The World of Celts -- Part 1

Ask most people in the United States to tell you what they know of the Celts (pr. Kelts),and you will receive no answer. If you say Celtics (pr. Seltics), rather than Celts, then you will be told of the exploits of a successful professional basketball team. Should you ask for the names of the five Celtic nations, you would be very lucky to be given the names of Cornwall, Brittany, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Occasionally, you may be reminded that a sixth "nation", the Isle of Man, should be included in your list. A major problem of course, is in defining what exactly constitutes a nation, for all the above countries with the exception of the Republic of Ireland (Eire), "belong" to another larger and stronger political unit that we normally refer to as "a nation."

Of the seven definitions of "nation" listed in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (New College Edition, l976), only two come close to describing what all our Celtic cousins ascribe to their own nationhood. 1. "Devoted to one's own nations, or interests; patriotic" and 2. "Characteristic of or peculiar to the people of a nation: a national trait."

We will accept the definition of a nation as something that exists when there is a general consensus among the members that they share a common identity -- be it language, culture, or a claim to a geographical area, or simply as the desire of a certain group of people to form a state by sharing common goals. Thus the Celtic peoples of the past were a nation, and thus the Celtic peoples of today form different nations.

In the fourth century B. C., the Greek writer Ephorus wrote of what he considered to be the four great barbarian peoples in the known world: the Libyans in Africa; the Persians in the east, and the Scythians and Celts in Europe. He called the last group the Keltoi; they lived mainly in those parts of Europe close to the North Sea, in France and in southwest Spain. We gather from Ephorus and from later Greek writers that the Celts formed a group of people who occupied most of western Europe from Anatolia to the Atlantic and who were sufficiently similar to be thought of as culturally one people, referring to themselves as Celts. They spoke various dialects of Indo-European that were sufficiently similar to be classified as a single language. We now call this language Celtic.

In the first Century, B.C. the following description of the Celts, whom he named Celtai, was written by Diodorus Siculus, an obviously biased Roman:

Physically the Celts are terrifying in appearance, with deep-sounding and very harsh voices. In conversation they use few words and speak in riddles, for the most part hinting at things and leaving a great deal to be understood. They frequently exaggerate with the aim of extolling themselves and diminishing the status of others. They are boasters and threateners and given to bombastic self- dramatization, and yet they are quick of mind and with good natural ability for learning. They have also lyrical poets whom they call Bards. They sing to the accompaniment of instruments resembling lyres, some times a eulogy and sometimes a satire.

Thus the musical abilities of the Celts as well as a tendency which we would today perhaps refer to as "cunning" were notable even in those early days. Around the same time as the above description, Julius Caesar provided us with another: "All the Britons paint themselves with woad, which gives their skin a bluish color and makes them look very dreadful in battle."

The Britons, of course, were another branch of the Celtic peoples, with whom the armies of Rome had been involved in fierce conflicts for control of central Europe before the latter's disciplined military might imposed Roman rule and the Latin language over much of the conquered Celtic lands. In certain areas, however, notably on what is now termed "the Celtic fringe of Western Europe," Celtic languages remained, and with the language, the culture and traditions of a proud people.

The fall of Rome in the fifth century A.D. meant something of a resurgence of these peoples, and it was then that separate Celtic nations found their identity in the British Isles. The language of pre-Roman Britain was derived from a branch of Celtic known as Brythonic (or P-Celtic), from which developed Welsh, Cornish and Breton. In other parts of the British Isles, not subdued by Rome, the Celtic dialects formed Goidelic, (or Q-Celtic), from which came Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx.

Manx survived as a living language until the l940's, Cornish having disappeared with the death of the last speaker in the late l8th Century. It seems that Goidelic was carried into present-day Scotland (where it developed into Gaelic) and into the Isle of Man (where it became Manx) by Irish emigrants. Brythonic was taken into Amorica (present-day Brittany) by emigrants from southwestern Britain after the fall of Rome and the beginnings of the Anglo-Saxon invasions).

In Ireland the language remained dominant until the late l6th Century when English began to take over, a process rapidly accelerated during the mass emigration of the period of the Great Famine in the early l9th Century. It seems that in Scotland, the Gaelic tongue was being replaced by English earlier, especially in the Lowlands and the more highly populated middle regions, giving rise to what we now term Scots.

As we have noted, Cornish and Manx are no longer living tongues, though Breton has survived despite centuries of persecution and attempts to suppress it. The survival of Welsh (spoken by about one quarter of the population) is a miracle indeed, for it was the wish of more than just the first Tudor monarchs to extirpate it once and for all. Perhaps we can attribute this to the provision of the Welsh language Bible and other religious tracts as the sole books from which countless generations of children learned to read and write.

Despite the loss of much of the native Celtic languages, what has survived to a great extent in Ireland and Wales, and to a lesser extent in Scotland are the great literary traditions of the Celtic peoples. The enormously rich mythology of the Celtic West has sustained generations of exceptionally talented writers. It is time to look at some of the ancient myths and traditions that inspired such writers and that also contributed to the modern movements towards independence in the Celtic nations of Britain. The successful referenda of l997 set up national political assemblies for Scotland and Wales. Thus, they followed the independence movement that culminated in the formation of the Irish Republic in l922.

part 2: