Modern Celts
This article concerns those peoples who consider themselves, or have been considered by others, to be
Celts in modern times. In ancient times, the
Celts were a number of interrelated peoples in central Europe sharing various cultural traits and speaking
Indo-European languages with a common
Proto-Celtic origin. Since the
Enlightenment, the term "Celtic" has been applied to a wide variety of peoples and cultural traits present and past. Today, "Celtic" is often used in order to describe the people and their respective cultures and languages of several ethnic groups in the
United Kingdom,
Isle of Man,
Republic of Ireland,
France,
Spain and northern
Portugal.
"Celticity" has been adopted as a node of self-identification by a variety of peoples at different times. During the
19th century, French nationalists gave a privileged significance to their descent from the
Gauls. The struggles of
Vercingetorix were portrayed as a forerunner of the 19th-century struggles in defence of French nationalism, including the wars of both Napoleons (
Napoleon I of France and
Napoleon III of France). Basic French history textbooks could begin with the famous words
"Nos ancêtres les Gaulois..." ("Our ancestors the Gauls..."). A similar use of "celticity" for 19th century nationalism was made in
Switzerland, when the Swiss were seen to originate in the Celtic tribe of the
Helvetii, a link still found in the official Latin name of Switzerland,
ConfÅ"deratio Helvetica, the source of the nation code CH.
At the same time, there was also a tendency to play up alternative heritages in the
British Isles at certain times, partially as a rationale for non-English parts of the islands to fully participate in the
British Empire. For example, in the Isle of Man, in the
Victorian era, the "
Viking" heritage was emphasised, and in Scotland, both Norse and
Anglo-Saxon heritage was played up.
With the advance of
Indo-European studies,
philologists also established that there was a relationship between the
Goidelic and
Brythonic languages, as well as a relationship between these languages and the extinct Celtic languages such as
Gaulish, spoken in classical times. The term "Celtic" therefore came to be widely applied (for the first time) to the
Goidelic and
Brythonic languages, and by extension to the peoples that spoke them.
A
romantic image of the Celt as noble savage was cultivated by the early
William Butler Yeats,
Lady Gregory,
Lady Charlotte Guest,
Lady Llanover,
James Macpherson,
Chateaubriand,
Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué and the many others influenced by them. This image coloured not only the
English perception of their neighbours on the so-called "
Celtic fringe" (compare the
stage Irishman), but also
Irish nationalism and its analogues in the other Celtic-speaking countries. Among the enduring products of this resurgence of interest in a romantic, pre-industrial, brooding, mystical Celticity are
Gorseddau, the revival of the
Cornish language, and the revival of the
Gaelic games.
In the decades leading up to
World War II, the various meanings attributed to Celtic "
race" were widely discussed in Europe. The so-called
Alpine race was identified with the ancient Celts and their descendants, and classical sources were scoured for appropriate
stereotypes to apply to this race.
After World War II, "race" went out of fashion and "
culture" took its place. Many of the same stereotypes and caricatures of Celticity once attributed to the Celtic or Alpine race, were thus recycled under the label of culture. But since the 1960s, Celticity has been put to a somewhat different use. The peoples of the "Celtic fringe" found in Celticity an explanation for their peripheral "otherness", as well as a source of pride which could galvanize them into demands for development and regeneration.
Nationalists in
Northern Ireland sought an end to endemic discrimination with the
Civil Rights Movement. Breton regionalists participated in the
May 1968 revolt under Breton flags and with the slogan
Bretagne=Colonie. The
Republic of Ireland, on surpassing
Britain's
GDP per capita in the 1990s for the first time in centuries, was given the moniker "
Celtic tiger". Thanks in part to agitation on the part of Cornish regionalists,
Cornwall was able to obtain
Objective One funding from the
European Union. Scotland and Wales obtained agencies like the
Welsh Development Agency, and Scottish and Welsh Nationalists have recently supported the institution of the
Scottish Parliament and
National Assembly for Wales, which are seen by many as a first step towards eventual independence from the
UK. More broadly, a distinct identity in opposition to that of the metropolitan capitals has been forged and taken strong root.
These latter evolutions have proceeded hand in hand with the growth of an
pan-Celtic or inter-Celtic dimension, seen in many organizations and festivals operating across various Celtic countries. Celtic studies departments at many universities in Europe and beyond, have studied the various ancient and modern Celtic languages and associated history and folklore under one roof.
The Celtic link is also claimed to come mainly from:
* language
* music
* cultural events
* sport
The
roots revival, applied to
Celtic music, has brought much inter-Celtic cross-fertilization, as, for instance, Welsh musicians have revived the use of the mediaeval Welsh
bagpipe under the influence of the Breton
binioù, Irish
uillean pipes and famous Scottish pipes, or the Scots have revived the
bodhran from Irish influence. Sports such as
Hurling and
Shinty are seen as being 'Celtic', whilst the Irish
fleadh is seen as an equivalent to the Breton
fest noz.
The
USA has also taken part in discussions of modern Celticity. For example,
James H. Webb, in his
2004 book
Born Fighting – How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, controversially asserts that the early "pioneering" immigrants to
North America were of
Scots-Irish origins. He goes on to argue that their distinct "Celtic traits" (loyalty to kin, mistrust of governmental authority, and military readiness), in contrast to the "
Anglo-Saxon" settlers, helped construct the modern "American identity".
Irish Americans also played an important role in the shaping of 19th-century
Irish republicanism through the
Fenian movement, the development of a discourse of the
Great Hunger as a British atrocity, and so on.
Six
nations tend to be most associated with a modern Celtic identity, and are considered 'the Celtic nations'. These are:
*
Ireland :*
Scotland:*
Wales:*
Brittany:*
Isle of Man:*
CornwallIt is these 'Six Nations' that (alone) are considered Celtic by the
Celtic League, and the
Celtic Congress. These organizations ascribe to a definition of Celticity based upon language. In the aforementioned six regions, Celtic languages have long survived and in the cases of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany continue to be used.
A number of activists on behalf of other regions/nations have also sought recognition as modern Celts, reflecting the wide diffusion of ancient Celts across Europe. Of these, the following regions are prominent:
*
Galicia:*
Asturias:*
EnglandIn neither Galicia nor Asturias has a Celtic language survived, and as such both fall outside of the
litmus test used by the
Celtic League, and the
Celtic Congress. Nevertheless, many organizations organized around Celticity consider that both Galicia and Asturias "can claim a Celtic cultural or historic heritage." [
1]. Justification for these claims to Celticity derive from similarities in music, dance, folklore, and culture to the other widely recognized Celtic countries. Further support is drawn from findings that the populations of northwestern Spain and those of other Celtic regions share a common genetic makeup.
[The Longue Durée of Genetic Ancestry: Multiple Genetic Marker Systems and Celtic Origins on the Atlantic Facade of Europe, American Journal of Human Genetics] England has a wealth of Celtic music, dance, folklore and culture, and the
Cumbric language was identified with northwestern England until long after the Norman invasion. England as a whole comprises many distinct regions, with some acknowledging a larger Celtic identity than others.
No treatment of modern Celticity would be complete without mentioning the migrations of people from Celtic countries. A very large portion of the populations of the
United States,
Canada,
Australia and
New Zealand is composed of people from Ireland, Britain, Brittany and the Isle of Man; and
Jamaica,
Barbados,
Montserrat,
Saint-Barthélemy,
Venezuela,
Argentina,
Brazil and
Mexico have also experienced large-scale migration from these lands at various times.
There are three areas outside Europe with communities of traditional Celtic language speakers: the
Chubut valley of
Patagonia with Welsh speaking
Argentinians (known as "Y Wladfa"),
Cape Breton Island in
Nova Scotia, with
Scottish Gaelic-speaking
Canadians and southeast
Newfoundland with
Irish Gaelic-speaking
Canadians.
While no Celtic-identified immigrant group is currently pursuing
independence or other
nationalist goals, Celtic-identified people have played critical roles in each societies movements for independence from the larger
empires to which they were formerly attached â€" for example, the most common mother-tongue amongst the
Fathers of Confederation which saw the formation of
Canada was
Gaelic.
[Ministry of Canadian Heritage. Gaelic most common mother-tongue among Fathers of Confederation. URL accessed 26/04/2006.] Today, Celtic identity throughout the Diaspora is generally presented as a
cultural identity (as opposed to a
nationalist or
racial one), and is experiencing a major revival.
Since the 1960s, there has been a very considerable growth of interest and enthusiasm in their Celtic heritage on the part of such people. Certain places in the diaspora have particularly strong associations with these various identities: the
Yorke Peninsula,
South Australia, with Cornish Australians;
Liverpool with the Welsh and Irish people in England;
Jesus College,
Oxford with Welsh students;
Glasgow with the Irish in Scotland;
South Boston or the
South Side of
Chicago with Irish Americans; and certain
arrondissements of
Paris with Breton Parisians.
There have been critics of the modern valorization of Celticity. It has been seen, for example, as firing some of the negative aspects of
Irish nationalism. Continental European groups claiming Celtic identity have been particularly vulnerable to claims that they are using ethnic divisions for political gain. For example, the
Italian Lega Nord have been accused of appropriating Celtic culture to pursue a
racist and exclusionary agenda. Similar accusations have been made towards claims of Celtic ethnology in Austria.[
2]
Indeed,
John Collis of the
University of Sheffield has argued that the idea of a 'Celtic' culture in the
British Isles was invented entirely by ancient authors, and then re-born by modern day nationalists. This is seen as an extreme critique of the situation; however, in Ireland, it has been shown that only around a quarter of the island contains significant archaeological evidence of the Iron Age culture typically identified as 'Celtic'.[
3]
Among
Atlantic Celtic groups, the main line of attack is that â€" while there is strong evidence for linkages between Atlantic and
Continental Celts â€" earlier assumptions that the Atlantic Celts must be the descendants of Continental Celts have largely been proven false. This finding has led some, including Richard Wagner of the Irish Institute, to assert that the Atlantic Celts are not Celts at all.[
4] Defenders of Celtic identity counter that the term has long referred to both Continental and Atlantic groups and is not dependant on any association between the two, so while revelations that the Atlantic Celts are an indigenous and not an immigrant group are of profound academic interest they are not particularly relevant to debates around the ethnic identitifications of the modern Celtic nations.
Recent genetic evidence seems to indicate that the populations of Ireland, Wales, Brittany, the Isle of Man, and Galicia may be closely linked and have been remarkably stable for "at least 6,000 years".[
5] This would mean that their shared culture actually pre-dates the
La Tène and
Hallstatt Celtic cultures. This does not necessarily mean that these peoples are not "Celts", however. Rather it means that the historical understanding of who the Celts were and are may need to be revised.[
6]
In any case, the usage of "Celtic" identity as a marker of indigenist, autonomist, and/or nationalist movements within the modern "Celtic nations" is deeply ingrained and unlikely to change any time soon.
*
Pan Celticism*
Peter Berresford Ellis.
1992. "Introduction".
Dictionary of Celtic Mythology.
Oxford University Press.
*
Norman Davies.
1999.
The Isles: A History.
Oxford University Press.
*
Robert O'Driscoll (ed).
1981.
The Celtic Consciousness. George Braziller, Inc,
New York City.
*
Euan Hague,
Benito Giordano and
Edward Sebesta 2005.
Whiteness, multiculturalism and nationalist appropriation of Celtic culture: the case of the League of the South and the Lega Nord in
Cultural Geographies, 12 (2), pp151-173
*
John Collis 2003. "Celts: Origins, Myths and Interventions".
Tempus
