One of our largest cohorts of Celtic Studies majors graduated yesterday, very proud of them! Llongyfarchiadau! / Comhghairdeas!

We kick off our 2026 volume with two fantastic articles! In @bernhardbaver.bsky.social and Francesca Guido's piece, they reassess and challenge the Old Breton glosses on BN1616. Available, open access, here: journal.fi/scf/article/...

This is a scholarly and succinct account of archaeological and textual evidence for magic among Celtic-speaking peoples in the ancient world and Middle Ages. Ehrmantraut also surveys representations of magic in Celtic and Romantic literature. Two things struck me: 1/2

I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.

But now, for a big new announcement: the radically new edition of Nauigatio St Brendani (Brendan's Voyage) with English translation, just after being published by the School of Celtic Studies @scs-dias.bsky.social at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies @dias.ie. /2

This summary of different early medieval literature is still one of my favourite things on the internet. #medievalsky

My 2023 Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lecture, "The Moral Economy in Early Medieval Ireland", is now available as a free PDF download from the ASNC website, for anyone who's interested! #OpenAccess #MedievalSky #Spéirghorm #Speirgorm @ceilteachomn.bsky.social www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/publications...

"But AI can transcribe quickly for me!" The lack of time for transcription in the archives is not natural, it is created. The time to transcribe, which is also time to read and think about material, has been taken from us by those with the power to fund our work. Now they want it without funding it.

Join us for this year's O'Donnell Lecture in #Celtic Studies: ‘Old #Irish: plenty of variation, but of what kind?’ Dr Aaron Griffith (Utrecht University) 🗓 8 May at 5.30pm 📍 Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, Oxford All welcome! Register: english.web.ox.ac.uk/event/old-ir...

Tionól 2026 27-28 Samhain / November Sprioc: 3 Iúil Deadline: 3 July. @dias.ie #DIASdiscovers www.dias.ie/2026/04/30/t...

Kind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

We only rate dogs. This is a miniature horse practicing his jumps. We are not qualified to comment on his form, as we are merely dog experts. Please only send dogs. Thank you… 13/10 (TT: alfy_da_weeny)

What’s so brazen is that the subhead literally spells out the travesty. It says that tech industry lobbyists have convinced congress to pay for their products to be made a compulsory part of public education so that when the industry wreaks havoc on American workers it can be blamed on educators.

Nicely timed with the Cornish language course being offered by CSANA starting later this month

BBC responds to interest in Cornish with new language podcast

oh no

If you hear any ominous screaming tonight (nos Galan Mai) the dragons have probably escaped and the instructions below need repeating 🕳️ 🐉 🐖 🍻 📦

Starting now at @scs-dias.bsky.social @dias.ie .

I've had a first, quick read-through of the article on the new Cædmon's Hymn discovery and it is a splendid model of clarity. You could absolutely read the abstract and introduction and get why this is a blockbuster discovery. 🧵 www.cambridge.org/core/journal... (Open access!)

It's day two of the SSMLL Annual Conference 2026: Medieval Wales at Cardiff University! Both the weather and the scholarship are already hotting up, with Scott Lloyd giving the first paper of the day, 'From Tref to Cantref: Mapping Medieval Welsh Boundaries for the Digital Age' 🗺

A fun fact for #WorldPenguinDay: penguin is probably a borrowing from Welsh pen gwyn, meaning "white head" 🐧 Since penguin seems to have originated in North America, the OED notes that it could also have been borrowed from Breton, from Bretons fishing off the coast of Newfoundland. OED s.v. penguin

🚨 The online Summer 2026 Bonn+Marburg Celtic Seminar is here! 🗓️ Join us this coming Monday 27.04.2026 (18:00 CET) for: Siobhán Barrett (Maynooth University): "Could there have been a medical school in Co Mayo in 16th-century, Ireland? A discussion of some textual evidence" 🔗 See poster for the link!

The Hereford Gospels online symposium programme is now online: www.herefordcathedral.org/Event/herefo... It will be on 26 June, 10-4. Please do share. It'd be lovely to have a nice audience.

It is a beautiful day in Cardiff for the start of the SSMLL Annual Conference 2026: Medieval Wales! What better way to start the day than with Welsh cakes and our first paper of the conference by Thomas Clancy, 'What's the commotion? Sound, structure and sense in Ystoria Gereint uab Erbin'

Possibly my favourite opening line of any article. 'Palaeography, like life, is full of accidents.' - E.A. Lowe

Anyone within travelling distance of Boston should go see Harvard Museums' exhibition "Celtic Art Across The Ages" (harvardartmuseums.org/exhibitions/...) – a unique opportunity to see two original Old Celtic inscription stones in the US. One of them is a relatively recent Cisalpine Celtic find, ...

Every time this tailor posts a photo of their workspace, it looks like their dog is a tailor and he's showing off the garments he made. IG z.o.e.y.a.t.e.s

I gofrestru ar gyfer y seminar, cliciwch ar y ddolen: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon... @yganolfangeltaidd.bsky.social

Edible Books! I don't have any real books to share today, so here is the glorious lineup of faux-folios from April 1! Most photos were by Ben Greer, and featured on @newberrylibrary.bsky.social instagram. First up, The Poison Princess, by Conservation, a Swedish Princess cake with a dire twist! 1/?

Beautiful and devastating. Hugging my dog tight.

Léacht - Lecture Ben Guy @department-asnc.bsky.social How to write a history of Britain in the ninth century: Historia Brittonum and its sources DIAS 10 Burlington Road 5pm 30 Aibreán/April @dias.ie

AI could never

What gets me is that lettering. E*Rat! (Also the scary eagle claw.)

This now lost figure of Christ from an inscribed stone at Llanglydwen, drawn in 1820, is done with your nonsense and is coming for you

🚨 Call for papers: 45th Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 9–11 October 2026 🗓️ Abstracts due by midnight: Monday, May 4th, 2026 #CfP #AcademicSky celtic.fas.harvard.edu/45th-hcc-cal...

A Cambro-Norman, angry at Geoffrey of Monmouth's work and his Latinization of Welsh names: "Prophetiae Merdinus!"

Absolutely amazing to hear Drs Richard Gameson and Andy Beeby talking about the Hereford Gospels palimpsest on Friday night. It's the culmination on nearly 30 years work for Dr Gameson. www.herefordcathedral.org/news/palimps...

"Afterwards all of his own people hated him, because of his crime, both the strong and the weak, the unfree and free, monk and layman, the poor and great. He wandered from place to place for a time, until at last his heart cracked, and he died without honour." - Historia Brittonum, 9th c. (1/2)

Pentre Ifan, Sir Penfro / Pembrokeshire. 📷 05.12.25 #Stunday #StandingStoneSunday #ClassicMono #BlackandWhite #BlancoYNegro #B&W #FotodeFer

A Cambro-Norman, angry at Geoffrey of Monmouth's work and his Latinization of Welsh names: "Prophetiae Merdinus!"

There's just ten days left to register for the upcoming SSMLL Annual Conference 2026: Medieval Wales (25th-26th April, Cardiff University). Students can attend in-person for just £20, or online for free (registration is required). Register today by visiting mediumaevum.org.uk/events/medie...

lol, a “cooperative” dachshund www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04...

As usual excellent ! I’ve always been curious about the prominence of apples in medieval Welsh — not just in Avalon but also in the lovely Myrddin poem Yr Afallennau (www.merlinpoetry.wales/poem/003/). Were they a symbol of romanitas? Or the older British crabapple? I’d love to know!

lol, a “cooperative” dachshund www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04...

"bloodshed is a vain destruction of all rule" - Audacht Morainn (The Testament of Morann), c. 700 ed. & trans. by Fergus Kelly (DIAS, 1976), pp. 10-11, 40

I think it's bad for the President to threaten to annihilate an entire culture and i do not think you are being alarmist if you take his threats seriously and literally.

Today, according to The Voyage of Saint Brendan, the saint and his brothers would have landed on the back of Jasconius the giant fish en route to finding the promised land of the saints. Some manuscripts of this work incorporated planned illustrations, others had enthusiastic readers...

It is likely that the name of that giant fish was Iasconius in the original version of Nauigatio Sancti Brendani (from Old Irish íasc "fish"), but in some versions the name appears as Casconius, obviously influenced by OIr. cásc "Easter".