aondeug
Full Member
Posts: 141
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers, He/Him/His
Religion: Thai Theravada, Irish polytheism
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Post by aondeug on Feb 13, 2015 19:36:02 GMT -6
This might not be the actual best place to put this but I feel like we could probably do with having a thread about the living cultures of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man and our experiences with it. I feel it's important to study or learn about or participate in it to some extent. Along with studying things like, say, the history of Catholicism in Ireland. Partly because it's just the polite thing to do I think, and partly because I do feel it can offer a sort of greater understanding or weight to the polytheist thing.
Anyway. My own experience with the living culture of Ireland has been incredibly limited. I do have a friend that is second generation Irish, and whose family has regular contact with their family back in Ireland. They're a Catholic family though one that came from the North. Her younger sister's expressed a sort of conflict about that whole thing in regards to how "Irish" she actually is, and my friend as well.
They're a nice family though. Really nice. They've told me fun stories about their wakes and about things like how when they were younger their father taught them to leave out milk for the Good People. Which isn't a thing they do anymore. Kind of like how children grow out of writing letters to Santa, I suppose.
And I've learned how to do things from them as well. I've learned to make fadge. Soda bread and potato soup too. I've become a part of this continuum of the passing down and sharing of their family recipes. Even if only a bit. I've then gone on to show my brother how to make these things as well. And that was just a very important day for me, I feel. A real and definitely tangible form of contact which meant quite a bit to me. The first batch of fadge I made were slightly burnt. That sticks out to me in particular.
That and a bit of the bread I offered to the gods when I got home.
And I've gone and shared things with them as well. I know lots of stories that they don't from the mythology and what not, and I'm learning bits of the language to share with them as well. And bits about the history of said language.
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Post by Allec on Feb 13, 2015 20:13:44 GMT -6
This is the perfect place to talk about the living culture Aondeug  I unfortunately have very limited exposure. My FIANCE has more since he had someone visiting from Ireland at his office for a few weeks! I am trying to learn the language and am making some progress in Duolingo. It'd be great if there was some sort of penpal program for people out of school to talk to people in Ireland, Scotland, or Island of Man. |
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aondeug
Full Member
Posts: 141
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers, He/Him/His
Religion: Thai Theravada, Irish polytheism
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Post by aondeug on Feb 14, 2015 0:48:26 GMT -6
Oh yay it's in the right place. I always kind of worry about little things like that. Anyway. I really need to get back on studying the language...I've made some progress with Duolingo and some books but I know very little Irish. And then I got caught up with school.
I find it kind of amusing that I've had more trouble starting Irish than I did with Arabic. But then by that point I had already had a few run ins with languages that do things that Arabic does grammatically and morphologically. Granted the root system will be the end of me. Irish is a whole new realm of prepositions doing things that I've never seen before.
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Post by Allec on Feb 14, 2015 13:10:54 GMT -6
I know right?! D: I had someone translate a complex sentence for me to then give a literal translation back so I can sorta figure it out... It's so different than what I'm use to.
But I'll keep trying >< If I can complete Duolingo, I'll consider that a huge success!
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Post by brimstonne on Feb 15, 2015 15:12:58 GMT -6
Im so jealous of anyone who can learn languages, Im horrible at it. I don't actually know anyone whos Irish, or from Ireland, which makes things difficult, but I try to learn it the easiest way for me. So I cook a lot of the traditional foods, and learn why it was traditional, etc. Like soda bread was/is really common because it required so few ingredients that almost anyone could afford to make it no matter their means in society. Its the easiest way for me to connect in that sense.
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wickedlittlecritta
Full Member
A tempest in a teacup
Posts: 169
Pronouns: she/her
Religion: Gaelic polytheist
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Post by wickedlittlecritta on Feb 15, 2015 16:43:54 GMT -6
I need to get back into Duolingo. I'm normally pretty good at languages, but I can't make heads or tails of Irish pronunciation.
I'm in the same boat as brimstonne, where I don't know anybody who's Irish/from Ireland, and while I am in a location with a pretty big diaspora population, there's only a few sporadic connections that I've been able to find. Most of it involving food. Which is great, but I'm not really big on cooking or baking, so I tend to focus on other stuff. Mostly media: songs, folk tales, stories, movies, history. I'm also trying to look more into specifically Irish-American stuff, and work that into my practice too. Since I'm American and all.
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Post by brimstonne on Feb 15, 2015 16:47:02 GMT -6
I need to get back into Duolingo. I'm normally pretty good at languages, but I can't make heads or tails of Irish pronunciation. I'm in the same boat as brimstonne, where I don't know anybody who's Irish/from Ireland, and while I am in a location with a pretty big diaspora population, there's only a few sporadic connections that I've been able to find. Most of it involving food. Which is great, but I'm not really big on cooking or baking, so I tend to focus on other stuff. Mostly media: songs, folk tales, stories, movies, history. I'm also trying to look more into specifically Irish-American stuff, and work that into my practice too. Since I'm American and all. I love reading Irish Fairytales too, theyre actually quite different than our American ones, or you could look into reading stories written by Irish people, or Irish-Americans to look at their worldview? |
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wickedlittlecritta
Full Member
A tempest in a teacup
Posts: 169
Pronouns: she/her
Religion: Gaelic polytheist
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Post by wickedlittlecritta on Feb 15, 2015 17:08:28 GMT -6
I have one of Yeats' folk and fairy tale collections that I adore, and a couple collections of assorted fairy tales that include Irish or Scottish ones. I've got a couple of nonfiction books on Irish Americans, and a scattered collection of fiction by Irish authors. Mostly Oscar Wilde. I love Oscar Wilde. My next goal is to find some more contemporary stuff but I already have piles of books to read and not enough space so it's a slow burning project. *Sighs wistfully at amazon wishlist* |
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Post by Allec on Feb 15, 2015 17:14:40 GMT -6
I've been reading two books by Lora O'Brien, who is a self-described Irish Witch. I so far really like her work, though I was hesitant at first! Her books Irish Witchcraft from an Irish Witch is so far great, as is A Practical Guide to Irish Spirituality (though the latter gives me questions to answer so I'm moving faaar slower than my typical snail pace.) At any rate, she's from the living culture and I find that important on its own--her work into the pagan and polytheist spheres is so far very accessible and yet not inaccurate. (She even describes what it means to be "Wiccan" vs "Witch" pretty accurately. Horrah!) I have another book that is written from an Irish-American perspective, but I haven't gotten too far into it so I'll let you know if it's any good when I have a better opinion of it |
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Post by TheModernSouthernPolytheist on Feb 17, 2015 0:36:09 GMT -6
I've had to put Irish on hold due to needing to learn Spanish for work/future goals, but it's on my list. I really love it.
I had the opportunity to travel to Ireland and stay for almost a month in the summer of 2013. I fell in love with it and it definitely left an imprint on me forever. It was a bit cold for my Southern bones (it was 65ºF/18ºC in June when I'm used to more like 90+ºF/32+ºC that time of year and that's not the hottest month down here), but other than that, the food, the people, and everything was amazing. Admittedly, we spent the vast majority of our time in Dublin, so it was rather cosmopolitain, but we did a little traveling, too. When we go back, we want to see County Derry and county Claire, where parts of our family immigrated from as well as a couple islands in Scotland that have castles once belonging to parts of the family, apparently. The Gaelic lands are somewhere I think I'll make multiple pilgrimages to throughout my life, finances willing.
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Post by Allec on Feb 17, 2015 13:39:10 GMT -6
Gaelic Polytheists in Diaspora Travel to Ireland 2020! /wishes
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cass
Junior Member
Posts: 77
Pronouns: they/their
Religion: Gaelic polytheist
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Post by cass on Feb 19, 2015 21:53:11 GMT -6
the field trip will happen!  i grew up going to highland games and irish music festivals, and i had this giant book of folktales from all over the world and i kind of read the irish and scottish ones obsessively, which is pretty much what got me so interested in gaelic cultures and led me to CR. there was a 3 day irish music fest about 30 minutes from my uni that i used to go to every year, and it had things like a wake tent and bodhran lessons and storytelling. and it had this cultural tent that had a different theme every year... i was actually supposed to help put that together once, but the person in charge just kinda stopped emailing me? i really really miss having festivals to go to. there's supposed to be a huge amazing inter-celtic music festival every year in france that i would probably sell my soul to go to >_< one day i will hopefully have that kind of money. i'm still working on the whole connecting my love for gaelic music and being gaelpol thing (setting poems from the carmina gadelica to music, devotional improv, music inspired by myths and legends, that sort of thing), but it'll be a while i think. |
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aondeug
Full Member
Posts: 141
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers, He/Him/His
Religion: Thai Theravada, Irish polytheism
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Post by aondeug on Feb 20, 2015 0:03:35 GMT -6
I just picked up a collection of Irish poetry edited and translated (mostly) by Thomas Kinsella. I happened to find it at a used bookstore while waiting for my grandfather for two dollars. I am very happy about this because I've been wanting to get more into Irish literature and poetry. Also it has some of the bits of poetry from his translation of The Táin which makes me very giddy. Two of the bits are some of my favorite parts of The Táin too. Namely the poems that the Morrígan recites as the armies enter Cuailnge and before the last battle. There's an anthology of short stories and the like at my school library that I still need to finish going through too.
And I NEED to read more Joyce. Because I am very, very fond of what little I've gotten through of Ulysses. There's something very pleasing to me about how it's written. Yes, I got lost at times but there's a sort of joy in that getting lost I think. It makes me think of how things are for me at times when I am walking around? Sometimes I just get very, very caught up in my thoughts and the world just becomes a vague blur. And then I get pulled out of it and I'm like "Where the fuck am I? What." That and there's a sort of weird grotesque beauty in describing the thoughts of some guy while he's taking a shit.
There is so much stuff to read and so much history to read about the times when these things were written and about the people who wrote them.
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Huri
Newbie
gone in the river
Posts: 36
Pronouns: They/Them
Religion: Gaelic Polytheist
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Post by Huri on Mar 25, 2015 10:49:02 GMT -6
I want to add all of you on Duolingo! Irish support team go! The only friends I have on there is my girlfriend (who's trying to learn Spanish) and my best friend (who knows like 5 languages, but not Irish)
My exposure to Irish culture has been pretty limited. Apparently my grandmother on my mom's side talked a lot about Ireland and wanting to visit but I didn't get to talk to her much because of my dad.
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ryeduck
Junior Member
Posts: 63
Pronouns: he/his/him
Religion: TBD
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Post by ryeduck on Mar 25, 2015 20:21:02 GMT -6
None of my living relatives are from Ireland, but a good portion of my family heavily identifies with their Irish heritage and takes pride in it. Several years ago my dad, grandma, and I went and stayed with a friend of my grandma's in County Sligo in Ireland. I got to experience the culture first hand and It's really stuck with me since. We went to Irish music sessions, walked the streets of Dublin, saw a soccer match in person (go Sligo Rovers!), and really tried to take in as much as we could. From that trip I developed a love for rugby. While hurling and Gaelic football are their traditional sports, football/soccer and rugby are definitely very prominent in Ireland's culture today. I'm actually still ecstatic about Ireland winning the rugby Six Nations tournament for the second year in a row! Rugby World Cup is in our sights! However, probably one of the most memorable moments of that trip was when we climbed Knocknarea. It's a large hill of limestone in Country Sligo and on it's summit lies Medb's Cairn, said to be the resting place of Medb, queen of Connacht in the Ulster Cycle. Definitely worth the hike if you ever get to go to Ireland. I know I will climb Knocknarea again if I ever get to go back! We have an Irish pub here in town that is run by an actually Irish Irish family. They have a traditional Sunday music session every week and I used to play accordion there. I haven't been in a long while and am out of practice, but will certainly go back if my work schedule will allow it. I love traditional Irish music (Solas anyone?) Speaking of work, I actually work at a whisky distillery that uses the traditional Scottish method of malting barely and we also have two Scottish style pot stills. So in a way, even my work is preserving a little bit of Gaelic culture! Those are just what I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more though. Like I said, my family is proud of their Irish heritage |
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