By 1632 Michael had assembled a team of three helpers - his cousin Peregrine O'Clery from Donegal, Peregrine O'Duigenan from Leitrim and Fearfeasa O'Mulconry from Roscommon. This was the team that would later be known as the "Four Masters". For three years the team scoured Ireland, taking notes from all the old history books.

When they were ready to write their history a problem arose. They had intended doing this work at the abbey in Donegal, but there was much trouble in the area, and the team had to choose a safer location. They moved twenty miles south, into the territory of the MacClancys of Dartry. Here, on the banks of the River Drowes, they began writing in August 1635.

They wrote two complete sets of a history of Ireland from the earliest times to 1616. They called their history "The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland". One copy went to the Franciscan College in Louvain, the other to Fergal O'Gara of Sligo who had provided the finance for the project. Two hundred years later, the great Irish scholar, John O'Donovan, in collaboration with Eugene O'Curry, translated the Annals from the old Irish into English. The translation was published in 1854.

Since then the Annals have been an invaluable reference for Irish historians, and have become widely known as "The Annals of the Four Masters". Because of its location close to the river Drowes, our school was named "Four Masters School" in honour of these notable men.

Four Masters Weblinks

CELT (Corpus of Electronic Texts), a project of University College Cork, has published extracts from the Annals on the Internet. The extracts feature the original Irish text. The introduction gives more information on the Annals, references and sources. The CELT Annals are made available for academic and educational use. Click on a link below to sample the Annals.