The Celts
Written by Greg Tczap
The Celts were a group of peoples
that occupied lands stretching from the British Isles to Galatia.
The Celts had many dealings with other cultures that bordered
the lands occupied by these peoples, and even though there is
no written record of the Celts stemming from their own documents,
we can piece together a fair picture of them from archaeological
evidence as well as historical accounts from other cultures.
The first historical recorded
encounter of a people displaying the cultural traits associated
with the Celts comes from northern Italy around 400 BC, when a
previously unknown group of barbarians came down from the Alps
and displaced the Etruscans from the fertile Po valley, a displacement
that helped to push the Etruscans from history's limelight. The
next encounter with the Celts came with the still young Roman
Empire, directly to the south of the Po. The Romans in fact had
sent three envoys to the beige Etruscans to study this new force.
We know from Livy's The Early History of Rome that this first
encounter with Rome was quite civilized:
[The Celts told the Roman envoys
that] this was indeed the first time they had heard of them, but
they assumed the Romans must be a courageous people because it
was to them that the [Etruscans] had turned to in their hour of
need. And since the Romans had tried to help with an embassy and
not with arms, they themselves would not reject the offer of peace,
provided the [Etruscans] ceded part of their superfluous agricultural
land; that was what they, the Celts, wanted.... If it were not
given, they would launch an attack before the Romans eyes, so
that the Romans could report back how superior the Gauls were
in battle to all others....The Romans then asked whether it was
right to demand land from its owners on pain of war, indeed what
were the Celts going in Etruria in the first place? The latter
defiantly retorted that their right lay in their arms: To the
brave belong all things.
The Roman envoys then preceded
to break their good faith and helped the Etruscans in their fight;
in fact, one of the envoys, Quintas Fabius killed one of the Celtic
tribal leaders. The Celts then sent their own envoys to Rome in
protest and demand the Romans hand over all members of the Fabian
family, to which all three of the original Roman envoys belonged,
be given over to the Celts, a move completely in line with current
Roman protocol. This of course presented problems for the Roman
senate, since the Fabian family was quite powerful in Rome. Indeed,
Livy says that:
The party structure would allow
no resolution to be made against such nobleman as justice would
have required. The Senate...therefore passed examination of the
Celts request to the popular assembly, in which power and influence
naturally counted for more. So it happened that those who ought
to have been punished were instead appointed for the coming year
military tribunes with consular powers (the highest that could
be granted).
The Celts saw this as a mortal
insult and a host marched south to Rome. The Celts tore through
the countryside and several battalions of Roman soldiers to lay
siege to the Capitol of the Roman Empire. Seven months of siege
led to negotiations whereby the Celts promised to leave their
siege for a tribute of one thousand pounds of gold, which the
historian Pliny tells was very difficult for the entire city to
muster. When the gold was being weighed, the Romans claimed the
Celts were cheating with faulty weights. It was then that the
Celts leader, Brennus, threw his sword into the balance and and
uttered the words vae victis "woe to the Defeated".
Rome never withstood another more humiliating defeat and the Celts
made an initial step of magnificent proportions into history.
Other Roman historians tell
us more of the Celts. Diodorus notes that:
Their aspect is terrifying...They
are very tall in stature, with rippling muscles under clear white
skin. Their hair is blond, but not naturally so: they bleach it,
to this day, artificially, washing it in lime and combing it back
from their foreheads. They look like wood-demons, their hair thick
and shaggy like a horse's mane. Some of them are clean shaven,
but others - especially those of high rank, shave their cheeks
but leave a moustache that covers the whole mouth and, when they
eat and drink, acts like a sieve, trapping particles of food...The
way they dress is astonishing: they wear brightly colored and
embroidered shirts, with trousers called bracae and cloaks fastened
at the shoulder with a brooch, heavy in winter, light in summer.
These cloaks are striped or checkered in design, with the separate
checks close together and in various colors.
[The Celts] wear bronze helmets
with figures picked out on them, even horns, which made them look
even taller than they already are...while others cover themselves
with breast-armour made out of chains. But most content themselves
with the weapons nature gave them: they go naked into battle...Weird,
discordant horns were sounded, [they shouted in chorus with their]
deep and harsh voices, they beat their swords rhythmically against
their shields.
Diodorus also describes how
the Celts cut off their enemies heads and nailed them over the
doors of their huts, as Diodorus states:
In exactly the same way as
hunters do with their skulls of the animals they have slain...they
preserved the heads of their most high-ranking victims in cedar
oil, keeping them carefully in wooden boxes.
Diodorus Siculus, History.
What is a Celt and
who are the Glasgow Celtics?
The people who made up the
various tribes of concern were called Galli by the Romans and
Galatai or Keltoi by the Greeks, terms meaning barbarian. It is
from the greek Keltoi that Celt is derived. Since no soft c exists
in greek, Celt and Celtic and all permutations should be pronounced
with a hard k sound.
It is interesting to note that
when the British Empire was distinguishing itself as better and
separate from the rest of humanity, it was decided that British
Latin should have different pronunciation from other spoken Latin.
Therefore, one of these distinguishing pronunciational differences
was to make many of the previously hard k sounds move to a soft
s sound, hence the Glasgow and Boston Celtics. It is the view
of many today that this soft c pronunciation should be reserved
for sports teams since there is obviously nothing to link them
with the original noble savagery and furor associated with the
Celts.
The Six Celtic Languages
There was a unifying language
spoken by the Celts, called not surprisingly, old Celtic. Philogists
have shown the descendents of Celtic from the original Ur-language
and from the Indo-European language tradition. In fact, the form
of old Celtic was the closest cousin to Italic, the precursor
of Latin.
The original wave of Celtic
immigrants to the British Isles are called the q-Celts and spoke
Goidelic. It is not known exactly when this immigration occurred
but it may be placed some time in the window of 2000 to 1200 BC.
The label q-Celtic stems from the differences between this early
Celtic tongue and Italic. Some of the differences between Italic
and Celtic included that lack of a p in Celtic and an a in place
of an the Italic o.
At a later date, a second wave
of immigrants took to the British Isles, a wave of Celts referred
to as the p-Celts speaking Brythonic. Goidelic led to the formation
of the three Gaelic languages spoken in Ireland, Man and later
Scotland. Brythonic gave rise to two British Isles languages,
Welsh and Cornish, as well as surviving on the Continent in the
form of Breton, spoken in Brittany.
The label q-Celtic stems from
the differences between this early Celtic tongue and the latter
formed p-Celtic. The differences between the two Celtic branches
are simple in theoretical form. Take for example the word ekvos
in Indo-European, meaning horse. In q-Celtic this was rendered
as equos while in p-Celtic it became epos, the q sound being replaced
with a p sound. Another example is the Latin qui who. In q-Celtic
this rendered as cia while in p-Celtic it rendered as pwy. It
should also be noted that there are still words common to the
two Celtic subgroups.
As an aside, take note that
when the Irish expansion into Pictish Britain occurred (see below),
several colonies were established in present day Wales. The local
inhabitants called the Irish arrivals gwyddel savages from which
comes geídil and goidel and thus the Goidelic tongue.
The Irish and the
Scots Are From the Same Tribe
Ireland used to be divided
up into five parts, the five fifths. There was a northern fifth,
Ulster, a western fifth, Connaught, a southern fifth, Munster,
an eastern fifth, Leinster and a middle fifth, Mide. Click here
to see a map of the five fifths.
The Ulster Cycle is a set of
stories which are grounded in the five fifths. Indeed, they are
primarily concerned with Cú Chulainn, the Ulster hero and
his king, Conor Mac Nessa in their wars against the king and queen
of Connaught, Ailill and Maeve. These figures play a prominent
role in the what may be the greatest story of the Ulster Cycle,
the Táin Bó Cúailnge, The Cattle Raid of
Cooley.
Sometime after 300 AD, Ulster
became steadily less important in status among the five farthings
and the ruling family of Mide, the Uí Néill Sons
of Niall started to take over large parts of Connaught and most
of Ulster. A similar move was made in Muster by the ruling family
of Munster, the Eoganachta family. Thus was Ireland divided almost
entirely into two halves.
The people of Ulster were pushed
to a small coastal strip bordering the Irish Sea. The kingdom
changed it's name to Dál Riata. Yet eventually Dál
Riata fell under the rule and influence of the Uí Néill.
This family, not content with the boundary presented by the sea,
launched colonies across the Irish Sea into then Pictish Britain.
Thus was Scotland founded, for it was these Uí Néill
that the Romans called Scotti, not the original Picts.
Indeed, it was this Irish Expansion
which led to Christianity in Scotland in 563 AD. St. Columba,
the patron saint of Scotland, was a member of a powerful family
in Dál Riata and in order to keep his ties in Ireland he
settled on an island that was close to both Scotland and Ireland,
Iona. Of course, even more bizarre is the fact that St. Patrick,
the man responsible for bringing Christianity to Ireland in the
first place, was from Wales.
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