Event Category: Celtic Myth

a recording of this lecture will be available to ticket holders for two weeks after the event

King’s Arthur’s great counsellor and magician, Merlin, is the most famous of all wizards in traditional European literature. From medieval romances and histories through Pre-Raphaelite paintings to the modern television and cinema screen, he is a towering figure, at once omnipotent and vulnerable, triumphant and tragic. To medieval writers, he epitomised the allure and the danger of magic, while to modern counterparts he is alternately a Druid, a Christian holy man, or a figure straddling the pagan and Christian worlds. Those who have studied his origins know him as a tantalisingly complex character, founded at once in native Welsh legend and in Anglo-Norman historical romance. His ultimate starting-point, however, seems solidly historic: or does it? You are invited this evening to explore the original sources of his legend, and see if we can understand where it began and how it developed.

Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.

a recording of this lecture will be available to ticket holders for two weeks after the event

Lugh, the Many-Skilled, is the best-known of Irish male deities, and apparently the most popular. Handsome, charismatic, charming, and adept at all that he does, he has been called virtually the ideal designer god. In modern times he is often thought to have originally been identified with the sun. Scholars have linked him with the names of gods and places across Europe to turn him into the Irish version of a single ancient pan-Celtic deity, Lugus. Equally famous today is a sensationally feisty and charismatic Irish goddess, the Morrigan, who is regarded (and often feared) in modern memory as a deity of battle, darkness and terror. She also, however, operated in the medieval stories as a goddess of love, bestowing sovereignty and victory on gods and heroes with whom she mates. The purpose of this talk is to discover what the actual evidence is of both, and to see whether a closer relationship can be made with either in the process.

Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.

a recording of this lecture will be available to ticket holders for two weeks after the event

Brigid (or Bridget, or Bride) is the most popular Irish goddess in the modern world. This is partly because of her bountiful and gentle nature, as a patroness of handicrafts (especially smithwork), poetry and healing, and partly because she is also revered as a major Christian saint, the patroness of Ireland, with a rich heritage of stories attached to her. She thus acts a a connecting point between the religions. The general supposition is that the goddess had an equal importance in pre-Christian times, and evolved into the saint. If that is so, however, why are the pagan and Christian figures so different, and why are there so few actual references to the goddess in medieval texts? This talk is designed to look at the evidence for both goddess and saint, and the possible relationships between them.

Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.