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]

Recent scholarship tends towards the idea that MacPherson's 'Ossian' wasn't entirely spurious but a considerable 'improvement' on some surviving fragments. As fakes go, it isn't bad! :o)

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Ossian went well with the obsession of the slave power with pseudo feudalism, taking Walter Scott (not his fault, and surely he'd be appalled if he knew) as the model for their pseudo jousts and tournaments.

Their desire was to recreate a society that was entirely class based, but with slaves instead of serfs. Not even necessarily African heritage slaves either, by this time, but anyone who wasn't worthy of being a master-owner-aristocrat. As it was in South Carolina and always had been, no one could run for office -- or vote for a candidate -- who wasn't wealthy -- and for the top political slots there weren't even elections, they selected out of their own oligarcy who would be senator and so on. No Jacksonian democracy voters' franchise exercised in the slave society, no siree bhob!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

'but anyone who wasn't worthy of being a master-owner-aristocrat'

So not much has changed on that side of the big pond then? :o(

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

The Red States (the heart of which is the former Confederate States of America) are talkin' all the same talk, walkin' the same walk and doing their best to bankrupt the country and repudiate all state debt, while pillaging other people's pensions that they worked for.

You be the judge, Judge! I just call 'em as I witness 'em.

Love, C.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

There's archaeological evidence of British chiefs selling other Brits to the Romans . I found my attitudes to this affected by the knowledge that once the English occupation of England was well established, the word that became "Welsh" changed meaning from "foreigner" to "slave" (this was the lower orders; the higher-ups rebranded themselves as English).

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

And of course there's St Patrick: born in Britain, captured by Irish raiders and sold in Ireland, and later wrote to a British chieftain criticising him for allowing his men to raid Ireland for slaves.

[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.)