Lughnasa College Moon
Two matters Celtica in my life right now, causing my early writing interests in things Celtic and ancient to resurface. The first is Caesar and his commentary on the Gallic War. There is, in fact, a Roman gauze thrown over the lives of the Celts, first by Caesar and Tacitus, then by that other world dominating super power, the Roman Catholic church. After the Romans left around 400 or so A.D., the Roman church filled in behind them.
It was these two literate oppressors who recorded both the religion and folkways of the Celts. There is, as you can imagine, considerable disjunct between the likely reality of the Celts and their description by people looking down from positions from authority. Especially in the case of the Catholics who combined power with a demand to change the old ways.
The second is the upcoming vote, on September 18th, on Scottish independence. The English, in some ways the political and national extension of both the Romans and the Roman Catholics into the contemporary world of the British Isles, overthrew Celtic lands (Wales and Ireland) and later merged with Scotland.
They first took Wales, which never managed to govern itself as a nation, divided too much by its steep mountains. That was Edward I, Longshanks, in 1284. In 1536 Henry VIII took Ireland and, ironically, tried to supplant Catholicism by sending over Protestants. That is, members of the Church of England, a church created by his famous conflict with the Papacy over his failed attempt to find a wife who would give him a son. Then, in 1707, through a dynastic inheritance by the Scottish king, James Stuart, of the throne of England, Scotland joined England.
Over the course of the last century and this one those bonds have become loosened, first by the Irish struggles, not entirely over even today, and the independence movements in Wales and Scotland. The Welsh movement has not got much momentum, but the Scottish one seems to be gaining favor with the country. If Scotland shakes loose, we might see again a more recognizable Celtic culture with both Ireland and Scotland looking both back to their roots and forward to their own, independent futures.
