text: Old Irish Old Irish was the first written vernacular language north of the Alps, and it first appeared in the margins of Latin manuscripts as early as the 6th century. Old Irish can be divided into two periods: Early Old Irish, also called Archaic Irish (c. 7th century), and Old Irish (8th–9th century). One of the most notable Old Irish texts was the Senchas Már, a series of early legal tracts that are alleged to "have been redacted from a pre-Christian original by Saint Patrick."
  Stories of the Ulster Cycle were written primarily in the Middle Irish period, but many of the heroes featured were initially described in Old Irish texts. Many early Irish literary texts, though recorded in manuscripts of the Middle Irish period (such as Lebor na hUidre and the Book of Leinster), are essentially Old Irish in character.
  Middle Irish
  Middle Irish is the form of Irish used from the 10th to 13th centuries; it is therefore a contemporary of late Old English and early Middle English. It is characterized by an increased amount of linguistic variation compared to the relatively uniform writing of Old Irish. In Middle Irish texts. writers blended together contemporary and older linguistic forms in the same text.
  Middle Irish is the language of a large amount of literature, including the entire Ulster Cycle.