ABSTRACT
Magic, mystery, music and laughter: these are some of the essential ingredients of a holiday in Ireland, according to Bord Fáilte’s 1999 tourism literature. These ingredients could also be construed to be part of an essentially ‘Celtic’ experience within the context of popular perceptions which tend to link ideas about the Celt to things spiritual, ancient, ‘alternative’ and natural. It is increasingly recognised that these contemporary constructions of Celticity have their origins in the existence of historically layered social relationships whereby Celts have been positioned as ‘peripheral others’ to a defining ‘centre’. In relation to this, it is generally acknowledged that ‘[T]ourism is one of the engines which manufacture and structure relationships between centres and peripheries’ (Selwyn 1996: 9). The aim in this chapter, therefore, is to consider the extent to which current tourism images of two ‘Celtic’ places – namely, the Republic of Ireland and Brittany – attempt to both tap into and reinforce a romanticised social construction of Celts as ‘peripheral others’ to the modern, urban and industrialised ‘centre’.
