Old Irish - Definition and Overview

Old Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Irish language which can be more or less fully reconstructed from extant sources. It dates from the 6th to the 10th century, when it gives way to Middle Irish.

Fragments, mainly personal names, of an earlier form of the language, known as Primitive Irish, are known from inscriptions in the ogham alphabet in Ireland and western Britain, dating as late as the 4th century.

Old Irish first appears in the margins of Latin religious manuscripts dating as early as the 6th century. A large number of early Irish literary texts, though recorded in manuscripts of the Middle Irish period such as Lebor na hUidre and the Book of Leinster, are essentially Old Irish in character.