Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
An Irish Materia Medica (Author: Tadhg Ó Cuinn)
subsection 9
TCD MS 1323 (H. 3.4):
This is also a vellum MS, dated by the Cataloguers ‘s. xvi?’. William O'Sullivan, Celtica xi 248, assumes that it was bought by the Library from Muiris Ó Gormáin: that would have
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been between 1761 and 1781. The copy of the Materia medica contains about 260 articles. The colophon states that the text is as taken down from Tadhg Ó Cuinn's dictation by Aenghus Ó Callanáin, and that this copy was written by Maghnus mac Gilla na naemh micc a Leagha. N. Ní Shéaghdha states, NLIre Cat, p. 71, that there is a note in RIA 24 B 2, p. 122 to the effect that the original transcript of Ó Cuinn's translation of the Materia Medica was in the possession of the Ó Callanáin family (‘i seilbh Eóin ui Challanáin .i. an liaigh’) in 1692 and that it was the ultimate exemplar of the Ó Longáin copies (see below) of the tract. No doubt, the ‘original transcript’ referred to was either the version that was written down by Aenghus, or that which was written down by the Giolla Padraic Ó Callanáin who is referred to in the earlier of the NLScot MSS. The Ó Callanáins were physicians to Mac Carthaigh Riabhach of Cairbre in west Cork. In the BM Cat., p. 222, O' Grady suggests that the Aonghus Ó Callanáin who was the second main scribe of the Book of Mac Carthaigh Riabhach, known as the Book of Lismore, was the same Aonghus who contributed to the production, in 1403, of the original of the item at the end of BL MS Egerton 89 (and who was, presumably, also the Aenghus of TCD MS 1323, H. 3.4). However, it is unlikely that he was the same Aonghus, because Finghin mac Diarmada, for whom the relative tract in the Book of Lismore was
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written, did not become Mag Carthaigh until 1478. See Celtica xv 96–110. Finghin died in 1505.