How the sacred tradition of the High Ollamhs of Ireland became a “secondary
source” 

Time and again the Celtic sources are mischaracterized by those unfamiliar
with them as mere folktale or commentary, simply due to the fact that they
were written down during Christian times. 

Let us imagine an alternate timeline:

 - The “Rig Veda” is kept alive for millennia in an oral tradition in a
society that hasn’t become literate yet
 - One day, Christians come in and take over this society, beginning a slow
and uneven “christianization” process that will last over 4 centuries
 - The existing oral tradition doesn’t simply stop existing, of course, but
carries on passing the “Rig Veda” down via official chief bards whose
office is so sacred that they continue to be considered social equals of
the king far into the Christian Era. These Chiefs of the High Bards each
train for over twenty years in memorization of the oral tradition.
 - A couple centuries after the Christians arrive these chief bards write
the “Veda” down from this carefully kept oral tradition using the language
of the time
 - A typical scholar stumbles in over a thousand years later: “I’m sorry to
tell you this, but it’s not scripture now. Therefore it must just be
folktales and commentary.”
 - The “Rig Veda” has now supposedly become a “secondary source” 

While they are an entirely different thing from the Veda, if you substitute
here the poetic and prose traditions preserved by the Chief Ollamhs of
Ireland for the “Rig Veda” you will begin to get a sense of the bias with
which Celtic sources are routinely treated by those who are only capable of
binary thinking — black, white, “pre-Christian,” “Christian.”

The transmission history of the Irish mythological texts is complex and
shouldn’t be over-simplified. To call the sacred oral tradition carefully
kept by an unbroken (and hereditary) line of official national bards who
were held to be of the same social standing as the High King of Ireland
through the Elizabethan age “folktales” makes one appear either ignorant of
the subject or an agenda-motivated slanderer.

In several cases we still have the names and biographical details of the
High Ollamhs who finally wrote down these traditions, and it is uncommon to
find that any of them were Christian priests as well as being bards. These
were two separate professions. It is a strange thing for those who haven’t
studied ancient Irish society to try to imagine how organized and revered
the class of bards or filid were in Ireland through the medieval period.

The truth is that, were it not for the Poetic Edda, which is a wonderful
text with its own debated transmission history, even scholars of Germanic
tradition would blush with pride to have sources of the same antiquity and
pedigree as the transcribed oral traditions the Celts have, with most
manuscripts compiled from the 600s to the 1100s, and some of the content
being demonstrably pre-5th century (pre-Christian), carried through by an
unbroken line of official hereditary bardic schools that were at the center
of their society.

Imagine a second timeline: the Poetic Edda is written down a century or so
later than we now believe it to have been, during Christian times by bards
who want to preserve their ancient oral tradition from being lost in the
new culture. Or even imagine the Poetic Edda is discovered in the same way
we know it to have been, translated into the language of that time, and
then the original versions are lost to history. Would the Edda suddenly
become a folktale due to the language of its writing having a date during a
Christian period, would the gods be impossible to identify clearly, and
would you then have the stomach to counsel your fellow Germanic brothers to
despair and nihilism regarding their ancestral tradition, despite the
nature of the text still being clear from poetic form, content, and
comparative study?


This is not to get into the details, as the quality of every individual
source is an ongoing debate.

-O’Gravy