On being Celtic…

Over the years I’ve often struggled to find or indeed give myself a compelling and brief description of what being Celtic is really all about. However, this afternoon while reading Mike Scott’s autobiography, Adventures of a Waterboy, I found a nice little summary:

What did it mean to be Celtic? Being Celtic was a way of seeing and feeling, of interpreting and inhabiting the world. The Celtic domain wasn’t simply a physical landscape spanning Ireland, Scotland, Wales and other regions on the Atlantic rim – it was a dream-space, a kingdom of the imagination with a coherency, a taste all of its own, ‘Room to Roam’, as the George Macdonald poem said. And this dream-space was inside me too.

Nail on the head stuff! Scott’s autobiography is hugely readable and it is not surprising to find that Dion Fortune, another person touched by the Celtic Ray, has been one of his most enduringly favourite and inspiring writers. Scott describes the influence on some of his earlier works in the 1980’s:

Suddenly someone had switched the light on. ‘The Big Music’, with its lyric about discovering The Mysteries, was the first number I wrote after the expedition to Foyle’s (bookshop), and every song on This Is the Sea was full of my new discoveries. Sometimes the influence was direct, like on ‘The Pan Within’, an occult love song, the premise and title of which came from Dion Fortune’s writings; and sometimes more general, as on ‘Trumpets’, a kind of gnostic devotional addressed to a being who was part God, part lover. The Perennial Wisdom fired my imagination and emotions and without its inspiration, songs like ‘The Whole of the Moon’, ‘Medicine Bow’ and ‘This is the Sea’ wouldn’t have been written.

Adventures of a Waterboy is well worth a read, particularly if, like me, you’ve been a fan for almost the past thirty years. You can purchase it directly from the Lilliput Press in Dublin or from Townsend Records in England.

Regrettably the story stops before the recent creation of The Waterboys’ most magical musical offering, An Appointment with Mr Yeats. Now, many musicians have tried to put W B Yeats’ poetry to music but most have failed spectacularly—perhaps with the exception of Celtic troubadour Christy Moore. However, ‘An Appointment with Mr Yeats’ works and is an alchemical gem to be treasured. A number of reviewers have suggested that the album may be Scott’s greatest artistic legacy to date. I’d be inclined to agree. While the ghost of Willie Yeats is the firm foundation of the work, Scott clearly adds the inspiring light of his own soul and creative spirit to produce something more special than either artist could have by themselves.

Fortunately, in a recent interview, Scott suggests that there will be a follow up to the first stage of his autobiography further down the track in a few years. I’m very much looking forward to reading it.

Coming full circle back to the start of this post – ‘On being Celtic’ – thank you Mike Scott for such an elegant and succinct definition. Perhaps to wrap up I should supplement Scott’s views on the matter with the words of Dion Fortune which seem to resonate with his sentiments:

Let us remember the gods of the natural forces,

for they have their work to do in the souls of

men and of women. Let us go back by the path of

our race to the ancient wisdom; its temples stand

on our soil, and the blood remembers. The sun it

worshipped still crosses the heavens above us;

the winds still blow on the hills, and the waters

surround us. The earth takes the seed in her furrow,

and the fire leaps on the hearthstone. As long

as women bake bread and men wield weapons, the

soul of the race is unchanged and belongs to Nature.

Excerpt from ‘Chant Pagan’ by Dion Fortune © The Society of the Inner Light.