Sometimes, it feels like the sciences and the humanities, or “liberal arts” as some people call them, are at war in our wider society. I don’t think they should be, and I suspect that to some extent the conversation is being manipulated by the same kinds of forces that like to tell us that the economy is in trouble because poor people are lazy scroungers. Is this tension bleeding over into our paths as Celtic Polytheists? I think it might be.

I’ve often written about the importance of mythology and the problem of people not understanding that “myth” isn’t synonymous with lies, or “old wives’ tales”. Naturally, not everyone sees myth exactly the same way I do, but studying the humanities helps us understand the difference between myth and simple fiction. Fiction is usually authored by an individual acting with intention. Myth is a cultural distillation which takes place over centuries and the subject matter is usually things like deities or origin stories.

The internet has had a democratising effect on how we exchange information. Anyone can write a blog post and claim to know what they’re talking about. Everyone can express their opinion by sharing unverified information via memes. Maybe rumour is no more rife than it ever was but it’s probably more public due to the rise of social media. At the same time, there’s a breakdown of education and objective journalism.

The recent US elections focused everyone on the problem of fake news. The rise in fake news anxiety has resulted in one group going to the extreme of only accepting that which can be ‘proven scientifically’, while another chunk have gone to the other extreme of ‘there are no facts, so everything is equally true’. Who or what should we believe – or believe in?

Enter “science”. Not any particular science, in this case. Not molecular biology, specifically, or an applied science like civil engineering – just Science. We even have a new piece of sarcasm: ‘Because science’. If science is on your side, there is no way that you are wrong. At least until a new discovery comes along, because even science has to revise its cherished truths, sometimes.

Before this turns into a political rant, let’s bring it home to what I usually write about. Polytheism is an approach to religion, or maybe spirituality. Trying to reduce religion/spirituality to a science is always going to be problematic. Of course there’s the reconstructive approach, which is popular in Celtic Paganism. Certainly, the science of archaeology can offer some facts about what altars looked liked, which regions favour inscriptions to certain deities, and so on. But even archaeology, one of the most interpretation-based of all the sciences, can only offer guesses at how people perceived deities, or what they believed.

That’s where history and myth can help us a little – or even a lot. Of course, it’s less factual. Historians have their agendas, or they just get things wrong. Myths were written down after Christianity had become the dominant religious and cultural force in Britain and Ireland. Therefore, it isn’t pristine pre-Christian material at all. These things require interpretation and uncertainty. Interpretation isn’t a science, and no amount of academic research is going to make it so. A good grounding in philosophy, critical thinking, and literary criticism is helpful up to a point – and no more.

Like many Celtic Pagans, I value the work of academics. They are responsible for making myths and history accessible to us through editions and translations. They also help us understand the linguistic history of texts and offer us a variety of possible interpretations of them. People with years of academic training in history or Celtic Studies are more qualified to do at least some of this work that you or I. However, we still have to accept much of that work as interpretive. If you hold up a theory about The Mabinogi or The Book of Invasions and say, “This person has a PhD, I got it from them, so it is correct,” you will soon find that other people with PhDs have other viewpoints. Academia can’t tell you the “correct” interpretation of myth or distant history – it can only present theories and try to defend them. Those theories are subject to fashion, as well as to improving scholarship. Don't expect scholars to hand you "scientifically proven" answers about myth, or even history, in most cases.

Going to the extreme of believing everything isn’t smart, but people living in a world filled with fake news anxiety are more likely to want the opposite: a system in which all gnosis can either be verified or must be rejected. I can’t help but wonder whether some people are attracted to Celtic paths that lack a surviving mythology, like Gaulish or early Brythonic, because they hope to base their practice only on archaeological ‘facts’, and not have to bother with those ponderous and suspicious myths. Of course, they usually find themselves reaching for interpretation pretty quickly, even if it's only interpretatio romana.
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It doesn’t make sense to try to reduce religion or spirituality to a science. Because it’s religion and spirituality. You will ultimately have to trust your own judgement. If you think you hear the voice of a deity, you will have to decide whether you really did, or even whether it’s fine to just assume that you did. If a myth or a piece of archaeological evidence speaks to your soul, you will have to decide whether to follow that feeling or shrug it off. Not every truth is determined by proof.

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.

In my study of the four branches of the Mabinogi one of the things that fascinates me is the repeated measuring of time by years in the story of Pywll and Rhiannon in the first branch.

This story begins with Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, and his courtiers going to the mysterious hill, or gorsedd, of Arberth, where legend has it that they are likely to see a wonder. The wonder they see is a woman riding sedately past, but who proves impossible to overtake. They try on three successive days to catch up with her, and even the great Pwyll, himself, is unable to do so. He finally manages to persuade her to stop and talk to him by shouting after her, and in the conversation which ensues, she proposes marriage to him, and invites him to come to her father’s kingdom “one year from now” for their marriage feast.

At the feast, things go terribly wrong when a previous suitor of Rhiannon’s turns up during the feast and manages to claim her. However, Rhiannon manages to put him off until “one year from now”. She and Pwyll then hatch a plan to trick the unwanted suitor, and at the second wedding feast their plan succeeds, and they are finally wed.

The couple then return to Pwyll’s kingdom of Dyfed, where they reign “that year and the next” but “in the third year” Pwyll’s advisors begin to complain that Rhiannon has not produced an heir. They want Pwyll to choose another wife, but he persuades them to meet him again “a year from now”, and if Rhiannon has not produced a child, then he will consider it. However, before the end of that year Rhiannon bears a son, who then mysteriously disappears on the night of his birth.

The action of the story then shifts from Dyfed to Gwent, where a landholder called Teyrnon has a fine mare who foals every May eve, but the next day the foal has always mysteriously disappeared. This time, Teyrnon vows to keep watch, so he takes the mare into his house for the night, arms himself, and sits up with her. The mare gives birth and soon a great clawed arm reaches through the window and grabs the foal, but Teyrnon manages to draw his sword and sever it, saving the foal. He runs outside to see what monster the arm belongs to but can find nothing. However, when he returns to the house, he finds that an infant has been left in the doorway.

Teyrnon and his wife decide to raise this child as their own, and in a familiar formula for young heroes the child grows at a prodigious rate. At a year old he is like a child of three, at two he is like a child of six, and so on. At four years of age, he is given the colt to ride, and it is at this time that Teyrnon hears of all that has happened in Dyfed, and realises that the boy is Pwyll’s son, and returns him to his parents.
While May-eve is only mentioned once in the story, at the foaling of Teyrnon’s mare, I feel that there is a strong implication that other major events in the story also take place at Calan Mai. This time of the thinning veil would make sense for Pwyll to go out with the hope of “seeing a wonder”. It is at the beginning of the tale that the language is most explicit that the timings of the wedding feasts are at intervals of exactly one year from the meeting of Pwyll and Rhiannon. This establishes a rhythm of exact years for the subsequent parts of the tale, even though the timing of events might be a little less definite. Perhaps we are expected to get the idea after the first few times.
It seems likely that the birth of Rhiannon’s child happens on May eve, the same night that he is delivered to Teyrnon. If we work back, then we have Rhiannon’s first appearance on the May eve five years earlier, and the return of the child four years later, possibly also at Calan Mai. This motif of years isn’t pronounced in the rest of the Mabinogi, suggesting that it is being emphasised intentionally.
The character of the youthful goddess Rhiannon arriving on her magical white horse is certainly one which feels like spring or early summer, and I don’t think it is hard to envision Her as a May Queen, come to bring good things to the land. It feels very appropriate to me to honour Rhiannon, and Teyrnon as well, at this time of year.

Maybe, (or maybe not) connected, are three May horse mumming traditions from southwest England, which once had a language and culture strongly connected to the Welsh-speaking home of the Mabinogi. You may be aware of the famous celebrations at Padstow, where the town has a long history of an all-day festival of stylised singing and dancing, involving their unique ‘obby ‘oss, pictured above. The tradition is at least two hundred years old, but like so many folk customs is likely much older, although we lack proof. At Minehead, in Somerset, there is also a hobby horse tradition, with some similarities and some notable differences to the one in Padstow. In Combe Martin, North Devon, a little later in May comes a festival called “Hunting the Earl of Rone”, which involves another hobby horse of the Padstow type, as well as a live donkey (which seems to be treated very well).

All three of these events are community festivals involving hundreds of local people as active participants, supporters, and spectators. Like the winter horse mumming customs, I wrote about here, here, and here, these customs went through a period of being considered survivals from pre-Christian times, but this certainly can’t be proven, however much it feels like it. One thing I find beautiful and wonderful about these traditions is their tenacity. The people within these small towns seem driven to keep the customs alive and to participate in them. They allow things to morph and grow to suit the times, yet still manage to treat them with a certain reverence. Alongside that respect, however, exists a certain wildness of spirit which can’t be denied when the horses take to the streets, accompanied by ranks of drummers and musicians.  Could this be the wild ebullience of a horse goddess?

So who was it that created the world of the Celts? Donn and Danu? Eiocha? The Cailleach?

Did we lose our creation myth?
The lack of a “Celtic creation myth” is something that has vexed scholars, and bothers many modern Pagans, as well. Some people feel that our body of myths is incomplete without one, and some neoPagans feel that their attempt at reconstructing a religion requires a creation myth. But what can you do? It’s not there.

There are various theories as to why. The Druids kept it as secret lore, and the Christian monks erased it because it differed from the biblical one being the two most popular. Neither of these feel entirely plausible to me. Creation stories are usually widely shared in a culture. I can imagine that there was knowledge that the Druids didn’t share widely, but that would probably have amounted to “trade secrets”, for the most part. In most cultures, creation stories are used to entertain, or to reinforce the truth of a particular religious paradigm. They’re really not much use if you keep them secret.

The Christian thing is a little more likely, I suppose. I don’t much care for Christianity, but I still think that Irish churchmen (and a little later Welsh churchmen) recorded myths and stories primarily because they thought they were worth preserving. After all, these will have been the stories they grew up with – their own indigenous material. I’m not saying that they never made editorial decisions for religious reasons, but often what we see in old manuscripts looks like an effort to preserve things with a degree of accuracy.

Still, if anything might have been problematic in the cultural mythos, a creation story which directly contradicted the well known creation and flood stories in the Book of Genesis might have been it. Certainly, when we get to the Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of Invasions) there is a conscious effort to create a story of Ireland which can be slotted into that system. However, because creation stories tend to be popular and widely known in a culture, you would expect to see some signs of it in the myths. Like a piece of clothing that has been altered, the shape of the original garment is usually evident, especially when examined by an expert. Goodness knows, Celticists have given the medieval manuscripts of Wales and Ireland a thorough going over, but there is no sign of a creation myth.

Sometimes, folklore preserves things that don’t get written down, and it has been suggested that the folklore surrounding An Cailleach, especially the folklore about Her in Scotland, might be what we’re looking for. It’s tempting to see this. There are many stories of The Cailleach creating aspects of the local landscape in local stories. She is sometimes represented as a giantess who moves large stones or creates mountains and lochs through her various activities – sometimes she even has sisters who help her. Legends like these are common all over the world. Only a few of them attempt to explain the creation of everything, though. They are usually limited to familiar topography. I’ll accept The Cailleach as both a creator and a destroyer on that scale, but She doesn’t look like the creator, to me.

Personally, I’m perfectly happy without a creation story. If Celtic-speaking people didn’t have one, that is really worth thinking about. It takes us outside of the Abrahamic worldview, and I think that’s a hard place for many of us to find, no matter how much we believe we’ve rejected it, because it’s so all-pervasive. What does it say, when people believe not that their gods put them into a world that had been created for them, but that their gods/ancestors travelled to a kind of paradise and took up residence there? Or even more simply, that the world has more-or-less always existed. I find it kind of refreshing.

But I read a Celtic creation myth one time.
There are a number of things floating around that try to be this. Most of them are just exercises in creative writing that got widely disseminated, often detached from their original intent, and the names of their original authors. They are all modern. Writers as diverse as Ella Young in her 1910 collection, Celtic Wonder Tales, and Peter Beresford Ellis in his Celtic Myths and Legends, have written them. There are several which appear on the internet frequently, so let's go through those.

A Tale of Great Love (a reconstructed Gaelic creation myth) by Iain MacAnTsaoir, is a serious attempt at reconstruction, but takes wild liberties with pretty much everything. This is the one about “Donn and Danu”. It turns up a lot in blogs and on YouTube, and MacAnTsaoir is rarely credited.

Then there is one written by Frank Mills, in 1998, called Oran Mór: The Primordial Celtic Myth. It’s just a bit of spiritual fluff with no real plot, which surfaces from time to time.

Finally, there's the one about how a horse called Eiocha is born from sea foam. She gives birth to Cernunnos, then mates with him. Before you know it, deities from Gaul, Ireland and Wales are running about interacting with one another. Then they create animals and humans, and finally fight some giants. In case you’re not sure, this is not an ancient Celtic myth. I finally tracked the origins of this one down at this link. I was created in New York, by “a team” in 2002.

Of course, I know the real answer. A hare laid an egg, and the world hatched out of it.

Have a lovely Vernal Equinox!

Mystery: Any truth that is divinely revealed but otherwise unknowable.
                                                                                      - Collins Dictionary

Over the past couple of years I’ve been thinking about this question of “hard polytheism” and “soft polytheism”, and I see a few problems. Now, those problems may have to do with how people define their terms, so let’s try to get that out of the way first.

I looked at a few random articles and discussions by modern Pagan devotional polytheists about this. As I understand the popular definitions of hard polytheism, the important factors are a belief that deities are real, and are distinct entities. Some went so far as to say that from this position deities must be perceived not only as individuals, but as ‘persons’. That all seems very simple to understand. The definitions of soft polytheism (mostly by self-declared hard polytheists) are a little more varied, but tend to dwell on the belief that deities are actually archetypes, and on various flavours of universalism. It strikes me that there is a lot of open water between those two positions.

There’s a tendency to paint a black and white picture. In most cases, that read as “Unless you believe exactly this,” it isn’t hard polytheism, and therefore it is soft polytheism – often followed by, “and therefore, you are not a polytheist.” Oh, dear.

There is noticeable peer pressure, in polytheist and reconstructionist circles, to insist on hard polytheism. (I think a bit of fundamentalism is creeping in, but that’s a different conversation.) Since I’m writing this, you may be assuming that I’m about to announce that I’m not a hard polytheist. Not really. However, I am frustrated by entrenched dichotomies. Generally, Pagans aren’t too keen on these, either. Good and evil – for example.

What’s in a name?
I can only speak for my own experiences with deities, and that lies almost entirely with Celtic deities (in the wider sense of “Celtic”). In Patrick Sims-Williams book Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature (p. 9-11), he talks about the question of deities with similar names, and divides these into three categories: cognates, borrowings, and translations. Hopefully, I can summarise his ideas here.

overlapping” deities always falls into these same three divisions, but I do think that a lot of it is down to issues of names.

The problem is, that while we can define these three categories, it is much harder to distinguish which category we’re looking at when we compare the names of two deities, and even when we can, does it tell us whether we’re looking at one deity or two? If I had a twin sister called Krista Hughes, I would argue that we are two different people. If I’m called Ms Hughes at work and Kris at home, I am still the same person, and would prefer to be viewed as an integrated whole. But someone encountering my name from just a few historical references, might not be able to see all this.

Can mythology clear this up?
No. But let me muddy the water for you a little. Most people consider that the Irish Lugh and the Welsh Lleu relate, somehow, to the continental Lugus. However, most of the details of their myths are different – at least on the surface. I would argue that if you dig a little deeper there are quite a few similarities, but I see that they are still quite divergent. On the other hand, the story of Rhiannon in The Mabinogi, and the story of Macha, in The Tain, while not the same, have ten or twelve points of similarity – yet their names are unrelated. Art the two goddesses related? If so, what does that relationship imply? I don’t have the answer, but both from an analytical, academic viewpoint, and from a spiritual one, I’m convinced that the relationship is worth investigating. I’m not going to cover my ears, and say, “la-la-la-la I don’t want to hear about this,” for fear of compromising my purity as a hard polytheist.  

Are Lleu and Lugh the same deity? I don’t know. They don’t feel quite the same to me. Maybe more like overlapping pieces of the same deity? Like there is something going on – if you reach back past the stories, to what’s behind the stories, there’s an underlying something. I don’t feel the need to arrive at an answer to this. I think I understand each of them better as a result of understanding the other. I am not talking about archetypes here, and I am definitely not talking about universalism. I’m just saying I recognise the complexity of their history.

I get a lot of inspiration from working with myths. I get more than inspiration, actually. Working with myths is a devotional practice for me, and a big part (certainly not the only part, though) of how I draw close to deities and interact with them. The more I do this, however, the more I find a lot of connections between deities and maybe a few blurry edges. Rather than find this worrying, or a problem to be solved, I celebrate it. I see it as a deepening of my understanding sometimes, and at others it’s more like my attention has been drawn to a great mystery. And I mean mystery in the spiritual sense, not in the “what’s the answer?” sense. I mean “A truth that is divinely revealed but otherwise unknowable.”

I had an interesting question/comment from one of the students on my current Celtic Horse Goddesses course, where we have been talking a great deal about sovereignty and sovereignty goddesses.

The question was: “I sometimes wonder if sovereignty is the correct word, though it is certainly the word used in the literature. It may be that the word sovereignty is being tainted by its use in England by isolationists and the far right. The ‘ownership’ denoted by the word sovereignty seems wrong.”

I understand their concern, and would add that it’s not just England. In 2018, the US president was banging on about US sovereignty in a speech at the United Nations, and that wasn’t the only time.

There is a danger in treating words as “tainted” too readily, though. It forces us to look for new vocabulary, often less precise vocabulary, and this will, in turn, create confusion later about every use of the original word in older pieces of writing. I think it’s always worth trying to hang onto useful words by keeping their true, clear meaning in the public conversation. If we can’t do that with sovereignty, then perhaps we can at least keep it as a specialist word within the sphere of Celtic studies and Celtic Paganism.

As for the original question, I think sovereignty is exactly the right word, in spite of the recent taint. Sovereignty is the opposite of ownership, in a way. Ownership of land is actually a relatively modern idea, in the long sweep of history. To this day, we talk about "landholders" a lot, in British English. I think landholder is a more accurate word for what should be going on, and how things were viewed in Celtic societies.

Holding land implies responsibilities to the people who live on the land, and to the land itself. Sovereignty, in the sense of kingship, requires the virtues of strength, good judgement, fairness, and respect for the goddess who has conferred it. That goddess is inextricably linked with the land and if she/the land/the people are not respected by the holder of the sovereignty, things will get out of balance, and this will become increasingly obvious. In a well-working system of appointing leaders, the holder of sovereignty will then have to be replaced. I suspect that this was easier to maintain in smaller units of government, such as a kin-group, tribe, or a smaller geographical region.

The kind of sovereignty implied by the question, above, is actually something other than sovereignty as I would use the word in Celtic studies or Celtic Paganism. What’s often being implied by modern politicians is a kind of exceptionalist “It’s a free country and you can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do,” attitude. Or, perhaps, “It’s a free market.” It’s forgetting that everything is inextricably linked. It’s refusing to acknowledge that what you do has repercussions for others and for nature, and forgetting that therefore your actions will rebound on your land and your people.

We are feeling the consequences of choosing leaders who have ignored this for decades. For centuries. Now we have a climate crisis and a pandemic. I don’t think the sovereignty goddesses went away when we stopped calling ourselves farmers and got rid of our kings. I believe that they are still here, and that one reason some of us are called to honour them again is precisely because they are tied to the health of the land, to the sacredness of the natural world.

I do love the Cath Maige Tuired, which is sometimes called The Second Battle of Mag Tuired (or Moytura, etc.) in English. I’ve used it as a way to teach about Irish deities, ideas about kingship, the power of satire, and so many other things. My ears pricked up when I heard that Morgan Daimler was planning to do a new translation, including the poetic passages that Elizabeth A. Gray chose not to include.

English translations of The Cath Maige Tuired have been published twice before: first by Whitley Stokes in 1891, and by Elizabeth A. Gray in 1982. Gray’s version is considered the standard, and better of the two translations. Both are available online, although Gray’s extensive notes make it worth getting the print version.

I’ve heard Morgan say that she decided to learn Sengoidelc (Old Irish) because she was unhappy with Stokes’ translation due to its omissions, so this translation is a nice thing, and an understandable thing, for her to be doing.

As well as being a translator, Morgan writes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Her stated reason for doing translations, however, has always been “accuracy”, and sometimes very literal translations fail to achieve what they set out to do, which is to make the original meaning of a text clear. Idioms, for example, require careful handling. They rarely translate well, so either a similar idiom has to be substituted, or there will have to be a footnote. (I love footnotes, but I also love text that flows.) Also, many things other than meaning get lost in translations. Various aspects of style might be captured, poetic devices rarely can be. A sense of the nuance behind why the original says “steed”, instead of “horse” or “mount” is necessary, and the ability to convey that sense of the word to the target audience requires a particular kind of skill that isn’t always covered by “literal”. 

Of course, not being a scholar of Sengoidelc, I can’t judge any translator’s work on how well it represents the style of the original, or its accuracy. But translations of Irish texts aren’t really for scholars of the language – they are for those of us who aren’t! We have to trust our translators, and for that reason I hope that this translation will be read and commented on by a few professional Celticists, so that readers who want to can get a sense of the quality of this work, which I suspect is high.

After so much preamble, you’re probably wondering what I think of this book. There are many things I like about it. The fact that it is slim and inexpensive should make it accessible to a wider audience, although this was achieved by keeping the extra material to a minimum. The author’s note is two short pages, there’s no index, introduction, or other interpretive material, which I suspect many of Morgan’s readers would find helpful. However, the footnotes are very good, and I love the fact that they’re placed at the bottom of the page, not in some mysterious location at the back of the book. I don’t mind reading footnotes, but I detest leafing back and forth and losing my place. For me this is a huge bonus.

Let’s talk a bit more about the footnotes. One thing I like is that Morgan has given the meaning of characters’ names. This is something that translators of myths and bardic poetry don’t do often enough, in my opinion. It instantly adds a layer of insight that is otherwise lacking. The footnotes are also very “honest”. Inevitably, there are many problematic words in texts this old, so where there is doubt, or where she has disagreed with other translators, Morgan has simply explained her choice, and often given Gray and/or Stokes’ alternatives. I spoke earlier of “trusting” a translator, and such an open approach to things helps the reader to do just that.

Cath Maige Tuired is a good story. So an edition like this will be really valuable if that aspect is to the fore, which I think it is here. Since I already know the story, and love it, it’s a little hard for me to put myself in the shoes of a first-time reader, but I think they would enjoy it, and feel very supported by the footnotes.

As for the language in the prose sections, Morgan’s focus on accuracy might impede the flow a little, but I respect her clear priorities, and didn’t find it awkward or “clunky”, which is a danger with literal translations. In fact, many passages were a joy to read.

The real surprise, though, was the poetry. Literal translations of poetry often fall flat, but these do not. It’s obvious that translators are wary of these passages with good reason. Medieval poetry in Celtic languages is notoriously obscure, sometimes intentionally so. There is a love of puns and double-meanings which sets traps for translators at every step, and a tendency by either poets, or scribes, to “antique” the language further for effect.

The only other translation of these passages that I’ve seen were done by Isolde Carmody as part of an MA thesis. (Lugh’s poem here, the Morrigan’s poems here.) Since they will have had the oversight of a tutor, I assume that they are reasonably plausible. They are significantly different than Morgan’s, which definitely flow better and make at least as much sense. My big frustration, here, is that Morgan chose not to divide the poetry into lines, in all but one case. Maybe this was done to keep the cost of the book down, as it would have added some pages, but I think it loses a sense of rhythm and space for the reader when it’s dumped into paragraphs this way.

In her presentation of this book, Morgan places quite a bit of emphasis on the fact that she is an amateur translator, which is understandable and very honest. However, it think her efforts deserve a bit of attention from those who are on the academic side, as they are the only ones able to comment on the quality of the translation.

As some of my readers will know, I’m not fond of turning deities into symbols or interpreting them as mere archetypes, but I have nothing against symbols.

“But it’s made up!” “This isn’t traditional!” Well, no, it certainly isn’t. At least it isn’t a tradition of long standing, although it’s become something of a tradition among many modern Pagans. There is nothing wrong with new traditions, and as new traditions go, I think the Oak and Holly Kings idea is both benign and useful. Not all Pagans are religious. Some have no interest in deities but most of us are interested in the seasonal cycles of nature, and these chaps give us something which personifies that in a non-deific way. Most people don’t worship the Oak and Holly Kings, they are just symbols.

As symbols, these figures have come to riff pretty obviously on the foliate head iconography found on (mostly) English Norman churches. It’s generally thought that their original meaning is far from the ideas of the veneration of nature that are now applied to them, but I don’t think that’s important. It’s a modern, post-Christian interpretation of a common artistic expression, as is the modern understanding of The Green Man. On the cultural appropriation scale, I would rank it 1 (very low) to 0 (you must be joking). It doesn’t ask us to apply any archetypal mumbo-jumbo to some unsuspecting deity who will find it a poor fit.

Of course you may feel that your own culture or mythology offers all you need to understand and celebrate the endless journey between midsummer and midwinter, and if so, that’s fine. Christians don’t really need Santa Claus, but he’s fairly harmless and popular, and largely what you make of him. A symbol of the season, a Christian saint, or something for kids. I don’t feel that my own tradition has deities which strongly personify summer or winter, in spite of some associations. Nor do I feel that there are myths in any Celtic tradition which really describe the seasonal changes as a strong theme. There are hints. The Cailleach is a big one – but I still feel a bit wobbly about whether or not she is even a deity, and I think she has acquired a lot of new folklore, especially concerning her imprisonment of Bride as a spring maiden. The seasonal battle between  Gwythyr ap Greidol and Gwyn ap Nudd, alluded to in Culhwch and Olwen, suggests that there may have once been a seasonal battle myth, as does Arawn and Hafgan’s annual battle in the First Branch of the Mabinogi.

The fact that many modern Pagans try hard to find or recreate myths from cultural traditions may indicate that there is a need for such a myth. It’s possible that this is largely a modern need, but that doesn’t make it unimportant. It’s also possible that it’s just another neoPagan hangover from the glory days of Frazier and Graves. Well, modern Paganism owes them a lot, whether we like it or not.

Old isn’t always better. Culture-specific isn’t always better, either. I’m a devotional polytheist. I do my specific thing within that. However, I’m extremely glad of the wider neoPagan community. I like many of its traditions and loathe others. I like the Oak and Holly Kings. I occasionally get a little frustrated when people start making claims for their antiquity or spouting nonsense about the meanings of foliate heads on churches. But I’m nerdy like that. I love to get at the truth of things.

Still, what a great new set of symbols. People like writing stories about them, and creating beautiful new art depicting them. So now you know. I’m completely and utterly out of the closet as a fan on the Oak and Holly Kings.

So many Celtic warriors, like Vercingetorix or Boudicca, have their public memorials, as do many legendary kings like Alfred the Great or Brian Boru. Where is Urien’s memorial? Why are his stories no longer told? It’s a sad state of affairs.

He would come to be known as one of the blessed womb-burdens of Britain. Urien and his sister Efrddyl, children of the great Cynfarch, were twins. Efrddyl went on to bear triplets.

Urien’s own eldest children, Owein and Morfydd were also twins, begotten, if was said, on Modron, the daughter of Afallach, King of Annwfn (the otherworld) when he found her washing at a ford. It's a scene uncannily reminiscent of encounters with The Morrigan in Irish myth. Ever after, Owein was associated in some mystical way with Modron’s divine son, Mabon, a deity worshipped in North Britain as Maponnos.

These were three blessed womb-burdens of Britain, according to the triads.

Where was Urien born? We don’t know. This is a phrase you hear a great deal when discussing Urien, or Rheged, or Hen Ogledd (The Old Brythonic North). We don’t know.

Urien might mean “privileged” or “exalted” birth. There are no surviving legends about him as a youth. No prodigious feats. It would be surprising it such tales hadn’t existed at some point, but even if they had, that wouldn’t make them true.

Taliesin is the closest we can find to an eyewitness. The Book of Taliesin contains many poems which are unlikely to be the work of the historical Taliesin, but it contains twelve which might be. Of those, eight concern Urien, and one is an elegy for Owein, his son.

It’s unclear whether Taliesin was of a similar age to Urien, or whether he served as Urien’s court poet for many years or just a few. My money is on him being younger. There is something in the tone of those poems. Of course it was the job of a bard to praise his patron, but Taliesin sounds as if Urien made a deep impression on him. They feel almost worshipful. A little like love poems, at times. In amongst the sabre rattling there is often tenderness, adoration, and gratitude.

Taliesin describes a few battles – one at a place called Gwen Ystrad (the white strath) that could be anywhere, another at Catraeth, almost certainly Catterick, which Urien seems to have held for a time. In The Battle of Argoed Llwyfain, Taliesin tells how Urien and Owain refuse the demand for hostages, from the Angle leader, Fflamddwyn, giving battle and defeating him, instead. Flamddwyn, meaning “flame bearer” – probably known for burning the settlements of the Britons. “The hounds of Coel’s litter would be hard-pressed indeed before they’d hand over one man as a hostage,” asserts Owein, invoking his ancestor, Coel Hen. “I shall plan a whole year for my victory song,” boasts Taliesin, at the end of the story.

All this is something of a preamble. The final chapters of Urien’s life are not told by Taliesin. Nennius takes up the tale, briefly, to give us a more Saxon viewpoint –

According to tradition, Urien was an old man by the time he finally created enough unity among the warlords of the north to drive the Angles back. The story of what that required of him as far as battle or diplomacy in unclear. Was it the work of many years? We only know that Urien seems to have grown from a powerful northwestern warlord into an irresistible unifying force in the north, only to be cut down by a jealous rival at the last moment. As is so often the case, it becomes another story of how the Celts almost won.

 Ironically, Arthur, who we hear so much of today, was probably operating in the same sphere, at around the same time, or maybe a generation before. Yet Arthur gets barely a mention from the poets and historians closest to hand, leaving me to wonder about many of the stories of a great, tragic king who nearly united the Britons. Were tales which have Arthur’s name attached to them originally inspired by the deeds of Urien of Rheged?

Half a year ago, I made a little video about Taliesin – talking both about the story of Cerridwen and the shape-shifting episode, and also about the historical Taliesin and his relationship to Urien. Something got inside me when I was working on that. I needed to know more about Urien of Rheged. There were no books about him, but a great deal of tangled conjecture on the internet.

I started reading the scholarly material, most of which referred me back to the few written resources available. Nennius, Taliesin, the Welsh Triads, genealogies, and the Llywarch Hen poems. I was amused by the honest, self-deprecating remarks of different Celticists as they introduced their topics. The consensus: we don't know.

Amusing, and very human, but a bit disheartening, too.

Increasingly, though, I knew I wanted to tell Urien’s story. Laugh, if you must, but sometimes I felt Urien looking over my shoulder, asking me to write it. But how? I’m not a fan of the historical/fantasy novel, with lots of romance, adventure, and material made-up for effect. On the other hand, I’m no historian, and by this time I had established that there wasn’t enough historical material to make a story.

Then, I remembered who I am. Someone who loves myth and poetry and legend, as well as history. I began to wonder whether there was enough material in the poets, and other sources I mentioned above, to piece together Urien’s story. Not a story of historical fact, not a fanciful story fleshing out the few facts we have, but a simple stitching together of the early texts. It worked. The old texts created a rich picture of Urien’s life, and I swear I glimpsed a nod of thanks out of the corner of my eye.

I feel like writing this changed something. Changed me. It felt like a privilege to reweave the tradition of Urien, rather than try to answer historical questions. And it was a joy to discover that far from making stuff up out of whole cloth, as the saying goes, I found a cloth that was already surprisingly whole.