Ó Cróinín, Dáibhí

Cronin, Elizabeth (‘Bess’) (1879–1956), folk singer, was born 30 May 1879, the eldest of the five children of Seán ‘Máistir’ Ó hIarfhlaithe and Maighréad Ní Thuama. Her father was headmaster in the school of Barr d'Ínse in the Fuhirees area of West Cork, near the Cork–Kerry border.…

Ua Conchobair, Tairdelbach (O'Conor, Turlough) (1088–1156), king of Connacht and high-king of Ireland ‘with opposition’. His accession to the kingship of Connacht in 1106, and his domination of that province for the next half-century, saw the emergence of Connacht as a major…

Vergilius of Echternach (fl. 709–721/2) was one of two early named insular scribes (the other is Laurentius) attached to the monastery of Echternach, Luxembourg, founded in 698 by the Anglo-Saxon monk Willibrord (qv). Vergilius…

Virgilius Maro Grammaticus (fl. c.650), an enigmatic author, was occasionally named (wrongly) in nineteenth-century scholarship ‘Virgilius of Toulouse’, and thought by some modern writers to have been either Visigothic Spanish (B. Bischoff), or British (V. Law), but he is…

Willibrord (657/8–739) of Ráith Melsigi, was probably of Northumbrian aristocratic family; his mother gave him his name, while his father, Wilgils, subsequently offered him to the monastery of Ripon in Northumberland, then ruled by Wilfrid (a relative?), later bishop of York (d. 709…