Lebor na hUidhre

Lebor na hUidre
Royal Irish Academy
Also known as	Book of the Dun Cow
Type	Compilation of early Irish literature
Date	Before 1106 (with later additions)
Place of origin	Clonmacnoise
Language(s)	Middle Irish, with some Latin words
Scribe(s)	Máel Muire mac Céilechair and two others
Material	Vellum
Size	32cm x 24cm
Format	Folio
Condition	Damaged, only 67 pages remaining
Script	Irish minuscule
Discovered	1844

Lebor na hUidre [ˈl͈ʲevor nˠə huiðʲrʲə] or the Book of the Dun Cow (MS 23 E 25) is an Irish vellum manuscript dating to the 12th century. It is the oldest extant manuscript in Irish. It is held in the Royal Irish Academy and is badly damaged: only 67 leaves remain and many of the texts are incomplete. It is named after an anachronistic legend that it was made from the hide of a dun cow by Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise.

The manuscript is thought to be the work of three scribes, whose handwriting was distinguished by R. I. Best in 1912 and identified with the letters A, M and H. A and M are believed to be contemporary. A began the manuscript and wrote the opening pages of several of the texts, which were continued by M, who Best identified as Máel Muire mac Céilechair meic Cuinn na mBocht, based on matching the handwriting with two marginal probationes pennae or pen tests, in which the scribe wrote his name. A much later note elsewhere in the manuscript names Máel Muire as the person who "wrote and compiled this book from divers[e] books". His murder by Vikings at Clonmacnoise is recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters in 1106, giving us a latest possible date and location for the main body of the manuscript. Some time later, H (named for his addition of two homilies) added a number of new texts and passages, sometimes over erased portions of the original, sometimes on new leaves. Based on orthography and an English loanword, Gearóid Mac Eoin concludes that H wrote in the late 12th or early 13th century.

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