Tairis

Là Fhèill Brìghde

2012-02-01T12:27:00.000Z

Spring has been stirring already - unusually early for these parts considering previous experience - so celebrations began on time this year, and with less panicking than last year.

The trees are starting to grow their tiny leaf buds:

And the bulbs are proudly poking up through the ground and there are even some early daffodils thinking about blooming already. Aside from the storms I've been mentioning, we've had an exceptionally mild winter. There is snow on the mountain tops, across the water from us, but here we've only had a few slushy flurries so far. That's all changing, though; right now we're in the middle of a cold snap, which has finally necessitated putting the heating on to encourage ourselves out of bed in the morning.

We're getting an arctic blast just now, and apparently it will be hanging around. The day has dawned bright and frosty - sunny but bitter - I'm not sure whether that counts as fair or foul considering the weather prognostications for today, but according to the Met Office there's plenty of wintry weather yet to come.

Still, life is stirring.

The preparations began with the usual cleaning and tidying, and then, while Tom was still at school and it was just me and Rosie for the afternoon, we set about making our dealbh Bride. We all made one last year, but this time I didn't have time to include Tom in the preparations (I'm generally at my most able in the early afternoon, so I have to seize opportunities as they present themselves). I used his icon last year anyway, so this time I decided we should use Rosie's anyway.

She chose the colours and the materials for decoration, and I cut and bent things as necessary, and this is what we ended up with:

As we made the icon, I told Rosie about the story of Brigid, and how she would be coming to visit us in the night. I told her that the little icon we were making was so that Brigid would know she was welcome and that we were ready for her visit. This got Rosie very excited. "Mummy, we should make her a bed, in case she gets tired!" Thusly, Rosie set about with feathers and paper and glue to make a comfortable 'bed' while I did the fiddly bits for the icon. As she went about her work she said, "Can we put some food out for her as well? She might be hungry." Yes, I said, I will leave some of our dinner out for her, and pudding too. Sometimes it amazes me how a child's mind works.

As we began decorating the icon, Rosie decided that the lady who was coming to visit us must be a princess, because she has such pretty hair and such a lovely long dress. Ladies who wear long dresses must be princesses. But wait! What about pants? (Underwear). We can't make an dolly to welcome the 'princess' in and have it knickerless, that would be rude!

And so Rosie set about making a pair of woollen pants for the icon of a goddess.

After that, we sat about making our seasonal mural, which I put up in the kitchen for the quarter. I put some paper out and asked her what sort of things she thought of when she thought about Spring. "Flowers." So flowers it was. Then butterflies. Then flowers still in bud, because lots of things are still growing. And sunshine. Oh, and sailboats, so she stuck down the sea and made a boat to go on top. Then she drew in the sailor, but something was still missing...a surf board! In that went too. And green hills, with sheep! But we need a fence...

And this is how it ended up:

For once, the picture is totally Rosie's own idea, rather than something I've come up with, hence the gigantic flowers to the right and the blue sheep in the middle...Tom wasn't too interested in doing his own picture (he's less interested in artistic stuff, unless it involves computers, and after a long day at school that sort of thing probably seems like more work for a six-year-old). Instead, when Tom got home we made cakes, and I let Tom decide on the colour of icing. He decided he wanted blue, but said that maybe we should do some pink as well, because Rosie likes pink. So both it was:

The first batch I over-cooked, so I had to do another batch in the end, even though everyone insisted the slight crunchiness was yummy, but no! Everything must be just so. The burnt ones are offerings to the land spirits, as is traditional...

Then there was dinner - to be honest I didn't have any because I can't stomach much at the moment, so I had a bit of veg and that was that. Communal feasting is difficult when one cannot sit or stomach too much food, but there isn't much I can do about that, really. Everyone else enjoyed it, at least. Rosie told everyone that a special lady was coming to visit tonight, and could she stay up to meet her?

After the kids were in bed I needed some time to sit down and relax for a bit - it had been a busy day by my current standards, so while I would rather have spent the whole evening ritualising and quietly contemplating, meditating and generally being, it was going to have be somewhat shortened and done before bedtime while the next lot of painkillers did their magic.

Thankfully the dealbh Bride had dried, and so after my usual offerings and Good Wishing and saining and so on, my devotions began. I sang (or...attempted to...), and prayed, and welcomed Brigid in. As I opened the door to invite her in one of our cats came in and proceeded to make an unholy racket. In the end, I couldn't proceed to placing the dealbh Bride in her bed (the feather bed that Rosie had made, placed in the clay cros Bride basket I made last year) without carrying and fussing the cat at the same time, so that was definitely not how I expected things to go.

I managed to do everything I wanted but didn't have the chance to take time to contemplate outside as I like to; just take the chance to breathe and feel and think after I make my offerings to finish things off for the night. I had to go lie down, so I took myself off to bed and did the contemplation there instead. I felt restless and unsatisfied with myself in a way, because I wanted to be able to do things like I usually do, but at the same time I had to admit to myself that I can only do what my body is capable of, and things are going to have be different from now on. I should stop being so bloody stubborn. On the one hand, I think things were successful, but on the other I think being in such pain as I was meant I wasn't as focused or in the moment as I usually am. It was there, thinking and letting my body rest that I was finally able to feel, and focus. It was then that I felt connected.

I slept surprisingly deeply and well - a novelty for me these days, to be sure. Getting up was definitely easier than it has been for a long while, anyway. Tom spent the morning complaining that his tooth hurt, and sure enough he has his first wobbly milk tooth. Perhaps very apt, considering.

Today I've done some more devotions and will do some more baking if I'm up to it - some bannocks, perhaps - and then more offerings to finish off. There may be some colder weather yet to come, but that's par for the course in these parts. Even so, in this house at least, spring has been welcomed in; its promise has not gone unnoticed. I don't know how much I will be able to do in the garden this year, but I will at least be able to appreciate the warmer weather and the sun on my skin in the coming months, and the idea of that - after all the wind and rain and the dark cloud we've had - warms by bones just thinking about it.

A new blog

2012-01-28T15:39:00.001Z

I've had it in my head for a while to start collating old tales and bits of lore and such, and keep it in a place that's easily accessible. The idea has been percolating for a while now (OK, over a year...), and seeing as I have an increasing amount of time on my hands at the moment, I thought now would be as good a time as any.

A while ago, on a whim, I set up a wordpress blog, so I figure I might as well use it and not let it go to waste. So here it is, without further ado:

Tairis Tales

My aim is to collect the tales and lore that can be seen to relate to gods and maybe-gods and (if I can keep on top of the tagging) form a kind of database so all the different permutations of the same tale, and al the different motifs, can be just a click away. Yes. I am sad like that...

Anyway, feel free to join me. There may be a few tweaks to come just yet, but I've already put the tales I've posted here up, with a little bit more from here and there. Everything that appears over there, just like the stuff I paste here, will be from older material that is copyright-free.

Tradition

2012-01-26T18:00:00.001Z

Gaelic Polytheists tend to talk a lot about tradition. Observing tradition, upholding tradition, being part of a tradition...preserving tradition...and on and on.

We tend to use words like tradition a lot, but nobody really talks about why all that much. It's kind of assumed that this is how things are, and this is what we do. Looking to tradition gives us the framework of what we do. I don't think that's the only reason why they're important, though. When we look at the underlying meaning of the words we use, and how they are seen in their native context, then it helps to put things into perspective a lot of the time. Language is a complex thing. I'm in no way a linguist, I hasten to add, so I can only really go by what dictionaries tell me, but I do see that language is important to understand what it is we're doing, and why.

Words like 'tradition' or 'customs' take on a very different meaning when we consider them from the perspective of the culture we focus on in our practices. When I was working on the last article - the one on values - one of the things I found most interesting was all of the stuff I found relating to customs and tradition; in particular, the fact that bés ('custom, habit, usual procedure, practice, manner, or way') can be seen in terms of moral behaviour, and that it can be found in the word for 'morality' itself, béstatu.

To the early Irish, it wasn't just the values that an individual had and upheld, it was the customs they observed and the way they conducted themselves publicly that made them an upstanding, upright member of the community. When we apply that idea in a modern context, we might hold ourselves to the same kind of standards. It is how we conduct ourselves, what we do, that makes us a good person.

Even so, when it comes to the doing in terms of 'tradition' or 'traditions, customs', we have to consider the fact that for most of us, they are not generally ones that we've been brought up with. There's a learning curve that comes with adopting a new religion, a new worldview, a new way of doing things. It can be a steep learning curve to begin with, but eventually, with a bit of work, we get there. Soon enough, we find ourselves in a sort of rhythm of daily practice - prayer, offerings, doing things a certain way...Suddenly, we've become part of a new worldview, a new way of life.

Some of us might have been brought up with a few traditions or bits of lore - those of us whose family might have come from Ireland or Scotland, or might be second or third generation or so - but even then, while those traditions might take on a new light, a new meaning, we still have to work hard to adapt and build our own traditions and practices within a worldview that we have to work at adopting. For many people in the western world, the worldview and attitudes we've been brought up with can be very different to the ones we find in Gaelic Polytheism, or any kind of polytheism that is rooted in 'traditional culture'. For a lot of people these days there's an ingrained 'every man for themselves' kind of mentality - the individual comes first - whereas in a Gaelic Polytheist view it's pretty much the opposite. It's family and community first, however you might define those things, and it can be quite alien to our upbringing and thinking to begin with. I know it was for me, anyway (my family are not the picture of functionality, to be fair), but it's also an ideal that I found to be attractive, having not really had much sense of family or community before.

Then again, in many ways it's pretty much impossible to talk about Gaelic Polytheism as a tradition, because everyone has their own approach and interpretation of what that tradition is and should be. I think this makes sense when we consider the fact that as a community we're extremely diverse and spread out. What works for me, as a married woman with children, living on the west coast of Scotland, and all the other things that make me fundamentally me (for better or worse) doesn't necessarily work for someone who is single, has no children, and lives somewhere that's vastly different to the kind of climate I live with here (wet and windy, mostly...did I mention wet?). So there will be differences in tradition, because tradition must serve different needs and different locales, and that's something we can see in the lore as well. In Ireland, say, different counties made different kinds of cros Bride at Lá Fhéile Bríde, while at Bealtaine some counties had the tradition of the may bush or the May ball, and others decorated with yellow flowers. And so on...

Ultimately, when it comes to tradition, it's the doing that counts, but the doing is nothing without the roots. Even Cú Chulainn - not someone I think most people would generally hold up as an example of wisdom - understood the need for tradition. "Be vigilant [to observe] regulations of [your] fathers," he said. This is what creates stability, and it's also a way of honouring the wisdom and traditions of your ancestors (or the ancestors who performed those traditions if you can't claim any heritage yourself). It is also a way of recognising that those who came before us - their experience, knowledge and wisdom - is valuable, and worth listening to. Those who have come before us, who may have struggled in the face of adversity, who may have had to fight for their own freedoms and rights...these are the people we should listen to and learn from as we might have to face our own struggles. This is a common ideal in many traditional cultures, and it's common because it works.

When you're at some remove from those traditions, though - when you haven't been brought up with them, when they have to be learned or even revived or reconstructed - then there isn't necessarily someone to turn to directly for guidance on the matter. One of the first things I did when I started seriously trying to practice as a Celtic Reconstructionist was to figure out what my traditions could be. People on the email groups and discussion boards directed noobs like myself to the kind of books I could read, and so off I went and read them. I looked at the Carmina Gadelica for inspiration, I read all the books on festivals and folklore that I could get my hands on, and I got an idea of the things I could start doing. They've evolved slowly over the years, as I've figured out what works and what doesn't, but they haven't changed much, I don't think. What I used to say in English I now try to say in Gàidhlig, as much as I can, for one, and I'm always trying to find things I can include the kids in.

It's thinking about the kids that makes me appreciate the idea of tradition the most, I think. There are some family traditions from my childhood that I remember with affection (and some with not so much affection...), and it's those kinds of things I want my kids to have and pass on if they have kids of their own. I can include them in a lot of traditions even if I'm not bringing them up with the religious elements, and I want them to remember those traditions with affection, the kind of things that brought us together as a family; churning the butter and everyone calling for the lumps to come, our seasonal pictures that we make each quarter, making the dealbh Bride for Là Fhèill Brìghde and carving the turnips at Samhainn, cooking all the yummy things for our feasts, and building wee cairns at the beach, and so on...

During a discussion on the cr_r group some years ago, somebody said something along the lines of (and I'm paraphrasing and framing it in the way I see it): Even though things have changed and have been lost over the years, centuries and millennia, or perhaps subsumed by Christianity, there is a thread that runs through it all - a thread of tradition that persists and perseveres no matter what. A bright red thread, one might say. I like that imagery. Even though things might have changed and evolved with the times, its all part of that one thread, continually being woven. It is part of a continuum.

Some of the songs and prayers in the Carmina Gadelica talk about doing things as a saint or famous figure did - "I will wash my face...as Mary washed her Son..." - or else the songs or prayers being said or sung are said to be those of Brigid or Mary, or whoever else, themselves. It is the connection with these powerful saints, the repetition of and respect for tradition that makes them effective. It is the thread there, shining brightly throughout.

Tradition is important. It's a huge word, when you think about it. Words can have such depth and meaning that can make them so powerful. I do as those before me did, and the weight of that tradition hangs around me like a warm blanket. It brings me comfort when I need it, and it gives me direction and an identity too, I suppose.

This tradition can bring a depth and meaning to even the most simplest of things. As I walk this path, I suppose I might see myself treading carefully in the footsteps of those who have gone before me. And as I walk, there are those who walk beside me in friendship and community, such as I've found across the internet, and I am grateful for that.

Maybe there isn't just one bright red thread reaching through the ages, but many, all being woven together into a thick, strong cord. It is in observing and preserving these traditions that we can make sure that the cord stays strong and bright, and it is in thinking about this kind of thing that I think I've also begun to really appreciate other people's traditions as well, and just how and why some people might be so offended and upset when their traditions are appropriated for fashion or folly, or simple ego. Or money. Most of the time, maybe it really comes down to money. Whatever the reason, it's appropriation; without regard or respect for other people's heritage or traditions or culture. But that, perhaps, is an entirely different post...

On this day...

2012-01-25T18:33:00.000Z

Wishing you all a very merry Burns' Night!

In honour of the day, I thought I'd share with you a very rare specimen of haggis, Haggis scota, which can be found at the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow:

I'm sure you'll agree it's magnificent...(I used to have a haggis toy as a kid, but it was white and looked more like a tribble).

If you're partaking this evening, do enjoy your haggis, neeps 'n' tatties. I recommend trying it with a whisky and cheese sauce, if that's your thing. Yum.

The Cailleach and the hunter

2012-01-24T14:47:00.000Z

From The Emmet, 1823:

The Cailleach...had the most unlimited power over the elements. When a hunter kindled a fire in a sheeling to warm his benumbed limbs, after the fatigues of the chase, this sublime being although in a mountain of Perthshire strode in a moment from hill to hill, and was with the hunter at his blazing fire in a twinkling, though it had been kindled by him in the distant mountains of Ross-shire. She always attempted to destroy him whom she thus so unexpectedly and unwelcomely visited; and the means which she had recourse to for this purpose were various. She was much afraid of a dog and a loaded gun; and as these were companions which every hunter had along with him, she was not so successful in the trade of slaying as she naturally wished. The following song was sung by her one evening to scare a hunter from killing her deer. As the hunter was in the act of levelling his piece at a large stag that grazed in a green meadow between two mountains, she suddenly made her appearance on the frowning brow of a large precipice, and recited or sung as follows, and it almost is unnecessary to mention, that the hunter made the decentest speed possible towards the low grounds, when the last strain came rolling to his ear on the evening breeze...

Tiny hunter cease to roam,

O'er the piny heights where I make my dwelling;

Tempt the roaring foam,

Of ocean when high the trouble waves are swelling,

But here where I hold my sway,

O'er deep glen and mountain gray,

Dare not venture night or day -

Tiny mortal roam not here!

I am monarch of the deer,

Which bound over all these green mountains;

I partake of their cheer,

The crystal stream so clear,

And the cresses that fringe the blue fountains:

Tis I that deform heaven's face with the storm,

And sublime on the dark clouds career.

I revel 'mid the elemental war,

At rest within my misty car,

And send my voice in hollow moans afar,

Down the dusky glen among the dwellings of men;

And fill them with terror and fear!

Cease, then, my piny heights to climb,

Pollute not my green knoll of thyme,

Where I hold my august court,

And with my fairy subjects sport,

When the moon at her noon,

Pours her silver stream of light,

O'er the blue bosom of the silent night!

Tremble mortal, at my power,

Leave my sacred dominion!

Ere I cause the heavens lower,

And whelm thee with a fearful shower,

For sport to my fairy minions!

Hence away! child of clay,

Go tempt the roaring foam,

Of ocean, when high the troubled waves are swelling;

But ne'er again stray where I hold my sway,

O'er the piny heights that I make my dwelling!

Signs

2012-01-20T11:11:00.001Z

Last week, as I was taking the dogs out for a walk with kids in tow, I stumbled across a dead crow, lying in the middle of the pavement. Now that, I thought, can't be a good sign.

With a lot of thought and worrying and gnawing at the innards of my mind, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't so much a sign of impending doom for myself (though I'm still not ruling that out), but that it maybe has more to do with the recent storms that have caused so much devastation and damage in the area. The storms have been nothing like I've ever seen before, and perhaps this crow was a sign to tell me that this place is hurting, and it needs something from me.

Here, mostly stuck on the sofa in pain at the moment, I've not been doing as much to maintain my obligations to this area, and if it takes a dead crow to give me a good kick up the arse, then it's perhaps time to take a hint that I really need to pick things up. During the storms I made offerings to the Cailleachan, the Storm Hags who unleash their fury in the wind and the rain, the raging waves and the rising streams. I watched the storms and breathed them in, at times I got caught up in the energy and the fury, and marvelled in what nature can do sometimes. I prayed and I sang, and on my rounds the other week, I took in the damage.

On a day to day basis, though, I think it's safe to say that I've mostly been wallowing on the sofa; the past few weeks or so haven't been great, as far as keeping on top of the chronic pain issues have gone. I've been so busy wallowing (and trying to escape at the same time, but running in the wrong direction), perhaps, that I've dropped the ball, and I need to get back on an even keel. Instead of wallowing, I need to get up and do.

So that's what I'm trying to do, getting back to concentrating on my daily devotions; my prayers and offerings, maintaining and rebuilding my relationship with this land that have otherwise been a little fudged recently. Balance must be restored, and my mistakes must be owned and owned up to.

But that's not what this post is about, really; I'm more thinking about signs in general...It's a tricky subject when it comes to a religion that otherwise emphasises that which can be found in books. There's no manual, when it comes to signs. There's nothing set in stone. For once, instead of nosing into a book and burying into research, it's something that we have to turn inwards to for answers. That can be difficult for a lot of folks, I think, and the whole mystical side of practice is something I've struggled with myself, on and off. After I finally had a bit of a breakthrough with it all, and finally got to grips with it, a dear friend said to me, "Welcome to the crazy."

Thanks. I think.

Signs are a tricky subject. You don't necessarily have to be gifted in seeing them per se (I mean, sometimes they're about as subtle as a brick in the face, y'know?), but at the same time, some people just aren't gifted, and that's just the way it is. I can't claim to be an expert in this, of course. I can't make any claims at proficiency. I try, because it's something that I've always been unable to avoid, in spite of the fact that once upon a time I might have tried to. It's just a part of me, and why run away from yourself?

It's the interpreting of signs that's often the hard part. It takes a kind of self-trust and self-knowledge that can be difficult to find; with signs, we have to be honest with ourselves, and sometimes it can be hard to do that. Sometimes there are things about ourselves that we don't to acknowledge, but in striving to be the best we can be, to uphold the values that we as Gaelic Polytheists hold dear...we must strive for truth, and strive for truth being at the heart of everything we do.

Struggling with those inner demons, sometimes we can receive signs that are so painfully obvious it's practically screaming the answer at us, and still we get totally the wrong end of the stick. Sometimes it's because we don't want to admit that we've been going about things wrong; that we've just received a negative sign. Sometimes, when life has thrown us more than a few lemons, the hard part can even be trusting in the fact that you've just had a good sign. Sometimes, we need a little guidance. Eventually, we might just get the hint.

At one point in my evolving Celtic Reconstructionist practices, I tried ogam for divinatory purposes, which included making my own set:

I chose to make them according to the colour correspondences associated with each letter; I respond strongly to colour, and I can't claim to be much of an expert with trees so using the more common tree correspondences seemed a bit pointless. I also tried a neutral set, with no colour or decoration:

Both sets - and others I've since experimented with - were put together from driftwood I found at the local beach after we moved to these here parts on the west coast; wood I collected as part of my efforts to settle in to this place. It involved a long process of offerings and building a relationship with the area before it felt right to even begin collecting anything from the local beach, and then I had to invest in the tools to burn the lettering and ogam into the wood before painting and/or treating with beeswax to preserve them.

The first set I connected with better, but ultimately I decided that ogam is not something that I really get on with. I experimented for a while with taking an ogam reading for the festivals, or when I felt it was necessary, for example, and while I did find them effective and useful in one sense, in another it never seemed to sit right with me. I'm beginning to think it was because I was limiting myself with them, and that as part of settling in here I needed to be looking around me for signs, familiarising myself with the locale and continuing to build on my relationship with it. Certainly my experimenting with the ogam helped me get more comfortable with engaging in the more mystical aspects of practice, though, and it helped solidify my thoughts on it all. Every now and then I think about going back to them; it seems a shame for them to sit in a cupboard, unused.

And so at least I managed to build on it. Birds, in particular (and in keeping with tradition, I think), form a large part of the signs I might see in general. Magpies are something that I feel have some sort of personal significance, but corvids in general have signficance to me and a lot of other folks.

As well as herons, owls, that kind of thing. A breeze picking up at the right time, clouds passing in front of the sun or moon at particular moments, the calling of birds or animals hanging the night air; and so on...

Sometimes signs can seem totally random. One time, I found a rainbow trout lying on the pavement outside my house. A perfectly whole trout, just randomly laying on the pavement...As things go, I figured it had to mean something, but that one I was totally stumped by...

There have been times when the signs have been a lot more obvious, though. One morning of Là Fhèill Brìghde I got up to find that our back door was wide open; as signs for Bride having visited go, you can't get any stronger really.

Last Samhainn, I set out some offerings to my ancestors and had a few words before finishing off my devotions. As I stood back and looked up to the sky for any signs, I saw a band of the Milky Way shining bright and clear above me - beautifully - and then a shooting star travelling right in front of me, in the west towards the ancestors. It's not often I get something as clear as those kinds of signs, but when I do, it's a time when I feel infinitely amazed at the world around me.

And so, all this rambling brings me to the thought that - for me at least - looking for signs is one of the ways I can keep connected with the land around me. With the gods and spirits and ancestors. Without that connection, I'm adrift, wallowing, out of balance. Maybe sometimes it takes a dead crow to wake me up.

Or maybe...maybe I'm just a bit mental and making things up as I go along. "Welcome to the crazy," my friend said.

Indeed.

Addendum: Gorm over at Three Shouts on a Hilltop has some very good thoughts to add to the subject, which is well worth a read.

Labels (again)

2012-01-17T18:35:00.000Z

This following post is something I've been pondering for a long while, and have made several attempts at getting it all out in a post only to give up and come back to it later...my brain, it just gave up; even it wasn't sure where I was going with this. Some recent conversations I've seen going on have started me thinking about all of this stuff again, though, and it's spurred me on to try and finally get these thoughts into a more coherent mess. Hopefully, I will succeed.

Mostly what I've been thinking about is the ever-popular subject of labels and how (or maybe why) people pick and choose those labels; or perhaps more to the point, what those labels are all about. There's a lot of baggage that can come with those labels sometimes, a lot of judgement values people might place on those who associate with them; a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings that come with them. We all have our biases.

In theory, any labels we choose to identify with are the ones we feel fit us best (hello, obvious statement of the day...). Sometimes, though, maybe that's not so much the case. Maybe sometimes we desperately want to cling onto those labels because we think that's what we should be, but maybe it's not what we actually are and we either can't or won't admit it...yet. Maybe sometimes, those labels become so swamped in misconceptions that they get co-opted into meaning something entirely different from what they were originally intended for. Maybe sometimes people see a prestige in the label and they want to be associated with that prestige, regardless of anything else. Maybe sometimes those people aren't even aware of what it is they're doing.

There is room in this world for a huge variety of viewpoints and approaches, and like anyone else (in theory...) I choose the approach that suits me best, and so the labels as well. In a religious sense, maybe it's not even about me, but what's right for the gods, the spirits, the ancestors that I strive to build and maintain a relationship with.

Either way, it should be a case of 'if the shoe fits,' right?

When it comes to reconstructionism, though, there are a ton of misconceptions that we come up against every day - just like anything else, surely. No, it doesn't mean I'm trying to go back to the Iron Age. No, I don't want to 'live like they did.' No, it's not just an American thing. And no, I don't run screaming from the building when someone mentions UPG...

These are all things that come up again and again, here there and everywhere, among many other things. Sometimes I see folks confidently stating that since Celtic Reconstructionists inevitably have certain gaps in our knowledge as far as our practices go, we look to other cultures to fill those gaps in. I disagree with that; we might look to other cultures - neighbouring Indo-European cultures - in order to form an educated picture of what we should be looking for in certain areas, but this is not the same as taking bits from here and there just to flesh things out.

If we did do this, then it seems to me that what we end up with can't really be considered to be particularly Celtic, let alone 'Gaelic', or whatever our focus happens to be. By incorporating other cultures' traditions into our own, the lines are blurred between trying to reconstruct something, as opposed to synthesising something that is simply modern and eclectic.

Of course, no culture exists in a vacuum; there are accretions from outside influences within any culture. But these are natural accretions, exceptions, that are made from within that cultural framework, over time, and by a process that generally involves the meeting of those cultures naturally, in one way or another. The Norse influences in Scotland are a good example of this, and I think it's fair to say that these influences happened over a long time, through contact and trade before the Norse actually settled and took over parts of Scotland. They had an influence on the language, customs and traditions, but first and foremost, these are things that were adopted into the culture, not things that dominated the culture that was there already.

In the same way, what we do as Celtic Reconstructionists should be approrached on the same terms; in understanding the culture, the beliefs, and most of all the worldview that informed those beliefs. These were and are the aims of CR. More and more, though, there seems to be an increasing trend to ignore that; adopting belief and practices from within a modern, neopagan view, rather than a specific cultural context. A side effect of this is that some then end up clinging onto labels that aren't appropriate in cultural terms, but which are perfectly understood - if contradictory - in neopagan terms, but that's perhaps a different post. Either way, yes, we are a modern religion, but I think it's important to point out that neopaganism in general is not a point of reference for reconstructionism as far as practices are concerned (historically, reconstructionism emerged as a reaction against those practices, even). What we find from historical sources, archaeology, language and lore is; from the culture. That's where we should be looking.

But then, there will never be one way of doing things, or total agreement amongst people, especially when we're dealing with an extremely disparate (and highly opinionated) group; it's unreasonable to expect that to be the case. It seems that reconstructionism will always be a spectrum as much as it's a methodology, even when one end of the spectrum might seem to be totally contradictory to the other. Ultimately, there will always be some people who just don't seem to get it.

Some of us deal with the problems these lables can bring by redefining ourselves and abandoning old labels in favour of new ones, sidelining ourselves. If anything, this allow us some space to move beyond the misunderstandings and find a community that fits us better, even if the pond is much much smaller. Inevitably, though, that just means there are new labels to be misunderstood and get confused by...It's a fudge, really, not a solution.

The only thing we can really do is be mindful of the labels we use and the communities we identify with. When we wear those labels and proclaim them, we take on a responsibility to the community those labels are associated with. To misrepresent them can be seriously damaging, and result in yet more misconceptions. Likewise, it's up to everyone to be mindful of what other people mean when they use a label - do they mean the same thing as you? Otherwise discussions get messy; people talk at cross-purposes and end up bickering, only to end up realising that both sides are talking about entirely different things.

Trust me, it's infuriating.

Translated articles

2012-01-13T09:53:00.000Z

Just a note for any readers whose first language is Portuguese: Two of my articles from Tairis have been translated by Brazilian blogger Aengus Miach (Leeh), over at her blog Tír Tairnge (with my permission). The direct links are:

Celbrando Là Fhèill Brìghde
Là Fhèill Brìghde

Many thanks to Leeh for all the hard work! It's great to see that there are such dedicated folks out there, across the world, doing such good work in CR; Leeh's blog is well worth checking out.

On being a bit windy...

2012-01-05T21:49:00.000Z

There have been more than a few storms around these parts lately, and while gales are par for the course for us at this time of year, I've never experienced anything quite like this since I've lived in this part of Scotland. Granted, only for the past four years now, but still. The ferocity of these storms - with winds well into official hurricane strength territory - is beyond unusual.

Tuesday's storm was the most ferocious for us, and there was another weather warning last night - though this one wasn't as bad by far. Tuesday's storm was rather unexpected for us, being woken around 5am with the house actually being shaken by the strength of the winds. A little disconcerting to be woken up like that. We ended up giving up on sleep and watching the storm doing its thing - rubbish bouncing down the street, trees threatening to come down, wondering what the hell that bump, thump, or crash was...And so on. One of those bumps, thumps, or crashes was the fence between our patio and our neighbour's caving in - the fenceposts simply snapped under the force of the wind (technically it's the neighbour's fence, so he has the responsibility to fix it, though we've offered to help in a neighbourly sort of way). Other fences up and down the street suffered a similar fate, with much of it ending up strewn across roads and pavements. Eventually - and this was the biggest calamity of all as far as the kids were concerned - our satellite dish was blown out of alignment. It's fixed now, though, so all is well with the world again.

Yesterday, I decided to actually leave the house for once, and took the kids and the dogs for a walk around the village to see what the damage was. We didn't brave the seafront - far too wet and windy for that - so we hunkered down into our coats and hats and headed towards the woodland that runs through our village. The cost of the storms was great as far as the woods are concerned:

Those grand old trees are covered in moss and lichen and fungus, the moss almost like beards:

It's one of the things I love about this place - the soft moss, the greenery. We only got so far before the path was totally blocked off by trees:

So we headed down to the path that runs besides the woods and made our way to the viewpoint where we could get a could view of the ferry. Along the way, we found this:

A foot to the right, and that tree would've landed on the roof.

We turned back with two soggy dogs and headed back home. Aside from fences, the damage only went as far as broken guttering and misaligned satellite dishes for the most part - houses and people got off lightly. This wasn't the case for the neighbouring towns and villages, some of which you can see in this slideshow - the pictures of Largs and Greenock. There were tiles missing from the roofs of the small row of village shops we have, and there was tile debris all around the place. The hairdresser's shop had water flooding in through the ceiling and the staff were battling flooding as we went by, and council contractors were sorting out felled trees around the school and playing fields.

Looking at the damage - those magnificent old trees, snapped and broken and uprooted in particular - it's sad, but it's nature I suppose. Other trees will sprout up in their place eventually. Thankfully, however, at least we've had some sunshine today. Finally!

Bliadhna Mhath Ùr dhuibh uile!

2012-01-03T13:08:00.000Z

Happy New Year, everyone. Slàinte mhòr agus a h-uile beannachd duibh (Great health and every good blessing to you)!

We had a quiet Hogmanay, and my husband and I welcomed in the new year together after a busy day of cleaning and getting the house in order. After some offerings and prayer I went off to bed not too long after some chatting with friends and family, and then in the morning I did some more formal ritual with blessings, prayer and offerings, sweeping the old year out and welcoming in the new year, and saining the house. I'd hoped to have done a lot of that before I went to bed, but physically I wasn't up to it then. It got done, at least.

I'd anticipated that laying the old year to rest would be something I was more than happy to do; it wasn't a terrible year, as such, but there are some things that I'm more than happy to leave behind - threads of stress and worries that I hope aren't carried on into this new year. More than anything, for me personally, the last year has been dominated by my having to adjust to chronic pain issues - learning how to live with it, finding medications that actually help, accepting my limitations and the fact that I'm unlikely to ever get better. Not great. On reflection, though, I can't say that things are all that bad...

In my prayers and blessings, I've felt a little conflicted about wishing for health for my family and myself (such as in this blessing), since I have this chronic pain thing that isn't ever going to go away...Considering the fact that there are days when I can't even walk, I can't say I'm a picture of physical health to begin with, and wishing for health when I'm not and never will be is something that seems odd to me; wishing for something that can never be again. Then again, all in all I know things could be a lot worse for myself; there are far - far - worse afflictions that I could be suffering from. It's something that I found myself mulling over as I meditated before bedtime on New Year's Eve: There are plenty of other health problems that I can be grateful that I don't have, and all in all what I do have is something I can live with. It got me thinking that while the chronic pain stuff has changed a lot in my life over the past year or so, it's something that I am going to adjust to eventually. I'm getting there, I think, and eventually maybe I'll get to the point where it won't be something I will have to keep harping on about here(!) as I figure stuff out.

Whatever changes it might have brought in my life, there are some things that haven't changed, and these are the things that are the most important. My kids are happy and thriving, I have family and friends that have been a great support to me, I have a roof over my head, and love in my life. Life can be a stress or a struggle at times, but most of all I have pretty much everything I need; the simple, fundamental things in life. It makes me feel incredibly lucky, and humbled, too.

There are other changes that have happened in the last year - solidifying good friendships, making new ones and finding spiritual fellowship; moving forward with my writing and research, finding more confidence in what I do, and so on. Not everything went the way that I'd hoped in the last year, though, and there are some things that might give me pause when I think about them. In particular, I'm saddened by the fact that I've been unable to visit my family and friends for over a year now - and not just because of my health problems. I'm thankful that some were able to visit me instead, even so.

Looking back and looking forward, I have a lot to be thankful for. Sometimes change can be difficult and painful, but I suppose looking on the bright side I've learned a lot, even from the negative stuff...I can't say what the future might bring, but having laid the last year to rest that's where my mind turns to now; I'm not one for making resolutions so really my only intention for the future is to keep plugging away at everything. Keep writing, keep adjusting, keep doing. And hoping that this year will be an improvement on the last.

New archaeology magazine

2012-01-02T17:39:00.000Z

A new magazine is now available from Irish Archaeological Research, who are:

...a non‐profit, member‐supported organisation dedicated to the preservation, protection and promotion of Ireland’s rich heritage. Based in Northern Ireland, IAR was formed by four archaeologists who, after years of working in the commercial sector, realised the need for a medium through archaeological information could be disseminated to both national and international audiences with relative ease.

IAR Volume 1

There are tough times ahead for those in the archaeology sector and the aims of this group are fantastic and much-needed, I think. The magazine can be downloaded for free at their blog here, and I think it's well worth a read; for those who might have difficulty in downloading the pdf there are apparently plans to launch a flash and html5 version next month, so keep a look out.

Beannachadh Bliadhna Ùir

2011-12-31T13:48:00.000Z

A happy Hogmanay to you all! And Good Wishes for the new year.

Today I'll be having the traditional tidy up and setting things in order, and tonight I'll be having a quiet celebration at home, with some offerings and a little ritual. I've decided I won't be trying the traditional Het Pint as the bells ring the new year in; eggs in my beer/whisky are kind of off-putting, I think!

Tomorrow we'll be off to the in-laws for the traditional steak pie dinner, as usual, but right now I thought I'd post an adaptation of a new year blessing that Carmichael recorded in Volume One of the Carmina Gadelica (said first thing on the first day of the new year):

Gods, bless to me the new day,

Never given to me before;

It is to bless your own presence

That you have given me this time, O Gods.

Bless to me my eye,

May my eye bless all it sees;

I will bless my neighbour,

May my neighbour bless me.

Gods, give me a clean heart,

Let me not from the sight of your eye;

Bless to me my family,

And bless to me my way.

Bits and pieces - links to books online

2011-12-28T13:38:00.000Z

Some useful links to hard to find books popped up on the CR group on Facebook a while ago so I thought it would be useful to make a note of them here as I make some updates to my website as well, for any readers who might not be on the group; following on from the books that were mentioned on the group I decided to have a wander around Scribd to see if there is anything else of interest. It turns out that yes, there's probably a huge amount there, but that would make for a long and boring list that would make even my eyes crossed! So instead, here are just a few that I found or was pointed to via FB:

First and foremost, there is Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia edited by John Koch. It's incredibly expensive to buy otherwise and it's a fantastic resource so it's well worth taking a look at. Of all the Celtic encyclopedias I've seen, I would say this is by far the best, and certainly the most extensive work; a lot of well-respected academics have contributed to the entries here and it makes a great starting point for research. The downside to its extensiveness (all 2000+ pages of it) is that it's an absolute bugger to find anything quickly! But seriously. For any Celtic Reconstructionist I would recommend this encyclopedia as one of the absolute necessities for your bookshelf. In my humble opinion, anyway...

Less useful is Patricia Monaghan's Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore. Her research isn't great and sometimes she's way off base, but I thought it was worth noting in case somebody stumbled across it and wondered about it. You can do a lot worse, but you can also do a lot better (see above...) and personally I wouldn't rely on this book for serious research. This is from the same author as The Red-Haired Girl From the Bog, which I've tried to read many times and have failed...(I know a few folks who love that book but for some reason her tone really grates on my nerves).

Something a little different is a collection of essays in The Vikings in Ireland; there are some contributions in there from well-respected academics and it's a subject that's often neglected so I think it's well worth exploring.

Another book is Graham Webster's The Roman Invasion of Britain. I've yet to read this but I think I have it somewhere on my bookshelf, having inherited it from the library of a friend and colleague of my mother-in-law earlier this year. I've read another book of his, The British Celts and Their Gods Under Rome, which I thought was mis-titled but otherwise not bad.

The Archaeology of Celtic Art offers an up to date perspective on the subject and gives a discussion about the use of the term 'Celtic' within archaeology these days; many archaeologists are reluctant to use the term, preferring 'Iron Age' instead (although they'll happily sap Celtic on the title of the book so it will sell...). This offers its own problems, but there are many who criticise these 'Celtoskeptics' as denying Celtic heritage and everything that entails. Aside from that, there are lots of purty pikchurs of shiny things.

Symbol and Image in Celtic Religious Art by Miranda Green is one I've reviewed here; it's good, but of more interest to those of a Gallo-Roman flavour rather than the Gaelic or Brythonic Polytheist. There is also Animals in Celtic Life and Myth, which is another one I've reviewed. It's probably good to remember that Green is generally stronger on archaeology than myth.

Finally, I stumbled across a recently published essay by Mary Jones called Rethinking Imbolc. It's aimed at a reconstructionist audience and I think there's good research and references here. The essay offers a different perspective on Imbolc, exploring the associations of the festival with purification, and I think it's well worth a read; there's some good food for thought here.

That's all, folks!

Book Review: Of Irish Ways

2011-12-28T11:36:00.000Z

Galloping towards the end of the year, I thought I'd do what's probably my last book review for 2011. It makes a change from trying to find room for all the brand new plastic crap the kids brought home from ~~Santa~~ the in-laws, anyway (we actually had a great time, and yes, the kids were thoroughly spoilt and my father-in-law was thoroughly blootert by the end of the day, but good times were had by all). I hope you had a good yin an a'. I can honestly say that in the past few days I've never built more Lego things in all my life...

Of Irish Ways
Mary Murray Delaney

Treasa piqued my interest in this one a while ago, and I saw it going for a whopping great 1p online so it seemed worth a punt. I wasn't sure if it was going to offer anything new, but in that I was pleasantly surprised.

This is nothing like I've ever really read before - it's primarily aimed at an Irish-American audience; those who are interested in their Irish heritage and history, lore and traditions. There's a little bit of everything here but there's no denying that it comes from a particular point of view, and in that sense it definitely colours the content in a certain light. At times, the book reads like a very romanticised propaganda text, a run down of all the accomplishments of the sons and daughters of Ireland, wherever they might have ended up.

For me it's an interesting read in the sense that I'm not the target audience, and I'm kind of detached from the aim of the book in a way, but I can also empathise with it in the sense that I too was brought up being told about my Irish heritage and being proud of it and told to hold onto it. The author is keen to educate the reader on the trials and tribulations of Ireland in recent history, as well as the more distant history, and she laments the fact that many Americans of Irish heritage, and even the Irish themselves, have very little understanding of the history and achievements of Ireland. It's in talking about this subject in particular that it becomes obvious that this book is very out of date in some respects - Delaney discusses the state of education in Ireland and of course it's going to be very different now from when the book was first published in 1973. The state of Ireland today is also very different of course - since the book was published there has been devolution in Northern Ireland, for one.

In spite of this, it's still a very charming book. Not all of it might be relevant or up to date now, but the author writes in a very conversational tone that makes it easy to get sucked into it. It's not a book that requires too much concentration, and while there are certainly better books to look to for reading up on Irish history, the very general overview given here might be a less daunting prospect for the beginner.

Subjects like funerals and wakes, marriage and matters of the home and hearth are dealt with as well as history, along with the festivals and feast days and beliefs in ghosts and fairy raths. Delaney does a good job to emphasise that many of these beliefs are still relevant today, and goes on to cover Ireland's long history of producing great pieces of literature and poetry, as well as music.

The amount covered here is perhaps a bit too general in some ways, and you probably won't find much here that isn't covered elsewhere. The exception is at the back of the book where there are some Irish blessings and proverbs, which is the best bit of the book for me. It's a shame the Irish isn't given as well as the English for them, but it's a useful if all too short section.

As books for research go it's perhaps not one of the first books I'd look to, but still, it's a good read. This would be a good compliment to Kevin Danaher's books (and Henry Glassie's Passing the Time in Ballymenone) if you're keen on getting an understanding of Irish ways and life.

Solstice!

2011-12-21T12:11:00.000Z

I got up this morning at around 8.15am and thought, "Ooooo, it's still dark." I put it down to the fact that the clouds were low and thick - as per usual now - and thus the sun wasn't able to brighten things up too much. It took a while to realise that it also perhaps had something to do with the fact that it's coming up to the shortest day of the year - tomorrow, officially...

So a happy solstice to those of you who celebrate! I will be making some offerings to mark the occasionbut my main focus of celebrations at this time of year will be on Hogmanay as usual - as yet we have no plans for Hogmanay, so it will probably be spent at home all quiet and boring. I'll be glad to see the back of this year, and fervently hoping that the new year ushers in a definite improvement on 2011.

If the weather in Ireland is anything like here then the solstice sun at Newgrange won't be illuminating much of anything (yup); the official gathering at Newgrange took place today, but there's a video you can watch from 2007 that shows what should happen quite nicely (although you might want to forward along a bit):

Newgrange might be the most famous solstice alignment, but there are others as well, including the chambered tomb known as Maes Howe on the mainland of Orkney. The light of the solstice sunset is captured there (when it shines!), and there are also cameras set there to capture and broadcast it. Neither of these tombs are Celtic, of course, but both remain as significant features in the landscape even today.

In the twelfth century the tomb was opened by some of the Norse settlers, and they made their mark by leaving a load of runes to commemorate their visit (33 inscriptions in all). Some of the graffiti attempts to make verse, and one such verse is thought to have (possibly) been made by Thorhall Asgrimsson, who is mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga. The verse is rough, and reads:

The man who is
most skilled in runes
west of the ocean
cut these runes
with the axe
once owned by Gauk
son of Trandil
in the south country.

(Translation from: The Triumph Tree: Scotland's Earliest Poetry AD 550-1350, edited by T.O. Clancy)

Which is not particularly relevant to the solstice, but there you go...

I will finish off with a seasonal poem translated by Kuno Meyer, one that's particularly relevant considering the recent hurricanes we've been having in these parts:

Dubaib rathib rogemrid

robarta tonn turgabar

íar tóib betha blái.

Brónaig eoín cach íathmaige

acht fiaich fola forderge

fri fúaim gemrid gairg.

In the dark season of the deep winter

heavy seas are lifted up

along the side of the world's region.

Sorrowful are the birds of every meadow-field,

except the ravens of dark-red blood,

at the uproar of the fierce winter-time.

I shall dedicate that to the Cailleach and the storm hags who've been unleashing their fury over the past few weeks.

Ancestors

2011-12-19T09:45:00.000Z

It's that time of year again when things get festive and words like 'family' and 'giving' and 'I want a Lego mermaid!' (says Rosie) or 'Lego Star Wars! (says Tom) get bandied about.

Christmas for us is a very secular affair, and unlike Mr Seren and his very Catholic upbringing, it's something that always has been for me. In spite of my nan's best efforts and all of those children's Bibles and books of prayer my sister and I were given over the years, my parents never brought us up in a particularly religious fashion (although as I've said before, my mother was always keen to encourage us to explore). In all my years as a pagan of some sort, it's not something I've ever struggled to reconcile - whether or not I should celebrate because I'm not Christian - because it's not something I've ever had much choice about. Christmas in my world is about family, and my family expect me to be there, dagnabit. Being married, it's now also something that my in-laws expect of me as well. Some of the more fundamentalist Christians might repeat the refrain of keeping the Christ in Christmas, but tell that to my mother-in-law. We don't get any special dispensation for not being Christian as far as she's concerned...

It's an honour, to my mind. It's nice to have people who want you to be involved, to share in traditions, company, good food (and drink, often involving a litre of vodka while my father-in-law cooks the Christmas dinner before he promptly staggers off to bed to fall unconscious and sleep it off...), thoughtful gifts, and just enjoying the company of others. It's nice to see the kids all excited that Father Christmas is coming (even if Rosie's not too convinced about him). I'm lucky that my in-laws have accepted and welcomed me into their family, especially considering the fact that we'll be going to theirs for Christmas day. As a reconstructionist, family and community are important things, and I can't begrudge the fact that I get to show my appreciation of those loved ones that are there for me and my own wee family unit.

But it's not all fluffiness and fun. Like most folks, my family isn't perfect and we have our dysfunctions and our disagreements. It's times like this - for me - that those negative elements are most keenly felt (I will hopefully be going to visit my hometown after Christmas, and doing the rounds with visiting family etc), and in a spiritual sense it raises a lot of questions, especially as far as the issue of ancestor veneration is concerned. There are certain members of my family that (when they die) I couldn't bring myself to honestly honour in my practices - by name, specifically addressing them. I can acknowledge the fact that were it not for them I wouldn't be here, and in that sense I'm thankful (because that's kinda turned out to be a plus as far as I'm concerned), but then again those certain family members aren't exactly people I consider to be honourable or possessing much in the way of redeemable qualities. Perhaps honouring them on that level - thanks, at least, for doing your bit in my being here - would be a bit grudging of me at the end of the day. They aren't really people I want to think about, let alone consider the prospect of venerating them wholeheartedly.

Equally, I know there are people in my family - who I never had the chance to meet - who were thought of in the same way. My great-grandfather was a con man and a philanderer who abandoned his children and then proceeded to sow his oats around the world, leaving many fatherless children in his wake (and that's just the start of it). He died at the age of 102, alone, after falling asleep in his armchair with a lit cigarette; after it fell out of his mouth it set the chair on fire - what a way to go. My nan, when the police turned up on her doorstep to inform her of her father's death, simply said, "Good. I hope he burned." They hadn't spoken in 40 years. She doesn't talk about him much so I can only imagine the kinds of hurt he caused her to prompt a response like that. So there's another one that I might consider difficult to consider worthy of honour.

So when it comes to ancestor veneration, can we be selective? Should we be? After all, there are a lot of ancestors we could never possibly know. On the one hand, how can we honour people we never knew, who might not want our offerings and attention; how can we consider building a relationship with them when we don't even know their names, their deeds? On the other hand, is it something we should get hung up on? At the end of the day, without them we wouldn't be here today.

For me, I've instinctively formed a practice where I give honour to 'the honoured ancestors' in general, and I've never had the sense that there are any ancestors who begrudge my offerings to them. To me, the idea of 'the ancestors' is a fairly ephemeral thing, really. When I make offerings to them I do get the sense of 'them' being there, accepting the offerings I give, but as yet I've not encountered any of them making themselves known to me on an individual level, aside from the ancestors who I knew in life. 'The ancestors' as a concept is very general to my mind, in some ways. They are my roots. Without them, I am nothing. I cannot claim to know them, or know if they are worthy of honour on an individual level - each and every one of their deeds and how they lived etc. But in general, I can acknowledge the fact that they have all, in some way, played a part in making me who I am today. And that, for me, seems to work.

Those ancestors that I knew in life I see a little differently. I have a more personal relationship with them, since I knew them in some way or another when they were alive. They are the ones I talk to at times, and feel are near. Sometimes I make offerings to them specifically, giving things that I know they liked when they were alive. Sometimes, I feel like they're with me; a waft of a certain scent that I associate with them, perhaps. It can be very comforting.

In a reconstructionist sense, it seems that some of the dead were treated differently than others at times - buried in mounds, their bones preserved and sorted amongst other bones, or some kept close by, in the house or in the midden. It might suggest the idea that they were installed in such places because they were considered worthy or important in some way, and perhaps the people who put those bones there, and later buried the cremated remains into the same mounds after they had fallen out of use otherwise, knew the names of the people who had been put there over the generations, and were given special remembrance and veneration by the community as a whole. Perhaps some of them were made gods, ancestral deities.

In my own way, I might not fiddle about with my gran's bones (for example), but I keep her memory alive; I honour her, and I tell my kids about her. And perhaps one day my kids will pass those memories, those stories, on to their kids, and make their own offerings with their great-gran in mind, and so on. As a Gaelic Polytheist, I don't have a long list of ancestors that I can reel off as the pre-Christian Gaels might have in their honouring their ancestors, but I can make a start at passing what I do know on. I'm sadly lacking in photos of my now deceased grandparents, and great-grandparents, and so on, but one day I hope to change that (with access to a scanner and mum and nan's photo albums).

But still, there is the issue of those who perhaps aren't 'worthy' of honouring. Not having had a personal relationship with my philandering great-grandad, I can appreciate the fact that without him I wouldn't be here, but otherwise I don't really want much else to do with him. Those I have more personal feelings towards is a different matter, I think. Perhaps they should be considered as they might in life: In terms of values, those who are thought of as having no honour are shunned, seen to be outside of the community and having no say, no rights within the community, and I certainly choose not to have much to do with those family members these days. And so in terms of honoured ancestors (that's how I generally address them), those without honour in life wouldn't really have a place as an honoured ancestor as far as I'm concerned. Maybe. Perhaps my views on that might change once I'm faced with their passing...

Irish language sign a first for Belfast

2011-12-17T17:08:00.001Z

Ahhh, politics. Don't you just love it?

Some people might say that a Christmas greeting sign - in Irish, no less - donated to the Belfast City Hall is a generous gift. A sign of good will, perhaps. Or perhaps not:

But David Browne, UUP, who has described Irish as "gobbledegook" said the decision was "an act of bad faith".

"The Irish language or Ulster Scots, it's all gobbledegook to me. The more polite way is to say that I don't understand it," he said.

"Even before the working group had met they did this. It is an act of bad faith," he said. "But I'm not really interested, the sign is up and that is it."

Source: BBC

What a mature and reasoned response, Mr Browne.

A little festive cheer?

2011-12-09T22:10:00.000Z

We survived 'Hurricane Bawbag' (as it was dubbed) relatively unscathed - we lost a wee bit of fence in the end, and the old satellite dish bounced off gleefully down the road before Mr Seren managed to catch it (losing all dignity in the process). But considering the damage elsewhere, we didn't do too badly at all. With winds over 160mph in some places, it seemed sensible to stay indoors as much as possible, and hope for the best...Thankfully the schools were closed.

Today, however, all is back to normal, and aside from some early flurries of snow this morning we've yet to experience the predicted blizzard. To make the most of it (and as a blatant excuse to get out the house) I decided to spend the afternoon at the garden centre, in order to glory in all things questionably festive in nature. Of course, I took the camera with me, because otherwise I cannot share in the glory of all that is of a questionable and disturbingly festive nature. Allow me to illustrate:

I have to admit, I can't blame the look on the poor wee kid's face at the back there. (Is the tallest clown...supposed to look 'red face'?)

This is something the local garden centre does every year - it's their 'Winter Wonderland' sort of thing, where they put up loads of random and often tenuously festive displays. Aside from the clowns, most of the scenes of recent years have been of various fairy tales that are popularly adapted for pantomimes (they're a popular festive form of entertainment here). This year it's all been toned down a little, the first year we went it was definitely the best. That year, we had homicidal dwarves:

Another year, there was what can only be described as a suggestively come hither Cinderella:

There was no Cinderella this year, but the dwarves were back again. Although alas, one of the dwarves certainly hasn't faired too well:

I can only imagine its injuries were the result of a heroic battle against the homicidal dwarf of previous years. A valiant defence of Snow White (a.k.a. Vampyra, I suspect), perhaps, for behold! She returned gloriously this year (after a few appearances with a mop for replacement hair), with the added bonus of a couple of pensive deer in tow:

It's perhaps safe to say that 'Snow White' has been taken to a somewhat literal extreme.

It's the clowns that really do it for me, though. I'm not sure quite why they might be considered festive, and they're something I've always found more than a little sinister in general (but especially so, after seeing Stephen King's IT when I was about thirteen or so), but the garden centre tends to go all out with them, for no apparent reason. This one is bad enough:

But this one takes first place for downright disturbing. If it were art, I would call it 'A Study in Sinister Nonchalance':

They move, you know. They all play happy and festive tunes and 'dance'. The first year there was this display:

And I swear to you, I swear that the clown at the the front there, it was making rude gestures of the self-pleasuring variety. With his flute. Poor Santa. Look at him there, edging uncomfortably away. Ho-Ho-Ho-ly Shit What The Fuck Am I Doing Here...

But it seems that for decency's sake, they've toned it down somewhat this year:

And now the clowns just want to eat your soul.

Outside, though, it's lovely:

As furious as the Cailleach has been these past few days - snow, hail, sleet, rain, thunder and lightning, sleet, and more snow and torrential downpours - well. It doesn't seem like anyone round here minds.

Book Review: Irish Folk Medicine

2011-12-09T12:13:00.000Z

Irish Folk Medicine
Patrick Logan

This title is a re-release of Logan's Irish Country Cures, so as far as I know they're one and the same just under different names.

Having read another of Logan's books I had a vague idea of what to expect here - a book that's short and sweet, well-written and well-researched, and providing a good overview of the subject. This is pretty much what you end up with in this book; it's a nice little tome that covers as much as possible in as few pages as possible - good for an introduction.

It's a quick read and one of those books that you pick up and put down as you find the time. It's not a particularly demanding read, although given the subject matter there are some things in here that I'm totally unfamiliar with - certain ailments and terminology that I'm not particularly sure what they refer to. Logan himself is a doctor so he writes with authority on the subject of various complaints and treatments, but this is both an advantage and disadvantage, I think. Many of the complaints referred to aren't really relevant today, or else they might be called something else, but they were either well-known at the time of writing, or at least still in living memory at the time; as such, at times there's very little explanation of things that I would've appreciated explanation of (or at least a glossary at the back). Me, I've heard of terms like dropsy, but I can never remember what it refers to...

Aside from that, the book gives a good overview of the subject and with Google handy the more obscure elements of the book aren't too much of an inconvenience. Along with human ailments (which are separated into internal and then external sections) there's also a brief section on animal ailments and treatments, and a short section on folk treatments at wells, spas, and sweathouses. At times the writing almost slips into the kind of style that seems to be note form - brief sentences that are barely grammatical - but at least it keeps things pithy.

The content isn't particularly exciting or revolutionary - to me anyway - and the treatments described aren't exactly ones I'll be trying any time soon...But there are some nice bits and pieces to be found here, and along with learning about folk remedies and attitudes towards illness, Logan does a good job of pointing out where these remedies seem to have a long pedigree - being found in Irish or even Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. This says a lot about the longevity of these treatments, some of which are pseudo-medicinal, some of which rely on sympathetic magic, or else sound medicine and common sense.

There isn't much detail as far as the supposed origins of many of these diseases are concerned - the belief in illnesses caused by the evil eye, for example - and nor is there much detail about who these folk-healers that people often consulted in cases where illnesses didn't respond to conventional approaches. The book is slightly lacking for that, but I think that's symptomatic of the time in which it was written - and to be fair, there still hasn't been much work on that, even today.

Over all, this is not one of those books that I'd say is essential reading, but if you have an interest in folk healing and herbology, then this is certainly a good one for the bookshelf. Given its length, this is a good introduction to the subject, for sure, and you should be able to find it cheaply second hand.

Expand your vocabulary, the Scots way

2011-11-30T13:40:00.002Z

On this day last year my then five-year-old son had the joy of tasting the delights of the nation's favourite fizzy beverage (resulting in several hours of bouncing off walls afterwards, of course). This year will be a little quieter, I hope, since the kids are off school today because of the national strike.

In theory we'll be going to the supermarket today, if the roads have cleared from all the flooding we had yesterday - the town nearest to us was completely cut off in the floods, and we had half of this month's average rainfall come down in 24 hours - about 2 inches, I believe, often coming down as huge chunks of hail. With no sign of any let up in the weather any time soon I suspect it's only going to get worse; this month has been extremely wet already and the ground is absolutely sodden. We're not too badly off where we are - on top of a hill - but the dogs are feeling thoroughly bored and forlorn.

The weather is officially dreich. A good word, that. In honour of St Andrew's Day, it's only right to celebrate all things Scottish. So how about some more good Scots words?

Awfy - awful
Baw - ball
Blether - idle chatter
Blootert - extremely drunk
Boak (bowk) - retch, vomit (as in: 'Och wheesht, ye'll gimme the boak' Oh shut up, you'll make me sick
Boggin - stinking, no good
Bowfin - smelly, stinking. Worse than mingin
Braw - handsome, fine
Breeks - trousers ('pants'), i.e. breeches
Broon - brown
But and ben - a type of two-roomed cottage, generally with the door in the middle and a window either side
Cludgie - toilet
Corbie - raven or crow; a generic term for corvids
Coup (cowp) - a rubbish dump, tip
Crabbit - grumpy, grouchy, ill-tempered
Craw - crow
Druthy - thirsty
Droukit - soaked, drenched, sopping wet (or else: drookeet)
Dunt - bump ('A dunted ma heid' - I bumped my head)
Fair - somewhat, very
Feart - frightened afraid
Foosty - dank, damp-smelling
Frae - From
Gallus - self-confident, outgoing, cheeky or daring
Geggie - mough (as in: 'Wheesht yer geggie!' Shut your mouth)
Gies - 'give us' (as in me - 'Gies it' Give me it)
Gin - if
Glaikit - silly, foolish
Greet - cry

"Don't cry, there's more in the pot."

Gubbit (gubbed) - beaten, thrashed, broken
Haud - hold (as in: 'Haud yer wheesht!' Hold your wheesht; Be quiet!)
Haver - talk nonsense (as in The Proclaimer's song "And when I'm haverin," in I Would Walk 500 Miles)
Hen - a familar (but also somewhat patronising, depending on context) way of addressing a woman, a term of endearment. "Dinnae fash yersel' hen" Don't bother yourself, hen/Don't go to any trouble, hen
Het - heated (as in 'Het Pint'); het up - worked up
Hoachin - absolutely rotten, maggot-ridden
Hoodie - a type of crow, but also used as a general term for all kinds of corvids
Howfin - stinking; also: howling
Howk - dig, gouge
Ilka - every
Keek - look; 'keek!' is a Scots equivalent of 'peekaboo!' with babies
Ken - know, understand (as in: 'Ah dinna ken' I don't know; 'Ah ken fine damn well' I understand perfectly
Kich (or keech) - shit
Leid - language
Licht - light (and as such: bricht - bright, nicht - night etc)
Lum - chimney (as in: 'Lang may lum reek!' Long may your chimney smoke; wishing someone the continued prosperity to be able to keep their fire going strong)
Mawkit (maukit) - literally, it refers to maggots (mawks), it's used to refer to something that's absolutely rotten, filthy; often used to describe children (as in: 'Lookit ye, yer mawkit!')
Mickle - a lot, a great amount
Mind - remember (as in: 'Dae ye mind yon lassie?' Do you remember that girl (over there)?
Mingin - stinking
Neuk - corner (nook)
Ony - any
Piece - slice of bread with something on it, or a sandwich; pieces and jam/jeely piece - jam sandwich
Peely wally - pale, sickly-looking
Plook - spot (acne)
Shoogle - shake, bounce (as in, 'Am shooglin the wee bairn oan ma knee' I'm bouncing the baby on my knee); also shooglie - shaky
Skelp - smack (as in: 'Wheest, or Ah'll gie ye a skelp aroun yer heid!' Quiet, or I'll give you a smack around the head!)
Skelpit - smacked
Sic - such
Sleekit - sly, cunning, slick
Sook - suck; someone who ingratiates themselves, sucks up, an affectionate animal ('Ya wee sook')
Tattie (tottie) - potato
Telt - told
Thegither - together
They - those (as in: 'See they weans' See those children)
Thrawn - stubborn, obstinate, contrary, difficult or awkward; misshapen, twisted
Toaty - tiny (as in: 'toaty wee footsies')
Unco - strange, unknown, odd, great, or as an adverb: very
Wan - one
Wean - child (possibly a contraction of 'wee ane' - wee one; or else referring to a child that has now been weaned (although it's not pronounced the same) according to some)
Wheesht - hush, shush. Also found in Gàidhlig - 'Ist a-nis!' Hush now
Widnae - would not (also dinna - didn't, wisnae - wasn't etc)
Yin - one (referring to someone, a thing); Big Yin (Big One - a nickname for the comedian Billy Connolly)

And finally, some insults and swear words (consider yourself warned!). These are generally applied liberally in conversations, and calling someone such names can be a term of endearment or an insult depending on the context. There aren't many words that are considered to be extremely taboo, and the 'f' and the 'c' word tend to get thrown around a lot in social conversation, almost of like a form of punctuation:

Bampot - someone who's a bit daft, crazy, a silly idiot
Bawbag - ballbag (i.e. scrotum) also bawheid, fanny baws, cunty baws
Besom - a difficult woman. Can also be used affectionately - 'Ye daft besom'
Clarty (or in Glasgow, 'clatty') - dirty; may also be used to describe a lady of loose morals
Cuntit - 'Cunted' - as in pissed (drunk) to the extreme, paralytic, exhausted
Daftie - a harmless idiot, silly
Dobber - idiot, tosser, wanker (kinda rude, associated with a penis; in England 'dobber' can refer to someone who tells tales, so be careful!)
Dunderheid - idiot, simpleton
Eejit - idiot
Erse - arse ('A face like a skelpit erse' - A face like a slapped arse)
Fud - 'the female genitalia'; less harsh than calling someone the 'c' word; an idiot
Jobbie - turd
Numpty - fool, moron
Nyaff - an irritating person
Pish - piss; can be used in a variety of ways, e.g. not very good ('That's pish!'), nonsense ('Yer talkin' pish'), an expression of disdain, pished - drunk, annoyed
Scunner - nuisance, or else a bore, sickening or disgusting person
Teuchter - a pejorative term for a country person, north of the central belt (especially in the sense of a Gàidhlig speaker)
Tollie - turd
Tube - (pronounced 'choob') idiot, tosser

Pottering about

2011-11-25T21:42:00.000Z

Not much doing at the moment, except pottering about here and there and trying to avoid the wind and rain outside at all costs. And the usual stuff that any full time parent does each day...Yes, it's a veritable rollercoaster of fun round here.

So I've done some more tweaking and updating on the website, and I've added a chunk more to the Article Downloads page. A good one in particular I came across is Space and Time in Irish Folk Rituals and Traditions, which has some interesting stuff on various festivals and wake traditions. It's an interesting read, and has some good pointers to further reading as well.

Other tinkering about includes a reworking and republishing of the So what do you believe? article, and after searching through some old articles I found a bit on the origin of the word frìth, which is usually said to be Norse in origin, but John MacInnes claims is, in fact, Gàidhlig after all. I added that into the Frìth essay on the website, and also went about tweaking the Saining article to correct a few bits and pieces that have needed seeing to for a while now.

It's St Andrew's Day next Wednesday so the local school is getting well-prepared for the celebrations (although they'll be on strike on the actual day, so I'm not sure if they'll move the celebrations to before or after). In preparation for the day, my eldest, Tom, is learning a smattering of Scots. So far I've been reliably informed that a dog is a doug, a cow is a coo, and a crow is a craw. He's very proud of his command of his newfound command of the dialect.

Manannán and the Shepherd

2011-11-22T15:44:00.000Z

Time for something a wee bit different now, I think. This is a story I found in an article on the lore of Manannán, which I though I'd share (from 1924, so out of copyright).

Here's a bit of preamble that might be useful, too - some epithets and associations:

He is spoken of variously as the Old King, Mananan of the Flames [the least common name], the King of the Wanderers, the Sailor's Friend, and--most intimate and frequent of all the names-Himself. There are stories of his calling people away to his secret Island of Immortality beyond the western sea, or appearing to sailors or fishermen in danger and helping them-sometimes in distant parts of the world. He is the patron (sometimes openly acknowledged but oftener not) of sailors and beggars and poets and all careless wandering people; he has been seen rolling and leaping along the summits of the middle mountains in the form of a wheel of fire; and he is never very far away from the hills of his Island, or from the imaginations of his people when they speak or think of the unseen world.

The following story is called simply "Manannán and the Shepherd", recorded "from the top of Laxey glen, and relates to the same district" on the Isle of Man:

There was a man living up at the Griananes one time, and he had sheep on the Big Mountain [Snaefell]; and one day he was up after them alone on a middling thick evening in the winter. He had them all nearly gathered in a quiet corner ready for counting, and was thinking of making tracks before the dark would come on him, when he seen a big coarse-looking man and him all like in ragged clothing, coming straight for him through the mist.

"Good evening to thee, master," he says; and "Good evening to theeself," says my bold boy.

"It's a fine lot of sheep thou have there."

"Aw, middlin', middlin'. I'm just for counting them before I'll make tracks for home."

"A hard task, that," says the stranger.

"No, not hard at all when ye know the way," says the farmer - but the words weren't hardly out of his mouth till he heard a mighty big laugh and a sound like a little mocking tune. And behold ye, when he looked around him there wasn't a sign of a sheep nor man nor anything at all, only thick, thick mist going swirling around him, and a high wind blowing. And he heard a big voice shouting out in the wind:

"Count thy sheep now, master! Count thy sheep now! Do thou know the way, master?"

Well, he knew then that it was some fairy making gammon of him, but he was wild atchim [Manx: 'terror'] and started trying to find his way out of the mist. But no use at all, for it wasn't minutes till he was in a strange country altogether, and big, high rocks all standing round in the mist fit to frighten you, and all like the noise of water falling down in deep gullies and places, till he didn't know where he was at all. And the dark begun to come on, and then he knew he was fairly took, so he sat down and waited till the thing would lift off him.

But no sooner did he sit down and give in than he found the Big Ragged Fellow standing in front of him and saying:

"Didn't I give thee a fine race now, and wasn't it a hard task to count thy sheep for all? But sit you there now, and I'll make the hard task easy." And then the Big Fellow drove the sheep right past, slow and plain that he could see the mark on every one, and right into the same corner where they were before; and then the man found he was close on the track going down the glen for home.

"What sort of a wandering fairy-man art thou, playing tricks on a poor fellow that never did thee no hurt?" he said. But behold ye, when he looked at the Big Fellow again he was taller than ever, and a sort of shine around him, and like going away up the Big Mountain in the mist. And a soft, easy voice come slipping down the hill - not the same voice at all that was shouting and mocking at him before, only he knew it was coming from the Big Fellow - and it said:

"Who would I be, only the King of the Wanderers, travelling the land and playing pleasant tricks on the like of yourself for my own diversion? But thou'll be none the worse for thy race arounnd the mountain!"

And he wasn't neither, for he had great luck with all his stock from that on, and came to be the richest man in the parish.

'Mananan -The Sea God of Mann' From A Correspondent in the Isle of Man.

Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 7, No. 28, Manx Collection Part I (1924).

Next new article

2011-11-18T23:32:00.000Z

This one took a while longer to finish than anticipated, but I suppose it's safe to say that once I get going it's difficult to stop sometimes. When talking about virtues, brevity and succintness aren't ones that I'd really be able to claim...These are failings that maybe I should admit to and work on, eh?

Anyway, suffice it to say, I had to split the article up into several parts:

Values - Part One
Values - Part Two
Values - Part Three
Values - Part Four

One of the good things about researching this subject is that there's quite a bit online that can be referred to. Sometimes the translations might not be too up to date, but maybe they're the best we've got. Sometimes the up to date stuff is freely available too, and that makes me happy.

I've given links where possible in the references, and maybe I've over referenced, to a certain extent, but my aim with this kind of stuff is to give as many pointers as possible to help people make their own minds up. I can't claim to have gone through all of the sources exhaustively, because I don't necessarily have them to hand, but I've tried to be as complete as I possibly can.

As ever, any questions, comments, blah blah feel free etc.

New article

2011-11-11T18:51:00.000Z

It's been a while since I've had anything of substance to add to the website, but I've finally managed to get back into the writing groove for long enough to finish another article.

After finishing the series of articles on the gods, spirits and ancestors I've been feeling a little lost and aimless in terms of what else I can add to website - not so much in the sense that I'm running out of things to write (there are plenty of things I've yet to even touch on, I'm fairly sure of that) - I've just been lacking an idea of where to go from here.

There's not much I can do to force inspiration; I've found the best thing to do is just relax and let myself stumble across it as it happens, so instead I've channelled most of my energies into reworking bits and pieces, here and there; a bit of reorganising and additions. But recently I've been thinking more and more about one subject in particular, and so I decided that I had my next article to be getting on with...

As ever things haven't quite worked out as I was expecting; one article has turned into two, so I've got one of them finished, and the other is in progress as we speak. Fermenting in my head, if not literally being typed, anyway. The finished article is on:

Gessi and Buada

Or, 'prohibitions and prescriptions' (there are so many different spellings to choose from - I know geis, singular, is the Old Irish spelling but the variety of plural options is confusing, so I ended up picking one and just running with it; not being a linguist I'll make no claims about my choice of plural spelling being the best one, but if I'm wrong on either count then at least one academic is as well. And at least I'm consistent...).

Mostly I've concentrated on the geis side of things, because I didn't find much to go on for buada, in spite of the fact that they seem to go hand in hand. I've tried to be as thorough as I can, and in the process I found a good few sources are available freely online - always handy! I've listed these on the Article Downloads page already, and I've tried to give links to as many of the tales I refer to as possible. Yesterday I found a book on archive.org that will be really handy for the next article as well. I've yet to add it to the website but it's worth noting here anyway, since it's a modern translation (1999) of a wisdom text I've spent ages trying to track down:

Old Irish Wisdom Attributed to Aldfrith of Northumbria: An Edition of Bríathra Flann Fhína maic Ossu - edited and translated by Colin Ireland

There's a good discussion of wisdom texts as a whole there, so it's worth a read if that's your kind of thing.

Anyway, all that remains is a few confessions (nothing juicy, though, so don't get your hopes up for anything good). Firstly, this wasn't the article I intended to write, but it's the one that apparently had to come first before I could concentrate on writing about values and virtues, my original topic of choice. Once I get the second article finished some things might have to be tweaked or moved around with this article, so they both still make sense, and I hesitated a bit before deciding to publish it right now. For some reason, I get impatient if I have to sit on something finished, though, so my impatience won out.

I thought at first that gessi would be something that I could look at in the process, but then my research ended up concentrating more and more on gessi than anything else, and then when I started writing I ended up with four pages of an article, three of which were about prohibitions and prescriptions. So it seems they wanted their own page. Who am I to disagree?

My second and main confession is that I've stopped short of really going into any details about how gessi and buada might apply in modern practices. I can't help but feel this might be a bit of a cop out, in one sense, but I decided that it wouldn't be right for me to go on about it. I'm not sure if I've really seen much discussion of them in a modern - Celtic Reconstructionist/Gaelic Polytheist - context, even though I do see the occasional query about them. But without much to go on in that respect, I decided it would be better to leave the question unanswered than fudge it.

So errr...Enjoy...

On a lighter note...

2011-11-07T23:14:00.000Z

After rambling on about fireworks so much recently, it would be remiss of me not to bring your attention to some news of a display-gone-wrong in Oban. This, you might say, is what you call a bit of an oopsie...

In brief: A Bonfire Night display in Oban was scheduled to last about 20 minutes last Friday; but instead, with the crowd eagerly gathered to enjoy the show, a technical hitch resulted in all (£6,000 worth) of the fireworks being set off within the space of less than a minute:

The result: Glorious.

Finishing up

2011-11-06T00:31:00.003Z

Remember remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder, treason

Should ever be forgot...

Technically speaking, we celebrate Guy Fawkes' Night in commemoration of the successful foiling of the plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, on this day in 1605. And so, in celebration of the fact that it's business as usual, and as we've done for centuries now, bonfires, fireworks, sparklers and toffee apples all mark the day. For those of us on the peripheries of the kingdom, shall we say, such celebrations may not always be as totally enthusiastic about the historical roots of the day...

When I was a kid, the bonfires would be piled up high and the Guy - an effigy of the man himself - would be thrown on the bonfire as part of the proceedings. When I lived in Glasgow (more than ten years ago now), local kids would go round on the streets - even getting into the tenement houses and knocking on the doors - lugging the effigy around and begging for a 'penny for the guy'. It's not just Glasgow where they do that, but that's the only place I've come across it myself; it seems to be a dying tradition. The guy itself would often be an effigy of someone widely hated - sometimes an unpopular manager of a football team, say, or the Pope, but mostly (certainly in Scotland) Maggie Thatcher. Not a popular lady.

When I lived in Bo'ness, grass verges of any substantial size would end up home to huge piles of wood, piled up by the local residents, ready for the big night. I can see how Hutton might suggest that the Samhainn bonfires simply came to shift to Bonfire Night, being so close together.

For most people these days, of course, the evening is nothing more than a good excuse to go and see some fireworks. As a kid my dad used to set them off in our garden, and we'd have a big bonfire right at the bottom, but as I got older it became more common for people to go to displays put on by local charities (or fire stations) - it was cheaper, and you got more for your money, certainly. The ones I went to as a kid used to have the big bonfires, but these days in general they seem to be on the decline (obsessions with health and safety, insurance, and getting sued usually get the blame for that). Certainly the display we went to tonight didn't have one. A shame, really. But perhaps, given what people tend to throw on the piles, a bit kinder on the environment.

So anyway. We decided to take the kids off to a local display in Gourock, which was tied in with a Myth and Legend event, with traditional storytelling and song on offer, as well as a parade through the town. Parking being what it was, we missed the storytelling part, but got there in time to join in with the tail end of the parade. And then, with a hot chocolate warming my hands and an ice cream for the kids, we got to see a spectacular display:

Tom, now six, was more than impressed. He was dancing and shouting in glee. Rosie, on the other hand, stood in awed four-year-old silence.

When we got home Tom ran out into the garden to watch the neighbour's get their fireworks going, jumping up and down on the trampoline in glee before we handed both the kids their very first sparklers. Rosie wasn't too sure about that at first. But it was OK in the end.

And now the air in the village is hanging heavy with smoke. And for me, as the air begins to clear, so the transition from autumn into winter is truly complete.

Onwards.

Oìdhche Shamhna

2011-11-01T11:57:00.000Z

Oìdhche Shamhna mhath dhuibh!

I hope you had a good one. Or will do, whenever you celebrate.

I know a lot of folks in the more northerly climes across the Pond have had a lot of snow over the weekend and might even still be cut off from phones and power right now; I'm hoping everybody stays warm and safe. Here we've not even had a first frost yet, but there's been some early snow on the peaks across the sea over in Argyll so winter is well and truly on its way. We're still getting a relatively warm and damp south-westerly for the most part, but there's definitely a bite in the air too now.

The geese are all gone and the crows and the rooks and the magpies have been noisily heralding the turning of the season for the past week or so, and have also been demanding their due out in the garden. Considering the fact that we have kids and Hallowe'en is such a big thing round here, I like to keep the day tied with Samhainn for the fun and festive feel with everyone in the village joining in too, rather than waiting for the first frost or whatever. There have been plenty of signs that it's time, anyway, and for the past week or so the kids have been asking about family and all the people who've died that they never met; grandparents and great-grandparents, what they were like and what they looked like. It's a neat and timely bit of synchronicity, and I've spent a lot of time digging out old photos to show them and talk about the people who came before us, who are responsible for our being here today.

So I've been busily preparing and looking forward to it all. In particular I'd been looking forward to the guisers arriving on our doorstep and performing their bit in exchange for their treats - it's always fun and gives a sense of community - and I made sure I bought plenty of treats to hand out this time. The past Hallowe'ens we've had in this house, in this part of Scotland on the west coast, we've always run out of treats and have had to make a mad dash to get more. But this year the night was pretty much a total washout. Hardly anyone braved the incessant rain, it seems, and so I have two large tins of sweeties left over. One of our neighbours just dropped off a bag of sweets for the kids this morning so it seems everyone's in the same boat here. We actually decided not to take the kids out guising just yet. They were up at 6am yesterday morning, and I think it would've been too much for Rosie in particular. There would've been wailing in the end. But with all the sweets left, the kids aren't complaining either way...

Things didn't go entirely to plan this year; usually I have a kind of three part celebration over the course of three days, from the 30th October to the 1st November. We do our seasonal pictures, and each day tends to have a different main focus - on the spirits, then the gods, then the ancestors...Usually, on the first day I carve the tumshies to kick things off, but things didn't quite work out according to plan this time round.

On Sunday we decorated the house with all of the decorations that we'd made, spooky ghosts made out of tissues, our skellington (Frank) taking guard at the front door, our tasteful flashing skulls and ghosts and spider up on the mantlepiece, with the even more tasteful decorations given to us by my mother-in-law last year:

And some decorations made out of orange, purple and black felt, that I cut out using cookie cutters as a template (we used the cutters to make some spooky gingerbread, but they didn't exactly keep their shape well once they went in the oven...ah well. Still tasty). There were bats and cats and more ghosts, but I think the bats are my favourite:

And we put some up in the living room, and the rest around my 'hearth shrine' in the kitchen. We did our seasonal pictures:

They're supposed to be fireworks, honest! Last year we did snowmen as our wintery theme, and ended up getting snowed in for five days...So yeah...This time I suggested a different direction, and the kids decided it was a good one (any excuse for glitter). We've covered the weather and snowy, flowery, leafy pictures and all that kind of stuff by now, so I thought we could do fireworks this time. We talked about how it was going to be a lot darker now, earlier and longer, but that meant that there would be fireworks! There's Guy Fawkes' night on Saturday (and one of the local events is apparently tying it in with a day of cultural events and storytelling etc; hopefully we'll make it there), and Hogmanay usually has fireworks too. So in all the darkness, we'll be having lots of things to celebrate. When I was a kid, every Guy Fawke's night we'd have fireworks in the back garden, and our grandparents would come over, and mum would hand out hot tomato soup in mugs to keep us warm. One of my happier childhood memories, so I promised the kids we'd do that too (the soup, that is, if not the fireworks in the garden).

Sunday afternoon we spent at the in-laws to show off Tom and Rosie's costumes, and after lots of excitement and showing off, two tired children were pretty much ready for bed. The clocks had gone back an hour for winter - very apt timing - so the kids hadn't adjusted yet and technically it was well past bedtime for them already. Just as we were leaving, fireworks started going off somewhere on the street. "Fireworks!" screamed Tom. "Mummy, the fireworks must be thanking us for doing our pictures!"

Well I do hope so.

I hadn't been able to get any shopping in, so once we got home and got the kids to bed I tried to get some turnips from the local shop, but the only ones they had were too small and mouldy to boot. So there was no carving on Sunday night. Yesterday was therefore a very busy day.

I'd promised Rosie some pumpkin soup, because she'd had some at nursery as part of their week of festive activities, and she loved it. Far be it from me to deny the kids vegetables, so I said we'd get a pumpkin for carving and make soup from the innards. Alas, the weekly shopping I'd ordered arrived without a pumpkin, and with two pathetically small tumshies. It's easier for me to order in these days, but it's a real pain in the arse when you're at the mercy of other people picking out your food sometimes. Luckily Mr Seren had to go into town anyway, so he was sent on a mission for a pumpkin and he ran here there and everywhere trying to succeed.

Alas, he returned without a pumpkin, but he did manage to procure two of the biggest turnips I've ever seen so all in all it wasn't a disaster. He stopped in at a grocers on his quest, and the grocer said with a resigned sigh, as soon as Mr Seren walked in, "We're out of pumpkins, but I've got huge tumshies." (Lucky you, sir).

I'd already started on one of the small tumshies and hadn't planned on doing as many as three of the buggers (let alone to giants), to spare my poor aching back, but waste not want not, right? You can see the size difference from the one I got from the supermarket compared to one of the ones Mr Seren got, in the photo at the top of this post. I'm proud to say I managed to carve them all with all limbs intact, and only one blister. I did some smaller white turnip lanterns too, and they went on my shelf in the kitchen.

The school makes a big deal out of Hallowe'en, so the kids went in costume and all the parents were invited to attend a parade. Tom decided to go as Optimus Prime and Rosie decided to go as a pirate; she already had the costume and my mother-in-law sorted Tom's costume out, so we got Rosie some extra bits and pieces to compliment the ensemble and we made a telescope for it, out of a tube, some felt, gold paper, and decorated with pirate treasure and gems. I managed to persuade her to wear some spooky face paints to complete the look (Tom really isn't fussed with dressing up at all, so he wasn't interested), and so we had:

Tom was happily in character, but I think Rosie was getting a bit self-conscious about people looking at her at this point; like me, she's confident and outgoing amongst people she knows, but otherwise she's shy and she doesn't like a lot of attention. In the end, she didn't want to join in with her class at the parade, but Tom happily paraded:

Yes, there he is next to the not at all offensive 'Indian Chief'.

Sooooo anyway. After school I got the dinner on, finished the tumshies, and we got on with the games. There was the obligatory dookin':

I totally failed at that. After trying with our mouths, we had a go using forks (trying to spear the apples, effectively - that's how they do it at the school, too), and then Mr Seren was set in charge of the rest of the games while I got on with the rest of dinner. They played musical statues, musical bumps, 'hot chocolate', hide and seek, and steal the sock (steal daddy's sock, that is), and I was glad that it wasn't my eardrums that weren't being almost pierced by the shrieking and squealing. I think it's safe to say they had a good time.

After dinner (beef stew and mash, followed by cranachan and oaty crumblies) we had the guisers start trickling along. Mungo, our youngest and incredibly neurotic dog, had been looking worried all day long because not only had I cleaned the house, everybody was all excited. Something was happening, but whether or not it was a good thing he wasn't too sure. Once people started arriving, he decided that things were actually OK; lots of children to sniff and get fuss from. All good. Although it would've been better if people had shared their goodies. Especially the kids who turned up with hot dogs (given to them by a house further down the road from us).

Eventually we had to get the kids to bed, and two very satisfied children promptly fell unconscious within approximately three seconds in spite of their insistence that they weren't tired. Honest. And that left me to my devotions for the night, along with offerings, charms, saining, and a little time to myself just to think and be and listen to the rain and what it had to say. I'd overdone things a little by this point and was in quite a bit of pain, so I didn't spend as long as I would've liked (but I still have tonight to finish things off, at least). I needed a good sit down and time to decompress before leaving some food out over night, and one more offering and then bed.

After Tom finishes school today we're going to make a fat cake for the birds out of suet and seeds, and we'll leave that out as our final offering in honour of Mr Seren's gran, and Rosie's namesake. I never met her myself, and we don't have any photos to look at, but feeding the birds is one thing Mr Seren associates with her in particular and I figured we could honour her that way, make it a family tradition for us too. She fed the birds every day and whenever Mr Seren asked why, she'd say it's because the little birds can talk to the angels and if you look after them and listen carefully they'll whisper to you and help you find lost things. Some bird food seems apt as a final way to welcome in the winter, as well, to round things off; we're being told it's going to be another cold one this year, so experts are encouraging people to make sure they leave food out for the smaller birds in particular. So we'll start as we mean to go on.

Some more on the Tigh nam Bodach hydro plan

2011-10-29T17:48:00.004+01:00

Some articles have arrived in my email via Google alerts explaining a little more about what led to the Gleann Cailliche application, that would have affected the Tigh nam Bodach/Tigh na Cailliche site, being withdrawn. The letter I received last September was very sparse on detail, but a commenter drew my attention to a letter from Mott MacDonald explaining their decision was based largely on the strength of feeling against the plans in the community.

The BBC don't have much more to add to the story over all, but do point out that while the main focus has been on the Gleann Cailliche plan, there are three other applications elsewhere in the estate that have yet to be decided:

Owners of the Auch Estate in Glenlyon, Perthshire, had lodged plans for four run-of-the-river projects, including Glen Cailliche where the stones are.

History enthusiasts feared they would affect the setting of Tigh Nam Bodach.

But it has emerged landowner Adam Besterman withdrew the Allt Cailliche planning application last month, shortly before his death aged 51.

Gleann Cailliche plan shelved

It will be interesting to see how the other applications turn out, since they might have an effect on any possible future plans as far as re-applying for the Gleann Cailliche site are concerned, so hopefully there wil be more updates on that in the press.

A better article over at the Perthshire Advertiser explains that some of the locals have decided to make it clear that the site remains as important and relevant today as it ever has been:

In the last five years, Glenlyon has seen the construction of several lucrative hydro schemes, but local residents insist they have not been offered anything to offset the delays and disruption they have experienced during construction.

Expert dyker Norman Haddow and a group of volunteers camped at the Tigh nam Bodach stones and rebuilt the walls of the tiny house.

“I’ve been wanting to do it for years and I think it gives a clear message that this highly significant place is being cared for,” he declared.

Ancient site saved from development

Come Monday (I presume - perhaps this weekend?), the Cailleach and her family will be tucked away in their shieling for the winter. It seems they're in good hands.

Hop-tu-Naa!

2011-10-26T09:59:00.000+01:00

Nice to see the Isle of Man getting some coverage for once. And also:

A good turnip lantern is worth a pound of anyone's money, safe in the knowledge that someone, though probably not the little cherub on your doorstep, has suffered sprained wrists and blistered thumbs scooping it out.

What's the difference between Hop-tu-Naa and Hallowe'en?

Truer words have never been spoken...

I've yet to carve any myself for the coming festivities, I'll probably get them done on Sunday, the day before I need them for the window to invite the guisers, so they'll still be fresh. I did loads last year, but taking into account my limitations I'll probably not be so ambitious in what gets carved this year. Then again, the kids might actually help this time.

Bute

2011-10-25T14:17:00.000+01:00

And so we have the final part of the scintillating trilogy of 'stuff what I did when my friend came to stay.' I'll spare you the updates on what I did when my mother and nephew came to visit the day after, for the rest of the week. But it's hard, being sociable. Especially if it involves having my mother come to stay...

Anyway. This pretty much sums up the weather of the last week or so (glorious sunshine just now, though. Of course):

I think it officially qualifies as dreich.

The view is from the ferry we took over to Bute on Monday (in case you hadn't noticed the bit of ship down in the corner there). I think the view there is looking towards Loch Striven and the Argyll mainland, with the edge of Bute just in the left-hand corner there. To right, just out of shot is Toward (the 'tow' as in 'towel', not 'to-ward'), where there's a lighthouse that you can see flashing every night on the shore of the village beach where I live. It's a place and a view that gives me calm and clarity, breathing in the cold, salty air and seeing the lighthouse flashing, flashing, as I look across the shimmering waves on a clear, bracing night. This is the view that I look to as I speak to the wind and the gods when I need a bit of deep thinking and to dust off the old brain. This here is peace.

My friend and I have taken a trip to Bute before, and on that occasion we tried to take a visit to Mount Stuart. We waited an hour or two for the bus to arrive, and when it finally did the driver told us that he could take us there but the house was closing in ten minutes. So it ended up being a fruitless effort, and we went to Rothesay Castle instead.

This time we (as in I) planned things a little better and made sure that Mount Stuart would be open for the whole day, and we finally made it there with not too much trouble. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos when we were in the house, but the place is absolutely stunning (if you click on the link above you can take virtual tours of the most impressive rooms, well worth it, I think); the marquess who built it was fascinated with astrology and Greek goddesses and the like, and the great hall is dedicated to all of the astrological signs (depicted in stained glass windows), with the constellations marked on the ceiling in silver and crystal, along with the mythological characters each constellation represents painted on as well.

The whole house is amazing - the details, the marble, the carvings. Even the knobs have knobs on. It can only be viewed as part of a tour, and that was pretty limited, but we were still impressed by what we saw. I have to say, though, we both came away thinking that as fantastical as the house is, the money it took to build such a huge monument could probably have been spent in far better ways that would have actually done something for society...

We could take photos outside, but given the incessant rain we weren't really keen on braving the damp for sake of some very dull photos. I did get a few, though. Dalek windows:

And a wee peek at the building itself:

Back into Rothesay, the main town on the island, we took a stop back at the castle, which nestles right in the middle of the town now. It's mostly a ruin and for some reason the first time we visited the castle I didn't take any photos of the building from the outside. So oooo, purty:

This doesn't seem to be the most effective moat in the world, for defensive purposes, anyway:

And looking in to the inside:

Time to go, and it wouldn't be a proper tourist spot without an appropriately twee and Scottish signpost, would it?

Oh alright, maybe just one photo from when my mother and nephew came to visit...Tom tempting the sea:

The Storm Hags have certainly been busy round these parts.

St Mungo's

2011-10-24T10:41:00.000+01:00

Continuing on from the last post, we also had a trip to St Mungo's Museum of Religious Art and Life in Glasgow. For most of my friend's stay the kids were off with their grandparents, but by this time they'd come back home and so they came out with us, because I decided it would be educational, dagnabbit.

Seeing as we have no separation of church and state in the UK, and we are officially a Christian nation, schools are legally obliged to incorporate some sort of religious or spiritual element each day (though you can opt out if you so wish). The religious or spiritual element doesn't have to be Christian but in most schools it is, either by majority rule or because the school is church run. In the larger urban areas you can find a few Muslim-run schools too.

When I was at primary school we said prayers and sang hymns every day, at assembly before the school day started. Many schools today tend to ignore the law and not bother, in our increasingly secular society (so the tabloids say, anyway). At the school that my kids go to, they don't say daily prayers or sing hymns, but they do have Christian services at Easter, Harvest and Christmas, and on a couple of other occasions too. As we're not a Christian family (and my husband is a staunch atheist), we choose to opt our children out of the services and any forms of worship - hymns etc - but we don't opt out of religious education. Schools should be about education, not indoctrination, we say to the head teacher. And that's fine by them. There's not a lot else they can do, really. My youngest niece, on the other hand, goes to a Catholic high school and is frequently told that abortion and contraceptives and sex outside of marriage are wrong and will send her to hell. Or something. Personally I think that's shocking, but at least my niece has a good head on her shoulders and has bothered to educate herself where the school has failed. But anyway...

By not having the kids participate in the Christian services, the downside, of course, is that the kids don't have any practical experience of what most of their friends have, and therefore very little real understanding of Christianity or other organised religions at present. We live in a small village so the activities on offer are generally run by the Church. Most kids go to Sunday School and that sort of thing. Between my husband and I, I'm the only religious or even vaguely spiritual one, and we have an agreement that we won't 'force' religion on the kids but let them choose to explore or commit as they so wish. So much of what I do with them and blog about here doesn't really involve their worshipping gods, but participating in cultural practices, learning about the seasons and teaching them why we celebrate the first fruits, the coming of winter, then spring, and so on. They've picked up giving offerings themselves, to 'say thank you' when we go to the beach and so on, and I answer any questions I have as clearly as I can.

But as far as organised religion is concerned, they don't have much of a clue. They get a little confused when one of Rosie's friends says Jesus is going to give him a little brother soon, because that seems a bit odd to them. Jesus is a baby in a stable! And we all know babies can't do much. The bit where Jesus grew up and then died on the cross is still a little fuzzy, apparently. But they're still young - only four and six, so there's plenty of time yet.

Tom, who's six now, brought a reading book home from school the other day, for his homework, and it was about a boy getting ready to go to mosque with his grandparents. I asked Tom if he knew what a mosque was, and he said he didn't. "It's a bit like a church," I said. Then it occurred to me that he probably didn't really know what that was either, so I asked if he knew what a church was.

"It's where the big clocks are?"

Ummmmm. Weeeeellll...technically I suppose a lot of churches do have a lot of clocks on their towers. But it occurred to me that perhaps the kids could do with a little bit of religious education. And my good friend has a degree in Religious Studies and I did it as an extra option in my first year of university, so I figured we could explain a few things between us while we were at the museum.

There are lots of different religions represented there, but mostly concentrating on the religions that can be found in Scotland today - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. There were some historical displays - a little bit of ancient Egyptians - and some others like Aboriginal and African religions, too. Notably nothing of a neopagan flavour, but you can't have everything can you?

The museum catered well for the children, lots of stuff for them to do, so they were well entertained. We got to learn about Shiva, Lord of the Dance:

And tried to see how easy that stance was, to get the kids involved and make it seem more tangible to them. We decided the extra arms were probably necessary for balance, for one, but also explained to the kids why Shiva was standing like that (the dance of creation), and was standing on what appeared to be a baby (a demon of ignorance, actually).

There was also Ganesha:

And the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (I think):

And rather a lot about Irish Catholicism, which inevitably involves St. Patrick: not the most popular of people in some circles. But he's got some very shiny relics associated with him.

And this one kinda looks like he's making something of a rude gesture, at a glance, suggesting that he's probably not all that fussed about opinions. (Sounds about right to me). Yes, his hand is actually in there. Supposedly. It's one of his reliquaries. I think there are reliquaries of his jaw and tooth as well, somewhere.

This one is allegedly the reliquary for his own bell:

Which in those days would have looked something like this:

You wouldn't ring it, ding-a-ling, but hit it with a stick (sort of thing).

And of course, we can't talk about Ireland without:

Although unfortunately the room it was in was really dark and it's not the best photo. Running after children, and all that, doesn't help with setting up the best shots.

The cathedral precinct itself is beautiful; the cathdral has a bright green, copper roof, and it's thought to stand right where St Mungo himself finally settled:

The cathedral is right by a stream, and it's said that Mungo (also known as Kentigern) would run into the stream every morning, no matter the weather, and sing the 150 psalms of David, then get out and dry himself on a rock. The stream is now covered by a culvert and there's a road running over it, and on the other side of the stream/road there's the Grey Rock, which is home to Glasgow's Necropolis - a fantastically gothic place, full of funerary monuments of Glasgow's richest and greatest from the city's nineteenth century heyday:

(These pictures are from previous visits). And if you're a Doctor Who fan, don't blink:

And that was that for the day, before we had to get to the station and see my friend off for her journey home. I'm kind of doing this all out of order, so next up will be our first day out, a trip to the Isle of Bute.

Fun days out: Roman Scotland

2011-10-20T14:40:00.000+01:00

I've had an old friend staying since the weekend so we've had some great days out enjoying the scenery. And a fair few museums, since the weather has mostly sucked. I have lots of photos to share over the next few posts, though considering the aforementioned weather there won't be much in the way of beautiful Scottish landscapes...

One of the places we went to was the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University, which has recently reopened after two years of refurbishment (with much fanfare). There's a lot of new stuff there, mostly pickled limbs and deformed animals of one form or another that were the stuff of legend when I was at uni (then viewable only by appointment, and I was told only those who were studying a relevant field would be allowed). These are a charming and delightful sight for some, I'm sure. Not so much if you have delicate sensibilities, though. Or just aren't feeling too great that day.

The stuff I was hoping to see, though, was the Roman artefacts from the Antonine - something the Hunterian has long been known for. With the reopening of the museum they've concentrated on advertising the Roman stuff, and way back when I was at uni they had a few altars on display at the least, so I wanted to see if it had been expanded and see if there was any Celtic stuff. Not so much new, it turns out, but the new displays do make everything a lot prettier, at least. They've added stuff that reflects how the Romans and the locals got on together, so that's where it gets interesting for me, and that's what I thought I'd start with first in this series of posts.

Most of the aretefacts on display come from the Roman forts along the Antonine Wall and others in the Clyde valley. The Antonine Wall starts in Bo'ness over in the east of Scotland (where I used to live), and cuts across to the west, through the northern outskirts of Glasgow, and it was only occupied for a relatively short period of time before the Romans abandoned it and withdrew back to Hadrian's Wall.

There were forts along the wall at regular intervals, and the soldiers there settled in and established a life for themselves while they were stuck out here in the Roman frontier. They weren't allowed to marry while they were in the army, but that didn't stop them forming relationships with the locals, having kids and attracting some of the locals to set up homesteads right next to the forts and so on. These leather shoes found at the Barr Hill Roman fort show just that - adults and children all in one place:

It's difficult to say just how integrated the Romans were with the local population (who would've been Brythonic speakers), or if the Romans had much of a lasting effect on them. It's also difficult to say how those who did form relationships with the legionaries changed - whether they adopted Roman ways, language, religious practice, that sort of thing. In the bigger picture, there doesn't seem to have been much of a lasting effect in this part of Britain.

Certainly the Romans themselves had some concern about local gods, though, and they approached them in their own religious terms. These altars here are dedicated to 'the Spirit of the Land of Britain' or 'Britannia':

The first altar is dedicated to the goddesses of the parade ground and Britannia, while the second inscription reads: GENIO TERRAE BRITANNICAE M COCCEI FIRMUS 7 LEG II AUG, "To the presiding Spirit of the Land of Britain, Marcus Cocceius Firmus, centurion in the Second Augustan Legion." In essence, the altars and the offerings made on it - milk, oil or wine, usually, poured into the 'dish' at the top - were meant to appease the land that the Romans were occupying, something that the local gods, who looked after their own people, would probably not be too pleased about. Interlopers! These offerings were meant to acknowledge that, and try to form some sort of peace with them.

Marcus Firmus also dedicated four other altars, one of which also mentions the Gaulish goddess Epona:

This inscription reads: MARTI MINERVAE CAMPESTRIBUS HERC(U)L(I) EPONAE VICTORIAE , COCCEI FIRMUS LEG II AUG, "To Mars, Minerva, the Goddesses of the Parade Ground, Hercules, Epona (and) Victory, Marcus Cocceius Firmus, centurion of the Second Augustan Legion." Epona is the only Celtic deity adopted into Roman religion - in general, while local Celtic deities are sometimes mentioned amongst deities on some altars, or syncretised with particular deities, they themselves weren't usually adopted into Roman practice in a wider sense. She was very popular amongst the Roman cavalry.

In some instances, we find locals (or local styles) being depicted. This water nymph from a Roman bathhouse in West Dunbartonshire, for example:

The armlets she's wearing indicate she's Celtic rather than Roman. The folds of her skirt are thought to represent flowing water.

And then there are the locals being thoroughly stomped on:

The hair and beards seem to be very distinctive 'Celtic' features, here are some more local captives (the two figures left and right):

I think that's Victory in the middle, so the whole scene is celebrating a win over the local hoards.

These are some coins minted in 48BC, but found in one of the forts on the Antonine Wall. They're thought to show Gaulish 'barbarians' captured during Julius Caesar's campaigns:

The styles here are very different, so it does seem that the Romans generally tried to show accurate depictions of whoever it was they were trying to subjugate. So it was kind of weird for me, seeing pictures of the past. People from 2,000 years or so ago, who lived pretty close to where I am just now. And kinda cool too.

Stovies

2011-10-06T13:11:00.000+01:00

Thinking ahead for Samhainn I've been out in the garden doing what I can to bring in the last of the fruit and veg. In spite of the warmer weather recently it's also been very wet and the larger of the onions have succumbed to the damp and slugs - I was going to pick them last week, but alas, my back didn't allow for that. The remaining carrots and the spring onions have fared a little better, though:

As well as a leek, there. The rest of the leeks could do with a bit longer and should be fine with the colder weather due soon anyway, so I've left those. Of the purple carrots I left in after the first batch of carrots I had for Lùnastal, only one turned out properly purple. Another appeared to be having a slight identity crisis, but the rest just gave up and decided on orange:

They were quite small still, but I figured they probably weren't going to do much else and I might as well pull them.

In honour of the latest haul I decided to put the larger onions to good use and make some stovies, a good stodgy winter dish that's a staple of the Scottish diet, that consists of only three basic ingredients - minced beef, onion, and potato:

Now, yes. Admittedly cat food may look more appetising than this but it's the taste that counts, right? I like lots of black pepper in mine, whereas my husband and the kids like to give theirs a kick with some HP Sauce. I've only ever used beef for them, but mutton is more traditional - harder to get hold of these days, too, though.

I made Brodick bannocks to go with them (I'm finally getting the hang of making them flatter, like they should be - though I think using wholemeal flour helps), to soak up the dregs, and boiled up the carrots. Et voila. Good wintry stodge. I've yet to decide on what I'll be doing for our Samhainn meal, but stovies are always good option, I think.

Now the kids are older and can get a bit more involved in the festivities I'm really looking forward to Samhainn this year. And so are they. The school has a fancy dress parade so they'll be spending the day in costume, and then once they get home it will be time for some fun and games before the guisers start knocking. I'd better start experimenting with the treacle bannocks...

Harvesting

2011-09-30T18:41:00.000+01:00

While most of Britain basks in a last gasp heatwave, it's business as usual round these parts. It's a wee bit warmer than usual for this time of year, yes, but no less wet and generally grey. An Cailleachan have been busy battering the coast and the autumnal colours are decidedly dampened on the trees here. Offerings were made to them at the equinox, but otherwise things have been pretty quiet.

The berry harvest has been good though - we've missed the best of the brambles, I think, but our own blueberries are still going strong. Our old friends, the baby snails, haven't disappointed:

But with careful removal of said friends, to avoid any extra accidental protein, we've had a good harvest so far and it's given me an excuse for some of these:

Although the recipe could do with some perfecting. Practice makes perfect, no?

And we've got some raspberries! Of the two bushes I've got in the flowerbed, this is the first year either one of them has put forth much in the way of fruit, and most of them have gone to the wee beasties in the garden, I think. The standard raspberry bush ended up getting crowded out by weeds and bushes that need trimming, I think, but aside from the other bush getting blown over, we have a modest amount of golden raspberries promising:

I've never tried them before, I don't think, though there are a lot of bushes that have spread and gone wild in the village. Rosie and I picked the only two that were good for eating, and Rosie bravely volunteered for a taste test:

It turns out they taste exactly like normal raspberries. They were met with approval.

The warmer weather has been good for the veg I've still got growing - the onions are about ready now, I think, but alas, after our berry harvest on Wednesday I decided to prune down some flowers that were crowding everything else out and that knackered my back again. Not as bad as it has been, but not great, and the onions can wait a while longer until I can walk again. The good news there is, I've at least been reassurred that fibromyalgia is an unlikely diagnosis for me - I just have the bog standard variety of chronic pain. Yay me.

With the pruning out of the way, however, I'll be able to get at my little devotional space I've arranged and set aside in the flower bed. It's been sadly neglected like most other things this year, but it seems something doesn't mind that because I startled a tiny wee frog as I was pruning. Sorry froggy. But I'm glad you found a home here.

Hello Wikipedians!

2011-09-28T18:15:00.000+01:00

So I noticed a few hits on the old blog here coming from Wikipedia, of all places, and it seems that there is currently a debate raging over there with regards to rutabaga, of all things. So hello! Thanks for all the support and nice things that are being said.

I have to say, it's a bit weird to find myself being debated on a corner of the internet dedicated to a root vegetable...

While I feel very honoured to have my website referenced on a Wikipedia article, I have to say I'm quite surprised, too, because I wouldn't have thought that it qualifies from what I understand of Wikipedia's rules about what is and isn't suitable for referencing. I do make an effort to write my articles to a decent standard and put references in, but it's not like they're peer reviewed, or anything. Having said that, I do live in Scotland, so I could point out that I am carrying on the tradition and am speaking from experience.

I didn't grow up in Scotland, but my husband did so I've spoken at length with him and my father-in-law about the practice. I can say - for what it's worth - that it's definitely rutabaga that was (and still is) used for carving the lanterns, though here they really are called tumshies, neeps, or just 'turnips'. In supermarkets you'll find them on sale as swedes, but colloquially they are rarely referred to as such in Scotland, as far as I've ever heard.

I can also say that they're an absolute bugger to carve.

Anyway, I've been unable to ascertain for certain how old the tradition is, but like some have been saying on the talk page it's not something that can be said to be particularly 'ancient' or specifically pre-Christian - especially seeing as the tumshie itself only dates from the seventeenth century. So the start of the section on Hallowe'en is incorrect when it says:

Since early times,^[when?] people living in Ireland and Scotland have carved turnips and used them as lanterns to ward off harmful spirits.^[19] They are still popular throughout Britain and Ireland today at Halloween, ^[20]however their use goes back to a much earlier time.

This bit here:

The bonfires were replaced with hollowed out turnips (the common name for rutabaga in Ireland, Scotland. and Northern England) filled with glowing coals.

Is also a bit questionable, I think (there's also a full stop after 'Scotland' that should be a comma). The lanterns didn't replace the bonfires; in Scotland, the bonfires have arguably shifted to Guy Fawkes' night on November 5th - see Ronald Hutton's Stations of the Sun. It's true that tumshie lanterns aren't as common as they used to be, though, and most people carve pumpkins these days. Most years you'll find the odd piece in the paper about trying to revive the tumshie.

I would also say that Samhain is not a Celtic festival, it's a festival that is Irish in origin. Given Scotland's Gaelic heritage, it is also referred to as Samhain (or Samhainn/Samhainn) in Gàidhlig. It's an important distinction that needs to be made, because 'Celtic' is a linguistic term that refers to a variety of languages. It is sometimes used as a cultural term but in this context it implies that Samhain is a festival that is found in all Celtic cultures. This is not the case.

Just my tuppence worth there.

Anyway, another useful reference for you might be F. Marian McNeill's book, Hallowe'en: It's Origin Rites and Ceremonies in the Scottish Tradition. The song on page 33, called A Nicht o' Tine has a verse:

A howkit neep wi' glowerin' een
To fleg baith witch and warlock.

In other words: "A carved turnip with scowling face, to scare both witch and warlock." As far as I can tell the book was published in 1970 or 1971 - there's no date or ISBN number, but it was published by The Albyn Press in Edinburgh.

And one final thing, just to clarify: I am, in fact, a 'her'!

Book Review: Kindling the Celtic Spirit

2011-09-28T15:59:00.000+01:00

One more review for now.

Kindling the Celtic Spirit
Mara Freeman

This is a book I bought early on in my first few tentative steps towards Celtic Reconstructionism, and at the time it was one of those fantastically inspiring books that got me very excited. This is the book that helped me see what a non-Wiccan/Wiccanesque style of practice might actually look like, and helped me see that Celtic Reconstructionist practice was actually workable; at the time I found it difficult to wrap my head around what to do because at the time - before the CR FAQ, before even the CR Essay, I think - there really wasn't much out there and I myself had been floundering after leaving Wicca behind and exploring various other paths like ceremonial magic and various forms of Druidry that all have fairly similar ritual approaches.

So I have a soft spot for this book, I really do. Let me be clear though: This is not a Celtic Reconstructionist book, or even written with such an audience in mind. It is written for what you might call a neo-Druid audience in mind, one that's looking for a more historically-minded approach without the Druid Revivalist trappings of Iolo Morganwg and Ross Nichols' dodgy history. It's also geared more towards the solitary practitioner than group practice, and the ritual outlines draw reference from traditional sources rather than neo-pagan ones, but here and there you will certainly find what might be seen as a neo-pagan approach, that don't necessarily agree with a CR approach - invocations to deities, Robert Graves, advocating developing a working relationship with the Good Folk...that sort of thing.

The book is laid out month-by-month, after a few introductory bits and pieces, and each month accommodates a particular focus relevant to the month, season, and related theme of the chapter. Tales and bits of folklore, animal lore, and spotlights on different deities are given in each chapter, and there are meditations to work on (there's also a CD that accompanies the book, with these meditations on it; you have to buy it separately, though, and I didn't so I can't comment on that). The festivals are dealt with as well - the eight festivals of the Wheel of the Year, but with a focus on customs and lore from historical sources - and there are some practical ideas and recipes for things to do for each of them - making a May Bough at Bealltainn, carving turnips at Samhainn, that sort of thing. There are also plenty of prayers, charms, poems, blessings and so on, many of which are adapted from the Carmina Gadelica or early medieval Irish manuscripts.

There is a very hearthy, domestic focus to the book which is something that really appealed to me, and I found the inclusion of practical, creative things to do for the festivals a nice touch as well. The adaptations and prayers are mostly well done, and while the guided meditations aren't really something that appeal to me personally, they're well written and I can see that they might work well for others.

Where it falls down, I think - and it's a problem that I find with most books like this - is that while the focus is mostly on an Irish or a more generally Gaelic practice, Welsh, Brythonic and Gaulish elements are also brought in here and there; an examination of the meaning of 'awen', the stories of Taliesin and Ceridwen, a section on Cernunnos, and so on. There is also the suggestion of a wassail bowl, which couldn't even be considered to be Celtic. All of this smooshing makes it a very hodge podge affair. To me, these are very different and diverse cultures - different languages, different histories - and while they might have the same Celtic roots, they've evolved in very different ways and deserve to be looked at and appreciated on their own terms.

It seems odd to have such a regard for historical practices, detailing folklore and customs from the various cultures, to then completely disregard their context and then mix them all up in a completely ahistorical way. This is rather disappointing, but at least Freeman is (usually) clear where everything comes from, and she's also quite good at referencing her sources. It would be easy to pick bits out that are relevant to one's own focus, but ultimately there's nothing here that comes from particularly esoteric sources and it would be just as easy to go to the source yourself.

It's a well-written, beautifully presented book. Ultimately, though, as inspirational as this book was for me, I'm not sure it's something I would recommend to a CR audience these days. Aside from being potentially confusing for the beginner, there are better sources out there to look to now, far more so than ten or even five years ago, so I think that looking to them instead would be more helpful - do your own research, or look to CR websites or groups that are out there.

Book Review: A World Full of Gods

2011-09-26T14:36:00.000+01:00

Another review today - I've had this book for over a year and only just got around to reading it in the last week or two. It's a good meaty book and it's been taking up most of my free time in the mornings to get through it, but I've also had the chance to tinker away at another page on the website - this time, the introductory article on Irish Mythology. Most of the additions are links to the various myths links, with a bit of reformatting and a few tweaks here and there.

A World Full of Gods
John Michael Greer

There aren't many books out there (that I've seen) that take on the task of providing a good, meaty, philosophical discussion of polytheism - especially one that comes from a polytheist point of view. This is very much a book that is aimed at the polytheist, rather than the Wiccan or neo-Wiccan/Wiccanesque pagan, and that in itself is refreshing for me, because it's not something I come across often.

I got off to a bit of a bumpy start with the book because much of the introductory stuff in the first few chapters were kind of obvious to me and I wasn't sure if the book was going to offer much for me to chew on - which is not to say that I think I know everything there is to say about polytheism, just that it's something I've had plenty of opportunity to think on over the years, and I'm pretty set in my ways by now. I was happily proven wrong, though, and once I got into the meat of the book I found a lot of good stuff (and to be fair, the more experienced polytheist or scholar of religion is invited to skip a few chapters near the beginning, to get on with it, but I wanted to read it from start to finish).

The first few chapters certainly help introduce the beginner to a good understanding of polytheism, and as much as I had some reservations about where it was all going I did appreciate seeing things being spelled out clearly, and in a way that helped me appreciate where others might have questions and confusions about certain things. I can see this being a good book to point people to, if they have some questions about how polytheism actually works.

I found the middle of the book more challenging and enlightening, and one chapter in particular helped solidify a few thoughts on something that had been bugging me for a while (chapter 8, dealing with offerings and reciprocity; the next one was interesting too).

For the most part the book is very straight forward, well-written and clearly thought out. There is a heavy emphasis on philosphy and logic in the way the subject is approached, and Greer does a good job of introducing the big words and concepts that the average reader probably won't have much familiarity with (and there's a handy glossary at the back in case you get lost). Because of the philosophical focus of the book, it's not a how-to sort of tome, with ritual suggestions or an encyclopedia of gods tucked in at the end so you can pick your favourites and invite them round to lunch. Nor is this the kind of book that I could really pick up and put down, or pick at here and there. This is a book that needs to be read from start to finish to appreciate it at its best, I think.

Over the course of the book, subjects like the different types of polytheism, and the ethics, myths, spirituality, ways of worship and the logic of polytheism are dealt with, as well as the question of why people might be polytheists. Greer keeps the focus of the book as general as possible, calling on various different cultures and polytheistic religions to illustrate his points - mainly Norse, Celtic, Shinto, Greek, Roman, with a few others mixed in - along with some analogies that help explain where he's coming from. Inevitably that means there has to be generalisations here and there to accommodate as broad a view as possible, but given the purpose and focus of the book I think it worked well. Both the commonalities and differences of polytheistic views and religions are taken into account, so it's pretty thorough. It would be nice to see something that focuses solely on Celtic Polytheism (though of course I'd say that), but as an introduction to polytheism in general, Greer has the right of it here.

One thing in particular that I appreciated is the emphasis on 'traditional polytheisms', which Greer stresses tend to be hard polytheisms. While generally I would say the arguments Greer presents are well done, there are some aspects that I think might be slightly lacking. Inevitably in discussing polytheism there is going to be some comparison to the major monotheistic religions (especially Christianity) as well as atheism, and I think the author's own bias towards accepting a polytheistic viewpoint means that certain elements are glossed over when presenting all the various different arguments, and at one point the argument was made that the widespread belief in the afterlife - or various forms of the afterlife - is itself evidence that supports its existence. I don't think this is the kind of argument that stands up to objective examination, really.

In addition to this, concluding that alternative viewpoints rely on 'special pleading' - and are therefore weak or invalid - is a common refrain throughout the book, and ultimately I can't help but feel that Greer often falls into the same traps in his own arguments as he claims others do. If you're totally on board with Greer's own views and you're not interested in weighing up the arguments and examining them, then it's probably not a problem, but if you look at the arguments objectively, as he seems to think he's doing, then I'm not so convinced. I can imagine my atheist husband would say that Greer's argument in favour of polytheism, for one, relies on special pleading as much as anyone else's beliefs.

In some ways, perhaps, agreeing with Greer's arguments are beside the point; if anything, whether you agree or disagree it helps finish your own train of thought about these subjects, and helps you make up your own mind. Greer's apparent assumption that his conclusions are 100% logical and watertight can grate a little, though, and at times it does get a bit repetitive.

As much as I enjoyed the middle portion of the book in particular, and appreciated the novelty of the book itself, the last couple of chapters weren't as good, to my mind. The chapters on myths and eschatology in particular weren't so much about polytheism, I felt, as they were arguments against monotheism (or, ultimately, any religion that claims to be the True Religion) so the book seemed to lose focus a little towards the end.

I'm not sure this is a book I could read again and again, but certainly I can see myself referring to the more helpful parts now and then. Nor do I think that I can give a resounding yes! for this book - ultimately I think it's good, it's worth reading, but it's certainly not without its flaws. For the most part I think the positives definitely outweigh the negatives, but equally I can appreciate that those negatives could be a complete turn-off for some (perhaps especially those who are better acquainted with formal discourse and argumentation than I am!), or else this could be a book that is fantastically inspiring in the way it articulates many different aspects of polytheism that are otherwise probably neglected in discussions.

Hail to the hooded crow...

2011-09-20T11:00:00.000+01:00

Blogger has a handy widget that lets you know the kind of search terms people use that result in their stumbling across your blog, along with other fun stats and stuff. It's always entertaining, especially since one of the most common search terms these days involves 'king's nipples' or 'nipple cult'. A while ago, somebody stumbled across the blog after doing a search for 'matriarchal spaceships' (I think that one's my favourite). Yesterday, somebody arrived by way of searching for 'invoking Irish zombies.'

The mind boggles, it really does. But I'm sorry to disappoint.

Anyway, I've not had much to say recently aside from bits and pieces in the news and reviews (of which I'm intending to catch up on a few more at some point), and that's mainly because I haven't been doing much. I slipped a disc in February and I've been having problems ever since, though quite what the problem is now is yet to be determined; I'm undergoing another course of physiotherapy and it's been decided that my disc isn't the problem right now, and I suspect I'm heading for a diagnosis of fibromyalgia (though that's by no means certain); whatever the case, it seems I'm stuck with whatever it is for good now, and will be dependent on a cocktail of medication just to get through each day. I can't be too active, or else I end up in even more pain, and alongside not sleeping too well and taking a lot of drugs that can make you tired, well. There's not much chance of that happening often. So yeah, not up to much these days while I figure out the limits of my capability now. It's a voyage of discovery!

A life of pain and drugs is not a prospect I relish, to be honest (though I'm well aware my situation is nowhere near as bad as it could be; I know folks with similar problems who have it far worse than I do), but it's not something that comes as much of a surprise, really. Just before this all happened I'd taken a trip into town to run some errands, and just as my daughter and I had got off the bus and were walking towards the shopping centre, there was a hooded crow perched on a wall. They're very distinctive birds, with their light grey bodies, and I've seen them before on travels around the Highlands - always in large groups, though, usually flocking around roadkill, or something. I don't live in a part of Scotland where they're common, but I do live near the edge of where they tend to live, so it's not outside the realm of possibility to happen across one. But when you happen across one in unusual circumstances, and they have religious significance to you...well. I don't know about you, but I tend to take note of that. And if it was supposed to be a sign, then I wasn't expecting it to be a good one, given the associations. (Pointless aside: In Ireland, the hooded crow is the emblem of the O'Tooles of Wicklow. In the fourteenth century, they are said to have gone into battle with the cry, Feannóg abú! - Hail to the hooded crow! That's a kind of attitude I can admire...)

So anyway, here I am, lumped with it for the foreseeable future. And of course, I'm not the only one facing something like this, and nor am I first. When the general diagnosis involved a buggered disc I went searching for folk cures and charms to see how people dealt with it before the advent of Tramadol and the like (might as well make it a learning experience). I didn't exactly find much that could help! Take, for instance, George F. Black's Scottish Charms and Amulets:

Some of the natives [of North Uist] wear a girdle of the Seal-skin about the middle, for removing the Sciatica, as those of the Shire of Aberdeen wear it to remove the Chin-cough.

Well, I did see a seal sun-bathing on a rock near the shore last month, but I think people tend to frown on that sort of thing these days. Personally, I like seals alive more than I like them worn as a girdle in the hopes of relieving sciatica.

John Gregorson Campbell, on the other hand, has this to say about leum droma ('leap of the back' - a slipped disc, or bad back in general):

When the back is strained and its nerves are affected so that motion is painful, the afflicted person is to lie down on his face, and one who was born feet foremost is to step thrice across him, each time laying his full weight on the foot that treads on the patient's back. There is not cure unless the person stepping across has been born feet foremost.

Ronald Black, The Gaelic Otherworld, 2005, p228/490.

Technically speaking, I could give this one a go because my husband was a breech baby, but then again he's about twice the size of me, and even without a knackered back I suspect trying this would break me, even if I could persuade him to try.

At least there's Tramadol...

The latest clever idea...

2011-09-17T21:52:00.000+01:00

Another news item, it's a newsy kind of day. This time, my moral outrage is directed here:

HOLY WELLS, bridges, milestones, vernacular buildings, lime kilns and other industrial sites that post-date 1700 will be “left without any protection” following moves to “delist” them, the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland has claimed.

In what it described as a “very worrying proposal”, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is seeking to exclude all post-1700 archaeological and historical structures and sites from the national Record of Monuments and Places (RMP).

Irish Times

I'm mentally filing this one under What The Fucking Fuck; who the hell thought this is a good idea? There seems to be overwhelming objection and resistance to the move, which is mildly comforting. Hopefully it will force the proposals to be shelved. Or dumped in the bin, for preference.

Irish zombies?

2011-09-17T12:37:00.000+01:00

Forget the nipple-obsessed Irish kings, now we have Irish zombies! Yay!

Two early medieval skeletons were unearthed recently in Ireland with large stones wedged into their mouths -- evidence, archaeologists say, that it was feared the individuals would rise from their graves like zombies.

Discovery News (although I think the latter word is meant somewhat loosely...)

Although before we arrive at the zombies, vampires were considered (of course):

Initially, Read and colleagues thought they had found a Black Death-related burial ground. Remains of individuals buried at the end of the Middle Ages with stones stuck in their mouths have hinted at vampire-slaying rituals.

It was believed that these "vampire" individuals spread the plague by chewing on their shrouds after dying. In a time before germ theory, the stone in the mouth was then used as a disease-blocking trick.

Since the vampire phenomenon didn't emerge in European folklore until the 1500's, the archaeologists ruled out this theory for the 8th century skeletons.

To be fair here, as wacky as this bit might sound, the journalist does actually mention the proper word for it, revenants. But zombies and vampires? It's a perfect combination for a sensationalist article.

Except, of course...

In spite of the excitedly breathless opening paragraph, the archaeologists in question at no point during the course of the article ever mention the word 'zombie.' But of course, everybody loves zombies these days, so why not, if it gets people reading the article? The zombie word implies the eighth century Irish were concerned about the living dead rising with a penchant for other people's brains, though, whereas I think what the archaeologists were actually saying is that the dead might rise due to an unholy communion with Satan, or something, with the general intent of terrorising the local population or spreading disease (but not the living dead zombie kind). That's not something that necessarily implies eating other people's brains and turning the whole world into zombies.

But no. Zombies.

Book Review: Celtic Devotional: Daily Prayers and Blessings

2011-09-14T13:24:00.000+01:00

Celtic Devotional: Daily Prayers and Blessings
Caitlín Matthews

I bought this book because I'd heard good things about it, along the lines of it being good inspiration for prayers and so on. Having read a few of the Matthews' collective works over the year and having not been particularly impressed, I'd held off bothering with it, but a preview of it on Google Books coinciding with a fit of boredom piqued my interest. At a penny and change for postage, second hand, I figured even if it was awful I wouldn't be losing out on much.

It's not bad. I can't say I found it to be fantastic, either, though. There are some genuinely good bits and pieces in here, but there is also a lot in here that as poetry goes, is not so good. I'm no expert in poetry, but I can spot clumsy and strained attempts at maintaining a rhyme or rhythm a mile off. Those I am an expert at...

For the most part I found the way it was all framed and phrased to be very off-putting. The book is very New Ageish, and that might sound more than a little snobbish but what I really mean is that much of it articulates ideas and concepts that are just alien to my thinking: Lots of Lords and Ladies, Grandmothers and Grandfathers (of this, that and the other), soul-midwives, self-contemplation and self-realisation, and love, light and life (notes of, drops of, glows of, greetings of, gems of, etc)...Some of the terminology does make me cringe a little, in amongst a good smattering of jargon.

The book is set out season by season, with prayers and invocations to usher in and see out each season/Quarter Day, and then there are daily prayers and invocations given for each day throughout each quarter, along with activities, meditations or contemplations to concentrate on that are relative to the theme of the quarter. There are kindling prayers on rising, smooring prayers on going to rest, and so on, but they are all to do with the soul rather than any literal kindling or smooring. In that respect, I can't help but wonder if smooring the soul each night is rather ill-advised? Hmm...Smooring is also explained as a Scots Gàidhlig word - it's not. It's a minor mistake, but an unnecessary one. But anyway, the soul theme in general is consistent with the over-arching aim of the book - the first chapter is titled 'Opening the Soul Shrine.'

In spite of my reservations and the New Age phrasing a lot of the time there really is some genuinely beautiful work in here. Matthews has certainly managed to capture the general essence and tone of Irish and Scottish poetry in particular (to my eye) and that in itself gives good inspiration to see the kind of things she's picked up on. As you work through you can see that much of it is pretty formulaic, which will either seem nicely consistent or thoroughly repetitive. I don't see myself ever actually working my way through the book day-by-day, to be honest.

I think the main problem I have with the book is that it's a 'Celtic' devotional, but aside from being framed around the use of the Irish names for the Quarter Days and the general idea of daily prayers that echo what you find in the Carmina Gadelica, there's nothing that's really Celtic at all. For one, the main inspiration is clearly Gaelic, but there's nothing really Gaelic in there and so the whole thing comes across as more than a little bit superficial. A lot of the prayers address 'Grandmother' and 'Grandfather', 'Lord' and 'Lady', or the soul-friend or soul-mentor of your choosing. In general, when anything theological is touched on, it's framed in terms of 'the Divine', which seems to be a way of keeping everything as neutral as possible in order to appeal to a broad audience. It's not something that appeals to me, though, and over all the books is not something I find to be particularly workable or adaptable to my own circumstances. For me, the quibbles permeate the whole content, so even the bits I do like I don't think would be something I'd find myself looking back on or using in my own devotions (your mileage may vary, of course).

All in all, it's a beautifully presented book if nothing else. Ultimately I'm not sure I'd jump up and down raving about it and recommending it to anyone who might care to listen to the crazy lady.

"The Cailleach is milking her goats to-night; don't you hear the milking-lilt?"

2011-09-14T10:20:00.001+01:00

The tail end of Hurricane Katia seems to have blown itself out now so this one's probably a little late, but, as a kind of tradition I've just decided to keep up with, it's times like this that sharing stories and lore about her seems like a good way to honour the Storm Hag. She was definitely singing her milking-lilt these past few nights.

This is another story from K.W. Grant's Myth, Tradition and Story from Western Argyll (1925, p10), and this time it's about the Cailleach Bheinn a' Bhric. Enjoy:

“Beinn a' Bhric” - Trout Mountain – is in Lochaber. It's presiding genius was a “Bean-shìdhe” - fairy woman. (Sìdh, the abode of the gods; not sìth, peace as so often rendered.)

The Cailleach tended her herds of deer in Glen Nevis, and often milked them there, especially in the “dead” months of winter. The huntsmen heard her song as she milked her deer; for all Highland milkmaids were wont, in times past, to charm the milk from the cattle by keeping time with their fingers to a ringing lilt. The song of the Cailleach was unlike that of every other milkmaid; it was peculiar to herself, and unique in every respect.

Sometimes the women folk accused her of driving her deer to the shore to feed on dulse, or upon the tender blades of their winter kale. This was no more than women's gossip; the herds of the Cailleach loved not such pasturage.

It was known among the huntsmen that, as certainly as any one of them caught a glimpse of the Cailleach he might stay at home for that day, for he should have no “shooting-luck.”

Once when the tempests of late Autumn marched down the hills, a young hunter of stout heart, on hearing that the Cailleach was abroad, determined to brave her. From dawn till sundown, he hunted in the deer forest of Loch Tréig, the chosen haunt of the Cailleach, but never a trace of deer or roe did he light upon. When twilight came he betook himself for shelter to a hut built for that purpose by the huntsmen. As he gathered wood and leaves wherewith to light a fire on the hearth, he began out of sheer bravado to rhyme a taunt against the Cailleach, imitating her peculiar tune as he hummed the stanzas:-

The grizzled Cailleach, tall and stern,
Tall and stern, tall and stern;
The grizzled Cailleach, tall and stern,
Swift she glides o'er peak and cairn.

Cailleach Bheinn a' Bhric horó!
Bhric horó! Bhric horó!
Cailleach Bheinn a' Bhric horó!
Warder of the mountain well, etc.

The hunter had completed but a few stanzas when the Cailleach, lilting as was her wont, approached and saluted him.

“I am aware,” said she, “that thou hast wandered far to-day in search of game. I have come all the way from “Lagan-nam-féith” - Quagmire Hollow – since the first spark of fire fell on thy tinder, to give thee sure luck in hunting. To-morrow, as I milk my deer, watch thou, and whichever of the deer becomes restive, I will strike with the knob of my fetter. (A fetter was made of plaited horse-hair with a loop at one end and a knob of hard wood at the other for fastening it.) Note it well; take good aim, and thou shalt have good luck.”

The hunter obeyed; and from that day forward he never hunted in vain.

Book Review: Folksongs And Folklore Of South Uist

2011-09-11T11:02:00.000+01:00

Another review to be getting on with:

Folksongs And Folklore Of South Uist
Margaret Fay Shaw

This is one of those seminal works by one of the most prolific and passionate folklorists of the day - and what an amazing woman, too!

Comparison with Alexander Carmichael's work is going to be inevitable with this book, and Shaw herself handily points out the places where there is an overlap with the songs of the Carmina Gadelica. Part of the appeal of this book, then, is seeing how Carmichael's work measures up (especially bearing in mind the criticisms laid against him at times), but I would hasten to add that Shaw offers a lot more than just different of songs that you might be already familiar with.

As the title suggests, it's not just songs to be found here - there are stories, recipes, a chapter on traditional dyes, proverbs and riddles, and a bit about Shaw's own experiences during her time on the island. Many of the songs also have musical scores accompanying them, which is great if you want to have a go at singing yourself (alas, I'm about as musical as a guitar with three knackered strings).

The glimpses of folklore - much of it seasonal, detailing Hogmanay celebrations and so on - are described with passion and a charm that bleeds through onto the pages. It's hard not to fall in love with the people and the place that Shaw describes, just like Shaw herself did. Over all the book itself is perhaps not as useful as the Carmina Gadelica - it's certainly not as wide-ranging being only one volume rather than six, but it's a good complement to it, and it contains things that I haven't seen anywhere else. The recipe for a traditional strùthan along with a more modern version, in particular, is something that I found extremely useful.

This isn't the first book I'd necessarily look to as far as research goes, but it does come in handy. It's well-researched and well-referenced so you'll find pointers to other places you can look to, and I think it would be a great addition to the bookshelf for anyone with a particular interest in Scottish folklore and song.

The 'R' word

2011-09-10T15:15:00.000+01:00

A week or so ago I had the dubious pleasure of having a run in with a racist on my f-list over on Facebook. And not just any racist, but a racist who is identifying as a Celtic Reconstructionist.

I've been hanging out on a few groups on Facebook lately, and that's where I met the person in question. This wasn't someone who I knew very well - he'd posted a few questions on a group, as someone new to CR and trying to figure a few things out, and I offered some opinions here and there. At this point there were no hints of racism - it was never brought onto the groups - and after a while we did the whole Facebook friends thing. Then came the racism...Post after post after post on his status updates, some of which were trying to articulate a point, others of which were just the same racial slur repeated three or four times in one sentence, mostly aimed at 'Paki's' and Muslims, and how they're 'taking over Scotland' (or will do, within the next 50 years or so. Forcing Shariah law on us all etc).

After I suggested that perhaps he could refrain from engaging in such ignorance and offensiveness (that would be a polite rewording of what I said), he defended himself by saying he didn't see it as racist at all - he was just stating the facts - and that was that. Unfortunately it didn't stop any of the subsequent replies to the post arriving in my inbox, so some of his friends stepped in and agreed with him - it's not racist, defending your culture, especially when it's under attack from religious extremists. Close the borders! GAELIC PRIDE WORLDWIDE!

And of course, obviously I just don't know any better, wallowing here in my self-hating, liberal, politically correct white guilt.

Somebody obviously hadn't read up on CR and what it stands for, and this is what's really irked me about the whole thing, and that's why I've been stewing about it for a bit. It's not like there isn't a whole website dedicated to exactly that, or anything...Or in the CR FAQ:

People practicing or endorsing racism are not accepted as a part of CR any more than KKK members are accepted as a part of mainstream liberal Christian denominations. We work hard to expose people using CR or a link with Celtic culture as an excuse for racism and condemn them for their prejudices and acts of discrimination.

CR FAQ

And, seeing as racism and homophobia and all the rest tends to walk hand in hand, let's not forget:

Knowing that humanity originated on the African continent, we believe that we are all of one blood, all one human family. CR as a whole is strongly anti-racist and welcomes people of all races, ethnicities and colors who wish to follow Celtic deities in a CR style.

CR firmly and absolutely rejects racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination that divide people into warring camps.

CR Essay

It's sad that things like this need to be restated. It's sad that things like this even have to be said at all, but there you have it: It does, and may be the only thing that can be hoped for is that such people will decide that CR isn't for them after all.

As far as I'm concerned, there's no excuse for racism, and there's certainly no excuse for jumping into a religion so it can be twisted to give a veneer of spiritual justification for racism and ignorance, or to reinforce a twisted sense of cultural superiority. The sources we look to in the process of reconstructing our practices show that ignorance and lies are something to be reviled. Being inhospitable or ungracious towards your guests is considered to be utterly offensive. Racism and bigotry encompasses all of these things. It has no place in Celtic Reconstructionism at all. It has no place in Scotland either, and I'm glad that the nationalist party who are currently running the show at Holyrood feel the same. The same can't be said for the BNP. Or the EDL. Or the SDL. But I digress, perhaps.

As far as I see it, at the heart of Celtic Reconstructionism - in all its many expressions - what makes you a part of CR is what you do, how you act, the gods you worship. Skin colour, blood, sexuality, place of birth...These have nothing to do with making a person eligible or ineligible, better or worthier as a reconstructionist, and nor should they.

Thankfully these kind of bigots are very much a minority, but therein lies the problem, in some ways. Perhaps because these problems with racists are (generally) few and far between, racism and bigotry isn't something that's talked about as much as it should be within the community as a whole. In this instance, for example, it seems that at least one person didn't get the memo, anyway. Then again, there are always going to be some who jump in first and then read later, so there will always be a few who will probably ignore the obvious anyway.

A lot of the time it's the negative things that stick in people's minds rather than the positives, and the only way to try and counter them is to speak out against them. Even though it might be just a small minority, any racists or bigots that are given free rein could potentially damage the community as a whole, and mire CR in a seedy image of bigotry and white supremacy (and some people would say reconstructionists have enough of an image problem without being seen as a bunch of racist bigots as well). Without speaking out, they can go round spreading lies, and their racist agenda under the guise of religion, and then it's a black mark against us all. I'm not saying that the person I had a run in with is doing this, by the way. But I do think it's a potential risk that folks like this might take it upon themselves to do so.

It has to be said, the CR community as a whole has a pretty good track record on speaking out. It doesn't tolerate this kind of thing, as people like Steven Akins will know (never claiming to be a reconstructionist, though, because he could go one better, oh yes - an anciente druid manuscript with a stunning pedigree, surviving through the ages in the hands of pretty much every prominent occult personality in the history books, with nary a mention anywhere during the course of hundreds of years or so. Until it fell into the hands of a white supremacist with a dim view of Jews, homosexuals and queers, and reconstructionists in general, of course...).

If there's one thing that all kinds of CRs can agree on, whatever part of the umbrella they might shelter under, it's that racism and bigotry have no place here. Labels are a slippery thing; anyone can go round calling themselves a Celtic Reconstructionist whether they fit under that label or not, and they can go round saying what they like. One thing I hope people understand, though, is that this is not something that's tolerated by the community as a whole. And anyone who might be labouring under the misapprehension that it is tolerated, or even celebtrated, well...I think it's safe to say that there's no place for you here.

55. Tell him, let him be merciful, just, impartial, conscientious, firm, generous, hospitable, honourable, stable, beneficient, capable, honest, well-spoken, steady, true-judging.

Audacht Morainn

VICTORY!!!!

2011-09-07T10:33:00.000+01:00

Yes, that's a whole lot of exclamation marks there, but with good reason, I think.

I've just received a letter from the Perth and Kinross Council informing me that the Allt Cailliche Hydropower Scheme for Glen Lyon has been withdrawn.

I'm not sure if that means that the hydroscheme has been given up on entirely, or if there may be a revised application lodged in future, I've not found anything online about this yet. For now, though, it seems that the future of Tigh nam Bodach is a bit brighter than it was when the application was first lodged.

I'll keep a look out for any news on this, but at the moment I'm just so pleased and relieved that this has had a happy ending. It might just be the first hurdle, but for now I'll take the good news happily and celebrate.

Book Review: Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200

2011-09-05T18:27:00.000+01:00

Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200 (Longman History of Ireland Series)
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín

This is one of those books that's great for the history buff, and it's certainly one of the more readable tomes on the subject. Anyone looking for a good introduction to the early Medieval period in Ireland, this is probably the book I'd recommend you pick up first.

No, it's probably not the most exciting bedtime reading, but for considering what it aims to deliver to the reader, it does a fine job. It's primarily aimed at university level students or the serious amateur historian, so it offers a good introduction to pretty much all of the key areas you'll want to know about, and it's well-referenced if you want pointers to further reading. It's not too heavy on Teh Big Wurdz and jargon so you won't be stuck reading the same paragraph again and again, trying to figure out what the hell it's supposed to be saying - always a plus in my book.

The areas covered include the beginnings of Christianity, the Church and its influence, the growth of early Medieval Irish literature, society and law, the Vikings, and then a bit about the political landscape. Each chapter covers a specific topic and is fairly self-contained, and provides a good introduction to the main points and issues surrounding that particular subject.

In addition to all of this, because it's fairly wide-ranging in its scope it makes a good place to start if you want to get an idea of the basics without having to spring for several lengthier books that go into more detail. It gives a solid foundation before you think about going on to the more specialised (denser and perhaps drier) books like Kelly's Early Irish Law, Patterson's Cattle Lords and Clansmen, Byrne's Irish Kings and High Kings, or McCone's Pagan Past and Christian Present, and so on...Educational and efficient! Nobody could complain about that in today's economic climate, eh?

You won't find much in here about pre-Christian Ireland, although there is a good discussion on the arguments for and against the pre-Christian origins of ogam. The lack of anything particularly meaty about pre-Christian Ireland might be off-putting to some, but what it does do is give a good idea of the kind of things surrounding the time when the tales were being written down, and how influential the Church came to be, and so on. This is all good stuff to know, even if it doesn't help in giving any practical ideas.

There isn't much that detracts from the book in terms of content; I'm sure some could criticise parts of it for not going into enough detail here and there, but at the end of the day, it's an introduction and it can't cover everything. It's not necessarily the cheapest book you'll find, especially if you buy it new, but otherwise if there's just one book you want to splurge on for introducing you to medieval Irish history, then I'd probably recommend this one.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

2011-09-01T22:54:00.000+01:00

Another bout of tweaking, this time some reorganising of the Resources section.

The links section has been a bit of a mess for a while now, so I've done some tidying up and reformatting there; any dead links should be gone now, and I've added in some more bits and pieces, but also removed some to keep the focus more tightly on Gaelic Reconstructionist Polytheism. I've decided to stick to what I know, as it were, to avoid confusion.

In the process of all that I decided to split off the pdf and .doc files into a new page:

Article Downloads

And then I decided to reorganise the Big Book List. That involved splitting off the older books into a list on its own:

Antiquarian Books

This is mainly because these are often the kinds of books that are problemmatic in one way or another, and it's unwieldy to have them lumped all together with the more reliable ones. They can still be useful but I think it's better to get a solid footing in the more modern works first.

Anyway, that's it for now...

Some changes and tweaking

2011-08-29T13:12:00.000+01:00

With the kids back at school and some time to myself again, I've started concentrating on writing and research in my spare time again. I spent most of the summer trying to come up with some ideas of what to do next but nothing's really inspired me yet. Instead, I kept coming back to the idea of cleaning up what's already there; some of the older stuff on the website is in need of tidying up and redoing, especially in light of the progress I've made elsewhere, and I decided that some reorganisation was in order, too.

Since I started on this incarnation of the website in 2008 I've added quite a lot of articles and it's getting really unwieldy. There's not really much I can do about that right now, but after the latest slew of articles focusing on the gods, spirits and ancestors, I've kept thinking they need to organised a little better so I've finally split them off from the Cosmology section where I originally stuck them, and put them in their own section titled 'Gods'. I've also moved my old dissertation on the Dagda, and the article on the Cailleach into that section, seeing as they come under that heading too.

The biggest changes are in the Introduction section, though. As time goes by my thoughts on certain things are solidifying, I suppose, and lurking around various parts of the internet as I do I've seen some questions come up repeatedly. I've also seen some comments on what I've already written (and have been 'accused' of being American on one site, which amused me greatly. I'm not sure which amuses me more, though - whether it's because it seemed like that would be a bad thing, or because they decided I 'sound' American...) and some good points were made, so I decided to expand on the 'Celtic' Reconstructionism? article to address those. Some of it's just trying to clarify or explain things a bit better. Some of it I've added in to try and address the questions I see popping up a lot - like the differences between CR and Druidry.

The Scottish Reconstructionism article that followed on from 'Celtic Reconstructionism' has now been renamed and reworked a little too. I decided to rename it to Gaelic Reconstructionist Polytheism to better reflect where I'm at right now (and had been thinking about doing it for a while) - a bit of a mouthful, but the 'reconstructionist' bit seemed necessary to distinguish it from other kinds of Gaelic Polytheisms that aren't reconstructionist, like Sinnsreachd. Terminology: It's complicated.

There are some minor tweaks to the next article that's still up there - How To Get Started - and for now there's another article I've taken down while I decide what to do with it...There's a lot more that needs doing over all, especially for the links section, but I need to figure out how I can do that properly.

As ever, comments are welcome...

Frankenstein's ancestors...

2011-08-23T19:36:00.000+01:00

Now here's something that's really interesting for you...

Ten ago the remains of several mummified corpses were found during a dig on South Uist - something that was exciting enough on its own, perhaps, but not least because they were then found to date from the Bronze Age. The evidence suggested that the corpses had been deliberately mummified, and had been placed in a bog for at least a year before being removed and then kept for many generations before they were finally buried.

Aside from being unique at the time, the find was exciting on a number of levels - providing evidence on Bronze Age burial practice, giving clear hints at what was presumed to be ancestor worship, as well as the implications as far as a belief in an afterlife are concerned, amongst other things.

The bodies were identified as male and female. Recent testing, however, has revealed that the mummies are in fact composites, made up of several different individuals and not all of the same sex:

A team from the University of Sheffield first uncovered the remains of a three-month-old-child, a possible young female adult, a female in her 40s and a male under the prehistoric village of Cladh Hallan.

But recent tests on the remains carried out by the University of Manchester, show that the "female burial", previously identified as such because of the pelvis of the skeleton, was in fact a composite.

It was made up of three different people, and some parts, such as the skull, were male.

Radiocarbon dating and stable isotope analysis showed that the male mummy was also a composite.

From the Beeb

Aside from there being implications in this new discovery as far as ancestor worship/veneration is concerned, it's also thought that:

"These could be kinship components, they are putting lineages together, the mixing up of different people's body parts seems to be a deliberate act," [Prof Parker Pearson] said.

(Somehow I doubt the various body parts came together by accident, so er, yeah...definitely deliberate). So not only is there possible evidence of ancestor worship here, the mummies could also be evidence of how social bonds were formed and maintained within a community - or one way in which that was done, at least. The find also raises some interesting questions about sex and gender in Bronze Age communities - is the mixing of sexes significant, relating to their function? Or perhaps the sex of the various corpses that were incorporated was incidental, and their status or role in the community was more significant...

Who knows. It's speculated that there are other mummies out there that may have been overlooked in the past - due to the state of their preservation, or whatever (once they're put in the ground, the mummified flesh wouldn't survive unless the conditions were just right, so you wouldn't necessarily realise that straight away). But given the fact that Bronze Age burial practice is something that seems to have continued into the the early Iron Age, there are some interesting questions there too.

More on the Laois bog body

2011-08-20T18:00:00.001+01:00

Following on from my previous post about the bog body from Laois...Good news everyone, it's not a woman, it's a sacrificed king! OK, it could be. Let's be clear on that.

What was originally thought to have been a pair of well-preserved female legs, with the rest of the body being in poor condition (having been placed in a leather bag), turns out to have been a mistake. Further analysis has shown that the body was simply in a very contorted position, and the 'leather bag' was actually the man's torso.

Naturally, it's now being speculated that this is a sacrificed king, as per The Golden Bough era of interpretation:

“Irish kings in the ancient period were replaced after a number of years. The old king would be sacrificed and a new king chosen. It ties in with their religious beliefs surrounding the solar deity (male) and the deity of the land (female). The king ties in with the solar cycle – the waxing and waning of the sun.

The idea was that the king was married to the sovereignty, or the land. The goddess would become old and withered and she would need a new young consort to return her to youth and vigor and beauty. So the old king would be killed and a new one take his place. They wouldn’t have been that old, either.”

Irish Central

But that's not all! Remember the article about Old Croghan Man, with the nipples "representing the life-giving sun" being cut off? Yup. The article about the Laois bog body has the same expert commenting:

They will be pay [sic] particular attention to the bog body’s nipples. Whether or not his nipples have been cut could indicate whether he was a king.

Kelly explained “The kissing or suckling of a king’s nipples was a gesture of submission,” Kelly said. “So by cutting the nipples, the king was being decommissioned.”

Irish Central

Other researchers have apparently claimed that the state of Old Croghan Man's nipples could be nothing more than the result of damage to delicate tissue from the waterlogged conditions, and aren't necessarily purposeful or the result of ritual, so it's not really clear that the nipples are a marker of ritual activity at all.

Either way, once again there's nothing particularly substantial offered in the Laois bog body article to concretely link the body with a human sacrifice or kingship. It's assumed that this is (or is likely to be) a king; it's assumed that this is (or is likely to be) a sacrifice, but very little is offered to support or even counter those points in order to provide a little balance. Yes, bogs are liminal places, and it's well-known that such liminal places - neither one thing another (land or water, in this case) - are often a focus of ritual activity or mythological symbolism. But it's equally the case that bogs by their very nature provide conditions where bodies are more likely to be preserved, and so the very idea of 'bog bodies' being a ritual thing could really simply be the result of accidents of preservation skewing our view.

All in all, it's not a very balanced article. The issue of human sacrifice is by no means universally accepted because it's notoriously difficult to prove conclusively. We can compare the Irish or the Celts as a whole to other cultures at the time who were also said to have practiced human sacrifice at some point or other, and say that on the balance of evidence it's likely that the Celts did too. But we can't really prove that what we find in the bogs is indicative of sacrificial intent. We can see that many of these bodies were dispatched in very specific ways. We can see there might even be a lot of similarities in the method (the so-called 'triple-fold death' method).

All too often these things get wrapped up in assumption, without considering the other side of the coin - the skeptics, those who are a little more cautious to leap to such conclusions (that doesn't make for such an exciting article, though, does it?). Sometimes people get a little too caught up in the imagination and then you end up with claims like Lindow Man being sacrificed by druids at Bealltainn simply because some mistletoe pollen was discovered in the contents of his stomach.

I was trying to find an article on this called 'Did they fall or were they pushed? Some unresolved questions about bog bodies?' by C. S. Briggs - well worth a read if you want a good, balanced view of the for and against, in ands outs of human sacrifice. I couldn't find that available online but I did find these ones that cite him, and look like they have some interesting things to say:

'Humans as ritual victims in the later prehistory of Western Europe,' by Miranda Green
Bodies from the Bog: Metamorphosis, Non-human Agency, and the Making of 'Collective Memory,' by Stuart McLean
Lindow Man

Lùnastal

2011-08-18T14:13:00.001+01:00

Summer is well and truly on its way out. The kids are back at school, the trees are hanging heavy with fruit, and the brambles are all but finished flowering and getting ready to ripen.

We've managed one whole ripened blueberry so far:

But once the rest start to ripen it looks like we'll be getting a bumper crop this year. In spite of the single, solitary ripe berry, I decided it was time to celebrate Lùnastal anyway; there's a chill in the morning air now, the days are drawing in, and the kids have gone back to school/nursery. From now on I think that will be a marker of autumn starting for us, because it ties in nicely with the summer ending and the new season beginning, and it tends to coincide with the kids needing new clothes and school uniforms, and having to think about the cooler or colder days ahead of us. It's a nice way to finish off the summer holidays and we still have time to fit most of the things I want to do in (in theory) without having to juggle it around school and homework and making sure the kids aren't too tired from a long day, and that they get to bed early enough etc.

So on Monday we celebrated, ahead of school starting on Wednesday. There wasn't much in the way of fruits to harvest, but I did manage to start harvesting some of the veg in the garden, so it was very much a start of the harvest season for us. The brilliant sunshine of the summer has turned to rain for the last few weeks or so, which has done wonders for the carrots and I realised they were looking about ready for pulling up. Whether it was because of the late start to the Spring season, or the fact that the soil was a little exhausted, or both, the veg has been slow to take off this year. I sowed the carrots back in May and I've read they should be about ready in 70 days or so, but they've only really just taken off.

Last year, I managed to harvest some gloriously mutoid looking Cthulu carrots:

This time round, I made sure I sowed the seeds a bit deeper, thinned the seedlings out properly if it was necessary, and had a go at making sure the soil was nice and loose. And this is what I ended up with:

There are still some growing - I tried a batch of purple carrots as well and they seem to be struggling to do much, along with a few more of these (I think they're a basic Nantes variety, but it just says 'organic carrot seeds' on the pack), but these ones came out spectacularly well. I pulled them up with a harvesting prayer (which I made up on the spot but with this sort of form in mind) - twisting each one out of the ground sunwise, and I managed to pull up a leek that had already matured as well (I think it grew from a leftover, broken off bit of leek I pulled up in the early Springtime, so it had a head start on the rest of the leeks I've sown, which languished for a long while in pots before I had the wherewithall to put them into the containers. They'll come later).

The onions aren't yet ready, but the carrots and the leeks meant I had the perfect opportunity for a good stew. The kids (and husband) clamored for a raw carrot each, and the rest went into to stew with the leek, some potatoes, onion, mushrooms, peas, and cabbage on the side. For afters I made cranachan and a choice of shortbread or oat crumblies to go with it, along with fresh raspberries; a good traditional harvest pudding. I had a go at some raspberry coulis as well. Once again the raspberry bushes in the garden haven't done much this year - no fruit, but at least they've grown well. Or one of them has. Hopefully that will help it survive the next winter a bit better, and give it a chance to fruit next year. The rowan has had a modest first fruiting, though:

Next year I might try picking some to dry and use for charms and such, like I did for my first year after moving here, but this year, these berries are for the spirits, I think.

So. We had dinner with our homegrown leek and carrots, followed by the cranachan (the crumblies were delicious, and follow a bannock sort of recipe so I counted them as that. It was a last minute decision and the first time I've tried them; I was going to try a struan bread to go with the stew but aside from a lack of funds to splurge on all of the ingredients at the moment, I'm a bit beyond being able to knead dough right now - still). Then, after dinner had settled a bit, the kids and I went outside to do some races - bike racing, scooter races, followed by a more sedate bubble blowing and catching competition at the kids' insistence. Tom decided he wanted to try riding his bike with the stabilisers off, so there was some wobbly and cautious attempts at that, too. We finished with a game of snap so I could join in as well, and the kids could calm down a bit before bed. Tom won at the scooting, while Rosie won at the cards so I declared them both champions; I declared that the bubbles couldn't have a winner after Rosie decided to use an umbrella to even out her slight height disadvantage against her older brother, but it was all in good fun and good spirits. For once Rosie didn't throw a strop at losing something, so the spirit of peace was kept.

After the kids went to bed I did my ritual stuff as usual - devotions, offerings, singing of praises, saining, protective charms, and so on. It was a still, quiet night and the clouds had dispersed enough for some stars to twinkle in the sky and the full(ish) moon was bright enough to cast moonlight shadows. I didn't catch any last bits of the meteor shower, though, but there was a gentle breeze that played with my hair as I meditated and talked into the night. The stillness and then the odd breeze now and then made it feel like I was being listened to, like the calm night air was swallowing my words and thoughts and taking its fill.

Once I'd done my devotions and the saining, most of the evening was spent making rowan charms - I tried a few different styles, and tried using beads and additional charms as well to make them a bit more decorative. After all that, sleep was most welcome.

In the morning there wasn't much time for anything because the kids and I had to get the train to meet my mother-in-law - she was very kindly splurging on Tom and Rosie's winter wardrobes and it was a last minute arrangement. I'd planned to make butter and cheese that day (our last day of freedom) - maybe some bread if I was up to it - and take the kids for a picnic down to the beach (there have been some sightings of sharks so we were going to go and see if we could spot them), but those plans have had to be put on hold. By the time we got home from shopping we were all pretty knackered, so there was just about enough energy for putting up our autumn decorations:

We did these a week or two ago. I promised Tom that we'd do some 'stained glass' pictures after he did them at school, and by the time we got around to it I figured we should take the opprtunity to resume our tradition of making seasonal decorations for the house. On one of our walks around the village - taking the dogs to the woods - we'd spotted a squirrel climbing up the pebble dashing of the school and at one point it clung on upside down and then flopped onto the guttering for a wee rest. The kids thought it was hilarious and we talked about how the squirrel would be stocking up on nuts for winter, and the conkers would be ripe soon, and so on, so that gave me the idea for our theme. I Googled for stained glass patterns and found this one, which I copied free hand onto card and then cut one out for each of us (I'd credit the source but I can't find it now...); Rosie needed a little help with hers, but this one is all Tom's own work (aside from me tidying up the edges). I think it came out well.

Along with sticking up our artwork, there was the experimenting with skeachan recipes too. That was about it, aside from more offerings to round off a sedate finish to the celebrations. For now. We'll probably try and do our picnic and dairy stuff at the weekend, if the weather improves.

Skeachan Cake

2011-08-17T11:08:00.000+01:00

Every now and then I take it upon myself to try and master a new recipe or two, especially if it's a good old stodgy traditional Scottish kind of thing. For a while now, on and off, I've been experimenting with trying to make a Skeachan cake - a 'treacle ale' cake. It's basically a fruit cake, made with a little black treacle and ginger, and the fruit is soaked in ale for about 24 hours before baking to make them all soft and juicy.

Technically skeachan is the 'treacle ale' - ale flavoured with black treacle, ginger and some other flavourings. I have a recipe for the skeachan itself (though I've not tried making it yet), but not the cake, so I had to look one up online. There were several to choose from but they all seemed to be lacking something, I thought, though I wasn't quite sure what - aside from not including enough ginger. Then one day I went on a trip to Luss - a nice little village on the shores of Loch Lomond with a fantastic tea room (they do the best soup I've ever tasted) - and they had some skeachan cake on offer. Obviously, for research purposes, I decided it was necessary to indulge in a slice.

After trying that and comparing my previous efforts, I found the recipes weren't far off after all, but definitely more ginger was needed, and the kind of ale you soak the fruit in is key. On the first few goes I tried some locally brewed pale ale and then a heather ale (Fraoch), but I think the cake needs a good heavy beer, so I ended up trying Guinness instead. That did the trick for my tastebuds. The cake I tried was topped with slices of crystallised ginger, which I think was definitely the missing ingredient. Now, after a bit of experimenting, I think I've cracked it:

It's a good cake for festive occasions and quite moist compared to some fruit cakes, and it's similar to the traditional Christmas black bun (but a bit less fiddly to make). So here's the recipe, if you want to try it:

Skeachan Cake

I cook by weights, but I've tried to adapt it to volumes as well. Bear in mind that I've rounded everything up to the nearest quarter cup for the sake of ease; the exact volume to weight ratios are a little less, but that shouldn't make much difference overall. You can easily adjust the ratios of dried fruit if you prefer (I like to use more sultanas and raisins, and a little less currant and peel), as well as the amount of ginger you use. I use quite a lot to give a fiery kick to it, but you might want to add it gradually to see how you prefer it. I've outlined the traditional method of combining the ingredients below, but you can get good results by just putting the ingredients for the cake batter altogether in a mixer, and then just stir in the fruit.

For a non-alcoholic version I think soaking the dried fruit in a flat ginger beer or cordial could work, adapting the amount of dried ginger for the batter.

Ingredients

225g (1 1/4 cups) Raisins

225g (1 1/4 cups) Sultanas (golden raisins)

350g (2 1/4 cups) Currants

75g (1/4 cup) Citrus peel

250ml (1/2 cup) Ale

225g (1 cup/2 sticks) Butter

225g (1 1/4 cups) Dark brown muscavado sugar

1tbsp Black treacle (or molasses)

4 large eggs

225g (1 1/2 cups) Plain flour

3 tbsp (approx.) Ground ginger

1 tsp Mixed spice

200g (approx) Crystallised ginger

Optional: Glacé cherries

Method

1. Soak the raisins, sultanas, currants and citrus peel in the ale for at least 24 hours, stirring occasionally.

2. Preheat the oven to 160C (adjust for a fan oven - about 10C less) and grease a large cake tin.

3. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.

4. Beat in the treacle, followed by the eggs.

5. Mix in the flour and spices (to taste).

6. Stir in the soaked fruits and the cherries.

7. Pile the mixture into the cake tin and cover the top with the crystallised ginger, using scissors to cut it to the desired thickness.

8. Bake for about 2 1/2 hours, or until cooked.

9. Allow to cool, then enjoy. Goes nicely with a little bit of cranachan.

An outsider looking in

2011-08-15T09:47:00.001+01:00

One of the recent posts over at the Wild Hunt blog got me thinking (dangerous, I know). It wasn't so much the posts that got me thinking - though I was glad to see it being covered - but the comments, really, many of which (at first) I found to be disappointing or just sad and apathetic.

Jason made a post on the recent protests and actions against the threat to the San Francisco Peaks; in short, there are plans to expand a ski resort in the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, despite the fact that the mountains are considered to be sacred by the indigenous groups there. The resort want to use wastewater to make snow - something that the protesters are objecting to strongly.

This isn't the only point that's being protested against, but for some reason people seem to be getting hung up on it, rather than looking at the bigger picture. In order to get the snow up there, pipelines will have to be laid, which will involve bulldozing ceremonial sites and digging up part of the mountain in order to lay the pipe. The comments in response to Jason's article were almost overwhelmingly - at first, anyway: "So? We use wastewater for drinking as well, it's only a bit of snow."

I find this kind of response is disappointing on many levels. Judgements were being made with little attention to the actual facts, and instead only one aspect is being focused on that is being dismissed as irrelevant. Even if the type of water being used for the snow was the only issue at stake here, however, the fact remains that the proposals go against the religious beliefs of a people and a minority. Their religious beliefs are being ridden roughshod over for the sake of profit; once again, a sacred site is under threat because money is to be made from it, and those who are protesting against it are being dismissed as a vocal minority with no real point or purpose. Is it just me, or is there a big disconnect here?

One of the things that a lot of Gaelic Polytheists - reconstructionists - have to reconcile is the fact that while we honour the dé ocus an-dé, the "gods and ungods" within a specific cultural focus, most of us aren't living in the lands where those gods originated from. And yet a large part of our practice focuses on building a relationship with the land we live in, as well as the spirits who live there.

Tied in with that, one of the inevitable questions for some folk is how to respect local beliefs (and spirits) that aren't Gaelic (I'd say "Irish, Scottish, or Manx", but that's a bit of a mouthful), and carry out our practices without causing offence. In the US there are some practices that are taboo in indigenous practice that are common in a Gaelic context; in Ireland, for example, it's common to pour a drop of whatever your tipple is - a wee offering for the Good Folk - if you happen to enjoy a drink outside. For some indigenous people, alcohol is a taboo and considered a poison for the ground. As much as it's a simple matter of respect and common sense not to piss off local spirits by offering what they might consider poison, it could also be considered a matter of hospitality. Hospitality is considered to be a virtue in Gaelic Polytheism, and that should include taking into account the needs and wants of our honoured guests.

Sacred places are increasingly coming under threat at the expense of progress. Whether it's the hydro-electric proposals that are threatening the safety and integrity of Tigh nam Bodach and Gleann Cailliche, or the motorway that ploughed its way through the Tara-Skryne valley, or the Slane Bypass that protester's claimed threatened Newgrange's status as a World Heritage site (which has been given a reprieve - for now - thanks to the ongoing economic downturn)...or whether it's something like the San Francisco Peaks that's at stake. It's a slow and seemingly inevitable march.

Pitted against progress and profit, there is the question of conservation and cultural integrity. These two sides often seem at odds, and I think ultimately if we want our own beliefs and sacred places to be respected and protected, then it's an issue that goes both ways. It's a case of being stronger together, and supporting others in their struggles to preserve their own sites even if it's not on our own turf, or relating to our own religion.

As a reconstructionist, I honour the gods from a specific culture. Part of my focus is looking to the lore, the history, the archaeology of that culture. I see that culture preserved within the landscape around me here, in the language on the signposts by the side of the road and in shops (always underneath the English, in smaller lettering as if a lesser language, however). Around me lie the memories, experiences and expressions of those beliefs and practices that I aim to incorporate into my life - such as that might be. This land I see around me is sacred, and I'm not the only one to share that view:

Cairns at Loch Loyne, 2008

Even today, people leave a mark, a sign of remembrance and perhaps thanks at having been present in such a landscape (and this isn't the only place I've seen).

Given my views it's only natural that I might err on the side of conservation, and I can understand why others do too. Why some people - pagans, reconstructionists, polytheists who also might see the land as sacred - don't care about these things, I don't understand. What's happening at the San Francisco Peaks, and probably many other places around the world, they're not happening in my back yard. There's probably not a lot I can do about it, being all the way across the Pond. But as a polytheist and an animist it saddens me that these places are being lost, and in the process freedoms are also being lost. Apathy reigns and big business wins, all because it's just a bit of snow.

But it's not. It's not just snow. It's not just a few pylons, or just a road. It's all wrapped up in belief and tradition, sacredness and ceremony, integrity and culture. None of that should be lost for a ski slope, or a road, or a hydro-electric scheme. At the least, none of it should be lost without a fight for it first.

'Late prehistoric' bog body found in Laois bog

2011-08-12T15:01:00.000+01:00

Thought to be the body of a woman, with some interesting details about the deposition of the body:

The body is estimated to be over 2,000 years old. It appears the torso and head, which were in a leather bag, did not survive. The legs, however, were not enclosed by the bag and were preserved by chemicals in the peat.

Found in the Cul na Móna bog between Abbeyleix and Portlaoise, it was discovered by an employee operating a milling machine on Wednesday evening.

Irish Times

Heilan' coo's mostly...

2011-08-06T20:53:00.000+01:00

Ooooooh yeah, down a bit...That's it...

Susie likes having a good wash. She's a show heifer, so she needs to look her best before the judges come and see her. Today she only had a shampoo and blow-dry (no, really), but usually she'd have a bit of conditioner rubbed in too. Timotei is the best, apparently. It takes about 5 litres per cow. Coo.

We met Susie (Siusan) today at a family event in Glasgow, along with some of her friends. And her daughter, also called Susie:

Mum is Susie Ruadh ('red'), while daughter is Susie Dubh ('black'), because one day this wee calf will end up black all over, just like her dad. Susie Dubh was only born in April, while I think her mum must be at least four or so.

Susie Dubh lapped up all of the attention and enjoyed a good scratch or two, especially on her chest and all the hard-to-scratch places a cow might have (at the front anyway!). They have very soft and thick coats. I could've petted them all day.

This is their friend, Una Ruadh:

In addition to a good bit of grass or hay, it seems they enjoy nibbling on zips and licking body warmers given half a chance. One little girl was horrified when she realised that her beautiful purple body warmer was covered in cow schleb. It seemed rude not to point out what the cow was doing to it once I noticed...

I don't think I noted this one's name down:

She's only a yearling, and is obviously unimpressed with being shown off to the great unwashed. Some of her friends had a little adventure recently, after a dog walker let their three dogs off their leads to run rampage through the country park where the herds of Highland cow's graze. As a result of the dogs giving the yearlings some unwanted attention, several took fright and stampeded, taking down fences and hedges until they ended up in the south-side of Glasgow. I think seven managed to escape from the park and end up in the city, and one of them apparently even wandered into a mechanic's garage, damaging a few cars before being rounded up safely and taken home (imagine explaining that one to the insurance company!). Luckily, none of them were injured, just a little freaked. If this is one of the heifers involved, she's not telling. She's feeling a bit coy:

Who, me?

The heilan' coos had a few friends along too, including a very chirpy-looking Anglo-Nubian goat:

And a Welsh badger-faced lamb:

For once, I met some horses that didn't hate me - these were Clydesdales, called Duke and Baron:

They enjoyed a good scratch too.

So, to conclude: I got to pet some heilan' coo's, and now I can die happy...

Online research tips for the beginner

2011-08-03T23:03:00.000+01:00

After seeing a few things around and about on the subject of books and the internet, as far as the beginner is concerned, I figured I'd put a few thoughts of my own together. Books - and other sources - are a tricky subject for the beginner because it's difficult to know where to start, and what to rely on. And especially when that involves looking on the internet.

It's all well and good being pointed towards a book list - even a short one aimed at beginners, like the one on the CR FAQ. I think the books listed there are excellent choices, but one problem a lot of folks have is investing the money in buying those books. There are plenty of places that these kinds of books can be found second hand at more than reasonable prices, but even so, that might be stretching an already non-existent budget too far for many these days.

There's always the option of trying to find them at the library, but that's not necessarily a satisfactory solution if you have to order them through Inter-Library Loan, if that's an option at all (I'm lucky I can get access to an academic library, because a lot of the books I want I couldn't get at my local library, unfortunately). It's important to remember that these books are recommended for a reason - they're not perfect, by any means, but they offer a lot of good information that wll give any fledgling reconstructionist a good start.

In the internet age, though, people are increasingly used to finding answers straight away, and looking things up on Google offers a much quicker and cheaper solution, and it might be tempting to ignore books that aren't freely available in favour of those that are. There are lots of books and articles available online, in full, along with plenty of websites dealing with various kinds of 'Celtic Paganisms' that might appeal to the beginner. The problem with this, of course, is that websites aren't necessarily always reliable or trustworthy, and nor are books. This post here on Discernment offers a lot of good advice on how to approach and assess the reliability of different sources, and Maya's essay here makes a good compliment to that.

The internet can be incredibly useful as a tool for research, if it's used wisely. It can also be a minefield, but knowing where to look - and how - can help narrow things down. Instead of just doing a web search, using Google Scholar can help you find far more reliable sources than you normally would (though I find a lot of neo-pagan sources crop up there as well, and while that might not be so bad for some, they're not necessarily the sort of focus I'm looking for), and while much of it may not be freely available, you can often find a few gems that are downloadable as pdfs. For many, admittedly, this is just a quicker route to a rapidly expanding wishlist...

One of the biggest advantages researching online can offfer is all of those free books, and occasionally articles or journals that are fully available, for free. Again, though, it's a double-edged sword. It's tempting to assume that just because a book seems to be well-written and well-researched, and has an authoritative or academic tone, then it's all good. This isn't always the case, because the author often has their own approach and bias in how they look at the sources, so it often helps to know where they're coming from, and to read as widely as possible in order to try and balance one view, or one approach, with another. Those pointers I've linked to above will come in handy - I think at the most simplest level, the best thing to remember when you're reading something is asking the question where did that come from? Until you know, and can see it's from a good source, look elsewhere as well and try to verify the point. If it seems a little off the wall, it probably is.

When you're reading academic tomes in particular, it helps to know the kind of angle they're coming from. I've outlined some of the approaches to Celtic Studies and Archaeology here already, and bearing this in mind is a good way to make your own mind up on things. Reading books on the same subject from these different approaches might leave you with conflicting views on certain things, and you're going to have to make your own mind up and decide what you think is right. When you start doing your own research, you'll find that there are rarely any quick answers.

There's sometimes a tendency to dismiss older books in favour of newer ones, simply because they're old and therefore out of date. Most of those books and articles that are available online are out of print, and yes, it's a good thing to remember that there's often a lot wrong with older books, simply because of the way approaches to research and interpretation have changed over the years. But that doesn't automatically make new books better, or strip those older books of any value whatsoever. There's a lot of stuff in those older sources that come in very handy to the modern reconstructionist, not least because there are translations of material that have since been relatively ignored. Since these older sources are now out of copyright they are often easily found online, in full, and this is where we come back to the issue of relying on the internet, and these free sources, in our reading.

Aside from Google Scholar, some of the best places to start looking are on archive.org, sacred-texts.com, or Google Books, and there's also a huge library of Scottish-focused books at Electric Scotland as well as lots of books on the Isle of Man at isleofman.com. (Scribd can also be a minefield of useful books, but they're not always books that are copyright free and there's a tendency for them to disappear once they're discovered, so it can be hit or miss.)

And that's nice and all, but when you're being cautioned about these books being potentially problematic sources, where do you start? While I would say that the histories that you can find are often very outdated in approach and you're probably better off sticking with more up to date books, one of the biggest strengths of some of these old sources is that they can contain eye-witness accounts of customs and traditions that have since died out or only continue privately. Many of these can be found in old journals (for example, when I was researching stuff for the Michaelmas struan, I found some particularly useful articles at archive.org).

Alexander Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica is one of the best sources to look if you're wanting inspiration for practices:

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3

There are six volumes in all, but because of the way they were published, over several decades, not all of them are out of copyright yet. The full six volume set will probably set you back a pretty penny, but you can buy an abridged version that just contains the English translations cheaply, which makes a good starting place. With the abridged version you lose the Gàidhlig and the extensive notes/glossary and indexing that you find in the full volume set. Then again, the first two volumes in particular are the most helpful to the aspiring reconstructionist, because later volumes were 'improved' and 'polished' more so than the first two. The volumes available online are therefore perhaps the most helpful for the beginner (though the others shouldn't be ignored, by any means).

Compare Carmichael's work with Douglas Hyde's Religious Songs of Connacht, and you'll see a lot of similarities along the way, which is especially helpful if you want to work out your own songs or prayers and base them on, and it goes to show that what Carmichael recorded on those remote islands can be just as useful for the Irish Reconstructionist as the Scottish, or simply Gaelic (labels are a tricky thing).

Looking on archive.org, you'll find a wealth of good stuff if you look up Folklore journals, or the Celtic Review, or search for well known and prolific authors like Kuno Meyer and Whitley Stokes. Much of this work will be outdated, and especially in the case of the translations provided by Meyer and Stokes, are much in need of looking at again in a modern context. This is happening, but it isn't necessarily widely available, and in the meantime we can find some gems in albeit somewhat imperfect formats.

As for websites, maryjones.us is a great starting point, which is good for a reconstructionist in particular, and links that I've posted previously, like to the Ulster Institutional Repository and the Carmichael Watson Project. Looking at the various universities who offer Celtic Studies as a discipline can also be helpful, such as Ulster, Belfast, Dublin, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Berkeley, Harvard, and so on. Otherwise - generally speaking - a good way to determine the reliability of a website is that if it actively sparkles, it's probably not too good as far as historical accuracy and research go. References also help.

What can I say? Sometimes I'm a bit slow...

2011-08-03T22:19:00.000+01:00

Thanks to some random and unrelated Googling, I accidentally discovered that the Carmichael Watson project has a blog.

Given the time of year an' all, I thought I'd just leave a pointer to a very handy article on the tradition of the Corn Dolly (or Cailleach) in Scotland:

Once a widespread European custom was to form a corn dolly or maiden out of the last sheaf at harvest time. Traditions of such customs were still in living memory during the 1960s in Scotland, and perhaps they are still being carried out in some parts of Europe.

The Carmichael Watson Project

I really should pay more attention to these things. Lots of good stuff there...

Mountains, mostly

2011-07-31T21:49:00.000+01:00

A very happy Lùnastal to you all!

I'll be waiting for my blueberries to ripen in the garden before I start my own celebrations, like I usually do, and it looks like they'll be at least another week yet. In the meantime I've been doing a few bits and pieces in preparation - some pictures with the kids, along with planning for things the kids and I can do together - making butter, some shortbread, cranachan and bannocks, and having a proper go at making some Lùnastal crowdie this time, and thinking of playing some games we can all play (nothing too physical for me, though. Hmph).

Anyway, during the summer holidays we were planning a few outings at least, with a holiday up in the far north of Scotland, and a trip down to England to see my family. An unexpected tax bill has pretty much scuppered those ideas, but seeing as my husband got some camping gear for his birthday we decided to go on a short camping trip this weekend - just an over night stay, but that suited me fine considering we were kind of experimenting with how my back would tolerate a long journey and sleeping in a tent (the answer being, the tent was fine, but not so happy with being stuck in a car).

We were originally thinking of heading to Perthshire so I could indulge myself with a trip to Tigh nam Bodach (perhaps my husband thought I might finally shut up about it...); but with the kids in tow and it being situated in a fairly remote location, and the uncertain back factor, a trek to those parts seemed doomed to wailing from tired children, or me. Instead we decided to head to Glen Coe, with the tent, the kids and the dogs in tow, and so we set off on Saturday morning in glorious sunshine.

The roads were busy through Loch Lomond, but the traffic thinned out considerably once we turned off onto the road to Glen Coe and we had a good run. The route takes you through Rannoch Moor - which is just beautiful. Empty though the roads were, it seemed it was mainly because everyone had stopped in the few parking places available. We couldn't stop and take a good look around, so I had to take a few snaps out of the window along the way:

The Rannoch Moor is the start of the Highlands 'proper' - technically I think the Highland Line starts at Ben Lomond, but the sign welcoming you to the Highlands is situated right as you enter the moor. Here's another view:

Aaaand:

As you get to the end of the moor you enter into Glen Coe, and the landscape closes in, with just a road winding through the mountains:

Some very fine mountains, too:

We pitched our tent at the campsite next to the Glen Coe visitor centre, and headed off to find a park for the kids to run off some steam before dinner and then bedtime. My husband managed to rip his only pair of shorts while he put the tent up, so there was a stop to find a new pair of trousers, too...

In the evening, I walked the dogs along an old path that eventually led into Glen Coe village; along the way I stumbled across the remains of an old blackhouse (and kicked myself for not having my camera). According to the information board, nine trees were planted around the house to commemorate the nine people were killed there during the Glen Coe massacre, but legend has it that there was a tenth - a small boy, whose terrified screams made a soldier pause and think twice about killing the poor child in cold blood. The soldier decided he couldn't bring himself to do it, so cut one of the boy's fingers off instead, and wiped the blood on his sword to convince his superior the boy was dead. Years later, the old soldier returned to the glen and stopped for a drink at the pub. He got drunk and began rambling on to the bar man about his regrets at the terrible things he'd done during the massacre, but for the one life he saved - the wee boy, whose finger he'd cut off. The bar man listened intently, and then, when the old soldier had finished, he held up a hand and showed a finger was missing.

I wonder how many stories like that there are.

After a very uncomfortable night, thanks to a slowly deflating mattress and being punched in the face twice by Rosie's nocturnal fidgeting, we got up bright and early and had our breakfast, packed up, and began heading home. The weather had taken a turn for the worse during the night, so it was mostly damp and dismal today. We took a detour along the coastal route, though, taking in Oban and stopping at a beach near Dunollie castle, so the dogs could get some exercise:

And then we headed to the Isle of Seil. We went there a couple of years ago, but that time we only went over the bridge and had a brief stop before heading back. This is the bridge (taken on our last trip when the weather was only a little better than this time):

The Atlantic Bridge in fact - the only bridge to cross the Atlantic Ocean. As you can see, it's not very wide at this point! Seil itself is a beautiful island - the dismal weather kind of made it even more so, in a way. The low cloud gave it an ethereal feel. On our travels we saw another abandoned house - a little like the one I saw the day before, but I think this one might be a little more recent:

We stopped for lunch in a village (I can't remember the name of it, but the locals call it Easdale - which is actually the island where slate is quarried right opposite); lunch was goooood, and the village itself couldn't really get much more Scottish:

Replete with ye olde phonebox. Then, after another dog walk, it was time to make a push for home. We made our way through Kilmartin Glen and passed Dunadd (one of my favourite places, which we also visited a few years ago), but it was getting too late to stop if we wanted to get back home for dinner and time to let the kids decompress before bed. It was nice to see it, though, albeit briefly.

The best thing, though - the Highlands in the height of midgie season, and no midgie bites. All thanks to this stuff. Seriously. It's like a miracle.

Book Review: Highland Heathenry

2011-07-21T21:48:00.002+01:00

Update: Please note that this book is no longer available.

Highland Heathenry: Ritual Formula for Gaelic Heathens
Ikindé Skréja Ominnsaer

Finally, another offering for a Celtic Reconstructionist's bookshelf; like the last one I reviewed that was aimed at such an audience, I bought it through Lulu, so it's a self-published work. And like the previous book, a large part of this one focuses on material from the Carmina Gadelica. Where they differ is that while Morgan Daimler's book perhaps offers more scope in the amount of charms offered, Highland Heathenry offers more detail on ritual outlines as a whole, as well as both English and Gàidhlig versions of the charms that have been chosen for the book, and reworked and 'de-constructed' for a CR audience.

The book is aimed primarily at the beginner, or anyone looking for an introduction to ritual within CR - specifically Scottish (Gàidhlig) practice. It's very short, which should be a good thing for anyone looking for something that isn't too overwhelming; the content presented here is clear and to the point, beginning with clear definitions for certain words and terms that the author uses throughout, and the reader is encouraged to go and do their own research as well.

The layout is clear and the use of some of the illustrations from the Carmina Gadelica gives a nice touch to the overall look and feel of the book. It's a little smaller than A4 in size, and considering the fact that many of the charms and rituals offered throughout the book cover more than one page, the size helps if you want to sit down and study what's going on here without having to constantly flick through.

Where the book falls down, I think, is in some of the details. Some are minor and probably more a matter of taste - I would quibble that for a CR book, 'heathenry' isn't the most appropriate term to use because (as far as I'm aware) most associate it with a specifically Norse practice. It would also have been nice to see more thorough and consistent referencing throughout (though there is some).

It has to be said that there are some fairly fundamental problems to be found here as well, that go beyond quibbles. I think this is truly unfortunate; what the book aims to deliver is good, it's just the problems all add up to having to question whether or not the book as a whole is workable without at least some major revision. Some of the information offered is just inaccurate - for example, the bile is a sacred tree that stands at the heart of a tuath's territory, not "a pile of stones with a flat table-topper slate." I think what's being referred to here is actually a dolmen, and these are common to Ireland (and neolithic), but not Scotland, and nor is there any evidence that they were used as altars by the Celts. There is also reference to the arms of the triskele representing the Dagda, Lugh, and Ogma, and also the cycle of life from childhood, adulthood, to old age, which is based on a questionable resource; the meaning of the triskele is by no means known for certain, although there are many modern interpretations. As UPG these are not something I can debate, but here they are apparently presented as fact, and that's where the problem lies.

The inclusion of Rhiannon and 'Toranis' as deities in a book that encourages specifically Gaelic practice, and also their assignations as deities of particular elements (albeit in a Gaelic elemental context, not Classical) is completely out of place to me, as is the use of the Welsh names for the solstices and equinoxes - Alban Arthuan, Alban Eiler, Alban Heruin, and Alban Elved. I suspect these names may have origins in modern druidic practice as well, which puts them doubly out of place.

A fair few of the charms will be ones that most recons will already be familiar with and are likely to have adapted for use themselves, so it's good to see Gàidhlig versions of these readily on offer and available for a reconstructionist audience. There are some that I find problematic, though, and at least one of them appears in a completely different context than it was originally meant; for the Bealltainn celebrations, Carmichael's Red Water Charm has been used as a 'Bealltainn exorcism' in the morning. As far as I'm aware, exorcisms are not a pre-Christian concept, and the charm itself is originally meant to be a healing charm for kidney stones. The use of the charm and the idea in general just seem thoroughly out of place, even inappropriate here.

At times, the Gàidhlig that's offered is also a little problemmatic. Spelling is a recurring problem - mixing both old and modern orthography, as well as a lot of spelling mistakes, and some errors are downright unfortunate (the Diesel Turn, instead of the the Deiseil Turn), but not something that couldn't be corrected in further editions with thorough proofing. As it is, though, while these will be easily spotted by anyone who knows what they're looking for, it will make the job of reading through and correctly pronouncing certain parts for others, who may be less advanced or confident in their understanding of Gàidhlig, more difficult.

However, while I can't claim to be advanced in my studies of Gàidhlig, I suspect that the problem may go deeper than spelling and orthography, with some parts of the Gàidhlig itself. For one, I have reservations with the use of the word 'deathachan' as the Gàidhlig for 'gods'; as far as I'm aware, the accepted plural is 'diathan,' and as far as I can tell the only source for 'deathachan' having this meaning is Alexander Carmichael himself. While it's possible this is an archaism, I suspect given the context of Carmichael's use of the word that it's more likely to be his own extrapolation, and so the accuracy of it seems questionable. Over all, it gives cause for concern about the reliability of the transliterations here.

Books that are aimed at a purely Celtic Reconstructionist audience are still very thin on the ground, and like the last one I reviewed this one is self-published; given the fact that the CR community is probably still very small, and self-publishing allows greater editorial control over the content without having to compromise with a publishing house, I think this is the way that most CR books in future will go. The main downside to this is that proofreading is often an issue, and it puts the author at a disadvantage in terms of advertising their work compared to an established publishing house, and many must also rely solely on online sales rather than those from a bookshop; maybe most people buy their books online nowadays anyway, but there are certainly those who would still prefer to be able to look at something before they buy it (edit for clarity: though in this instance there is a preview option for the introduction and blurb).

As such, reviews like this are certainly going to be one way that any self-published author will hope to garner at least a few sales. I do regret that I can't give this book a better review, but when all is said and done, I've tried to be honest and objective in what I find just as with any other book I review here. Ultimately, I find that there are problems with the book are a severe detriment to what it's trying to achieve. Although over all it's aims are good; I'm just not sure it's quite there.

Bits and pieces - links of interest and a new CR book

2011-07-17T18:37:00.000+01:00

I'm snagging something from Treasa's blog that I meant to mention ages ago, after she brought my attention to it - the Ulster Institutional Repository. It's an archive of articles and work by researchers at Ulster University, and there's a good section on Irish and Celtic stuff there. There are lots of articles you can download as pdfs, on all sorts of things, although some entries are only references. Hopefully they will add to it, because some of the most interesting ones aren't available, but it's still well worth a look. Treasa's also posted a nice video called Lament by Damien Byrne, which won an award in March - it's a reworking of The Death of Aoife's Only Son.

In other news, I've got a copy of a new CR book on order, called Highland Heathenry by Ikindé Skréja Ominnsaer. It's just out yesterday, and how could I not? My credit card won't be thanking me just now, I'm sure, but the book should arrive sometime next week (while the kids are away - yay, peace and quiet!) and I'll be reviewing it at some point after that, I'm sure. Ikindé's blog is here if you want to check her out.

Update...

2011-07-14T12:45:00.001+01:00

There won't be much chance for writing or research while it's the summer holidays, because with the kids both at home all day I don't have much free time to get on with it. Usually with Tom at school full time and Rosie going to nursery in the mornings, I use my free time while the both of them are out of the house for doing my own thing - often that involves writing. But now there are small children to entertain, and while I can occasionally grab a minute or two for a blog post and whatnot, actual deep thoughts require a bit more concentration to get stuck into things.

As it is then, I've managed to finish my next essay, on the Good Folk - Na Daoine Sìth. A couple of the books I've read recently have had some useful stuff in them, so while they're fresh in my memory I've also taken the opprtunity to add a few bits and pieces to the article on Gods of Landscape and Lore. The main additions are for Donn, Finnbheara, Clíodhna, and Úna, with some further minor tweaks here and there. Likewise, I've added Donn's association as the ancestor of the Maguires to the Gods as Ancestors article, too.

Until I have a bit more free time, or get used to my new routine and don't feel so braindead by the time they've gone to bed, that's probably about it for now. Once I do manage to get stuck back into things again, I'm not sure what I'll be concentrating on as yet. Any thoughts or requests are welcome, though!

PS: According to my stats wotsit, recent searches that have led to people stumbling across the blog here include "cow print dressing gown", "gaelic irish lewd wakes" and "the dangers of becoming a werewolf". For some reason, such diversity amuses me...

Sunsets and blue skies

2011-07-08T14:54:00.000+01:00

Blue sky is always a novelty here in Scotland - especially on the west coast, that is - but we've been having some glorious blue skies and sunny days recently. I even have a slight sunburn (never a good idea to put sunblock on your own back before going out to mow the lawn...obviously I missed bits). It's sad but true - mild sunburn round these parts actually seems like an achievement.

My husband bought a new lens for his camera recently - a big one, that makes you look like you're a scary stalker or paparazzi (same thing, really). And so of course, with a lens that's perfect for taking wide angle shots of luscious landscapes, the weather turned to interminable grey and dull, with extra midgies for good measure. Typical.

Our planned camping trip has been put on hold for the next few weeks or so - we're probably going to head right up to the far north of Scotland - when hopefully we'll get a window of good weather to accompany us, but with the new lens we're hoping to get some good shots. I've mentioned how I want to go to Tigh nam Bodach (before the developers inevitably move in...) and my dear husband doesn't seem averse to the idea; it's a bit of a trek, but I'm hoping that we'll be able to stop on our way up north.

For now, though, you'll just have to be content with atmospheric shots of round these parts. In amongst the rain and cloud, we've at least had some nice sunsets (you can click them for larger pictures, if you want):

I think this one is my favourite shot, our local beach as above, where I did my Midsummer devotions:

And of course, we can't not have a lighthouse in here at some point...This one's a well-known landmark in the area, the Cloch lighthouse:

A view of the Clyde at low(ish) tide, with the Holy Loch just off in the distance...You can tell how much rain we've been having by the luscious green grass:

And the last one, Inverkip's war memorial, with Argyll behind it:

Tynwald Day - Laa Tinvaal

2011-07-05T13:18:00.001+01:00

Today is Tynwald Day on the Isle of Man, a national holiday that sees an open air parliament convene onTynwald Hill, next to St John's Chapel. The tradition is associated with the Midsummer celebrations, and possibly Manannán mac Lir, and goes back at least a thousand years, and is said to be the oldest parliament in continuous existence in the world. The Beeb are live-streaming the events of the day:

Here!

Come 4.30pm the video will start recapping highlights of the day, apparently, and I think you should be able to view the video wherever you are.

There's a brief description of the Tynwald Court from the 17th century here, and a nineteenth century description here. These versions might swallow up a lot of your computer if you don't have a very good internet connection, though, so be warned! Alternative options can be found here and here (pages 29-30 and 10-11 respectively).

Midsummer

2011-07-01T17:48:00.000+01:00

I'm a little late posting about my Midsummer, which I celebrated last week, but I'll do a rundown just now anyway. Mainly because I took pictures, and it's a shame to waste them...

It's not a time of year I usually make much fuss about, but I do tend make a trip down to the beach to make my own devotions to Manannán - my version of paying the rents, as it were. Usually I make the most of the longer days at this time of year and take myself off to the beach after the kids are in bed, and I can watch the sun start to set. This year, though, considering the weather has pretty much consistently sucked all summer up until the last week or so, I made the most of some dry weather and went during the day, taking Rosie and the dogs with me before having to pick Tom up from school.

Along with the dogs and Rosie, we took some supplies for a wee picnic, and offerings, and we set off to make an afternoon of it. Somebody had left a wee red spade on the beach (continuing a theme from the red jacket I found at Bealltainn, perhaps?), and Rosie set to searching for 'treasure''. This necessitated speaking in Pirate for most of the time we were there, while the dogs 'walked the plank' and rescued sticks from the sea.

I took in the dramatic scenery:

And managed to find Rosie some treasure:

A heart-shaped(ish) rock, which kind of reminds me of the fossil rock I found on my first Midsummer here. I didn't realise she'd kept it until the next day, when she took it to nursery to show her teachers, but she just had to keep it, she said. It's got pink flecks in it.

We built a wee cairn (Rosie insisted on making it a tower, so it's more like a sort-of-cairn):

And beside that we left some food offerings after we'd had our picnic. Then we moved off and picked our way over the rocks, to a vantage point where I could throw some silver pennies into the sea and have a quiet meditation; I took an old shilling with me, and found another silver penny in my pocket so figured that should go in too.

On our way home I took Rosie through the arboretum that runs through the middle of the village (the good thing about the summer having sucked, weatherwise, is that at least the midgies have been kept at bay for longer than they normally do. They're only just starting to bite and normally I wouldn't bother going to the woods in the afternoon on a sunny day - we escaped unscathed this time); we hadn't been for a while and somebody had set up a rope swing from one of the trees along the path:

This was a great discovery for Rosie, and we spent some time playing on it before having to hurry for Tom. I suspect we'll be coming back here a few times at least, now that the summer holidays have started.

Seeing as Midsummer coincided with the wrapping up of the school year, we've had lots of school work being sent home. I haven't got round to doing any seasonal murals with the kids so far this year, so instead I put up some of the artwork that got sent home, and which seemed apt. This is my favourite piece, by Tom - pretty good for a five-year-old:

And also, to round it all off and celebrate the end of the school year and the arrival of summer - finally! I decided to make a cake (and cheese scones). At school this term Tom's teacher had some caterpillars, which the class looked after while they watched them grow, and then seal themslves off into their crysallis', and then come out as beauuuuutiful butterflies. Tom was fascinated by the whole thing, and couldn't stop rabbiting on about them, day after day. He was sad that he missed the butterflies being let out into the wild when he was off sick with a cold (although I'm glad they were let go). So it was decided that the cake should be butterfly shaped, and the kids helped decorate it with sprinkles and edible glitter:

Not the best photo - the flourescent lighting makes for sucky pictures. There's a butterfly farm near my hometown, so the next time we go for a visit I might take the kids along.

And finally, while most of the garden is running rampant and being woefully neglected, the slugs have at least left some of the strawberries alone:

OMNOMNOM. At least I can claim one success this year, if not for much else. It's a nice, bright finish to the celebrations, and the splash of cheery colour feels almost symbolic of the fact that - touch wood and probably famous last words - my back seems to be getting a little better. Or at least, not worse. Here's hoping, though.

Druid divination with SPOONS

2011-07-01T09:46:00.000+01:00

A while ago, I had a little bit of internet rage about a BBC program on the Celts - here, about the suggestion that some gold 'spoons' were used for divination (followed by a demonstration based on made-upness). The section with that part of the program in it can be seen on youtube now, it starts about three minutes in:

Book Review: The Old Gods: The Truth about Irish Fairies

2011-06-30T15:53:00.000+01:00

After mentioning I had another book on order in my last post, and hoping it would arrive early this week, it did (on Monday, all prompt), and I managed to get through the whole thing by the following day. It was only short, and a good read - I have another of Patrick Logan's books on my shelf but I haven't got round to it yet besides a quick flick-through, but now I think I'll bump it up a bit on my list. I'm tempted to by another book, though...but I should probably save my pennies, even if it is only 47p second-hand.

As for the one I've just read, now is as good a time as any to get on with a review, while it's still fresh in my mind:

The Old Gods: The Facts about Irish Fairies
Patrick Logan

As much as I enjoyed this book, I have to say it threatened to go downhill very rapidly - there was a bit of a bumpy start, which worried me a little at first, mainly down to the fact that two pages in there's mention of the Scottish Blue Men, with "(Negroes)" in brackets. That threw me a little at first, and made me wary of how this was going to go, but in the end it all turned out nicely. Yes, the author's outlook on certain things is maybe a little old-fashioned. It's not as jarring or unfortunate as reading some of Dion Fortune's work, if you're familiar with her, though...

While the book is quite short (only 150 pages all told), it's still a fairly comprehensive introduction and hits pretty much all of the basics you need to know. One of the main things I liked was that Logan writes about the subject as a living thing - the fairy-faith that he himself has been, and still is, a part of and has experienced. It's a refreshing change from all the other books I've read on the subject - on Ireland or Scotland - that tend to insist on it all being in the past tense.

Logan gives lots of stories and anecdotes throughout the book, which illustrate his points nicely and keep the tone conversational and quite pacey. Some of the anecdotes have a wry sense of humour about them - like how he and two friends dug up part of a fairy mound once, and (unsurprisingly, with hindsight, he says) paid the price for it; they all contracted tuberculosis. To be fair, from some stories I've heard, they got off lightly. Some of the other stories are from Logan himself, or friends, family, and other people he's interviewed or spoken to over the years (often his patients, from his work as a doctor), whereas other are from manuscripts and other folklorists. There's a good mix here, and he's obviously done a fair bit of legwork.

There isn't much in the way of referencing, except for the occasional casual reference to an author, which is a shame in terms of fact-checking, but since much of it is backed up by anecdotal evidence that Logan himself has collected, it's almost forgivable. If it were a modern book, though, I think each contributor would have been carefully profiled in an appendix, and so on, so all in all it does come across a bit dated.

I was really impressed by this book, over all, but aside from the slightly old-fashioned outlook from the author in places, my only criticism - or perhaps more a concern - is that the book doesn't really go into much detail about the more negative aspects associated with fairylore. For the most part I suppose this is because the book is concentrating on the strand of fairylore that pertains specifically to those who can be seen as gods that have been repackaged, as it were, and so tend to be more positively portrayed in folklore. But while the author does go into the more negative associations (the blast, and changelings and so on), and looks at other types of fairies - water horses, leprechauns, the púca, and so on - that tend to have a more ambiguous or just plain malevolent reputation, it often all seems a little too edited for delicate sensibilities, perhaps; sanitised.

I'm not sure whether this was done out of romanticism, or just not wanting to get too deeply into the scarier, darker layers of lore, but it's a shame, really, because over all it makes book seems a little unbalanced in that respect. It's not lacking completely, but I think other authors would have emphasised it more. In a sense, though, I could say that the fact that the book offers so much that you probably wouldn't find elsewhere more than makes up for it; if the view is a little one-sided, it's at least coming straight from someone who is a part of it all, and a native speaker, to boot (he provides some translations to material that haven't been published in English before, that is).

In spite of this, I'd still recommend the book as a good read, especially for the beginner or anyone looking for a short overview. I bought it quite cheap, too, which is always a plus. I would have to say that it's only a start, though; I'd recommend looking to balance it out a bit with the folktales at the least. Definitely one I'm happy to keep on my shelf, though.

Reviews

2011-06-26T11:57:00.001+01:00

No trips to the library of late, but I've managed to squeeze in a few books from my own bookshelves for once. Off the back of one of them, I've got another book on order - not that my credit card appreciates the sponking, but oh well. Hopefully it will arrive next week and I can get stuck into it then, I'm running low on bedtime reading these days. It's The Old Gods: The Facts About Irish Fairies by Patrick Logan, which Seán Ó Duinn mentioned in his Where Three Streams Meet: Celtic Spirituality. That's one book I'll be reviewing, the other is Cattle in Ancient Ireland, by A. T. Lucas.

Cattle in Ancient Ireland
A. T. Lucas

Yes, every day is a party in my brain...

I seriously doubt that this book will be of interest to anyone other than the most die hard of folk interested in the finer details of Irish life and culture, from the perspective of that fine beast, the cow. Mostly cow. Sometimes, bulls. (And speaking of which, I recommend watching this topical news report at your earliest convenience).

To be fair, I probably qualify as being on the more die hard side of things, and am also writing this review on a Sunday morning clad in the cow-print fleecy dressing gown my mother bought me for my thirtieth a few years ago, so that probably tells you just how much of a party can get going in my brain some days. Cows and Irish history; I'd hesitate to say I'm particularly enthusiastic about the two in combination, but I don't find it totally mindnumbing to contemplate either.

I bought the book because there are some references to it that piqued my interest, mainly to do with the use of milk in baptism (possible evidence of pre-Christian practice), and the offering of cattle in death rites, in marriage, and the bleeding of cattle at certain festivals...That sort of thing. The book does indeed go into these sorts of detail, which aren't really discussed elsewhere, but while it offers something that most other books don't in that respect, the lack of detail in these areas was a little disappointing; I wasn't much better informed than I was having seen the second-hand references.

For the rest of the book, however, there is an almost overwhelming amount of detail. As far as early medieval Ireland is concerned, the importance of cattle as a measurement of wealth, and as the backbone of the economy, cannot be understated, and if you read this book you won't be left in any doubt about that. So really, it's an important book in that respect. It's not exactly a dry read, as such, but the level of detail given in arguing each point made is mind-boggling; points are well made. Perhaps a little too well made to make a decent read, but to be fair I don't think this is a book that qualifies as light, or entertaining reading on any level anyway. Either way, for the most part there isn't much to disagree with in the book, although I couldn't help but feel that the section dealing with the colour of cattle, and the possibility of the actual existence of red-eared cattle from mythological descriptions was a little weak.

However, I can now, with confidence, say that I feel well-informed as far as the practices of transumance and cattle raiding is concerned, along with many other things relating to cattle in ancient Ireland. It's not the sort of thing a normal person would want to boast about, but if you happen to find yourself desperately needing to research the subject, you can't go far wrong in starting with this book. It's well researched, well-written, well-structured, and covers most (possibly all) areas that you'll need to know about. Where it's lacking, it's probably safe to say that this only reflects the dearth of material for Lucas to have gone on in writing anything of substance.

It's a good read for what it covers, but it's very much a niche interest book. I wouldn't recommend you whip out your credit card and order it from the online bookstore of your preference right now, unless you suddenly find an inexplicable and burning need to know all about ancient Irish cattle.

Where Three Streams Meet: Celtic Spirituality
Seán Ó Duinn

This is an ambitious book in some respects, since its purported aim is to weave together the three different strands (or streams) of Irish belief and practice throughout the ages that have come together to give what the author calls 'Celtic Spirituality'. Inevitably, I think, given this ambition there are a few disppointments to be found, but also a few gems...

The three streams that are brought together (no, nothing to do with Ghostbusters) are: the beliefs and practices of the megalithic people of Ireland; those of the pre-Christian Celts; and that of Christianity. These are all brought together to show just how they've shaped modern spirituality - and here is my first niggle, because I would have to say that it's modern Irish (Christian) spirituality being looked at here, rather than anything specifically 'Celtic'. I disagree with Ó Duinn's use of the 'Celtic Spirituality' as a sort of catch-all, because for the most part he's looking at something much more specific - Ireland, with some Scottish evidence thrown in for comparison. Another niggle is the references to 'the Great Mother', but that should be expected as par for the course if you've read other books by the author. It's easily read around.

Given the fact that Ó Duinn is a monk, and the focus of the book is very much on the end result of what he calls 'Celtic Spirituality' - what we see today - it's only to be expected that the pre-Christian material may be somewhat lacking to some extent, and the subject matter weighted heavily in favour of the Christian 'stream'. I would've liked to have seen more detail for the former, and I would anticipate that the fact that Ó Duinn is primarily writing for a Christian audience might be problemmatic for some folks who are more interested in the pre-Christian stuff and might still have some hangups from their upbringing or whatever; not a problem for me since I wasn't brought up Christian, so I can only imagine, really, but I'd have to say that ignoring the Christian material means you'll be losing out on a lot anyway.

Necessarily, the first strand (megalithic peoples) is somewhat lacking in detail, and only superficially dealt with in terms of how the megaliths were effectively repurposed by the pre-Christian Celts in their mythology and practices. This is inevitable, but some might feel that it kind of undermines the stated aim of the book if there's not much that can be said about it. What little there is in there is interesting, but probably not much there that you haven't heard before unless you're completely new to the subject.

For the rest, like I said, I would've liked to have seen more detail about the pre-Christian material and its implications on modern belief and practice, but what Ó Duinn does deal with is mostly well done once you get passed the introductory stuff. There's some good stuff on offerings, ancestor worship, gods and the like, and there are examples of traditional Irish prayers given that show just how similar daily ritual practices are compared to the Carmina Gadelica (some instances of which are also examined) which are also interesting.

While I think that ultimately a lot of people who pick this book up might be disappointed by the lack of depth in terms of dealing with the pre-Christian strand, I'd stress that there's good stuff here, in spite of the problems I have. One problem in particular that I had was the reliance on commentary by Classical authors in the first few chapters, in detailing the beliefs and practices, and cultural values of the pre-Christian Celts, without much attempt at examining just how far we can a) rely on such commentary in taking it at face value, and b) apply it to the Irish, when the Classical authors were only really talking about the Gauls or Britons. And not necessarily reporting first hand knowledge...I can understand why this was brought into the mix, but I think it was given undue weight.

I couldn't help but feel that towards the end of the book, the focus became a little unstuck and was more about Celtic Christianity than anything to do with examining the influences on its evolution. It's interesting and invaluable in terms of pointing out the areas within Christianity that do seem to be genuine hangovers of pre-Christian beliefs, but at times the detail was a little too narrow to hold my interest in any kind of depth.

Over all, this is a good read, in spite of the criticisms I might have of it - it's engaging and well-written, well-researched and referenced, and the bits I disagreed with are - for the most part - easily read around or skimmed over. I managed to finish it within two evenings in spite of it not being a particularly small volume, so it was a quick read for me.

The first half of the book was far more interesting to me than the second half, given that it dealt with things like the gods, ancestor veneration and the like. I can't say that I learned much that I didn't already know, but I think this is the first time I've ever seen it all brought together in one place - ancestor worship, gods and spirits, and so on. Had I bought this book earlier in the year, a lot of my research for the articles I've written in the past six or eight months or so would've been much easier, to be fair...

All in all, for the average Celtic Reconstructionist I think this book will be of most interest to the beginner, or someone who's come so far and might be feeling the need for something to help solidify things in their mind a bit more. You might not find all of it of interest or relevance, but I'd say it's definitely worth a read.

The Carmichael Watson Project, and an update on Tigh nam Bodach

2011-06-25T20:04:00.000+01:00

I've taken so long to write this one that this is probably redundant by now, but just in case, here's a heads up:

The Carmichael Watson Project is now live

This is an archive and catalogue of Alexander Carmichael's work and notes during his life and research in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. As yet, not every entry is accompanied by scans of his original work, but you can still view quite a lot. There's an article here at the Beeb.

In other news, a report from Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba (Scottish National Heritage) has been added to the planning page for the Glen Lyon hydro scheme. The scheme that threatens Gleann Cailliche and Tigh nam Bodach. There are some concerns raised in the report regarding the impact on both Tigh nam Bodach and the surrounding area that so far seem to be the most encouraging cautionary signs against the scheme - not least that they conclude that: "We consider that the cumulative landscape and visual impacts of the four projects in combination could be significant and adverse." That includes not just the issue of the pylons, but the plans for widening access roads as well.

For Tigh nam Bodach itself, they say:

"The most westerly scheme – Allt Cailliche - is proposed in the most sensitive side glen where there are no human artefacts apart from the historic Tigh nam Bodach. The introduction of the proposed intake, powerhouse, upgraded tracks and pipeline excavations could have a significant adverse impact."

Other points raised include not just the potential for damage to Tigh nam Bodach and the sensitive/rare wetland habitats that will have to be disturbed, but also the potential disruption to rare birds that are breeding in the area, including merlins and golden eagles. The report points out that only two, instead of three of the necessary surveys have been undertaken in examining the potential impact that any works carried out might have on breeding pairs in the area, and it seems likely that the development will have to be limited in when it can undertake the most disruptive elements of the project in order to prevent scaring the birds off.

You can download the pdf by clicking here if you want to take a look yourself. All in all, it paints a worrying picture in terms of the potential damage the scheme could inflict on the area if it gets the go ahead, and I'm really glad that - unlike some of the other authorities and organisations who've submitted comments - Scottish National Heritage have really looked into the proposals from all angles and taken the time to make such a detailed reply.

Iron Age settlement (possibly) found on St Kilda

2011-06-17T09:58:00.000+01:00

It was previously thought that St Kilda was only ever visited for hunting and wool gathering, but it looks like archaeologists have found evidence of settlement that could date as far back as the Iron Age:

"Farming what is probably one of the most remote - and inhospitable - islands in the North Atlantic would have been a hard and gruelling existence."

St Kilda expert Jill Harden, who is contracted to NTS, said it was refreshing to know that there was still so much to learn about the islands.

The finds were made during a five-year project to produce the most complete mapping record of St Kilda's built heritage.

From the Beeb

There are also some fantastic pictures of the island to look at. This article from the Stornoway Gazette gives a bit more background to the island, and the St Kilda website adds a bit of detail too.

The Pipe

2011-06-15T14:14:00.000+01:00

Last night I saw a documentary called The Pipe, about the controversy surrounding Shell Oil's efforts to lay a gas pipeline in a remote part of Ireland. The documentary was from the perspective of the residents of Rossport, who oppose the pipeline and accuse Shell and the Irish government of colluding to generally stomp on the locals' constitutional rights in order to make a profit. After finishing the documentary, I really can't say I blame them...

I remember seeing the Solitaire, the pipe-laying ship, parking up in the Clyde back in 2008 before it went on to Ireland:

It caused quite a stir round here from tourists and sightseers blocking up the roads to take photos, though not much was made of the controversy itself. Huge amounts of security about though, and no wonder, having seen the documentary now.

Folks across the Pond probably won't be able to watch the documentary at 4OD, but if you can get hold of it, I'd recommend it - well worth a watch, even though it's saddening and maddening at the same time. You can watch the trailer here:

An update, finally

2011-06-12T12:11:00.001+01:00

After the last article I put up on the website - which ended up receiving an amazing amount of attention - thanks to some generous plugging by Erynn - I really thought that I'd kind of covered all I could think of on the subject; there were bits I'd originally intended to expand on but didn't find any place for them in the articles as I wrote them.

I'd figured that the next article to write was obvious and inevitable - the next stop was the daoine sìth (I'll try to avoid the 'f' word). I've had a bugger of a time writing it, though. From putting my back out and the drugs preventing me from being able to concentrate enough to research and write, to just realising that I was going about it all wrong, it's been a long time coming, and a process that's kinda reminiscent of pulling teeth.

I realised that the subject was too narrow considering the focus I'd been taking as far as the gods and the other two are concerned. I'd done gods, I'd done ancestors, but I hadn't done anything about the spirits, and so I had to scrap my original idea and take things in a different direction, broadening the scope a little. I'm not entirely sure that I'm happy with the end result, to be honest - I'm limited by lack of experience in being able to talk much about dealing with foreign spirits in other countries, for one. But this is what I ended up with:

Gods and Spirits

It's something that's been on my mind a lot this year so far, though. I might still get round to covering the daoine sìth in a separate article, but in some ways it's not going to be easy because I've already done a lot here there and everywhere else. A lot of it will inevitably be repetitious, but it's difficult to figure out just what needs to be repeated.

Ho hum. Lots of things need doing. So little time to do it...

Hmmm...

2011-06-06T10:23:00.000+01:00

I see this has been doing the rounds in a few places I lurk, and I couldn't not comment:

Clonycavan Man’s hair contains an imported gel. Old Croghan Man has a leather amulet, decorated in the fashionable continental style, on his arm. It represents the sun, with which Irish kingship is closely associated. Both men also had their nipples sliced before they died. Together, these features suggest that the men were kings. The king’s nipples represented the life-giving sun. Their cutting suggests that their power was being ritually decommissioned.

Both men appear to have been “killed” three times: by strangulation, by stabbing and by drowning. However ritualised, Old Croghan Man’s death was garishly violent: he was bound with hazel rods threaded through holes in his upper arms, stabbed in the chest, struck in the neck, decapitated and cut in half. (All that has been found are his torso and arms.) But the violence was not mere sadism. “This,” says Eamonn Kelly of the National Museum of Ireland, “isn’t done for torture or to inflict pain. It’s a triple killing because the goddess to whom the sacrifice is made has three natures. She’s goddess of sovereignty, of fertility and of war and death. So they’re making sacrifice to her in all her forms, and the king has to die three deaths.”

Amulet, Old Croghan Man, 362-175B.C.

I can just imagine the pained expression on my old professor's face as he'd say, "Weeeeeell, we shouldn't read too much into these things..."

The dangers of being a 'true' Scot

2011-06-02T17:53:00.000+01:00

Bride's och aye, the poo!

I'm sure it can happen to the best of us...

In the garden, before another review

2011-05-28T18:33:00.001+01:00

In spite of the gloriousness of April, May has been a total wash out. Earlier this week most of Scotland was battered by storms and heavy winds that got up to over 130mph. I'm not sure how strong they were round here, but it was enough to knock more than a few trees down around the village, and closed the coastal road even heading into Greenock - generally more sheltered than the road heading south into Largs.

This is the sort of weather we're more used to in late autumn or winter - it was so cold yesterday that we finally gave in and put the heating back on for a wee bit again. Suffice it to say, the cold, rain, and lack of sunshine means there's not much happening in the vegetable patch at the moment, and unless the weather improves dramatically then I'm not sure we'll have much to show for it come the autumn. Not that I've been able to do much in the garden anway.

One success is this:

The poppies are in full bloom at the moment, a bright antidote to the dismal grey sky. When I originally planted them I was under the impression that they were going to be proper red ones - these seem a little washed out and I presume that's just the variety, or maybe poor soil quality (or a bit of both).

I've sown some more to put out in the front garden, but these poppies are growing in the patch of flowerbed out the back that I set aside for a wee spiritual focal point. They're growing in between a small cairn I've built to comemmorate my ancestors, and a small pond I use as a focal point to put some offerings out when I'm gardening and weeding (sadly neglected this year, but Rosie is keen on tending things with offerings of daisies and buttercups when she thinks no one's looking).

The poppies themselves are dedicated to the memory of one of my grandads - Poppy, as I called him - who was a gardener. I'm glad they've come along so well since I planted them three years ago now. If only I could say the same for the vegetable patch...

But now, another review.

The Year in Ireland
Kevin Danaher

This is another one of those seminal books that should go on every aspiring reconstructionist's booklist if they happen to have an interest in Ireland. It's one of those books that I love so much that I'm hard-pressed to find much to say about it that's particularly negative.

Do you want chapters covering just about everything you want to know about the Irish festival calendar? Check. Do you want it illustrated? Check. A good read? Check check check. That's about all you need to know, really.

It's set within a very Catholic festival year so not everything will be relevant to a polytheistic context, but it does do a good job of giving a good idea of the cultural context in which you'll find the festivals. The book is laid out well, with each chapter dealing with a different festival, meaning that some of them are only a page long, if that. For the longer chapters there are various subheadings to help break everything up and make it easier to dip into for reference - definitely a good thing because I don't find the index at the back to be particularly detailed or helpful.

Danaher gives a good amount of detail for the more popular festivals, and covers a goodly amount of ground in terms of the scope of his research and the dissemination of it. For anyone wanting to get to grips with ideas for things to do for the festivals then this is really the first place you'll want to look, and it will give a lot of inspiration. I've mentioned other books that are a good supplement to this over the course of the reviews I've done, but this book will really be your go-to book, unless you want to start delving into journals and more specialised areas of research, or lengthier and more concentrated books like Máire MacNeill's The Festival of Lughnasa, or Sean O'Duinn's The Rites of Brigid.*

This is not a quick read by any means, I've found. It's not a massive tome but it does pack a lot of stuff into it, and there's a lot for the beginner to chew on. Had it been written by a not so accomplished author, it would probably be overwhelming in that respect, but Danaher is not only an excellent writer, he also seems to be genuinely passionate about his subject, and that shines through in his work and helps carry the reader along, I think. Plus, it's the sort of book that's good for dipping into every now and then - picking it up to read the relevant chapters as you go along through the year. For the beginner, I would recommend getting hold of a copy of this as soon as you possibly can.

* I thought I'd reviewed this already - and I'm still semi-convinced I did, but can't find it. This review here, from a promising new blogger, does a good job of pretty much mirroring my thoughts on it.

Another review, this time, four for the price of one...

2011-05-28T15:01:00.000+01:00

This next review is long overdue - as some of the first books I ever bought for myself once I finally decided to take the plunge into Celtic Reconstructionism, they've been instrumental to my path and my research, and their value cannot be overstated.

The Silver Bough: Volume I-IV
F. Marian McNeill

Coming in at four volumes, the full set for the series may set you back a pretty penny if you indulge yourself in one go, but I can tell you straight away that these books are well worth it. I'd originally intended to review them all separately, on their own merits, but in the end I decided that was pointless seeing as I'm not sure they can be fully appreciated without reading each book, and many of their strengths and weakness are the same or very similar. I figured I'd probably just end up repeating myself.

First of all, I'll give an idea of what each volume covers:

The Silver Bough Volume I: Scottish Folk-Lore and Folk-Belief

Here we have an introduction to various aspects of folklore, from witchcraft and fairies, to different types of charms and folk practices. Of all the introductory tomes to the subject, I think this is the most accessible and strikes the right balance between hitting all the right bases without overloading the reader.

The Silver Bough Volume II: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals Candlemas to Harvest Home

Covering Candlemas, Easter, Bealltainn, Lúnastal and the harvest festivals including Michaelmas, this is probably the best place to start if you want to find out anything about these festivals. Again, it's accessible and detailed, but won't overload. For some subjects - like Bealltainn - various different aspects of it are covered in several chapters, but for the most part this is the sort of book you can dip into as and when you get to each particular time of year to get an understanding of what the festivals are about, and for ideas of what you can do.

The Silver Bough Volume III: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals Hallowe'en to Yule

Covering a slightly shorter period of the year, but with good reason because there's a lot to pack in. Chapters include covering Samhainn, Christmas, Yule, Hogmanay, and Handsel Monday. Much of what you'll find for Samhainn/Hallowe'en is also covered - with more additional details - in McNeill's standalone book, Hallowe'en: Its Origin Rites and Ceremonies in the Scottish Tradition.

The Silver Bough Volume IV: The Local Festivals of Scotland

Covering the different local festivals, grouped loosely by the time of year (although there's some need for a bit of backwards and forwards here). Of the four volumes, this one is probably of least immediate value and relevance to the beginner, but it gives good additional details for when you want to get stuck in a bit further, or are looking for customs that might relate to somewhere you have heritage from.

The value of these books - and the love I have for this author - cannot be overstated. Although I'd unreservedly recommend the whole set to anyone, however, that doesn't mean that they're not without their problems...

The first volume was published in 1957, with subsequent volumes coming out every couple of years thereafter. This means that not everything is necessarily as up to date as you might hope, and some of the interpretations given by McNeill aren't necessarily solid. I tend to be more forgiving of things like that in older books such as these, but they need commenting on all the same - McNeill's frequent mention of druids, and linking customs with 'ancient druid practices' need to be ignored, for example, because there's simply no evidence to support what she's saying there.

Likewise, because much of McNeill's research is based upon older books, it helps to know what you're dealing with there. She goes along with Fraser and his The Golden Bough sometimes, and for the Cailleach, for example, she draws upon MacKenzie's work. It has to be said that he's not necessarily the most reliable source for that kind of thing even if he is interesting. It helps to be a little circumspect there.

References are given throughout the volumes but in trying to follow up on some things, McNeill hasn't been as thorough as I would have liked. Having familiarised myself with a lot of the stuff she's drawn her research from I can see where bits have come from now, but it does cause a headache or two if you don't know to start with. What she does reference, however, is sound - she doesn't try to fudge anything with giving references that don't really follow what she's saying, so over all you'll find she's quite reliable.

Because of the cost involved in getting hold of all four volumes - not outrageous, but not necessarily within everyone's means - I've tried to find alternatives. The Scottish volumes of British Calendar Customs are a good substitute, but unless you can find them from the library you probably won't have much luck buying them and I would say they're probably not as readable as McNeill anyway. Sheila Livingstone's Scottish Customs, and Scottish Festivals, both draw heavily from McNeill, are cheaper and less detailed, and might do well for someone who's a little daunted by the prospect of getting stuck into four volumes right away. I reviewed those as well, and found them to be a little problemmatic, though, so my recommendation there comes with a bit of a qualifier.

The Silver Bough is by no means the only thing you'll ever need to read, but it does give a fantastic start, I think. Along with Ronald Black's The Gaelic Otherworld, I would recommend the first three volumes (at the least) as must-haves for the beginner.

Next up: Our Highland Folklore Heritage by Alexander Polson

2011-05-28T14:05:00.001+01:00

Our Highland Folklore Heritage
Alexander Polson

A while ago I read and reviewed another of Polson's books, Scottish Witchcraft Lore, which - over all - I liked. It's one of those books I wish I could afford, so I could add it to my hoard. It was mainly for that reason that I picked this one up - to see if it was as good as the one I've already read, and to see if this book has anything to add to the subject.

For the most part, the answer to the latter point is: not really. In many respects, this book is like a precursor to Scottish Witchcraft Lore - Our Highland Folklore Heritage was published slightly earlier, and is slightly shorter in length, too, and in general there's quite an overlap in subject matter and content between them when dealing with witchcraft and related matter. This book has a broader scope at least, so it's not all the same sort of stuff by any means. For me, a downside is that what's missing here are most of the things that I enjoyed so much about Scottish Witchcraft Lore - mainly the interviews with witches and groundwork that Polson himself did for that book - so for me it's not really a cheaper substitute (this book is at least within my means if I want to buy it) in that respect. Then again, it would be pretty pointless writing two books that are basically identical, so looking at the book on its own merits, that's a big plus.

What this book does offer is a simple introduction to various aspects of Highland folklore - lore at sea, witches and witchcraft, fairy lore, second sight, ghosts, various kinds of spirits, and so on. Each chapter is quite short, but they hit all the right notes for giving a basic overview and there are plenty of stories, many of which Polson collected from his students during his time teaching in various places in the far north of Scotland. They probably aren't ones that you'll find published in too many different places, so that's a major plus too.

For the most part, each chapter covers things that you might already know if you've read other introductions to the subject, but Polson presents everything in a brisk but engaging style, at least (sometimes, it's more like he's just putting some notes down than attempting to write anything more flowery), and a lot of it is from the horse's mouth. Polson doesn't offer too much in the way of detailed analysis, rather he lets the material speak for itself and you can draw your own conclusions.

As a quick and straightforward read, and for anyone looking for a good introduction to the topic, or just something that adds a little more to the subject, I'd definitely recommend this one.

Bealltainn - part two

2011-05-28T12:59:00.000+01:00

Mmmmmm. Cheese scones...

I finally got around to finishing off my Bealltainn celebrations just shy of two weeks after I started - there was ritual, there were offerings, there were bannocks, and scones, and stew, and also skimming and saining, and making of charms, and cutting of rowan for the charm-making thereof...Things were a little muted, but I'm learning to adapt to a new life of not always being so mobile, and making the most of when I can.

There's nothing like living with constant pain - of varying degrees, at least - and the side effects of medications meant to help control the pain, to give someone a bit of a boot up the arse as far as spirituality and practice go. Or me, that is. And as far as life in general goes, really. At the moment I'm in a medical limbo between getting a diagnosis (the ins and outs of which are far too boring to go into) and getting the appropriate treatment for my particular problem, so I'm both waiting and doing what I can in terms of living and coping without too many drugs fogging up my brain, and adapting life to within means I'm actually capable of. Fun.

Inevitably, it seems, compromises will have to be made in future. From now on, if my back isn't up to it then the festive dinners may not always be slavishly cooked from scratch, the bread not freshly baked, or the butter freshly churned, as I'd prefer, but the intent remains the same. Likewise, ritual may have to become more internalised at times, rather than accompanied by ritualised actions and gestures, but until I ever reach the point where I can delegate these things, what will be will be. I do those things because I enjoy doing them, because it makes sense to me; not because I have to, not because it makes me more spiritual in some way.

One thing I can still do, though, is read. I haven't done as much reading as I'd like lately, really (medication and brain fog etc), but I have a small backlog accumulating, and over the next however many posts I'll be trying to clear it. First up is:

Celtic Flame: An Insider's Guide to Irish Pagan Tradition

Aedh Rua

As I understand it, this was originally written as a CR101 book, but never quite made it that far, for one reason or another. The author himself stresses that he no longer identifies as CR, although the influence of some of those who were involved in the early stages of the CR community (especially Alexei Kondratiev) is unmistakeable. The book also begins with a veritable who's who of movers and shakers as far as the founders of CR are concerned.

Perhaps because of all this - both the author's involvement, the influence, and the many names invoked here - I can't help but feel that the focus of the book gets a little confused at times. On the one hand, it's not a CR book, but one that describes the author's own path and beliefs. Fair enough. On the other, it seems that the audience the author is talking to is meant to be, or expected to be, CR, since this is the community most often referred to.

This might be indicative of the fact that the book and the author evolved in their path over the course of its writing, or else it could be that the author simply assumes that the CR community, or those interested in it, will indeed be his audience. If it's the latter, I don't think it really works too well; if it's the former, then it's probably symptomatic of the fact that this is a self-published title and, like so many under that heading, in need of some editing - and certainly elsewhere, in terms of layout, formatting and proofreading, it could use some work too. There's nothing major here, but the Bibliography alone causes a headache if you actually want to find something; the references don't always seem to match up to what's being talked about, and so on.

It's an odd sort of book. In terms of doing what it offers, I think it does well - you come away with a good idea what the author's path is all about, even if there is some confusion as I've mentioned. I would have to disagree that it's 'authentic Irish pagan tradition' as the author presents it; rather, it's one way of doing things, and I have to say I find language like that a little concerning and disconcerting. The chapter on values, however, genuinely offers something that I've not seen elsewhere - outside of Alexei Kondratiev's article on Celtic Values, which it draws heavily on - although it maybe ends up going on a little too long as far as how they relate to different levels of society is concerned.

The author also goes out of his way to include a good amount of Irish (and in the ritual chapter, Scottish Gaelic, too) - introducing Irish words for concepts he's explaining, explaining what they mean, and so on. That's a definite plus, but along the way all these different words gets hard to keep track of, and I didn't realise there was a handy glossary given at the back until I'd nearly finished the whole book (it's not listed in the contents page). The Irish in particular seems a bit confused to me, with - as far as I can tell - Old Irish and modern Irish mixed up at times, but always with modern pronunciations given (when they're given at all). This may be an issue of spelling/proofing more than anything else, but I would be leery of using any of it myself without checking it thoroughly first. In the ritual chapter, I have to give the author props for being upfront and honest that his Irish isn't up to adapting the Gàidhlig of the Carmina Gadelica, but I'm not sure that simply adapting the Gàidhlig with Irish deities is nothing more than something of a fudge - this is supposed to be Irish Paganism, it seems to detract a little from that.

The ritual format is not something I personally get along with - tools, casting a circle to make a sacred space, invocations to deities and so - but some of the poetry here is quite good and inspiring. With the Carmina Gadelica being a major source for inspiration here, it's maybe not something that will be unfamiliar, but I'm always interested in what other people do with it, and how they approach the material.

The section on gods also bears mentioning - the way the gods, spirits and ancestors are split up into the 'head' gods, 'specialist gods (of skill) tutelary spirits/gods, and so on - is genuinely nothing I've ever seen before and interesting for that alone, even if I don't entirely agree with the reasoning. One problem I have here is that the gods are listed in terms of attributes and symbols (including lunar/solar stuff for good measure), with a handy reference guide on what to call on them for - it comes across more like a menu for rent-a-god than anything with real depth, and certainly is one of the points where the author and most CRs would most definitely disagree.

His views on the Fomorians are a little too black and white - he has them as demons, eternally pitted against the Tuatha Dé Danann. At the very least, this seems to ignore the fact that after the Fomoire were defeated at the Second Battle of Mag Tured, they're never mentioned in an adversarial role again (as far as I can recall. The TDD themselves take on that role, against the Milesians, even). It also ignores later Irish folk tradition. Other types of spirits are included under the Fomorian title, though, including Scottish ones like the Fachan, which not only confuses the Irish focus in the book otherwise, but also doesn't address the point that although they might seem similar, but that doesn't mean they're the same...I think if you find this book of interest, this is a chapter best ignored.

All in all, this seems to be a book that came so close, and yet didn't go far enough in some areas. To a certain extent it feels unfinished in a way that I can't exactly put my finger on. Certain parts feel like they need fleshing out - a little spit and polish wouldn't go amiss in general - and over all I think it would've done better to stand on its own merits rather than in the shadow (even nominally) of CR.