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This article considers the world-famous rivalry between two Scottish based football clubs, Rangers and Celtic. It reflects on dominant representations of the origins, evolution and meaningfulness of this clash. A critical reading of these representations demonstrates they largely ignore or simplify the significance of history for this contest. This study contends that recognising the importance of aspects of Scottish/British imperialism especially contributes to a more informed understanding of these totemic clubs' foundations, heritages and supporter enmities and throws light on contemporary postcolonial socio-cultural and political identities in Scotland generally. Scrutinising both football commentary and contemporary artistic representations of past imperialist endeavours – in particular, the Great Tapestry of Scotland and Black Watch– contributes to a better understanding not only of this sporting rivalry but also to how Scotland's role as junior partner with England in the British Empire project, particularly in relation to Ireland, is remembered, contested, overlooked or celebrated in contemporary Scottish society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous slag samples and a piece of iron bloom with slag from excavations of Celtic settlements (La Téne C and D) at Ordacsehi, Szilvásvárad and Jászberény (Hungary) were examined. The main objectives of the investigations were to study the material and structural properties of the slag specimens, the definition of the metallurgical functions of the different pieces of slag. Analytical techniques are wet chemical analysis (ICP-OES complemented with carbon determination, moreover using titration for separating the Fe2+ and Fe3+), textural-chemical investigations with SEM-EDS microanalysis and mineralogical analysis with XRD. Chemical investigations can be supplemented by ED-XRF. Most of the examined slags can be originated from the purification hammering process, where in an oxidizing atmosphere intended to separate the slag from the iron after reheating the bloom, or the forging of the iron tool. Some of the slag samples with fine dendrites remind metallurgical slag, although there have not been found traces of bloomery at the excavation sites. The examined slaggy bloom-fragment interlocks to the beginning of the technological line of forging as the first (by)product after the smelting formed in the bloomery furnace. Most of the examined slag samples are by-products of smithy workshop working in buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the specific meanings and figurations of Celtic identity, myth and history in three works by Louis MacNeice: his long poemAutumn Sequel(1954), written for broadcast on the BBC, and his two late radio playsThey Met on Good Friday(1959) andThe Mad Islands(1961). It will demonstrate that the poet moves from expressing an archaic and insipidly romanticised form of Celticity inAutumn Sequel, to depicting a significantly more sophisticated Celtic character and identity inThey Met on Good FridayandThe Mad Islands; both dramas, it will be argued, are informed by a more thoroughly archipelagic conception of cultural formation and identity in the British and Irish isles. In all three texts, MacNeice’s radiogenic engagement with Celtic material functions as a means of interrogating, though not always successfully, the forms and potentialities of human agency, community, and artistic activity within a post-war climate of political disenchantment, social fragmentation and perceived cultural vacuity. The essay will also demonstrate that MacNeice’s Celtic themed radio writing is an important aspect of the poet’s lifelong exploration of his psycho-cultural genealogy and a means of further clarifying his complex maternal and paternal inheritance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perigrinatio, the Latin term for pilgrimage was at the heart of the medieval Celtic church, but was this was understood and practised not only as a journey to a shrine, but more broadly as a spiritual journey, which could lead to an isolated hermitage or peripatetic evangelistic mission. In this paper, we outline the beliefs and practices of the broad assemblage known as the Celtic church, particularly the interleaving of pilgrimage, asceticism and landscape poetics, and how these have informed continued and renewed pilgrimage practices to sites of the early Celtic church by particular denominations, ecumenical groups and those interested in broader spiritualities. These sacred mobilities are explored through vignettes of embodied-emotional-spiritual practices situated in the landscapes and faith communities of Lough Derg, Ireland and the Isle of Man. They share geographical marginality, a focus on multiple Celtic saints and an enduring belief in the immanence of God, expressed through embodied spiritual practice in the landscape. However, they differ widely in matters of institutionalised structure, regulation, discursive scripting and gendered hierarchy, reflecting situated and denominational preferences for the ascetic and aesthetic spiritual legacies of the medieval Celtic church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past quarter-century, Celtic music has slowly declined on the global stage and been replaced as thede factopan-European world music by a bricolage of Romani, klezmer and Balkan styles. These primarily East European musics have been adopted, adapted, fused, confused and ultimately claimed by northwestern Europeans as part of a wider project of reimagining their own identities in the post-Cold-war era. The music industry has not given a name to this trend, but the contributors to this volume have come to call it the ‘New Old Europe Sound’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores depictions of Celtic barbarism and paganism in novels and films 1968–1978 to consider how Hechter's concept “internal colonialism” relates to their portrayals of “Celts” and their “colonisers”. Whilst the fictions portray Celts as threatening to the British nation state and its American allies, the non-Celtic colonial powers are ultimately blamed for the violent horror in each text. The article focuses on depictions relating to Cornwall. This case study shows how much “a product of its time” Hechter's theory was, and examines the interplay between academia and popular culture in producing theories of nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper suggests that Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins may have been the ideal theologian for Emily Brontë, as inscape, Hopkins's most famous contribution to the English language, is an apt description not only for the ferocious love between Cathy and Heathcliff, but also for the compassion that God would have felt for the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. My purpose in this paper is to indicate how Emily Brontë's portrayal of a violent, passionate world lends itself to an interpretation of an abiding divine presence as seen from a Hopkinsian perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review opens with a story of the reviewer's uncanny, synchronistic meeting with Clare Cooper Marcus, a pioneer in the psychological and social implications of architectural design. Marcus' recently published memoir, Iona Dreaming: The Healing Power of Place, is an initiatory story of a woman in her sixties, following retirement from a successful career, who is facing a life-threatening illness that leads her on a six-month solitary retreat to the island of Iona, a ruggedly beautiful island with a rich Celtic history in the Scottish Hebrides. Marcus' journey of self-discovery and healing, guided by her work with a Jungian analyst, helps her link past with present and reconnect to more soulful and healing relationships with nature, landscape, and body. Memories of a childhood in war-ravaged London and a subsequent evacuation to the English countryside illustrate how some of the seeds planted in the author's childhood have blossomed into a rich and powerful life's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A particular Celtic-key pattern, dating from around 1000 AD, displays conspicuous self-similarity. Such self-similar structures, although rare, are not unknown in the medieval period, but it is unlikely that there was a well-developed concept of recursion at that time. In the other cases it is possible to infer a plausible origin for self-similarity in pre-existing techniques of design and construction, but the inspiration for this example remains obscure. Nevertheless the recursive structure allows the use of modern methods to reproduce the pattern, and develop it further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing and sustaining a tourist economy in regional Australia has required innovative strategies. Shifts towards cultural tourism have resulted in the revitalisation of heritage and the development of tourist sites that are authentic (re)presentations of past landscapes and peoples. In Australia, where European heritage is comparatively young, lateral thinking, creative licence and municipal efforts have been required. The Australian Standing Stones at Glen Innes were constructed to enhance the region's perceived Celtic heritage and stimulate tourism. Tourists at the site have discerned elements of heritage and authenticity despite their recent construction. Creating a distinctive tradition, however tenuously linked to history, can be an effective means of branding place and stimulating tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's criticism on the article by K. Sarah-Jane Murray's "The Ring and the Sword: Reading Marie de France's Yonec in the Light of the Vie de Saint Alexis." It argues on the heroic elements background of the poem which include the ring, the sword, the fancy dress, and the late child. It examines the Celtic origin of the narrative poem "Yonec" based on Tom Peete Cross's arguments about the sources and influences of the language to the poem. It reviews the plot of the poem through the discussion of how various Celtic stories are analogous to it, the unusual pairing of a ring and a sword, and the allusion to the Old French Vie de Saint Alexis.

This paper centres upon the concept, authenticity, within the context of a Celtic music festival. Increasing attention has been paid to the music-tourism relationship and this paper seeks to elaborate upon the contested meanings and dimensions of Celtic music in the wake of its commodification through tourism. Attention is accorded to the interlocking tensions relating to commodification and authenticity within music and tourism studies and, moreover, the role of emotion within the authenticity and music debate. Drawing upon empirical research conducted at a Celtic music festival (Glasgow, Scotland) comprising in-depth interviews and a questionnaire survey, it is suggested the festival audience attach authenticity to the music on the basis of their emotional interaction with the music. This occurs by the ways in which emotion is evoked within the music and the relationship between music, emotion and audience identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The greatest single immigrant group in Scotland derives from the island of Ireland. During the years of the Great Irish Famine in the mid-nineteenth century until the First Word War, several hundred thousand Irish migrated to Scotland. Traditionally, this migrant community has been largely ignored in academic, popular and public literature and representations. It is primarily through the sport of soccer that this group's distinctiveness and identities are manifest in Scotland. However, the existence and the successes of Celtic, a football club founded and supported by the Irish Catholic immigrant community, highlights not only this marginalisation but the prejudice perceived and experienced by the Irish diaspora in Scotland. This paper highlights the role and significance of the Scottish print media in reflecting, creating, sustaining and disseminating this prejudice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims regarding a unitary, coherent “Celtic” culture and its westward spread over centuries have proliferated rapidly over the past 10 to 15 years. We examine both this general phenomenon, and one specific instance of it in detail: the claims of Celtic identity by Wise Use activists in New Mexico in the 1990s. Our primary concern is to examine their significance and utility in contemporary cultural politics. We argue that they have provided a powerful way for many white people in Western Europe and the United States to claim for themselves an ethnic identity strongly associated with oppression and resistance to the state, a position that affords them symbolic resources in negotiating the challenges of both multiculturalism and neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origin of sail has been debated for a long time, but the linguistic evidence has rarely been taken into account. The word sail has a cognate in two Celtic languages, and a good linguistic chronology is available for these. The reconstructed historical development of Celtic and Germanic words indicates that the word existed in West Germanic well before the Anglo-Saxon migrations and the confinement of Celtic to the British Isles. An origin of both word and technology in the Celtic world is proposed, both being passed into the Germanic world in the Rhine region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This essay argues that early twentieth-century Paris, as the most artistically avant-garde metropolitan centre of its time, enabled a group of artists and writers from British colonies to define their own national identity. Their nationalism was not primarily political but cultural. The Scottish Colourist J. D. Fergusson, the Canadian life-writer and painter Emily Carr and the Australian artist Margaret Preston all encountered in Paris the work of the Fauvists, and through it they came to recognize the stylistic particularity of the indigenous art of their own homelands. Through the agency of the Fauvist inflection of Post-Impressionism, they were enabled to perceive the 'native', Celtic, indigenous Canadian or Aboriginal, as a powerful aesthetic, rather than as a primitive and outmoded convention. A specific focus for artistic iconoclasm, and the breaking down of the traditional genre boundaries of academicians, was the influential philosophy of Henri Bergson. To investigate his ideas in relation to the arts, John Middleton Murry created the influential journal Rhythm, with Fergusson as its art editor and, soon after it began, with Katherine Mansfield as assistant editor and contributor. Though the magazine had no explicit political affiliations, its stance was implicitly anticolonial; its watchword was taken from the Irish cultural nationalist J. M. Synge: 'Before art can be human it must learn to be brutal.' It looked for contributors, both artists and writers, who eschewed realism in favour of a pared-down aesthetic that could stimulate an intuitive response in the perceiver. Its impact was felt in New Zealand, Australia and Canada; what Carr wrote after her training in Paris expresses the paradox of discovering the local through the international: 'I was glad I had been to France. More than ever I was convinced that the old way of seeing was inadequate.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indo-European root *seĝh-, encompassing notions of‘holding, seizing’, possibly‘harnessing power’, and its derivative *seĝhlosare proposed as etyma for a northern Gaulish word for‘sail’ that then spread, with the attendant technology, to adjacent Celtic and Germanic dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]