But the myths and legends of Ireland were oral, handed down over the centuries, altered, amended, sometimes to fit in with the christian beleifs, sometimes on the whim of the travelling story tellers, and were not put into written form until the eleventh century and after.
Ireland is immutable; it does not change, and most of it has not changed. A Celtic Warrior could be depsosited in its midst and be convinced that he was in his own time. Ireland largely escaped the Industrial Revolution; there are few tracts of desolate wasteland. The entire population is around 5 million, considerably less than either London or New York.
The mythology is violent and tender in turn. It can be fragmentary, and hallucinatory vivid.. Who can forget the image of three hanging naked women, largely unexplained? Or the beautiful story of the four maidens turned into swans and doomed to their fate for hundreds of years? or the hidious hags who are transmuted by love into beautiful women? or the ghastly horor of the shrinking hut?
Some of the stories are not for the faint hearted. But there are others, compassionate and benign, that show a different side of the ancient Celtic culture, a culture that lives on indiffent to what has been called progress.