Ó Duibhgeannáin, Cú Choigcríche

Ó Duibhgeannáin, Cú Choigcríche (O'Duigenan, Peregrine) (fl. 1630–41), chronicler and scribe, one of the compilers of the Annals of the Four Masters, was son of Tuathal Buidhe Ó Duibhgeannáin, of Castlefore, Co. Leitrim; nothing is known of his mother. In the late medieval period the learned family of Ó Duibhgeannáin had been hereditary historians to Clann Mhaoilruanaidh, a kin-group that included Mac Diarmada of Moylurg and Mac Donnchadha of Tirerrill. A branch of the family had been based at Castlefore from about 1400 and ran a bardic school there. They were regarded as the junior branch of the family, the senior branch being based at Kilronan in north Co. Roscommon.

Cú Choigcríche worked as a trained historian and scribe at a time when lay patronage of such activities was in decline. He was one of the team of lay scholars who worked with the Franciscan historian Mícheál Ó Cléirigh (qv) on a range of historical projects in the 1630s. Fearfeasa Ó Maolchonaire (qv) and Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh (qv) also collaborated with them, and they worked in a variety of locations for a number of different patrons. As a member of this scholarly team Ó Duibhgeannáin worked on the compilation of ‘Genealogies of Irish saints and kings’, completed at the house of the Franciscans at Athlone (November 1630), under the patronage of Turlough MacCoughlan (Terence Coghlan (qv)). The work was intended to show the noble origins of early Irish saints, and was part of a project masterminded by Irish Franciscan scholars at St Anthony's college in Louvain.

In the late autumn of 1631, again working with the same colleagues, Ó Duibhgeannáin contributed to a new recension of ‘Leabhar gabhála Éireann’ (Book of the taking of Ireland), an account of the origins of Ireland partly modelled on the biblical Old Testament, and regarded by Irish historians in the early seventeenth century as an essential backdrop to the history of Ireland. This project was sponsored by Brian Ruadh Mág Uidhir. His chief historian, Giolla Pádraig Ó Luinín, joined the other four scholars for the duration of the task. The work was completed at the Franciscan monastery at Lisgoole, Co. Fermanagh, in December 1631.

In late January 1632 the ‘four masters’ commenced the compilation of historical ‘Annals of the kingdom of Ireland’, the work for which they are best remembered. The new annals were derived from a range of older manuscript sources that were brought together at the temporary residence of the Donegal Franciscans at Drowes, close to the boundary between Co. Donegal and Co. Leitrim. Working from their base in the monastery, the chroniclers selected material from the older sources to form a new set of annals that told the story of Ireland from the biblical flood in AM 2242 down to the year AD 1616. The work was undertaken in two stages, in 1632 and again in 1635–6. The evidence suggests that Cú Choigcríche Ó Duibhgeannáin and Fearfeasa Ó Maolchonaire worked on the earlier material only and were not involved in transcribing the final section of the annals covering the years 1332–1616. Two complete copies of the annals were made: one was taken to Louvain, probably with a view to being published, while a second set was presented to the patron, Fearghal Ó Gadhra (qv), of Coolavin, Co. Sligo.

The Annals were used as a source of reference by the Franciscan John Colgan (qv) in the first volume of his work on the lives of Irish saints, Acta sanctorum Hiberniae (Louvain, 1645). The preface to Colgan's work coined the term ‘four masters’ for the team of three secular historians and one Franciscan who compiled Ireland's most famous annals. Curiously, in his major edition of the annals first published in 1851, the editor, John O'Donovan (qv), omitted Cú Choigcríche Ó Duibhgeannáin's name from the ‘four masters’, substituting that of Conaire Ó Cléirigh, an error that has been copied by many later historians. In fact, six men in all worked on the annals, but two of these, Muiris Ó Maoil Chonaire and Conaire Ó Cléirigh, worked as scribes for a short period and were not reckoned by Colgan among the four principal historians who contributed to the work.

An eighteenth-century scribe, Míchéal son of Peadair Ó Longáin, attributes a poem dated 1641 to Cú Choigcríche Ó Duibhgeannáin. The poem was in praise of Tadhg Ó Rodaighe (qv) of Fenagh, Co. Leitrim, and concerned a dispute between Ó Rodaighe and the protestant bishop of Ardagh over lands at Fenagh. All but three quatrains of the poem, ‘Aoinsgiath cosnaimh na gceall’, had been lost by the time the scribe recorded it. Although it may well have been the work of an Ó Duibhgeannáin poet, the ascription to Cú Choigcríche son of Tuathal Ó Duibhgeannáin is uncertain, and may have been due to his renown, in Irish literary circles in the eighteenth century, as the best known of his contemporaries of that learned family.