I’ve been working on some “projects” instead of writing.  I’m not saying that they were critical, but they have cut into my writing time.  Among these was rereading a couple of novels because I thought that the next in the series MUST have been released.  I thought I actually saw that it was, but no.  Anyway, I had read my copy of George R. R. Martin’s Storm of Swords, but I had to rely on the library for A Feast for Crows.  I signed up for A Dance for Dragons, but it isn’t even released yet.  In fact, the last update from George was a couple years ago.

So. . .      . . . I’m about ready to get back to work.

My intention, as I’ve mentioned and as is indicated by the title of this site, is to write about Celtic people, as I imagine they may have been, as I imagine they could be.  It may be that this is what you seek as well.  See my Focus Page for what I’m working on currently.

If not, and if you are interested, rather, in the romance and intrigue of the Saxons after Harold was defeated at Hastings you might want to take a look at this: Lothere by Jenny.  This may keep you busy while you wait for me to write more that is Celtic and also rewrite what is merely Celtic into something good, or at least better than my first attempts.

I’ve also been thinking and doing some research and it is the thinking part that has led me to my topic today.

If you are reading this, it is likely that you are an English speaker.  I’d say that there is an even better chance that if you are reading this you are from the United States.  One of the main destinations for the Celtic Diaspora was the shores of the New World.

That being said, let me say that the spirit of the Celts lives in American rugged individualism.  This American ideal is being trained out of us, to be sure, but a focus on the individual owes much to immigrants who themselves were likely influenced by these values.  Individual Rights is a value that is codified in Celtic, Brehon Law, but that has had its full flowering in the New World, not the Old.

I planned to sprinkle this little post with several quotes about the flamboyant celtic spirit, their love of colors that some might term gaudy, a certain pride, but also extraordinary bravery.  Instead I think perhaps I’ll put together a page of that sort of thing.  The truth is that reading about CuChulain and Finn, Lugh and Nuada, the Dagda and the Morrigan, all of it makes me want to echo those old themes and bring them to another generation of readers, if I can.  .  .

.  .  . And so here we are.  If you’ve made it to this post you may have become disappointed once again.  I’m not very far along on this odyssey.  I’m not sure if I’m up to it.  But like my ancestors, it really isn’t about what I can do, it is much more about what I will do, and what I intend is large and gaudy and brightly colored, and of the same sort of beauty as the bagpipes.  Certainly it isn’t the kind of thing that is for everyone, but I hope it is for you.

Hopefully this rambling confessional ends my hiatus and I can get back to the business of yarn spinning in the celtic mode.

Sincerely,

LSO

Here are some beginnings:

• Jump right in to The Red Son of Concubar.
• Start reading about Lugh of the Long Journeys.
• Start to learn about Tir na Nua.
• Posts, including this one, about Celts.

No, the world won’t end if the unique form of government designed by the founders of the United States is destroyed, but it will be a much worse place, lacking hope.  Many, even most, may think I exaggerate for effect.  However, I don’t think it is an exaggeration, first, to say that our constitutional republic, founded on the rights of the individual and strict limits on government, has made the United States unique in its individual freedom and generous in its dealings with the world, and second, that our uniqueness hangs by a thread.

I was listening to a radio show that presented a survey of college students in prestigious universities as freshman and as seniors and discovered that the seniors knew less about our system of government than the freshman.  In fact it isn’t general knowledge that we do not live under the rule of a Democracy but rather we are citizens of a constitutional republic, or did.  In the words of Ben Franklin when asked about what sort of government they’d crafted, Ben said, “A Republic Madam, if you can keep it.”

Far worse than oversight, our educational system is in the process of eradicating the knowledge of our origins and indoctrinating our children, at every level, into a socialist, materialist, Marxist system that has nothing unique to offer, certainly nothing good for humanity.

Power has been and continues to be concentrated in the hands of a few, along with wealth.  Socialist warriors, who rail against the rich, are the foot soldiers of a bureaucratic class that agitates for ever bigger government as it favors ever larger companies replacing cronyism for capitalism.  Recently the pretext Capitalism has been shed as the current regime simply nationalizes one industry after another and shows no signs of stopping.

Kiss your child.  You may be looking at the last generation born free.  The debt accrued by our over-reaching and wildly unconstitutional government is mind bending.  For all you who babble about sustainability have a look at our country’s finances. 

We are insolvent, our borders are porous, we are bailing out the EU while they have been trying to destroy us financially.  Are we mad? 

I think of the many things we are, the most pressing is that we are and have been misinformed.  I do not believe that the current regime is legitimate, who would have voted for blue dog dems who vote in lock step with a Marxist/Leninist like Nancy Pelosi?  They are not in anyway what they represented themselves as being to get elected in conservative districts and their vote for a radical leftist for Speaker of the House is clear proof of that, their later betrayal of their oath to protect the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic only confirms what that vote reveals.

Our president, who presented himself  as being some kind of Constitutional scholar, has not stopped (teleprompted speeches to the contrary or not) his attacks on the Constitution from his first 100 days.  It may be that he is not even qualified to be president according to that document which may explain why he holds it in such contempt. 

It may be that he holds you in contempt as well, he presented himself as a moderate uniter and left you to imagine what that might be.  He let you Hope and imagine in your own mind the Change you wanted to see.  Instead he has not stopped removing your freedom and selling you into national debt with deficit spending that is unsustainable on the order of months not years.  Let’s face it, he does hold you in contempt.

Well there, if the United States of America ceases to be, if we implode into a wasteland of warring barbarians picking through the bones of a once great society or live (if you can call it that), exist rather, as slaves of Imperial China it won’t be the end of the world.

Our government has run off our constitutional rails long back, and there is only a very short time until it can not again be put right.  Become informed, organize, and by all means vote.  You owe it to your children to get this vote right.

In the words of Franklin, “We have a Republic IF we can keep it.”

LSO

I mentioned in my post about my progenitor, Niall of the Nine Hostages, High King of Ireland, son of Eochaid Mugmedon (Slave Lord), that I found Finn MacCool in the genealogy of Niall Glundub (Black Knee)

Just an aside.  Does anyone know why Niall Black Knee was called Black Knee?  I have no idea and I’ve been watching for it.  The bi-name thing is kinda cool.  Nine hostages, 100 battles, slave lord, even red sides makes some sense but Black Knee?  I’d like to know what the story is with that.

Fionn Mac Cumhaill is the focus of one of the three great cycles of Irish Mythology.  The Fenian Cycle follows Fionn and his struggles to survive, first of all, and to assume the champions role that his father had, and then as the leader of the Fiana (think Irish knights errant).  In his quest he is opposed by Gol Mac Morna among others.  Later legends turn him into a clever giant, but I like the Finn of the Fiana.

That Finn may have been an actual person is debatable, but what isn’t, is that this character, construct,  or perhaps my distant cousin, this Finn left a mark on the Irish.  And why not?  If there was ever a perfect Irishman then it most likely was Finn.

Finn was a true Renaissance man.  He was an outdoors man and hunter, a warrior or fearsome aspect,( and elf? Well, his mother was a woman of the Sidhewho turned into a deer so Finn ordered his men not to hunt deer… but that’s another tale.) but even more than these or rather despite undoubtedly being these he was also a poet.  A sensitive guy.

He was a smart guy, a politically astute man, who served several kings in an era when regicide was the most common route for prospective sovereigns to reach their thrones.  Finn seemed to know everything, perhaps it was tasting the Salmon of Knowledge, there are stories that he did, but where did all this stuff come from if not from a seed of truth?

Well, I left you plenty to think about, a bit of an intro to Finn, and perhaps you can see why I thought it was sorta cool that he might be a relative through his daughter Aine, if there was an Aine.

Happy clicking,

LSO

Little enough of what I’ve been able to assemble on these pages so far has any basis in the reality of Earth.  I have bent my will and my efforts toward Tir na Nua. 

That is not to say that there are no mythic figures worth looking into.  In Ireland the line between myth and reality is as thin as the line between the living and dead at Samhain.  There are figures, men and women, who bridge the gap between the real and the fantastic.  Whether they approached such legendary status in life is open to debate, but some few have attained it in memory, in lore.

One such real figure is Niall of the Nine Hostages (Noigiallach).  If nothing else, this particular Niall’s story had much to do with my later fascination with things Celtic.  Niall, it appears, was a king and so fixed in memory and genetics that many count him among their progenitors and as many as twenty-five percent of folk in the North of Ireland, and their descendants whether they know it or not, seem marked by his genetics, True Story.

You can read a little more about The Niall Nine Hostages That Was and a little less about me.

I discovered my association on the back of a clan tie at a highland games in Gresham Oregon.  Again, true story.  I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned how I first came across bagpipe music in a small high-school radio station in North Dakota.  I played “Mul of Kintyre“, by Paul McCartney and the Wings every day for the rest of that semester.  But I discovered IT again on a summer day in Oregon when it came through my window and lured me into another world.

Certainly it was different from the run-of-the-mill day in Gresham Oregon, different than North Dakota too.  But the music drew me to the event and the event led me to a small blurb on the back of a MacNeill clan tie.  There I first read anything at all about Niall Noigiallach. 

With only a very few little words on a bit of paper the writer chose to mention this fellow, Niall of the Nine Hostages, High King of Ireland.  Obviously, it was effective marketing, I bought the tie along with some bagpipe music and a banger. 

Truth to tell, though the O’Neills and the MacNeills both have Niall Noigiallach as a progenitor, they are really named after Niall Glundub (Black Knee).  Still, selling ties is easier with Noigiallach than the closer relative Glundub.  I’ve got to forgive the inaccuracy for its impact.

But that is not even near the end of the story.  No dear reader, looking into Niall exposed me to such wonders as a genealogy that stretched back (thanks to dutiful monk scribes) past Noah to Adam himself.  I learned that legend names a grand-daughter of Noah as the leader of the first settlement on the Emerald Isle.  I ran across names like Nuada Silver Hand, and Finn MacCool, and Conn of the Hundred Battles. 

Recently I found links through geneologies back to those three notables in Legend to my heritage (fictional or not).  Isn’t that a wonder?  All this found through Niall Noigiallach.  True Story.

LSO

Dear Readers,

I’ve only got a couple of minutes, but let me just say, something needs to be done about climate fraud.  Before the EPA and the Obama administration takes one more step down the “Ban All Breathing”, suicidal, Eco-Marxist inspired, (de)Cap(itate) and Trade(away our future),  maybe we need to get a grip and look at facts instead of  the fabrications of Climate Gate “Scientists”.

I admit, I was wrong when I said that there is no man caused global warming.  It appears now that a few scientists have created it out of whole cloth and foisted it on us.  Yep, they created it with data manipulation, erasure, and an inbred “peer-review” system that had lots to do with rubber-stamping political allies work, but nothing at all to do with science.

The science has been shown to be swiss cheese, not settled.  Still, the political wing of the “CO2 is killing us” crowd continues.  Fact means nothing to politics and that is why the idiocy of Cap and Trade can proceed (really it is the only rational way that it could have been contemplated at all).

As I’ve mentioned before, the plan to knee cap our trade makes no rational sense.  The less we manufacture the more China and India do, the net effect is not only negligible, in global terms, it is the inverse of what you want.  Making things on the other side of the world and shipping it to America is not CO2 efficient, it isn’t efficient in any way at all.  It is demonstrably and obviously stupid. 

If you think you are smart because you believe in Global Warming but you can’t wrap your brain around the proceeding, you are a lost cause and should not breed.  Let me reinterate that point by telling you that it is your duty, since you believe this, NOT to breed and crowd out superior organisms, humans use energy that causes CO2, also they breathe, more CO2, also, especially the vegetarians, pass gas (fart) this methane, molecule for molecule, traps hundreds of times more heat than CO2.  So please, for the polar bears, enough with the cabbage and the beans.

Okay, I’ve slipped into some classic rip riffs on the stupidity that is Anthropogenic Global Warming.  It’s just so stupid I can’t stand it.  It is SO stupid that to anybody who really thinks about it the political nature and purpose of the thing is clear.  Why CO2?  Because that’s what energy produces, energy use makes us productive and free.  Marxists (like BO) don’t like people mobile, free, or even productive really.  They want dependant serfs.

What is remarkable, and why I bother to mention this again, is that it is being revealed that the idea of Anthropogenic Global Warming came before the science. (smirk) I mean “Science.”  Why is Obama still rushing ahead with this?  To save the planet?  Just more evidence that it isn’t “Science” it is REALLY Marxist politics.

LSO