Recently Added to Sacred-Texts: Survivals in Belief Among the Celts

A work of particular interest to CR has been recently posted to Sacred-Texts.com: Survivals in Belief Among the Celts, by George Henderson, [1911].

This long out-of-print book, graciously loaned to sacred-texts for scanning by a reader from their personal library, reviews the extensive literature on survivals of pre-Christian beliefs in the Celtic area. It covers customs from Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany, and relates them to other traditional cultures world-wide. This is a work of scholarship, and cites from authoritative literature, including many now hard to obtain sources, and several short texts in the original Gaelic. Among the fascinating topics covered are the evil eye, geis (taboos), doppelgangers, beliefs relating to animals and shape-shifting, lustration, second-sight, and healing rituals. Of particular interest is the discussion of pagan elements in the Carmina Gadelica.

Published at Glasgow university, it focuses on the traditions of Scotland and Ireland. It is because of works like this that we should support Sacred-Texts. There really is no other sourse like it out there. Consider buying their CD soon.

One Response to “ Recently Added to Sacred-Texts: Survivals in Belief Among the Celts ”

Comments:

Jenavira says:
February 25th, 2007 at 4:50 pm

It’s worth mentioning, I think, that part of the reason the book is out of print is because the idea of survivals has pretty well gone out of fashion in serious scholarly literature: the basic assumption behind “survivals” is that pieces of culture would exist basically unchanged for hundreds if not thousands of years, that people who did not fit the Victorian idea of civilization were basically stuck in time, which we know now is simply not true.

It does look like it would be an interesting text on turn-of-the-century folk beliefs, though, which is not without its own merits.