Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Maelmura
MAELMURA (d. 886), Irish historian, was a native of Ulster, and is generally called Maelmura Othna, from the ancient form of the name of Fahan, co. Donegal. St. Mura [q. v.] founded an abbey here, now demolished, but of permanent fame from the literary distinction of its inmates. They all wrote historical verses, and there can be no doubt that as the fame of Mura urged Fothadh na Canoine, his comharba or ecclesiastical successor in 799, so the example of Fothadh led Maelmura, a member of the same community, to write historical poetry. Maelmura means servant of Mura, and was probably either adopted on entrance to the monastery of Fahan, or given with the intention of the devotion of the child to the patron of the Cinel Eoghain. The ‘Annals of Ulster’ quote a poem on the death of Maelmura under 886, and the ‘Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland’ quote another version of it under 884. The verses speak of him as a king of poets, and an historian without superior. His most famous poem begins ‘Can a mbunadas na ngaedel’ (‘Whence the origin of the Gael’). It tells of the remote origin of the race from Gaedhal Glas, goes on to the six sons of Miledh or Milesius, and their attendant bondmen, and relates the conquest and division of Ireland by them. This poem exists in the ‘Book of Leinster’ (fol. 133, b 11, Royal Irish Academy facsimile), and is sometimes called ‘In Cronic,’ the chronicle (O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, p. 92, and O'Curry, note in Irish Nennius, p. 268). In the ‘Book of Lecan,’ a thirteenth-century manuscript, there is another historical poem by Maelmura, addressed to Flann Sionna, king of Ireland in his time, recounting the kings from Tuathal Teachtmhar to Flann, and describing the battles of Tuathal against the revolted Aithech Tuatha and against the Leinstermen. The chronicler Tighearnach quotes one of his verses (O'Curry, p. 524). He died in 886.
[Book of Leinster, Roy. Irish Acad. facsimile; Annala Rioghachta Eireann, ed. J. O'Donovan, i. 535; Annals of Ulster, ed. W. M. Hennessy, vol. i.; R. O'Flaherty's Ogygia; J. H. Todd and A. Herbert's Irish version of Nennius, Dublin, 1848. The chief poem of Maelmura from the Book of Leinster is here printed, pp. 220–70. The editors were ignorant of Irish, and the whole of this poem, as well as the Nennius itself, was transcribed and translated by E. O'Curry, a fact nowhere stated distinctly in the book. E. O'Reilly in Transactions of Iberno-Celtic Society, Dublin, 1820; O'Curry's Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Irish History, p. 42; S. H. O'Grady's Silva Gadelica, 1892.]