The Celts: History, Life, and Culture
John C. Koch, general editor, and Antone Minard, editor
ABC-CLIO
Ireland and Scotland are the countries which come most often to mind when the word Celt is mentioned. Wales is less frequently first thought of, although it is a Celtic land going back into history - and in present day as well. This two-volume encyclopedia, The Celts: History, Life, and Culture, originated at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies. It includes contributions from Celtic scholars the world over, and entries which cover a wide geography of Celtic life. The underlying Welsh perspective brings two interesting aspects to the project. As you might expect, there is rather more coverage of events and people and ideas from Wales than is often found in reference books on Celtic life. In both choice of ways to write about ideas and in choices of what to include and what to leave out, there’s a often a different way of seeing things than is found in reference books edited by those from other parts of the Celtic world, too. In the section covering emigration, for example, there are full articles on emigration from Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Wales, while for emigration and Ireland, the reader is directed to an article called Celtic Languages in North America: Irish; and for emigration and Scotland, a similar one in the Celtic language section about Scottish Gaelic. That’s not to say these are bad perspectives, just that you will often find different approaches in these volumes than you may find elsewhere.
This is a reference work, with 808 articles arranged alphabetically over two volumes. Lest you think that means this is dry reading, though, think again: for the most part the articles are well written, engaging, and filled with useful information for both specialist and general reader -- which is quite an accomplishment for a work to which more than two hundred scholars contributed. Articles range in length from fifty to three thousand words, and there’s a list of selected resources included as well.
What I wish they had also included: there’s a list of the names of all those scholars who contributed, but it is just that -- names, with no hint of affiliation or biography. That would have added to the usefulness of the books for me, as would a pronunciation guide. I know Scottish Gaelic, and Irish, and French, so navigating older forms of these I could handle, but Cornish and Welsh and Breton? Not so much, and I think other readers might face the same problem. As liberal use of names and words in a variety of languages appears, more information about how to say them would’ve been helpful. Space for this could perhaps have come from omitting the table of contents pages, which are reproduced in each volume. As the articles are arranged alphabetically and frequently cross-referenced, I am not sure any reader will need to refer to a table of contents.
Naturally with that diversity of writers and a chronological range of subjects that goes from the Iron Age to the twenty first century, there are subjects I would have wished to see treated differently. All in all, though, The Celts: History, Life, and Culture is a well thought out and well-executed project. It’s not inexpensive, but for a reader engaged with the subject or a librarian looking to expand a collection, it will make a worthy addition to resources.
Kerry Dexter is Music Editor for Wandering Educators You may reach Kerry at music at wanderingeducators dot com
You may find more of Kerry’s work about music and musicians of Ireland, Scotland, and North America, as well as travel, history, and creative practice, at Music Road and elsewhere in print and online.