Talk:Scottish mythology

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There is almost nothing of use here to a Wikipedia user who wants to know what mythological information (of the religious kind) survives in Scotland. What are the literary sources? What was preserved in folklore and oral tradition? Anybody have anything to contribute in that vein? Quartier Latin1968 19:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've never contributed to this page., but I can give some idea of the sources. There are loads of early modern collectors of Highland, Lowland and Galloway folklore, as well as Scottish-derived Gaelic texts such as the Book of the Dean of Lismore and the Lebor Bretnach, medieval historical works and various saints lives compendia such as the Breviary of Aberdeen. The subject is simply gigantic, but not well studied. - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 19:48, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is something of a clash of terminologies between anthropological uses of the term "myth" and popular notions of gods and goddesses. Early folklorists (basically most people before the 1950s) had naive notions about "primitive cultures" that simply aren't useful any more. If WikiPedia writers want to glean sources for archetypes of deities that appeared in Scotland, they could do no worse than to read Anne Ross's "Pagan Celtic Britain". Gaelicmichael 22:25, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An additional n.b.: Ronald Hutton's book (I think tiitled) "Pagan Gods of the British Isles" has lots of useful warnings for those who think that compiling a list of pagan gods is a trivial task!! Gaelicmichael 22:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re clash of terminologies: Yes indeed; I was a little disappointed to see that this page had been moved from Scottish folklore to Scottish mythology, because it seemed that the former was more to the point. But not being familiar with the Scottish literature on the subject, I couldn't be sure. Quartier Latin1968

03:45, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]