Celtic Origins Research Articles

A Y-Chromosome Signature of Hegemony in Gaelic Ireland

Seventeen-marker simple tandem repeat genetic analysis of Irish Y chromosomes reveals a previously unnoted modal haplotype that peaks in frequency in the northwestern part of the island. It shows a significant association with surnames purported to have descended from the most important and enduring dynasty of early medieval Ireland, the Ui Neill. This suggests that such phylogenetic predominance is a biological record of past hegemony and supports the veracity of semimythological early genealogies. The fact that about one in five males sampled in northwestern Ireland is likely a patrilineal descendent of a single early medieval ancestor is a powerful illustration of the potential link between prolificacy and power and of how Y-chromosome phylogeography can be influenced by social selection.

Whiteness, multiculturalism and nationalist appropriation of Celtic culture: the case of the League of the South and the Lega Nord

The League of the South (USA) and Lega Nord (Italy), formed in 1994 and 1991 respectively, are nationalist organizations that have utilized claims to Celtic ethnicity to further their appeal. In this article we explore these claims, made in relation to the southern United States and northern Italy, and argue that they are used by these organizations to justify exclusionary politics. By claiming a privileged status for Celtic culture, heritage and genealogy, the League of the South and Lega Nord envision their putative nation-states as accommodating other ethnic groups in subordinate roles. We argue that claiming Celtic ethnicity is an implicit appeal to white privilege. In the proposed nation-states of the Confederate States of America and Padania, white authority would be sustained. Further, the way these groups use Celticness allows them to make links to specific historical and material geographies. Claiming Celtic origins enables northern Italians to distinguish themselves from southern Italians, and to make an associated historical-geographical connection between themselves and northern Europe, enabling disassociation from the Mediterranean. The League of the South claim to ‘Anglo-Celtic’ ethnicity enables their membership to distinguish themselves from other residents of the United States, be these non-white residents of the southern states or other white people within the USA. Finally, we suggest that some dominant political commitments to multiculturalism facilitate precisely such claims to Celtic origins, however tenuous, to be made in the name of recognizing and protecting cultural difference.

The Longue Durée of Genetic Ancestry: Multiple Genetic Marker Systems and Celtic Origins on the Atlantic Facade of Europe

Celtic languages are now spoken only on the Atlantic facade of Europe, mainly in Britain and Ireland, but were spoken more widely in western and central Europe until the collapse of the Roman Empire in the first millennium a.d. It has been common to couple archaeological evidence for the expansion of Iron Age elites in central Europe with the dispersal of these languages and of Celtic ethnicity and to posit a central European "homeland" for the Celtic peoples. More recently, however, archaeologists have questioned this "migrationist" view of Celtic ethnogenesis. The proposition of a central European ancestry should be testable by examining the distribution of genetic markers; however, although Y-chromosome patterns in Atlantic Europe show little evidence of central European influence, there has hitherto been insufficient data to confirm this by use of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Here, we present both new mtDNA data from Ireland and a novel analysis of a greatly enlarged European mtDNA database. We show that mtDNA lineages, when analyzed in sufficiently large numbers, display patterns significantly similar to a large fraction of both Y-chromosome and autosomal variation. These multiple genetic marker systems indicate a shared ancestry throughout the Atlantic zone, from northern Iberia to western Scandinavia, that dates back to the end of the last Ice Age.

Rosacea

Rosacea is an inflammatory skin condition affecting primarily the central facial area. Although rosacea is seen most often in persons of Celtic origins with fair complexion, it occurs in all races of people across all skin pigment types. The 3 components of rosacea are redness of the skin with or without flushing, telangiectasias, and acne. Any 1 or all 3 of these components may be dominant, but all are not necessarily present at the same time. Many persons with rosacea have a history of adolescent acne, but there are numerous exceptions. Typically, onset is in the mid adult years. The underlying cause is unknown. Some persons may have gastric coinfection with Helicobacter pylori, but causation has not been proved. Triggering factors include stress, alcohol consumption, environmental exposures, and certain foods. There may be a hereditary component. Concomitant seborrheic dermatitis is common. Severe cases may result in the development of grossly enlarged sebaceous glands and rhinophyma. This latter complication is more common in men than in women. The differential diagnosis of rosacea includes acne vulgaris, lupus erythematosus, photosensitive disorders, and other causes of flushing, such as the decrease of hormones during menopause, or other metabolic or endocrine diseases. The diagnosis is most often clinical, but tests such as a skin biopsy may be helpful when there is uncertainty. Management must emphasize removal or minimization of triggering factors and treatment of the acne component if present. Ongoing sun protection is important. Often, topical treatments of sulfur or sulfacetamide or topical antibiotics are prescribed. Oral antibiotics, especially those in the tetracycline family, are often used for cases with an acneiform component. Treatment of telangiectasias includes all the aforementioned, and electrocoagulation utilizing a small epilation needle or photocoagulation with intense light or laser can also be used.

Rosacea

Rosacea is an inflammatory skin condition affecting primarily the central facial area. Although rosacea is seen most often in persons of Celtic origins with fair complexion, it occurs in all races of people across all skin pigment types. The 3 components of rosacea are redness of the skin with or without flushing, telangiectasias, and acne. Any 1 or all 3 of these components may be dominant, but all are not necessarily present at the same time. Many persons with rosacea have a history of adolescent acne, but there are numerous exceptions. Typically, onset is in the mid adult years. The underlying cause is unknown. Some persons may have gastric coinfection with Helicobacter pylori, but causation has not been proved. Triggering factors include stress, alcohol consumption, environmental exposures, and certain foods. There may be a hereditary component. Concomitant seborrheic dermatitis is common. Severe cases may result in the development of grossly enlarged sebaceous glands and rhinophyma. This latter complication is more common in men than in women. The differential diagnosis of rosacea includes acne vulgaris, lupus erythematosus, photosensitive disorders, and other causes of flushing, such as the decrease of hormones during menopause, or other metabolic or endocrine diseases. The diagnosis is most often clinical, but tests such as a skin biopsy may be helpful when there is uncertainty. Management must emphasize removal or minimization of triggering factors and treatment of the acne component if present. Ongoing sun protection is important. Often, topical treatments of sulfur or sulfacetamide or topical antibiotics are prescribed. Oral antibiotics, especially those in the tetracycline family, are often used for cases with an acneiform component. Treatment of telangiectasias includes all the aforementioned, and electrocoagulation utilizing a small epilation needle or photocoagulation with intense light or laser can also be used.

Magic in Medieval Romance from Chrétien de Troyes to Geoffrey Chaucer by Michelle Sweeney (review)

948 Reviews Gower's Genius may lack authority), in general White skirts the important fact that many of the poems he discusses are poetic visions or psychological allegories: the positions taken by allegorical figures like Nature or Genius therefore reflectthe moral condition of a controlling central character. White, however, takes almost everything that is said, regardless of its point of view or tone, as a transparent reflection of the author's true opinions. This carelessness about form makes it difficultto achieve the praiseworthy task set early in the book?that is, to look at how the poets make the 'instability and ambivalence' of Nature a source of 'enormous poetic power as the focus of contesting energies within individual poems' (p. 47). Because the effect of form on meaning goes largely unacknowledged, we end up seeing Gower in the Confessio Amantis as an author who has tried but failed to reconcile the claims of Nature and Reason, rather than as one who self-consciously probes an allegorical fault-line to convey equivocations issuing from Amans. Parts of the chapter on Gower, however, show what this book could have been. White's understanding of Nature's ambiva? lence allows him to introduce to criticism of this poem a refreshing and clear-sighted recognition of Gower's pessimism; his reading of Amans's renunciation of love is closely observed and shows the potential of his method. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the book does not live up to this potential. The final chapter on Chaucer is especially disappointing. Here White skips from poem to poem without significantly engaging any of them or their relationship with the full tradition. In a book that at the beginning proclaims Gower and Chaucer as its ultimate objects (p. 7), one expects both less and more: a less meandering opening, a more sustained and thoughtful close. Wellesley College Kathryn L. Lynch Magic in Medieval Romance from Chretien de Troyes to GeoffreyChaucer. By Michelle Sweeney. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2000. 199 pp. ?35. ISBN 185182 -536-3. It is the virtue of this book to draw attention to an area which, one suspects, many earlier medievalists have regarded as just too silly to merit serious attention, but as the author?quite rightly?says of magic in the romances, 'to fail to acknowledge its influence is to diminish [. . .] a phenomenon which medieval authors saw as a means of interrogating their own community's sense of self and purpose' (p. 53). Sweeney's conclusion, expressed already in the introductory chapter, is that 'magic is used to achieve a similar purpose across the range of texts under discussion, that is, evaluation of the characters' values, identities or moral beliefs' (p. 19). The 'texts under discussion' include Geoffreyof Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae as progenitor of the Arthurian romances elaborated by Chretien de Troyes, the subject of the firstchapter, 'The Origins of Romance'. Chretien's derivative ro? mances and the 'Breton laisyof Marie de France are the texts drawn on in Chapter 2, 'Breaking the Celtic Spell'?though one suspects that this particular spell was never whole for the present author, who, despite writing from within a 'Celtic' university, is content to repeat the complacent Romanicist's position of downplaying the Celtic origins of the MF and ME romances. Indeed, she is far from up to date with the current state of scholarship on matters Celtic. Her familiarity with the 'Matter of Britain' underlying the Arthurian Romances, i.e the medieval Welsh tradition, is?to put it kindly?inadequate. Like many scholars of Romance romances, one suspects her familiarity with Welsh is minimal, if not non-existent, as exemplified by the frankly illiterate Prouder, which appears here for the name of the Welsh romance Peredur (p. 57). Even worse garbled is the statement on page 61 that one of the sources identified as influential on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae is 'potentially one ofthe Welsh Triads, namely the Tysilio\ As St Tysilio makes MLR, 98.4, 2003 949 no appearance whatsoever in the Trioedd Ynys Prydein, the reference is perhaps to the late medieval Welsh version of GeofTrey's Historia known (misleadingly, as it has nothing to do with the...

Ronsard's Eutrapelian Gaillardise

Thanks in no small measure to the sixteenth-century French poet laureate Pierre de Ronsard, the adjective "gaillard" and its derivatives ("gaillardise" and "gaillardement") emerged to join the most semantically loaded and etymologically enigmatic words of the early modern French language. To the various meanings traceable to the term's Gallo-Roman and Celtic origins and faithfully recorded in the near-contemporary dictionaries, the Pleiade leader adds the ideas of nimble-wittedness, civility, and playfulness inspired by the Aristotelian moral concept of "eutrapelia." The present study not only exposes previously undetected yet copious textual evidence for this association, but it also reveals how Ronsard's eutrapelia-enhanced gaillardise shapes the rhetorical strategies at work in his polemical poetry and, further, contributes to his career-long ambition to bring definition to the "French" identity.

Frequency of hemochromatosis C282Y and H63D mutations in Sardinia.

Hereditary hemochromatosis (HH) is one of the most common autosomal recessive disorders of iron metabolism among Caucasians, and it is associated with C282Y mutation of the HFE gene in populations of Celtic origins. A second mutation, H63D, shows a very high widespread frequency, although its role in iron metabolism is still inconclusive. There are no data on the frequencies of these two mutations in Sardinia, an island in the Mediterranean sea that has not been invaded by Celtic peoples. We examined 836 chromosomes from Sardinian subjects and tested for the mutation by restriction enzyme digestion of PCR products. Among the 836 analyzed chromosomes, we found a C282Y allele frequency of 0.0036 and an H63D allele frequency of 0.173. These data could explain the observed rarity of HH in Sardinia. The high allele frequency of H63D and the rarity of HH in Sardinia is suggestive that this mutation is not a major contributor to this disease.

"Dark Catastrophe of Passion": The "Indian" as Human Commodity in Nineteenth-Century British Theatrical Culture

THE MELANCHOLY NATIVE AMERICAN MAY HAVE GAINED CULTURAL ASCENDANCY in England through the popularity of American writers like James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant, but the sorrows of the appealed to the nineteenth-century British subject for reasons different from those for which the mourning attracted Americans. The appropriation of Native American land by the American government and the possible Celtic origins of the Native American tribes are two themes that surface in the Gentleman's Magazine and other British periodicals of the 1810s and 1820s. (1) These themes in combination reveal the British public's identification with the Native American as the victim of American imperialism and the public's association of the Celt, the original British person, with Native Americans. This identification with suffering occurred as Britain mourned for the American colonies lost in the American Revolution and again in the War of 1812. What Nancy Moore Goslee describes as the violent expropriation of Indian territory was now the fault not of the British colonists but of the Americans, who were also responsible for the territorial losses of the British. (2) The loss of empire installed a compensatory imperialist fantasy in British culture. In the first three decades of the nineteenth century, the cult of the Native American grew as William Wordsworth, Amelia Opie, Felicia Hemans, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and others wrote poems and plays featuring the tragic Indian. (3) All of these British writers portrayed the colonized as mourning over a lost relative, tribe, or homeland, or over imminent personal demise. In tracing a resemblance between the and British losses of American lands, British writers legitimated the British imperial right of possession by portraying white Americans as the robbers of innocent Indians and Britons alike. Yet British artists not only appropriated the image of the sorrowing to justify British empire, but also marketed this figure for money and prestige. The mourning serves British imperialism and exemplifies a widespread romantic economic melancholia. Here seen in British cultural production, the displacement of mourning through ambivalent identification with an impoverished object is symptomatic of melancholia. Well-known to nineteenth-century British culture, the theories of melancholia developed by early modern medical thinkers like Robert Burton were eventually given a psychological structure by Sigmund Freud. (4) Freud describes the cause of melancholia as the subject's refusal of the loss of a beloved object. Unlike the melancholic, the subject who successfully mourns the lost object prolongs the existence of the object while testing the reality of that object's absence. Finding the object irretrievable, the subject severs his attachment in order to preserve himself. But instead of gradually weakening his attachment to this lost object, the melancholic subject refuses to let go of the object. Faced with loss, the melancholic subject refuses it by identifying himself with the lost object. This identification is painful because are never brought to full closure; identifications are inevitably failed identifications, as Diana Fuss observes. (5) The subject thus emerges through his melancholic refusal of his own incompleteness: desire sustains subjective identity while testifying to its impossibility. Like Fuss's melancholic subject, Britain defined itself through its melancholic identification with a surrogate object that was outside the nation and yet belonged inside it due to the nation's attachment to it. (6) When romantic artists offered up the surrogate object of the image, melancholy Britain's imperial loss was transformed into a symbolic gain for commodity culture. British commodity culture formed around a commodity economy produced by capitalism. …

The Celtic Calendar and the English Year

The author examines the linguistic and historical evidence for the names and implied meanings of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon months, seasons, days, solstices, equinoxes and festivals, and concludes that the major divisions of the English traditional year are of Anglo-Saxon rather than Celtic origin. Key Words: Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Festivals, Days of the Week, Names of the Months and Seasons. Introduction England has a rich tradition of annual customs and festivals which include Yule, Lent, Easter, May Day, Midsummer, Harvest and Halloween, as well as many local minor festivals. The majority of published references on English folk tradition tend to attribute either Roman or Celtic origins to these annual events. For example, Yule is often identified with the Roman Saturnalia, and May Day with Floralia. However, it is the Celtic calendar that is most often used to explain the origins of the English traditional year. A recent study of the ritual year by Ronald Hutton of Bristol University (Hutton, 1996), has involved a thorough re-examination of the historical records, and has largely discredited the concept of the Celtic calendar. However, Hutton does not fully explore the Anglo-Saxon evidence. The purpose of this essay is to review the linguistic evidence, and use the results to suggest a basis for the English traditional year. The Celtic Calendar The native languages of Britain and Ireland descend from two branches of the Indo-European family (Renfrew, 1987), Celtic and Germanic (see table 1). The Celts (Kd,ot) are first recorded in the 5th century BC by the Greek historian Herodotus, who locates them in the area of the upper Danube (Selincourt, 1954,142). Later Roman historians referred to a number of peoples within their empire as being either Celts or Gauls. Archaeologists have therefore attempted to find evidence of these early Celts in central Europe, and have identified two possible cultures known as Hallstatt and La Tine (Renfrew, 1987, 211-249). However, the Celtic language group was not recognised by that name until the beginning of the 18th century (Edward Lhuyd, 1707), and its relationship to these archaeological cultures is still a subject of much debate (James, 1999). Nevertheless, at their greatest extent, Celtic languages were spoken throughout what is now northern Italy, France, Spain, Britain and Ireland. Evidence `No man will travel this country, 'she said, `who hasn't gone sleepless from Samain, when the summer goes to its rest, until Imbolc, when the ewes are milked at spring's beginning; from Imbolc to Beltane at the summer's beginning and from Beltane to Bron Trogain, earth's sorrowing autumn.' The above passage comes from the 10th to 11th century collection of Irish heroic tales known as the Ulster Cycle (Kinsella, 1970, 27). During the wooing of Emer (Tochmarc Emire) by the hero Cuchulainn, he is required to sleep for a year before she will agree to marry him. In describing the year Emer also provides the earliest reference to all four of the Irish pagan festivals, that marked the changing of the seasons. Three of these festivals names have survived in Ireland and highland Scotland, as the months May, August and November. However, in the later sources Bran Trogain is known by the name Lugnasad(see tables 2 and 5). Discussion In the 19th century during the `Celtic Revival' these early Irish festivals were rediscovered by folklorists and academics such as Sir James Frazer, who between 1890 and 1915 published a twelve volume study of magic and religion entitled The Golden Bough (Frazer, 1922). This and similar works attempted to reconstruct a pan-Celtic year that was said to have existed not only in Ireland and Scotland, but throughout Britain and the former Celtic speaking parts of Europe. This `Celtic Calendar' was believed to have included the winter and summer solstices, and the spring and autumn equinoxes, as well as the four recorded festivals that marked the changing seasons. …

Hallowe'en and Other Festivals of Death and Life

Why do we celebrate Halloween? No one gets the day off, and unlike all other major holidays it has no religious or governmental affiliation. A survivor of our pre-Christian, agrarian roots, it has become one of the most popular and widely celebrated festivals on the contemporary American calendar.Jack Santino has put together the first collection of essays to examine the evolution of Halloween from its Celtic origins through its adaptation into modern culture. Using a wide variety of perspectives and approaches, the thirteen essayists examine customs, communities, and material culture to reveal how Halloween has manifested itself throughout all aspects of our society to become not just a marginal survivor of a dying tradition but a thriving, contemporary, post-industrial festival. Its steadily increasing popularity, despite overcommercialization and criticism, is attributed to its powerful symbolism that employs both pre-Christian images and concepts from popular culture to appeal to groups of all ages, orientations, and backgrounds. However, the essays in this volume also suggest that there is something ironic and unsettling about the immense popularity of a holiday whose main images are of death, evil, and the grotesque.Halloween and other Festivals of Death and Life is a unique contribution that questions our concepts of religiosity and spirituality while contributing to our understanding of Halloween as a rich and diverse reflection of our society s past, present, and future identity.The Editor: Jack Santino is an associate professor in the department of popular culture at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio.

From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail by C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor (review)

Niggling though these point may seem, they but scratch the surface of much greater problems, ones that suggest that Littleton and Malcor are poorly grounded in the history they need to know in order to demonstrate the validity or even the plausibility of their case. Indeed, given their thesis and the way they present it, one also wonders whether they even know the history of that history. It must be said, after all, that to argue the Scythian origins of Arthur is scarcely a radical reassessment when, in fact, it goes back for centuries and was first given popular form by Sharon Turner in the 1820s. Indeed, one still encounters it in some of the more occult and/or evangelical literature today, notable Adam Rutherford's Israel-Britain: An Explanation ofthe Origin, Function and Destiny ofthe Norse-AngloCelto -Saxon Race (1934, with many subsequent editions) and Herbert W. Armstrong's The United States and Britain in Prophecy (1967', with an equal number of subsequent editions). No scholar would want to buy into their tales of the Scythians as the Lost Tribes of Israel - and hence of Britons and Americans as the true inheritors of their manifest destiny - but at the same time anyone pursuing the Scythian connection should surely be aware of their existence and continuing appeal, for they suggest dimensions to the whole hypothesis that are badly in need of serious investigation. Nevertheless, in spite of all the defects that From Scythia to Camelot so clearly has, it makes a not-insignificant contribution to the ongoing debate about the mythic and folkloric sources of Arthurian literature. Much as one may doubt many of Littleton and Malcor's specifics, it is hard to put down their book still believing in the purely Celtic origins of those aspects of the story that seem to transcend simple authorial inventiveness. For that deepening of the mysteries involved, readers should be grateful. CHARLES T. WOOD Dartmouth College C SCOTT LITTLETON and LINDA A. MALCOR , From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment ofthe Legends ofKing Arthur, the Knights ofthe Round Table, and the Holy Grail. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 1795. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994. Pp. xxxiii,401; 18 plates, 19 maps, and 11 genealogical tables in Appendix 2. isbn: 0-8153-1496-5. $66. In the last chapter of From Scythia to Camelot, Littleton and Malcor make the following claim: The evidence clearly suggests that, save for some unique historical events, the core of what later became the Arthurian and Grail literature was born on the steppes of ancient Scythia' (283). After reading their book, however, many readers may feel, as I do, that the authors did well to disclaim from the outset that they had discovered anything like 'the final "truth"' of this matter (xxxi). The authors employ a cultural diffusion model to argue that the most important Arthurian figures and themes originated in the culture of nomadic horse-riding peoples who inhabited the Eurasian steppes, an area known as Scythia to the Romans and Greeks. Between the second and fifth centuries B.CE. two tribes, the Sarmatians and the Alans, imported these figures and themes into the western Roman Empire. In support of their argument Littleton and Malcor offer a wealth of detailed information and speculation, divided into four parts. Part I, The Cultural and Historical Background,' consists of one long chapter detailing the early history of these Scythian tribes. Because of their martial prowess, both were eventually employed by the Romans to help defend the Empire. In the late second century the Iazyges (a.k.a. Sarmatians) were settled in northwest Britain along Hadrian's wall and during the fifth century the Alans were settled in parts of Gaul, principally in the southwest. Part II, 'Figures,' consists of four chapters. In the first, Arthur's name is derived from that of the prefect who initially commanded the Iazyges in Britain, Lucius Artorius Castus, while Arthur himself is derived from a Scythian prototype of Batraz, the central hero of the Scythians' modern descendants, the Ossetians. The most striking evidence they offer in support of this connection concerns the fate of the two heroes' swords. As he...

Nomads and crusaders A.D. 1000-1368 (review)

Short notices 255 Lewis, Archibald R., Nomads and crusaders A.D. 1000-1368, rpt; Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1991; paper; pp. x, 224, 8 maps; R.R.P. US$10.95 Professor Archibald Lewis was a major historian, author of fifteen books on medieval and early m o d e m history, and a speciatist in maritime history. In this ambitious book (reviewed in The American Historical Review, 95 (1990), p. 799) now reissued in paperback, Lewis attempted the impossible: to outline in 224 pages the early development of Byzantine-Russian, Islamic, Indie, East Asian, and Western European history in order to determine why the other societies 'failed to match the medieval performance of Western Europe' (p. vu). Lewis asserts that two forces were at work influencing these societies during this period: the nomads and the crusaders. The important Mongol empire, by the end of the thirteenth century, began to crumble under the weight of heavy taxation and a lack of social cohesion. The Latin West at the same time forged ahead due to impressive naval strength and the more forceful national governments which developed out of the papal weakness caused by the Avignon exile and internal corruption. It cannot surprise us that Lewis credits the West's maritime strength with itsfinalsuccess at out-classing the achievements of other societies he studies, at least by certain somewhat arguable standards. With its generally successful coverage of areas usually ignored in medieval works of this sort, Lewis' book is recommended for use by undergraduates in any related area of medieval studies. The lack of footnotes render it less useful for post-graduates or scholars in the field. A. Gdmour-Bryson Department of History University of Melbourne Loomis, Roger Sherman, The Grail: From Celtic myth to Christian symbol, rpt Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991; paper; pp. xiv, 287; 3 illustrations; R.R.P. AUS$12.95. Among the elements of the Authuriad, that grandly ramshackle product of the European Middle Ages, the Grail particularlyretainsa capacity to fascinate and to generate highly speculative, sometimes bizane, theories. In terms of serious scholarship, however, there has been little that supersedes or countervenes this work from a major Authuriad scholar at the height of his powers. Loomis' scholarly and critical affiliations have been very much with those who reasserted the Celtic mythic origins of the Arthuriad and continued to do so in the face of pressure for internationalized exegetical Christian readings. This full-scale treatment allowed him to expand his contribution of a chapter on the origins of the Grati legends to Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages (1959) ...

The Grail: From Celtic myth to Christian symbol (review)

Short notices 255 Lewis, Archibald R., Nomads and crusaders A.D. 1000-1368, rpt; Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1991; paper; pp. x, 224, 8 maps; R.R.P. US$10.95 Professor Archibald Lewis was a major historian, author of fifteen books on medieval and early m o d e m history, and a speciatist in maritime history. In this ambitious book (reviewed in The American Historical Review, 95 (1990), p. 799) now reissued in paperback, Lewis attempted the impossible: to outline in 224 pages the early development of Byzantine-Russian, Islamic, Indie, East Asian, and Western European history in order to determine why the other societies 'failed to match the medieval performance of Western Europe' (p. vu). Lewis asserts that two forces were at work influencing these societies during this period: the nomads and the crusaders. The important Mongol empire, by the end of the thirteenth century, began to crumble under the weight of heavy taxation and a lack of social cohesion. The Latin West at the same time forged ahead due to impressive naval strength and the more forceful national governments which developed out of the papal weakness caused by the Avignon exile and internal corruption. It cannot surprise us that Lewis credits the West's maritime strength with itsfinalsuccess at out-classing the achievements of other societies he studies, at least by certain somewhat arguable standards. With its generally successful coverage of areas usually ignored in medieval works of this sort, Lewis' book is recommended for use by undergraduates in any related area of medieval studies. The lack of footnotes render it less useful for post-graduates or scholars in the field. A. Gdmour-Bryson Department of History University of Melbourne Loomis, Roger Sherman, The Grail: From Celtic myth to Christian symbol, rpt Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991; paper; pp. xiv, 287; 3 illustrations; R.R.P. AUS$12.95. Among the elements of the Authuriad, that grandly ramshackle product of the European Middle Ages, the Grail particularlyretainsa capacity to fascinate and to generate highly speculative, sometimes bizane, theories. In terms of serious scholarship, however, there has been little that supersedes or countervenes this work from a major Authuriad scholar at the height of his powers. Loomis' scholarly and critical affiliations have been very much with those who reasserted the Celtic mythic origins of the Arthuriad and continued to do so in the face of pressure for internationalized exegetical Christian readings. This full-scale treatment allowed him to expand his contribution of a chapter on the origins of the Grati legends to Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages (1959) 256 Short notices and also to enter into discussion on works (Chr6tien de Troyes, the Vulgate Cycle, Robert de Boron) entrusted to other contributors in the earlier volume. This is not a revised or updated edition, but the reprinting offers a good opportunity for a first-time buyer. Jennifer Strauss Department of English Monash University Moote, A. Lloyd, Louis XIII, the just, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, University of California Press, 1991; paper; pp. xiv, 401; 16 plates; 5 maps; R.R.P. US$14.95. Professor Moote's 'political' biography' of Louis XIII was published in 1989 and has now been reissued in paperback with the obtigatory chorus of cover endorsements and extracts from favourable reviews. Even without these it is possible to recognize in it a highly serious contribution to the debate about a reign that continues to fascinate historians. Moote's introduction 'Interpreting Louis XIII' sets out the problems he faced, not least a residual bad conscience vis-d-vis the anti-biographical tradition associated with the Annales tendency. However, historical biography is now all the rage, as Roland Mousnier's L'Homme rouge ou la vie du cardinal de Richelieu (1585-1642) (Paris, 1992) demonstrates. Louis XIH's childhood, as documented in particular by the Journal of his physician H6roard, has proved to be antiresistiblebait in recent decades for specialists in psychohistory, Moote tries to distance his own interpretations from the excesses of that school. Nonetheless, evidence drawn from his subject's early life bulks large in his attempt to establish Louis XIII as the ultimate source of the policies followed by his...

Local History in France and Regional Publishing Houses

Not least among the paradoxes of French history is that this highly centralized country, which acquired very early the structures of a modern state, has a long and important tradition of regional, provincial, and local history. The geography of France, its exceptional network of waterways, the variety of its countryside, and the ease of communication have favored regional history from prehistoric times. One cannot understand the history of France without a thorough knowledge of its Celtic origins: some 100 tribes or pagi spread out over the whole territory whose names and borders persist into current departments. Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars (59 B.C.) is our first written document, Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks (c. 584 A.D.), our first national history. The romanization of the Gauls followed the same pattern as that of the Gallic tribes; similarly, the different waves of Germanic or Mongol invaders were all absorbed and assimilated. The abbeys spread out over the country were the focal points for the first collections of documents: cartularies, the principal source for French historiography. From the birth of printing, customaries were issued from local presses. The religious wars promote the publication of accounts of local events. The 17th century sees the founding of regional societies and academies, such as the Sociéteé des Lanternistes in Toulouse and the Académie de Caen in Normandy, along with the Académie Française. The 18th century was marked by the production by the Benedictines of Saint-Maur of monumental regional histories, for example: L'Histoire du Languedoc by Devic and Vaissette. This was also the era of the first demographic studies. After the revolutionary rupture, the 19th century saw the rebirth of provincial academies and societies; these continued to multiply from the Restoration to the July Monarchy, through the Second Empire and the Third Republic. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, each department could count within its territory more than one learned or academic society; each of these consecrated a more or less important part of its activities to local history. Certain of the auxiliary sciences of history, such as genealogy, heraldry, sigillography, and the publication of collections of charters were the province of local erudites, and printing was often done locally. In the 20th century the movement has continued and currently is assuming new dimensions, becoming a sociological phenomenon. The secondary residences acquired by urban dwellers in their province of origin or another inspire a great desire to know the history of these vacation or retirement places. Monographs on local history going right down to the village level are multiplying. Finally the new French school of history founded by Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, and Fernand Braudel has given local history its patents of academic nobility by encouraging brilliant researchers to consecrate their doctoral theses to exhaustive monographs on regional or local history. Some examples are: Michel Rouche's L'Aquitaine, des Wisigoths aux arabes, 418-781: Naissance d'une région; Alain Molinier's Stagnations et croissance, le Vivarais aux XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles; J.C. Perrot's Genèse d'une ville moderne, Caen au XVIIIe siècle, and George Duby's La Société aux XIe et XIIe sièles dans la région mÂconnaise.

Genetic differentiation among natural European populations of Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L., from drainages of the Atlantic Ocean

Previously published allelic frequencies at four polymorphic protein coding loci were used as a basis for examining genetic relationships among 19 European populations of Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L. ‐ exclusive of Baltic drainages ‐ from the Barents Sea to Spain. The data did not support a model of distinct ancestral (e.g. Boreal and Celtic) origins, but were consistent with all populations descending from a single ancestral group within this region with genetically diverged populations drawn together through limited local migrations.

Genetic differentiation among natural European populations of Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L., from drainages of the Atlantic Ocean

Previously published allelic frequencies at four polymorphic protein coding loci were used as a basis for examining genetic relationships among 19 European populations of Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L.--exclusive of Baltic drainages--from the Barents Sea to Spain. The data did not support a model of distinct ancestral (e.g. Boreal and Celtic) origins, but were consistent with all populations descending from a single ancestral group within this region with genetically diverged populations drawn together through limited local migrations.

La Révolution Française et les origines celtiques de la France

Jean-Yves Guiomar, The French Revolution and the Celtic Origins of France. It was during the Revolution that the Celtic character of France's origins was emphasized as it never had been before. This contrasted with the legacy of ethnic and aristocratic notions from the previous century. The author traces the stages and carriers of the emerging notion in milieux such as Le Cercle Social and among men such as Combry, the author of A Voyage in Finistère. The latter was one of the founders of Le Cercle Celtique and active among people fascinated by the Celtic tradition in Paris under the Directory. The author demonstrates how the debate on the cult of the dead brought together common themes of discussion. The study of the works and publications of the Celtic Academy, from 1805 on, reveals the successes and failures of this current of thought and its significance within the cultural, scientific and political context of the time. The future "regionalist" current was developed by the hiers of the Enlightenment and not by those who were the depositories of a purely aristocratic tradition of thought.

Celtic Origins of Southern Herding Practices

Celtic Origins of Southern Herding Practices

Sur les origines celtiques de l'Irlande

Ce n'est pas sans appréhension qu'un spécialiste de l'Afrique noire se risque sur le terrain de l'Irlande ancienne, qui ne saurait lui être vraiment familière, malgré un certain effort de recyclage. Sa propre identité celtique explique évidemment l'intérêt qu'il lui porte mais ne garantit nullement le sérieux de sa démarche.J'avancerai cependant qu'une approche extérieure, et en somme naïve, peut être utile car dans ce cas les arbres ne risquent pas de cacher la forêt. Par ailleurs, sans croire pour autant à une évolution unilinéaire nécessaire des sociétés humaines, je pense que certaines logiques structurelles sont universelles, qu'elles régissent les phénomènes d'ethnogenèse, les rapports de l'homme avec lui-même et la nature, ainsi que la formation des traditions orales.