Excerpt from The History of Ireland: From the Earliest Period of the Irish Annals, to the Present Time

The various races and tribes who formed the chief portion of the population of modern Europe had no written literature before their conversion to Christianity; and hence they adopted the alphabets of Rome or Greece, according to the country of the missionaries who were their teachers. The letters which they possessed before were calculated only for cutting inscriptions on wood or stone. They were those elaborately formed characters which among the anglo-saxons and Germans are known by the name of Runes, and which the Irish designated by the synonymous word in their language, Oghams. The literature of all people in this state of society was preserved only by the memory, and was passed from one to another, and from generation to generation, orally; its preservation being the particular duty of an important and very influential order, who are commonly designated by the name of bards or poets. It was their business to Commemorate the mythic stories relating to the origin of their tribe, as well as its great exploits or misfortunes at a later period, the latter, though exaggerated and disfigured in accordance With their prejudices and passions, belonging much more to what we strictly consider as history than the former, although the transition from one to the other is almost imperceptible. These, however, were the only materials upon which the early history of all nations was founded.

The books which were first written by the Christian missionaries were copies of thebefore the vernacular language of the people was committed to writing in anything but brief notes and glosses to assist the teacher in explaining the Latin text. The old order and the new one - the hard and the Christian priest - continued to live together without so much of rivalry as might be expected, the bard gradually resigning the religious part of his character to the priest, while the priest left the commemoration of historical events as the special province of the bard; and this state of things lasted during a longer or shorter period, according to the slowness or rapidity of the march of civilization. In Ireland it has continued to a very late period; and hence, while among the anglo-saxons and the Franks, and most of the branches of the Germanic race, the creations of the bards soon began to be regarded in their true light of romances, in Ireland the popular conviction that they were strictly historic has hardly yet been overthrown. The modern historian of that country has thus to deal with a great mass of materials which his judgment repudiates, although popular belief or prejudice will not allow them to be neglected.

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