Haha, this one of the things I've been focusing on in my research since the new year, so allow me to resuscitate this thread to nerd-puke on you for a minute! Unfortunately, you'll also see me trying to find my thread of thought, as there are a lot of things to cover here and my ADHD brain wants to head in all the directions at once. I'll do my best to keep it focused for you, but if I suddenly veer into another direction and don't explain myself well, please let me know so that I can fill in as best I can!
The first offshoot is the archaeological dates on Ireland's written language and how that bears on discussion. Dissecting the expansive corpus of early Irish literature, modern scholars can determine six distinct(ish) periods of the Irish language itself: Primitive (pre-sixth century CE); Archaic (sixth century CE); Early Old (seventh century); Old (eighth and ninth centuries); and Middle and Modern (which are
way too late for our discussion of the pre-Christian Irish, so forget them) (McManus, 83). The earliest forms of the written Irish language (aka our only examples of Primitive Irish) are the ogham stones, the earliest of which dates circa the fourth century CE (O'Kelly, 250), although a researcher from 1975, James Carney, did theorize that it could have begun as early as the first century ("The Invention of the Ogam Cipher," 57).
Although if you'll allow me a tangent: Unfortunately, any mention of a Greek-Irish connection is...severely outdated scholarship, and at this point conclusively incorrect. I had to do a term paper on the correlation of Ancient Greek and Irish philosophies for my Classics degree, and discovered that as of 2011, the fluency of the Irish in Ancient Greek at any period had been called into doubt (Moran, 'A Living Speech?' 29-57), and by 2012, denied altogether (Moran, 'Greek in Early Medieval Ireland,' 172-192). Ancient scholars believed that the Phoenicians from Carthage had built a trading route with the Irish, and brought them the Ancient Greek language that way ("Ierne"). However, as Pádraic Moran astutely points out, any transliteration of the Greek in Irish manuscripts systematically reflects the pronunciation of contemporary Old Irish speakers in the seventh and eighth centuries, not classical Greek and Latin speakers, like the Carthaginians (Moran, "'A Living Speech?' The Pronunciation of Greek in Early Medieval Ireland"). Furthermore, the potential to read continuous Greek would have been limited, as the only available materials at the time were intended for fluent Latin speakers attempting elementary bilingual education – something that would only have allowed passive knowledge and a simplistic reading ability, not a fluent understanding of Ancient Greek (Moran, "Greek in Early Medieval Ireland"). Moran provides extensive data and individual, real examples of each of these topics in his separate articles, so I'll let you access those by yourself - link's at the bottom - to see the data he pulled, which is pretty conclusive. On top of that, no Ancient Greek artefacts have ever been discovered on the island itself (one of the Moran articles - or both, my notes are in a muddle at this point - confirms this). The Greeks learned of the Irish potentially through those traders, although their writings are never about their direct dealings peoples of Ireland; they instead focus on geographical features of the island itself and what seems to be third-party hearsay ("Ierne"). It's been suggested that the "affiliation of the Irish culture with the ancient Greek...culture" is purely one that stems from their Proto-Indo-European roots, which were not further influenced (Benedict Fitzpatrick, ““Columbanus and Gregory – ‘Irish Ancients Who Were Philosophers’").
So that leaves us with the two other reigning theories for the origins of the Ogham alphabet, and thus the origins of the written language: the Germanic runes or the Latin alphabet. The Latin is the stronger of the two theories currently, simply because scholars can currently pinpoint its introduction to Ireland, and its concurrent to the emergence of Primitive Irish (Dillon & Chadwick, 258); there is aso a strong argument being built for the runes, because it would explain why the Irish have letters for H and Z that they don't use, "as well as the presence of vocalic and consonantal variants 'U' vs. 'W' (Düwel, "Runenkunde")," which is unknown to the Latin language. Either way, afaik, ogham is currently believed to be derivative from another script. Therefore, it needed an outside influence - either the Vikings (the first raid occurred in 795 CE; "Annals of Ulster"), the Latin-speaking populace (evidence for a Roman invasion is sketchy, despite varied archaeological evidence; Caesar first wrote about Ireland in 50 CE), or some other heretofore unconsidered language - all of which seem to have come in closer to/around Ireland's conversion to Christianity. Therefore, the logical conclusion is
not that the Irish
chose not to write down their mythology, but that they
couldn't.
And why should they? As Allec pointed out, the
filidh were expected to memorize their poetry in order to ensure the integrity of the tradition. The Book of Leinster (12h century) contains a colophon to the Tain Bo Cuailnge that reads "A blessing on everyone who will memorize the Tain with fidelity in this form and will not put any other form on it" (Rees, 17). In fact, a large part of the gradation of the seven types of poet lay in the number of compositions they have memorized (Breatnach, 81). The top rank of ollam had to memorize upwards of three hundred fifty compositions -
perfectly.
Which eventually returns us to your original question, of a sort -
Why did the early Irish peoples not write down their myths? They didn't have the capability, because of their ethics, which ensured excellent memorization of the lore as set out. Besides
enech, or honor/face (i.e. dignity, reputation, status) which regulated individuals' behavior and attitudes, another virtue that was exceptionally important was
ferbas or excellence (i.e. dignity, worth, and behavior fitting your social position and status - defined by your job). The artisans' ferbas was expected to be exhibited through - in order - wisdom (
gaís), judgement (
breth), knowledge (
éolus) and discernment (
mes) (McCone, 127). Most importantly - at least in the process of this discussion - was the value of
bes, habit/procedure/practice as well as morals/morality (i.e. customs, preservations of the lore, etc).
The Instructions of Cormac mac Airt provides a good example of how best to apply the idea of
ferbas. Essentially, sticking very, very closely to law and custom not only maintained stability but was considered an active way to honor those who were responsible for what came before you.
One last note before I take off: Kondratiev is known to be a problematic author if you're looking for historical resources. He makes consistent use of broader neo-pagan ideas and was trying to appeal to a vast audience, not stick closely to archeological or lorical evidence. If you're okay with a neo-Wiccan format, that's great; but if you're looking for something more historically based, then you're going to be highly annoyed the further you get.
The CR FAQ wrote a notation on his work, if you're interested.
The CR FAQ's Reading List is also a good - albeit rather outdated at this point - springboard for resources. I'd also recommend
Maya St Clair's Longform Reading List, which was written in 2015 and contains a generous mix of old and new sources. And if you're interested in historical/Recon leanings, I highly recommend reading
Thorraborinn's suggestions for a recon practice, which can give you some idea of how to conduct research, etc. Just a thought if you're interested in that sort of thing!
Otherwise - thanks for letting me ramble about my geekery!
Hope this gave you something new to chew on!!
Bibliography"Annals of Ulster," translated and edited by Mac Airt & Mac Niocaill.
CELT: The Corpus of Electronic Texts. Accessed January 8, 2017.
www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100001A/index.html"bés."
eDIL. Accessed January 8, 2017.
www.dil.ie/5755Breatnach, Liam.
Uraicecht na Ríar: the poetic grades in early Irish law. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1987.
Carney, James. "The Invention of the Ogam Cipher,"
Ériu. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1975.
Dillon, Myles; Chadwick, Nora.
The Celtic Realms. London: Cardinal, 1973.
Düwel, Klaus. "Runenkunde" [runic studies]. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 1968
Fitzpatrick, Benedict. ““Columbanus and Gregory – ‘Irish Ancients Who Were Philosophers’.” In Ireland and the Making of Britain (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1922): 70-72, accessed December 12, 2016.
archive.org/details/irelandandmakin02fitzgoog“Ierne,” in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, edited by William Smith, LLD. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1854. Accessed December 12, 2016.
www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064McCone,
Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature, Maynooth: St Patrick's College, 2000.
McManus, Damian.
A Guide to Ogam. Maynooth: An Sagart, 1997. Originally published 1991.
Meyer, Kuno (ed. and tr.).
The Triads of Ireland. Todd Lecture Series 13. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1906. Accessed January 8, 2017.
www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T103006/Moran, Pádraic. “‘A Living Speech’? The Pronunciation of Greek in Early Medieval Ireland.” In Ériu 61 (2011): 29-57. Accessed December 17, 2016.
www.pmoran.ie/downloads/Moran_2011_Pronunciation%20of%20Greek.pdf—. “Greek in Early Medieval Ireland.” In Mulitlinguism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds. Edited by Alex Mullen and Patrick James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Accessed December 17, 2016.
aran.library.nuigalway.ie/bitstream/handle/10379/4114/Moran_2012_Greek_in_early_medieval_Ireland.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y O'Kelly, Michael J.
Early Ireland, an Introduction to Irish Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Rees, Alwyn, and Rees, Brinley.
Celtic Heritage. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1961.
Hope this gave you something new to chew on!!