The Oldest Irish Tradition: A Window on the Iron Age Book

Kenneth Hurlestone Jackson was the Rede Lecturer in 1964 and his lecture, printed here, focused on exploring medieval and earlier Irish literature. The Rede lectures originate from an endowment left to the University of Cambridge by Sir Robert Rede, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas for a series of edifying lectures each year by an individual scholar on 'Humanity, logic and philosophy' each year to the University. This has evolved into a single annual lecture given by an individual appointed yearly by the vice-chancellor. Jackson's lecture explored the possibility that the Ulster cycle of tales preserves an oral tradition of Celtic Irish society from the third and fourth century AD; as the background of the tales pre-dates Christian influences in the fifth century and 'provides us with a picture - very dim and fragmentary, no doubt ...of Ireland in the Early Iron Age.'