A Modern Celt

Celtic tradition is at the heart of many aspects of popular modern pagan paths, and this book brings those aspects together to explore the relevance of a 2000-year-old culture in modern-day society. A Modern Celt looks at the Tuatha de Danaan, who they were and their continuing relevance in the 21st century. It looks at several of the key figures and the legends surrounding them, and considers how they relate to real life, everyday events, and the power they can lend us to deal with our own problems. The wheel of the year brings Celtic festivals and a modern calendar together, and these corner posts of the year help us understand the world as something that existed long before humans arrived, and hopefully will continue to exist long after we are gone. A Modern Celt considers some of the things we do to try and preserve it, and how these can be inspired by our Celtic roots. With musings from members of Celtic paths about why they feel such a tie to their Celtic ancestry, A Modern Celt paints a picture of an ancient world, alive and thriving today. ,

The Celtic peoples of the British Isles hold a fundamental place in our national consciousness. In this book Simon James surveys ancient and modern ideas of the Celts and challenges them in the light of revolutionary new thinking on the Iron Age peoples of Britain. Examining how ethnic and national identities are constructed, he presents an alternative history of the British Isles, proposing that the idea of insular Celtic identity is really a product of the rise of nationalism in the eighteenth century. He considers whether the 'Celticness' of the British Isles is a romantic fantasy, even a politically dangerous falsification of history which has implications in the current debate on devolution and self-government for the Celtic regions.

“Finely researched and lucidly written . . . details the rise, ebb, and flow of the idea of a common Celtic identity linking Ireland and Wales.” —The New York Review of Books Who are the Celts, and what does it mean to be Celtic? In this book, Caoimhín De Barra focuses on nationalists in Ireland and Wales between 1860 and 1925, a time period when people in these countries came to identify themselves as Celts. De Barra chooses to examine Ireland and Wales because, of the six so-called Celtic nations, these two were the furthest apart in terms of their linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic differences. The Coming of the Celts, AD 1860 is divided into three parts. The first concentrates on the emergence of a sense of Celtic identity and the ways in which political and cultural nationalists in both countries borrowed ideas from one another in promoting this sense of identity. The second part follows the efforts to create a more formal relationship between the Celtic countries through the Pan-Celtic movement; the subsequent successes and failures of this movement in Ireland and Wales are compared and contrasted. Finally, the book discusses the public juxtaposition of Welsh and Irish nationalisms during the Irish Revolution. De Barra’s is the first book to critique what “Celtic” has meant historically, and it sheds light on the modern political and cultural connections between Ireland and Wales, as well as modern Irish and Welsh history. It will also be of interest to professional historians working in the field of “Four Nations” history, which places an emphasis on understanding the relationships and connections between the four nations of Britain and Ireland.

The Celts are commonly considered to be one of the great peoples of Europe, with continuous racial, cultural and linguistic genealogy from the Iron Age to the modern-day 'Celtic fringe'. This book shows, in contrast, that the Celts, as they have been known and understood over two thousand years, are simply the 'other' of the dominant cultural and political traditions of Europe. It is this continuous 'otherness' which lends them apparent continuity and substance.

This volume, one of the few devoted to Celtic syntax, makes an important contribution to the description of Celtic, focusing on the ordering of major constituents, pronouns, inflection, compounding, and iode-switching. The articles also address current issues in linguistic theory so that Celticists and theoretical linguists alike find this book valuable.

From prehistory to the present day, an unrivaled look deep into the contentious origins of the Celts Blood of the Celts brings together genetic, archaeological, and linguistic evidence to address the often-debated question: who were the Celts? What peoples or cultural identities should that term describe? And did they in fact inhabit the British Isles before the Romans arrived? Author Jean Manco challenges existing accounts of the origins of the Celts, providing a new analysis that draws on the latest discoveries as well as ancient history. In a novel approach, the book opens with a discussion of early medieval Irish and British texts, allowing the Celts to speak in their own words and voices. It then traces their story back in time into prehistory to their deepest origins and their ancestors, before bringing the narrative forward to the present day. Each chapter also has a useful summary in bullet points to aid the reader and highlight the key facts in the story.

The Celts are commonly considered to be one of the great peoples of Europe, with continuous racial, cultural and linguistic genealogy from the Iron Age to the modern-day 'Celtic fringe'. This book shows, in contrast, that the Celts, as they have been known and understood over two thousand years, are simply the 'other' of the dominant cultural and political traditions of Europe. It is this continuous 'otherness' which lends them apparent continuity and substance.

The author of Ireland's Holy Wars journeys through the Celtic world to discover the Celtic past and what remains of the authentic culture today, discovering that Celtic revival is largely misplaced and that the threats to the world's Celtic communities and culture are relentless.