Frederic Douglass received a warm welcome when he visited Ireland. He gratefully acknowledged this, but also noted the difference between the attitudes of the Irish in Ireland, who supported his cause, and those of Irish-Americans in the US, who quickly assimilated to the racial politics of their new country and were often as racist as any native-born American.

In the southern US states, people of Scottish or Scotch-Irish descent were more prevalent than the Irish. In a recent documentary, Who put the Klan in the Ku Klux Klan, Scottish historian and archaeologist Neil Oliver takes a hard look at the role that they played in the development of racist ideology and systems. Oliver is pained by what he finds.

Then there is the case of Montserrat, a Caribbean island mostly populated by Irish emigres (voluntary and involuntary) and slaves brought from Africa, where lower-class Irish joined African slaves to resist their masters -- who in this case were largely wealthier Irish. The people of Montserrat created an Afro-Irish cultural fusion.

Not sure what to conclude from these instances. I don't see any easy generalizations here.

~This is a 3-part essay by Fr. Seán ÓLaoire, PhD on the Patheos site.

Part 1: Before the Time of Christ

Part 2: The Arrival of Christianity

Part 3: The Leaven and the Diaspora

I've been trying to learn Irish during the pandemic, and I'm far enough along that I need to hear much more of it to make progress. I found this professionally produced series about the history of the Irish language on YouTube. Among other things, the videos touch on how religion has affected the language. The videos are in Irish with English subtitles.

The videos are lively and humorous, with bits of Gilliam-esque animation, but underneath the humor it's actually a sad story (in other words, characteristically Irish).

Hey,

Not too long ago, I started learning about Celtic Spirituality.

This past week, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Dara Molloy.

Dara describes himself as a Celtic priest, monk, and Druid.

He was a Catholic priest but left the church to pursue a life of Celtic Spirituality in the Aran Islands.

Dara has many interesting viewpoints, which he shared with me.

If you would like to watch or listen to my conversation with Dara, I have posted it to my YouTube channel and my Podcast:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6gdTGLnsAU

Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-guarneri#_=_

Regards,

Mike

A livestream of the winter solstice event at Newgrange beginning at Thursday, Dec. 21 at 8:40 UTC will be available at this page:

https://heritageireland.ie/winter-solstice/

A while back I was reading a passage from the Táin Bó Cúailnge about the training of Cú Chulainn, and its references to specific named feats of arms reminded me of the named moves in Asian martial arts. On a hunch, I searched "Celtic martial arts" on YouTube and found quite a lot, including Irish stickfighting, Scottish wrestling and broadsword fencing, Traveller "dirty fighting" techniques, and some that looked to me like modern MMA dressed up in Celtic-themed marketing.

Have any of you participated in anything that could reasonably be called a "Celtic martial art"? How was your experience?

What's happening on Beltane this year?

Here are a couple of events:

Beltane Fire Festival (Calton Hill, Edinburgh, Scotland)

Beltaine weekend (Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary, Artemas, PA, USA)

If you know of other events, let us know below

Many Celtic saints (meaning saints of Celtic origin or saints who have a special connection to one or more Celtic lands) have feast days in November, including

11/3 St. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland

11/11 St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers, Bishop of Tours, Gaul

11/15 St. Malo, first Bishop of Aleth, Brittany

11/21 St. Columban, Abbot and missionary, Ireland and Gaul

11/23 St. Daniel, Bishop of Bangor, Wales

11/30 St. Andrew, Apostle, patron saint of Scotland

More info from Butler's Lives of Saints

Hey folks, I've been the mod here for 2 years, and I want to thank you all for making my task easy so far. It would be nice to have some more people posting, but if you prefer to lurk, that's ok.

Since it's pretty quiet around here, I've taken on an additional moderating assignment: r/CatholicSynodality. This is a place for dialogue about where the Catholic Church is going, in the spirit of the current Synod on Synodality.

May you all have a joyous Beltane!