Murtagh King
Irish writer
Murtagh King (Irish: Muircheartach Ó Cionga; c. 1562 – c. 1639) was an Irish Old Testament translator and scribe.
Overview
King was a member of an Irish bardic family, who were residents of the barony of Kilcoursey, County Offaly, known as Fox's Country. They were poets, scribes, and drafted legal documents for their patrons, mainly the families of Fox and Mageoghegan. Writing in 2001, McCaughy states "What we can say is that the Muircheartach Ó Cionga that we are concerned with in this study was one of a learned poetic family of the name who are referred to quite frequently in the sources, some of whose poetry survives (a good deal of it religious), and that they are located in the barony of Kilcoursey in Fox’s Country."
Muircheartach first apparent appearances are as Murtagh O Kinge of Kilcolly and Murtho O King of Fox's County in fiants of the 1590s. In the 1610s he was an agent and receiver to Lord Lambert's lands near Athlone, County Westmeath (he appeared as a witness for dowager Lady Lambert in the 1630s). He appears to have been among the native grantees who received land in the plantation of his locality around the year 1620. The Franciscan Paul King was his nephew.
Association with William Bedell
King was employed from 1627 by William Bedell (later Bishop of Kilmore) to teach Irish to himself and students at Trinity College, Dublin.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Murtagh King” is irish writer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Murtagh, King and Irish, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “irish writer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 5, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q6933179. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1562, 1639, 2001 and 1620.
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This entry incorporates text from “Murtagh King” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.