Many thanks to Celeste Jones and Spanking Romance Reviews for hosting this challenge, and making me blog every day for an entire month!!!
Aiḃell – pronounced Ay-vell
A
Celtic Goddess. So what in the heck
has she got to do with spanking? Quite a lot actually!
By
sheer coincidence she was the guardian spirit of the O’Brien clan and what an
appropriate spirit for my couple in Exile To Unity, Jim and Ange O’Brien
She features as a Fairy Queen in a comic poem Cuirt an Mean
Oiche – roughy translated as Court at midnight by Brian Merriman. In this poem,
she is angry. Really angry. The men are refusing to marry. Her solution?
She passes a law subjecting all men who
remain as bachelors at the age of 21 to corporal punishment. My
kind of gal. J
To read more about her click the Wikipedia
link
Please do comment, even just say hello! I would love to hear from you. I hope you enjoy all the links on what should prove to be a really fun and original hop. It's a long list and it's probably not going to be possible for you to come here every day, but I do hope you make it back here a few times throughout the challenge.
Great post, Tara. I love Celtic legends. I remember reading W B Yeats "Celtic Twilight" years ago and enjoying the magic.
ReplyDeleteThanks Etta,
DeleteYes, Yeats had quite the way with words. :D
Very original! Celts have all the best legends.
ReplyDeleteNot all the best, but some pretty good ones :D I love Greek mythology.
DeleteLike a spanking goddess? I love this....
ReplyDeleteYeah, captured my interest too! It was a gift of a find. I went hunting for Celtic Deities begining with A and was thrilled when I came up with this, Especially as she was the guardian of the O'Brien clan.
DeleteHave you read Karen Marie Moning's Fever series? That is the first place I heard the name Aibell - I think it might be spelled slightly differently. Actually, she is mentioned in a lot of Moning's books and I HIGHLY recommend! They're not even spanking!! I had no idea how to say it until I read your post though!!
ReplyDeleteNo I haven't, Natasha. But I will look into them now.
DeletePerfect.
ReplyDeleteMmm, Tara I do not think that this Ay vell and I would have been bosom buddies. I kind of like tf Lupercalia better. A a feast, now know as Valentines Day the men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.
ReplyDeleteThey were naked," says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile. The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival – or longer, if the match was right.
I love your choice of A.
lol I've always loved the idea of Lubercalia too. What a festival :D
DeleteReminds me of the Polish Dingus Day--Men would drag women out of their beds, throw water on them and whip them with pussy willows. Eeeeeeeek.
DeleteThank you Han.
DeleteI didn't know that was the origins of St Valentine's day, but of course like many modern festivals, their roots were in pagan or ancient feast days.
I suspect the women were lining up for the whipping because they enjoyed it as much as for the fertility!
Tara! Brilliant A post! I'm heading over to the wiki to learn more about Aibell. I'm a sucker for welsh mysticism.
ReplyDeleteThanks Thianna.
DeleteFun post Tara! Some of these traditions are something!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Megan. It adds weight to the theory that Ireland was a matriarchal society once upon a time!
DeleteWhat fun! I love all the different ideas everyone has for the same letter.
ReplyDeleteThanks Celeste. Me too on loving the different ideas. It's going to be a really interesting hop, I think.
Deleteso cool!
ReplyDeleteI love symbolism in stories!
LOL about the corporal punishment! She sounds like my kind of gal!
:)
Thanks Katherine, she's my kind of gal too!
DeleteLove the excerpt! And yes, different is nice. Gonna have to make a note to check out your books.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Kathy. It's nice to see a new visitor. That's one of the great things about this blog hop, we are all visiting around.
DeleteAwesome legend! The Celts/Vikings/Angles/etc have some cracking tales if you can dig deep enough to find them. Even the Orkney Sagas are good, although somewhat heavy!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, sounds like a good law!
John (aka BawdyBloke)
Thanks for stopping by, John. Yeah, there are some great old tales. I'll have to go on the hunt for some more spanking Celts!
DeleteI love going around and seeing all the different thing's we all came up with for A - this is going to be an interesting month.
ReplyDeleteLOL-- I love it!
ReplyDelete