A Brief History of the Celts

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  Martin of Tours, father of Celtic monasticism, was a frequent visitor to Magnus’ court. Martin became a close friend of Elen Luyddog and is said to have converted her to Christianity, according to Sulpicius Severus in Dialogues. Elen not only became a leading figure in the intellectual life of the court but was the mother of many children of the new western emperor.

  When Magnus crossed the Alps to Milan in AD 387, the eastern emperor, Theodosius, saw him as a threat to his empire and took the field against him. Magnus was defeated, captured and put to death on 28 July AD 388.

  Elen decide to leave Gaul with her children and go back to Britain where she began to work assiduously on behalf of the Christian Church. Place-names attesting to her influence include various Llanelens. Elen occupied a position that caused Celtic leaders, even in the Isle of Man, to acknowledge her as a source of their sovereignty. Certainly her sons and daughters founded dynasties. Leo became king of the Cantii; Cystennin ruled at Segontium in Gwynedd; Owain is said to be ancestor of the kings of Glywsing (South Wales); Demetus founded the dynasty which ruled Dyfed; Antonius is claimed as ancestor of the kings of the Isle of Man. Plebig became a disciple of St Ninian. Her daughter Sevira married Vortigern, the famous king ruling at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. His son, Brydw, was blessed by St Germanus of Auxerre during one of his visits to Britain.

  Elen’s home is said to have been at Dinas Emrys, a fortress which can still be seen at Bedgelert. We are told by Nennius that Dinas Emrys played a central part in the overthrow of Vortigern, who was regarded as betraying Britain to the Anglo-Saxons. It is named after Emrys (Ambrosius) who is said to have toppled Vortigern. At one time scholars tried to prove that Emrys was the real historical figure of Arthur. However, Arthur and Emrys, in historical record, are clearly two different people. Elen Luyddog was undoubtedly dead by the time Vortigern emerged as the ‘overlord’ of southern Britain.

  Women have played a prominent part in Celtic life, from the mother goddess and the pantheon of female deities down to a whole range of powerful historical female leaders, priestesses and Christian saints. Their role did not stop with the coming of Christianity but continued into medieval times among the insular Celts. As has been pointed out before, a unique piece of ‘feminist’ literature emerges from twelfth-century Ireland in the form of the Banshenchas, a book on the genealogies of leading woman. In fact, this could be claimed as the first European book about women in their own right.

  7

  CELTIC FARMERS

  The economic backbone of Celtic society, which was essentially rural like most ancient societies, was in its farms. Celtic farmers were part of a continuum which archaeologists can trace back to the Bronze Age. Archaeology disproves the popular notion of the Celts being an itinerant people, constantly travelling Europe in great hordes, attacking and looting as they went. Both agricultural and pastoral farming were practised and indeed became highly sophisticated as the Celts combined their technology with other rural knowledge and skills. They were a long way removed from the picture that Caesar would have us believe when he speaks of the British Celts in these propaganda terms: ‘. . . many of the inland Britons do not grow corn. They live on milk and flesh and are clothed in skins.’

  In fact, Celtic farmers, in whatever part of the ancient Celtic world they lived, could have taught the Romans a few lessons on farming. Their wheeled transport was superior to the Romans’ and their technology allowed them to produce the first harvesting machine; the Celtic plough, fitted with a mobile coulter, was greatly superior to the Roman swing plough of the same period.

  The plough, of course, was the very basis of agriculture. The earliest picture of a Celtic plough is found in a rock carving in the Val Camonica, north of Milan, where the Celts had settled from the start of the Hallstatt period. The Camonica rock carvings are an excellent source of information on the Celts and show the first known rendition of the Celtic god Cernunnos together with wagons, scenes of hunting and so forth. Some of the carvings date from the seventh century BC.

  Double ploughing, running a plough twice across the field, seemed a common practice in early European societies for the plough did not entirely turn the sod. However, innovative Celtic technology provided the plough with a coulter, a sharp knife attached to the plough beam which made a vertical cut through the soil at the same time that the share made the horizontal cut and thus the soil was turned over upon itself.

  The Celts developed iron shares while their neighbours continued to use wooden ones. The iron provided the Celts with, literally, an ‘edge’ over their neighbours. The plough was often pulled by two yoked oxen and by this means they were able to open up vast tracts of arable land. The Celtic farmers would penetrate regions previously impossible to plough and cultivate.

  Among the British Celts, the iron share and coulter, plus the practice of crop rotating and manuring, seemed to mark a major change in intensive farming before the end of the second century BC. Land was being cleared at an unprecedented rate and some areas, such as marshy, clay soil valleys, were actually being drained and brought under the plough. When the Romans arrived in Britain, in total contradiction to Caesar’s assertions, a patchwork of hedged, fenced or walled fields, with others delineated by ditches, and smaller woodlands, would have been the landscape seen by the invaders. In other words, the countryside was not too dissimilar to what we see today.

  Throughout the Celtic world the intensive exploitation of agricultural land required manuring to ensure that the soil remained fertile. Classical writers attest to the fertilisation of lands by Celtic farmers using lime and marl, which is a limey clay.

  Essential to this agricultural progress was the development of the wheel, and the general purpose wagon and other wheeled machinery helped Celtic farmers to make rapid advances. They evolved the first harvesting machine, the messor, later called vallus by the Romans. According to Pliny, this was a ‘big box, the edges armed with teeth and supported by two wheels, which moved through the cornfield pushed by an ox rather; the ears of corn were uprooted by the teeth and fell into the box.’ A stone relief found in Brussels is the best representation of this Celtic harvesting machine.

  The introduction of iron obviously helped farmers in that sickles, scythes, spades, forks, axes and billhooks became more powerful and sophisticated. The former socketed hafting was now replaced by shaft-holes, while cutting tools were attached to their handles by means of a sharp spike on the tool going into a wooden handle or haft. The hand tools which we still use today were all anticipated by Celtic craftsmen at least by the first century BC.

  The Celtic farmers grew a large variety of crops and these depended on what area of the Celtic world they farmed. Mainly they produced cereals, notably several varieties of wheat such as emmer, spelt and bread wheat. Millet was a major crop in Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul; this was a gramina-ceous plant giving a crop of nutritious seeds. The species of millet called panicum, or panic, was a particular Celtic crop of the Po valley. Barley, rye and oats were produced as well as fibrous plants, such as hemp and flax, the latter grown not only for linen to make clothes but for oil as well.

  Crops like pulses, beans, peas and lentils, were also grown. From archaeological evidence, we find that a wide variety of fruits and berries were cultivated. While in northern Celtic climates, from the sixth century BC, wine was imported from Etruscan and Greek sources, and later from Roman merchants, it appears that the Celts of the Po valley and then the Celts of southern Gaul soon began to cultivate the vine and produce their own wines. Even in southern Britain during the Roman occupation, there is evidence of vines being cultivated and wine produced. The Saluvii of southern Gaul also started to grow olives. Archaeologists have found the presence of olive and grape presses at the Saluvii capital of Entremont.

  Corn was ground by circular millstones which were turned by hand, and then dried in kilns or stored in large granaries. These querns were often worked by two people, sitting facing each other, passing the handle or both handle
s from one to another. Even so quern grinding was tedious work, for it would take about an hour to grind 5 kilograms of meal in this fashion. This type of grinding was found throughout the Indo-European world; an ancient word in Irish for the quern was meile, cognate with melyn in Welsh, mola in Latin and mylen in Anglo-Saxon.

  Where the Celts had water power they adopted the water mill. In the Dindshenchas there is a story of how the water mill supposedly came to Ireland. We are told that King Cormac mac Art (said to have reigned AD 254–277) fell in love with a woman whose job was grinding corn. In order to relieve her from her task, the king sent ‘across the sea’ for a millwright (saer-muilinn) and asked him to construct a mill on a stream called the Nith (Ir. nemnach, sparkling) beside the royal palace at Tara. Whether this is true or not, water mills were in general use in Ireland by this time.

  In a world without refrigeration, storage was an essential in case of crop failure, war or some other disaster. The Celts were great salt producers and salting was their chosen method of preservation, especially of meats. Celtic salt pork, from Gaul, was an early export to the peoples of the Italian peninsula.

  The main method of storage was by the use of pits. A large number have been found and for a long time they provided archaeologists with a problem. Charred grain had been discovered in many of them but the idea that such holes in the ground could be safely used to store grain or vegetables in a dry condition seemed nonsensical. However, experiments, particularly those at the Butser Celtic Farm, Hampshire, suggest that if the pit was sealed, the grain in contact with the damp walls would germinate, using available oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. This would cause the rest of the grain to go into a form of suspended animation so that it lasted in perfect condition for many months.

  These pits are often called souterrains and in Cornwall they are given the Cornish name fougou, meaning a subterranean chamber. There are similar structures in Ireland, also called souterrains. These are built of dry-stone walling surmounted by large lintels forming the roof. Some of them are quite lengthy in that the passages connect with elaborate small chambers. Those at Carn Euny, Sancreed and Boleigh, in Cornwall, are good examples that have survived. While local folklore imagined all sorts of dark practices taking place within these narrow passages and chambers, they were nothing more than winter storage places.

  As well as agriculture, the Celts practised pastoral farming. They kept sheep, cattle and pigs, but their varieties were very different from modern-day domestic farm animals. The bones of sheep discovered by archaeologists show that the breeds kept by the Celtic farmers were small and goat-like, rather like the modern Soay sheep from St Kilda, in Scotland. The wool of this breed is short, coarse and usually dark. They were exploited for their wool and milk rather than meat. The production of woollen goods from Britain was well known in Caesar’s time for such items were part of a thriving export business from Britain to Rome.

  The cattle – the now extinct Celtic Shorthorn, which was smaller than modern breeds – were also bred to produce powerful oxen for pulling ploughs and wagons. The modern Dexter cattle seem to be the closest approximation of the early breeds used by the Celts. Physical knowledge is based on archaeological finds of bones at Celtic sites and settlements. From this we know that cattle were not only draught animals but supplied meat and milk. Cattle occur as the most frequent of domestic animals. Certainly, from early Irish literary sources we find that the number of his cattle was the indicator of the wealth and social status of a man and his family. Early Irish units of exchange were based on a séd, which was the value of one milch cow. Three séd made a cumal, being the value of three milch cows. A cumal was also a unit of land measurement.

  Because of the importance of cattle in Celtic society, bulls played a major role in Celtic culture. Images of bulls begin to appear in the Hallstatt culture and they are frequently connected with sacrificial rituals, one of which is mentioned by Pliny. We have already referred to the royal tarbhfeis, or bull ritual, in connection with kingship. This is described in the Serglige Con Culainn and Togail Bruidne Da Derga. The significance of bulls can be seen in insular Celtic mythology, particularly the Irish saga of the Táin Bó Cuailgne. Over forty images of mystic three-horned bulls have been discovered in Gaul together with a relief showing what appears to be a deity called the ‘Bull with the Three Cranes’ – Tarvos Trigaranus – from Paris. In this inscription, the Celtic word for bull is recognisable, cognate to old Irish tarb and Welsh tarw, also the word tri (three) and the Welsh cognate garan for crane.

  Pigs were the second most common domesticated animals in the Celtic world. Pigs and boars came to have a religious significance among the Celts and they were assigned to aristocrats as part of their grave goods. Pigs also play a prominent role in insular Celtic literatures. In the Welsh epics, Pryderi possesses a herd of pigs acquired from Arawn who ruled Annwfn, the Otherworld. In Irish myth, in the story of Scéla mucce Meic Dathó, we find the dissection of a gigantic pig playing an important role. Celtic warriors also appear with symbols of boars on their helmets, and sculptures of boars and pigs occur frequently in Celtic art. The boar became one of the royal symbols among the early Irish kings.

  Horses and dogs were bred for both hunting and warfare. There seems no trace of the use of donkeys and mules before contact with the Italian peninsula. Chickens and cats were also found in Celtic farmsteads. Caesar says of the British Celts: ‘Hares, fowl, and geese they think it unlawful to eat, but rear them for pleasure and amusement.’

  The construction of farmhouses, which we will discuss in Chapter 12, varied in design through the Celtic world. In Britain and Ireland, houses tended to be circular. Caesar, in a slip from his usual propaganda about barbaric Britons, says that the houses in southern Britain were no different from those in Gaul. ‘The population is exceedingly large, the ground thickly studded with homesteads, closely resembling those of the Gauls, and the cattle very numerous.’ In Gaul, the Celtic houses were predominantly rectangular, as they were among the Celts of the Po valley. They were usually half-timbered constructions. Such two-storey rectangular houses were certainly being built by the Celts from the second century BC.

  One of the interesting things in Ireland is the survival of ancient boundary pillar stones, used to delineate farm boundaries. Cormac mac Cuileannáin’s Sanas Chormaic, his tenth-century ‘Glossary’, refers to these boundary markers as gall and gallan because, he says, they were first erected by Gaulish Celts when they arrived in Ireland. True or not, the Brehon Laws, as one would expect, have some stringent rules about farmers and their duty to the land and community.

  From Irish sources we learn the names and uses of implements which are similar to those we know were used in other parts of the Celtic world. We know that the ancient Irish had mastered the art of manuring (ottrach) and that they used dung-heaps (crum duma). We know that they understood the importance of irrigation. We also learn that in Ireland the plough was drawn not only by oxen but by horses, for we are told in the ninth-century Féilire of Oenghus that the Munster religious Ciaran kept ‘fifty tamed horses for tilling and ploughing the ground’.

  The picture that archaeology reveals of a stable Celtic farming economy is certainly a different one from the popular notion of itinerant war bands.

  8

  CELTIC PHYSICIANS

  A small family cemetery has been uncovered at Obermenzing near Munich dated to the third or early second century BC. In one of the graves, described as Grave 7, a sword and iron scabbard was found whose chagrinage and bird-headed triskel make it a noteworthy item of Celtic artwork. But the most remarkable discovery in Grave 7 was a whole range of surgeon’s equipment which promptly caused it to be labelled by the archaeologists ‘the warrior-surgeon’s grave’. The surgical instruments included a retractor, probes and a trephining saw, a cylindrical skull drill.

  According to Dr Simon James: ‘In medicine, as in so many other areas, the Celts stand favourable comparison with the classical world.’


  We do not know much about specific medical practices among the Celts until the start of the Christian era when such information was committed to writing. However, we do know that surgical medicine was advanced in the Celtic world. The ‘surgeon’s’ grave at Obermenzing is not the only one in which surgical instruments of bronze and iron have been discovered.

  We know from the skulls of several skeletons that the Celts often did neurosurgery and were adept at the trephining operation, making circular cuts into the skull in order to relieve pressure in the case of head injuries or, it has also been suggested, psychological disorders. Several times we find skulls which have been trephined as many as three times.

  The best-known example demonstrating the success of ancient trephining operations was found in January 1935, off the coast of Ovingdean, Sussex, when a fisherman trawled the skull in his nets. ‘The Ovingdean Trephined Skull’ is now in the Brighton Museum, Sussex. The skull has two large round holes cut into it over the brain pan. It is dated to the second or first century BC. The remarkable thing about this skull is that the ancient Celtic surgeons had cut into it on two separate occasions; the healing of the bone around both holes indicated that the patient survived both operations but eventually died of sepsis some weeks after the second. Similar skulls have been discovered on the Continent where the patient has survived the infections and the shock of such operations. One found at Katzesdorf, Austria, actually shows three attempts at trephining. Two holes were completed but the third was not, and there are no signs of healing. Obviously this patient died on the operating table.

  The first native Celtic record of the trephining operation appears in an account of the battle of Magh Rath or Moira in AD 637. An Irish chieftain named Cennfaelad had his skull fractured by a sword blow. He was taken to the medical school of Tuam Brecain (Tomregan) and had the injured part of his skull and a portion of his brain removed. On his recovery, it was said that his wits were as sharp as ever and he became a great scholar and author of Uraicept na n-Éces (Primer of Poets), a work still existing in copied form.