The Gaelic version of the Seven Sages, surviving in only one manuscript in the National Library of Scotland and dating from c. 1690, is incomplete. Only the final four stories remain - but according to Greene (1944), they accord closely with the details and pattern expected of the Version A tradition. This prose text differs sufficiently in style and detail from the Middle English Version A (which is a verse redaction) to preclude the English from being its source. Greene has instead proposed a Latin text of Version A, found in an Irish manuscript (Dublin Trinity College Library Ms 667), as a possible original source for the Gaelic text. However, Greene also opperates on the assumption that the seventeenth-century Scots Gaelic manuscript that survives was a copy of an earlier Gaelic text. Though no earlier Irish/Gaelic translations of the Seven Sages narrative survive, there is a reference to one from the library of the Fitzgerald Earls of Kildare at Maynooth. In her study of this medieval inventories of this library, Aisling Byrne has identified a text designated [51a] with the title 'Foilfylmurey / The VII sages', one of the Irish text from the collection that is sadly no longer extant.
The National Library of Scotland's catalogue indicates that this text may be associated with an 'Alexander MacDonald' - who may potentially be identified as the famous Jacobite Gaelic poet Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill, also known as Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair.
| Language & Composition
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| Original language of version |
Gaelic
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| Translated into (languages) |
Scots Gaelic
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| Place of composition |
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| Date of composition |
1690 - 1700
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| Source for date of composition |
Greene (1944)
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| Recorded branch of this secondary version
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| Connected prints
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No connected prints
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| Languages in Use
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| Language of text |
Gaelic
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| Regional or specific language of version |
Scots Gaelic
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| Notes
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| Note |
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| Notes on motifs |
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| Notes on the frame |
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| Pattern of embedded stories in this version
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