Ossian Collection > Celtic revival in English literature

INTRODUCTION ii
Berkeley's Maids of Morven, in which, by a strange
oversight, the hero and heroine are transported to
"Odin's hall." But the worst offender of all was
John Joshua Proby, whose Revenge of Guendolen
(1785) confused the Scandinavian, the Celtic, and
the classical mythologies on a scale that is truly
magnificent.^
To make matters still worse, when, towards the
end of the century, there finally did come to be a
general interest in Celtic antiquities, the leading
authorities divided themselves into two opposing
camps. On the one side were the ** Celtomaniacs " —
those wildly enthusiastic supporters of the Celtic
cause whose creed a recent scholar has described so
admirably:
La Celtomanie est une doctrine qui peut se resumer
ainsi: "Les Celtes sont le plus ancien peuple de la terre;
leur langue, mere des autres langues, s'est conservee
presque intact dans le bas-breton; ils etaient de profonds
philosophes, dont les revelations se sont transmises
aux ecoles bardiques du pays de Galles; les dolmens
sont les autels ou leurs pretres, les Druides, offraient
des sacrifices humains; les alignements sont leurs obser-
vatoires astronomiques." ^
^ See also above, p. 3, n. i, for Thomas Cooke's blunder.
2 Salomon Reinach in the Revue Celtique for 1898, p. iii. Among
the worst of the Celtomaniacs were Pezron, Pelloutier, Aubrey,
Stukeley, R. Colt Hoare, Latour d'Auvergne, Cambry, Edward Wil-
liams, and H. Martin.