July 10, 2007
Lady with a Mead Cup
Lady with a Mead Cup: Ritual, Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tene to the Viking Age by Michael Enright Four Courts Press, 1996
Lady with a Mead Cup is an analysis of the social/religious significance of a ritual in which the wife/lady/queen of a warlord offers a cup of mead to the members of a warband in Germanic and continental Celtic (Gaulish) culture. Actually that kind of relates to the previous book in that it’s focussed on warbands and their connection with seership, though it doesn’t discuss the Fenians.
Much of it was rather dry and hard to get thru so I skipped parts (mainly the big chunk in the middle about archeology), but there was some good info in there, especially about the role of sibyls/prophetesses in warbands, and later on in the book, the cult of the “Gaulish Mercury”, Rosmerta, and the connection between Mercury, Lugh and Odin and how the cult of Odin evolved in relation to the rise of the warband.
Whew! Now I’m going to take a break from all this heavy nonfiction and finish up His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. 🙂
(This is an older post- I just hadn’t finished it)
Roots, Leaves and Threads 