HIST 310-The Celts
I still plugging away at "Miscellany". I finished the love poems and enjoyed them. I laughed at how most of them were about wives of other people! I enjoyed how they stole away to walk and lay in woods together. Dafydd ap Gwilym's "The Jealous Husband" was very bold in saying how he wished his lover's husband would die or he would even kill him. I thought the last line was funny "She does not care if he is buried, and if he's buried I should not care either." His lover doesn't care that she is married and attached to her husband. He does and could careless if they just leave him dead out in the woods.
The compliments paid to women of this era of poem would not be considered kind in these days. In #46 "Reconciliation" "... O skin like foam; stretch your lime-white rounded are about me, in spite of all our discord." I know that if my husband and I had a fight and he said my skin was like foam and my arm was rounded and lime-white, there would not be a reconciliation occuring!! My skin and foam do not have any similarities and I am hoping that my color is never lime white!!
I have picked Celtic Mythology for my final project in this class. I started researching websites for information and have found there are quite a few out there, but trying to find ones that have valuable info is a little hard. As with my other class (Vikings) I have found that most of the informative sites are college websites.
One website described that Celtic Mythology was tampered with by the Priests that wrote it down. They added lots of Christian beliefs to it and it is hard to find out what the "true" myths were. He broke it down into two main types, Irish and Welsh, and then broke those down into four sections.
I have found it very interesting reading everyone's spin on how history really was. What we were taught in school as truth is not always so. I also know that you cannot believe everything you read on a website!!
I have finished reading the "hero" section of Celtic Miscellany. I enjoyed it, but like I already said it was a little violent. I realize that was to show his strength and power. It really isn't any different from other older stories. There always seems to be a woman who betrays him or takes advantage of him!!
The nature poems are very descriptive and romantic (I think that is the word I would use).
I don't really know what and how you want me to write in my weblog, so I am just going to be putting down my thoughts as I do my research. Please email me to let me know if you are looking for something different.
At the website of Simon James' Ancient Celts Page he asks "Who were the Ancient Celts"? I always thought of them as coming from Viking origin and being from Ireland. (I didn't really have much of an idea) He says they were also called Gauls. I had heard of that group before from my early West. Civ. classes, but placed them in the France, Spain area. I never put it together that they were the same people. Reading West. Civ texts about the barbarians "uncivilized" people that lived out of the colonies boundries.
His "assumptions" of not being able to group all the "Celts" into one does make sense to me. They were probably all different in respect to their homelands as the South American Indian tribes were to the North American Indian Tribes.
In his Alternative History he says that there was a switch in thinking. The Celts were originally from continental Europe and the Irish and Brits were just similar to them. Then somehow is got switched around to all we think of as Celts are coming from Irish and British origin. I most certainly thought that.! He also states that it is the differences between the people that is important.
I haven't researched any other websites yet, but Mr. James does have a different spin on the history of Ancient Celts,
Started this weblog for "The Celts". I have started reading "Celtic Miscellany". I have found the Hero's a little violent !!
