Customer Reviews

Looking for the Lost Gods of England

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A very interesting read from Kathleen Herbert, taken from a transcript of a talk she gave at a meeting of "The English Companions" in 1994.

With it are included 40 pages of text, an outline of the Pagan English Calender, Songs & Dances for Spring & Summer, a few maps illustrating the locations of people & places from ancient history, locations where poems and stores take place and Gods and Legends in the landscape of Great Britain, also a small index.

Herbert discusses royal genealogies (and their "divine ancestors"), charms (several for healing) verses and the beliefs associated with the pantheon of ancient Britain, a discussion of the attributes of each month (including their Old English names and by-names) the deity to whom the month was sacred and certain things and traditions that would take place in that time of year.

She writes extensively about the main Gods, their variant names, parallels to Gods of other pantheons (like Roman ones) and their many traits, culled from verses and stories.

She also discusses the many people that lived in ancient times, including the lesser known Germanic tribe the Harii. And the more well known tribes, the Goths, Vandals, Jutes, and Anglii of course! Some of their customs, including their customs of warfare, like the rituals of painting their bodies to terrify their enemies.

She attempts to sift through many sources to give us a picture of the religion of ancient Britain (plus some rudiments of the Old English language)
Sources sited Include the writings of Venerable Bede (673-735 C.E.) Tacitus' account called "Germania" which was publish in 98 C.E. And epic poems like Beowolf plus Anglo-Saxon verses and rune poems.

Despite the mere 59+ pages, "Looking for the Lost Gods of England" proves to be an enjoyable and informative source.

This short (36 pages plus notes and supplementary material) book is actually a transcript of a talk by Kathleen Herbert. A lot is packed into these pages. There are snippets from source material (with translations as needed, e.g, from Old English) as well as Herbert's observations and conclusions about the religious beliefs and practices of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Herbert touches on the gods, the runes, the calendar (seasons and festivals of the year), and more. Statements about what people thought during a period in which written evidence is relatively sparse are of course always somewhat tentative, but Herbert makes good cases for her conclusions.

I just finished this book this morning and thought it was great. It's short, but very informative about early English history. It includes detailed notes for further research and a useful collection of maps as well, all this should appeal to those taking a scholarly approach. Don't assume though that the book is boring. I found the authors style engaging and once I started reading it I read it straight through. There is some very useful herbal knowledge there and I loved the description of the early english ritual to heal mother earth. The author did a very good job at removing the christian bastardization of the ritual and reconstructing it back in root form. This helps much indeed to better understand the early worldview of our folk and kin and gives us a stronger platform to rebuild upon. What I enjoyed most however was the thorough research on the domian of Frigg and Freya, how she was able to contrast them in a way that I had not thought of before.

I highly recommend this book.

This is an interesting book but one gets the impression that the author could have written a much longer one with more information. This needs to be read as lecture memoranda rather than as a treatise on the subject.

To date, there have been few good books tracing the origins of English pagan beliefs, laying out traditional remnants, etc. While there are substantial difficulties to writing such a work (few sources, difficulties in those sources, questions of interactions with the Norse, etc) such a work, if done well, would be guaranteed a place with the works of Gwyn Jones, EOG Turville-Petre, Jan de Vries, and Dag Srombeck on the shelf regarding Germanic studies. This book, alas, is not such a book.

However, what it does do is outline a variety of sources for such work and a general survey of possible directions for future research and some preliminary conclusions. For those of us who are interested in this topic, it is one more important work which will build towards such a project. So while it is not the book we should be looking for on this topic, it is a welcome step in the right direction.

I would highly recommend this work to anyone who is interested in Germanic studies.

This is specific, detailed, and a quick read. Very lively writing style, and useful whether your interest is just in passing (because it is short) or you merely want a place to start (because it has depth and detail.) The only criticism I could make is that I wish it were longer. That said, I don't find it a fault with the author, rather in reading it my curiosity has been piqued and I want more.

It's always a pleasure to read one of Kathleen Herbert's books. This one, like Peace-Weavers and Shield Maidens , is part of a lecture series. The topic was very well researched and presented. My only complaint is that it's too short, like the earlier book. She always makes the reader think. If you're interested in the roots of English religion, this is an excellent place to start.

This book is only about the lost gods of 'old England,' but apparantly the gods of pre-Saxon Britain don't count, even if a good deal of the lore on them is gone, too.

By the way, did you know that the word "Welsh" comes from a Saxon word for "foreigner"? It's what the Saxons called the natives whom they pushed westward...