Читать книгу 366 Celt: A Year and A Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore - Carl McColman - Страница 48

The single best collection of myths in the Celtic world comes from Ireland; the other significant body of myth was preserved in Wales. Both Irish and Welsh myth were committed to written form in the Middle Ages, by Christian scribes, most if not all of whom were monastic. This leads to a number of unanswerable—yet difficult—questions. Are the myths simply the product of imaginative storytellers, or do they hearken back to an ancient, pagan belief system? How many of the myths have been lost? Of the ones that survived the ages, how much pagan lore did the Christian scribes who preserved them censor, consciously or unconsciously? Of course, we’ll never be able to answer these questions definitively, although scholars have made a number of educated guesses. The good news? The written myths do seem to point to an earlier time; some of the stories preserved may have originated as early as the first century CE. The bad news: yes, there’s a lot missing. Yes, there’s no doubt that the Christians tampered with their pagan source material (the damage was worse in Wales than in Ireland). But the extent of this loss is itself shrouded in mystery. All we can do is take what we have, and attempt to understand the grandeur of the Celtic past based on fragmentary evidence. And then keep the myths alive, by telling the stories, and identifying ways to apply this ancient wisdom today.