The Irish Hand: Scribes and their Manuscripts from the Earliest Times -- Book Review

http://www.corkuniversitypress.com/Irish-Hand-p/9781782050926.htm

The Irish Hand: Scribes and their Manuscripts from the Earliest Times

by 

Timothy O'Neill

This is a revised and expanded edition of what has long been regarded as the standard work on Irish Manuscripts. The new book incorporates high quality digital images of the works of Irish scribes through the centuries. The extraordinary stories of the survival of these volumes provide a commentary on the cultural history of Ireland, its language, scholars and scribes.


Timothy demonstrates in this beautifully produced book that Irish writing is a living art; the fine ancient script has, to this day, a continuing tradition- Irish Arts Review


The Irish Hand is arranged in two parts. Part One presents survey of the manuscript tradition, followed by essays on thirty-one of the great books of Ireland. The context, contents, and history of each manuscript are given, accompanied by a full-page illustration.


Part Two surveys the work of the scribes from a practical perspective, examining script and lettering in detail. Extracts are given from fifty-two manuscripts, transliterated and translated, with a commentary on the penwork. The Irish Hand covers 1,500 years of Irish script and letter design from the sixth to the twenty-first century


Timothy O'Neill, widely acknowledged to be the finest calligrapher in Ireland, is also a scholarly authority on the manuscript tradition and the author of Merchants and Mariners in Medieval Ireland (1987). He was the Burns Scholar at Boston College in 1995 and currently serves on the council of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. His artworks include the Roscrea Missal (1981), the Ó Fiaich Gospel Book, Maynooth (1995), Celtic-style tailfins for British Airways (1997), stamps for An Post in 2009 and a facsimile of the Faddan More Psalter in 2011.

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This book review appeared in Stylus: Trade, Academic, and Professional Books - Fall 2014, book catalogue. For more information about, and to place an order of "The Irish Hand: Scribes and their Manuscripts from the Earliest Times,” please check Stylus/Cork University Press website.

Irish lettering, scripts and fonts

The beginning of the Gospel of Mark from the Book of Durrow.
(example of Insular (Gaelic) script, Wikipedia)

When wanting to use an Irish-looking font on their computers, most people use fonts related to the Uncial script. But, where did it come from?

Contrary to what most Irish believe, the Uncial script is not their invention.  Uncial was derived from "Old Roman Cursive" between the 1st and 2nd century with the oldest known Uncial manuscript found in Egypt.  It remained as a high-level book hand until the 12th Century but was not a major influence past Britain.  Emerging alongside Uncial in the Roman Empire was Half Uncial, which was a derivative of "New Roman Cursive"

Two of the best examples of Half Uncial known are the Lindisfarne Gospel circa 700 AD and the Book Of Kells, now in Trinity College, dated about 100 years after the Lindisfarne Gospels.  The Half Uncial used in Roman England, after the Romans departed, developed into several distinctive scripts, which have been named Insular.  

Insular scripts were "of the Islands" and followed the flow of Christian missionaries and scribes, particularly to and from Ireland.  A distinctive Insular Half Uncial, sometimes called Insular Majuscule, was first used in Christian Ireland where it adopted a Celtic influence especially in its use of decoration and illumination.

On the continent, the Half Uncial script, with an extra 300 (or so) years of Roman influence developed into several "National Hands” like Lombardic and Merovingian.  These variations were consolidated by Charlemagne and Alcuin of York into Carolingian, which is the ancestor of our present day minuscule (lower case letters). Carolingian, made it to England by the 9th century where it became known as English Caroline.  This script never had a major influence in Ireland, which continued to develop and use the Insular Half Uncial, until quite recently.  

An early typographic font, from the 16th Century, used the distinctive rounded letter form, flattened pen angles and some distinctive letters like the "a", "d", "g" and "t" of the historical script.  This font when used in Ireland today is commonly called Gaelic Uncial or Irish Uncial while our normal selection of fonts like Times New Roman are used for everyday printing.

The Irish can certainly take pride in the script which has become associated with them and the Book Of Kells, the highest example of the Insular Half Uncial and its illumination. A history and pictures of the Book of Kells can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells

A word of caution, Paleography, the study of ancient writing, is not a precise science and accurate dating of scripts or manuscripts is difficult.  My sources for this summary were Claude Mediavilla, Calligraphy, Scriptus Publications; Stan Knight, Historical Scripts from Classical Times to the Renaissance, Oak Knoll Press: Michelle Brown and Patricia Lovett, The Historical Source Book for Scribe, the British Library; Michelle Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600, University of Toronto Press and Rutherford Aris, Explication Formarum Letterarum - The Unfolding of Letterforms, The Calligraphy Connection; all of which would be good sources for further study."

By Rick Draffin

(Rick is a Professional Calligrapher who provides calligraphy services to Veterans Affairs Canada. You can see his work on the “Book of Remembrance,” in the Peace Tower).