Interesting email from an Irish fellow about Irish kilts.

[slohairt]

Some new points here, and some not so new.

Whilst it is true that 'Good King James'* coined both of the terms 'Great Britain' and the 'United Kingdom', they didn't come into serious use until much later, and not even with the union of parliaments, but only when most of the British Empire was gone, so that it became necessary to have terms to cover British possessions near at hand, other than simply as part of the Empire.

Not only that, but the modern usage is different from that which Good King James intended. He meant the same thing by both Great Britain and the United Kingdom, simply all the areas of which he was king. However, in Modern usage, and officially, Great Britain, aka Britain, means England, Wales and Scotland, i.e. the contiguous British mainland, whereas the United Kingdom or UK is all the above plus Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, i.e. including all the bits directly offshore that are under British rule.

Sadly, even many British people get this terminology mixed up, so it's no great wonder that Americans invariably get it wrong. I used the term 'contiguous' intentionally, as it may particularly help Americans to think of Britain as analogous to the 'lower 48', whereas the whole country is the UK. Unfortunately, even if you get it right, you may come across some drunk in a pub who still tells you that you are wrong, LOL!

As for the kilt not being Irish national dress, it is true on the one hand that it has never been recognised by the Irish government. On the other hand, the main thrust for it's adoption as such was by the Gaelic League during it's early years, and that organisation was founded in 1893, some 19 years before there was any Irish government that could have considered the matter and rendered a decision one way or the other.

Prominent early wearers of the Irish solid green or solid saffron kilt in the late 1800s and early 1900s were invariably Irish nationalists, which to many would be reason enough to wear a kilt as a symbol or Ireland. The concept is hardly new (unless to you anything a mere century old is brand new) and not likely to go away no matter how much some would like to wish it away.

As to whether the English are celts, the oldest known inhabitants of England were the Britons, who of course were Brythonic Celts by definition. To what extent the Angles and Saxons actually displaced them is not really a settled question. It was once thought that they were all driven into Wales or killed, but opinion seems to be softening on that, so the English may be some mixture of Celtic and Germanic (Angle in the North and Saxon in the South), and perhaps Norman, although it has long been thought that the Normans only married into the aristocracy and did not mix with the common people.

Of course, even if the English may have some Brythonic celtic blood, what the English are certainly not is Goidelic celts, unlike the Irish and the Scots. Unless of course, like me, you have both English and Irish blood, for example.

*I prefer to call him that, because in full he was King James II of England and King James VI of Scotland.

Actually, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are crown dependencies deemed to be outside the UK.

[O'Callaghan]

Actually, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are crown dependencies deemed to be outside the UK.

Then why does my passport say the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands?

[The Guy in the Kilt at UC]

Then why does my passport say the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands?

I thought that Great Britain was the big island (you know: England, Scotland & Wales) and the United Kingdom was included North Ireland and so on. But of course I may be getting most of this from the movie King Ralph.

[Chas]

Then why does my passport say the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands?

Mine doesn't.

The Cover:



Pages 1 and 2



No mention of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.

Is your passport current?

Regards

Chas

[McClef]

*I prefer to call him that, because in full he was King James II of England and King James VI of Scotland.

Probably a typo but he was James I of England.

[O'Callaghan]

Probably a typo but he was James I of England.

Sorry, you are quite right!

[davedove]

As to whether the English are celts, the oldest known inhabitants of England were the Britons, who of course were Brythonic Celts by definition.

Everything I've ever read says that the celts didn't get to britain until around the middle of the 1st millenium BC, which is when celtic type tools and such began to appear.

There were people in Britain for thousands of years before that. They're the ones who built the stone circles. Contrary to popular belief, the celts didn't build the stone circles; they found them, thought they were cool, and used them for their own purposes.

[The Guy in the Kilt at UC]

Everything I've ever read says that the celts didn't get to britain until around the middle of the 1st millenium BC, which is when celtic type tools and such began to appear.

There were people in Britain for thousands of years before that. They're the ones who built the stone circles. Contrary to popular belief, the celts didn't build the stone circles; they found them, thought they were cool, and used them for their own purposes.

There is the idea that Celtic culture migrated to Britain rather than Celtic people.

[davedove]

There is the idea that Celtic culture migrated to Britain rather than Celtic people.

I have also read that. It's wasn't a mass migration or anything like that, more of a trading relationship and the spread of goods and ideas, especially the iron tools of the celtic peoples.

[gilmore]

There is the idea that Celtic culture migrated to Britain rather than Celtic people.

That is now indisputible.

DNA shows that the majority of the inhabitants of the UK and Ireland descend from people who lived in the Iberan peninsula during the last Ice Age, and migrated north up the Atlantic coast as the ice retreated.

Take a look at the first two maps here http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/Wo...groupsMaps.pdf showing the distribution of the Y DNA R1b Haplogroup in 1500 AD, just before the time of European imperialism.

It was for the most part the same group of people who were formerly thought to be pre-Celtic, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, etc., and were merely changing their language, technology and culture, rather than successive waves of people of different ethnicities invading and conquering the British Isles.