An Dindshenchas de Emain Macha
Cid diatá Eomuin Machae? Ni hanse. …
The Story of the Name of Emain Macha
Why the name of Emhain Macha? Not difficult. …
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…
Historic Love Magic: Not Just A Woman’s Art
Recently in a discussion the subject of laws against women using witchcraft to lure a man into marriage came up, and while it is an interesting topic it made me think that we tend to always look at love magic as something done by women to get a husband and not the other way around. In reality there is quite a bit of evidence in both Irish and Norse material to support men using magic to get a wife as well. So I thought, in the interest of fairness, it would be good to look at the other side of the love magic coin, that is men using magic against women in affairs of the heart. 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…
Aislinge Óenguso: Oengus’s Dream
My newest translation project, the text of the “Aislinge Oenguso”. This was a fun and interesting text to do, but a bit time consuming. I did make a few changes in the English, choosing to take a looser approach to the literal translations in order to preserve the flow of the story, and keeping all verbs in the past tense. You may also note that in the text the goddess Boínn is referred to with the definitive article as “the Boínn”; this reflects the Irish material where she, like the Dagda, is given the definitive “the” before her name. This convention seems to have been lost in English but is clearly present in the original Irish of the story.
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:
Anti-Racism Magic
Blessings Darlings!
I assume that everyone reading has heard of the attack earlier this week on the people – black people – at the Emmanuel AME church in South Carolina. I’m going to provide a simple magic aimed at reducing racism.