- Irish Gaelic
- Scottish Gaelic
- Welsh literature
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.
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.
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.