Pic: gary

Episode 14, The Children of Lir, is now available and on the feed for download. The Children of Danu choose Bodb Dearg as a new High King for themselves much to King Lir’s displeasure. To bring the clans together, Bodb’s foster-daughter marries Lir and bears four beautiful children to him. Sadly she dies and Lir marries her sister, who in jealousy curses the Children and turns them all into swans.. This is the second and final part of two episodes telling the story of the Children of Lir which has to be one of the most famous of all Celtic tales. We discover the tragic end of the beautiful children.

We join the story as the Children of Lir are forced to flee their homeland and venture onto rough and icy seas.The Episode is available for subscribers on the feed, or you can download it or listen to it from our Episodes page. You can find the Shownotes for this episode in the Shownotes section.

If you come to the site and listen or listen from one of our players - have you considered subscribing? It’s easy and you automatically get the episodes on your computer when they come out. If you’re unsure about the whole RSS/Subscribing thing take a look at our Help page.

Episode 12, The Song of Amergin, is now available and on the feed for download. The Sons of Mil finally break through the magic of the Children of Danu and land on the shores of Erin. They demand recompense for the death of their kin and negotiations take place. Now it is up to the Tuatha De Danaan - will they fight, flee or come up with another plan? And yet, the great Bard Amergin also has a trick or two up his sleeve!

The Episode is available for subscribers on the feed, or you can download it or listen to it from our Episodes page. You can find the Shownotes for this episode in the Shownotes section.

If you come to the site and listen - have you considered subscribing? It’s easy and you automatically get the episodes when they come out. If you’re unsure about the whole RSS/Subscribing thing take a look at our Help page.

Thanks to the keen eyes and ears of one of our listeners who noticed that Episode 3 was only 12 minutes long instead of the expected 26 minutes, we have discovered that cyber-moles have been burrowing through the interwebs and eaten half of Episode 3! Seriously, thank you to our keen listener. The copy of Episode 3, Bres the Beautiful,  on the server has somehow become corrupted and only the first half played. We have now replaced it with a brand new, shiny Episode 3 and want to apologise to all of our very confused listeners wondering what happened between this point and Episode 4!

Please accept our sincere apologies for this. We recommend that you re-download the episode from our Episodes page and overwrite your locally stored version. Alternatively, right click this episode 3 link and choose Save Link As.. to save to your machine.

Thank you for your patience,

Gary & Ruth

We have updated the Celtic Myth Podshow website and hope that you enjoy the new additions. So what have we done? Well, you will find a new Help page that explains some of the more confusing aspects of New Media to beginners to podcasts. We have added a page of Credits to say Thank you to all those who have helped produce the show and we have added some photo and image galleries.

Help Page

Some of the new technology we are using is very confusing - I know it took me a little while to get my head around it! Continue Reading »

Pic: gary

The first part of the Midsummer Special is available for download and is on the feed. We celebrate the Midsummer Festival with a massive offering of goodies. So we’ve divided the episode into two parts. The first part contains a reading from The Religion of the Ancient Celts, another from a modern book called Fairy Healing, some music, and a story by Willie Meikle called The First Silkie. Part 2 of the Midsummer Special will be available in the middle of next week.

The Episode is available for subscribers on the feed, or you can download it or listen to it from our Episodes page. You can find the Shownotes for this episode in the Shownotes section.

Episode 10, The Harp’s Voice Unleashed, is available for download and is on the feed. It completes the story of the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh from the Book of Invasions. Mighty Balor, the strong smiter, and the Fomori have invaded Ireland and the Tuatha De Danaan meet them on the field of Battle. After a bloody and epic struggle, Lugh kills Balor and the Fomori are beaten and driven back to the sea. Tired and weary, it is now time for the Children of Danu to count the cost…

In this episode, we also announce our final decision about the use of accents within the shows and introduce the Midsummer Special which will be available for download and on the feed in a week’s time.

Not everyone has the time to keep in touch with all their friends using all the exciting new social media that we see around us and still visit us here on the Show site to find out what’s going on and when the next episode is due, and so on. So we thought that it would be a good idea to support the news and forums that we’ve got here if we set up a Myspace page and a Facebook group, so that users of either of those services could check in with us and their friends at the same time. It would be lovely if the fans of the Show became firm friends with each other as well. I’ve always thought of us all as a kind of worldwide clan and the more ways we can talk to each other, the better.

The Facebook group seems to be a favourite with lots of people already joining, although there haven’t been many discussions there yet. If you are a Facebook fan, click the button above and come and meet more people that like the same things you do.

The Myspace page has more keep-in-touch widgets on it at the moment, so that you get an echo of the main blog here, listen to a show or the Utterz and see what we’re saying on Twitter. If you’re a Myspace fan, come along and say hello

An update to our post about the new theory about the origins of the Celts, which can be found here, the ABP Welsh Communique gives us a little more detail. The full text of the article can be found here. In his O’Donnell Lecture at the University College, Bangor, Professor John Koch said that on the basis of an extensive continent-wide overview of linguistic and archaeological evidence, he has come to the conclusion that a Celtic civilisation and culture had originated on the Atlantic West of Europe in the Bronze Age.

Recent DNA researches has shown that contemporary British people – Celts and Anglo-Saxons alike – have more in common with the Basques than any other race group. This finding has attracted confusion and amusement in the popular English press. Continue Reading »

Anne’s blog is well known for its podcast reviews and we’re proud to have been the subject of several of his reviews previously. He describes it as an elite podcast listener’s blog. He said in a review of Episode 3: The tale of Bres the Beautiful is the third tale in the series that will deliver the whole Irish mythological cycle. After the gods and wars tales we have had so far, the story of Bres will touch upon another motif in story telling, the ‘Vatersucher’. Why do I know this only in German? My Babylon dictionary couldn’t hep me out here. Literally this is a fatherseeker. Bres doesn’t know who his father is and at some point he is forced to find this out. And this may not be the kind of thing he wants to know. As goes with Vatersuchers until recent times. I was thinking of the character Johnny in a Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

Celtic Bloodfine - the New Review

Anne has just reviewed Episode 6 for us. We’d like to offer him a hearty Thank You for his honest and appreciative criticism. All of the constructive criticism he offers has been very useful to us in improving the shows. He says: Continue Reading »

Site member and author William Russeth has received a super review for his book The Fires of Belenus, a romantic tale, that tantalizes readers with rational portrayals of mythical events found in the CuChulainn and Arthurian legends. We are really looking forward to reading this book. William has asked If anyone, by chance, does read the book, I would really be interested to hear if they think I was true to my claim of representing the ancient Celts accurately. William can be contacted through http://mysite.verizon.net/resr5omo/whrhomepage/ or you can leave a message for him on our forums.

Review from Writers and Readers of Distinctive Fiction.
Title: Fires of Belenus 4/10/08
Author: William H Russeth
Genre: Historical Adventure/Romance
Length: 377 Pages
Publisher: Wings ePress (Dec 2007)

In Fires of Belenus, William H. Russeth pens an adventurous tale smartly written. You will shiver in the presence of Druids, cower before merciless warriors, and hope in the true spirit of one young man named Eoan. With a little romance to soften this ancient Celtic world, Mr. Russeth weaves a story that is not only entertaining, but surprising in its revealing and intriguing conclusion. I do so want to tell you the ending, but I must refrain. All I can say, is, read the book! You won’t be disappointed.

Reviewed by Lynda Coker, Writers and Readers of Distinctive Fiction

For more information and excerpts visit the website:
http://mysite.verizon.net/resr5omo/whrhomepage/

William Russeth

Author of “Fires of Belenus” Wings-Press: www.wings-press.com