Romantic Cumbria's Dead And Gone

This blog has occasionally drawn attention to the richly varied and mostly un-English cultural heritage available to Cumbrians. Like most questions of cultural identity this is a matter of personal choice, and I'm personally less fascinated by our Viking heritage than by the elided Romano-British. Which means that any hint of Cumbria's Celtic past always draws some attention in these pages. But the recent festival of Celtic Cumbria seems to have got it horribly wrong. Inventing a past for yourself is one thing. This one seems to be grounded in the consumer-oriented ersatz Oirishry that's been a central part of our cultural heritage since . . oh, the 1980s . . .