Dark Serpent
Page 49
An interesting aspect of ancient Celtic society, as described by their contemporaries, is their quite modern-sounding attitudes towards homosexuality and women. Men sharing sexual encounters was normal and love between men was highly esteemed. Women were treated as equals, were able to own property and were quite capable of going to war if they chose to. It was not unknown for women to be warlords and to rule clans; and archaeologists are re-examining discoveries of graves that were immediately tagged as those of men to see if they were actually women’s graves. A woman chose her own husband, and if she was unhappy in her marriage she could divorce her husband and keep her property.
The druids kept an oral history and left no written records (as the Archivist is so peeved about). No records of them at all exist after about 200AD. This has made it very difficult to create a definitive profile of these people.
During the Middle Ages, some monks collected the folk tales of Ireland and Wales and ‘updated’ them, making Saint Patrick a superhero who converted the evil Celtic heathens. They produced wonderful manuscripts of these stories, which in turn form the basis of the Romantic classic Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. The original folk tales were translated into English by Lady Charlotte Guest and published as The Mabinogion; and were compiled into a series of three volumes by Owen M Edwards in 1902, all of which are available electronically via Project Gutenberg. They include many tales of Arthur and his court and the romanticised exploits of his knights, but there are also references to the true Iron Age society of warlords and chieftains, who led their clans in battle against each other, conquered neighbouring towns, then demanded regular tributes and took nobles’ children to hold as hostages.
When I plugged ‘Celtic mythology’ into Google, a large number of nineteenth-century resources came up, all of which painted the druids as a gentle, nature-worshipping group of wise magicians who venerated Christ long before he was born. These are generally romanticised versions of the historical tales, based on the idea of the noble savage, an ancient magical sage who was at one with nature. I looked further into the author of many of these sources, James Bonwick, and discovered that he was a Tasmanian schoolteacher who had absolutely no access to first-hand archaeological information. Most of this material seems to be completely made up, based on the tales translated by Lady Caroline Guest. This was a type of counter-propaganda, an attempt to redefine pre-Christian people as civilised to refute the commonly held view that any peoples living before Christ were barbarians. The Irish were also regarded as sub-human savages at the time, and Bonwick’s sympathetic portrayal of the druids was a noble attempt to stop persecution of the people of Ireland.
Even though most of this work is not based on factual archaeology, it does not detract from the fascinating recreation and retelling of the Celtic myths, colouring them with a sense of culture and civilisation that resonates even today. They’re certainly much more readable than Caesar’s brutal depictions, and seem to be the foundation of much of the modern life-affirming neo-pagan movement. Bonwick, for example, seems to be one of the first scholars to link the druids with standing stone circles such as Stonehenge, when historically they probably had very little to do with them.
After reading the wonderful reinventions of the druids, I wanted to find out the truth. Were they brutal headhunters who engaged in human sacrifice, as the Romans said, or were they an advanced civilisation of wise pacifists, as the Romantics depicted them? Modern archaeology would provide the answer: peer-reviewed scientific inquiry without philosophical ulterior motives. The archaeological evidence points to the latter. The solid silver Gundestrup Cauldron (200BC–300AD), discovered in a bog in Denmark, shows someone being drowned in a barrel. Ancient Celtic pits have been unearthed containing remains of sacrifices. The most definitive piece of evidence for me, though, was the Roquepertuse portal, a set of stone pillars from about 300BC in France. The pillars have head-sized alcoves carved into them, and the heads were still in them when they were discovered. There’s a similar set of pillars nearby, again with head alcoves. Nobody lived near these pillars; they formed part of an ancient temple.
One name kept coming up in my research: Barry Cunliffe; or, to give him his full title, Emeritus Professor Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe CBE, Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford (retired, 2007). He’s written some absolutely breathtakingly brilliant books on the history of Europe, and particularly on that of the Celts. The Ancient Celts (1999) is definitive; it’s easy to read, comprehensive and has gorgeous full-colour illustrations throughout. I read many references on the ancient Celts and most of them either covered some of the same material as this book, or referred to it. Anything by Professor Cunliffe is worth reading.
Armed with all of this fascinating information about the nature of the ancient Celts and their druids, I promptly threw all of it away and wrote a story set in the present day with very little reference to what really happened, and an outrageous explanation for the origins of the sea people, Celts, Greek philosophers and the Roman war machine. My aim is purely to entertain and I hope I have succeeded.
All of the places on Anglesey and Holyhead mentioned in the book really exist: the castle is Beaumaris Castle; the manor is Plas Newydd; the Trefignath Burial Chamber really is on a bike track near Tesco’s; and the Penrhos Feilw standing stones are in the middle of a field, along with a couple of extremely cute ponies who wouldn’t come home with me. Images of all these places are easily found on the internet for those interested.
References
(Note: there are probably many more references that I dipped into but didn’t note on my bibliography list. When I’m being a knowledge sponge, I think about how the references will aid my story and completely forget that I’ll have to list them later.)
Anwyl, Edward, Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times, Archibald Constable & Co Ltd, London (1906).
Bonwick, James, The Pagan Gods of Ireland, Samhain Song Press (2011 digitisation of an 1894 original).
Bonwick, James, The Druids of Ireland, Samhain Song Press (2011 digitisation of a pre-1900 original).
Bonwick, James, The Serpent Faith in Ancient Ireland, Samhain Song Press (2011 digitisation of a pre-1900 original). The link between druids and serpents has existed for a very long time.
Curran, B, Celtic Lore & Legend, The Career Press (2004).
Davies, John, The Celts, Cassel, London (2002).
Edwards, Owen M (1902), editor, The Mabinogion, in three volumes, translated from the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch by Lady Caroline Guest.
Edwards, Owen M, A Short History of Wales, Fisher Unwin Ltd (digitised from 1922 original).
James, Simon, Exploring the World of the Celts, Thames & Hudson, London (2005).
Laing, Lloyd Robert, The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland, Cambridge University Press (2006).
Leahy, A H, Heroic Romances of Ireland ( 2008 digitisation of a pre-1923 text).
O’Grady, Standish, The Coming of Cuculain (digitisation of a pre-1923 original).
O’Grady, Standish, Early Bardic Literature of Ireland (digitisation of a pre-1928 original).
Rolleston, T W, Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race (digitisation of a 1911 original).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the people of Holyhead, who are a generous and friendly bunch. I’d particularly like to thank Nerys Beaman and Suzanne Roberts at the Holyhead Information Centre, who plied us with maps, tourist information and advice for our time spent there; June Davies and Neil Abernathy at the Dublin Ferry Guest House, who looked after us exceptionally well; and Ann and Steve Roberts, who run www.Holyhead.com and gave me tea and told me fascinating stories of the town’s history and one of the worst jokes I have heard in my entire life.
Kylie Chan
Brisbane 2012
About the Author
In 1985 Kylie Chan married a Hong Kong national in a traditional Chinese wedding ceremony. She lived in the Chine
se community in Australia for eight years and in Hong Kong for ten years and now lives in Brisbane. Kylie has studied Kung Fu (Wing Chun and Southern Chow Clan styles) as well as Tai Chi and is a senior belt in both forms. She has also made an intensive study of Buddhist and Taoist philosophy and has brought all of these together into her storytelling.
Voyager has published her Dark Heavens and Heaven to Wudang series.
Other Books by Kylie Chan
DARK HEAVENS
White Tiger (1)
Red Phoenix (2)
Blue Dragon (3)
JOURNEY TO WUDANG
Earth to Hell (1)
Hell to Heaven (2)
Heaven to Wudang (3)
CELESTIAL BATTLE
Dark Serpent (1)
Copyright
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2013
This edition published in 2013
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Kylie Chan 2013
The right of Kylie Chan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000. This work is copyright.
Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
31 View Road, Glenfield, Auckland 0627, New Zealand
A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India
77–85 Fulham Palace Road, London, W6 8JB, United Kingdom
2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada
10 East 53rd Street, New York NY 10022, USA
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Chan, Kylie, 1964-
Dark serpent / Kylie Chan.
ISBN: 978 0 7322 9440 3 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978 0 7304 9879 7 (epub)
Speculative fiction.
Demonology – Fiction.
A823.4
Cover design by Darren Holt, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover images by shutterstock.com
Chinese characters supplied by author
Author photograph by Adam Hauldren