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Post by Heron on Nov 20, 2009 18:34:21 GMT -1
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Post by Sìle on Nov 20, 2009 19:22:41 GMT -1
You can listen to parts of the book being read on the Samhain 2009 edition of the Celtic Myth Podshow.
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Post by potia on Nov 20, 2009 21:45:01 GMT -1
Heard of it but not got a copy as yet. Chapter titles look reasonable.
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Post by potia on Feb 22, 2010 21:13:35 GMT -1
I've got a copy of this now (actually brought it for someone else and then discovered they'd already got it) and just started reading it.
Have to say that initially I think it may include some dubious scholarship. First few pages are trying to find very old roots and I'm suspicious. The books states:
"The first time she is mentioned in writing is in the classic work Histories, written in the fifth century BCE (from 431-425 BCE) by the Greek Historian Herodotus. He mentioned a Celtic tribe on the Iberian peninsula of Spain called the Kallaikoi."
The book goes on to refer to works by Strabo and Pliny referring to the women of the Callaeci. and the authors say the name has been suggested as meaning worshippers of the Cailleach. The authors are not saying this is correct but they go on in a way that implies they think it is a definite possibility.
Maybe I'm wrong but this just raises alarm bells to me. Would those much more versed in classics than I am care to give opinions on this?
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Post by deiniol on Feb 22, 2010 21:29:29 GMT -1
Maybe I'm wrong but this just raises alarm bells to me. Would those much more versed in classics than I am care to give opinions on this? Well, it's been a long time since GCSE Latin, but it sounds like bollocks to me. I'm under the impression that "Cailleach" has a solid etymology in Latin pallium "veil". Chance resemblences between utterly unrelated words in different languages are dispiritingly common, it seems like Callaeci-Cailleach is just one of these.
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Post by megli on Feb 23, 2010 9:12:16 GMT -1
Yes, that's correct. It's an Early irish borrowing (4th/5th C AD) based on Latin pallium, '(nun's) veil', given an Irish adjectival ending. Its meaning is 'woman wearing a veil', then by extension, 'nun', then, because lots of widows became nuns in Early medieval ireland, 'old woman', which is the sense at work in the folkloric figure. A famous early Irish poem, 'The lament of the Old Woman of Beare' puns on the nun/old woman double-meaning.
Yes, as Deiniol says, coincidences are common: in one Australian aboriginal language, the word for 'dog' is ---- 'dog'!
One of the wonderful things about historical linguistics is that by scientific analysis of soundchanges you can show that words which look totally different are descended from one ancestral word---my favourite example is 'cycle', 'wheel', and 'chakra', which are the Greek, English and Sanskrit descendents of the Indo-European 'wheel' word. You'd never guess that they are really 'the same word', but they are!
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Post by potia on Feb 23, 2010 9:27:29 GMT -1
I thought as much. It's nice to know I'm getting better at spotting dodgy scholarship
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Post by megli on Feb 23, 2010 10:09:35 GMT -1
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Post by potia on Mar 3, 2010 13:30:57 GMT -1
I've finished reading this book now and I have mixed opinions on it. On the one hand it's quite a nice collection of summary stories that include similar features as the Scottish Cailleach stories. On the other hand I think the possibilities of a deer cult of some kinid overseen by priestesses is on very shaky ground and this is one of the themes they come back to at intervals through the book.
I'm not sure if I'd recommend this book, I might as a collection of stories but with a "dodgy scholarship enclosed" warning too.
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