Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: info wanted on runes
From: canders@isr.harvard.edu (Carl E. Anderson)
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 15:32:50 GMT
Organization: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

In article <1992Aug26.143642.18824@access.digex.com> corun@access.digex.com (Corun MacAnndra) writes:
>In article <1992Aug22.053926.5714@u.washington.edu> mimir@milton.u.washington.edu (Al Billings) writes:
>> The Ogham are Celtic, not Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxons originally used
>>the Elder Futhark, which was later expanded.
>
>It has been my experience that the Anglo-Saxons are Celts. There are several
>anthropolgists, one of whom I have spoken with on this subject at the National
>Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian, who believe that the Celtic
>"nation" originated with the Scythians, and moved west as tribes, becoming
>the Goths, Visigoths, Vikings, Danes, Saxons, Britons, Irish, Picts (though
>here some believe the Picts to be descendants of Creten sailors), etc., and
>that if the Celtic "nation" had united under one ruler, would have made the
>Roman Empire look like Saturday night in Toledo Ohio.

	I dunno.  Certainly there are many close ties between the Germanic
and Celtic groups (read H. Davidson's _Myths_and_Symbols_of_Pagan_Europe_,
a great book for Celto-Germanic ties).  But the Anglo-Saxons are _not_
Celts, as standardly defined.  They are Germanic.  
	Using the definition of Scythians you give above, the Scythians
were not Celts so much as Celto-Germanic, later developing into the Celts
and the Germans.  However, I would hesitate to agree wholly with this
theory.  Celtic languages are usually grouped closer to the Italic
languages than to Germanic, which would seem to indicate a split between
the groups reasonably far back (after all, they were all Indo-Europeans
~4000 BC).
	It is true that the Celts were at one point spread all over Europe,
and also the distinctions between the Celts and the Germans are not always
clear (largely due to "if-fy" classical sources) through the early
centuries AD.  The Celts, for better or for worse, were far to fractious a
bunch to unite themselves too - the idea of Celtic unity is a modern one.
(Personally I dislike large political entities, and would take a little
tribe over an empire any day ;)

	BTW - there are a number of Celtic elements in what we would
normally think of as English (A-S) folk tradition.  This can be put down to
the widespread absorbtion of the rural Celts into Saxon society during the
Vortigern/"Arthurian" period.  During the various rebellions and civil
wars, the Saxons fought with the remenants of the Romano-British
aristocracy in the towns, while the great number of the rural British
population fell in with the Saxons.  Thus elements like Morris Dances and
"Horned God" survivals in English folk tradition.

>Indeed, when the Russian government brought an exhibit to the U.S. entitled
>Nomads of the Eurasian Steppe, one of the pieces of bridle decoration cuaght
>me eye at once. Had I not read that the triskel spirals I was looking at
>were actually Scythian ca. 700 B.C. I would have sworn they were Irish Celtic
>ca. 900 A.D.

	They are very similar.  The Scythians were an Indo-European group,
and their art styles (especially in something as simple as a triskele) were
probably the ancestors of later patterns used by the Celts and Germans.  

>My point is that describing the Ogham as merely Celtic, you should be a bit
>more specific and say Irish or British Celtic, or even British Druidic, since
>it was used (to my knowledge) only by the scholar class, the Druids, and not
>by the common folk.

	I don't know of any Ogham finds outside the British Isles myself.
I'm not entirely sure about the Druid Ogham monopoly, since I know that the
Druids weren't into writing down their lore, but then again I guess Ogham
inscriptions hardly fall into the same category.
	Anyone got clue on who wrote Ogham?  This may be one of those
things nigh well unrecoverable by archaeology ...

Cheers,
Carl

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Carl Edlund Anderson	            	"Hefi ek ok aldri sva reitt vapn
canders@isr.harvard.edu			at manni at eigi hafi vidh kommit."
OR
anderso2@husc.harvard.edu			- Skarphedhinn Njalsson 
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Newsgroups: alt.pagan