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Post by deuce on Apr 16, 2016 10:47:53 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Apr 16, 2016 11:55:09 GMT -5
A quote from REH: "I've been reading Destiny Bay [by Donn Byrne] and in a way the book's left a bad taste in my mouth. I remember several years ago, picking up a magazine with one of those stories in it. I read it for awhile, until -- I remember what a distinct shock it was when I suddenly discovered that the characters were a bunch of damned Orangemen. I was not only shocked but astounded. In those days, I in my innocence supposed that the only Irish who found their way into decent literature were South-country people. I supposed that, naturally, all Irish writers and men of intellect came from the South -- and that the Ulstermen, recognizing their low moral and psychic status, made it a point to conceal their shame as much as possible. Such the innocence of youth. Yet here was an Orangeman flouting his shame, and his people's shame, in my very face -- blatantly and brazenly announcing his color, and apparently proud of it. I have received many literary shocks. Few have equalled this. I felt vaguely outraged and insulted. I finally took up the reptilian thing and tried to read it, but the zest had gone out of it. Bred in the traditions of Munster and Connaught, or at least a handed-down remnant of those traditions, a violent hatred for all things Orange was as natural to me, and as much a part of me, as patriotism and love for the striped flag is to the average American youth, reared with Boy Scout standards." ~REH~These are the "Orangemen" that Howard is referring to: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_OrderThey originated with the anti-Jacobite "Orangemen" who supported William of Orange against the Jacobite adherents of the Scottish Stuart dynasty.
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Post by trescuinge on Apr 17, 2016 11:55:19 GMT -5
A famous Jacobite song:
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Post by deuce on Apr 18, 2016 11:09:03 GMT -5
I kept running into this song last weekend. I took it as a sign. It's been used by everyone from Sleepwalkers to the Fugees to Conor McGregor.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2016 12:07:34 GMT -5
Thanks for the link - this book looks interesting.
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Post by valeriaspirit on Apr 21, 2016 7:33:13 GMT -5
Somewhat disjointed article about recent skeleton find under an Irish pub: "“The DNA evidence based on those bones completely upends the traditional view,” said Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Oxford who has written books on the origins of the people of Ireland. DNA research indicates that the three skeletons found behind McCuaig's are the ancestors of the modern Irish and they predate the Celts and their purported arrival by 1,000 years or more. The genetic roots of today's Irish, in other words, existed in Ireland before the Celts arrived. “The most striking feature” of the bones, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science journal, is how much their DNA resembles that of contemporary Irish, Welsh and Scots. (By contrast, older bones found in Ireland were more like Mediterranean people, not the modern Irish.)" www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/17/a-mans-discovery-of-bones-under-his-pub-could-forever-change-what-we-know-about-the-irish/There were people and then there were other people seems to be a traditional account. Devils' in the details. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Hi, Arcadian - I've been mulling this over since first reading it. Without having any particular expertise in this area, it seems to me that it's risky to theorize about any migration of the Celts and their effect on Ireland while having studied only three ancient bodies. Just a thought - there might be several thousand elsewhere which would show close links with the Celts. The fact that the three bodies pre-date (I guess) the "Celtic invasion" of Ireland doesn't mean that the Celtic influence was negligible. We do seem to have Celtic linguistic influences (and artistic and mythological influences) which has helped to foster a continued sense of a distinctive ethnic identity - regardless of who the precise genetic forebears of the modern Irish were. I think it most likely that there is a mix of populations in Ireland, including quite a strong influence from the ancient Norse Vikings (also in Scotland and parts of England). It is silly for one commenter to note how one person used the Celtic identity pejoratively. Of course there are always outliers, but the truth is that for the last 100 years or more the Irish have taken pride in their Celtic identity. Certainly that is true of REH. What would he make of someone asserting now that, you know, you have always thought your heritage was Celtic but it wasn't. And - if it isn't Celtic, what is it, exactly? Just a final thought - I remember when we studied Irish myth in graduate school (I had a great course in kiddie lit taught by Margaret Hodges), we learned that there were aboriginal peoples who resided in the isolated hills and mountains of Ireland. They were supposed to be small and dark, and were called the "Fir Bolgs" by the later-comers (who I presume were largely Celtic). I think these Fir Bolgs were supposed to be the inspiration for leprechauns and such. It also seems to me that they may be the same as the people of "Mediterranean" stock referred to above and in the article. Valeria Spirit
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Post by trescuinge on May 2, 2016 21:13:48 GMT -5
A bawdy Scottish poetess mentioned in Clancy's "Women Poets in Early Medieval Ireland" and included in "The Great Book of Gaelic", Iseabail Ní Mheic Cailéin, Countess of Argyle. Please follow the link for the translation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89istibh,_a_Luchd_an_Tighe-se Éistibh a luchd an tighe-se re scél na mbod bríoghmhar do shanntaich mo chridhe-sa cuid dana scéalaibh do sgríobhadh. Cé líonmhor bod bréagh-bhileach do bhí san aimsir romhainn tá aig fear an úird chrábhaidh seo bod as cho mór righinn. Bod mo shagairt thuarasdáil cé tá cho fada seasmhach o tha céin ní chualabhair an reabh atá ina mhacan. Atá a riabh ro-reamhar an sin 's ní h-é scéal bréagach nocha [chuala] cho-reamhar mhotha bhod arís. Éistibh.
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Post by deuce on May 21, 2016 23:05:20 GMT -5
The greatest victory in Pictish history happened 1331 years ago today: senchus.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/against-iron-swords-dun-nechtain-ad-685/Paleogenomics and archaeology seem to indicate that the "Pictish" peoples were a Gaelic stratum over a non-Indo-European stratum with a "P-Celtic" stratum laid over all of that. Complicated. Still, the Picts put the smackdown on the Germanics to the south.
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Post by deuce on May 31, 2016 13:30:33 GMT -5
Somewhat disjointed article about recent skeleton find under an Irish pub: "“The DNA evidence based on those bones completely upends the traditional view,” said Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Oxford who has written books on the origins of the people of Ireland. DNA research indicates that the three skeletons found behind McCuaig's are the ancestors of the modern Irish and they predate the Celts and their purported arrival by 1,000 years or more. The genetic roots of today's Irish, in other words, existed in Ireland before the Celts arrived. “The most striking feature” of the bones, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science journal, is how much their DNA resembles that of contemporary Irish, Welsh and Scots. (By contrast, older bones found in Ireland were more like Mediterranean people, not the modern Irish.)" www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/17/a-mans-discovery-of-bones-under-his-pub-could-forever-change-what-we-know-about-the-irish/There were people and then there were other people seems to be a traditional account. Devils' in the details. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Hi, Arcadian - I've been mulling this over since first reading it. Without having any particular expertise in this area, it seems to me that it's risky to theorize about any migration of the Celts and their effect on Ireland while having studied only three ancient bodies. Just a thought - there might be several thousand elsewhere which would show close links with the Celts. The fact that the three bodies pre-date (I guess) the "Celtic invasion" of Ireland doesn't mean that the Celtic influence was negligible. We do seem to have Celtic linguistic influences (and artistic and mythological influences) which has helped to foster a continued sense of a distinctive ethnic identity - regardless of who the precise genetic forebears of the modern Irish were. I think it most likely that there is a mix of populations in Ireland, including quite a strong influence from the ancient Norse Vikings (also in Scotland and parts of England). It is silly for one commenter to note how one person used the Celtic identity pejoratively. Of course there are always outliers, but the truth is that for the last 100 years or more the Irish have taken pride in their Celtic identity. Certainly that is true of REH. What would he make of someone asserting now that, you know, you have always thought your heritage was Celtic but it wasn't. And - if it isn't Celtic, what is it, exactly? Valeria Spirit Hey Val! As Arcadian noted, the article is "disjointed", to say the least. Here's the link again: www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/17/a-mans-discovery-of-bones-under-his-pub-could-forever-change-what-we-know-about-the-irish/While Whoriskey (the journalist) seems to have done some good work on things like the "Paleo Diet", he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near questions about European prehistory, IMO. Basically, he manages to come to a conclusion that is almost the opposite of what the evidence suggests. Essentially, he states that since the DNA evidence suggests the primary ancestors of the Irish were in Ireland 4000yrs ago, that those early ancestors could not be "Celtic". This is because he's using the Hallstatt culture as the absolute earliest period of Celtic culture. Here are links for Hallstatt and La Tene: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstatt_cultureen.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_T%C3%A8ne_cultureHowever, there has been a growing dissatisfaction with the "standard model" established over a century ago. One of those dissidents is Barry Cunliffe, long considered "a" dean of Celtic studies, if not the dean of such. Cunliffe and many others, especially those in the fields of linguistics and genetics, have long noted the fact that Ireland seems to have possessed a very continuous culture going far back into prehistory. The basis for this is both linguistic and archaeological. Very few, if any, Irish place-names appear to be pre-Celtic, indicating that the settlement was quite ancient. Even more important, there seems to be almost no cultural intrusion from the early Bronze Age until the Roman period, and that only here and there. In other words, "Hallstatt" culture never arrived and "La Tene" barely did. How to explain the utter "Celticness" of Ireland? What Cunliffe and others suggest is that proto-Celts followed the Early European Farmer (EEF) culture, the "Mediterranean" DNA, to Spain. The NEF had spread over Europe as far as Ireland, displacing the hunter-gathererers. The EEF appear to have been the ones who built megalithic structures like Carnac and Newgrange. It was in Spain that a Celtic identity/culture began to coalesce. Many exciting finds in Spain are backing up this thesis: www.historyireland.com/pre-history-archaeology/tartessian-europes-newest-and-oldest-celtic-language/www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol6/index.htmlFrom there, Celtic enclaves spread, especially up the Atlantic coast. The Celtic language and culture spread back into the rest of Europe from Spain and the Isles. This eventually gave rise to the P-Celtic Hallstatt and La Tene cultures who then refluxed back west to Spain and the Isles to a certain extent. Thus, the Irish were on the ground floor of Celticness and their Celtic culture predated that of Hallstatt by many centuries. I love how Whoriskey posted on St. Patrick's Day. Apparently so he could go, "Ha! You Irish thought you were "Celtic", huh? Wrong!" Cunliffe and John Koch, whom Whoriskey quotes out of context, both contribute to the "Celtic from the West" paradigm in these scholarly volumes: www.amazon.com/Celtic-West-Alternative-Perspectives-Publications/dp/1842174754celticscholar.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/celtic-from-the-west-2-rethinking-the-bronze-age-and-the-arrival-of-indo-european-in-atlantic-europe/A blog post that uses the same data as Whoriskey, but in a much better fashion: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=23224
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Post by deuce on May 31, 2016 13:40:36 GMT -5
Just a final thought - I remember when we studied Irish myth in graduate school (I had a great course in kiddie lit taught by Margaret Hodges), we learned that there were aboriginal peoples who resided in the isolated hills and mountains of Ireland. Valeria Spirit I assume you mean this "Margaret Hodges"? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_HodgesThat's pretty cool! As far as the "aboriginal peoples" stuff, if one takes such references from the legends seriously (and I do, to a certain extent), then those could be the descendents of either the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) or the Early European Farmers (EEF) or some combo thereof. They would be "Picts" in Howardian terms.
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Post by valeriaspirit on May 31, 2016 17:59:23 GMT -5
Hi, Deuce! Yes that is the lady. Besides having a marvelous resume, she was one of the best teachers I have ever had and a truly gracious person. I hope there's some video of her somewhere - I'll try to check on YouTube.
I don't have any more info about the Fir Bolgs, but I agree in general that there's a grain of truth in our myths and legends. So the Fir Bolgs may represent an indigenous, semi-mythical, probably pre-literate culture present when later waves of immigration (Celts? Norsemen?) arrived.
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Post by deuce on Jun 1, 2016 14:06:31 GMT -5
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Post by trescuinge on Jun 27, 2016 19:55:06 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Jul 11, 2016 16:10:40 GMT -5
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Post by trescuinge on Jul 25, 2016 21:47:24 GMT -5
I admit it; I love The Corries:
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