And finally, introducing...

I can't remember how long ago I started the article on marriage - three months or so? It's taken a while, anyway, and although previously I said that it looked like I was going to have to split it into three parts or so, it ended up having to be six...

Yes, I pretty much managed to end up writing the best part of a book in the end, around 30,000 words or so. It kind of took on a life of it's own, but that's what you get when you try to be thorough, I guess. And even then, I know there's more I could've added, given enough time and resources. But anyway, seeing as that completes the life cycle on Tairis, for now, I've split off the articles on Death and Burial, and Birth and Baptism, and lumped them all together under a new section called 'Life Passages'. 

So with that caveat in mind, here:

• Part One - covering the earliest evidence, early Irish law and sacred marriages etc.
• Part Two - covering informal marriages in Ireland and Scotland, as well as handfasting
• Part Three - covering the later evidence for marriage customs in Scotland and the Isle of Man
• Part Four - covering the later evidence for marriage customs in Ireland
• Part Five - covering the early evidence for attitudes towards sex and sexuality
• Part Six - giving some thoughts of ritual elements and rites to add to a reconstructionist ritual

Given the length of it, I've had to repeat bits here and there in the hopes that while the whole thing should be cohesive, each article can stand on its own (ish). And while yes, I've proofread it, there are still probably some clangers I've missed, so hopefully it will all make sense. After so many thousands of words, my fingers sometimes end up not quite doing what my brain tells them to.

With that, enjoy. I'm not sure what I'm going to move on to next...I rather fear I may have to clean the house tomorrow while Rosie's at nursery.

Oh, the horror!

Hibernation and reviews

My hearth shrine, decorated with the tasteful skull-shaped lights for Samhainn...

It's been an odd transition period from summer-half to winter-half round here. Interminable rain and grey skies, and now gloriously frosty and sunny mornings (followed by more rain), and although I celebrated Samhainn two weeks ago now it feels like the transition into winter has only just secured itself and sunk its teeth in. The cold's making me feel kind of hibernaty - no bad thing when I have a pile of books to get through.

I got a pile of articles from my last trip to the library, and some of them are really good. Some of them I haven't got round to yet, but I thought it might be useful to give a brief rundown of the good ones before I go on to do a book review....

• Women, milk and magic at the Boundary Festival of May
  Patricia Lysaght
  
  This one is from Lysaght's Milk and Milk Products book (not the most inspiring title), which is a collection of essays on all things dairy in the Gaelic and Scandinavian world (primarily) from a historical perspective. I didn't read the whole book, but did pick at a few of the articles - well worth a read, especially some of the Scandinavian stuff that show the similarities between the folk customs surrounding milk charms and protecting the 'produce' (toradh, as the Gaels would call it). But this article stood out, so it was worth photocopying - it's a good overview of Bealtaine in Ireland, and includes a good amount of modern folklore and customs that were recorded by the Folklore Commission in the 1940s in particular (something that most other sources tend to lack). I shall probably use it to take a look at updating my Bealltainn article at some point.

• Hearth-Prayers and other Traditions of Brigit: Celtic Goddess and Holy Woman
  Séamas Ó Catháin
  
  From JRSAI Vol, 122, 1992. I was hoping for the article to have far more information about Irish hearth-prayers than it actually did, but still, this was a good read. If oddly tangential at times. But I did get some useful stuff from it, not least a slightly different version of an Irish smooring prayer:
  
  Coiglímse an tine mar a choiglíonns cách,
  I rake this fire like everyone else,
  
  Bríd ina bun agus Muire ina barr;
  Brigid below it with Mary on top;
  
  Dhá aingle déag d'aingle na ngrást,
  Twelve angels of the angels of the graces,
  
  Ag cumhdach mo thí-sa go lá.
  Protecting my house till down.
  
  And the point that aingeal is referenced in both Irish and Scottish versions, and refers to either angels, or fire. As a non-linguist, the clever ambiguities of the language can't be appreciated without articles like this to help me...

• 'Handfasting' in Scotland
  A. E. Anton
  
  In the Scottish Historical Review, Vol 37, 1958.
  
  Trying to figure out the whole debate around handfasting has been a bit of a bugger, quite frankly, because everyone knows that handfasting is an Anciente Celtic form of marriage. But it isn't (in the historical sense), although most sources arguing against it refer to each other rather than the historical sources that would be actually helpful. Yes, the argument may be convincing, but how about going into some detail, eh? Seeing as everyone references this article in arguing against handfasting-as-marriage, it seemed sensible to go to the source. It's thorough, and yes, it's convincingly argued (ha), although it's taken more than a few reads to absorb it all properly. I'm glad I got hold of it, though. TLDR: Handfasting comes from the Anglo-Saxon word handfæstung, which referred to the custom of shaking hands on agreement of a contract. In this case, a contract of betrothal - an agreement to marry at some point in future.

And so, onto the book review, one of my latest library snags:

Marriage in Ireland
Art Cosgrove (Ed.)

Originally published in 1985, this is a collection of essays on marriage throughout the history of Ireland. Each chapter is written by a different author, and covers a distinct period in history - from marriage in early Ireland, through to the twentieth century. The exception to the rule is Caoimhín Ó Danachair's (KevinDanaher's) article on 'Marriage in Irish folk tradition', and it really stood out for me as the best of the lot (also, the most helpful, to be fair).

The weakest eassy was the first - 'Marriage in early Ireland' by Donnchadh Ó Corráin. It's well written and informative, to be sure, but having gone into the subject in great detail already it seems that there are better sources to look at this (Bart Jaksi's chapter in 'The Fragility of Her Sex?', Fergus Kelly's Early Irish Law, and Daibhi Ó Cróinín's Early Medieval Ireland spring to mind), and for the most part it's probably safe to say that this is simply for the reason that those sources are more up to date and thorough. I couldn't help but feel that some of the issues were fudged a little here, but the article was sparser in references than I'd've liked it to have been, so it was difficult to follow up or check some of the points that seemed a little off (mainly linguistic points, possibly a matter of odd spelling).

Cosgrove's own chapter on 'Marriage in medieval Ireland' was a good read, and helpful for my reasearch, too, and the rest of the chapters were good too, though less relevant and therefore of slightly less interest to my aims. The last chapter in particular, 'Marriage in Ireland in the twentieth century' was more than a little dull for me, but then statistics have never really been my thing. It will surely be useful to anyone who needs (or wants) to know about marriage statistics of socio-economic groups, or rates of illegitimacy and so on. Me? Not so much.

Ó Danachair's article takes a slight detour from the chronology and focuses on folk memory, which he defines as being around 200 hundred years or so, and folk traditions. What you find here is pretty much what you'd expect from the author - good research, good writing, and engaging to boot. In many respects, this chapter gives a personality to the people being talked about in the other chapters, and while there was a little bit of overlapping in subject matter here and there between this article and the preceding one, on 'Pre-famine Ireland', it at least added to my understanding rather than made me switch off.

One thing I would liked to have seen is some mention, at least, of 'Teltown marriages' and the debate surrounding them, along with the problem of nineteenth century authors, in particular, heavily romanticising and even purposely rusticating the whole subject. OK, so that's two things. But this is a fairly small book, and to be fair there's only so much that you can cram in in such a short space. What it does offer is good, the few reservations I have with the first article aside, and it focuses on historical record, rather than general. I could quite happily have got stuck into a whole lot more, though.

Like an annoying thing on an annoying day, with annoying sprinkles on top...

My oh my, how time flies. No sooner did I go to the library, than a month suddenly vanished and I had to return my books. In my head, it's been a few weeks, tops. But no, the books I got from the grown up library (as the kids call it, because I had to explain why they couldn't come too, and that's all I could think of) were due back today.

I didn't get around to reading even half of what I was intending to, but I did get the research I needed done, at least. I kind of ran out of steam with the Understanding the Universe book - not that it's not good, it just wasn't scratching the itch I was hoping it would and in the end I just didn't finish it. I have a more pressing itch to scratch at the moment, so I might go back to it at some point, because while I was at the caravan I did make good progress with it and I might as well go the whole hog.

I don't like to hold on to books during term time, in case someone else needs them (because if they get recalled, I won't be able to return them immediately, necessarily. Which would be expensive for me and inconvenient for everyone else), so I've returned all but one of them - British Calendar Customs: Scotland - because I'm fairly sure nobody will miss that for another month or so, and when I get the chance I really want to get stuck into it.

This time, at the grown up library, I remembered to take my book list. So that's an improvement on last time at least. I managed to get the articles I wanted to hunt up, and a few of the books I forgot. Yay. But this is also where the annoying part comes in, because I've been trying to work on my next article - on marriage this time, following on from the pieces I did on Afterlife and Ancestors, and then Death and Burial - and I've kind of hit a wall. Marriage is unexpectedly complicated.

I thought it would be difficult in the sense that there's not much to go on in terms of pre-Christian evidence (and there isn't, in terms of ritual pointers, which is what I really want to know about), but noooooo, there's a whole lot of other things to consider, too. I thought it would be a matter of cup rituals - a maiden bestowing a cup of on her intended to signify her acceptance of him, and then vice versa when he accepts it, and so on...then early medieval Irish marriage laws...then more recent folklore evidence. But not so much. 

Research has been a hard slog and I seem to have collected a huge amount to sift through - more so than usual, and I'm already at the point where I know I'm going to have to split the whole thing into at least three parts. This is partly to do with the fact that I want to be comprehensive, and I want to show that marriage as it was is a very limiting topic for some in the present day. But my general aim in writing these articles is to give an overview of historical practices and outlooks, and that kind of conflicts with my own views on the subject. I'm fine with that, but at the same time I'm leery of how my attempts at being somewhat objective, at least, might be construed.

Marriage and babies was an ideal, yes. The laws didn't recognise gay and lesbian partnerships as being applicable for marriage unions (although homosexual relations in and of themselves weren't condemned either), and choosing not to have kids? Unheard of. It allowed for men to have more than one wife, but not women. And so on. As I said, it's complicated. And I'm leery of coming across as saying heterosexual marriage, between a man and woman (who subjugates herself to her husband) is the norm and the ideal in a reconstructionist and Gaelic Polytheist context, while trying to come across as even vaguely objective. I'm leery of coming across as saying that a man and woman should marry so they can have babies. End of. Because although to all intents and purposes I'm a walking embodiment of the heterosexual 'norm' - married, two kids, housewife - I don't think that should be the case for everyone. I don't think that those who choose alternatives to the 'norm' should be marginalised, because with modern technology, modern medicine, modern laws, we simply don't live in a world where such a narrow view should be considered to be desirable. I guess I have to have more of an editorial slant on the subject than I usually prefer, just to be clear.

But I'm kind of digressing. My main problem in writing the article is that there are still bits that I don't feel like I fully understand - not just that I'm not sure I can articulate properly, but I'm just not sure of at all. It's affecting my ability to put down the research I've collated into something even vaguely coherent. There seem to be a lot of holes, and there are conflicting opinions that all seem to confidently state that this is how it was, which then contradict everyone else. Which makes it evident that I need to do more research to fill in a few gaps before I can make up my mind with confidence.

This is where the really annoying part for today comes in. On my list of forgotten items that I managed to pick up today, was Bart Jaski's Early Irish Kingship and Succession. On a whim, I bought a copy of The Fragility of Her Sex? a while ago, because it was relatively cheap and I figured it would get me out of a research blackhole quicker than getting a copy from the library would, since the articles seemed to cover the issue of marriage in early medieval Ireland (turns out: not so much, but what I did find was useful, at least). Jaski has an article on marriage in there, and it was very helpful to what I needed to know, in parts, if not wholesale. I managed to piece bits of the rest together from here and there (and gods bless Google Scholar, Google Books, and Archive.org in my endeavour), and started to feel that at least as far as the cup-bearing issue, and the early Irish law were concerned, I had it covered. Then I looked up 'marriage' in the index of Early Irish Kingship and Succession, and the first thing that I looked at detailed almost everything I've written so far. If not word for word, then pretty much in the same order and not really disagreeing with anything I've said so far.

So much for my attempts at original research. I've basically followed in the footsteps of someone else already, for no good reason, because I should've just got his book instead - and could've, if I'd remembered the damn book list a month ago. I mean, it really looks like a bad case of plagiarism, cheekily disguised by the fact that I've attempted to make it look like I haven't by just referencing the same sources...It's a bit of a bummer, to say the least. Or maybe I should feel buoyed by my apparently on-the-nose research skills.

But it's not all bad - oh no and definitely definitely not. In looking up some of the journals for articles I wanted to photocopy, as usual I picked a few of the other volumes off the shelf and had a quick flick through. As luck would have it, I found a good article called 'The Drink of Death' that essentially looks at the inversion of the cup motif, in relation to the king's marriage to the land, along with an article on tattooing in insular Celtic tradition by Charles MacQuarrie. I read the latter on the train home, and it offers a lot of food for thought, not least in the fact that he points out that as far as the Picts and woad go, they are said to have painted themselves. It's iron needles that they and other insular tribes (certain, and specific tribes, MacQuarrie suggests) used for tattooing, and these tattoos tended to be of animals on the face, arms (close to the wrist) or thigh. They were either indicative of some sort of 'bloodthirsty' pact (i.e. uncivilised, pagan), or else an expression of some sort of spiritual (civilised but arguably not necessarily Christian, given the precedents) ideal. So basically, considering the next tattoo I have in mind, it's all cool beans. Although I doubt it will be on my face...