Who were/are the Celts?

[french frank]

I'd never heard of him, Lat. The Modern Antiquarian may have something in common with Colin Wilson? Cope seems quite aware of (and quite enjoys) the 'bogusness' of the Celtic thing, but post-modernism repackages it all to manufacture a wider 'discipline'.

[Beef Oven!]

"Saint" Julian may be a punk in his own mind. He emerged in the immediate aftermath of punk rock. But I reckon he was a quarter of the way vocally towards Scott Walker and could be seen as the nearest to a competitor to him in terms of idiosyncrasy. For 20 odd years, Walker has been wild. I am not sure that any of us who saw the former live at various times during the 1980s - starting with the Teardrop Explodes - would have anticipated his subsequent romping across the countryside to pursue history. Maybe, though, it shouldn't have been a huge surprise. The question was always what would have happen if an individual combined some intelligence, arguably an over-active imagination and a spiritual sort of philosophy that only made sense to him with mind-altering substances. It was of interest to me as I always felt the latter would be unmanageable. The answer turned out to be the extraordinary book "The Modern Antiquarian" which was wonderful and yet not to be taken seriously or was it? Here is information and the glowing reviews:

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/the_books/

So while in terms of his stylistic approach, one could think of Malcolm McLaren's "The Ghosts of Oxford Street" - half-baked, slightly wacky ideas made into a collage for artistic effect - there is perhaps something more to be said for comparisons with Peter Ackroyd's unusual but academically impressive approaches to London. Imagine the capital city as a human body if you will. If anything, Cope is controversial because he is a bit less imaginative in his work than Ackroyd, albeit with a twist. What appear to be books for the coffee table - beautiful in their presentation, presumably trivial and, certainly on the surface, anything but punk in design - are not at all insignificant in their oddball historical content.

Very interesting.

Yes, I've seen Cope live a few times back in the day, and would have never predicted this.

But remember, he became a bit of an expert and compiler of information, summaries and reviews on 'Krautrock'.

P.S. He's wasn't a punk, but may well be in his own mind (like many of us were/are!)

[Lat-Literal]

I'd never heard of him, Lat. The Modern Antiquarian may have something in common with Colin Wilson? Cope seems quite aware of (and quite enjoys) the 'bogusness' of the Celtic thing, but post-modernism repackages it all to manufacture a wider 'discipline'.

Yes, I can understand that connection but my understanding of Wilson is that he could be - to varying degrees - dark, angry, secretive, political, egotistical. Cope is hardly any closer to Wordsworth but what I think he would like to be is Kerouac if Kerouac had been more like Blake. This is a guy who is "casually" On The Road - "where is he now?" we are all expected to wonder if, that is, he cares - with a microscope on history - unexpectedly - and waves of colourful apocalyptic vision. Perhaps it is more "In the Fields" than "On the Road" but the key point is that it is a roam. The first part is focused on reality - it is real history - and the second is literary/poetic. What links the two is a mysticism that probably wouldn't withstand close scrutiny. Sometimes these days it is difficult not to mention David Icke but Icke is big in showbiz and political. I doubt Cope is quite either of those things.

Nor would I expect him to regard himself as a Wilson style "prophet" although I could be wrong. He has written about prophets. However, as you have indicated in regard to his outlook on the Celtic sell, he has the capacity to be questioning and objective. I would say there is a strand of distant irony in him so that part of the fun is in others not being able to tell which parts of him are serious and which are not. This is someone who emphasizes light, albeit out of chaos and even flame. On the band he fronted when asked to say if they were dark: "Quite the opposite...I think we were an offending light band". On the detailed work about so-called Krautrock which Beefy mentions: "I thought it was up to me to write the book because I have the time to do it. I'm capable of doing it. It's shadowy and it shouldn't be shadowy. Krautrock is symbolic of the underground and the occult and everything that is underneath. It's my job to bring it out to people". Wilson may have had Cope's "strange effervescences" but would he ever have said "I've.....fallen in love with the world and the world radiates so much light at me"? If not, it could be that he placed himself above his work whereas deep down Cope hopes to be remembered for his outputs.

[french frank]

Thanks for all that information! You live and learn here :-)

I was thinking of the combination of mysticism and a certain erudition which might link the two as writers.

Anyway, the exhibition is called Celts: art and identity. Hence the 'If you think of yourself as a Celt, you are a Celt' inclusiveness …

Yes, I can understand that connection but my understanding of Wilson is that he was, to varying degrees, dark, angry, secretive, political and egotistical. Cope is hardly any closer to Wordsworth but what I think he would like to be is Kerouac if Kerouac had been more like Blake. This is a guy who is "casually" On The Road - "where is he now?" - with a microscope on history and waves of colourful apocalyptic vision. Perhaps it is more "In the Fields" but the key part is that it is a roam. The first part is focused on reality - it is real history - and the second is literary/poetic. What links the two is a mysticism that probably wouldn't withstand close scrutiny. In these areas, it is difficult not to mention Icke but Icke is about showbiz and he is political. I doubt Cope is quite either of those things.

Nor would I expect him to regard himself as a Wilson style "prophet" although I could be wrong. He has written about prophets. However, as you have indicated in regard to his outlook on the Celtic sell, he has the capacity to be questioning and objective. I would say there was a strand of distant irony in him so that part of the fun is in others not being able to tell which parts are serious and which are not. This is someone who emphasizes light, albeit out of chaos and even flame. On the band he fronted when asked to say if they were dark: "Quite the opposite........I think we were an offending light band". On the detailed work about so-called Krautrock which Beefy mentions: "I thought it was up to me to write the book because I have the time to do it and I'm capable of doing it. It's shadowy and it shouldn't be shadowy. Krautrock is symbolic of the underground and the occult and everything that is underneath and it's my job to bring it out to people". Wilson may have had Cope's "strange effervescences" but would he ever have said "I've.....fallen in love with the world and the world radiates so much light at me"? If not, it could be that he placed himself above his work whereas deep down Cope is hoping to be remembered for his outputs.

[MrGongGong]

I'd never heard of him, Lat..

Where were you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-EXt3FG8NM

[french frank]

Where were you?

France, I expect.

[teamsaint]

[QUOTE=MrGongGong;509818]

Where were you?



not Kilimanjaro, clearly.

[Lat-Literal]

France, I expect.

He does that one too. There is nothing he can't do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsiTMS1WSfw

Before this thread is returned to anything like it was supposed to be, I feel I need to get my own Cope out of my system. Most people tend to have a pull towards certain places. Westminster Abbey, Blackpool, the South of France, Antarctica. My main places in Britain have been Glastonbury, Lindisfarne which in actuality I have never visited, and for a reason not in the least understood until 2015, Rottingdean which is four miles east of Brighton. I also happen to like Lynton and Lynmouth, the Isle of Wight, York where I studied and many other places but the first group is different because those places have a vague spiritual hold on me. Never seeing or indeed feeling that the festival at the former was simply an epic party, this writer is a guy who very happily bought in to the idea of Avalon beyond the A303. There have also been solo pilgrimages to Avebury and up to the Tor.

While the latter have rarely been comprehended, others have recognised it is isn't possible for me to pass Stonehenge in a car without stopping there for a sandwich. It would be like ignoring a permanent friend who is there to help with any insecurity. Music has always tied in closely because it is felt to reside in that safe space between the air and the land, the land and humans and humans and the air. In the absence of music, there would be little sense of any spirituality. Of the three, it was Rottingdean I never really associated with music. Rather there was a pitch and putt course and a windmill overlooking the sea which was visited annually for over 40 years, normally in mid December for my birthday and the winter solstice. How lovely to be playing mini golf by the sea for free in thick snow and to have a feeling of affiliation with the mystery of time and space. Yes, honestly.

Anyhow, there is a rumour on the grapevine that the host of the World Music forum used to live if not inside the Rottingdean windmill then very close to it. I am not sure that he and I have ever discussed the Copper Family. But three things occurred strangely within 48 hours in February this year. First, I discovered that Bob and Ron Copper's "Traditional Songs From Rottingdean" recorded in 1963 had recently been made widely available in this country for the first time in its original album form. That has close esoteric connections with the early folk music collections of Cecil Sharp in North London and others. Secondly, I had for reasons I won't say here a lengthy chat with an organizer at the local church, an innocuous place on the edge of the South London suburbs and one which I had not had any verbal communication with previously. Thirdly - and I have absolutely no idea how or why I did this - I watched on You Tube "Voices of Albion", a film first screened at the second Portobello Film Festival Annual Film Makers' Convention in 2007. That charts in the style of a modern antiquarian the historical origins of many of the contemporary and near contemporary left field subcultures such as Spiral Tribe, the Exodus Collective and the Dongas and traces their origins to the Digger and Leveller Movements of the Seventeenth Century. A fair number of the Dongas would turn up regularly at Michael Eavis's farm.

Briefly, there is a map in the film - blink and you would miss it - depicting a line between Rottingdean and the North London Borough of Barnet. Specifically, the de Mandeville family is mentioned as being relevant to the latter and hence the former in that they were among a number of Templar families who were allegedly party to an ancient secret that linked music, landscape and locality. The line on the map is presented as a direct connection from the village of the Coppers to the de Mandevilles' manor. We are also told in the film that there was a strong legendary link between the de Mandevilles and Arthur's Camelot Castle, for which read Avalon or Glastonbury. There are umpteen references to the de Mandevilles in the correspondence of William Stukeley who Cope discusses in his article. But what was incredible was that on viewing "Voices of Albion" I thought I saw marked with a big x and its name my local church on the line on the map. Convinced I had imagined it, I had to replay it but, on repeated viewing, there was no doubt that it was true.

Intensive research followed in which I managed to ascertain that the de Mandevilles' manor was situated in what is regarded spiritually as the Barnet Triangle. The line is drawn from its location and its Glastonbury associations though Gog and Magog at Totteridge and then it travels south to Rottingdean on the coast via my local church. Why? Well, it turns out that there is a South London companion to the Barnet Triangle and it is the equally spiritual Croydon Triangle which has the church here at its southern tip. The line in London connects the two. From there, the connection continues for 40 or 50 miles to Rottingdean not as a ley line but as a sort of energy line which is designed to enhance how music blends with the landscape and location so that those things may be felt to merge. I would be very surprised if anyone who attends the church has ever heard of the Croydon Triangle or is aware the church is on the film as being linked to Rottingdean in one direction, the de Mandevilles and Stukeley in the other and by association out towards Arthurian legend in the west. But I have now got it into my head that my musical outlook was somehow pre-determined by my location. For what it is worth - and I don't have a strong religious faith - I was Christened in that very church in the year the Copper Family's album was recorded. What I now want to learn is whether it was recorded in the same month!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm9zotZFCR8

http://www.earthstars.co.uk/earthstars-sites-to-visit/

[french frank]

One can't argue with what anyone else feels about most things, but for me - brought up in Somerset long before the festival 'moved in' on Glastonbury; knowing Pilton as the first place in England to plant a commercial vineyard; and also academically involved with Old Celtic literature, history and language, all the modern associations seem quite alien.

The latter day reinvention of bards, druids and paganism, Glastonbury ley-lines, Bligh Bond and psychic archaeology (I half remember some woman involved with a group called something like the Society for the Preservation of Lost Knowledge): all this was irresistible when discovered by the flower children and hippies of the 1970s. And the mystery of King Arthur and Avalon too! There was a whole mish-mash of ideas tacked on to ideas about the Celts. Something for everyone to identify with, as the BM exhibition illustrates.

[Lat-Literal]

One can't argue with what anyone else feels about most things, but for me - brought up in Somerset long before the festival 'moved in' on Glastonbury; knowing Pilton as the first place in England to plant a commercial vineyard; and also academically involved with Old Celtic literature, history and language, all the modern associations seem quite alien.

The latter day reinvention of bards, druids and paganism, Glastonbury ley-lines, Bligh Bond and psychic archaeology (I half remember some woman involved with a group called something like the Society for the Preservation of Lost Knowledge): all this was irresistible when discovered by the flower children and hippies of the 1970s. And the mystery of King Arthur and Avalon too! There was a whole mish-mash of ideas tacked on to ideas about the Celts. Something for everyone to identify with, as the BM exhibition illustrates.

Yes, thank you. That is very interesting. The title of the thread is "Who were/are the Celts"? The main distinction that is emerging is one of objectivity and subjectivity. I see the former as academic and the latter as inferior intellectually. I place myself without any self reprimand more in the latter group. And that is why I have a lot of respect for your outlook and that of Padraig, geofflikesmusic and indeed the daughter of a friend with whom I was at university. She is brilliant and currently studying archaeology in Oxford.

I spoke this year with an academic who I have never met and he asked me about my degree. I said that it was in history and politics at what was one of the top six universities at the time but on mentioning that the history component was focused on the 19th and 20th centuries he said "oh, that's just journalism in disguise". In many respects, he was right.

At the heart of the differences may be something about individual ability to accept human nature for what it is at any time and specifically how societies have to be organised. The hippies who were adult "children" and appealed to me when I was a rather adult sort of child were internally conflicted in that they wanted both to drop out of society and to change "the world", by which they meant society. They were very much in the "here and now" but what were their influences subconsciously? In very simplistic terms, I think one could say that modern history might have been perceived by them as "things" getting better but not better enough while earlier history would have been about kings and queens and battle. Irrespective of the Holocaust and Vietnam that was farther from any sort of idyll. Of course, these were exceedingly privileged generations. They could often afford to muse.

In any such contexts, having references that are much earlier in history is not necessarily about wanting to learn more about how human beings organised themselves and behaved in bygone times. It is about the convenience and particularly the reassuring comfort of not knowing such things as a means of diluting the negative impacts of modern mankind. It is the unrecognised counter-balance to revolutionary bluster. It implies concession to the difficulties or sheer impossibility of radical grass roots change. That is not to say that it is unreal on every level. The reduction of human beings to mere artefact tackles the ostensibly egotistical notion that any land can be mastered when nature has a permanence and force that regularly reminds us that it cannot be and perhaps that is just as well. Maybe it is the essential difference between being bombed out of an aeroplane and losing one's life when flying because of adverse weather conditions. The latter feels more acceptable somehow as it isn't personal or politically potentially avoidable. There's less grievance.

I think too one might want to bear in mind the timing of the modern celtic mysticism with the technological developments in mass media. The question of who the Celts were - or are - when it is spun through the hippy dream focuses on a sense of network that is essentially unseen. The Celts and associated elements are presented with elaborate and often very contrived inter-connections as if they are carried and connected via some sort of radio or television mechanism on the ionosphere. Deep down, it is a communal response on the fringes, where togetherness is defined by a separateness, to what is felt in heart and soul to be modern one-way communication, hence social diktat. To align with a "Celtic Fringe" requires a sense of being somewhere fairly central personally and geographically and not necessarily enjoying it whereas true academics who want to learn will in their immersion work against the view that most things were ever any sort of fringe. That surely is the point about getting involved in the facts rather than pondering and supposing.

Given the content of my earlier post, I might need to qualify what it conveys. I am not taken in by souvenir shops which are - what shall we say? - alternative. I am very quick to recognise modern business sense and while I don't condemn those who trade in this area I instinctively see through it. £37 bits of stone are not for me and they never will be.

But the older I am the more I have a knowing approach towards my past and present perspectives. I am not of the view that seeing life through one prism is any more real than doing so through other prisms. I am not convinced that what is generally regarded as being normal in organisational terms in 2015 is anything other than politically faddish and I am downright sure that it is by instinct unhealthily oppressive. What makes people happy and healthy is what matters most to me. If some prefer "Celts", let them have "Celts"!

[french frank]

And I have absolutely no problem with what I think you mean by "Celts" - in quotes :-) It's just that that isn't what the word means to me. The original topic (if I remember accurately) was about research into the genetics of the historical Celtic race.

But:
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.' "

It's probably no more than a question of what any one individual finds most interesting/involving. I'm interested in the examination of the language, the ancient literature and what it reveals, the historical fact. I'm not involved in the sense of identifying with any of it.

I suspect today's voracious appetite for fantasy fiction/science fiction an interesting phenomenon. So much about the Celts seems to be based on pure (pleasing) fantasy.

[Lat-Literal]

And I have absolutely no problem with what I think you mean by "Celts" - in quotes :-) It's just that that isn't what the word means to me. The original topic (if I remember accurately) was about research into the genetics of the historical Celtic race.

But:
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.' "

It's probably no more than a question of what any one individual finds most interesting/involving. I'm interested in the examination of the language, the ancient literature and what it reveals, the historical fact. I'm not involved in the sense of identifying with any of it.

I suspect today's voracious appetite for fantasy fiction/science fiction an interesting phenomenon. So much about the Celts seems to be based on pure (pleasing) fantasy.

Very fair points.

I am not for science fiction myself and have read all of the thread. The DNA test was new to me and I am interested in it because I am sure I have non-European roots. I have never felt white and I have been hoping for a long time to prove that I am not. Something like North African heritage would suit me just fine. Wasn't there a series on Radio 3 a couple of years ago in which Celtic Christianity was discussed seriously? I seem to recall us talking about Bede and others in this the arts section. It may have extended to Iona.

[Lat-Literal]

....Ah yes, it was a series about the Anglo Saxons. I might have to start using the term "a senior moment".

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?6516-The-Essay-Anglo-Saxons

But notwithstanding earlier history, Bede is far from irrelevant. Herren and Brown write in "Christ in Celtic Christianity" - "Outsiders tended to lump the Britons and the Irish together with reference to ecclesiastical matters, particularly in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. We have endeavoured to be cautious with the term "Celtic" used inclusively, and not apply it to beliefs that were exclusively British or Irish. The English writers Aldheim and Bede, who wrote in the late seventh and early eighth centuries, provide invaluable information for our assessment of British and Irish beliefs and practices in their day. Indeed, as all modern scholars of early Insular history are aware, it would be impossible to write anything meaningful about the Celtic regions without recourse to these sources, particularly Bede. However, English writers were not merely detached observers of the scene; they were also deeply influenced by it. Irish missionaries and teachers converted Northumbria". Having said as much, the English word "Celt" didn't arrive until 1707!

[french frank]

Having said as much, the English word "Celt" didn't arrive until 1707!

1607? according to the OED (" The Indians wer wont to vse no bridles, like the Græcians and Celts.")

One point: does it all start off with what "we" call "other people"? The Greeks used Keltoi and Galatai for particular "other people". Tribes/peoples were recognised and given names, by others, according to where they settled, how they grouped themselves together, what their common habits were seen to be and where they seemed to have come from. First mention in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is of 'Bretenlond' and 'Brettas'. And later, famously, they referred to the Walas. It took quite a while for the Walas to think of themselves as 'Welsh'.

Only to be expected that a sense of 'Celtic identity' came much later, originally based on artistic, linguistic and social characteristics/similarities. After that: if you think you're a Celt, you are a Celt.

[Lat-Literal]

1607? according to the OED (" The Indians wer wont to vse no bridles, like the Græcians and Celts.")

One point: does it all start off with what "we" call "other people"? The Greeks used Keltoi and Galatai for particular "other people". Tribes/peoples were recognised and given names, by others, according to where they settled, how they grouped themselves together, what their common habits were seen to be and where they seemed to have come from. First mention in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is of 'Bretenlond' and 'Brettas'. And later, famously, they referred to the Walas. It took quite a while for the Walas to think of themselves as 'Welsh'.

Only to be expected that a sense of 'Celtic identity' came much later, originally based on artistic, linguistic and social characteristics/similarities. After that: if you think you're a Celt, you are a Celt.

Interesting. I had in mind (1) Edward Lluyd in "Archaeologia Britannica (1707)" - seven languages belonging to a "Celtic" family - Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Manx, Breton, Gaulish and (2) the 1707 Act of Union for which it seems key regional and cultural distinctions were hitherto identified and labelled presumably for administrative purposes.

But perhaps on further reflection we should be speaking in terms of years earlier than 1707 and 1607. Apparently some allege that George Buchanan revived the word in the 1500s following centuries of its dormancy. They say the geographers Skylus, Avienus, Hecataeus and Miletus used something similar in the sixth to fourth centuries bc to describe warlike people pushing down to the south of Europe. However, at that time, it didn't have ethnic significance but rather simply designated people living in the west. A key figure later on is Johann Kaspar Zeuss who published the Grammatica Celtica in 1853 and created the foundation of scientific Celtic philological studies. Three or four decades later the Irish took it away from the science and into romance with the "Celtic Renaissance" after which time it spread as a still rare and beautiful rhododendron or ponticum depending on one's outlook.

It might be worth adding that there was a Celtic style romance in the Middle Ages. Arthurian legends were adopted by many countries and had the title Matiere de Bretagne. The druid figure - a natural philosopher, exotic and strange - was in Pliny. Posidonius managed to find a parallel between a "Celtic feast" and a passage in the Iliad. I wonder, though, if any of this matters. Isn't a lot of concept historically half-baked? One writer mentions how "American" history pre-dates any concept of an America. And while we are told that the word itself was one applied by outsiders, those who support Celtic in Scotland or Celta de Vigo in Galicia don't have a problem with it. Nor do the organisers of Celtic Connections.