Re: Breton, Cornish & French

"John Cartmell" <john@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:4f6ea4aa15john@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> What *we* call Celtic and Anglo-Saxon cultures and people and language
is
> hopelessly confused with utterly false and fictional 19th and 20th
century
> mythology.

yes - upon a general point, the american historian Thomas Desjardin 
describes what for north and south seems to be the critical event in the 
fate of the nation - Gettysburg - and illustrates that even such recent 
material as 140 years ago is hopelessly confounded and on a massive scale,

one story hiking the route of another, often on some original falsehood,
by 
those with conspiracy to fame and glamor, and even citing impossibilities

the truth is that very little is known of the battle from these written 
records [an industry!], while very much is presumed to be by virtue of
such 
'author'-ity

even in 1995 a major media network [Turner] perpetuated gross falsehoods
to 
some 40 million viewers, and this on the enthusiam of Turner himself,
rather 
than any candid *****sment of what was sure, or even relatively sure - in 
fact, he repeated what is certainly utter nonsense with great 'author'-ity

--

now - to someone like me, with an anthropological interest, i am less 
interested in bland assertions of what we know, and more of how we know
what 
we know, indeed, not even of princes and generals, but of the state of 
social intercourse of the context of ordinary people

---

should you wish to regress 400 years further, there is not the slightest 
/evidence/ that Will Shakespeare wrote his own Works. And I do mean
nothing 
evident whatever! This is not to intrigue on alternate authors, but for
the 
most famous and studied person in the literary history of the world to not

possess a scintilla of evidence of his author****p... shall we take some 
pause here?

> Does it matter whether 1st millennium people used the same words;
> they almost certainly had different understanding of the concept - just
as 
> we
> (should) have shrugged off the confused ideas of the 2nd millennium.

regressing to these early periods, these caveats, especially on brave 
pronouncements of surety require some judicial equivocations [even if, at 
length, we say we cannot know we any certainty]

what is appalling about public newsgroups is the common [in two senses of 
that word] assertion of 'authority' on ancient subjects [albeit usually 
uncited, but, nolens volens...] where very intelligent opinion admits 
/quality/ of doubt among many sources

this can make for a simply idiotic pretence at knowledge, which to cite 
another ancient work, which 'does not know what it does', nor they that
take 
part, of their own part - thereby one already attains an Orwellian 
re-written history, espoused by innocent, yet ignorant numbskulls

though this is a broad ranging address, all too much here is, would be, 
evinced on the basis of texts - yet contexts are so much greater,
especially 
should one imagine a culture which had /oral/ tradition, and more, and 
iconic representations actually embedded in the landscape

these are inimicable to the rentier-wikipedia scholar, and so, shall these

factors cease to exist and become disestablished of knowledge, and only
true 
to experience or reflection in it, such as those greeks meant by
philosophy

    thou man who woudst travel lightly
    there is red blood upon they ****rt

    &

    Is furasda dh'an fhear eisdeachd
    Beum a thoir dh'an fhear labhairt

    Tho~

    bend thy knee
    not before me
    neither of god
    but of thee!

Phil Innes

> -- 
> John