La femme celte

[la_marquise]

I'm blogging today about the myth of the Celtic Woman, over on Charles Stross' blog, for those who are interested. Comments are down there, at present, due to spambots, but you can comment here, if you're interested.

Skirt of the day: red and gold silk wrap.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It's a common belief -- it derives from Irish saga material about the origins of some of the Irish peoples, which 19th century scholars took as early and authentic. More recent work has shown that they're anything but, but at the time, this was the best information available, and as a result scholars approached archaeological finds expecting to see pan-Celticism. The idea of diffusionism -- everything spreading out from a heartland in the middle East -- as promulagated by V. Gordon Child and others in the first half of the 20th century, played into this notion too.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Were those Irish origin stories explicitely meant as an appeal to unity or were they just the background to some stories and histories and pedigrees?

I’m now left wondering at the parallel between those Irish origin stories and the sort of stories that both sides, but mainly the Unionist side are telling about nationhood.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

We don't really know, alas. At the time they were written down, there was no Irish nation as such -- there were many rival clan-based kingdoms, each with their own agenda, genealogies and, probably, origin tales. What we have are the origin tales of groups who were closely tied to successful churches, and whose traditions became culturally important, like the Dal Riada and the Ui Neill.