Introduction to Irish Mythology

[icymist]

In my previous essay, Introduction to Celtic Mythology, I noted that after the fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of Christianity the Celtic peoples began their own written traditions, first in Ireland and then in Wales. This essay will talk about the written traditions of Ireland.

Of all the Celtic peoples it was the Irish that gave us the largest corpus of myths, the oldest of which dates back to the seventh century CE. The aim of this essay is to give the readers an introduction to Irish mythology.

There are three main manuscript sources for Irish mythology; the first is The Book of the Dun Cow dating from the twelfth century CE, the Book of Leinster dating from the early twelfth century CE, and the Rawlinson manuscript B 502 dating from between 1100 and 1130 CE. Most of the material in these manuscripts predates the date they were written down on. The earliest of the prose in these manuscripts can be dated based upon linguistics to the eighth century CE and some maybe as old as the sixth century CE.

Another group of manuscripts that are considered important sources for Irish mythology are The Yellow Book of Lecan, The Great Book of Lecan, The Book of Hy Many and the Book of Ballymote. These four manuscripts originated in the west of Ireland in the late fourteenth century or early fifteenth century CE. <1>

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