Flapjacks

Food is a very important thing, culturally-speaking. Different cultures have different kinds of treats, for one, and as far as celebrating things are concerned, sweet treats can form a very special part of it. At Christmas, in Scotland, it's traditional to have a black bun (something I've yet to try my hand at) or a Selkirk bannock. Gingerbread is always good at Hallowe'en, while cranachan is the must have tastiness at the harvest...

And then there are the kind of treats that aren't really associated with particular times of year, but more to do with the kind of ingredients that tend to lurk in cupboards. Indian treats tend to be very coconutty, for example, whereas in Scotland they generally consist of fat, sugar, various flavourings (often spices like caraway or ginger, and/or dried fruits), and oats or flour of some of form or another. Shortbread? Clootie dumpling? Parlies? Pitcaithly bannock? Yetholm bannock?

It was this reason that led me to one very shocking and important discovery (according to Wikipedia, so it must be true), since I had some porridge oats that needed using:

The US and Canada don't have flapjacks.

Not like we do on this side of the Pond, anyway. Apparently a flapjack is a kind of pancake in north America, while here they are made of oaty, buttery, sugary and syrupy deliciousness:

The reason I discovered this is because I was going to post the fruits of my labours and a recipe, and it occurred to me that golden syrup isn't really a thing in the US. So I wondered what kind of alternatives were used instead, and apparently the answer is: None, really. Corn syrup would be the obvious choice, but it seems that most folks hold out for golden syrup when they decide to make "English flapjacks" (as they seem to be called, but they're not just an English thing, honest) as some sort of exotic tastiness...It seems odd to think of something so fundamental to my own childhood and existence as not being a thing somewhere. That it's seen as something different.

So anyway, if you fancy clogging up your arteries and speeding up your Type 2 diabetes, why not try some? The following recipe is for the usual homemade flapjack, that goes quite hard and kind of crunchy-but-chewy once they. If you want a softer flapjack, either: Eat before they've cooled down, or add a little bit more golden syrup, a tablespoon of flour or so, and bake a little thicker. The recipe I used calls for an 11'' x 7'' pan, but I prefer using a slightly smaller one so they're thicker so I get a bit of chewiness in the middle.


Ingredients

8oz porridge oats (or rolled/jumbo oats)
4oz butter
3oz sugar
2tbsp golden syrup

Method

1. Put the butter, sugar and syrup into a pan and heat until golden melted goodness is achieved.

2. Stir in the oats until well mixed and whack into a baking tray.

3. Bake in the oven at 350F/180C/Gas Mark 4 for about 20 minutes or until a nice golden-brown on top.

4. Remove from the oven and cut the flapjacks into fingers. Leave to cool before removing.

5. Eat. Try not to fall into a diabetic coma.

Things you need to know for St Patrick's Day

It's Paddy, not Patty. Seriously now.

Virtual Tour

Not my usual area of interest, but I think this is really good (and a little hypnotic)...

There is a virtual tour of an Iron Age Gaulish village, Acy-Romance, now available online. You can get a general view of the village and go into more detail about daily life, sacred sites, and all sort of things. The level of detail is absolutely amazing:

Take the virtual tour

Although I would guess you need a decent internet connection, it takes a while to load (my internet connection's not fantastic, but it's not too shabby either). For a little background, try this article. It would be fantastic to see similar projects being done for Ireland and Scotland.

Book review: The Celtic Heroic Age

The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales
John Koch (ed.) in collaboration with John Carey

For once, here is a book that uses the word 'Celtic' in its proper context. That's not exactly surprising, considering who's put it together, but after all those books that don't...well. It's refreshing, to say the least.

While there are plenty of places online where you can find all kinds of myths and literature, sometimes it's good to have them in book format; especially considering the fact that the translations on offer are generally more up to date (though this isn't always the case. Elizabeth Gray's translation of Cath Maige Tuired is the most recent version, and freely available online, although the online version doesn't have the notes that the hardcopy format does). This book certainly has a lot to offer in terms of all kinds of myths and literature that are collated within this volume, though I have to say that the soft-cover version I have isn't the most sturdy. Some of the pages are threatening to come loose.

Inside, you'll find a veritable smorgasbord of goodies on offer. First up is a selection of Gaulish inscriptions, excerpts from Classical sources referencing the continental Celts, as well as bits and pieces relating to the Britons (e.g. Boudicca). Then we have Irish and Hiberno-Latin sources (i.e. Irish sources written in Latin), which forms the main chunk of the book, followed by Brittonic and Brittonic Latin sources. The latter part is comprised mostly of Welsh poetry, but there is also a little bit of Breton legend, as well as excerpts from the Historia Brittonum.

The Gaulish inscriptions are really interesting, but all too few, while as far as the Classical sources are concerned there's not much that I hadn't already seen before; it's certainly handy for reference, at least, but admittedly this material isn't really my area of primary interest. The usual suspects are to be found in the Welsh poetry - Taliesin, Y Gododdin, Preideu Annwn, etc. - so it's all good if you're wanting to get a broad overview of different kinds of Celtic literature. On the other hand, however, if you're wanting to study any of these things in more depth I would recommend books that are more dedicated to the subject.

The same can be said of the Irish section as well - you'll find the important stuff, such as Recension I of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Audacht Morainn, Echtra Nera, Tochmarc Étaíne, The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn, and so on, all neatly packaged and presented. There is a lot here that you can already find online these days (which wasn't the case at the time of this book's publication), although the down side with that is you have to look for it, and know what you're looking for. If you're familiar with the myths then you've probably read most of them before, at least. If not then at least you won't have to look too far to find the good stuff - some of the most important tales have been cherry-picked for you (although obviously it doesn't include the epics).

One of the best things about this book is that there are also some bits and pieces that the average reader is less likely to be familiar with. For the Irish section, the early Dynastic poetry is very useful in particular (lots of pre-Christian hints there), and so are the excerpts from Giraldus Cambrensis (including the section on the sacred flame of Kildare). Most of all, though, the value of this book - aside from the decent translations on offer (as opposed to the "retellings" and cleaned up versions that Lady Gregory or Charles Squire offer, say) - is in the fact that there is so much packed in to one handy volume. For the reconstructionist the decent translations are a definite draw, and just one reason that I'd recommend the book. I can't help but feel that it would have been better if the book had more thorough annotations, but then again I think the primary purpose of it is as a primary sourcebook, not a running commentary. The notes that are given are usually brief but often give good pointers to further reading in places. Still, more would have been better.

This is a book I would definitely recommend, though I can see that it will probably be a low priority for most folks who have a limited budget. It's definitely worth it, though, and you should be able to find it cheaply enough.

Book review: The Apple Branch/Celtic Rituals

One from the vaults now, a book I read pretty much at the beginning of my involvement in Celtic Reconstructionism, and which at the time came highly recommended.

There has been quite a bit of time passed since the initial fanfare that heralded the book's re-release (when I got hold of a copy) and I think maybe it's time to revisit it. The copy I'm reviewing is the later edition that was released under the title of The Apple Branch, which - as I understand it - differs only slightly from the older edition, which was called Celtic Rituals. As far as I'm aware, the only differences are that the newer edition has an index and a few extra passages in the first chapter added in.(Or not...)

Addendum: As per Faoladh - The original title is The Apple Branch, published by Collins Press and later released in a new edition by a US publisher with the addition of the index and the text restored. Celtic Rituals is a 'grey market' edition.


The Apple Branch: A Path to Celtic Ritual (alternative title: Celtic Rituals: An Authentic Guide to Ancient Celtic Spirituality)
Alexei Kondratiev

Aside from the CR FAQ this is the only other book that ever really comes up in conversation when people want to read something that's good for a Celtic Reconstructionist. It's understandable, given how much Alexei contributed to the CR community over the years, but it's also one I find problematic in many respects.

This is not a Celtic Reconstructionist book. For this reason alone I find it difficult to recommend it for anyone wanting a book on Celtic Reconstructionism, because it is not a book that fits the bill, plain and simple. This doesn't mean that it's a bad book, or a terrible book, just that it isn't one that can be considered to be particularly illuminating as far as CR is concerned. In that sense, it's a difficult book to review because on its own terms it surely has a lot of positives. It is thorough, and unlike many other books aimed at a neopagan audience, it doesn't shy away from getting into details. The research is good, and well-presented, and at the time it was first published it certainly offered something very different to anything else that was available at the time.

Even so, none of this means that it is a good book for a CR audience, although it does arguably make it an important one as far as its place in CR's history goes. After all this time, I think The Apple Branch has held such a special place in Celtic Reconstructionist circles for so long due to the fact that it is far more sympathetic to CR's emphasis on decent history (as opposed to ye anciente Irish potato goddesses and Celtic alternatives to patriarchal penises...), and when it first came out it was as close to a reconstructionist book as anyone was going to find. For me, though, that just isn't a reason to hold on to it.

So why isn't this book CR? Put simply, Alexei himself repeatedly pointed out that this book isn't CR, and was never intended to be. One of the biggest points that makes it "not CR" is that the rituals outlined are really no different to the myriad other Wiccanesque kinds of ritual on offer by other authors offering "Celtic traditions." This puts it in the dubious company of the McCoys and Bucklands of the world, and also perhaps proved influential in the work of Aedh Rua's Celtic Flame which is similarly Wiccanesque in ritual approach, and really this is not surprising since Alexei himself was Wiccan. There is talk of 'the God' and 'the Goddess', there is circle casting and invocations at each quarter, and so on, although there is definitely a slightly different spin put on all of it. Given Alexei's emphasis on language, invocations at each quarter are given in Celtic languages - Scots Gaelic in the north, Welsh in the east, Breton in the South and Irish in the west. It's not something I can really get on board with, personally; deep down, I can't help but feel that it's using languages for the sake of it, without regard for their own context, and it all seems rather pointless if you don't even speak those languages and understand what any of it means, or even honour the gods of those cultures anyway.

The over all approach is pan-Celtic, and while this might have been popular in academia in the 60s, we've come a long way since then. Celtic cultures do have their similarities, even their common origins, but that doesn't mean we can mix them all together and get something that is reflective of anything that would have ever been practiced. For me, it makes a hodge podge, and it's one of my biggest problems with neopagan books that fall under the 'Celtic' umbrella in general. It certainly makes something meaningful for a lot of folks - otherwise these books wouldn't be so popular - but to my mind, I don't see the point of looking to historical sources and then...ignoring history.

Ultimately, it seems that the pan-Celticism undermines a very important point that the book emphasises, and that's the importance of using Celtic languages to justify the use of the label Celtic in the first place. I wouldn't go so far to say that language is the only thing makes something Celtic (as Alexei basically seems to), but he does have a point that language is incredibly important. But in advocating for linguistic authenticity, framing it within a pan-Celtic approach just seems contradictory, and ignores the rich variety of Celtic cultures, and their differences.

With that said, one thing that Alexei does manage to do is give a decent historical overview of the Celts. The pan-Celtic approach gives a slightly misleading view, to my tastes, but it can't be denied that the research here is very good. It's perhaps a little coloured by politics that some might find distracting or distasteful, but you could do far worse. I do think it's a little dry, though, and very dense in places. Most people, when they're reading a book on a particular religion, are looking for what that religion is about, not so much a history lesson. If I wanted that, I'd read a history book. Here, I would anticipate that a fair few readers end up wondering what exactly the oppression of the eighteenth and nineteenth century really has to do with paganism...Of course, it is relevant in a round about way, and as history, people should know this. I just don't think starting off with this kind of stuff works in the book's favour.

I'm not sure it's Alexei's fault that the blurb states that it presents "the" Celtic traditions, but however it came about, it's more than a bit misleading. What the book describes is a way of doing things, to be sure, but it's a synthesis of many different things that are presented in a modern, Wiccanesque framework, not a traditional one. Ultimately, as much as the book is a part of CR history, it has no practical relevance, and I would only really recommend it if you're looking for a wee slice of history.