Matheson Collection > Gleanings from Irish manuscripts

A LETTER OF JOHN MAC SOLLY
THE ORIGINAL of the letter printed
and translated in the following pages will
be of interest, not only as being from the
pen of a good Irish scholar, but also as making
a very probable allusion to the imprisonment of
an Archbishop of Dublin. It is bound into
the MS. marked 23M4, in the Royal Irish
Academy. It has not, to my knowledge, been
published before. A few words of explanation
regarding the writer, the addressee, and the per-
sonal and other references in it, will be necessary.
John Mac Solly, the writer, was a native of
county Meath, and resided in Harmanstown, in
the parish of Stackallen. He cultivated Irish
literature, not, however, as an original author.
He is known as a diligent copier of MSS., and
as a friend of Tadhg O Neachtain, the lexico-
grapher. The latter was a son of Sean O Neachtain,
the poet, and spent a considerable number of
years in the city of Dublin, where he commemo-
rated his literary acquaintances in a piece of
twenty-six stanzas. Mac Solly he speaks of as
follows :
An Solamh sochma Seaán na searc
a Thoigh Calláin thaoibhe Teamhrach
cuim is sciath is tearmon dil
fhritil arsaidh mhacaibh Mileadh
(Calm Mac Solly, John the beloved, from Stack-
alien, in Tara's neighbourhood, protector and
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