The Celts

[Damion]

Following on from a discussion elsewhere, I wanted to discuss the old/new concept of Celtic identity, not for the modern Celtic peoples, but the historic ones which include the British Isles.

I feel the current train of thought for some is throwing the baby out with the bath water, that is that the only way to deal with a revisionist look at Celtic identity is to say that none existed over the region of the Celtic speaking world.
Language always binds with common culture so I feel it false to say that Celts were only a language group. There are regional variations in art and the Iberian Celts and Celt-Iberians are materially quite distinct from the Gauls, another problematic ethnonym, but this does not mean that they had no general culture. Certainly the ancients were able to identify them as having certain peculiarities.

Much is made of the Insular Celts never calling themselves such (though the personal name Celtchair seems to record the name), but there is little evidence to show that the Continental Celts ever called themselves such either yet the Romans label the greater part of Gaul as Celtica suggesting that at some level that identity existed. That Caesar then stated that not only were tribes in southern Britain very similar in appearance to the Gauls, he states that many in the not distant past had migrated there from Gaul which I believe is attested by archæology. One of the better examples is the Parisi of Yorkshire who appear to be related to the Parisi that gave their name to Paris. While Caesar talked of many chariots used by the Britons (presumably in his campaign in the south), the Parisi in the north stand out in British finds for having chariot burials like the Celts of Gaul.
It may be that the concept of being a Celt, assuming it was used by the Celts themselves, is similar to how earlier generations of people from Australia would regard themselves as British while officially being Australian. Though in rivalry with people from Britain would revert to a specific Australian identity, keeping that British identity as a sort of meta identity rather than a day to day one.
The Britons after the Anglo-Saxons invaded referred to themselves as Cumbrians, but the two refugee colonies (that I know of) they founded were named after Britain.
Today the Welsh are content to call themselves the name the English gave them. Should records be lost of our time and only English speaking Welsh survive, future generations would assume that Welsh was the native word for the Britons. Similarly the Britons seem to have abandoned the name Albion in favour of the Roman designation Britannia but the Irish preserved it and then applied it to their new lands in Britain which later was called Alba(n).
Again there is a chance that that name could never have been known and we'd only think of Britain as ever being called such rather than originally being the name of a people.

We know very little about the Celts, to say they weren't a culturally distinct group is as bad as saying they were all one big ethnicity.
Caesar says the Britons painted their bodies to make them look fiercer.
We know Britons fought as mercenaries in Gaul against the Romans. Hired or brought over by ties of family they came. So why no mention of them painting themselves while fighting in Gaul? Did the ones who came come from tribes that didn't do this or was the practice limited to warfare within Britain, something that received the blessing of the local druids but who didn't bestow such blessings on foreign expeditions. We simply don't know. The same for chariots in battle. Caesar makes reference to the ones used in Britain but not as a strange thing to see in Gaul being used by these british mercenaries.

To suggest anything didn't bind these people together in pre-Roman times culturally is a stretch when we know so little. Certainly the druids of Britain and Gaul were part of the same religion, with gallic druids even going to Britain (Anglesey?) to keep up to speed with their British counterparts. That seems that at that level that common culture existed, at least amongst the ruling classes.

[LKM]

I think that the biggest issue is that the term Celtic means different things to different people. In modern times it normally reefers to a grouping of related languages. The term Celtic actually comes from the name of a tribe of people from Northern France known as the Celtae. It was the Romans who said the ancient peoples of Great Britain were like the Celtae tribe of France, calling them Celtaeic. Over time the term became Celtic and has changed meaning in different context.

When you look at Welsh, Scottish, and Irish history and cultures you do find there is a lot known about the ancient peoples of the British Isles. The issue is that the information we normally see is based on the Roman view of the people. I feel that we rely on the Roman records far to much when looking at non-Roman peoples in Europe, especially when the Romans insulted and belittled any non-Raman culture. The ancient Britons had a few writing systems, and only one can currently be read. They passed down allot of information in stories and songs. The people north of Hadrian's wall were known as the Picts, a term used by the Romans that described the tattoos the warriors often had, while the people south of Hadrian's wall called themselves Cumbri or Cumbric, a more ancient term that was used by the people of the island of Great Brittan for themselves.

You can learn a lot about the Cumbri and their culture if you read some of the poems and songs that were left. You can also look at the current cultures of the areas that has little Roman influence and see the influences of the more ancient cultures mixed with modern cultures. If you look at the cultures of the different regions you will need to also look at the history of the areas.

One place that you can read the poetry:
http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/index.html