the later chapters, dealing with events of which the authors had first-hand accounts, are much more detailed. Importance As a historical source, the Annals are largely limited to the accounts of the births, deaths and activities of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland and the wider social trends or events are up for contemporary historians to establish. On the other hand, the Annals, as one of the few prose sources in Irish from this period, also provide a valuable insight into events such as the Desmond Rebellions and the Nine Years War from a Gaelic Irish perspective. The early part of this work is based upon the Lebor Gabála. Today, most scholars regard the Lebor Gabála as primarily myth rather than history. It appears to be mostly based on medieval Christian pseudo-histories, but it also incorporates some of Ireland's native pagan mythology. Scholars believe the goal of its writers was to provide an epic history for Ireland that could compare to that of the Israelites or the Romans, and which reconciled native myth with the Christian view of history. It is suggested, for example, that there are six 'takings' to match the Six Ages of the World. Medievalist academic Mark Williams writes of Lebor Gabála Érenn that it is a "highly influential Middle Irish prose-and-verse treatise [...] written in order to bridge the chasm between Christian world-chronology and the prehistory of Ireland". Editions and translations , 7 volumes, Royal Irish Academy: : English, Irish : English, Irish : English, Irish : English, Irish : English, Irish : English, Irish * * The appendix of volume 6 contains pedigrees of a small selection of the Gaelic Irish nobility, pp. 2377 ff. See also Irish annals The Chronicle of Ireland Template:Cite AFM for citing the Annal in articles at Wikipedia References Further reading External links Catholic Encyclopedia: Annals of the Four Masters List of Published Texts at CELT — University College Cork's Corpus of Electronic Texts project has the full text of the annals online, both in the original Irish and in O'Donovan's translation. Irish Script On Screen — The ISOS project at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies has high-resolution digital images of the Royal Irish Academy's copy of the Annals. 1630s books 17th-century documents 17th-century history books Donegal (town) Irish chronicles Irish texts Irish-language literature