Nollaig Ó Muraíle

Nollaig Ó Muraíle is an Irish scholar. He published an acclaimed edition of Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh's Leabhar na nGenealach in 2004. He was admitted to the Royal Irish Academy in 2009.

A native of Knock, County Mayo, Ó Muraíle attended National University of Ireland, Maynooth where he was a postgraduate student enrolled for a PhD. He was Placenames Officer with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland 1972-1993. He was Reader in Irish and Celtic Studies at Queen's University Belfast to 2004 and Senior Lecturer at the School of Irish, National University of Ireland, Galway from 2005. He is married to Tresa Ní Chianáin and has two children. He lives in Dublin.

In 1971, at the suggestion of Tomás Ó Fiaich, then Professor of Modern History at Maynooth, Ó Muraíle began work on Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh's Leabhar na nGenealach. This was continued under the direction of Professor of Old and Middle Irish Pádraig Ó Fiannachta.

Upon joining the Placenames Branch of the Ordnance Survey in late 1972, Ó Muraíle had already translated over one hundred pages, albeit from Eugene O'Curry's copy. Access to the autograph of Leabhar na nGenealach however remained difficult; only on 28 August 1979, at University College Dublin's new home of Belfield, was he able to begin transcription of the original, which he finished on 10 September 1981. It had taken a total of 88 sessions in UCD Special Collections Reading Room. Typing began in late 1982 and was complete by 4 September 1984. By early 1988, after much tedious work, the Cumire was also successfully in transcript. His PhD dissertation, submitted in September 1991 on the life, background and work of Mac Fhirbhisigh, was fully two volumes, totalling 1,086 pages.

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