A Brief History of the Celts

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  Perhaps one of the most fascinating is a text found in 1887 at Rom (Deux-Sèvres) on a thin lead plate in Latin script dated to around the end of the first century BC, which is a poetic dedication to the Celtic horse goddess, Epona. Dr Garrett Olmsted, who has made the most recent translation of the inscription, comments that the closest example to the Rom inscription is a Vedic hymn to Indra, demonstrating yet again the common Indo-European root of the Celtic and Sanskrit traditions.

  The text, as Dr Olmsted gives it in translation, reads:

  It was set up for you, Sacred Mother. It was set out for you, Atanta.

  This sacrificial animal was purchased for you, horse goddess, Eponina.

  So that it might satisfy, horse goddess Potia; we pay you, Atanta, so that you are satisfied; we dedicate it to you.

  By this sacrificial animal, swift Ipona, with a filly, goddess Epotia, for a propitious lustration they bind you, Catona of battle, with a filly, for the cleansing of riding horses which they cleanse for you, Dibonia.

  This swift mare, this cauldron, this smith-work, beside fat and this cauldron, mind you, moreover with a filly, Epotia, noble and good Vovesia.

  The poet here is using various synonyms for Epona in his invocation of her.

  The other corpus of textual evidence comes from the Iberian Celts, notably from northern Spain in the area between Saragossa and Burgos, and includes some of our lengthiest texts in Celtic languages. Notable among them was a text found in 1908 at Peñalba de Villastar, in the Spanish province of Tereul, where an inscription was found carved in Latin letters dated to the first century BC; it seemed to be a Celtiberian votive offering to the god Lugus. A similar inscription was found at Luzaga (Guadalajara).

  My argument that the Celts were not an illiterate society – if we take illiteracy to signify merely ignorance of letters or literature, for one must not forget that they had a very sophisticated oral tradition as most ancient societies had – has been endorsed several times since 1970. An excavation at Botorrita, 20 kilometres south of Saragossa, the ancient site of Contrebia Belaisca, revealed a bronze tablet some 40 centimetres by 10 centimetres, inscribed in Celtiberian, using a variant Iberian script. This dated from the second century BC. The 200-word text gave instructions relating to a Celtic ritual, and is now in the Archaeological Museum in Saragossa. In the early 1990s another long text in Celtiberian was discovered at the same site at Botorrita.

  Through 1968–1971 at Chamalières, south-west of Clermont-Ferrand, a Gallo-Roman sanctuary was excavated. The sanctuary was the source of two natural springs where several thousand wooden votive gifts were found. In January 1971, a lead tablet was discovered there inscribed in Gaulish and dated to the second half of the first century BC, or early first century AD. It was an appeal to the god Maponus for protection and consisted of 336 letters, one of the longest Gaulish Celtic texts. Maponus was the ‘Divine Son’ whose cult is also found in Britain and who may be equated with Mabon in the tale of Culhwch and Olwen.

  In August 1983, at l’Hospitalet-du-Larzac, 14 kilometres south of La Graufesneque, another lead tablet was found inscribed with a text amounting to 160 words which seemed to be another invocation to the deities.

  The exact number of texts found in Eastern Europe and Galatia has not been calculated – nor have they yet been evaluated from a linguistic point of view – although we are speaking of perhaps one hundred or more. Celtic coins also supply a rich field of personal names from which we may learn word roots and sound values. Then there is the insular Celtic textual evidence.

  To put the earliest Celtic inscriptional remains in context we should point out that the earliest Latin inscriptional remains are almost contemporary, dating from the beginning of the sixth century BC. There is an inscription in stone, the Lapis Niger, from the Forum and an inscription on a fibula giving a manufacturer’s name. However, it is difficult to find many Latin inscriptions prior to the third century BC. For the Romans, Greek was the language of learning until the third century BC when a Latin literature began to take shape with the works of poets such as Gnaeus Naevius (c. 270–190 BC) and Quintus Ennius (239–169 BC), both of whom were from the Greek areas of southern Italy. But soon a ‘Celtic school’ of writers emerged, usually Celts from Cisalpine Gaul, northern Italy, who adopted Latin as a lingua franca to write in rather than writing in their mother tongue. Caecilius Statius, a young Insubrean warrior captured at the battle of Telamon in 225 BC and taken as a slave to Rome, earned his freedom and became Rome’s leading comic dramatist. The titles of forty-two of his works are known.

  Many of the writers we now think of as ‘Roman’ were in fact Celts using the imperial language instead of their mother tongue. H.W. Garrod, in his introduction to the Oxford Book of Latin Verse (1912), was one of the first to point out that Cisalpine Gaul had become the home of a vigorous school of poets with a common quality which could be identified as Celtic.

  This school of Celtic writers was not confined to the Celts from the Po valley, the first to be conquered by the Roman empire and ‘Latinised’. Throughout the Celtic world, by virtue of the spread of the Roman empire in its military form and then in its Christian form, Celts adopted Latin as their lingua franca. Their work included not only poetry but also history, biography and philosophy.

  However, the bulk of Celtic learning, story-telling and history was to remain an oral tradition until the start of the Christian era, which is when Irish took its place as Europe’s third-oldest literary language after Greek and Latin. The written language emerged in two phases. The first was the development of a native Irish alphabet – Ogam. This was named after Ogma, the god of eloquence and literacy, who was also known to the British and the Continental Celts as Ogmios.

  Ogam is frequently mentioned in the myths and sagas. It is an alphabet of short lines drawn to meet or cross a base line, originally using twenty characters. The language it represents is archaic; most of the surviving inscriptions date from the fourth to sixth centuries AD and are on stone. There are some 370 inscriptions, the bulk surviving in Ireland but with a few in Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Cornwall. Some of them are bilingual with Latin. Of these inscriptions, the greater number are concentrated in south-west Munster, particularly Co. Kerry, and have been argued to be a creation of the Munster poets.

  From later Irish texts in Latin script we hear that in earlier times Ogam was used to write ancient stories and sagas; it was incised on bark or wands of hazel and aspen. These ‘rods of the Filí’ (poets) were kept in libraries or Tech Screptra. We have evidence of this from Aethicus of Istria, who wrote a Cosmography, used by Orosius Paulus in his History Against the Pagans, composed in seven books in AD 417. Aethicus reports that he sailed to Ireland and spent time there examining their books which he calls ideomchos, implying that they were particular to Ireland and strange to him. Aethicus could well have been examining these Ogam-incised ‘wands’, which was how the Chinese originally recorded their literature. However, while we have numerous references to their existence, it is only the Ogam-inscribed stones that have survived.

  A clue to what happened to these early Irish books can be found in the Leabhar Buidhe Lecain (Yellow Book of Lecan) compiled about 1400 by Giolla Iosa Mór Mac Firbis, a work containing copies of many early texts, even one dating from the fifth century BC. This text, written by Benignus, mentions that Patrick, in his missionary zeal, burnt 180 books of the Druids. The Irish Christian sources are all fairly clear that books existed in Ireland before the coming of Christianity.

  However, Irish literature began to emerge from the sixth century AD. The flowering of Irish literature demonstrated that it was the result of a lengthy period of a sophisticated oral tradition. While the literary language was flourishing from this period, the oldest surviving complete manuscript books which provide sources for Irish mythology, history and many other matters only begin to date from the twelfth century AD, though there are many fragmentary texts from earlier periods. One of the earliest is Leabhar na hUidre
(Book of the Dun Cow) compiled in AD 1106. Leabhar Laignech (Book of Leinster) was compiled around AD 1150 at the same time as another book known simply as Rawlinson Manuscript B 502 (see Chapter 14).

  The wealth of Irish literary material is tremendous, reaching a great outpouring in late medieval times before the start of the English conquest and the systematic destruction of the language and libraries. The great Celtic illuminated Gospel books, produced during the seventh to tenth centuries AD, have been acknowledged to comprise one of the peaks of European artistic creation. Around thirty are known to have survived. Judging by these, what was destroyed must have been an awesome treasure.

  To put the Irish survivals in context, it is worth pointing out that the earliest surviving copies of Julius Caesar’s famous De Bello Gallico date only from the ninth century AD.

  Literature in Welsh followed the Irish, with manuscripts surviving from the ninth century AD, although material written as early as the sixth century AD is copied. Welsh was certainly flourishing as a literary language by the eighth century AD but, apart from the fragmentary remains, the oldest book entirely in Welsh is the Llfyr Du Caerfyrddin (Black Book of Carmarthen) dated to the twelfth century.

  Survivals in the other insular Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish and Breton, are of a much later period.

  The literatures of Irish and Welsh also contain two complete Celtic law systems, which enable us to make many conjectures about the early social systems of the Celts. The Laws of the Fénechus (free land tillers) of Ireland are more popularly called the Brehon Laws, from breaitheamh, a judge. They are obviously the result of many centuries of oral transmission. The earliest complete copy of these laws is found in the Book of the Dun Cow, and several fragmentary texts have survived. The first known codification was made in AD 438 when King Laoghaire of Tara established a nine-man commission to examine the laws, revise them and set them down in writing. St Patrick was one of three clerics who served on this commission with three judges and three kings. Tradition has it that the laws were first given to the Irish by King Ollamh Fodhla in the eighth century BC.

  Many of the early Norman and English settlers found the Brehon Laws more equitable than those of England and adopted them. It was not until the seventeenth century that the law system was finally smashed by the colonial administration.

  The Brehon Laws show fascinating parallels with the Vedic Laws of Manu in India, which are echoed in the Welsh law system, the Laws of Hywel Dda. Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good) was Hywel ap Cadell who ruled Wales about AD 910–950. He decreed that the laws of Wales be gathered and examined by an assembly presided over by Blegwywrd, archdeacon of Llandaff. The revised laws were then set down in writing. The laws survive in some seventy manuscripts of which only half predate the sixteenth century.

  Another fascinating aspect of the Irish literary treasures is the fact that although the oldest surviving medical books in the language date from the early fourteenth century, they constituted the largest collection of medical manuscript literature, prior to 1800, surviving in any one language. This confirms the reputation of the Irish medical schools, which were famous during the Dark Ages, and also underlines the classical writers’ references to the advances of Celtic medicine and the archaeological finds which support this.

  Early Irish texts on cosmology are now coming to light in many European repositories, forgotten for centuries. These confirm that the Irish shared many perceptions of the world and cosmology with the Vedic writers. The Coligny Calendar had long demonstrated that this was so among the Continental Celts.

  One other set of literary remains from Ireland deserves brief attention. From the seventh century there survive the genealogies of the Irish kings and chieftains stretching back to the mists of time. The main bulk of the surviving early genealogies dates from the twelfth century, although quoting from the earlier texts, and includes one of the most unusual works in early European literature – the Banshenchas, a work of the lore of women’s genealogies. These pedigrees trace the lines of the Irish kings back to 1015 BC.

  We can see, then, that, whatever other accusation might be levelled against the ancient Celts, they were certainly not an illiterate society. Bards, story-tellers, historians, poets, genealogists and law-givers had a special place in the ancient Celtic world. This fact is commented on by the classical writers, and is confirmed in the Brehon Laws of Ireland where, under the etiquette of the Gaelic court, the Ollamhs, or professors, took precedence immediately after the princes of the blood royal and before chieftains and territorial lords. The Ollamhs were allowed to wear six colours at court whereas chieftains were restricted to five. The Chief Ollamh, or Druid, was even allowed to speak at the assembly before the High King. The ancient Celts clearly accorded learning special respect and reverence. The popular Roman view of the ancient Celts as ‘savage’ and ‘barbarian’ failed to recognise the reality of their society. It is fitting that we end our survey on Celtic literacy with a comment of Joseph Cooper Walker from his Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1768): ‘Can that nation be deemed barbarous in which learning shared the next honours to royalty?’

  3

  CELTIC KINGS AND CHIEFTAINS

  By the time the first identifiable Celtic culture emerged, the Hallstatt period, the Celts were ruled by kings who were immensely rich; they lived in magnificent fortresses and were buried in great tombs, timber-lined and often of oak wood, under large barrows, with splendid grave goods to assist them in the Otherworld. The rulers of this society were buried with their chariots, wagons, personal ornaments and jewellery, and utensils containing food and drink. The poorer classes continued to be buried in simple cremation graves as they had been during the Urnfield period.

  Like most early Indo-European peoples, early Celtic society was based on a caste system. At the bottom end there were the menials and producers equivalent to the sudra and the vaishya in Hindu society. Next came the warrior caste, equivalent to the Hindu kshatriya. Then came the intellectual caste, which included all the ‘professional’ functions – judges, lawyers, doctors, historians, bards and priests of religion, the Druids. These were equivalent to the Hindu Brahmin. Similar caste divisions are found in Greek and Roman society.

  When we get our first glimpse of Irish society, the Celtic structure had not greatly changed. There was a menial caste which was divided into several sub-classes ranging from prisoners to herdsmen and house servants. The ceile was the producer, the basis of the entire society. Above them came the warriors and nobles, the flaith, often coming under the title of aire (noble), which is cognate with the Sanskrit word arya, freeman. Then came the professional class, originally the Druids.

  At the top of society, among both the ancient Celts on the Continent and the later insular Celts, there came the kings and queens; indeed, there was a whole range of kings from minor kings who paid allegiance to more powerful kings, to over-kings or high kings.

  The word for a king in the Celtic group of languages was rix, in Gaulish, cognate with the word for king in other Indo-European languages: rajan in Sanskrit (hence Hindi, raj), rex in Latin and so forth. Now this concept of kingship in Indo-European meant one who stretched or reached out his hand to protect his people. The very word for king also meant an act of stretching or reaching. In old Irish, for example, rige was not simply kingship but was the act of reaching. In modern Irish righ still means ‘to stretch’. The same idea can be seen, albeit a little in disguise, in Latin – porrigo, to stretch or reach. It is a compound of pro and rego, to guide, direct, govern or rule. In modern English the very word ‘reach’ is of the same root. Indeed, the word ‘rich’ in English, and in most of the Germanic languages as well as French from the Germanic Frankish, also comes from the root word for ‘exalted, noble and kingly’.

  Gods with ‘long hands’, such as Lugh Lamhfhada in Ireland and Dyaus in Vedic literature, are symbolic of the concept of royalty. In the old Irish king lists we find that Oenghus Olmuchada of the Long Hand is recorded as rul
ing in Ireland in 800 BC. Indeed, one of the most notable modern symbols in recent years has been the ‘Red Hand’ of Ulster. Today it is viewed as the rather threatening symbol of the Ulster ‘Loyalist’ planter tradition. In fact it goes back long before their adoption of it for it was the heraldic badge of the Uí Néill dynasty, the symbol of the Celtic Kings of Ulster. It appears on the seal of Aedh O Néill, King of Ulster in 1334–1364. The Uí Néill dynasty would rush on their foes with the war-cry: ‘Leamh Dearg Abu!’ (The Red Hand forever!) In medieval times their armoured warriors wore a Red Hand badge, and examples have been found from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, the symbolism goes even further back, to the tradition of the Milesian invasion. Eremon, son of Golamh, or Míle Espain, the progenitor of the Gaels, had taken an oath that, out of his siblings, he would be the first to land on the shores of Éireann. When he saw that his ship was not going to be first, he cut off his hand and threw it on shore. In this legend, we find an echo of the symbolism of the reaching out of the hand. Eremon, in spite of his brother Eber’s claims, became, according to the Druid Amairgen, the first high king of Ireland.

  Rí and rigan remain in the Goidelic languages as words for king and queen, but in Welsh the word for king has changed to brennin. It is argued that this derives from Brigantinos – i.e. ‘spouse of Briganti’, the goddess known as the ‘elevated one’ (cognate of Brigit) – and thus reflects the ritual mating of a king with a goddess of sovereignty. An example of this union is when the three goddesses (Children of Danu) Éire, Banba and Fótla met the Milesians and Eremon became king of the northern half of the country while his brother Eber became king of the southern half. Éire sealed her union by handing her royal husband a golden goblet of red liquor. Nine kings of Ireland are said to have cohabited with Medb for she would not allow any king to sit at Tara unless she was joined with him. While Medb appears as queen in Connacht and Medb Lethderg appears as queen in Leinster, it is possible that the traditions are confused for Medb is clearly a goddess representing sovereignty.