Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Braein, Tighearnach
O'BRAEIN, TIGHEARNACH (d. 1088), Irish annalist, belonged to a Connaught family which produced before him an abbot of Clonmacnoise, Donnchadh, who died in 987, and after him Dermot, coarb of St. Comman (d. 1170); Gilla Isa, prior of Ui Maine (d. 1187); Stephen, erenach of Mayo (d. 1231); Tipraide, coarb of St. Comman (d. 1232); and Gillananaemh, erenach of Roscommon (d. 1234); but which does not seem to have been a literary clan. He became abbot of Clonmacnoise, and is therefore called comharba Chiarain, coarb or successor of St. Ciaran (516–549) [q. v.], and was also abbot of Roscommon or coarb of St. Comman. Clonmacnoise, of which considerable ruins remain, stands on flat ground close to the left bank of the Shannon, and had produced several learned men before his time. He there wrote annals in which Irish events are synchronised with those of Europe from the earliest times to his own day. These were afterwards continued by Augustin MacGradoigh [q. v.] There is a copy of these annals, written in the time of the contemporaries of the original author, in the Bodleian Library, which also contains an ancient fragment. Three copies exist in the Royal Irish Academy, and one in Trinity College, Dublin. The British Museum has two inferior copies. The annals are in Latin, and the critical discernment of the author has often been praised, because he dates accurate history in Ireland from the founding of Emhain Macha, co. Armagh, in B.C. 289. He quotes Bæda, as well as Josephus, Eusebius, and Orosius, and gives in Irish part of a poem by Maelmura [q. v.] He died in 1088, and was buried at Clonmacnoise. Dr. O'Conor printed a text of Tighearnach in his ‘Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores,’ but the inaccuracies are so numerous that in quoting Tighearnach a reference to one of the manuscripts is necessary.
[Annala Rioghachta Eireann, ed. O'Donovan, vol. ii. Dublin, 1851; O'Conor's Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores; Manuscripts in Bodleian Library, Rawlinson, Nos. 488, 502; O'Curry's Lectures on Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History, Dublin, 1873; Facsimiles of National MS. of Ireland, vol. i.]