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"It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody."
Brendan Behan
The Celts...
by Maireid Sullivan, 2004
The name “Celtic” was first given to the peoples of the British Isles in the 1700s,
by a Welshman.
”...a pioneering linguist, the Welshman Edward Lhwyd, who demonstrated that Scots and Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and related languages were also related to the extinct tongue of the ancient Gauls. He chose to call this family of dead and living languages "Celtic". Soon it was being used as an ethnic label for living peoples, and was applied to ancient monuments too.” Simon James Ph.D.
 The six modern-day Celtic nations, Scotland (Alba), Brittany (Breizh), Wales (Cymru), Ireland (Eire), Cornwall (Kernow), and the Isle of Mann (Mannin) share common bonds of culture, history, and language. In addition, two regions, Galicia and Asturias, in the northwest corner of Spain (Celt-Iberia) also claim a Celtic cultural or historic heritage. The roots of Celtic culture are not restricted to those parts of Europe traditionally regarded as 'Celtic'.
Archeological findings trace the people known as the Celts across Europe before 3000 BC. The name Celtic comes from the Greek word Keltori, "the hidden people." For those who study Celtic heritage, it is a life-long and multi-dimensional fascination. The aphorism, “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know” applies.
Our earliest sources of documentation on Celtic cultures across Europe –the tools, weapons and ornaments that Celtic peoples buried with their dead– are evidence of great artistic skill: The Celts achieved a rich and sophisticated tribal culture long before the dawn of Greek civilization. They were united inter-tribally by their shared language and world view/philosophy. The Greeks knew them as “the first philosophers”. It appears their society was not hierarchal, but egalitarian.
According to Caesar’s reports, the Druids were their intellectual class, incorporating all the professions. So, their leaders were a spiritual people, not a materialistic people.
Scholarly report argue that Celtic culture successfully upheld social egalitarianism for thousands of years--this philosophy promoted personal sovereignty for each individual, based on the concept of Free Will. This is unique in the history of later European societies, where patriarchal hierarchy gradually expanded from east to west. The lack of a centralized government structure amongst European Celtic nations made them easy prey to the centralized Roman Empire.
In 1069, just three years after William of Normandy, the Conqueror, captured England, he launched the great “Harrying of the North”. This was the beginning of the “Highland Clearances” in Scotland, which nearly wiped out Scottish culture.
Since I am Irish, I tend to focus on my own part of this vast cultural heritage. To determine who the Irish really were one must study their myths and legends. The origins of Irish settlement are disputed to this day. During the twelfth century, Irish monastic scholars compiled the "Book of Invasions" (the Leahbor Gabhala), one of the earliest chronicles of mythical occupations of Ireland. It claims that the first settlers were relatives of Noah, through the coming of the Sons of Mil, the Milesians from Spain, (who are also known as the Gaels, of Gaul). Many of these exceptional characters were believed to have magical powers, including the Tuatha de Danann, the "people of the Goddess Danu", who were said to be a race of Gods.
During the Dark Ages of Europe, Irish “saints and scholars” flocked to the Continent to establish teaching monasteries, reputedly “saving civilization” by transcribing and teaching Classic Greek literature.
Ireland remained to a great degree isolated from Europe until the end of the thirteenth century. 'Civilization' didn’t save the Irish when their ancient high culture succumbed to imperialist forces during the long war with England, which was intensified by the war between England and the Roman Catholic Church.
So, from the thirteenth century in Ireland, traditional life was disrupted by continuous waves of murderous cruelty, of a kind never before reported amongst their own peoples, but which had been par-for-the-course for Europeans under the ruthless expansion of the Roman Empire, and consolidated under the Inquisition.
During this European invasion, Irish and Scots were evacuated from their traditional lands, as forests were cut down to make way for plantations and estates of the English Ascendancy, justified by English law - the "Quia Emptores Act" of 1290 AD.
Up until the seventeenth century, unlike the rest of Europe and England, Ireland's Bardic schools had an educational tradition outside the monastic and ecclesiastical schools, which turned out poets, historians, lawyers, doctors, etc. Legends speak of these schools reaching back, before the first millennium BC, to ancient Druidic schools throughout the Celtic world. European Celtic libraries were destroyed during the expansion of the Roman Empire and, much later in Ireland, under the British Empire.
By the end of the seventeenth century, every aspect of traditional Irish culture was outlawed; their enlightened ancient language and Brehon Laws, their sacred ritual practices and their intricate music -- banned, sent underground, into hiding, while the old Irish aristocracy and defeated Irish Chieftains fled to the European continent with the reminder of their tribes and armies, welcomed by the European aristocracy, leaving behind the long-suffering people of Ireland, amongst embattled ruins, still standing, to be ruled by a new “Irish” aristocracy, known as the Ascendancy.
Now, throughout the Celtic Diaspora, the rich and sacred heritage of Celtic culture is deservedly experiencing a widespread renewal of interest, but, as we saw in the tragic controversy over the destruction of the Hill of Tara region, by corrupt politicians and developers, it seems not enough people today are prepared to make the necessary effort to protect their rich heritage.
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"This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever." Sigmund Freud (about the Irish)
"I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could."
George Bernard Shaw
"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."
Sean O'Casey
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