Sometimes Myths Are Real

It's been a rough winter in the UK--storms and floods have devastated counties like Somerset. One small positive thing that's come of it all, though, is the curious reappearance of a submerged forest of the coast of Wales:

Composed mostly of oak and pine, the forest is believed to date from the Bronze Age. It was buried under a peat bog 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, then inundated by rising sea levels until this winter's violent storms stripped away the covering of peat and sand. The high level of alkaline and lack of oxygen in the peat has preserved the wood in an almost pristine state. 

A walkway made of sticks and branches was also discovered. It's 3,000 to 4,000 years old and was built, it is believed, to cope with rising sea levels back then. "The site around Borth is one where if there is a bad storm and it gets battered, you know there's a good chance something will be uncovered," says Deanna Groom, Maritime Officer of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, who helped find the site. 

But what's really interesting about this is the location of this submerged forest: Cardigan Bay, in the area of the fabled Cantre'r Gwaelod--the "drowned hundred" of Gwyddno Garanhir, a legendary king, who may (or may not) be the same as the historical 6th century ruler Gwyddno ap Clydno of Meirionydd.

The earliest account is found in the Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin:

Seithenhin sawde allan.
Ac edrychuirde varanres
Mor. maes guitnev rytoes. 

Boed emendiceid y morvin
Aehellygaut guydi cvin.
Finaun wenestir mor terruin.

Seithenhin, stand thou forth,
And behold the billowy rows;
The sea has covered the plain of Gwydneu. 

Accursed be the damsel,
Who, after the wailing,
Let loose the Fountain of Venus, the raging deep.

Briefly, a girl named Mererid fails at her duties of keeping the floodgates closed, and the land is subsequently drowned.

There are several Celtic legends like this: Ys at the bottom of Douarnenez Bay in Brittany, Lyonesse in Mount's Bay in Cornwall, and finally Cantre'r Gwaelod in Cardigan Bay, which, as it happens, is the same area as this newly-exposed forest that's been under water for five thousand years.

But this isn't the only lost land found again; a forest was found in Mount's Bay, Cornwall. As the BBC reported:

Remains in Penzance, Cornwall, can be seen after sand was ripped from beaches by a series of storms which hit the coast in the new year.

Geologists believe extensive forests extended across Mount's Bay in Penzance between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago.

The shifting sands have also revealed wrecks, an iron age settlement in Devon and wartime explosives in Devon, Somerset and Dorset.

Remains of ancient forests have also been seen on Portreath beach, Daymer Bay in Cornwall and Bigbury Bay in Devon.
...
St Michaels Mount in the bay is known in Cornish as Karrek Loos yn Koos - which means Grey Rock in the Wood.

This is the area often associated with Lyonesse, the drowned land that was home to Tristan.

On the one hand, we can't say for certain that the memory of these lost lands were carried down for thousands of years, but we do know that Britain has been continuously inhabited for at least ten thousand years, since the end of the last Ice Age. It's a leap, but not an entirely unreasonable one, to suggest that the stories later preserved by the Celts were memories of the culture that predated them, passed on, influencing their myths.

New Resources Hit the Net

The British Library Journal is now available for you to read; and lucky for anyone interested in Celtic subjects, there's a brand new article on Lewis Morris and the Mabinogion.

New Chartres Tablets!

Via the Continental Celtic language list, I've learned that two new Gaulish-language tablets have been found in the city of Chartres. This is quite exciting--really, any new finding of Gallo-Brittonic, anything that can fill in the gaps, is worth celebrating.

P-Y. Lambert will be publishing a study on it soon; this article looks like a preview (unfortunately, I read it through Google Translate, because my French is pretty terrible). It's largely a list of names, and aparently might be a defixio, which is a magical curse tablet.

Here's a video--in French, unfortunately, but the only one I know of--about the new tablets:

A Crash-Course in the Druids

Just in time for Halloween, the Radio 4 program In Our Time--a round-table discussion program that focuses on topics of history or the history of an idea--spent the September 20th program on a subject dear to my heart: DRUIDS.

Melvin Bragg's guests were Barry Cunliff, Miranda Aldhouse-Green, and Justin Champion. Cunliff, and Aldhouse-Green are well-respected archaeologists, the latter also known for her popular histories on the subject of the Celts, and Champion is a historian of early modern Britain, when the druids reemerged in the public consciousness.

The program itself sticks to an overview of the druids largely in the context of Greco-Roman records due, obviously, to the lack of contemporary records by the Celts themselves--though they did touch on the lingering of druid beliefs and myths in the bardic traditions of Ireland and Wales, a subject I wished they'd have gone into further. And unfortunately they really didn't speak much to the existence of druids in Ireland potentially into the seventh century; the program was largely focused on druids in Britain. 

There was no sensationalism in the subject matter; lurid stories of bloody human sacrifices were treated as what they likely were-fairly rare, but also not abnormal (with the note that the Romans themselves only outlawed the practice in the 90s BCE).

Over all, it was a good, fluff-free introduction to the druids. The format itself is, by its nature, a bit dry (which In Our Time can often be), but the subject matter makes up for that.

Arthur, King of the Arctic?

The Heroic Age points to an idea that I wasn't really familiar with before: that King Arthur was, at one point, credited with conquering the New World via Greenland.

According to Thomas Green, John Dee, when conjuring up precedent for a British Empire, relied not only on stories about Prince Madoc and St. Brendan, but also upon the idea that Arthur himself ruled the whole of the North. Now, Geoffrey credited him with conquering Scandinavia, but went no further--indeed, who knows what Geoffrey even knew of Greenland?  Scholars believed that Dee had invented this story, but Green points out that apparently it does predate Dee:

§7.  Mercator included a legend to his great wall map of 1569 that referred to Arthur in the following way:

Touching the description of the North parts, I have taken the same out of the voyage of James Cnoyen of Hartzevan Buske, which allegeth certain conquests of Arthur king of Britaine, and the most part, and chiefest things among the rest he learned of a certain priest in the king of Norway's court, in the year 1364. This priest was descended (in the fifth generation) from them which King Arthur had sent to inhabit these Islands

The article discusses whether this ultimately goes back to Geoffrey's Scandinavian conquest story, or whether it perhaps goes back to an even earlier tradition of a frozen Otherworld to the north. Of course, it's no surprise that anyone would connect a mythical conquest of the North with the Norwegian settlements of North America, and concoct a story of King Arthur doing the same, but earlier. And how irresistible the idea would be to an incipient British Empire.

This Could Be Gre--No, It's Probably Gonna Suck

So I come across this today:

Michael Fassbender and screenwriter Ronan Bennett are developing a feature film about the legendary Celtic warrior Cuchulain, with Fassbender set to play the leading role.

Cuchulain is the central character in the Ulster Cycle, an epic series of Old Irish legends that date from around the 8th century.

Set in the northern part of Ireland, the saga relates the story of the Ulaid tribe headed by King Conchobar, and particularly its conflict with the rival Connachta tribe led by Queen Mebh.

The most prominent figure in the legends is Conchobar's nephew Cuchulain, who has semi-divine ancestry and superhuman fighting skills. In the most famous story, known as the Cattle Raid of Cooley, he is the only man capable of resisting the vast army sent by Medb to steal Conchobar's prize white bull.

Now, this isn't meant to be a knock on Fassbender or Bennett, but it's not as if there've been many successful adaptations of mythology lately--not the dreadful remake of Clash of the Titans, nor the inexplicable Immortals, and especially not 2004's laugh-fest King Arthur.

I'm always wary of adapting mythology--which ultimately was (and still is) someone's religion. Usually in these big-budget adaptations, the gods are an evil to be defeated by mortals (which is an ugly bastardization of the meanings of those myths), or they're written out altogether (as in the otherwise watchable Troy). I can easily see this as being a "defeat the gods" film, given that the Morrigan is an antagonist, while Lugh, Cuchulain's divine father, could easily be ignored or forgotten. Really, the only film that hasn't been automatically dismissive of gods was Thor, and they aren't exactly gods, but aliens with god-like abilities.

And while ancient stories are all the rage, it's rare they aren't big, bloated, painful messes. I rather liked Tristan and Isolde--it wasn't a great film, but because the action was smaller and the conflict personal, it wasn't a terrible film, either. I dread to think of the Cattle Raid of Cooley being turned into 300.

On the other hand, the last film I saw that delved into Irish myth and history was the absolutely fantastic Secret of Kells, so it's not as if the task is impossible.

STEPHEN COLBERT QUOTES THE CARMINA GADELICA!!!

STEPHEN COLBERT QUOTED THE CARMINA GADELICA ON THE TRUE MEANING OF GROUNDHOG'S DAY--CANDLEMAS!!!

http://www.hulu.com/watch/325992/the-colbert-report-the-meaning-of-groundhog-day

THIS IS AWESOME.

Rethinking Imbolc

Weaving St. Brigit's Cross from JustWeaving

Today is the feast of St. Brigit, which coincides with Imbolc, a Ráithí Fírinneacha na Bliana--"One of the True Quarters of the Year" (along with Samhain, Beltane, and Lughassadh, and as opposed to the solstices and equinoxes). It's the first day of spring by the Irish reckoning, and given that it's in the mid-sixties here in Philly, it certainly feels like spring.


Groundhog's Day is definitely related to Imbolc, and if that damned groundhog says we have six more weeks of winter, when we haven't had even one week, it's time to string up the rat.

Anyway, I wrote a paper on the Irish holiday of Imbolc; here's a taste:

While Imbolc is undoubtedly a feast of spring, and a feast celebrating Brigit, there is, I think, a third element to the feast which is sometimes overlooked—it is likely that Imbolc is a feast of purification, and perhaps represents a longer period of purification, analogous to several other Indo-European and even Christian festivals. Moreover, this feast of purification is intimately bound up with the holiday’s other meanings honoring spring and Brigit—that all three are important to understanding the origins of Imbolc. 
...

The four main feasts of the Celtic calendar—commonly known by their Irish names Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnassadh—when their themes are examined, form a series of corresponding concepts. Samhain is a feast of winter, death, and the ancestors, while Beltane is a feast of summer, sexuality, and fertility.

If Hamp is right, and Imbolc is analogous to the February period of purification found in Roman and Christian tradition, then perhaps Imbolc, like Lughnassadh, was a period and not a single day. It is currently impossible to prove that the pre-Christian Irish observed Imbolc as such a period, but as we have seen, we have analogous ideas in neighboring cultures, and even a Gaulish month called “purification” which falls around the time of February

You can read the whole thing at Scribd

The True Meaning of Halloween

The scene out my back window right now. Yeah, that's snow.

As I'm sure some of you know, Halloween has its origin in the Celtic festival held on November 1st; the Irish called it Samhain (and the Scots call it Samhuinn, which is essentially the same thing), the Welsh call it Calan Gaeaf; the former means "End of Summer" and the latter "The First Day of Winter". And while there are lots of associations with things like faeries and ghosts and a thin veil between this world and the Otherworld, it's also deeply associated with the harvest, with getting the food in for the winter.

Because the holiday we now call Halloween was originally the eve of the first day of winter, as evident in the names I listed above. This, of course, is why the winter solstice is called Midwinter--because it fell between the beginning of winter on November 1st, and the end of winter on February 1, called Imbolc in Irish and Candlemas in English (and surviving in the US as Groundhog's Day, which has its own tradition of predicting the coming of spring).

Halloween is the beginning of winter. We're far enough from the equinox to notice that the nights are getting longer, the weather is cold, the mornings have frost. It's not hard to see how this transition, this slide into the dark time of the year brought us associations with death; the plants are dying, the harvest is reaped, the animals are slaughtered* to be cured and eaten over the winter. It's only natural that death is on the mind, and from that closeness with our dying environment, we draw closer to our own departed.  Both the Dead and Winter are integral parts of Halloween; in fact, I'd say they're inseparable.

So it's with no small amount of amusement and annoyance** that I woke up to see it snowing on October 29th. It's really unusual for us to get snow in October here in the Philly suburbs; I mean, we've occasionally gotten a few flakes, but so far we've got at least three inches, probably four, and it's not going to stop snowing until tonight. We're not ready for this kind of weather--none of us were. Our decorations are getting blasted by the wind and snow; I hope that the rubber bats and spider don't disappear on us.

So my husband and I are spending the day watching Halloween cartoons, eating the food for a cancelled party, and drinking, and occasionally going out to shovel the walk.

We're getting the real meaning of this old Celtic holiday--winter isn't coming, it's already here, kids.

Consider this Nature's Trick; the treat is... um... I guess it looks nice?

*In fact, in Welsh the month of November is called Tachwedd meaning "slaughter"; compare with the Anglo-Saxon name for November, Blōtmōnaþ, "blood month".

**Annoyance, as it has resulted in me having to postpone my Halloween party for a week. At which point it's not a Halloween party, is it? I guess we'll call it a Guy Fawkes Party, or something.

Happy Lughnassadh/Lammas!

Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun - Van Gogh

 August 1st on the traditional Irish calendar marks Lughnassadh--"the assembly of Lugh", wherein Lugh of the Long Arm, the Many-Skilled God of All Arts, is honored, along with his foster-mother Tailltiu, who first tilled the land in order to plant crops.

§59. Tailltiu daughter of Mag Mor king of Spain, queen of the Fir Bolg, came after the slaughter was inflicted upon the Fir Bolg in that first battle of Mag Tuired to Coill Cuan: and the wood was cut down by her, so it was a plain under clover-flower before the end of a year. ...and Cian son of Dian Cecht, whose other name was Scal Balb, gave her his son in fosterage, namely Lugh, whose mother was Eithne daughter of Balar. So Tailltiu died in Tailltiu, and her name clave thereto and her grave is from the Seat of Tailltiu north-eastward. Her games were performed every year and her song of lamentation, by Lugh. With gessa and feats of arms were they performed, a fortnight before Lugnasad and a fortnight after: under dicitur Lughnasadh, that is, the celebration (?) or the festival of Lugh.

--Lebor Gabála Érenn

So what's so great about Lugh? Why's he so important? We can be relatively confident he was worshiped in places like Iberia (where we have inscriptions to "the Lugoves", which means "the Lughs"), Gaul (with the city of Lugdunum "fort of Lugh", today called Lyon), Britain (where the story of Lleu is set down in the fourth branch of the Mabinogi), and Ireland (where we have lots of stories about him), and so on. So why is today, the harvest day, the day the Celts worshipped Lugh?

Simple--not only was he the MacGyver of deities, he got the secrets of harvesting food from the king of the Fomoraig, the Bad Guys of Irish mythology:

Thereafter Lugh and his comrades found Bres son of Elotha unguarded. He said:"It is better to give me quarter than to slay me."

"What then will follow from that?" said Lugh

"If I be spared," says Bress, "the cows of Erin will always be in milk."

"I will set this forth to our wise men," said Lugh.

So Lugh went to Maeltne Mor-brethach , and said to him: "Shall Bress have quarter for giving constant milk to the cows of Erin?" " He shall not have quarter," said Maeltne; "he has no power over their age or their offspring, though he can milk them so long as they are alive."

Lugh said to Bress: "That does not save thee: thou hast no power over their age and their offspring, though thou canst milk them. Is there aught else that will save thee, O Bres?" said Lugh.

"There is in truth, Tell thy lawyer that for sparing me the men of Ireland shall reap a harvest in very quarter of the year."

Said Lugh to Maeltne: "Shall Bres be spared for giving the men of Ireland a harvest of corn every quarter?"

"This has suited us," said Maeltne: "the spring for ploughing and sowing, and the beginning of summer for the end of the strength of corn, and the beginning of autumn for the end of the ripeness of corn and for reaping it. Winter for consuming it"

"That does not rescue thee," said Lugh to Bres; "but less than that rescues thee."

"What?" said Bres.

"How shall the men of Ireland Plough? How shall they sow? How shall they reap? After making known these three things thou wilt be spared."

"Tell them, said Bres, that their ploughing be on a Tuesday, their casting seed into the field be on a Tuesday, their reaping on a Tuesday." So through that stratagem Bres was let go free.

The Second Battle of Moytura

The story of Lugh wrestling the secrets of agriculture--in other words, making sure people can eat--from Bres is paralleled in Christian texts wherein St. Patrick does battle with Crom Dubh. The theme of St. Patrick winning food has many versions, the oldest of which is found in the vita found in the Book of Armagh, and other variants, as described by Máire Mac Neill:

In general, the folk-legend has the following plot: the saint comes to the distrct and begins t build a church; in a time of food-shortage he asks the pagan magnate for food for his workmen; the pagan has a fierce bull which kills all who approach it, and he offers the bull to the saint in the ope that it will kill him; the bull, however, submits quietly to being taken and slaughtered; the bull's flesh is eaten by the saint's company but the saint enjoins that the hid and bones be carefully kept; the pagan, enranged at the loss of his bull and the failure of his plan, asks the saint to give back the bull; the saint has the bones and hid put together, and the bull rises to life.

The Festival of Lughnasa, pg 393

Mac Neill's book is the go-to source on the holiday, and if you can get a copy of it, grab it--it's often very hard to find.

And it wasn't just the Irish: the medieval English knew the day as hlafmæssen-dæg, literally "loaf-mass day"¹, the feast of first fruits, when the harvest first ripens. The cereal crops come in, and are turned into such wonderful things as bread, beer, cakes, whiskey, Cheerios... Well, I think Cheerios. Pretty sure.

Anyway, the word eventually became Lammas, and was the time of year for the Lammas fairs, especially the Ould Lammas Fair, held in Co. Antrim, Ireland, for the last four hundred years.  Mac Neill maintains that Lammas--particularly given its timing on August 1st ultimately comes from Lughnassadh, and I really don't see any reason to contradict her.

In Wales, the day is called "Calan Awst", which is rather straightforward, meaning "First Day of August". And as far as I know, there's no connection made between Lleu and August 1st. Indeed, very little of the day seems to survive in Wales; Mac Neill mentions that in the nineteenth century, people would gather on the Breckon Beacons, heading for Llyn y Fan Fach, as described by Sir John Rhys, where the Lady of the Lake would make an appearance.

But Lugh shows up in Wales as well, as Lleu, the put-upon son of Aranrhod, cursed by his mother, raised in isolation by Gwydion, murdered by his wife's lover, but ultimately triumphs over all of it to become king of Gwynedd. It's unfortunate that we only have scraps left to us in the Mabinogi and the poems of Taliesin to piece together Lleu's story.

So today, Loaf-Mass-Day, the Festival of Lugh, and oddly enough the birthday of Clau-Clau-Claudius in the city of Lugdunum, I baked a loaf of beer bread, and will enjoy eating it, preferably with a bottle of beer homebrewed by a friend of mine.


On that note, I leave you with "John Barleycorn"; I wish I could find the Fairport Convention version, but Traffic will have to do.

NOTES

1. Just as Christ-mass is now Christmas, Loaf-Mass became Lammas.

Another Celtic Grave Story

The BBC has a brief news item on the grave goods of a Celtic princess in what's now Germany; I assume it's the same as this one. Nothing really new, as far as I can tell, but hopefully we'll see more of the goods as time goes on.

Was Hamlet Irish?

The Guardian has an article about the recently-published theories of Dr Lisa Collinson, a professor of medieval Scandinavian at Aberdeen, wherein Hamlet's name is traced to a medieval Irish story; she sums up her ideas at the Oxford University Press blog:

[I]n an article published online last week in the OUP journal Review of English Studies, I have set out my own  – no doubt even less perfect – theory, which I hope will be of as much interest to artists of various kinds as to scholarly specialists.

In this new article, I conclude that Hamlet probably came ultimately from Gaelic Admlithi: a name attached to a player (or ‘mocker’) in a strange and violent medieval Irish tale known in English as ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’. If I’m right, this means that some version of the Hamlet-name was associated with players hundreds of years before Shakespeare lived or wrote.

 And she gives an interesting argument which you really should read in full.

But I'd like to see if anyone has ever traced the story of Hamlet to the Old Irish story The Destruction of Dind Ríg.

In that tale, Loegaire Lorc is king of Ireland, and his brother Cobthach is a petty king of Bregia. Out of envy, Cobthach kills Loegaire, and then proceeds to kill his nephew Ailill. He only leaves Ailill's son, Moen Ollam, who is driven mute by the events, until he was an adult. Then, upon being struck, he regains the ability to speak, and is renamed Labraid. His uncle welcomes him to a banquet at Tara, but then has him driven out because the people say that Labraid is more generous than Cobthach. Labraid/Moen goes off into exile, and then takes on a wife and allies. They plot to return to Cobthach's lands, and proceed, using both force and a magic harp that puts people to sleep, to sack the stronghold Dind Ríg.

Cobthach and his great-nephew make peace, and Labraid/Moen rules over Leinster. But he isn't satisified, sicne he still hasn't had revenge over his great-uncle for the murder of his father and grandfather. Labraid/Moen constructs a house of iron, and invites Cobthach and his people into it for a feast--but Cobthach would only enter if Labraid/Moen's own mother was also in the house. And so they enter to feast, while outside, Labraid's men start building a fire. They point out that his mother is still in the house, but she tells him to go through with it. And so Cobthach is killed, as is Labraid's mother. But unlike Hamlet, Labraid survives.

It's not hard to see some parallels with Hamlet: the murderous brother; the muteness perhaps akin to Hamlet's madness; the exile and return in order to get revenge; the uncle inadvertently killing the mother. If Hamlet's name comes from Irish is it possible that his story--deriving from an unrelated source, though both stories deal with the destruction of a royal house--does as well? That it somehow filtered into medieval Norse literature?

Sure? Why not? But then again, how would it have happened? I don't know, but I'd be curious to find out.

About Those Skull-Sipping Britons

So going beyond my annoyance with Reuters' reporting on how the very early Britons (i.e., living some 12,000 years before there were any Celts) drank from human skulls, let's talk about how this practice went on even up through modern times: Yes, I speak of the Penglog Teilo--the Skull of St. Teilo.

Writing in The Source, Buckley quotes an Asaph Dar, who describes how, at least in the 19th century, there was an association made between the nearby St. Teilo's Well, and the chalice made of his skull:

  The faith of some of those who used to visit the well was so great in its efficacy that they were wont to leave it wonderfully improved. An old inhabitant of the district, Stephen Evans (Hifyn Ifan) used to relate a story to the effect that a carriage drawn by four horses came over to Llandeilo. It was full of invalids from the cockle village of Penclawdd, in the Gower Peninsula, who had determined to try the waters in the well. They returned, however, no better than they came; for though they had drunk of the well they had neglected to do so out of the skull. This was afterwards pointed out to them by somebody and they resolved to make the long journey to the well again. This time, we are told, they did the right thing and departed in excellent health. Such is the great persistence of primitive beliefs that while the walls of the church have long fallen into decay [9] the faith in the well continues in a measure intact.

 Whether this belief, that the efficacy of the well's water would only hold if one drank with the skull of St. Teilo (who, curiously enough, has a cult which lays claim to at least three bodies at three different churches), is an ancient one, is unknown.

The act of drinking from a skull is hardly limited to 19th century Welshmen; indeed, their Celtic forbearers were quite happy to drink from skulls, if Livy is to be believed:

The Boii stripped the body of its spoils and cut off the head, and bore them in triumph to the most sacred of their temples. According to their custom they cleaned out the skull and covered the scalp with beaten gold; it was then used as a vessel for libations and also as a drinking cup for the priest and ministers of the temple.

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, III.23.24

But it's not just Roman propaganda which recounts this; in Bruigean Atha I, a tale from the Fionn Cycle, Fothad Canaindi, a leader of a rival fianna, says that "It is a prohibition for me to drink ale unless it be drunk with white faces", by which he means he only drinks ale from a skull.

Drinking from a skull was hardly the province of the Irish or Welsh, of course; there are medieval Continental accounts of drinking from skull cups in religious settings.

The new story of 15,000 year old skulls used for drinking is held up as a gory detail of the ancient past, one replete with cannibals and all manner of barbarism out of a horror movie (or, well, something staring Arnold Schwarzenegger). But change the setting slightly, and the skulls become holy relics, and drinking from them a type of Christian piety.

Perhaps the modern disgust (and fascination) with the idea is bound up in our detachment from the material world: our meat comes pre-ground, pre-sliced, wrapped in plastic. Dealing with animal bones, unless you are truly into cooking, is a rarity outside of, say, eating some Kentucky Fried Chicken or buffalo wings.  Just today, I was making a pot of navy bean soup, using the remains of a ham I'd saved from Christmas. As the soup cooked, the meat came off the bones, and the marrow flavored the waters, so that the bones became clean and hollowed, and I could pull apart the joint. I saw the ball-and-socket of the pig's hip, and thought about how this had once been an animal walking about. And there was nothing strange about it, though it did impart its own type of awe--that in some ways, I am no different from this animal. I am flesh and sinew and bone, and I could be as easily boiled and separated. I felt for the pig, but it didn't stop me from cooking it.

Real skulls have been used as props in Hamlet; real cadavers used by medical students; real bodies, skinned and cased in a silicone rubber in Bodies.

And so maybe there wasn't anything that strange about drinking from a human skull, depending on context and circumstances. But I can't lie--I am a product of late 20th/early 21st century America. The concept still hold a sort of gruesome fascination.

I'll leave on this oddity:

While [Perceval and the Fisher King] were talking of one thing and another, a boy came from a chamber clutching a whilte lance by the middle of the shaft, and he passed between the fire and the two who were sitting on the bed. Everyone in the hall saw the white lance with its white head; and a driop of blood issued from the tip of the lance's head, and right down to the boy's hand this red drop rain. ...A girl who came in with the boys, fair and comely and beautifully adorned, was holding a grail between her hands. ...The boy saw them pass, but did not dare to ask who was served from the grail[.]

--Chrétien de Troyes. Perceval: The Story of the Grail.

But then compare with the Welsh version of this story, where the wide-mouthed dish (which is what a "grail" originally meant) is gone, and replaced by a severed head:

Then Peredur and his uncle discoursed together, and he beheld two youths enter the hall, and proceed up to the chamber, bearing a spear of mighty size, with three streams of blood flowing from the point to the ground. And when all the company saw this, they began wailing and lamenting. But for all that, the man did not break off his discourse with Peredur. And as he did not tell Peredur the meaning of what he saw, he forebore to ask him concerning it. And when the clamour had a little subsided, behold two maidens entered, and a large salver between them, in which was a man's head, surrounded by a profusion of blood. And thereupon the company of the court made so great an outcry, that it was irksome to be in the same hall with them.

--The Story of Peredur

And of course, there is the famous story from the Mabinogi, where the severed head of Bran (the original Fisher King) holds an Otherworldly feast. Confusing heads and cups? Maybe, but maybe not.

A (Very Late) Happy Imbolc!

For those who don't know, Imbolc--falling roughly halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox (or, Christmas and Easter)--is the old Irish start of spring; it's a feast of purification¹, and comes a day after the feast of Brigit, the goddess and the saint. In the Catholic calendar, it's also Candlemas/the Feast of the Purification of Mary. But you probably know it best as Groundhog Day.

Using this day for prognosticating the future weather goes way back, certainly long before some Pennsylvanian marmot chewed his way out of the ground. Plus, before him, it used to be a snake. To read a good summary of how Brigit relates to spring and predicting the weather in February, check out Alexander Carmichael's classic Carmina Gadelica:

The serpent is supposed to emerge from its hollow among the hills on St Bride's Day, and a propitiatory hymn was sung to it. Only one verse of this hymn has been obtained, apparently the first. It differs in different localities:--

'Moch maduinn Bhride, Thig an nimhir as an toll, Cha bhoin mise ris an nimhir, Cha bhoin an nimhir rium.'

Early on Bride's morn The serpent shall come from the hole, I will not molest the serpent, Nor will the serpent molest me.

Other versions say:--

La Feill na Bride, Thig nighean Imhir as a chnoc, Cha bhean mise do nighean ’S cha dean i mo lochd.' [Imhir, 'La Fheill Bride brisgeanach Thig an ceann de in chaiteanach, Thig nighean Iomhair as an tom Le fonn feadalaich.' 'Thig an nathair as an toll    La donn Bride, Ged robh tri traighean dh’ an    Air leachd an lair.' [t-sneachd

The Feast Day of the Bride, The daughter of Ivor shall come from the knoll, I will not touch the daughter of Ivor, Nor shall she harm me. On the Feast Day of Bride, The head will come off the 'caiteanach,' The daughter of Ivor will come from the knoll With tuneful whistling. The serpent will come from the hole    On the brown Day of Bride, Though there should be three feet of snow    On the flat surface of the ground.

The 'daughter of Ivor' is the serpent; and it is said that the serpent will not sting a descendant of Ivor, he having made 'tabhar agus tuis,' offering and incense, to it, thereby securing immunity from its sting for himself and his seed for ever.

In America, the day has become associated with the 1993 movie Groundhog Day. In one of those wonderful cosmic convergences, the theme of the movie actually fits the original theme of the holiday: Phil Connors, the miserable, venal weatherman played by Bill Murray, spends lifetimes living the same day over and over again, indulging in every vice you can find in a small Pennsylvania town, before slowly learning to become a better person. What's funny, of course, is that the origin of Imbolc--like the Roman Lupercalia, or the Catholic Lent--is in a time of purification. Like Phil, we're all living the same day over and over again; sometimes we waste our time, which is easy, especially in winter when we're miserable. But hey, unlike Phil, we don't have an eternity to get it right.  We invent times like Imbolc to get ourselves back on track, to remind ourselves that winter doesn't last forever, that spring is coming, and we need to get our heads together. To purify ourselves, to make ourselves better people.

Hey--the groundhog called for an early spring. Better get crackin'.

1. Eric Hamp, 'Imbolc, Oimelc', Studia Celtica, 14/15 (1979/1980)

I Am Not Looking Forward To The Eagle

I have yet to be satisfied with a film treatment of Roman Britain (*cough* The Last Legion *cough*), and I have the feeling The Eagle might annoy me much like 2004's ridiculous King Arthur.

"But you haven't seen it yet."

No. I haven't. And yet I'm already annoyed. Why?

Well, The Eagle, much like the forgettable film Centurion, is about the legendary Ninth Legion, which supposedly disappeared during a disastrous run-in with the local Britons up north of Hadrian's Wall around the year 120. Of course, whether this actually happened--not so much a local uprising, which is pretty much par-for-the-course, but the disappearance of the legion--is a matter of debate.Still, it's not the historical ambiguity that bothers me.

It has 2nd century Picts speaking Scottish Gaelic.

Let me say that again.

It has 2nd century Picts speaking Scottish Gaelic.

There is so much wrong with this.

According to the London Times

Macdonald has a fairly free rein in recreating his ancient tribe; but he is determined to be as authentic as possible, with the tribesmen in the movie all speaking Gaelic. In order to achieve a little contemporary symbolism, the Romans will be played by American actors.

[snip]

They were a more indigenous folk than the Celts, who were from further south,” he argues. “They were probably small and dark, like the Inouit [sic], living off seals and dressed in sealskins. We are going to create a culture about which no one knows much, but which we will make as convincing as possible. We are basing it on clues gained from places like Skara Brae and the Tomb of the Eagles in Orkney, so that we will have them worshipping pagan symbols, like the seal and the eagle.

OK. Where to begin. First, if you want to be authentic, then you wouldn't have Picts living in the second century speaking Gaelic, which wasn't spoken by any sizable portion of people living in Britain at that time. For one thing, "Gaelic"--in this case, the Scottish dialect of Goidelic--didn't exist; there were dialects of Old Irish, mostly spoken in Ireland (I don't think there were any Irish settlements in Britain at the time, but I could be wrong). Having Picts speak Scottish Gaelic is like having King Alfred the Great speaking Elizabethan English and declaring it authentic.

Secondly, the Picts, insofar as they spoke a Celtic language, were Celts. "Celtic" isn't a race, it's a group of related languages/cultural output. That Pictish was probably a strand of Celtic--specifically P-Celtic, and thus distantly related to Gaulish and ultimatley Welsh--is largely accepted by academics, though there are always some who disagree; Wikipedia has a pretty decent introduction to the disagreements, and where the current thinking stands.Even as early as the 1500s, scholars saw the similarities between Gaulish and Pictish (yeah, I was surprised too by the early date; George Buchanan figured this out a full hundred years before Edward Lhuyd pioneered the use of "Celtic" to describe the related languages of Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Manx, etc.).

I'm not sure how Macdonald can say "They were Celts, expect that they weren't; they spoke Gaelic, except they didn't; this is authentic, even though we don't know anything about the Picts, except that we do, since they were short and not Celtic" and not expect my head to explode.

I get that the Picts helped form the Scottish nation; but they weren't Scotti, the name of the people who conquered them; they probably adopted Gaelic as it became advantagous to speak the langauge of the political elite, but that was centuries after the events of the movie. The best evidence we have tells us that they were related to the other Britons just south of them, who went on to become the Welsh, Cumbrian, and Cornish peoples. If he wanted to be "authentic", he could have had them speak Welsh, which is closer to what we know of Pictish than Scottish Gaelic is.

Moreover, the non-Scottish history of Northern Britain is often glossed over in popular culture, which is very frustrating. (To see Y Gododdin called "The Oldest Scottish Poem" is completely anachronistic. Sorry, Kenneth H Jackson, but come on!)

I hope the music for the movie is by these guys:



Because their knowledge of Druids is as well informed as The Eagle's knowledge of the Picts.

But Does It Taste Like Guinness?

Via io9, scientists have figured out how the Celts brewed their beer:

The first step to drinking like the Celts is to dig an oblong ditch. Pour in water and barley, and leave them there until the barley sprouts. Once they have, they need to be dried. Light a fire at each end of the ditch and keep it going until the barley is dried. This will darken the beer and give it a smokey flavor. It will also dry the grains slowly enough that they'll secrete something called lactic acid. Like other acids, it tastes sour. Sourness and smoke; delicious. Some of the grains will char. Leave those in the ditch for future archeobotanists to uncover. Mash up the grains to maximize the amount of sugar that the yeast, which gets added later, has to feed on.

Hops weren't used in beer until sometime in the High Middle Ages; at least, that's the earliest it's mentioned. Instead, beer was flavored with gruit, a combination of herbs, some of which were mild narcotics: nutmeg, mugwort, yarrow, and henbane were among those used. Henbane, of course, is potentially very toxic, though here it's obviously diluted. Moreover, henbane is interesting, as it's associated with the oracles of Apollo, and with the Celtic god Belenus, for its hallucinogenic elements.

Why you shouldn't drink beer with henbane.

The Greco-Roman world wasn't too keen on beer; the emperor Julian wrote

Who and from where are you Dionysus?
Since by the true Bacchus,
I do not recognize you; I know only the son of Zeus.
While he smells like nectar, you smell like a goat.
Can it be then that the Celts because of lack of grapes
Made you from cereals? Therefore one should call you
Demetrius, not Dionysus, rather wheat born and Bromus,
Not Bromius.

Of course, the poem is a little more complex than it looks; there's a lot of punning in there:



However, even a beer lover like myself knows that stale beer does pretty much smell like piss.

As we all know, primitive man invented beer; but the Celts invented Guinness. And for that, we are grateful.

New Celtic tomb found

At the Heuneburg hill fort in southwest Germany, already the sight of a good deal of archaeological work, the undisturbed tomb of what they believe was a Celtic noblewoman has been found. The tomb is around 2600 years old, which places it at the time of the Bronze Age western "Hallstatt D" culture, which was transitioning into the Iron Age Celtic La Tène culture.

So why is this interesting? Well, Heuneburg was an important Celtic settlement; it's possible that it's the city of Pyrene mentioned by Herodotus:

For the Ister [Danube] flows from the land of the Celts and the city of Pyrene through the very middle of Europe — History 2.33.3

There are dozens of graves that have already been found, but most were either destroyed by the elements, or robbed in antiquity; it's rare that modern archaeologists are able to find an undisturbed inhumation.

To get an idea of what an aristocrat's tomb can look like, check out this reconstruction of the Hochdorf tomb, which dates to 530 BC, not that long (archaeologically speak) after the recently-found tomb, and only about twenty miles away:

Click on picture to see original on Wikipedia

(What you can't see, off to the top right, is a giant cauldron, originally filled with 100 gallons of mead. Also found were golden shoes, a gold-leafed dagger, and other precious items.)

Hopefully, the public will soon see what's been found; Heuneburg is already the site of a reconstructed Celtic village.

The location of Heuneburg:

View Larger Map

Happy Eponalia

Eponalia--the Feast of Epona, the horse goddess of the Celts--is one of the only pre-medieval festivals connected to the Celts that we can directly point to, if only because it was preserved in a Roman calendar.¹ Though a Celtic goddess, she was adopted by the Romans, and her cult was widespread.

Called the Guidizzolo inscription, this rustic Roman calendar, found in norther Italy (near Verona), in the province of Gallia Cisalpina, mentions this feast as

'XV Kalendas Ianuarius Eponae'.

This date--counting backwards fifteen days from the Kalends of January (i.e. January 1), would lead to today's date, December 18th, as explained here:


--American journal of archaeology, Volume 8

Of course, why Epona was worshipped in December is unknown; but it is interesting to note the old Welsh custom of the Mari Lwyd held around the time of the new year (i.e. January 1), wherein a mumming troop carry around a horse's skull on a pole, the jaws hinged so that the skull can talk and engage in rhyming contests, earning food for the mummers. The origin of the custom is unknown, but certainly Wales had its own horse goddess in Rhiannon.

And so, have a happy Eponalia!

For more about Epona, check out Epona.net, the most comprehensive site on the subject.

NOTES

1. The other two are the famous "TRINOX[tion] SAMO[nii] SINDIV" i.e. "three-nights of Samonios today" on the 17th of Samonios; when the month of Samonios occurred is of much debate; the other is "DECAMNOCTIACIS GRANNI", the ten-night festival of Grannos, about which we know nothing, not even when it occurred.

Rachel Bromwich, 1915-2010

Via Heavenfield, I've learned that Rachel Bromwich has passed away at the age of 95.

Professor Bromwich, more than any other scholar, has influenced my work; my website (and really, my life) would be much poorer if I'd never come across her writings.

Her Trioedd Ynys Prydain is one of the most important works on Old Welsh literature--really, if you're interested in Welsh literature and legend, you can't just pick up a copy of the Mabinogion, you have to seek out TYP. The notes alone are an impressive encyclopedia of Welsh myth and legend. And her works on Welsh Arthuriana in general are without match. She also was instrumental in translating the works of Sir Ifor Williams, whose studies on Taliesin are among the best.

She published an updated edition of TYP as late as 2005; I can only hope to be as active at that age (or live that long).

Saving the St Chad Gospels

Via Heavenfield, there's apparently work being done by the University of Kentucky and the Litchfield Cathedral to digitize the St Chad Gospels:


Video via Heavenfield

For those who are wondering, this gospel contains the Surrexit Memorandum, one of the earliest texts in the Welsh language (which you can see at my website, with a translation of one section by John Rhys.)