The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

Just got done with The Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd the other day. I wasn't sure what to expect, but hey, it's Ireland, it's historical fiction, I had to read it. On the whole, I enjoyed it, though I had some nitpicks with the first part, set in the pre-Christian Iron Age.

Being familiar with the mythology, my brain kind of wanted to put a lot of the character names in the mythological framework and kept going "lolol Conall Cearnach" even after I told it not to. This was rather irritating, though I was ultimately able to make it stop.

( SPOILER WARNING. Do not read if you have any intentions of ever reading this book. )

Also, I believe the word is geisa rather than geissi, but I've seen it spelled at least two different ways, so I can't be sure. Also also, I'm not familiar with Irish noun-case morphology. Whee, lookit l33 sling linguistic terms like she has any idea what the hell she’s talking about! (For those not familiar with the word, it is sometimes translated as "taboo" but also has overtones of "condition", in the sense that a condition is placed on one that one must commit or omit certain behaviors or acts, or in the sense that one lays such a condition on oneself.)

Oh, and this article should be required reading for canars new and old, or for anyone who has ever found it necessary or expedient to take on a magical/religious/magicoreligious name. (Yes, I do have one. Yes, I broke one of the rules mentioned herein, although not for that reason; I use an epithet of several goddesses, because of its meaning. You'd have to really know Greek religion to know the epithet in question, though, which I'm sure does not make it okay.) I shall excerpt just a bit for the delectation of dethorats, as her beloved cousin (or his namesake) is directly mentioned.

It took one person of Lady Pixie's acquaintance only a few minutes to blur together Gwydion son of Don, and Girion, Lord of Dale, into the craft name "Lord Gwyrionin"--and several months to find out that the name he had invented, and used throughout the local pagan scene, was also the Welsh word for "idiot".

Also, the enterprising Patrick Brown is in the process of turning THE ENTIRE ULSTER CYCLE into a webcomic. (I perhaps extrapolated a bit too much, but the impression I gained was that ultimately the story will cover the entire Ulster cycle.) What he has thus far is rockin' with Dokken. AWWW YEAH.

In conclusion, the ancient Celts. :D