Francine Nicholson wrote:
> There are many misuses of any term. One misuse is to attribute such
>notions to someone who uses a term only to refer to the people whose culutre
>and language belonged to the same group. Conversation is most productive, in
>my opinion, when people listen without attributing opinions that were not
>actually implied or expressed.
I am sorry that I have offended you. It is not your opinions that I am
addressing but the implications of the term "Celts" itself. The cultural
politics of Wales, Ireland, Scotland and even Brittany over the last
hundred years surely shows just how loaded this term is. It is probably
impossible for us to eradicate the term and start afresh, but romantic
Celtic nationalism has coloured a great deal of the folkloristic and
antiquarian collecting that forms the basis for much of the discussion of
wells and waters. It therefore surely behoves us to be very careful in our
use of such terms, because of the freight of assumptions associated with
them, in all our minds, mine included. We have very little reliable
information about the beliefs of the many peoples whom we lump together as
"Celts".
David Harley,
Dept. of History,
University of Notre Dame,
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
tel.: 219-631-7789
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