Fascinating, thank you! I’m from the Western Isles of Scotland and was particularly interested in what you mentioned about the Martinmas ox. In modern Scottish Gaelic, “mart” is just one of the words for “cow”, especially for beef cattle; “beef” is “feòil mairt”, “meat of the cow”. I have no idea whether there is an etymological connection to St Martin (“Martin” is “Màrtainn”, with a much longer “a” sound) but it would be fascinating to find out, so I was wondering if you could point me to a source for the info about the Martinmas ox? If it’s not readily to hand don’t worry about it though!
Thank you for this piece of writing, covers a lot of ground in one go. I found your work through Michael Martin, 'Druid Stares Back' substack, much of history is currently being replaced with plugging into 'the now' or current thing, we are missing some very deep connections with our past & thus where we are headed. I wonder why in the primary & secondary schools I attended as a child I was not taught much of the stories told here, am grateful it survives
Fascinating, thank you! I’m from the Western Isles of Scotland and was particularly interested in what you mentioned about the Martinmas ox. In modern Scottish Gaelic, “mart” is just one of the words for “cow”, especially for beef cattle; “beef” is “feòil mairt”, “meat of the cow”. I have no idea whether there is an etymological connection to St Martin (“Martin” is “Màrtainn”, with a much longer “a” sound) but it would be fascinating to find out, so I was wondering if you could point me to a source for the info about the Martinmas ox? If it’s not readily to hand don’t worry about it though!
Thank you for this piece of writing, covers a lot of ground in one go. I found your work through Michael Martin, 'Druid Stares Back' substack, much of history is currently being replaced with plugging into 'the now' or current thing, we are missing some very deep connections with our past & thus where we are headed. I wonder why in the primary & secondary schools I attended as a child I was not taught much of the stories told here, am grateful it survives