THE CELTS
Unearthing the surprising history of an influential people. Hunter,
Before the Romans arrived in Great Britain, there were the Celts. The Celts left their languages in Wales, Ireland and northern Scotland, but those who lived in England and southern Scotland were influenced by the Roman conquest and their Latin language.
Although we associate Celts with the British Isles and France (Gauls), their early ancestors came from much further east in what is now Europe, a nomadic history British author Jean Manco traces in Blood of the Celts: The New Ancestral Story. Manco uses not only archeological evidence but also DNA findings to trace their journey.
There is tremendous fascination with the Celts. Societies all over North America celebrate the ancient language and culture. One doesn’t see that to the same extent with Vikings.
I don’t entirely agree with you. Here (in the U.K.) there is a lot of enthusiasm about the Vikings, but perhaps the amount of Celtic immigration to America and Canada is the key. There is a strong Scottish connection in Canada.
We think of Celts as an Irish/British phenomenon because remnants of their language are still evident in those countries. But your book shows, through DNA tests and archeological records, that the Celts were spread further and wider than we ever understood.
Before the Romans started their expansions, many of the Celts on the Continent had inhabited regions in France and Spain and were leaving traces of their language. However, Latin had a profound influence. It was left to the Irish to continue the Celtic language and art because they weren’t as influenced by the Romans. The Romans never set up camps or stayed in Ireland.
We do associate the Celts now with the British Isles and Brittany, where Celts lived. The ancestors of the Celts came from the European steppes. But not the Celts themselves. The Celts belong to a branch of languages called Indo-European. They came from eastern Europe. They were descended from people who were adventurous and spread out in many directions.
It is probable the ancestors of the Celts would continue trading along the routes they discovered, along Spain and Portugal and Scandinavia. Some Celts set up a community in Europe, in what are now France, Spain and Portugal.
The Romans had a huge impact on the Celts, wiping out their culture and imposing the Latin language, hence French, Spanish and Portuguese are linked to Latin, although you’ve found some Celtic traces in those languages.
The only Celts who remained free, who were outside the empire, were those in Ireland and northern Scotland. There was an encouragement to speak Latin because this enabled you to take part in the life of the Roman Empire. Eventually it became a first language for people in France, Spain and Portugal.
You note the Etruscans, that group of people who lent their name to the region of Tuscany in Italy and were pre-Roman, influenced the Celts. Some Celtic speakers used Etruscan script to create a language. The Etruscans are very mysterious because we haven’t cracked their written language. Could we learn about them through studies of the Celts?
The Etruscan script is different from the language; the script is just the way of writing, so those Celts close to the Etruscans borrowed that script to write in a Celtic language. I don’t think they borrowed much from the Etruscan language at all, just the actual alphabetic letters. There may have been influence on the dialect. Today, for example, we use the same alphabet for many languages. French and English use the same alphabet but the language is different.
Why is it important today for us to understand the influence of the Celts?
It’s very important for those of us whose ancestors came from the British Isles because the Celts played such a huge part in our history and prehistory.
In Canada you have people not only from the British Isles but from France where they spoke Celtic. Where did the Scottish tartan come from? Where did surnames like MacTavish come from? These are connected to the Celts.
I wondered about my husband’s surname, Cruickshank.
It’s a Scottish name but it isn’t from a Celtic language. It is from Old Norse, meaning something bent. The Scottish Lowlands were settled by the Angles from the north of England. It is a complicated story. Old Norse was spoken in Orkney and Shetland for a long time, so you do get surnames from Old Norse.
Some readers of my book about the Celts will be more interested in the history, some will be interested in tracing their ancestry, and I have an appendix at the end that traces surnames. The Y DNA is passed from father to son. So one can find a link.
There was a Celtic artist revival that influenced art nouveau — the twirling, swirling shapes.
There is wonderful Celtic art that goes back to the Latin period and we have people turning to this as relief in the 19th century from all the sort of conventional arts. It’s part of our history.