r/IrishHistory • u/Hammer_Price • 2h ago
Irish Tales (1835) an important manuscript compiled by MM Graham sold at Purcell on July 15 for €25,000 ($28,632). High presale was €4,000. Reported by Rare Book Hub.
From catalog notes:
An Important Irish Manuscript Book, ‘Irish tales collected from the Best authors now extant’, was compiled by Matthew Moore Graham in 1835.
Graham was an engineer and translator from the Irish, of Dundalk, Co. Louth, active from the 1830s until the 1850s. He was an assistant to Francis Dobourdieu, the county surveyor for Louth in 1834-1840.
Graham is better remembered, however, as a translator of Irish poetry, who published The Giantess from the Irish of Oisin; and the Wars of Donomore with other poems and translations (Belfast, 1833).
For an account of his translations, see Robert Welch, A History of Verse Translation from the Irish 1789-1897 (Irish Literary Studies 24, 1988).’ The Royal Irish Academy Library and University College Dublin Library contains some of his original manuscripts and the National Library hold microfilm copies of his Gaelic Manuscripts.
This manuscript comprises of 226 numbered pages and is bound in contemporary half leather. It is written in a beautiful Gaelic script. A feature of the manuscript is the regular initially lettering of some words similar to the ancient Irish manuscripts where, ‘ initials were heavily decorated letters where the shapes of the characters are intertwined with mythological beasts and interlacing knotwork. Rooted in the medieval insular art style—most famously seen in the Book of Kells and Lindisfarne Gospels’. At the corner of one page is a geometric drawing with the dimensions written, most unusually, in Gaelic.
Further manuscript material in different hands with distinctive calligraphy and different dates are adhered at rear of book and others loosely inserted.
These documents include earlier works by Irish bards Cearbhall O Dalaigha, the famous Irish satire Bean na dTri mBo, translated as the Woman of Three Cows (repaired with hand stitching), original correspondence referring to the Hibernian Celtic Athenaeum; study of the inscriptions on the Kilnasagart Stone and a letter from Cumann naGaeligh, Luimni;.
One most attractive illustrated single page Gaelic manuscript has various artistic representations at the top, side and at the bottom of the page. The illustrations include a landscape feature, an Irish warrior with distinctive headgear and at the bottom is a depiction of a shamrock design above a line of Ogham writing. Small octavo.
