WHO WERE THE CELTS" PROPERLY SO-CALLED? Disclosing identity of Early British " Celts" or Kelts "The so-called Celtic Question, than which no greater stumbling block in the way of clear thinking exists . . . there is practically to-day a complete unanimity of opinion among physical anthropologists that the term Celt, if used at all, belongs to the brachycephalic [round-headed] darkish population of the Alpine [Swiss] highlands totally lacking in the British Isles."-W. Z. RIPLEY, Races of Europe, 124, 126, 305. RIGHTLY to elicit the real racial agency by which uncivilized Ancient Britain became Aryanized in Language, High Culture and Civilized Institutions in the pre-Roman period, it is still necessary for us to re-examine and strive to solve the vexed question of "The Celts"; for the existing confusion in the use of this term forms one of the greatest obstacles to clear thinking on the subject, as cited in the heading. And this gross confusion has been a chief cause of the delay hitherto in solving the Origin of the Britons and the Aryan Question in Britain. At the outset we are confronted by the paradox that, while philologists and popular writers generally in this country assume that the "Celts" were Aryans in race as well as in language, and were the parents of the Brythons or Britons, and the Scots and Irish-notwithstanding that the "Early Britons" are also called non-Aryan pre-Celtic aborigineson the other hand, scientific anthropologists and classic historians have proved that the "Celts" of history were the non-Aryan, round-headed, darkish, small-statured race of south Germany and Switzerland, and that "Celts "properly so-called are "totally lacking in the British Isles." Thus, to speak, as is so commonly done, of "Celtic ancestry," the "Celtic temperament" and "Celtic fire" amongst any section of the natives of these islands, is, according to anthropologists, merely imaginary! The term "Celt" or "Kelt" is entirely unknown as the designation of any race or racial element or language in the British Isles, until arbitrarily introduced there a few generations ago. Nor does the name even exist in the so-called "Celtic" languages, the Gaelic, Welsh and Irish. It is, on the contrary, the classic Greek and Latin title of a totally different race of a totally different physical type from that of the British Isles, and that word was only introduced there by unscientific philologists and ethnologists some decades ago. The "Celts" or "Kelts" first appear in history, under that name, in the pages of Herodotus (480-408 B.C.). He calls them "Kelt-oi" and locates them on the continent of Western Europe. He says: "For the Ister [Danube], beginning from the Kelt-oi divides Europe in its course; but the Kelt-oi [of Gaul?] are beyond the pillars of Hercules, and border on the territories of the Kunēsi-oi or Kunet-oi [supposed to be Finnistere] who live the furthest to the west of all the peoples of Europe." Strabo, writing a few decades after Cæsar's epoch, gives further details regarding the ancient Greek information on the Celts, whom he calls "Kelt-ai": He says: "The ancient Greeks afterwards becoming acquainted with those natives towards the west, styled them 'Kelt-ai' [Kelts] and Iberi-en' [Iberians], sometimes compounding the names into 'Kelti-Iberien' or 'Kelto-Scythian -thus ignorantly uniting various distinct nations." 1 But see later. Herodotus ii, 33; iv, 49; also Xenophon (d. 359 B.C.) Hellenica, vii, I, 20. ⚫ S. i, 2, 27. NO TRUE "CELTS" IN BRITISH ISLES 129 Strabo habitually uses the term "Keltica" or "Land of the Kelts" for Gaul, which corresponded generally to modern France including Switzerland, and defines it thus:— Keltica" is bounded on the [south-] west by the mountains of the Pyrenees, which extend to either sea, both the Mediterranean and the ocean; on the east by the Rhine; on the north by the ocean from the north [west]ern extremity of the Pyrenees to the mouth of the Rhine; on the south by the sea of Marseilles and by the Alps from Liguria [Genoa] to the sources of the Rhine." He excludes Iberia or Spain-Portugal from Keltica, noting, "The Pyrenees chain divides Keltica from Iberia "; but he adds "Ephorus extends the size of Keltica too far, including within it what we now designate as ' Iberia' as far as Gades [Cadiz]. He includes Liguria [Genoa and Piedmont on the Italian side of the Alps] whose people he says were named by the Greeks" Kelto-Ligues," or Kelto-Ligurian. It is also noteworthy that he calls the inhabitants of" Keltica" or Gaul not only "Kelt-ai" but also them and their land repeatedly Galatic," (i.e., a variant of Galatia and Kelt) and he includes the Belgae as Kelts." But Strabo, like Cæsar and all other Greco-Roman writers without exception, expressly excludes Britain from Keltica or" The Land of the Celts." Thus he writes: "its (Britain's) longest side lies parallel to Keltica [Gaul].” And he emphasizes the difference between the physical appearance of the inhabitants of Britain and the Kelts or Celts of Gaul, describing the latter, the Celts, as a short-statured race with light-yellow hair." Cæsar also, in the well-known opening paragraph in his Commentaries, whilst affirming the identity of the Celta or "Celts" with the Galli or "Gauls," restricts the title "Celt" to Mid-Gaul west of the Seine, that is to Old Brittany, with Armorica, the Loire Valley, and Switzerland. He says: All Gaul (Gallia) is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgæ inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who, in their own language, are called Celts' (Celta), in ours Gauls' (Galli), the third." " 1 S. iv, I, I; and compare ii, 1, 17, etc. 2 Ib. iii, 1, 3 and iv. 4, 6. 5 Ib. iv, 4, I. 8 D.B.G. i, I. 3 Ib. iv, 4, 3. • Ib. iii, 1, 3; iv, 4, 2. "Ib. iv, 5, 2. And neither Cæsar, nor Tacitus, nor any other of the Greek or Roman historians or writers ever refer to the Celts or Kelts as inhabitants of Britain or of Hibernia. In British history and literature the first mention of Celts appears to be in 1607 in an incidental reference to the Celts not in Britain but in France; and again, in 1656, in Blount's Glossography which defines "Celt, one born in Gaul," and again, in 1782, contrasting the British with the Celts in Gaul in the sentence: "the obstinate war between the insular Britons and the continental Celts." But all of these references are unequivocally to the Celts in France, and not in Britain. The manner in which the notion of a "Celtic" ancestry for the British, Scots and Irish was insidiously introduced into British literature now becomes evident, and affords a striking example of the inception and growth of a false theory. The credit for the first introduction of this notion into Britain-a notion which by frequent repetitions and accretions grew to be" the greatest stumbling-block to clear thinking" on the Celtic Question-now appears to be due to a Mr. Jones. In 1706 he published an English translation of Abbé Pezron's book issued in 1703 on "Antiquité de la Nation et de la Langue des Celtes," under the title of Antiquities of Nations, more particularly of the Celta or Gauls, taken to be originally the same people as our Ancient Britains," in which he gave currency to that theory of M. Pezron. The seed thus thrown into receptive British soil seems to have taken root and grown into a sturdy tree, which now is popularly believed to be indigenous. Thus, in 1757, Tindal, in translating Rapin's History of England, says in his introduction (p. 7) "Great Britain was peopled by the Celta or Gauls." And, in 1773, the theory that the Celts were ancestors of the Gaels had become current in Skye, for Mr. McQueen, in a discussion there with Samuel Johnson, says: "As they [the Scythians] were the ancestors of the 1 Topsell, Fourfold Beast, 251. 2 For these and subsequent references to early English occurrence of the Celt," see Dr. Murray's Oxford English Dictionary, “ Celt.” name • Warton, Hist. Kiddington, 67. Murray, English Dict., re Celt." "CELT" NAME TRANSPLANTED TO BRITAIN 131 Celts [in sense of British] the same religion might be in Asia Minor and Skye." And, by 1831, the seedling Celtic tree had become established in Britain as a mighty monarch of the forest which sheltered the Aryan theory of the Celts under its branches with the Celts as full-blooded Aryans in race. In that year Dr. Prichard, the ethnologist and philologist, in his" Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations," describes the supposititious "British Celts" as Aryans in race, and ascribes to them the introduction of the various Aryan dialects current, before the Anglo-Saxon period, in the British Isles. And, in 1851, Sir Daniel Wilson, the antiquary, calls the British Isles "the insular home of the Keltai." The transformation of the people of the British Isles into "Celt" was then complete. The older philologists were thus mainly responsible for this arbitrary extension of the name "Celtic" in a racial sense to the earlier inhabitants of the British Isles. The confusion arose through the popular misconception that because a people spoke a dialect of the same group of languages they were necessarily of the same race. The confusion began with the observation by the French philologists that the language of the Celts in Brittany or Mid-Gaul, or "Celtic " speech, as it was naturally called by them, was essentially similar in structure to that of the Brythonic or Cymri speech of the Welsh and the Breton of Brittany in Gaul. This Brythonic language was then presumed to be a branch of the Celtic of Gaul, and the term "Celtic" applied to it, and then extended in a racial sense to the Welsh people who spoke it. Similarly, the Gaelic or Gadhelic speech of the Irish and the Scottish Highlanders was also found to have affinity with the Gallic and Welsh " Celtic," and all the people speaking those languages were also dubbed "Celts." The linguistic affinities on which this racial kinship was assumed, were tabulated in two groups by Dr. Latham in 1841, based on the classification by Prichard and C. Meyer; and this still 'Boswell, Life of Johnson, III. Hebrides Tour, Sept. 18th. 'W.P.G., 472. Irish Gaedhlig, Scottish Gaelic Gaidhlig, from Irish-Scot Gaodhal and Welsh Gwyddel, a Gael or inhabitant of Ireland and Northern Scotland. R. G. Latham, M.D., English Language, 1841. |