# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cormac (836-908)

Cormac mac Cuilennáin in the ODNB.
​CORMAC (836–908), king of Cashel, born in 836, was son of Cuilennan, chief of the Eoghanacht, or elder branch of the descendants of Oillil Olum. He received literary education from Sneidhghius of Disert Diarmada, and attained excellence in all the parts of learning as then esteemed in Ireland; that is in verse composition, in the explanation of hard words, in history, in the art of penmanship; to all which he added the reputation of piety, and crowned the whole by becoming the chief bishop in Leth Mogha. The very ancient church which is the present glory of the rock of Cashel was then unbuilt, and the summit of the crag was enclosed by a rampart of loose stones, the stronghold of the kings of the south, within which a small low stone-roofed building was the bishop's church. In 900 he became king of Cashel, and was thus the chief temporal as well as the chief spiritual authority in the south of Ireland. When the south was threatened with invasion, Cormac led the men of Munster against Flann, king of Ireland, at Moylena (the present Tullamore, King's County), and having won a battle marched on into southern Meath and against the Connaughtmen, and brought hostages and booty home down the Shannon. But the south of Ireland has never been able to achieve more than a temporary success over the north, and two years later, in the early autumn, Flann with Cearbhall, king of Leinster, and Cathal, king of Connaught, brought a great force against Cormac. He met them on the road into Munster, at the present Ballymoon. His army was routed, and an old account of the battle thus relates his death: ‘A few remained with Cormac, and he came forward along the road, and abundant was the blood of men and horses along that road. The hind feet of his horse slipped on the slimy road in the track of that blood, the horse fell backwards and broke Cormac's back and his neck, and he said when falling “In manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum,” and he gives up his spirit, and the impious sons of malediction come and thrust spears into his body and cut his head from his body’ (O'Donovan, Three Fragments, Dublin, 1860). It was Fiach ua Ugfadhan who decapitated the body on a stone still pointed out and within a drive of Ballitore. A poem ascribed to Dallan mac Moire (Annala Rioghachta Eireann) gives the day of the battle as the seventeenth of the calends of September. The true year was 908. There is a very ancient stone cross with twelve rudely carved apostles on the base near the field of battle. A glossary of hard Irish words called ‘Sanas Chormaic’ is invariably attributed to this king Cormac. Later editors have made alterations, but enough remains of the original to make the ‘Sanas’ valuable as the most venerable monument of the literature of Munster and as the earliest Irish dictionary. It contains explanations of more than thirteen hundred words. The etymologies are of course merely fanciful, but blended with them are stories, allusions to customs, some of the few relics of Irish pagan lore, and other historical fragments. The oldest extant fragment of the glossary is in the ‘Book of Leinster,’ a manuscript of about A.D. 1200, and the oldest complete manuscript (Royal Irish Academy, H. and S. No. 224, s. 3/67), is of the fifteenth century. Some Irish writers state that the glossary was part of a large work known as ‘Saltair Chaisil.’ This has been generally attributed to Cormac, but there are no safe grounds for believing it to be his, or indeed for regarding it as anything but an ancient collection of transcripts, such as the existing ‘Lebor na Huidri.’ The ‘Sanas Chormaic’ was first printed by Whitley Stokes in 1862 (‘Three Irish Glossaries,’ by W. S., London). This edition contains a general introduction, an account of the codices, an Irish text, and copious philological notes. The glossary had been previously translated and annotated by John O'Donovan, and Whitley Stokes has also edited this translation.
[Sanas Chormaic; Cormac's Glossary, translated and annotated by the late John O'Donovan, LL.D., edited with notes and indices by Whitley Stokes, LL.D., Calcutta, 1868; Stokes's Three Irish Glossaries, London, 1862; Annala Rioghachta Eireann, vols. i. and ii.; O'Donovan's Leabhar na g-Ceart, Celtic Society, p. 22, as to the Saltair Chaisil; Book of Leinster, facsimile, 144 a.]
N. M.