I volunteered to review this book, having met the author online quite by chance. It quickly became evident that we have many common interests, so when he mentioned that he’d just published a book, I was intrigued. Once my review copy was more-or-less in the post, Bill mentioned to me that the book is over 600 pages long.

I wondered what I had let myself in for.

As it turns out, I have not regretted my offer. In fact, I read Ghosts of the Forest cover-to-cover without feeling the need to skim sections and just pretend that I had read them. Like one of the author’s weekend hiking expeditions, the book draws the reader forward into a labyrinthine exploration of landscape, folklore, myth, and dreaming the gods of the Old North into life again.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in those gods, even though, due to the tattered state of the evidence, most of its conclusions must remain tentative. Not that William A. Young is afraid of a bit of speculation, but it rarely gets too wild. He is generally well grounded and remembers to make those qualifying statements with regularity. I think it’s important to read the book in that spirit. If you go in looking for things to disagree with, you will find them, and if you go in determined to accept every suggestion, you could be misled. But if you read the book in the same spirit of curiosity in which it was written, you will come out with lots of useful leads.

The Ghosts of the Forest is a rather contemplative piece of writing in which the author reminds us of old stories from a wide variety of sources, then tells us what he’s been thinking about those stories, and of his search for confirmation in the landscape. He draws his conclusions and defends them as best he can, but he mostly avoids dramatic claims of groundbreaking discoveries – except, perhaps, when a bit of that is warranted.

This isn’t 600 pages of Young trying to sell you his theory based on increasingly spurious historical references. It’s a lyrical trip through the landscape of Hen Ogledd both in time and space. Young needs to see the places that fascinate him first hand. He needs to touch them and spend the night in them. And he needs to approach respectfully, on foot. To make pilgrimage.

He takes the reader with him. His mile-by-mile descriptions of days spent traversing moorland and forest, clambering over tricky terrains and into steep valleys gives one a sense of being there along with him in real time. And when you get tired of walking, there’s always time to stop for a story. From Thomas the Rhymer to Owain, men and gods of the North take on new aspects as we look at their tales from vantage points other than our sofas and desks.

The stories Young draws upon are wide-ranging in type and origin. He’s happy to quote antiquarians like Scott, while recognising their faults. He understands the differing mills which have ground local lore, saints’ lives, and Arthurian romance into their historical shapes. Occasionally, I found his reasoning a touch flawed. He feels bound to look for Merlin’s sanity-restoring spring, but springs are much easier to find in the landscape of the rural North, than they are in native literature relating to Myrddin and Lailoken. That spring, like so many things we can easily start to believe are traditional, is a creation of that great Norman liar, Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Not that springs, wells, and fountains are unimportant in the native literature more generally. Like many of us, Young returns over and over to that well, spring, or fountain where we find Owain, Pryderi, and Cynon, having been directed there by a surly guardian of the forest. If this complex of symbols fascinates you, and yet you find that understanding it always ends in a cul-de-sac, then you may appreciate the fresh angle on it presented in The Ghosts of the Forest.

As the book progresses, Young slowly builds a case for the “dark man” or “guardian of the forest”, whom we know from Owain, being an echo of the Northern deity, Cocidius. In the process, he takes us on a tour of other sites which already have known associations with Cocidius, or for which he makes some well-reasoned arguments. He also brings the narrative romance Fergus of Galloway into this equation in an interesting way, ending not on Hart Fell, as Nikolai Tolstoy did in his Quest for Merlin, but further southeast on Caplestone Fell, where he finds some surprising and well-preserved ruins which have never been properly investigated, due, no doubt, to their location.

This, for me, was one of the highlights of the book, but in a book like this, there are so many. If you are interested in the folklore of southern Scotland, stories of the Old North, or tales of the Northern Merlin, then you are likely to find frequent small rewards in this book. Nuggets of information, or old ideas combined in new ways.

This could be a much shorter book if Bill Young didn’t take us with him on his hill walks. But it seems to be while he’s walking that so many of his good ideas are brought forth. This gives the book a naturalness that wouldn’t be achieved in a more concise format. I did occasionally long for some kind of outline with lots of chapter headings, such as some of the old antiquarian and folklore books used to provide. (If you want to find things again in this book, my advice is to make notes.)

Another reason this book is so long is that Young takes the trouble to include full versions of many of the stories he draws upon, sometimes modernising the language a bit. This includes full re-tellings (sometimes quotes, where legal) of Thomas the Rhymer, the Colt of Kielder, Fergus of Galloway, Lailoken and Kentigern, and many other texts and folk-tales without which the reader might be unsure of their ground. This means that the reader doesn’t have to go hunting for the relevant texts.

Modernising language or translating some words in Scots poetry might be helpful, from the standpoint of accessibility. I’m less sure about the author’s decision to try to phonetecise the spellings of Welsh words. This gives us things like “Myrthin” for Myrddin and “Arvderyth” for Arfderydd. From experience, I find that such attempts are no guarantee that the reader’s pronunciation will improve, and also that this will grate on readers with even a basic grasp of Welsh. This is a quibble, I know, and certainly not grounds for avoiding the book.

Two recurrent themes are the author’s call for some of the sites he visits to be better investigated, archaeologically; and his arguments that some form of Pagan religion persisted for many centuries in the North – far beyond Roman Christianity, or even beyond the time of the evangelising saints. Of course, these two topics are not unconnected. Maybe, it would be nice if we could brandish some material proof which would advance the dates of the survival of ‘pre-Christian’ religion in the area. I certainly agree with the author’s instincts that this is the case, and he makes some excellent arguments for it. However, I think this needs to be weighed against the questions of disturbance, notoriety, and increased footfall to sites which currently exist in peaceful obscurity.

The Ghosts of the Forest is available on Amazon in the US and UK, or from the author’s website: inter-celtic.com

Tales of the Old North - a six-week online course, starts on Saturday, 6th January.
As the Romans retreated from Britain, a new dynastic order (or perhaps disorder) rose up in what is now southern Scotland and northern England. Later known by the Welsh as Hen Ogledd: The Old North, its heroic and poetic remembrance is one of the most beautiful, and often overlooked flowerings of Celtic-speaking culture.
 In Tales of the Old North we will hear the words of the bards and scribes concerning Taliesin, Urien, Owein, Myrddin, The Gododdin, and more.

Thomas Love Peacock was an early Victorian author (d. 1866) best known for his satirical novels. He could also turn his hand to verse, which features quite a bit in The Misfortunes of Elphin – but I’d better start at the beginning.

Gwyddno Garanhir (Gwyddno ‘longshanks’) is best known as the lord of the legendary drowned kingdom which is supposedly under Cardigan Bay. There is real evidence of an inundation, perhaps 4,500 years ago. Medieval maps show islands no longer visible, while in recent years, heavy storms have revealed more and more petrified forests along the coast, visible at low tides. Perhaps a very long folk memory has made its contribution to the legend of Gwyddno, who would understandably need a good pair of wading legs.

Gwyddno belongs to legend, now, and it is difficult to place him with certainty in a historical period. The 6th century seems likely, but that’s a little late for the inundation. A conflation of famous Gwyddnos could be at work. There are a number of Gwyddnos in the 6th century who are difficult to disambiguate, although Peter Bartrum offers some help in A Welsh Classical Dictionary (p 392-396).

Gwyddno Garanhir’s first literary appearance is in the 13th century Black Book of Carmarthen, where he has a conversation with Gwyn ap Nudd, in which Gwyn is very much in his psychopompic persona. His main legend also appears in the Black Book, as a lament in Gwyddno’s voice for the loss of his land – Cantre’r Gwaelod (the bottom cantref). Medieval poets and 20th century Celticists have all contributed interpretations of the material. Over time, it has been suggested both that the woman Meirerid, mentioned in the poem, made a mistake with a well (perhaps reminiscent of Boand in Irish lore), or that the flood was the result of drunkenness on the part of either Gwyddno, himself, or a prince called Seithenyn. (Bartrum p 394-396)

Gwyddno is also the father of a prince called Elphin, who had the luck to find the infant Taliesin (sewn up by Cerridwen in a leather bag forty years earlier) caught in his father’s fish weir. Some versions of the tale of Taliesin and Cerridwen mention how Gwyddno’s horses were poisoned when Cerridwen’s cauldron burst and its poisonous contents flowed into a river. Much of the story of Taliesin is devoted to telling how he later rescued Elphin from his poverty and from the anger of King Maelgwn. [1] Gwyddno’s final claim to fame is his possession of a hamper, mentioned in Culhwch and Olwen. Gwyddno’s hamper is capable of feeding a hundred men, if food for just one is put into it.

Early Welsh literature wasn't well known in Victorian England, so it might seem an odd starting point for a novella by a satirist who was a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley. But Peacock’s wife was Welsh, and he seems to have been fond of Wales – probably with something of a romantic gloss.

The Misfortunes of Elphin isn’t a long book. My copy is just over a hundred pages, and quite of bit of that is verse. On one level, Peacock does what I have been tempted to do myself. He tries to put Gwyddno’s stories into one cohesive narrative. In fact, he only includes ‘The Drowning of the Bottom Hundred’ and the tale of Taliesin.

If you don’t mind Victorian English, you might enjoy Peacock’s book. His satiric wit is mostly aimed at the drunken Seithenyn, and various self-important members of the nobility and clergy. So far, so good. Of course, like any good historical/mythological novelist, he also feels duty bound to create a love interest for the young Taliesin, and to pad the story out with sometimes interminable conversations between said nobles and clergy, which allow him to exercise that witty turn of phrase. At first, I found that aspect quite funny, but by the end it had begun to grate and I was tempted to skip forward.

Then there’s the verse. I happen to like Victorian poetry a lot. (Alfred Tennyson was one of my ‘gateway drugs’ to neoPaganism, believe it or not.) Technically, Peacock’s verse is excellent in its rhyme and metre. But, even though much of it describes nature, it left me cold. Perhaps Peacock’s cynical satirist’s mind made it difficult for him to feel nature on a deep level. It's as if he imitates other poets’ descriptions of nature without quite understanding why they say what they say.

The penultimate chapter of the book features a bardic contest in which Taliesin competes against other famous early Welsh bards. Myrddin, Aneirin, and Llywarch Hen are all present. When I hit that chapter and saw what Peacock was about to do, I definitely sat up and took notice. Good English translations of these works were not readily available in Peacock’s time, and exactly how he accessed the material isn’t clear. Did his wife translate for him, or did someone else? Did he attempt to read the Welsh? My guess is that someone merely provided him with a synopsis of some of the work of these poets, and perhaps translated a few lines as examples.

Now, to be clear, Peacock never claims his poems to be translations, or even paraphrases, of the work of Taliesin or these other great bards. However, this was the chapter in which I really lost respect for the book. Into the mouth of Llwyarch Hen, Peacock puts his unemotional and flabby verses about the beauty of winter. He completely misses the desolation and despair of the original gnomic verses, but sticks to the subject matter, after a fashion. Myrddin talks about how nice apple trees are and Aneirin offers a long and rousing poem about warriors. None of it makes the reader feel anything, completely missing the power of the original poets. Of course, the poetry of Peacock’s Taliesin is filled with his own sharp wit, but it lacks the seemingly heartfelt praise of his patrons found in the historical Taliesin, or the sharp-edged, psychedelic shape-shifting of the legendary Taliesin.

In the end, I have the same problem with this book that I have with every historical-cum-fantasy novel based on Celtic myth or legend. The authors are almost always from outside the relevant cultures, and are basically co-opting those cultures as a vehicle for the story they want to tell, and they want to give that story a coat of Celtic paint.

The Misfortunes of Elphin is in the public domain. My copy was published by the Dodo Press (undated). It is also available online and in historical reprints.

[1] These stories of Taliesin are translated in Patrick Ford’s The Mabinogi and other Medieval Welsh Tales. University of California Press.

Many lovers of Irish mythology know that the Dindsenchas offer a rich seam of lore, but rarely feel that they have the time or the knowledge to work that seam effectively. I believe that I have a remedy in this document, which lists the different sets of dindsenchas translated by Gwynn and Stokes, in a master index, with every entry hyperlinked to the journals where they reside on archive.org. It’s now easy to locate all the entries for Druim Suamaig or Mag Murisce (should you wish to) from this single index. I’ve also included some of the more popular personal names, with a list of the entries in which they occur. You may not be surprised to hear that there are at least nineteen dindsenchas which mention Cú Chulainn, but now you can actually find them, as well as the Mac Óc’s modest sixteen.

Essentially meaning “lore of places”, the Dindsenchas take us on a rather random tour of Ireland, stopping to point out what happened in specific places, most of which can still be located in the landscape, today. The stories told are mythological or legendary and because of this, they contain a great deal of mythological information, some of it not found in other texts. On our travels, we learn snippets of information about figures from all four ‘cycles’ of Irish myth: The Mythological, Ulster, Fenian, and Historical; and sometimes entire new stories are revealed to us.

The problem has always been how to find those stories. Like many Irish texts, dindshenchas are scattered through various manuscripts, giving groups of them exotic names like The Bodleian Dinnshenchas, the Rennes Dindsenchas, and The Edinburgh Dinnshenchas, depending on where the manuscript was housed. And that’s just the prose dindsenchas. In the style of many Irish texts, there are also poetic settings of many of the stories, known collectively as The Metrical Dindsenchas.

If you’re lost already, wait until I tell you about the English translations! Between about 1892 and 1924, the redoubtable Whitley Stokes and Edward Gwynn (working separately) edited and translated the prose and metrical dindsenchas, respectively, for our use and benefit. Like many translators working at that time, their work was published, often piecemeal, in Celtic Studies journals like Revue Celtique or Todd Lecture Series, where it has remained largely inaccessible to the general public.

Even if you manage to locate the journals, finding your way around the dindsenchas, themselves, can be a bit hit-or-miss. Most of the titles refer to places names which have changed over the centuries, and which give no clue as to what gems may lie within. Who would guess that the entries for Dumae Selga tell the story of the Mac Óc and his lover, Derbrenn, who care for a herd of talking pigs who were once human; or that the dindsenchas of Berba recount the bizarre tale of Meche, son of the Morrigan, and his three hearts? Only the most dedicated students of early Irish texts have really learned to find their way around the Dindsenchas, and it’s no wonder. Some of them are indexed, and sometimes, the index is even in the same journal as the texts. It’s hardly a recipe for a quick browse.

I hope this document will encourage all lovers of Irish myth to explore the Dindsenchas with confidence. They are a wonderful resource!

I’ve seen a few questions this week about what “Celtic Paganism’s stance” is on abortion. Happily, none of the internet spaces I inhabit saw this turn into a fight. Most people gave answers similar to my own, and here’s mine:

First, Celtic Paganism is just an umbrella term. It’s not an organised religion, there is no official stance on anything. We have a collection of mythology and other early texts which are meaningful to many of us, but just like the Christian Bible, they are open to a variety interpretations.

There is nothing like Leviticus or the Ten Commandments in that body of lore. We do have the Irish Brehon Law and the Welsh Laws of Hywel Dda, but these are secular legal texts. They prioritise compensating the injured party far above any thought of punishment. Women have different, in many ways slightly better, rights than they did under the Norman laws which superseded them, but women were still very much an oppressed group. I’m not aware of any mention in either set of laws that human life is sacred. However, it’s pretty clear that wives were expected to produce children.

Like I said, these are secular laws, so unless you are trying to reconstruct the social order of the early Medieval period of Ireland or Wales in the comfort of your own home, you probably aren’t going to live by them, anyway. If fact, you can’t, because the rest of society doesn’t recognise them, and you live in a society, like it or not. These law codes are very useful for understanding the social order as presented in mythological texts, and they are a good springboard for some philosophical pondering.

According to this excellent article on the Brehon Law:

In the story of the conception of Cú Chulainn found in the Lebor na hUidre, the king’s sister has become mysteriously pregnant (by the god Lugh), so the king finds her a husband.

That’s right, the woman aborted Lugh’s baby and nobody batted an eye. But, being a magical baby, it sort of grew back.

People also quote the story of St Brigid of Kildare magicking away a woman’s embarassing pregnancy with a miracle, as if whatever the saint did, the goddess must surely approve of (as long as it fits their narrative). Pro-lifers will tell you that this is another myth which is open to interpretation, and in that, for once, they are probably right.

If you are looking for the perfect, “Well, according to my religion,” type of comeback in the abortion discussion, based on following Celtic Paganism, forget it!

The fact is that none of us know what the Druids (who were supposedly the judges of their day) thought about ending pregnancies, or what their judgement would have been on a thousand other things. But what if we did? What if tomorrow, somebody found a secret text from 100 BCE full of verifiable Druidical laws or moral codes? Would you just live by them? I doubt it. All that would happen would be a new set of debates about what they really intended - whether that bit about what to wear is relevant today, and whether it was worth risking prison to perform those human sacrifices.

And that’s good. As Pagans, some of us are very quick to judge people for following their religious texts and religious leaders without asking questions, weighing the evidence, examining their own consciences, and reaching rational personal conclusions about right and wrong. Not to mention being realistic about the need for compromise and tolerance of people who reach different conclusions.

One of the things I love about teaching mythology is that reading the myths and discussing what we think they might mean has the potential to raise the ethical intelligence of everyone in the conversation. In my opinion, that is the strength of myth, and I am wary of anyone who uses ancient texts in a fundamentalist way, and I am wary of those modern storytellers who reshape myths in order to force them to mean what they want them to mean – especially without telling the reader/listener what they’ve done. (If you need a story to help you make a point, maybe go write one, rather than changing something which is culturally significant in its current form so that you can claim ‘ancient indigenous wisdom’ backs your idea.)

We live in a society where a lot of people are very quick to quote some kind of holy writ as the ultimate authority in every question: whether that’s the Koran, the US constitution, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or even the Bible. I think it makes us philosophically lazy. The questions seem too hard for us. We aren’t used to looking at issues from all sides, or trying the experiment of laying our emotions or our cultural conditioning aside and attempting a bit of objectivity. Our culture doesn’t even condition us to consider objectivity as an option. We want to know what our tribe thinks, so we can think the same and avoid cancellation on social media, or even professionally.

Celtic Paganism is not going to offer you a moral code, but it can offer you some great tools for arriving at your own sense of ethics. Thinking is hard work, but it’s all we’ve got.  

For the record, I believe that every woman should have the right to end her pregnancy at any time, for any reason.

Is there a problem?
Most scholars of the Mabinogi(on) will tell you, “Oh, don’t use the Charlotte Guest translation. Get something better!” I firmly agree, but I think it deserves a bit of an explanation.
       Many people cut their teeth on this translation. It was the first translation into English that was at all popular. In fact, it became extremely popular, arriving during the Victorian era, with its obsession with Medievalism in art and literature. Pre-Raphaelite painting, the poetry of Tennyson – it was a perfect fit. Guest’s language is high toned, old-fashioned, and sometimes very beautiful.
       Cut to the present day, and Lady Charlotte’s version also has the advantage of having passed into the public domain. The copyright is expired, so any website that wants to host it, or any publisher who wants to reprint it, is free to do so. No wonder it’s still popular and some readers are very loyal to it. (I get it. I like the King James Bible. The language is pretty, I’m used to it, and don’t really care about the accuracy!)

So why do modern scholars hate it so much?
It’s just not a very accurate translation. The reasons for that are varied, and not always as straightforward as you’d think. Guest was not a native speaker of Welsh. However, she was a scholar of multiple languages and took advice from native Welsh scholars during the process.
       Most of the later, serious editors of her work have said that the translation was better than they had been led to believe. That said, scholarship of Middle Welsh really has improved since Guest’s day, and all of the later translations reflect this.

Could prejudice be at work?
Guest certainly came under fire (some of it seemingly unfair) from the translators who followed her, most notably Jones and Jones. Being a woman may have made her an easier target than a male translator, or may have caused them to take her less seriously, but I wouldn’t like to go out on a limb over that, because I don’t know what was in their minds.

Guest’s legacy
Charlotte Guest was quite a woman. Polyglot and polymath. An example of a member of the upper class who used her leisure time for good works and large projects – including translating a massive piece of literature from Middle Welsh. She also worked to provide education for local children, started a library, and took over the running of her husband’s iron works after he died. (Not to mention having ten children.)

Further reading
The Mabinogi: Looking at different translations. A description of all the modern translations, and where to find them.

The Crimes of Lady Charlotte Guest and The Further Crimes of Lady Charlotte Guest are two papers by Donna R. White, delivered to the Harvard Celtic Colloquium in the 1990s, which explore the accusations levelled at Guest and their veracity.

I’m writing a lot about reading material these days, but people seem to like it, so here’s another post on the topic, sparked by a discussion in a class today. Not for the first time, someone said something like, “I’ve got those books you recommended, and I’ve read some of them, but . . .” The implication was ‘I’m not sure it did me much good.’  

I think this follows on pretty logically from what I was saying in a recent post about people buying up Celtic Studies books and not using them. It reminded me of why this happens, because I know people buy them with good intentions. I often recommend what I see as reference books, but people are trying to read them cover-to-cover.

If you’re interested in Celtic myth and related things, then ultimately the goal is to join up what you learn in one book with what you’ve learned from other books you’ve read. Some books are meant to be read cover-to-cover. That’s obviously the best way to read fiction. It also works really well for non-fiction books with a more-or-less linear narrative structure. Books on history for example, or any topic in which the author is building up a picture – starting with background material, building up layers of knowledge and presenting theories, tying things together in the final chapter.

Books like Celtic Heritage by Alwyn and Brynley Rees, or John Waddell’s Archaeology and Celtic Myth work well read cover-to-cover, as do many others. However, scholarly books such as these are also very useful if you just read the chapters that look most interesting to you. In fact, you may remember what you read better that way, because although these books are somewhat linear, each chapter stands pretty well on its own. And you might get less discouraged by the density of them if you go for things that interest you.

The two books mentioned above are about mythology, but books of mythology are usually collections. I’m thinking of things like Cross and Slover’s Ancient Irish Tales or Koch and Carey’s The Celtic Heroic Age. Many of us like big books. We’re used to reading modern fictional trilogies, for example. But mythology doesn’t read like fiction. It rarely spends much time on what the characters are thinking, or even on description. The narratives are often concise, sometimes downright terse. A lot can happen in a sentence or a paragraph, and you need to adjust the pace of your reading to make the most of such texts. Slow down and give yourself time to picture the details of scenes, consider the motivations and possible emotions of characters, and so on. (There are exceptions. The Tain, or Culhwch and Olwen, for example, are very wordy in places.)

However, the conversation which happened today in class was about a different class of books altogether. One was Rachel Bromwich’s mighty tome Trioedd Ynys Prydein. ‘The Triads of Britian’ seems an innocent enough title, but this is mostly a reference book, or a book to pick up and leaf through for interesting bits. Its two main sections are the triads themselves in Welsh and English with some very interesting notes; and the ‘Notes to Personal Names’. This section has significant essays about the people mentioned in the triads. Essays which reference almost every text outside the triads in which that person appears, plus the etymology of their name, scholarly ideas about them, etc. It’s a gold mine, but you need to know that section is there and use it, not just when you stumble on a triad somewhere, but to find out more about many characters from the Mabinogi and Welsh legend, generally.

Another book which came up was the Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin by Marged Haycock. This is an excellent scholarly translation of a very difficult collection of poems. I love this book, but I can’t imagine most people getting much joy from reading it straight through. Or, at least not unless you go slowly. You could spend a couple of days on the introduction. It's not that long, but if you’re new to the subject it’s still quite a bit to take in.

Each of the poems has a lengthy headnote which is worth reading. Each poem also has many footnotes. Most of these discuss why Haycock translated a word or line the way she did, and possible alternatives. They’re pretty interesting to me – maybe not to you. It’s enriching to read them and perfectly okay to ignore them. Honestly, I’d say one poem a day is enough with this book. Read it thoroughly, read the notes, do it justice. Sleep on it, or go read something a bit lighter. I generally go to this book because I'm reading something which mentions one of the poems, and then I want to go deeper into it.

If you want to read the poetry of Taliesin in a more relaxed but slightly less scholarly format, you might like Lewis and Williams’ The Book of Taliesin, which is another modern, still quite scholarly, translation. It offers you enough information to help you make sense of things, but is more manageable.

Obviously, I can’t talk about ALL the books here! There are lists everywhere of “the best books to read” about Celtic myth or history. Unfortunately, such lists rarely tell you what the book is like, what it’s for, or how to get the most out of it. If you’re asking people who are more knowledgeable than you for book recommendations, it’s helpful if you tell them what, specifically, you want to learn. You want stories. You want the history of ancient Scotland. You want a good dictionary of Celtic mythology. Whatever. There is also no shame is saying, “I got myself a copy of ___ but it’s not making much sense. What am I supposed to use it for?”

You could even ask me in the comments!

It's the middle of October, and in a few weeks the first of the dark time traditions will begin to unfold in Britain. I'm not talking about Samhain, Halloween, or Bonfire Night, but other traditions which are interconnected. Among my favourites are the souling plays of Cheshire. These are simple, traditional plays which have been around for at least a couple of hundred years, but may include elements of something much older. The reason they are called "souling plays" is that they are associated with All Souls Day, on November 2nd, a day that has had a major influence on how we celebrate Samhain/Halloween.

A hundred years ago, folklorists were sure that plays like these were pre-Christian survivals about death and rebirth. That has been discredited now, but whatever the origins, there is something in them that speaks to my Pagan soul, and I know I'm not alone. Kristoffer Hughes says of the Mari Lwyd tradition, "A sure sign of the power within the sacred is when it easily transfers itself into the celebratory practises of secular communities." I fully agree, but I also think that the sacred has a way of seeping into secular traditions, or perhaps finding a way to make itself known through them.

The Cheshire plays are short and based on a formula. Each group - usually associated with a particular village, has its own variation. Performances mostly happen in pubs, although they once went house-to-house, and are performed by adults for adults on the days close to November 2nd. 

King George enters and swaggers about bragging for a few lines, then in comes the knight, Slasher. They have a sword fight and the knight is killed in a joyful combination of ritual recitation and slapstick comedy.

Next to enter is the knight’s mother -- a man in drag. She is distraught at the knight’s death, so a doctor is called to revive him. The Quack Doctor comes in next. After some more joking about, the knight is given some silly remedy and stands up, fully cured. There are other stock characters that usually do their bit – a boozy Beelzebub and a sort of fool, sometime called Little Devil Doubt. He usually collects the money at the end and might try to ride the horse.

The final character (and, of course, my favourite) is The Wild Horse, often named Dick. The Horse is usually a carved horse head, or decorated pony's skull, mounted on a pole, and carried by a man covered by some sort of heavy fabric. He is led in by his Driver, who tells us what a great horse he is, or perhaps once was, and the play ends by asking the crowd to give money to buy The Wild Horse a new cart, or some other necessity.
​
I realise that my description is not very inspiring, so I hope you will enjoy this video of the real thing.

This kind of play is well known in most parts of Britain, but Cheshire stands out because the plays are at All Souls, instead of Christmas. From a Wheel-of-the-Year perspective, there isn't really a wrong time for a nod to death and resurrection, but the beginning of the dark time, and the Christian All Souls celebrations add a little extra weight.

The other thing that stands out about Cheshire is the Wild Horse, itself. In most of the plays, the horse and driver are given quite a bit of time for lines and larking about, even though they have no actual involvement in the plot of the play. Maybe horses have survived as part of the plays because people love to see them, but another possibility is that the horse was once a separate tradition, like the Mari Lwyd or Hooden Horse, which at some point was combined with the play.

The Lair Bhan.
There is a tantalizing reference from 19th century Ireland to a Mari Lwyd-like pole horse called the Lair Bhan, in County Cork. “It is not many years since, on Samhain's eve, 31st October, a rustic procession perambulated the district between Ballycotton and Trabolgan, along the coast. At the head of the procession was a figure enveloped in a white robe or sheet, having, as it were, the head of a mare, this personage was called the Lair Bhan, " the white mare," he was a sort of president or master of the ceremonies. A long string of verses was recited at each house.”
​                                                                                                                          – William Hackett, 1853
 
This tradition has completely disappeared, as far as I know. There are other Lair Bhans in Ireland, connected with wren boys or with St. John's bonfires, but they are usually of the type where a frame goes around the "rider's" waist. This one seems to have been part of a house visiting tradition in which people gave food and money to the troupe to avoid bad luck. Sadly, I only know of this one reference.

And speaking of Mari Lwyds at this time of year, I noticed that The Anglesey Druid order chooses to bring their Mari out for the first time at Calan Gaef (Samhain). 

Whatever all these horses mean, I love that people are interested in them again. If you are waiting for me to connect them to the horse goddesses, I will, but I would certainly not say that they are necessarily a remnant of a horse cult, although it's always just possible. Rather I would say that they might be a manifestation of some part of us that quite rightly reveres the Great Mare, whether we can voice it in so many words. Whether the person under the cloak is a devout Pagan trying to honour a horse goddess, or just someone why enjoys taking part in mumming traditions, isn't the main point. I see the Great Mare in the snapping jaws of the horse, and the tingle everyone gets when the horse makes an appearance, and feel that in some way She has honoured us with Her presence, regardless of the intent.
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Intent, of course, can take these traditions to another level!

​Told by the living and the dead, in their own words, Master Jack is a story I had to write, inspired by the people past and present who make folk traditions happen, in spite of their often difficult lives. It is also the story of the spirit of the horses which I believe live through the different hobby horse and skull horse traditions of Britain.  

I have been working on material for the class I’ll be teaching about Maponos and Mabon soon. I’ve been reading papers that are either new, or that I hadn’t had time to read before, and thinking about the site of the spring at Chamalières where the famous tablet inscribed to Maponos was found. Of course, I’m looking for images that will help the students to visualise what must have been happening at Chamalières as the last decades BCE moved into the first century CE. Images like the one of the archaeological dig that uncovered all this, back in the early 1970s seem messy and overwhelming. It made me realise that I have not really taken the enormity of this site in, myself. 

Our ideas of deity vary – some things we can’t shake off from cultural Christianity whether we were really raised as Christians or not, plus our own ideas about what a deity is, or what we think deity meant to our pre-Christian ancestors. It’s very personal. But the enormity of this site, the weight of requests for healing and probably offerings of thanks for healing – today, I just felt the weight of it.

If I came closer to understanding Maponos today, it was only that I came closer to understanding the enormity of what was being asked of Him. Like most modern polytheists, I shy away from thinking of deities as all-powerful or all-knowing. If you want their help you have to get their attention, offer something in return, and accept that they probably have more agency in the world than you do, but how much more is never clear.

From what the archaeologists can know, this site was only in use for a hundred years – probably less. Yet the limbs piled up into a solid mass, accompanied by offerings of gold staters and hazel nuts and fibulae. Maponos waited with open arms to receive all that pain, all those hopes.

I’ve had a few visions of Maponos over the years. One, quite unexpected, where he appeared as a tall, self-assured, young man in a cave with flowing water. I sat with my arm outstretched as He poured water over it from a dipper. I had an overwhelming sense of kindness and compassion, but also of the sort of detachment one often finds in people in the medical profession. Detachment which allows them to do their work, keep their sanity, be efficient. Something else, too. A sense from Him that I shouldn’t be surprised by His willingness to heal. A sort of "It's what I do" matter-of-factness.
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Of course there’s more to Maponos than His healing aspect. We lack any mythology for Maponos. We have to do our best to understand Him through His associations with Apollo and Mabon ap Modron, and maybe even Aengus Óg son of Boand and the Dagda. Their attributes include healing, being imprisoned, music and poetry, hunting, association with the sun, maybe a warrior aspect … Recently, I sensed Maponos reminding me that I need to see deities, Himself included, in all their aspects, not just pick one. 
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​If you want to learn more about Maponos and Mabon there are opportunities coming up soon. I’ll be teaching a class about him starting on Saturday, 18th September. You can join just the first week of the class, as a stand-alone talk, or sign up for the full six weeks. There’s more information at this link. 

The Stone of Mannan, Clackmannan, Clackmannanshire. The centre of former Manaw Gododdin.

When I fetched up in Scotland in about 1982, I never felt so welcomed in my life. It was a feeling which was to continue for the entire 25 years that I lived there. Maybe my interest in Scottish culture helped, maybe I just got lucky in making some really exceptional friends in the first few weeks, and first few years, that I lived there. I wish I’d never left, to be honest.

It was also around that time that the call to Paganism (and in my case that always meant the call of Celtic deities) began to get really strong. There was no internet back then, and not many books. I was never drawn to witchcraft or Wicca, so I pieced information together from a variety of sources. I spent a lot of time at the library, and a lot of time at the tops of hills communing with rocks, or just walking. No doubt there were Pagan groups around Edinburgh, but I was a lot shyer in those days than I am now, and extremely busy, so I never connected with them. I kind of regret that now, but can’t change it. I built relationships with Bride, and Lugh, and Belenos early on. Later with Epona and Mabon ap Modron and Manannán mac Lir.

 Back in the US, I have increasingly found myself with a lot of time on my hands, and a desire to really delve into myths and bardic poetry and adjacent history and archaeology. I’ve also been living in pretty remote places, so the internet has been a lifeline, and I’ve met a lot of Celtic Polytheists and other Pagans. I love it that they come in so many varieties! But I notice that I’m not like a a lot of other Celtic Polytheists. One thing that I’ve been given the side-eye for a few times is my tendency to be “pan-Celtic”. That is, I have connections to deities from what are considered to be several different “pantheons”  - Gaulish, Brythonic, and Irish. I would agree that there is a kind of pan-Celticism which can be a bit sloppy and conflate cultures which have very separate identities. “Celtic” isn’t a monolithic idea, more of an umbrella term.

But consider Scotland. Especially southern Scotland, where I come from. It is a complete crossroads of the different Celtic cultures. The entire island of Britain used to be Brythonic-speaking. (Brythonic is the group of Celtic languages to which Welsh, Cornish and Breton belong.) It was undoubtedly a patchwork of different subcultures and dialects – but it is also likely that the similarity of languages implies a similarity of culture and religion. It’s hard to say whether a concrete idea of Pictland, for example, existed before the Romans turned up and defined it by building Hadrian’s wall. So the Brythonic continuum was split, north and south, and it seems like Roman soldiers from parts of Gaul may have imported some deities when they arrived, judging from the inscriptions to deities like Epona and Maponos at Roman settlements and forts, of which there are many along the wall.

Of course, the island of Britain, even the north, had contact with Gaul before that, and since there are no inscriptions to tell us what was going on until the Romans turned up, perhaps these deities were already important, just not recorded. The area around the Forth and Clyde seems to have been a kind of bridge between Hen Ogledd (The Old North) and the Picts. But perhaps Hen Ogledd didn’t really come into focus as an entity until the Romans were starting to withdraw. The wall, itself, must have created its own cultural, political and economic zone. Maybe the wall created Hen Ogledd.

It’s also possible that the Epidii, who were centred around Islay and Kintyre, had cultural connections with the northeast corner of Ireland long before the emergence of Dalriada. (This might account for the strong connections between Macha of the Ulster Cycle and horses – but that’s another blog post!) However that played out, by the 6th century the invaders/settlers from Ireland (called Scots, remember) had arrived, bringing their Irish language which evolved into Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic), which in turn became the dominant language of Scotland over the following centuries. The thing is, though, that by this time both Britain and Ireland were also becoming heavily Christianised, so while the Irish language and culture came to Scotland, it’s hard to say which pre-Christian Irish beliefs or practices were still considered important. My sense is that while the deities we perceive as Irish are in Scotland, too, their roots don’t go as deep.

I realise that this potted history of Scotland I’ve just given is pretty fuzzy. The truth is that we lack much in the way of detail about Scottish history for the eras I’ve talked about. There are many competing theories, and what you believe may depend on which authors you think are right or what scenario best fits your worldview. I’m old enough to know that fashions in how we interpret the evidence come and go. There is reasonable evidence for the worship of deities that we usually think of as Brythonic, Irish, and Gaulish in Scotland. Not that I think anyone has to justify their relationship with any deity based on where they live.

Are there any exclusively Scottish deities? I’m sure that there were once many, because every river will have had one (usually a goddess) and so will other features of the land, itself. A few names are preserved, or guessed at, based on river names, such as  Clota of the Clyde or Tatha of the Tay.

Some would also claim The Cailleach. Certainly, there are one, or several, Cailleach characters associated with weather, deer, mountains, or creating landscapes in folklore from different parts of Scotland. However, there are Cailleach figures in Ireland, too, and a few very similar figures in Wales. Scottish folklore offers us an array of legendary figures who may or may not be deities – from saints to giants to Fionn MacCumhaill.

Then there is the mysterious Shony/Seónaidh to whom libations were given in Lewis and Iona accompanied by prayers for an abundance of seaweed. Some associate Shony with Manannán mac Lir, but that is just a possibility. Manannán, Himself, has several placenames associated with Him where the mouth of the Forth begins to narrow, which seem to mark out a region known in Brythonic poetry as Manaw Gododdin. (The Gododdin were a tribe whose seat was probably Edinburgh, and who seem to have controlled lands to the south.) And so the gods of the Gaels and the gods of the Britons become difficult to separate, but there are at least a few genuinely Scottish deities who we can still identify.

I recently read a couple of statements saying that Morgan la Fay, a character from Arthurian stories, has no connection to The Mórrigan – and I agree. (Or I mostly agree, we’ll come to that.) However, what I think people are missing is the goddess who did inspire Morgan la Fay: the goddess Modron. And Modron is, at least tenuously, connected to The Mórrigan, as I see it.

Modron is widely considered to be cognate with Dea Matrona of Gaul, the tutelary goddess of the River Marne. (Both names essentially mean “divine mother”.) She is also related to an early Celtic saint named as Modrun, Madryn, Materiana, etc. in Wales, Brittany, and in Cornwall, where she has a famous holy well.

As Modron, She is known from a few references in early Welsh texts. There, She is the mother of Mabon ap Modron, a character in the tale of Culhwch and Olwen. She is mentioned both in the Triads of Britain, and in a 16th century manuscript known as Peniarth 147. Both of these references are to the same story, which pairs Modron with the great king and hero of the Old North, Urien Rheged.

The tale goes as follows:
Urien is told that at a certain river ford, all the dogs of the district go to bark, as if they see something uncanny, which no human can see. Urien approaches the ford and the barking stops. He looks around, and sees a young woman washing clothes in the river. He is consumed with desire for the woman, and has sex with her – whether with or without her consent is somewhat ambiguous.

Immediately after this act, the woman blesses Urien and thanks him, and tells him that she was fated to wash at that place until she got a son “by a Christian”. Modron then introduces herself by name and says that she is the daughter of Avallach (Triads), the king of Annwfn (Pen. 147). She tells Urien to return in a year’s time and she will give him their son. When he does so, she actually presents him with twins – a son, called Owein, and a daughter, called Morfydd.

There is no more to the story than this, but there is some poorly preserved folklore in Cumbria, the centre of Urien’s power, which recalls a “fairy king” called variously Aballo, Eveling, Everling, etc., who has a daughter called Modron. This duo are often linked to local Roman ruins, and there are remains of a Roman fortress near Brugh-by-Sands which the Romans called Aballava, possibly after a local deity or existing placename which may have been linked to the deity.

A further, and also tenuous, link between Modrun and The Mórrigan might be Rhiannon. One famous aspect of Modron’s son, Mabon, is his role as a divine prisoner, a role also filled by Rhiannon’s son Pryderi in Welsh lore. The association of these two stolen infants is referred to in Welsh bardic poetry to the point of conflation, and also in the Triads of Britain. Just occasionally, it appears that the historical Owein is also being associated with Mabon, although this is less clear. Even without Owein, there is still enough to link Modron and Rhiannon, perhaps as reflexes of one another.

I realise that there is probably nothing I can say to convince some followers of The Mórrigan that I’m right about this, or for them to take any interest in it, but it is increasingly important and interesting to me. So, what has any of this got to do with Morgan la Fay?

If you are interested in Arthurian stories, then you may already have picked up on a couple of things. The first writer of an Arthurian saga, Geoffrey of Monmouth, gives the wife of his character, ‘Uriens’, the name ‘Morgan’. Perhaps he didn’t want to give her a name connected with a saint, especially one which in some versions or her story was said to be the daughter of Vortigern. Yet he associates her with the Isle of Apples, or Avalon, which points directly to the story of Modron, daughter of Afallach, in the Welsh material.

Geoffrey’s stories were soon taken up by Chrétien de Troyes, and reworked as French verse. Chrétien also has his Uriens character marrying Morgan la Fay, now cast as the sister of Arthur, and they have as son, Yvain, whose name is obviously based on Owein, so an awareness of Modron’s story is still lurking in the background. Both Chrétien and Thomas Malory portray this Morgan as a supernatural femme fatale.

So while I absolutely agree that Morgan la Fay has “nothing” to do with The Mórrigan, as a literary character, she may well be based on a goddess who, I believe, does have links to The Mórrigan. In my mind, Morgan la Fay will always be just a literary character, however.

There is further information about Modron in a video I made called The Goddess Modron; and much of the same information is included as a section in a longer essay on Mabon ap Modron called Who is Mabon? which includes more complete citations.