Dindsenchas or Dindshenchas (modern spellings: Dinnseanchas or Dinnsheanchas or Dınnṡeanċas), meaning "lore of places" dind "notable place"; senchas "old tales, ancient history, tradition" - Dictionary of the Irish Language, Compact Edition, 1990, pp. 215, 537 (the Irish language word dinnseanchas means "topography"), Collins Pocket Irish Dictionary p. 452 is a class of onomastic text in early Irish literature, recounting the origins of place-names and traditions concerning events and characters associated with the places in question. Since many of the legends being related also concern the acts of mythic and legendary figures, the dindsenchas has been an important source for the study of Irish mythology.
Works
Although they are known today from these written sources, the dindsenchas are clearly a product of oral literature and are structured so as to be a mnemonic aid as well as a form of entertainment. They are far from an accurate history of how places came to be named. Many of the explanations given are made to fit the name and not the other way around, especially in the many cases where a place was much older than the Middle Irish spoken at the time of the poems' composition. In other cases, the dindsenchas poets may have invented names for places when the name of a place, if it had one, was not known to them. A detailed analysis points to a pre-Christian origin for most of the tales. For example, many placenames appear which had fallen out of use by the 5th century A.D., when Irish written records began to appear in quantity. Furthermore County Clare is given as part of Connaught suggesting a date before ~610 AD and the Battle of Knocklong. Christian references, and the Graeco-Roman myths and tales of Pagan atrocity associated with that influence are also mostly absent.
Knowledge of the real or putative history of local places formed an important part of the education of the elite in ancient Ireland. This formed part of the training of the military, for whom a knowledge of the landscape was essential. It was also essential knowledge for the bardic caste, who were expected to recite poems answering questions on place name origins as part of their professional duties. An early example of this are the tales about Mongán mac Fíachnai which date from at least as early as 750, where the poet Forgoll is asked to recite the lore of different places. Consequently, the dindshenchas may well have grown by accretion from local texts compiled in schools as a way of teaching about places in their area.
Edward Gwynn compiled and translated dindsenchas poems from the Lebor na hUidre, the Book of Leinster, the Rennes Manuscript, the Book of Ballymote, the Great Book of Lecan and the Yellow Book of Lecan in The Metrical Dindshenchas, published in four parts between 1903 and 1924, with a general introduction and indices published as a fifth part in 1935.
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