way into the Irish source directly via the medium of one of these vernaculars should be left open to consideration.
2.3 A Cure for Skin Disease
[…] sūg praisci bāne ⁊ escob bán do cur a toll a srōna gu sreōda. Dá rab tesbach [i]na srōin [i]na diaig, curtur bainne cīchi inte arambi mac […] Et derbaid Dyan Cecht gurob tarbach don incinn sin.
[…] put the juice of white cabbage and daisy56 in his nostril until he sneezes, and if there should be heat in the nose afterwards, the breastmilk of one who has nursed a son is put in it […] And Dían Cécht confirms that that is beneficial for the brain.57
Iterum sūg praisci bāine ⁊ esboc beaan do cur a pollaib na srōna co sreōga ⁊ dá roib tesbach sa srōin na diaigh curtar baindi cích maic innti ⁊ derbaid .g. gurab tarbach don cinn sin.
Another: put the juice of white cabbage and daisy in the nostrils until he sneezes, and if there is heat in the nose afterwards the breastmilk of [a woman who has nursed] a son is put in it, and “g” confirms that that is beneficial for the head.59
And 3yue him sumwhat in his nose to make him snesse, as sauge or plemeros y-brusid and y-holde longe in þe nose. And 3eue him þe poudir of piretre, of staphie, and syneuey y-sowid / in a lynen cloþ. And let him holde þis in his mooþ and chewe it ofte. And when þe humour falleþ dovn from his brayn into his mooþ, þen alwei let him spet it oute. And aftir þat he is y-purged, take a woman-is mylke þat fedeþ a knave childe and anoynt his y3en þerwiþ.61
Once again, the Irish version of this remedy is considerably abbreviated by comparison with both its Latin and English parallels, omitting details such as the instruction to have the patient chew a cloth containing certain herbs and
3 Translation Across Vernaculars in Irish Textual Tradition
The foregoing discussion has sought to highlight, in a very preliminary way, some parallels between the learning preserved in one sixteenth-century Irish remedy collection and material transmitted in both Latin and other contemporary vernacular traditions of medical writing. The question of whether any of the cures included in Conla Mac an Leagha’s collection might have entered the Irish canon directly via the medium of languages such as French or English is a thorny one that requires considerable further research. Although many years ago Robin Flower suggested that the cultivation of medical learning in Ireland from the twelfth century onwards might be connected to the rise of the Anglo-Norman nobility, who provided patronage to Irish physicians for
Here it may of course prove useful to look to the wider context of translation practices in late-medieval Ireland, where many literary works are known to have been rendered into Irish directly from other vernaculars around the time that Conla Mac an Leagha’s medical remedy collection was compiled, i.e. the second half of the fifteenth century and the start of the sixteenth century.64 Of possible significance in this regard is the fact that one of the most prolific scribes and literary translators of the period in question was one Uilliam Mac an Leagha, whose precise relationship to the North Connacht medical scribe Conla Mac an Leagha is uncertain, but who was clearly a contemporary working in similar learned circles.65 This Uilliam was wholly or partially responsible for copying seven extant manuscripts, several of which contain hagiographical and narrative material that he translated directly from Middle English into Irish.66 One of the manuscripts in question, London, British Library, Additional 30512, was in the possession of the Cahir Butlers in 1561, and Erich Poppe has observed that “it is very likely that [Uilliam] Mac an Legha worked within a mixed Irish and Old English cultural and social milieu. The dominant medium of cultural and literary influence to which he was exposed,
4 Conclusion
[i]t is perhaps not helpful at this stage to characterize Irish physicians as either “outward looking” or “conservative”; they may have been as various as they were numerous. What would indubitably be helpful would be the
further exploration of their manuscripts in relation to the textual traditions of the Latin works on which they drew, or the pursuit in much greater detail of a comparison between the processes, contexts and significance of vernacularization in Ireland and in other regions of northern Europe.72
The three examples discussed here, drawn from a single medical remedy book compiled in North Connacht around the turn of the sixteenth century, represent only a small drop in a much larger ocean of Irish-language scientific material that remains largely unstudied, but has much to contribute to wider discussions concerning the multilingual, multicultural milieu of the medieval Insular world. Recent advances in digital technologies may provide a practical means for facilitating such research; although it has been over twenty years since William Crossgrave observed that it would “be enormously helpful to have a ‘Repertorium’ for, e.g. medieval Irish or Danish manuscripts dealing with science, medicine and technology” comparable to that pioneered for Middle English medical texts by Linda Voigts and Patricia Deery Kurtz, no such database yet exists for the Irish-language material.73 This is, surely, the next logical step for achieving a more in-depth understanding of the place of Ireland within the wider currents of medical and scientific learning that impacted Europe as a whole throughout the Middle Ages.
Acknowledgements
The research for this article was undertaken as part of the project LEIGHEAS: Language, Education and Medical Learning in the Premodern Gaelic World, funded by the Consolidator Laureate Award scheme of Research Ireland (2022–2026; grant agreement no. IRCLA/2022/2922).
Bibliography
Manuscripts
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 388.
Dublin, King’s Inns Library, MS 17.
Dublin, National Library of Ireland, MS 512.
Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, MS 23 N 29.
Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, MS 24 B 3.
London, British Library, MS Arundel 333.
London, British Library, MS Harley 546.
London, British Library, MS Harley 978.
Primary Sources
Anathomia Gydo, ed. and trans. Eithne Ní Ghallchobhair, Irish Texts Society 66 (London, 2016).
Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library MS Harley 585: The Lacnunga, ed. and trans. Edward Pettit, 2 vols., Mellen Critical Editions and Translations 6A–6B (Lewiston, 2001).
Constantinus Africanus, Pantegni Practica, in Opera omnia Ysaac (Lyons, 1515).
Dioscorides, De materia medica, trans. Lily Y. Beck, Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus, De materia medica, 3rd (revised) ed., Altertumswissenschaftliche Textue und Studien 38 (Hildesheim, 2017).
Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium Medicine (Lyons, 1510).
Healing and Society in Medieval England. A Middle English Translation of the Pharmaceutical Writings of Gilbertus Anglicus, ed. Faye Marie Getz (Madison, WI, 1991).
Henry Daniel, Liber Uricrisiarum: a Reading Edition, eds. E. Ruth Harvey, M. Teresa Tavormina and Sarah Star (Toronto, 2020).
“A Latin Technical Phlebotomy and its Middle English Translation,” eds. Linda E. Voigts and Michael R. McVaugh, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74/2 (1984), 1–69.
Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England: Being a Collection of Documents, for the Most Part Never Before Printed, Illustrating the History of Science in this Country Before the Norman Conquest, ed. and trans. Oswald Cockayne, 3 vols., Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 35 (London, 1864–66).
The ‘Liber de Diversis Medicinis’ in the Thornton Manuscript (MS. Lincoln Cathedral A. 5. 2), ed. M. S. Ogden, Early English Text Society 207 (Oxford, 1938).
“A Mediaeval Handbook of Gynaecology and Midwifery …,” ed. Winifred Wulff, in Irish Texts. Fasciculus V, eds. John Fraser, Paul Grosjean and J.G. O’Keeffe (London, 1934), 1–99.
Medical Writings from Early Medieval England, Volume I. The Old English Herbal, Lacnunga, and Other Texts, eds. John D. Niles and Maria A. D’Aronco, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 81 (Cambridge, MA, 2023).
The Medicina Plinii. Latin Text, Translation and Commentary, ed. Yvette Hunt (London, 2020).
Oribasii Collectionum Medicarum Reliquiae, ed. Johann Raeder, 4 vols., Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 6 (Leipzig, 1928–31).
Pliny, Naturalis Historia, ed. and trans. W.H.S. Jones, Pliny. Natural History, Books 28–32 (Cambridge, MA, 1963).
Regimen na sláinte: Regimen sanitatis Magnini Mediolanensis, ed. Séamus Ó Ceithearnaigh [James P. Carney], 3 vols. (Dublin, 1942–44).
Rosa Anglica seu Rosa Medicinae Johannis Anglici: an Early Modern Irish Translation of a Section of the Mediaeval Medical Text-book of John of Gaddesden, ed. and trans. Winifred Wulff, Irish Texts Society 25 (London, 1929).
Schöffler, Herbert, ed., Beiträge zur mittelenglischen Medizinliteratur. Sächssische Forschungsinstitute in Leipzig, anglistische Abteilung, Heft I (Halle, 1919).
The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, ed. Monica Green (Philadelphia, 2001).
Secondary Sources
Adams, J. N., and M. Deegan, “Bald’s Leechbook and the Physica Plinii,” Anglo-Saxon England 21 (1992), 87–114.
Arbuthnot, Sharon, “Late Medieval Irish Medicalese and its European Context,” in Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World: Vernacular Texts and Traditions, eds. Deborah Hayden and Sarah Baccianti (Turnhout, 2025), pp. 287–305.
Baccianti, Sarah, “Cultural Crossroads and Medical Learning in the Medieval North Atlantic World,” in Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World, eds. Hayden and Baccianti (Turnhout, 2025), pp. 23–52.
Banham, Debby, “Dun, Oxa and Pliny the Great Physician: Attribution and Authority in Old English Medical Texts,” Social History of Medicine 24/1 (2011), 57–73.
Barrett, Siobhán, “Varia I: The King of Dál nAraide’s Salve,” Ériu 69 (2019), 171–8.
Breen, Aidan, “Uilliam (Iollann) Mac an Lega,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, eds. Eoin Kinsella et al., 2009, https://www.dib.ie/biography/mac-lega-uilliam-iollann-a4990 (accessed 8 June 2024).
Buck, R.A., “Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval Medical Texts,” Neophilologus 96 (2012), 467–85.
Byrne, Aisling, Translating Europe: Imported Narratives and Irish Readers at the End of the Middle Ages, Paul Walsh Memorial Lecture 4 (Maynooth, 2019).
Byrne, Aisling, “Cultural Intersections in Trinity College Dublin MS 1298,” in Adapting Texts and Styles in a Celtic Context. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Processes of Literary Transfer in the Middle Ages. Studies in Honour of Erich Poppe, eds. Axel Harlos and Neele Harlos, Studien und Texte zur Keltologie 13 (Munster, 2016), 291–304.
Cronin, Michael, Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages, Cultures (Cork, 1996).
Crossgrove, William, “The Vernacularization of Science, Medicine, and Technology in Late Medieval Europe: Broadening our Perspectives,” Early Science and Medicine 5/1 (2000), 47–63.
Demaitre, Luke, Medieval Medicine: the Art of Healing, from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara, CA, 2013).
Demaitre, Luke, Doctor Bernard de Gordon: Professor and Practitioner (Toronto, 1980).
Dinneen, Patrick S., Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla. An Irish-English Dictionary (Dublin, 1927).
Doody, Aude, Pliny’s Encyclopedia: The Reception of the Natural History (Cambridge, 2010).
Eastman, Carol, Codeswitching (Clevendon, 1992).
Faerber, Beatrix, “A Text Preserved at Aghmacart Medical School: Bernard de Gordon’s De Prognosticis, Book II, 9,” Ossory, Laois and Leinster 7 (2019), 100–22.
Flower, Robin, “Ireland and Medieval Europe [Sir John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture],” Proceedings of the British Academy 13 (1927), 271–303.
Flower, Robin, “Popular Science in Mediaeval Ireland,” Ériu 9 (1921–23), 61–67.
Grace, Pierce, “Medicine in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, c.1350–c.1750,” Irish Historical Studies 44, no. 166 (2020), 201–23.
Green, Monica, “A Handlist of Latin and Vernacular Manuscripts of the So-called Trotula Texts, Part 2: The Vernacular Translations and Latin Re-writings,” Scriptorium 51 (1997), 80–104.
Harris, Jason, “Latin Learning and Irish Physicians, c.1350 – c.1610,” in Rosa Anglica: Reassessments, ed. Ó Murchú, 1–25.
Hayden, Deborah, “Old English in the Irish Charms,” Speculum 97.2 (2022), 349–76.
Hayden, Deborah, “Medieval Irish Medical Verse in the Nineteenth Century: Some Evidence from Material Culture,” Irish Historical Studies 45, no. 168 (2021), 159–77.
Hayden, Deborah, “A Sixteenth-century Irish Collection of Remedies for Ailments of the Male Reproductive Organs,” Celtica 33 (2021), 248–76.
Hayden, Deborah, “Téacs leighis ó thuaisceart Chonnacht: comhthéacs, foinsí agus struchtúr,” in Téamaí agus Tionscadal Taighde, ed. Eoghan Ó Raghallaigh, Léachtaí Cholm Cille 50 (Maynooth, 2020), 60–84.
Hayden, Deborah, “Attribution and Authority in a Medieval Irish Medical Compendium,” Studia Hibernica 45 (2019), 19–51.
Hayden, Deborah, “A Versified Cure for Headache and Some Lexicographical Notes,” Keltische Forschungen 8 (2019), 7–22.
Hayden, Deborah, “Three Versified Medical Recipes Invoking Dían Cécht,” in: Fír Fesso: A Festschrift for Neil McLeod, eds. Anders Ahlqvist and Pamela O’Neill, Sydney Series in Celtic Studies 17 (Sydney, 2018), 107–123.
Hayden, Deborah, and Sarah Baccianti, “Cultural Crossroads and Medical Learning in the Medieval North Atlantic World,” in Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World, eds. Hayden and Baccianti (Turnhout, 2025), 23–52.
Hayes, Richard, “Irish Medical Links with the Continent,” in What’s Past is Prologue: A Retrospect of Irish Medicine, eds. William Doolin and Oliver Fitzgerald (Dublin, 1952), 23–28.
Höffler, Max, Die volksmedizinische Organotherapie und ihr Verhältnis zum Kultopfer (Stuttgart, 1908).
Hunt, Tony, “Code-switching in Medical Texts,” in Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, ed. D. A. Trotter (Cambridge, 2000), 131–47.
Hunt, Tony, Anglo-Norman Medicine, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1997).
Hunt, Tony, Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-century England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1991).
Hunt, Tony, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-century England: Introduction and Texts (Cambridge, 1990).
Hunt, Tony, and Michael Benskin, eds., Three Receptaria from Medieval England: The Languages of Medicine in the Fourteenth Century, Medium Aevum Monographs, New Series 21 (Oxford, 2001).
Jacquart, Danielle, and Charles Burnett, eds., Constantine the African and ‘Alī Ibn al-‘Abbās al-Mağūsī: The Pantegni and Related Texts, Studies in Ancient Medicine 10 (Leiden, 1994).
Kesling, Emily, Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, Anglo-Saxon Studies 38 (Oxford, 2020).
Kwakkel, Erik, and Francis Newton, eds., Medicine at Monte Cassino: Constantine the African and the Oldest Manuscript of the Pantegni, Speculum Sanitatis 1 (Turnhout, 2019).
Luft, Diana, Medieval Welsh Medical Texts, Volume 1: The Recipes (Cardiff, 2020).
Mac Coitir, Niall, Ireland’s Wild Plants. Myths, Legends and Folklore (Cork, 2015).
Ní Shéaghdha, Nessa, “Translations and Adaptations into Irish,” Celtica 16 (1984), 107–24.
Nic Dhonnchadha, Aoibheann, “Medical Writing in Irish,” Irish Journal of Medical Science 169/3 (2000), 217–20.
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. Pádraig Ó Macháin (Cork, 2019), 111–25.
Nic Dhonnchadha, Aoibheann, “Michael Casey’s Medical Transcripts in Gilbert MS 147,” Éigse 60 (2019), 75–85.
Nic Dhonnchadha, Aoibheann, “Some Words from Almusór (1400),” Ossory, Laois and Leinster 7 (2019), 14–31.
Nic Dhonnchadha, Aoibheann, “The Medical School of Aghmacart, Queen’s County,” Ossory, Laois and Leinster 2 (2006), 11–43.
O’Boyle, Cornelius, The Art of Medicine. Medical Teaching at the University of Paris, 1250–1400, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 9 (Leiden, 1998).
Ó Corráin, Donnchadh, “What Happened [to] Ireland’s Medieval Manuscripts?” Peritia 22–23 (2011), 191–223.
O’Grady, Standish, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Library [formerly British Museum], vol. 1 (London, 1926; repr. Dublin, 1992).
Ó Muraíle, Nollaig, “The Learned Family of Ó Maol Chonaire – the Connacht Branch,” in The Book of Ballycummin, eds. Elizabeth Boyle and Ruairí Ó hUiginn, Codices Hibernensis Eximii 4 (Dublin, forthcoming).
Ó Murchú, Liam P., ed., Rosa Anglica: Reassessments, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 28 (London, 2016).
Pahta, Päivi, “Code-switching in Medieval Medical Writing,” in Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English, eds. Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (Cambridge, 2004), 73–99.
Pahta, Päivi, and Irma Taavitsainen, “Vernacularisaton of Scientific and Medical Learning in its Sociohistorical Context,” in Medical and Scientific Writing, eds. Taavitsainen and Pahta, 1–22.
Parina, Elena, “Medical Texts in Welsh Translation: Y Pedwar Gwlybwr and Rhinweddau Bwydydd,” in Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages, eds. Aisling Byrne and Victoria Flood, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 30 (Turnhout, 2019), 47–63.
Poppe, Erich, “Latin and Latin Learning in Fifteenth-century Ireland,” in Researching the Languages of Ireland, ed. Raymond Hickey (Uppsala, 2011), 97–117.
Poppe, Erich, “Stair Ercuil ocus a Bás – Rewriting Hercules in Ireland,” in Translations from Classical Literature:Imtheachta Aeniasa and Stair Hercuil ocus a Bás, ed. Kevin Murray, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 17 (London, 2006), 37–68.
Ross, Bianca, Bildungsidol – Ritter – Held. Herkules bei William Caxton und Uilliam Mac an Lega (Heidelberg, 1989).
Risk, Henry, “French Loan-words in Irish, Part II,” Études Celtiques 14/1 (1974), 67–98.
Sharpe, Richard, “Books from Ireland, Fifth to Ninth Centuries,” Peritia 21 (2010), 1–55.
Shaw, Francis, “Irish Medical Men and Philosophers,” in Seven Centuries of Irish Learning, 1000–1700, ed. Brian Ó Cuív (Cork, 1961), 75–86.
Shaw, Francis, “Medieval Medico-philosophical Treatises in the Irish Language,” in Féil-sgríbhinn Eóin Mhic Néill: Essays and Studies Presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill, ed. J. Ryan (Dublin, 1940), 144–57.
Taavitsainen, Irma, Päivi Pahta and Martti Mäkinen, eds., An Electronic Corpus of Middle English Medical Texts (Amsterdam, 2005).
Temkin, Oswei, The Falling Sickness. A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (Baltimore, MD, 1945).
Voigts, Linda E., and Patricia Deery Kurtz, eds., Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference (Ann Arbor, 2000).
Wallis, Faith, “The Experience of the Book: Manuscripts, Texts, and the Role of Epistemology in Early Medieval Medicine,” in Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions, ed. Don Bates (Cambridge, 1995), 101–26.
Walsh, Paul, “An Irish Medical Family – Mac an Leagha,” in Irish Men of Learning: Studies by Father Paul Walsh, ed. Colm Ó Lochlainn (Dublin, 1947), 206–18.
Walsh, Paul, “The Learned Family of O Maelconaire,” in Irish Men of Learning, 34–48.
Walsh, Paul, “‘Scraps’ from Irish Scribes,” in idem, Gleanings from Irish Manuscripts, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 1933), 123–81.
Websites
Ango-Norman Dictionary: www.anglo-norman.net
British Library Digital Collection: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/
CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: https://celt.ucc.ie/irllist.html#scimed\
Dictionary of Irish Biography: https://www.dib.ie/
eDIL – Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language: www.dil.ie
Irish Script on Screen: www.dias.isos.ie
LEIGHEAS: https://leigheas.maynoothuniversity.ie
Teanglann.ie Dictionary and Language Library: http://www.teanglann.ie
Francis Shaw, “Irish Medical Men and Philosophers,” in Seven Centuries of Irish Learning, 1000–1700, ed. Brian Ó Cuív (Cork, 1961), 75–86, at 78–79.
For this estimation, see Nessa Ní Shéaghdha, “Translations and Adaptations into Irish,” Celtica 16 (1984), 107–24, at 112. For the sake of convenience and because the focus of this chapter is a text written in Connacht, Ireland during the late Middle Ages, I employ the term “Irish” in reference to the language of the medical texts produced across the medieval Gaelic world; this is in keeping with the usage of the historical dictionary of the Irish language (eDIL, www.dil.ie), which covers material of both Irish and Scottish provenance.
Digital editions of most of the published Irish-language medical texts are now available in the CELT database (https://celt.ucc.ie/irllist.html#scimed; accessed 21 February 2022). A recent overview of the field is given by Pierce Grace, “Medicine in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, c.1350–c.1750,” Irish Historical Studies 44, no. 166 (2020), 201–23.
See, e.g., Regimen na sláinte: Regimen Sanitatis Magnini Mediolanensis, ed. Séamus Ó Ceithearnaigh [James P. Carney], 3 vols. (Dublin, 1942–44), and Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, “Some Words from Almusór (1400),” Ossory, Laois and Leinster 7 (2019), 14–31 (on an Irish pathological treatise based mainly on the Practica super nono Almansoris of Gerardus de Solo).
“A Mediaeval Handbook of Gynaecology and Midwifery,” ed. Winifred Wulff, in Irish Texts. Fasciculus V, eds. John Fraser, Paul Grosjean and J. G. O’Keeffe (London, 1934), 1–99. The Latin text of the Trotula has been edited by Monica Green, The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia, 2001); see also her remarks on Wulff’s edition in “A Handlist of Latin and Vernacular Manuscripts of the So-called Trotula Texts, Part 2: The Vernacular Translations and Latin Re-writings,” Scriptorium 51 (1997), 80–104, at 99.
Anathomia Gydo, ed. and trans. Eithne Ní Ghallchobhair, Irish Texts Society 66 (London, 2016).
On the marginalia and colophons of Irish medical scribes, see, e.g., Paul Walsh, “‘Scraps’ from Irish Scribes,” in Gleanings from Irish Manuscripts, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 1933), 123–81; Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, “Medical Writing in Irish,” Irish Journal of Medical Science 169/3 (2000), 217–20; and eadem, “The Medical School of Aghmacart, Queen’s County,” Ossory, Laois and Leinster 2 (2006), 11–43.
On the Irish Rosa Anglica, see Winifred Wulff, ed. and trans., Rosa Anglica seu Rosa Medicinae Johannis Anglici: An Early Modern Irish Translation of a Section of the Mediaeval Medical Text-book of John of Gaddesden, Irish Texts Society 25 (London, 1929) and the essays in Liam P. Ó Murchú, ed., Rosa Anglica: Reassessments, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 28 (London, 2016). On Bernard of Gordon and his works, see Luke Demaitre, Doctor Bernard de Gordon: Professor and Practitioner (Toronto, 1980).
For recent remarks on this subject with regard to the Irish medical lexicon, see Sharon Arbuthnot, “Late Medieval Irish Medicalese and its European Context,” in Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World: Vernacular Texts and Traditions, eds. Deborah Hayden and Sarah Baccianti (Turnhout, 2025), pp. 287–305.
For examples of some such figures, see Richard Hayes, “Irish Medical Links with the Continent,” in What’s Past is Prologue: A Retrospect of Irish Medicine, ed. William Doolin and Oliver Fitzgerald (Dublin, 1952), 23–28.
Päivi Pahta and Irma Taavitsainen, “Vernacularisaton of Scientific and Medical Learning in its Sociohistorical Context,” in Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English, eds. Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (Cambridge, 2004), 1–22, at 9–10.
William Crossgrove, “The Vernacularization of Science, Medicine, and Technology in Late Medieval Europe: Broadening our Perspectives,” Early Science and Medicine 5/1 (2000), 47–63, at 47. This article is the concluding essay in a series of papers on the vernacularisation of science, medicine, and technology in the late Middle Ages that appeared in a special issue of Early Science and Medicine, vols. 3/2 and 4/2.
On Latin proficiency among Irish medical scholars of the late-medieval period, see Jason Harris, “Latin Learning and Irish Physicians, c.1350–c.1610,” in Rosa Anglica: Reassessments, ed. Ó Murchú, 1–25.
British Library, Arundel MS 333, fol. 113b; see Standish O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Library [formerly British Museum], vol. 1 (London, 1926; repr. Dublin, 1992), 257. Nic Dhonnchadha, “Medical Writing in Irish,” 218, notes that Cormac is known to have completed the earliest surviving translation of Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium Medicinae in 1482, as well as Irish renderings the same author’s Liber Pronosticorum (1295) and De Decem Ingeniis Curandorum Morborum (1299). On his extant works, see also Ní Ghallchobhair, Anathomia Gydo, 2–4, and Beatrix Faerber, “A Text Preserved at Aghmacart Medical School: Bernard de Gordon’s De Prognosticis, Book II, 9,” Ossory, Laois and Leinster 7 (2019), 100–22.
Crossgrove, “Vernacularization,” 47 and 49.
Pahta and Taavitsainen, “Vernacularisation of Scientific and Medical Learning,” 9. For a more detailed account of the vernacular sources summarised here, see Deborah Hayden and Sarah Baccianti, “Cultural Crossroads and Medical Learning in the Medieval North Atlantic World,” in Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World, eds. Hayden and Baccianti, pp. 23–52.
See especially the editions published in Tony Hunt, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-century England: Introduction and Texts (Cambridge, 1990); idem, Anglo-Norman Medicine, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1997); and Tony Hunt and Michael Benskin, eds., Three Receptaria from Medieval England: The Languages of Medicine in the Fourteenth Century, Medium Aevum Monographs, New Series 21 (Oxford, 2001).
See most recently Diana Luft, Medieval Welsh Medical Texts, Volume 1: The Recipes (Cardiff, 2020), and Elena Parina, “Medical Texts in Welsh Translation: Y Pedwar Gwlybwr and Rhinweddau Bwydydd,” in Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages, eds. Aisling Byrne and Victoria Flood, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 30 (Turnhout, 2019), 47–63.
For this figure, see Pahta and Taavitsainen, 11, whose estimate is based on texts recorded in Linda E. Voigts and Patricia Deery Kurtz, eds., Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference (Ann Arbor, 2000). See also Irma Taavitsainen, Päivi Pahta, and Martti Mäkinen, eds., An Electronic Corpus of Middle English Medical Texts (Amsterdam, 2005), which includes 86 texts from three traditions of medical writing (surgical treatises, specialised texts, and remedy books). For edited examples of English medical texts from this later period, see Linda E. Voigts and Michael R. McVaugh, “A Latin Technical Phlebotomy and its Middle English Translation,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74/2 (1984), 1–69; Faye Marie Getz, Healing and Society in Medieval England: A Middle English Translation of the Pharmaceutical Writings of Gilbertus Anglicus (Madison, WI, 1991); and E. Ruth Harvey, M. Teresa Tavormina, and Sarah Star, eds., Henry Daniel, Liber Uricrisiarum: A Reading Edition (Toronto, 2020).
See, for example, Tony Hunt, “Code-switching in Medical Texts,” in Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, ed. by D. A. Trotter (Cambridge, 2000), 131–47; Hunt and Benskin, Three Receptaria; and Päivi Pahta, “Code-switching in Medieval Medical Writing,” in Medical and Scientific Writing, eds. Taavitsainen and Pahta, 73–99.
For a discussion of the historical circumstances surrounding the loss of many early medieval Irish manuscripts and the survival of most Old Irish texts in much later codices, see Richard Sharpe, “Books from Ireland, Fifth to Ninth Centuries,” Peritia 21 (2010), 1–55, and Donnchadh Ó Corráin, “What Happened [to] Ireland’s Medieval Manuscripts?” Peritia 22–23 (2011), 191–223. For observations on the possible preservation of earlier Irish medical material in late-medieval manuscripts, see Deborah Hayden, “A Sixteenth-century Irish Collection of Remedies for Ailments of the Male Reproductive Organs,” Celtica 33 (2021), 248–76, and eadem, “Old English in the Irish Charms,” Speculum 97.2 (2022), 349–76.
Harris, “Latin Learning and Irish Physicians,” 25.
Arbuthnot, “Late Medieval Irish Medicalese,” 289–90.
On Irish medicine and philosophy, see especially Francis Shaw, “Medieval Medico-philosophical Treatises in the Irish Language,” in Féil-sgríbhinn Eóin Mhic Néill: Essays and Studies Presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill, ed. J. Ryan (Dublin, 1940), 144–57, and idem, “Irish Medical Men and Philosophers.” On approaches to adapting and translating this material (including some criticism of Shaw’s views), see Nessa Ní Shéaghdha, “Translations and Adaptations,” 111–17, and Michael Cronin, Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages, Cultures (Cork, 1996), 25–28.
Voigts and McVaugh, “A Latin Technical Phlebotomy,” 22–23, cite six separate editions of Middle English remedy books published between 1844 and 1938. The surviving Old English material likewise consists primarily of remedy collections, and these have received considerable editorial attention and discussion; see, e.g., Oswald Cockayne, ed. and trans., Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England: Being a Collection of Documents, for the Most Part Never Before Printed, Illustrating the History of Science in this Country Before the Norman Conquest, 3 vols., Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 35 (London, 1864–66); Edward Pettit, ed. and trans., Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library MS Harley 585: The Lacnunga, Mellen Critical Editions and Translations 6A–6B, 2 vols. (Lewiston, 2001); and John D. Niles and Maria A. D’Aronco, eds., Medical Writings from Early Medieval England, Volume I: The Old English Herbal, Lacnunga, and Other Texts, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 81 (Cambridge, MA, 2023). For a recent analysis of these texts and references to secondary scholarship, see Emily Kesling, Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, Anglo-Saxon Studies 38 (Oxford, 2020).
Voigts and McVaugh, “A Latin Technical Phlebotomy,” 21–22.
Faith Wallis, “The Experience of the Book: Manuscripts, Texts, and the Role of Epistemology in Early Medieval Medicine,” in Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions, ed. Don Bates (Cambridge, 1995), 101–26, at 107–11. For remarks on the use of authoritative attributions in the Irish remedy collection discussed further below, see Deborah Hayden, “Attribution and Authority in a Medieval Irish Medical Compendium,” Studia Hibernica 45 (2019), 19–51; on the versification of Irish herbal remedies in its wider European context, see eadem, “Three Versified Medical Recipes Invoking Dían Cécht,” in Fír Fesso: A Festschrift for Neil McLeod, eds. Anders Ahlqvist and Pamela O’Neill, Sydney Series in Celtic Studies 17 (Sydney, 2018), 107–123.
The contents and background of this text, parts of which are preserved in two separate Royal Irish Academy manuscripts (RIA MSS 24 B 3 and 23 N 29), have been discussed in a number of recent publications. For editions and analysis of one chapter and several individual remedies, see Siobhán Barrett, “Varia I: The King of Dál nAraide’s Salve,” Ériu 69 (2019), 171–78; Hayden, “A Sixteenth-century Irish Collection;” eadem, “Attribution and Authority;” eadem, “Three Versified Medical Recipes;” eadem, “A Versified Cure for Headache and Some Lexicographical Notes,” Keltische Forschungen 8 (2019), 7–22; and eadem, “Medieval Irish Medical Verse in the Nineteenth Century: Some Evidence from Material Culture,” Irish Historical Studies 45, no. 168 (2021), 159–77. The codicology of the text has been treated by Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, “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. Pádraig Ó Macháin (Cork, 2019), 111–25, and further remarks on its contents are found in eadem, “Michael Casey’s Medical Transcripts in Gilbert MS 147,” Éigse 60 (2019), 75–85.
See e.g. eDIL, s.v. cuthach or dil.ie/14046 (“rage, fury, madness”); http://www.teanglann.ie, s.v. cuthach (“rage, fury”), and Patrick S. Dinneen, Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla. An Irish-English Dictionary (Dublin, 1927), s.v. cuthach (“madness, rage”).
RIA MS 24 B 3, 90.13–15 (my translation). In this and the following passages cited from unpublished texts, expansions are indicated by italics, missing letters are supplied in square brackets, and length-marks, where not found in the manuscript, are marked using a macron over vowels. Word-division and punctuation are editorial. Note that this recipe in fact begins in the manuscript witness with the word aliut (“another”), indicating that it is intended to treat the same ailment as the preceding remedy, which is headed Ar cut[h]ach. This example is also noted in Deborah Hayden, “Téacs leighis ó thuaisceart Chonnacht: comhthéacs, foinsí agus struchtúr,” in Téamaí agus Tionscadal Taighde, ed. Eoghan Ó Raghallaigh, Léachtaí Cholm Cille 50 (Maynooth, 2020), 60–84, at 79.
The chapter as a whole is found in RIA MS 24 B 3, 89–90.
Luke Demaitre, Medieval Medicine: the Art of Healing, from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara, CA, 2013), 147; on the history of the disease, see also Oswei Temkin, The Falling Sickness. A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (Baltimore, MD, 1945).
Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, 141.
Pliny, Naturalis Historia 28.78, ed. and trans. W.H.S. Jones, Pliny, Natural History: Books 28–32 (Cambridge, MA, 1963), 174–75.
The Medicina Plinii has most recently been edited by Yvette Hunt, The Medicina Plinii: Latin Text, Translation and Commentary (London and New York, 2020). On knowledge of the Natural History in early medieval England, see, e.g., Debby Banham, “Dun, Oxa and Pliny the Great Physician: Attribution and Authority in Old English Medical Texts,” Social History of Medicine 24/1 (2011), 57–73, and J. N. Adams and M. Deegan, “Bald’s Leechbook and the Physica Plinii,” Anglo-Saxon England 21 (1992), 87–114. On the later reception of Pliny’s work, see Aude Doody, Pliny’s Encyclopedia: The Reception of the Natural History (Cambridge, 2010).
A copy of this text is found in Dublin, King’s Inns Library MS 17, fol. 13r–31v (s. XV), and a second, abridged version of it occurs in NLI MS 512, fol. 5–8 (dated to 1462). A digital facsimile of the former manuscript can be viewed on ISOS (www.dias.isos.ie; accessed 21 February 2022). Translated excerpts from Constantine’s Viaticum are also found elsewhere in Conla Mac an Leagha’s remedy book; on some of these, see Hayden, “Authority and Attribution,” 31–32 and 41–42.
Cornelius O’Boyle, The Art of Medicine. Medical Teaching at the University of Paris, 1250–1400, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 9 (Leiden, 1998), 123–24.
Constantinus Africanus, Pantegni Practica, 5.17, in Opera omnia Ysaac (Lyons, 1515), fol. xcix, d; my translation is a slight modification of that given in Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, 145 (who suggests that this advice from Constantine might have originated in “vernacular lore”). On the evolution and transmission of the Pantegni, see Danielle Jacquart and Charles Burnett, eds., Constantine the African and ‘Alī Ibn al-‘Abbās al-Mağūsī: The Pantegni and Related Texts, Studies in Ancient Medicine 10 (Leiden, 1994) and Erik Kwakkel and Francis Newton, eds., Medicine at Monte Cassino: Constantine the African and the Oldest Manuscript of the Pantegni, Speculum Sanitatis 1 (Turnhout, 2019).
For a more detailed analysis of these techniques in relation to Irish medical texts, see Arbuthnot, “Late Medieval Irish Medicalese.”
Pahta, “Code-switching,” 81–82.
Hunt, “Code-switching,” 131.
See eDIL, s.v. linnida (dil.ie/30283).
RIA MS 24 B 3, 88.12–14 (my translation).
Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Michael Casey’s Medical Transcripts,” 82–83 and n. 82; the author also notes the existence of a second copy of the remedy in a slightly earlier (fifteenth-century) Irish medical manuscript (Dublin, National Library of Ireland G11, 285.39–42).
See www.anglo-norman.net, s.vv roche1 and roche2 respectively. For attestations of the borrowing in Irish, see Henry Risk, “French Loan-words in Irish, Part II,” Études Celtiques 14/1 (1974), 67–98, at 87 (citing róitse, róiste < AN roche ‘rock’) and eDIL, s.v. róiste “rock” (dil.ie/35494); these citations are also noted by Nic Dhonnchadha, “Michael Casey’s Medical Transcripts,” 83 n. 82.
www.anglo-norman.net, s.v. roche2. For the glossary in question, see Tony Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-century England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1991), 1.23.
Dioscorides, De materia medica, 2.28; trans. Lily Y. Beck, Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus: De Materia Medica, 3rd rev. ed., Altertumswissenschaftliche Texte und Studien 38 (Hildesheim, 2017), 100.
According to Max Höffler, Die volksmedizinische Organotherapie und ihr Verhältnis zum Kultopfer (Stuttgart, 1908), 149, the freshwater carp fish is not noted in written sources prior to the sixth century, but appears to have been well known in Europe during the early Christian period, when it was frequently found in monastery ponds and consumed at Lent by monks and clergy; Höffler further notes that the fish is frequently used in medicinal preparations as a substitution for other animal ingredients.
Hunt, Popular Medicine, 121 (no. 132).
Hunt and Benskin, Three Receptaria, 139 (no. 571, fol. 28ra).
Hunt and Benskin, Three Receptaria, 149 (no. 666, fol. 33va).
M.S. Ogden, ed., The “Liber de Diversis Medicinis” in the Thornton Manuscript (MS. Lincoln Cathedral A. 5. 2), Early English Text Society 207 (Oxford, 1938), 80.23–27. Ogden notes (117) a parallel for this remedy in the work of the late antique medical writer Oribasius; see Johann Raeder, ed., Oribasii Collectionum Medicarum Reliquiae, 4 vols., Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 6 (Leipzig, 1928–31), 2.49.
Herbert Schöffler, ed., Beiträge zur mittelenglischen Medizinliteratur. Sächssische Forschungsinstitute in Leipzig, anglistische Abteilung, Heft I (Halle, 1919), 235.
Here one might note Carol Eastman’s observation (in her Codeswitching (Clevendon, 1992), 1) that “the study of loanwords per se out of context is a relic of the past” (cited in Hunt, “Code-switching,” 132).
Although I have not yet managed to fully elucidate the contents of this section of the remedy book, the passage cited here is preceded by several remedies stated to be for carriage, defined in eDIL (s.v., dil.ie/8262) as “scabies, mange, skin disease.”
The plant referred to here as escob bán (spelled esboc beaan in the second version of the text cited below) is not recorded in eDIL (accessed 8 June 2024), but Niall Mac Coitir, Ireland’s Wild Plants: Myths, Legends and Folklore (Cork, 2015), 255, gives Espibawn, Espie-ban, Easpagán, Easpag Bán, Easpag Baoch and Easpag Speáin as alternative names for the ox-eye daisy (leucanthemum vulgare). Mac Coitir further notes (257) that the word “has nothing to do with bishops (easpag in Irish), but derives from the word easpa meaning an abcess. Ox-eye daisy was used in traditional medicine to cure abcesses, boils and other skin complaints.”
RIA MS 445 (24 B 3), 41.21–24. While the beginnings of individual remedies in the collection are consistently marked using rubricated initials, the passage cited here starts mid-sentence in the manuscript, following a line and a half of text beginning with the words Dentur scetrac. In another earlier copy of the passage (considered below), however, it is clear that two distinct remedies for the same ailment are in question, with the excerpt cited above being the second of the these.
For more such examples, see Hayden, “Attribution and Authority,” and Barrett, “The King of Dál nAraidi’s Salve.”
London, British Library MS Harley 546, fol. 14v10–12. A digital facsimile of this manuscript can be viewed online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_546 (accessed 22 February 2022).
Nic Dhonnchadha, “Michael Casey’s Medical Transcripts,” 85 n. 90.
Getz, Healing and Society in Medieval England, 56. Cf. Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium Medicinae, Bk. III (Lyons, 1510), fol. 138va: Et ex eadem decoctione fomentetur caput optime tunc apponatur puluis condisi aut sileris in naribus. et prouocetur sternutatio vt dissoluatur humiditas. Post fiat masticatio ex puluere stapbidis piretri sinapis in panno ligatis per longum tempus. Et si fluens humor permittatur decurrens a cerebro exire primo in lecto recte recipiatur: et irrorentur oculi et frons cum lacte mulieris masculum nutrientis et hoc modo curatur lippitudo et lacrime et dolor oculorum.
Pliny, Naturalis Historia, 8.21 (ed. and trans. W.H.S. Jones, 52–53). On this theme in medieval English tradition, see R.A. Buck, “Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval Medical Texts,” Neophilologus 96 (2012), 467–85, where this example from Pliny is noted at 473–74.
Robin Flower, “Ireland and Medieval Europe [Sir John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture],” Proceedings of the British Academy 13 (1927), 271–303.
A valuable recent account of the state of the art in this field is given by Aisling Byrne, Translating Europe: Imported Narratives and Irish Readers at the End of the Middle Ages, Paul Walsh Memorial Lecture 4 (Maynooth, 2019).
On Uilliam’s possible relationship to Conla and other members of his family who worked as medical scribes, see Paul Walsh, “An Irish Medical Family: Mac an Leagha,” in Irish Men of Learning: Studies by Father Paul Walsh, ed. Colm Ó Lochlainn (Dublin, 1947), 206–18, and also Aisling Byrne, “Cultural Intersections in Trinity College Dublin MS 1298,” in Adapting Texts and Styles in a Celtic Context: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Processes of Literary Transfer in the Middle Ages. Studies in Honour of Erich Poppe, eds. Axel Harlos and Neele Harlos, Studien und Texte zur Keltologie 13 (Munster, 2016), 291–304, at 292. Aidan Breen, “Uilliam (Iollann) Mac an Lega,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, eds. Eoin Kinsella et al., 2009, https://www.dib.ie/biography/mac-lega-uilliam-iollann-a4990 (accessed 8 June 2024), argues that Uilliam was the father of Conla. My thanks to Nicholas Thyr for drawing my attention to this reference.
Erich Poppe, “Latin and Latin Learning in Fifteenth-century Ireland,” in Researching the Languages of Ireland, ed. Raymond Hickey (Uppsala, 2011), 97–117, at 99–100; on the manuscripts and translation style of Uilliam Mac an Leagha, see, e.g., Byrne, “Cultural Intersections,” 292–93; Erich Poppe, “Stair Ercuil ocus a Bás: Rewriting Hercules in Ireland,” in Translations from Classical Literature: Imtheachta Aeniasa and Stair Hercuil ocus a Bás, ed. Kevin Murray, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 17 (London, 2006), 37–68, at 37–38; and Bianca Ross, Bildungsidol, Ritter, Held: Herkules bei William Caxton und Uilliam Mac an Lega (Heidelberg, 1989).
Poppe, “Latin and Latin Learning,” 100.
Robin Flower, “Popular Science in Mediaeval Ireland,” Ériu 9 (1921–23), 61–67, at 65–67; Hayden, “Three Versified Medical Recipes.”
On this family, see Paul Walsh, “The Learned Family of O Maelconaire,” in Irish Men of Learning: Studies (Dublin, 1947), 34–48, and Nollaig Ó Muraíle, “The Learned Family of Ó Maol Chonaire: The Connacht Branch,” in The Book of Ballycummin, eds. Elizabeth Boyle and Ruairí Ó hUiginn, Codices Hibernensis Eximii 4 (Dublin, forthcoming).
Walsh, “An Irish Medical Family,” 206–7.
Flower, “Ireland and Mediaeval Europe,” 283.
Harris, “Latin Learning,” 25; see also above, p. 87.
Crossgrove, “Vernacularization,” 59–60; on the database compiled by Voigts and Kurtz, see above, n. 19. The LEIGHEAS project, based at Maynooth University, is in the process of developing such a digital resource for the Irish corpus: see https://leigheas.maynoothuniversity.ie (accessed 8 June 2024).