#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: After the Beltaine-Festival, the herds were booleyed to lush mountain pastures, to remain there until Samhain, when they were driven home. “Girls tended the cows through the sweet summer days, living in rough huts called shielings, milking each morning, making butter and cheese, packing the produce into churns to bury in chilly bogs for safekeeping. It was a simple life, full of music, because it was believed that cows gave more milke when serenaded.”
Source: Patricia Monaghan The Red-Haired Girl From The Bog
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: It is said of the Dagda that he had an enchanted harp, in which the music was spell-bound, and he alone could call it forth. When he played, summer would break in bud and blossom all over the land; or winter with its snows and frosts would come ; or sleep or laughter or tears would fall on all who heard the music.
Source: Heroes of the Dawn by Violet Russel
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: On the West Coast of #Scotland, the God of Summer, Angus Og resided on the Green Isle of Summer, also named the ‘Land of Youth’. He had dreamed of a beautiful maiden weeping, and when he awoke he asked his father, the King of the Isle, about his dream. The King tells Angus that Beira holds Bride captive because Bride is the fair princess Angus is to marry, and when he becomes King of Summer, Bride is to be his Queen.
Source: Angus and Bride - Folklore Scotland
#FolkloreThursday: „The Celts were not dualistic in their view of the world, preferring to speak of balance rather than conflict between winter and summer, male and female, night and day.“
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: After the Beltaine-Festival, the herds were booleyed to lush mountain pastures, to remain there until Samhain, when they were driven home. “Girls tended the cows through the sweet summer days, living in rough huts called shielings, milking each morning, making butter and cheese, packing the produce into churns to bury in chilly bogs for safekeeping. It was a simple life, full of music, because it was believed that cows gave more milke when serenaded.”
Source: Patricia Monaghan The Red-Haired Girl From The Bog
#Celtic#LegendaryWednesday: According to the British historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, Myrdinn Wyllt “Wild Merlin” was a #Welsh king/hero who went mad and fled to the woods, where he lived in a bird costume (or perhaps actually transformed himself into a bird). The name derives from a Welsh legendary figure who became famous as the magician Merlin.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
RT @GodysseyPodcast
Foundational to the creation of Merlin is Myrddin Wyllt, or Myrddin the Wild, a bard who in Welsh poetry went mad after a battle and fled to the Caledonian Forest far to the north as a wildman, contemplating his former life but gifted with prophecy. #FolkloreThursday
🖼: A. Lee
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: How did the storytellers of the #IronAge learn about the prehistory of #Ireland? #Fintan mac Bochra could tell them all about it, because he lived for at least 5000 years after the Deluge well into the time of #Fionn Mac Cumhaill, becoming the repository of all knowledge of #Ireland and all history.
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: #Ogma mac Elathan, son of Delbaeth, is according to #Irish tradition the inventor of the #Ogham script. This Son of Art was not only extremely famous in the art of speech and poetry, but also an athletic trénḟer, a power man. In the battle of #MagTuired he fought on the side of the #TuathaDéDanann against #Bres and his #Fomorians.
Source: Helmut Birkhan Die #Kelten
This huge translation and writing project I am fitting together in its final form is too big to fit in my brain all at once. I must therefore trust the decisions that numerous iterations of me from the past made. I have to resist the urge to revisit every detail, just because I may have had a bad night's sleep. In this way, I expect be able to publish a work bigger and more comprehensive than any I ever imagined producing, while still retaining some semblance of my sanity. That's the hope.
#FolkloreThursday: In #Scotland cattle were preserved from the influence of witchcraft by placing garlands of rowan and honeysuckle around their necks. Red threads tied in their hair or woven into the wreaths likewise protected dairy cattle from milk-stealing witches, who were especially active on #Beltane.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore https://twitter.com/Fiona_m_Byrne/status/1454888042649559045
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: „A local man had caught a Leprechaun. Because it didn't help him find a treasure, he put it in an oak chest. On the evening of the 10th day, the farmer claimed: "Darragh Fort is on fire!" Only then did the "gankeynogue" (= little man) promise him a treasure if he let him out to save his family.
When the Leprechaun saw the deception, he took the opportunity to disappear. However, the farmer later overheard the "gankeynogue" tell his wife where the treasure could be found: under a stone in front of the farmhouse, where the farmer's wife had stumbled over it this morning and spilt a bucket of milk.
And right there the farmer discovered a beautiful treasure of gold.“
Source: Derryragh - Wikipedia
“A poet, who had been trained as a seer, gorged on the flesh of a just-killed bull, then slept wrapped in its bloody hide in an attempt to divine through dreams the identity of the next king. Should the poet fail, the punishment was death.” This #Irish and #Scottish ritual was called bull-sleep (bull feast, tarbhfleis) and was one of the great divination rituals of the ancient #Celts. Sometimes the poet’s vision was cryptic, as when the king CONAIRE appeared as a naked man surrounded by BIRDS, approaching Tara. At that moment Conaire, whose mother was a bird, dreamed that he should approach Tara naked, thus fulfilling the prophecy.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
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RT @Modquokka
To forsee a future King, Celtic tribes would see a Bard gorge their fill on flesh of fresh killed bull, then sleep; its bloody hide wrapped about them to be blessed with bull-sleep and its dreams of divination. #FolkloreThursday
My second audio post for patrons this month is a recording from my own song archives. The song is a strathspey port-à-beul titled "A Cur Nan Gobhar," which is all about goats...and kilts.
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: „Women were entitled to enter all the same professions as men; they could be #druids, poets, physicians, lawgivers, teachers, warriors, leaders, even queens. The mythological stories are littered with such references to women of power.“
Source: https://aliisaac.substack.com/
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: „In ancient #Ireland, not only could women be queens, but they could lead armies, be warriors and druids, possess wealth and property in their own right, and engage in marriage on an equal footing with their husbands.“
Source: https://aliisaac.substack.com/
Though the Romans equated their war god Mars with the Greek god Ares, they portrayed him as very different. Mars was also a god of agriculture and a father to the Romans, who used war to create lasting peace, while Ares was only interested in slaughter and chaos.
"We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct categories which we label 'scientific' and 'supernatural.' ... But the very moment we are compelled to recognize a creature in either class as real, the distinction begins to get blurred."
In one Welsh legend, King Arthur discovered an altar floating in the ocean, and unsuccessfully tried to use it as a table. When Arthur realized the altar belonged to St. Carannog, he returned it in exchange for the saint ridding the land of a troublesome dragon.
#FolkloreThursday: #Fionn Mac Cumhail was tracking Gráinne. So she hid from her former suitor on a magical rowan tree. But the leader of the Fianna suspected where she and her lover Diarmait were. He sat beneath the tree of the giant named Searbhan and began to play fidchell that had been Diarmait’s passion, against his friend Oisín the bard. Unable to resist indicating the best move to his chum, Diarmait dropped berries onto the board from above, thus revealing his location to Fionn. And so the pursuit began again.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: The grave of Reinheim belongs to a very respected person. Peter Buwen emphasises that there is no evidence of this person exercising direct rule. On the other hand, there are a large number of objects with religious symbolism. For example, the end figures of one arm ring depict female figures with wings wearing a bird of prey helmet. Due to the many magical-religious objects "it can be stated that the woman buried here is more likely to be a priestess than a princess."
Source: Holger Müller „#Keltische Frauen an der Macht. Ausnahme oder Regel?“
#Fergus Mac Roich was obliged to fight to the death against his own foster son #CúChulainn so that Queen #Medb's army could invade #Ulster. To save face and the life of a hero, they agreed that this time the younger CúChulainn would give way, but next time Fergus would. And so it came to pass. #nonviolence
#Celtic#FolkloreThursday: The lay of Fergus explains how Queen Maeve's army was prevented from entering Ulster by #CúChullinn for one night: ---
"What bespeaks this withe to us,
What purports its secret rede?
And what number cast it here,
Was it one man or a host?
"If ye go past here this night,
And bide not one night in camp.
On ye'll come the tear-flesh Hound;
Yours the blame, if ye it scorn!
"Evil on the host he'll bring,
If ye go your way past this.
Find, ye druids, find out here,
For what cause this withe was made!"
A druid speaks:
"Cut by hero, cast by chief,
As a perfect trap for foes.
Stayer of lords—with hosts of men—
One man cast it with one hand!
"With fierce rage the battle 'gins
Of the Smith's Hound of Red Branch.
Bound to meet this madman's rage;
This the name that's on the withe!
"Would the king's host have its will—
Else they break the law of war—
Let some one man of ye cast,
As one man this withe did cast!
"Woes to bring with hundred fights
On four realms of Erin's land;
Naught I know 'less it be this
For what cause the withe was made!"
Source: Gutenberg‘s The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Táin Bó Cúalnge