The Scottish Statesman, a new online newspaper for Scotland, launched today.
Here's my first contribution. It's about Arthur in Scotland, and the English approach to history.
More news to come ...
Showing posts with label Scottish Independence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scottish Independence. Show all posts
Thursday, 2 October 2014
Monday, 2 June 2014
The Meaning of "Camlann"
I received a message from Moon Books today, telling me that the copyedited manuscript of The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion is ready for me to check.
It seems unlikely that the book will be available before the Scottish independence referendum in September. I'll be keeping a close eye on the referendum: the vote takes place the day before my 12th wedding anniversary, and having got married on the Isle of Iona to a woman who is half-Scottish, as well as having gone to university in Glasgow, my sympathies lie very much with the "YES" campaign.
I was also interested to note that Le Monde published this piece, indicating that the pro-independence campaign is gaining ground. The reporter had been in Alyth, Perthshire, to follow the debate. Alyth, as I revealed in The King Arthur Conspiracy, is where Arthur fought his last battle.
How do I know this? Lots of reasons, not least of all the fact that the place is name checked in a contemporary poem of the battle.
But wasn't Arthur's last battle fought at a place called Camlan?
Well, for a long while I wasn't so sure. Now, though, I know that it was - sort of - and I explain why in my forthcoming book on The Grail. But as that may not be out before the referendum, I hereby present this information as a gift to the "YES" campaign and in honour of a warrior who gave his life fighting for Scottish (and British) independence.
Many commentators refuse to accept that the place-name "Camlan" isn't Welsh. The fact that Camlan is the Gaelic name for the old Roman fortifications at Camelon, near Falkirk in central Scotland, means nothing to them. Arthur's "Camlan" was Welsh, and that's all it could have been.
Very silly - and utterly useless, in terms of trying to track down the site of that all-important battle. If it was a Welsh place-name, it would have meant something like "Crooked Valley", which really doesn't help us very much.
The first literary reference to "Camlann" comes in the Annales Cambriae ("Welsh Annals") which mention Gueith cam lann - the "Strife of Camlann". However, that reference cannot be traced back to an earlier date than the 10th century, hundreds of years after the time of Arthur. The contemporary sources make no mention of "Camlann", and so it may be that the name didn't come into use until many years after Arthur's last battle was fought there.
The earliest literary reference to anyone called Arthur concerns an individual named Artur mac Aedain. He was a son of Aedan mac Gabrain, who was "ordained" King of the Scots by St Columba in 574. Accounts of the ordination ceremony indicate that Arthur son of Aedan was present on that occasion, and that St Columba predicted that Arthur would not succeed his father to the Scottish throne but would "fall in battle, slain by enemies."
Those same accounts tell us that Columba's prophecy came true: Artur mac Aedain died in a "battle of the Miathi", which means that he was killed fighting the Picts of central Scotland.
The Irish Annals, which were compiled from notes made by the monks of Iona, inform us that the first recorded Arthur was killed in a "battle of Circenn", fought in about 594. Circenn was the Pictish province immediately to the north of the Tay estuary - broadly, Angus and the Mearns - which was indeed the territory of the "Miathi".
Circenn might have been Pictish territory, but the name of the province is Gaelic. It combines the word cir (meaning a "comb" or a "crest") and cenn, the genitive plural of a Gaelic noun meaning "head". An appropriate translation of Circenn would therefore be "Comb-heads".
The Miathi Picts, like their compatriots in the Orkneys, appear to have modelled their appearance on their totem animal, the boar. This meant that they shaved their heads in imitation of the boar's comb or crest - rather like the Mohawk tonsure, which we wrongly think of as a "Mohican". Indeed, whilst we assume that the term "Pict" derived from the Latin picti, meaning "painted" or "tattooed", there are grounds for suspecting that it was actually a corruption of pecten, the Latin for a "comb" (hence the Old Scots word Pecht, meaning "Pict").
So where does "Camlann" fit into all this?
After Arthur's death, much of southern and central Scotland was invaded by the Angles, those forerunners of the English. As a consequence, the Germanic language known as Northumbrian Old English was established in southern and central Scotland by the 7th century. It eventually became the dialect called Lowland Scots.
In the Scots dialect, came, kem and camb all meant "comb". And lan', laan and lann all meant "land".
The land in which Arthur's last battle had been fought - that is, the Pictish province of Angus - was soon speaking an early variant of the English language, or Lowland Scots. The fact that the Pictish province of Circenn was named after its "Comb-heads", those Miathi warriors who cut their hair to resemble a boar's comb or crest, meant that the place became known by its early English equivalent: "Comb-land" or Camlann.
This was not, of course, the name that Arthur and his warrior-poets would have used for the place. But then, the term "Camlann" didn't appear in any literary source for at least another three or four hundred years. By the time the Welsh annalist came to interpolate the "Camlann" entry into the Annales Cambriae, the location had become known by its Old English/Lowland Scots name. But that name was merely a variant of the older Gaelic name for the province - Circenn, or "Comb-heads".
And that is where the first recorded Arthur fell in battle, as St Columba had predicted. Not in England or Wales or Brittany, but in Angus in Scotland.
The province of the Pictish "Comb-heads". The region known as "Comb-land", cam lann.
It seems unlikely that the book will be available before the Scottish independence referendum in September. I'll be keeping a close eye on the referendum: the vote takes place the day before my 12th wedding anniversary, and having got married on the Isle of Iona to a woman who is half-Scottish, as well as having gone to university in Glasgow, my sympathies lie very much with the "YES" campaign.
I was also interested to note that Le Monde published this piece, indicating that the pro-independence campaign is gaining ground. The reporter had been in Alyth, Perthshire, to follow the debate. Alyth, as I revealed in The King Arthur Conspiracy, is where Arthur fought his last battle.
How do I know this? Lots of reasons, not least of all the fact that the place is name checked in a contemporary poem of the battle.
But wasn't Arthur's last battle fought at a place called Camlan?
Well, for a long while I wasn't so sure. Now, though, I know that it was - sort of - and I explain why in my forthcoming book on The Grail. But as that may not be out before the referendum, I hereby present this information as a gift to the "YES" campaign and in honour of a warrior who gave his life fighting for Scottish (and British) independence.
Many commentators refuse to accept that the place-name "Camlan" isn't Welsh. The fact that Camlan is the Gaelic name for the old Roman fortifications at Camelon, near Falkirk in central Scotland, means nothing to them. Arthur's "Camlan" was Welsh, and that's all it could have been.
Very silly - and utterly useless, in terms of trying to track down the site of that all-important battle. If it was a Welsh place-name, it would have meant something like "Crooked Valley", which really doesn't help us very much.
The first literary reference to "Camlann" comes in the Annales Cambriae ("Welsh Annals") which mention Gueith cam lann - the "Strife of Camlann". However, that reference cannot be traced back to an earlier date than the 10th century, hundreds of years after the time of Arthur. The contemporary sources make no mention of "Camlann", and so it may be that the name didn't come into use until many years after Arthur's last battle was fought there.
The earliest literary reference to anyone called Arthur concerns an individual named Artur mac Aedain. He was a son of Aedan mac Gabrain, who was "ordained" King of the Scots by St Columba in 574. Accounts of the ordination ceremony indicate that Arthur son of Aedan was present on that occasion, and that St Columba predicted that Arthur would not succeed his father to the Scottish throne but would "fall in battle, slain by enemies."
Those same accounts tell us that Columba's prophecy came true: Artur mac Aedain died in a "battle of the Miathi", which means that he was killed fighting the Picts of central Scotland.
The Irish Annals, which were compiled from notes made by the monks of Iona, inform us that the first recorded Arthur was killed in a "battle of Circenn", fought in about 594. Circenn was the Pictish province immediately to the north of the Tay estuary - broadly, Angus and the Mearns - which was indeed the territory of the "Miathi".
Circenn might have been Pictish territory, but the name of the province is Gaelic. It combines the word cir (meaning a "comb" or a "crest") and cenn, the genitive plural of a Gaelic noun meaning "head". An appropriate translation of Circenn would therefore be "Comb-heads".
The Miathi Picts, like their compatriots in the Orkneys, appear to have modelled their appearance on their totem animal, the boar. This meant that they shaved their heads in imitation of the boar's comb or crest - rather like the Mohawk tonsure, which we wrongly think of as a "Mohican". Indeed, whilst we assume that the term "Pict" derived from the Latin picti, meaning "painted" or "tattooed", there are grounds for suspecting that it was actually a corruption of pecten, the Latin for a "comb" (hence the Old Scots word Pecht, meaning "Pict").
So where does "Camlann" fit into all this?
After Arthur's death, much of southern and central Scotland was invaded by the Angles, those forerunners of the English. As a consequence, the Germanic language known as Northumbrian Old English was established in southern and central Scotland by the 7th century. It eventually became the dialect called Lowland Scots.
In the Scots dialect, came, kem and camb all meant "comb". And lan', laan and lann all meant "land".
The land in which Arthur's last battle had been fought - that is, the Pictish province of Angus - was soon speaking an early variant of the English language, or Lowland Scots. The fact that the Pictish province of Circenn was named after its "Comb-heads", those Miathi warriors who cut their hair to resemble a boar's comb or crest, meant that the place became known by its early English equivalent: "Comb-land" or Camlann.
This was not, of course, the name that Arthur and his warrior-poets would have used for the place. But then, the term "Camlann" didn't appear in any literary source for at least another three or four hundred years. By the time the Welsh annalist came to interpolate the "Camlann" entry into the Annales Cambriae, the location had become known by its Old English/Lowland Scots name. But that name was merely a variant of the older Gaelic name for the province - Circenn, or "Comb-heads".
And that is where the first recorded Arthur fell in battle, as St Columba had predicted. Not in England or Wales or Brittany, but in Angus in Scotland.
The province of the Pictish "Comb-heads". The region known as "Comb-land", cam lann.
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Culture Wars
Later, I signed up for the "Celtic Studies" course at Glasgow University, which included the study of Gaelic. I didn't hang around at uni for very long, but I managed to pick up a bit more of a sense of the history and development of the language, along with a fair amount of Gaelic literature.
I love the sound of the Gaelic - for me, it brings to mind peat-smoke and the salt-sea tang. It is a soft, musical language which survives most obviously in place-names and songs. Many Scottish place-names have remained essentially unchanged for centuries. They record the impressions of the people who named them, and the history of the immediate area.
Gaelic was brought over to the Scotland from Ireland in the early centuries of the Common Era, and many a Gaelic place-name preserves memories of that period when the English language did not yet exist. A large-scale map of the Highlands and Islands can therefore serve as a sort of relief map of ancient history: a peek into times forgotten by all but the archaeologist and - perhaps - the native Gaelic speaker.
The Scotsman newspaper published a rather snide, borderline offensive article yesterday which really riled the Gaelic-speaking community, and with good reason. It claimed that Gaelic was a dead language, kept on life support only through huge injections of public subsidy, to which it had no right. Confusingly, the piece also discussed the supposed decline of the Scots dialect, which has nothing to do with Gaelic (Scots is, in fact, a parallel development of English, both having evolved out of the Northumbrian Old English which had taken root in southern Scotland by the 7th century AD). By the end of the comment piece it was difficult to know what the commentator was really on about - was he bemoaning the apparent decline of everyday Scots at the expense of the longer established Gaelic tongue, or did he hold both in equal contempt? Hard to tell.
In many ways, the article resonated with a history of its own. Gaelic is, and was, predominantly a language of the Highlands and Islands. The Scots tongue belonged predominantly to southern and central Scotland, to Edinburgh and the Lowlands. So, if we assume that the writer of the snarky little piece was campaigning against the survival of Gaelic, and allowing himself a twinge of nostalgia when it comes to Scots, then he was really resuscitating an ancient prejudice - what the Gaels of the Highlands thought of as the Lowlander's "great hatred".
But I'm not so sure. Let us not forget that next year - 2014 - sees an opportunity for the people of Scotland to vote for an independent Scotland. Right now, it's looking pretty close. And, if I'm honest, I think independence for Scotland would be a very, very good thing. In the increasingly fevered atmosphere of the independence debate, though, culture becomes a battleground. The not-so-veiled attack on Scottish culture and the linguistic heritage of the Highlands and Islands which comprised the bulk of the Scotsman's article should be seen in the light of the independence furore. What it's basically saying is: "Your language is rubbish and it should be dead. And with it, the memories of your people, your ancestors, your ancient history. Your culture is pants. Forget it. We're all English now. In fact, we're becoming American. So anyone who wants to speak the language of Scotland is some sort of effete subsidy junkie draining the public purse in order to maintain a Gaelic-language TV channel."
(For the record, BBC Alba is lovely - some of the very best music on television.)
There are times when you sense that history never changes. The tone of the Scotsman piece is depressingly familiar. You hear things very much like it throughout the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. It's the boring jawing of the colonial mind, with all its implied superiority. It's the thinking that gave rise to the Glencoe Massacre and the Highland Clearances.
It is, all in all, a pretty silly attempt to justify the Act of Union of 1707 (England didn't really want Scotland, and most of Scotland didn't want England, but for strategic reasons it was in England's short-term interest to forge a political union with their northern neighbours. England paid just under £400,000 for the privilege, most of which took the form of compensation for the failure of a financial scheme which the English had done their utmost to ruin. The common people of Scotland gained little or nothing from the deal - in fact, the Highlands were forcibly drained of people and stocked with sheep instead, those few Highlanders who remained then being employed by wealthy English people to be little more than forelock-tugging gamekeepers.)
The author of the Scotsman piece seems to advocate some kind of Year Zero. The abandonment and complete forgetting of the past (which the Gaelic and Scots tongues retain - the outlooks, worldviews and memories of their people). He seems to want to draw a line through the present. Everything before hand goes into the rubbish bin of history.
As he put it himself, "Like most educated people, I find the Mither Tongue almost unintelligible." Note the superciliousness of that statement. His education hasn't stretched to a curiosity and interest in the living heritage of his own people. The statement would make as much sense - and, arguably, somewhat more sense - if it read, "Like most uneducated people, I find the native language of my fellow countrymen perplexing - because I never bothered to learn it - and barbarian, because I have a false sense of cultural superiority."
The same intolerance, the same violent denial of a peoples' right to their own memories and capacity for self-expression, has been used in the past in numerous attempts to stamp out other languages (Welsh schoolchildren were once cruelly humiliated if they let a Welsh word slip from their lips, because the English didn't want them to be able to express themselves in their own terms and in the language of their fathers). It's not the mercy killing of a dying language that we're looking at here - it's the deliberate denial of another person's way of thinking, their memories and the way they see the world around them.
It's an argument we've heard, over and over again, since Roman times. What it demands is absolute conformity. No linguistic or cultural memories. No history, in fact. Forget everything.
None of that quaint, homespun wisdom, the bleak memories of past atrocities, the songs of love and loss and longing and rebellion. No roadsigns telling you what the true name of the place you're looking for is. Blanket conformity, and the smothering dominance of an alien culture. What you might call, the Clearances all over again.
Let us hope that the Scots find the courage and confidence to vote against this sort of imperialist gibberish next year.
Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Cognitive Dissonance
If history has taught us anything, it's that making predictions is a bit of a fool's game. But there's one prediction that, I think, can be made. Change is coming. This century will not look very much like the last one. And that, for some people at least, is a problem. Some people do not handle change, or the prospect of change, very well at all.
Take one of the most pressing and urgent issues facing humanity: climate change. Contrary to what some people would have you believe, there is little or no disagreement among scientists that climate change is happening and that mankind's activities are largely to blame. However, some people see the implications of this as an infringement of their personal liberties, their beliefs in the infallability of the free market, their 20th century convictions. The scientific data comes as a threat to their beliefs, their worldview.
When evidence, or data, or a theory, or a new idea comes along that challenges your deeply held convictions, you tend to experience something called "cognitive dissonance". It's basically the inability to hold two opposing views at once. There's your settled worldview, and then there's the new information. You can't accept both (they're mutually contradictory), so you attack the new information. And its source. You make out that the scientists are in disagreement with each other, when they're not. And then you reject science altogether. You make faith the cornerstone of your thinking and reject all the evidence which shows your faith to be misplaced.
The problem is exacerbated by a trend that has been apparent over the past few decades. It can best be described, perhaps, as a shift to the right (politically speaking). One of the results of this shift is explored in a new independent movie, Compliance. Basically, many people have been all too willingly placing far too much unquestioning faith in authority. We have all been following unworthy leaders without daring to question what they say.
The institutions which should be challenging political authority - namely, the media (i.e. journalists) and academia - have failed to do so. This is partly because success in those fields has come to be reliant on a willingness to comply, to conform, to accept and repeat hand-me-down beliefs. Those academics and journalists who should have been questioning a rather threadbare and faith-based political philosophy have themselves been caught up in that same philosophy. They cannot question, because they have been imposing their own belief systems on the students and readers, and demanding that those same students and readers comply and conform.
With regard to my recently published book about the historical Arthur - The King Arthur Conspiracy (published by The History Press) - it has been interesting to note that the most positive feedback has come from educated readers and academics who haven't subscribed to some formulaic notions along the lines of a consensus. The most savage attacks have come from those who fear to question the consensus which has built up over recent decades (in line with the general shift in the direction of reactionary thinking and compliance with authority figures).
Or, if you prefer, the free-thinkers like the book. Some of them love it. But those who are trammelled in their thinking, and who cannot adjust to new information, have attempted to undermine it. That is, they have experienced cognitive dissonance (information and ideas which do not square with their preconceived notions) and so they fight back, dismissing the message and vilifying the messenger. Unsurprisingly, most of these readers subscribe to a rather imperialistic notion of King Arthur and resent the very idea that he might have been of Scottish descent. There have even been veiled suggestions that The King Arthur Conspiracy was written purely to cash in on the debate surrounding Scottish independence - a suggestion which reveals the latent nationalism behind the 'consensus' view of Arthur.
The same problems hover around William Shakespeare. Back in the 19th century, there was a great deal of scholarly interest in a death mask which was believed to be of Shakespeare:
The current consensus in Shakespearean circles, however, is that it is not Shakespeare's death mask. The leading British authority on Shakespeare is usually pretty scathing of any suggestion that it might have been. The thinking here seems to be something along the lines of: "If the death mask was Shakespeare's, I would be interested in it. But I'm not interested in it, so it can't be of Shakespeare."
The death mask has been in Darmstadt, Germany, for many decades now, British interest in the mask seemingly vanishing at around the time of the first World War.
But, as I explain in my next book, minutely detailed scrutiny of the death mask and various acknowledged portraits of Shakespeare reveals something very interesting. The chances of the death mask NOT being of Shakespeare are miniscule. There are, quite simply, far too many unusual correspondences, too many unique features in common, for it to have been anybody else's. To put it simply, this is the death mask made of William Shakespeare in 1616. So why does the country's leading authority on all things Shakespearean reject the very possibility that it might be?
It's that same old problem of cognitive dissonance. During a period of right-wing political retrenchment, of reactionary thinking, faith-based certainties and authoritarian judgements, an academic consensus surrounding Shakespeare has emerged (in its way, it's not too dissimilar to the nonsensical scholarly consensus surrounding Arthur). Because the death mask does not fit into the model of Shakespeare that these academics have developed, embraced, and sought to impose on students and readers, then the death mask has to be rejected. A proper study of the death mask would prove that it is almost certainly Shakespeare. But the leading academics of the past few years don't like that idea, so it is consigned to oblivion.
Unfortunately - as with Arthur - this means rejecting all sorts of evidence out of hand and mercilessly abusing those who find such evidence. The academics, you see, have spoken. Arthur could not have been Artuir mac Aedain; the death mask cannot have been Shakespeare's. These standpoints fit comfortably in with the current academic consensus (that is, voicing them means that you stay on the right side of the bigger boys, and don't face the wrath of the authoritarians), but they do nothing whatever for our understanding of Arthur or Shakespeare.
Part of the change that is coming, then, is that the intolerant academics who have dominated their fields for so long will be toppled. Their beliefs - which they have insisted on everybody else paying lip service to - cannot be sustained in the face of the evidence.
But they'll fight tooth and nail, all the way. Because for them - as with the climate change sceptics - it's not a matter of evidence. It's all about belief.
Take one of the most pressing and urgent issues facing humanity: climate change. Contrary to what some people would have you believe, there is little or no disagreement among scientists that climate change is happening and that mankind's activities are largely to blame. However, some people see the implications of this as an infringement of their personal liberties, their beliefs in the infallability of the free market, their 20th century convictions. The scientific data comes as a threat to their beliefs, their worldview.
When evidence, or data, or a theory, or a new idea comes along that challenges your deeply held convictions, you tend to experience something called "cognitive dissonance". It's basically the inability to hold two opposing views at once. There's your settled worldview, and then there's the new information. You can't accept both (they're mutually contradictory), so you attack the new information. And its source. You make out that the scientists are in disagreement with each other, when they're not. And then you reject science altogether. You make faith the cornerstone of your thinking and reject all the evidence which shows your faith to be misplaced.
The problem is exacerbated by a trend that has been apparent over the past few decades. It can best be described, perhaps, as a shift to the right (politically speaking). One of the results of this shift is explored in a new independent movie, Compliance. Basically, many people have been all too willingly placing far too much unquestioning faith in authority. We have all been following unworthy leaders without daring to question what they say.
The institutions which should be challenging political authority - namely, the media (i.e. journalists) and academia - have failed to do so. This is partly because success in those fields has come to be reliant on a willingness to comply, to conform, to accept and repeat hand-me-down beliefs. Those academics and journalists who should have been questioning a rather threadbare and faith-based political philosophy have themselves been caught up in that same philosophy. They cannot question, because they have been imposing their own belief systems on the students and readers, and demanding that those same students and readers comply and conform.
With regard to my recently published book about the historical Arthur - The King Arthur Conspiracy (published by The History Press) - it has been interesting to note that the most positive feedback has come from educated readers and academics who haven't subscribed to some formulaic notions along the lines of a consensus. The most savage attacks have come from those who fear to question the consensus which has built up over recent decades (in line with the general shift in the direction of reactionary thinking and compliance with authority figures).
Or, if you prefer, the free-thinkers like the book. Some of them love it. But those who are trammelled in their thinking, and who cannot adjust to new information, have attempted to undermine it. That is, they have experienced cognitive dissonance (information and ideas which do not square with their preconceived notions) and so they fight back, dismissing the message and vilifying the messenger. Unsurprisingly, most of these readers subscribe to a rather imperialistic notion of King Arthur and resent the very idea that he might have been of Scottish descent. There have even been veiled suggestions that The King Arthur Conspiracy was written purely to cash in on the debate surrounding Scottish independence - a suggestion which reveals the latent nationalism behind the 'consensus' view of Arthur.
The same problems hover around William Shakespeare. Back in the 19th century, there was a great deal of scholarly interest in a death mask which was believed to be of Shakespeare:
The death mask has been in Darmstadt, Germany, for many decades now, British interest in the mask seemingly vanishing at around the time of the first World War.
But, as I explain in my next book, minutely detailed scrutiny of the death mask and various acknowledged portraits of Shakespeare reveals something very interesting. The chances of the death mask NOT being of Shakespeare are miniscule. There are, quite simply, far too many unusual correspondences, too many unique features in common, for it to have been anybody else's. To put it simply, this is the death mask made of William Shakespeare in 1616. So why does the country's leading authority on all things Shakespearean reject the very possibility that it might be?
It's that same old problem of cognitive dissonance. During a period of right-wing political retrenchment, of reactionary thinking, faith-based certainties and authoritarian judgements, an academic consensus surrounding Shakespeare has emerged (in its way, it's not too dissimilar to the nonsensical scholarly consensus surrounding Arthur). Because the death mask does not fit into the model of Shakespeare that these academics have developed, embraced, and sought to impose on students and readers, then the death mask has to be rejected. A proper study of the death mask would prove that it is almost certainly Shakespeare. But the leading academics of the past few years don't like that idea, so it is consigned to oblivion.
Unfortunately - as with Arthur - this means rejecting all sorts of evidence out of hand and mercilessly abusing those who find such evidence. The academics, you see, have spoken. Arthur could not have been Artuir mac Aedain; the death mask cannot have been Shakespeare's. These standpoints fit comfortably in with the current academic consensus (that is, voicing them means that you stay on the right side of the bigger boys, and don't face the wrath of the authoritarians), but they do nothing whatever for our understanding of Arthur or Shakespeare.
Part of the change that is coming, then, is that the intolerant academics who have dominated their fields for so long will be toppled. Their beliefs - which they have insisted on everybody else paying lip service to - cannot be sustained in the face of the evidence.
But they'll fight tooth and nail, all the way. Because for them - as with the climate change sceptics - it's not a matter of evidence. It's all about belief.
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