A ship that found shelter in Ireland: Bìrlinn Chlann Raghnaill
Abstract
This article examines the earliest history of the Scottish Gaelic poem Bìrlinn Chlann Raghnaill by Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair. The copy of the poem now preserved among the papers of Charles O’Conor (1710–1791) in the Royal Irish Academy is examined treated of in order to elucidate the earliest textual history of the poem. It is demonstrated that the Royal Irish Academy copy of the poem came to O’Conor from the Scottish Gaelic scholar James McLagan (1728–1805) at some point after February 1771, and that McLagan collected the poem on a journey to the Hebrides in the summer of 1770. This clarifies that the McLagan version of Birlinn Chlann Raghnaill predates, by six years, its publication by the poet’s son.
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COMHARTaighde is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal in the field of Irish language and literature studies. The full text of the article described on this page is available in the Irish language only. English-language translations of article titles, abstracts and certain metadata are provided in order to enable international scholars to discover research published in COMHARTaighde and to facilitate the indexing of articles in certain academic databases.
