Customer Reviews

The Celts - Rich Traditions & Ancient Myths

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have watched this 3 video set more than once and always find something new. The host is excellent. I would wish that there was more emphasis placed on ancient Celts and their religion, and legends than on modern day ones and their problems of keeping an ethnic heritage alive, yet it is good see that they are meeting with some success in this area. The movie also focuses on all Celtic cultures, rather than the stereotypical focus of Irish and Scots as being all there is. Enya provided the musical background and of course her music along is evocative both of past and modern Celtic culture. On the whole, enjoyable and informative.

Delany's "The Celts" gives an in depth view on Celtic civilization from past to present. It shows culture, history, music and language and the struggles of the Celtic people to find their identity. It covers all genres of the culture and is beautifully written. This collection contains a wealth of information and is probably one of the best sources of information on the Celts ever. The music and scenery alone are worth the purchase!

I have watched this set MANY, MANY times since I got it 2 years ago. I never get tired of it. I turn it on whenever I'm bored with TV. It has given me insight into some of the things I've read about the Celts, historically and fictionally. Enya's music is wonderful, as always. This is a must have for any Celt or ancient British Isles enthusiast!

What Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" was to science, Frank Delaney's "The Celts" is to Celtic history and legacy. Historian Delaney takes us on a journey through the colorful and ultimately tragic history of the Celts, and presents his arguments in an accessible and engaging manner. For those of us who always thought of the Celts as being limited to their Irish or Scots roots, Delaney opens up a much broader Celtic world, and explores customs, rituals, and history still alive in the then-modern world of 1987.

If there is a drawback to this set, it would have to be the lack of updated material. While I appreciate that the series is on DVD in an unmolested format, and while most of the material does not require any changes, there are some points that could have been given a follow-up segment. Chief among these is the phenomenon of the broadcasts in Welsh and Breton, which were completely in the native languages. Does the practice continue, or has funding and viewership declined since 1987? Are young people still interested in trying to learn their native tongues and customs? Are the parades and festivals that celebrate Celtic heritage still being held? Do the Irish storytellers still wander the countryside spinning tales? The series today leaves too many questions unanswered since the episodes originally aired in 1987, despite the excellent description of the historical Celtic world.

For many, the whole point of owning the series is the music of Enya, which was released as a separate soundtrack album, and was her first official solo effort. Enya herself is featured in an 80's music video at the end of one installment, and appears personally in another. The balance of her contribution is to the soundtrack that is still beloved among fans.

Included with the series are several interesting and vintage features from the BBC. One is what amounts to a 30 minute music video montage of an Irish weekend, from 1981. There are two interviews with Enya, related to the release of "Watermark", and there is another BBC documentary featurette on Celtic peoples taken from a late 80's news program.

Sadly, without any kind of revision, the series takes on a quaint, even dated, quality. Even so, you're less likely to find a better or more intelligent attempt to explain Celticism than Frank Delaney's "The Celts".

I purchased this DVD set even though I already have the VHS version mainly so I could get the special features related to Enya. I'm writing this review first and foremost as an Enya fan.

The packaging of the VHS version was really wonderful but the packaging of this DVD is absolutely gorgeous! There is gold trim around the edges of sections and titles and the inside of the digipak case has a fantastic mountain and countryside landscape with castles.

The special features are a total of 80 minutes making the 2 discs total running time 405 mins (6 hours, 45 mins). There are no subtitles but it includes CC (Closed Captioning) for the main feature only. It has very well designed and themed menu's.

The documentary series itself is quite good overall although also quite long. It shows the history and traditions of the Celtic people through the ages from ancient times through to the late 1980's with gorgeous countryside and Enya's beautiful music throughout. There are even some battle reenactments. At times it can get a bit drawn out and boring, but not anymore than any other history lesson would. Overall its quite good. Probably one of the best in-depth documentaries on the Celts ever made.

There are six episodes on these discs. In the fourth episode at the end, there is the Enya music video of "I want tomorrow" which is very interesting to watch, very different looking and acting Enya than we're used to in her other videos.

Near the very end of the final episode Enya performs the song "Aldebaran". I hesitate to call it a music video. It features Enya singing in darkness with a warm light shining on her face only near her eyes.

Special Feature Reviews:

- Gaelic Weekend: A Musical Journey Around Ireland (30 Mins) (No Enya Content)

This is a show from 1981 which shows many scenes of people from Ireland going about their day-to-day lives rich with music and song. Many different styles of Irish music is played and performed throughout and there is no narration. I found it quite enjoyable to watch the various lifestyles and just people going about their daily lives. A beautiful slice of Ireland both visually and musically.

- Breakfast Time Enya Interview (4 Mins)

This is a snippet from the BBC Breakfast Time show, even though it's short, it's quite good. It's probably from 1988/89 around the release of Watermark. It shows some snippets from the Orinoco Flow video and a young Enya talking about her music and how she defines it. We also see a younger Nicky and Roma in this video. Nicky talks briefly about the process of studio recording Enya's music. Enya also mentions "The Frog Prince" movie and her involvement with it and they show a very quick snippet from the film. Of course, she also talks briefly about The Celts documentary series.

- Nationwide Celtic Connections 5 (15 Mins) (No Enya Content)

This is part of a BBC show series called "Nationwide" probably from the early to mid-1980's which talks about the fact that the Celts hardly ever wrote down anything about their myths, legends and laws. It was all passed down from generation to generation through the spoken word. It also discusses the efforts being made to maintain the Celtic languages as many of them are dying out. A very interesting add-on to the The Celts documentary, even though it isn't a current update on the topic.

- Val Doonican's Enya Interview and Performance (17 Mins, 30 sec)

This is by far the best Enya-related addition to the DVD set! Probably created not long after the release of Watermark (I'd say 1989 or 1990), it shows Enya and Val Doonican driving up in the Irish countryside to a few of Enya's favourite places, places that remind her of her youth. She is interviewed very casually as they walk around the beautiful locales. She performs the song "Na Laetha Geal M'?ige" while we see her walking around a castle and by a tree and some beautiful Irish scenery. The song from the album is played while she sings and that is all your can hear. No live performance.

Then they go into her fathers pub - Leo's Tavern and we see Enya sitting beside her father and they get interviewed together. They talk about their musical family and background. Right behind them is Enya's Watermark album hanging on the wall along with some awards for the album.

They go to a beach that Enya is very fond of, that she used to visit a lot with her family as a child. Val Doonican and Enya talk a bit more. This beach also has a lot of ties to her grandparents who are the inspiration for the song "On your shore" which she performs here as well. She walks along the beach singing the song and then as she sings, it shows many scenes taken from the first special feature on disc 1 - "Gaelic Weekend: A Musical Journey Around Ireland" with a faint transparent woven cloth overlay, as if the scenes are being projected onto a woven cloth material. A very nice effect. Again the song from the album is played while she sings and that is all your can hear. No live performance. Enya seems very casual and very relaxed throughout the interview and its very nice to see.

All-in-all, this DVD set is very good also considering all of the Enya content throughout the documentary and in the special features. It would have been nice if they included a featurette like an addendum to the series updating us on anything new with regards to the Celts and their languages now that it's 2004. It would also be nice if they included subtitles in English, Spanish and French for this North American release. But these are minor things to gripe about really. I'd say that this is a must-have for any serious Enya fan/collector and those interested in the history of the Celtic people.

Being a long-time Enya fan, I've known about the Celts miniseries for quite a few years. Thus, when it came out on DVD, I was eager to view it. Like tens of millions of other Americans and Canadians, I have a significant amount of Celtic ancestry, and have been greatly interested of late in discovering my roots. So, was this miniseries what I'd hoped for?

For the most part, yes. The series covers the Celts from the first time the Greeks encountered them (naming them "Keltoi"), some 2500 years ago, up to the present (or 1987, at least). They came to rule almost all of Europe, but eventually other peoples invaded their lands and pushed them into the far West, where their descendents remain today: the British Isles, Brittany and Northern Spain. They were fierce warriors, but clannish and hence easy prey to the "divide and conquer" strategy. They were also famous for their magic; even down to this day the Druids continue to fascinate us.

We learn that elements of Celtic religion and folklore continue to influence even the non-Celts; people who carve Jack-O-Lanterns for Halloween are unwittingly practicing a form of Druidism, as are people who toss coins into wishing wells, once an act to appease or petition the water spirits. The idea of "romantic love" appears to come from the Celtic tradition, as shown by the legends of King Arthur, himself an ancient Briton. A common theme of Celtic lore were the tales of people matching wits with those from the Other World; I was reminded of Bilbo Baggins trading riddles with Gollum in the dark, Bilbo's life and the fate of Middle Earth hanging in the balance, though he did not know it. Although the miniseries does not mention J.R.R. Tolkien, the fact is that he drew upon Celtic mythology, among other things, when penning "The Lord of the Rings".

Some aspects of the miniseries are quite humorous. Take, for instance, a couple of scenes depicting the quintessential stern English schoolmaster trying to drill Celtic history into the heads of utterly, mind-numbingly bored young men. Sometimes the humor is unintentional. BBC has a certain classic documentary style which Monty Python loved to parody. So, when the narrator was walking across a field of battle in which the Irish and the Vikings are fighting furiously, whacking at each other with swords and axes, I kept expecting someone to run past and lop his head off, in the gruesome tradition of "The Search for the Holy Grail". But, of course, nothing of the sort happened.

It is inevitable that in some ways the DVD has not aged well, being almost twenty years old. The weakest of the six episodes is by far the final one, in which scholars get together and discuss whether there truly is such a thing as a true Celtic culture any more, or whether it has merely been reduced to cartoons (Asterix the Gaul, leprechauns chasing rainbows) and souvenirs. They showed one goofy video from an utterly forgettable 80's pop star dressed up in ridiculous Celtic armor, featuring girls who looked like plaid-wearing cheerleaders. I found myself lamenting they hadn't thought to feature Runrig, a Gaelic-speaking rock group from the Isle of Skye who have played a major role in the Celtic revival of the past 30 years, and are very serious about their language and culture. Their classic album "The Cutter and The Clan" came out in 1987, so they were certainly becoming well known at the time. But, alas, there was no mention of them.

As a side note, episode 5 primarily devotes itself to the efforts to preserve the Celtic languages of Welsh, Breton and Irish, and the beginning of the afore-mentioned Celtic revival. Did you know that children who dared to speak Welsh in the classroom were once shamed mercilessly and ridiculed?

While I was never all that fond of Enya's earliest music, I gained a much greater appreciation of it after hearing it played on the DVDs. The music in one scene, showing a Welsh village submerged by the waters of a newly created reservoir, was most haunting. And then there was this weird video in episode 4 showing Enya as I'd never imagined her before: her eyes glowing red, she shoots lightning from her fingers and ignites an ugly old car. Perhaps it symbolized the fight to free Celtic culture from the junk of globalization. I'm not really sure.

Parental warning: Note that these DVDs are not rated. I suspect they'd have to be given a PG-13, or its television equivalent, if they were to be rated. Here's why: In a couple of places, in both episodes 1 and 4, there is a depiction of a reconstructed ancient Celtic village complete with people in period dress, or lack thereof. In both cases, blonde women are shown painting each other with elaborate blue whorls, and there is full frontal nudity. Some will find this mightily offensive, as shown by the recent Super Bowl halftime uproar. Myself, I found it somewhat annoying, and could have done without it. It reminded me of photos in old National Geographic magazines. But certainly it accurately depicted the customs of the ancient Celts, as described by Roman writers of the time.

In summary, I'm glad I bought "The Celts". It did teach me a lot I didn't know about my heritage. Most likely I'll watch a good part of it again, though I'll be skipping episode 6 and the nude scenes.

I teach ancient history and am thoroughly delighted with this video series. The history is rich yet not boring or dry. The music of Enya makes the experience even more delighful. I will use this as a resource for years to come.

I've watched this several times and have become more annoyed each time. Clearly the assembled "scholars" are upper class English snobs, being served tea in one scene by an obedient butler. The tone is one of condescension toward peoples of Celtic origin, not only toward the Irish and Scottish, but also toward American Irish immigrants, who are depicted as coming all the way to America to live in tenements! Hardly so; the Irish and Scots have thrived in America, which says something about the effect of their subjugation by the English. I was particularly annoyed by a small song segment by a purported Scottish rock singer (not the Enya material -- that was superb). This group was dressed up in ridiculous "Scottish garb" to supposedly fulfill the American market for cheap entertainment and simple stereotypes. Not only was this music awful but I suspect it was manufactured for the "documentary." What finally really got my goat was one commentator with bad teeth, delicately sipping his tea, who declared the Celts to have a disposition toward "terrorism, driving badly," and 'a tendency to throw old mattress frames over gullies' [instead of building bridges]. Since the show went into modern history it is a severe omission, in my view, for no mention to have been made of various genocidal actions exercised by the English over Ireland since the 16th century. A far better documentary is "Out of Ireland" which captures the struggles and triumphs of the Irish and hails them as a necessary and now valued ingredient in America's melting pot. Their pluck, hard work, ingenuity and creativity have been at the heart of American popular culture and democracy since Andrew Jackson. The best part of the DVD is actually the 3-D cartoon at the beginning which depicts the English in a comical light. To this I say "Bang On!"
Pat from Rochester MN

For those who are a fan of Enya, then you're going to want this three videotape collection. The Celts was a BBC production from 1987, and the music from Enya's debut is featured here (as well as an original version of "The Longships" that never appeared on album, but was later re-recorded for Watermark). But what really matters here is this is a useful series documenting Celtic history, with its beginnings in the Austrian Alps in Hallstatt (an alpine village by a lake with towering mountains, a stunningly beautiful place that no trip to Austria should be without) and spreading everywhere up to Ireland all the way eastwards to Turkey. Pretty much pointing out if you want to know the origins of Celtic culture, it's not Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, but Austria. And while most people associate Celtic with Irish and Scottish, the documentary goes out of the way to let everyone be aware of Breton, Welsh, and other cultures. I do like the episode regarding about Celtic religion and spirituality, how it made a transition from Paganism to Christianity. They even state how many of the Pagan rituals never really disappeared even during the rise of Christianity. It's not without its flaws. For one thing, there are a few boring spots (like the one with a school teacher lecturing the kids about the Celts, and the kids seem absolutely bored).

Since the review, I have bought the DVD and not one bit disappointed! For one thing, you get all six episodes on two discs. The picture quality is about the same as the VHS, but that's to be expected, given this dates back to 1987, so you won't get pristine, digital quality pictures. You also get more than just the six episodes. You get to see an interview with Enya at a beach near her hometown of Gweedore, County Donegal in Ireland. She strikes me as having a nice, down to earth personality, the kind of person I wouldn't mind having as a friend, even if I am not exactly a fan of her music (New Age isn't really my thing). There's another footage of Enya, pretty much pushing her then-latest release, Watermark, including videos to "On Your Shore", and "Na Laetha Geal M'Óige" (likely this was done in late 1988 during the release of Watermark, over a year after the documentary came out). Also you get some other footage, including Gaelic Weekend: A Musical Journey Around Ireland from 1981, which is just that, lots of footage around Ireland, showing musicians playing traditional Irish folk music in pubs (complete with tin whistles, uilleann pipes, fiddles, bodhrans, etc.) or simply singing. The other is Nationwide Celtic Connections, which featured some music from Breton Celtic musician Alan Stivell (I recognize material from his 1971 album Renaissance of the Celtic Harp and 1980's Tir na Nog: A Celtic Symphony). You get more insight of Celtic culture, basically, you have to watch it to understand, I really thought Nationwide Celtic Connections compliments The Celts documentary.

Regardless, this is a nice documentary to have if Celtic history and culture interests you.

This documentary started strong with history and reenactments, but then went off into boring tangents like "modern Celts" with scenes of people dancing in clubs. What? The narrator talks endlessly while standing on some historical spot. I was waiting for Monty Python to come running through with a gag it was so mind-numbing. I had to stop the dvd half way through out of sheer boredom. I would have loved to have seen more engrossing history, more reenactments, more history, and less long-winded dry speeches in which I didn't learn much of anything.