Trecheng Breth Féne
The Triads of Ireland
In 1906, Kuno Meyer published The Triads of Ireland as volume 13 of the Todd Lecture Series of the Royal Irish Academy. The publisher was Hodges, Figgis, & Co., Ltd. of Dublin and London.
The original name of this collection is Trecheng Breth Féne. Meyer translated this as “a triadic arrangement of the sayings of Irishmen”, and noted that “it is but a small portion of the large number of triads scattered throughout early Irish literature”. The text of Trecheng Breth Féne is found in largely identical form in the following manuscripts:
The Yellow Book of Lecan (L)
The Book of Ballymote (B)
The Book of Húi Maine (M)
The Book of Lecan (Lec)
A paper MS written in 1575 (N)
A paper MS written by Tadhg Tiorthach Ó Neachtain in 1745 (H')
Meyer used these six manuscripts to construct his critical text. He noted that he followed the order of triads found in the Yellow Book of Lecan "in the main." The material on this webpage consists of the "Text and Translation" portion of Meyer's edition of Trecheng Breth Féne, including footnotes, but not including variant readings of the Irish text. The Preface, Glosses and Notes, Index Locorum, Index Nominum, and the Glossary are not included here at this time.
Innéacs na dTréanna
Useful links
- The Triads of Ireland [PDF] (1906) by Kuno Meyer (the entire book scanned as a PDF)
- Celt Corpus: The Triads of Ireland (main text only) and other texts edited by Kuno Meyer
- Deutsch (by Claudia Jenik) | Français | Español (part)