Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales
Reviewed by Kristin McFarland
[Snip] Celtic Heritage seeks to outline the well-known, “traditional” myths of Celtic Lands (specifically, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland), and highlight the patterns of those myths within a larger cultural context. Further, the book demonstrates the power of the myths—and the storyteller—to blur the lines between realities: between the Otherworld and real world in the myths themselves, between life and death, and between the world of myth and the world of reality. According to Rees and Rees, “Under the spell of the storyteller’s art, the range of what is possible is transcended: the world of magic becomes a present reality, and the world of every day is deprived of its uniqueness and reality… When the spell is over, the hearer ‘comes back to earth’, but the earth is not quite so solid as it was before, the cadence of its time is less oppressive and its laws have only a relative validity” (342).
What’s been said…