Celtic Myth & Legend: An A-Z of People and Places [Hardcover]

Mike Dixon-Kennedy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1996

Royalty, warriors, deities, giants, monsters, and wizards of Celtic myth and legend join forces. Travel to enchanted islands, battlefields, standing stones, bustling cities, and other intriguing sites. Hundreds of entries illuminate the culture. Each entry includes a detailed definition, its origin, alternate spellings, and extensive cross-referencing. Fascinating information is provided on both well-known characters, such as King Arthur, St. Patrick, and Jack the Giant-Killer, as well as lesser-known individuals.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 309 pages
• Publisher: Blandford Pr; 1 edition (May 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0713725710
• ISBN-13: 978-0713725711
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,846,524 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Errors on Every Page, March 18, 2002

By 

Christopher S. Thompson (Portland, Me USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Celtic Myth & Legend: An A-Z of People and Places (Hardcover)

I read this book just after finishing Peter Berresford-Ellis' dictionary of Irish mythology, and I'm afraid this one does not hold up at all. The author apparently has no knowledge of any Celtic language, and it shows- there are embarassing errors on nearly every page as a result. For instance, he defines Alba as a "poetic name" for Scotland, whereas it is simply the ordinary Gaelic word for Scotland, still in everyday use by thousands and thousands of people. He makes bizarre claims, such as that Scotland was never really a Celtic country (in fact, Scotland was almost entirely Gaelic-speaking for centuries), and he defines the "Celtic period" as ending with the arrival of Christianity, which is nonsense especially because literally all of our sources for Celtic myth were written during the Christian era. He frequently indulges in unsupported speculation, using phrases such as "some have claimed" (in other words "I made this part up myself")and he seems to accept Barry Fell's claims of Ogham inscriptions in the new world, even though Fell's works are themselves wild flights of fancy based on ignorance of Celtic linguistics. He edits a number of stories to remove Christian elements, thus distorting the original version. Overall, this book is a classic example of the folly in trying to write about the Celts without knowledge of a Celtic language. As the author can only read secondary sources, he obviously didn't know when he was making a mistake.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misleading, November 3, 2005

By 

cèile (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celtic Myth & Legend: An A-Z of People and Places (Hardcover)

I agree with the reviewer who said that there were errors on every page. Dixon-Kennedy doesn't recognize Scotland as a Celtic country. What he frequentlly called 'Irish' should be called 'Gaelic' because the folklore of Gaelic Scotland and Gaelic Ireland is very similar as these countries once formed a single cultural entity.

Fionn MacCumhail was the equivalent of King Arthur and Robin Hood for the Gaels. One hundred different motifs of his legend were collected in Ireland and four hundred in Scotland. (Almqvist et al., The Heroic Process: Form Function and Fantasy in Folk Epic)

The book 'Leabhar na Fèinne' is a collection of all the literature of Fionn MacCumhail, as well as Cuchullain and Fraoch, that could be found in Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century. Every poem and song was composed in Scottish Gaelic (a Celtic language).

Peter Beresfore Ellis is a better reference for those new to Celtic myth and folklore, and MacKillop's Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology is the best, most detailed reference to date.

The Green Man is featured on the cover of this book.
I question the inclusion of the Green Man in a book of Celtic mythology; all the provenances of this entity are in countries where a Germanic language is spoken or was spoken in the 'Dark Ages'.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Reasonably Complete, December 31, 2001

By 

"darkewolf" (Western Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celtic Myth & Legend: An A-Z Of People and Places (Paperback)

Although the book is a fairly good broadrange reference
for celtic mythology, it does come with a few inherent problems.
For a start, the author does not give references in his entries. The more and more I do research into celtic mythology and their way of life, the more I find one needs to be able to find references to 'primary sources'.

But, for someone begining in the area of celtic studies or someone merely curious, this book is a great start point.