Ten Thousand Saints: A Study in Irish and European Origins

When it was first published in 1972, Hubert Butler’s pioneering masterwork was received with scepticism by his contemporaries. He used linguistics to trace the origins of myths and saints back to pre-Celtic Ireland and Europe, and showed how these stories and names – ancestors of half-forgotten tribes – became absorbed by Christian mythology. The early Irish wove their stories, as did the Greeks, the Hebrews and all early peoples, from the migration of tribes and by wordplay with their time...