Countdown to Open Beta - Casse

[QwertyMIDX]

Very tolerant of you .

[Zero1]

Very tolerant of you .

Tolerance is for GIRLY MEN!,

And for the reccord I too think the Celtic newage crap is just that, a load of crap. I fell in love with Celtic and ancient Germanic civilizations for their great warrior spirits and their greater respect for women and females in general when compared to the Grecco/Roman civilizations whom more or less treated women like crap.

[zakalwe]

such as Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Manx and Gaidhlig (or whatever the spelling of Scot's Gaelic is

Gaelic just i'm afraid, although pronounced with an 'a' rather than an 'a'.

incidentally one of the interesting things with gaelic and gaelic is that speakers of Donegal Gaelic i know feel it is far closer to Islay and S Argyll Gaelic than either N Hebrides Gaelic or south of Ulster Gaelic. Not really surprising as the sea is a connector rather than a divider along the west coast, and we shouldn't judge the borders of the past by the borders of today. But just a nice reminder that the modern division of Ireland and Scotland is not so simple in prehistory as we might imagine

[Ranika]

A funny thing is, Scots for a very long time after the formation of what we would call Scotland (though it lacked the Hebrides and such), still considered themselves an Irish kingdom (and were called Irish by Saxons/English for a long time). The relations began to fall away as the Scots grew culturally distinct from the Irish; where they had been essentially identical as Dal Riadans, as they took control of the north of Britain, they grew to be culturally distinct, but essentially still 'Irish'; they had their own customs and unique traits, but, so did all Irish kingdoms; more or less, they became seperate from the clans of Ulster in custom and tradition. When the last Dal Riadan holdings in Ireland were lost, their direct connection to Ireland was severed, but connections were still, more or less, close. However, they remained, essentially, an 'Irish' kingdom; however, conflicts with Northumbria introduced very long-lived land claims in the south of modern Scotland/north of modern England, between who actually had the right to what. So many treaties were rather ambigous, so there was constant conflict over interpretation; one didn't much like the thought of a foreign king collecting tax or raising levies from people who didn't belong to their land. This inevitably led to the influx of Anglo-Saxons into the area we would come to call the 'lowlands'; invaders, migrants, and by way of marriages. Marriages were meant to try and ensure peace, but that never lasted long in the earlier periods; that most weighs on the very much Gaelic culture of the early Scots, which doesn't recognize marriages that well, since the Gaelic clan societies had no concrete nobility, just various ranks of aristocracy that could fluctuate; a marriage agreement good in one generation can very suddenly become utter rubbish. Until the introduction of the Norman feudal system (where feudal noble houses merged with clan systems to an extent, though Norman political styles became predominant), the Saxons/English were dealing with a people who had a wholely different system of politics. The introduction of Norman systems did change a lot. Ireland (at first), despite Norman presence, and despite descending, in large part, into anarchy, preserved much of Gaelic political systems. Normans were Gaelicized; they started following similar systems. Gaelic/Norse Irish took well to some Norman customs, but found many rather abhorrent and flat out barbaric (the concept of 'divine right', particularly, which even most Irish aristocrats, who would benefit, didn't adopt for generations). The Scots in the lowlands changed far quicker; they had been directly associated with the Saxons and then Normans for a longer time than the Irish. Through marriages and just political situation, they adopted many more customs, much quicker. Normano-Irish and Normano-Scots were wholely different groups; the Normano-Irish were more Irish with strong Norman influences (they were simply substantially more prevalent, and the Norman culture was being submerged in Irish culture), and Normano-Scots were more Norman with strong Gaelic Scot influences (not a matter of numbers here; Saxon and then Norman feudalist influences had been being absorbed for some time); this would be a major shift culturally between the two. However, highland Scots, though affected more heavily by Norse culture (though both were substantially influenced by it) were still like the Irish in many respects, though they also had absorbed Pict culture, and had existed in their own land now for centuries, so they, of course, followed a different course of development; by this point, Scots and Irish are most distinctly different groups. However, things still changed more. That's only the Norman invasions and developments; we could explore further (much further), but I think that's a good time to declare the genuine split between the Irish and Scots into completely distinct cultures, though I could understand arguments placing it earlier or even a bit later.

That said; the kingdom of Dal Riada, despite being across the sea (mostly, it had some coastal holdings in Ireland for a while) was, I think, Irish. I don't see much debate in it; while they did change (northern Briton and Pict influences), they could still converse with the Irish easily, shared most of the same customs, etc. Scots and Irish are culturally distinct today (and I'm sure any of us from either would remind you), but it is something of note that we weren't always.

[zakalwe]

I tend to agree with most of what you're saying i think. I see the modern divisions between Ireland and Scotland as somewhat misleading for this period. I wouldn't say Dal Riata was 'irish' as such as i think that puts a modern spin on things, but i agree that culturally these areas were similar. Argyll and the southern hebrides and much of Ulster can really be seen as a single unit. I go with the idea that the supposed 'invasion' of west scotland by the Scots was nothing of the sort. This was predominantly later attempts to explain why the west coast of Scotland had a Gaelic culture. Rather what existed was a cultural and geographical unit encompassing the north of Ireland and Argyll and some other parts of Scotland. Of course this was a dynamic process and power structures shifted between various areas within this unit at different times and interactions with external bodies had strong effects, but the so-called invasion is unlikely to have ever happened. The connections and existence of this socio-cultural sphere had always been there.

[Ranika]

Right; I only use the term 'Irish' as it's something people can understand quicker than trying to draw out a more nebulous concept of culture and tradition. The 'invasion' of Dal Riada has been determined, more and more, to have actually been more of a slow migration; remains of early Gaelic houses from substantially earlier than the proposed period of the 'invasion' exist, so clearly, Gaels existed in Argyll. It's not hard to see why; it's a very short distance between the closest point of Ireland and Scotland; it would be easy to simply determine that one could 'hop the pond' and set up a community; it'd be more of a slow expansion into a relatively unpopulated region. The invasion concept seems more, to me, as an attempt to explain the hostilities that arose between the Picts and Dal Riadans; if the Dal Riadans had violently invaded and conquered the region, it would give more of a valid reason for hostilities between the two, but, as it is, it seems they rather peacefully migrated, and hostilities probably escalated over unrelated matters; probably just a land grab. It's a lot less epic that way I suppose; people want colorful wars, but, that's just not how people spread all the time.

[Sfwartir]

Casse looking good, EB. I've never bothered to play the Britons in vanilla and (no offense) probably won't play Casse either, but still - Casse looks great.