John Waddell, L’Archéologie et la mythologie celtique, trans. Marie le Men. Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2022, 204 pp., 11 colour ill.

Abstract

Abstract Professor Waddell’s Archaeology and Celtic Myth (Dublin: Four Courts, 2014) now gains wider attention by a French translation, attractively presented with many illustrations. The main text, virtually unchanged from that of 2014, has seven chapters: encounters with myth; the Other World and tombs on the River Boyne; the “fugitive image” (on sun-worship and the like); the Quest for the Other World; the Horse Goddess; the Goddess of Sovereignty; and Sacred Kingship. The author (a Galway archaeologist) relates material entities (tombs, metalwork, sculpture) to the paganism represented in Irish texts and beyond. Plenty here, then, for prehistorians and literary scholars. They will be aided by a twenty-page bibliography, and obstructed by complete lack of an index. Yet the latter will not trouble non-specialists, also (with reason) likely to appreciate this study of Celtic mysteries.