Gods and Heroes of the Celts.
Author: SJOESTEDT, Marie-Louise (Translated by Myles Dillon).
London: Methuen, 1949. xxi, 104 pages. Hardback.
This book appeared in Paris during the war, and is probably unknown to the majority of English and Irish scholars. The author’s death during the Occupation has deprived Celtic students of a brilliant and productive writer.
It presents a new and interesting conception of Celtic mythology. There are three cycles of legends in early Irish literature, the Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle and the Fenian Cycle, of which the second is the best known. The whole subject has been recently dealt with in Professor O’Rahilly’s Early Irish History and Mythology. Miss Sjoestedt departs from the conception of Celtic religion put forward there. Here there is no Celtic Other World, for gods and men share the world between them, dwelling side by side in separate camps. The central notion of Celtic religion consists in the union of a tribal god with the mother-goddess, Sucellos with Nantosuelta, a myth which is reflected in the human camp by the inauguration of the king, conceived as a wedding with Fertility. On the human side there is an opposition between Cu Chulain as hero of the tribe, and Finn as hero outside the tribe.
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
INTRODUCTIONChapter
I. THE MYTHOLOGICAL PERIOD
II. THE GODS OF THE CONTINENTAL CELTS
III. THE MOTHER-GODDESSES OF IRELAND
IV. THE CHIEFTAIN-GODS OF IRELAND
V. THE FEAST OF THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER
VI. THE HERO OF THE TRIBE
VII. THE HEROES OUTSIDE THE TRIBE
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CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEXES
ISBN: None/Unknown
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