The Celtic languages contain one of Europe’s oldest and most vibrant mythologies. By virtue of the fact that they were written down only early in the Christian period, the Celtic languages and therefore Celtic mythology are predated by Greek and Latin. But the mythology is a development from a far earlier oral tradition. Contained in many of the stories are voices from the dawn of European civilisation, for the Celts were one of the great founding peoples of Europe. It is generally thought they commenced their spread across Europe from their original homeland around the headwaters of the Rhine, Rhône, and Danube rivers, which still bear their original Celtic names, at the start of the first millennium b.c. By the third century b.c. the Celts were settled from the central plain of Turkey in the east through the Balkans, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland, and northern Italy to France, Belgium, Spain, and Britain and Ireland. They were the first Transalpine European civilisation to emerge into recorded history.
Their political influence and geographical power started to decline in the first century b.c., primarily in the face of the advance of the ruthless military empire of Rome. Conquest and assimilation into the pax Romana were the order of the day. Area by area, the Celts were either pushed back, annihilated, or assimilated. The only Celtic area that escaped Roman conquest was Ireland and, to a lesser extent, northern Britain. It has been argued, therefore, that the early Irish legends and tales are a true “window on the Iron Age,” uninfluenced by contact with Rome. But due to the fact that the myths were not committed to writing until the early Christian era, when Christianity and its attendant Latin culture had been imported from Rome, the argument is a moot one. Analysis shows that many Christian scribes tended to bowdlerise the pagan vibrancy of the myths and give them a Christian veneer.
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