At 16:43 06/03/00 -0500, Francine wrote:
>> From: Bob Trubshaw [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>>
>> At one level I can agree that 'holy' and 'venerated' *may* be only a
>> matter
>> of semantics. But 'powerful in different ways', as you handily put it, is
>> important to me as there is little hard evidence for what this
>> 'difference'
>> really amounted to (although rather a lot of supposition and
>> prejudice!!!).
>>
> What do you consider "hard evidence" and what do you consider
>"supposition and prejudice"?
Life's too short to give a full answer to the latter! However, the
'supposition' that triggered my response to Carl-Henrik was that there is a
*continuity* between Celtic attitudes to water and the early christian
'sanctification' of wells. Dedicating wells to saints is well-known in
among Byzantine christianity (i.e. the origin of the whole package of the
cult of saints imported in the British Isles during the 8th century); there
is no parallel to such 'dedications' in Celtic practices.
Furthermore, the majority of evidence we have for Celtic 'veneration' of
watery places is *not* from wells but from rivers and boggy pools (and I
don't think this can be 'explained away' by saying that less evidence has
survived for Iron Age use of wells).
I am *not* disputing Francine's point that the Celts were seriously into
watery places. But I am still looking for any evidence that in Britain -
most especially my interests in lowland Anglo-Saxon England (which, by the
time we find any evidence for 'halig welle' and the like, had seen several
hundred years of Roman occupation and several hundred years of pagan
Scandinavian settlement) - there is anything but superficial similarity.
As I have written at length within the last year ('"Do not call it fixity" -
Continuity in archaeology and folklore' _3rd Stone_ No.34; April 1999), it
is simply 'not on' to look at superficial similarities and assume that there
was some 'unbroken tradition' being maintained. Even when 'folk customs'
have been maintained over recent centuries, the meaning and 'significance'
tends to evolve and be reinvented over quite short time scales (e.g. just a
few generations). But this is really the territory that Ron Hutton has
illuminated so thoroughly e.g. in Stations of the Sun (OUP 1996) so I hope
that there is no need to repeat at length.
Suffice to say I am far from happy to accept that the Celtic archaeological
evidence provides any useful evidence about immediately-prechristian beliefs
and practices. And I really hope that it does not need pointing out that
the 'Celtic' mythological material (the Mabinogion etc etc) is such a
thorough mish-mash of ideas written down so far into the christian era that
there is simply no chance of reliably establishing anything about
prechristian beliefs (other than prior 'supposition and prejudices'!!!).
Maybe there is 'hard evidence' for Celtic beliefs to have persisted but I -
and others who have looked such as Hutton and Tristan Hulse - have yet to
find this in the British Isles - even in Ireland where (unlike lowland
England) the Celtic period overlapped with the early christian influx.
Hence the hope that the relatively late christianisation of Scandinavia
might reveal something useful !
BTW anyone on the list from the Baltic countries?? As the last European
countries to be christianised there is the tantalizing hope that some useful
historical (rather than archaeological) information about wells may be
lurking . . .
Bob
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