Customer Reviews

Music and the Celtic Otherworld: From Ireland to Iona

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I wanted to like this book, since the subject is such a rich and fascinating aspect of Celtic life, but it's not the book I hoped it would be. As the extension of PHD thesis, this book is naturally scholarly and I have no problems with that. There are way too many dreamy, misty faux-Celtic books around and way too many people passing their own ideas off as "how it really was" but it could have included more quotes and actual writings rather than relying so much on the author's thoughts about the writings.

What truly put me off the book, however, was a lapse in scholarship. One of the most interesting accounts of music changing reality is in "Tain Bo Froech," "The Cattle Raid of Froech." In this story, available in translation so ignorance is not an excuse, Froech was a renowned warrior whose mother was one of the Sithe, the people of the otherworld. When he went to woo Findabar, the daughter of the king, his aunt, Boand, gave him a marvelous retinue from the Sithe. This included three harpers, the sons of Boand and Uaithne, the harper of the chief of the gods. They were named after the strains of music that Uaithne played as they were being born, Sad Music, Happy Music, and Sleep Music.

When they played for the king's household, the decorations in the form of snakes and birds and hounds in gold and silver on the harps came alive and moved among the people. Twelve men died of sorrow.

All this, including their birth, is in the story but the author says that "the story describes how a talented mortal harper summoned spirit-images" of the animals. She quotes one paragraph but has no idea of the context in which it is placed. Poor scholarship!