Notes on the first catalogue description of Harleian 5280

This paper provides a detailed analysis of an early catalogue description of the important 16th Century Manuscript Harleian 5280, held at the British Library. Harleian 5280 contains a mixture of prose and metrical material from the Old/Middle Irish periods and it is known for the peculiar spelling conventions employed by the scribe. This paper compares this early description to Robin Flower's entry in the Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum, Vol. 2 in order to assess its accuracy. The paper also discusses the attention paid to the early catalogue description by the archivist Thomas Astle in his The Origin and Progress of Writing...(1784). Astle's work is still in print and widely available, therefore, it is important to counter his negative criticism of Harleian 5280, the Irish manuscript tradition and the corpus of Irish literature.