Celtic Quest Encore

Last week I talked about how the Celtic Quest seemed to keep popping up at different places as I got back to Dad's home in time to see Natalie MacMaster and Donell Leahy and their family playing in the summer night for the 150th anniversary of Lennox and Addington Counties. Then I arrived home to discover that the performer at the patio series at Festival Place was a fiddler. I didn't go. However, on Sunday night, at Symphony in the City, we did go to watch the McDades perform with the Edmonton Symphony Orcehstra. Celts are EVERYWHERE these days!

Symphony in the City, Kinsmen Park

On Tuesday I drove to Saskatoon to spend a couple of days browsing and reading in the library at St. Andrew's College.

St. Andrew's College, Saskatoon

I was surprised that sitting in the stacks reading brought back old sentimental memories of my days studying there. It really surprised me since I could not really remember actually having sat in the stacks reading during my time as a student at St. A's! No -- not that I didn't read, but that we lived across the street and most of my reading was done in the comfort of our living room!

Proof that I actually OPENED a book in the stacks!

As I mentioned last week, the main book for which I was searching was a book written in the 8th century by a monk by the name of Bede. He was a Northumbrian (from north of the river Humber). And he wrote about the history of Roman occupied England and the beginning of Christianity in the British Isles. He is known as The Venerable Bede and I was all prepared to play on that name by calling him The Impenetrable Bede...but he was actually quite readable. I suspect that is due to the translators of the edition I was reading, since he wrote in Latin.

One of the things that made me sit up and take notice were the comments made by the translators about what Mr. Bede himself had written and what he had copied from other historians. It seems that what we would call plagiarizing was not frowned upon in those days. Mr. Bede copied whole sections of other people's works and never even mentioned their names. He is looked upon as one of the great religious historians of Great Britain.

Mr. Bede....ooops -- no -- that is Mr. Bean!

This is The Venerable Bede...though I am not sure who decided this is what he looked like.

As well as reading some of the 500 plus pages that Bede wrote, I explored some of the other offerings of the stacks of St. Andrew's. I found several other books that I want to read over the next while on the history of the coming of Christianity to Britain, including a chapter on St. Patrick (from somewhere in Scotland?) who brought Christianity to Ireland and became their patron Saint and another chapter on St. Columba, an Irishman who brought Christianity to Scotland and became one of Scotland's beloved Saints.

Hopefully, one of the local libraries will be able to process an inter-library loan for some of these books. Being a Scot/Celt/Gael (still trying to figure that one out!) I am loath to actually spend money and buy them! If I do have to open my wallet I will likely be heard to utter the Gaelic phrase:

Ha mi Bronach!