Life
fl.1662 [var. Plunkett; Ristéard Pluincéad]; completed first Irish-English dictionary in Trim, 1662; an MS held in Marsh’s Library (MS Z4.2.5); formerly owned by Dr. Dudley Loftus and bought from his widow by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh and later used by Edward Lhuyd [q.v.] through the good offices of William Moylyneux; an edition by Seán Ua Suilleabháin pending in 1995.
Commentary
Muriel McCarthy and Caroline Sherwood-Smith, eds., Hibernia Resurgens: Catalogue of Marsh’s Library (1994): Vocabularium latinum et hibernum (1662), MS 420 fols. ; 29.4x18.2; Bernard 878; compiled Sept. 1662; orig. owned by Dublin orientalist Dr. Dudley Loftus purchsed by Archb. Marsh from his widow, 1695; Pluncéad mentions that he finished it in the Franciscan monastery at Trim, 1662; refers to self as bráthair bocht d’ord. S. Froinsias’ on title-page, providing only information; dictionary draws on archaic sources and uses phrases in common speech; contains earliest known examples of certain words; earliest surviving attempt a a compete Irish dictionary; availed of Mícheál Ó Cléirigh’s Foclóir nó sanasán nua (Lobháin 1643).
Norman Vance, Irish Literature, A Social History (Basil Blackwell 1990), cites the Dictionary by Richard Plunket being a manuscript held in Marsh’s Library; here cited with its shelf mark].
Notes
William Molyneux [q.v.] conveyed the dictionary to Edward Lhuld under strict conditions and with a pledge of payment of £10 to Narcissus Marsh, who acquired it in the collection of Dudley Loftus. (See Muriel McCarthy, Catalogue of Marsh’s Library (1994), p.6.)
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