The Celtic Druids' Year: Seasonal Cycles of the Ancient Celts
This well-packaged new book on the Celts puts substantive academic research into popular terms. King's focus is on the wheel of the Celtic year with its cycle of four celebrations: the fire feast of Lughnasa; the still-celebrated festival of the dead, Sarnhain (Halloween); the feast of the herds at Imbolc; and the wild abandon of Beltane, with its maypoles. Corollary to those festivals are the equinoxes and solstices, observed by the Celts in less ritualized fashion but important to them as markers in the agricultural year. Besides the annual cycle, King describes the religious underpinnings of the festivals, the functions of the druid priests and bards, relationships to other mythologies, and the influence of historical assimilation and migration on what we know of Celtic myth. A good resource, well written and well researched.Patricia Monaghan--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.