Book of the de Burgos

The Book of the de Burgos, or Book of the Burkes, is a late 16th-century Gaelic illuminated manuscript. It is held by the Library of Trinity College Dublin as MS 1440, Historia et Genealogia Familiae de Burgo.[1]

Book of the de Burgos
Trinity College Library
Folio 19r
Also known as	Book of the Burkes
Date	between 1571 and 1584
Place of origin	Connacht
Language(s)	Early Modern Irish, Latin
Patron	Seaán mac Oliver Bourke
Material	Vellum
Format	Folio
Script	Irish minuscule
Contents	genealogy, poetry
Illumination(s)	Irish soldiers

The book consists of seventy-five folios, twenty-two of which remain blank. It was made for Sir Seaán mac Oliver Bourke, the McWilliam [2] of Mayo from 1571 to 1580. Believed to have been the product of his patronage, its production appears to have ceased upon his death, except for a few additions in 1584.

"It is, as far as we know, the last of the great family books written in Irish, but its text has remained rather bleak, the poems that were probably intended to fill the blank pages never having been copied".[3]

The text is of two symmetrical documents in Irish and Latin respectively, containing many fanciful genealogical links between the Burkes and Charlemagne, the Kings of Jerusalem, France and England. What distinguishes the Book of the de Burgos from other late medieval Irish manuscripts is its visual style, with large pictures which are "extremely crude and brutal in colour, but arresting by their originality and their vehemence. Movements are awkward but convincing... skies are red or yellow, dogs are green, there is a constant disproportion of the figures, but a sort of brutal integrity emanates from these images... gaudy and violently realistic."[3]

There are four scenes of the Passion, nine Burke portraits and a page on their coat of arms. Two poems inserted at the end of the book are praise-poems written by Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn and Ruaidhrí mac Domhnall Ó hUiginn, for Sir Seaán. The book ends with two legal deeds in Latin, dated 1584, between Walter Ciotach Burke (son of Seaán) and the Barretts, who laid claim to possession of Belleek castle. There are later comments in English in a later hand from the original scribe - "Olyverus Bourke mac Sheamus died the last daye of December Annno Dom. 1619 in his house at Inisquoe."[3]