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Post by arth_frown on Jul 25, 2007 13:28:38 GMT -1
Hmm... Miranda Green. Will Parker's 'The four branches', though some parts are arguable. Proinsias Mac Cana's 'Writers of Wales; The Mabinogi'. David Stifter's 'The Celtic World' looks good but is probabaly massively pricy. Anything by John Koch or John Carey. This list is good: www.digitalmedievalist.com/bibs/celtkit.htmlas is this, but note how she qualifies recommending Ellis: www.digitalmedievalist.com/bibs/celthist.htmlAnd as for people I wouldn't recommend, PBE and the Matthewses are the main offenders in the pseudo-scholarship stakes IMHO. Thanks for the advice.
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Post by arth_frown on Jul 25, 2007 13:52:34 GMT -1
David Stifter's 'The Celtic World' £596
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Post by megli on Jul 25, 2007 14:06:47 GMT -1
whereas with Hutton they are using it as academic validity of doing something called 'Druid' without using whats known about the historical Druids as a basis. I see what you mean. But his point, I think, is that over the last 500 years people have done all sorts of things that ramified from the tiny scraps of deeply ambiguous classical evidence we have, and these 'traditions' now feed in to the edifice of modern druidry, or pseudo-druidry, and that's something we just have to accept, whether we like it or not. We are the first generation, really, to attempt reconstructionism with a systematic and sceptical use of the sources: indeed the first to have such sources easily available, whether they be archaeological, linguistic or literary-historical. You might want to argue ('you' used non-specifically) that the only person really deserving the title 'druid' is someone who tries to live a reconstructed version of the beliefs of an ancient druid as fully as possible; but that can't retrospectively alter the past 500 years of people who have used the term, sometimes about themselves, who weren't reconstructionists (but who may have believed they were ) I'm not sure that he's arguing for its validity or not - just saying, this is what people have done, and coo! Ain't it interesting in and of itself? As we all know, if you wanted to write down what we really know for certain about the ancient druids it wouldn't cover a sheet of A4, sadly. *sigh* (I have a recurring dream about meeting an ancient druid and speaking, in halting British: 'Now, reverend sir, what's it all about then this Druid business?!')
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Post by megli on Jul 25, 2007 14:07:21 GMT -1
David Stifter's 'The Celtic World' £596
OW!!! Library loan?
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