Кельтологика

Review on Celto-Slavica 1

Andrew Breeze

Parallels Between Celtic and Slavic: Proceedings of the First
International Colloquium of 'Societas Celto-Slavica', Held at the
University of Ulster, Coleraine, 19-21 June 2005_. Edited by Séamus Mac
Mathúna and Maxim Fomin. (Studia Celto-Slavica 1.) Coleraine: The
Stationery Office, 2006. ISBN 0-33-708836-5. xiv + 334 pp. GBP??.

Rarely does a book on Celtic Studies stir the imagination as much as
this one. It implies Celts and Slavs share more than one might think. It
has eighteen chapters, as follows. Séamus Mac Mathúna learnedly
describes Russian Celticists past and present; Piotr Stalmaszczyk does
the same for their modern Polish confrères. Both give ample
bibliographies for their themes. The late Viktor Kalygin discusses K. H.
Schmidt's hypothesis on the eastern origin of the Celts. Respect here
for his erudition is jolted by the remark (p. 69) that the Pennine Hills
have a name 'from the Celtic word for head, ^* _penno_-'. This is
misleading. Kalygin never knew that the form _Pennine_ is a recent one,
due to the English literary forger Charles Bertram (1723-65). See _The
Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names_, ed. V. E. Watts
(Cambridge, 2004), p. 467.

Alexander Falileyev, in a note on the Ukrainian contribution to Holder's
_Alt-celtische Sprachschatz_, stresses the evidence for Celtic
settlement in the Ukraine (when there is very little for Russia). Václav
Blazek sets out equivalents in Slavic mythology to the Irish divine
names _Dagdae_ and _Macha_. He also discusses Pwyll (whose name means
'sense') in the _Four Branches of the Mabinogi_ and his namesakes in
Czech tradition. Although noting that Pwyll is chosen by his bride,
Rhiannon, Blazek is silent on Pwyll's curious passivity and _lack_ of
sense. (For an explanation of that strange courtship and Pwyll's
stranger ineptness, see this reviewer's _Medieval Welsh Literature_, p.
75.)

Folke Josephson compares prefixes of Old Irish and Slavic verbs; Anna
Bondaruk outlines typology of control in Irish and Polish; Elena Parina
discusses direct object double-marking or pronominal reprise in Celtic
and South Slavic; Viktor Bayda explores the ways Irish and Russian show
possession. In a short but striking paper, Anna Muradova is illuminating
on a Breton vocabulary in Catherine the Great's proposed 'dictionary of
all the languages of the world'. This project was directed by the German
scholar Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811), explorer of Siberia and
elsewhere in the Russian Empire. An investigator of heroic mould. The
paper perhaps implies there was more interest in Breton at St Petersburg
than in Brittany. Nevertheless, the Empress's enlightened patronage of
linguistics helped raise the status of Breton in the 1960s, when
scholars in Brittany drew attention to it. Such are the long-term
blessings of disinterested research.

John Carey's 'Russia, Cradle of the Gael' looks at supposed Irish and
Scottish origins in Scythia. Tatyana Mikhailova compares names in
Russian and Irish encantations. Dean Miller contrasts Cú Chulainn with
Ilya of Murom, antagonist of Prince Vladimir, ruler of Kiev. Grigory
Bondarenko's '"Knowledge in the Clouds" in Old Irish and Old Russian',
finding parallels in prophetic dialogues associated with Bran and the
twelfth-century _Lay of Igor's Campaign_, refers to the 'shamanic
flight' of their authors. Nina Chekhonadskaya writes on disruption of
feasts in the saga of Mac Dátho's Pig and Russian epic. Maxim Fomin
furthers discussion on early Ireland and India. After noting Kim
McCone's revisionist challenges to the work of Myles Dillon and D. A.
Binchy, Fomin speaks of how society in each land accepted religious
change. He considers this, rather than survival in both of Indo-European
archaisms in kingship and government, to be the appropriate subject for
researchers. Indian rulers had to take on board the ethics of Buddhism:
Irish kings had to rethink their role as regards Christianity. Fomin
thinks that, by seeing matters in this context, common political
desiderata such as 'abundance' and 'moral uprightness' will make more
sense.

Frank Sewell writes on recent poetry in Ulster and Russia. Hildegard
Tristram's concluding remarks 'What's in Celto-Slavonica?' stress the
bulk of material on Celtic Studies from Slavic lands, little of it known
in the West. She goes on to define lines of research under the headings
of contrastive studies, aspects of contact, and common inheritance. The
volume ends with an obituary of V. P. Kalygin (1950-2004) and list of
publications by that brave philological pioneer.

There is much to admire in this truly ground-breaking volume. Worthy of
praise is the emphasis on traditional linguistic science, something now
(one feels) out of favour in British universities, but evidently
flourishing in Ireland and the Slavic countries. Both are heirs to the
great philologists of nineteenth-century Europe. It is thus perhaps no
surprise that visitors from Moscow or Lublin found their hosts in
Coleraine speaking the same methodological language. This may be because
Ireland and Russia are old-fashioned places, where change comes late; or
because philological study and linguistic nationalism have long been
friends. A future International Colloquium of Societas Celto-Slavica may
find the latter a fertile subject. It would bring together vast swathes
of modern European history, in which literary romanticism, having sown a
crop of romantic legends, reaped a harvest of intransigent nationalism.
In this tremendous movement the poets were aided by professors of
philology, with their grammar-books and glossaries. The subject is a
promising one for Celts and Slavs alike.

After praise, criticism. Some will be pained at the book's general
implication that Celtic = Irish. Celts in (say) Scotland and Wales may
feel aggrieved that it says so little on their countries. Some
contributors to it apologize for not referring more to work by Czechs,
Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, or Bulgarians. (Hungarians and
Romanians, being non-Slavs, are just ignored.) Yet one finds nothing on
those lines as regards Scotland, Wales, or Cornwall. But then
Pan-Slavism is strong: Pan-Celticism is weak. This also merits analysis.

Parallels Between Celtic and Slavic_ is hence far from being a quixotic
or eccentric venture. It touches upon basic questions of language,
culture, and historical identity. Future volumes in the series could
therefore have very interesting things indeed to say on Celts and Slavs,
peoples who from each part of their continent have been crucial in
shaping its destiny.

                                          ANDREW BREEZE

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