Every single person who makes a comment on my lovespoon post about how it would be WAY COOLER if people did it with knives instead is getting blocked immediately and also owes my cat £3.
Real talk, though. I think that Welsh / quote-unquote ‘Celtic’ culture (which I put in inverted commas because there isn’t one universal Celtic culture; it’s lots of different ones) forms the basis of so many fantasy narratives, like Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Prydain etc, that people in general (I’m gonna say it: mostly Americans) have sort of absorbed this bastardised, high fantasy version of Welsh culture, where everyone frolics around the woods with enchanted swords and has affairs with saucy elves and performs magic inside stone circles with daggers and moss, and so when they see information about actual Welsh / quote-unquote ‘Celtic’ culture, they’re like “excuse me, where the fuck are the elves? Where are the knives?’ because to them it’s like a fantasy downgrade from what they’re used to, rather than, y’know, an actual culture, and it’s missing the elements that they’re used to, and therefore feel entitled to.
They’re so accustomed to only consuming Welsh culture through the lens of artificial pseudo-Medieval fantasy that the real source material seems like it’s missing something to them, and as far as they’re concerned, it’s something that merits complaining about or mocking, because clearly it has less intrinsic value or interest if it doesn’t involve enchanted blades and prophecies.
And I’m absolutely not saying here that no-one should use elements of Welsh or Celtic culture for fantasy worldbuilding; just please, for the love of all that is holy and delicious, remember that the Welsh stuff came first, and that Welsh people do in fact still exist, and so treating Welsh culture like the boring magic-free little cousin of Dungeons and Dragons lore is not only offensive, but also ignorant. Don’t act like real Welsh stuff is somehow less interesting than your DnD campaign because people don’t, like, propose to one another with daggers and then fuck an elf.