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The Sky Is Falling on Our Heads : A Journey to the Bottom of the Celtic Fringe
In The Sky Is Falling On Our Heads, Rob Penn travels the length and breadth of the Celtic fringe (from the wilds of Scotland, via Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and the Isle of Man to the heart of Brittany) on a quest to get to the bottom of his Celtic roots. Along the way he endeavours (with mixed and hilarious results) to become a Celtic poet. His odyssey takes him from standing on the table in the corner of an Irish pub, struggling to be heard over the shouts of the drinkers, to the stage at Lorient in Brittany where he must perform his less-than-spectacular poetry in front of an audience of 40,000. He is aided and abetted on his journey by a cast of colourful characters, including a Cornish lady with a penchant for men in kilts, the winner of the Whitest Buttocks in the Isle of Man Competition, and a crystal-clutching Californian. Utterly engaging, and devastatingly funny, this is a captivating romp through an extraordinary - and often bizarre - cultural landscape.
- GenresTravel
342 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 20, 2015
A well-written account of the author's journeys in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man (Penn is half Manx/half English himself) in search of what a "Celtic" identity really means. A nasty incident in which he was the victim of gratuitous violence nearly put me off, but I decided to push on. The book was written a decade ago, and I'm truly sorry not to see more by him. Only "negative" I found was relating entire conversations where I just couldn't deal with having to "translate" the phonetic transcriptions of the local accents into standard English. A little of that went a looooooooong way! Otherwise, definitely recommended.
August 21, 2025
Its not often that I get to write the longest review a book has, but given the nichety of this piece of work (and a piece of work it is) I am going to make my mark on it.
It goes as such: Robb Penn pretends to be a poet whilst travelling Celtic festivals in search of what 'Celticness' actually is, whilst he slowly stops pretending to be a poet and starts actually being one. A brilliant premise for a travelogue, and unfortunately, in my opinion, squandered. I'll begin by addressing my biggest problem: Penn's unacademic sweeping generalisations of Celts, with his focus on that word 'celt' transgressing from an obsessive search to something more fetishistic. He claims to want to find 'real celts' by essentially racially profiling strangers - searching for short, hairy, bearded men, these are his own descriptions of what he wants. His sweeping generalisations include lines such as 'the celtic peoples have always been intolerant of anyone seeking to better themselves', and from beginning to end of this book Penn clumps disparate populations under the banner of 'celt', a mere language term, with zero tact or care. He even comments on historians' growing reluctance to engage with the term 'celt' because of what it means and how little it identifies beyond language, then says these historians make him angry.
Bringing me onto the other major critique of the book: Penn throws around claims and histories and factoids and opinions with what seems like zero academic backup. From a casual travelogue like this academic formatting isn't expected, but some kind of 'books I read' list at the end would give Penn any form of authority in his often very bold claims about 'Celticness'. But that's it - from the beginning of the book Penn openly admits that he can't stand reading academic nonfiction, which isn't a crime in itself, but makes it hard to then establish an authoritative voice for his relating of Celtic cultures and histories.
As purely a travelogue, its alright, and if read only as such could meet with a better audience, however the reader does have to ignore the casual homophobia and sexism Penn weaves throughout his book - read: any of the numerous times Penn meets 'young attractive girls', in his description of their breasts while they dance or short-skirted kilts whilst they perform. And this, from a man with a wife and child. Or better put: this, from a man who MISSED HIS CHILD'S BIRTH to go on a piss-up at Samhain? And missed most of the pregnancy too?
Throughout the book it becomes increasingly clear that Penn's Manxness is also at least a little performative. He is an English-born half-Manxman, a reasonable claim, but throughout his travels he consistently insults various people from the 'Celtic Fringe' in his writing, all whilst taking to his knees to whimper 'I'm Manx, I'm Manx, I'm Manx' whenever someone takes queiry to his belonging. This culminates in the violent incident in Wales, where a man tries to pick a fight with him on account of his Englishness, and he claps back, calling the man a 'fat welsh bastard' and clobbering him to the floor. Whilst I don't approve of the Welsh violence wholly, there is something decidedly wrong about Penn's role as the Englishman at a Welsh festival who seeks to escalate violence, not as the oppressed Welshman, but as the cultural oppressor. Similarly, his furious ravings about the Irish girl who denies pancelticism reek of an oppressive disposition. Penn enters another person's country, into their pub, and writes that he wanted to hit the girl for saying 'fuck the celts' and standing against pancelticism. And of all countries, Ireland, where enough English-accented pricks have caused problems in the past.
This is all without mentioning the phonetic dialogue, where Penn attempts to recapture the sound of each Celt speaking, penning Scottish, Irish, Cornish accents and the like for the purpose of... No, really, why does he do this?
Or, in other words: I wouldn't bother with this one if I were you.
It goes as such: Robb Penn pretends to be a poet whilst travelling Celtic festivals in search of what 'Celticness' actually is, whilst he slowly stops pretending to be a poet and starts actually being one. A brilliant premise for a travelogue, and unfortunately, in my opinion, squandered. I'll begin by addressing my biggest problem: Penn's unacademic sweeping generalisations of Celts, with his focus on that word 'celt' transgressing from an obsessive search to something more fetishistic. He claims to want to find 'real celts' by essentially racially profiling strangers - searching for short, hairy, bearded men, these are his own descriptions of what he wants. His sweeping generalisations include lines such as 'the celtic peoples have always been intolerant of anyone seeking to better themselves', and from beginning to end of this book Penn clumps disparate populations under the banner of 'celt', a mere language term, with zero tact or care. He even comments on historians' growing reluctance to engage with the term 'celt' because of what it means and how little it identifies beyond language, then says these historians make him angry.
Bringing me onto the other major critique of the book: Penn throws around claims and histories and factoids and opinions with what seems like zero academic backup. From a casual travelogue like this academic formatting isn't expected, but some kind of 'books I read' list at the end would give Penn any form of authority in his often very bold claims about 'Celticness'. But that's it - from the beginning of the book Penn openly admits that he can't stand reading academic nonfiction, which isn't a crime in itself, but makes it hard to then establish an authoritative voice for his relating of Celtic cultures and histories.
As purely a travelogue, its alright, and if read only as such could meet with a better audience, however the reader does have to ignore the casual homophobia and sexism Penn weaves throughout his book - read: any of the numerous times Penn meets 'young attractive girls', in his description of their breasts while they dance or short-skirted kilts whilst they perform. And this, from a man with a wife and child. Or better put: this, from a man who MISSED HIS CHILD'S BIRTH to go on a piss-up at Samhain? And missed most of the pregnancy too?
Throughout the book it becomes increasingly clear that Penn's Manxness is also at least a little performative. He is an English-born half-Manxman, a reasonable claim, but throughout his travels he consistently insults various people from the 'Celtic Fringe' in his writing, all whilst taking to his knees to whimper 'I'm Manx, I'm Manx, I'm Manx' whenever someone takes queiry to his belonging. This culminates in the violent incident in Wales, where a man tries to pick a fight with him on account of his Englishness, and he claps back, calling the man a 'fat welsh bastard' and clobbering him to the floor. Whilst I don't approve of the Welsh violence wholly, there is something decidedly wrong about Penn's role as the Englishman at a Welsh festival who seeks to escalate violence, not as the oppressed Welshman, but as the cultural oppressor. Similarly, his furious ravings about the Irish girl who denies pancelticism reek of an oppressive disposition. Penn enters another person's country, into their pub, and writes that he wanted to hit the girl for saying 'fuck the celts' and standing against pancelticism. And of all countries, Ireland, where enough English-accented pricks have caused problems in the past.
This is all without mentioning the phonetic dialogue, where Penn attempts to recapture the sound of each Celt speaking, penning Scottish, Irish, Cornish accents and the like for the purpose of... No, really, why does he do this?
Or, in other words: I wouldn't bother with this one if I were you.
November 28, 2021
The phonetic language made the book hard to read, I couldn't finish it.
October 22, 2014
Loved the idea of the book but the phonetic spelling defeated me. Unfortunately did not finish.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews