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Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 16, 2014 at 7:35pm

Kelts

Ogma (modern spelling: Oghma) is a character from Irish mythology and Scottish mythology. A member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, he is often considered a deity and may be related to the Gallic god Ogmios.
He fights in the first battle of Mag Tuired, when the Tuatha Dé take Ireland from the Fir Bolg.
Under the reign of Bres, when the Tuatha Dé are reduced to servitude, Ogma is forced to carry firewood, but nonetheless is the only one of the Tuatha Dé who proves his athletic and martial prowess in contests before the king. When Bres is overthrown and Nuadu restored, Ogma is his champion. His position is threatened by the arrival of Lugh at the court, so Ogma challenges him by lifting and hurling a great flagstone, which normally required eighty oxen to move it, out of Tara, but Lugh answers the challenge by hurling it back. When Nuadu hands command of the Battle of Mag Tuired to Lugh, Ogma becomes Lugh's champion, and promises to repel the Fomorian king, Indech, and his bodyguard, and to defeat a third of the enemy. During the battle he finds Orna, the sword of the Fomorian king Tethra, which recounts the deeds done with it when unsheathed. During the battle Ogma and Indech fall in single combat, although there is some confusion in the texts as in Cath Maige Tuired Ogma, Lugh and the Dagda pursue the Fomorians after the battle to recover the harp of Uaitne, the Dagda's harper.He often appears as a triad with Lugh and the Dagda (The Dagda is his brother and Lugh is his half-brother), who are sometimes collectively known as the trí dée dána or three gods of skill,although that designation is elsewhere applied to other groups of characters. His father is Elatha and his mother is usually given as Ethliu, sometimes as Étaín. His sons include Delbaeth and Tuireann.He is said to have invented the Ogham alphabet, which is named after him.

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 15, 2014 at 5:08pm

Celtic England

The Kingdom of Elfed / Elmet

This is the name of an early medieval Brythonic kingdom in what is now southwest Yorkshire, in north-central England. It is particularly noteworthy as a Celtic kingdom situated well outside Wales and yet surviving late.

We have references in

1) place-names
2) early Welsh poetry
3) historical notices in reference to its incorporation into Northumbria

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3cHdQC1cXLEC&pg=PA307&dq...

The last native Brythonic ruler is named (in English) as Certic, corresponding to the Welsh personal name ‘Ceredig’. You’ll find the same name attested in the Welsh county of Ceredigion. Not the same individual of course. There is also an Elfed in Wales.

Ceredig son of Gwallawg was probably expelled from his kingdom about 616 by the Northumbrian king Eadwine.

(click ‘next’ twice)
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=f899xH_quaMC&pg=PA395&dq...

It is likely that this area would have continued to speak Old Welsh for many generations. It came under the control of the Welsh king Cadwallon son of Cadfan about 633-34.

There are a number of Welsh place-names in the region (see BLITON). One of them is Leeds.

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 14, 2014 at 4:14pm

Celtic Mythology

MANAWYDAN AP LLŶR is a Welsh character of lively soul. The Welsh counterpart of the Irish Manannán Mac Lir, he is the son of Llŷr and a hero of the Mabinogi. He is the title character and protagonist of the third branch and brother of Bendigeidfran and Branwen, protagonists of the second branch. Although he wields magic well and is a skilled craftsman, Manawydan shows no hint of the divine characteristics present in his Irish counterpart, Manannán mac Lir, the sea-god. In the third branch Manawydan is married to Rhiannon, and together with Pryderi and Cigfa he lives in exile in Lloegr, where he works first as a leather craftsman and then as a wheat farmer.

Irish, Manx and Welsh myth all feature a highly skilled Manxman as the son of the onrushing tide of the sea (*Liros). This suggests a trans-Irish-Sea tradition. Indeed, he may well have been the spirit of the Irish Sea specifically. This may explain how across these traditions his character is sometimes lively, sometimes calm, now mischievous, now vengeful. If he was originally the character of the Irish Sea, it may also explain why in Irish folklore he is associated with merchants and trade. In ancient Ireland, a good deal of trade must have come and gone across the Irish Sea. Such parts of Britain as Lancashire have been heavily settled by Irish over thousands of years and eastern parts of Ireland were anciently settled by Brigantian Britons.

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 14, 2014 at 3:30pm

The Oogie Boogie Witch

DRUID TRIADS

The three great Celtic Druid Triads :

1. Three things from which never to be removed
- one's oath
- one's gods
- the truth

2. The three highest causes of the true human are:
- truth
- honour
- duty

3. Three candles that illuminate every darkness :
- truth
- nature
- knowledge

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 13, 2014 at 6:54pm

Taliesin or Taliessin was an poet, whose work survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin. Taliesin was a renowned bard who is believed to have sung at the courts of at least three Celtic British kings. Taliesin is one of the five great bards referred to by Nennius in his Historia Brittonum (c. 796).

According to James McKillop’s book, A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, Taliesin is a Divine or divinely inspired poet of Wales, often thought to be historical (late 6th cent.) and to have flourished in the Old North, i.e. formerly Welsh-speaking regions of the Scottish Lowlands. Classed with Aneirin as one of the two surviving cynfeirdd [oldest poets], Taliesin was ascribed by Sir Ifor Williams (1944) twelve poems of the sixty in the Book of Taliesin, compiled 14th cent. Two highly incompatible versions of Taliesin’s life survive.

In the older, supported by the ascribed twelve poems from the Book of Taliesin, he is the author of praise poems filled with realistic detail of chieftains like Urien and Owain who warred against the encroaching Angles, 550–600. The second version, developed much later and known chiefly in the Hanes Taliesin [Tale of Taliesin] or Ystoria Taliesin [History of Taliesin], places the poet further south, in Powys, and portrays him as an immortal in the service of a series of princelings.

Read more: http://www.celticidentity.com/taliesin/

Artwork: Birth of Taliesin ©2008-2014 ladyfireoak
http://ladyfireoak.deviantart.com/art/Birth-of-Taliesin-86060092

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 11, 2014 at 3:05pm

Macha - A triune goddess of war. As the wife of Nemed, she makes her first appearance. Then, as the wife of Nuada, she is killed by Balor of the Evil Eye at the second battle of Magh Tuireadh. Thirdly, as the wife of Crunniuc Mac Agnomain of Ulster, she utters a curse that the men of Ulster would suffer the pangs of childbirth for five days and four nights in times of Ulster's greatest difficulty. The curse would last for nine times nine generations. Mac Mong Ruadh, or Macha of the Red Tresses, is not a war goddess, though her traditions seem to have inherited those of the triune goddess. She is listed as the seventy-sixth monarch of Ireland, reigning in 377 B.C. She built Ard Macha (Macha's Height = Armagh), established Emain Macha (Navan) as the capital of Ulster, and is credited with building the first hospital in Ireland, called Bron-Bherg (House of Sorrow), which was in use until its destruction by fire in A.D. 22.

Dictionary of Celtic Mythology Oxford Paperback Reference - Peter Berresford Ellis =>> http://goo.gl/TPyFbr

Artwork: Antony Galbraith
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-morrigan-antony-galbraith.html

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 11, 2014 at 2:04pm

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 10, 2014 at 1:54pm

Celtic Identity

Brigantia was an ancient Celtic goddess, titular deity of the Brigantes, a powerful confederacy of Brythonic Celtic Tribes centred in north Britain in Roman times. The name Brigantia is thought to mean “the high goddess”.

In the Peter Berresford Ellis’s Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, Brigantia is “The High One,” tutelary goddess of the Brigantes of Britain and cognate with the goddess Brigid, regarded as one of the principal Celtic goddesses. Her name also survives in the river and place-name Brent in England and in the Braint in Ynys Mon in Wales. She might be the source of Caesar’s Celtic “Minerva,” and she may well have been the model for Britannia.

Among the ancient Celtic goddesses, a few names occur in many areas, suggesting that these goddesses were honored by diverse groups of Celts. Brigantia is one of these goddesses. Variations of her name are found throughout Europe.

Read more: http://www.celticidentity.com/brigantia/

Artwork: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Brigantia2-208310262

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 8, 2014 at 12:29pm

Wild Eyed Southern Celt

Is ó mhnáib do·gabar rath nó amhrath. (Old Irish)
It is from women that fortune comes, good or bad.

Spoken in the council of the Túatha Dé Danann by Midir Mongbuide, son of the Dagda, in "Acallam na Senórach" (408-09); in Irische Texte, edited by Whitley Stokes and Ernst Windisch; 1900
image: http://tinyurl.com/n6g7ul5

Comment by Dept of PMM Artists & things on February 8, 2014 at 12:28pm

Celtic Identity

The Ardagh Hoard, best known for the Ardagh Chalice, is a hoard of metalwork from the 8th and 9th centuries. Found in 1868, it is now on display in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. It consists of the chalice, a much plainer stemmed cup in copper-alloy, and four brooches, three elaborate pseudo-penannular ones, and one a true pennanular brooch of the thistle type; this is the latest object in the hoard, and suggests it may have been deposited around 900. The chalice ranks with the Book of Kells as one of the finest known works of Insular art, indeed of Celtic art in general, and is thought to have been made in the 8th century AD. Elaborate brooches, essentially the same as those worn by important lay-people, appear to have been worn by monastic clergy to fasten vestments of the period.

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