May be of interest to some.
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 11:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [JFRR] Celtic Curses (Mees, Bernard)
Celtic Curses. By Bernard Mees. 2009. Suffolk, UK: Boydell and
Brewer. 238 pages. ISBN: 9781843834571 (hard cover).
Reviewed by Steve Stanzak, Indiana University ([log in to unmask]).
[Word count: 892 words]
Bernard Mees's recent work, Celtic Curses, arrays an impressive range
of scholarship on ancient and medieval Celtic cursing practices. Most
treatments of this topic focus primarily on literary representations
of curses in the British Isles; Mees, however, also considers the
historical and archaeological evidence for cursing practices among
both Insular and Continental Celts. Throughout his work, the author
offers careful close readings of actual curse texts and situates them
as best as possible into their historical and cultural contexts,
attempting to show how curses were used in particular real-life
situations. For this work, the volume was nominated in 2009 for The
Folklore Society's Katherine Briggs Award.
The volume's chapters can be roughly divided into two sections. The
first section examines the scant archaeological evidence for Celtic
cursing in antiquity, focusing on several kinds of sites where curses
are found inscribed on objects, usually lead tablets. The chapters
"Infernal Powers" and "Dark Waters" both examine such curse tablets
found in watery bodies -- a natural spring in France and the famous
spring at Bath -- used as ritual sites for healing cults. These sites
are filled with objects given to gods of the underworld. The three
Celtic-language curse tablets found at these two sites are
significant because they provide philologists with rare evidence of
two ancient Celtic languages, Gaulish and British -- the curse
tablets at Bath represent the only documentary evidence for British
other than names on coins. Mees is able to extract much from a close
textual analysis of these precious documents.
Topics of other chapters in this first section include: a curse
tablet found in a tomb (the dead, unsurprisingly, are good
intermediaries between the living and the underworld); curses that
seek to punish enemies; and curses that are somehow fragmented
(either through poor preservation, incomplete contexts, or texts that
are just plain confusing).
The tablets examined in these chapters provide insight into numerous
aspects of ancient Celtic culture and religion. Some tablets include
names of Celtic deities who are called upon to fulfill the curses
written on the tablets -- curses that request punishment for thieves
and victory against opponents in legal disputes, as in the following
curse, found in a graveyard with some puppy bones: "I give notice to
the persons (whose names are) written below, Lentinus and Tasgillus,
in order that they may [be taken away by] Pluto and Persephone. Just
as this puppy harmed no one, so (may they harm no one) and may they
not be able to win this suit. Just as the mother of this puppy cannot
defend it, so may their lawyers be unable to defend them, (and) so
(may) those opponents be turned back from this suit" (72).
The second half of the book turns away from archaeological evidence
in antiquity and takes up historical and literary evidence from the
Middle Ages, primarily from Irish sources. Just as Celtic cursing in
antiquity was influenced by Roman cursing practices, so medieval
Celtic cursing was influenced by a now-Christianized Roman Church.
This influence as demonstrated in the literary record is striking:
druids and saints engaging in cursing duels, the intersection of
cursing and excommunication, the replacement of Celtic cursing words
with Latin ones. This second section includes chapters on
breastplates (protective prayers) and clamours (ecclesiastical
curses); geases (an Irish form of taboo) and binding curses; and
incantations (versified spells). The book is framed by an
introduction that assesses trends in Celtic historiography and by a
brief conclusion.
Celtic Curses is a valuable, in-depth look at Celtic cursing
practices. That said, the author presupposes knowledge of Celtic
history and linguistics that may prove daunting to the casual reader
and may at times overwhelm even the specialist. This is in part due
to some poor organizational choices, a problem that could be
ameliorated by more clearly explaining key terms, forefronting
important information, and utilizing chapter subheadings. However,
the work's complexity is also due to the author's comparative and
philological approaches, which necessitate a large corpus of source
materials that, when arranged together, creates an interpretive
context. As such, Mees often veers back and forth between evidence
from Celtic texts and analogs found in Greek and Latin texts. While
this habit is often confusing for the reader, it underscores the
amount of contact between the these cultures and the difficulty in
distinguishing between imitation and adaptation. Mees often raises
the question: was the Celtic cursing tradition an indigenous,
pre-Roman tradition or the syncretic amalgamation of Graeco-Roman
curses with the native Celtic language and religion? The answer, of
course, depends on the situation, and Mees is careful to acknowledge
the intricacies of the problem.
Mees is responding to two threads in Celtic scholarship: one that
attributes pagan, pre-Christian meaning to Celtic literature written
by Christian monks, sometimes influenced by a romantic impulse that
characterizes these texts as somehow archaic and untouched by
Christianity (an impulse still present in modern neo-pagan and Celtic
heritage movements); and another that emphasizes clerical, Christian
influences on Celtic texts, ignoring the possibility of native
traditions. Throughout his work, Mees attempts to navigate between
these two poles by examining actual evidence of cursing, informed by
ethnological principles, to see if there are any connections between
actual Celtic cursing in antiquity and later Irish literary curses.
Mees gives such attention to early Celtic curse tablets from the
Continent because these curses, unlike Insular literary
representations of curses, are embedded in actual, lived experience.
---------
Read this review on-line at:
http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/review.php?id=968
(All JFR Reviews are permanently stored on-line at
http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/reviews.php)
*********
You are receiving this mail because you are subscribed to the Journal
of Folklore Research Reviews mailing list or because it has been
forwarded to you. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this list send an
e-mail to [log in to unmask]
For further information on JFR Reviews please visit the JFR webpage
(http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/).
|
