|
Post by Adam on Jan 19, 2011 18:52:22 GMT -1
im merely stating that all current evidence of brigantia is in the north all current evidence *that you are prepared to accept*... hence my statement regarding difference of opinion regarding methodology... we accept that rivers (for example) with names cognate with the names of known Gods or Goddesses provide supportive evidence (note supportive, not conclusive, though other factors may strengthen or weaken the conclusion) of the importance of these Gods or Goddesses to the local population... we do not do so lightly or frivolously and we do not do it because "that is how it is at Brython"... such circumstances are well attested in areas where other supportive evidence for the presence of the worship of a specific God or Goddess is present... so we feel fairly safe in taking such circumstances as supportive evidence for a working hypothesis, whilst being prepared to acknowledge that future discoveries may strengthen or weaken that hypothesis. However, you do not seem willing to accept this as evidence despite the assurance of two scholars with significant academic experience in this field... and that is OK... but as far as I can see it kind of makes for an impasse... you repeatedly demand, in an ignorant and hostile manner, evidence... we present it to you, in various different ways... you either ignore or refuse to accept it. Where would you like to go from here?
|
|
|
Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 18:57:31 GMT -1
redraven most of what you have eloquently written is not what ive said at all....in fact most of it is just trying to put words into my mouth..... i began by saying brigantia meant nothing to me, as i considered her to be a northern deity. All im asking for is some proof that she was revered all over the country by independant tribes, north and south. I mentioned that shrines to her were mainly found in the north around the area of the brigantes implying she was predominantly worshipped by them and no-one else. Im not saying she has to be nationally recognised at all, in fact quite the contrary. All i want to know is if she was a pan celtic/ british deity then why is the majority of evidence to her in the north and hardly any evidence in the south? Simple enough question but no-one has yet answered me in a direct non patronising way.
|
|
|
Post by Lee on Jan 19, 2011 19:13:48 GMT -1
All i want to know is if she was a pan celtic/ british deity then why is the majority of evidence to her in the north and hardly any evidence in the south? Simple enough question but no-one has yet answered me in a direct non patronising way. and you have been presented with evidence - which you are disregarding - that she was also known in southern england, a wide area of continental europe, ireland, and possibly wales. that you are unwilling to accept these and only focus on the northern britain thing. I am sorry, but you are misrepresenting what we are doing/saying now; we havent said "this is how brython does it" we are saying this is how we do it and THIS IS WHY we feel it to be correct.
|
|
|
Post by crowman on Jan 19, 2011 20:30:50 GMT -1
Im going to take a few days to think about things, im unhappy about the way words were put into my mouth. Dream-guardian managed to explain things to me in about two lines of a text, the rest of you just tried to defend your ideas and pantheon by attacking me. This isnt my idea of healthy debate.
|
|
|
Post by Lee on Jan 19, 2011 21:10:11 GMT -1
attacking you? where have we attacked you?
we have presented to you the evidence as we see it and explained our methodology. at no point have we called you names, belittled your methodology or been rude.
i would also point out it has also been you who has misrepresented our messages and Brython's aims.
all that has been 'attacked' is your opinion. nothing wrong in that, especially as it has been attacked with facts.
|
|
|
Post by redraven on Jan 19, 2011 21:17:50 GMT -1
redraven most of what you have eloquently written is not what ive said at all....in fact most of it is just trying to put words into my mouth..... i began by saying brigantia meant nothing to me, as i considered her to be a northern deity. All im asking for is some proof that she was revered all over the country by independant tribes, north and south. I mentioned that shrines to her were mainly found in the north around the area of the brigantes implying she was predominantly worshipped by them and no-one else. Im not saying she has to be nationally recognised at all, in fact quite the contrary. All i want to know is if she was a pan celtic/ british deity then why is the majority of evidence to her in the north and hardly any evidence in the south? Simple enough question but no-one has yet answered me in a direct non patronising way. I'm not going to get involved in the linguistic approach as I'm neither qualified or capable of mounting a reasonable discourse on the subject. The lack of evidence in the south indicates to me that she was not revered in the south because of the reasons I've have put forward. I believe this answers your questions in a direct and non patronising way, whether you agree with this statement is a matter of personal interpretation. RR
|
|
|
Post by arth_frown on Jan 19, 2011 21:39:09 GMT -1
There's not much evidence of Bridget being worshipped in the south, so what?
There's no evidence of hindu gods in southern England beyond 60 years ago. but yet Hindu gods are worshipped now.
|
|
|
Post by Tegernacus on Jan 19, 2011 23:35:27 GMT -1
I always thought the Brigantes were a federation of other tribes anyway, rather than a tribe in itself. Could be the common Goddess was the thing that brought them together. They weren't the only ones who recognised Briganti - she was everywhere from the Alps to Ireland to Northern Spain - a true "celtic" God. That there is evidence for her in the north isn't surprising, since the federation up there seems to have adopted her as a patron Goddess. Why isn't she remembered in the south? Well, why aren't all the others remembered in the south either? Do you know how many gods the Silures recognised? Probably a dozen. Do you know how many we have evidence for? Two. Thing is Crowman, if you're looking for just the specific gods of your town, valley, area, odds on there is no record of them at all. But, via process of elimination, linguistics and experience, we can tell you what gods were likely to be, if not worshipped, then recognised and acknowledged. Brigit is one. Bound to be. And we're nothing like the Obod. Where is the evidence for Arianrhod being worshipped in Brittania? Cerridwen?
|
|
|
Post by potia on Jan 20, 2011 10:14:12 GMT -1
Can't remember who said it (Megli perhaps) but someone in a post sometime once said "Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence".
|
|
|
Post by dreamguardian on Jan 20, 2011 10:15:58 GMT -1
Im going to take a few days to think about things, im unhappy about the way words were put into my mouth. Dream-guardian managed to explain things to me in about two lines of a text, the rest of you just tried to defend your ideas and pantheon by attacking me. This isnt my idea of healthy debate. What I said was: That we - brython - just disagree with your - crowmmans - point of view, Thats it! Brython, as a group accept the current scholary evidence that the cult of briganti was widespread in britain, Ireland & europe.
|
|
|
Post by Adam on Jan 20, 2011 10:58:32 GMT -1
Can't remember who said it (Megli perhaps) but someone in a post sometime once said "Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence". I think it was Carl Sagan originally, and IIRC he meant it as an example of fallacious reasoning... he called it "impatience with ambiguity" and argued that if you cannot find evidence for something, despite repeatedly looking for it, you have to assume that it may well not exist and that it decreases the likelihood of what you were looking for evidence for to be true... that we have have doubt if the evidence is not present... a good solid sceptic position... But... we *have* evidence!!!!!
|
|
|
Post by dreamguardian on Jan 20, 2011 13:15:15 GMT -1
I always thought the Brigantes were a federation of other tribes anyway, rather than a tribe in itself. Could be the common Goddess was the thing that brought them together. They weren't the only ones who recognised Briganti - she was everywhere from the Alps to Ireland to Northern Spain - a true "celtic" God. That there is evidence for her in the north isn't surprising, since the federation up there seems to have adopted her as a patron Goddess. Why isn't she remembered in the south? Well, why aren't all the others remembered in the south either? Do you know how many gods the Silures recognised? Probably a dozen. Do you know how many we have evidence for? Two. Thing is Crowman, if you're looking for just the specific gods of your town, valley, area, odds on there is no record of them at all. But, via process of elimination, linguistics and experience, we can tell you what gods were likely to be, if not worshipped, then recognised and acknowledged. Brigit is one. Bound to be. And we're nothing like the Obod. Where is the evidence for Arianrhod being worshipped in Brittania? Cerridwen? Exactly
|
|
|
Post by dreamguardian on Jan 20, 2011 13:26:46 GMT -1
Obviously my perspective is very heavily influenced by the increasing proportion of my working life that I'm giving over to raising livestock - but I would argue that your actual lifestyle is important in how you approach the ritual and meaning of festivals, and most importantly the nature of your relationships with the big ineffable Ones! If you have the good sense to work in a heated/air-conditioned office, and Tesco allows for a consistent diet year round- then what is it that compels you to celebrate the beginning of February? And if you do feel compelled then that is both interesting and useful, albeit subjective, evidence we can work with here - particularly if many of the group feel this strong urge? I don't work with livestock, Francis but I also don't see that Imbolc is exclusive to that narrow focus. I work long hours during the day and during the night. A lot of the time is outside in all weathers & often difficult circumstances. The roads were inpassable during this winter period which regulary involved myself & my colleague carrying equipment over large distances to treat the sick, injured & vunerable. I welcome & celebrate the first signs of spring & the hope of better weather. Plus I do try to source my food locally & use the farms too, supporting the local farmers & econamy. there are times, as much as it pains me, I have to go a larger shopping trader because local suppiers were not in a position to provide me with the basic food I require.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2011 16:00:40 GMT -1
can you see why i dont think Briganti is pan british though? Umm, I think I can. It depends somewhat on how you define 'pan-British'. If there's evidence, however small, for her in the west (Anglesey), a large part of the north and the south (Middlesex), you could define this as 'pan', 'all' - it depends a bit on how close in you're looking. If you want to mean 'all over' Britain, in every part, then there isn't evidence for that. She's said to be pan-Celtic because she appears in so many vastly different areas in the Celtic lands. It doesn't mean that she was honoured in every single place across those regions though. It compares her with local goddesses like Coventina who only appear in one localised place, or other deities who only appear in, say Gaul, or Ireland. So if we apply the same criteria as pan-Celtic to pan-British, she is pan-British (she appears in very different parts of Britain, though not necessarily everywhere). I note that Anne Ross in Pagan Celtic Britain, says the Celtic custom of naming rivers after goddesses (given that the Braint and Brent river names are definately connected with Brigantia) and the nymph Brigantia from Irthington "make it at least worth bearing in mind that Brigantia might at one time have had a wider cult area than now appears to be the case" (in Britain). The evidence is suggestive but inconclusive. It's worth bearing in mind that she had a wider cult area in Britain. I think myself that there must have been one tribe living by the Brent who honoured her. There may have been more, I can't know, but there is more evidence of Sulis than Brigantia in the south and their functions do overlap somewhat. Maybe Sulis was more prevalent in the south and Brigantia in the north? Or did Sulis replace an earlier cult of Brigantia in the south? These are unanswerable questions unless more archaelogical evidence turns up. We don't know conclusively how widespread her cult was and so it depends a bit on your perspective whether you believe she was pan-British or not, how you define it. Does that make sense? As for your question, are you sure the Brigantia river reference doesn't just mean on high, up high etc I think the answer is that the original name behind the Braint and the Brent was *briganti and *briganti is the augmented and personal form of *brig or *briga (lofty), literally meaning 'lofty female person' (according to an earlier post by Megli).
|
|
|
Post by crowman on Jan 20, 2011 17:32:03 GMT -1
All i wanted was a simple answer to a question, which dream-guardian provided, and which i was happy with...because of people taking the right royal hump with me for daring to suggest Brigantia may not have been worshipped by everyone in pre roman britain it spiralled out of control into a slanging match making me feel I was being attacked for my views, no matter how nonsensical they may seem to others.... Gellifach has nailed basically what i was trying to explain in one, so thanks for that. I havent any the linguistic knowledge of megli whom i admire greatly, nor can i match any of you people at dun brython whom i look up to for guidance. What i didnt like is people trying to loftily put words into my mouth and make me out as something im not. I can take criticism, i can even take blame when im wrong, what i find especially disheartening is that certain posters just inflamed matters without actually reading the thread seemingly for the pure fun of having a go at someone. I consider my question answered now so thanks to those individuals who took the time and patience to answer me.
|
|
|
Post by arth_frown on Jan 20, 2011 18:13:15 GMT -1
If we rewind a bit. If we use the format and except that any of the gods are not worshipped by everyone, then none of the gods are pan-celtic/British.
|
|
|
Post by Adam on Jan 20, 2011 21:21:32 GMT -1
As for your question, are you sure the Brigantia river reference doesn't just mean on high, up high etc I think the answer is that the original name behind the Braint and the Brent was *briganti and *briganti is the augmented and personal form of *brig or *briga (lofty), literally meaning 'lofty female person' (according to an earlier post by Megli). I think you might mean the following... caerfeddwyd.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=Land&action=display&thread=1641&page=1
|
|
|
Post by nellie on Feb 9, 2011 19:58:21 GMT -1
|
|
|
Post by nellie on Feb 11, 2011 6:04:01 GMT -1
Hi Douglas, let's just say my world view has already broadened since I started that thread already - a small handful of gods seemed to pop their heads in to say hello ;D As to why I felt that way, I'm not sure. Either it says something about me or it says something about my cultural grooming. Not sure which lol!
|
|