> From: [log in to unmask] [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>
> As a gloss to the Historia Brittonum has it "Nulla tamen certa historia
> originis Scottorum reperitur" after all sorts of confused traditions about
>
> Brutus, Britto, the Trojans, Ham son of Noah, the Spanish, etc etc.
>
> It is perhaps relevant to this discussion to mention the genealogy of
> Hywel
> Dda in Harleian MS. 3859 which traces the ancestry of the Gwynedd dynasty
> from Jesus' sainted Auntie Anna.
>
All in the family, eh? ;)
What I find fascinating is the similarity of the stories about
Jesus' upbringing to those of heroes such as Cu/ Chulainn. Both had so many
fosterparents that it almost seems like the poor child would have to have
been constantly moving: "If this is Tuesday, I must be at Uncle Fergus'
place." Of course, it wasn't a real situation being described--I'm just
pointing out the irrationality of the motif. In the mythic tales, the motif
was used to explain why Cu/ Chulainn was a master of so many skills--he
learned them from the living masters. In Jesus' case, the same motif was
used to justify the pre-eminent claims of the oldest monasteries by
attributing the exalted role of Jesus' fosterparent to their founders. Of
course, no attempt was ever made to explain how a saint born in the fifth or
sixth centuries managed to foster (or, in Brigid's case, assist in the birth
of) Jesus in the first.
BTW, it's interesting that the Welsh attributed an aunt named Anna
to Jesus, given that elsewhere that was the name of his maternal
grandmother.
Francine Nicholson
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