Jean Markale's The Druids:
Celtic Priests of Nature is the most imaginative attempt I've yet come
across to explain the myths in relation to the Celtic culture and religion as
well as situate them comparatively with other Indo-European pantheons. Includes
a lot of at times questionable etymological detours but his enthusiasm and
obvious passion for the subject makes up for the occasional academic blunders.
I've only read his book on Druids and I didn't even pick it myself, my
brother bought it as a birthday gift years ago; a friend of his whose steeped in
all things Celtic apparently recommended it. Anyhow, I feel much the better for
having read it as I just enjoyed the fact that he goes out on a limb to force
linkages and impose patterns on events that otherwise remain buried in the
deepest obscurity.
Even if some of his etymological work is highly questionable the mere act of attempting to impose order over all this material requires an enjoyable leap of the active imagination - I could care less if much of the academic graft is technically bogus as he suggests affinities and synergies which are highly imaginative in themselves, necessarily deepen understanding of the actual processes involved in the oral retention of myth and at the end of the day, in many instances may actually acccurately reflect what did indeed happen.
Jean Markale is in fact a French scholar whose focus is initially on Gaul but he tries to embrace the whole available corpus including cultures well outside of what we may traditionally refer to as Celtic - bearing in mind many scholars are only comfortable nowadays using this term to refer to a purely linguistic affinity. It would seem implausible in fact for any proper study of the matter to exclude consideration of other tribal pantheons who share obvious affinities on the grounds they weren't from traditional 'Celtic' homelands.
If I recall, Francis Byrne in Irish Kings and High-Kings makes several comparisons between Irish mythic characters and those found in India - so he is going in fact much deeper than the supposed Celtic affinity and looking for surviving remnants in an assumed shared Indo-European culture. I will say that I would never discount anything he says merely on the grounds that it seems far-fetched - he's far too good a scholar otherwise. But it is well to be aware that in his revised edition of High Kings he practically disowned much of the scholarship saying that recent research had it well outflanked, unfortunately he both opted to leave it largely unrevised and neglected to point out precisely which areas he now held were dubious. The only conclusion you can draw from that is that he hadn't actually followed up any of the more startling claims he had made or if he had, had discovered them to be bogus - in which case a brief mea culpa would have been appreciated.
If you really wish to torture yourself you might have a bash at Robert Graves The White Goddess which is a notoriously idiosyncratic, some might even say mescaline-boosted, wild foray into just about every extant mythic reservoir available in search of the El Dorado of a common fertility/mother goddess of which all other mythic pantheons are (supposedly) merely descendent. Graves relies heavily on Irish examples and is particular keen to demonstrate that the druidic institution here (as elsewhere) faithfully recorded origin tales with unerring accuracy over vast periods of time.
More conventionally you might try Lady Gregory's Complete Irish Mythology - still one of the best collections around which starts from the mythological tales of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, Fir Bolg et al. and completes with the Fianna and the adventures of Cú Chulainn and Oisín. Yeats wrote a fine preface for this one and it's as large a compilation as I've come across. There's no annotation, preambles or explanatory notes of any kind which does leave the tales kind of hanging in the breeze a bit.
An excellent and indispensable guide is James McKillop's Dictionary of Celtic Mythology - this is a great read to familiarise yourself with the whole corpus of what has been preserved before tucking into any particular set of tales. It's a concordance with copious internal cross-referencing with about 4,000 entries each of which is a mini-essay in itself. This would make an excellent companion to Gregory's book (as well as being logged into ucc.celt.ie where you can compare texts with the original Gaelic versions).
Thomas Kinsella's translation of Tain Bo Cuailgne is also a cracking read if you ever have the time. Definitely one my favourite books and tales from the Ulster Cycle. Also, Peter O' Connor (a psychotherapist) has written an interesting work recently entitled Beyond the Mist which explores the Irish tales from a (mainly) Jungian perspective - not wholly convincing, but opens up some interesting angles nevertheless.
Charles Squire's Celtic Myths and Legends is dated in many places being published over a hundred years ago I think but is still valuable in so far as it attempts a narrative explanation of selective tales. Includes a treatment of British and Welsh tales - Artur and the Mabinogion and so on.
Stuart Pigott's The Druids is the most sobre treatment of the lot (apart from McKillop) and it comes primarily from an archaeological perspective and from someone who is at pains to establish first of all what can be known for certain - may not be as much fun as Markale or Graves but it does give you firm anchorage in the field. Much of the discussions surrounding druidry necessarily involves a lengthy treatment of the various Celtic pantheons so it's as well to start with something indisputably authoritative.
T. M. Charles Edwards Early Christian Ireland is also a handy dip for marking some of the transitions that occurred with the advent of the new 'dispensation' and noting not only how the druidic and bardic order reinvented themselves but also what changes were possibly wrought in the nature of oral transmission as the populace began to absorb the new teaching.
Even if some of his etymological work is highly questionable the mere act of attempting to impose order over all this material requires an enjoyable leap of the active imagination - I could care less if much of the academic graft is technically bogus as he suggests affinities and synergies which are highly imaginative in themselves, necessarily deepen understanding of the actual processes involved in the oral retention of myth and at the end of the day, in many instances may actually acccurately reflect what did indeed happen.
Jean Markale is in fact a French scholar whose focus is initially on Gaul but he tries to embrace the whole available corpus including cultures well outside of what we may traditionally refer to as Celtic - bearing in mind many scholars are only comfortable nowadays using this term to refer to a purely linguistic affinity. It would seem implausible in fact for any proper study of the matter to exclude consideration of other tribal pantheons who share obvious affinities on the grounds they weren't from traditional 'Celtic' homelands.
If I recall, Francis Byrne in Irish Kings and High-Kings makes several comparisons between Irish mythic characters and those found in India - so he is going in fact much deeper than the supposed Celtic affinity and looking for surviving remnants in an assumed shared Indo-European culture. I will say that I would never discount anything he says merely on the grounds that it seems far-fetched - he's far too good a scholar otherwise. But it is well to be aware that in his revised edition of High Kings he practically disowned much of the scholarship saying that recent research had it well outflanked, unfortunately he both opted to leave it largely unrevised and neglected to point out precisely which areas he now held were dubious. The only conclusion you can draw from that is that he hadn't actually followed up any of the more startling claims he had made or if he had, had discovered them to be bogus - in which case a brief mea culpa would have been appreciated.
If you really wish to torture yourself you might have a bash at Robert Graves The White Goddess which is a notoriously idiosyncratic, some might even say mescaline-boosted, wild foray into just about every extant mythic reservoir available in search of the El Dorado of a common fertility/mother goddess of which all other mythic pantheons are (supposedly) merely descendent. Graves relies heavily on Irish examples and is particular keen to demonstrate that the druidic institution here (as elsewhere) faithfully recorded origin tales with unerring accuracy over vast periods of time.
More conventionally you might try Lady Gregory's Complete Irish Mythology - still one of the best collections around which starts from the mythological tales of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, Fir Bolg et al. and completes with the Fianna and the adventures of Cú Chulainn and Oisín. Yeats wrote a fine preface for this one and it's as large a compilation as I've come across. There's no annotation, preambles or explanatory notes of any kind which does leave the tales kind of hanging in the breeze a bit.
An excellent and indispensable guide is James McKillop's Dictionary of Celtic Mythology - this is a great read to familiarise yourself with the whole corpus of what has been preserved before tucking into any particular set of tales. It's a concordance with copious internal cross-referencing with about 4,000 entries each of which is a mini-essay in itself. This would make an excellent companion to Gregory's book (as well as being logged into ucc.celt.ie where you can compare texts with the original Gaelic versions).
Thomas Kinsella's translation of Tain Bo Cuailgne is also a cracking read if you ever have the time. Definitely one my favourite books and tales from the Ulster Cycle. Also, Peter O' Connor (a psychotherapist) has written an interesting work recently entitled Beyond the Mist which explores the Irish tales from a (mainly) Jungian perspective - not wholly convincing, but opens up some interesting angles nevertheless.
Charles Squire's Celtic Myths and Legends is dated in many places being published over a hundred years ago I think but is still valuable in so far as it attempts a narrative explanation of selective tales. Includes a treatment of British and Welsh tales - Artur and the Mabinogion and so on.
Stuart Pigott's The Druids is the most sobre treatment of the lot (apart from McKillop) and it comes primarily from an archaeological perspective and from someone who is at pains to establish first of all what can be known for certain - may not be as much fun as Markale or Graves but it does give you firm anchorage in the field. Much of the discussions surrounding druidry necessarily involves a lengthy treatment of the various Celtic pantheons so it's as well to start with something indisputably authoritative.
T. M. Charles Edwards Early Christian Ireland is also a handy dip for marking some of the transitions that occurred with the advent of the new 'dispensation' and noting not only how the druidic and bardic order reinvented themselves but also what changes were possibly wrought in the nature of oral transmission as the populace began to absorb the new teaching.
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