The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends

In trying to find material to build and expand into Gaulish myths I initially despaired of finding anything at all. While it had been relatively easy to find Irish, Welsh and even Scottish myths it was proving difficult to find anything other than fragments of stories that might have been parts of Gaulish myths. However, I eventually found a wonderful book by Peter Berresford Ellis called “The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends” in which there was a whole section of myths from Brittany. Although some people may consider Brittany to not be part of Gaul it was all I had at the time so I eventually used all those stories. In these I liberally peppered the names of Gaulish gods and goddesses who seemed appropriate to the stories. Again, I of course, removed all Christian references from the stories though there were not many.

Peter Berresford Ellis;s work “The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends” is a truly marvelous book which covers many Celtic regions. It covers myths from Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, The Isle of Man, Wales and Brittany. Almost all the stories in it are truly wonderful and I might never have found any Gaulish stories without it.

From there I went in search of other Breton myths and I found quite a few that were useful to adapt. I also found, on line, many stories of the Ankou and many versions of the Melusine story which I turned into stories of a family of snake people. Finally I also came across many myths of the Basque peoples who although being more Iberian than Gaulish contained a few stories that helped build out my Gaulish stories. In the end I drew on many sources to build out a large number of Gaulish stories including the works of Lord Dunsany.

Sometimes I took stories from one mythology and adapted it for a different mythology because they were after all Celtic stories and often had different versions of the same story in different places. I ended up using one story twice but made them very different stories, one about a death god and one about a sun god.

The Gaulish myths are indeed connected, and some stories occur before others, but it would be difficult to give a reading order and in any case each story should be able to stand alone.

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