MARCUS PITCAITHLY

I delve into the question of what exactly "Celtic" means. The term "Celtic" is an extremely contentious one. The idea of Celticity has often been politically charged; the word gets bandied around a lot, and used very loosely, with extreme vagueness about whether it should be taken as referring to language, culture, genetics, or a combination of the above; it provokes a lot of fights, often between people who don't seem to realise that they're using different definitions, and

In which I look at the legacy of the ancient British resistance leader in later folklore, romance, and drama. Content note: child abduction; marital breakdown. We've looked before at the potential relationship between Shakespeare's Cymbeline (c. 1610/11) and the Snow White story. I'd like to dive again into the play's connections to other romances and legends about the Roman invasion of Britain in CE 43. The majority of the play's quasi-historical material comes by way of

In which I examine the connections of one of Tolkien's most famous characters to Shakespeare, Norse myth, and a local legend from...

The second volume of Old Tales Retold is out! As with Sprites and Goblins, I didn't feel the book itself was the place for notes on the...

Content note: murder; attempted murder (including familial and spousal); violent jealousy; rape. NB: This post has been edited since it...

I've finally published the first volume of Old Tales Retold. (Volume II, Here Be Dragons, should follow in 2017.) It didn't seem the...

A look at the early literary history of orcs. Content note: racism. Image: engraving of Orcus from Orlando Furioso. The orc – generally a...

In a few esoteric corners of the Internet, one will come across the assertion that Kenneth III, King of Scots from 997 to 1005, was of...