Talk:Scottish mythology

Survivals

There is almost nothing of use here to a Wikipedia user who wants to know what mythological information (of the religious kind) survives in Scotland. What are the literary sources? What was preserved in folklore and oral tradition? Anybody have anything to contribute in that vein? QuartierLatin1968 19:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I've never contributed to this page., but I can give some idea of the sources. There are loads of early modern collectors of Highland, Lowland and Galloway folklore, as well as Scottish-derived Gaelic texts such as the Book of the Dean of Lismore and the Lebor Bretnach, medieval historical works and various saints lives compendia such as the Breviary of Aberdeen. The subject is simply gigantic, but not well studied. - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 19:48, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

There is something of a clash of terminologies between anthropological uses of the term "myth" and popular notions of gods and goddesses. Early folklorists (basically most people before the 1950s) had naive notions about "primitive cultures" that simply aren't useful any more. If WikiPedia writers want to glean sources for archetypes of deities that appeared in Scotland, they could do no worse than to read Anne Ross's "Pagan Celtic Britain". Gaelicmichael 22:25, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

An additional n.b.: Ronald Hutton's book (I think tiitled) "Pagan Gods of the British Isles" has lots of useful warnings for those who think that compiling a list of pagan gods is a trivial task!! Gaelicmichael 22:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Re clash of terminologies: Yes indeed; I was a little disappointed to see that this page had been moved from Scottish folklore to Scottish mythology, because it seemed that the former was more to the point. But not being familiar with the Scottish literature on the subject, I couldn't be sure. QuartierLatin1968 03:45, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Late-19th and early-20th-century works that collected folklore while it was still alive are reasonable sources to look for, though should be taken with a grain of salt, treated as primary sources, and directly attributed. The problem with works like Lewis Spense's The History and Origins of Druidism is that Spense believed a lot of nonsense (like Atlantis). Same goes for Frazer's The Golden Bough, which tries to draw parallels been religious and folkloric beliefs all over the world, often mistaking coincidence for meaning. They were cut from the same cloth as Jung and, later, Joseph Campbell, and engaged in a tremendous amount of what we'd call "original research" and WP:FRINGE, synthesizing and syncretizing unrelated material to build a picture that isn't actually supportable by the facts, but glued together by Celtic Twilight romantic notions. That said, one thing many of these guys did well was dig up obscure folk beliefs, and cite their sources for them. Spense in particular goes on and on about pagan beliefs surviving into the 20th century, noting where and when they've been found and according to whom. His faults are principally interpretational, drawing connections he hopes are real rather than shown to be real.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:38, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Maybe move this, and/or re-scope it

I'm thinking this should move back to Scottish folklore. Very little of the material is actually mythological, and most of what we have comes to us "revised" by Christian monks long after the pagan religion had died off, so we still are not really writing about Scottish mythology, but Christian bowdlerization of Gaelic beliefs, some of which were mythological, some folkloric, and some made up by the Christians. Even if we do have enough material for an article on Scottish actual-mythology, it seems to be material for a separate article from the folklore one. Even them, I'm skeptical that the mythological material wouldn't coincide completely with Old Irish mythology, and/or with Welsh (British) mythology, where the two would have mixed. So, if we don't split, it would probably make sense to not duplicate that material in this article. Stick to the folklore, and when it touches on mythological themes and figures, refer to the extant articles on them. Anyway, this kind of scope discussion is probably worth hashing out before launching an RM; those tend to get testy and to fail to come to any consensus if the goals are not clear beforehand.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:48, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

"Ulster Cycle" "Fin and Fianna" Sections

Are only Gaelic Celt, Irish mythology; should be moved to that article and removed from here. The portion that claims it is Scottish mythology is does not have a citation. I believe this is false. (2001:579:83A8:BA00:5480:A94:C973:8964 (talk) 19:11, 6 January 2021 (UTC))

The book Duanaire Na Sracaire: Songbook of the Pillagers: Anthology of Scotland's Gaelic Verse to 1600 by Wilson McLeod and Meg Bateman (Birlinn, 2019) talks about the Fianna stories and stories about Cú Chulainn showing up in Scottish Gaelic poetry. It indicates that many of these poems are in the Book of the Dean of Lismore. This indicates that these stories are a part of Scottish Gaelic folklore (mythology?) as well as Irish, probably because there were strong ties between Gaelic people in Scotland and the Irish during the times these poems were written. --Grammarchist (talk) 20:51, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: HUM 202 - Introduction to Mythology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 August 2023 and 8 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Thoughtsofamermaid (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Thoughtsofamermaid (talk) 04:15, 7 November 2023 (UTC)