Part 11 of ARDA 2 SECTION TWO A - Student Organizations ...

From Dwelly’s Scots Gaelic Dictionary (get out the
magnifying glass!) here is a description of a dance enacted in the
Highlands up into the nineteenth century. We may be seeing here
a descendent of a Druidic ritual or religious drama, There is also,
apparently a bird named the black-headed Cailleach bird, but
whether it has anything to do with the old Celtic Goddess is
unclear.
95. Cailleachag-cheann-dubh.
cailleach an dùdan (cont.)—
“It is danced by a man and a woman. The man has a rod in
his right hand, variously called slachdan druidheachd, (druidic
wand), slachdan geasachd, (magic wand). The man and the
woman gesticulate and attitudinize before one another, dancing
round and round, in and out, crossing and recrossing, changing
and exchanging places. The man flourishes the wand over his
own head and over the head of the woman, whom he touches
with the wand, and who falls down, as if dead, at his feet. He
bemoans his dead “carlin,” dancing and gesticulating round her
body. He then lifts up her left hand, and looking into the palm,
breathes upon it, and touches it with the wand. Immediately the
limp hand becomes alive and moves from side to side and up and
down. He rejoices, and dances round the figure on the floor. And
having done the same to the right hand, and to the left and right
foot in succession, they are also become alive and move. But
although the limbs are living, the body is still inert. The man
kneels over the woman and breathes into her mouth and touches
her heart with the wand. The woman comes to life, and springs
up, confronting the man. Then the two dance vigorously and
joyously as in the first part. The tune varies with the varying
phases of the dance. It is played by a piper or a fiddler, so sung as
a “port-a-beul,” (mouth-tune) by a looker-on, or by the
performers themselves. The air is quaint and irregular,” and the
words are curious and archaic commence as follows:—
“Cailleach an dùdain, dùdain, dùdain,
Cailleach an dùdain, cum do dheireadh rium.”
The Druids did not Build Stonehenge
In Answer to Many Inquiries
“If the Druids didn’t build Stonehenge, and weren’t even in
Great Britain at the time, when and from where did they come”
Most likely in several waves and from several sources, from Gaul
and from Belgium, of course, but also from Ireland. The Celtic
evidence in Ireland seems to predate that from the Sussex
Stonehenge area by a number of centuries. So when did they
arrive in Ireland And from where had they come
Peter Harbison in our day, like Heinrich Schleimann, the
self-made nineteenth century business man and amateur
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antiquarian who, after hearing much debate about the
whereabouts of Troy, and if, in fact, there has ever been a real
city of Troy, took a shovel and a copy of the Iliad and found Troy
right where Homer said it was, has advanced the theory for the
origin of the Irish Celts right where legend and Leober Gabala
said they come from: Spain. Not all of them, Celtic speaking
people came to Ireland over a number of centuries. But there is
evidence that a Q-Celtic speaking people came to the south and
west of Ireland around 500 B.C. from the northern coast of Spain.
They may have come first in “raid and trade” forays, then as
small groups of warrior-aristocrats, younger sons, and their
retinues. There is no evidence in the archeological record for any
one, large scale invasion. Later whole clans may have been
expelled from the Celto-Ligurian areas of Spain by the Roman
conquests there from 133 B.C. onwards. The Book of the
Invasions, Leobor Gabala, may be the story of one of these. The
followers of King Mil were not even by their own claim the first
Celts in Ireland. They fought against a distinctly Celtic native foe
in a distinctly Celtic style heroic battle. One group of Celts
displaced another, and there is the echo in the old poem of those
other groups having displaced still older, Bronze Age, perhaps
non-Indo-European populations. This theory, which coincides
with legend, and which Professor Hawks, calls his “gradual
Celticization theory” of Irish pre-history, fits David Greene’s, the
noted philologist’s, evidence that a Celtic language ancestral to
modern Gaelic was being spoken in Ireland by 500 B.C.. This
gradual Celtization of the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of
the island may have followed the model of the Anglization of
Britain by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in historic times. Coming
first as raiders, then as mercenaries hired during some of the
endless intertribal conflicts, they remained and eventually made
war on and conquered their former hosts. This is speculation of
course. But it is backed by the (non-conclusive) evidence of the
gradual appearance of more and more Celtic types of artifacts,
especially military ones, and objects of aristocratic ornament. The
farming tools such as stone hoes continue in the native style. In
the South and West there aristocratic items are of a non-La Tene
style. This may tie them to the Spanish Celts rather than to the La
Tene Celts north of the Pyrenees. The possibility is strengthened
by the “chevaux-de-frise” style of fortifications on the Aran Isles
in County Galway. Similar examples appear in Spain and none in
Britain or Gaul. However, some archeologists would see a
wooden version of this scatter-stone style of architecture in some
early Belgian forts, hence the name. No chariot burials have ever
been found in either Ireland, Britain, or Spain, though these
figure prominently in the other Celtic areas. Burial rites are
usually conservative, slow to change, and generally faithfully
preserved by immigrants in their new homelands. This is true
even when they adopt the better adapted technologies of the
native farmers and craftsmen!
The North of Ireland has always shown more influence
from Britain and by way of Britain from the Continent, and this
goes back at least as far as the late Hallstatt Period. Iron Halstatt
style swords appear in both Britain and North Ireland.
Later, scabbards of elaborate and uniquely British design
appear in Antrium. But the influence was not all in one direction.
The Celts of Ireland first raided and then settled in Wales,
bringing Irish Druidic culture and the artifacts mentioned by
Myles Dillon in his article “The Irish Settlements in Wales,” in
the academic journal “Celtica” #l2. The first evidence of Celtic
cultures in Britain are not so early as those in Ireland and are of
clearly Gaulish or Belgian origin. Again the pattern seems to be
one of gradual Celticization with wave after wave arriving from
the Continent all the way up to the arrival of the Belgae, who just
precede Roman conquerors in the fourth century B.C. Thus the
Heroic society of the Celtic epic warring chieftains, bards, and
Druids may go back no farther than the La Tene Period in