Oral Tradition
The fili maintained an oral tradition that predated the Christianization of Ireland. In this tradition, poetic and musical forms are important not only for aesthetics, but also for their mnemonic value. The tradition allowed plenty of room for improvisation and personal expression, especially in regard to creative hyperbole and clever kenning. However, the culture placed great importance on the fili's ability to pass stories and information down through the generations without making changes in those elements that were considered factual rather than embellishment.
In this manner, a significant corpus of pre-Christian myth and epic literature remained largely intact many centuries into the Christian era. Much of it was first recorded in writing by scholarly Christian monks. The synergy between the rich and ancient indigenous oral literary tradition and the classical tradition resulted in an explosion of monastic literature that included epics of war, love stories, nature poetry, saint tales and so forth which collectively resulted in the largest corpus of non-Latin literature seen in Europe since Ancient Greece.
See Early Irish literature for more details.
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