Trees and Tradition in Early Ireland 1 LIONEL S. JOSEPH William James College (Ret.) BRIAN DRAYTON TERC, Cambridge, MA Old and Middle Irish nature poetry has long been appreciated for the vividness of its description of the natural world. In this paper, we will show that the inventory of trees and bushes upon which poets drew was based less upon direct observation of nature than upon a traditional taxonomy found in a completely different genre, the law tracts dating back to the seventh century, notably the tree list edited by Fergus Kelly in 1976 from Bretha Comaithchesa ‘Judgments Concerning Neighborhood Law’. Thus, the economic and aesthetic value of trees and bushes as discussed in law tracts and nature poetry were part of a single continuous tradition of taxonomy and silviculture stretching over at least 500 years. We will end by discussing the relationship between this tradition and the Ogam letter names (McManus 1997). Keywords: Irish nature poetry; Old Irish tree list; Ogam letter names The goal of this paper is to demonstrate continuity and infuence in early Irish nature writing 2 between two genres widely separated in time and style: the Old Irish law tracts of the seventh century and Middle Irish nature poetry in such texts as Buile Ṡuibhne, ‘The Inspired Vision of Sweeney’. In what follows we will focus exclusively on trees and bushes because of their importance in the legal literature (Binchy 1971; Kelly 1976), in nature poetry, and in the Ogam letter names (McManus 1986, 1988, 1997). In addition to the Old Irish tree list in 1 LSJ presented a preliminary version of this paper at the Seventh Annual Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 1–2 May 1987. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the valuable discussions and correspondence that he has had while refning it over the years: with the late Anders Ahlqvist and with John Armstrong, Fred Biggs, Liam Breatnach, Brian Frykenberg, Thomas Hill, Jay Jasanoff, Fergus Kelly, Proinsias Mac Cana, Damian McManus (especially a letter of 21 April 1988), and William Mahon. We are happy to thank LSJ’s son, Daniel F. O. Joseph, who took time off from his editing and translating of Japanese to edit this paper. We are also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for Studia Celtica Fennica and to our outstanding editor Sarah Waidler and her colleague Silva Nurmio. Their valuable comments made this paper stronger. 2 For a detailed analysis of the creation of the myth of the Celts as supremely ‘natural’ in the writings of Ernest Renan and Matthew Arnold, see Sims-Williams (1996). Lionel S. Joseph, Brian Drayton Studia Celtica Fennica XVII (2020–2021), 54–73, eISSN 2242-4261 © 2020 Joseph, Drayton This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).