Blood of the Celts

The New Ancestral Story

Jean Manco

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780500772959
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Europe

The heritage of the Celts turns up from Portugal to Romania, from Scotland to Spain. Yet debate continues about who exactly were the Celts, where ultimately they came from, and whether the modern Celtic-speakers of the British Isles and Brittany are related to the Continental Celts we know from ancient history. So a fresh approach is needed.

Blood of the Celts meets this challenge, pulling together evidence from genetics, archaeology, history and linguistics in an accessible and illuminating way, taking the reader on a voyage of discovery from the origins of the ancient Celts to the modern Celtic Revival, with some startling results.

CHAPTER ONE

The Voices of the Celts

Emer, daughter of Forgall the tricky, wife of Cú Chulainn, made speech:—

‘I am the standard of women, in figure, in grace and in wisdom;

None mine equal in beauty, for I am a picture of graces.

Mien full noble and goodly, mine eye like a jewel that flasheth;

Figure, or grace, or beauty, or wisdom, or bounty, or chasteness,

Joy of sense, or of loving, unto mine has never been likened.

Sighing for me is Ulster,– a nut of the heart I am clearly –

My spouse is the hound of Culann, and not a hound that is feeble;

Blood from his spear is spurting, with life-blood his sword is dripping;

Finely his body is fashioned, but his skin is gaping with gashes,

Wounds on his thigh there are many, but nobly his eye looks westward;

Bright is the dome he supporteth and ever red are his eyes,

Red are the frames of his chariot, and red are also the cushions;

Fighting from ears of horses and over the breaths of men-folk,

Springing in air like a salmon when he springeth the spring of the heroes,

Rarest of feats he performeth, the leap that is birdlike he leapeth,

Bounding o’er pools of water, he performeth the feat of nine men;

Battles of bloody battalions, the world’s proud armies he heweth,

Beating down kings in their fury, mowing the hosts of the foemen.’¹

This proud lady is easily the winner in the ‘Ulster women’s war of words’ at The Feast of Bricriu, an Irish tale written down in the Middle Ages. Her status was high, for her husband Cú Chulainn was the great hero of the Ulster Cycle of tales. Her contest is linguistic. The wives of other warriors had proclaimed their own rank and beauty and the deeds of their husbands. Emer proves her worth with a flow of eloquence to outdo theirs.

In this one snippet of a tale, we see Celtic-speakers much as ancient Greek and Roman writers portrayed them – valiant, boastful, fond of feasting and lovers of language, beauty and wisdom. The Romans left their most detailed commentary on the Gauls, as we shall see, but here we have a matching picture of the Irish. No stereotype can truly mirror a multitude of individuals. Yet the voices of Celts long gone can reveal the values of the elite for whom songs were sung and pedigrees recited. The Roman legions brought literacy to many a Celt, but at a price. Celtic-speakers turned into Latin-speakers within the Roman empire. So the Celts of Continental Europe, where Roman influence was strongest, left us nothing that could be called literature in a Celtic tongue. There are inscriptions, curse tablets and suchlike fragments, but no connected narrative. We turn then to the poetry and prose of those Celts whose language was not lost to Latin.

Heroic ideals

Ireland remained outside the Roman empire; the Roman province of Britannia was on its northernmost fringes. Thus Celtic languages survived in the British Isles. There we find not only tales in Gaelic, but also heroic poetry written in Brittonic, once spoken over most of Britain and the ancestor of Welsh. The collection of death-songs called Y Gododdin sprang from northern Britain though it was preserved in Wales. Here is the elegy for a lord of Dumbarton:

He rose early in the morning:—

When the centurions hasten in the mustering of the army

Following from one advanced position to another

At the front of the hundred men he was the first to kill.

As great was his craving for corpses

As for drinking mead or wine.

It was with utter hatred

That the lord of Dumbarton, the laughing fighter,

Used to kill the enemy.²

Once again we see admiration of courage. A lord was expected to lead his men into battle, not plan tactics from the rear. We can picture this ‘laughing fighter’ charging exhilarated at the enemy. He was the type of man who would become a leader, for he could inspire others to follow. This was not a society of nation states, with taxation supporting standing armies.

Through the lens of Y Gododdin we can glimpse a tribal structure similar to that which the Romans had encountered among the Celts. Indeed the tribal name Gododdin is the Middle Welsh version of Votadini, recorded in the Roman period. The tribe lived between the Firth of Forth and the River Wear. [see 87] Today their former territory is partitioned between northeast England and southeast Scotland.³

One of the strongholds of the Gododdin lies beneath the present castle on Edinburgh Rock.⁴ Under the name Eidyn it features in Y Gododdin. Here a war-band feasted before the major battle celebrated in these verses. A chief who lavished meat and mead on his followers could expect feats of heroism in repayment. As one verse declares: ‘The trees of battle were trampled – vengeance in payment for mead.’⁵ Among the feasting warriors were men both of Gododdin and from further afield. War-bands were often of mixed origin. The lord of Dumbarton had come to Eidyn from the neighbouring Brittonic kingdom of Alt Clud, with its stronghold at Dumbarton overlooking the River Clyde.

The lord of Eidyn, leader of the war-band, was the son of a man with the English name Wolstan.⁶ The Angles of Deira, in what is now east Yorkshire, were his enemies.⁷ This enmity can be explained by the power struggles between the various bands of Angles and Saxons who had poured into Britain after it lost the protection of the Roman empire. Some Angles became neighbours of the Gododdin when they settled north of Hadrian’s Wall, founding the kingdom of Bernicia. They then annexed the fellow-Anglian kingdom of Deira to the south, but in AD 616 the exiled heir of Deira successfully fought back, taking both kingdoms. The royal heirs of Bernicia sought refuge with the Picts or Irish.⁸ So it would be no surprise to find one of their retinue among the Gododdin, thirsting for vengeance. The main battle commemorated in Y Gododdin is generally dated about AD 600, but a date during the period of Deiran control of Bernicia, AD 616–33, would explain why the enemy across the border from the Gododdin are the Deirans in the earliest form of the elegies.⁹

Another of the fallen commemorated in these verses was Heini son of Neithon, renowned for killing 100 gold-torced chieftains before he joined the band at Eidyn.¹⁰ Here we have a man with a Celtic name slaughtering men wearing the Celtic symbol of the noble warrior. That tells us that warfare among Celts was not unusual either. War is a common theme in early Irish literature. Here are just the first few stanzas of a poem attributed to Laidcenn mac Bairceda:

It ill beseems me to forget the affairs of every famous king, the careers of the kings of Tara, mustered tribes on the warpath.

A noble battle-hero, fair and tall was Moen, Labraid Longsech; a cruel lion, a lover of praise, a mighty lover of battle.

A fair warrior was Ailill in battles against the frontiers of Crothomun; Abratchaín shook the ranks of the field of Ethonmun.

Dreaded master of Ireland was glorious Oengus Amlongaid. He dwelt upon the slopes of Tara: with his own will alone he conquered it.¹¹

The style and archaic language of this poem places it among the earliest surviving Irish verses, from the late 6th century or early 7th century. The tradition of preserving knowledge orally in verse had come into contact with Christian literacy. Poetry began to be written down.¹²

Celtic poetry was not all blood-soaked. Bards retained by a lord to sing his praises might be limited in their official repertoire, but some poetry could be composed simply for pleasu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• About the Author
• Other titles of Interest
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1 The Voices of the Celts
• 2 The Gauls and Celtic
• 3 Bell Beakers and Language
• 4 The Indo-European Family
• 5 Stelae to Bell Beaker
• 6 The Iron Sword
• 7 On the Move
• 8 Celts vs Romans
• 9 Christian Celts
• 10 Loss and Revival
• Appendix: Surnames and DNA
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Sources of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Copyright