High King of Ireland, reigning in 714 b.c., and is traditionally recognised as founding rule by legislature and giving the country the first codified law system. He is said to have been buried at Tailltinn (Teltown, Co. Westmeath).

Olwen

[W] “She of the white track,” so named because four white trefoils sprang up wherever she trod. The beautiful daughter of Yspaddaden Pencawr, “chief giant,” who lived with her father in a fortress. Culhwch overcomes many difficulties to make her his wife. She has similarities to Étain in Irish myth.

Oonagh

[I] Wife of Fionnbharr, relegated from an ancient goddess of the Dé Danaan in popular folklore to “queen of all the fairies in Ireland.” Oonagh and Fionnbharr dwelt at the sídhe of Meadhna, five miles west of Tuam.

Oral Tradition

It was not until the early Christian period that the Celts began to write extensively in their own languages. For hundreds of years prior to that time, Celtic law, poetry, philosophy, science, history, genealogy, and literature were passed down in oral form. Julius Caesar commented of the Celts: “They commit to memory immense amounts of poetry. And some of them continue their studies for twenty years. They consider it improper to commit their studies to writing.” It is clear that this was a religious prohibition rather than an inability to write, for we find that the Celts could and did leave inscriptions on occasion, mainly funerary inscriptions in Greek and Latin characters. Such Celtic inscriptions have been found in northern Italy and northern Spain. A find in 1983 of a lead tablet written in Latin cursive has provided us with the longest known Gaulish text to date (Études celtique, Paris, CNRS, Vol. XXII, 1985). Prior to this, the most extensive text in Gaulish was the Coligny calender, dated to the first century b.c., now in the Musée Des Arts, Lyons, France.

It is argued that when the Greeks first recorded the name Keltoi as a name for the Celts, they were recording a name by which the Celts referred to themselves—“the secret people.” The word ceillt still means “hidden” in modern Irish, and this is also thought to be the etymology of the word “kilt,” for obvious reasons.

It is accepted that many of the stories of Celtic myth were ancient even at the time when Christianity had replaced the ancient Celtic religion, which had placed such a prohibition on writing. And when the Christian scribes came to write down the stories,