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

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

What we really don't know about the Celts?

Most things really- even whether 'the Celts' as a cultural entity ever existed.

Ah, the joys of being an historian! :o)

Skirt of the day?

Ancient undergraduate era denim!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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)