Matheson Collection > Gleanings from Irish manuscripts

SCRAPS FROM IRISH SCRIBES
I. RISDEARD O CONCHUBHAIR
BERNARDUS GORDONIUS, or Ber-
nard de Gordon, was the author of a
Latin medical treatise compiled at Mont-
pellier in France about the year 1303, and
entitled Lilium Medicinae, or The Lily of the
Art of Medicine, This work was translated into
Irish by a certain Cormac Mac Duinnshléibhe, or
Cormac Mac Donlevy, in the middle of the
fifteenth century. The precise date of the version
is not available, but we know that this practitioner
was engaged in preparing a version of another
medical work in the year 1459. Several manu-
scripts of the translation of the Lilium Medicinae
have come down to us, but it still remains un-
printed, save for some extracts included by
Standish H. O Grady in his Catalogue of Irish
Manuscripts in the British Museum, There are two
fine copies of the work in the library of the Royal
Irish Academy which, besides their value for
constructing the main text of the whole, will
have a particular interest because of the lengthy
scribal notes which they contain.* These notes
have never been printed, and I think it desirable
to transcribe and annotate them here.
The information they give regarding Irish
* Since these words were put in type several of our extracts
have been printed in Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the
R. I. Academy fasc. x, pp. 1168-73. Through the courtesy of
the Editor of the Catholic Bulletin this and the following essay
are reproduced from that review August 1929, February 1930.
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