What, then, was the Yellow Plague which caused such a devastation?
The Irish generally record the Yellow Plague as Buidhe Conaill and a few times as chron conaill. It is often glossed as the plaga magna or the mortalitis magna, In other countries the Latin name pestis flava (yellow plague) also occurs. The Irish word buidhe means yellow and, according to the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of the Irish Language based mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials (Compact Edition, Dublin, 1983), the Buidhe Conaill is a relapsing fever with accompanying jaundice. It has been pointed out that while the word Conaill is often given with a capital `C’, in the early texts it was given with a small `c’ and was thus the genitive of condall, meaning `aftermath’. There has arisen therefore a confusion among some scholars that the name of the plague was called the `Yellow (Plague) of Conaill’ for there is an old Irish name Conall (`strong as a wolf’) but, as we now see, it means `yellow aftermath’. The other term chron conaill means `dark yellow aftermath’. An intere
