> Well, I haven't done an extensive search to see what's out there, but
> _usually_ what hasn't been sufficiently covered is a good, detailed,
> hard-nosed, critical look at exactly what the pre-1600 material is, and if
> there is reason to believe that some particular piece, technique, whatever
> is plausibly pre-1600 even in the absense of direct evidence, exactly what
> the reasons are for believing that (leaving the
> rosy-romantic-traditionalist glasses off).

Amen! I don't normally post "me too!"s, but there's a lot of
interesting stuff that could be looked at, and hasn't. Vivian's
posting was a great start, and is in fact good enough that it could be
the initial webpage that sets other interested people off looking for
further details. (Sometimes a bunch of half-answered questions can be
very valuable, after all...)

And as a by-the-way: it's not so much the rosy-romantic _conclusion_
that is bothersome, it's the lack of detail in most rosy-romantic
looks at Celtic music. To give a recent example (and not just to pick
on Efenwalt), a good way of summarizing Griogal Cridhe's origin is
"written about events that happened in 1570, music collected in the
early 19th century." You might then conclude that it was written in
1570, or not, but either way, you don't want to only say "Griogal
Cridhe, 1570". If you needed to be concise, perhaps you could say
"Griogal Cridhe, arguably 1570". Most rosy-romantic writers tend to
say things like "Griogal Cridhe, 1570", and never mention that there's
a quite legitimate argument over the date.

-- gb

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