Celtic literature, the body of writings composed in Gaelic 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 English literature. French-language works by Breton authors are covered in French literature.

Irish Gaelic

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 bc. The language is often described in its earliest form as Goídelic, named after the Celts (Goídil; singular, Goídel) who spoke it. The modern form, known in English as Gaelic (in Gaelic called Gaedhilge or Gaeilge), is derived from the Scottish Gàidhlig.

The earliest evidence of Irish Gaelic consists of archaic sepulchral inscriptions in the ogham alphabet based on a system of strokes and notches cut on the edges of stone or wood usually ascribed to the 4th and 5th centuries ad. 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 Gaelic literature. The early literature (linguistically Archaic, Old, and Early Middle Irish), was composed by a professional class, the fili (singular, fili), and by churchmen. The medieval literature (linguistically late Middle and Classical Modern Irish) was dominated by the lay and hereditary bardic orders. In the late literature (17th century to the end of the 19th) authorship passed into the hands of individuals among the peasants, the class to which most Irish speakers had been reduced, using the dialects into which the language had been broken up. The subsequent revival has continued to the present day.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:

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Poetry: First Lines

Early period

Irish literature was originally aristocratic and was cultivated by the fili, who seem to have inherited the role of the learned priestly order represented in Caesar’s Gaul by the Druids, vates (“seers”), and bards and to have been judges, historians, and official poets responsible for all traditional lore and the performance of all rites and ceremonies. The arrival of Christianity and the gradual disappearance of paganism led to the abandonment of their specifically priestly functions. Nevertheless, the fili seem to have retained responsibility for the oral transmission of native lore or learning, which was in marked contrast to the new book or manuscript learning of the Christian Church. Fortunately, the ecclesiastical scholars were not as hostile to the native lore as were their counterparts abroad, 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, legendary and factual; laws; genealogies; and poems, but prose was the predominant vehicle.

The fili 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 thought, even kill. The laws set out penalties for abuse of the áer, and belief in its powers continued up to modern times. The official work of the fili has been preserved in fragments of annals and treatises.

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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 metre 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 second and fourth lines) was derived from Latin hymn metres. The quatrains of the later popular metre, the debide (literally “cut in two”), consisted of two couplets with the two lines of each couplet rhyming.

Much early verse was of an official nature, but that of the church was hardly more lively than that of the fili, 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 the famous address to Pangur, a white cat. They avoided complicated metres and used a language that had been cultivated for centuries, with a freshness of insight denied to the fili. That the fili could, however, adapt their technique was shown by an 11th-century poem on 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 eremitic movement in the Irish Church also provided a strong impetus to nature poetry. This almost Franciscan poetry 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 fili; 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 Artacáin summed up the saga material, while Fland Mainistrech collected the work of generations of fili who had laboured to synchronize Ireland’s history with that of the outside world. Equally important is a great collection, 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, making rhyming easy, facilitated mnemonic verse on numerous subjects.