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I'm Irish.. This is such bullshit.. "you probably think a wake is just another Irish piss up, a few beers around the corpse and an open coffin." Thats exactly

I'm Irish.. This is such bullshit.. "you probably think a wake is just another Irish piss up, a few beers around the corpse and an open coffin." Thats exactly what is is in my experience. "But amongst the Celts this ancient form of death-sharing lives on." Celts wtf? We Irish are slightly more inbred that on the continent but the entire European population has been thoroughly blended for 100's of years. No-one is a Celt. No-one here would ever mention ancient demographic groups in reference to modern day events. Stopped reading after that.

rsynnott 9y ago
“Celts” normally refers to people from regions with a historically Celtic language and cultural influence, these days; it’s not meaningfully an ethnic group today.
- Jdam 9y ago
  OK, I will start calling Italians Romans from now on.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    The Romans were Trojans, according to Virgil. They defeated the Italians in battle, and abducted women to marry.
  - garmaine 9y ago
    I’m pretty sure the people of Rome call themselves romans.
anonoholic 9y ago
> Stopped reading after that. Uh, and you were doing so well. That meme should crawl in to a corner and die. I stopped reading after that. (It was the last thing you wrote :) )
- everyone 9y ago
  I have no idea what you are referencing.
  - themarkn 9y ago
    It's a common thing now for a comment on some text to identify done objectionable line and say "stopped reading after you said react was a framework not a library" or whatever. It's a really condescending way to indicate disagreement with a part of an article, and dismiss the author.
  - garmaine 9y ago
    If you stopped reading you don’t really have the right to comment, not any more than someone who didn’t read at all. “Stopped reading” usually means you fixed an interpretation of what the author said and presumed the rest without giving them the courtesy of actually verifying what they wrote is what you think it is. That’s rude and a cognitive bias that weakens quality discourse.
theoh 9y ago
The genetic distribution of the European population is not blended to the point of indistinguishability. https://www.eupedia.com/europe/maps_Y-DNA_haplogroups.shtml https://www.eupedia.com/europe/maps_Y-DNA_haplogroups.shtml
- asveikau 9y ago
  It is still right to say it's highly anachronistic to call modern people Celts. Not to mention most countries of the former Roman empire have been home to Celts.
  - gerdesj 9y ago
    Define "Celt".
    - asveikau 9y ago
      People the Romans conquered, then assimilated in places like northern Italy and modern France. That their languages survived relatively isolated a while longer in places like Britain and Ireland is why we think of them as being from there.
      - gerdesj 9y ago
        Without looking around at all, I recall that only Tacitus mentions the "Keltike", which is a Greekism and not Roman, so I'm probably wrong a bit. I believe that there are very, very few refs to Celts pre-modern revivalism. I think Tacitus mentions them as located in what we would think of as Belgium (nee bit of France, sort of). I think that Celt is generally confused with Briton (Preton/Pretanike - Pytheas) thanks to some fanciful thinking over the last few hundred years. You might also notice: Britany - a region of modern France. The "indigenous" Britons were duffed up by various invaders. The Scots migrated from Ireland and the Picts went the other way etc etc. Angles and Saxons, Norwegians and Danes farted around at various times (we had a King Knut/Canute famous for talking to the sea - he didn't really - he was emphasising how the sea is unstoppable (or was he!) These isles off of the left hand side of mainland Europe have a pretty complicated history but perhaps not as complicated as say what we now know as France, Germany, Italy and co. The Celt thing is a bit ambiguous at best ...
gerdesj 9y ago
No idea why you were downvoted like that. I'm a nominal Brit with a lot of Irish influence. Reverse those nationalities and you could say the same - which you pretty much did. I have a similar experience of wakes as you - they are quite often a damn good piss up and quite rightly so. As to the Celts thing, that is rather more complicated. In England there is a pejorative term: the "Celtic fringe" which probably doesn't help here! Celtic-ism seems to me to be a bit of an amalgam of some real historic fact and rather a lot of rose tinted, backwards glancing pseudo nationalism and a lot of bollocks. I won't go further on that, otherwise this comment will become an essay but as you say: "... ancient demographic groups in reference to modern day events" - where's the relevance: we've moved on a bit since 55/54BC etc?
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Presumably the 'Celtic fringe' is the flip-side to the 'Protestant ascendancy' which is just a bit of neat propaganda tied with a bow to justify and perpetuate the historical into the future.
barry-cotter 9y ago
> the entire European population has been thoroughly blended for 100’s of years. This is not true. There’s more than a bit of population substructure within Ireland. Norman and English names are over represented among Fine Gael politicians, Gaelic derived ones among Fianna Fáil. The people in the Northwest are visibly different than in Leinster, more red heads (Celts), more people who could pass as Spanish ( the pre-Celtic population). And the idea that European populations have been thoroughly blended is absurd. If you walk into an Aldi in Limerick you’ll see the same as as in Leipzig albeit in a different language. The girl looks German, not Irish. And Norwegians don’t look like Portuguese.
- kenbaylor 9y ago
  Thoroughly agree. Ireland has many accents, many of them very strong. This is common in cultures where people stay in a locality for most of their lives. There is recent mobility (in the last 50 years for work, education etc) but most families have been stationary in their home towns for multiple generations. Even the Irish spoken in each area is distinctive.
beilabs 9y ago
Had a wake for my father some years ago. While there was a lot of alcohol there was great comfort in the many stories that everyone had of him and had no issue in laughing over. My family always has held wakes and probably always will.
garrettheaver 9y ago
It's a piss up when the death is somewhat expected or of "natural order". The very elderly, etc. Wakes for young people are very very different and difficult as are wakes for people who died before their time or who have left young families behind. And you're right about the word Celt being bullshit but we definitely consider ourselves distinct in culture.

rsynnott 9y ago

“Celts” normally refers to people from regions with a historically Celtic language and cultural influence, these days; it’s not meaningfully an ethnic group today.

Jdam 9y ago
OK, I will start calling Italians Romans from now on.
- mirimir 9y ago
  The Romans were Trojans, according to Virgil. They defeated the Italians in battle, and abducted women to marry.
- garmaine 9y ago
  I’m pretty sure the people of Rome call themselves romans.

anonoholic 9y ago

> Stopped reading after that. Uh, and you were doing so well. That meme should crawl in to a corner and die. I stopped reading after that. (It was the last thing you wrote :) )

everyone 9y ago
I have no idea what you are referencing.
- themarkn 9y ago
  It's a common thing now for a comment on some text to identify done objectionable line and say "stopped reading after you said react was a framework not a library" or whatever. It's a really condescending way to indicate disagreement with a part of an article, and dismiss the author.
- garmaine 9y ago
  If you stopped reading you don’t really have the right to comment, not any more than someone who didn’t read at all. “Stopped reading” usually means you fixed an interpretation of what the author said and presumed the rest without giving them the courtesy of actually verifying what they wrote is what you think it is. That’s rude and a cognitive bias that weakens quality discourse.

theoh 9y ago

The genetic distribution of the European population is not blended to the point of indistinguishability. https://www.eupedia.com/europe/maps_Y-DNA_haplogroups.shtml https://www.eupedia.com/europe/maps_Y-DNA_haplogroups.shtml

asveikau 9y ago
It is still right to say it's highly anachronistic to call modern people Celts. Not to mention most countries of the former Roman empire have been home to Celts.
- gerdesj 9y ago
  Define "Celt".
  - asveikau 9y ago
    People the Romans conquered, then assimilated in places like northern Italy and modern France. That their languages survived relatively isolated a while longer in places like Britain and Ireland is why we think of them as being from there.
    - gerdesj 9y ago
      Without looking around at all, I recall that only Tacitus mentions the "Keltike", which is a Greekism and not Roman, so I'm probably wrong a bit. I believe that there are very, very few refs to Celts pre-modern revivalism. I think Tacitus mentions them as located in what we would think of as Belgium (nee bit of France, sort of). I think that Celt is generally confused with Briton (Preton/Pretanike - Pytheas) thanks to some fanciful thinking over the last few hundred years. You might also notice: Britany - a region of modern France. The "indigenous" Britons were duffed up by various invaders. The Scots migrated from Ireland and the Picts went the other way etc etc. Angles and Saxons, Norwegians and Danes farted around at various times (we had a King Knut/Canute famous for talking to the sea - he didn't really - he was emphasising how the sea is unstoppable (or was he!) These isles off of the left hand side of mainland Europe have a pretty complicated history but perhaps not as complicated as say what we now know as France, Germany, Italy and co. The Celt thing is a bit ambiguous at best ...

gerdesj 9y ago

No idea why you were downvoted like that. I'm a nominal Brit with a lot of Irish influence. Reverse those nationalities and you could say the same - which you pretty much did. I have a similar experience of wakes as you - they are quite often a damn good piss up and quite rightly so. As to the Celts thing, that is rather more complicated. In England there is a pejorative term: the "Celtic fringe" which probably doesn't help here! Celtic-ism seems to me to be a bit of an amalgam of some real historic fact and rather a lot of rose tinted, backwards glancing pseudo nationalism and a lot of bollocks. I won't go further on that, otherwise this comment will become an essay but as you say: "... ancient demographic groups in reference to modern day events" - where's the relevance: we've moved on a bit since 55/54BC etc?

wavefunction 9y ago
Presumably the 'Celtic fringe' is the flip-side to the 'Protestant ascendancy' which is just a bit of neat propaganda tied with a bow to justify and perpetuate the historical into the future.

barry-cotter 9y ago

> the entire European population has been thoroughly blended for 100’s of years. This is not true. There’s more than a bit of population substructure within Ireland. Norman and English names are over represented among Fine Gael politicians, Gaelic derived ones among Fianna Fáil. The people in the Northwest are visibly different than in Leinster, more red heads (Celts), more people who could pass as Spanish ( the pre-Celtic population). And the idea that European populations have been thoroughly blended is absurd. If you walk into an Aldi in Limerick you’ll see the same as as in Leipzig albeit in a different language. The girl looks German, not Irish. And Norwegians don’t look like Portuguese.

kenbaylor 9y ago
Thoroughly agree. Ireland has many accents, many of them very strong. This is common in cultures where people stay in a locality for most of their lives. There is recent mobility (in the last 50 years for work, education etc) but most families have been stationary in their home towns for multiple generations. Even the Irish spoken in each area is distinctive.

beilabs 9y ago

Had a wake for my father some years ago. While there was a lot of alcohol there was great comfort in the many stories that everyone had of him and had no issue in laughing over. My family always has held wakes and probably always will.

garrettheaver 9y ago

It's a piss up when the death is somewhat expected or of "natural order". The very elderly, etc. Wakes for young people are very very different and difficult as are wakes for people who died before their time or who have left young families behind. And you're right about the word Celt being bullshit but we definitely consider ourselves distinct in culture.