learning in the Irish language as preserved and promoted by the elite learned classes of late-medieval Ireland. In its design and execution, and in its combination of native and European tradition, the book is a library of literature that makes a self-assured statement about aristocratic literary taste in autonomous Gaelic Ireland in the late 15th century. Later history After the fifteenth century, one gets only sporadic glimpses of the book during the next 300 years. In June 1629 it was deposited in the nearby Franciscan Timoleague Friary, where the renowned scribe, author and historian, Brother Mícheál Ó Cléirigh copied material from it. It is thought to be identical to a book confiscated by Lewis, 1st Viscount Boyle of Kinalmeaky, then aged 23, at the siege of Kilbrittain Castle in 1642 during the Irish Confederate Wars, and sent by him to his father, The 1st Earl of Cork. Lord Boyle of Kinalmeaky (whose younger brother was the chemist Robert Boyle) died not long after, at the Battle of Liscarroll in September 1642. It is uncertain when the book was brought to Lismore Castle in the west of County Waterford, a castle which Lord Cork had purchased from Sir Walter Raleigh in 1602. In the eighteenth century, the castle passed by marriage from the Boyle family to the Cavendishes, Dukes of Devonshire. In 1814, during renovations to the castle and town of Lismore by The 6th Duke of Devonshire, the manuscript was rediscovered, having apparently been walled up in the Castle with the Lismore Crozier, which is now in the National Museum of Ireland. Upon its discovery, the book was soon loaned to the Cork scribe and scholar Donnchadh Ó Floinn (who named the book 'Leabhar Leasa Móire', the Book of Lismore), whose friend, Micheál Óg Ó Longáin, transcribed nearly all of the manuscript in 1817, under the sponsorship of Bishop John Murphy. The title 'Book of Lismore' or 'Leabhar Leasa Móir' dates from this time. From this and other transcripts by Mícheál Óg, many further copies of sections and individual texts were made, and this contributed to a temporary revival of manuscript-making in Cork during the first half of the nineteenth century. The book was returned to Lismore around 1821-2, but sixty-six leaves remained in Cork, and were subsequently sold to the Duke of Devonshire in 1860. Further transcripts were made by Eugene O'Curry and by Mícheál Og's youngest son, Seosamh,