R.I.P. Maureen O'Hara

Growing up, I always wanted to look like Mary Kate Danaher.

It's funny--I realized today that I've probably watched two of her movies every year since I was a kid--Miracle on 34th Street and The Quiet Man. And of course I grew up with The Parent Trap. Her performances are as much a part of my memories, my cultural grounding, as Monty Python or the Replacements.

O'Hara always seemed to play a woman who didn't need anyone's bullshit--you had to win her over. And I wanted to be that.

I've seen The Quiet Man probably 36 times, which is as long as I've been alive. My great-grandfather came from the area where they filmed it (though he left by 1904), and when the film came out, it became a family obsession, in part because of that, because we looked at it and said "we came from there"--and it's true, because we've met our family who still live near there, still have the family farm.

But not just my family--it was so popular in my neighborhood, that when I went to a funeral about ten years ago, I came across an old friend of my dad's, who, realizing he was one of the last of that crowd, sat there and told me about how he'd wished he'd moved away, and found his own White O'Morn. For some reason, it had a real hold on the men of my parents' generation, who grew up hearing about the Old Country from their fathers or grandfathers, treating the film like some sort of Irish-American Haggadah. I know people from Ireland hate this, because it can be patronizing--but it comes from a sincere place.

She had a good death, which is more than can be said for most people, famous or not. But it's hard not to feel a little sad--as others have already said, there's so little of Old Hollywood still living, I guess it's only Olivia de Havilland now.

Tear Down Little Pete's? Sure, Can We Tear Down City Hall Too?

Philadelphia, I love you, but you’re bringing me down: Little Pete’s to Meet the Wrecking Ball

Little Pete’s, a beloved Center City diner, will meet the wrecking ball soon in order to make way for a 300-room hotel.

South Street is a shell of its former self; the Boyd is being hollowed out into a shitty multiplex; Little Pete’s is going to be torn down for a goddamn hotel. Hell, they even want Frank Gehry to tear out the steps of the Art Museum.

One of the great things about Philly has been that it’s a place everyone could afford live; I don’t want it to be the “sixth borough” or SanFranEast.

But what else is new?

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.

If you like Icelandic sagas (and I do), this is pretty cool.

Chapter 18: Concerning Leia and the Sons of Dítú
A woman was named Leia; she was the daughter of Beilorgana, king of the Aldiran Regions in Ireland. Relations were cool between Beilorgana and Falfadinn, for Falfadinn, King of Norway, claimed to be King of Ireland as well, and he raided widely in the Aldiran Regions.
There were many chieftains in many lands who greatly disliked King Falfadinn, but did not like Jabbi, King of the Danes, either. Many went to new lands, to the Faroes or to Iceland or to the Hebrides or to the Orkneys or to the Shetlands. But the army of Falfadinn was great, and he had many large warships, and he raided the lands of those who would not acknowledge his absolute authority. He had many good men killed, and others he enslaved. He was a very unpopular king. And because King Falfadinn wanted to intimidate all who stood against him, he ordered to be built the greatest ship which men had ever seen upon the seas, and that ship held such a store of men and weapons that they could pillage an entire large city. And a name was given to that ship, and it was called Daudastjarna (Death-Star).

--from Tattúínárdǿla saga: Star Wars as an Icelandic saga, and other fun with Old Norse 

You know, every time I think I'm burned out on Star Wars, something like this happens, and it's very much up my alley.

Oh hey, so ancient Rome and China had some contact

Which you maybe already knew (I did, but only in a vague sort of way, and the fact that Ptolemy's Geographia mentions China and Japan). But I haven't actually read the source text for the Chinese side, the Weilüe (魏略), until today, thanks to io9:

The kingdom of Da Qin (Rome)¹ is also called Lijian.² It is west of Anxi (Parthia) and Tiaozhi (Characene and Susiana), and west of the Great Sea.³

* * *

The ruler of this country is not permanent. When disasters result from unusual phenomena, they unceremoniously replace him, installing a virtuous man as king, and release the old king, who does not dare show resentment.¹⁸The common people are tall and virtuous like the Chinese, but wear hu (‘Western’) clothes. They say they originally came from China, but left it.¹⁹

They have always wanted to communicate with China but, Anxi (Parthia), jealous of their profits, would not allow them to pass (through to China).²⁰ 

--John Hill's translation

There's a lot more to be found at the site (and the notes are awesome), but one thing I found interesting is that they called Rome Da Qin (or Ta-Ch'in)--meaning essentially that Rome, being the other large empire at the other end of the known world, was The Other China.

The Universe Wants Me to Listen to Foghat

I'm having one of those weird days of serendipity, and it's all about Foghat.

• Two different stations were playing Foghat this morning as I drove to work; 
• There was a reference to them on the lastest episode of the podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour that I listened to at work today; 
• I just now started watching MST3K episode Pod People, which also tosses off a reference to Foghat. 

This is more Foghat in one day than in my entire life. I don't even own any of their records.

Yep, this has nothing to do with the Celts or Philly or anything else. It's just kinda weird.

Cernunnos: Looking Every Which Way

Ceisiwr Serith has adapted his article "Cernunnos: Looking a Different Way" (from the Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium) into a documentary, Cernunnos: Looking Every Which Way. This is the full-length version; he also has divided it up into eight parts, if that's more convenient for you. Check it out:

On My 34th Birthday, I Am Given a Bow and Arrow Set

Because I am a very mature, adult woman, my husband naturally gave me a bow and arrow for my birthday today. How he did it was fun.

Since I had the day off, and he didn't, he gave me my gifts last night: a new mess kit (very much needed), a pair of earrings, and a lego set (a very cool wizard and his pet dragon). So I wasn't expecting any other gifts tonight.

When we got home from dinner (sushi) tonight (about an hour ago), I went upstairs to change into something more comfortable--which, eh, is a sweatshirt, not what that phrase implies. Came back downstairs to watch last night's Daily Show, and Den says to me, "So, did you get everything you wanted for your birthday?"

"Yeah, I had a good one."

"Good." Looks behind me, to the bookcase. "What's that? What's behind you?"

So I whip around, and see, half-hidden behind the bookcase, a long package. "Huh--looks like Birthday Santa left an extra package!"

"Oh. My. God."

Because this should sound a little familiar, at least for Americans:

Yep--he Christmas Story'ed me. I couldn't be happier.

TWC drama--Hurricane Sandy makes people testy.

Saw this this morning on the Weather Channel; Steph and Mike are on shaky ground, guys...

(Video made by my husband. Hooray for working iphones.)

Aftermath of the storm? Not what I was expecting.

So after all that, getting through Hurricane Sandy, never losing power, what did I do? I dropped my iphone into the bowl of french toast mix I was making, to celebrate the hurricane being gone. And now it has no sound unless you plug in headphones--speakers aren't working, and I can't hear anyone if you call me. So it's sitting in a bowl of rice, and hopefully I won't have to buy a new phone, because apparently "liquid damage is not covered under warranty".

And if I do have to buy a new phone, I need to wait two weeks before I'm eligible for the subsidized upgrade from Verizon.

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.

Why I Fell Off the Face of the Earth

While it's hardly the first time I went a long time without posting, I feel like I should explain that I'm having an incredibly exhausting year.

In February, my husband and I went to California, followed by a trip to Ireland in April. I was intending on posting about the trip to Ireland, since it's in this blog's wheelhouse. But then in late May, we suffered a tragedy: my stepfather, with whom I was very close, suffered a stroke. He'd been with us in Ireland, and the stroke came as a shock. He lingered for a couple of weeks in a coma before dying. And to be honest, I haven't been the same since.

Meanwhile, I started a new job--a full-time job at that--a week before the stroke, and that's taken up a large chunk of my time.

I still intend to post about the trip to Ireland; aside from visiting places like Newgrange and Inis Mór, we also met my mom's cousins, who still live on the farm my great-grandfather left to come to the States. It was a wonderful trip, and I have some pretty cool pictures to post, but like I said, my heart hasn't been into it.

But I guess the depression is starting to lift, and I'll be able to start posting again.

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.

New Link - Tairis Tales

I'm adding a link to Tairis Tales, a new(ish) blog by Seren (of the site Tairis), which will

collate all of the tales, myths, legends, lore and more from the Gaelic countries – those of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man 

 Already she's covering stories I've never gotten to, and will be linking to from my own site.

The Road Goes Ever On and On

So this has been and will be a season of traveling. Last October, I drove up from Florida with my sister on an errand; and recently (as in last week) I was in California:

Why yes, California *does* know how to party

In the spring, I'll be in Ireland with my family, and in September, I'll be down the shore.

This is my half-assed way of explaining the recent lack of posting, and upcoming lack of posting; not that it explains the overall lack of posting--that's mostly laziness mixed with a lack of inspiration.

If you're interested, some pics from my trip are over at my Tumblr.

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