Re: 'Return Stonehenge' says archdruid

From: allan connochie (allan_at_EASYNET.CO.UK)
Date: 06/25/04 

Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 23:54:45 +0100

"Féachadóir" <Féach@d.óir> wrote in message
news:7kund0p5u22rmap42rha1g84pubog4oqjt@4ax.com...
> Scríobh "allan connochie" <allan@EASYNET.CO.UK>:
> >
> >"Féachadóir" <Féach@d.óir> wrote in message
> >news:sj8ld0l8h5p5ru0tu6dfk3r5269glgj5gr@4ax.com...
> >> Scríobh "allan connochie" <allan@EASYNET.CO.UK>:
> >>
> >> [snip]
> >> >The Book
> >> In the ninth century when the Book of Kells was moved, Mac Alpín was
> >> uniting the Scots and Pictish kingdom. It might not be the modern
> >> Scottish nation, but something certainly existed.
> >
> >Well precisely it wasn't Scotland. The kingdom which emerged, Alba,
> >constituted only a smallish part of what is now Scotland. Even the
Western
> >Isles themselves were not part of this kingdom. They didn't become truly
> >part of Scotland until four centuries afterwards.
>
> Isn't this a bit like the US didn't exist in the late 1700s, because
> there were only 13 states?

I see where you're coming from right enough but I'm still not sure. There
was a nucleus of some kind of merging state
yes but it didn't even encompass Iona. Hence the book was never in this
emerging state. The Western Isles had been part of Gaeldom and it was
simply moved to another part of Gaeldom when the Norse were overrunning the
Western Isles. What I was really trying to say was that those who produced
the book were of a religious culture which cut across the modern idea of
Ireland and Scottish Gaeldom. Hence it didn't leave its homeland simply
moved within it. That the nations of Ireland and Scotland emerged later is
another story.

It's very much like folk describe St Cuthbert as a great English saint.
Looking at it in modern eyes he of course wasn't English. He was born,
raised and initially worked in what has been a fully integrated part of
Scotland for a millenium. But at that time he was a Northumbrian.
Generally regarded as part of the heptachery. He was as English as Bede if
that means anything at all. It's just that borders which emerged later
confuse the matter.

end of waffling

Allan

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