It is unclear when literacy first came to Ireland. The earliest Irish writings are inscriptions, mostly simple memorials, on stone in the Ogham alphabet, the earliest of which date to the 4th century. The Latin alphabet was in use by

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The oldest surviving manuscripts containing examples of the written Irish language date to the 8th century. Their Irish contents consist of glosses written between the lines or on

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The oldest books of miscellaneous literature are the Lebor na hUidre, or "Book of the Dun Cow", transcribed about 1100, and the

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The bulk of the ancient stories and some of the ancient poems were probably committed to writing by monks of the 7th century, but are

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When it is understood that the ancient Irish sagas record, even though it be in a more or less distorted fashion, in some cases reminiscences of a past mythology, and in others real historical events, dating from the pagan times, then it needs only a moment's reflection to

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There are four great cycles in Irish story-telling, not all of which fully survive. Professor John Th. Honti stated that many of these Irish sagas show "a nucleus" that appear in "some later European folk-tale".
Mythological Cycle
The Mythological Cycle

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Perhaps no country that ever adopted Christianity was so thoroughly and rapidly permeated and perhaps saturated with its language and concepts as was Ireland. It adopted and made its own in secular life scores and hundreds of words originally used by the Church for

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