Tidying up

 Tidying Up:  I have decided to draw out the little tales of Celtic telling.  It is to do with the old saints, the Celtic ones, that wandered round our land and others of course, preaching but there is a whole swathe of opinion that the term 'Celtic' is a descriptive term that has come in through over-romanticism, starting in the 18th century, of past people.

A lot of the stories come from the Irish tradition of storytelling and old books still exist with the dates of battles and kings and ancestral lineage.  So imagination may have run riot but there is still a small truth hidden somewhere in all the myths.

This thought came to me when on listening to a talk on Saturday.  The speaker had written a book on tales from Lindisfarne, but the thing missing was hardly any reference to Lindisfarne??  

I did enjoy the talk, though there was a thread of the modern day through it which was gender identity, she identified herself as she/they.  Now my family will tell you I get completely confused by the use of they, but that is my age obviously.  Also obviously trying to work out whether people from the Celtic Age were LGBTQ, was a stretch too far ;)

Lindsfarne Island like Iona Island on the West side of England was the place where the first early monasteries congregated and were the place where many important Celtic saints came from, they accrued their stories and preached far and wide.  They took some of the practice of imitating the Eastern monks, finding lonely places to live like hermits but also preached.  I also love the idea of them walking around with a bell, a bangu to summon the congregation in the open air.

So I start with probably my favourite female saint, Melangell, she saved a hare from a local  hunting prince and was rewarded some land which forever became a sanctuary from the kill of the hunt.  The first environmental person to stand up for the rights of animals maybe.