jO_77, market days depend on a calendar being common only to those who can reach the market--a small area before the invention of interstate highways.

I'm not sure what Newgrange has to do with what we were discussing. Newgrange was abandoned long before the historical period. Whatever the genetic relationship may or may not have been between the people who built Newgrange and the later Irish-speaking inhabitants of the island, I'm not aware of any cultural relationship.

It's these uncertainties about the history of the celtic lands' populations and languages that led me to phrase my earlier post in terms of the celtic lands' rulers. It's a way of avoiding committing myself to any specific timetable or process for the celtization of Britain, Ireland, and Gaul. Maybe it happened by mass migrations (such as the northern English emigration to Britain, which according to one source left the earlier homeland empty for a time); maybe it was by means of aristocratic takeovers (such as the Norman conquest of England) which replaced or demoted the upper crust but left everyone else as they were. Maybe some sort of backtrailing was part of the process (such as the 6th century English migrations from Britain to Germany). I think we're on fairly safe ground if we assume that the rulers of Britain, Gaul, and Ireland spoke celtic languages when the celtic lands begin to be mentioned in written records. Maybe their subjects, or some of them, did too. (e.g. There are hints that Gaulish may have lingered into the 5th century A.D., and the easiest way I can see to account for this is to assume it had penetrated the population well before that time.) But for the purposes of discussing the calendar, I didn't think it was necessary to make any assumptions about when and how the celtic lands had become celtic.

Here's a lyric that's as good now as anytime. It doesn't seem to be in DT in precisely this version:

THE LOVER'S TASKS.
Folk Songs from Somerset, 3rd Series, ed. Cecil J. Sharp and Charles L. Marson, Simpkin & Co., London, 1906.

Say can you make me a cambric shirt
Sing ivy leaf, sweet william and thyme,
without any needle or needle work ?
And you shall be a true lover of mine.

Yes, if you wash it in yonder well
Where neither springs water, nor rain ever fell

Say can you plow me an acre of land
between the sea and the salt sea strand ?

Yes, if you plow it with one ram's horn
and sow it all over with one pepper corn

Say can you reap with a sicke of leather
and tie it all up with a tom-tit's feather ?

Yes if you gather it all in a sack,
and carry it home on a butterfly's back,

This seems to be a dialog, with one sweetheart saying the "say can you ?" verses, and the other saying the "yes if you" verses. This structure suggests that maybe someone could write an "answer" verse to serve as the second verse of the Star Spangled Banner.

T.