Studies in Irish Mythology

Since my first encounters with Irish and British scholars, or the general public in those countries, I have often been confronted with the question as to why I have developed an interest in early Irish literature and mythology. To answer this, I always reminded these inquirers of the great Celtic scholars from Central Europe such as Kuno Meyer, Julius Pokorny or Rudolf Thurneysen. What is more, I was always surprised to discover to what extent the early Irish literary tradition, with all its conflicts, heroes and learned men, is underestimated in Ireland itself or in the English-speaking world. Early Irish literature, as one of the richest vernacular literatures in medieval Europe, is much less known to the general public than Old Norse sagas or the Old English epic 'Beowulf'. It is of course rather difficult in the field of Celtic studies to find the right balance between the scientific, sceptical, hardcore textual analysis and popular vulgarisation on the subject of Celtic myths and legends. When taking the 'scientific approach' one can sometimes miss the most overt message of the text, whereas taking the 'popular approach', generalisation often suppresses the delicate and complex puzzle of epochs and realities within the text. For me the most interesting and promising undertaking in my research was always to dig and uncover hidden layers and meanings within early medieval Irish texts, notwithstanding that sometimes the results are not what one might expect to find. Some chapters of this book, the result of about ten years research, were published previously as articles in different periodicals and proceedings of conferences. They deal mostly with mythological narratives, both prose and metrical, composed and written down in early medieval Ireland in Old and Middle Irish. I strongly believe that presenting them now — reworked and updated — as a single book, constitutes an integral text towards a reconstruction of an early Irish mythological worldview within the broader context of Indo-European and Eurasian mythologies.