Monday, February 05, 2007
Pssssttt… we’re not really Celts…
As Fintan O’Toole says, it’s not really a secret (subs needed). Lot’s of people know it, but no one seems to want to talk about it. The Celtic Fringe is a Oxford myth cooked up by the polymath keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, and popularised in a book called The Antiquities of Nations. The integrity of our ancient Celtic identity is, it seems, bogus. “There never was a Celtic invasion of Ireland or Britain. The identity our Celtic of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany dates back, not to the mists of time, but to 1707” (Just after the first Act of Union in fact).
O’Toole goes on:
Edward Lhuyd, brilliantly, argued that Gaelic, Cornish, Breton and Welsh were related to the language spoken by the ancient Gauls. He called these languages “Celtic” (largely because the term Gallic then denoted the hated French) and suggested that they had spread to Britain and Ireland through migration.
In an intellectual culture saturated with classical learning, the link with the “Keltoi” who had invaded ancient Greece, and with the Gauls whom Caesar slaughtered and described, was flattering, not least in Ireland. Instead of being marginal people, we were the remnants of an ancient and once all-powerful European civilisation. With the rise of 19th-century cultural nationalism, this ready-made genealogy, with its neat racial distinction between Celts and Saxons, was far too useful to be refused. In an era obsessed with so-called scientific racism, it provided a seemingly natural case for Irish independence. The Celtic Twilight (or as that rare sceptic James Joyce called it, the Cultic Twalette) added a rich layer of modern cultural prestige.
Indeed, he argues that the only thing genuinely Celtic about ancient Ireland was our ancestor’s predilection for ‘Celtic bling’:
There is an Iron Age material culture that is evident in findings from northern Europe between Paris and Prague. It is named after a site in Switzerland called La Tène and is associated with what we call the Celts (there is no evidence that these people ever used the term or even identified themselves as a single ethnic group).
And none of the things you would find if these people invaded or migrated to Ireland - their pots, their houses, their burial-sites, their coins, their horse-fittings - exist here. There are high-end La Tène-style objects, but virtually all of them are of recognisably local manufacture. As Barry Raftery, one of the leading authorities on Iron Age Ireland, puts it of the presumed Celtic invasion, “It seems strange that a warrior aristocracy supposedly responsible for imposing so many aspects of its culture on the indigenous population . . . should have had almost no impact on the archaeological record.”
In fact, what both archaeology and genetic studies show is continuity - broadly the same people who built Newgrange continuing to inhabit the island, speaking a version of the language of the Atlantic seaboard from which they had originated. What did happen in the Iron Age is that an emergent aristocracy began to adopt the international style they knew from trade and other contacts. Local craft-workers produced their own versions of Celtic chic - a bit like us copying Gucci or Prada. It was a way for the knobs to distinguish themselves from the yobs. As the archaeologist Simon Jones puts it, “‘Celtic art’ . . . is not a marker of ethnic identity but of status, wealth, and power”. If we are Celts today because our elites developed a taste for continental bling, then half the denizens of Foxrock and Montenotte are Italians.
Mick Fealty @ 04:21 PM
Revisionism penned by a revisionist and published by the revisionist Irish Thames seeking to reassert themselves as Britain’s paper in Ireland.
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 04:43 PMSo the (undeniably Celtic) Irish language can be explained away how? Maybe it never existed?
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 04:49 PMHow is it that the Irish are always inventing things so as to pretend that they are so much different from everyone else on the islands?
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 04:49 PMMick
It’s also why, as previously noted, there is no Celtic section in the National Museum of Ireland.
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 04:56 PMso what about the HH gene mutation (the ‘celtic gene’) that causes hemochromatosis? it’s found in the irish, british, scottish and welsh. the mutation is undeniable. so what should it really be called ... the ‘gaelic gene’? the ‘pasty white gene’?
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 05:17 PMUna
The question is is the language Celtic? You could be in part different but the difference may not be as assumed.
Anyone who gets a high on thoughts of the racial purity or unique qualities or exclusivity of the race has to be at best suspect and at worst certifiable. We are mongrels and much healthier for it. Celts, pre Celts, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, throw in a few Spanish, and now Poles and East Europeans. A fine mix.
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 05:34 PM“In fact, what both archaeology and genetic studies show is continuity - broadly the same people who built Newgrange continuing to inhabit the island, speaking a version of the language of the Atlantic seaboard from which they had originated.”
Funny how people read the title of an atricle then continue right ahead and spout their usual rubbish. I maybe not be a ‘celt’ but (most of) my ancestors have been living on this island for five thousand years longer than some people.
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 05:46 PMLast month’s Irish Democrat has an interesting piece on this debate by Peter Berresford Ellis:
Relax - we’re all Anglo-Saxon anyway!
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 05:48 PMA leaked letter from the British Ambassador to Ireland detailing a meeting he had with one of the principle shareholders and the chief executive of The Irish Times from 1962 and 1997, Major McDowell, wherein McDowell asks Downing Street for “guidance” on how he might better control the paper’s “renegade white nigger” editor, Douglas Gageby, who was displeasing McDowell by his terrible tendency to leave “authorised” pro-British material out of the Irish Times and include “unauthorised” material in it, specifically related to the practice and policy of the British government on Northern Ireland, shows that the owners of the Irish Times strove to please their British masters in using the Irish media to disseminate pro-British propaganda. O’Toole, Myers, Dudley-Edwards, et al, are simply a continuance of that policy of using the media as a platform for stooges to serve their master’s agenda.
http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/apr2004/irtimesmcdowell.gif
The previous Slugger post that Pete linked to and the article therein shows that its author was dearly concerned that “nationalists from Devoy to Pearse made Celt and Gael synonymous” and, presumably, saw it as his solemn duty as a non-historian and non-archaeologist but adept propagandist to serve his master’s by reversing what was seen as beneficial to Irish nationalism and thereby detrimental to British nationalism by the simple (but pissing in the wind) expedient of attempting to unlink “Celt and Gael.” You might write it as “Pro-British stooges from O’Toole to Myers made Celt and Gael mutually exclusive.”
The fly in the ointment, of course, is how Gaels came to speak a Celtic language. The stooges have no explanation for this beyond embarrassing themselves by claiming that it was the result of ether “a small upper crust” or kidnap of women over many years.” Heh. Game over.
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 05:51 PMDur, everyone knows we’re the lost tribe of Israel anyway. Up through Spain we came, aye, that we did.
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 05:57 PMWe’re certainly not Anglo-saxon.
We’re actually pre-Celts, who have adopted, and now largely abandoned, Celtic linguistic habits.
Does the extra syllable make any difference?
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 06:39 PMbpower, it’s a pity that the panto season is over as I could have answered your remark, ‘Oh no, yiz didn’t.’ :o) LOL
However, to be serious, I fail to see why some of the contributors above have got their dander up on this topic. It’s been quite obvious for centuries we have been a mongrel race with many forms of integrations going on (except with the DUP, of course, (heh)) due to immigration, emigration, inter-marriage or invasion. My current passport says I’m Irish - mind you, my other one says I’m British - but that’s another story. However, it’s good enough to get me around the world if I choose and shout for Ireland as I did on Sunday. Anyone who gives a shit about racial purity in the 21st C needs their head examined?
I liked the bling bit though. I can just picture Cuchulainn with his medallion and Brian Boru with his nose pierced (before the axe hit him, of course).
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 06:47 PMThe Dubliner, the Indymedia can be a bit too lefty so…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Gageby
Ath Cliath abu !!
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 07:49 PMCeltic people Celtic. That’s what’s at issue, not the existence or otherwise of the Irish language.
Fintan says that it’s attachment to Ireland was primarily due to the imaginative figuring of an Oxford academic. And, because of the power of the brand, even in funding circles, no one is prepared asked difficult questions about it.
If he’s right, then surely we are just getting het up over simple nomenclature? Or, given some of the invective above, does it go deeper than that?
TD,
Whilst I am grateful you managed to get to the point by your last paragraph, it’s not clear what you mean when you say, “the fly in the ointment, of course, is how Gaels came to speak a Celtic language”?
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 08:00 PMSoup, anyone?
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 08:04 PMWhy is there is a single person on the planet for whom this is news? Are there really that many gormless, sub-educated goons out there?
Posted by on Feb 05, 2007 @ 08:17 PMOn a personal note,as a Scot,I’ve always felt that saying Scotland is ‘celtic’ makes a mockery of the rich and varied cultures , languages and peoples from our history , that made Scotland what it is today !
We have a saying used in Scotland today One Scotland , Many Cultures and not only is that true of modern Scotland but it’s even more so , when applied to our rich and diverse historical past !
For example, in the 9th century the area that is now Scotland had almost half a dozen different cultures speaking as many different languages divided up into even more different kingdoms. In the southwest they were speaking Cumbric (a Brythonic language closely related to Welsh), in the southeast they were speaking Old English, in the northeast they were speaking Pictish, in the far north they were speaking Norse, and in the west they were speaking Gaelic.All these different influences came together and played their own important role in making Scotland what it is today 
