J. P. Mallory's "The Origins of the Irish": Book Review

Combining archeology with linguistics, adding genetics to explain the connections between these two fields, this expert in Indo-European Studies turns to his homeland to wonder how its earliest inhabitants wound up on this North Atlantic island. With attention to demystification but with an affection for the myths, J. P. Mallory builds on nearly a half-century of his research to present an academic study that anybody curious about his title will welcome. Learned but lively, Mallory's contribution remains throughout cautious in its surmises but diligent in his analyses.

He begins about as far back as the Big Bang, if in passing. Much of the first hundred pages explain how recently Ireland (and Britain, always its fractious or friendly neighbor) split off from the Continent--itself long in the making as the tectonic plates shifted slowly. Two parts of Ireland at one time faced each other, if from a distance as far apart as Australia from the island today.

After the last Ice Age, the land bridge between northwest France and Ireland cannot be firmly dated, but it broke apart over 12,000-10,000 years ago. That means whomever settled as what Mallory calls the "Irelanders"--prior to the relatively recent national formation of the "Irish" under Niall of the Nine Hostages, the first figure straddling legendary and historical times and allegedly the kidnapper of Calpurnius' Romano-Briton son to be known as Patrick--had to migrate into that thawed-out expanse after the melting glaciers filled the Irish Sea.

For only 1/43,000th of its existence as a land mass has Ireland occupied its present site and shape. Poorer in flora and fauna than Britain or the Continent, it could not have supported many prehistoric families. As few as 3,000 people may have lived in Ireland for the first 40% of its existence as we know it. Recently settled in Eurasian terms, colonists may have voyaged from the nearby Isle of Man as global warming wiped out part of that territory. Generally, Mallory favors looking closest--to the western Scottish and Welsh shores for those who would populate Ireland first.

As for farming, around 3800 BCE marks a revolution in agriculture. It may have spread rapidly, within two hundred years, and again probably westward from a British base. Brittany at the tip of today's France may have contributed, as the longer sea passages navigated back and forth in turn may have stimulated Irish-British trade all the more.

Any archeological treatment of Northern Europe debates the origins and provenance of the Beakers, the pottery goblets with a bell-like shape. Suffice to say Mallory delves into this with gusto and wit, no small feat for what can be deadly dull material for those of us outside the trenches. He loves citing his more imaginative predecessors to telling effect about the romantic interpretations of sherds and grooves. "Drink, fighting and the Irish Sweepstakes would certainly tally with Irish stereotypes," he comments as he surveys the eagerness of his gullible colleagues to imagine (ca. 2500 BCE) brutal invaders, tipsy warriors, and horse-drawn shock and awe descending upon cowering scrabblers.

Metallurgy ushers in the Bronze and Iron Ages, and the siting of dramatic hillforts may show cultural shifts for population changes and ritual behaviors at this time.  While Mallory downplays the exotic or martial, he notes how, given hoards found, Continental foreigners could have visited or stayed.  He consistently edges away from a scenario of invasion (despite the Irish legends and their "nine waves" of conquerors) to one of gradual diffusion of goods and contacts. Ironically, Niall's own inheritance centuries later would signal the end of this mythical time, as a cult from Southwest Asia and the customs and language of a dying empire would transform Ireland into the "Irish," whose legacy would be distorted by Christian interpretations of what has come to be known as a "Celtic" past.

Earlier than often assumed, by those celebrating Patrick's freedom from Niall's enslavement and his return to Ireland to convert its "pagan" natives, Roman influence entered Ireland as it had Patrick's homeland, wherever it was across the Irish Sea. In fact, perhaps by way of earlier slaves than that fabled missionary to the Hibernians in 432, Christians lived on the island; a bishop was sent there the year before Patrick to minister to that flock. Niall and his ilk engaged in an active sea-slave trade.

Mallory shows that while a pre-Christian Roman presence left a fraction of what imperial centuries of occupation over Britain had, nonetheless Irish evidence for Roman trade and settlement can be marshaled. From the classical reports of Ptolemy and the Romanized variations on the savage British and Irish tribes and places, we get the first glimpse into what "civilization" regarded as Hibernia, a damp backward dump on the world's edge. "Why the Romans or indeed anyone else should have wanted to come to Ireland is a mystery if the early classical descriptions of the island had provided copy for Roman travel brochures", Mallory remarks with typical flair. 

We also owe the classical historians another label, if an elusive one. They named the diverse peoples across Europe speaking similar languages as Celts. Mallory follows Kim McCone in matching this to a root meaning of "hidden" and therefore "offspring of the hidden one," identifying this allusion with the lord of the dead, Donn, the "dark brown one."

Speaking of enduring identifiers, generations looked south to Spain (anywhere but east!) for Irish origins, but this Latin confusion does not fool Mallory. He dismisses origin myths as modeled by monks on the biblical wanderings of the Jews. He also blames the Wikipedia equivalent of the 7th century, Isidore's Etymologies, with this persistent but false derivation of supposedly adjacent Hibernians from venerable Iberians.

Deepening his application of language, the latter third of Mallory's study finds him tackling the spread of the Celtic tongue into Ireland. These final hundred pages pack a tremendous amount of data--DNA as well as glottochronology--into a few chapters. Microliths give way to haplotypes.

He leaves us with two possibilities about the spread of Proto-Irish during the first millennium BCE. Mallory posits social prestige and identification with trend setters as likely explanations for a native adoption of a Celtic language. He suggests that an initial impact around 1000 BCE is one of two "most likely" windows of opportunity, in tandem with the emergence of hillforts. The second may be around the 3rd century BCE as Tara and other highly visible "ritual enclosures" dominated the landscape and consolidated a mental perspective that would endure as the "Irish" looked around in Niall's pivotal era to adapt the four provinces circling around a fifth center as their nation's model.

This valuable book does not leap from a petri dish or a soggy excavation to any bold conclusion. This Belfast-based professor knows his subject all too well to trust in what genetic findings from next year's lab or carbon dating from this season's dig may override. Mallory relies on commonsense and judicial balancing of the more fervid proposals of his colleagues. The Origins of the Irish serves as a trustworthy. eminently scholarly but accessible guide past tricky diversions and evasive directions. (PopMatters 4-1-13 + 4-2-13 Amazon US)

"To the Winds Our Sails: Irish writers translate Galician poets": Book Review

This 2010 anthology collects five poems each from ten Galician women. Irish poets translate four per poet from an English-language crib, with the remaining one rendered into Irish itself. The results reveal some of the revived enthusiasm and energy emanating from this northwestern corner of Iberia, with its alleged ancient ties to the Celtic lands, as the legendary homeland of the Irish themselves. 

How such expression cross over linguistic expanses, co-editor Mary O’Donnell observes, raise questions. ‘It remains one of the essential questions whenever translation is in the air: how should it be done—an attempt at a literal transposition, an attempt to capture the spirit of the poem, regardless what gymnastics of language and phrasing, or is it a bit like making a dog stand on its hind legs? In other words, can it be done at all?’

Comparing Luz Pozo Garza’s take (from As arpas de Iwerddon [The Harps of Iwerddon—unmentioned in this very under-annotated book but it’s the Welsh version of Éire]) on the medieval account Lebor Gabala Éren or Book of Invasions, the possibilities emerge across the sea that unites rather than divides Galician from Gael. Taking Binn Éadair as her setting in these inclusions, she evokes a John Hinde picture-postcard rather than today’s Howth full of imposing villas. She appears to wish to return to what was imagined, in venerable or more recent depictions of this fabled promontory north of Dublin, and like her translator Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, envisions myth within or beneath today’s exurban sprawl. 

Manuela Palacios in her preface explains the context for each poet. She singles out Luz Pichel’s surrealism. The unpredictable bursts into her “Burning the Firewood’. I cite in full for a flavour of her style. ‘The fog at daybreak is crammed with the bustle/ of rushing people./ A cock’s cry that comes with from afar/ echoes the cry of the crow,/ that scurries frightened/ by the blows of men.// They rise with the day and break maces/ against the doors of the cattle shed.// Another cock responds./ I look at the woodshed and think/ how I would like to burn it all.’

Catherine Phil MacCarthy’s rendition captures the rhythm of the Galician, with about the same amount of syllables per line. English usually takes fewer words than the original, so MacCarthy’s choice shows the attention to not only meaning but melody that translation may provide. Poets were given free rein to tighten or loosen the English or Irish equivalents, and in the latter (each Galician chose which of her five poems would be singled out for the Gaelic selection; some Irish poets had their own command of Irish to translate and some were given assistance, notably by Rita Kelly), considerable change can be seen, as that language in turn often demanded more words and more syllables than the Galician, in turn.

Why use three languages? This parallels, as O’Donnell shows, compare 'two histories of struggle, two histories almost assimilated by greater, eloquent cultures that communicate in what are decisively termed world languages’, so giving Gaeilge and Gallego a chance to be heard along with English and rather than Spanish strengthens cultural exchange and encourages dialogue between the two nations, in real or idealised manifestations between two cultural cousins, seeking blood ties beyond the water.

Ultimately, the choice of ten women poets itself burrows into the land for some, and transcends its limits for others eager to enter imaginary or psychic terrain. This matters for any reader. Let Xiana Arias via Paddy Bushe conclude, as they do this volume, with a burst of transmission asserting ‘This is Not Feminine Literature’: ‘This is not feminine literature, the author said, while writing a play for children. There is a hero who snatches a beautiful woman from the arms of an evil man. In the end she leaves, alone, scoring the asphalt with her toenails.’ This image digs deep into one’s imagination, a fitting way to leave the impact of this encounter within the reader’s mind. (Slugger O'Toole 9-25-13 and to Amazon US 8-10-13)

Ag foghlaim faoi Galicia

Faoi deireadh, bím ag léamh mír faoi na Gailíse sa Spáinn. Deirtear finscéal go raibh ndúiche Cheilteach fadó. Ach, níl mé cinnte mar scoláire, ar an drochuair.

Mar sin féin, thósaigh mé fuarthas ar iosacht leabhar leictreoneach le David Hoffman. Is treoirleabhar aísiúil é. Scriobh sé go soiléir agus gonta.

Tá mé ag gheofar ar iosacht leabhar eile leis filiochta aistrithe ó Gailísis go Béarla-- agus roinnt Gaeilge. Beidh mé sé ag thaispeáint ar bealach spraoiúil a foghlaim beag as Gaeilge agus Gailísis a chéile. Is cosúil Portaingéilis go fírinne.

Is maith liom an suíomh seo ar an nghréasán Turgalicia freisin. Tá tú in ann ag dul ag imeall an réigiún agus ag fheicéail an tír féin. Tá bealaí taistil eagsulaí ann.

Go minic, d'fhéadhfadh go mbeadh mearbhall nuair a lorg de reir "Galicia" i mBéarla. Tá sé freisin réigiún arsa sa Pholainn. Bhí conái Giúdaigh ann, go dtí go chéid seo caite. Fada ó shín, rinne Ceiltigh ansin.

Learning about Galicia

Lately, I'm reading a bit about Galicia in Spain. It's said in legend that it was a Celtic heartland long ago. But, I'm not sure as a scholar, unfortunately. 

All the same, I started with borrowing an electronic book by David Hoffman. It's a useful guidebook. It's written clearly and concisely.

I am borrowing another book about poetry translated from Galician to English--and some Irish.  It will show me a fun way to learn a little in Irish and Galician together. It's like Portuguese, certainly.

I like this site on the web Turgalicia too. You are able to go about and the region and to see the land itself. There's various itineraries there.

Often, there may be confusion when searching regarding "Galicia" in English. It's also an ancient region in Poland. Jews lived there, until the last century. Long ago, Celts did.

(Photo/Grianghraf: Cristina Pato leis bratach na Gailíse agus píopaí/with a flag of Galicia and pipes.)

"Mebyon Kernow + Cornish Nationalism": Book Review

Unlike Scotland and Wales, Cornwall represents ambiguity as a Celtic nation. Formerly Celtic-speaking, its last native speakers having died before the nineteenth century, for five centuries it remains an English county. This paradox, accepted by many of its residents, introduces this study by Bernard Deacon, Dick Cole, and Garry Tregidga. (Cardiff: Ashley Drake-Welsh Academic Press-Griffin Press, 2003. ISBN: 1-86057-075-5.) Mebyon Kernow & Cornish Nationalism sums up, concisely and dispassionately, the formation of the 'Party for Cornwall' in 1951, its revivalist and antiquarian predecessors, and its inspiration for wider Cornish Solidarity pressure groups and Cornish Assembly campaigns now agitating for de-evolution in the wake of SNP and Plaid Cymru's successes over the past decade.

The language had faded well before industrialization took full hold over Cornwall. Contrasting with Welsh and Scots nationalist efforts in the early 20c, Cornish progressives took the momentum that erosion of agriculture as a basis for most of its residents provided, and celebrated the spread of the machine. Yet, by the end of the last century, the last tin mine having closed after millennia digging and refining the metal that made Cornwall famed, the trust placed in mechanization had crumbled. Instead, the influx of second-home owners from 'up-country' loomed, along with the relegation of Cornwall as a touristed but otherwise neglected backwater by Westminster, as larger threats. Reasserting Cornish Celtic identity has both played into the hands of those vacationing or retiring there, and tricked those predicting that cultural nationalism could never lead to political activism among those once again proud to be Cornish, not English.

The second chapter surveys the early 20c language movement. The Celtic Revival, as elsewhere in the Atlantic archipelago, remained mired too often in antiquarianism. Garbed druids were picturesque, but failed to use their powers to halt emigration of the land's youth. Many who sought to resurrect the language fought against any accompanying radicalism, paralleling the Gaelic League-IRB Hyde-Pearse contentions. Henry Jenner is here quoted in 1926 as claiming 'no wish on anyone's part to translate the Irish political expression "Sinn Féin" into Cornish, [or] to agitate for Home Rule for Cornwall [or to] foment disloyalty to England's King or the British Empire.' (16) Jenner's assurances of an apolitical revival showed how fearful many of the elder generation could be about any revolution, given the scale of Ireland's recent wars.

Only at mid-century, in the postwar British reassessment of conventional pieties, did nationalists form a constitutional party, Sons of Cornwall, MK. Even tiny nudges towards what was perceived as a call for federalism or regional representation aroused mainstream culturalists' fears echoing Jenner's jitters. Under Richard Jenkins and other committed activists, change began, however small. The competition, the content, and the compromises could be tiny: unable to select among three vying canonized candidates to be Cornwall's patron saint, it was agreed to consecrate the Duchy to their care as a trio.

But, by the early 1960s, more substantive rather than symbolic considerations loomed. Although the authors make no mention, the parallel with Sinn Féin in the Wolfe Tone Society ginger group of the mid-60s sharpens the depiction of what confronted a miniscule cadre. Young Cornish patriots, like their Irish and other Celtic counterparts, longed for not nostalgia but real advance into a politically relevant and economically practical terrain upon which the recovery by Celtic nationals of their land, their subsistence, and their citizenship could be contested and won. For MK, the enemy emerged after the Greater London Council was formed. The GLC proposed-hidden from local scrutiny-that their metropolitan overpopulation problem could be alleviated by the relocation of thousands of its urban millions to rural areas such as Cornwall. This 'overspill' would flood whoever and whatever remained of a native, regional, and Celtic culture, the MK argued. Inspired by the SNP and Plaid Cymru, MK fought back through conventional elections. Like the Welsh and Scots (and the Irish parallel again of Official SF-The Workers Party, unmentioned again by the authors), such methods sputtered and few gains were kept in the invader's Parliament. Powers of resistance again slipped away from Celtic control.

Three splits, in 1969, 1975, and 1980, weakened MK. Two of these led to splinter parties. The complaint reminded me again of that leveled against the Provos more than once. The older organization, restless youth and militantly minded veterans complained, was too broad rather than too narrow a place for Celtic action. If everyone from soft-focus language lovers to conservative ruralists to itchy leftists belonged to MK, it could not move forward into grasping and holding onto meaningful gains, politically or practically.

By the 1970s, opposition did coalesce around one main enemy: housing. Holiday homes and the rising prices that tourism spurred combined. They undermined the ability of native Cornish to afford to remain in their homeland.

But the radical action of another group of Mebyon, the Sons in Wales, the Free Welsh Army, and other shadowy contingents was not the acceptable face of Cornish nationalism. As the paper Cornish Nation became radicalized by such Celtic guerrillas in the early 70s, protests were lodged about its 'increasingly sympathetic coverage of Irish Republicanism.' (61) And in a media climate that loved the global warming of fist-pumping wild youth, the Cornish staged their own performance art. Posing as, inevitably, the 'Free Cornish Army,' students from Plymouth Polytechnic, among '40 fully trained units' as they claimed, marched and were duly photographed and publicized before the trick was spoiled. (62) The heated atmosphere of the decade did, however, lead to another substantial storm, albeit contained within the confines of the Cornish nation. The Cornish National Party broke away from a too-timid, so they charged, MK in 1975. Two years later, the CNP leader left, lamenting its 'infiltration by communist elements.' (67)

By the 1980s, then, MK languished. As with the SNP and Plaid Cymru, the authors explain, the Thatcher years hastened MK's retreat into 'internal reflection about its philosophical role.' (75) Restless younger members, often with socialist ideological support, formed into pressure groups for more immediate action. Ties with leftists and Greens were sought. An elusive An Gof entity threatened violence. MK and nationalists consistently rejected physical-force efforts. They preferred backing up anti-nuclear grassroots efforts. They fought 'Devonwall,' in which the Crown would consolidate Cornish with Devon's services after its 1974 reconfigurations of the British counties.

The new European Parliament, later that decade, inspired calls for local representation, but the Cornish constituency was deemed too miniscule.

With the 1990s, the anti-Poll Tax protests sparked a novel legal defense. It was deemed illegal under a treaty, never repealed or superseded it was argued, that was signed by England with Cornwall-in 1508. Allied as Cornish Solidarity, many resistors to the Crown expanded regional resistance. Although only as a fill-in line under a newly placed box marked 'Other,' the Cornish could present themselves to the rest of Britain as a distinct ethnic group for the first time. In 2000, ten percent of the Cornish electorate, or 50,000 voters, signed a call for a local Assembly. At the time this book went to press, this effort met with stalling by Westminster, but the authors cautiously conclude that such a renewed pride in Cornish regionalism signals a sea-change from ingrained attitudes dominant as late as the 1970s that diminished cultural heritage, belittled local tradition, or condemned political activism among the Celtic remnant at the tip of the British island.

Their summaries make instructive reading. Deacon is a lecturer in Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter. Dick Cole currently leads MK. Dr Garry Tregidga serves as the Deputy Director for the Institute for Cornish Studies (at Exeter). They hold that the language activists have been often 'over-defensive'. (114) This may, they suggest, reflect decades-and centuries-of malaise in Cornish society. So long marginalized as the Celtic Fringe colonized within England itself, its natives lack confidence that its leaders can produce change and decide actions on the local level. Yet, the authors add, the cultural agenda derided by many as nostalgic decades ago now proves that results can be measured. The Celtic manifestations may be more displayed as kitsch in souvenir shops than before, but the Cornish flag flies, signs reflect bilingual heritage long suppressed, and resistance to the Anglophonic juggernaut can be seen more immediately than before by locals and tourists alike. (Compare my review of Marcus Tanner's "The Last of the Celts", which has a pessimistic chapter on this heritage industry in Cornwall and considers all six Celtic nations as doomed to extinction as the language erosion in turn eliminates any ground upon which natives can survive with any indigenous culture or self-governing polity.)

Still, the visual recovery of a Cornish nationalism, the authors warn, does not wrest territorial security. The Cornish flag was forcibly removed from flagpoles after the 2002 death of the Queen Mother, they note. This symbolizes how fragile are the symbols.

Flag-waving, they concur, may make Cornish prouder, 'but it has not fostered a clearly and consistently pro-active nationalist political activism.' (115) But, the druid-garbed revivalists of a century ago could never have predicted how fluid Celtic identity could become. Rather than looking back to antiquated slogans, the authors remind us, the newest Cornish symbols may be heard in music-and emblazoned on surfboards. (Amazon US 8-14-12; in slightly edited form to The Blanket 30 Nov. 2005)

P.S. See the New York Times, 17 November 2005. Sarah Lyall's 'Saving Cornish: But Stop. Isn't That Spelled With a K?' About 200 can converse in Cornish. But four competing versions contend, and any e-mailer, Lyall claims, rather than selecting the 'wrong' version and so incite the recipient's hostility, had better write only in English.

Elizabeth Cunningham's "Red-Robed Priestess": Book Review

Imagine Mary Magdalen was born a Celt, foster-daughter of a hero who then rapes her. She then falls in love with a certain gifted foreign exchange student who comes to (what is now) Wales from Palestine. She rescues him from sacrifice by the Druids, so they must flee back to Israel. They will create a daughter, together. There he will meet his fate with --and apart from-- her. Meanwhile, her first-born daughter, taken from her by the Druids, a “misbegotten child of a misbegotten child,” grows up to lead a native rebellion against the Romanization of Britain.

After a career roaming the Levantine, where not only Jesus but Paul of Tarsus embraced her with various consequences, this red-robed priestess, born Maeve Ruadh, Mary the Red, sails from Gaul across the Channel. Her hair now faded to grey, at sixty she returns to the land of Britain where she was raised, to seek out her first-born daughter, rebel queen Boudica. During an uprising in Britain a generation after the Crucifixion, Maeve will witness through her shape-shifting self the fate of her homeland and the decisions made by both her headstrong daughters.

This ambitious novel completes Elizabeth Cunningham’s lively series, The Maeve Chronicles. As a first-time reader of Maeve’s adventures, I found the start of this complicated saga slower going. Still, Ms. Cunningham integrates the past gossip and guises of her appealingly flawed, wittily droll heroine deftly. The author blends what can be known from the historical record—as with the three earlier installments—into a winning mixture of fantasy, romance, epic, and meditation upon the struggle between Christian notions of peace and pagan insistence upon power, and how these principles themselves warp and mutate and shrivel as the cause of the Celtic Britons clashes with that of the Roman (or Romanized) imperial settlers.

Without taking herself or her creation of unpredictable, seductive Maeve too seriously, Ms. Cunningham manages to extend the relevance of this novel beyond a mash-up tale of “Magdalene returns to the Druids”. Her pace rarely pauses to allow us to catch up, but Maeve can shift via dream states conveniently across Britain if necessary, a helpful narrative device that compresses the defeat of the Druids on the Isle of Mon (today’s Anglesey off the northern Welsh coast) with the rebellion of Boudica that burned down London and two other Romanized cities before the Celts were crushed by the Roman forces. The predestined nature of the true part of this tale, therefore, requires skill in keeping the reader involved in a doomed epic. It is a testament to Ms. Cunningham’s ability that she can keep the plot moving rapidly while insisting upon depth given to the magical and mundane characters from history and myth who hurry across these busy pages.

Maeve, telling us her tale, muses early on about her relationship with the Roman commander. She recalls how both of them “kept straying into each other’s story, as if some incoherent dream insisted on inhabiting waking hours.” The chronicle, colloquially rendered in modern-day English, succeeds in avoiding the mustiness of many alternate histories. Maeve addresses herself to our time as well as hers, and this allows Ms. Cunningham to connect her predicament with that of anyone forced to take the side of those who murder or those who will die.

Tangled into the machinations of Celts and Romans, directed by the come-and-go voice of Jesus and the messages from earlier chronicles in this series now and then, Maeve struggles to make the right decisions, as her daughters must confront the presence of their mother in unexpected circumstances, and as she must admit uncomfortable revelations about her own background and her own long absence from the lives of her two girls.

“I sighed. Once again, the choice. Suddenly I was tired of spinning tales, spinning the truth, tired of spinning. They say deceit weaves a tangled web. But fabrication is an art form. The truth is the raw, and often unappealing, material.”

Maeve’s admission compels her to alter allegiances, and to test her loyalties. Ms. Cunningham presents a fair-minded portrayal of both sides in this British conflict, and this is enriched by Maeve’s own understanding of the lessons left for her by Jesus. “What does it mean to love your enemy on the eve of battle? Do you spare your enemy even though he won’t spare you? Do you kill him, because he will kill you? Which is worse, death or murder?”

The tragic resolution of this dramatic showdown comes after hints of stories perhaps nearly as ancient, the roots of King Lear and Hamlet, as well as plenty of Celtic divination and Druidic debate. Ms. Cunningham notes how she had to return, a final time, to allow her heroine the chance to return to her homeland, to settle the last story which Maeve’s long life had created. This final episode in The Maeve Chronicles, for all its carefully recreated battle and bloodshed, lingers in the mind equally as long for its introspection and revelation. This offers a welcome examination of the ties of love and the conflicts of loyalty on the intimate as well as epic levels. (Featured at the New York Journal of Books 11-15-11; Author's website.)

J.S. Dunn's "Bending the Boyne": Book Review

This retells and expands the coming of those who engendered their own myths about ancient Ireland, and those whom they met. The Invaders here turn antagonists, unlike their counterparts in Celtic origin myths. Dunn shows us from the view of the Starwatchers, those already settled in the island, what this first of many incursions means for the oldest settlers. The figures of Boann, Aengus, Daghda, and Elcmar appear in legend, and many more whom Dunn introduces, embellishes, and imagines as full of longings, doubts, and concerns as you and me. Contexts about Atlantic Bronze Age trade, the dispersion of peoples, astronomy and traditions, and mercantile connections with Iberia and Britain, as sailing patterns are all integrated, smoothly and intelligently, into the plot.

While the tale starts and finishes in the present, this framing device coheres around a story from prehistory, when the Bronze Age reached the far fringes of Europe. About a hundred pages in, the setup is in place for the cultural showdown, and the main characters enter, so the pace settles in and sustains itself as Cian becomes the protagonist and we learn the combination of bronze and astronomy that allows him to mingle these crafts deftly. Dunn incorporates her academic studies into the story, not an easy task. "Bending the Boyne" blends knowledge and relationships, love and friendships, adventure and discovery into a fluid, steady narrative.

Dunn also sneaks in allusions to current politics, music, the Troubles, "A Modest Proposal," the poems of Yeats, and other cultural imports and inventions from the Ireland we know today. The narrative gives us a quick glimpse of where we're at now before taking us back very far. Then, we find out as the novel unfolds how what we see in a Dublin museum now might have originated thousands of years ago, if only a few miles northwards in distance, perhaps.

The tone, for an historical novel thousands of years ago, remains consistent: fluent enough for us to relate to, but enriched by a subtle register attuned to an ancient attitude, apart from our casual vernacular and casual exchanges. Dunn's characters regard status, relationship, and intention seriously, as misreadings of these cues can lead to their own doom. Therefore, I liked the slightly elevated diction and the avoidance of anachronisms, as if a resonant tale translated into modern vernacular does not lose its classical, measured cadence. I felt even for the "heavies" such as Elcmar, and what happens to such as Enya and Muirgen brings supporting roles alive as well. I felt I made friends with Cliodhna. I wanted to learn more of the elusive Sreng, and I wondered about Bolg.

Such open-endedness as to some characters, even as we follow others to the end, works well to expand the limits of the narrative, as with the Brighid and Connor episodes. I got angered at the Invaders and felt sorry for the Starwatchers. Dunn conveys the plight of those trapped by those determined to stop the mounds and erect the circles and this captures the societal transitions well, as does the way the "beaker" folk spread their technology. The explanations, as with how the newly imported, fashionable pots stand on tables, enter lightly, especially for historical fiction. Dunn makes the refinements of metallurgy as intriguing as astronomical alignment, resulting in an enjoyable and poignant account about these pre-Celtic Starwatchers.(See Newgrange.com for information & excerpt. Posted to Amazon US 3-15 & Lunch.com 4-21-11)

"Requiems for the Departed": Book Review

Ancient Celtic myths tell of vengeful thieves, backstabbing comrades, inebriated thugs, and wicked women. This collection brings characters inspired by these dubious role models into (mostly) today’s Ireland. Their mobile phoning and pill-popping counterparts rely on criminal pursuits – and the pursuit of criminals. The beer, the wanton women, and the chemicals may be more exotic in the retellings, but the (mostly) grim tales of haunting, revenge, and payback capture the raw scenes of the original tales, full of passion, release, death, and vendettas.

Editors Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone arrange 17 entries. Stuart Neville opens the anthology with a lively take on his Armagh hometown’s Queen Macha. Her erstwhile latest paramour, as he approaches her modern incarnation, reflects: “Back then he’d have done anything for a taste of the Queen, but as she took the last of him, his fingers tangled in her dyed crimson hair, he noticed the blood congealing on her knuckles.” Sam Millar spins his shamus Karl Kane’s saga wittily. “If I’d been any more sociable, I’d have needed a condom.” Kane and colleagues investigate, of all places in Belfast, a Jewish abattoir. As with many authors here, Millar ingeniously arranges venerable symbols into surprising patterns.

T.A. Moore’s “Red Milk” in its mayhem reminds me of a savage screenplay. A wake may seem too familiar, but this scene gains sharpness: “They sat around a table in their black shabby plumage, drinking sweet tea and saying the faults of the dead like a rosary. Go in there, and they wouldn’t be backward about coming forward with the sins of the living either.” Later, one sinner warns another: “I will beat you ‘til both sides of your face match.” Moore renders her snarling, shouting characters vividly. As with other stories, hers takes place among stables and beasts. The ancient tales shared these scenes, but not as chronicles of the cooking of chemicals or the distribution of drugs.

Tony Bailie serves up druidry and reincarnation as revenge. Maxim Jakubowski follows the triple goddess the Morrigan through lowlife Dublin. Arlene Hunt regales us with horse trading. Ken Bruen in his characteristically staccato style conjures up the banshee. Three authors in their introductory notes credit the ‘70s electric folk-rock band Horslips for inspiration. I recommend their albums "The Táin" and "The Book of Invasions" (both reviewed by me on Amazon US) as a soundtrack to amplify these tales. These renditions of passions and betrayals of ancient Ireland filtered through traditional and rock music share the bloody, loud, and ornery nature of characters in these pages.

As the collection continues, stories start to echo one another. For instance, the tragic lovers Diarmuid and Gráinne earn a similarly sad version from Adrian McKinty.Then, Garbhan Downey revamps their tale into a lusty, silly send-up. Warrior clans evolve into Derry’s football rivals. Teams stock their ranks with immigrants from Chechnya, Russia, and Brazil. This comments cleverly on today’s cosmopolitan Irish society.

Two roughly paired stories at the center of this collection evoke poignantly another cultural transition. They are the only two stories not taking place in contemporary Ireland. John McAllister sketches how a rough justice emerged as Christianity loomed over 5th century pagan Ireland. Una McCormack shifts a few years back in this same setting. She imagines a confrontation between Celtic and Roman methods to correct injustice, through the arrival of the boy who will become Patrick. Both stories capture the uneasy atmosphere of an island filled with clans – loyal to pagan gods and brutal customs – who must soon face the coming of Christianity.

Neville Thompson’s “The Children of Gear” sets the story of The Children of Lír among the addicts and dealers plaguing today’s Dublin. This sparely told tale haunted me as much as the original, with its abandoned children, cruel stepmother, and trapped father. Dave Hutchinson, like Millar, puts an attenuated Jewish connection into his story; his opens as a reality show features “the last surviving and very aged member of U2.” One old woman has faint blue tattoos like many from the past (and our present) generations; another upright gent conceals in his trousers his risque piercing, a Prince Albert. Hutchinson directs us to look backward from the prospect of the near future. Today’s daring poses will turn frail and awkward soon enough.

In the closing story, “The Life Business”, the fantasy master who writes as John Grant draws upon his “real name” and real-life teenage stint as a British cadet. He integrates disturbing and emotional reveries into his shape-shifting characters. His story rattled me the most. Grant eerily channels otherworldly senses into a psychological study of identity.

I’d caution that if you lack familiarity with these Irish myths, some stories may elude your full grasp. All contributors give introductions, yet some gloss over their original inspirations. The stories fall into three sections paralleling standard classifications of the Ulster cycle, folk figures, and Fianna warriors, but the editors could have followed through on reminding readers of the context for this archaic arrangement. A couple of stories, very compressed, moved too swiftly for me to grasp them.

All the same, for those who wish to acquaint themselves with the original stories, sample Frank Delaney’s "Legends of the Celts" or Mary Heaney’s "Over Nine Waves." Or check out those two Horslips albums. With the combination of murder, mayhem, and madness on the page matched with what blasts from your speakers, this will transport you back to the spirit of a Celtic past, and the multicultural island’s present. This book’s full of entertaining slaughter, gory slug fests, and, being Irish, the lingering touch of inevitable longing, heartache, and loss.

[Posted to Amazon US 7-7-10; to British Amazon 7-12-10. Revised for PopMatters 8-2-10.]

"The Gundestrup Cauldron & 'Celtic Buddhism'": my article

"The Gundestrup Cauldron & 'Celtic Buddhism'", has been published in Epona: E-Journal of Ancient & Modern Celtic Studies 5 (2009): 1-29. (PDF). For you with short attention spans, here's an "abstract". (Via the "journal's homepage", click a Union Jack first for English-language text.)

I'm happy to have contributed. I started my investigations nearly two years ago while re-reading Michel Houllebecq's combative novel of ideas "The Elementary Particles" (=my review). A chance reference tied the "Book of Kells" illumination of St Matthew to a "mandala". My curiosity whether any Celtic-Buddhist transmissions could be proven led to this survey of the evidence, or lack of, as opposed to the invention of influences.

In its supersized format my survey comprises this article. A second piece, revised and updated, (if half the 15,000 word length of the "Epona" article) has been submitted (a few days ago) for publication in selected papers revised and expanded from the proceedings of the "Alternative Spiritualities in Ireland" conference held last Samhain at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

The reason my "Epona" article's so lengthy? I wanted to delve as deeply as I could into a topic in the backwaters of exploration. Luckily, this peer-edited journal welcomed my research, for as Dr. Emilia Szaffner explains in her "editorial introduction" to the "Epona" project:

The journal is named after the Celtic horse goddess Epona, who was also an incarnation of fertility. The worship of Epona was widespread, especially in the 1st–3rd centuries CE inside and also outside the Roman Empire, for instance in Pannonia and Transylvania. Among the Celtic gods it was Epona whose cult lasted probably the longest in the Carpathian Basin.

Yeats mused that until the Battle of the Boyne, Ireland belonged to Asia; for the far-westbound Magyar coming from above the Caspian Sea, they stopped only at the Danube. Before they arrived, Pannonia halted at that wide river. I recall crossing the bridge north of Budapest to see right by the roadside Roman ruins-- their military camps did not cross that riparian frontier, home to the untamed barbarians. And among these, perhaps contacts no book extant can account for once happened. What beliefs shared, surmises entertained?

The title of my paper, with the Gundestrup Cauldron, symbolizes one connection, however far-fetched or conjectural. So, the congruent, complimentary Central European-Celtic-and perhaps Buddhist (as mavericks may meditate) route of cultural influences beckoned me down my own Road of Great Events. Maybe not a Silk one, but a pilgrimage I've enjoyed.

It's led to a lot more reading than I'd expected into Buddhism itself, far deeper than shows in my scholarship I confess. It's helped me pursue an endeavor that reminds me of how closely intertwined the personal and the academic paths can tangle when one loves what one does. I let go now-- of retyping of MLA punctuation vs. Harvard Style documentation, refusals of copyright permission for image use, or reduction of amassed research to meet word count and deadline.

Photo: Visit the "Gundestrup Cauldron" entry on Wikipedia; this displays Plate "A" with the horned figure said by some to be Cernunnos the Celtic horned god-- and a few to be an antlered shaman as "yogic adept" clutching a Hindu "naga" snake.

Credo quia absurdum?

What do I believe? I was asked this after a slew of reviews. As a scholar I tend to analyze and cite, rather than expound on my personal credo.

Tertullian, an early Christian philosopher, is often wrongly cited; "Credo quia absurdum is, of course, a misquote. Tertullian's words are credibile est, quia ineptum est (De carne Christi 5.4)." Robert Sider argues this in "Credo Quia Absurdum?". But I promised no footnotes, so here I cannot get past my own blog entry's title's verification. My training runs deep.

And that's the point. It's hard for an academically trained type; Tertullian or me, we face the same challenge. It's credible because it's inept, that is, defying belief. The absurd becomes the basis for our faith, our attribution to a force beyond our reason or understanding that we then trust, that we accept as worthy of our confidence as the concrete evidence that surrounds us.

My melange of denominated tendencies begins with cradle Catholicism from an Irish-American upbringing still strict enough to have imprinted itself upon me deeply despite a post-Vatican II childhood, as the very first generation who came of age after the Latin Mass and Baltimore Catechism (although my parents duly bought me a copy whose illustrations I still recall vividly). By college, I had already begun drifting away, although difficulties during grad school brought me into an ambivalent dance of moving closer and then stepping back from the Church. By the time my wife and I established our relationship, I'd begun shifting first through Eastern Catholicism-- for its theological perception of God as emanations we could grasp but not His essence intrigued me-- and then, intersecting with our realization that a liberal form of Judaism might allow us a shared space within which to raise a family, into the faith that she was claimed by as a member even if she grew up with but a shaky grasp of its tenets.

For a while, this space supported us. Both parental pairs regarded by mixed bemusement or subtle hostility our decision. But, as my wife noted in a conversation with a friend that I half-overheard about a year ago, ultimately a more dogmatic approach "didn't take" with our kids and us. We tend, and I probably bear the most credit or blame, towards skepticism. If I was not around I reckon my wife and our sons would have grown up firmer in their Judaism, but who knows? My dissenting mindset mixes with theirs and it half-formed them, and half-differs from hers.

We live in an environment where hardly any of their classmates from the JCC had two Jewish parents, and while many of their classmates continue to be my sons' friends-- as had been predicted by their principal the first day we visited the Silverlake-Los Feliz JCC-- these diverse boys and girls reflect the reality of a diverse Los Angeles outside the enclaves in the Valley or Westside where one can surround one's family with camps, schools, shul, and friends who stick to a Jewish way of life.

Anyone thinking that "Yiddishkeit" or delis or comedy alone can keep a Jewish heart alive should note "Seinfeld" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as portents-- not only of their creators' wishes to "pass" in Hollywood, but of a doddering nod to trust in schtick and stand-up as reliable indicators of Jewish identity. Contrast this with assimilation, intermarriage and compromise that American Jews now accept, outside of the Orthodox, as inevitable. Watch a Judd Apatow film where the schlub desires the blonde; that director's wife mirrors what we see projected. Conversion and blended families, secularization and modification, will mark whatever Judaism marks my sons, with their surnames, as a different breed if from the same tribe within. This transformation will alter whomever chooses to identify with Judaism in a diasporic community far far different than any other in the three-thousand years of the people's history.

I never spoke more than a few sentences to a Jewish classmate until I entered my M.A. program. I knew nearly no Protestants, until then, also. Just as I was raised in a totally Catholic milieu, who can say if such an immersion will ensure continuity in a nation where 44% of us "switch" from our childhood or ancestral faith, or lack of, nowadays? Soon, you will, for the first time in a long time, likely not "tell" who's a Jew by their name, their appearance, or at least part of their genealogy. New sitcoms may be pitched on just such a premise; "Bridget Loves Bernie" no longer as instant joke?

Of course, Catholics have no worries about losing numbers, while Jews do. This places on us a low-level guilt, for we wonder if we're betraying a promise, an obligation laid on us by my choice to follow my wife into Judaism, and our commitment to guide our sons. Yet, and this sums up my own attitude, I argue that imposing rigidity will not lock them into a "Torah-true" path anyway. It may drive them towards a desperate flight from a faith or a practice. I'd rather sleep more soundly knowing they've been exposed to what they are within Judaism, that they have the basic orientation inside upon which they may test moral and spiritual guidance, and they have a confidence that they can continue to seek their fulfillment.

My wife blogs often about her own struggles with her soul's direction, within an attenuated ancestral allegiance that attracts her often but also daunts her. Writing the past year to three Jewish prisoners, all of whom grew up in a similar Californian setting where no ties to the ancient practices strongly bound their families to the life they'd left behind in moving here, she's had to confront her own questions. Meanwhile, she responds to theirs about a faith that it turns out they all clutch tiny fragments of, as they try to fit their pieces within the puzzle.

For me, I stand at more of a distance from any genetic bond. What's pulled me in, of course, has been my Irish identification. Catholicism by definition enters this, even if one is a Protestant (or in one case we know, a beloved, cranky, Belfast-bred Jew). Yet, so does the Celtic, and then pagan, foundation, if one so deep and so broken by 1500 years post-Patrick that (as I've written lately) one can dimly glimpse and not grab securely what remains after so long a Christian overshadow.

They say the Celts did not believe so much in omnipotent gods but more powerful humans who, euhemerized (great word), were transformed into deities. The supernatural intervention beloved of a "deus ex machina" Greek's frequently lacking in the Ulster Cycle. Heaven's downplayed, but life's fleeting. I must have cottoned on to this early in my childhood reading, somehow. I'd enter the little of nature I could and there I'd sense a presence lacking in a man-made sanctuary-- especially after Vatican II denuded so many altars and snuffed out their candles. Stars still comfort and terrify me equally, or awe-fully. If you ask me I might prevaricate as a Ph.D., but inside, I can attest that I feel an energy latent, if not for rational me manifested fully due to my intellectual caution, within creation.

I looked up "panentheistic" to check my recall of this term the other day. A pantheist finds "God is nature." A panentheist holds that "God is in the Whole." A subtle distinction, but the point being that the latter concept allows a Whole beyond a deity (or deities) manifested within only the organic or visible realms.

A universe or multiverse that precedes or takes in a Creator, even. Brian Clegg's book "Before the Big Bang," which entered my thoughts up in Big Sur where I reviewed it last August, suggests that before the blast that inflated our horizons, there may be dim echoes and trace elements of a recurring pattern, branes colliding, background radiation persisting, that each Big Bang all but obliterates, worlds with end, amen. This end-runs around Anselm's Ontological Principle, and shows that we can have indeed posit a God greater than than we can conceive, if it's a Force that stands outside the universe and allows the First Cause creating "ex nihilo" to be itself inconsistent from what we perceive-- even if we can never prove this to convince a medieval theologian-- as a scientifically postulated space that can, after all and after all ends, never be created... since it has always existed.

This aligned neatly for me with a Buddhist concept. I noted in my blog-Amazon US review of Clegg how he elides over this connection. The recurring model, rather than chronologically Big Bang-> endless expansion theory or the Big Bang-Big Crunch start-stop alternative, fits for me better. It may defy Anselm's thousand-year-old logic, but he did not live in a world of satellites. Clegg predicts that we soon may know much more with the new telescopes we're sending up. Buddhism, as the Dalai Lama has reminded us, if it clashes with scientific proof, would cede a contested doctrine to reason. It does not fear progress. (I've written a lot about Buddhism as a blog keyword search shows, so I will be brief.) I like its lack of digging in and insisting that it alone holds the right way towards salvation. Instead of theistic reward, it leads to inner enlightenment-- a telling distinction. For a Buddhist, the impermanence that the Big Bang's recursive and brane theories suggest may not threaten a belief, but may confirm its ancient message that all things must pass.

Even if the Quiet Beatle was a Hindu; my other favorite term lately's "henotheist": one can believe in one deity while not denying the efficacy of others. Tolerance and its lack among many believers and deniers alike wearies me. Sin happens when we fail to better ourselves and others, not when a god or Santa marks a demerit. Salvation comes when we welcome a messiah to this world, even as atheists or gentiles, when we learn to get along. That's about it for my eschatology these post-purgatorial days.

If we move away from intolerant monotheism, for here my discomfort may lie with my formative mindset, what's next? I've often referred since taking the BeliefNet.com quiz about my religious affiliation vis-a-vis double 100% scores as Mahayana Buddhist & Neo-Pagan. These two don't really match, on the other hand, so they may register I suspect my past study with my ongoing research-- combined with personal reflection-- on Western adaptations of Buddhism. This overlaps Celtic sympathies that may have re-emerged, filtered through an inbred leaning that my childhood may have deeply embedded within me. Despite habitual Catholicism, which tied for last place at 13% in that quiz. Still, another quiz about my spiritual attitudes put me as a Straddler, smack between the observances of more conventional worship and the freer floating thinking and not-thinking akin to a restless seeker such as me.

Added to this, or showing my lack of grounding, another test I took pegged me as an Agnostic-Atheist. The conflation of these terms irritates me, and an exchange with the head of "Atheists United" ticked me off. For 2/3 of the article she presented herself as an atheist. Then this leader defined herself as really an agnostic, to me a related but fundamentally very different philosophy. (No more footnotes but it was Bobbie Kirkhart interviewed by Patt Morrison in the L.A. Times on 12 Dec. 2009.)

That quiz asked me and I confirmed that "God can neither be proven or disproven." For me, a truly agnostic admission. My wife disagrees. She sees God's presence all around her. I have wandered far from this comfort although I grew up with this view. But perhaps I sense it in the fleeting moments of a bird that alights on a branch, or a desert sunrise-- if more than in the maggot that crawls in dog crap or the cancer that kills a third of us. My romantic soul battles here with my pessimistic mind. I find it difficult to attribute a unicorn-and-rainbow goodness to our world when within it, disease and decay also linger, on a planet where we labor in vain to eradicate killers in cells. Remove man, take away incarnation, get rid of revelation, tear up inspired scripture, and still you'd have predators, germs, microbes, and slaughter, far as I can tell. We place over this a storyline of salvation and transcendence, but I suspect it for its wish-fulfillment. We need happy endings; that's why we call them fiction, to paraphrase somehow Oscar Wilde.

Still, I wrote a Master's paper on Tolkien's "eucastrophe," his idea that the Gospel was the first myth that came true. I admire this argument, and once I agreed with it. My sympathies persist, and my medievalist preparation imbued me with an appreciation and respect for this ideal even as my own life's trajectory moved me past it, for as I wrote my dissertation, I found my own beliefs changing.

So, I cannot-- as those quiz results prove-- stay in one checked denominational box. I lack confidence that a loving god or pantheon guides us. After we die all I can say is that we will return to whatever unknowable, unfathomable, and/or non-existent mystery preceded our conception. I aver that it's impossible to one way or the other confirm anything more. My decade working on a dissertation on "the idea of purgatory in Middle English Literature" attests to my interest in the topic, even if the medievals failed to convert me to their pieties. The condition of the soul before it came into a body, as some Neo-Platonic concoction, has for as long as I can remember intrigued me: it was the first philosophical or theological question I formulated as a precocious lad already troubled by mortality and my soul's fate.

In my family tree, around 350 CE, there's a clan ancestor that my great-grandmother as a Connellan from Roscommon may trace her line to. Typically arcane genealogical explorations led me to this fellow, "Ono," who was a Druid. Combine that with the East Mayo "tinker" that then birthed the woman who was my maternal grandmother and you get suggestive, if again romanticized naturally, DNA traces that for a guy like me, stuck in the city, still spark faint but delightful imaginings. I've always loved "origin myths." The ways we explain how we got from way back to now intrigue me. I suppose my own search for faith combines with my own turn back to Ireland.

My teacher, soon to become an ex-nun, freshman year at my distantly-Jesuit-run university, told me I was a Pelagian. My lack of confidence in original sin as staining us, and my trust that the soul unaided by an infusion of grace could attain salvation, set me at odds with orthodoxy. Yet, I learned that this was a decidedly Celtic heresy, and similar misgivings that such as Anselm would have brought from his Italy to Canterbury about such as John Scotus Eriugena's avowal of a primitive creation spirituality, a sort of panentheism, may betray my own genetic theology.

"Magic" may be denigrated or cheapened now, but I suggest in its expression of the inexplicable delight and the uncanny omen it's but too-loose a term for what we cannot account for. A nagging, sense-defying sixth sense that beyond our intellect another level of action, and perhaps meaning, persists: I can live with this. I've always felt that energies move around us. We may tap into them for good or evil purposes. I betray my own naivete or my core creed. Where they come from and where they go I may lack an ability to tell, for I may accede to them without witnessing them myself. But, today at least, absurd as it may be, that's what I might believe.

Image: "Godless Columbia: Terminology FAQ"

Ronald Hutton's "Witches, Druids & King Arthur": Book Review

These collected essays examine mainly pagans past and present. The title may be pitching an historian's scholarship more widely. For Hutton, the leading expounder of the discontinuity between modern and ancient paganism, such a wider audience may welcome his work.

The essays are uneven in length and scope, and at times some drag. I found my attention wandering on and off, but I admit far less interest in magic than witches, say, and more in Druids than the Renaissance, for example. But all chapters make thoughtful points, and Hutton phrases his judgments with tact and care. He delves into controversial subjects and dismantles falsity. The title and cover may evoke an occult or stereotyped overview of these subjects, but these are advanced essays, geared for the educated reader. Perhaps those less knowledgeable may finish these thoughtful pages with a greater respect for an historian's approach to mythmaking.

"How Myths are Made" takes on the British Isles. Kilts, atrocity tales from the English Civil War, native Irish resistance, or "traditional" Welsh dress, among many examples, can be shown to be fabricated rather than verifiable products from long ago. I found some of his discussion on Irish republicanism, the topic closest to my own studies, to be at times overstated and simplified. But he does resurrect a broad range of delightful anecdotes to elaborate his contentions. As in the faithful hound-legend of Beddgelert, how the Russians were supposed to have infiltrated English ports early in WWI, Margaret Mead's islanders, Melville's "Typee," or how 120 years seems to be the maximum length one can "trust" any orally transmitted memory.

The next two essays explore Arthurian lore-- first how recent academia treats the historicity of Arthur, and then how Glastonbury became a New Age center full of dubious dabblers. The fourth one looks at length into "the New Old Paganism" and seeks to find how monotheism began to supplant polytheism among non-Christians in later antiquity. "Paganism in the Lost Centuries" examines strands of ancient belief that may have become enshrined, so to speak, in the Christian-dominated culture. These two are both densely written studies. For more on this field, by an author whom Hutton barely touches upon, see Pierre Chuvin's "Chronicles of the Last Pagans." (Also reviewed by me on Amazon US and this blog.)

"A Modest Look at Ritual Nudity" tries to find if this practice, contrary to Hutton's earlier thinking that only Wiccans practiced it regularly as worship, and not any ancient cult, may have existed way back. The evidence of course may be suspect as often we only have detractors to track for such charges. Yet Hutton shows here as throughout his scholarship an appealing open-mindedness to sift through masses of difficult sources on touchy subjects to find what seems most likely true.

For Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Hutton returns to their familiar stories to find more pagan foundations than many Christian apologists do for their mythologies. Hutton argues that in the tension between their faith and their love of pagan tales and multiple gods, the two Inklings gained the power that marks their best work. Especially for Tolkien, Hutton reminds us that except for an "accident of publication" (231), the Middle Earth we know would have been preceded by the origin and creation myths of the gods later assembled after his death into "The Silmarillion," and if that work had been put out first, we'd likely read differently the rather understated mindset and populated mythos within "The Lord of the Rings."

In retrospect given two works on the ancient and modern Druids, published later this decade, Hutton's "The New Druidry" appears to be a warm-up for these books. He notes how 200 years of a "dream of syncretic universalism" for pagans in the wake of Romanticism appears to be waning. We see emerging in its place a more localized, land-based practice as becoming grounded by those reclaiming and reinventing "the old native religions." (249)

My favorite essay, "Living with Witchcraft," serves as a coda for his most famous study, "The Triumph of the Moon" (1999). This was the first serious history of modern British neopaganism. Hutton contrasts the patient reception it gained among current witches and pagans-- even as it revised their own origin myths often-- vs. the fears, contempt, and ridicule indulged in by many of his academic colleagues when they learned he studied witches and witchcraft. Even with tenure, he felt his career often at risk when engaging in sensitive research into what's a misunderstood, denigrated, and/or too overdramatized yet very under-explored topic.

Hutton reminds us, for some need so, of how past scholars fumbled their investigations into witchcraft. He shows how professors have toyed with their informants from the pagan community, and how cautiously he then had to tread to keep the confidences he established. His ethics and probity speak well for his difficulties, as he relates in compelling detail how controversial witches remain for the British audience. When learned clerics and esteemed dons scoff at the legitimacy of such research, one can only suppose how everyday folks regard witches and neo-pagans among them. Hutton represents the first sustained attempt to teach the public and the professoriate about the truth of modern witchcraft and its reasons for the same respect accorded other religious practices by today's neighbors.

By the way, the "nine million" supposedly executed in "Burning Times" for their "Old Religion" are shown an extrapolation of a 1793 figure of "9,442,994" from a unnamed local historian in the first chapter. (30) In this final section, Hutton shows how "Triumph of the Moon" sought a more sober revision of inflated discussion of witches past and present. (He estimates 40-50,000 probably died for witchcraft in Europe during Christian hegemony. [31]) (Posted to Amazon US 11-26-09)

Loughcrew & a rose bouquet

Less known, harder to reach, more intimate than Newgrange, Loughcrew needs as of yet no replica mound, no twinned museum, no solstice lottery. On Meath's highest hill, Carnbane East invited us, with a practical and symbolic key, into its narrowed womb-chamber.

Of course, as on Tara's softer declivity a few hours before, the rain lashed us mightily. Our host, who took a few of us from Maynooth's Alternative Spiritualities conference that weekend concluded, later wrote me of Terry Pratchett's musing that the forces always conspire against those who strive to enter pagan places. Whether out of defence, or out of challenge heightening reward, who knows? Ritual retreats: by us long denigrated, demolished, or transformed utterly.

About 280 meters above the plains of fertile Meath and overlooking Cavan's lakes, 17 counties are said to be seen, besting Tara's 16. However, at both sites, an All Saint's Day storm raged. The Hiberno-Norman family the Plunketts owned this demesne once. Riding into the valley below, I watched mists rise as if to shroud newer venerated sites, such as Oldcastle's parish church where St Oliver Plunkett was born (whose head I'd seen enshrined in a later sacred edifice in Drogheda a few days before), sufficiently to allow older spirits to emerge on the determined wind to surround us. We'd studied that weekend at Maynooth the entry of New Age and "new religious movements" into Ireland recently, and now we found ourselves alone this Sunday afternoon which soon turned grey, blustery, and battering.

By Californian standards, at least. Wearing glasses and a waterproofed thin jacket with a scarf wrapped around my neck to keep out the drops and the chill, I ascended the gradual slope. I chatted with an Australian medievalist as she recommended a book "Modern Paganism in World Contexts," for I wondered how the Old Beliefs revived or revised were faring abroad. In our own small ranks, at least one youthful practitioner from Tipperary had already at Tara's Lia Fáil quietly carried out his own private ceremony, and he'd be the last one left, chanting nearly inaudibly, within the summit named "Carnbane" ("White Cairn") we were off to visit, holding the key to fabled Cairn T.

I've cited in my Tara entry Anthony Murphy & Richard Moore's argument, discovered in full only after my return from Ireland, about the ancient patterns set up on the heights of the Boyne river valley to match the Bóthar Bó Finne, the road of the illuminated Cow, that worshipped Bóann, the cow-goddess. The triple hills that comprise Slaibh na Caillaighe (or Caillí), the "Mountain of the Witch or Hag"-- now revamped by New Agers into "wise woman healer" as my own research presentation into "Celtic Buddhism" had noted at Maynooth-- mythically arose when the woman dropped her stones there. Out of her "divine womb, translated into the language of dress," as Michael Dames in "Mythic Ireland" parenthetically puts her magical feat, the "Witch's Hops" of three spaced hills arose, so folk belief had it.

Dames argues for a midsummer solstice fire-kindled alignment for Loughcrew with Uisneach, the "tree" centrally located as island hub, with Cairn T as a "hag-shaped tomb" penetrated by the sun-god. Murphy & Moore, building on Martin Brennan's theories, sketch an even more elaborate schema. Murphy, photographing the backstone (pictured above) brightened as its patterns inscribed tracked the sun's passage entering on the autumnal equinox, happened to look tilted up on his back within the cairn's uttermost chamber, backward towards the door. It's a tight fit as we could attest, waiting so three or so of our party could squeeze under the limbo-low lintel into the inner recesses.

Murphy witnessed what probably few before him would have noticed, their eyes naturally face front. The door aligned with the Hill of Slane, another Boyne site, one where Patrick a few days after his Easter triumph had lit in 432 the paschal fire to roust the pagans. This cairn, these Drogheda-based researchers surmised, revealed a equinoctial orientation within the horizon, even 32 miles away to Millmount which had guided me to my host's home in Drogheda. Murphy and Moore's knowledge of their local Louth lore, additionally, revealed Millmount as the missing link. Unfortunately, just as at Tara misguided British Israelite-misled excavators had damaged sites a century ago, so at Millmount the Martello Tower's bulk, erected after 1798's rising-- above what's rumored as Amergin's tomb, this Stone Age mound-- amidst fears of French coastal invasions, long after the Sons of Mil, continued to impose the modern fear over the ancient ground, as the motorway below Tara shows.

Lots of ifs, lots of qualifiers. Still, scholarship the past thirty-odd years has moved towards a recognition of the Boyne Valley as a massive astronomically aligned configuration of womb-tombs and holy sites. Amergin ca. that legendary 1694 BCE uttered: "Who but I knows the place where the sun sets? Who but I knows the ages of the moon? What land is better than this island of the setting sun?" Seeing the Sons of Mil were said to have left Spain for Eirinn, high praise indeed.

As I trudged up the hillside, around puddles and over mud, I met finally my host about whom my entry on Downpatrick will tell more. We'd corresponded on line after an amazing configuration of my own. Over the years, entries on this blog on Horslips, John Moriarty (I'd quoted an article of this host, a journalist-poet-novelist whom I'll keep anonymous as he works in Belfast; old reticence dies hard for me), Francis Stuart, and finally the band The Fall. Quite an unlikely pattern, speaking of cosmological formations on the Net if not Bó Finne. Yet, it brought us together, and straightaway, recognizing each other from the photos-- and who else would approach a band of academic misfits on a stormy Sunday in the back of beyond?-- we struck up conversation.

I asked him if that was Drogheda far off. He said no, but I wondered, when later studying Murphy & Moore, if that Boyne Valley set-up pulled me at least in the right direction. I saw wind-generating towers, so much for Bronze Age cairns, on the hills far away. We could see a bit of the Irish Sea; supposedly Ballysadare Bay the other side below Sligo town can be discerned, but you'd need the sharp eye of Amergin to make that out even under a clear sky. After we had entered Cairn T, we noted how similar the floral drawings carved within seemed to the untutored gaze like a hippie child's fingerpainted flower, or a Native American's rock art pictograph. We tried, with flashlights, to shine some light on a dark chamber.

Cary Meehan in her fine "Traveller's Guide to Sacred Ireland" notes 27 inscribed stones within. I felt intruding on a venerable place, which oddly reminded me of the fake Injun Joe's cave on Tom Sawyer's Island at Disneyland, an attraction I'd long liked as it had no time limit. Unlike the Frontierland site, this Neolithic one, perhaps as old as 3000-3500 BCE, makes it older than the pyramids of Giza, or Newgrange itself, let alone Stonehenge.

A candle burned in an outer chamber. As the young neo-pagan stuck his head, faintly chanting, into the farthest recess where Murphy had looked away from, the rest of us tried to poke and peer a bit, feeling awfully enormous in this small space. When I exited with my new friend, the rain pummelled us.

I spider-crawled up the cairn. Usually I would not, as I sense I'm scaling a tomb. But certainly whatever remains were within had long since entered their own reunion with the elements that thrashed about us. A miracle this solid stone mound had survived the course of civilization, millennia before what motorways and traffic-- which to be fair brought us to and from such sites today in relative comfort-- sought to speed us past.

On top of Cairn T, on Carnbane East, what's called "the Hag's Chair" surmounted the small hillock. It opened down on the chamber, to allow rain in and smoke out, I suppose, with a welcome bit of sun. The stone lap atop Cairn T cradled, flooded by a small accumulation of rainwater, a fresh bouquet of roses left by an earlier pilgrim.

The force of the gusts up there intensified. I felt full impact of the wind as it roared in from the Atlantic side, eastwards slashing the island at Meath's tallest summit. I turned away to the west, gazing across at the more brushy, less raw, third hill, Patrickstown, tellingly named for he who drove out druidry. Over 30 chambered cairns sit here on the witch's triple hops, where most tombs have never been opened.

Down the hill, we walked, not able to talk much due to being wrapped up in our jackets and hoods. It made me again appreciate, for all my grousing, the technology of the present, and I kept imagining how soaked I'd've been as an ancient devotee. Intruders had long been imposing themselves upon these airy, isolated redoubts. Meehan notes that the Iron Age-- which banished the old ways as the Celts advanced with weapons, male-oriented pantheons, and an upending of the maternal alignments-- often made these hills, legendarily the haunts of fairy women, the Sí, the last bastions of the goddess, if now warped into hags rather than "wise healers." Mebdh reduced to Queen Mab; the Wife of Bath's tale of a loathly lady's entreaty.

A later tradition-- if one around three thousand years ago said to have been instituted is newer this tells how long this site has been commemorated-- claims that Ollamh Fódhla, poet-king and law-giver, who started the triennial féis at Tara, was buried at Cairn T. Underneath where I stood, above the path I now climbed down, the sun, another brighter day, would pass again along a diagonal route over the backstone. Images of a rayed star, spirals tripled and swirling like a nebula, reminded me of the simplest art we fingerpaint as children, and of the most complex, via Hubble Space Telescope transmitting to us today. We love to look up at the sky, and in it, as Flannery O'Connor wrote, we try to figure out our central mystery-- no less or more clear after all our inventions and measurements than it was to nameless ancestors on my mysterious isle-- to puzzle out "the position of our human life."

Photo at the equinox of the backstone, Cairn T.