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===Early Celtic literature===
For a comparatively small country, Ireland has made a large contribution to [[world literature]] in all its branches. The [[Irish literature]] that is best known outside the country is in English, but the [[Irish language]] also has the most significant body of written literature, both ancient and recent, in any Celtic language, in addition to a strong [[Oral literature|oral tradition]] of legends and poetry.
The [[Ulster Cycle]] written in the 12th century, is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas of the traditional heroes of the [[Ulaid]] in what is now eastern [[Ulster]] and northern [[Leinster]], particularly counties [[County Armagh|Armagh]], [[County Down|Down]] and [[County Louth|Louth]]. The stories are written in [[Old Irish|Old]] and [[Middle Irish]], mostly in prose, interspersed with occasional verse passages. The language of the earliest stories is dateable to the 8th century, and events and characters are referred to in poems dating to the 7th.<ref>Garret Olmsted, "The Earliest Narrative Version of the ''Táin'': Seventh-century poetic references to ''Táin bó Cúailnge''", Emania 10, 1992, pp. 5–17</ref> The ''[[Annals of Ulster]]'' ({{lang-ga|
[[File:Gododdin1.jpg|thumb|upright|A facsimile page of ''[[Y Gododdin]]'' c. 1275]]
In [[Medieval Welsh literature]] the period before 1100 is known as the period of ''Y Cynfeirdd'' ("The earliest poets") or ''Yr Hengerdd'' ("The old poetry"). It roughly dates from the birth of the Welsh language until the arrival of the [[Normans]] in Wales towards the end of the 11th century. ''[[Y Gododdin]]'' is a medieval [[Welsh language|Welsh]] poem consisting of a series of [[elegy|elegies]] to the men of the [[Britons (historical)|Britonnic]] kingdom of [[Gododdin]] and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the [[Angles]] of [[Deira (kingdom)|Deira]] and [[Bernicia]] at a place named ''[[Battle of Catraeth|Catraeth]]'' in ca. AD 600. It is traditionally ascribed to the bard [[Aneirin]], and survives only in one manuscript, known as the [[Book of Aneirin]]. The poem is recorded in a manuscript of the second half of the 13th century, and it has been dated to anywhere between the 7th and the early 11th centuries. The text is partly written in [[Middle Welsh]] orthography and partly in [[Old Welsh]].
The name [[Mabinogion]] is a convenient label for a collection eleven [[prose]] stories collated from two [[medieval Welsh]] [[manuscript]]s known as the [[White book of Rhydderch]] (''Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch'') (ca. 1350) and the [[Red Book of Hergest]] (''Llyfr Coch Hergest'') (1382–1410). They are written in Middle Welsh, the common literary language between the end of the eleventh century and the fourteenth century. They include the four tales that form Pedair Cainc y Mabinogi ("The Four Branches of the Mabinogi"). The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions. While some details may hark back to older [[Iron Age]] traditions, each of these tales is the product of a highly developed medieval Welsh narrative tradition, both oral and written. [[Lady Charlotte Guest]] in the mid-19th century was the first to publish English translations of the collection, popularising the name "Mabinogion" at the same time.
Gaelic literature in Scotland includes a celebration, attributed to the Irish monk Adomnán, of the Pictish King [[Bridei III of the Picts|Bridei]]'s (671–93) victory over the [[Northumbria]]ns at the [[Battle of Dun Nechtain]] (685). [[Pictish language|Pictish]], the now extinct [[Brythonic languages|Brythonic language]] spoken in Scotland, has left no record of poetry, but poetry composed in Gaelic for Pictish kings is known. By the 9th century, Gaelic speakers controlled Pictish territory and Gaelic was spoken throughout Scotland and used as a [[literary language]]. However, there was great cultural exchange between Scotland and Ireland, with Irish poets composing for Scottish or Pictish patrons, and Scottish poets composing for Irish patrons.<ref name=Triumph>{{cite book|last=Clancy|first=Thomas Owen|title=The Triumph Tree: Scotland's Earliest Poetry AD 550-1350|year=1998|publisher=Canongate Books|location=Edinburgh|isbn=0862417872}}</ref>
No Cornish literature survives from the Primitive Cornish period (c600-800 AD). The earliest written record of the Cornish language, dating from the 9th century, is a [[Gloss (annotation)|gloss]] in a Latin manuscript of the ''Consolation of Philosophy'', which used the words ''ud rocashaas''. The phrase means ''"it (the mind) hated the gloomy places"''.<ref>[http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/060615.shtml Oxford scholars detect earliest record of Cornish]{{dead link|date=January 2013}}</ref><ref>Sims-Williams, P., 'A New Brittonic Gloss on Boethius: ud rocashaas', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 50 (Winter 2005), 77-86.</ref>
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