Celtic Ambiance

For the past ten years I have had a yearning, one of those deep soul longings, to connect with my Celtic roots. It started when my husband found out that three or four of his ancestral lines go straight back to Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland. For the last ten years we have travelled around to Scottish Festivals and listened to Celtic music with its harps, flutes, and of course bagpipes. We have felt the thrill of listening to multiple pipe bands coming together from all over to play Scotland the Brave as they march into a large green field all arrayed in their colorful kilts. A tangible reverberation swells through the air and never fails to bring tears to our eyes. We watched young girls, even our own daughter for a time, dance traditional Scottish and Irish dances. We laughed and cried as we watched famous Scottish stories from days gone by come alive as actors reenact them. These festivals along with reading to my children about England and Scotland’s History and gathering Celtic music and pictures of my native Western Washington’s natural beauty has enlivened my desire and nostalgia of my Celtic ancestor’s homeland.

As this yearning has grown, I have learned to appreciate the calm, misty, grey days of my beautiful Northwest climate. As I look out my window now, across a gentle valley to a hillside of dark green trees, I imagine how it would feel to be looking across a glen or moor filled with Heather as mists rise after days of rain. I can’t seem to take enough pictures of the green flora and fauna and long to take hikes up into the moss covered mountains here. A couple years ago I framed a picture of a river that alone would have been breathtaking but there was also a waterfall emptying into that river. Everything around the waterfall, and even the river with its mossy boulders and green hues is so, well…green, so alive, it takes my breath away every time I look at it, still. The peace that emanates from these picturesque parts of the Northwest stirs my Celtic longings.

When I was young, I often heard about my mother’s German roots that stirred her soul and connected her with her paternal grandfather’s homeland of Germany. As a result of these longings, we ate Corned Beef and Cabbage and loved to visit Leavenworth, a re-creation of a Bavarian Town in Eastern Washington, during the Holidays. I knew my father’s parents’ ancestry was largely from England but always thought of myself as largely German. A few years ago, I stood by my mother’s gigantic genealogy chart in her office and decided I wanted to know how much Celtic I really had in me. I tallied up an accurate percentage of where my roots go and to my surprise, I was 75% Celtic (mostly English and Scottish with a little Irish thrown in). That explains the tears every time I hear the bagpipes!

I can’t seem to read enough about Scotland, England and Ireland. I love reading of their tumultuous history, of the rise and fall of good and bad monarchs. I loved learning about Queen Elizabeth and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots and the even more ancient Queen Boadicea with her flowing golden hair. I wish I could have met King Alfred the Great and his wise mother. I get furious every time I hear about King Edward Plantagenet and his mistreatment of the Scots. I love Robert the Bruce and thrill every time I read about him finally deciding to fight for what he knows is right even though he knows that everything and everyone he loves will be put in harms way if he does. My favorite Saint is Saint Patrick. I love how he loved the very people who had been his captors. I love reading Shakespeare, Jane Austin and George MacDonald, as much for their wonderful stories and writing as for the connection to my Celtic roots that I feel as I read about the people and times that make up my homeland.

Some day I hope to be able to travel there. To see the moors that Emily Dickenson never saw, to walk through the ancient castles and manor houses, to stand on the Eastern shore in Sussex where many of my ancestors stood, to feel the feeling of being on the land where my ancestors lived, loved and died hoping for a better tomorrow and dreaming of how life would be for their children. I am sure that one visit will never do but I hope it isn’t a disappointment after all the wonder I have felt for the last decade. I hope that it will feel like I have dreamt it would, that it will even maybe be better. Most of all I hope that once I go there, this feeling won’t go away but grow and that the wonder of it, the Celtic Ambiance, will ever be a part of me.