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(Tribal Territory of the Dobunni)

So, remind me again why I should be concerned about a bunch of boy-boffing, bread-eating Redcrests?

I mean, really, what's with those Romans?

They're so cowardly that they can't have sex with an equal: it has to be someone weaker than them, someone they can overpower. That's what it takes to make their puny little dicks hard. That's why they like boys so much.

I mean, what's with that?

And what's with all that bread they eat, anyway? Bread, bread, bread: it's all they ever eat. No wonder they're such weaklings.

I mean, really: why can't they eat porridge, like real people do?

Porridge, now, that's real food.

Porridge makes you strong.

You could call it the Bannock Mystery.

The common word for the most commonly-made kind of bread in the more northerly Insular Celtic languages—Gaelic bannach, Scots Gaelic bonnach, Manx bonnag—all derive from the Latin word panis, “bread.”

That the name of such a common foodstuff should be a foreign word is odd in human linguistic history. Languages tend to retain old words for basic concepts; likewise, when you borrow a new food, you tend to borrow the new name for it as well.

So what gives?

Q: What is the most common definition of “the right way to do things”?

A: Well, the way I do it, of course.

It seems to be a basic element of human psychology that we despise other people for what they eat.

Frogs.

Krauts.

Beaners. (Gods.)

Afghans, I am told, look down on the peoples of the Subcontinent as “Lentil-eaters.”

Real men, of course, eat meat.

The most famous Briton of his day was Pelagius (c. 354-418), hated by Latin churchmen for his heretical views.

Augustine of Hippo, for one—like many so-called saints, not really a very nice person—couldn't say enough bad about the man that he belittled as “that porridge-eating Briton.”

Aha.

Apparently, Romans—the conquerors—disparaged Britons—the conquered—as “Porridge-eaters.”

Real people, of course, eat bread.

The Romans, of course, ate porridge of various sorts, as well as bread. It's hard to believe that the Insular Celts didn't eat bread—probably some sort of griddle-cake—as well as porridge.

But back in the old Dobunni days—those being the original (so say some) Celtic Tribe of Witches, porridge was apparently our staple food.

A Folktale of the Dobunni

Long ago, in the dawn of days, the Great Mother in her fruitfulness brought forth First Man and First Woman, since when have twins been accounted by our people, the Dobunni, a sign of bounty and good luck; and these were the first man and woman in all the world.

In her turn, First Woman too brought forth, like her mother, and in her fruitfulness she too brought forth twins, a boy and a girl.

Again in her fruitfulness she brought forth twins, and these too were a boy and a girl.

Again and again in her fruitfulness she brought forth, seven pairs of twins in all, each pair a boy and a girl.

When it came time for their children to marry, First Man and First Woman broke up the pairs of twins, so as to avoid incest. The boy of the first pair they wed to the girl of the seventh pair, and so on.

But the fourth pair fell in love, and incestuously wed one another.

And that's where the Catuvellauni come from.

John Alden Jr: What do they want, these terrible witches?

Cotton Mather: The same thing we all want: a country of their own.

(WGH's Salem, 2012)

[There] were so many of them [the witches] that they thought that, if they were able to remain at large for just one more year, they might have raised up a king from among them.

Hans Fründ, Report on Witchcraft in Valais (1475)

What is the Third Kingdom of the Witches?

Easily told.

Kingdom the First: the Celtic Dobunni of the Cotswolds and Severn basin, circa 100 b.c.e.

Kingdom the Second: the Anglo-Saxon Hwicce, their heirs both cultural and genetic.

Kingdom the Third: the eponymous Witches, their latter-day children, now in worldwide diaspora.

What is the Third Kingdom of the Witches?

Easily told.

Us: the Younger Witchery.

Did the original Celtic Tribe of Witches originate with the merger of two boy-bands?

Likely, we'll never know for sure.

Listen as I weave my tale.

2000 years ago, a Celtic-speaking people known as the Dobunni, the “[People of] Two Bands”, lived in the Severn basin of what is now England.

(600-some years later, they morphed—maybe I should say shape-shifted—into an Anglo-Saxon-speaking people called the Hwicce, the origin and namesake—so say some—of today's Witches. But that's another story for another night.)

Though the origin of the Dobunni's name is disputed, if indeed it does mean the People of the Two Bands, there are parallels with the ethnonyms of other Celtic-speaking peoples: the Continental Tricorii and Petrucorii clearly mean “Three [War-] Bands” and “Four [War-] Bands” respectively.

But the koryos—war-band—for which these peoples were named was not just any kind of war-band.

How, you may have wondered, did the Indo-European-speaking ancestors manage to conquer, populate, and bequeath their languages to virtually all of Europe and much of Western Asia?

On current evidence, it would appear to have been a kind of franchise operation.

The traditional pantheons of most Indo-European peoples featured, not one, but two gods of war. (In current terms, we would denote these Thunder and the Horned.) These were respectively the patrons of two different fighting forces: the teutâ (in Witch English, this would be thede, “tribe”), the initiated, adult men of the tribe, and the koryos (WE here), the uninitiated youths still in training for full adulthood. Each of these fighting forces had its own patronal god: Thunder to the thede, the Horned to the here.

(Ah, just savor that alliteration. Sometimes the language seems to be expressing an opinion of its own, doesn't it?)

This explains why, to this day, it is the Horned who presides both at initiations and at the rites of man-making of the latter-day Tribe of Witches.

According to Kris Kershaw in his 2000 monograph The One-Eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-) Germanic Männerbünde, the boys of the koryos/here lived together in the wild—often the forest—while they learned the skills and lore necessary to adult men of the People. Set apart by their unkempt dress and hair—think dreads*—and wild behavior, they had a reputation for being the fiercest, most fearless, most unrestrained fighters of all. Unmarried, owning nothing, testosterone-fueled, they had nothing to lose. It was they who reaved the cattle of neighboring tribes, and terrified the Red Crests by charging into battle stark naked, wearing nothing but a neck-ring and a belt.

(Easy, when you don't own armor or a helmet to don anyway. Still, say what you will, that's bravado!)

Since it was only after full initiation into tribal manhood that one could marry and acquire land and property, it was these bands of uninitiated youths who spearheaded the Indo-European expansion. Once the thede had settled down for a while, available land and goods would become scarce.

In search of new territory and herds of their own, it was the boy-bands who led the charge.

I was recently astounded to read in Richard Rudgley's 2018 book The Return of Odin that

Today in both American and British pagan circles, practitioners generally divide themselves into three basic groups: Wiccans; Druids, and those who follow some kind of Celtic religion; and Heathens, those who follow Germanic and Norse traditions [231].

Admittedly, the book was originally published in 2006; maybe things were simpler in those days.

Still, if I knew Rudgley well enough to tease him, or if I weren't a Midwesterner, and hence constitutionally incapable of public rudeness, I would really have to suggest that maybe, just maybe, he needs to get out a bit more often.

I don't know about Britain—although I have my doubts—but here in the US, I can assure you from personal experience that pagans come in lots more flavors than Wiccan, Celtic, or Germanic.

Lots more.

So I can't help but find it a jest for the gods that, in fact, I can recognize something of myself in all three of Rudgley's categories.

...Well, if I say it who made it myself: that was one kick-ass Man-Making ceremony. They'll still be talking about that one a hundred years from now.

So I figure you owe me, what, something in the neighborhood of...say...nine cows. Good milch cows, too, mind you, nothing old and milked-out.

A nine-cow coming-of-age ceremony: now there's something you'll be able to tell your grandchildren about.

(“My family paid nine fine milch cows for my man-making,” you'll tell them, and they'll say, “Oh, grandpa, you're such a bull-shitter....”)

Hey, our people's cattle have always been our pride. You know what they say about us, that every word in our language means three things: something good, something bad, and something to do with a cow.

What? What? You can't be serious. You've got to be kidding.