Did not set out to find more evidence of relationships between the group B manuscripts of OCC today but I found it anyway!
Ó Caoimh did not like that OCC says that Niamh ingen Celtchair was Cú Chulainn's lover, but his source clearly said it, because he wrote that first, then crossed it out and corrected it to Emer:
Or, possibly, a later user of Ó Caoimh's manuscript took it upon themselves to correct that, which is not impossible! It definitely looks like it's a later addition, in different ink. But, upon closer examination of the hand, I do still think it's most likely Eogan who made the correction himself; the hand is broadly similar and the abbreviation not inconsistent with what he uses elsewhere.
Whoever it is, it's done consistently:
By the time we get to Uilliam Mac Cairteáin, in 1703, it's firmly Emer, with no sign that Niamh was ever there:
Not only that, but it's also in Art Ó Caoimh's MS, from 1701-2:
(Potato quality because this is a photo taken on a phone of a microfilm of a manuscript, displayed on a properly old-school microfilm reader that required manual winding and everything because the buttons were broken.)
And while Uilliam makes enough changes that he appears to have sources other than Ó Caoimh (though I still think Ó Caoimh was his primary source), frankly, Occam's Razor suggests that Art is most likely to be using his dad's book. So. At some point between 1684 and 1702 -- maybe the next day, maybe ten years after writing it, hard to say -- Eoghan appears to have 'corrected' his manuscript to say Emer, and this has been incorporated by those who copied his work, with no sign that Niamh was ever there.
BUT! The Ó Longáins, who appear to derive at least part of their text of OCC from an Ó Caoimh-based tradition, have put Niamh back in!
I already knew there was more than one tradition feeding in here, but this is further evidence that they are not solely Ó Caoimh-derived! Indeed, Seaghan Ó Réagáin, who I've suggested might represent a copy of the intermediary tradition here, also has Niamh:
These two represent what I call the Bc and Bd variant (in my forthcoming chapter about the Cork Oidheadh Con Culainn), while Ó Caoimh is Ba and Mac Cairteáin Bb. I've suggested that Bc and Bd incorporated elements from the B1 group of MSS, alongside aspects of Ba, while Bb is more directly derived from Ba, and did not circulate further. This doesn't challenge that, but potentially provides some further evidence and avenues to explore for proving it! Niamh's presence or absence might return to Bc and Bd via B1, while Bb loses her because it is derived from Ba and this was not something Uilliam decided to "correct", as he does with a few other changes.
So that's a whole rabbithole I'll have to go down at some point to see if I can prove it properly. There's so much more to do on these variants, and I'm saving it for post-PhD, mostly, but this was just one I noticed in passing, because I was collecting relationship terminology again and was looking at that word caomhleannán.
So, looks like another variant among the group B MSS is who exactly Cú Chulainn is sleeping with, and this time Ba and Bb are proving to be outliers.
