Celtic Peoples Research Articles

Celtic Countries from the Perspective of Polish Romantics and Exiles

In this piece on the Polish Romantic travellers confronted with Celtic cultures and countries, I have tried to show the way they reacted and how their imaginations worked. Probably some of their reactions were not different to those of all other Celtophiles. The special role of the Czartoryskis’ cultural patronage needs to be highlighted. In the nineteenth century Poland, nobody ever attempted to gather so many books about Celtic history and culture again, even after the emergence of Celtic Studies as an academic discipline later in the nineteenth century. The predictable result was that, with time, knowledge of Celtic cultures diminished among the Polish writers. The literary revival in early twentieth century Ireland, associated with Yeats and his contemporaries, did not elicit widespread reaction from Polish librarians and academics. This failure to respond to new developments in Ireland is probably to be explained in terms of the economic and socio-political conditions in the divided Poland of that time. One of the many negative results of the partitions at the end of the eighteenth century was that a large number of important Polish writers moved abroad, as well as that their relations and impressions were affected by this emigration. Being a political émigré was not always helpful in so far as the exploration of new cultures was concerned, both from the point of view of the psychological trauma of being away from home and of various everyday constraints. Generally, it was personal interests and earlier studies, and not finances or place of living that influenced some Polish authors’ choice to write on Celtic themes.

The Celtic fringe of Britain: insights from small mammal phylogeography.

Recent genetic studies have challenged the traditional view that the ancestors of British Celtic people spread from central Europe during the Iron Age and have suggested a much earlier origin for them as part of the human recolonization of Britain at the end of the last glaciation. Here we propose that small mammals provide an analogue to help resolve this controversy. Previous studies have shown that common shrews (Sorex araneus) with particular chromosomal characteristics and water voles (Arvicola terrestris) of a specific mitochondrial (mt) DNA lineage have peripheral western/northern distributions with striking similarities to that of Celtic people. We show that mtDNA lineages of three other small mammal species (bank vole Myodes glareolus, field vole Microtus agrestis and pygmy shrew Sorex minutus) also form a 'Celtic fringe'. We argue that these small mammals most reasonably colonized Britain in a two-phase process following the last glacial maximum (LGM), with climatically driven partial replacement of the first colonists by the second colonists, leaving a peripheral geographical distribution for the first colonists. We suggest that these natural Celtic fringes provide insight into the same phenomenon in humans and support its origin in processes following the end of the LGM.

Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields (review)

Reviewed by: Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields Richard C. Allen Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields. By Ronald L. Lewis. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Pp. x, 395.) With the establishment of the North American Association for the Study of Welsh Culture and History (NAASWCH) in the mid-1990s, the history of Wales and its people has increasingly gained the attention of a much wider audience. This has resulted in the publication of a number of well-researched and informative studies, and to date there is a growing corpus of material relating to Welsh settlement patterns throughout Britain, Europe, America, Canada, Patagonia, Australia, and Africa. This literature has mapped the impact of religious exiles, economic migrants, politicians, women, and intellectuals. Arguably, however, the Welsh encountered fewer settlement problems than other ethnic groups and this has tended to mask their presence and their involvement in the making of American society. Yet the continuous presence of Welsh societies throughout the world, and particularly the industrial contribution of the Welsh, suggests that, despite their relatively small numbers and supposed invisibility, this Celtic people has had a discernible impact. Ronald Lewis's richly illustrated study of Welsh immigrants to the coal-mining areas of North America, and the associational life they enjoyed, is an example of how this ethnic community expressed its cultural distinctiveness but also managed to assimilate quite quickly. The product of extensive research as well as a personal odyssey, Lewis's monograph charts the progress of these immigrants and complements the growing literature concerning the emergence of Welsh migration and industrial activity. Expanding on his earlier studies, Lewis offers the reader a vivid insight into the experiences of skilled Welsh immigrants and how they became involved in the major expansion of the American coalfields. The opening chapter provides a context for the uninitiated about Welsh history and the nature of migration, while chapters two and three investigate settlement patterns, networking, and how some Welshmen secured key positions within their local communities. As he observes, "Welsh nepotism thrived in mining towns, but only where there was a Welsh community, and the Welsh mine [End Page 101]owners and managers were instrumental in determining whether those communities emerged in the first place" (89). Lewis reflects upon the way the Welsh were able to offer effective leadership in these coalfield communities where life expectancy was dismally short. They promoted modernization and industrial reform. As chapter 5 charts, they were instrumental in the creation of professional inspectors and the Mine Safety Reform Movement which acted as a pressure group for change. Providing evidence from the Avondale mining disaster of 1886 where 110 colliers perished, Lewis reveals the extent of this tragedy both in written testimonies and in contemporary pictorial images. When the bodies were brought to the surface there were agonizing shrieks, and in the consequent jury report the dead men were described as "mouth open," "hand clinched," and "face bloated, and arms extended over his head" (162). Despite the passing of safety legislation and the best efforts of professional inspectors established after this tragedy, a second Avondale tragedy occurred in 1871 at the West Pittston shaft. Reviewing the demand for further safety legislation in Ohio, Illinois, and elsewhere, Lewis shows how the Welsh "found an avenue of upward mobility in mine safety" (188) as well as influencing the changes in legislation. Chapter 7 investigates Welsh involvement in union management where Lewis notes that by the 1920s the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was a well-established organisation and "primed with the ideology of progress and success, Welshmen were strategically positioned within the industry and the union to personally benefit from the opportunities presented as well as to shape the direction of the labor movement" (249). In this excellent chapter he discusses the changing face of unionism from the 1880s onwards, including an assessment of John L. Lewis who has been equally regarded as a progressive labor leader and "a power-hungry despot" (276). Welsh Americansalso exposes the way in which these immigrants assimilated into the wider American society, but still retained the vestiges of their cultural inheritance. In chapter 4 Lewis pays...

Céli Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages (review)

Reviewed by: Céli Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages Patricia M. Rumsey Céli Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages. By Westley Follett. [Studies in Celtic History, XXIII.] (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 253. $85.00. ISBN 978-1-843-83276-8.) The last major study of the Céli Dé was that of Peter O'Dwyer in 1977, which he revised with additions in 1981. This has been the standard work on the subject ever since, and many subsequent writers have adopted O'Dwyer's views unchallenged. Academic scholarship has waited thirty years for a reappraisal, and subsequently two major reassessments of this so-called "reform movement" in early medieval Ireland have appeared, including Westley Follett's work. O'Dwyer's work has had its critics, and writers such as Nora Chadwick and more recently, Colmán Etchingham, have questioned the categorization of the Céli Dé as a "reform," but their objections have been peripheral to the main thrust of their respective studies. Follett's work concentrates fully on reassessing the Céli Dé and is original in that it centers on the manuscript history of the various texts that have traditionally been associated with the Céli Dé monks. With painstaking thoroughness, Follett shows that the writings hitherto ascribed to the movement (if, as he says, it can be deemed a movement) are actually much fewer in number than O'Dwyer and other earlier commentators believed. Although this investigation of manuscript history forms the major part of the book, Follett also, in his long and detailed second chapter, explores Irish asceticism before the Céli Dé to put these monks in context. His carefully detailed study goes a long way to providing an up-to-date and much needed successor to John Ryan's now extremely dated Irish Monasticism. Etchingham argues that Irish monastic asceticism showed no sign of declining in the mid- to late-eighth century, and Brian Lambkin views Céli Dé as members of God's personal retinue who saw themselves accordingly as a kind of "religious elite." In his conclusions, Follett substantiates these premises of Etchingham and Lambkin, and it is, perhaps, the only disappointing element in his work that he takes these conclusions no further. However, it is in his methodology that he shows his originality. Whereas Lambkin based his suggestion mainly on the evidence provided by the poems of Blathmac and the Félire Óengusso, Follett examines and critiques all the texts that have been associated with the movement. He draws the conclusion that "céli Dé, at least in their eighth- and ninth-century manifestation, were more of a local phenomenon than a regional or general one, as has often been supposed" (218). [End Page 782] This is an important book both for the study of insular monasticism and for research into the history of early Irish texts. In the meticulousness of its scholarship it provides a model for the latter. It enters the current debate regarding the exact identity of the Céli Dé when this question is coming to the forefront of academic research and develops that debate in new and original ways by its examination of the manuscript history of crucial texts, showing how a more precise assessment of the authorship of these texts can assist in understanding Céli Dé identity. Although not everyone will agree with Follett's conclusions, by refining and narrowing the early medieval "database" of texts connected with the Céli Dé, he provides an important service to current and future scholarship. Patricia M. Rumsey University of Wales, Lampeter Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

J. Wyn Evans and Jonathan M. Wooding, eds., St David of Wales: Cult, Church and Nation. (Studies in Celtic History, 24.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2007. Pp. xiv, 391; 12 black-and-white plates, 2 black-and-white figures, 4 tables, and 5 maps. $105.

J. Wyn Evans and Jonathan M. Wooding, eds., St David of Wales: Cult, Church and Nation. (Studies in Celtic History, 24.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2007. Pp. xiv, 391; 12 black-and-white plates, 2 black-and-white figures, 4 tables, and 5 maps. $105.

Célí Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages. By Westley Follett. Studies in Celtic History. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell & Brewer, 2006. xii + 259 pp. $85.00 cloth.

Céli Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages. By Westley Follett. Studies in Celtic History. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell & Brewer, 2006. xii + 259 pp. $85.00 cloth. - Volume 76 Issue 4

B. MAIER, Die Religion der Kelten: Götter – Mythen – Weltbild

Bernhard Maier published extensively on various aspects of the religion, literature and history of the Celtic peoples from antiquity to the present day (see p. 233 of his book for a list of studies).

The Scottish Invention of America, Democracy and Human Rights: The History of Liberty and Freedom from the Ancient Celts to the New Millennium (review)

The Scottish Invention of America, Democracy and Human Rights: The History of Liberty and Freedom from the Ancient Celts to the New Millennium (review)

Exploit the Levitt Write Cycle

The ancient Celts are renowned for very many things—wonderful art, conspicuous consumption, commercial acumen, dipsomaniacal predisposition and a distressing tendency to discard their clothes befor...

:Royal Inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c. 1100–1600: A Cultural Landscape Study.(Studies in Celtic History, number 22.)

:Royal Inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c. 1100–1600: A Cultural Landscape Study.<i>(Studies in Celtic History, number 22.)</i>

The book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales. By John Reuben Davies. (Studies in Celtic History.) Pp. xii+244. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003. £50. 1 84383 024 8

<i>The book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales</i>. By John Reuben Davies. (Studies in Celtic History.) Pp. xii+244. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003. £50. 1 84383 024 8

The &amp;quot;Magic&amp;quot; of Music: Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in Aesthetics

The “Magic” of Music:Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in Aesthetics Alexandra Kertz-Welzel O, then I close my eyes to all the strife of the world—and withdraw quietly into the land of music, as into the land of belief, where all our doubts and our sufferings are lost in a resounding sea. . . .1 Music serves many different functions in human life, accompanying everyday activities such as working, shopping, or watching TV, as well as creating an individual world of sounds in which to relax, to enjoy life, or just to escape into one's dreams. Tia DeNora describes this personal use of music as a technology for the self and quotes Mireille, a contract cleaner, who thinks that "everybody should listen to music. It helps you to be calm, relaxed, to see your life differently."2 This desire to change minds or moods and perhaps to be personally transformed by music also motivates adolescents to listen to their music giving them a strong feeling of self-identity and helping to relieve boredom, get through difficult times, or reduce tension.3 Although this obviously everyday use of music is usually different from the life-changing strong experiences with music which Robert Panzarella4 or Alf Gabrielsson5 investigate in their research, it nevertheless shows the natural human desire to use music to transform emotions or experience life more intensively. Certainly, adolescents do have different kinds [End Page 77] of intensive and even ecstatic experiences with music; for example, while attending a rock concert with its pseudo-religious implications, or a Friday night dance party with friends, or while making music in a band. Gabrielsson quotes the description of a young woman, attending an outdoor concert of Prince: One feels so free somehow. At concerts one can dance, jump, scream and sing as much as one wants. You are like a part of it all, not just a spectator. Throughout the whole concert the audience was in total ecstasy. It was only one thing that mattered: the music! You are filled with the wonderful feeling that everything is all right, that you are living only for what is happening 'right now.' You are in a way 'intoxicated with joy." . . . You don't think about what you are doing. You do what you feel like, without even thinking about it.6 This desire for intensive or even ecstatic experiences through music is not only an aspect of individual life, it is also an important issue in the history of music and aesthetics from ancient times. One origin of music and art can be found in the relationship of music with religion and ritual, using sound's emotional and ecstatic power to connect the world of human beings and the sacred. Music as magic and a means of ecstasy was a frequent conceptualization in ancient Egypt, as well as in Greece, in the rites of ancient Celts and early Christians, and also in non-Western religions today.7 Priests or shamans among the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, and West-African tribes use the emotional power of music to evoke trance in their contemporary practices. Unfortunately, the aesthetics of Western European art music, especially since the eighteenth century, tends to eliminate this sensual "magic"8 of music only to replace an ecstatic way of experiencing music with a more intellectual approach. The idea of absolute music or the aesthetics of formalism attempts to establish a "pure" approach to listening without feeling, imagination, or sensuality. It is a claim to elitism which might be one reason why it is difficult for students to be affected by Western European art music, since it appears to be far away from their own world of intensive music experience. Not only the way of listening and performing Western European art music, but also the music itself may prevent students from further involvement in "classical" music and having the kind of intensive experiences their "own" music offers them. If a goal of music education is not only to involve students in art music but also to deepen and enhance their lives through aesthetic experiences, it may be reasonable to start with their musical experiences and to...

The medics of Myddfai

I recently logged on to the web site of NICE, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, in order to check their official guidelines for treating hypertension. I was delighted to see that they offer the option of reading these in either English or Cymraeg. The sceptics among you might snort at this choice, for who in Wales could possibly be interested in such guidelines and incapable of reading them in English? The question, of course, misses the point. The Cymraeg version is there not for utilitarian purposes. It is there in the cause of continuity. There are no indigenous people left in Britain, but the Celtic peoples, including the Welsh, have the nearest claim to being aboriginals, having arrived from central Europe several centuries before the Romans. Seen through Welsh eyes, the rest of us are all relative newcomers, whether our forebears came as Angles, Vikings, Normans, Huguenots, Afro-Caribbeans, Ugandan Asians, or whatever. The survival of some of the Celtic languages on these islands through wave after wave of invasion and colonization over more than two millennia is historically quite remarkable. Waiting last …

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.

BANQUETES Y RITUALES COLECTIVOS EN EL SUROESTE PENINSULAR

El trabajo propone una interpretación diacrónica de las costumbres religiosas en el suroeste prerromano relacionadas con la iglesia masiva de bebidas y comidas dentro de contextos rituales sagrados. Así se destaca la importancia de estos banquetes colectivos, sin presencia explicíta de las imágenes divinas durante la Edad de Hierro, y con la asistencia de numerosas figuritas sagradas durante los primeros siglos de la civilización romana en el Suroeste peninsular. Junto a esta diferencia, los banquetes demuestran el abandono de una paridad entre la ingesta de comida y bebida, con el sacrificio explícito de grandes animales como acto central del rito, como ocurría en época preromana, para favorecer la bebida masiva de un ñíquido costoso, posiblemente vino, acompañado de la toma colectiva de frutos y manjares secos, acompañados de salsas, durante la denominación romana.Palabras Clave: Banquetes, santuarios, Célticos, rituales, sacrificios, favissae.SummaryIn this paper we put forward a new diachronic interpretation of religious rituals among the Celtic peoples in the Southwestern areas of the Iberian Peninsula during the Iron Age and the early centuries of Roman rule. We emphasize the outstanding importance of collective feasts close to and in shrines during the Second Iron Age. These banquets werw jheld around animal sacrifices and the subsequent ingestion of meat and a kind of local beer. Apparently, there was not a explicit presence of sacred images in these feasts in pre-Roman times. However, during the Roman perod, different favissae found in archaeological sites belonging to the Beaturia Celticorum have yielded numerous terracotta figurines of Roman goddesses besides a large number of small wine cups and big plates, probably for dried fruits and food accompanied by sauces. We consider these changes as true indicators of deep transformations in social and ideological structures among the Celtici in Roman times.Keywords: feasts, food and drinks, shrines, Celts, rutual, sacrifices, favissae

Christ in Celtic Christianity. Britain and Ireland from the fifth to the tenth century. By Michael W. Herren and Shirley Ann Brown. (Studies in Celtic History, 20.) Pp. xii+321 incl. 5 figs+16 plates. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002. £50. 0 85115 889 7

<i>Christ in Celtic Christianity. Britain and Ireland from the fifth to the tenth century</i>. By Michael W. Herren and Shirley Ann Brown. (Studies in Celtic History, 20.) Pp. xii+321 incl. 5 figs+16 plates. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002. £50. 0 85115 889 7

Why the History of ‘the Celtic Fringe’ Remains Unwritten

‘The Celtic fringe’ commonly denotes those parts of the British Isles whose population is predominantly of Celtic stock, namely Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Its use presupposes a range of common features and characteristics in the various peoples characterised as Celtic and also implies a relationship in the nature of core and periphery with another region of the British Isles, namely lowland England. The term is, however, essentially an English and metropolitan—and so outsider—construct. It also brings with it considerable ideological baggage arising out of England's historically fraught relations with the Celtic peoples, which reflect a pattern of English colonisation and cultural imperialism in the British upland zone since the eleventh century. Not surprisingly, therefore, many Celts find the term offensive. In terms of the writing of history, moreover, British scholars have tended, until very recently, to study the archipelago's individual nations in isolation from each other rather than to develop comparisons between them in the context of a pattern of state formation. In any case, few historians have the requisite linguistic skills to master the sources and modern literatures in the various Celtic languages. Although recent initiatives—for instance, the advent of the so-called New British history and a range of EU-funded projects which promote collaborative research between the various national traditions—now afford scope for a more thorough analysis of the concept, it remains to be investigated how far the various Celtic peoples may be said to have experienced a collective history.

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.

Gods, heroes, &amp; kings: the battle for mythic Britain

islands of Britain have been a crossroads of gods, heroes, and kings-those of flesh as well as those of myth-for thousands of years. Successive waves of invasion brought distinctive legends, rites, and beliefs. ancient Celts displaced earlier indigenous peoples, only to find themselves displaced in turn by the Romans, who then abandoned the islands to Germanic tribes, a people themselves nearly overcome in time by an influx of Scandinavians. With each wave of invaders came a battle for the mythic mind of the Isles as the newcomer's belief system met with the existing systems of gods, legends, and myths. In Gods, Heroes, and Kings, medievalist Christopher Fee and veteran myth scholar David Leeming unearth the layers of the British Isles' unique folkloric tradition to discover how this body of seemingly disparate tales developed. authors find a virtual battlefield of myths in which pagan and Judeo-Christian beliefs fought for dominance, and classical, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Celtic narrative threads became tangled together. resulting body of legends became a strange but coherent hybrid, so that by the time Chaucer wrote The Wife of Bath's Tale in the fourteenth century, a Christian theme of redemption fought for prominence with a tripartite Celtic goddess and the Arthurian legends of Sir Gawain-itself a hybrid mythology. Without a guide, the corpus of British mythology can seem impenetrable. Taking advantage of the latest research, Fee and Leeming employ a unique comparative approach to map the origins and development of one of the richest folkloric traditions. Copiously illustrated with excerpts in translation from the original sources, Gods, Heroes, and Kings provides a fascinating and accessible new perspective on the history of British mythology.

From Ancient Celts to Camelot , and: The Early Celts and Legends which Preceded Thomas Malory , and: Sir Thomas Malory's Great Work , and: Moving on From Malory by Jonathan Smalley (review)

From Ancient Celts to Camelot , and: The Early Celts and Legends which Preceded Thomas Malory , and: Sir Thomas Malory's Great Work , and: Moving on From Malory by Jonathan Smalley (review)