Celtic literature
Celtic literature, the body of writings composed in Irish and the languages derived from it, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, and in Welsh and its sister languages, Breton and Cornish. For writings in English by Irish, Scottish, and Welsh authors, see Irish literature, Scottish literature, and Welsh literature, respectively. French-language works by Breton authors are covered in French literature. See also Breton literature and Cornish literature.
Irish
The introduction of Celtic into Ireland has not been authoritatively dated, but it cannot be later than the arrival there of the first settlers of the La Tène culture in the 3rd century bce. The Irish language is often described in its earliest form as Goídelic, named after the Celts (Goídil; singular, Goídel) who spoke it. The modern form is known in English as Irish and in Irish as Gaeilge or Gaedhilge.
The earliest evidence of Irish consists of archaic sepulchral inscriptions in ogham, an alphabetic script based on a system of strokes and notches cut on the edges of stone or wood. These inscriptions have been ascribed to the 4th and 5th centuries ce. Writings in the Roman alphabet date from 8th-century glosses in Old Irish, but 7th- and even 6th-century compositions are preserved in much later manuscripts.
Four distinct periods are recognizable in Irish-language literature. The early literature (linguistically, Archaic, Old, and Early Middle Irish) was composed by a professional class known as filid (singular, fili) and by clergy. The medieval literature (linguistically, late Middle and Classical Modern Irish) was composed predominantly by laypeople and the hereditary bardic orders. In the late literature (17th century to the end of the 19th) authorship passed into the hands of individuals among the peasantry—the class to which most Irish speakers had been reduced after the collapse of the ancient Gaelic order and the imposition of English rule—using the dialects into which the language had been broken up. The subsequent revival of the language has continued to the present day, in particular through compulsory education in schools, the constitutional designation of Irish as Ireland’s first official language, the proliferation of Irish-language media, and its recognition as an official and working language of the European Union.
Early period
Irish literature was originally aristocratic and was cultivated by the filid, who inherited the role of the learned priestly order represented in Julius Caesar’s Gaul by the Druids, vates (“seers”), and bards. The filid are believed to have served as judges, historians, and official poets responsible for all traditional lore and for the performance of all rites and ceremonies. The arrival of Christianity and the gradual disappearance of Celtic religious beliefs led to the abandonment of the priestly functions of the filid. Nevertheless, the filid are believed to have retained responsibility for the oral transmission of native lore and learning, which was in marked contrast to the new book and manuscript learning of the Christian Church. Fortunately, the ecclesiastical scholars were not hostile to the native lore, and they appear to have been eager to commit it to writing. As a result, Ireland’s oral culture was extensively recorded in writing long before it could have evolved that art itself. The record consisted mainly of history, both legendary and factual; laws; genealogies; and poems, but prose was the predominant vehicle.
The filid were powerful in early Irish society and were often arrogant, enforcing their demands by the threat of a lampoon (áer), a poet’s curse that could ruin reputations and, so it was believed, even kill those unfortunate enough to have offended a fili. The laws set out penalties for abuse of the áer, and belief in its powers continued long after the decline of the filid. The official work of the filid has been preserved in fragments of annals and treatises.
Verse
The earliest verse has been preserved mainly in passages incorporated into later documents, both literary and legal; most have suffered in transmission and are very obscure. One of the earliest poems is a eulogy on St. Columba (c. 521–597) in rhetorical short sentences linked by alliteration, ascribed to Dallán Forgaill, chief poet of Ireland. This device of alliterative rhythmical prose was used again in the sagas. Probably the oldest actual meter was that in which two half lines were linked by alliteration—a system reminiscent of early Germanic verse. Rhyme was used from the 7th century; the requirement was only that there should be identity of vowel and syllabic length and that consonants should belong to the same phonetic class—a system also found in early Welsh. The quatrain (seven or eight syllables to a line and rhyme between the second and fourth lines) was derived from Latin hymn meters. The quatrains of the later popular meter, the debide (literally, “cut in two”), consisted of two couplets with the two lines of each couplet rhyming.
- Robin Flower
Much early verse was of an official nature, but that of the church was hardly more lively than that of the filid, who often affected a deliberately obscure style. More interesting was the 10th-century Psalter, a biblical history in 150 poems. But the real glory of Irish verse lay in anonymous poets who composed poems such as “Pangur Bán” (also known as “The Scholar and His Cat”), a famous ode to Pangur, a white cat. These poets avoided complicated meters and used a language that had been cultivated for centuries, with a freshness of insight denied to the filid. That the filid could, however, adapt their technique was shown by an 11th-century poem about the sea, where preface, choice of theme, and metaphorical expressions all suggest Scandinavian influence. This and other nature poetry carried on a tradition of native lyrics, sagas, and seasonal songs that showed remarkable sensitivity. The monastic and hermitic movement in the Celtic Church also provided a strong impetus to nature poetry. This poetry, almost Franciscan in spirit and tone, had an especial appeal to monastic scribes, so that much of it has been preserved.
Historical verse arose partly because recording of the past was an important part of the work of the filid; some of the earliest poems were metrical genealogy. As time went on the necessity for compendiums of information grew, and these were again often in metrical form. In a long poem, Fianna bátar in Emain (“The Warriors Who Were in Emain”), Cináed ua hArtacáin summed up the saga material, while Fland Mainistrech collected the work of generations of filid who had labored to synchronize Ireland’s history with that of the outside world. Equally important is a great collection of place lore, written in prose and verse, called the Dindshenchas, which gave appropriate legends to famous sites of Ireland between the 9th and 11th centuries. Indeed, the development of a loose debide form made rhyming easy and helped encourage the composition of mnemonic verse on numerous subjects.