Re: Celtic source for Arthurian mythos?

On Jul 29, 6:22 pm, VtSkier <vtsk...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
crunch wrote:
On Jul 29, 7:08 pm, imipak <imi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 29, 12:55 pm, crunch <pchristain...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jul 29, 2:27 pm, VtSkier <vtsk...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Agamemnon wrote:
"Weland" <gi...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:h4ols5$3dg$2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
crunch wrote:
http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/bibs/arthbib.html
Norris Lacy
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/n/j/njl2/arthur.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessie_Weston
David Christainsen
Uh, regarding the question in the title--no duh?  It is well known
that even the earliest French Romances of Arthur and gang are related
to tales learned in Brittany...because they tell us.  Not to mention
the early Welsh sources etc.  So the root of it has long been known to
be "Celtic"....
The Welsh are not Celts and neither were the ancient Britons.
Hmmm, where did the Welsh pick up their Celtic
language? However I tend to agree that the ancient
Britons may well not have been Celts. The Belgae
certainly were. The rest may have been what we
know as Albans.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
So, nobody wants to read the Wikipedia article
I gave.
Why ignore Jessie Weston?
No offense to you and your post here is OK, but
SHAers really don't know the full depth of Arthurian
scholarship.  I wish it were different.  And, I will not
play teacher again, like I did with the Thiering Thesis,
UNLESS at least some SHAers really want to get
into the NITTY-GRITTY WITH SCHOLARLY REFERENCES.
David Christainsen
By SHAers, I take it you are referring to the general case. It seems
unlikely you could be talking about all SHAers, as I'm definitely a
SHA poster and I am 90% certain that I have covered more of the
subject than the majority of professional Arthurian scholars, and 95%
certain that there is little you can tell me that I've not heard
before. The possibility of a Scottish origin for a number of the
component legends, for example, was something I'd been familiar with
for some decades. That does not mean you can't tell me anything new -
the suggestion that ALL of the legends might be Scottish was a new one
on me - but it does mean that arguing that no SHAer knows the full
depth is not going to cut much mustard with me, as I'm certain I'm not
that much of a rarity. I fully expect quite a number of SHAers to know
as much (or more) on Arthurian mythos than I do.

I have a healthy respect for your integrity
and competence.

However, let us start with the nitty-gritty. I am sure you are
familiar with Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of British Kings". Most
people interested in early post-Roman British history will have
encountered it, especially if interested in Arthurian myths because
that's a key source. But he didn't write one. There were several re-
writes, some quite significantly different. Which particular version
do you use? How many have you read? Which version or versions do other
sources you use refer to? If you don't know, can you be certain that
these sources are using compatible reference material?

You have not read Goodrich in careful detail
on the subject and you should.  I am 100 %
sure that you would be interested.  Is Goodrich
right?  IMHO yes.

These are not trick questions, and no insult is implied by them.
Rather, the key to them is to investigate what stated and unstated
axioms underlie the theories put forward, to determine if a theory has
mistakenly assumed references to be compatible and to use the same
axiom set when this was not in fact the case. The lack of fresh data
and the total inability to decipher Pictish writing means we are
hindered in investigating the various ideas. The chief tool we can use
is to trace the ideas back to see if any contradictions exist. These
need not be known to modern scholars, so this doesn't imply any kind
of deceit or inability. We are looking at close to one and a half
thousand years of evolving ideas and it's simply not possible for any
scholar to turn that kind of mass of data into a collection of
earliest extant ideas and first principles. You can't ask the
impossible of anyone, no matter how good they are.

Specifically, Goodrich and I have a clue about
deciphering Pictish writing because it was
a non-IE language and the Picts came from Finland.

The Picts were indeed non-IE but Finland? I
don't think so. They had relatives (Pictones)
on the Armorican side of the Channel

Frankly, I find this a potentially more rewarding debate, as an
understanding of Picts can potentially be tested and so very little is
known with any level of definiteness.

For example, Pictish writing bears a striking resemblance to the
cartoonish writing common in South America which is heavily
ideogramatic (one symbol or symbol component equals one idea, rather
than one word or one sound). This doesn't mean they're related -
literally half the world apart and about a thousand years apart. On
the other hand, it does suggest Pictish is based on ideograms, and if
you know the culture then you stand a better-than-even chance of
understanding them because ideas don't depend on what words the Picts
themselves used. It would not allow you to read Pictish as a Pict
would have done, because you still don't know the underlying language,
but it does allow you to read Pictish as a Pict would have understood
it.

Note I say better-than-even. There are known ideogramatic languages
that we cannot read at all, for all that we understand the archaeology
and a fair bit of the culture. Knowing the context is certainly not a
guarantee of anything. Note that I also say it only suggests it's
ideogramatic. English is primarily an alphabetic language, I think
everyone would agree on that, but only 26 of the over 110 keys on a
computer keyboard are alphabetic. The numbers are all pictograms,
along with many of the symbols. Other symbols are pictograms. Several
other keys alter the meaning of a key and effectively perform the same
role as determinants do in a written language. If an archaeologist or
linguist with zero understanding of any language to date were to study
a computer keyboard to try an determine what the underlying language
was based on, they would probably guess it was syllabic as alphabetic
languages don't have hundreds of symbols. It's very rare they get as
far as a single hundred, low tens is much more common. If you're over
100 elements, you're much more likely looking at something syllabic.
If they looked at a chord keyboard (which often has 5-10 keys) they
would likely decide it couldn't represent words at all as no language
has that few symbols. In both cases, the limited available data would
lead to a wrong conclusion based on a faulty assumption (that one key
= one unique character).

Because we have very limited contexts for Pictish writing, and very
limited examples, it is not safe to assume that something that appears
logical is correct, until we have overwhelming evidence through
repeated use in the examples available that it is correct.

However, the moment we know something about the origins of the Picts,
we can start eliminating obviously incorrect theories. We can prove
negatives, even though we can't be sure of what will turn out to be a
positive.

It is interesting that the small dark people
who we sometimes call Lapps and who call
themselves Sami and are reindeer herders
in northern Scandanavia speak a Finnish
dialect. The Finns are a blond, blue-eyed
people who came into Finland at an early
time from the south. It appears that the
Sami on contact with Finns discarded their
language, whatever it was, and adopted
whatever was current for Finnish at the time
of contact.

That is fascinating. It would be interesting to know if there are Sami
words that are clearly not of Finnish origin or of any other known
origin that can be shown to be likely to be from a pre-Finn language.
It would also be interesting to know if the Sami have any myths or
legends as to why they switched language.

Now, are the Sami related to the Picts?
Maybe. The Picts were reported to be small
and dark by all reporters from Pytheas
onward. What was their language? No one
knows. Probably not Finnish.

Easy to test. Stick Linus Torvalds in Scotland and see if Pictish
becomes open source.

One of the tradtional 'races' of Ireland
who predated the Gaelic speakers and even
the de Dannan were the Firbolgs and
Formorians. These people were always described
as small and dark. Were they releated to the
Picts? Maybe.

Oppenheimer's work would lead one to believe that the Irish and
Caledonians are the Ice Ace peoples. It is very likely that the Dogger
peoples were related to the Picts. There's supposed to be pockets of
people within Scotland who seem to be genetically closer to a much
older haplogroup to the rest, so there may even be some Pictish traits
visible today that could be matched up with other populations if we
knew what to look for.

Are they the original north Europeans whose
genes are still found in such abundance
regardless of cultural overlays in the whole
region? Probably.

Lactose tolerance evolved once in the north of Europe amongst the Ice
Age peoples there. Thus, there is at least one gene that is from
peoples of the right time and approximately right location that exists
today in the region. Tall foreheads (another common feature from that
era) exist today but aren't nearly as dominant as the rounder heads of
later people. Thus, at least two genes from the original north
Europeans definitely exist today. More than that almost certainly do,
but until someone actually does a full genetic decode on a well-
preserved archaeo-genetic sample from those people, I don't see how we
can really know for certain.

With that kind of sheer volume of data, it is absolutely guaranteed
that no researcher will have examined every possible permutation of
elements to see if a contradiction exists at some point in the
evolution of those elements. It is also guaranteed that if a
contradiction does exist between some set of N elements, at some point
in their history, whatever theory that resulted would need to be at
the very least re-examined to see if it needed revision. It might not,
it might not be a critical problem at all. Re-adjusting the data to
deal with the contradiction might even end up supporting the theory.
It happens a fair bit in science.

Impressive!

But it is utterly impossible to discuss the results until we have
discussed those things on which the results are based. No structure
can be stronger than its foundations. If we have not reached a
satisfactory point on the foundations, we can determine nothing about
the safety of the structure itself.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

For starters and definitely not ruling out other
competent Arthurian scholars, Jessie Weston
not being the least of them -

I recommend highly going thru Goodrich with
a fine tooth comb; this will take a wee bit of
time to digest.

Last, I am bending over backwards to be
diplomatic with you.  Also, I can learn from you.

David Christainsen

For me, 'Arthurian Scholarship' is a dead horse.
Unless, of course Aggi makes some outrageous
statement on the subject and needs to be slapped
down.

Also for me, the peoples of Northern Europe, where
they came from and where they went and how are
interesting. Can you or anyone cite any research
on that subject done after say, 1996? I would
welcome anything and will read it.

I'll dig through the genetics and archaeology papers for references to
the Dogger peoples and also to the aforementioned population pockets
in Scotland. All of that is recent work.
.

Relevant Pages

  • New Written Language of Ancient Scotland Discovered
    ... Unlocking the mysteries of the Picts ... The symbols used in written language exhibit certain distinctive ... there are only around 250 Pictish symbol stones in existence, ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Language of the Irish Travellers
    ... example, Ulaid (Modern Irish Ulaidh, English Ulster) is said to come ... names in Scotland are usually labelled Pictish. ... Any reason to think there were _Picts_ in Ireland before the Celts? ... language akin to Welsh, or a non-Celtic language influenced by it. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: The truth about the Picts
    ... Guaranteed no mention of the Geneva Convention, International Law, Law of ... house of Scotland and the trade of the burghs pushed the Scots language ... Pictish went down in the face of Gaelic through most of Pictland though it also went down in the face of Scots. ... The Picts didn't leave much written evidence but what evidence there is has from the early 20thC convinced historians that what they spoke was P-Celtic. ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • Re: OQFTCI98 Game 1 Rounds 7-8: Arthuriana, languages
    ... are on modern retellings of it. ... What extremely popular book, published in 1982, tells the entire ... Arthurian saga from the women's point of view? ... Indo-European language family? ...
    (rec.games.trivia)
  • Re: The truth about the Picts
    ... Guaranteed no mention of the Geneva Convention, International Law, ... house of Scotland and the trade of the burghs pushed the Scots language ... Pictish went down in the face of Gaelic through most of Pictland ... The Picts didn't leave much written evidence but what evidence there is ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)