#song of albion reread 2k17

[finnlongman]

So, way back in the day -- by which I mean 2017 -- I decided, while pulling an all-nighter, to reread Stephen Lawhead’s Song of Albion trilogy. It had been a favourite during my earlier teens and I was intrigued to see how well it stood up after I’d actually studied Celtic Studies.

The answer was “not very well”, and my increasingly sarcastic liveblog can be found on this blog under the tag “song of albion reread 2k17″, if anyone is curious. Brief takeaways, for those who can’t be bothered to read through: indiscriminate mixing of Irish and Welsh elements, describing a visibly Brittonic language as ‘proto-Gaelic’, ascribing epithets to completely different characters to whom they originally belonged, lack of developed female characters, and occasionally appearing to take both Caesar and Iolo Morgannwg literally as sources.

I only got through the first book and I had concluded I wasn’t masochistic enough to do the others, but, well, I’ve been short of ways to procrastinate recently. I found somewhere I can read book 2, The Silver Hand, online -- I’m dubious about its legality, but since I do own a physical, hardback copy of the book and only happen to be separated from it by the Irish Sea and a pandemic, I figure we can let it slide just this once.

Which means... we can continue.

You’re probably going to want to blacklist “song of albion reread 2k20″, though.

[finnlongman]

Song of Albion reread 2k17, continued

Previous thread: http://miriamjoyblogs.tumblr.com/post/164955799628

Okay so things are continuing to sound distinctly Welsh, but at least something was described as a "Briton" word, which shows there is some acknowledgment of this Brittonic vibe. This, however, is making me raise my eyebrows:

I feel like this is questionable 18th century druid nonsense (or possibly even more recent than that), but I don't know enough about Welsh lit to say for sure. Either way it's very Welsh sounding. And we're supposed to be in Scotland. Well, the Otherworld. But it SOUNDS like the Irish/Gaelic Otherworld in the descriptions, it's just that everybody there appears to be Welsh.

Typical. Go to a whole other world and it's full of Welsh people.

[finnlongman]

Song of Albion reread 2k17, continued further

First thread: http://miriamjoyblogs.tumblr.com/post/164955799628 Second thread: http://miriamjoyblogs.tumblr.com/post/164957886968

I know. I stopped posting. You might've thought I gave up on the book and/or fell asleep (which would be reasonable as it's nearly 6am). Actually I got distracted by food and then the internet, and also the book stopped driving me quite so nuts for a while.

Mostly it's because it became distinctly Welsh and I don't know enough about Lludd and Nudd to know if it was even vaguely accurate so I figured I'd keep quiet.

Anyway, the sun's beginning to come up. I'm on p327, so I have less than 100 pages to go. Let's see if I can get there without wanting to cry.