ABSTRACT
One of the matters on which Celticists have failed most signally to achieve consensus is the degree to which the extant corpus of medieval Irish literature may be accepted as a reliable index of native mythology and religion: apart from the diverse special interests of the scholars themselves – constituents of the literary evidence which appear to stand forth in high relief when viewed from one academic or ideological perspective may be less prominent when seen from other points of view – there is the very real problem posed by the nature of the evidence itself and by the manner of its survival. First one must have regard to the chronological gap which separates the Irish materials from the information on the beliefs and practices of the continental Celts that survives in inscriptions, iconography and the commentaries of various classical authors and which furnishes a vital complement to the Insular evidence. Near the beginning of the twentieth century Camille Jullian commented on this difficulty from the standpoint of a historian of Gaul. Even if it could be proved that Irish tradition and Gaulish civilization were historically related, is it justifiable to interpret the one by recourse to the other? Can one, he asks, really rely on documents written in Ireland so many centuries later than the independent Gaul of the pre-Christian era? 1
