between Ireland and Wales during the period that the two literatures were being originated. The idea was first fully argued by Cecile O’Rahilly in her Ireland and Wales: Their Historical and Literary Relations (1924).

As the political fortunes of the Celtic peoples declined and, one by one, the surviving nations were conquered and incorporated into alien cultural traditions, the continuity of their mythological traditions was almost destroyed. In this respect Ireland suffered more than Wales, for its native intelligentsia was systematically eradicated through the seventh century conquests, with the learned classes of society especially being singled out and killed or sent into exile. Books in Irish during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were printed in Antwerp, Brussels, Paris, and Louvain and had to be smuggled into the country. The attempts to eradicate the Irish language and culture that followed did not, however, entirely destroy the mythic traditions that, for the majority, turned into an oral folklore tradition once more. In Wales, the experience was slightly different. The laws attempting to “utterly extirp” the Welsh language and culture did not destroy the native intelligentsia nor drive them into exile. Printing in the language became a native occupation and the literary as well as the oral traditions continued to flourish.

Many still worked in the native Celtic languages, developing the mythological themes. Micheál Coimín (1688–1760) was producing works such as Laoí Oisín ar Thír na nOig (Lay of Oisín in the Land of Youth). But while some worked with the native languages, others began collecting the oral traditions and translating them into English and, in the case of the Breton traditions, into French.

The “cultural bomb” that sparked a new interest in Celtic mythology and, as a by-product, instigated the European “Romantic Movement” in literature was the work of a Scotsman, James MacPherson of Kingussie (1736–1796), who published Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands (1760), Fingal (1762), and Temora (1763), all of which, he claimed, were translations from ancient Scottish Gaelic manuscripts. They became known collectively as Ossian (Oisín being the son of Fionn Mac Cumhail).

Dr. Samuel Johnson denounced MacPherson’s works as forgeries, causing a bitter controversy. Whether the works were merely highly subjective translations of oral Celtic traditions in Scotland rather than