PREFACE

The three finest sights in the world: a field of ripe wheat, a ship in full sail, and a pregnant woman of the Mac Donnell family.¹

In our collection, we can see that the Triads are organized into certain groups based on their subject matter. For example, the first sixty-one entries are all topographical topographical: relating to the naming and description of specific places—though the first thirty-one of these are not actually triads at all. Among the rest, those dealing with legal matters stand out clearly (§§ 149-172).

We have no way of knowing exactly when this collection was compiled, except by looking at internal evidence. This includes the age of the language and a few references to historical events that we can date approximately.

The language used in the Triads can be described as late Old Irish. Their system of verbs matches the style found in the "Continental glosses" original: glosses; these are Old Irish notes and explanations found in manuscripts stored in mainland Europe,² which suggests they were not written later than the year 900. On the other hand, certain patterns in how nouns are declined declined: changing the form of a word to show its grammatical case, such as possessive or plural—which appear in all the surviving manuscripts—make it impossible to date them much earlier than the second half of the ninth century (roughly 850–900 AD).

For instance, the possessive genitive singular form of certain noun groups i- and u-stems no longer ends in -o; this has been replaced everywhere by the ending -a.³ We know this is a significant change because of the Annals of Ulster a chronological record of medieval Irish history, which serves as a reliable guide for tracking how the language developed century by century. This possessive ending in -o is found for the last time in the year 816 in words like rátho of a fort and Ailello of Ailill. From that point forward, the ending -a is always used.

The place name Lusca (modern-day Lusk) was originally a type of noun an n-stem that formed its possessive as Luscan. This is the standard form found in the Annals of Ulster until the year 880, after which point it—

¹ This triad comes from the Glynns of Antrim, the home district of the Mac Donnell clan.
² Specifically, I should mention the relative verb forms: "who goes" original: téite, "who are" original: bíte, "that are" original: ata, "who carry" original: berta, "twenty" original: fichte, "who spoil" original: coillte, and "who bribe" original: aragellat. Also notable are the deponent verb "it makes noble" original: neimthigedar, the phrase "I am" original: ató, and the use of the prefix ad- in "he asked" original: conaittig.
³ For example: "of a fort" original: rátha, "of a robber" original: foglada, "of a lordship" original: flatha, "of an oak" original: dara, "of the Saint Ela" original: Ela, "of a ford" original: átha, and "of life" original: betha.