Kelten: Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur

Folklore, Annual, 1998 by Malcolm Jones

Kelten: Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur. By Helmut Birkhan. Wien: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997. 1261pp. 70 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 3 7001 2609 3

The present tome is a massive and masterly synthesis of just about everything that is known or can be inferred about the Celtic peoples during the millennium c. 500 B.C. to c. 500 A.D. Not since the syntheses of the sixties has anything properly comparable been attempted, and, indeed, it is doubtful whether any other single living scholar has the range of competences required to bring off such an ambitious survey with such notable success.

Professor Birkhan--as he explains in his Introduction--is a believer in the Worter und Sachen method of comparativism, and is thus able to combine courageously the evidences of archaeology and Indo-European linguistics to impressive effect. In that same Introduction he anticipates the criticism that he must frequently infer the practices of his early Celts from long posterior late medieval (British and Irish) sources (the major manuscripts are catalogued on p. 468ff.), but his optimism that there are valuable insights into the prehistoric period to be gained from such retrospection is infectious, and almost always 0 convinces--a rare exception is the citing of Pope Hadrian's prohibition of the heathen practice of body-painting amongst the late-eighth century (non-Celtic!) Mercians as evidence for this practice amongst the early Celts.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted: we are presented with well over 1,100 pages of state-of-the-art "Germanic" scholarship and, it seems to me, that one of my first duties as reviewer, should be to call for an English translation of such an important and authoritative work! Importantly, it is a book which triumphantly gives the lie to D.E. Evans's pessimistic opinion (quoted in the Introduction) that "the mutual relationship of the disciplines of archaeology and comparative philology in prehistoric research is ... by and large unfruitful."

As befits a work written by a comparative philologist, after consideration of exactly what was meant historically by "Celt," a history of the Celtic tribes is sandwiched between a consideration of the Celtic Languages in general and the influence of these "substrates" on the non-Celtic languages which now overlay them. There follows a survey of the archaeological material, including a very sensible excursus on the celebrated Gundestrup cauldron (which rightly stresses the stylistic technical parallels with the Thracian material), and some forty pages on the Insular Celts. The core of the book, however, is to be found in the following five hundred-plus pages on Celtic religion (gods, religious institutions, beliefs) and society (including the positions of druids, seers and poets); a further one hundred pages considers the ideal of the hero, the hierarchy of Celtic society, and the various types of Mannerbund, and includes an excursus on the famous Celtic "matriarchy" (which the author, having considered the evidence such as it is, attributes not to the Celts themselves, but to their various predecessors, e.g., in these islands, the Picts). Nor does Birkhan neglect Derfriedliche Alltag, devoting some sixty-five pages to a survey of a subject that has not been attempted since Anne Ross's Everyday Life of the Pagan Celts (1970). On the important symbolism of hair and beards, incidentally, I was reminded of the asseveration Meuyl ar uy maryf [Shame on my beard] found in the Mabinogion.

The religious core of the book, as well as in-depth discussion of Celtic divinities which effortlessly interweaves comparative philology with comparative mythology, includes authoritative discussion of such recent finds as the extraordinary inscribed lead plaque excavated at Larzac near Millau (Aveyron) in 1985--at roughly 160 words, the longest Gaulish text known--with its mention of mnas brictas ["women endowed with magic, sorceresses"] and apparent Gaulish cognates of the Welsh terms for the underworld, annwfn, i.e., Gaul. antumnos [

In an undertaking so vast, there are, inevitably, areas in which the bibliography might be a little more up-to-date (Insular Celtic numismatics, for instance) or augmented (the Indic Asva-medha ritual, which it has long been customary to compare with the record of the inauguration of the king of the Cenel Conaill as reported by Giraldus Cambrensis, is treated at some length, for example, but without reference to the impressive discussion to be found in Wendy O'Flaharty's Women, Androgynes and Other Beasts), but this reviewer for one is humbled by the breadth and depth of the author's knowledge.

One of the very few errors of fact I noted is Birkhan's belief that Boudicca was one of Shakespeare's dramatic personae--he is doubtless thinking of the eponymous heroine of Fletcher's tragedy Bonduca [sic], probably performed in 1613. With regard to the Romano-Celtic Medionemeton, Rivet and Smith in fact identify it with the intriguing site of Arthur's O'on [Oven] at Larbert in Stirlingshire, and additionally, the symbolic significance of the territorial "Centre" behind such Medio-names is well explored in the Reeses' book (op. cit. above). The present book must have gone to press too late to note the return of the stone of Scone to Scotland.