Reading 12

“The Celts of the Scottish Highlands have a special word for the host of the dead: sluagh, meaning ‘spirit-multitude’. ‘The spirits fly about in great clouds like starlings, up and down the face of the world, and come back to the scenes of their earthly transgressions. With their venomous unerring darts they kill cats and dogs, sheep and cattle. They fight battles in the air as men do on the earth. They may be heard and seen on clear, frosty nights, advancing and retreating, retreating and advancing against one another. After a battle their crimson blood may be seen staining rocks and stones.’ The word gairm means shout or cry, and sluagh-ghairm was the battle-cry of the dead. This word later became ‘slogan’. The expression we use for the battle-cries of our modern crowds derives from the Highland hosts of the dead.”

- Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (1960)