#this goes for other Celtic speaking nations too like Scotland Brittany Isle of Man and Cornwall

[llyfrenfys]

See, I personally find this quest to find pagan/pre-Christian elements in Welsh/Irish literature quite unnerving - I don't know about anyone else.

There's something to be said about genuinely discovering pre-Christian elements in a narrative or story and that being where evidence and study has led you. But I see some people on this fruitless quest to find pagan elements in very Christian texts and sometimes it feels like if no pagan elements can be found, people start making stuff up out of whole cloth - and that can be very dangerous for already not-well known texts in minoritised languages!

There's already so much misinformation out there about Irish/Welsh texts and literature in general - so it hurts to see people carelessly adding to the misinformation either out of ignorance or lack of respect for the source material.

I promise you the source material being Christian doesn't ruin it - you can in fact, enjoy these myths without making them into something they're not!

[llyfrenfys]

Actually adding my tags to the main post because they're just as important as the main text

#I feel like general ire towards (particularly) colonial Christianity has informed how people think of and view anything that is associated

#with Christianity - and ire towards some of the ills committed in the name of Christianity is very valid actually

#but what it isn't is approaching any text written in a Christian context and immediately disregarding it for having anything unique or#insightful to say. And in a Celtic languages context

#this can be especially othering and almost fetishistic of an imagined pagan Ireland and Wales which was 'covered up' by Christianity

#and that desire for people outside of Ireland and Wales to impose a kind of 'pagan faerie culture' onto the modern countries directly feeds

#into false depictions of Ireland and Wales as 'lost in time' or as magical places full of latent pagan culture &c. which can be really

#damaging in its own way against people who live in Wales or Ireland or who speak Welsh or Irish

#this goes for other Celtic speaking nations too like Scotland Brittany Isle of Man and Cornwall

#But Wales and Ireland tend to be the most focused on for this kind of treatment

See, I personally find this quest to find pagan/pre-Christian elements in Welsh/Irish literature quite unnerving - I don't know about anyone else.

There's something to be said about genuinely discovering pre-Christian elements in a narrative or story and that being where evidence and study has led you. But I see some people on this fruitless quest to find pagan elements in very Christian texts and sometimes it feels like if no pagan elements can be found, people start making stuff up out of whole cloth - and that can be very dangerous for already not-well known texts in minoritised languages!

There's already so much misinformation out there about Irish/Welsh texts and literature in general - so it hurts to see people carelessly adding to the misinformation either out of ignorance or lack of respect for the source material.

I promise you the source material being Christian doesn't ruin it - you can in fact, enjoy these myths without making them into something they're not!