Re: Res: [tied] legendary genealogies

> These are good questions and you, among others, are
> the man for myth.
> Why Spain? Did the Gaels perceive the Q-Celt
> commonality with Hispano-Celtic? --even though
> Hispano-Celtic as a whole was farther removed from
> Goidelic than Brythonic was.
> They also looked to France for some of their
> ancestors: e.g. the Laigin or Laighne who accompanied
> one of the kings back from exile in France. They
> looked for their ultimate origins in Scythia. Why?
> Were they somehow cognizant of an early history 1,000
> or more years before or did they run all the way to
> Scythia based on the similarity with the name Scotia?
> You guys know more than me, so I'll let you answer

Once again, a lot of this stuff comes from early medieval pseudo-
historical speculation by Spanish scholars such as Orosius and
Isidore, who were highly regarded by learned medieval Irishmen. The
Scythian connection arose because someone (wrongly) thought that the
superficial resemblance between the names Scythae (in Latin, "th"
was pronounced more like "t") and Scotti (an early name of the
Irish) meant that the two people were somehow connected.

- Chris Gwinn