May be reposted as long as the above attribution and copyright notice are retained [Originally published in An Tríbhís Mhór: The IMBAS Journal of Celtic Reconstructionism, volume 2, issue 1/2, Samhain 1997/Iombolg 1998.]
 
 
 
As the nights lengthen and the leaves take on their autumn colours, many of our cities prepare for a seasonal festival dominated by dark and frightening imagery. Ghosts, skeletons, hags, nocturnal creatures such as cats and bats, and grinning monster faces peer out at us from shop windows. Much of it is just commercialism, yet there is no denying that the atmosphere of the holiday still has a profound effect on the modern psyche — as we can see from the spontaneous outrageousness of Hallowe’en parades, the creative expressions of death-related themes, and the general surge in mischief-making. All these customs, however, are a diffuse reflection of the beliefs and practices of the Celtic populations of Europe, for whom this feast was a crucial turning-point in the flow of time.

The earliest record we have of the festival of Samhain in the Celtic world comes from the Coligny Calendar, a native Celtic lunar calendar inscribed on bronze tablets and discovered in eastern France a hundred years ago. The calendar — dated, through epigraphic evidence, to the 1st century CE — is written in the Latin alphabet and was found in conjunction with a Roman-style statue (identified by some writers as Apollo, by others as Mars), but the language used is Gaulish and the dating system itself bears little resemblance to Roman models, implying that it represents the survival of an indigenous tradition maintained by native clergy. A detailed discussion of the calendar lies outside the scope of this article, but for our purposes it will be enough to point out that its year consists of twelve regularly recurring months that fall naturally into two groups, one headed by the month that is labeled SAMON (for Samonios) and the other by the month GIAMON (for Giamonios), and that the names of these two months are clearly related to the terms samos “summer” and giamos “winter” (cf. Gaelic samh(radh) “summer”, geamh(radh) “winter”; Welsh haf “summer”, gaeaf “winter”). The date of SAMON- xvii is identified as TRINVX SAMO SINDIV, which can be readily interpreted as an abbreviation of Trinouxtion Samonii sindiu (”The three-night-period of Samonios [is] today”). This is one of the very few dates in the calendar that is given a specific name, testifying to its importance as a festival; and since Samoni- is obviously the origin of the modern name Samhain, it is reasonable to equate the Trinouxtion Samonii with the feast that is still one of the most important dates in the Celtic ritual year.

We should note, however, that since the Coligny Calendar gives no indication of how its months relate to those of the Roman calendar, we have no conclusive evidence that would allow us to fit it into the framework of our own year, and scholars are still very much divided on the issue. The most confusing element, of course, is that Samon- refers to summer, and so would naturally lead one to think that a month with that name would head the summer half of the year; and many of the earlier interpretations of the Coligny Calendar take this for granted. In living Celtic tradition, however, the festival of Samhain, despite its name, is definitely the beginning of winter. Though such evidence doesn’t necessarily exclude the possibility that Continental Druids used a completely different terminology, many scholars now accept the authority of the living tradition and place the Samonios month in October/November.

What does the name of the festival mean, however? Here, again,we run into controversy. The traditional interpretation — first put forward in the Mediaeval glossaries and still held to by native speakers — is that it means “summer’s end”, being a combination of samh “summer” and fuin “ending, concealment”. This is obviously a folk etymology, since we know that the earliest form of the word (Samoni-) had a different structure, but its importance to the living tradition should make us wary of dismissing it too lightly. Although philologists have been unable to find a plausible Indo-European explanation for a suffix -oni- meaning “end of” (the suffix, by the way, occurs in at least three of the other Coligny months), this is not conclusive in itself: there are quite a few other derivational suffixes attested in Old Celtic that resist an easy Indo-European etymology, although their meanings are uncontroversial. What should be kept in mind is that in the ritual context of the Celtic Year, Samhain is strongly identified with the “end” or “concealment” of Summer, the Light Half of the year. In the modern Gaelic languages the festival is called Samhain (Irish), Samhuinn (Scots Gaelic), and Sauin (Manx). The night on which it begins (Oíche Shamhna in Irish, Oidhche Shamhna in Scots Gaelic, Oie Houney in Manx) is the primary focus of the celebration. The Brythonic languages call the feast by a name meaning “first of Winter”, borrowing the Latin term calenda which designates the first day of a month (Welsh Calan Gaeaf, Breton Kala-Goañv, Cornish Kalann Gwav), but the beliefs and practices associated with it are consistent with what we find in the Gaelic countries, and will help us discover a pan-Celtic theology of Samhain.
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Tristan and Iseult is a love story that a harper, or minstrel, tells at Camelot, the court of King Arthur. Tristan, nephew of King Marc of Cornwall, slays an Irish knight in a duel, thus averting a war. Later Tristan, shipwrecked in Ireland, kills a dragon that is scorching the countryside, and is forgiven for his victory over the Irish champion knight. He brings home the princess Iseult (Isolde, Isolt, Ysolt) to be the bride of King Marc in order to cement the peace between their two countries. But on the trip back to Cornwall, Tristan and Iseult fall passionately in love. Though Iseult becomes queen of Cornwall, the love affair continues until they are betrayed to King Marc. She is rescued from burning at the stake by Tristan wearing leper’s clothes, and they escape to live in the forest. In the end Marc forgives his queen and Tristan is banished. Then he comes to Arthur’s court and becomes a knight of the Round Table. When he dies, Iseult arrives too late to see him, and she dies of a broken heart. King Marc buries them together, and hazel and honeysuckle plants spring from the ground over their hearts and twine together over their grave.

There are many variations of this enduring love story.

From the Back Cover :
The first complete English edition, brilliantly translated….Throughout it retains the beauty and sense of fatality that have made it one of legendary literature’s most fascinating tales.” — Time

A tale of chivalry and doomed, transcendent love. The Romance of Tristan and Iseult is one of the most resonant works of Western literature, as well as the basis for our enduring idea of romance. The story of the Cornish knight and the Irish princess who meet by deception, fall in love by magic, and pursue that love in defiance of heavenly and earthly law has inspired artists from Matthew Arnold to Richard Wagner. But nowhere has it been retold with greater eloquence and dignity than in Joseph Bedier’s edition, which weaves several medieval sources into a seamless whole, elegantly translated by Hilaire Belloc and Paul Rosenfeld.

“A powerful rendition, an incomparable tale.”

– The New York Times

It consists of an eight-line “octave,” generally with a rhyme scheme a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, followed by a six-line “sestet” with a varying rhyme scheme. The octave introduces and develops the theme, and the sestet completes it. In the 16th century the English, or Shakespearean or Elizabethan, sonnet was developed. It consists of three independently rhymed quattrains followed by a unifying couplet. Its general rhyme scheme is a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f, g, g.

Examples of the sonnet form can be found in the works of Dante, Petrarch, William Shakespeare, John Milton, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The main source of information about Scandinavian mythology was an Icelandic scholar named Snorri Sturulson (c. 1179-1241), who wrote down the myths in what has come to be called the Prose Edda. There are a number of translations available on the internet, as well as at Amazon.com.

On the northeastern banks of the Great River, which runs from north to south bisecting the land, lies the forest of Mirkwood, where the evil Sauron built up his power. Still further east the dwarves reside, beneath Erebor, the Lonely Mountain. The Misty Mountains, over which the travelers cross, rise to the west of the Great River. Further west is Eriador, where many of the hobbits reside and where the first volume of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Rings, begins.

The first deliberate creation to match limerick form is usually considered Tom o’ Bedlam (c. 1600):

From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend thee

And the spirit that stands
by the naked man,

In the book of the moons defend yee.

And here’s another example:

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.

But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean

And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

Ironical situations in stories usually involve contrast between what is expected and what occurs: the thief who is robbed, the hunter who becomes the hunted.

In the 1760’s, the Scottish poet James Macpherson (1736-1796) claimed dubiously to have discovered and translated tales written by Finn’s son, Oisin, whom he called Ossian. Two of his popular books are Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books (1762) and Temore (1763), an epic that he claimed was translated from the Gaelic of Ossian. Both Finn and his son frequently appear in Irish myth and literature, most notably in the poetry of William Butler Yeats.

An example from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.