On Furphies: what we really don't know about the 'Celts'

[la_marquise]

I have my professional hat on, today, over on the SF Novelists blog. I'm talking about the concept of 'Celts', the origin of myths about their history and the law around women. You can find the article here. You can comment here or there.

SKirt of the day: flippy blurred floral.

Comments

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Good stuff. I am going to identify as a Corsican Celt* and demand an appropriate ethnicity tick box.

* No really. I have ancestors called Patrick and Kathleen and ancestors from Corsica. What is a island. Also it alliterates. What more could anyone ask?

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Good stuff. I am going to identify as a Corsican Celt* and demand an appropriate ethnicity tick box.

* No really. I have ancestors called Patrick and Kathleen and ancestors from Corsica. What is a island. Also it alliterates. What more could anyone ask?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Probably you have too "rigidly scientific" an imagination.

...It's basically conspiracy-theory mythology.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

It's the historian in me. Or maybe it's because my mother was a science teacher. Or maybe both...

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

It hit the wall for me when it demonstrated that it took the Lebor Gabála Érenn's Milesian invasion narrative literally.

Also when it fitted Crom Crúaich and Herakles into the same universalising schema by claiming that they were entirely alike. HELLO GRAVESY WE DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW MUCH AT ALL ABOUT CROM CRÚAICH.

I expect my review will be entertaining but will not satisfy any Gravesians or THIS IS TRUE neopagans.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

It sounds as if it will not make people like me at all unhappy, though.

Graves was hard to write critically about when he first wrote, though. He is so stylish and touched upon on the nice popular thoughts and gave them mythic value.

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

:-)
Bonkers. Complete hokum. I blame Fraser and Campbell for most of this, I really do. Though it makes a great hunting ground for novelists.

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

They almost certainly didn't. I wrote about that for Clarkeworld a couple of years ago. But it's a subject atht really upsets some lay readers -- Simon James, who is the most vocal on resisting 'Celticism', gets hate mail.

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

It is, and rather beautifully written. But *not* anthropology, which it is sometimes taken to be.

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

I hereby dare you to read Fraser. He is the Source. I read the short version of the Golden Bough in my teens and it explained an awful lot about Graves. Mary Renault and others.
The reigning king of 'you what?' books about the Celts is Celtic Heritage, Alwyn and Brinley Rees. Wonderfully wrong.

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

He reduced The Golden Bough to manageable size and incorporated ideas from Jung and the spiritualists. It's a fascinating book if considered as fiction. But only then.

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

Yes, precisely. We are dealing with a category created by an outside group, who lumped all sorts of people's together mainly by geography, drew parallels between their cultures which may not have been considered parallels at all by the cultures themselves and then became Authorities due to historical accident.
I had that book too. Good stuff.

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

Furphies are everywhere.

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

The Celts were slave-owning peoples: the law codes make this completely clear. It's another thing that romantic Celtic fantasies of the sub-Mists of Avalon kind miss out. (There are writers who get it right, or right enough, given the demands of fiction -- Patricia Finney, Katherine Kerr, Evangeline Walton -- but most readers don't know how to tell the difference.)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I've got both Breton and Scottish ancestry, but that don't make me a Celt as it's Francononne Breton and lowland Scottish.

A lot of folk simply don't seem to be able to haul this on board.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I only read such things for pay.

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

For a value of 'Celt'. The 'traditional' Celtic migration theory starts with Spain. But genetic connection and cultural identity are not the same -- cultures and languages mutate, drift, intermix and change over time and genetic links are far enough back that in terms of recorded culture, they aren't hugely helpful. Interesting, though.
I was delighted with the Church of Wales' decision to elect female bishops. They didn't have them in the early middle ages, not at all.
I have a soft spot for some of the Welsh saints. Interesting set of Lives.

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

I'm glad it's useful/

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

Yes: I think if you've got any base in history at all, you know the furphies. It's popular culture that won't let go of them.

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

I hope so :-)

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

Corsica is an area I've never studied, I have to say.

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

Oh, the degree of inter-marriage across cultural groups in Europe is huge, much larger than most people realise. And there is a 'romance' about being a Celt right now, so people are attracted to it. I am probably mostly a Celt -- Welsh mother, father from the Herefordshire borders -- but there's Somerset in there too, and Black Country, and on both sides we have blue eyes as a recessive (I have them, along with 3 cousins). IN the early middle ages, these areas were probably fairly mixed anyway -- Britons and Saxons -- and then we get the Scandinavians and the Normans (Franko-Scandinavian with some Breton) and the Flemings and....
We're a mongrel race, the British.

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

Very wise :-)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Yup! In my case there's English, Scottish, Romani and a smidge of Welsh plus Breton, Italian and Latvian Jewish and those are just the ones I know about! :o)

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Your posts always are. :)