Editing Irish mythology (section)

==Sources==

[[File:Book of Leinster, folio 53.jpg|thumb|upright=1|alt=A page from a 12th-century Irish manuscript|Folio 53 of the ''[[Book of Leinster]]''. Medieval manuscripts are the main source for Irish mythology and early literature.]]

The three main manuscript sources for Irish mythology are the late 11th/early 12th&nbsp;century {{Lang|mga|[[Lebor na hUidre]]}} (Book of the Dun Cow), which is in the library of the [[Royal Irish Academy]], and is the oldest surviving manuscript written entirely in the Irish language; the early 12th-century ''[[Book of Leinster]]'', which is in the [[Trinity College Library, Dublin|Library]] of [[Trinity College Dublin]]; and [[Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 502]] (''Rawl.''), which is in the [[Bodleian Library]] at the [[University of Oxford]]. Despite the dates of these sources, most of the material they contain predates their composition.<ref name=Frehan-2012/>

Other important sources include a group of manuscripts that originated in the West of Ireland in the late 14th&nbsp;century or the early 15th century: ''The [[Yellow Book of Lecan]]'', ''The [[Great Book of Lecan]]'' and ''The [[Book of Ballymote]]''. The first of these is in the Library of Trinity College and the others are in the Royal Irish Academy. The Yellow Book of Lecan is composed of sixteen parts and includes the legends of Fionn Mac Cumhail, selections of legends of Irish Saints, and the earliest known version of the ''[[Táin Bó Cúailnge]]'' ("The Cattle Raid of Cooley"). This is one of Europe's oldest epics written in a vernacular language.<ref name=Frehan-2012/> Other 15th-century manuscripts, such as ''The Book of Fermoy'', also contain interesting materials, as do such later syncretic works such as [[Geoffrey Keating]]'s ''Foras Feasa ar Éirinn'' (''The History of Ireland'') ({{circa|1640}}). These later compilers and writers may well have had access to manuscript sources that have since disappeared.

Most of these manuscripts were created by Christian [[monk]]s, who may well have been torn between a desire to record their native culture and hostility to pagan beliefs, resulting in some of the gods being [[wiktionary:euhemerize|euhemerised]]. Many of the later sources may also have formed parts of a propaganda effort designed to create a history for the people of Ireland that could bear comparison with the mythological descent of their British invaders from the founders of Rome, as promulgated by [[Geoffrey of Monmouth]] and others. There was also a tendency to rework Irish genealogies to fit them into the schemas of Greek or biblical genealogy.

Whether medieval Irish literature provides reliable evidence of [[oral tradition]] remains a matter for debate. [[Kenneth H. Jackson|Kenneth Jackson]] described the Ulster Cycle as a "window on the Iron Age", and Garret Olmsted has attempted to draw parallels between ''[[Táin Bó Cuailnge]]'', the Ulster Cycle epic and the iconography of the [[Gundestrup Cauldron]].<ref name=Jackson-1964-oldest/> However, these "nativist" claims have been challenged by "revisionist" scholars who believe that much of the literature was created, rather than merely recorded, in Christian times, more or less in imitation of the [[Epic poetry|epic]]s of [[classical literature]] that came with [[Latin]] learning. The revisionists point to passages apparently influenced by the [[Iliad]] in ''Táin Bó Cuailnge'', and to the ''Togail Troí'', an Irish adaptation of [[Dares Phrygius]]' ''De excidio Troiae historia'', found in the Book of Leinster. They also argue that the material culture depicted in the stories is generally closer to that of the time of their composition than to that of the distant past.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}}