What the Butlers Saw: Acallam na Senórach and its Marginalia in the Book of the White Earl

In the fifteenth-century ‘Book of the White Earl’ (the older, intercalated section of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 610), Acallam na Senórach, the well-known fianaighecht text, is annotated in the hand of the text’s main scribe. He adds a sporadic series of marginal headings, summaries and brief notes on places mentioned in the text. These constitute valuable evidence for the text’s reception in later medieval Ireland. In this article, I explore the critical approaches to the Acallam implied by these annotations and discuss the various possible interests in the text that might have led to them being made. The notes are printed in full in an Appendix.