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Brainballs, Screaming Rocks and the Well of the Heads
The Latinate cleric who first wrote down "The Cattle Raid of Cooley" can be compared to one of those FBI employees who collects samples of pornography in order to help run sting operations. The monks of the early Catholic Church's hierarchy felt obliged to preserve their area's pagan folk tales, as evidence to justify their attempts to snuff out the traditions that had given birth to them. However, those written versions were either layered over with judgemental commentary or changed outright, to suit t he monks' taste and morality. "Cooley" is footnoted with a little missive that calls it a product of the mutterings of demons, a comparatively mild decree. The story "Tobar nan Ceann," called in English "The Well of the Heads," came to the same fate.

20th Century Neopaganism in the developed world is equally squeamish about the old style mythic worldview, that brazenly reduced all form and fluid imaginable. Rain, snow and riverwater; blood, urine and semen were equally interchangeable. Death was an entr'acte in the grand cycle of reincarnation, and severed heads continued to speak as matter-of-fact as could be. Buile Suibhne (Crazy Sweeney) winds up chased by five heads bent on revenge, bopping along the road and calling after him. The head of Fer gal Mac Maile Duin (McMuldoon) prophesies after his death, set on a pillar and more neatly groomed than ever. Finn MacCool kills his servant in a fit of pique, but props the head up on a sideboard to keep him company at home. It soon becomes a nuisance, whining for a handout while he tries to eat his dinner. So Finn heaves the thing out the window, only to hear it still mumbling stubbornly in the grass!

Don't even ask about brainballs, how do you think they're made?

Hero
(1982) The Ossian version of "Finn MacCool," shot in Scots Gaelic with a cast of amateurs led by Derek McGuire; a real odd bird directed by Barney Platts-Mills, a sort of British Pasolini.
92 min., Color, not available

The Highlander Series
Scotsman Connery is virtually the only native element in the original Highlander (1986), from a massive script by an unknown first lauded by screenwriter Richard Walter, which even Time Out had to admit was "utterly preposterous fun" (111 min., Color, Rated R, $14.99). The Quickening (1990) jumps the beheadings to the 21st century and cops out by telling us these are Scotsmen *from outer space* (88 min., Color, Rated R $14.99), while H III (1994) More swordplay set to The Carmina Burana ( min., Color, Unrated, $89.99). H IV The Final Dimension $96.99(1995)

The War Lord
(1965) Charleton Heston and director Franklin Schaffner worked so well on this period piece, they were reunited two years later for The Planet of the Apes. Heston plays an 11th century Norman feudal lord who abhors the local pagan customs, but isn't above invoking a little-known convention that allows him first crack at any villager's bride. Adapted from a Leslie Stevens' novel.
123 min., Color, $19.99 Laser $39.99

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There's a head loose on the Web every day, Monday through Friday, thanks to the Pagan Celtic Britain, first published in 1966. The populism studied in last year's The Image of Antiquity (ISBN 0300058144), by Sam Smiles, is given a real once-over by J. Mitchell's blunter Meg alithomania (Cornell U. Press, 1982). If you really want to face down the hateful consequences of misrepresenting cultures and human history, though, look for Paul J. deGategno's James Macpherson (ISBN 0-8057-6975-7) or the Harvest House publi cation Racial Myth in English History by Hugh A. Mac Dougall (ISBN 0-88772-211-3).

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