2. Early Celtic Literature

For a comparatively small country, Ireland has made a large contribution to world literature in all its branches. The Irish literature that is best known outside the country is in English, but the Irish language also has the most significant body of written literature, both ancient and recent, in any Celtic language, in addition to a strong oral tradition of legends and poetry.

The Ulster Cycle written in the 12th century, is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas of the traditional heroes of the Ulaid in what is now eastern Ulster and northern Leinster, particularly counties Armagh, Down and Louth. The stories are written in Old and Middle Irish, mostly in prose, interspersed with occasional verse passages. The language of the earliest stories is dateable to the 8th century, and events and characters are referred to in poems dating to the 7th.

In Medieval Welsh literature the period before 1100 is known as the period of Y Cynfeirdd （“The earliest poets”） or Yr Hengerdd （“The old poetry”）. It roughly dates from the birth of the Welsh language until the arrival of the Normans in Wales towards the end of the 11th century.

The stories of the Mabinogion appear in either or both of two Medieval Welshmanuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch （ Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch ） written ca. 1350, and the Red Book of Hergest （ Llyfr Coch O Hergest ） written about 1382–1410, although texts or fragments of some of the tales have been preserved in earlier 13th century and later manuscripts. Scholars agree that the tales are older than the existing manuscripts, but disagree over just how much older.

Gaelic literature in Scotland includes a celebration, attributed to the Irish monk Adomnán, of the Pictish King Bridei’s （671–693） victory of the Northumbrians at the Battle of Dun Nechtain （685）.