By Liam Mac Mathúna

Seán Ó Neachtain and his son Tadhg were at the centre of Gaelic scholarship in Dublin in the first half of the eighteenth century. Much of their work is infused by the impulses of modernity and sensibility, which permeated the city’s intellectual life at the time. The numerous extant manuscripts, which the Ó Neachtains and their learned colleagues wrote, bear testimony to that community’s industry, not only in preserving the literature of earlier periods but in creating new works. This is therefore an account of Gaelic scholarship in an urban setting, told from the inside.