Happy Lughnasadh every one!
Air n-Aithesc:Air n-Aithesc Volume II Issue II
Volume II Issue II of Air n-Aithesc
Author Archives: Maya
The Celts An Illustrated History
Author: Helen Litton
Publisher: Wolfhound Press
Published: 1997
ISBN: 9780863275777
Pages: 138 including a bibliography, index, and many pictures both black and white and coloured.
Synopsis: In the eyes of the world Ireland is a Celtic country – but just how Celtic is Ireland? Do we know whether the Celts arrived at all? What was their real impact on this western island at the edge of the known world?
Of Recommended Reading Lists – The Long Version
Previously I’d given a short recommended reading list, this one is a bit more comprehensive with a few more books added but it is still a very short list compared to what is out there. However, by the time you finish reading these books you will have a good foundation on which you may start to build your personal practice and finding new books to read on your own.
Continental Connections
Long Title: Continental Connections – Exploring Cross-Channel Relationships from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age
Editors: Hugo Anderson-Whymark, Duncan Garrow and Fraser Strut
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
Published: January 31st, 2015
ISBN: 9781782978091
Pages: 172 with some maps, charts, pictures, and illustrations.
Synopsis:
The prehistories of Britain and Ireland are inescapably entwined with continental European narratives. The central aim here is to explore cross-channel relationships throughout later prehistory, investigating the archaeological links (material, social, cultural) between the areas we now call Britain and Ireland, and continental Europe, from the Mesolithic through to the end of the Iron Age. Since the separation from the European mainland of Ireland (c. 16,000 BC) and Britain (c. 6000 BC), their island nature has been seen as central to many aspects of life within them, helping to define their senses of identity, and forming a crucial part of their neighbourly relationship with continental Europe and with each other. However, it is important to remember that the surrounding seaways have often served to connect as well as to separate these islands from the continent. In approaching the subject of continental connections in the long-term, and by bringing a variety of different archaeological perspectives (associated with different periods) to bear on it, this volume provides a new a new synthesis of the ebbs and flows of the cross-channel relationship over the course of 15,000 years of later prehistory, enabling fresh understandings and new insights to emerge about the intimately linked trajectories of change in both regions.
Review: Continue reading…
Early Medieval Ireland AD 400-1100: the Evidence from Archaeological Excavations
Authors: Aidan O’Sullivan, Finbar McCormick, Thomas Kerr, Lorcan Harney
Publisher: Royal Irish Academy
Published: 2014, originally 2013
ISBN: 9781904890607
Pages: 584 pages including Appendix tables, Bibliography, Index, plates and figures.
Synopsis:
How did people create and live in their own worlds in early medieval Ireland; what did they actually do; and to what end did they think they were doing it? This book investigates and reconstructs from archaeological evidence how early medieval Irish people lived together as social groups, worked the land as farmers, worshipped God, made and used objects and buried their dead around them. It focuses on the evidence from excavations conducted between 1930 and 2012 and uses that evidence to explore how people used their landscapes, dwellings and material culture to effect and negotiate social, ideological and economic continuities and changes during the period AD 400–1100.
Review: Continue reading…
Manx Calendar Customs
Author: C. I. Paton
Publisher: The University Press, Glasgow
Published: 1939
Series: Folk-Lore Society London Monographs (Volume 110)
Pages:147 including Addenda and index, with pictures.
Review: Continue reading…
The Story of the Isle of Man
Author: Arthur William Moore
Publisher: General Books LLC (Scanned)
Published: 2012, originally 1902
ISBN: 9781154154152937
Pages: 31
Review: Continue reading…
The Celts: The Construction of a Myth
Author: Malcolm Chapman
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 1992
ISBN: 0-333-52088-2
Pages: 342, including 2 Appendices, Notes, Bibliography and an Index.
Synopsis: The Celts are commonly considered to be one of the great peoples of Europe, with continuous racial, cultural and linguistic genealogy from the Iron Age to the modern-day “Celtic fringe”. This book shows, in contrast, that the Celts, as they have been known and understood over two thousand years, are simply the “other” of the dominant cultural and political traditions of Europe. It is this continuous “otherness” which lends them apparent continuity and substance. Modern social anthropology, Celtic studies, literary and historical evidence, and the author’s own fieldwork in Brittany and Scotland, are brought together in demonstration of this.
Review: Continue reading…
A God Who Makes Fire – The Bardic Mysticism of Amergin
**This review was first published in Volume II Issue I of Air n-Aithesc
Full Title: A God Who Makes Fire: The Bardic Mysticism of Amergin Author: Christopher Scott Thompson
Copyright: 2013
ISBN: 978-1-304-45726-4
Pages: 202
Synopsis:
An in-depth examination of the famous “Cauldron of Poesy” text describing the mystical practices of the poet-seers of medieval Ireland and the legendary bard Amergin. Includes a new translation of the text, a line-by-line analysis of the original Old Irish, a new interpretation of the Cauldron system unlike any in current use and exercises for practicing the Cauldron system as a method of spiritual cultivation.
Review:
A Guide to Irish Mythology
Author: Daragh Smyth
Publisher: Irish Academic Press
Published: First published in 1988, this edition 1996
ISBN: 9780716526124
Pages: 200 including source material list and index
Synopsis: This guide, structured alphabetically with a helpful cross-reference system, allows the reader to delve into the ornate world of Irish mythology and its four cycles of tales: the Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian or Ossianic Cycle, and the Historical Cycle or Cycle of Kings. The characters associated with each of these cycles are vividly brought to life — heroes such as Cuchulainn, Oisin, Cormac Mac Airt, Conchobar Mac Nessa, Finn and the Fianna.