A Brief History of the Celts

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  When the British Isles emerged into recorded history, becoming known to the Mediterranean world in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, we have evidence that its inhabitants spoke one or another form of a Celtic language – the insular Celtic forms today represented by their modern descendants, Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, Cornish and Breton. The evidence comes in the form of names and words recorded in early references in the classical world and personal names recorded on British coins issued in Britain long before Romans invaded the island – facts that Dr James appears to dismiss. It is a telling truth that no place name survives prior to the Celtic place names in the British Islands. Professor Kenneth Jackson’s Language and History in Early Britain (Edinburgh University Press, 1953) is the seminal guide to this topic and has been an inspiration to a generation of Celtic scholars. This 752-page book sets out the linguistic evidence for the existence of a Celtic language in ‘Iron Age’ Britain.

  Another obvious piece of evidence comes directly from the writing of Julius Caesar: ‘Qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur’ (‘In their own language they are called Celts, in our tongue Gauls’). Clearly this contradicts the idea propounded by Dr James that these people did not call themselves Celts until the eighteenth century.

  Writing on this point, Dr James states that while there were Celtic-speaking peoples here in the Iron Age ‘they were not necessarily Celts’ [my italics] but people who had somehow been absorbed into a Celtic-speaking cultural ethos. My response to this is the reminder that Celtic is, and always has been, a linguistic term and not a biological one. To talk of biological attributes and to try and separate and identify individual ‘racial’ groups who, at this stage, shared a common language and culture is dangerous.

  If the logic of Dr James’ view were followed, it would be equally wrong to talk of any ancient group of people by linguistic definition. Thus there would be no Anglo-Saxons, no Slavs, no Latins and certainly no Greeks. In Iron Age Britain we would have to become linguistically cumbersome in the extreme if we went down such a path. We could not even speak of Ancient Britons, because no one called himself or herself an ‘Ancient Briton’. We would have to be specific and speak of the Cantii, Coritani, Cornovii and Trinovantes – conveniently forgetting, by the way, that these are all Celtic names.

  Dr James wrote to me: ‘I am being deliberately polemical . . . It is intended to draw attention to the real discrepancies between the ideas of your field and mine. My long-term hope is that this will help to precipitate genuine co-operative work to seek synthesis.’

  As it stands, that is a laudable aim. But Professor Barry Raftery, of University College, Dublin, Ireland’s foremost archaeological authority on the Iron Age, and Professor Barry Cunliffe, the leading archaeological expert on Britain’s Iron Age, both in the same ‘field’ as Dr James, have dismissed the idea that the ancient Celts did not exist and see the claim as simply ‘anti-Celtic revisionism’. The people living in both islands during the Iron Age not only spoke Celtic languages but also shared a common religious system, a mythology and cultural expression – even a comparable law system. They were, by the only meaningful scholastic definition, Celts.

  In a strong attack on my arguments in the subsequent issue of the Irish Democrat, Dr James, I believe, clearly demonstrated that he was indeed more concerned with modern politics than the ancient Celtic civilisation. One of the best studies on the background to the modern resurgence of the ‘Celtic idea’ had just been published: Norman Davies’ The Isle: A History (Macmillan, 1999). Dr Davies had succinctly discussed why, in an effort to rubbish the rise of modern Celtic nationalism, some people might like to remove the Celts as an entity from history.

  As regards the Continental Celts, it took a little longer for the French to join the revolt, but in 2002 Professor Christian Goudineau, a Professor at the College de France, chairman of Antiquités Nationales and president of the Scientific Council of Mont Beuvray, who had previously courted controversy as an archaeologist, decided that the Gaulish Celts had not existed either. Julius Caesar had it all wrong when he wrote his book Commentarii de bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gaulish War). Professor Goudineau’s views in his book Par Toutatis! Que reste-t-il de la Gaule? were immediately seized on by The Times (appropriately on 1 April) and The Independent (4 May), and several other publications, who seemed more concerned to attack René Goscinny’s famous cartoon character ‘Asterix the Gaul’ than to contribute to any serious historical discussion.

  Certainly, archaeologists, especially in television documentaries, in recent years have resorted more and more to talking about the ‘Iron Age People’ in Britain, Ireland and France. In April 2003 when the University of Leicester announced the discovery of the hoard of Celtic coins minted by the Corieltauvi long before the arrival of the Romans they decided to announce that ‘in excess of 3,000 silver and gold coins have been found, mostly made by the local Iron Age tribe – the Corieltauvi’. That is sad for it does not inform people who this ‘Iron Age tribe’ was, nor explain what language they spoke or what culture they followed. ‘Do You Speak Iron Age?’ is a joke now often heard among Celtic Studies students in modern universities.

  That the Celts will weather this mini-storm, I have no doubt, as they have weathered similar attempts to eradicate them from the historical map.

  I am delighted that The Ancient World of the Celts is appearing in a new, easily accessible edition in the Brief History Series. Such a general introduction appears to be needed more than ever following their confused helter-skelter descent into Iron Age People.

  Peter Berresford Ellis, April 2003

  1

  THE ORIGINS OF THE CELTS

  When the merchant-explorers of Greece first started to encounter the people they came to refer to as Keltoi, at the start of the sixth century BC, the Celtic peoples were already widely spread through Europe and still rapidly expanding. It was Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 490–c. 425 BC) who says that a merchant named Colaeus, from Samos, trading along the African coast about the year 630 BC, was driven off course in his ship by tides and winds and eventually made landfall at the Tartessus, the modern River Guadalquivir in southern Spain. In the valley of the Guadalquivir are the modern cities of Cordoba and Seville. At Tartessus, Colaeus found a tribe of the Keltoi exploiting the rich silver mines of the area.

  About 600 BC merchants from Phocis, in central Greece, made a treaty with these same Keltoi to trade goods for their silver. The king of these Keltoi was named Arganthonios, which seems to derive from the Celtic word for silver, arganto. Herodotus tells us that his name became a byword for longevity among the Greeks for he reportedly died as late as 564 BC.

  From where did the Greeks derive the name Keltoi? Julius Caesar gives the answer at the beginning of his De Bello Gallico (Gallic War). He refers to the Gauls as those ‘who are called Celts in their own language’. So, it appears, and logically so, that Celt was a name that the Celts called themselves. If this is so, what does the name mean?

  Numerous doubtful etymologies have been put forward. One suggests an Indo-European root quel, denoting ‘raised’ or ‘elevated’. This survives in the Latin celsus and the Lithuanian kéltas, comparable to the old Irish word cléthe. Thus it would be argued that the Celts described themselves as ‘exalted’, ‘elevated’ or ‘noble’. Another suggestion is the Indo-European root kel-, to strike, surviving in the Latin -cello and the Lithuanian kalti. This seems just as unlikely as the first suggestion. Henri Hubert suggested that it might be cognate with the Sanskrit cárati, to surround, found in the old Irish imm-e-chella.

  Of all the suggestions, perhaps the most acceptable so far has been that the word derived from the Indo-European root kel- meaning ‘hidden’. This survived in both old Irish as celim (I hide) and old Welsh, celaf. The Celts were ‘the hidden people’, perhaps a reference to their religious proscription against setting down their vast store of knowledge in written form in their own language. As Caesar observed in his Gallic War: ‘
The Druids believe that their religion forbids them to commit their teachings to writing, although for most other purposes, such as public and private accounts, the Celts use the Greek alphabet.’ In old, and even in modern Irish, the word celt still exists for an act of ‘concealment’. The word celt is also used for a form of dress or mantle, designed to ‘conceal’ or ‘hide’ the genitalia, which is now known in English as a kilt.

  The various ancient names incorporating the word celt are probably names identifying the person’s ethnic background although Professor Ellis Evans argues they are more likely to be from the root kel-, to exalt. The father of Vercingetorix, Celtillus, who held suzerainty over all the Gaulish tribes, might well have been known as ‘exalted’ but in Irish mythology, the Ulster hero Celtchair’s name is clearly shown to mean ‘mantle’ or ‘concealment’.

  However, the fact that there were personal names incorporating the synonymous terms ‘Celt’ and ‘Gaul’, in whatever form the Greeks and Romans chose to present them, did lead to some confusion when the classical writers tried to link the Celts into their own cultural concepts and creation myths. Appian (Appianos of Alexandria who flourished c. AD 160) tried to explain the origin and names of the Celts by writing about two kings called Keltos and Galas who he said were the sons of the Cyclops, Polyphemus, and his wife Galatea. Of course, the character of Galatea, whose name meant ‘milk white’ (from galakt, the Greek word for milk), was used by Theocritus, Virgil and Ovid as the eponymous ancestor of the Galatae. It is argued that she actually took her place in Greek and Roman literature following the impression the Celts made on the Greeks during their invasion and sack of Delphi. Greek writers frequently remarked on the ‘milk white’ skin of the Celts.

  Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. c. first century BC) records a story of Keltos being the son of Heracles (Hercules) and Asterope, daughter of Atlas. Yet another Greek, Diodorus Siculus (c. 60–c. 30 BC) made the Celts originate with Galates, whose parents were Heracles and the daughter of a local king of Gaul.

  I find that it is not stretching the imagination to suggest that when the Greek merchants first started to encounter the Celtic peoples and asked them who they were, the Celts simply replied, ‘the hidden people’ – that is, to Greek ears, Keltoi.

  As there is no documentary evidence about the Celts prior to these early Greek writings, some scholars argue that it is not justifiable to speak of ‘Celts’ before the sixth century BC. Others argue that we can build a reasonable picture of Celtic life during the first millennium BC by the use of comparative Indo-European linguistics and archaeological evidence.

  So, who were the Celts and where did they come from?

  The first European people north of the Alps to emerge into recorded history, the Celtic peoples were distinguished from their fellow Europeans by virtue of the languages which they spoke and which we now identify by the term ‘Celtic’. (The use of this term to identify this group of languages was only adopted with the development of Celtic studies.) The Scot, George Buchanan (1506–1582), was one of the first to recognise the relationship between the surviving Celtic languages. By the time the Celtic peoples first appeared in written records, they had already diversified into speaking differing dialects, so we may usefully speak of the existence of several Celtic languages even though their speakers retained common links in terms of social structure, religion and material culture.

  These Celtic languages constituted an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The Indo-European family encompasses most of the languages spoken in Europe, with a few notable exceptions such as Basque, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, and also includes the languages of Iran and northern India. At some point in remote antiquity, there was a single parent language which we call ‘Indo-European’ for want of a better designation. This parent language, as its speakers began to migrate from where it was originally spoken, diversified into dialects. These dialects then became the ancestors of the present major European and North Indian language groups: Hellenic (Greek), Italic (Latin or now the Romance languages), Celtic, Germanic, Slavonic, Baltic, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan (including Sanskrit), Armenian, Anatolian, Tocharian, Hittite and so forth.

  Even now there remain common forms of construction and vocabulary among all the Indo-European languages which are not found in other languages. For example, the word ‘name’ incorporates a very profound and ancient concept, and it survives with hardly any change in the Indo-European languages. ‘Name’ in English comes from the Anglo-Saxon nama; this is namn in Gothic; name in German; noma in Frisian; nomen in Latin; namn in Norse; naam in Dutch; onoma in Greek; namman in Sanskrit; aimn in Irish; anu in old Welsh but enw in modern and so forth.

  Other features common to the Indo-European group include a clear, formal distinction of noun and verb, a basically inflective structure and decimal numeration. An interesting example of the relationship between the Indo-European languages can be seen in the cardinal numbers, one to ten. ‘One, two, three’ sounds very similar to the Irish aon, dó, tri, the Welsh un, dau, tri, the Greek énas, duo, treis, the Latin unus, duo, tres and the Russian odin, dva, tri. But they bear no relation to the Basque bat, bi, hirur or the Finnish yksi, kaksi, kolme, because those are not Indo-European languages.

  The earliest Indo-European literatures are Hittite and classical Sanskrit. Hittite writing emerged from 1900 BC and vanished around 1400 BC, surviving on tablets written in cuneiform syllabics which were not deciphered until 1916. The classical Sanskrit of the Vedas is of later origin, usually dated around 1000–500 BC.

  Where was this parent language originally spoken and when did it begin to break up? It is probable, but only probable, that the speakers of the parent tongue originated somewhere between the Baltic and the Black Sea. It also seems probable that the parent tongue was already breaking into dialects before the waves of migrants carried it westward into Europe and eastward into Asia. Although it is still a matter of argument among academics as to when this parent language might have existed, most speculation puts the date at around the fourth millennium BC.

  Professor Myles Dillon was one of several Celtic scholars who argued that the Celtic dialect, the ancestor of the Celtic languages, began to emerge from the Indo-European parent about the start of the second millennium BC. What is extraordinary are the close similarities that have survived between Irish and Vedic Sanskrit, two cultures which developed thousands of miles apart over thousands of years. When scholars seriously began to examine the Indo-European connections in the nineteenth century they were amazed at how old Irish and Sanskrit had apparently maintained close links with their Indo-European parent. This applies not only in the field of linguistics but in law and social custom, in mythology, in folk custom and in traditional musical form.

  The following examples demonstrate the similarity of the language of the Vedic Laws of Manu and that of the Irish legal texts, the Laws of the Fénechus, more popularly known as the Brehon Laws:

  Sanskrit

  Old Irish

  arya (freeman)

  aire (noble)

  naib (good)

  noeib (holy)

  badhira (deaf)

  bodhar (deaf)

  minda (physical defect)

  menda (a stammerer)

  names (respect)

  nemed (respect/privilege)

  raja (king)

  rí (king)

  vid (knowledge)

  uid (knowledge)

  Arya gives us the much misunderstood term Aryan; the old Irish noeib becomes the modern Irish naomh, a saint; and the Irish bodhar (deaf) was borrowed into eighteenth-century English as ‘bother’. To be ‘bothered’ is, literally, to be deafened. Finally, the word vid, used not only for knowledge but for understanding, is the root of Veda; the Vedas constitute the four most sacred books of Hinduism – the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, Atharva Veda. The same root can be seen in the name of the Celtic intellectual caste, the Druids – i.e. dru-vid which some have argued meant ‘thorough knowledge’.<
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  Unfortunately, no complete ‘creation’ myth of the Celts has survived. When these myths came to be written down, in the insular Celtic languages of Irish and Welsh, Christianity had taken a hold and the scribes bowdlerised the stories of the gods and goddesses, thus obscuring their symbolism and significance. That the Celts did have a vibrant and rich pre-Christian mythology, including a creation myth, is seen not only in the Christianised stories but in the few allusions in the classical writers. However, most of the classical writers tend, like the Christians after them, to incorporate the Celtic myths and gods into their own cultural ethos.

  The fact is that many of the surviving Irish myths, and some of the Welsh ones, show remarkable resemblances to the themes, stories and even names in the sagas of the Indian Vedas. Once again, this demonstrates the amazing conservatism of cultural tradition. By comparing these themes we find that Danu, sometimes Anu in old Irish and Dôn in Welsh and also surviving in the epigraphy of the Continental Celts, was the mother goddess. She was the ‘divine waters’ which gushed to the earth in the time of primal chaos and nurtured Bíle the sacred oak, from whom the gods and goddesses sprang. Her waters formed the course of the Danuvius (Danube).