Sources of Irish mythology. The significance of the dinnṡenchas

Dinnṡenchas Érenn ‘The lore of famous places of Ireland’ contains within it a significant number of tales or mentions of tales whose main characters are of the Túatha Dé Donann. Consequently, this large and detailed corpus of aetiological stories and poems is an important source of mythological narratives and information. The relationships between the prose and poetry in the collection, and the earlier sources which they may have drawn upon, allow for very interesting and informative inter-textual studies to be undertaken. In some cases, however, the dinnṡenchas corpus is the oldest—and sometimes the only—source for the narratives being related. Consequently, one of the aspects of the compilation of Dinnṡenchas Érenn which is most difficult to assess is the influence of the learned literary sources it draws upon versus the extent to which it reuses and reworks earlier traditional materials.