u/ImportantProblem2481

It’s late at night, and I’ve gone down a rabbit hole looking into creepy paranormal stories.. when I was a child I was obsessed with creepy stories like Marjorie McCall and other old Irish folklore.

I remember being told as a child where an exorcism happened… and being absolutely terrified when I was younger.

But it got me thinking about how much I don’t believe in supernatural things anymore as an adult.. but I wondered, have you any genuinely creepy or unexplainable stories? Do let us know

Is the CELT project site down for anyone else?

I'm stuck trying to find out which versions of 2CMT Eliz Gray was using and both the new and old domains are inaccessible.

https://celt.ucc.ie/document/
https://iso.ucc.ie

Duchas.ie contains a huge collection of oral tradition many of it recorded by children.

You can spend hours browsing through stories on all sorts of topics from folklore to advice on farming.

If you are bored I'd highly recommend getting lost in the archives.

The word síd is translated as 'peace' in poetry from the adventures of connla. Potentially one of our oldest stories where it might be used as a part of a christian allegory that uses secular imagery.

The same word is translated as 'peace' in the poetry at the end of the second battle of Moytura. . 'Sith co nem. Nem co doman' / 'Peace up to heaven. Heaven down to earth.'

Since we're relying on the earlier adventures of Conla for the translation could the poem popularly called the Morrígan's prophecy be in the same ecclesiastical context?

Kim McCone in his translation of Connla and John Carey in a separate article both locate the Connla poem in 'the ecclesiastical culture of homily and exegesis.' In their view the word 'síd' can be translated as 'peace' because its being used to illustrate the allegory between the otherworld and the christian afterlife. The poem shows the aes síde are from heaven.

Should the battle of Moytura be looked at differently than the adventures of Connla? As something secular?

Could intra/intertextuality be a reframing of the old nativism/antinativism?

Im reading an old article by John Carey "the encounter at the ford: warriors, water, and women." He mentions that Nagy looks at the Táin in isolation where James Carney looks at greek and roman influences.

In his article "Talking Myth in Medieval Irish Literature" Nagy mentions carney obliquely when he criticises anti nativists here discouraging students from trying to recreate IE originals of myths.

On the surface of it, the argument seems to have been going on 20 years after the fact.

https://www.wexfordcoco.ie/sites/default/files/content/Yola%20Today%20-%20Resource%20Pack%20ONLINE%20USE.pdf

A remscéla of the Táin that might come from the 12th century mentions that Medb and Ailills Druids try to tell how the battle will go by making a sacrifice to Osirus and classical deities.

The story is called "the battle of findchorad."

'They offered sacrifices to Mars, to Osiris (?), to Jove and to Apollo. These are the sacrifices they offered: the flesh of dogs, pigs and cats'

Did those deities and the ritual get into the story because the remscéla draws from oral stories or lost manuscripts on paganism? Or could it be a more contempory authority on paganism to the scribe like Augustine of Hippo and his book 'the city of god' because it mentions osirus.

Whilst all folkcrafts can be called piseogry since theyre superstitions. House blessings, cures, and gifts are separate to a form of cursing only called piseog bags.

A 10-10-20 fertiliser bag with sticks, flowers, and ribbon hung from a tree at someones gate. Could drag them into misery, and poverty. Only priests can destroy them. But could its actual function be a traditional way of airing a grievance publically so it doesnt silently fester and get violent?

If people see a piseog bag they know someones broken a traditional tabu, and theres a bad problem. So they talk about it and the public discussion brings everything out in the wash. Where who is in the right and what should be done turns into public opinion.

We funnel tourists out to an abandoned cottage in feakle to see where Biddy Early lived. But whilst the plague of tourism exists did people like Biddy Early, Máire Ní Mhuirchu etc exist or is it old school rationalism?

How much of the second recension of the Táin is influenced by Virgils Aeneid?

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Theres an Irish translation of the Aeneid in the manuscript that it comes from. So we know Aed Ua Crimthann had a very detailed understanding of the Aeneid.

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When he expanded and edited the Táin he illustrated his understanding for his readership by comparing characters. For example, the Morrigan is called the Morrigan Alecto and in his version of the Aeneid Alecto is called Alecto badb.