Preparing a workshop on Celtic Spirituality it strikes me again, the inventedness of it all. We have a generous record of the 'ancient' hymns and prayers of the ordinary Scots because the civil servant and amateur folklorist Alexander Carmichael toured Gaelic-speaking Scotland between 1855 and 1910, collecting them. But it's generally recognised that Carmichael heavily edited his Carmina Gadelica, tidied it up for Victorian consumption. So what I, in my workshops, present as the spiritual outpourings of everyday folk, rooted in peaty land and rugged history, is as invented as, let's say, the druidry at any chosen Eisteddfodd (for which we must thank Edward Williams, aka Iolo Morganwg).
You can go one of two ways with this observation – moan about the artifice, suggesting that there's no real value in Carmichael's work because his radical alterations are so far removed from the original words of the Hebrideans he visited on his tours; that Iolo Morganwg's rituals are a contrived charade. Or you can hold your hands up and say, it's probably impossible to get to the raw source of anything in history, so we should be grateful to the Carmichaels and Morganwgs for bringing us something glorious to play with, however invented it may be. Folk expressions change all the time: so celebrate!
This strikes me as a theme in Cole's book, which recognises that of all the nations in the British isles, England is the least reluctant to celebrate itself, but then goes on to note the emergence of a new kind of Morris Dancing (The Morris side Hunter's Moon 'smash huge sticks together instead of waving wimpish hankies'; Cole's website references Goth Morris sides Wolf's Head and Vixen) and the increase of all sorts of 'traditional' festive events (Lammas etc, which could be called a return to the pagan, but in a good way – valuing the earth and celebrating the seasons). Which is all invented – but wonderful. That it is also an English spirituality rather than something borrowed from the Scots, is even more encouraging still.
