The Celtic Reader: Selections from Celtic Legend, Scholarship and Story

by John Matthews

A broad-based collection of materials dating from the earliest eras of the written word to the 19th and 20th-century scholarship and investigation.

Genres: Mythology, Fantasy, Anthologies

317 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

John Matthews is an historian, folklorist and author. He has been a full time writer since 1980 and has produced over ninety books on the Arthurian Legends and Grail Studies, as well as short stories and a volume of poetry. He has devoted much of the past thirty years to the study of Arthurian Traditions and myth in general. His best known and most widely read works are ‘Pirates’ (Carlton/Atheneum), No 1 children’s book on the New York Times Review best-seller list for 22 weeks in 2006, ‘The Grail, Quest for Eternal Life’ (Thames & Hudson, 1981) ‘The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom’ (Element, 1994) and ‘The Winter Solstice’ (Quest Books, 1999) which won the Benjamin Franklin Award for that year. His book ‘Celtic Warrior Chiefs’ was a New York Public Library recommended title for young people.

Reviews

[Michael Cahill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not exactly light reading, but if have a hankering to explore old texts about the celts, this is an excellent investment of your time. The book is subtitled "A selection of lost classics from Celtic literature". and that is what it is. Compiler and editor Matthews has assembled a collection of works that were published much earlier, providing introductory comments and interpretation. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. But it is not light reading, and this area would have to interest you greatly.

[Saski · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just pressed 'I'm finished' as in "I can't continue! as in "I can't care enough about the topic to struggle through bad writing in hopes that one of these essays is brilliant." And at this rate it would have to be brilliant to make up for what I have read so far. It's embarrassing. I was going to do a triple doctorate in Indo-European Studies -- one third I-E mythology, one third I-E archaeology/anthropology, one third I-E linguistics (my favorite part). This book would be a perfect part of my reading assembly, but it seems I have traveled far in the past twenty years. I just can't get interested.

But I honestly feel it is not completely my fault. I believe the choices Matthews made, the texts he chose to include, were not the best. He says he wanted the "out-of-the-way and unusual, rather than repeating the many variations of Celtic lore, life and literature already available." To which I say, perhaps there is a reason these 'unusual' writings are not readily available, in short because they are not very well-written nor particularly scholarly. And Matthews was aware of these flaws. He says himself that in the first section alone, only one of the authors "is a bona fide scholar." The others are "enthusiastic amateurs," as he calls them, phrase I would not disagree with. They are enthusiastic and they are amateurs. Some of their jumps in logic fly far beyond my understanding, I suspect because they are just that, unsupported jumps in logic. This too, the editor knew: "Whether or not we accept as even possible some of the claims made within this group of essays, we cannot ignore the fascination it holds for us still." I need more than that.

I admit that I have not read enough to give the book a fair shake. No doubt if I were deep in the study of Celtic lore I could find something of use, perhaps even found nowhere else. But I am no longer in this field and there are too many other books, better put together, better selected, that would serve me better at this time.