A Calvinist blogger (from the South) posted about wanting to understand his Celtic roots and then listed some books being read to that end.
I expected to see Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South by Grady McWhiney, an entertaining if deeply flawed work, that nevertheless touches on some interesting points - not so much about 'Celtic' culture, but the cultures of North Britain vs. the South of England and by way of comparison the Yankee North and Confederate South. It sets out to prove too much and fails. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, by David Hackett Fischer does a better job but it too (despite its 1,000 pages), proves too limited and ironically too short. His Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement, augments the former volume but still leaves the reader wanting.
But these books weren't mentioned. He mentioned John T. McNeil's The Celtic Churches: A History, A.D. 200 to 1200, which is good place to start but I'm afraid has nothing to do with either Calvinism or the Calvinist elements that came to dominate in Scotland centuries later. The same is true of Backhouse's The Lindisfarne Gospels. Like the Book of Kells, these works are fascinating but have little to do with the Calvinism that would emerge in Britain. So in other words if he's interested in pursuing his Scots-Irish roots - he's reading the wrong books. The Scots-Irish would have wrinkled their noses at these books and the old Celtic Church. The Covenanters tore down Celtic crosses and tossed out the tokens and relics of the ancient Church. It was only in the 19th century that some engaged in romanticised revisionism regarding the Culdees - who are indeed fascinating and represented a resistance to Rome. But they were not Protestants, Calvinists, or Presbyterians.
I was disappointed to see Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization on the list, a book that many will remember was extremely popular in the 1990's. A revolting work, Cahill is a sloppy historian and an irreverent revisionist. It's easily on the list of books I most despise and is an insult to the Irish. I remember reading it at the time and being baffled as to why it was so popular - even among many Christians.
After Cahill, could it get worse? It did. Next was Jim Webb's Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, which was more of a romanticised military history of America's frontiersmen and the like. It has nothing to do with actual Celtic history or Celtic peoples. Again, the Scots-Irish or Ulster-Scots were not really Celtic and in fact largely despise all things Celtic - which they associated with the Roman Catholic Irish and the Roman Catholic Scottish Highlanders. They were mostly of Lowland Scots origin - a mixed people but dominated by an Anglo-Saxon culture - one very different from the Anglo-Saxon culture of the West Country or the Anglo-Norman culture of the English elite. No doubt many Ulster-Scots had some Gaelic and Brythonic blood - as well as some Pictish ancestry. These were the people that made up the greater part of the Scottish ancestry and identity but culturally they were not Celtic - not like the far more pure Gaelic folk of the Highlands whom they despised.
If the Ulster-Scots were 'Celtic' then the term more or less ceases to have any meaning. I remember having this discussion years ago with a dyed-in-the-wool Theonomic Presbyterian who wore a kilt and was into the bagpipes and all things 'Celtic'. Braveheart (a rubbish movie) had just come out and he was riding the pop culture wave - but he didn't understand that as a Presbyterian - these weren't his people, and Webb's book does not belong on the same list as Cahill, neither of which are worth reading in my opinion.
And then the reading list took an even darker turn with JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. Again, this has nothing to do with 'Celtic' anything as once again we're talking (maybe) about Scots-Irish culture in Appalachia (and apparently beyond) which it must be said Vance does not represent or understand - and to what extent he does, he actually despises it. He's trashing the values of the people that McWhiney's aforementioned Cracker Culture attempts to explain and celebrate. Again, though McWhiney's work is flawed, I think about it quite a bit and in particular how a place like rural Wales is so much like Appalachia - and yet there's not actually a lot of Welsh heritage in those parts. Something else is at work.
I also think back to HV Morton's travel writings in Wales and Scotland and some of his comments about country people in those parts and how they may seem backward but were not at all like the 'yokels' he found in parts of England. So while Wales and parts of Scotland may be analogous (in some ways) to Appalachia, in other aspects the cultures are still quite different.
I've said it before but it's worth mentioning again - if you want to read a good book about Appalachia that will give you a lot more insight then read, At Home in the Heart of Appalachia by John O'Brien. It's not about Celts, but about Appalachian culture and West Virginia in particular. O'Brien makes a pretty good case explaining how people are much the same everywhere and provincialism does not have to be limited to the hill country of Appalachia. Small towns and small town life can be the same in the Midwest or rural California for that matter. There are differences to be sure. Rural New England is not the same - though when one reads about old Swamp Yankees, it's not really that different. The reason rural Vermont is different today is because everywhere I have looked (on my various visits) I only see city transplants (many of them rather odd) with plenty of money. Of course most of Old Appalachia is also gone. I went looking for it years ago and while the grandchildren of the people I sought are still living in the same places - they're not the same people. It's not the same culture.
Unfortunately the list was instructive in this respect - an example of what not to read if one wishes to understand Celtic roots - which in many cases are not actually Celtic at all. But I will say this if you ever get a chance to see the Book of Kells, or to visit Lindisfarne or Iona, be sure to do it - it's well worth it. They are experiences I treasure and though I will probably never make it back - I'll never forget.