Matheson Collection > Gleanings from Irish manuscripts

GLEANINGS FROM IRISH MANUSCRIPTS
Meath. James O Farrell we hear of from Tadhg
O Neachtain, already referred to :
O Fearghail fa dheóigh Séamus seang
a crich Longphortach aird Eireann
James O Farrell the graceful, from
the high land of Longford in Erin.
He wrote some folios, now in the British Museum,
in 1 7 1 1 . There were other scribes later named
O Farrell. Of MacCarragher nothing is known.
The Doctor might be Dr. Edmund Byrne, Arch-
bishop of Dublin from 1707 to 1723, who was
arrested, and subsequently admitted to bail in the
early part of 1718.'^ Dr. Byrne was a friend of
the O Neachtains, and they compiled a lengthy
elegy in Irish on his death. We are in the dark
as to what piece on the Battle of the Boyne
Mac Solly had transmitted to Garret Macnamee.
Richard Tupper or Tipper, to whom the letter
was addressed, lived at Mitchelstown, in the
parish of Castleknock, in the county of Dublin.
He has left a considerable body of MSS., which
are now divided between Dublin and the British
Museum. The earliest known to Mr. Robin Flower
is dated 1 709, and contains Lives of Saints and
I . "All the Catholics of that kingdom were thrown into
the greatest consternation by the arrest of the Archbishop of
Dublin and some of his priests and religious through malice
of a Spanish Jew who, feigning himself a Catholic priest,
deceived that prelate, and then denounced him to the Govern-
ment. All the prisoners had already been set at liberty on giving
security to appear when called on." — Spiciiegium Ossoriense^
iii, 131-
202