Brace yourself...

Pictures are coming (with plenty of waffle, too).

Last Sunday we dropped the dogs off with the in-laws in preparation for a short(ish) family holiday over to Ireland, and then on Monday morning at 4am we got up and got in the car half an hour later to make our way to the ferry port. Two hours later we arrived there, an hour later we were off on our way, and then after another two hours we arrived in Belfast. Then followed a glorious five days of trekking around an enthralling series of lumps and small walls, as Mr Seren refers archaeological sites.

Our original plan was to spend a few days around Dublin, then head over to Galway, up to Donegal, before heading home again, but we had to reduce our plans to spend a full week there down to five days, due to work constraints. So eventually Galway and Donegal were abandoned, and we ended up basing ourselves in Dublin for the whole time (which was much easier, really - especially when kids are involved).

On Monday we stopped off at the heritage centre at Newgrange and took a tour round the Knowth complex and then Newgrange itself. After being up so early in the day, that was about all we could manage - we'd planned on doing the Hill of Tara as well, but Newgrange took up the whole afternoon - so we put that off for another day. Tuesday was the Dublin museum, taking in all the archaeology, then Wednesday was Kildare. We took in the cathedral, the fire temple and round tower, and had lunch in the town centre, then spent the afternoon at Brigid's well before heading home via Glendalough (which was beautiful). Thursday was a days for the kids, at a waterpark, and Friday we headed home via the Hill of Tara and a leisurely drive through Navan, Kells, a few other towns, and a semi-accidental trip up the Falls Road in Belfast on our way to the docks.

One thing I learned on our travels is that Irish drivers are fucking terrifying. No, seriously. Terrifying.

Anyway, over the next few posts (probably more than a few, to be fair...) I'll be waffling on about all the sites I saw, once I've sorted through all the photos and uploaded them (and picked up the dogs from the in-laws). And slept a little...

JSTOR

One of the biggest problems for most people who are keen on doing their own research is the limited access to academic journals. The kind of articles you can find in journals are often some of the most useful resources because they can deal with the kind of minutiae and specialist areas that won't fit into a book, or else they provide the kind of bite-size burst of information that's a lot easier to chew on than a dry and dense academic book. But unless you have access to a university library, or academic resources like JSTOR, you pretty much have to rely on what's freely available online (such as ones I've listed here), or hope you can find someone who might trouble themselves to obtain a copy for you.

For a while now, JSTOR have been offering access to some of their articles that are already in the public domain, but now – and finally, because they've been promising to do it for ages – they're allowing members of the public limited access to their still-copyrighted catalogue. From what I've read, you won't get access to all the brand new articles that have just been released, but if what you're looking for has been published for a good three years or so, then you might be able to access it (if it's included in the scheme). You have to sign up to the site, and then you'll be able to add no more than three articles to your "shelf," where you can then view them. You don't get to download the articles, you just get access to images (so you can't cut and paste them to keep forever and ever), and whatever you add will stay on your shelf for two weeks, after which you can remove it and then pick something else to read.

So it really is limited – and frustratingly so if you're relying on it to do research for a particular piece you might want to work on – but it's better than nothing I suppose. For me, while I have access to a university library and can get a lot of articles there, I don't get access to JSTOR or other kinds of online resources, so it's a bugger if I want to access an article in a journal the university doesn't carry. Now, though, I can access journals like Béaloideas, whereas otherwise I'd have to jump through hoops to get what I want to look at when I happen to be able to visit the library. So that's a definite YAY.

I'm still holding out for unlimited access, though...

NEW STUFF

A heads up from Gaol Naofa:

While it may seem we’ve been quiet for a while, much has been happening behind the scenes as we’ve celebrated five years as an organisation. Our council has been very busy, creating new content for this site, as well as for private use by the members of Gaol Naofa. All of the site documents have been updated and restructured. While much of this site will still be familiar to our long-term readers, there is a lot of new material here.

If you happen to hang out on our Gaelic Polytheism group on Facebook, you'll already have seen the announcement, but otherwise: Gaol Naofa Uachtarán Treasa, Kathryn and I have been busy Doing Stuff over the past year or so in particular, updating and expanding the website and figuring out a few things. There's more in the works, but we're at the point where the first lot of Stuff is ready to be unleashed. You can read the proper announcement at the Gaol Naofa link above, or on our new page over on Facebook, but here's an overview of what's we've put out so far:

The Gaol Naofa FAQ
The link above will take you to the main page, click on the link for the pdf file (we had to put it in a pdf because it clocks in at a good 90 pages long). The FAQ has been substantially expanded and outlines the nitty gritty of our organisation and our vision for it, and it also goes into some of our beliefs and outlooks on certain areas. In that sense it might be of interest to Gaelic Polytheists in general, but I hope it's clear that the contents of the FAQ (as with everything else we've done) speaks to our own points of view as an organisation and no one else's. Even though some other groups might overlap with us in places, that doesn't mean one size fits all.

Then there's:

Rowan and Red Thread: Magic and Witchcraft in Gaelic Cultures
Again a pdf (I think it's fair to say that the length of this one is pretty much my fault), clocking in at a more modest, but still meaty, 57 pages... We cover the general gist of the article in some of the questions in the FAQ, so this offers a bit more of our thoughts on this, with plenty of references and historical goodness. It's a huge area, though, and this is really only scratching the surface, for sure.

And then we have:

Prayer in Gaelic Polytheism
Another pdf but a bit shorter than the two above. The title is fairly self-explanatory, so we go into how we approach prayer and how we make our prayers, and the kinds of sources we look to and how we deal with the problems those sources present. Some examples of prayer are given, with a suggested reading list at the end as well.

As you'll see on the articles page, the Offerings article has been slightly overhauled recently, and there is an article from Treasa and Kathryn yet to come (soon!). Elsewhere on the site you'll find that the reading list has been expanded, and the "About" pages have been overhauled too, and to celebrate five years of the organisation, Treasa has given the website a bit over a makeover with new headers and icon thingies...

A big thanks, once again, to everyone who helped us out and supported us during the first, second and however many final drafts we got to!

Reviews

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.