The images of Cernunos have been included as part of the shamanic "master of animals" motif and compared to the images of the antlered stag-god of other prehistoric religious icons, such as those seen in the Indus Valley and among the Germanic tribes. There is an enormous amount of intriguing but unprovable speculation among scholars and popular writers alike that link Celtic beliefs, of which we know little, to those of the shamanic beliefs of other prehistoric Indo-European religions. We do have ritual finds that suggest similarities, but the widely variant cultures leave one wondering at the differences.

I confess that although I'm still intrigued by this approach, these days I'm more interested in the differencs that made the Celts distinctly Celtic. In my early days of exploring Celtic cultures, I read Fraser's unabridged Golden Bough cover to cover and anything else I could get my hands on that made fabulous comparisons. Then I went to university, where I majored in Celtic Studies and discovered the wondrous academic approach, which is to sweep the comparisons aside in an attempt to discover who the Celts really were on their own turf. It's a far more minimalist approach and not nearly as much fun, but it has the benefit of clearing the way for the Celts to emerge out of the mists in all their glory, kind of like rolling out the red carpet at the Oscars.

Playing the Hero: Reading the Irish Saga Táin Bó Cúailnge by Ann Dooley

In Playing the Hero, Ann Dooley examines the surviving manuscripts of the most significant early Irish saga, the Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley), and brings to life the culture and times in which medieval scribes recreated the texts. Dooley argues that the scribes' work is both a "transmission and a translation," and that their volatile history of one hundred years — from the beginning to the end of the twelfth century — set the conditions for their literary creativity.

"In this study I am more interested in all the complex and varied aspects of how texts — and this text in particular — reveal themselves, of how it is that they come to mean," Dooley explains. "I have adopted this stance even though most scholars and readers of the text would agree that there is an underlying dynamic and high-relief profile to the narrative of the Táin. It presents a textual vehicle for the display of an exemplary master hero, one who is amply and sharply enough delineated that he can bear comparison with other heroic figures from the early literary traditions of the Indo-European language world. It is tempting to continue a scholarly tradition that sees Cú Chulainn as such: the youth from the Ulster borderlands indeed bestrides his saga like a colossus; however, to borrow phrasing from the saga itself, some trees, indeed whole forests, may have to be first cut down in order to have a clearer line of sight to him."

Playing the Hero is an intriguing contemporary look at the world of Irish saga in which Dooley interrogates the epic hero and violence as a normal way of life in the saga genre. Her work is a provocative groundbreaking addition to Medieval Irish studies.

About the author

Ann Dooley is an associate professor in the Centre for Medieval Studies and the director of the Program for Celtic Studies at the University of Toronto.

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